Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory: Quality and Quantity of Retention - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4720782/ <comment><USER2> The conclusions are expected, however it is nice to have experimental confirmation. Now we just need to figure out what are they doing differently to enable such phenomenal recall.

"We investigated recall of recent and remote, predominantly routine, events in HSAMs and controls. Interestingly, HSAMs and controls recall the same amount of information when tested within a few days (up to a week). Beyond this, HSAM participants forget autobiographical details at a far slower rate than do age- and sex-matched controls. Furthermore, in comparison with controls, HSAM participants maintain more richly detailed recollections and their forgetting curve for autobiographical memory is shallow, which should come as no surprise given the nature of their memory (LePort et al., 2012). The data here suggest that HSAMs are not better than controls in acquiring information. However, they are far superior at retaining information."

<comment><USER3> > are not better than controls in acquiring information

My earliest memory is 2 weeks after 4 (I am now 31). I can remember it down to the most intricate detail. I cannot for the life of me remember the tasks I am looking at this sprint (which is why I write them down). Memories seemingly become more accessible the more time has passed; facts too, I can recall the vast majority of my high school syllabus despite being someone who a solid C-grade student.

This is the first time hearing about HSAMs, but based on personal experience I would posit that it has more to do with how memories are _accessed,_ not how they are stored.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Do you know your memory is accurate?

2\. By constantly replaying the memory, you strengthen it. How much do you remember from the day after your earliest memory?

<comment><USER5> 2\. there's actually no such thing as "read-only" from our memory. it's closer to "read and then rewrite." so, it can change over time and often become less accurate the more you access memories.

<comment><USER6> Patient H.M. would seem to be counter evidence to your assertion. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison)

<comment><USER7> I don't think so.

> For post-1953 information he was able to modify old memories with new > information. For instance, he could add a memory about Jonas Salk by > modifying his memory of polio.

Additionally, the surgery he had, caused him to have a very... unique neurological structure. I'd hesitate to generalize his experiences directly that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds very suspicious that people were able to name day of the week for random dates 15+ years ago when most days that pass one has no reason to associate the date and day of week. Makes me wonder about the individuals participating in this study, their incentives to get an official high memory credential, and whether they learned a formula for calculating days of the week.

<comment><USER9> There was a 60 minutes episode interviewing 6 SAMs[1]. They're tested with random historical events happening back a few decades, some fairly mundane such as weather patterns -

\---

"Let's move back in time now to 1990. It rained on several days in January and February, can you name the dates on which it rained?" McGaugh asked.

 __Believe it or not, she could.

"Let's see. It was slightly rainy and cloudy on January 14th, 15th. It was very hot the weekend of the 27th, 28th, no rain," she replied.

We checked the official weather records and she was right.

\---

1\. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gift-of-endless- memory/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gift-of-endless-memory/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am the exact opposite of someone with hsam. I forget things constantly, and often have to fake my way through conversations like "do you remember when we..". I feel like I'm a totally different person from who I was 10 years ago, because I remember almost nothing from that time. I try not to get into arguments because I just have to take the other person's word that events happened like they said.

<comment><USER10> ..and I document my code very well..

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My adult son, who has serious leanring disabilities (cannot read, only do basic math with number up to 20), seems to have an above average memory for certain autobiographic details, such as who he was with on a certain date. But I don't think it is in the order of HSAM.

</comment><comment><USER12> This college student I dated: the sex was great but she also had some quirks (and other thigs). One quirk was crazy, verbatim ABM. Good luck debating someone with a "CCTV footage" memory.</comment>


Why Does the World's Top Mathematician have a Public E-Mail Address? - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/04/16/why-does-the-worlds-top-mathematician-have-a-public-e-mail-address/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29 <comment><USER2> The author of the article do not realize, that his e-mail may be public for many reasons, such as: \- Somebody have enormous idea and want to share it; \- Somebody found mistake in his work; e.t.c. I mean, the authors thinks that the reasons to have public e-mail is to have _public_ interactions, which is not true obviously.</comment>


Half of European Men Share King Tut's DNA - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-tutankhamun-dna/half-of-european-men-share-king-tuts-dna-idUSTRE7704PB20110801 <comment><USER2> Also..

> Every time you breathe, there's a good chance that at least one of those > molecules was exhaled by Julius Caesar in the throes of death.

[https://futurism.com/estimating-how-many-molecules-you- breat...](https://futurism.com/estimating-how-many-molecules-you-breathe-that- were-from-julius-caesars-last-breath)</comment>


What Is The Secret Of Making Millions? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sourcepep.com/what-is-the-secret-of-making-millions/ There is a science why some people are successful and some are not. Author of the Book 'Rich People Think' Steve Siebold makes some extraordinary observations on the difference of mindset of people who are financially successful than those who are not. <comment><AUTHOR> There is a science why some people are successful and some are not. Author of the Book 'Rich People Think' Steve Siebold makes some extraordinary observations on the difference of mindset of people who are financially successful than those who are not.</comment>


The Panama Papers: how the world's rich and famous hide their money offshore - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/the-panama-papers-how-the-worlds-rich-and-famous-hide-their-money-offshore <comment><USER3> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Panama%20Papers&sort=byPopular...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Panama%20Papers&sort=byPopularity&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think all this talk about the legality of using such services misses the point. It's about legitimacy, especially that of state leaders. While the western media might try to use it to delegitimize some non-western leaders, the leak actually works both ways.

Any country leader who'd make a speech to tell her (or his) people she doesn't care about them or their country, would do nothing illegal, but would probably loose her power. It's the same here - the leak serves as proof that the national Elite in many countries is no longer "loyal" to its imagined community (aka nation).

<comment><USER5> Don't forget that the people that profit from selling financial services to corrupt leaders are so corrupt as them. Even if they speak flawless English and wear nice clothes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well this is cool.

But notice on the [https://panamapapers.icij.org/](https://panamapapers.icij.org/) page there is a "leak to us" button, so we can share information with the journalist consortium, but no "show me the leaked data" button so they can share with us.

Where do we get the actual leaked data, so we can investigate companies ourselves, instead of relying on mass-media "analysis"?

And what about the other law firms (this is only the fourth largest, apparently)? Is it just a coincidence that Putin is implicated in this, the only leak?

<comment><USER7> They want to derive the maximum amount of exposure, page views and revenues from the leaked data in the form of web articles with ads, printed news papers with ads etc. Releasing the the actual data would be counterproductive to their own financial gains.

Somewhat ironic, I think.

(Yes, some of the 100+ news organizations are ad free, such as the mandatory tv license-paid state broadcaster/propaganda organ SVT from my country, Sweden, but they also have their own motives of wanting to control the data.)

<comment><USER8> The leak contains large amounts of personal information on people who aren't necessarily guilty of anything illegal, correct? If that's the case, releasing the full leak comes with some very real ethical concerns.

<comment><USER9> > The leak contains large amounts of personal information on people who aren't > necessarily guilty of anything illegal, correct?

How do we know? That's just an assumption. It could also be that the leak contains information on some very powerful people who better not be crossed?

<comment><USER10> > _" In this trove there are administrative documents that could actually be > brought to public knowledge, such as records of incorporation, shareholder > registers or directors or creation of bank accounts. But there is especially > a lot of personal information, such as private postal and email addresses, > scans of passports for internal and external correspondences Mossack > Fonseca, with many private items (such as vacation rentals, electricity > bills or, more sadly, the discovery of cancer)"._

[https://www.reddit.com/live/wp1fvdxxwb45/updates/02ec05f2-fa...](https://www.reddit.com/live/wp1fvdxxwb45/updates/02ec05f2-fa78-11e5-b94c-0e945010cea9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pot kettle black?

"...most of the UK's big media organisations shelter assets and cash flows offshore. Top of the hypocrites in this respect is The Guardian. They put their assets in the Caymans, and they used a Luxembourg tax shell designed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers to funnel cash flows beyond the reach of HMRC. "

"Other media organisations using offshore entities include the Huffington Post – whose journalists criticised Amazon for doing the same. The owners of the Mail, News UK and The Telegraph also have various offshore tax-efficient structures."

