South Korea's program of higher wages and taxes – so far, it's not working - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/business/south-korea-economy.html <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see contrasting articles on taxes & growth. There's this article about how South Korea raised taxes in a bid to grow faster and failed, but there are also plenty of articles about how Kansas's attempt to _lower_ taxes in a bid to grow faster also failed [1], as well as predictions that California's high taxes would hamper growth (which hasn't really happened yet).

What if the actual conclusion is that _it just doesn 't matter_. Growth is driven by other factors, like when a brilliant but insufferable physicist moves back home to be close to his mother [2], and is a function of individual, private firms performing functions of the economy more efficiently than existing incumbents. Tax policy follows as a _consequence_ , and can go in either direction: either the newly-rich individuals think "Oh well, I've got plenty of money to spare, I can afford to burn some to ensure the people around me live decent lives", or they think "I want to keep more of this money to myself so I can decide how to allocate it." Regardless, wealth brings power, and so they have the ability to shape local government policy based on their particular worldview.

If this is correct, tax policy is a huge distraction, and if governments really want to jump-start growth they should be funding basic research, ensuring that the results are public (to their citizens, at least), and encouraging bright young people from across the world to immigrate to their jurisdictions.

[1] [https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/kansas- pr...](https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/kansas-provides- compelling-evidence-of-failure-of-supply-side-tax-cuts)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Career)

<comment><USER3> > What if the actual conclusion is that it just doesn't matter.

You're probably right with respect to growth.

Other commenters are going to glibly point out that you need taxes to pay for basic research or whatever. Yeah, I think they miss the point too.

If the country wanted to, it could not raise a single tax dollar and 10x its research spending. A country isn't a household, its balance sheet can have debt permanently, etc. etc.

No, I think taxes matter __for justice and equality __. And the whole reason cost effectiveness entered our debate is that rich people, like you 're correctly pointing out, have opinions, and tax policy is a consequence of that.

But if overall rich people are aligned against higher taxes, which is the case in history most of the time, they're effectively aligned against equality and justice.

And save me the downvotes if you don't understand how property taxes, for example, that differ between neighborhoods, can be about justice as much as they are about funding school districts.

Or that the healthcare mandate was absolutely about justice, and that calling it a tax was a workaround precisely for the reasons I described: that we've become obsessed with positivist or legalistic (instead of normative) dialogue, so it was the only way to get ACA passed.

I love tax policy on HN, because it really brings out of the woodwork people who _do_ care about what's good for the country, and people who _don 't._

<comment><USER4> > I think taxes matter for justice and equality.

There is nothing inherently just or equal about coming with guns to people and taking a percentage of their earned resources.

> I love tax policy on HN, because it really brings out of the woodwork people > who do care about what's good for the country, and people who don't.

And I love it because it brings out holier-than-thou virtue signalers, who think that they know better than everyone how to spend other people's resources, while denigrating their contributions.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. "Caring about what's good for the country" is not nearly enough to be able to bring positive change even to a subset of people in the country. But it does bring some virtual internet points, I concede that.

<comment><USER5> > _There is nothing inherently just or equal about coming with guns to people > and taking a percentage of their earned resources._

There's nothing just about people believing they "earned" those resources by their hard work alone, and not understanding that there were huge infrastructure costs that enabled them not just to do the work and earn money, but even to stay alive -- and that they have to pay to sustain it.

From the roads their cars (and they suppliers and customers cars) drive on, to the airports, to the government funded internet (from the research of ARPANET, to CERN (www), to the trillions spent subsidizing telcos), to the primary schools and high schools they went to, to the fire department that helps them to avoid burning when their houses catch fire, from the FDA and relevant law enforcement that helps them avoid dying from the first crook wanting to sell crap as food or medicine, to the contract laws and their enforcement that help them stay in business, to the criminal laws and their enforcement that protect them from being at the mercy of anyone who'd fancy killing them, from the military that prevents them from being the subjects or prisoners or sex slaves of some foreign power that wanted to expand, and on and on...

It would only be _just_ their "earned resources" if they made them in the jungle, hunting or growing their food alone.

<comment><USER6> It might be a two-sided transaction, but we don't really have a choice, do we?

If we knew then what we know now, maybe people wouldn't have wanted the government to subsidize the automobile by creating our road system's infrastructure. Hey, maybe people won't even want the internet in another twenty years. And I know for a fact that plenty of people in the US don't appreciate the way law enforcement keeps them "safe". Same for the military.

I find this whole, "let me laundry-list things the government does, many of which it didn't really _ask for permission_ to serve, as a justification for its existence," to be a fairly empty excuse for taxation. I appreciate what I get on some level, but I recognize that the government isn't 100% perfect and that my successes aren't that dependent on, say, my high school guidance counselor.

<comment><USER5> > _It might be a two-sided transaction, but we don 't really have a choice, do > we?_

We don't have a choice with any LAW. It's what the society has decided, with the means the society has to decide things (elections, and so on).

> _I find this whole, "let me laundry-list things the government does, many of > which it didn't really ask for permission to serve, as a justification for > its existence"_

That's what elections are for -- and even more so, active participation in politics every day (including with violent protests when it calls for it).

If the population hardly deserves the title of "citizen" (active participant in the politics of the polis), and just casts a vote every 4 years (if that), then they don't get to complain that they pay more taxes than they want, or the government does X which they don't want.

The exception being if there's a tyrannical government, or opaque procedures out of their reach, or the control has been shifted away from their reach and they're e.g. a protectorate (which also can happen).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Odd they only interviewed business owners and employers, and not the people who benefit from higher wages.

Of course, this article scratches its head because it is assuming SKorea = USA and South Koreans = 'Muricans. Maybe we should look at the biggest driver of the economy in the US: consumer spending. Giving workers higher wages causes a boom in spending and a boom in economic growth (see: the wage increases in the 1990's and the largest boom in latter 20th century history). Maybe SKoreans just don't need to own piles of crap like americans? Maybe we should look at what historically the biggest driver of the SKorean economy is, and see if raising wages would actually increase that.

Too bad the article is so thin on actual economic history and, um, knowledge.

<comment><USER8> There's some truth to what you're saying but the idea that you "give workers higher wages...(to create) a boom in spending", as if wages were some kind of perpetual motion machine is not accurate. If everyone was paid more for no reason, that creates inflation since it artificially alters supply and demand even though no new value was created in the labor market. Prices for everything would simply increase.

But even this, is a simplistic view. Inflation typically causes previously issued corporate debt to drop in price and newly issued fixed rate instruments to increase in yield. The problem with that is that increased yield cost corporations more money to borrow when they refinance their existing debt. Now companies are in trouble from two angles: One, a higher cost of labor due to inflation, and two, from higher costs of borrowing money. As a result, companies increase prices even further, which starts an upward spiral where wages can't keep up. By the way, this is the cause of the recent meltdown in US Stocks over the last 4-6 months.

If this process is allowed to run without any controls, you'll wind up with a hyperinflationary environment, similar to Argentina, where the dollars in your bank account are worth 40% less than they were the previous year. People wind up unable to afford anything beyond day-to-day goods like food and housing, consumerism, the main driver of most Western economies, slows to a crawl (You can't save for an iPhone when it costs double what it did last year), industries that rely on discretionary income go out of business, and the economy contracts and collapses on itself.

I know this is a bit dramatic, but it can and does happen. It can happen even without a trigger, but if you suddenly increased the minimum wage in a tight labor market you're basically throwing gasoline on the fire that is inflation.

<comment><USER9> You just made a very persuasive argument that increasing minimum wage will spike inflation. But I don't think this is true when you look at the data. We've recently increased minimum wage a lot over the last 8 years, but inflation hasn't really moved at all.

And from a theory standpoint minimum wage increases should have very little effect on inflation. Standard inflation theory is too much money in the economy. And too much demand for goods, causes too much demand for workers. This causes a tight labor market which drives wage rates which get passed onto consumers through increased prices. But minimum wage workers have the least amount of negotiating power, and since the minimum wage is higher than their market wage they by definition can't negotiate. Which makes it impossible for them to drive inflation.

> One, a higher cost of labor due to inflation, and two, from higher costs of > borrowing money. As a result, companies increase prices even further, which > starts an upward spiral where wages can't keep up.

Inflation does have some serious problems, but the idea that wages can't keep up with inflation doesn't make any sense. How can wage driven inflation drive inflation higher than wages?

I'm also not sure borrowing money is any more expensive. The nominal interest rate increases, but the real interest rate decreases. There is a large boon to current borrowers when inflation unexpectedly increases, and a boon to loaners when inflation unexpected decreases.

<comment><USER10> Well you have to be careful with the data.

Firstly, inflation stats don't track every price. In particular they don't track house prices (directly) or the prices of financial instruments like debt, stocks, etc. So money printing that pours into the stock market will cause a market bubble whilst inflation stats stay stubbornly low.

