Ask HN: Why not Flex? - <AUTHOR> I'll never get back those weeks of my life that I've spent trying to fix cross browser HTML/CSS/JavaScript issues.
I feel like I have to jump through several hoops just to achieve good-looking rounded corners, especially if the element has a border.
Many relatively standard GUI widgets just don't exist in the web stack (e.g. tabs have to be expressed as an unordered list with an extra element in each to do the "sliding doors" effect).
The set of available fonts is still, in 2009, incredibly limited.
My current project (http://shoptalkapp.com) has typified all of the above pain, and more. It's heavily AJAXy, which only exacerbates the problem.
So I ask the HNers, "Why not Flex?" <comment><USER2> It's user-hostile.

Flex code runs inside a sandbox element, much like Java applets. It doesn't feel native to the browser - the Flex app can change things only within its own little canvas. (Okay, there's ExternalInterface as well, but then you're back to writing JavaScript and DOM manipulations.) It's not aware of browser resizing - you're locked into a fixed width layout. It can easily result in horizontal scrolling if you have a full-width Flex app in a small browser window. It generally doesn't show up on mobile devices. It takes forever to load. It disables UI conventions - like being able to right-click on the page - that users are used to. Hitting Ctrl-T when a Flash app has focus does not open a new tab. It's not easily indexable by search engines.

I look at it as Flex:Javascript::Swing:native GUIs. It makes development easier, but at the cost of never quite meshing right with the rest of the platform. _You_ may like it, but your users probably won't.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry but most of that is FUD.

 _It doesn't feel native to the browser_

Most advanced javascript apps don't feel particular native to the browser either because HTML still lacks basic widgets like a combobox or -button. How many native browser buttons do you see in your Gmail or Google reader interface?

 _It's not aware of browser resizing - you're locked into a fixed width layout_

Wrong. Flex handles browser resizing out of the box, see for example <http://www.grooveshark.com>

Moreover the Flex layout manager is heads and shoulders above the box model madness of HTML/CSS.

 _It generally doesn't show up on mobile devices._

That's one valid point. But then again, how many AJAX apps can you name that are really useful on (which?) mobile devices without a special mobile version?

 _It takes forever to load._

Nonsense. <http://omgpop.com> feels quite zippy, no?

 _It disables UI conventions - like being able to right-click on the page - that users are used to._

Point taken. It replaces the browser context menu with a customizable flash menu. That sucks but it's hard to imagine how it could be done otherwise.

 _Hitting Ctrl-T when a Flash app has focus does not open a new tab._

Works fine here (OSX/Firefox).

 _It's not easily indexable by search engines._

Neither is AJAX content.

 _You may like it, but your users probably won't._

That depends very much on the application. Right tool for the job.

<comment><USER4> >>>>It's not easily indexable by search engines. >>Neither is AJAX content.

You typically wouldn't load your entire layout via Ajax.

<comment><USER3> _You typically wouldn't load your entire layout via Ajax._

Depends on the application. Flex doesn't compete with your average listing- based HTML webapp. It's competing with GWT and Ext in the field of complex, desktop-like GUIs ("RIA").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. There are a million small disadvantages to using proprietary plugins, it is not "the internet", google can read flash, but not well, you dont have firebug, your site cannot be scraped, these may not all affect you, but there are lots lots more.

2\. The flash plugin sucks on most browsers, its a slow unreactive user experience, compare a few full flash sites to their equivalent in javascript.

3\. Flex's layout constructs are similiar to pretty much every widget manager around, are in no way close to the power of xhtml/css, I for one didnt find it enjoyable at all to develop for.

how long have you been doing html/css? its a pain that goes away quite quickly, if it hasnt, I would ask some more experienced developers to look over your stuff and see if anythings being done wrong.

and you might want to look at graceful degredation, if ie isnt a particularly large chunk of visitors, your exact problems are very easily solved in a way that very gracefully degrades (-moz-border-radius:, font-face:)

<comment><USER6> 1 - This is a completely valid point. There are tradeoffs in build a site in Flash. You have to put extra work into being crawler friendly - something you get out of the box with HTML/CSS.

2 - Depends on what you're doing. Animations definitely run smoother and with less resources in Flash than they do in HTML/CSS.

3 - A lot of Flex's layout capabilites "just work" out of the box. You don't have to figure out the complexities of the box model and you don't have to know the intricacies of floats. You just say "I want a container that positions things horizontally and I want them to be aligned on the top of the box" and it does it.

Flex's components I have found are incredibly hard to precisely skin. Then again, so is HTML if you don't have experience in it.

<comment><USER7> re 2 - I disagree. On a powerful computer flash is OK, but on let's say a Core 2 duo 32 bit and an intel i950 graphics chip, almost any flash will take one of the cores to 100%...