[http://order-order.com/2016/04/04/media-organisations- using-...](http://order-order.com/2016/04/04/media-organisations-using- offshore-havens/)

<comment><USER12> The major issue with tax avoidance schemes is the effect on competition. It's kind of like the prisoner's dilemma.

If no-one uses them, great.

If everyone uses them, you have a lower effective tax rate and different policy outcomes to the ones expected, so there might be distortions.

If others use them but you don't, you're at a competitive disadvantage.

An analogy for the everyman - imagine that there's a loophole me and everyone else in my city could use as individuals to completely avoid tax. If I choose not to do so, I'm receiving, say, 20-30% less income than I would annually, putting me at a huge disadvantage when performing normal activities such as buying a home, say.

I don't think that tax avoidance is immoral, I do think it should be fixed because of the distortion (favouring large businesses, which already generally have advantages due to scale).

It's a bit like how one can be a marxist whilst also choosing to own private property. You can't exist without mimicing society to some extent.

<comment><USER13> The question is are these companies doing anything illegal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As mentioned by another poster (who's comment is now dead?)

 _How is this different than when Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, HP and Google "hide" their money offshore in places like Ireland and the Cayman Islands, which helps them avoid repatriating their profits overseas and paying taxes on them?_

It isn't. The point of this is that Putin is doing it.

<comment><USER15> The difference is that those companies were/are exploiting various loopholes in laws across many countries to avoid paying the tax they ordinarily would. Immoral? Sure. Illegal? No.

I'm no tax professional, but it sounds like this leak is about a large number of wealthy people actively _evading_ tax, by hiding their assets/source of income and other shady things. This is very illegal, and if true, I imagine some of these people can and will be prosecuted for it.

Tax _avoidance_ is legal, tax _evasion_ isn't.

<comment><USER16> Not sure I'm seeing a difference..

<comment><USER17> When you put your money into a structured pension plan for your retirement then it's tax avoidance since you are avoiding paying the tax you normally would if you invested it in some other way. Tax evasion is where you break the law by hiding money that should be taxed. Quite a big difference.

<comment><USER18> I think a lot of people (myself included) tend to focus on the "how" rather than the "why".

Presumably, big corporations are not only avoiding tax via legal means, but they are creating these legal means to avoid tax. Why do it illegally, when you can bribe/buy politicians, who then pass laws and allow you to avoid all the tax you want.

It could be 100% legal _(not bribery specifically, but campaign financing for example)_ , but i don't think most people are really okay with it.

I'm perfectly okay with someone finding a legal loophole, i am not okay with them blocking said loophole, or introducing new ones.

<comment><USER19> This is, notoriously, how tax avoidance works in the UK. There's a revolving door between the big accountancy firms that work out tax avoidance schemes, HMRC, which is the UK's IRS, and policy desk's in the Treasury, which define tax policy.

HMRC has been notoriously lax in enforcing and collecting tax nominally owed by the largest corporations - most recently Google, which "negotiated" a payment of £130m in back taxes due on £4.6bn in sales.

The details of the "negotiation" have been kept confidential, so we have no way of knowing how they were calculated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I suspect this will end up fizzling out and not resulting in very much.

From the Guardian articles it's becoming clearer that Mossack Fonseca is not some sort of mafioso outfit. Even the Guardian's own coverage has to admit that they do have compliance staff, do perform due diligence and do report things to the authorities. And they did close down operations when they got wind of illegal doings. So any stories have to become arguments about specific cases and debates about whether they could have done more in those cases, rather than the more juicy story they clearly want, implying that MF is some sort of criminal nexus that is being taken down by the journalistic establishment.

If we look at the Swiss banking leak from a few years ago, there were thousands of account details leaked to the UK government which assigned hundreds of tax officers to investigate them. And it turned out that about two thirds of them had paid exactly the right amount of tax all along. Of the rest, actually proving criminal intent turned out to be impossible, so of the original 1000+ account holders, only one case was ever actually taken to court. The others were cleared up through fines. The resulting amount of revenue was trivial at only £135 million, probably the costs of the investigation itself consumed most of that. This wasn't UK specific, other countries also ended up finding the data was useless for prosecutions.

The same was true of another case, when the Swiss authorities agreed to start sending tax information to the UK. The government thought it was in for a windfall and wrote the expected amounts into the budget. Red faces followed when the actual amount of unpaid tax turned out to be much lower than hoped for.

Maybe the Iceland angle will result in a few heads rolling, who knows, but I'm willing to bet that most of these revelations end up having very little impact: the worst cases are all in places where the local law enforcement is too weak to prosecute presidents and other heads of state for corruption.

<comment><USER21> I think you're downplaying this more than you should. I got a very different impression listening to Nicholas Shaxson (author of [1]) on the BBC. Most if not all the world leaders involved in this leak are VERY likely trying to hide personal money from their own country, that alone is a huge deal.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Islands-Uncovering- Offshore-B...](http://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Islands-Uncovering-Offshore- Banking/dp/0230341721)).

<comment><USER22> Exactly, why is Cameron's holding offshore stuff? Now he's dead and Cameron has picked up his assets, no doubt having avoided inheritance tax, is he holding these now?

Why do normal people pay these taxes yet these guys do not?

\-----

to the poster below as HN throttle messages when UK corruption is raised:

I think he was mocking the UK's corruption as law.

The last part is a nod to Private Eye, the only remaining free press in the UK.

<comment><USER23> Re: Cameron Sr & Blairmore holdings use of the Panama firm.

All of this is a perfectly legal tax avoidance scheme for the rich.

The company, legitimately, never paid a penny in UK taxes because it was run by various Bahama Islanders & decision making was done in Switzerland at a ski resort.

The Guardian article suggests there is evidence that the decisions & meetings were held in the UK - if that is true then Cameron Sr. illegally evaded millions in UK taxes.

According to the Guardian, David Cameron has answered these claims by stating: 'This is family business'.

Many will recognise this classic rejoinder from the Godfather movies.

Now we are told the firm is being run from Ireland, where Google and Facebook were working the, perfectly legal, 'Dutch Irish Sandwich' tax avoidance scheme - that David Cameron rightly criticised and both tech firms apologised and paid up.

So once again this is all perfectly legal.

Perhaps a bit hypocrital given Cameron's 'tough' stance on tax avoidance and trying to put the blame on comedian Jimmy Carr.

Of course, as before, if decisons were still being made in the UK, then the company would owe many millions in UK taxes and fines for evasion - but no-one is suggesting that.

Jimmy obviously should have used the Cameron Family firm.

The, probably perfectly legal, tax avoidance scheme for the super rich is called Blairmore Holdings.

It is named after the ancestral Cameron family estate which recieves tons of money from Europe simply for the amount of land it contains.

All perfectly legal, a sort of welfare for the gentry.

If this all paints a picture of corrupt toffee nosed twits spouting lies about the poor while filling their offshore coffers then...

shurely shome mistake.

David Cameron is fully expected to give back the millions he inherited from all these decades of tax avoidance - _cough_ or not.

[http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers- da...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-david- cameron-father-tax-bahamas)

/s

<comment><USER24> If it's ethically questionable then that's a good reason to publish this information, especially when politicians are involved.

<comment><USER23> I am editing this to a sarcasm tag and of course I agree, if he doesn't resign tomorrow then parliament is a poor joke.

Which is of course is probably also a joke, _lols_ & _nervously resumes studying UK libel laws_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> These keywords have been censored in Chinese microblog services, along with all news mentioning Panama Papers removed, due to obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nobody from the US mentioned? This doc was definitely scrubbed.

<comment><USER14> No, it was created by George Soros with the help of some US institutions.

<comment><USER27> I think its probably a hit job to smear Putin once again, especially because of rising conflicts in Azeribaijan and Armenia.

"Big Leak of Data" but doesnt actually make the data public. I mean, seriously???