Secondly it's possible businesses have adapted to increased minimum wage laws by simply automating those jobs away. I see a lot of robotic airline checkin desks and McDonalds order takers these days.

<comment><USER9> Imagine a bond pays out $10,000 in 30 years. Now if the interest rate is 0 that bond is worth $10,000. But if the interest rate is 10% then that bond is worth $573.

So if the interest rate goes from 10% -> 0 we would have 1700% inflation. Which is crazy especially if all other goods and services in the economy remain unchanged.

<comment><USER10> Why would that be crazy? Isn't that a circular definition of crazyness? Inflation is whatever statisticians say it is - if inflation stats were very different to how they are now, why would that would be crazy? Maybe it's crazy that we constantly read about asset bubbles yet inflation stays flat? The intuitive definition would imply inflation should swing up and down wildly given the huge size of the bubbles in question.

In reply to your second post, which I think is essentially the same as this one, it makes no sense to say it'd give "a false impression inflation is happening". Inflation is whatever set of prices we want to include. If we arbitrarily exclude some because we think inflation stats should _look_ a certain way, that's the tail wagging the dog - this data exists to inform decision making, not tell us what we want to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is overly simplistic, and all but guaranteed all these generic discussions about tax and growth rate, far detached from economic/social situation of Korea.

South Korea has some serious problems.

\- Living as South Korean is hard and stressful. Really hard and stressful. It has one of the highest suicide rate, highest elderly poverty rate among OECD, and again one of the longest working hours. Not to mention extreme competition at school.

\- As a result, less and less Koreans are getting married, and less babies are born, because people cannot afford to marry and have babies. These days a lot of young people say they cannot afford to be in a relationship! We are turning into a country of "involuntary celibates."

\- This of course means there will be less and less young people to sustain the economy, which will start a positive feedback loop. Immigration might help but it can only help so much.

The government is thus forced to do something. Increased minimum wage, more public sector jobs, better enforcement of workplace safety laws (which have been basically toothless): these are desperate attempts to make people stop feeling like walking next to a cliff (and hopefully to make more babies). If these policies also bring immediate economic growth, that's great, but that's not the primary objective, as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER12> If young people cannot afford to marry and start families, then... they need more and better jobs, and to get to keep more of their income. I.e., more growth and lower taxes.

<comment><USER13> You suggest "more growth" and "lower taxes" as a solution. The former is more of an objective rather than a solution; every single government wants "more growth" but how to achieve that is a completely different story. About "lower taxes", South Korea already tried that option for 9 years and it had spectacularly failed. (BTW, income and corporation tax in SK is generally much lower than the US, so apparently "even lower tax" that you might suggest won't likely work.)

<comment><USER12> There's certainly a point where lowering tax rates cannot help much (diminishing returns). But raising tax rates from that point might have an outsize effect, depending perhaps on how much (but still assuming not that much of a change).

As to growth, you're absolutely right that it's not as simple as wishing it. But the same is true for raising wages: sure, it's trivial to raise the statutory minimum, but for that to have the intended effect is a different story, unless the intended effect was more unemployment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why would anyone expect higher taxes to increase growth?

> _Under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea has raised taxes and the minimum > wage in the name of economic growth. So far, it hasn't worked out as > planned._

That's not how that works at all. Whoever made this "plan" apparently skipped Macroeconomics 101.

> _Growth has slowed, unemployment has risen and small-business owners like > Moon Seung are complaining._

Any Economics undergrad would tell you that's exactly the expected outcome.

Raising taxes hurts growth and increases unemployment because you are reducing the profitability of all businesses.

Raising minimum wage increases unemployment because you are raising the cost of labor.

And small businesses often pay the highest price for these policies.

<comment><USER15> When I took Economics 101 I was told that there was one school that says "taking people's money away will make the economy worse because they know how to spend it best," and another school that says, "the economy is powered by money changing hands, so if you take away money that would otherwise have sat around and use it to buy random items, you will force the economy to be more active than it would otherwise have been."

<comment><USER16> > the economy is powered by money changing hands

The economy is powered by creation and exchange of value. Money changing hands is mistaking the incentive for the act itself.

Most economic schools of thought advocate stimulus during recessions to stop a slowdown of money changing hands, but this is a short-term measure. Money isn't the economy and there's no reason to believe making money fly around willy-nilly will help the economy in a permanent way.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. The key factor in growth is the production of goods an services.

To easily demonstrate: imagine everyone stopped producing goods and services tomorrow in the US.

Everyone would still have the exact same amount of money, but you will not be able to use it to buy a fresh loaf of bread (since none are being baked) or have your car serviced.

The value of money will drop to zero. It won't matter at all if it changes hands; indeed, it won't, since there won't be anything to buy.

Thinking "money changing hands" powers the economy is thus mistaking effect for a cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _But joblessness hit an eight-year high in August of 4.2 percent after the > new minimum wage took effect, though it has since improved. Growth was at 2 > percent in the third quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, > down from 2.8 percent in the second quarter._

A 4.2 percent unemployment rate is remarkably low, and 2% growth in a quarter, isn't bad either.

Increasing taxes and raising the minimum wage is certainly not going to lead to increased economic growth or lower unemployment. The primary benefit of such moves, is to improve the quality of life for the middle-class and lower- middle-class. Neither of which was mentioned in the article, which is surprising considering that's the primary motivation and metric against which it should be measured.

<comment><USER18> Presumably that 2% growth is annualized.

<comment><USER10> But 2% annual growth is normal for developed economies. The USA with 4% under Trump is really kicking it and that looks unsustainable.

Also I thought economists believed 5% unemployment was something of a lower bound, that there's always a bit of natural unemployment as people move around between jobs - you can't actually ever hit zero.

So I'm not sure from these stats why South Korea thinks they have a growth or employment problem. It doesn't look like it. The primary driver of economic growth in advanced economies with stable populations is productivity increases and those come from technological advancement, which isn't going to be much affected by minimum wages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Once your economy gets to a developed state the only way to see a significant bump in growth is through innovation.

Look at the top 100 counties in terms of real GDP growth, not a lot of Western style counties there.

South Korea has a reputation for a very educated work force, if I were a citizen I'd probably be advocating for policies that can fully take advantage of that over generic solutions such as raising or cutting taxes.

<comment><USER20> > if I were a citizen I'd probably be advocating for policies that can fully > take advantage of that

what are some of the examples of these policies.

<comment><USER15> If you believe that the best place to innovate is inside a big corporate lab, or a scrappy startup garage, or both, the answer would be "lower taxes," with the answer to the immediate next question ("for who?") being determined by your balance of preferences between industry labs and the Woz's garage.

<comment><USER21> Alternatively you could create very high taxes on large organizations and capital gains, then offer significant tax incentives to invest in R&D. This is more or less what gave us Bell Labs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The korean economy is at the moment ill and rotting away. The youngsters expect to be employed by the big corps earning big bucks while having insane job security. Samsung pays massive salaries , 15-17 salaries a year and companies face insane conditions due to super strong labor unions.

No the real change would be to cut the bullshit for korean laborers. Korean workers spend insane amount of time at work DOING ABSOLUTELY nothing because their supervisor has some work to finish and is unable to delegate / manage better.

Koreans have serious issues with productivity and the country should aim to ease the burden on both workers and companies.

</comment><comment><USER23> It won't. That's not what taxes are for.

"The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government. Two changes of the greatest consequence have occurred in the last twenty-five years which have substantially altered the position of the national state with respect to the financing of its current requirements.

The first of these changes is the gaining of vast new experience in the management of central banks.

The second change is the elimination, for domestic purposes, of the convertibility of the currency into gold.

Final freedom from the domestic money market exists for every sovereign national state where there exists an institution which functions in the manner of a modern central bank, and whose currency is not convertible into gold or into some other commodity."

Taxes for Revenue is Obsolete - Beardsley Ruml (Chair of New York Fed 1946)

[http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html](http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html)

South Korea is overtaxed for the size of government it has. As is any nation with any long term unemployment.

<comment><USER24> That's not true if you have free movement of capital across the national border. Debt is a claim on future productivity of the nation, and if a necessary share of the national income is not being claimed through taxes to service the debt, capital will exit to brighter climes. That statement may have been true in 1946 when the US was the only non-shattered developed economy in town but it's hardly axiomatic.

<comment><USER25> >>"Debt is a claim on future productivity of the nation, and if a necessary share of the national income is not being claimed through taxes to service the debt, capital will exit to brighter climes. "

What debt? The grandparent is telling you that debt is not necessary to finance a state that control its own floating currency.

<comment><USER26> > debt is not necessary to finance a state that control its own floating > currency

It is if you wish to avoid runaway inflation. Even countries which have cast off the fetters of the gold standard (or equivalent) have found that there are still limits to the rate at which they can issue currency. Moreover, once the implications sink in people just index prices (including wages and interest rates) to the expected rate of inflation and you're right back where you started.

