Windows 8 Welcome Screen And Windows Explorer Screenshots Leaked - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/04/03/windows-8-screenshots-leaked/

<comment><USER2> Well, I'm sure _eventually_ there will be something to chew on. But for now... Reading about the ribbon feels like reading that the next Cadillac will have chromed tail fins again. Intensely interesting if you're thinking about buying one, but not particularly _actionable_.

Which is an interesting counter-point to the Windows of so many years ago: The entire industry worked on a calendar dominated by Windows releases. Apps would be upgraded on that schedule. PC purchases would spike on that schedule. Hordes of apps would become extinct overnight as Microsoft built their features into new releases of Windows.

But now? As a developer, what does a new release of Windows mean to me? What does a new release of Windows mean to startups? Come to think of it, what does a new release of Windows mean to Microsoft?

Can Microsoft count on taxing their existing customer base in the form of upgrade revenues? Specifically, incremental upgrade revenues (people upgrading to Windows 8 that wouldn't upgraded to Windows)?

Obviously the thing will sell to OEMs and so on, and Microsoft will claim huge wins from corporate customers upgrading, but are we going to see another bit of sales jiggery-pokery where most of the revenue would be money Microsoft would have made anyways?

</comment><comment><USER3> Quick question - what are the killer features that you would want to see in Windows 8?

I can't think of any. While Windows XP was getting a bit old (in terms of age) it did pretty much everything you'd want from an Operating System and some security weaknesses aside (which as someone working in that field matter to me, but may not to others) I struggle to find what, other than shininess and less reboots on major changes Windows 7 brings to the table. Likewise, Windows 7 is so 'good enough' I can't imagine what features would possibly make me want to upgrade. Anyone got any ideas?

<comment><USER4> Exposé. Virtual desktops.

A massive overhaul of Windows Update that turns it into part app store, part package manager. I want a Debian-like system where it's easy to add my own sources, and everything on the system is updated with one service.

<comment><USER5> So, you are anticipating features that have been in other operating systems for years?

<comment><USER6> I get quite annoyed when I read comments of the "hah, [X] has had [Y] for ages!" variety in response to questions like this, as I don't believe they are particularly helpful or address the point.

This isn't a question asking for comparisons between Windows and other operating systems - it's looking for sought-after features (whether implemented in another OS or not).

Responding otherwise always seems to end up in a fanboyesque argument (see commentary on this recent TC post on desired iOS5 features devolve into an Android-vs-Apple flamewar: [http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/04/01/10-things- that-simply...](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/04/01/10-things-that-simply- need-to-be-in-ios-5/)).

<comment><USER5> I"m not saying any of that at all. My point is that probably, there are more exciting things to hope for in new versions of Windows. Or, perhaps as others have stated, there really isn't much to be excited about. All of the major desktop environments do everything a user wants, and it's really unlikely MS will do anything majorly innovative, bold or disruptive in terms of interface in the next version of Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Difficult to say if this is a April-fools joke, but if not, here is my thoughts.

I hope Microsoft does not apply the ribbon UI to all their future programs as it takes a lot of pixles and makes the menu messy and complex. The minimalistic side of me would hope for more shortcuts and _one_ place where you did settings/preferences for a program. I believe Mac OSX has done this very good with their system preferences panel and globally accessible cmd+',' shortcut in order to get to the preferences of current program.

And what is up with that background picture?

<comment><USER8> I will agree with you that OS X Preference windows are easy to natigate and often have very apt UX for various types of preferences.

However, the menubar system (File, Edit, View, etc) as it currently stands is in much need of improvement. How many times have you hunted for an action/preference in the menubars to no avail? It's rows and rows of text with no visual feedback for various types of actions.

The only improvement of late has been the addition of a live "search and hunt" (by that I mean, type in a search keyword and it will hunt it out of the menu and point to it).

<comment><USER9> _How many times have you hunted for an action/preference in the menubars to no avail?_

not sure which OS you're talking about, but in OSX all menus are searchable via the help menu (top entry in help menu is a search field. type here and it will highlight matching menu items in any menu)

[Edit: this video shows what I 'm talking about [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOoOvIqiWe0&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOoOvIqiWe0&feature=player_detailpage#t=25s)]

<comment><USER10> I find it easier to locate things in a well-organized system of menus than I do on the "Ribbon" where everything is just sort of in your face. Countless times I've stared at the ribbon for minutes trying to find what I want to do, only to suddenly spot it and realize it was right in front of me all along, but because it's so busy nothing stands out.

My number one peeve with MS is the Ribbon and if that becomes global in Windows 8 I'm finished with the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope this isn't even close to the final design. With their Metro UI on Windows Mobile 7 they took a big step into the right direction - an all-flat, simple, clean interface that got rid of all those shiny, glossy elements. Why wouldn't you stick to that approach when it comes to your flagship product? Especially given the fact that Windows Mobile 7, despite lacking in certain features, received a lot of praise for their original and well executed UI philosophy. Additionally this is a chance to unify the interfaces of the desktop and the mobile OS.

Some may say that this interface doesn't work on the desktop, but have you seen the Zune software? It looks clean, original, simple, yet very modern and substantial. That piece of software should have been the template for the whole operating system.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some kind of incentive program to stop OEMs loading new PCs up with crapware. Most importantly, Microsoft Security Essentials installed by default thus removing the need for Norton/Mcafee/whatever. Sure they might get a bit of "anti-trust" flak for it, but it would be worth it to the end user.

I do student laptop support for a university at the moment, while I won't be doing it by the time Windows 8 comes out it'd be nice to think my sucessor on the job doesn't have to wade through tonnes of default installed junk to connect to the university wireless.

</comment><comment><USER13> "The Windows explorer has also got a lot of new stuffs - mainly the inclusion of ribbons. Ribbons was first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 and in Windows 7, it was used in other applications such as Paint, WordPad etc. The Ribbons UI makes it possible for users to notice features much more easily than the old menu based system.

No doubt some people will complain about the change. However, I believe that the Ribbon UI is quite a good and refreshing replacement for the old menu based system."

So to summarize:

IE9: "We have the cleanest UI out there, more space for content, less UI! Streamline!"

Windows Ribbons: "Show it all to the user! Less space for content, more UI, expose every option all the time!"

And we wonder why Microsoft is conflicted. (yes I will admit to being a 'Ribbon Hater')

<comment><USER14> You know you can just double click on a tab of the ribbon and it will hide, right? I'm a sort of ribbon lover by the way! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just not buying that this real. Why would they reuse Windows 7 wallpaper, and return to NT style login. It is a repost from: <http://www.withinwindows.com/> looks like they enjoyed the traffic too much to let it go, as a follow up reveals more detail: [http://www.withinwindows.com/2011/04/02/windows-8-secrets- wi...](http://www.withinwindows.com/2011/04/02/windows-8-secrets-windows- explorer-ribbon/)

<comment><USER12> Are you referring to "press ctrl-alt-del to login" as NT style login? This style is still in Windows 7 if you set your network up like that.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, didn't mean to hit "down" arrow, meant to mod-up :)

You're entirely right, that's a domain-policy option. It's a security feature to require a Ctrl+Alt+Del before showing a password box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think Microsoft will move Windows towards Metro, as Apple moves OS X towards iOS. Which is good, since both Metro and iOS are both less tech, and more human.

</comment><comment><USER18> Where do Microsoft hire their designers from? How can one of the richest companies in the world not be able to hire crack designers to actually produce something more than a glossy tacky UI.

Or is Microsoft so engineer/developer focused that they let the engineers design the interfaces that normal every-day people will use.

And if Windows 8 is supposed to be the touch friendly OS from the ground up, why are they still relying on Ctrl + Alt + Del and implementing that god awful Ribbon UI across the board?

<comment><USER19> > why are they still relying on Ctrl + Alt + Del

That's a security measure. No application can hook into Ctrl + Alt + Del... the OS always handles it. This way, a malicious application can't phish you with a fake login screen.

If they were to pick another key combination to reserve for the OS, they would break backward compatibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> That ribbon is taking up _way_ too much space considering 80% of it is disabled.

<comment><USER21> Considering how massively pre-alpha the software undoubtedly is, I'm not about to leap to conclusions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would love to be able to have full customization of folders and navigation structure on my windows pc. things like 'games' 'searches' 'links' etc. that nobody (I've not seen one) uses annoy appearing in start menu and all other places eating up screen realestate and making it harder to use. And actually its really hard to get rid of them if not possible. You keep deleting them from various dialog boxes and they some of them keep coming back making it feel like you trying to kill a zombie that keeps coming back with one organ less each time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can anyone else _not stand_ the ribbon UI? It drives me nuts. If ribbon UIs are going to be even more pervasive in Windows, I'm even more glad I switched to Mac.

<comment><USER24> The ribbon UI to me is like those websites where you have to hunt for a link. I can't stand it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is the original post with more Pictures

<http://www.withinwindows.com>

</comment><comment><USER26> Lousy use of space is something that turned me away from Windows from the start, and they are still wasting space. Worse though, it is harder to find alternatives that don't; even Mac OS X these days has more and more iTuneseque apps that fill a huge display without adding much. I think I was happiest with Window Maker on Linux or Solaris.