<comment><USER28> > I think its probably a hit job to smear Putin once again

I thought "smear" was the same as "defame". If he is actually tax-evading and stealing Russia's money, it's, at worst, exposing some of the skeletons in his closet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know how such a thing was pulled off? I mean, it is not like taking a paper clip from office. This is mind boggling amount of information - how can someone copy so much info _and_ send it to a newspaper etc without setting off red flags? This is incredible.

<comment><USER30> A single HDD worth of content isn't a mind boggling amount of information.

<comment><USER29> True, but collecting it isn't (unless it was all in one place, which I doubt). And taking it out of the firm isn't (unless they have zero security).

<comment><USER31> It could be quite accessible by someone like the IT and e-mail administrator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tax avoidance in the UK is a big problem. We can't pay for our infrastructure because of these guys avoiding tax.

But it's not just working people in the UK - working people all over the world are being denied services thanks to UK tax havens.

Who is causing more problems for working people? Sparse terrorist attacks or day-in, year out tax avoidance depleting spending and raising land costs?

<comment><USER20> _Tax avoidance in the UK is a big problem. We can 't pay for our infrastructure because of these guys avoiding tax._

Tax avoidance is undefinable so this sort of statement is meaningless. The UK can't pay for its infrastructure due to a massive structural deficit. Even if you start defining legal behaviour as immoral and try to grab more money from targeted companies or individuals, the amounts of revenue collected would be trivial compared to the size of the problem - and it'd be a one off hit. Once a country demonstrates that the rule of law is optional, investors start to flee. And that's the sort of avoidance that you can't tackle with any law.

<comment><USER22> The exact line drawn between tax efficiency and immoral tax avoidance is hard to pin-point, but I'm certain that I know a bunch of crooks filling their boots when I see it.

These off-shore companies are not fair. Do your work, pay tax on it like the rest of us.

As for the rule of law being optional. I pay my taxes yet these guys choose not to by using loop-holes. That is not the spirit of the law.

I reject this kind of argument, it's very popular but it doesn't hold any weight with me.

They could stop this kind of rubbish but they don't want to because people like Cameron are using it.

Let's have land value tax now and stop this international hide and seek.

We don't want these "investors" in the UK. UK banking funnels dirty money into property which ramps the price for workers. Banks they "help" by lending us insane amounts which absorb all our income (and require ultra low rates forever). None of this is of any help to the normal working person who is doing stuff of actual use that makes the world turn, like food production, doctors, etc. These guys are taking and giving nothing back. Tax them!

<comment><USER20> "I know it when I see it" is not a basis for a legal system.

Look at it like this. You live in a country, you work there. Now imagine you go on holiday to a sunny destination. Whilst there, you open your work email and reply to a few mails.

If you are then arrested by the local police and told you are doing business in that country without paying taxes, and thus must now pay a big fine or be prosecuted for tax avoidance, would you be happy about that? I think not.

What if the locals didn't like your kind of people and thought your treatment was totally fair? "I know crime when I see it", they say. Would you roll over and meekly accept it?

No, you wouldn't. You'd extricate yourself as quickly as possible, and then leave and never go back. And you'd tell all your friends to stay the hell away from that banana republic.

Well, that behaviour applies to companies too. If you want them to employ people in your economy, there must be clear rules and those rules must be followed predictably.

I quite agree that interest rates are being artificially kept far too low around the world and this is driving property bubbles in places like Manhattan and New York. The solution to that is not to tax people who are just trying to shield themselves from inflation. The solution is to abolish central banks.

<comment><USER22> They lobby to add loopholes to the legal system because the banks control our "democracy".

Both major parties are captured by the banks. We have first-past-the-post system to keep it 2 party.

We need people to actually put their foot down.

I'm happy for every single one of these parasites to leave and never come back. The wealth of the UK is _not_ in these guys with their paper it's in people doing actual work. If we need to issue more currency to facilitate this then fine, it's fiat.

Their paper is _not_ facilitating work. We have smart people who are getting up in the morning and can do things. Their paper in fact allows them to claim a slice of the working man's labour.

I've seen these arguments on "what if". These guys are guilty, we all know it. We need tax payments to have a democracy, it's these guys who are breaking the law and undermining our country.

We do not need these shysters.

<comment><USER20> The UK is not a two party system. Right now the dominant parties in the UK Parliament are the Conservatives, Labour and the SNP. The previous government was a coalition with the Lib Dems.

The banks do not control democracy. Governments control banks. I know this may be painful to hear, but just go _talk_ to people who work in banking about how many of their banks staff work in "compliance" i.e. implementing the wishes of all the various government agencies. You will be amazed at how many thousands of people (in some big banks, tens of thousands) do _nothing_ all day but implement various regulations.

 _I 'm happy for every single one of these parasites to leave and never come back._

You say that now, but you wouldn't be. The UK has a very narrow tax base. That means most tax is paid by a tiny number of people.

[http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21618784-taxes-are- bes...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21618784-taxes-are-best-raised- broad-base-many-countries-it-worryingly-narrow-too-reliant)

In the UK the top 1% of earners pay about 30% of all income tax. In the USA the statistic is even worse, 1% of all earners pay 50% of the income tax. These figures have been going up over time.

In short, the government is paid for by ever fewer people, who pay ever more tax. This makes countries very vulnerable to them just leaving. That's the underlying reason why the British government fights so hard to defend the city, and why Osborne was willing to take the political hit of reducing corporation tax in his last budget. If the big earners leave, then any chance of ending austerity within the next 20 years is gone for good. The UK would need to start doing actual, serious austerity - like shutting down large parts of the NHS.

 _If we need to issue more currency to facilitate this then fine, it 's fiat._

All that does is tax people through inflation instead of direct payments. The UK has been there before, in the 1970's. It resulted in the country going to the IMF for a bailout, Greece style. If you think people buying houses just to protect their wealth is a big problem now, a few years of trying to fund a massive deficit through money printing would show you what's truly possible when people get desperate.

 _These guys are guilty, we all know it._

That's right. Burn the witches. Worry about the consequences later.

<comment><USER22> These people are deriving enormous economic rent. Many land owners are subsidised.

The UK works by enough people getting up to provide food, education, medicine etc, not due to paper circulating.

How are 1% of people providing 30% of "value" to the UK each day? They don't. They are using their paper claim to claim the labour done by others.

The USA has the same problem.

Let's flush these parasites out.

<comment><USER31> Slogans, inciting hate. That is no basis for healthy economic policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > how the world's rich and famous hide their money offshore

It shouldn't be just the rich and famous. These schemes don't cost much. I'm sure many internet entrepreneurs use them, because they 're easy to setup and to do accounting (plus low taxes, ain't that sweet?). People have already stopped acting surprised when they read about big corp. dodging taxes. We live in a financially globalized world, but taxation has not been globalized. The main issue here is whether the companies are laundering money or used for illegal purposes. The tax evasion issue is too hard to solve with data exchange (which now exists). These people are always going to be finding new ways to avoid taxes. Perhaps governments should start acting smarter, like moving more to indirect taxation.

Perhaps if this "leak" had happened a few years ago, when panama was still a tax haven it would have some real meat. Right now it seems like it will be used to divert attention.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well team, we now know what DAVOS ( World Economic Forum ) is all about, cover for tax avoidance or evasion and a collection of customers for Mossack Fonseca LLC - Our job now is to see how much economic harm has been done by them not paying their fair share of taxes. (think Flint Water, EPA Supper Fund, and Higher Education fund etc. ) Based on this claw-backs of all or part of the taxes. And for Mossack Fonseca ( it has now to be part of the FCPA regulation with full reporting requirements to the CCB/ECB and the IMF ) - <USER2> investment in people, innovation is cut off and people revert to the most primordial jobs and actions - we can have better with real education and distributed know-how where people work for the betterment for humankind.

</comment><comment><USER34> The government structures are completely broken from the inside out. We badly need a disruption in this sector. Digitally decentralized democracy, blockchain government, ethereum-based economy! Not sure. These are random thoughts, but I would love to see at least some baby steps towards this direction. Not an expert on this topic, but I can see there are potential opportunities for the world as a whole and, what's most important, its economy. I'm sure there is an emerging field coming soon around this niche. Most likely, it's just a matter of time.

