As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need a Guaranteed Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/09/24/495186758/as-our-jobs-are-automated-some-say-well-need-a-guaranteed-basic-income <comment><USER2> I seriously doubt it could be realistically implemented. More probable outcome is ballooning law enforcement costs due to significant fraction of population becoming unemployable and resorting to crime, and almost endless, Japan-style economic stagnation in all developed countries. Sorry for sounding pessimist.

This time it gets serious and software is going to really eat the world. By the way in some countries (like Belarus) there is already significant public backlash against programmers because people see their incomes as unfair profiting at the expense of others.

<comment><USER3> Really? You think that's more realistic than just taking it from the top 0.1%? There was a time in this country for nearly 40 years where the top tax bracket was above 75%, and for quite a while it was 91%, and for a short while it was 94%. Basically it was a policy of not letting a small number of people take all of the marbles. There is, in fact, a way to avoid that tax, it's called start a new business or expand one - those costs are tax deductible. The problem is tax policy at the top end is basically saying some tiny number of people can be hoarders, not innovate, and then aristocratically hand it off to their kids in the form of trusts that don't pay inheritance tax.

Very possibly some kind of basic income would help people be more mobile, move from expensive cities to less expensive cities. But I also think as likely is higher taxes would incentivize the very rich to invest. Rich investors = good. Rich savers = bad.

<comment><USER4> This I don't get -- why are rich savers bad? How can a large number in some bank account possibly affect anyone else's life in any tangible way? The way I see it, the 'problem' with rich folks is when they use up a disproportionate amount of resources without creating any value, e.g. buying land, houses, cars and employing people to do their pointless (from society's perspective) bidding. I.e. _spending_ money.

<comment><USER5> > This I don't get -- why are rich savers bad? How can a large number in some > bank account possibly affect anyone else's life in any tangible way?

Quite the opposite - savings are integral to a healthy economy.

Investment (in an aggregate economy) must equal savings; this is an identity, not an equation. Any money that is invested (whether loaned to private individuals to buy a house or car, or whether invested by the state into public infrastructure) - all that requires others' savings in order to happen.

For some reason, people get mad when they think of other people "hoarding" money. But in reality, there's no such thing as "hoarding" money. You can hoard a rivalrous resource, but you can't hoard fiat money.

<comment><USER6> > "Investment (in an aggregate economy) must equal savings; this is an > identity, not an equation. Any money that is invested (whether loaned to > private individuals to buy a house or car, or whether invested by the state > into public infrastructure) - all that requires others' savings in order to > happen."

Sorry to say but whilst what you say makes logical sense, it is in fact wrong.

When a bank makes someone a loan for a house, for example, it isn't based on anyone's savings. It's based on nothing. Creating the loan creates brand new money, backed by the value of the same loan. In other words, when the bank gives you the money for the loan, it is the contract to pay that loan back which is the asset the bank gets in exchange.

As for hoarding fiat money, it absolutely is a real thing, but it comes in many forms. When it comes to uses of money, not all uses are equal. For example, increasing house prices rob an economy of its productivity, as money becomes locked away in a non-productive form. Money can only 'do work' and help an economy grow as a medium of exchange. It is, in a sense, lubricant for the economic engine. One of the reasons we have economic inflation as standard is to ensure there's always enough money in the system to function as a medium of exchange, counteracting the money that is lost from active use by saving and other non-productive uses.

That's not to say saving is all bad, it still makes sense at a certain level, but it's not universally good.

<comment><USER7> Money creation is so poorly understood that the Bank of England undertook to clarify[0]:

• This article explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans.

• Money creation in practice differs from some popular misconceptions — banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with them, and nor do they 'multiply up' central bank money to create new loans and deposits.

• The amount of money created in the economy ultimately depends on the monetary policy of the central bank. In normal times, this is carried out by setting interest rates. The central bank can also affect the amount of money directly through purchasing assets or 'quantitative easing'.

[0] [http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte...](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Take an IPhone - you find a variety of technologies - each one was created by some government grant... The collective production of wealth, which is then privately appropriated.. it's very easy to start thinking of basic income as a dividend that goes to the collective that was responsible for collectively producting the wealth."

"We need to create a system whereby society stakes a claim to the returns to aggregate capital, and this claim becomes an income stream that goes to everyone. I don't see why my children and your children have a right to a trust fund [or] why Paris Hilton has a right to a trust fund, when nobody else does, or very few people do.

Think of basic income as a trust fund for all our children - to be financed by dividends from our aggregate capital, which was after all, created collectively."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1eOVU61mZE&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1eOVU61mZE&feature=youtu.be&t=11m12s)

\- Varoufakis

<comment><USER9> Since WW2 most basic research has been funded by governments, but prior to WW2, the industrial revolution happened without state funding. Varoufakis' argument is that since the state has been taxing the productive to fund research, that gives it a moral right to tax the productive some more.

Paris Hilton obviously didn't earn her money, but her parents chose to give it to her, and millions of people chose to stay at Hilton hotels. If you assume ordinary citizens have a right to the money they earn, you have to grant Paris the same right to her trust fund. (Which is going to be invested or spent anyway). There's no consistent way to assert the right to violate property rights, without abolishing property altogether.

<comment><USER10> > Varoufakis' argument is that since the state has been taxing the productive > to fund research, that gives it a moral right to tax the productive some > more.

Regardless of if the research done prior to WW2 was funded privately or publicly, that knowledge is part of our shared culture heritage.

The fact is, regardless of how well they run their hotels, the Hiltons could not be where they are without the travelers who pay to stay at their hotels. Without the government regulation, infrastructure and security that makes such travel safe and easy there would not be the market for the Hiltons to have made their money in.

The government has a critical responsibility for keeping our shared economy healthy, growing and stable. Taxation to do this is not a moral RIGHT, but a moral RESPONSIBILITY.

You sound like you think we'd do OK with no taxes, and thus no government. That is more idealistic and unrealistic than even the most ardently blind arguments for BI.

<comment><USER9> The government is needed to enforce the laws. This does not mean the goverment needs to redistribute wealth, regulate business or manage the economy. A government which stuck to this role could be funded by tax rates of about 5-8%.

My ideal society would have said funds made by voluntary donations. This is a far-off ideal, but it is achievable - unless you think humans cannot form a society without coercion.

<comment><USER11> Often times, experience suggests people are not saints and will do or not do things unless compelled by laws and rules.

<comment><USER9> Re-read my post. Laws are needed, government is needed, taxation and coercion are not needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So we can all play more video games: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/23/why-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/23/why- amazing-video-games-could-be-causing-a-big-problem-for-america/)

"Most of the blame for the struggle of male, less-educated workers has been attributed to lingering weakness in the economy, particularly in male- dominated industries such as manufacturing. Yet in the new research, economists from Princeton, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago say that an additional reason many of these young men - who don't have college degrees -- are rejecting work is that they have a better alternative: living at home and enjoying video games."

<comment><USER13> What else can they do? With the new wave of AI and automation there will be no jobs left for people with below average intelligence. You will need more and more researchers and programmers but not everyone can do those jobs.

<comment><USER14> > more researchers and programmers but not everyone can do those jobs.

Research is suited to fairly scientific minds but I think programming is totally something anyone who's interested can do.

Software development continues to modernize and become more accessible. If you're motivated, I'd say you can definitely do programming. And the best part is that it applies to virtually any existing job.

<comment><USER15> It's easy to think so if you've been programming for a while, but try to teach programming to kids (or adults) and realize this really does depend on some inherent ability and/or interest (and this is even with a self-selected group who chose to go to a programming course).

You probably can get most everyone programming at a basic level, like we did with reading and writing, by requiring it at a primary school level.

However, a lot of these people will be about as useful as professional programmers as the average person is as a professional author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious, and this may have been discussed elsewhere, but how would that work in a country like the US (both in terms of size of population and capitalistic greed)? For instance, when student loans became ubiquitous, universities raised their rates. Now there are many theories as to why that was but I feel the simplest explanation is that a) it created greater demand, and b) easy/cheap money (look at ITT). What's to stop rents/mortgages from increasing, cost of goods increasing, basically the cost of everything going up b/c a) people have guaranteed money and demand more goods, and b) simple greed? In my mind it wont be long before that "basic income" isn't enough live on at all. Now I know this seems to be a difficult problem to solve, but I don't think throwing "free" currency at it is going to do anything but drive the value of that currency and it's buying power way down. Im most likely very wrong ( i have zero knowledge sady enough of money and how markets and economies work) - I would just love someone to explain to me how this is even an option - I want to understand?!

<comment><USER17> If there is demand for cheap food as well as an assure flow of money into the hands of that demand, it seems reasonable to believe the market will address that demand. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER18> Markets have been given almost half a century to solve world problems, and we haven't seen these problems solved.