</comment><comment><USER27> The screen shows "Friday April 1", April fools?

</comment><comment><USER28> Ribbon on explorer is a bit weird but better then then win7 no menu, weird context sensitive button bar.

</comment><comment><USER29> What a mess, so much clutter still going on. Doesn't look like a very pleasant or easy UI to use.

</comment><comment><USER30> That's a huge menu! Respect!

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if they'll continue the pattern they've set so far- Win95 => Win98SE : Win2000 => WinXP : WinVista => Win7

The OS changes on a more fundamental level every other release. (At least, this is how I see it)

So does that imply Win8 is likely going to be another 'rewrite' (not that they necessarily start from scratch)?

P.S. Yes, I am ignoring WinME.

<comment><USER5> That's what they've done with NT for the past 4 releases, yes. 2000 was the first NT5, XP was the second. Vista was the first NT 6, Windows '7' was the second. The actual version numbers of Windows, unlike the marketing names, reflect this release style.

<comment><USER32> Actually, the reason WinXP is 5.1 (instead of 6) and Win7 is 6.1 (instead of 7) is for "maximizing application compatibility":

[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/ar...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx)

<comment><USER33> Ah, but they care about maximizing application compatibility more for some versions than others. Will microsoft care as much about app compatibility for windows 8 as they did for windows 7?

<comment><USER5> They sure don't care about IE 9 being compatible with XP. Breaking third party software and hardware is more of a pain, though, as Vista proved. That was most of the problems they had with Vista, but I guess they _are_ over that hump at this point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Professor has to prove he built a stone fortress legally atop Beijing skyscraper - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/13/4616798/illegal-rooftop-mansion-beijing-china

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://gigapica.geenstijl.nl/2013/08/beijing_man_builds_ille...](http://gigapica.geenstijl.nl/2013/08/beijing_man_builds_illegal_roo.html)</comment>


Facebook crypto to launch next year - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/24/18638331/facebook-crytocurrency-globalcoin-2020-launch-uk-bank-of-england-blockchain <comment><USER2> From the people who sold your personal information and took money from Russian trolls: A totally trustworthy decentralized-not-decentralized crypto. Seems legit.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Centralized crypto and "stablecoins" (lmao at you, Tether) are ridiculous concepts that belie the entire purpose of the invention of Bitcoin.</comment></comment>


How IF by IFTTT Onboards New Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.useronboard.com/how-if-onboards-new-users/ <comment><USER2> Hi all! I'm the person behind this teardown. If you have any questions or critiques or whatever, fire away -- I will be checking this all day.

</comment><comment><USER2> @RKoutnik Thank you for posting this!</comment>


IPFS fork usable as a Go library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ipsn/go-ipfs <comment><AUTHOR> This repository is an unofficial fork of `github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs`, converted from a `gx` based project to a plain Go project. The goal is to act as an IPFS library that can be imported and used from Go apps without the need of switching all dependency management over to `gx`. As a bonus, this fork is compatible with GoDoc!</comment>


The advanced guide to content marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/04/29/the-advanced-guide-to-content-marketing/

<comment><USER2> Marketing, it seems, is all about spamming HN with ads for a book about marketing.</comment>


Facebook friend attrition - <AUTHOR> http://www.keacher.com/?p=1037

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately "friends" have become synonymous with "one-time acquaintances".

I won't add someone as a friend unless I have known them for at least 3 months.

I also don't feel bad if someone unfriends me, because that means they weren't my friend. I don't need some artificial number to feel good about myself.

A few real good friends > several hundred people posting on facebook about some stupid "let's get wasted" party or posting new "cellphone" self- portraits.

Quality over Quantity IMO.

</comment><comment><USER3> These are not your friends.</comment>


The Ocean Is Struggling to Breathe, Too - <AUTHOR> http://oceans.nautil.us/feature/613/the-ocean-is-struggling-to-breathe-too <comment><USER2> The oceans have acted like an enormous damper on our terrible actions.

From absorbing run off leading to hypoxia, sinking plastic to the bottom, and dissolving our excees C02 into the water, the oceans have saved us from the consequences of our actions.

This is going to change at some point. When it does, things will happen quickly and it won't go well for us.

<comment><USER3> >This is going to change at some point. When it does, things will happen quickly and it won't go well for us.

No one with any scientific background would make this claim. Le Chatelier's principle has the opposite effect. Equilibrium changes slowly. If it ever becomes "too bad" it will be almost impossible to reverse in your lifetime. In an entire century, surface pH of the ocean has dropped by about 0.1 unit from 8.2 to 8.1.

[https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/oceansicer...](https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/oceansicerocks/oceanchemistry.html)

<comment><USER4> > In an entire century, surface pH of the ocean has dropped by about 0.1 unit > from 8.2 to 8.1.

pH is a particularly bad one to use as an example - once the buffering capacity is used up, the pH will change very suddenly (see this[1] random image result to show the curve from a standard titration).

[1] [https://blog.opticontrols.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/01/Tit...](https://blog.opticontrols.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/01/Titration-Curve.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the cause of jellyfish population explosions too. [https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/693](https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/693)

</comment><comment><USER6> What an utterly tone-deaf and tasteless headline.

<comment><USER7> Not sure why you're being voted down.

That's one of the most facepalm-inducing headlines I've ever seen on here.

<comment><USER8> You're not allowed to ask about downvotes on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is going to be a big, and horribly unsatisfying "I told you so!"

<comment><USER10> Or it ends up here: [https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco- pocalyp...](https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic- predictions)

<comment><USER9> It's possible but not likely, however, the cost of being wrong is dramatically smaller.</comment></comment></comment>


3D model of slave ship brings harrowing history to life - <AUTHOR> https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2019/07/26/3-d-model-of-18th-century-slave-ship-brings-a-harrowing-story-to-life/ <comment><USER2> > _Between 1500 and 1867, some 40,000 voyages carried 12.5 million Africans to > the Americas, where they were sold into slavery._

As far as I'm aware, the majority were sold into slavery _in Africa_ , and then resold elsewhere.

(making the distinction because it's important to why there are still open slave markets in parts of Africa)

<comment><USER3> Strictly speaking you are enslaved the moment someone has captured you with the purpose of selling you to another person. Can you explain in more detail why you think this fine distinction is needed?

<comment><USER4> He's trying to say that over millenia whites enslaved whites, blacks enslaved blacks and viceversa. Nothing personal or racial

<comment><USER2> > _Nothing personal or racial_

I don't think it's the case that there was nothing racial about the trans- Atlantic slave trade, at least in terms of justifying it to a public who would increasingly be inclined to think that society can tell people not to keep slaves.

Though I would tend to agree that slavery was never _only_ about race, not before the trans-Atlantic trade, and not during.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This model is cool, but also clinical: if you're interested in understanding what it was like to _be_ an African kidnapped and sold via the Atlantic slave trade, consider reading Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon[1] or Aley Haley's Roots[2].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracoon:_The_Story_of_the_La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracoon:_The_Story_of_the_Last_%22Black_Cargo%22)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family)

<comment><USER6> Roots is fiction, please don't try an understand the world from fiction or even novels based on truth many or most 'popular' cultural autobiographies are faked, from your Roots link -

"However, historians and genealogists found critical errors in his research. Most of the novel is either unsupported or contradicted by the available evidence."

<comment><USER5> Roots was _advertised_ as a fictionalization of Haley's family lore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a little disappointed that they had to make a video in order for people to view the 3D model on the web. The model itself should be viewable in a browser, just like an image, a sound or a video. This is exactly the sort of thing that glTF was designed for, so maybe one day that will be a reality.

<comment><USER8> Except for glTF to work, WebGL needs to work as well and it isn't a given, without any sort of control of what kind of hardware or browser someone is using.

And even if the hardware and browser offer proper WebGL support, it might occur that the drivers are black listed, thus making any proper use of WebGL unbewarable.

Such is the WebGL reality, where devices with native support for OpenGL ES 3.2, might still struggle to see a WebGL 2.0 scene.

With a video everyone gets to enjoy it.

<comment><USER7> That's what I'm lamenting. I want to live in a world where a 3D model is no more exceptional than a JPEG.

There's no inherent requirement for OpenGL support to render glTF 2.0. WebGL is only required because browsers don't include native support.

<comment><USER8> The irony is that is exactly what Khronos shows on their glTF presentations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Weird. Because of privacy settings I can't view the 3d model walk-through video. Anyone else getting the issue? I disabled ublock but no dice.

[https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/ship](https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/ship)

<comment><USER10> It seems like you need to allow cookies for player.vimeo.com to get past that dialog.

<comment><USER11> "To get" makes it sound like a technical limitation. "To go" more accurately represents the manipulative choice I suspect is the actual limitation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The maps at the exhibit referenced[1] were fascinating.