<comment><USER27> > you're right back where you started

That's kind of the point. Enforce taxes so that people have less money or print money and raise inflation so that the money people have is worth less, either way the real consideration is how much of the nation's productivity you are using, not how you are getting the money.

<comment><USER24> Taxes don't cause people to have less money - they're purely a redistributive process

<comment><USER25> If a government spending is in surplus taxes means retiring money from the economy.

<comment><USER24> Yes, but that's a separate point isn't it? If the government spends every penny it taxes, that only moves purchasing power from one sector to another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article doesn't differentiate between tax and wage increases.

Any business which needs to pay minimum wage in order to maintain a profit is in a precarious situation. A rising minimum wage is far from the only risk to the business; even simple economic growth is going to capsize them eventually as more local jobs pay higher wages.

While we will blame the loss of these jobs on the minimum wage hike, I think it's safe to say these jobs were going away in the near term anyway.

<comment><USER12> Or growth might improve the situation for marginal businesses. But raising the minimum wage will certainly push them out. Maybe that's a good thing: releasing resources for better uses. But maybe it's a bad thing too. I wouldn't raise the minimum wage just to push marginal businesses out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The thing that gets glossed over in most tax debates is that every tax system has its own wrinkles.

For instance in Switzerland you pay tax on the imputed rent of a home you own. In Denmark you can can come as a foreigner and pay 27% for several years. In the UK you can claim non dom and avoid tax on all overseas income. In Malta corporations pay 35% but get back 30 quite soon.

The brackets and deductibles are also all wildly different.

And most importantly the taxes are paying for very different levels of service.

So there's no sensible way to compress that into a headline without asterisks.

That's not to say I don't think it's a worthwhile debate, just that a number of commentators seem to be going directly to economic theory, which generally does not address these wrinkles.

</comment><comment><USER30> no workers were interviewed for this article, only bosses

</comment><comment><USER31> I am trying to understand the logic behind higher taxes for growth, is it because the domestic consumption is so low, that government decided to tax and spend "Bigly"? If they are spending bigly, what are they spending on?

<comment><USER2> There's a big marginal-propensity-to-consume argument. Poor people spend a much larger proportion of their income than rich people, so if you redirect money from rich people to poor people, you redirect it from hoarding & speculation toward economic activity.

It's unclear at which threshold this actually occurs, as it implies that rich people are either sitting with their money in the bank or playing speculative games with it rather than investing it in productive enterprises that will spend it on innovation. South Korea's experience indicates that may not be the case, at least in South Korea, or it could indicate that government expenditures aren't actually reaching poor people, or it could indicate poor people blew it all on Bitcoin rather than spending it on useful things. Anyway, that's the theory, whether it applies to reality is still an open question.

<comment><USER32> Well, that's only if you believe that "consumption" is a good thing that is supposed to be encouraged.

In reality, it is the opposite. Consumption, is by definition the _destruction_ of resources.

I am not sure why people believe that the destruction of resources is something that we should be promoting.

Instead, we should be promoting savings, and the preservation of resources, as well as the creation of capital.

<comment><USER26> > Instead, we should be promoting savings, and the preservation of resources, > as well as the creation of capital.

Production and consumption are both necessary. If you don't save and invest then production capacity will decline and there will be less available to consume in the future; but on the other hand if you don't consume then all that production capacity goes to waste and you derive no benefit from saving and investing. The _balance_ is the critical aspect. Both policies which promote over-consumption at the expense of saving and policies which encourage over-investment at the expense of consumption miss the mark and destroy value by moving the economy away from the optimum balance.

<comment><USER24> Funnily enough I happened to read an O Henry story today that is exactly about this:

[http://www.bibliomania.com/0/5/221/714/17033/1/frameset.html](http://www.bibliomania.com/0/5/221/714/17033/1/frameset.html)

As is usual with O Henry the sting is in the tail :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Moon Jae-In's term started in May of 2017. There is not a lot of data in 18 months to parse here, so also not many conclusions to make.

<comment><USER34> The top post about taxes not mattering references changes that happened in ~5 years.

Changes happen over the scale of decades.

You don't want to make bad policies today that turn your country into the USSR tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is a slight slowdown in the economy fault of new president's policies or rather just economic cycle? My assumption is that in the short run labour cost to the economy will increase, but in the medium to long run the positive effects could be more noticeable: accumulation of savings, growth if taxes were invested sensibly by government (i.e. in R&D).

</comment><comment><USER36> Why would you expect higher taxes to heat up the economy? That's in the same boat as raising interest rates.

<comment><USER37> If the cash is redistributed, theoretically you increase buying power, both state and individual. Holding all other variables steady.

<comment><USER38> However that also causes inflation. Holding all other variables steady.

<comment><USER39> Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - it encourages companies to spend on expansion instead of hoarding, and reduces the value of debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really think the new kind of start up financing is going to explode. It is just inevitable, under the standard VC system, that there is going to be conflicts of interest. The VC's are going to push for growth and an IPO as quickly as possible in order to ensure that their money is protected. On the other hand, the CEO's of the startup's recognize the need for growth, but would like to do so in a more sustainable, organic method.

This new method of raising capital that the article mentions might not be the best method, but it offers a new approach. It offers something different, and I believe, will allow for other new methods to arise that will better support the entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love how it's more important to have high economic growth than to pay people a living wage.

What exactly is the alternative that everyone here is suggesting? Lower taxes and the growth will somehow give these people more money? Really? No. It may increase growth, but that money will go to the people on top and the people on the bottom will be exactly where they were.

At least in this case, the money is redistributed to people who need it.

<comment><USER42> > Lower taxes and the growth will somehow give these people more money? > Really?

Lowering tax rates can actually increase a country's total tax receipts. Having more GDP not only means more stuff per person, but also more stuff to tax.

That said, the goal of a country is not even to maximize its tax receipts in the first place. Taxes are one way that a country achieves its goals. A country's goals are going to be a mixed bag, anything from redistribution wealth to the poor as you've said, to reducing tax burdens on its citizens.

<comment><USER43> Do we really believe that lowering taxes increases tax receipts ? I don't think any tax experts believe it anymore. There have been number of examples, like Bush Tax cuts and Kansas tax cuts that didn't increase tax revenue

<comment><USER42> In the general sense, which is the sense I meant it, it's obvious. When you tax 100% and 0%, then your tax revenue goes to zero. When you tax 99% and 1%, they're a bit more than zero, but not by much. At some equilibrium, you maximize tax revenue. If the current tax is above that equilibrium, then logically you will increase tax revenue by lowering the tax rate. AKA the Laffer Curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> no mention of the crypto crash here which funneled massive amounts of cash outside the country. Many koreans invested everything they had into crypto. They were completely scammed!

[https://qz.com/1166103/a-third-of-south-korean-workers- have-...](https://qz.com/1166103/a-third-of-south-korean-workers-have- invested-in-cryptocurrencies-like-bitcoin/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Korea seems to be the sort of place where they could pull back from a policy like this, without a decade of idiotic bickering.

</comment><comment><USER46> Raising taxes will not result in growth. The government has to think like a company and invest in the right opportunities to make more money and create better jobs. Maybe its time we rethink the role of our government. Instead of asking us for taxes, maybe they pay us back.

<comment><USER39> Put the Ayn Rand down and join the real world please.

Also - case in point - Kansas. Lower taxes, and they now can't fund schools properly - which means no educated workforce 10-20 years down the line.

<comment><USER47> Please don't do personal attacks on HN or take the thread further into ideological flamewar, regardless of how lame another comment was.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Many, many businesses are barely making it - so taxes them more goes right to their bottom line. Perhaps the tax rate on business should be progressive, so that businesses working to stay afloat don't sink, and those that are chock full of cash can pay the standard rate.

Better yet would be to create programs that offset taxes by opening/hiring more employees. I'd personally like to see the money stay in the private sector than go to the government directly. Hiring more people still increases taxes through personal income taxes.

<comment><USER49> A business tax is paid on profits, so it has little to no effect on struggling businesses.

<comment><USER48> False. If your small business is barley making it - any and all money goes directly back into the company for survival. If you're on the edge of going under, any additional money you can keep on the table increases the chances of survival.</comment></comment></comment>


All Female Lizard Species Created in Lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/all-female-lizards/

<comment><USER2> Just so long as they don't learn to open doors...</comment>


Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn't So Great After All - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397 <comment><USER2> Did companies ever consider remote work desirable in the first place? Outside of the few poster ones (e.g. twitter), I'm pretty sure 99% of companies were never on board with the idea of long term remote work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/3ngGN](http://archive.is/3ngGN)</comment>


Carbon – Create images of your source code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dawnlabs/carbon <comment><USER2> Ugh, making accessible plain text into inaccessible images. As a blind person I really hate this.

<comment><USER3> It's actually accessible. take a look at this tweet and inspect the image. all the code is in the alt attribute. So they have thought of that. This will only be if you tweet it from their webapp though.

It would be cool if there was a way to copy paste the text easier.