<comment><USER35> The internet does make direct democracy more feasible. One can engage public libraries to ensure everyone has internet access.

This would need to be checked and balanced, but it effectively makes lower houses (House of Representatives, for example) obsolete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Govt can do nothing due to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome)

</comment><comment><USER37> Am I the only one to find the reporting on this to be rather one sided? Sure we all know Putin is a shady character to say the least, but none in the US or the UK being directly reported on? Germany? France? Instead we get a token gesture in the way of Iceland's PM being implicated.

The Guardian is losing a hell of a lot of credibility in my opinion for having this biased view being published.

I say make all the documents available to the entire world. That is the only way it will be less media propaganda and more a true leak.

<comment><USER23> [http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers- da...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-david- cameron-father-tax-bahamas)

The Guardian reports the UK Prime Minister's father used the firm.

<comment><USER37> Yes I saw that however you cannot have the mention of his father be seen as adequate reporting on the misdeeds of the elite.

<comment><USER23> Yes Cameron answered all allegations regarding this in 2009 so it will make him look tough - storm in a teacup.

Greenwald cites this tweet as evidence of no US or Israel links [https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/716718478577823744](https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/716718478577823744)

captured from : [https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/](https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/)

unclear teaser denial by icij chief : [https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/716771686482202625](https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/716771686482202625)

* Greenwald [https://theintercept.com/2016/04/04/a-key-similarity-between...](https://theintercept.com/2016/04/04/a-key-similarity-between-snowden-leak-and-panamapapers-scandal-is-whats-been-legalized/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> And nothing will happen to them. In Canada the rich get an amnesty and just have to repay some taxes.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-revenue-kpmg- secret-a...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-revenue-kpmg-secret- amnesty-1.3479594)

And they mention all these dictators. Why on earth Putin & Co will try to evade taxes and hide his money? Putin owns Russia, he is the taxman and the hangman. He doesn't have to hide anything.

<comment><USER14> _Why on earth Putin & Co will try to evade taxes and hide his money?_

Why would the anti-russia media focus on one powerful rich person as being bad?

Gee, I wonder...

<comment><USER28> Putin's record speaks for itself, really.

<comment><USER39> His record of not funding Arab militants to overthrow country leaders in the Middle East in the last decade speaks for itself as well.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure to what leader you're thinking about. If you're thinking about the US, you probably mean Syria, in which case I'll need a lot of convincing that events down there would have evolved differently without US involvement, considering the agendas of the local players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm surprised there is no American figures on the list. If some don't appear as more info is released, I'll seriously question the motivations behind this leak.

<comment><USER41> Let's say it is biased, does it make it any less true these people used shell companies to obfuscate their holdings? Or, are you saying this behavior is okay and in which case it would not matter?

If you look more carefully it does list some less known Americans.

<comment><USER42> If the leaked documents implicate important US figures, but the reporting of the leaks do not mention them, then the public will interpret that as "see, US figures are not engaging in this activity!".

In other words, the reporting of this leak can be used to shame / reputation smack anyone who is on the current Western hit list while masking that behavior for anyone that the Western media outlets want to protect.

<comment><USER41> Yes, that's one take. Another take is exposing some is better than exposing none.

This is like saying, hey the news mainly shows when white cops beat up on black suspects, but it doesn't much show when white cops beat up on white suspects, (or any other combination) so they should not show any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Anyone know how this tax sheltering works? The article mentioned "One leaked memorandum from a partner of Mossack Fonseca said: 'Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes.'" That would lead me to believe the "vehicle" for transferring wealth offshore might be selling vehicles - like selling yachts? Just a guess though.

<comment><USER20> "Vehicle" in this context just means legal entity. It's the jargon of the space, it doesn't mean a mode of transport.

The principle of offshore tax shelters is very simple. Countries tax activity that happens in their jurisdiction. Only America tries to tax activity that happens _outside_ of America, and it's attempts to do so have caused huge problems for Americans everywhere (whilst raising trivial amounts of revenue). All other countries recognise that legitimate taxation is inherently region specific: a country that raises taxes from other countries is more properly called an empire.

So countries tax things that happen inside their borders, and countries can set tax rates independently, and the world is full of small countries that don't require much revenue to operate. Hence, if you can shift your business activities from a high tax jurisdiction to a low tax jurisdiction, you can legally pay the lower rates of tax.

Essentially all discussion of tax "avoidance" you may encounter revolves around the inherent difficulty of figuring out where a business actually _is_. For a person it's easy. A person is where their body is, and simply counting days spent in a country is sufficient to decide on tax residency. For a company it is not so easy because a company can do things in many places simultaneously. The rules that try to resolve this conundrum are extremely vague and thus, easily gamed.

The case of the UK PM's father is instructive. His company had most of its meetings outside of the UK. This allowed them to argue that it wasn't a British company and thus shouldn't pay British taxes. If the British tax collectors want some of that revenue they'd need to argue that actually the business _was_ done in the UK, really. That's a tricky argument.

In the case of companies like Apple or Google, they set things up so their business is done in Ireland. They do this because the Irish people have repeatedly opted to allow very low (effectively zero) rates of corporation tax in order to attract skilled employment to a part of the world that would otherwise be fairly unattractive. Whilst technically Irish corporation taxes are not zero, their rules define the location of a business differently to some other countries, which means arrangements like the Double Irish become possible and that allows for moving profit out of Ireland essentially untaxed. The Irish people know this and allow it, because it has been a very powerful strategy for them and has made Dublin a business center of Europe. Some other countries like to complain about this, stating it's unfair competition, but all countries compete to attract businesses in various ways - often with direct subsidies rather than low tax rates. So their complaints ring somewhat hollow.

In practice the money these big companies stash in the Bahamas will eventually get taxed anyway, because taxes apply when the money moves, and eventually that money will move. Probably back into the USA if/when a 'tax holiday' becomes politically acceptable.

<comment><USER44> You're a bit wrong in the beginning. Most countries tax activity that happens _outside_ , but almost all only do it for their residents (UK is an exception, it doesn't even tax it's residents, if they're foreign born). Only the US (and another two or so third world countries) attempts to tax its citizens for all activity even if neither the citizen nor the activity is in the US.

<comment><USER20> Yes, sorry, I was talking about corporate taxation. Yes if you live in a country then all of your activity is assumed to have 'happened' in that country even if the money was raised abroad. But that's easy to enforce, as you are physically in their jurisdiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why are there sovereigns listed? If you have your own country, and it's not known for the rule of law, why do you need a shell company in Panama? Aren't you above the law?

<comment><USER46> My guess is that people who currently have their own country that's not known for the rule of law want an escape hatch with assets that _are_ secured by the rule of law, in case it turns out that in the future, their country is had by someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The hypocrisy of these politicians attacking tech companies for not paying more tax all the while they're using offshore tax havens to hide their money.

</comment><comment><USER48> Without more context, the information here is titillating but not ultimately all that useful.

Let's generalize the content so you can see what I mean:

"A massive trove of documents was just leaked from a law firm that helps companies and individuals create and operate shell companies in [jurisdiction X]. We don't know what those shell companies are used for, but they could be used for wrongdoing! And this law firm was suspiciously focused on protecting its clients' identities, which further suggests wrongdoing."

Jurisdiction X in this case in Panama. Ok, it sounds dubious to us 'Muricans.

What if jurisdiction X was Delaware? Would you think the law firm was setting up shell companies for "wrongdoing", or because starting and operating a business is complicated and there are a variety of practical reasons to base your corporate in entities in Delaware rather than (say) Maine? Would you think the law firm is protecting its clients identities because of an effort to conduct fraud, or because law firms generally err on the side of preserving the sanctity of attorney-client privilege whenever possible?

Now let's say Jurisdiction X is Ireland. Are the companies that use Irish shell companies engaged in wrongdoing? Or are they responding to the bizarre and complicated world of international regulation and taxation as any rational actor would? Certainly secrecy is not the goal - everyone, including the IRS, knows everything about how e.g. Apple uses Irish entities to conduct business.