I know people often criticize topics that surface anything remotely concerning race, as there is a "race to the bottom", but I often find that I learn a lot just by the fact-checking that it spawns.

To that end, one reference that I didn't know coming in is "Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660", for the degree to which Trans Atlantic slave trade re-shaped Central African society. Secondly, a book I read a year or so ago Ibrahim Kendi's "Stamped From The Beginning" which discusses how exponential profits reaped by the trans- Atlantic and inter-America slave trade — unprecedented in the human practice of enslavement — spawned racist hierarchies that persist now.

[1] [https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/maps](https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/maps)

</comment><comment><USER13> " "We designed the model to be sensitive to the numerous issues of representing the slave trade," added Dr. Radburn. "The feedback we've received so far has been very positive. "

What does being sensitive to issues about slavery mean? Is it historical accurate or not? There should be no positivity. Only accuracy. It's not like anyone truly imagines these days that any slavery from any time period was a summer camp get-away. If someone can't handle the historical reality, don't read about it to begin with. Bad things happened in the past. Get over it, but learn from it so we don't make the same mistakes. Putting your head in the sand doesn't change it. What's next, concentration camps will be downgraded to just weight loss centers because people's sensitivities can't handle "people were tortured and died in these places".

<comment><USER14> It's funny because "concentration camp" itself in the WW2 sense is a euphemism for death camps. A concentration camp is nothing more than a place where you concentrate individuals that you don't want to allow to freely walk around at large but don't want to put into individual prison cells either. Inherently, there is nothing wrong with a concentration camp.

<comment><USER15> At this point, the whole term "concentration camp" has a negative connotation and implies that the people being placed in the camp are being placed there for innate traits such as race or nationality, instead of based on their actions (in which case we just call it "jail" or "prison". Many people do think of "death camps" when they hear the term, only because of the notoriety of the Nazi camps.

The US ran their own concentration camps during WW2, to house Japanese Americans. Sure, the US didn't go to the depths of the Nazi concentration camps, but that doesn't make it any less deplorable to round people up purely based on their race or nationality (or any other now-protected status).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I couldn't imagine the heat dang, smells, damn Screenshot from video [https://i.imgur.com/9dooh8v.png](https://i.imgur.com/9dooh8v.png)

<comment><USER17> That doesn't even factor in the sea sickness. Chained and locked in one position with people stacked on top of you? Some of them vomiting on your head in a sweltering, stifling, and pitch dark hole all day for 2 or 3 months? No thanks.

<comment><USER16> 2/3 months, damn, whoever is still alive…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The barbarity and cruelty of mankind never fails to surprise and sadden me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Where is 3D model file?</comment>


Duty & Failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/06/poynter-online---romenesko.html

<comment><USER2> I understand the anger/outrage towards him for what on the surface seems irresponsible. But is it necessary to completely rip him apart repeatedly on Twitter, write a long, harsh blog post, and post insulting comments to hacker news?

He seemed to have screwed up. Big Time. I get it. But come on, be a little professional or at the _very least_ , wait for the full story.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it just struck a nerve.

I was the poor kid in college who worked two jobs to pay for school while the rich kids partied and globetrotted. My co-founders and I applied, interviewed and got rejected from YC. Now I'm living in the dining room of an apt I share with them and we worked 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week on our startup. We're having a blast, but my personal finances, which are normally impeccable, have gone to total shit. It's just that I'm all fucking in, and so are my co- founders. And when I hear about some bloke who has the opportunity of a lifetime and just throws it away like that, well, it pisses me off.

Am I jealous? Yes. Do I feel sorry for the guy? Not in the least. Am I being fair? I think so.

<comment><USER3> It'd be fair if you knew the whole story. Don't be part of the torch/pitchfork mob with shit like this... Wait for the whole story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did this startup founder run over the blogger's dog or something?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised the guy even had time to have a girlfriend when trying to start a company, much less marry her. Unless she was also a co founder.

<comment><USER6> I downvoted you. Business should never come ahead of family. No excuses. If you're starting a company to the detriment of the establishment of a family, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER7> What's so fundamentally wrong with waiting a year or two to establish a family because you want to get a company started?

<comment><AUTHOR> the wrong part is starting and then backing out when you've got other people depending on you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1472515>

</comment><comment><USER9> Regardless, who goes on a month-long honeymoon at all? Let alone being at a startup. No matter who you are, I'd say max is two weeks.

\</comment><comment>----- Edited my 'Irregardless' to 'Regardless'

<comment><USER10> Hate to be _that_ guy, but "irregardless" is not a word. Regardless, however, is.

<comment><USER9> You're right. Thought I had learned that awhile ago. Guess not.</comment></comment></comment>


Sorting in Japanese – An Unsolved Problem (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/2011/02/13/sorting-in-japanese-%E2%80%94-an-unsolved-problem/ <comment><USER4> Blog author here. Surprised to see one of my old posts on the front page while browsing Hacker News.

It's interesting to reflect on what has improved since I wrote it, and what has not.

Both Android and iOS, for instance, provide mechanisms to get this right, if you know to use them and expose them for those locales (and only those locales). For example, both have a Contact object that contain corresponding phonetic-reading fields for first and last names.

iOS Contact - see phoneticGivenName, phoneticFamilyName [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts/cncontact](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts/cncontact)

Android contact - see PHONETIC_GIVEN_NAME, PHONETIC_FAMILY_NAME [https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Con...](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/ContactsContract.CommonDataKinds.StructuredName)

For fun I tried using Google Translate to translate the kanji name in the post 淳子 in various contexts to see what Google thinks it is:

\- 淳子 translated to "Dumpling"

\- 淳子さん translated to "Atsuko"

\- 淳子様 translated to "Sadako"

\- 淳子さま translated to "Mrs. Lion"

\- 淳子殿 translated to "Mr. Reiko"

\- 私の名前は淳子です translated to "My name is Miko"

\- 私の名前は淳子です。 translated to "My name is Reiko."

\- 私の名前は淳子です! translated to "My name is gyoza!"

I expected them all to translate to Junko or Atsuko. The variation and unexpected results for what should be exactly the same thing is very interesting.

<comment><USER5> Many statistical machine translators like Google Translate are very sensitive to the availability of bilingual corpus. In this case GT seems to have learned that -子 means either a dumpling (餃子) or a female name ending with -ko, but haven't seen enough corpus to determine that the preceding 淳 is pronounced either Atsu- or Jun- in given context so it is guessing. Combined with the user-contributed corpus this can be rather disastrous: several machine translators had translated Japanese "初音ミク" [1] to Korean "이명박" [2] ;-)

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Myung- bak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Myung-bak)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I missing something subtle in this Kanji example, or all 4 names actually written the same?:

"There are four Japanese women whose names you have to sort: Junko, Atsuko, Kiyoko, and Akiko. This does not seem difficult, until they each show you how they write their names in kanji:

淳子 (Junko) 淳子 (Atsuko) 淳子 (Kiyoko) 淳子 (Akiko)"

I'm not familiar with Japanese at all (and have never had to deal with localization beyond date formats), even less so written, but these seem like wildly different pronunciations for some spelled the same.

I know English has its own large set of warts with pronunciations and spellings (even disregarding US vs every other English speaking nation), but this seems overly odd.

How do you get further context on how to pronounce a proper name like this? The post mentions context, but obviously in the above example, lacking the "abc" spelling (as the post terms it), what context do you have to know the proper pronunciation?

<comment><USER7> It seems odd because it is. I live in Japan, tried to learn Japanese like I did learn English and German: through reading, as the true asocial geek I am. Well, that's not possible unless you know about 1000 kanjis, unless you stick with kids book or some mangas (which, actually, I am not that interested in)

To learn Japanese you need to learn to speak it first.

I stopped caring about kanjis wen I realized that a 15 year old, top of her class, was having difficulties reading news articles because of some words she did not know.

That's polemical and I would not tell it that upfront to my Japanese friends but I feel like kanjis are a vastly inferior writing system compared to the alphabets they have. The reason why it still exists is to create an educational hierarchy: the more kanjis you know, the more educated you are.

Kanjis are of Chinese origin, they occupy a similar place in Japanese culture than Latin does in European cultures. I wish they would do like Koreans and get rid of it altogether, but it will never happen. The culture here is far too conservative for such a brutal change. They even call the furikana (kanji "subtitles" that explicit the pronunciation) as a dumbing down.

This is an example where obfuscation is confused for depth.

<comment><USER8> And as a counter example, I like kanji and learned Japanese by reading (though I also like manga, so perhaps it was helpful). I find kanji _very_ helpful in learning vocabulary. In fact, I actually measured how fast I could learn vocabulary containing kanji I didn't know by learning the kanji first, versus learning the vocabulary phonetically. It was about the same. However, as there are only about 2200 kanji in the list of commonly used kanji and there are about 20,000 words you need for adult level proficiency, it means that each kanji is used in, on average 10 words. Actually, it's even better than that because the first 1000 most common kanji are used in 90% of the words you will encounter. I can learn vocabulary with kanji I know dramatically faster than vocabulary with phonetics alone. Ironically, I think it's even more helpful in Japanese than it is in Chinese because there are so many readings for the character that if you learn the word phonetically, you may have no idea what the root of the word is.