<comment><USER4> >It would be cool if there was a way to copy paste the text easier.

Like, just using text? Maybe even send it through a syntax highlighter first?

I can't be the only one that was irked at Amazon for spending _years_ making their product promo pages or prominent buttons as hard-coded images instead of text. Horribly inaccessible, over the top, looks terrible on HiDPI devices, looks terrible on a non-Mac because it was clear that their designers were using OS X font rendering, so it looked totally inconsistent.

My favorite part is being on mobile and having to scroll left and right to see the image, or the image has been fit-to-scale is flatly impossibly too small to read.

I feel stodgy, but this entire effort is annoying. Just like the stupid GIFs on project READMEs that play too slow or too fast and have to be watched 50 times to grasp what's going on. Meanwhile asciinema exists and is superior in every way (seekable, pausable, text-selectable, etc).

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately the web platform has failed to provide a sensible way to embed HTML content, so images and videos are how people actually share things. You can take an image and save it to your device and share it to any social media service without doing anything special. You just can't get that experience with asciinema or any other sort of rich format. It's a real bummer.

<comment><USER4> Hyperlinks work just fine though. Who saves an image of code? For what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The VSCode plugin "polacode" makes nice looking images of code using your current theme. It's really nice. [https://github.com/octref/polacode](https://github.com/octref/polacode)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Did not know that plugin. Just tested it, seems to work really well. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment> fake-name Did you feel there were not enough projects out there already named carbon?

Jesus, at least change the name. Carbon is [already a thing]([https://github.com/graphite- project/carbon](https://github.com/graphite-project/carbon)).

<comment><USER7> To me Carbon makes sense, since it's like a 'carbon copy' of the code. Most project names are not unique words. And I for one have a hard time picking names for projects. Just curious, but what would you think would be a better name for this project?

<comment> fake-name Anything, as long as it has < 100 google results.

At least, plonk the project name into the github search, and see if there are existing projects using exactly that name. I found at least _EIGHT_ other projects with more then 100 stars already named "carbon". At least one of them is VERY widely used (carbon, which is the time-series backend for graphite).

Basically, you're actively making life harder for users when you decide to name-collide with existing active projects.

<comment><USER8> It would be interesting if Google providing away to search for unlikely phrases. Maybe their data structures would allow some sort of direct enumeration based on inverse tf-idf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any twitter-clones that allow you to post markdown?

Can't help but weep for the excess bandwidth of sharing code as a .png -.-

<comment><USER10> You will be losing the audience though

</comment></comment><comment> another-cuppa Please show me source code as plain text. My fonts and colour preferences are better than yours.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just so you know, your project has a pretty big name collision with a PHP library (called Carbon)[1]. It extends PHP's DateTime API.

I know that there probably aren't a huge amount of PHP devs around here, but one of, if not the most, popular PHP libraries in production.

It's not a huge deal I guess, not being in the same space, but I just thought you should know.

</comment><comment><USER12> The quality of the text rendering could really be improved by using subpixel render [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering). Most desktop apps do this. Your browser does it. Your terminal probably does it. VSCode does it. Even the canvas tag in browsers supports this.

Basically, every place you're likely to read code is going to look better than the images generated with this.

<comment><USER13> Subpixel rendering requires knowing the pixel orientation (are sub pixels left to right or top to bottom) and the order they are in (rgb vs bgr) and finally assume that the display screen is in real full color mode, and not some limit color space like YUV420.

<comment><USER14> Which is why it's insane that Windows 8.1 broke the cleartype tuner and it's still broken in 10 to this day.

See Noel's comment (at the bottom) of [https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/768bd013-c...](https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en- US/768bd013-cff9-4a80-a3f9-5ca04340871e)

<comment><USER15> Yes, there's something horribly persistently wrong there; all Metro apps render conspicuously ugly fonts for me now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really? This honestly has to be one of the most useless things I've seen implemented.

Legitimately what is the point?

</comment><comment><USER17> So basically this adds some skeumorphic mac buttons ??? and a drop shadow?

<comment><USER18> Skeuomorphic is more than a tired cliche buzzword for pretend designers that want to voice their disagreement. It actually is a style for ornamental designs that mimic real-world things.

Three flat-colored circles in a row on a flat surface do not look like realistic items at all, they are actually the opposite, a stylized representation of a real life object.

<comment><USER17> in this context, it's being used more in the "spirit" than in the traditional direct physical resemblance.

In this context, the "spirit" is indicating that simulating a "mac window", which serves no major purpose in elucidating source code, which is analogous (but not strictly identical, of course) to simulating physical buttons in another context.

<comment><USER18> So it's the same, except it's something else completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does this project have 13k stars?!

<comment><USER6> 13,000 people clicked on the star button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice work - Just yesterday I tried typing out 5 lines of Ruby code in a Facebook comment in a group I belong to, and the if...end block had all the leading spaces trimmed out, which made it look weird and negated the point I was trying to make.

Something like Carbon would have made the illustration a lot better, and only added a few seconds to the process.

<comment><USER21> Do you have PrintScreen key on your keyboard?

<comment><USER22> Please, don't ever print screen any code you want to share with someone, it's really bad for your karma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I did make something similar before, but I guess mine is more inferior in many ways.

[https://altbdoor.github.io/code-screen/](https://altbdoor.github.io/code- screen/)

</comment><comment><USER24> It's quite annoying that the source code editor doesn't display the edit cursor - makes editing text exceedingly difficult.

Any chance you could add display of that cursor back in?

</comment><comment><USER25> This would be good to use for Medium posts, since the built in code formatting is so bad, especially, especially on the mobile app, since it won't rotate to landscape.

</comment><comment><USER26> It would be nice if you could select text in the SVG images.

<comment><USER27> Just like TermToSVG ? [https://github.com/nbedos/termtosvg](https://github.com/nbedos/termtosvg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> just...take a screenshot of your editor

<comment><USER13> Some editors also have option to copy / paste with rich text formatting. This way code can be copied to mail client with all the colors/bold/italics/sizes etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why not just take a screenshot, i dont get it.

<comment><USER30> I similarly don't get the enormous popularity of Carbon but it offers two things that a screenshot doesn't:

• It frames the code properly; this is an aesthetic choice, and certainly subjective, but many people seem to prefer it. At the very least, it provides consistent, even margins around the code which are fiddly to achieve with a screenshot.

• If you paste a normal PNG screenshot on Twitter, it gets converted to JPEG and downsampled, creating ugly block artefacts around the text and changing the colours. You can avoid this by making at least one pixel of the PNG partially transparent. Carbon does this automatically (but you can of course do it manually with a screenshot).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> what a perfect compliment to yesterday's post about PaintIDE.</comment>


Vatican Library Puts 4,000 Ancient Manuscripts Available Online for Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.messagetoeagle.com/vaticanlibrary.php#.VEkMGhZ0Yim <comment><USER3> Absolutely incredible. Historical documents like this are priceless. I always get a chill when I look at stuff like this: these manuscripts give us the opportunity to "hear" from minds that vanished from this earth centuries ago.

Even if you can't read the text, there's something moving about seeing the painstaking and beautiful work that went into creating these. Those marks were made by a hand that has long since turned to dust... Made by someone who felt that what they had to communicate was vitally important to humanity.

<comment><USER4> Your post reminded me of one of my favorite books of all time, Chadwick's _The Decipherment of Linear B_.

Linear B is the name given to a syllabic script used on clay tablets excavated on Crete around 1900. Chadwick's book recounts the tale of how Michael Ventris ultimately deciphered it and revealed the text to be Ancient Greek rather than any other language, which was against scholarly opinion of the time - and even his own. It's a wonderful story about human intelligence (there was no Rosetta stone equivalent for Linear B; the decipherment had to be accomplished purely by deriving rules from the corpus), the transferability of skills (Ventris was an architect, not a linguist or cryptographer), dispassionately following where the evidence leads, and the value of sharing information openly in the sciences (Ventris' insights were enabled by data compiled and shared by others, notably the equally brilliant American researcher Alice Kober, as Margalit Fox documented in a more recent book).

Now, after it gets done describing this accomplishment, it ends with a brief section on how the now-readable documents revolutionized our view of ancient European history, and what their contents tell us about their authors and their lives.

It was a hugely inspirational read on so many levels. I read it as a teenager, and if there's any teen around you who seems like they might enjoy it - <USER2> it to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we change this link to the actual source? [http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp](http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp)

Or the Vatican library homepage or this tweet: [https://twitter.com/vaticanlibrary/status/522270002012246016](https://twitter.com/vaticanlibrary/status/522270002012246016)

<comment><AUTHOR> One feature I would love within HN submissions is to include alternate links, chose to link to the page I did because it the article was eye grabbing in the pictures they chose and they did provide sufficient background on the project I didn't feel as if it were merely blog spam; I have never been to that site before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Vatican is really a amazing piece of history in and of itself. Despite how you may personally feel about its religion, or the effects of it on the world. The _enlightened_ western world we live in today would not exist without it, and without all the knowledge, art, and culture it (and its local branches) preserved for ~1000+ years.