Now let's say Jurisdiction X is Cyprus. Are the shell companies for tax avoidance in the home country, or for the reasonable avoidance of double- taxation? One reason investment firms use structures based in Cyprus (or the Caymans, or BVI, or Luxembourg) is that these countries have mutual tax treaties with most Western nations, while the US does not. Those tax treaties ensure that the investor will end up paying taxes only in their own domicile, not the nation they invest in AND their own domicile. For US persons investing in (say) Poland through a Cyprus entity, they end up paying their full slate US taxes (NOT avoiding them - in fact they usually pay higher US taxes than they otherwise would, because for technical reasons the Cyprus blocker often results in paying ordinary income tax rates on what would otherwise be treated as capital gains) but they avoid having to pay BOTH Polish taxes AND US taxes. This is akin to the reasons why many/most private US businesses are set up as pass-through entities rather than corporations - avoiding double taxation is not the same as dodging taxes.

 __*

I'm not an expert on Panama, or international tax for that matter - I just have some experience dealing with these issues. So I can't say for sure in what specific purposes using a Panama entity is equivalent to using a Delaware entity or a Cyprus entity, vs. a blatant attempt to dodge taxes.

All I know is that, from my own experience, there is a huge gap between the public PERCEIVED reasons why companies and individuals establish overseas shell corporations (tax avoidance! money laundering! bribery!) and the ACTUAL reasons they do so (procedural efficiency, clear legal rules, full payment of taxes but not OVERpayment of taxes, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER49> An interesting take from a commenter on my Facebook feed:

"It's all good. Taxation is stealing, hiding wealth in off shore accounts is the only recourse left to the little man against large government greed."

<comment><USER50> This is why Facebook recently added a variety of new ways to illustrate your disappointment on posts.

<comment><USER51> Curiously they left off "rolleyes"</comment></comment></comment>


Google Reader Mac OS Lion UI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aziz/Google-Reader-Lion-UI

<comment><USER2> Very nice. Reeder.app is also a good alternative. I use it daily and it is awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like Reeder, but I badly some of the features that's missing in Reeder, namely, sort by magic and translate to my language. I use Reeder on iPad and I'm quite happy with it.</comment></comment>


List of possible changes, updates, additions for PHP 6 - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.php.net/ideas/php6 <comment><USER2> The main pain-point I have with PHP is how clunky its functions are; it seems like first-class functions have only been added so they can tick a box on their feature list, since many aspects of PHP make them unnecessarily hard to use.

Passing function names around as strings is, of course, a hideous consequence of using separate namespaces for functions (foo) and variables ($foo), so it's at least understandable.

Having to explicitly list a function's free variables with "use" is a hideous consequence of not having lexical scope from the start, so again it's understandable.

What I don't understand is why functions aren't first-class in PHP's parser. For example, the parser doesn't know that functions may be returned from other functions:

        $foo = function() { return function() { echo "Hello;" }; };
        $foo()();  // Parse error

Instead we have to perform some indirection like this:

        call_user_func($foo());

Or like this:

        $bar = $foo();
        $bar();

Likewise, the parser doesn't realise that functions may be stored in objects:

        $baz = new stdClass;
        $baz->quux = $foo();
        $baz->quux();  // Error, no such method

Again, we have to add an indirection:

        call_user_func($baz->quux);

Or

        $foobar = $bar->quux;
        $foobar();

Named functions can't be closures, even though we can declare them anywhere, presumably for historical reasons, ie. this is a syntax error:

        function foo($bar) {
          function baz() use ($bar) {
            echo $bar;
          }
        }

Another example of making it unnecessarily hard to use functions is iterable objects, which can only be iterated via foreach loops (ie. there is no way to map, reduce or filter them).

Of course, I could also complain about no tail-call optimisation, functions not being curried, etc. but those aren't PHP-specific since very few scripting languages seem to get them right for some reason :(

<comment><USER3> > Having to explicitly list a function's free variables with "use" is a > hideous consequence of not having lexical scope from the start, so again > it's understandable.

No, it's a clear avoidance of the problems of the Javascript lexical scope. Yes, it'd be nice to have that "for free", but there's far worse that could happen if you had free access to all variables. The GC complexity alone would outweigh the benefit.

> Likewise, the parser doesn't realise that functions may be stored in > objects:

A contrived example actually. First, the interpreter only interprets "$foo->quux()" as a method call on a non-existent method. You are not accessing a property of the object, ever, through a method call like that. Instead, you have the option to implement __call.

        class foo {
            public $quux;

            public function __call($method, $args) {
                if (property_exists($this, $method) && is_callable($this->$method)) {
                    return call_user_func_array($this->$method, $args);
                }
            }
        }

        $foo = new foo;
        $foo->quux = function () { echo 'hello'; };
        $foo->quux();

Changing this behavior could single-handedly break compatibility with all libraries making use of __get/__call methods. It could have been implemented, yes, and probably should have been. However, most people using PHP aren't throwing closures on an object (the closure won't have access to $this scope till 5.4 or later, you know) and expecting them to work like a method.

I may address the other points later, but I'm pretty sure that if you'd take a look and try writing idiomatic PHP you'd find it easier than assuming that your idioms from other languages will work directly and without modification.

<comment><USER2> > No, it's a clear avoidance of the problems of the Javascript lexical scope.

Do you mean problems with the way Javascript implements lexical scope (no "let" blocks until recently, hoisting, global-by-default, etc.) or problems with lexical scope in general? Lexical scope's been around since at least ALGOL60, but really started to shine in Scheme.

I agree that there's a tradeoff for GC, and as I said it's understandable why "use" acts the way it does, since lexical scope wasn't in there from the start (where it could have informed other scoping policies).

> A contrived example actually.

I agree, but it's contrived precisely _because_ PHP's OO and functional features don't play well together, so everybody's learned not to do it.

> First, the interpreter only interprets "$foo->quux()" as a method call on a > non-existent method. You are not accessing a property of the object, ever, > through a method call like that.

That's exactly my point! :)

> Instead, you have the option to implement __call.

Yes, this is a decent workaround for a self-contained library/app/etc. but it shouldn't really be necessary.

> Changing this behavior could single-handedly break compatibility with all > libraries making use of __get/__call methods.

That's an issue, but I don't think it would be as calamatous as you say :) It would mainly alter behaviour for those who are putting functions in their objects, but as you say that's not commonly done!

> However, most people using PHP aren't throwing closures on an object (the > closure won't have access to $this scope till 5.4 or later, you know) and > expecting them to work like a method.

I wasn't saying that a function property should act like a method _semantically_ (ie. be called with an implicit $this argument), only that it should be possible to call it like a method _syntactically_ , ie. the syntax "A(B)" should call "A" with arguments "B". Note that it's not just functions; quux could be anything callable.

> I'm pretty sure that if you'd take a look and try writing idiomatic PHP > you'd find it easier than assuming that your idioms from other languages > will work directly and without modification.

I've been writing PHP since 4.2, so I'm perfectly aware of what does and does not work. I'm pointing out what _could_ work, and make PHP much nicer. Sticking to standard practice is a good idea when writing libraries and applications, but is stifling when brainstorming for a new version of PHP.

My problem with idiomatic PHP is that it's usually _incredibly_ verbose, usually because everything's been collapsed down to be first-order, which leads to boilerplate (eg. repeated build-up and tear-down code) and copypasta ("multiply_all_foos" and "sum_all_foos" which are the same except for the operator, or "Foo->multiply" and "Foo->sum" if you prefer). A few higher-order functions, like function composition and partial application, can cut down this bloat tremendously. It's just jarring when this bumps into a completely unnecessary PHP quirk, like having to put "call_user_func" all over the place ;)

<comment><USER3> > Do you mean problems with the way Javascript implements lexical scope (no > "let" blocks until recently, hoisting, global-by-default, etc.) or problems > with lexical scope in general?

In general. It's powerful to be able to reach out of your immediate scope to access something outside it, but then everything from the defining scope must be retained for later. Because of variable variables, which can be either wickedly difficult to debug or incredibly handy, virtually anything from the defining scope could be accessed in a way the interpreter couldn't predict.