I understand that one may argue that they didn't get the opportunity. But from macro indicators to flagship cases, what we see is that while market brought us a wealth of new products, they are slow to solve acute problems, especially when these problems are hard to explain to the population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Altman quote is on target "I think it's good to start studying this early. I'm fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we're going to see some version of this at a national scale."

However, it will likely be called something different in the near-term in order to gather momentum. Often the argument focuses on the concept as opposed to the practical benefits. Putting it in different terms could serve to reframe the argument to focus on the benefits.

These are interesting as well: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/universal- basic-income/](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/universal-basic-income/) [https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income- bul...](https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income- bullshit-a6bc92e8286b#.p7c3g7g7k)

<comment><USER9> People who seriously think a basic income future is desirable should invest the bulk of their research efforts in automation technology. How do you build a fully automated farm? How do you build a fully automated factory and logistics network? How do you build a fully automated hospital? How do you build robots capable of maintaining and fixing all these automated systems?

All these things are way beyond current technology. If they could be built, we'd effectively be in a Star Trek post-scarcity economy, and money would probably no longer be needed. That day is a long way off, though.

<comment><USER19> Automation is reality.

Industry 4.0's path is being charted as we type, and this is posted today in terms of logistics: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12575147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12575147)

There are things like hospitals that will be tougher to tackle. Money is the currency of power, and I don't see us abandoning power any time soon. So, "Star Trek post-scarcity economy?" I don't think so. However, we will likely experience a temporary(perhaps decades) imbalance between the supply and demand of human labor. In that time, elements of a basic income, or practical equivalents will rise.

I'm not necessarily an advocate of basic income, but an advocate for the basic welfare of everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Things can go many ways...

Once being supported by other humans is no longer a requirement for power, large portions of the population will be to the mercy of elites.

When that happens, it will be up to elites to decide what to do. They might be already deciding what to do (e.g: [http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/press- release.html](http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/press-release.html), item #9).

They can either:

1) decide that limits will need to be imposed on our demographics and start a plan of population control. if that population is not already in effect (zika?)

2) let the market regulate itself, pushing people into poverty and reducing their fertility and life expectancy.

3) be altruistic and ensure wealth for everyone.

Personally I think altruism will not be a thing. The planet has limits, and within a few generations we will be reaching our planet's carrying capacity, this in the context of major nations accumulating armament (e.g: [https://youtu.be/YoC0Xcjko0A?t=28m16s](https://youtu.be/YoC0Xcjko0A?t=28m16s), [https://youtu.be/rXSh3ur5XnQ?t=1h16m26s](https://youtu.be/rXSh3ur5XnQ?t=1h16m26s)).

</comment><comment><USER21> Every time I hear arguments about basic incomes, I think of universe 25.

[http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/03/the-amazing-rise- and-f...](http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/03/the-amazing-rise-and-fall-of- a-rodent-utopia/)

Fundamentally, we're all animals and due to physics and material constraints, there's scarcity involved. By giving a basic income, we're pretty much ignoring the fact that eventually we will run out of water and food and manufactured goods.

<comment><USER22> You can't relate the rodent utopia experiments as a defense of having to keep people in need of basic necessities to survive or they lose the will to live.

Besides the fact you are comparing rats to people, even the study itself considers all the localized factors that contributed to societal collapse:

* You are isolating them in a relatively small space with one another.

* You have uncontrolled population growth.

* You are using a species that naturally trends towards "clan wars" for territory.

* They are rats, and thus have nothing productive to do with their time in the absence of survival.

In the same reason you cannot just compare horses to humans and say that when physical and mental human labor is obsoleted there will be no new jobs for people because horses do not have the capability to invent their own work, rats are the same. Fundamental to our establishment of society is our ability to invent things for us to do beyond the survival every other animal dedicates their life to.

Also, it is incredibly nihilistic to think that human beings need to toil to survive or else life is without meaning or we will collapse society.

We already _know_ that in first world countries people reproduce less. That isn't even a function of economic well being directly but a function of education, which relates precisely back to how humans aren't just animals acting on instinct. If your post-scarcity society is uneducated hairless monkies, yes, they would go the way of the rat colony dystopia. If you have a culture of education and intellectualism, and let people invent their own work, you have an actual utopia. It is the same mind that elevated mankind above all other animals that can stop us from destroying ourselves as we eliminate survival as a daily concern.

<comment><USER21> > * You are isolating them in a relatively small space with one another. * You > have uncontrolled population growth. * You are using a species that > naturally trends towards "clan wars" for territory. * They are rats, and > thus have nothing productive to do with their time in the absence of > survival.

Are we talking about rats or humans now? Only your fourth assertion is rat specific. All the other observations are true of the human condition. We now have 7.4 billion human beings in the world right now, and it's the developing countries, you know with clan warfare and living in relatively small spaces that have uncontrolled population growth.

> Also, it is incredibly nihilistic to think that human beings need to toil to > survive or else life is without meaning or we will collapse society.

Just because it's nihilistic doesn't mean it doesn't hold truth. It seems that your objections are rooted more in your worldview and philosophy rather than objective arguments you're bringing up. They even bring up this point in the experiment, where he mentioned the "beautiful ones", who forgot how to breed and spent all day grooming themselves.

> We already know that in first world countries people reproduce less. That > isn't even a function of economic well being directly but a function of > education, which relates precisely back to how humans aren't just animals > acting on instinct.

I don't think it's a function of education. Do you have a citation? You could easily read this as saying, people in the first world are incented not to have children, as they have seen how children generally make parents unhappier and would prefer against that.

> It is the same mind that elevated mankind above all other animals that can > stop us from destroying ourselves as we eliminate survival as a daily > concern.

I think that's where the difference lies between our points of view. I think that most people are creatures of instinct, and our conscious mind is constantly trying to justify our actions after the fact with logic. If we really have elevated minds, how come many intelligent and educated people have differing opinions on things? Why are we still debating global warming, and having wars over religion?

<comment><USER22> > Are we talking about rats or humans now?

We are not restricted to confined spaces with other people. Even the most destitute could walk down the street and leave. And we see in people that _are_ so restricted the same kind of psychological problems you find in the rats, such as in prisons.

Population growth is not uncontrolled. Educated populations are equalizing and declining in growth. Once women are educated and empowered in society and people have a standard of living where their own survival isn't dependent on many children taking care of them in old age, you see birthrates decline dramatically.

The clan war problem is truly something mutual, but its something we _might_ be able to surpass one day.

> would prefer against that.

Which isn't something reflected in rats, at all. The population decline was due to a breakdown of society. We are not having that at all, yet our replacement rate declines dramatically once you no longer need the kids to survive in your later years and you are educated on how to avoid getting pregnant. The only reason rats reproduce like... rats is because they don't have the rational mind to understand what contraception is, how to use it, and how it can avoid them the unhappiness later of having kids.

> Why are we still debating global warming, and having wars over religion?

Neither of these are rational arguments. For all intents and purposes, scientific consensus is the basis of rational thought, and everything else is emotional response to rationality. It is that scientific process that separates us from the animalistic emotional squabbles.

<comment><USER21> > The clan war problem is truly something mutual, but its something we might > be able to surpass one day.

What gives you that assertion? We've been trying to surpass it for literally thousands of years.

> Neither of these are rational arguments. For all intents and purposes, > scientific consensus is the basis of rational thought, and everything else > is emotional response to rationality. It is that scientific process that > separates us from the animalistic emotional squabbles.

But yet we still have these arguments, even though they're not rational.

Primarily, I don't think we've evolved much in the past couple thousand years. We are not much smarter than our ancestors. We might have improved nutrition, but fundamentally we're just cave dwellers that think scary things lurk in the dark, and make up excuses to justify our actions that are primarily instinctive.

For instance, a couple of extreme examples. Most people and all scientific evidence points to the fact that if you eat less and work out more, your life becomes exponentially better, and you tend to lose weight. There's a fringe movement that comes in with the idea that you can be healthy at every size (HAES) which goes against all science, just so you can feel good about being fat and unhealthy.

Also, WRT to your comments about population declining naturally, the Catholic Church is a huge bulwark against that. They're even against pulling out. Every time I see a commercial about how somebody had four children starve to death, I think to myself not "What an unfortunate person", but "Just stop having kids and slowly torturing them to death by hunger."

My main point is that we already have conclusions we want to reach, mostly caused by biological instincts, and we use our logical brains to justify the decisions to ourselves, so we can get to sleep at night. We're not really that much more elevated than animals, if elevated at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I haven't heard a good political-economic explanation of how a universal basic income that actually finances the living expenses of a large portion of the population avoids spiraling into yet another welfare program.

The point of a UBI in the academic literature is to enable dismantling of high-overhead welfare state in favor of a low-overhead and higher-level grant (check out eg the overhead of Social Security Retirement income vs Social Security Disability income), but that tradeoff is somehow never actually offered.