Kanji is frustrating to write, but a joy to read, IMHO. Yes, you need to learn 2000 (or so) characters, but, let's face it -- you've got _years_ to do it. I can now read words that I don't know and have a pretty good idea what they mean -- something that would be practically impossible phonetically in Japanese. In fact, when I'm faced with new vocabulary, I _often_ ask people to write it for me (just in the air) -- as soon as I see the kanji I almost always know what the word means.

I've often thought how superior this writing system is from roman phonetic characters (which bizarre historical spelling anachronisms to boot) ;-) I appreciate that you don't agree, but I hope you'll also understand that I have no intention of grading your education level on the number of kanji you know.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Kanji has aided in my study of the Japanese language in ways I couldn't fathom before trying to do so. I made it to N5-level proficiency [1] after a few semesters of study and only begrudgingly studied Kanji because it was required by the text. I hated it and really only wanted to speak and understand spoken Japanese.

Then I discovered Wanikani [2], a spaced repetition service that focuses on teaching Kanji reading. Unlike Anki decks, Kanji is literally the only thing Wanikani focuses on, but it does so incredibly well. With diligence it's even possible to learn all Joyo Kanji within about a year.

After taking Kanji seriously I began to understand the root meanings of the vocabulary I had known all along. It let me form associations I previously wasn't privy to and enabled a much faster uptake of new vocabulary. Instead of remembering why the syllables さいこう (saikou, pronounced "sigh co") means "best" or "utmost", I can simply recall the kanji: 最高. The character 最 means "most" and the character 高 means "tall". "most tall" = "utmost".

Japanese is extremely logical like this, as is their grammar. For fans of logic it's really top-notch.

If you're learning Japanese, please don't do yourself a disservice by skipping Kanji. A fully-integrated learning approach that includes reading will yield dividends in the long term.

[1] [http://jlpt.jp/e/about/levelsummary.html](http://jlpt.jp/e/about/levelsummary.html) [2] [https://www.wanikani.com/](https://www.wanikani.com/)

<comment><USER7> Of course kanji helps. Like Latin helps with many European language. If you learn Latin before learning French it will feel extremely logical.

Making it a pre-requisite to write a single sentence in French, however, seems like a waste of time and goodwill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a Japanese native, it pains me a lot when the westerners come upon linguistic differences like this and start calling them things like "overly odd" or "inferior" as they seem to be doing in the comments here. I can't help but smell a whiff of anglophonic condescension - I had thought political correctness have swept over the west over the last few years, but perhaps they only selectively apply to those who can talk back to you?

<comment><USER11> Reading the article showed me how ignorant I was to this problem... so much so that I'm surprised I haven't seen more articles like this in the past.

For all the talk on ML and PC here, it's surprising that language is still a huge unsolved issue. As someoneone who knows a tiny amount of Japanese, I'm surprised that a common solution is to provide the katakana equivalent. Outside of the tech realm, is this really what a native Japanese would write on (say) a physical/ paper document: both the Kanji and Katakana?

<comment><USER12> Yes, entering a name's kanji and kana separately is standard for most any form in Japan, whether digital or on paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four- Corner_Method](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method)

You can sort Chinese characters (including Kanji but i'm not sure they use the Four Corners Method) by the Four Corners method. Why would you need to sort kanji phonetically in the first place? Do Japanese users actually expect names to be sorted phonetically? English speakers don't expect names to be sorted by IPA so consistency of the sorting scheme should be all that matters.

<comment><USER12> > Do Japanese users actually expect names to be sorted phonetically?

Yes - or that's how a human would sort them, at any rate.

<comment><USER13> I don't think you're in a position to speak for all of humanity.

<comment><USER12> I meant a human as opposed to an algorithm.

Point being: kanji words aren't _always_ sorted phonetically, for the reasons described in the article, so a user may not be surprised if they aren't. But when a human is sorting kanji words they do so phonetically by reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >In English, the logo goes with their saying: "Everything from A to Z." This is indicated by the arrow. But in Japan, and any other country that doesn't use English, A and Z aren't always the first and last letters of the alphabet.

This is grasping for straws.

a) Many English speakers/countries are unfamiliar with the meaning of the logo's arrow. b) They will get the meaning if explained. c) Some won't because A-Z standing for "everything" requires a given level of literacy (cf. alpha and omega) d) They will get it easily when explained because it's a simple concept.

Japanese people learn the English alphabet pretty early on in school and while some may not be familiar with the saying A-Z the logo and the meaning still perfectly works and would get an aha reaction when explained.

</comment><comment><USER15> For those who want to know more about this:

The article touches on just the tip of the iceberg. You might think that all you need to do is add an extra field for phonetic readings, and then simply sort on that field, but there are a lot of things that can go wrong. A naive sort (i.e. based simply on character code) will hit the following snags:

1) Hiragana vs Katakana

The article focuses more on Kanji vs Kana, but Japanese users will expect Hiragana and Katakana to be properly sorted together. Either you normalize your sort field (by converting everything to Hiragana, for example) or you use a Kana-insensitive collation.

2) Half-width characters

Katakana can be encoded as full-width or half-width characters (カ vs カ). Generally you want these treated as the same, so again you need to normalize or use a width-insensitive collation. There are also full-width alphabet characters (A vs A).

3) Youon

These are actual different characters (ゆ vs ゅ, つ vs っ), so you can't normalize, but you want them sorted together. Here you need a collation that's case-insensitive with respect to these.

4) Dakuten/Handakuten

Like youon, these are also different characters (は vs ば vs ぱ) so you can't normalize, but you want them sorted together (insensitively). A sensitive sort will give you (はね, ばつ, ぱすた) while an insensitive sort will give you (ぱすた, ばつ, はね).

There has been a lot of work around this, resulting in many different database collations over the years, some of which result in sorts that would greatly confuse Japanese users. As of today, you probably want to be using (in the case of MySQL) utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci or something similar.

<comment><USER16> I'd assume you'd want ゅ andっ to be added to the kana they're attached to, and then sorted. I'd want my き and きゅ together and び and っび together.

<comment><USER15> That does make sense in a way, but I don't think that would feel natural to any native Japanese speaker. I'm not native and even I would find that ordering very odd.

At the very least, it would make the sorting algorithm a lot more complex if you had to look ahead at later characters in order to sort the current prefix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just a thought experiment, don't take it too seriously:

The crux of the issue is that kanji don't have an inherent "natural" ordering that a user would expect. Sorting by their character code doesn't mean anything to a Japanese person. But, what if we made our own standard of what entails a "natural order". There's nothing about A–Z that makes the alphabet obligated to be in that order (and not something like based on sound or shape) other than it being the convention that developed. Even hiragana can have different orderings (AIUEO vs IROHA [0])

One proposed method would be to do it how the dictionaries do it: first sort by major radical, [1] and then by stroke count. This is something most Japanese learn when learning how to write characters anyway (of course ambiguities would arise when the radical is shared and the stroke count is the same, but we could just choose a third arbitrary factor; we'd also have to decide on a specific written form as stroke count can differ depending on whether it is handwritten or the font).

We could then teach our approach to schoolchildren and it would just become accepted over time like other things they learn. But wait you say, it's more natural for them to sort on pronunciation. However, if I gave you a list of polygon names and told you to sort by the number of sides they had, you'd be perfectly capable of doing it despite that not being alphabetical. Things are less "unnatural" if you grew up learning them and your brain doesn't experience dissonance.

Anyway, just my hot take.

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

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_\(Chinese_characters\))

<comment><USER18> The only problem with that is that the resulting order would be useless for many applications. Say you're looking up your friend Tanaka Tarou, but you're not sure which characters his name is written with. If the sort order is phonetic, you can find the name and likely work out that this is the Tanaka you were looking for. But how do you search for a name in a kanji-indexed list if you don't know the kanji?

Incidentally, this is why kanji dictionaries invariably have _multiple_ indices: one by radical, the other by pronunciation(s).

<comment><USER17> Great point. I was considering a very visual-minded reader but of course not everyone would be so good at it nor would they always just care about how the kanji looks rather than other aspects. It's a difficult problem indeed... My intention is to show that we'd need some sort of radical solution that might not be what we'd immediately jump to (for example the current approach the author mentions is having a separate field for readings, but this is clearly resource-intensive and wouldn't work on arbitrary data). To solve sorting for Japanese, I feel we need to rethink what it means to sort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've seen this problem solved a few different ways.

1) Have a romanized version of the value to sort. 2) Have a hiragana or katakana version of the value to sort (hiragana > katakana > roman order for sorting).

Excel seems to sort things without telling it the reading for something. In JS and a few other languages Japanese is sorted based on UTF-8/16 code. This works for everything but kanji because of the reading requires a human.