<comment><USER7> Well… That's true of any strong and long lasting institutions.

Incidentally, many of the ancient documents in those archives were copied into it during the renaissance after surviving for hundreds of years in the Muslim- Arab world. The Hebrew document in that article (I think 'Supplement to The Torah' is a decent translation) by Maimonides is a great example.

Maimonades was a Jewish Scholar who lived in Spain (during the Muslim period), Morocco & Egypt. He can (and is) claimed by Arabs, Jews & the Helenic culture of the middle ages. If you think in terms of 'The Flame of Western Civilization' he was part of the movement that carried that flame for a few hundred years before it was carried back to Christendom during the Renaissance. You could also make the argument that European Christianity joins Western culture during the Renaissance.

But certainly, the Vatican is an incredible influence on Western culture, good, bad or odd.

<comment><USER8> Though forgotten by pretty everyone who doesn't study Medieval history, the Muslim scholar Averroës (Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd) was perhaps the single most significant figure, influencing all medieval scholars including Maimonides.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes)

"Famous scholastics such as Aquinas believed [Averroës] to be so important they did not refer to him by name, simply calling him 'The Commentator' and calling Aristotle 'The Philosopher.'"

<comment><USER9> [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119629/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119629/)

I saw this film a long time ago, and as I remember it was enjoyable and inspiring, so I recommend it as an easy to watch introduction on this topic and era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At one point in time before we had universities, science and math research was done in monasteries. The Vatican paid for a lot of that research and education. So I assume they got a lot of books they collects or had written that they want to made free access to the public by digitizing them.

A lot of people have left the Catholic Church to go to Non-Denominational Churches, or else just became Atheists. So passing the hat around doesn't work as well as it used to.

Priests and Nuns take a vow of poverty, they are not spending the money on themselves. They use it for food panties, for homeless shelters, for healthcare, for education, and to pay their employees. A lot of times churches are in debt even if the people pledge to donate over a million dollars to the church, people don't always donate what they pledge or promise and many families even with good paying jobs just don't donate at all. There is nothing that forces people to donate 10% of their salary to a church, in fact most donate less than that. Some don't donate anything at all.

The documents won't rot away they are being taken care of and preserved. If there is not enough donations to digitize them, the world will have to go without them.

Just think this is a large collection of books from around the world that hasn't been seen since the Library of Alexandria. Books that were protected from the Nazis who wanted to burn them. Books that governments had wanted banned or censored. Books that brought about human advancement and civilization throughout history.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Priests and Nuns take a vow of poverty"

It depends. "Priests who belong to a religious order (e.g., Benedictine, Dominicans, Franciscans, etc.) take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Diocesan priests make two promises, celibacy and obedience; these promises are part of the ordination ceremony."

<comment><USER11> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_poverty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_poverty)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The Vatican is also turning to crowdfunding and is now seeking donations of €5o save a single page in a manuscript, while donations of at least €1,000 will see the backer included on the official supporters list_

If they had literally put this on kickstarter, it would have been sureal.

<comment><USER12> Why is the catholic church panhandling in this way? Surely they can afford to do it themselves.

They talk about "saving" the documents. Are they going to just let them rot away if we don't cough up?

<comment><USER13> This is how the church does everything. They never use their resources (other than personnel) to do things, instead they rely on donations and keep their money in their own pockets.

<comment><USER14> The Church is a body of people. The people of the Church donate money towards its purposes - the preservation of manuscripts isn't a main focus of the Church and is something the support of which isn't confined to Christians (or in this instance Catholics, who may or may not be Christians!).

In the same way that you might donate to a soup kitchen run by a Church fellowship, because the money goes to feeding hungry people, you might donate to manuscript preservation.

That people in the Church donate their time and money towards such causes and ask for other people to donate their money doesn't seem wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That Aztec illustration!

I was a bit disappointed with all the mentions of "ancient" and the oldest thing on that page was 400 AD.

<comment><USER16> Glad to see it, especially when compared to the fate of Mayan codices that fell into catholic hands:

"We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction." (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices))

<comment><USER17> Catholics, in particular Franciscans, have also been extremely useful in describing, preserving and creating codices describing the life, history and mythology of the precolumbians, not to mention their roles in the syncretic emerging culture. Once could cite [Bernardino de Sahagún]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardino_de_Sahag%C3%BAn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardino_de_Sahag%C3%BAn)) for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My university has a very similar digitized collection, albeit smaller. One common denominator with these types of online collections is software that leaves much to be desired. Accessing the collection and searching through it is usually very painful. I realize they are on a tight budget, but it is disappointing nonetheless. Maybe it would be a good open source project.

</comment><comment><USER19> > The Vatican is also still seeking funds to digitise the remaining 76,000 > manuscripts, which it estimates will take more than 15 years, over €50m, and > the efforts of more than 150 specialised experts.

What I'd do is do a quick pass over all the documents with a basic digital camera and store them as jpgs. Then, go back and do the painstaking, hi res scans.

I also worry about "FITS, the format developed by Nasa" for long term storage, as we all know what has happened to older Nasa storage formats and technologies. When I archive family pictures and stuff, I use jpg, for the simple reason of its ubiquity.

<comment><USER20> I don't think you can do a "quick pass" over 76,000 fragile, ancient manuscripts, for any sane definition of "quick."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know if it's ok to make profit out of these?

Think: Retouch and sell as a painting.

<comment><USER22> IANAL

Short answer, no. Long answer, it depends and you'd need to be careful.

The issue isn't copying the artwork per se, it's copying the Vatican's picture of the artwork. They will likely release the images for free, but retain copyright over the digitisation.

Would you be caught for stealing a plate from an ancient book and incorporating it somewhere? Dunno. The Holy See is part of the Berne convention so you're still bound by their claimed copyright. Are they really going to go after you? I find it rather unlikely unless you're peddling images of the Sistene Chapel.

On the other hand if you made a reproduction of the image, say you found a drawing and manually vectorised it, then I think you would be safe - as after all, it's the photo that's copyright, not the manuscript.

In principle, taking a photo of a Van Gogh and putting it on a Tshirt is perfectly legal. The bans on photography in galleries boil down to:

\- Light sensitive works

\- Copyright on newer exhibits

\- Profit making for the gallery (as many galleries in the UK are free, this is how they make their money)

\- House rules, you may not be violating image copyright, but you may be violating house rules which they could kick you out for

<comment><USER23> > The issue isn't copying the artwork per se, it's copying the Vatican's > picture of the artwork. They will likely release the images for free, but > retain copyright over the digitisation.

In the US they can not claim copyright for this. This is very clear. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp). and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is just in time. When everyone but the clergy forgot how to read those, they are putting 'em online. I especially like Old Slavonic ones, where notation for numbers is purely alphabetical with tilde. A+B is not boolean there. It returns Г, meaning V.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there actually a website to see the digitized art works?

<comment><USER25> Found it: [https://www.vatlib.it/home.php?ling=eng&res=1920x1080](https://www.vatlib.it/home.php?ling=eng&res=1920x1080)

<comment><USER26> More specifically here's an index of digitized manuscripts. Click on the book to view one. [http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp](http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Om nom, this is highly tasty. I hope one day all libraries will be accessible like that.

</comment><comment><USER28> They want to crowd-fund the digitizing of their own collection? A multi- billion-dollar outfit needs to pass the hat to keep their own house in order?

<comment><USER29> As a catholic I understand that you may not want to cooperate but calling it a 'multi-billion dollar outfit' is really off the mark by eons.

But you are entitled to your own opinions. Not that they are necessarily right.

<comment><USER28> [https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060715051049A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060715051049AAJwh7u)

Their US investments alone are worth a half-billion. Not so far off the mark.

<comment><USER30> Citing Yahoo Answers as a source? Whoa.

<comment><USER28> Well, citing a quote from an authority presented in a Yahoo Answer.

Ok, I googled again for you. Here's an expert from Georgetown U quoted in a Google Answer: [http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=54617](http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=54617)

<comment><USER31> The "authority" quoted in the Yahoo Answers thread is Jack Chick, who's rapidly anti-Catholic (see [http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractByKeyword.asp?Subject=Cath...](http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractByKeyword.asp?Subject=Catholicism)), claims Dungeons and Dragons involves true demon worship, etc. - he's pretty much anti-anything that isn't hard-core fundamentalist Christianity.

The Vatican is certainly wealthy, but Yahoo Answers should never be used as a "see? evidence!" item.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Happiness and Life Satisfaction (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction/ <comment><USER2> My main question with the happiness surveys is whether what you're really getting is the answer you want to hear.

So for instance if you're Scandinavian you're expected to say you're happy. This is pretty much one of the first things everyone says when it comes to the region. And if you haven't thought too much about it lately, perhaps you are inclined to just tell the researcher a stock answer.