<comment><USER6> > "I haven't heard a good political-economic explanation of how a universal > basic income that actually finances the living expenses of a large portion > of the population avoids spiraling into yet another welfare program.

The point of a UBI in the academic literature is to enable dismantling of high-overhead welfare state in favor of a low-overhead and higher-level grant (check out eg the overhead of Social Security Retirement income vs Social Security Disability income), but that tradeoff is somehow never actually offered."

Two main points:

1\. UBI is a form of welfare, but if you're concerned about UBI spiraling into a welfare program in the sense of means-tested welfare, why would it? If everyone gets the same, and the basic needs are all met (including free education and free healthcare) the only reason it would change into a means- tested program is if the government couldn't afford it. Which leads us onto point 2...

2\. When it comes to financing UBI, it's best not to do so through taxation. Instead you do so through money creation. At the moment the system used in countries like the UK and US for money creation effectively is a money-making venture for the banking system. By moving to debt-free money and using UBI as the vehicle for new money to reach the system, you minimise the risk of UBI contributing to government debt.

Lastly, there is another way to not use UBI but still tackle the same issues, and that's to make the basics of life free for all. However, I'd suggest that would require coordinated effort on the international level, UBI seems like a more realistic transitionary approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's worth looking into in advance, but not writing about every week. It's a bridge we'll cross if and when we come to it. So far, automation has displaced some jobs and created others. Will it start doing the former more than the latter? Only time will tell - we are not there yet.

</comment><comment><USER25> My issue is the power over the people that the Basic Income would give the government. "Vote for me and basic income goes up!!" and the ways it will be manipulated by those in government in 10,20,100 years. Sounds good, but I can think of a million ways this can easily be abused.

<comment><USER26> How is this any different from "Vote for me and taxes go down!!"? At least we'd have a different choice.

<comment><USER25> For me its different in a few ways. For one the amount given will never go down, people would flip. Second by the sales pitch of "taxes goes down" the government does not get more control over and of the money. Vast majority don't like the idea of taxes being raised on them no matter who they are.

The sales pitch of "get more money" will also be used to hide and justify taxes going up etc. They will do things like only talk about how you get more money and not mention things like they will tax more. Its an easier more manipulative sales pitch that it becomes capable of.

Also over the course of time tons of changes, additions, etc will be added to it. I am not completely against the idea, it sounds great in practice but I just see way too many things that can go wrong.

I also don't think its wise to put too many eggs in one basket.

<comment><USER26> > Vast majority don't like the idea of taxes being raised on them no matter > who they are.

I don't know, people in my town regularly vote for tax increases and vote for politicians who want to raise taxes. Seems like a political issue tbqh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hum, do we really need to see this as white and black. Work or no-work? Why not just introduce 30 hours/week or even 25 hours/week. And by that I mean employees keep the same weekly salary, companies use the gain in productivity by automation to give back some family time to employees. What we get in exchange, is one or 2 extra days of consumer spending. People tend to spend more during weekends anyways, so everybody is a winner. We keep the same salary, we have an extra day free in the week, companies get the 15% increase in consumption, and get slowly ready for full work automation.

<comment><USER22> Businesses don't want to hire people at 20 hours a week if they are willing to work 40. And this isn't black and white - we have been in transition to mental labor automation for the past 50 years. We have just been replacing desirable industry jobs with service jobs that people hate with a passion, as wealth inequality grows and those dropped out of economic potential switch to basically waiting on those that have not yet fallen.

UBI I would argue is much more desirable, if you were going to try to legally force 20 hour work weeks. UBI actually lets you absolve a lot of historical regulation that holds industries and growth back, that was all established as an attempt to protect the poor and uneducated from exploitation. When everyone has an easily accessible minimum standard of living, regulations in the workplace can be retired to enable more innovation since the workers can finally negotiate evenly with the employer rather than being exploited to survive. It also lets those workers with the ethic to do so to spend as much time as they want making as much money as they want, knowing they won't starve or go homeless when they stop.

Either you keep cracking up the extreme regulatory machine currently asphyxiating the American corporate sphere (ever wonder why _all_ the innovation is in software? It isn't just because its new, it is also because relative to almost everything else it is extremely unregulated) or you just use increased taxes on unfettered growth to provide for the masses so that the unleashed potential doesn't destroy lives.

<comment><USER27> So basicly, let's deploy UBI, and if people want to work 3-4 day weeks, it is up to them. I agree with this idea, and it clears up the work-no-work part of my argument. I just felt that UBI is such a big step, that just lowering the number of weekly hours had a precedent (from 7 to current 5 days a week) and was not associated with a more leftist sentiment, thus being easier to pass.

<comment><USER22> UBI is as big a step as you want to make it. Alaska has an effective UBI with its dividend from oil revenue, and nothing really stops you from starting it at a lower amount and ramping it up over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Eatsa is not automated. It's just an automat[1], with people in a conventional kitchen in back filling the glass-fronted boxes.

The Government as the employer of last resort (see Works Progress Administration) has a better track record than a basic income. Plus you get a lot more infrastructure built.

[1] [http://www.theautomat.com/](http://www.theautomat.com/)

</comment><comment><USER29> There's a bigger question to be asking here, which is that once we've reached a point where labor is not required for the provision of basic needs, are we going to liberate all of humanity from labor, or are we going to let a smaller and smaller fraction of the population horde the benefits of automation?

I believe we can liberate humanity from forced labor in my lifetime. And I think that the product of that liberation, in terms of cultural production and scientific discovery, will have a bigger impact on human civilization than anything we've seen in recorded history. Because when people don't have to be baristas to pay the rent, and have the resources to pursue whatever they were really passionate about before they had a landlord, beautiful things will develop.

"Basic income" is one possible tool in the box but it's not the only one. And instead of having dumb arguments about the minutiae of handing out free currency in our economic system as it's currently constituted, I would rather see more debate about the _principle_.

<comment><USER30> Agreed. Once we build a clanking replicator, or it's biological/nano counterpart, we'll be approaching a state where thought manifests reality.

As a thought experiment, if every one has a replication device like in Star Trek or Drexler's universal assembler, how will the materials and energy to run such a device be distributed? Presumably we would allocate some to everyone, which would function as a basic income.

If we continue on the current path where resources are consolidated into the hands of the few, and these few have no need for the labor of the masses...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Article shows a person pulling a bowl from a cubby at Eatsa. No different than an Automat; what's old is new again.

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

</comment><comment><USER32> The error here is to assume an isolated development of one trend. If AI becomes as sophisticated as imagined, it will make most (if not all) other technologies evolve with it. When talking about manufacturing/production, better tech correlates to lower production costs, lower prices. If you still pay $500 for a mobile phone then, it is more a subject of brandwashing than economics. Same thing with services, medicines, food, etc. In sum: we'll need less money. If that money comes from universal min wage, or from working less hours, or from working more hours at lower wages, seems irrelevant next to this question: who will own AI?

</comment><comment><USER33> If I am getting free money, is 'society' going to be my boss, but in real life? Will I be more subservient to society than I currently am? What is my role in society, what am I giving back to it?

<comment><USER34> Some people will be giving back. Point is not all can and want. For some a job might even be a luxury.

Your role in society now becomes: not being a problem because you have no job/money. That is why they give you money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Basic income aside (I really like the idea) I don't agree with the general premise that we will all be automated out of a job. I think it's ignoring a lot of the human qualities that have created the world around us.

In the past ~300 years we've automated more than we could ever have imagined. Our basic needs are produced in massive quantities in factories that rely on humans only for orchestration. Yet we don't work much less than we did in the past (per person or as an economy). We still work 40-50 hours a week, 48-50 weeks a year. So why are we convinced that a life where we don't have to (or choose to) work is right around the corner?

We are underestimating the human desire for novelty and an ever-increasing standard of living. Huge new product categories will spring into existence and we'll discover we suddenly want these new things, really badly. This will create opportunity for labor to meet the demand, just as it always has,

What _will_ change is the distribution of rewards. Each human becomes more and more productive as technology advances as a whole. Look at the market cap of a tech company with 50,000 employees versus an oil or automotive company from 30 years ago. This value is captured by the executives and investors, employee pay is not keeping up with employee value.

<comment><USER36> > _We still work 40-50 hours a week, 48-50 weeks a year._

There also exist civilised countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Basic income probably isn't the answer, but instead basic needs being met through education and proper allocation of resources is a very viable answer. FDR had a vision during his time in office which was for every person to own land. Theoretically, if everyone had access to use some amount of land through entitlement - they would be able to use natural means to provide themselves and their family with certain basic needs like food and shelter. With the advent of technology and GMO crops - anyone should be able to understand growing their own food and building their own home when suddenly presented with more free time in the absence of traditional industrial work. I hate to go all Atlas Shrugged on y'all - but Galt's Gulch was effectively this. It was a commune that recognized an individual's power to provide for themselves when presented with the means to meet their basic human needs.