<comment><USER20> In JavaScript, I imagine using string.localeCompare would give a more helpful sort than just UTF-8 value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think taking people names as an example is extreme because when Japanese people give a name to a baby, they choose both a phonological sign and a kanji-based transcription: phonologically, they tend to pick quite a common name (like christian names in the west, contrasting it with the native- american names that are a lot more specific to the person), but try to be clever and original when it comes to writing it with kanjis.

And I'm not even sure Amazon has an additional input field just for the sake of sorting names. Isn't this a common practice in the country ? (if I have to call a customer, how am I supposed to greet her if I can't pronounce her name ?)

</comment><comment><USER22> If im not mistaken, another unsolved problem is generating url segments (or "slugs") from characters such as chinese, arabic and possibly japanese as well.

<comment><USER23> You just use a (somewhat cleaned up) UTF-8 representation as a slug. UTF-8 URL components are universally supported (transparently encoded and decoded) in all modern browsers, and Google shows the real characters instead of the urlencoded version. You still end up with the urlencoded version when you hit Ctrl+C, but I expect that to be fixed in the near future as Unicode becomes even more widely used.

For example, the following link should work perfectly well in all modern browsers:

[https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/メインページ](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/メインページ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ran into this issue at work the other day. Relevant SO question: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54543528/intl- collator-s...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54543528/intl-collator- sorting-japanese-why-does-collator-not-prioritize-japanese-chara)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is great, I never took this into consideration and I actually enjoy Japanese as a hobby. JLPT N4 and I'm astounded to "wow, yeah, that makes sense it's a problem."

I always like unique problems like this, I never considered ABC vs Kana, Kanji -- and Romaji.

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting. I didn't know this was a problem. Kanji uses chinese characters. If sorting has been solved for chinese character, I'm assuming that the existence of Chinese dictionaries mean that sorting is no longer an issue, then why can't the same method be used for kanji characters?

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not native to Japanese or English, but I do think Kanji is beautiful and kana is "better" than the Alphabet, and although I dislike resorting to whataboutisms† to assert a point, @everyone here who suggests the abolition of kanji, please consider this proposal for "simplifying" the English language:

• Consolidate letters with identical pronunciations into a single letter: A/E, E/I, C/S, C/K, C/Q, G/J, I/Y, K/Q, U/OO, V/W, X/KS

• Split letters with ambiguous/variable pronunciations into multiple letters with fixed pronunciation: A, C, E, G, I, O, S, U, X, Y

• Remove any "silent" letters from all words.

• Disambiguate homographs and homonyms+homographs (e.g. lie, fair.)

I'm sure I missed or left out many examples, but would any of these proposals fly, at all?

Do they not disregard all the subtle nuances and historical significance which only advanced learners might appreciate? Do you feel a little aghast at my naiveté for even suggesting this? What would be the response of native speakers to a foreigner campaigning for a more streamlined and consistent English?

† _or more accurately: Tu quoque_

\----

I'll just leave a piece of fun trivia as an example of the cool stuff that would be lost if kanji was abolished:

The "slang" for a female ninja is _kunoichi_ : く _ku_ , ノ _no_ , 一 _ichi_ (the first two characters being _katakana_ )

and the kanji for woman is 女, made up of the following strokes: く, ノ, 一

It's something that I noticed on my own some time ago and it brought a smile to my face, like someone discovering an in-joke. There is a lot of arguably- clever wordplay like this in Japanese, and losing that would just make things bland for everyone, and for what? Just to make the language a little easier to stomach by Westerners?

What we should be campaigning for, is better resources and tools for learning and looking up kanji.

</comment><comment><USER28> The correct word is collation.

</comment><comment><USER29> Protip: Kirakira name

</comment><comment><USER30> Some statements you have made about the Japanese Language are ambiguous at best. Let's clear them up, but first let's be precise with the terminology. Pronunciation and sound have not interchangeable meaning. Every sound -or sequence of- in Japanese is associated with a specific character. It happens that some Kanji have multiple sounds or that a group of Kanji shares the same sounds, but still how are read it's univocal. There is no pronunciation involved. Just to give a quick example, the sound of あ is one and only one, while in English the sound of `a` has different pronunciations in pal, Paul, paediatrics, and so on. For the sake of simplicity it's ubiquitous savage practice overlapping the use of the "reading" with the one of "pronunciation" and the one of "intonation", but you should know the difference. The pronunciation transforms based on the preceding and/or following characters. There's no such concept in Japanese. The sounds of the Japanese language are distinctively dictated by Hiragana. Therefore what you have is a "Reading". A reading is made of one or more sounds. But once again readings or sounds have no multiple pronunciations. I hope I was able to shed some light on this complicated subject. It's a nuance, but makes an important impact.

Quoting: "I should note that there are two different alphabetical sorting orders in Japanese. For this article I am going to use the a i u e o (あいうえお) sort order." Alphabetical order as we know it, it's one in Japan too. The order of the Hiragana works exactly like our alphabetical order: a preordered sequence of scripts from A to Z is the methodologically equivalent to the Hiragana from あ to ん, albeit there is no words starting with を and ん - <USER2> two characters of the alphabet. The Katakana alphabet is exactly like Hiragana, just the characters `design` changes - it is only used to write, in Japanese sounds, imported words from non-Japanese languages (Chinese and Korean are exception because you can use the Kanji to write them, although when writing just Chinese or Korean sounds, you will be using Katakana still). When talking about `ordering` we normally refer to which sequence we are listing the Kanji: by their Hiragana sounds is the most common way of listing them. They can also be listed by what in English are called Radicals - foundational shapes composing the Kanji ideograph, they can be listed by strokes count or be listed by their Chinese reading - the Japanese sound of the equivalent Chinese Kanji, or even by recurrence. In the Japanese language it's frequently used `ordering` by meaning, by which Kanji may or may not be listing, where only Hiragana is used to write all the words. This method is the closest rendition in Japanese to what we are accustomed to name English dictionary. More here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_dictionary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_dictionary) I think it's already clear where the problem of sorting lays. Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, though being different looking alphabets, have a well-defined scope and interconnection in the Japanese language. Kanji are words, thus have meaning; Hiragana offers a vocalization to the Kanji and also absolves the crucial grammatical role, providing the language with adverbs, prepositions, particles, determiner, verbs conjugation and more. Katakana usage is sidelined to just words foreign in nature, hence they exclusively represents sounds, carrying no meaning. Consequently when reading Japanese on a generic subject Kanji are mostly encountered, some Hiragana that connects them are present (it needs to be said that very common words are often written in Hiragana only, e.g. こんにちは means Hello) and sporadic Katakana when some imported word is used. This is happening because in the Japanese language there is hardly any punctuation at all - yes, there's a full stop, a comma, a way to encapsulate direct speech, but no concept of empty space. You can read Japanese from any direction you set up yourself for. Traditionally it's read top to bottom from left to right. Modern books are read as ours would be, even so sometimes you turn the pages backward to further the reading, e.g. comics etc. The English alphabet is used in case of very technical terms or for proper names - <USER3> context may sometime better served with romaji. But that's not a rule whatsoever. Katakana is employed more often. The Western alphabet -romaji in Japanese- adoption is similar to how you would take up French, Spanish, Italian or German words in your writing. (continue)

<comment><USER30> Quoting from "Sorting Settings": "In this example you can see ABC and katakana are separated. Kanji are then separated from katakana. There were no hiragana in this list[...]" The Hiragana on that list are the characters と and の. On that particular list の expresses the meaning of correlation and と convey the mere meaning of `and`. For instance 地域 と 言語 の オプション (notice I myself have entered the `spaces` for clarity's sake, but there should be none) is a very instructive example. Those are actually three distinct nouns you are trying to order as one: 地域 reads ちいき (Hiragana for `chiiki`), means area; 言語 reads げんご (Hiragana for `gengo`), means language; オプション read opushon, is, you guessed, option in English. Note I didn't write that オプション means option. オプション IS the word `option` written with Japanese sounds or, in other words, written in the Japanese script - i.e. Katakana, you guess it. So 地域と言語のオプション can be translated as "Regional and Language options".

Quoting from "Sorting Names" "It is very possible to have different people with the same name write their name in different character sets. The traditional way of writing the Japanese name of Ayumi would be written in kanji; a modern, stylish way would be to write it in hiragana, and a second generation Japanese-American might write their name in katakana or the alphabet." Japanese always writes their name in Kanji. They don't use different sets. When the Kanji composing their names can assume several sounds, they write alongside what's called Furigana, the Kanji reading - usually as a subscript or superscript. Furigana is written in Hiragana (not Katakana as you stated later on), but for the Internet where websites could potentially be read by a non-Japanese crowd, Katakana might be used in some cases. Nonetheless as I said earlier Hiragana and Katakana differ only by scripting style, if you wish to call it as such. So which script is in use, it's not a relevant issue for foreigners. All the other statements are a matter of opinion, save for the last: Japanese do write sometimes their names in the romaji, aka "ABC alphabet", especially when they are dealing with foreigners at any level. Although why, being 2nd gen Japanese-American entails writing its own name in Katakana, beats me. It's a tiny bit like saying, forgive me here, a 2nd gen Italian-American would write its name in Latin.