In some ways, I can already see the mess that could ensue. Which is precisely I appreciated the "use ()" syntax.

> I wasn't saying that a function property should act like a method > semantically (ie. be called with an implicit $this argument), only that it > should be possible to call it like a method syntactically, ie. the syntax > "A(B)" should call "A" with arguments "B". Note that it's not just > functions; quux could be anything callable.

I guess I can see the value in that. However, that leads to ambiguity during debugging, especially if you've included a dependency and haven't thoroughly vetted it. In that case, you need some XDebug magic to know if $foo->quux was a closure, callable array or string, invoke-able object, or a method. Then you need to determine its call semantics, etc.

I don't think "anything callable" is appropriate. But I do think anonymous functions, closures, and invoke-able objects are. You could then make strings and arrays invokable by wrapping them in a class, but without trying to execute an erroneous string or array.

> I'm pointing out what could work, and make PHP much nicer.

Yeah, your suggestions could work. Whether it would make PHP better or worse depends on the programmer, and the change's second-order effects on how the object model works. But I'm skeptical of its benefit. It would probably wind up muddying the execution logic till at least 1 patch level further. I'd have to see some real-world examples of how this would be useful to fully convince me.

Call me paranoid if you wish, but I wouldn't want a novice programmer stumbling on that change by accident. I can already envision the spaghetti they'd use it to write, then we'd have to come bail them out. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest hurdle I find in PHP at the moment is how difficult it is to get a debugger working. XDebug requires a bunch of installation and configuration and the PHP built in webserver doesn't seem to solve this problem at all.

Most PHP programmers seem to have given up and resorted to using echo for debugging.

<comment><USER5> apt-get install php5-xdebug and enabling it in the config isn't exactly _hard_. Getting it to integrate with your IDE might be slightly more involved, but still no rocket science.

It's also something you only have to do once, on your development box. So I don't really consider that a hurdle.

<comment><USER6> It's not so much the degree of difficulty, but rather that the difficulty exists in the first place.

The PHP experience is absolutely horrible compared to those of Java, Python, the .NET languages, and even to those of C, C++ and Objective-C.

Take Java, for example. Debugging works seamlessly in pretty much every major Java IDE, including the free ones, on pretty much every platform used for Java development. This has been the case for a decade now, if not longer. It takes basically no effort to start debugging Java code.

The .NET experience is even better, although more limited in terms of tooling. Debugging is stupidly simple and very efficient when using C# and Visual Studio. Again, it has been like this for many years now.

PHP needs to get its act together so that debugging is at least as simple as it is when using those other languages and runtimes. Anything less is just plain unacceptable today.

<comment><USER7> +1 if debugging is present out-of-the-box, even first-time users will have no excuse _not_ to use proper debugging.

While installing XDebug may be no rocket-science, I've encountered too many situations that it just didn't work reliably, causing developers to revert to nasty var_dumps() for debugging.

<comment><USER8> The only things I managed to get working reliably with xdebug were

• break at the first line in a script (very annoying when you have to debug something very deep)

• generate tracing logs (horrible to read but the best debugger replacement I had at the time)

• generate profiling logs (very helpful)

I never managed to get arbitrary breakpoints to work so I basically resorted to either traces or var_dump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Support of UTF-8 for the language itself, as PHP currently allows non ascii > encoding in scripts, I would recommend to stop supporting it, except in > comments.

Yes, how dare these people use their own alphabet.

<comment><USER3> At least when your library is guaranteed to have ASCII functions and objects I can still type them. Otherwise non-ASCII libraries would be utterly useless to me.

<comment><USER9> But that's a different problem altogether, being able to do my own code in my own language and making things I share properly accessible and usable to everyone.

Also, you should note the recommendation I quote is not about adding the ability to use non latin alphabet, this is about removing that ability. It's been there for over a decade and I don't see that rendering libraries developers brainless, so I would say your point doesn't apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes I wonder how important backward compatibility is. A lot of <=PHP4 libs wont run on a modern server so there are already compatibility issues.

Maybe PHP6 could be a complete cleanup. And maybe the focus shouldn't be on backward compatibility but on running <6 and 6 side by side.

<comment><USER11> They better keep the backward compatibility, or you face the fiasco of Python 2 vs 3. The way that PHP deprecate API functions slowly over a period of time is prefered.

<comment><USER10> Well I was thinking about Python when I wrote my comment :)

One of the problems with Python is that they almost encouraged writing code in 2 and porting it to 3. Also: Python 3 is almost a complete different language.

It would be the same when PHP6 would use a + as string concatenation. Such changes would turn it into a complete different language.

<comment><USER6> Have you ever actually used Python 2 and Python 3? Python 3 is not "almost a complete different language", as you put it.

Somebody who has used both will notice that Python 3 is syntactically and semantically almost identical to Python 2 in most respects. The main differences are in terms of removing redundancy, removing outdated features and functionality, increasing consistency, vastly improved Unicode support, and standard library improvements.

A developer with Python 2 experience should be able to pick up Python 3 in about 30 minutes, at the most. That's not what we'd expect were Python 3 "almost a complete different language".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't wait for PHP6 to be released for the second time. I already own a book about it!

</comment><comment><USER13> To make sure you have proper context: With one or two exceptions, those proposals are just vague ideas of what we might want to do in PHP 6. It says very little about what will actually go in. Most of it won't, at least I dearly hope so - otherwise we wouldn't get a release in the next decade ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> I see no "optional static typing" in the list.

Would be great if PHP.net and HHVM (Facebook's HipHopPHP) would go on in the same direction (somehow).

</comment><comment><USER14> If only php changed concatenation from . to + and then used . for classes and packages I believe it would have a bigger impact.

So honest question, what if somebody forked php and made those simple changes, how many people would switch?

I would without hesitation.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't. I do find the use of . for concatenating strings to be annoying, but I wouldn't switch to a PHP fork that didn't also address bigger issues (saner function support, optional strong typing, named params maybe, operator overloading.)

But then at some point you no longer have PHP you may have something which is close enough to an existing language that just switching to it becomes a more palatable option.

<comment><USER14> As a hobbyist and freelancer I don't use any of these 'bigger issues' (saner function support, optional strong typing, named params maybe, operator overloading.) for my casual projects.

So no, I'd benefit the most with a cleaner syntax than with cooking unicorns in fairy sauce. And I believe 80% of casual programmers agree with me.

Pareto wins.

<comment><USER16> Syntactic headaches mean less than semantic ones. PHP fails to support, or supports quite poorly, many semantics which more competently designed languages handle well. If PHP is your primary, or worse your _only_ , programming language, then this deficit leaves you at a disadvantage when it comes to growing more skilled in your craft, because after a while you're not learning new things which generalize across languages, but rather learning how to work around the famously irreducible piles of manure unique to PHP.

You can get quite good at doing that, of course, and it's even a useful professional skill, there being so much PHP code in the world, and most of it awful. But doing so does not make you a better _programmer_ , because at best it teaches you nothing useful about how to use less programmer-hostile languages, and at worst it inculcates habits which will prove actively harmful in any later effort to develop skills in such languages.

That you are unable to appreciate this qualitative distinction does nothing to erase its existence, but it does provide an excellent example of the conceptual deficiencies which result from a PHP-centric perspective on programming -- even something as trivial as proper first-class functions you dismiss as "cooking unicorns in fairy sauce", and since PHP doesn't have them, how would you know otherwise?

Whether you choose to address these deficits in your education is, of course, entirely your lookout. I'm just here to point out that they exist. You're free to argue otherwise, should you so choose, but you'll be wrong to do so; I speak here from experience gained in working with people who similarly mistook PHP for a worthwhile general-purpose web development language, who began their programming careers by specializing in it, and who in so doing unwittingly stunted their professional growth in precisely the manner I describe. Some overcame it, and matured into truly professional programmers with whom it was a pleasure to work; some did not, and most of those, as far as I've been able to keep track, eventually drifted out of the field entirely. All, having been seduced by that syphilitic temptress of innocents we call PHP, suffered unduly as a result. (I'd have been among them myself if not for early exposure to Perl, which for all its warts is a thousand times preferable to PHP; having cut my teeth on a language which is merely bad, I was equipped in my first encounter with PHP to recognize the legendarily awful when I saw it.)