<comment><USER38> When I visited some of the smaller pacific islands the question of unemployment benefits came up and the response was basically what you describe. On the island there's enough room for everyone to live and grow food and take care of themselves. Presumably with the help of others if they are incapacitated.

I'm not sure how that can work though on a global scale of 7 billion people while also allowing for the aggregation of people into cities that is so necessary for everything our modern civilization builds.

On top of this naturally you now have unfairness in the system as some peoples land will be better than others, and by virtue they will be richer than others through greater productivity.

In the end UBI works around all this and simply says - let the market sort it out, so that the best uses of capital, land, people's time can be found, but we're going give people enough to live so that if the most efficient result is that half the population sits on their hands and the other half work programming robots, then from a systems perspective we are adequately compensating those half that sit on their hands for their misfortune not to be a robot programmer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think the society might shift toward more entrepreneurial lifestyle. More and more people will own automatons, robots, AIs that do stuff for them, and either use or sell the results of their labor. There will likely be a scale of 'intelligence' of robots - some might be similar to dogs or dolphins or highly specialized for particular jobs. Lots of people might own taxi cars that work for them. Or a bunch of robot-workers that build houses. Or robot actors or something. You rent them out, lease them, make some money, take care of their energy needs, fix them up, maybe train them for other jobs...

</comment><comment><USER40> An alternative to the basic income is _free_ access to (basic) food, shelter, health services, education, etc. Which is called (basically) socialism. The (important) difference between that and basic income is that with basic income you get _free_ access to non-essentials, such as entertainment, restaurants, alcohol, tobacco, etc.

</comment><comment><USER41> The solution that is more likely to be implemented is a culling of the herd. Sad but true.

</comment><comment><USER42> Good thing Swiss citizens just refused the basic income, by vote. Goes along with today's vote: Swiss have authorized their own government to perform surveillance on them to "prevent terrorism"...

</comment><comment><USER43> At this point, I have grown sour on Guaranteed Basic Income and would rather a Prorated Guaranteed Minimum Income. I do realize it would be more open to fraud, but I just cannot see something without means testing going into effect. I would also hope the thing pays out in daily amounts, as opposed to the once a month problem of our current payments.

I still believe there will be non-ai jobs. In the near term, I'm wondering what an industry / government acceptable certificate (trade program) would be for robot technician. The government could probably help a lot of job prospects if it banned companies from barring third-party service of robots.

<comment><USER44> The reason no-one wants means testing is that it adds a massive bureaucratic overhead to the system, which actually defies part of the point of basic income, which is to get rid of most other, costly to run, social programs.

<comment><USER43> I believe that GMI also gets rid of all the other social programs. I just don't think it will fly that Bill Gates gets a payment. That is going to be a big opposition to overcome.

I don't get where you can say "no one" since plenty of people want means testing for Social Security, etc. right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What about we let the prices fell slowly towards zero as automation makes things cheaper and cheaper to produce?

What's the point of distributing money if things are free?

<comment><USER46> That was Karl Marx's plan. Didn't pan out perfectly though.

Most people just want more and more stuff. Cheaper prices will only result in people buyijg more.

<comment><USER6> As the cost of production falls and demand increases, I'm fairly confident the cost of materials will rise, if we continue to live in a capitalist society that'll be the mechanism that controls the level of demand. The other option that could work is more material wealth in the commons, for example sharing the use of cars rather than owning one outright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Basic income would be the end of democracy.

</comment><comment><USER48> Guaranteed income is not a solution. Sure housing and food are the most 2 important things but people need to feel they are needed in the society.

<comment><USER6> > "people need to feel they are needed in the society."

That can be achieved in different ways. The health of communities does not need to rely on earning money, there are plenty of other ways to build a vibrant society that still values the contribution of individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> We are approaching a level of technology which is not human-oriented but software-oriented: the crucial idea here is that the transition will be not about "jobs will be harder or require more intelligence" \- its about the emergence of artificial labor pool that is inherently better, smarter and less demanding. There is no way to "retrain people" to compete with robots, there is only "retreat to segments" where automation hasn't arrived yet - a narrower subset of potential jobs(there are no magical 'new jobs' coming). Lets take for example Joe The Programmer as someone who doesn't fear being automated.: He is confident he can write software better than a program trained to do so, and all his life beliefs hinge on that idea. He could do a less mentally- challenging job - but they are all taken by robots and automatons, doing it at fraction of minimum wage. Suppose a neural-net generator emerges that can produce software from requirements and diagrams of the middle management types. At first its used only for the simplest, mind-numbing tasks or viewed as debug aid. It develops to covers creation of modular pieces of code and its code quality is superb. Now the time come and grown complex enough to create functional software by itself without human input. The management looks at it, and decides to cut down on their software division. Jobs in the segments become fewer and fewer. Joe The Programmer now has to retrain himself to do something the code generator can't do, or hasn't expanded to area yet. But with progress there is nothing left, the most complex software can be done with minimal bugs and without unreliable human programmers. Software proven itself much cheaper to maintain with minimal staff - even it will be eventually replaced by helper software. Joe The Programmer is now fired. Now that there is no need for much middle management, as there is little to manage: the company shrinks and becomes more productive. At ultimate point the key personnel/directors/Chief officers are replaced by expert systems trained with their domain knowledge and the company become a purely digital entity producing income for its owners or shareholders. There is no point adding human back in the chain, as it will reduce efficiency and increase complexity(labor laws, taxes, paper trails,etc).

What is key here, is we only lack the software..the hardware is here now. i.e. all this retraining/re-specialization of the labor market will not matter, when software will be also "re-trained"(neural nets, generic algorithms,general artificial intelligence ) much cheaper to do equivalent of a human mind-work. Now it simply a hardware problem: At X investment a machine would outperform similar X investment for a human worker/employee, with none of the extra needs/limitations/laws regulating labor. Obviously the result in mass poverty and breakdown of class-based society if there is no moderating factor: basic income becomes a necessity, not an option "to stabilize the economy" \- without it there is no economy and no society(as even third-world countries depend on job(for a very liberal definition of a job) income existing).

<comment><USER50> The company probabaly can't entirely be replaced by machines because there would be still a need for someone who is familiar with decent tech and is responsible for selection of technology stack, because there would be a number of competing AI workers manufacturers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to delete HN comments or profile? - <AUTHOR> I'm not thrilled with the idea of not having any power over something connected so directly to my name being undelete-able forever. Not that I've written anything I'm ashamed about, but as a principle.<p>What are the options for deleting old comments or an account altogether? <comment><USER2> This site has an API which is used by several unaffiliated projects, some of which will probably have copies of your old comments even if they get deleted from the main site. Probably the best you can do is click the Contact link at the bottom of this page email@example.com and ask.

</comment><comment><USER3> You probably should've thought about that before using your name online--HN is nice in that you don't _have_ to link your persona(s) here with anywhere else.

EDIT:

Somewhat more helpfully...look, it'd be really annoying to see swiss-cheese holes appear in the post history of the site as users decided to delete/undelete/redelete their comments. It would significantly decrease the archival utility of this forum.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are many Austen's in this world.. If you ever felt like you want to quit, remove all your info from your profile.. HN doesn't even asks for an email address, so it's pretty easy to get disconnected IMO.

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe that it is often possible to work with YC on the issue. Try emailing using the contact link at the bottom of most HN pages.</comment>


Is Microsoft no longer unstoppable? - <AUTHOR> http://www.breakingviews.com/2009/01/22/Microsoft.aspx?sg=nytimes <comment><USER2> Segal argues that Microsoft should abandon marginal and unprofitable ventures (Xbox, Zune, search) and concentrate on its cash cows, Windows and Office, I presume. Segal's advice is off base. The problem with that strategy is, if someone eats your cash cows, you are left with nothing. The only viable strategy is to keep pushing the frontiers fo new revenue streams. Microsoft's real problem is that it is a follower not an innovator.</comment>


/usr/bin/time: not the command you think you know - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@atroche/usr-bin-time-not-the-command-you-think-you-know-34ac03e55cc3 <comment><USER2> TL;DR: An internet executes "man time" in Bash 3.2 on an old BSD machine (that version of Bash is over 10 years old), wants to use the BSD-specific -l option, but finds out that "time" is also a shell builtin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mac OS uses bash 3.2 :)</comment></comment>


The Second Serve Problem - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/09/the_second_serv.html

<comment><USER2> The numbers look conspicuous to me. "If they get their first service in, itself a 65%-ish probability for a top player, they will win the point with a roughly 75% likelihood." implies a probability of winning the point on first service of just under 50%. Add in the "only 50%-ish of the time" for the second service and the 0% for the 3% of double faults, and I do not see how top players can win so many of their service games.