Quoting from "Kanji - The Real Problem": "Kanji have multiple pronunciations, determined by the context in which it appears.[...]Only from the context in which the kanji appears do you know how to pronounce it." That's like saying the pronunciation of the word 'pool' is determined by the context referring to water or balls. Not the pronunciation, but the meaning of the word is changed by the context. We all agree on this statement. Single Kanji words change along with their meaning based on the context, but like the word 'pool', its reading is the same. e.g. あめ (reads ame) which means 'candy' if written 飴 or 'rain' if written 雨 . In this case the Kanji itself controls its meaning and reading, not the context. When single Kanji is a verb the meaning and reading changes with what's called Okurigana - Hiragana written after the Kanji absolving the purpose of conjugation -, while the Kanji remains invariant. For example 着く and 着る reads つく (tsuku) and きる (kiru) respectively, the former means 'to arrive' and the latter 'to wear'. Single Kanji aren't at all like you describe them. Compound Kanji words follow a different ruleset build upon how many they are. Generally speaking one kanji in two-Kanji words has multiple readings depending on what is the word it appears in and where it appears in that word. You can learn the rules, or you can get used to them just by seeing them used in massive frequency. This case alone is as you've described: the need to know the context in which the Kanji lives. But since the meaning also changes with its reading, you could be able to catch the overall meaning of the sentence without being able to read that single word. But compounds Kanji with multiple readings aren't that recurring and they generally represents common words requiring not much effort to memorize. Compound Kanji words composed by more than two Kanji reads unequivocally in one way as English words do with very few exceptions. More here [https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%8C%E5%BD%A2%E7%95%B0%E9...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%8C%E5%BD%A2%E7%95%B0%E9%9F%B3%E8%AA%9E) If anything what could, quote "[...]keeps students up nights studying for years[...]" isn't the multiple Kanji readings, but the fact that you need to know between 2000 and 3000 Kanji and its their combinations that build words (mostly two Kanji words). So it's like having a permutation with repetition (in ordered arrangements) of 3000 syllables that makes words in pairs or singularly.

Quoting "Here is an example: 私は私立大学で勉強しています。[...]A second year Japanese student could figure this out. For a computer, this is a very difficult problem." The choice is particularly sad. This isn't difficult at all for a computer, granting you understand the Japanese language. Let's dissect this phrase: 私 は 私立大学 で 勉強しています。 私 わたし (reads watashi) is the English pronoun 'I'. A computer instantly knows it because only the watashi reading/meaning can be followed by the Hiragana は. That's something a 6 years old Japanese knows. And something you would learn in your first months or less of Japanese studies. Conversely a computer know instantly that's the reading/meaning isn't watashi when it scans that following 私, there's another Kanji. This compound Kanji 私立 reading can only be しりつ (reads shiritsu) out of a staggering number of combined readings of 2 - and that's only because 立 has two usable Chinese reading りゅう and りつ (the third would require the Kanji to be lonesome), 私 only one, し. Kanji have usually one Japanese reading and one or more Chinese readings governed by strict rules on which reading group has to be used. Coding it isn't as much of a headache. As soon as the computer realize that the third character that follows the first two Kanji is a Kanji as well, the range of possible readings bottoms. That's also due to the fact the first two Kanji makes already a word - as often happens with 2+ long Kanji words, they are compose of multiple words, just like some long words in Western languages would - that means 'private' in English. With the same approach the computer instantly finds the reading of the two Kanji 大学 だいがく (reads daigaku) means University, another very common noun. I think you already got the gist of it. Last word 勉強しています the computer know instantly is a verb because of the unique okurigana しています (read shiteimasu) Present Continuous of "to do" and 勉強 is both extremely popular and has a unique reading, べんきょう (reads benkyou) which is the noun 'study'. "I'm studying at a private university", even a machine translation would be accurate here.

I think the point is that there is no use in sorting all the words written in the three different Japanese alphabets simultaneously in the same juncture. Microsoft knows it so well it has yet to implement it. In your final thought you completely miss to understand that you don't need to attack the problem by "pronunciations". You have only to treat the Kanji with different approach and translate Hiragana/Katakana in romaji, which it has been done already long time ago. I hope at least you're going to quit using "pronunciation" in favor of "reading" by the time you've done reading this post. If ever.</comment></comment>


Most innovative companies of 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/section/most-innovative-companies-2013

<comment><USER2> Isn't it just February? What if a company announces quantum teleportation in November 2013? What list is it going to make?

Sheesh, I bet the authors of this article drive model 2014 cars already...

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't somehow agree with the list (or the order). I felt companies like Tesla, Microsoft deserved a better ranking. And did Apple really innovate last year?

has anybody heard of shine by Misfit wearables? I saw them in indiegogo and found their technology pretty impressive too!!

</comment><comment><USER4> 17/ SAMSUNG : "for elevating imitation to an art form". Really ??

<comment><USER5> _Oded Shenkar, a professor at Ohio State University and the author of Copycats, defines it thus: "Basically, you try to innovate where you have an advantage and imitate everywhere else."_

Samsung was innovative because they stood on the shoulders of giants (Apple) and made something more advanced, instead of going back to the drawing board and throwing out everything learned from the iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meh, that list is as lame as they come. Yelp? What did Yelp innovate in 2012? What's Nike's claim to the position of most innovative?

Complete fluff piece, 0 content.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very very surprised Tesla isn't here (or higher, maybe I missed it) on the list

<comment><USER8> #22

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats to all the named companies! Keep pushing!</comment>


Ask HN: Idea Sunday is awesome... but now what? Let's build something. - <AUTHOR>

Since "Idea Sunday" started a few weeks ago, I look forward to reading through the comments every Sunday. But HN is better than just ideas...let's execute on one each week and create some real value by making it into a reality.
We've got every kind of hacker on here (eng, biz, data, mkt...). Let's start a project and collaborate.
We can wrap up Idea Sunday with a poll of the top 10 ideas (via comments in Idea Sunday thread) and all vote on one project to build as a community each week.
Who's in. <comment><USER2> If this goes ahead, Assembly (a yc alumni company) would be a great place to track the projects: www.assemblymade.com No, I don't work for them. Yes, I know them and they're very cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm working on 2 of the ideas that I proposed today and a couple weeks ago. It might take a while (I have other projects, and I'm a full-time student), but yes, I'll complete those.

Also, I think polling might not be the most efficient way to chose what to work on. I'd say let people decide what they want to work on, rather than crowdsourcing the decision.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just built [http://threadaday.github.io](http://threadaday.github.io), based on this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617434)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm interested, I can help out with marketing, analytics & strategy - uk.linkedin.com/in/jameslethem/</comment>


Show HN: It is too easy to get your private data stolen if you are a traveler - <AUTHOR> Having traveled with my older brother in Italy, I realized there is no good app for finding travelers who speak your language. For example, at Naples, we couldn't find many people who speak English at all. When I moved to the Netherlands I've got a new problem - it was hard to find people who speak my native language.
So I decided to develop an app.
But before doing it, I analysed market of existing products. I quickly found a bunch of competitors and started to research them. I was surprised that a lot of applications share private data of users, some of them share even passwords.
Here are a few examples of iOS apps, and the pictures will say everything for themselves:
backpackr
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0sd5txstnwagzsb/res_back.png?dl=0 You can get email, facebook ID and password of any user over cleartext http
travelmate https://www.dropbox.com/s/xopdo2rx0tem30r/res_travelmate.png?dl=0 http, email, facebook_id
booola https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8y811yfupeuo1b/res_booola.png?dl=0 emai, facebook_id
trippers https://www.dropbox.com/s/xkh62i5pg5rbe1v/res_trippers.png?dl=0 emai, facebook_id
outbound https://www.dropbox.com/s/hjw1fpts5xaeons/res_outbound.png?dl=0 email
party with a local https://www.dropbox.com/s/hunjtgvo46p24b7/res_party.png?dl=0 email
Is it a normal practice? <comment><USER2> Because the spirit of "Show HN" is for things people can try out or play with [1], this would probably be better as an "Ask HN". But even then, with all the links it would perhaps be best shared as a blog post and a regular submission.

[1]: Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont have blog

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> extremely insecure!!</comment>


War Without End - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/magazine/war-afghanistan-iraq-soldiers.html <comment><USER2> The endless (and pointless) wars that our soldier are being spent on has a relatively easy solution

Reinstate the draft.

That might seem counterintuitive since that would give us a lot more soldiers to use, but it would give a lot of families, a lot of Americans real skin in the game.

Wasting soldiers is easy as long as most people dont care and dont notice. But when it is your daughter/cousin/ uncle/parent someone you know for a majority of the population it becomes a very serious matter.

I say this as an ex-army soldier. I will be honest and say that I didnt enjoy my time in the military very much, and forcing thousands and thousands of youth to go through it means a lot of pain and uncomfortable situation, I think the benefits would outweigh the sacrifices made to make this happen.