It's for reasons like these that, to borrow a quote from the UNIX-HATERS Handbook, "I'm rather surprised that [Rasmus Lerdorf] is still walking around alive"; indeed, long may he continue to do so, for if there's a special hell for programmers, then in its frozen ninth circle there must surely be a waiting hole in the ice with his name carved around the edge -- or, just possibly, a throne.

<comment><USER17> This went from "insightful" to "rant" pretty quickly. I was with you until "mistook PHP for a worthwhile general-purpose web development language". That's exactly what PHP is, a worthwile general-purpose web development language.

I understand your grievances with PHP's semantic issues, and I can appreciate that PHP's lack of support for newer, common language paradigms inhibits growth in professional development.

But you replied to a guy who starts his comment with "As a hobbyist". Most of what PHP is used for is for small web development projects that in no way need optional strong typing and full functional support.

At the beginning of your comment you say that if PHP is your only programming language than this deficit leaves you at a disadvantage. Well no shit! There's no silver bullet language that can do everything for everyone 100% of the time. In one breath you lambaste using PHP as your only language; in another you identify that PHP's lack of support for x, y, and z cause the developer to stagnate in learning new things. It seems you condemn using PHP for everything, and then are upset that it can't do everything!

To this I would say use the right tool for the job.

<comment><USER16> You seem to see "insightful" and "rant" as mutually exclusive. I don't agree, but that's merely a quibble; to address the meat of your response, I say that, while of course you're right that no language is ideal in all cases, PHP exists in a unique local pessimum compounded of its attractiveness to novice programmers and its unmatched ability to hamper them from learning lessons they will find useful in becoming familiar with languages other than PHP -- indeed, it is far more successful at making it _harder_ , not easier, for novices to gain a grasp of any other language, and it is precisely this trap which incurs my loathing.

Small web development projects, as you say, do not require strong typing, first-class functions, &c. But they certainly can in many cases be _improved_ by these capabilities, and, in any case, few languages which offer them outright require their use; meanwhile, a language which either fails entirely to offer them, or worse offers a broken, awful version of such functionality to newbies who are not equipped to recognize such enormities and are thus vulnerable to the fallacy that that's how such things are and should be done everywhere, is one which can inflict enormous harm on people who frankly don't know enough yet to look out for themselves -- precisely the sort of people, in other words, which PHP so successfully attracts, through its presentation as the right tool for _every_ web-facing job.

Perhaps you mistook my colorful phrase, "that syphilitic temptress of innocents", for mere hyperbole, and failed to recognize it as the precise, if metaphorical, description which it is. If you have so mistaken me, then I hope this comment helps to clear up the matter somewhat.

<comment><USER17> Haha, ok fair enough. I agree with everything you just said. I honestly wish PHP _would_ implement these features and break backwards compat for those same reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I fear, they will give unicode another try, fail again and just keep on bloating the API. I bet there is a language out there, which way to set or get attributes, PHP has not yet copied.

</comment><comment><USER19> to join in the other Unicode posts

Utf is not Unicode

[https://enjoydoingitwrong.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/unicode-i...](https://enjoydoingitwrong.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/unicode- is-not-utf/)

</comment><comment><USER20> They had me at "Unicode support".

Assuming it somehow works.

<comment><USER21> If the internal representatiom changes, I wonder how much the current mb_* functions will be affected. I hope reimplementing them is trivial and doesn't affect edge cases. I've seen a lot of very very hacky code relying on them, there was no evident clever solution, and it would be a nightmare to go back on all these and test all the wicked pattern they were supposed to cover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Considering all its problems, I wonder why PHP has not been forked already in a saner language.

I mean who in 2014 is going to start a new project in PHP apart from people that can't be bothered to learn something else ?

<comment><USER23> For me the main reason to use PHP rather than say Python is that there is a load of not too bad open source stuff out there that you can use and modify.

<comment><USER24> Uh...

[http://pypi.python.org/](http://pypi.python.org/) \- 40,037 packages

[http://rubygems.org/](http://rubygems.org/) \- 70,678 packages

[http://www.cpan.org/](http://www.cpan.org/) \- 129,447 packages

[http://packagist.org](http://packagist.org) \- 24,244 packages

There's a _lot_ of open source code out there for all major languages. And, based on the canonical package indexes, a lot _less_ for PHP than the other main contenders in the OSS web-ready scripting space (although, obviously, PHP is very domain-specific compared to the others I've listed, so the comparison is not completely fair - even with that caveat, however, I would expect Perl and Ruby to have PHP licked).

There are compelling reasons to use PHP - omnipresence, ease of deployment - but this isn't one of them.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, Composer can handle a lot more than just the list on Packagist, so I don't how "canonical" Packagist really is for php, as opposed to being the "default", if it matters.

[https://getcomposer.org/doc/05-repositories.md#types](https://getcomposer.org/doc/05-repositories.md#types)

Though I'd agree it is still a weak argument in favor of PHP.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nanotechnology in Science Fiction (and vice versa) - <AUTHOR> http://metamodern.com/2009/04/09/nanotechnology-in-science-fiction/ <comment><USER2> I'll note that Greg Bear's Blood Music story (complete with 'grey goo' scenario) was published in 1983 (June issue of Analog SF magazine, edited by Stanley Schmidt), three years before Drexler's book was printed.

By another name, the 'grey goo' trope is older - if you dig into mid-20C comics (especially the horror subgenre), or even older SF, you'll find more than a few examples of the 'mass of protoplasm' that absorbs all organic life into itself.</comment>


Google now allows . # , / and many other punctuations - <AUTHOR> http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2140741/Google-Upgrades-Punctuation-Search-Results <comment><USER2> They should have rather integrated Google Code Search into Google search so that we can use regexp for the whole web!

</comment><comment><USER3> ™ and © not supported :)</comment>


Boeing employee inadvertently sends private info of 30,000 employees to his wife [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/Breach%20The%20Boeing%20Company%202017-02-08.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Short synopsis: Employee at Boeing wanted a hand formatting an Excel spreadsheet, so he emailed it to his wife (not a Boeing employee) so she could help him out, but she discovered that there were hidden columns in the spreadsheet containing extremely sensitive information for 30,000 employees.

Kudos to Boeing for handling this in an open manner. I am learning that there are actually protocols in place for reporting this sort of breach, as well as legislative requirements in different countries/states that outline what needs to be done and communicated to the victims of the breach.

<comment><USER2> worrying thing is, this needs voluntary breach reporting? Talk about low standards...

<comment><USER3> What could they reasonably do to somehow "automatically" detect this?

<comment><USER4> Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools could be installed on the mail servers to scan every email and email attachment before they leave the corporate network or are delivered to ensure there are not any SSNs, credit card numbers, birthdays, etc. present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, damn, I can imagine the sinking feeling this employee must have felt when he realized that he had made a mistake. It's very heartening to see the responsible way in which this was handled by both him and Boeing. No mention of repercussions for the employee, although I'm willing to bet he won't make such a mistake again.</comment>


Intution behind the pointer Symbology in C/C++ - <AUTHOR>

i wondered for a long time what would have been the rational or the intution behind the symbols used in C/C++ for Pointers.'*' for pointer declaration and for redirection, which is a symbol used for multiplication. Similary '&', which is also used for 'AND'. And what would have been reason for using the same symbol for references in C++. <comment><USER2> I don't know the real answer, but I always thought that the star indicates something pointing to, hence pointer. For &, I have an even sillier explanation, ANDdress. For references, & is overloaded to distinguish those who claim to know C++ by simply knowing C, since they are the same(!)</comment>


Design Inc. Interviews Dee Speed from YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NYiRAcZpCY <comment><USER2> Wow she has a lot of great insights. Her views on contributors vs. managers are spot on.</comment>


Suicide Bombing Makes Sick Sense in Halo 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2007/11/gamesfrontiers_1105

<comment><USER2> Kamikaze pilots are not the same as terrorists. Terrorists, as the name suggests, mean to inflict psychological damage -- terror -- to the population, including civilians. They do this by committing the most atrocious thing possible. Kamikazes, as far as I know, are soldiers who have decided to give their lives in combat.