It still could be valid data for the whole set of professional tennis plagers (male and female), but I doubt one draw conclusions for individual players from it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tennis is not about winning individual points, but about stringing points together to win games (and sets). I find that first-serve faults tend to happen a lot in the same game. I think employing this "two first-serves" strategy and double-faulting a few times in a game could cost you a break of serve and lose you the set. Winning more points on average over the course of the entire match doesn't necessarily help.</comment>


Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/ <comment><USER2> A few years ago, my girlfriend and I had an argument about this article and the book it came from. I flat refused to buy diamonds, and obviously she wanted a beautiful engagement ring. The compromise we came to was that if it wasn't a diamond, then it better be fucking amazing, preferably with a yellow saffire.

Long story short, I'm currently on my honeymoon, and her yellow saffire ring blows everyone away.

If your girlfriend turns you down for lack of a diamond, you have probably chosen poorly. However, she might (reasonably) turn you down if she's dissappointed, so make your feelings known long in advance, or you might be in trouble.

Get your rings at Brilliant Earth in SF (I did my shopping online, and was not dissappointed). They are the only ethical jewelers I've found, and I looked hard. My wife's ring has a large yellow saffire (fair trade from Sri Lanka, mined from shallow mines with a low environmental impact), small diamonds from Canada (sadly lab diamonds are not good enough for jewelry yet), and recycled gold.

The ring is pretty unique, and utterly amazing, and I would recommend this route for any ethically minded person.

<comment><USER3> She must be pretty damn happy with it, if you're getting away with browsing news.yc whilst on honeymoon :)

<comment><USER4> Gotta do something while......recovering...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun fact: If you get a diamond nice and hot (blow torches work great) and then drop it into some pure oxygen, it will burn like the hunk of charcoal it is.

</comment><comment><USER6> Spending insane amounts of money on a clump of carbon molecules to declare your love seems to me extremely wasteful. If your s.o. really needs a display of conspicuous consumption over spending your - now joint - funds carefully and wisely you might want to talk it over. Easy come easy go, if you have money left over to throw it out more power to you but most people are not in a position to throw away money like this.

Congratulations to the DeBeers marketing department, they've done an excellent job of making people believe this sort of stuff is needed.

<comment><USER7> Your point certainly sounds reasonable, but it's not how the human mind works. The point of conspicuous consumption is to _make believe_ that the man is "in a position to throw away money like this", because that (imaginary) man is considered to be a good provider/sexually attractive. Talking about it beforehand would be like telling your kids you were going to dress up as Santa Claus to put presents under the tree—the reality is no different, but the _fantasy_ is ruined.

And DeBeers certainly didn't _create_ the notion of conspicuous consumption as a romantic gesture—women have been receiving silver and gold trinkets for millennia, especially ones adorned with various gemstones. DeBeers just popularized diamonds as the gem to be specifically associated with such gestures—and they're a fairly effective/obvious one, too, since they're eye- catching, distinctive, and easy to adorn oneself with.

<comment><USER8> You are right that the fantasy needs to be played out and its duly mentioned in the article about the woman already expecting a diamond even though the diamond is a surprise gift. This suspense 'game' was what De Beers invented. I mean they could have marketed black rock if it happened to be their line of business.

<comment><USER7> > I mean they could have marketed black rock if it happened to be their line > of business.

Well, if it happened to be their line of business, _and_ they had a monopoly on the supply of it. It's hard to market things you can find in your back yard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately, realizing this is not enough. You need your partner to realize it too, or you're out of luck. Good luck presenting a ring of ruby or sapphire; even though they are far prettier stones IMHO, every girl I've met has diamonds stamped into her heart.

<comment><USER10> This was an eye opening experience for me as a younger nerd, something that taught me how truly irrational many humans are. Diamonds are clearly pretty, but buying them props up a cartel and indirectly leads to warfare, enslavement, and death. Clearly a young woman would happily understand why I would have ethical objections to this...

...and to this day, I don't understand how some people's minds even work. (It was a hypothetical discussion and my life wasn't appreciably derailed by this conversation, it's just memorable to me because of the utter incomprehension I felt.)

<comment><USER11> It also of course, provides legitimate employment to __a lot __of people throughout Africa.

If people stopped buying diamonds, it would be a disaster for the continent.

Saying that, I still would hate to buy something that may have been mined by a slave and purchased by a cartel.

<comment><USER10> If you want to look at the bigger systemic effects, they are these: Africa's very richness in easily exploitable natural resources is _exactly_ the reason there is so much warfare and violence.

There's really no gain to capture economic centers in developed parts of the world, because they do things like finance or entrepreneurship or software which are actually dependent on a stable settled population in a consistent legal system. That's why despite all the gangsters in LA, they just sell drugs instead of taking over Hollywood by force and trying to profit from the film industry. Even when gangsters take something over in this country, it's through infiltration rather than mounting a physical invasion of the city.

African gangsters (better known as "rebels", "paramilitary groups", etc.), on the other hand, can actually take over a diamond mine or something and collect all of the income relatively quickly. Crush the demand for diamonds, and the diamond-rich parts of Africa become that much more stable just because they'll have to work harder to generate wealth. And then, maybe, it won't be worthwhile for the paramilitaries and rebels to attack it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article appears to be an excerpt from a longer book on the subject: Epstein, Edward Jay (1982). "THE DIAMOND INVENTION"

The author has a website, <http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm> with what appears to be the complete contents of the book. I don't know if he's updated it since 1982.

<comment><USER2> Epic book, worth a read if anyone enjoyed the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283>

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm amazed in general at the amount of conformity in people surrounding the whole topic of weddings. Not just the ring (btw, diamond rings for engagement is an American cultural thing as far as I know, in Europe the props are different), but the whole dress code and the mandatory steps involved in the event. Wasn't the future supposed to free us from such conventions? I find it funny especially with people who laugh at religious functions as superstition, and then they embrace a totally arbitrary set of made up rules.

<comment><USER15> Well, rites are important to us as social beings, and we make them elaborate and heavy with tradition so they feel more important. We've always had them, regardless of religion. There's always a need to mark the occasions of births, adulthood, partnership and death.

Add a bit of capitalist profit-hunger, and you end up with companies doing everything they can to maximize the money people spend on the rites, by manipulating the cultural expectations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> note that this article is from the 1980s, not recent (though still accurate)

<comment><USER17> Yeah. The article should maybe deal in depth with the start of De Beers.

De Beers was basically formed by an English colonialist (Cecil John Rhodes). He controlled a company which basically owned a country (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_South_Africa_Company>).

He also had his own private army and tried to overthrow a sovereign government (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid>).

<comment><USER18> Rhodesia was named for him. He also set up the Rhodes Scholarship, which enabled people like Bill Clinton and Bob Hawke to go to Oxford.

<comment><USER17> Just because he set up a scholarship in his name doesn't make the things he did any better.

One of the aims of the Rhodes scholarship is Anglicization. A person who did not study in English cannot apply (even though he is fluent).

Until recently they also excluded women.

In any cases, the legacy of Rhodes is despicable - even if he left behind a scholarship program. His creation of the state of Zimbabwe (with two different ethnic groups) results in problems to this day.

<comment><USER18> "Just because he set up a scholarship in his name doesn't make the things he did any better."

I don't think I was suggesting that it did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Relevant article on the synthetic diamond trade from Wired last year: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html>

edit: oops I mean 2003; 11.09 was the issue number

<comment><USER11> Does anybody know where I could buy a synthetic clear diamond?

<comment><USER2> They don't come any larger than 0.3 karats, which is too small for a solitaire. You can't get them to match either, which makes them bad for side stones. I tried.

A good alternative is Canadian diamonds, which are not owned by DeBeers, not mined or polished by slaves, and not the cause of any conflict. That solves about half the problems with diamonds.

Get them from Brilliant Earth (I'm not employed there, just a very satisfied customer.)

<comment><USER20> LifeGem sells synthetic diamonds in the .20 to .99 carat range. Either your claim is wrong, or LifeGem are crooks,

<comment><USER2> It must be my claim which is wrong. I was recounting what a sales person told me. It might instead be that they don't supply them, or might just have been an outright lie.

That said, a one karat stone is no good as a solitaire (the book from the article above talks about this: one karat stones all go into eternity rings, which were invented by debeers due to a massive oversupply of Russian one karat stones. Actually, the book implies that these stones may have been lab stones, as no-one knew where the Russians got so many one karat stones from.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite quote from the article ...

"Watts found that the diamond had mysteriously shrunk in weight to 1.04 carats. One of the jewelers had apparently switched diamonds during the appraisal"

</comment><comment><USER21> Single page version: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1982/02/have- you-e...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1982/02/have-you-ever- tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/)

</comment><comment><USER22> My fiancee and I had this discussion too. In the end, we decided to forego engagement rings all together and just go with a nice set of tungsten carbide wedding bands.