How do we know that people are not just saying what is expected of them? I think there's at least some evidence that people tend to do that when asked a question.

<comment><USER3> > So for instance if you're Scandinavian you're expected to say you're happy.

That implies that not only they are not that happy but they are systemically lying for some reason. I find this scenario hard to believe.

> How do we know that people are not just saying what is expected of them?

I don't know much about statistics, but given a large enough sample size these folks probably an edge case. Source: gut feeling.

<comment><USER4> >That implies that not only they are not that happy but they are systemically lying for some reason. I find this scenario hard to believe.

I don't think this is outlandish. In Japanese there are words for true feelings vs reported, societally expected ones:

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

<comment><USER5> The concept is also deeply British "stiff upper lip" etc, although I am struggling to think of good words to describe the difference (the Wikipedia article uses "private mind" which is deeply unsatisfactory).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I immediately searched for the word 'sleep' in this article.

> And various surveys have confirmed that people who say they are happy also > tend to sleep better and express positive emotions verbally more frequently.

Couldn't better sleep be the cause for happiness?

<comment><USER7> I think so, but couldn't happiness be the cause of better sleep?

Worried and anxious people don't sleep very well.

<comment><USER8> Maybe both ways are true, making it a feedback loop in either direction.

<comment><USER9> This is certainly my anecdotal experience. I sleep worse when in poor health/stressed. But sleeping less makes me prone to poor health/stress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great statistics, thanks for sharing. I think that happiness is definitely something we should care about more, personally and also in statistics and political decision making.

Let me share this (free) book written by a psychologist that deals with happiness.

It's not the kind of hooray-optimist positive psychology, it's actually backed by research, with the results detailed in each chapter.

Tom Stevens: You Can Choose To Be Happy [https://csulb.edu/~tstevens/](https://csulb.edu/~tstevens/)

</comment><comment><USER11> It is important when exactly they ask that question. If they would ask me in June vs in November I would certainly give different replies. Time of the year with different amount of good weather conditions makes big difference.

<comment><USER12> Taking vitamin D shrinks that gap for a little.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.grc.com/health/Vitamin-D.htm](https://www.grc.com/health/Vitamin-D.htm)

An amazing amount research on vit-d collected into a digestible web site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting that there seems to be a trend towards greater happiness during the internet era. If you look at the "Share who say they are 'very satisfied' or 'fairly satisfied' with their life" 1973 - 2016 graphs they are fairly flat 1973-1994 and then go up noticeably after then. Maybe spending time on the net isn't as bad as some make out. Personally I've found it a major plus in my life.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting that Kosovo(fairly new country, with low GDP) have highest Cantril Ladder in Balkan, and higher than some countries in EU

<comment><USER16> Which also seems very weird if you have ever visited these countries

<comment><USER17> Happiness is often about the change of your state rather than about the state itself.

<comment><USER16> I don't think the change that happened there really makes anyone happy. Have you been there?

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure what you meant, because of the football match, Kosovo vs England a lot England fans visited and really enjoyed the time there!

<comment><USER16> [https://www.politico.eu/article/kosovo-hashim-thaci-un- speci...](https://www.politico.eu/article/kosovo-hashim-thaci-un-special- court-tribunal-organ-trafficking-kla-serbia-milosevic-serbia-ramush/)

I think people like their organs more than they care about football. Hopefully that's history. I wouldn't derive nation's happiness from experience tourists had during a football match.

<comment><USER17> Seems like you are consuming hate.

<comment><USER16> Not sure what that means but the stories I heard from the Kosovan (and Serbian and Albanian) people about their dead relatives have certainly filled me with a lot of hate towards pointless wars.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo <comment><USER2> _It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics.

You are all stardust.

You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode.

So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today._ </quote>

<comment><USER3> Beautiful quote from the talk. Nevertheless, this still shows attachment to the "matter" that he himself says seems irrelevant to the universe as we've now come to understand it. About 30% in dark matter, about 70% in Nothing. Matter is just "all the rest < 1%". So are we matter or not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this lecture to be very interesting, but I was disappointed in all the jabs against religion (even though I'm an atheist myself). The information he presented about how a flat universe could come from nothing is thought- provoking. I would love to read further discussion about the content-- for instance, the implications of an ever-expanding universe and future societies clueless to the presence of other galaxies. Instead, people are focusing on it as a video about atheism, which really occupies less than 1% of the video here.

I'm aware this lecture took place at an atheism convention, but I don't find anti-theism to be very constructive anyway. You can be a skeptic and an atheist without making disdainful remarks about the belief system of others. Engaging in open, respectful conversation is a better way of making people abandon religion anyway, if that's your goal. You know what they say about flies, honey, and vinegar.

Regardless, there are religious scientists and cosmologists. Being patronizing about their beliefs discourages them from contributing. As others have said, science is not the alternative to religion, and we shouldn't treat it in such a way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. However, other "religions" such as Buddhism and Hinduism have spoken experientially of Nothing, and the universe arising out of Nothing. This has been misunderstood/misinterpreted as "nihilism" by the west.

Refer "Ashtavakra Gita" and ancient text, for example.

<comment><USER6> This reminds me of Infinite monkey theorem.

There are so many religion disciplines with so many diverse views on so many things that someone from somewhere will point to an obscure reference to a religion and argue _"See this religion also talked about this 1000s of years ago and science just discovered it now"_. And lets forget overwhelming majority of the religious reference that science obliterates.

So, lets say tomorrow, we discover with definite evidence that the universe did actually came out of something, instead of nothing (which we don't know yet for sure as krauss pointed out), most religious people will forget about this reference made in Buddhism and Hinduism to proclaim _"Science validates us"_ , but instead will argue _"Science doesn't know everything"_.

Please note that this is not what I am saying your personal position is, just making a general observation of religion sometimes looking for validation from science, only when it fits their world-view.

<comment><USER7> Buddhism isn't really a religion like Christianity is. There are no faith- based assumptions in Buddhism and it makes no claim to anything you can't reason yourself independently (as far as I know). I think you should read up on it a bit before lumping it with traditional religions. I don't think your infinite monkey theorem applies to Buddhism because it doesn't have prophecies (afaik) or literal descriptions of how the universe was created. In fact, based on what I reAd I don't think buddhists even worship a god. A Buddha seems to be just a description of a state of spiritual enlightenment.

And a trait with most religions is that adherence needs to be exclusive from other religions. From what I learned from the simpsons, buddhists are allowed to practice other religions. That's another sign Buddhism isn't just another branch of Christianity.

<comment><USER6> > Buddhism isn't really a religion like Christianity is.

...

> I think you should read up on it a bit before lumping it with traditional > religions.

I didn't really say that or implied that or say anything that's specific to buddhism or any religion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bah, I read 'AAI' as 'AAAI' in my morning pre-coffee blurriness and was in eager anticipation of an AI talk on simulations and world-building, or something. Would have made more sense on HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have something of an awe for atheists. They seem to have a clearer idea of "God" than the rest because they clearly don't believe it .. or He or She or I dunno .. but they seem to.

I liked the ending note on humility where he presented a scenario where he thinks falsifiable science could end up not figuring out the truth about the universe because the inhabitants won't be able to access a galaxy other than their own.

</comment><comment><USER9> Forgive my naivete, I am watching the video now but won't be able to finish it tonight. Could someone please explain to me how the universe came from nothing? Isn't that like saying that something both is and isn't at the same time and in the same sense?</comment>


Google Game Builder shuts down, project moves to open source - <AUTHOR> https://steamcommunity.com/games/929860/announcements/detail/1608276251516057010 <comment><AUTHOR> The last full compiled version was also uploaded to Github [https://github.com/googlearchive/gamebuilder/tree/master/bui...](https://github.com/googlearchive/gamebuilder/tree/master/builds)

It was really fun, if you didn't know the project imagine like a lite version of Minecraft with realtime JavaScript support [https://www.blog.google/technology/area-120/create-3d-games-...](https://www.blog.google/technology/area-120/create-3d-games- friends-no-experience-required/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, this didn't even make it six months.</comment>


How Long Does It Take Ruby/Node/Go to Linear Search 200MB? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jonathanotto.com/linear-search-benchmark <comment><USER2> Raise your prices. You really don't want the kind of customers who pay $10/month. Charge $50-$100 and not only will you get a better class of customer, you'll also need far less of them to get your $10K/month revenue.</comment>


Experiences, Not Products, Provide Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/happiness-no-purchase-necessary-says-study.php?campaign=th_rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehuggersite+%28Treehugger%29 <comment><USER2> This is all so true, and yet hard to focus on in real life.

I mean if the decision were phrased 'Would you rather pay a babysitter, take your SO out for an excellent meal, followed by a night of drunken shenanigans, and finish up making passionate love in a wonderful hot tub suite at a local hotel or would you rather buy an iPad?' than the only people buying an iPad would be the very lonely or those with a direct business interest.