An alternate plan would it to be mandatory that family members of elected officials to serve in the military and in wars, personally. (Not just sit at a desk in DC pushing buttons) But there is so much corruption in those systems that the children would probably be protected one way or another.

<comment><USER3> What an unbelievably bad idea. Mandatory drafting is involuntary servitude, slavery. How about taking a non interventionist policy?

<comment><USER4> Citizenship has historically been defined by military service, in that you are not merely subject to the security apparatus of the state, but a part of it. Because you are a part of it, you have a say in it. It was the removal of the draft which necessarily removed the role of service from citizenship.

What do people who are not a part of the military care about non-intervention? There is a reason we viliify the draft-dodger who becomes a politician and sends others sons off to war.

<comment><USER3> Historically most ancient or medieval wars were fought by professional soldiers.

Here is a Wikipedia quote

"The persistent old belief that peasants and small farmers gathered to form a national army or fyrd is a strange delusion dreamt up by antiquarians in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries to justify universal military conscription"

I support Rothbard's view on the issue: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3TY5OhUJhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3TY5OhUJhw)

<comment><USER4> Not what I'm referring to. I'm referring specifically to those who owned land and bore arms and were referred to as Citizens in Rome.

I find both the notions that conscription=slavery and that taxation=theft can only be held by someone who does not believe in any sort of duty or obligation to one's community, country, nation, or God, and that self-interest must necessarily be one's sole (or at least primary) motivating factor.

<comment><USER3> No, community and state are two different things. Surely I do not accept social contract theory. But I do not think we will reach a common ground arguing this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Typical NYTimes to underline all the poor dead & wounded American soldiers and not a single word about innocent Iraqi and Afghani citizens, let alone the insane wave of refugees across the globe that America's aggression has helped cause.

<comment><USER6> Americans are simply not interested in the victims of their wars. It runs counter to every iota of American culture, to acknowledge the failures of their warrior-classes, alas.

But, you should know, the article did mention the casualties, at least glibly. "Many more Afghani's have died than were lost in the 9/11 attacks", is the only context the author can find, to appeal to his readers.

Its a sad state of affairs when the worlds greatest nation is populated with its worst cowards. Americans should have a War Channel that shows them what their military-industrial-pharmaceutical masters are doing around the world, 24-hours a day. Only then would the honour and pride demanded of American servants of its military be placed in the proper context.

<comment><USER7> Why did USA get so up in arms with Korea, Vietnam War, etc but not USA's ongoing Afghanistan/(Iraq?) war?

<comment><USER8> Presumably because of the military draft, which was abolished in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, IIRC.

<comment><USER9> I also suspect fatigue. For a lot of US citizens, the war has taken place a for a majority of their (our) life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a very simple proposal to insure success in any military campaign: just make all tours of duty _accompanied_ tours, i.e. send families along with the servicemembers, from the highest ranks to the lowest, and also make deployment to a combat zone on the order of a decade or two, not a few months or a year.

I guarantee that any general staff whose wives & children are in the affected area and who will be there for the next decade will figure out how to pacify the region to the level of a Chicago or Detroit.

<comment><USER11> That argument is very poor because it assumes that (1) pacification has so far failed for lack of proper motivation of service members, and (2) bringing their families in possible harm's way will properly motivate them.

You haven't demonstrated (1) and it disregards movitations such as a desire for advancement (higher ranks), or not getting shot at (lower ranks), and (2) can have many outcomes (there are faster ways to get home for an individual than winning a war), the least probable of which is the outcome you "guaranteed".

You're merely appealing to emotion while simultaneously disregarding all other (and much more relevant) factors leading to a drawn-out war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What would "winning" these wars even look like? There is no answer to that because these are not wars that are meant to be won. How can you win something when you don't even know what winning means? These are simulacra wars unlike a war like WW2. Every war America has fought after WW2 has been a simulacra war, not intended to be won but intended to advance random political goals at the expense of our soldiers lives. It's as if America is stuck in a loop, relieving WW2 over and over again but without any actual enemies or wars to fight. Thus we create simulacra wars, wars that shouldn't exist, wars for profit and politics. No one in their right mind could possibly believe these wars are making us safer or whatever the propaganda du jour is. A lot of people just simply can't grasp the idea that they are being duped and lied to by their government, sent to die for nothing. I hope that tuition money is worth the ptsd or the lost limbs because people fighting these wars sure as hell aren't doing anything good for the rest of us Americans. That's why we have the constant "support the troops" bullshit at football games and everywhere else. If there was really a threat, if there was a real necessary war, that bullshit would be unnecessary. Men willingly volunteered to fight in WW2. Today, you couldn't have a draft without mass upheaval, protests, and resistance. I'd rather go to prison, my ultimate nightmare, than fight in these simulacra wars for others' profit. If there was a draft, I'd rather protest by shooting my commanding officers and die than fight in a bullshit war. Clearly though, there won't be a draft but about 1% of the US population is either so desperate for money or delusional that they are willing to fight these staged, unwinnable, simulacra wars. And so on and on they will continue.

<comment><USER13> Wars are always fought to advance political goals. I agree that in that case, the goals are shitty.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I should have specified shitty, niche political goals not in the interest of the country or its people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad, with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures, have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed government action._

Except for the mention of the World Trade Center, this could be a telling of the US involvement in Vietnam.

Back then, it was the highly dubious Domino Theory that hawks waved around to browbeat anyone suggesting that such a war was un-winnable, morally indefensible, or just plain hair-brained.

Today it's the equally dubious umbrella of Terrorism.

Having recently watched Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary, it seems nearly impossible to understand the thinking of the war's supporters. Unless, that is, you replace the word "Communism" with "Terrorism."

<comment><USER15> The domino thing wasn't that crazy. China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia. Then what? Philippines? Thailand?

Of course, the right answer was that we couldn't take on all of those burdens, not even one, really, not for long. But in the aftermath of WWII, I think it's not surprising that this wasn't understood.

<comment><USER16> Everyone seems to also forget the then recent success of the Korean war. At risk of confusing what was known then and what is known now, well, look at NK vs SK today. Vietnam under socialist control turned out to be not anywhere as extreme but it would have been hard to guess that right during China's "great leap forward". Of course, things didn't turn out as well for neighboring Cambodia.

<comment><USER10> > Vietnam under socialist control turned out to be not anywhere as extreme

Not as extreme as North Korea? No, but even the Soviet Union wasn't as extreme as North Korea. The subjugation of South Vietnam under North Vietnam was pretty brutal though — the Boat People didn't spring from nothing.

<comment><USER13> I remember working with a Boat People on my first job. He was a cool guy, but we never talked about Vietnam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The underlying problem is _comfortable war_. It's comfortable for us - we give up nothing, there is no draft, no extra tax, no rationing. Even the soldiers live in relative comfort at base, with air conditioning, plentiful food, computer games, etc.

We should choose, as a society, to make war uncomfortable for us. It is the moral choice. We should have a draft, which puts the children of the wealthy and powerful at risk. We should have extra taxes, and ideally there should be rationing.

Then see the popularity of diplomacy rise.

<comment> saiya-jin > We should have a draft, which puts the children of the wealthy and powerful > at risk

If you're wealthy its super easy to avoid going to war, it doesn't matter which country we talk about. Bribe physician to have some made-up condition (ie Trump), or get drafted but end up doing some safe job on military base back home/outside of any real danger (i think Bush jr).

Wars are fought by poor under-educated classes (thats where drafting/hiring is aimed at), smart person sees how pathetic the causes are, how incompetent political and military leadership is, and how stupid it would be to lose life or health for no good reason (and very probably introduce hefty chunk of evil into this world).

You can get all the adrenaline thrill doing extreme sports (and much more), you can get paid better elsewhere and it must be kinda hard to strike the patriotic tune when country being attacked by your government is half across the globe, never set a military foot on US soil nor threatened it in any way

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Even though the weird Qanon movement is delusional on the particulars, when it comes to pointing out the obvious betrayal of regular folk by cabals of elites milking the system for their benefit is strikingly on point.

<comment><USER19> Hitler also had a point that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair to Germany. Neither Qanon nor Hitler deserve to be absolved of their dangerous lies this way.

<comment><USER6> Comparing Qanon to Hitler is such a sad and tragic way to run from the truth.

<comment><USER20> Bringing up insane conspiracy theories on Hacker News is what is actually sad and tragic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats- responses-i...](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses- iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors- th...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times- and-iraq.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/world/threats- responses-i...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/world/threats-responses- intelligence-defectors-bolster-us-case-against-iraq-officials.html)

Many more where that came from. There is a case to made that the US wouldn't even be _in_ Iraq if not for the undying support of the Bush administration's agenda, by none other than the New York Times.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you are a soldier and find other reasons to fight rather than for the person next to you, then I wonder if you're fit to fight at all.

 _You know what I 'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is._

<comment><USER23> Sorry but that makes no sense from a policy point of view.

<comment><USER24> Soldiers don't make policy.