</comment><comment><USER23> de beers + venter + toxo = bacteria designed to modify your buying behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER24> Its been a fantastic fad while it lasts (lasted?) but in the end its always just been "Vans off the wall" for "big people".

I wonder what we'll use next. I've always wanted to give my wife a ring with a bit of a meteorite set in it because, hey, its from _outer space_. Where does one find such things?

<comment><USER25> These guys were able to procure some to make dice. You might start by sending them a note and/or following up on the source they mention.

[http://crystalcaste.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Sto...](http://crystalcaste.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CC&Product_Code=02152S&Category_Code=XS)

<comment><USER26> The banner at the top of the site boasts about winning a lawsuit to prevent someone else (Hasbro) from creating similarly-shaped dice, but the shapes look like they would have ancient origins. Not exactly my kind of company.

<comment><USER25> Heh. Well, I'm not suggesting he work for them. Just that they may know something about how to procure meteorites. To by knowledge, it's not a big company, so they might be friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The lesson here is how co-ordinated messaging (propaganda) can continually shape and re-shape broad cultural memes no matter how stupid the memes are.

While in the case of diamonds it's a matter of wasting money, encouraging inane consumerism and odious environmental practices for the sake of a few wealthy oligarchs...

When the same thing happens in politics...

It encourages meaningless consumerism and odious environmental practices for the sake of a few wealthy oligarchs.

The Lesson: Distrust messages from oligarchs.

</comment><comment><USER28> If it were the other way around: if women had to buy something in order to gain a man's affection and commitment, it would be considered a servile and sexist tradition. Yet somehow the tradition of men buying expensive engagement rings for women survives. I say the heck with that. If she gets an expensive ring, then I want an expensive ring too. Equal rights! :)

<comment><USER29> I bought her a ring and then she bought me a TV and surround sound system. I get a hot tub later. Then we'll be about even. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Have you ever tried to convince a woman of this truth about diamonds?

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting, but too long for me to read right now. Does anyone know why De Beers seems to be exempt from U.S. anti-trust laws?

<comment><USER32> There's a longstanding case still bouncing around the court system:

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

<comment><USER33> "The settlement provides $295 million to purchasers of diamonds and diamond jewelry, including $130 million to consumers."

Does anyone think it seems like a very low number? Just $130 million for consumers, considering the cartel has been operating for decades and brought in billions?

<comment><USER32> Sounds low to me. And the agreement not to monopolize sounds flimsy. But I'm sure the class action legal firms did just fine.

<comment><USER34> It's really low, when you remember that antitrust violations carry triple damages, not just single. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Damages>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This link should have had (1982) after the title. Read the whole article only to be very disappointed that it only covered up to 1982 - wtf?

</comment><comment><USER8> There are some things you don't learn in college... like the truth about these pieces of carbon

</comment><comment><USER36> Never even seen one, and I dont get i why diamonds and gold are given so much value. Its true if someone said... the market is driven by women.

</comment><comment><USER37> Pop history of the diamond trade.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm worried it'd fly up my nose! Oh, "sell," not "smell!" My mistake.</comment>


Show HN: all-in-one messaging + payments + bookings app for business - <AUTHOR>

We just launched an iPhone app for independent business owners that helps them run (book clients, get paid) and grow (stay in touch, promote) their business.
Here is our teaser video: http://youtu.be/l_xZeMUzwH4
The app is free to download: https://bit.ly/1hkfxC6
Looking for feedback from the HN community. Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links

Teaser video: [http://youtu.be/l_xZeMUzwH4](http://youtu.be/l_xZeMUzwH4)

App Store download: [https://bit.ly/1hkfxC6](https://bit.ly/1hkfxC6)</comment>


The Omni Group has sold 5,000 copies of OmniGraffle for iPad (for $50 each). - <AUTHOR> http://www.omnigroup.com/company/press/the_omni_group_sells_five_thousand_copies_of_omnigraffle_for_ipad/

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing that they'd have probably sold 10 times that if it was priced at $9.99, the same price as Pages, Numbers and Keynote. I for one would have picked it up at that price...

<comment><USER4> I agree. The main reason I even came to the comments for this article was to say that. I'd even be willing to pay up to about half what they're charging for it. Up until then, however, I'll go without.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish they would spend more time bolstering up the default templates and workflow found in the current OSX version instead of working on something new.

</comment><comment><USER6> Drawing software seems like an enduring fit, even after the hype wears off. The iPad niche?

</comment><comment><USER7> Unrelated: I didn't know Apple actually had a trademark on "Multi-Touch": [http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...](http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77219819)

<comment><USER8> they don't

      2010-03-29 - Subsequent Final Mailed
      2010-03-29 - Subsequent Final Mailed
      2010-03-26 - Subsequent Final Refusal Written
      2010-03-02 - Teas/Email Correspondence Entered
      2010-03-01 - Communication received from applicant
      2010-03-01 - TEAS Response to Office Action Received
      2009-09-01 - Non-final action mailed
      2009-09-01 - Non-Final Action Written
      2009-08-13 - Teas/Email Correspondence Entered
      2009-08-13 - Communication received from applicant
      2009-08-10 - TEAS Request For Reconsideration Received
      2009-08-10 - Ex parte appeal - <USER2>
      2009-08-10 - Jurisdiction Restored To Examining Attorney
      2009-08-10 - EXPARTE APPEAL RECEIVED AT TTAB
      2009-02-09 - Final refusal mailed

<comment><USER7> Hrm. I wonder why Omni decided it was?

<comment><USER9> Apple explicitly claims the trademark in their press releases.

<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/05/03ipad.html>

<comment><USER10> They claim an _unregistered_ trademark on it. ® signifies a registered trademark. ™ signifies an unregistered trademark. They can still sue to defend it as an unregistered trademark, but they'll have a harder case to prove (especially since their attempted registration was denied), and they wouldn't be entitled to the punitive damages that they could get if it was registered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Omni Group is one of the original (and best) NeXT/Openstep shops still around. I worked with them back in the late nineties and they were a very interesting crew - brilliant, cult-like, fun-loving, hardcore coders. Congrats to Omni!

</comment><comment><USER12> Good for them! OmniGraffle is the main reason I will always keep a Mac around.

</comment><comment><USER13> How is this program (for the iPad or Mac)? The screenshots feature silly graphics-heavy stuff, but would this thing be for making E-R/schema diagrams, family trees, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER14> Not really sure why this is press release worthy?

</comment><comment><USER15> I think a mockup tool would be pretty useful on the iPad as well, especially given iPad's interaction model.

<comment><USER16> This one got better after they added snap to alignment in the latest version:

[http://www.ipadworkapps.com/2010/05/imockups-killer- wirefram...](http://www.ipadworkapps.com/2010/05/imockups-killer-wireframe- app-for-creatives/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> $$$$$$$

Cool, so all I have to do is write an advanced graphics program to get rich. Yay for the iPad!

</comment><comment><USER18> Who else clicked on a link to see what the heck is Omni _Giraffe_ for iPad? :)

</comment><comment><USER19> And Apple got 30% of that? Such a rip-off to developers.

<comment><USER20> Really? So what's a publishing deal (distribution, some marketing, storefront, updating, &c) that has a better split then that?

I can guarantee you you won't find one for video games, at least.

Also, Android market has the same split. So does Palm's, Nokia's, and WinMob. Blackberry is 80/20.

<comment><USER19> "publishing deal" is a warm and fuzzy way to say "monopoly".

Developers should be able to sell their software for a platform without being forced into using one specific distribution channel. The App Store is Microsoft's wet dream, even they have never managed to invoke Big Brother so completely.

<comment><USER21> Clearly, you haven't heard of the XBox where the split is 60/40.

<comment><USER20> And I should note that's the split going to Microsoft and the _publisher_ , not Microsoft and the developer. The studio is almost certainly not even getting 50% of that 60%, the way most such things work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tail call optimization in ECMAScript 6 - <AUTHOR> http://www.2ality.com/2015/06/tail-call-optimization.html <comment><USER2> Guess ES6 takes some wind out of this guy's rant: [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript- isnt...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt-scheme/)

He argues that JS only has 3 of the 9 essential elements of Scheme.

ES6 gains tail call elimination and lexical block scope. Though I guess it arguably gives up "minimalism." So now it's 4/9\. If it gets macros (which there has been talk of happening in the future) it'll be 5/9.

<comment><USER3> It still doesn't seem like scheme even if it gets those features. Lots of languages have those features and we don't consider scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does one feature detect whether a browser supports TCO? It's an invisible feature. Without it, tail-calling code will seem to work, but could explode the JS stack.