Giving up your own life in combat is not the same as tossing a bomb into a crowded supermarket when not under any immediate danger.

<comment><USER3> My definition: the use of stealth to deliberately attack civilians in order to affect political change.

That way the firebombing of Dresden and use of the a-bomb doesn't qualify, as there was nothing stealthy about it. Likewise inadvertent civilian casualties, like the four thousand French civilians who were killed in D-day, are not counted. No doubt having a bomb kill your whole family during a large sea invasion is pretty terrifying, but it's a different concept for _society_ than somebody sneaking up to you in a market with a suicide vest on.

But choose your own. Definitions are very important when talking about terrorism. Some people think everything is terrorism. For those folks, it's really hard to discuss.

I really hope I didn't start a political discussion. Nothing to see here, please move along.

<comment><USER4> _use of the a-bomb doesn't qualify, as there was nothing stealthy_

"Stealth" as used here is a pathetic weasel word. Such rhetoric comes up all the time in order to demonize the tactics used by the poorly-equipped, in contrast to the expensively-equipped.

But, FYI, the Japanese had an air-raid system which normally functioned whenever bombers were detected. In the case of the atomic attacks, the alarms weren't set off because one bomber does not signify a bomb-run. Hence, they were as "stealthy" as anything could be.

EDIT: To head off the argument "But we warned them," it is pretty clear that no one is going to evacuate entire cities on mere warnings. Completely impractical.

<comment><USER3> So you're saying that even though we DID warn them, it doesn't count because there's no way the warning could have been heeded? Sounds a little self- serving.

We killed a lot more Japanese civilians in conventional bombing than we ever did with the A-bomb, not that most people know that. I guess it was fine to continue killing them with one kind of bomb, but not with another?

Glad to use a weasel word. It was called for. It's a tricky definition, but I'm happy with it. I'm sure that others will disagree, hence my concern at even posting it. But I'm a fan of the way language works, both in politics and user interaction, so I thought it was germane.

For those wishing to engage in a good political debate (probably not me, as people have a tendency to down-mod me for days after I express political opinions as a way of "paying me back"), the use of force in wartime is a good one. There was an interesting editorial along those lines in the Wall Street Journal yesterday commemorating the death of one of the pilots that flew the A-bomb missions. You can check it out here:

[http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=11001...](http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010827)

<comment><USER4> Conventional bombers are also terroristic, according to any dictionary definition of the word. Even lexicographers are subject to political whim, I'm sure, so you can make up whatever definition you want.

We should understand at minimum that it is not _more_ honorable somehow to attack from a greater distance, using more elaborate machinery, using different words to describe the same results, etc. None of those is morally positive.

<comment><USER3> If your definition is "that which causes terror" then it is over-broad, including everything from chemical warfare to late night Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Yes I can make up whatever definition I want, not in some effort to "get my way" in the argument, but simply as a way to disambiguate the conversation. Words with overly broad meanings lead to sloppy analysis (hence the relationship to hacking)

War is not honorable at all in my opinion, and it's not a game that should be played fairly like some inter-collegiate hockey game. It's a messy and horrible business and no amount of weaseling or moralizing can make it any better. The goal, as best I can tell, is to make the other side want to stop fighting before they do the same to you.

Having said all of that, it only takes one party willing to use force to make all parties use counter-force, so war is going to be with us for a long while. So it's simply not enough to throw our hands up in disgust and cast a pox on the whole affair -- we need to be intimate with it. The same way we are intimate with cancer, or terror, or death, or any number of other cruel realities in life.

<comment><USER4> You're getting just a tad trollish. I did not suggest casting poxes at any point, though I would suggest that various diplomatic structures prevent war in a more-or-less predictable way.

There is an explicit branch of strategic bombing which is explicitly terrorism. No ambiguity involved.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_bombing>

<comment><USER3> I'll watch my tone. But conversely, sometimes trolls are just people that disagree with you in a manner that you find uncomfortable. I will attempt to be polite and respectful, and will apologize if I'm not. That's all I can do.

If you are using the Wiki article as an argument that due to international treaty terror bombing was illegal/immoral/defined as terror, etc then I disagree. As far as I know, the word "terror" was not used in the treaty and even if it was, it does not describe the same thing as what I'm describing. Once again, my definition is nothing but thin air, but it does describe a unique thing that this does not.

Other treaties such as the Kellog-Briand Pact did all sorts of things, like outlaw the use of war in the furtherance of national policy:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg-Briand_Pact>

Reviewing the pact (and several others) is a good reference for the difference between diplomacy and reality, the difference between treaties that make the populations feel better and treaties that actually accomplish something. If I remember correctly, terror bombing was conducted by all sides in WWII. The Washington Post article makes a great case for utilitarianism in warfare -- trying to see fifty years down the road and doing the thing that causes the least harm overall. Does this require a conviction that you are right and the other person wrong? Absolutely. But I can't imagine conducting a war in which both sides agree that, hey, it's all kinda relative anyway. Sort of a struggle of the apathetic. There are some deep issues here, and I'm opposed to anybody that claims to be able to handle them all in a soundbite.

When I think of terrorism and western civilization, I think the best analogies are the American Civil War and the struggle on the plains with the American Indians. While I understand we have somewhat cartoonish views of both conflicts now, they have great parallels to the current situation.

You're welcome to pursue various definitions of terrorism. Another overloaded fuzzy word is the word "war", which has lost all sense of meaning in the last 100 years. It's reached the point where "war on terror" could mean anything from a land invasion of Iraq to a bake sale to collect money for preventing a motorcycle convention from coming to town. You can't have any kind of discussion without first a definition of terms, as old Socrates understood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bah, dying in games is not any worse than losing a point in a sport, or chess. Kasparov sent a "suicide pawn" to be massacred by the "enemy queen". It has really nothing to do with the individual act of suicide bombing.

The interesting thing about his strategy is that it might increase his chance of survival. He is playing a variant of Tit for Tat. If other skilled players knew that he was doing this, they would actively avoid him. Are there stats in Halo for "Kills from beyond the grave"? If so, he would benefit from making as many people as possible aware of the strategy. In theory, at least.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is that one of those games that auto-aims for you?

Good luck against a seasoned Quake player (if they dare to enable that option). XD</comment>


End of roaming charges for travellers in the EU in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-885_en.htm <comment><USER2> Is this finally happening then? I swear I've heard something like this happening every year or so for the past 4 years, only to be delayed by lobbying from T-Mobile / Orange et al.</comment>


Ask HN: Standardized Abbreviations for Code Reviews? - <AUTHOR> I've just submitted a code review on GitHub and marked it as "Request Changes", but only 10% of my comments were important. The other 90% were suggestions and questions because I'm not sure how familiar the developer is with the ecosystem.
I vaguely remember one HN comment mentioning a set of standardized abbreviations for: "This has to be changed and I am willing to die on this hill", "I have somewhat strong feelings about this, debate me", "This is just a suggestion", etc., in the same way that "LGTM" has become useful shorthand.
Does anyone remember/know such a convention? It would be great to have a linkable resource for client work. <comment><USER2> I am doing lots of code reviews but never thought about that, I tend to use vague language "you can leave at it as is if you don't feel it is necessary" but that would really helpful and productive to have a set predefined categories.

What a great and really obvious idea in retrospect !</comment>


Industry insiders don't use their products like we do. That should worry us - <AUTHOR> https://www.popsci.com/industry-insiders-dont-use-their-products-like-we-do <comment><USER2> "Don't get high on your own supply."

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, what? Tobacco, soda and constant digital distractions are bad for me? /s

</comment><comment> tony-allan Don't bother trying to access the site if you are from Australia. The URL redirects then breaks.

<comment><USER4> same in DE

google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tJzMTc...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tJzMTcIuKDwJ:https://www.popsci.com/industry- insiders-dont-use-their-products-like-we-do+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=de)</comment></comment>