It's just hard to keep that kind of perspective sometimes.

<comment><USER3> What about a consumer good that can be reused daily and helps make your day to day experience better?

In regards to the one day hot tub experience, I think people can logically amortize the cost of the iPad/iPhone over the months and years that they'll use it. And, I believe if a device brings a little bit of boredom breaking into your daily routine, why deprive yourself (you're not hurting others with your purchase decision)?

<comment><USER2> Sometimes physical goods ARE experiential as well, for instance a nice steak, or purchasing the hot tub outright.

The difference pointed out by the study is that the memory of the steak is likely to make you happier in the long run than owning the hot tub even though the steak is long gone and the hot tub is still there. After all, the hot tub will eventually become a chore (repairs, cleaning, upgrades, etc...) but the memory of that steak never really dies if it was extraordinary. It's counterintuitive, but it makes sense to me.

This study is why I've started trying to focus on experiences, rather than things, when buying gifts. So far it's worked out rather well for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link to study... <http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/98/1/146/>

This study was done at Cornell, where there has been great concern for suicides. For students there, grades are their 'product' and hopefully they can see that grades and being at the top of their class isn't everything.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/education/17cornell.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> The above link requires you to pay to read the white paper. I found the PDF through the researcher's website in case if anyone is interested.

[http://cornellpsych.org/people/travis/materials/Carter- Gilov...](http://cornellpsych.org/people/travis/materials/Carter-Gilovich- Relative%2520Relativity-InPress.pdf)

EDIT: Looks like it requires to have Google as the referrer. Simply search for the title and it's the first link.</comment></comment>


YouTube's algorithm is spreading a series of unfortunate far-right events - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2019/05/14/youtube-s-algorithm-spreading-series-unfortunate-far-right-events <comment><USER2> This site has the most obnoxious loginwall I've ever seen. I got two paragraphs in, and it locked up completely.

<comment><USER3> You can use Reader View in Firefox to read the article.</comment></comment>


Mini-Internet using LXC - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/flesueur/mi-lxc <comment><USER2> For the record, Stéphane Graber, the original author of LXC has been simulating the Internet, too: [https://github.com/nsec/the- internet](https://github.com/nsec/the-internet)

<comment><USER3> I'm the developer of MI-LXC.

From what I understand, Stéphane Graber's code is tailored to generate a (very) large number of nodes and study network interactions but does not provide facilities to (re)generate/individualize the role of the nodes

In MI-LXC, my aim is to achieve a smaller-scale network but with every node playing a specific role (custom apps, custom config) and in fact, most of the work is the creation of these templates rather than the lxc part. The current scenario generates an organization information system, with a DMZ (SMTP, wiki, DNS, etc.), client machines, auth server, filer, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This tool seems similar to mininet ([https://mininet.org](https://mininet.org)). If anyone is familar with both, how do they differ?

Can this tool do layer 3 (routing)?

<comment><USER5> Here's a fork of mininet that can use docker containers as hosts - [https://github.com/gmiotto/dockernet](https://github.com/gmiotto/dockernet). I had done something similar to have mininet hosts as LXC containers. Unfortunately I had created my version for LXC 1.x I haven't had the time to upgrade it to LXC 2.0 yet.

<comment><USER3> I'm the developer of MI-LXC.

From what I understand, Mininet is (as sgraber's) tailored to generate a (very) large number of nodes and study network interactions at level 2. It does not provide facilities to (re)generate/individualize the role of the nodes

Dockernet seems to solve this problem but (1) I did not know of it ;) and (2) it does not seem maintained. It seems quite complex to fork...

In MI-LXC, my aim is to achieve a smaller-scale network but with every node playing a specific role (custom apps, custom config) and in fact, most of the work is the creation of these templates rather than the lxc part. The current scenario generates an organization information system, with a DMZ (SMTP, wiki, DNS, etc.), client machines, auth server, filer, etc. It can of course route at level 3, I use standard linux bridges to connect containers according to the configured topology

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the detailed explanation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: (meta) Etiquette of submitting own stuff - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I wondered what people's thoughts were on the etiquette of submitting your own stuff to HN.
Specifically: if I write a post which I think addresses an interesting point which would appeal to hackers and is something I'd  appreciate the opinions of HNer's on, is it ok to submit it?
Thanks in advance, and sorry if this has already been asked a thousand times! <comment><USER2> It's been asked in the past, the general consensus has been that while it's perfectly fine and acceptable to submit your own stuff, you'll find over time that it's more beneficial if other people find your prose interesting enough to submit it for you.

In the meantime, if you have something to offer, submissions are free, so go ahead and give it a shot.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you took the time to write it, and it's relevant, why the hell not?

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I think the ability to start posts on HN (the Ask HN variety) suggests that submitting your own content is welcome. If the content is relevant then it gets voted up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never understood peoples concerns over this — the whole point of social news that it doesn't matter who submits it, people will just upvote what they like, so I see no problem what so ever with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Basically you are free to submit your own stuff, and other people are free to not up-vote it if they don't like it. Of course, if you self-submit a bunch of your stuff and no one up-votes it then you will lower your karma average, which also lowers the worth of your vote when your up-vote or down-vote.

It is best to try to keep your karma average as high as possible.</comment>


A New Kind of Microchip: Introducing a probability-based microchip - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/26055/page1/

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614085></comment>


Were we smarter 100 years ago? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepublicdomain.org/2009/07/17/were-we-smarter-100-years-ago/

<comment><USER3> It is a modern conceit that intellectual progress has made modern generations smarter than those that preceded them.

A hundred years ago, far fewer people got advanced educations but those that did were thoroughly well-versed in the liberal arts (as classically defined), meaning that they had been grounded in Latin, rhetoric, and similar subjects that trained them to be highly articulate in their forms of expression (as is easily seen from a glance at these hearing transcripts).

Those who went on to become lawyers, politicians, etc. were indeed elitists but the best among them were highly talented, very bright, and quite capable of making many of our modern politicians look pathetic by comparison in their forms of expression.

The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is widely regarded as a classic high point in the venerable lineage of that work - whose aim, it is worth recalling, was to gather all the world's knowledge in an advanced and erudite state.

They may have used pen and paper back then, or sometimes typewriters - <USER2> their knowledge base was far smaller than what we have today - but we have nothing over them in terms of innate intellectual capacity.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. When you compare youtube comments to anything written 100 years ago you must be tempted to think we've gotten A LOT stupider.

But what you have to realize is, that 100 years ago most people couldn't even read or write. But today they are making youtube comments - progress!

<comment><USER5> The Internet used to be mostly filled with intellectuals and I thought people here were much smarter than the general population I encountered. Today the net is a cesspool.

<comment><USER6> That's an awfully broad statement, don't you think? The Internet used to be an area with a higher-than-normal density of intellectuals, and now you can only say that about some parts of the Internet. But please don't lump it all together as if there was some sort of equivalence between (say) Hacker News and 4chan and Christian Youth Forums and YouTube and the Energy from Thorium forum.

If the net is a cesspool, then so is the entire world.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but those bright stars like hacker news eventually burn out too. Hopefully it doesn't happen too quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 100 years ago, education was rarer, but very strong. The records we have from those days are from the best and brightest.

Today, education is more broadly available. We can read the words of the brightest of our time, and the dimmest. They are all online for our reading pleasure.

So are we smarter? Are they smarter 100 years ago? Odds are, no to both questions. But we certainly have a visibility into the full spectrum of today's people. We don't have that view of olden folk. Our perspective will be skewed.

<comment><USER8> Yes it's like Victorian buildings, bridges, etc. Those Victorians sure knew how to build to last!

But wait, we only see their buildings that _did_ last. Everything that's not a Victorian structure is evidence of something of theirs that didn't...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Summary: Accounts of the legislative hearings over the 1909 Copyright Act (which dealt with the newfangled invention of mechanically reproduced music) cover many of the same issues that are relevant today, but with all parties engaging in a much higher level of debate than is currently evident.

Guess they did better before we let the TV cameras in :-)

<comment><USER10> Angling for the perfect five-second sound bite makes _all_ debate more inane, but the debate about copyright is a _particularly_ awful case: most of those TV cameras are owned by major media companies that have an axe to grind.

It's not a coincidence that the media industries have a degree of political influence that's out of proportion to their size. If you're a politician, it's good to avoid irritating major media corporations, and it's even better to have them on your side.

This is why Larry Lessig eventually gave up on trying to make his arguments more eloquent and went into the corruption-fighting business. Eloquence is great, but it doesn't do much good when the fix is in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In computer terms: the CPU(s) and RAM of humans -- the wetware, if you will -- are presumably much the same, on average, as they were 100 years ago.

But it seems indisputable that we know how to deal effectively with more of life's threats and opportunities than we did back then.

(Again in computer terms, our libraries of event-detection and -handling routines are much more sophisticated than those of a century ago.)