<comment><USER5> Good question. One hacky way of detecting TCO could be to cause a stack overflow:

      var supportsTco = false;
      try {
        (function rec(n) { if(n) rec(n - 1) })(20000);
        supportsTco = true;
      }
      catch (e) { /* Ignore stack overflow error */ }

This works for me on Firefox and Chrome (by "works" i mean it doesn't, because no browser implements TCO yet, but the code detects it). But it's not bullet- proof: it would fail on a JS runtime with no TCO but a higher stack size limit, or on a runtime that detects this specific case of recursion and optimizes into a loop (or completely eliminates the innocuous function call).

A side-question: does anybody else feel that stack overflows just don't belong in high level languages? I mean, most high level languages remove the distinction between stack-allocated values and heap-allocated ones: it's all references. It doesn't make sense to worry about whether a Ruby (or JS, or Python, etc) object lives on the heap or on the stack. But yet, you still have to worry about the function call stack on these languages, and they all have tiny limits (in the order of the thousands stack frames) compared to the heap size limit.

Wouldn't it be possible for a language to make the stack grow without an arbitrary limit (besides the limit of physical memory)? And if so, why do these high level languages that focus on ease of use not implement the stack that way?

<comment><USER6> > One hacky way of detecting TCO could be to cause a stack overflow

You can do this to test your own browser, but it's rather pointless in practice unless you can do it at runtime _without_ crashing the browser or causing it to become unresponsive. Otherwise, you'll have to manually keep track of which (browser, version) combination supports it and which ones don't.

> Wouldn't it be possible for a language to make the stack grow without an > arbitrary limit (besides the limit of physical memory)?

Yes, some languages already do this. For example, you'll never get a literal "stack overflow" error in Go[0]. (You'll never get one in Java either - it'll be an OutOfMemoryException or whatever they call it)

[0] [http://dave.cheney.net/2013/06/02/why-is-a-goroutines- stack-...](http://dave.cheney.net/2013/06/02/why-is-a-goroutines-stack- infinite)

<comment><USER5> > [...] it's rather pointless in practice unless you can do it at runtime > without crashing the browser or causing it to become unresponsive.

The snippet i posted doesn't crash the browser and seems to take around 1 or 2 milliseconds to run. Considering usual page load times, and if detecting whether TCO works is important for an application, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable solution (albeit pretty ugly hehe).

Thanks for the pointers about languages that don't have this limitation. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the case for Java. This simple recursive function throws a StackOverflowError in less than 100,000 iterations: [http://ideone.com/Tf4n3I](http://ideone.com/Tf4n3I), and it's not because the program is consuming all physical memory:

      /usr/bin/time -v java StackOverflowExample
      Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StackOverflowError
              at StackOverflowExample.rec(StackOverflowExample.java:7)
              at StackOverflowExample.rec(StackOverflowExample.java:8)
              at StackOverflowExample.rec(StackOverflowExample.java:8)
              ...
      Command exited with non-zero status 1
              Command being timed: "java StackOverflowExample"
              User time (seconds): 0.13
              System time (seconds): 0.01
              ...
              Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 27000
              ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While it's nice that TCO is in the ES6 specification the fact is not one JavaScript engine implements it. Not one. The Babel transpiler implements a rather limited form of TCO, but hey, that's better than nothing. Meanwhile an alternative to TCO is to use a trampoline which I've blogged about here [https://taylodl.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/functional- javascri...](https://taylodl.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/functional-javascript- tail-call-optimization-and-trampolines/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've always wondered... what does a tail call recursion look like in a debugger?

Essentially, it is just a loop, but is it worth providing some special indication of tail recursion?

<comment><USER9> It is straightforward to provide the type of stack trace information people want for debugging in the presence of tail call elimination (not optimization ;) ) [http://www.brinckerhoff.org/clements/papers/cf- toplas04.pdf](http://www.brinckerhoff.org/clements/papers/cf-toplas04.pdf)

You can even try it out in Racket.

Edit: to clarify, my parenthetical was meant to say tail call optimization is not an optimization but a matter of correctness (so best to call it elimination instead), not to make a distinction between the two.

Also, that isn't quite the right paper but I don't have time to find the one I meant right now...

<comment><USER10> How does it work? There have been bugs I could not diagnose because the caller was optimized out in the stack trace.

I took a look at the paper. It's very dense but seems to be a technique for annotating stack frames with permissions? That sounds interesting but is no help for debugging.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the paper is about showing that you can do the equivalent of annotating stack frames for security in a language with tail calls. The same ideas work debugging though.

Basically, the key idea is that you can manage the debugging information yourself. So for simple tail recursion, you can have the first call push a marker on the stack and subsequent calls update a count on the marker (if you care about the depth). For more complicated interactions, you can record whatever debugging information you need, even a full stack by associating the information with a cell under the top-most stack frame. (Of course, this debugging information may grow with the depth of recursion, depending on whether you try to keep the full stack or not, but will still be more space efficient than keeping around all of the stack frames.)

The main point is that keeping track of your execution context doesn't have to be done by walking the call stack, you just need to have a protocol for maintaining whatever state you want on entry/exit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Entreposeurs - Sincerity is the key. If you can fake that, you've got it made. - <AUTHOR> http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/?p=3219

<comment><USER2> getting a job = being a non-poser entrepreneur? I think your last point is a bit off.

<comment><USER3> The point is not that working for someone else is an entrepreneurial activity, but that experience is a prerequisite to successful entrepreneurship. School doesn't confer that experience, except to the extent that students often have a lot of spare time and access to resources. Self-motivated students who take advantage of that can do that well, but not everyone is a Gates or Zuckerberg who can afford to ignore the curriculum in favor of their spare-time projects. For most, working for someone else - which includes free-lancing or working for friends' startups - is _by far_ the best way to learn what's truly in demand, what's truly new, what's truly possible.</comment></comment>


New California Declares Independence from Rest of State - <AUTHOR> http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/01/15/new-california-declares-independence-from-rest-of-state/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, I've heard of this for years now, but I don't see it ever happening. I lived in CA for 14 years and the only people who'd support this movement with cash to promote it are landowners that have huge swaths of land in "New California" and the few working class folks bamboozled by their propaganda.

That's not near enough. Hardly anyone living in any of the metro areas would ever agree to this. It's like asking them to give away their backyard.

<comment><USER3> They can have the land, we will just keep the water...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article: "The state of New California would incorporate most of the state's rural counties, leaving the urban coastal counties to the current state of California."

The actual declaration [0] refers to "the Counties of California", and does not identify a fixed set of member counties.

The "New California" website [1] list county committees for all California counties [2]—incliding the urban/coastal ones—though most of them (including many rural inland counties) seem to just have the central org's vice chair as the contact.

[0] [https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/720c6a07-3594-44b7-8098-94f...](https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/720c6a07-3594-44b7-8098-94fc11bae240/downloads/1c3sut5r6_88440.pdf)

[1] [https://newcaliforniastate.com](https://newcaliforniastate.com)

[2] [https://newcaliforniastate.com/county- committees](https://newcaliforniastate.com/county-committees)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sure would be a boon to the remaining portion of the state economically, though.

Probably wouldn't be that much of a change in # of house GOP representatives from the current 7, though they're pretty endangered in 2018. It would be 2 new GOP senators and would be a boost to GOP electoral college though.

</comment><comment><USER6> If true, this appears to be a calculated move to draw away blue electoral votes from the biggest state in the country. This is a historically large move of Gerrymandering.

<comment><USER7> People have wanted to do the same thing in Washington state, cut it off at the Cascades say. To avoid moving the electoral college, you have to split into 3 states for almost always one way states. But the other parts of the state are sucking down revenue from the populated area to build their infrastructure. I almost wish it could happen, because then we would get away from the 60% of the state in Seattle votes for something vs 40% of the rest. We could just build our own damn infrastructure and not have to negotiate with someone with very different world views, who has very different needs and ideas about guns, god etc.</comment></comment>


Non-Admin Chrome Frame Reaches Stable - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2011/08/non-admin-chrome-frame-reaches-stable.html

<comment><USER2> I don't want software writable by non-admin. It's a huge security hole.

<comment><USER3> I think you may have a misunderstanding on the _non-admin_ part of the post..

<comment><USER2> How so? I want binaries to be unwritable by users.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows Phone 7 developer resources – start building cool apps now - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/edvangelist/archive/2010/10/14/windows-phone-7-developer-resources-from-the-boston-developer-launch-start-building-cool-apps-now.aspx

<comment><USER2> Announcing obvious bias here, but IMO one of the best things about WP7 is how easy / good the tools are; making WP7 apps has way less of a learning curve than iOS, and once you get proficient with them, you can make entire apps in an afternoon, it's really easy to be productive and have great looking apps with animations and transitions.

<comment><USER3> You're perhaps not the right person to ask all these questions, but maybe you'll be able to answer...