<comment><USER25> And yet I find the answer to "Why did you sign up?" to be "To defend the guy next to me!" an odd statement.

Should no one be a soldier in peacetime? Because logically, if the hypothetical guy next to you isn't getting hypothetically shot at...

<comment><USER24> It isn't why people sign up; it's why they continue to fight after the reasons they signed up have become destroyed in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> And the same forces, including the NY Times, are currently trying to push us into a war with Russia.

</comment><comment><USER27> Also "National Emergency" without end and without oversight. The National Emergencies Act [0] allows the President to declare emergency powers, but it must be renewed annually, and he must give a report to Congress on how much has spent on the emergency and the status.

Bush declared a national emergency after 9/11, and renewed it every year. Obama did the same. Trump the same. No reports to Congress. Congress has never asked for a report. Nothing but "the threat continues". [1]

More recently Trump used it as a way to force retired Air Force pilots back into active duty.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act) [1] [https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/14/perm...](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/14/permanent- emergency-trump-becomes-third-president-renew-extraordinary- post-9-11-powers/661966001/)

</comment><comment><USER28> _With this anniversary, prospective recruits born after the terrorist attacks of 2001 will be old enough to enlist._

All else aside, that just ain't right.

</comment><comment><USER29> Apologies for the tangent, however I just noticed that up to 150% zoom in Chrome the pictures will maintain their size while the text grows. That's pretty cool.

I mean, it seems obvious and I've never had to deal with this(does it rely on em or screen percentage sizing?!), but the way the Times formats the article seems to play particularly well with zoom.</comment>


Cyber Pearl Harbor: Why hasn't a mega attack happened? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130820-cyber-pearl-harbor-a-real-fear

<comment><USER2> BBC.com is ironically unavailable to Brits due to the fact we fund the BBC but not BBC Worldwide.

So whereas the rest of the word can access BBC Worldwide content Brits are not allowed to.

Shame, sounds like a moderately interesting article. I'll never know without tunneling to a different location to access the content.</comment>


How to Make a Paywall With No Technical Ability - <AUTHOR> http://paywallify.posterous.com/how-to-make-a-paywall-with-no-technical-abili

<comment><USER2> Awesome, this makes it seem doable

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you use it on your website?</comment></comment>


More on Chrome updates and headers (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://unsearcher.org/more-on-chrome-updates-and-headers <comment><USER2> Is there such a thing as "CleanChrome", meaning the good technical bits without this kind of Google business-driven terribleness?

As background, I feel like I've given Firefox enough chances, and am not interested in Brave given their history of anti-creator choices. (I'd consider Safari, but its extensions model seems too limited for "Tabs Outliner"-style extensions.)

<comment><USER3> edge, right?

<comment><USER4> It's the circle of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I keep wondering why people who seemingly care about their privacy continue to use Google products/services, doing all their online activity while logged in to their Google account.

<comment><USER6> As much as I want to use Firefox more, it doesn't "just work", unlike Chrome.

Every other update it destroys my containers and I have to recreate them. Or it will just stop responding to keyboard input after an update. I have to go in and disable all add-ons, restart and enable them. I get it, add-ons are hard.

I'm just afraid that if I start syncing my bookmarks etc that I do with Chrome, Firefox will destroy them someday and I'll be left spending half a day recovering.

I do want to use it more, but I also need it to just work every time.

<comment><USER7> >Every other update it destroys my containers and I have to recreate them.

I've used containers since Firefox 52 and this never happened to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >As, the Verge already explained, Chrome is turning into the new IE6 (in case you wonder, that's not a compliment). Not only is Google making some services running faster on Chrome, the browser also sends information only to Google.

Did Microsoft make their services run faster on IE6? Did IE6 send information only to Microsoft?

<comment><USER9> > Did Microsoft make their services run faster on IE6?

Yes. Internet Explorer used to send out-of-spec TCP packets during the initial handshake that IIS would respond to also in an out of spec way. This had the effect of speeding up subsequent requests, but only in the case of IE talking to IIS.

<comment><USER6> I presume you are referring to this sort of thing: [http://grotto11.com/blog/slash.html?+1039831658](http://grotto11.com/blog/slash.html?+1039831658)

It is perfectly within spec to send data on a half-closed TCP connection, from the other end. That is exactly what the shutdown(SD_SEND) socket call is for. It signals the stack to send a FIN so that the other side can send data but knows to not expect more.

They were probably implementing a version of HTTP 1.1 (before it became a formalized standard) that did not break existing clients (or servers) but speeded up theirs.

BTW, I find it hard to believe IIS was sending more data after sending a FIN. Let's just say I worked in the vicinity of the Windows networking org in those days.

I know it's not a popular history to believe among the SV crowd, but Microsoft in those days would bend over backwards for ISVs (Independent Software Vendors, or companies that wrote software for Windows) if they just whispered "your products are using undocumented APIs that I don't have access to". Regardless of whether that claim was true or not, they would work overtime to dispel the notion.

The were just getting put under the anti-trust microscope, with a consent decree signed in 1994 and a bigger suit was obviously coming soon.

Of course, when google does something similar with QUIC/SPDY, it's the second coming of Christ. Definitely not a way to boost their browser/core business.

edit:typos</comment></comment></comment>


Finland plans to give every citizen a basic income of 800€ a month - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/566702/finland-plans-to-give-every-citizen-a-basic-income-of-800-euros-a-month/ <comment><USER2> Another way to look at this is tax money that the government would have spent is now spent by the citizenry directly.

Giving people money rather than, government, banks or as corporate tax breaks is a novel way to redistribute wealth - in direct oppositition to the paralysing bailout / austerity cycle much of Europe is suffering from.

The surprising sucess of Bush's economic stimulus cheques shows money distributed this way stays local longer stimulating economic activity in small business which provide long term employment and community investement - entrepreneurs are in great part the wealth of nations.

This removes the poverty trap, alters everyones risk profile for startups, and future proofs an economy against robocalypse - looking forward to seeing this in action.

<comment><USER3> I doubt taking money from the disabled and the elderly and giving it to able bodied people is going to "help" them out of poverty.

<comment><USER4> I've had friends and acquaintances in multiple countries who've had to choose not to do things because they risked no longer qualifying for disability and other programs that they were dependent on. Once you are in you tend to stay in because these programs inevitably victimize those who try to leave and fail.

Giving everyone a little backup makes for a better society where people can take the risks they should take.

<comment><USER3> My grandmother is 83 years old and gets about $1200/mo to live on. So, your saying her lazy ass needs to go get a job when her check goes down to $800 so I can have an $800. it makes no sense. a negative income tax makes a lot more sense and you can set it up so the marginal tax rate doesn't discourage people from working.

<comment><USER4> I suspect that much like in Switzerland, many politicians are looking at something demanded of them that they wish to sabotage and are craftily pitting current social net recipients against it is one way to do that. I think the unfinished process of publishing and voting on it is meant to address that.

I'd be arguing from the opposite side, where you both get the ~$1200 in universal income if that is a normal pension amount, and then I'd expect the average HN reader to end up paying a little more in additional taxes than they get in income under a universal income plan. But over time, I think it will raise all ships.

There are many ways to implement that, but I think universal income has a better opportunity to remain intact and increasing once pushed through. Plans that try to achieve fairness through more complex benefits and scales tend to end up in tatters because they offer opponents a lot of surface area and ways to implement a thousand cuts where few people feel a connection to each individual part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10090542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10090542) : 108 days ago, 233 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10553008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10553008) : 23 days ago, 280 comments

Other submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10093134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10093134)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10682359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10682359)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685049)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10683527)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10511242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10511242)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730541)

I'm sure there are more.

 _Edited to correct incorrect URLs initially posted._

<comment><USER6> The fist two threads you linked had no comments, perhaps you copied the wrong URL.

(In this case, I'd avoid to link to the others threads unless one of them have a very interesting comment that deserves to be rescued from an obscure thread. This is more frequent in technical threads, were the comments may add a lot of information. Basic Income is too close to politics and usually the threads are full of unsupported opinions.)

<comment><USER5> That's bizarre - I'll look into that - thanks.

 _Edit: Now fixed - thanks again for the heads-up._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is quite interesting from an entrepreneur point of view, people could try lots of different startup, company ideas but still have at least a basic income.

<comment><USER3> not if you've got to take care of your disabled grandma because her benefits got cut and she can't live by herself anymore.

<comment><USER8> She gets the 800 as well. Seems much more fair than the system in the United States, where benefits accrue relative to your political influence (or, often, the political influence of the lobbying group that manages your interest).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Finland has been in a depression for a while. Their GDP is still 6pc below its previous peak. [1]

If this is a last desperate ploy to prevent secular stagnation one has to wonder how effective this will be - it is sold as temporary but the moment it is withdrawn their economy truly craters.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/12001895/Finlands- depress...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/12001895/Finlands-depression- is-the-final-indictment-of-Europes-monetary-union.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> so who loses out on the plan? The disabled, elderly, children of poor single mothers. why should they get all the benefits. now spoiled rich college kids get extra money to spend.</comment>