As a simple example, just think of how much more more the average person knows about, say, healthy eating and the downside of smoking -- this isn't to say, of course, that there isn't still a lot of work to do in disseminating that knowledge.

So yeah, there seems little question that we are indeed 'smarter' (in the sense used above) than we were 100 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER12> "You are a product of your environment." --Clement Stone

</comment><comment><USER13> The Flynn effect suggests not. :)

<comment><USER14> The Flynn effect mostly appears in only certain puzzle tests. There is no Flynn effect in vocab and numeracy, despite far longer hours spent at school. This indicates to me that we have gotten better at certain abstract puzzles, perhaps because the rising prominence of IQ tests made people study those puzzles more. The Flynn effect only proves that those kind of puzzle tests are very flawed at measuring innate aptitude.

<comment><USER13> I think that your objection is, rather, an indictment of schools and the surrounding bureaucracy.

Anyway, _do_ people study such puzzles? For such a consistent, widespread rise, you'd expect it to be pretty obvious that they do, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER15> Well, didn't you play with brain teasers and abstract shape puzzles and such as a child? Or edutainment software? Studying doesn't have to mean nose-to- the-grindstone.

<comment><USER13> I'm in my mid-30s. If there was anything we'd recognize as "edutainment" software in the 70s and early 80s, we couldn't afford it. Anyway, I have an average-software-engineer IQ, more or less, on tests in the 80s, and I can't remember ever doing much brain teaser or abstract shape puzzles -- those weren't interesting to me. I spent every waking hour I could reading past age seven or eight.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Sorry HN, but Groupon is not doomed" - An alternate point of view on Groupon - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/13/in-defense-of-groupon/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR

Groupon can't fail because they have guys from Amazon and a guy from Cisco running it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally some rational writing about Groupon by a smart person with good information.

</comment><comment><USER4> TLDR summary: An alternative point of view written by a shareholder with a substantial financial stake in people believing that Groupon has a future.

This guy trusts the same CFO whose staggering negligence and/or incompetence has resulted in massive harm to Groupon's capital structure and reputation and which has led to SEC investigations into the company's accounting and reporting.

This guy trusts the same chief counsel that let the CEO violate a well-known "silent period" rule that almost threw the entire IPO off the rails, that let the CFO ignore the most basic financial controls, that let Groupon get into legal troubles in multiple countries...

Yeah, this is another fine piece of opinion from TC.</comment>


Kerckhoffs's principle - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle <comment><USER2> It doesn't mean you shouldn't obscure the system as well.

<comment><USER3> It depends.

It makes sense to obscure which of the various public crypto systems you are using.

It makes no sense to use a private crypto system no one else is using or even knows about.</comment></comment>


How 4chan hacked ReCAPTCHA to win the TIME 100 Poll - <AUTHOR> http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/

<comment><USER2> While I don't doubt that TIME's poll security team (if it existed) was more than overmatched, how could a website defend the integrity of their online poll against such an attack?

Or is running an effective online poll truly hopeless?

<comment><USER3> Why not only allow one vote per IP? It would be possible to spoof your IP, but still, could all of the manual 4chan voters spoof their IPs for every vote?

<comment><USER4> They could use a proxy to "spoof" their IP. But there is no known way they could use IP spoofing to use any old IP address, as the voting app runs via HTTP, which runs over TCP, which requires a full connection, and the known spoofing attacks on TCP are blind, e.g. you can send but not receive data. So HTTP would not work over blind TCP spoofing.

I think that if one vote, or any small number of votes were allowed per IP, the attack would have been much more difficult, as there simply are not tens of thousands of readily available proxies, unless these people have access to a big botnet.

A downside to one vote per IP is that AOL and some organizations place their outgoing web traffic behind one or a small pool of IP addresses. So these users wouldn't have been able to vote.

<comment><USER5> > A downside to one vote per IP is that AOL and some organizations place their > outgoing web traffic behind one or a small pool of IP addresses. So these > users wouldn't have been able to vote.

That would not have been such a big problem. But be sure to play 'dead man' and maintain the illusion that every vote counts.

Eg here on Hacker News after you click on the vote-arrows Javascript manipulates the counts accordingly, but did you ever check whether your vote has had any effect on the "true" counts in the server? (Of course at Hackers News it has, because PG is not evil.)

Even more devious would be accepting the unwelcome votes, but also reversing each one of them after a random time has passed. This way the attackers get the see illusion, that their attacks succeed, but are fought back (or drown out in counter-votes from real people) only a few hours later.

<comment><USER6> Sometimes your vote does not have an effect on the "true" count on the server. For example, try voting every comment on a page down, and then reload to see the real counts. This isn't "evil" per se.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm .. something's not right.

Why didn't Time blacklist the "devoters" by their IPs (or respective small subnets) ? They couldn't be _that_ incompetent. So it's reasonable to assume that the blacklisting wasn't working, which means the hack must've been mounted in a distributed fashion, which in turn implies it was ran over a botnet of some kind. Hmm ..

<comment><USER8> Web proxy farms mean you can't just say "100+ votes from a single IP address = blacklist". You'd probably need manual intervention to distinguish proxies and individual abusers. Once you're manually intervening, you may as well just wait until the poll closes and drop the results you don't want.

<comment><USER9> ...which in turn might make oone wonder whether or not that's happening already all the time and on just any poll around. Haven't it be the respected TIME one could suspect they kept the poll as it turned out just because the Anonymous group knew the exact number of votes for every rank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A simple forced login with email verification would have ended all of this nonsense. Throw recaptcha for good measure.

<comment><USER11> TIME's purpose with the poll was to drive traffic and interest - the integrity of the poll is a very distant second concern. Throw up barriers around voting and you remove the participation and thus traffic from the equation.

<comment><USER12> If their purpose(s) include _only_ "to drive traffic and interest" -- then they can forget about pretending that "journalism" (i.e., valuable, reliable content) is no longer their business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel that it is more a crack than a hack. :-)

<comment><USER13> I just think a hack is an improvement to anything while the action in the post is just ruining the online voting system.

A hack would be to let the TIME web team to know the details of the crack and the solution to fix it.

Cheers. :-)

<comment><USER14> Classically, a subset of "hacks" are pranks, which are relatively-but-not- totally harmless ( _someone_ had to take down that car):

<http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/misc/best_of.html>

In the grand scheme of things, the ranking of TIME's list is relatively unimportant. I believe this is only the second time they've done a ranking poll, and it was effectively gamed last time as well (by a much larger group of people, though: Stephen Colbert fans and Rain fans).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most Effective Thing You Did Publicizing New Site or App? - le-mark I'm finishing up an Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and getting ready to launch. What are some things I can do to publicize the site other than spamming hacker news or r/programming with links as some tend to do? What was most effective in publicizing your new app or site? <comment><AUTHOR> Individually contact individuals who are potential users. Show them the product personally. Listen to their feedback.

As number of users approaches zero, a hockey stick growth graph and linear growth graph are indistinguishable due to noise. The differences show up over time and have more to do with month to month churn than week one growth.

Good luck.</comment>


PaintCode 3 adds support for Android, Swift 3 and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.paintcodeapp.com/?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> Your upgrade price for customers that purchased less than a year ago is pretty insulting.</comment>


The night bullets hit the White House – and the Secret Service didn't know - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/white-house-shooting/ <comment><USER2> This is a good example of a certain kind of really bad website design that seems to be becoming more popular.</comment>


Y Combinator is hosting its first-ever hackathon — with a twist - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/29/y-combinator-is-hosting-its-first-ever-hackathon-with-a-twist/

<comment><USER2> If I may hijack this thread:

The only computer systems I can find that offer easy-to-access input and output pins are low-power single-board computers like the Arduino. Are there any options for people who need desktop-equivalent computer power to run their creations? The only options I really see are to run I/O through an Arduino, or to jab wires into an ISA slot on a desktop motherboard.

<comment><USER3> > ISA slot

Good luck finding one of those. It's been well over a decade since systems switched to PCI.

> desktop-equivalent

If a Raspberry Pi [1] doesn't have enough horsepower for you, the Kickstarter- funded Parallella project [2], currently shipping prototypes, will offer a dual-core ARM main processor and a 16- or 64-core Epiphany Multicore Accelerator.

If you still want a desktop, I don't know a thing about hardware, but I've heard that parallel/serial ports are easy to use for people who do. So maybe you should look into building your hardware for the parallel/serial port (and using a USB adapter since most modern systems don't have them onboard)?

Of course, AFAIK serial ports max out at 115200 bits/second, so if you need a faster I/O rate for your application, look into USB, Ethernet, or PCI.

[1] <http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs>

[2] <http://www.parallella.org/board/>

<comment><USER2> > It's been well over a decade since systems switched to PCI.

I keep getting the two reversed in my head. >_<

I somehow completely missed that the Raspberry and the Parallella featured GPIO pins (and I sank a lot of money into the Parallella Kickstarter!). Thanks for pointing that out to me.</comment></comment></comment>