Do you know how the application store will work? If I write a WP7 app, can a user download it from my website or do I have to be listed in the store?

And if I have to be listed in the store, what restrictions are there on apps?

I ask because the main thing preventing me from being interested in WP7 is the lack of a decent web browser (Wikipedia's WP7 article claims the browser is "halfway between IE7 and IE8").

So, is there any chance that someone could port Chrome or Opera to WP7? Or is there no way to get HTML5 on WP7 at all?

<comment><USER4> It pretty much has to be in the app store (of course some other methods, if you treat the phone as a dev phone, but clearly that's not scalable).

The web browser is actually quite good for a mobile browser. It is true that its missing HTML5 capability, but that's coming over time.

With that said, could you port over a browser? Not likely, you'd have to rewrite from scratch, as it has to be in managed code.

I've never written a web-browser, but if it makes use of sockets (which I assume they do), you'll also be stuck, as this version doesn't have 3rd party support to access sockets.

You'll probably need to wait until a future rev of the SDK, at which point IE9 will probably be just around the corner.

<comment><USER5> This lack of standards compliance in regards to browsers/ms is getting extremely old. For that reason alone I'm not going to write apps for this phone and I'm a c# guy. It's time we stopped supporting things that break the web intentionally or otherwise.

<comment><USER6> I can't agree with this more. It's really frustrating to write web apps that work on all the standards compliant browsers, and then have to make all sorts of hacky changes to them because Microsoft decides to do its own thing.

We're a .net shop, but now we just recommend that our users use other browsers to get the best experience. It looks like that won't be changing when it comes to mobile access either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is a good developer win7 phone to test with?

<comment><USER4> I'd get one with a keyboard, like the Dell Venue Pro, so you can test both with and w/o the physical keyboard. Besides that, they all have to have min specs, so it shouldn't matter too much which phone you get.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A hackable cryptocoin graph builder - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/derogab/coingraphs <comment><USER2> It's definitely nice but feels too tightly coupled with the PHP+MySQL web stack, it's too big of a hurdle to install these two just for the purpose of storing some numbers and showing a simple HTML page with a javascript line graph.

Maybe consider:

\- not storing the data in any database and instead fetching it through javascript when the page loads; sure it might take a couple of seconds to populate on first load but it's a small price to pay for the benefit of not requiring any database or server-side refetching cron jobs; most of the exchanges have publicly accessible APIs for fetching candles for every market.

\- using a simple node.js express server to serve the (now practically static) HTML page

<comment><USER3> I've been working on something similar for my own perusal. My dependencies are sbcl, gnuplot and an image viewer that can do a slideshow: [https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZSKsy7ZMOpNjrfY8wbQ...](https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZSKsy7ZMOpNjrfY8wbQJKLyHFefg0DFJDYV)

You'll always have dependencies.

My graphs need a little more info like a label for the left and right y-axis.

The OP's design _does_ look now modern although I do not know what "hackable graph builder" means.

<comment><USER2> Nice work! To be clear I'm not against dependencies in any way, by all means reuse whatever you can get. I just think that in this particular case using two pretty massive pieces of software like apache and mysql is overkill.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm afraid you're right! I will try to find the best way to use less dependencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Be cautious about exposing this on the public internet-- it's vulnerable to SQL Injection through misuse of prepared statements as noted in [https://github.com/derogab/coingraph/issues/1](https://github.com/derogab/coingraph/issues/1)

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like "chart" would be more accurate, I thought/hoped "graph" was related to blockchain graph analysis which is quite interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had opted for 'graph' because it was the one that sounded best. I will evaluate what you have said. Thank you. In the meantime I'm thinking of changing the name from 'coingraphs' to 'coingraph'.

<comment><USER6> I clicked expecting the same thing. Nobody looks for "stock graphs", they call them "stock charts" etc

<comment><AUTHOR> I had chosen the "graph" name even after reading this: [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/43027/whats- the-...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/43027/whats-the- difference-between-a-graph-a-chart-and-a-plot)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Plan a Team Retreat for Your Remote Company - <AUTHOR> https://barrettbrooks.com/remote-team-retreat/ <comment><USER2> I really hate these team retreats.</comment>


Show HN: Sincere – Write about how you are feeling - <AUTHOR> https://www.sincere.chat/ <comment><USER2> So this is just a monologue? Someone writes something and maybe someone else reads it, but conversations are not supposed to take place?

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you submit what you've written?</comment>


Businesses in NYC can operate 100% tax-free for 10 years - <AUTHOR> http://startup.ny.gov

<comment><USER2> This made it to the homepage yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7366254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7366254)</comment>


$60 LED light buld that lasts for 20yrs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17788178

<comment><USER2> "The DoE challenged firms to develop a design that gave out a warm light similar to that from an incandescent bulbs but was much more energy efficient.

Philips was the only entrant for the competition and its design underwent 18 months of testing before being declared a winner."

Uh. There have to be at least a dozen companies capable of developing this sort of technology, right? Why did only one company enter the contest?

<comment><USER3> Making their design fit the strict requirements for the $10 million prize was probably not worth it for the competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most interesting part to me: "Production of 100 watt bulbs has ceased in the US and Europe. Production of 60 watt bulbs has been stopped in Europe and is being phased out in the US. From 2014, incandescent bulbs of 40 watts or above will be banned in the US."

I had no idea - better stock up now so I can sell them on ebay in ten years!

<comment><USER5> I recall news, that some smart-ass in Europe still continued to sell 100W bulbs as "heating elements", not bulbs :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article seems disappointingly light of any actual information about the new light bulb. How it is different from current crop of LED lights? What is its efficiency? Light output? Color reproduction? Surely just introducing a LED light can not be news these days, much less front page material.

<comment><USER3> The requirements for the prize are: "It would draw no more than 10 watts of electricity, be truly dimmable, flip on and off without flicker or hesitation, and emit a pleasant light. It would also have to fit into a standard socket and last at least 20 years."</comment></comment>


Easter Egg in OEIS: Fur Elise in MIDI - <AUTHOR> https://oeis.org/A123456 <comment><USER2> While it was added to demonstrate the listen feature, it ends up downloading a file called play instead. Good demo idea. Not so food an implementation.</comment>


Show HN: PSD Grade - Lint your PSD's. - <AUTHOR> http://psdgrade.com

<comment><USER2> Interesting and promising! A few points: (for context, I'm a decent developer working as designer)

\- Considering the usual use of PSDs (contract work, most of it is under some sort of NDA), online uploading tool makes this a bit worrisome. I would much prefer drag-and-drop offline solution, similar to Slicy app. That would fit into designers' workflow and we could see some improvements.

\- Right now the "grading" areas are few, and somewhat questionable. Mostly questionable is the use of different fonts and font sizes. Many designs benefit from 5-6 different fonts, slightly varying in weight and sizes for best legibility. Some designs are only possible because of that. Much more meaningful insights would be, for instance, non-integer font sizes (23.989 instead of 24), or use of too many font families, opposed to just "fonts" (same family, different weights).

<comment><USER3> this is true but if you don't take the grades to heart it doesn't really matter I guess except that it swings the overall figure.

Improvements can be made though for sure. It could be a personalized machine learning algorithm but I don't think it's there yet :D

Or, better yet, how bout building this into Photoshop... run the lint & have it suggest re-factorings _for_ the user?

> Several non-integer font sizes are used. OK to refactor?

> Shall we re-organize layers/blending?

<comment><USER4> +1 for turning this into a Photoshop plugin

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me (in The Netherlands) the domain is not up yet:

> The domain that you are trying to use does not exist. Please click on one of > the links below to help find your site.

> ResolvingNameServer.com provided as a free service by DNS Made Easy, the > world leader in Enterprise DNS Service.

<comment><USER6> That's funny, according to [https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/psdgrade.com](https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/psdgrade.com) (which is not a complete list of course) some DNS servers have the entry and some have the old 184.108.40.206 (that's the parked domain). The URL [http://184.108.40.206/](http://18.104.22.168/) seems to work fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the math is off for the grade.

Received an F for a place and still got a 100% A somehow.

[http://i.imgur.com/CaEeG3o.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/CaEeG3o.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for pointing that out, all resolved!

<comment><USER8> I'm seeing the same issue with other PSDs that generate Fs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If it is not resolving try these

[http://psdlint.com](http://psdlint.com) [http://www.psdgrade.com](http://www.psdgrade.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> Not working here in Dubai and neither are the alternative domains provided. If it doesn't work for you try the direct IP (188.8.131.52).

</comment><comment><USER10> Domain does not exist :| Darn, after getting so many references, the site goes down. The website is missing out so much traffic.

</comment><comment><USER11> Domain unavailable here too in the Pacific Northwest of the US.

<comment><USER12> Not available here in Victoria, BC either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Same in NE US.</comment>