<comment><USER6> And the Javascript equivalent wont?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Flash has its place, for sure but it has many short comings when developing an entire web-based app.

As far as I know, the answer to these questions is no for Flash based sites:

1) Can it be indexed by most search engines?

2) Is the text always selectable, & copy and paste-able?

3) Does the structure of the Flash movie imply anything about the information it presents? (e.g.
 elements imply tabular data.)

4) Is Flash & Flex an open platform which can be developed on for free?

Your argument against HTML doesn't point out any weakness in HTML itself. It does point out the lack of a standard and accepted HTML UI library, as well as a simplified, cross-browser compatible development environment for that UI library (the notable exception here may be cappuccino.org and some other, larger dev environments like WebObjects, neither of which I've used extensively).

<comment><USER6> Let's drop the absolutes, shall we?

1) Google can index it. I wasn't aware of other search engines that are relevant. I'm willing to concede that you -should- do extra work to make sure you are search engine friendly, but that doesn't rule Flash out completely.

2) Yes, text is copy/pastable. No, the experience isn't nearly as good. Yes, it's a really big deal that copy/paste sucks for Flash.

3) No, Flash markup isn't semantic because Flash markup isn't public. Then again, how much information does
 imply?

4) Yes. Flex is open source and can be developed for free (<http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/>). I do all my Flex development with simply mxmlc and fdb, I don't use Flex Builder at all.

<comment><USER9> the last time i looked at this issue, writing flash applets with mxmlc meant that you can't use flash GUI controls. is that still true?

<comment><USER6> This is true, you don't have direct access to flash GUI controls from vanilla Flex. That being said, I have found it rare that I find a Flash control that hasn't been ported to Flex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're using Flex + ZendAMF(PHP) and development is enjoyable. Serializing PHP data types that are also native to Actionscript remove the need to parse JSON and XML. On the wire the data is binary, thus small(no XML tag tax) and fast.

Flex's default widgets and classes are all easy to extend and customize. You never need patches of js to customize some component on the bottom of the page.

Adding features like drag and drop, navigation trees and tabs are almost too easy. Dividing your app up into loadable(and cacheable) modules can keep your application fairly lightweight, althrough still much bigger than a standard AJAX app.

We(developers) will always be able to feel it when we're using a Flash app(before we even right click), but the CSS/Style/Skin support is good enough to make the app look inviting.

</comment><comment><USER11> We're using the upcoming Flex 4 for a new project and I'd compare Flex to GWT but not something like jQuery. It definitely has its trade-offs and benefits. The state management and skinning system is first class and there are some great micro-application architectures being created in the Flex world.

We have started to see the same sort of thing in HTML/JS land (Sproutcore/Cappuccino) but honestly, they come with almost all the same tradeoffs as Flash does.

I would say the File upload/download, animations, skinnable components, layout management, and more in an single well thought out package outweighs anything in the HTML/JS land currently. Sure if you want to patch together components you can get all of the same things, but that's like arguing _insert flavor of linux_ is as fun to use as Mac OS X because it has all the same features.

I choose Flex for the same reasons I choose Rails. It's not a chore to develop in.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ajax is easy to use, and the dom is easy to manipulate using jquery. When yo create a site with plain html, it fits in perfectly with how the user expects the web to work.

When you do this is flash, it is an application running in your browser. It is far from seemless, and is the equivalent of a java app. It is something that takes time to load, and when it finally does, it takes time for the user to get used to the new experience.

The simple question is, when you come to a page that uses flex do you notice that flash is running. If so then why? Why isn't it completely transparent to the user? Why does it seem like an isolated little object on the page that has little interaction with what is going on around it.

Perhaps I just don't like a company owning any type of represention on the web.

Perhaps you knew all these answers though, and this whole post is a light form of flame bait. In which case I fell right into it by explaining the obvious down sides of flex.

So the positives: *Things move around and look pretty.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a client using Flex right now. They're having a desperately hard time finding anyone adequately qualified to perform the work, so availability of hackers is an important consideration.

Also, everything else people have said. It uses a plugin, which slows things down and appears non-native. It's proprietary; if one day Adobe says "Flash Player is universal, let's start charging for it, and jack the IDE cost up 50%. We don't care if everyone moves off of it because we'll make a lot more money off of the relatively short-lived mass influx of license money", or "Let's just not release the new version or ensure compatibility on (Windows 7/OS X 10.6/Linux/Solaris/any other platform important to your userbase) [yet]", or "Let's break compatibility in Flash Player 11 and make a really difficult downgrade path", you and your users are kind of screwed, and so on.

<comment><USER7> It is pretty sound to be sceptical of any open-source offering from a company like Adobe. I'd much rather spend time learning some skills in an open source project where the full stack is open-sourced future proof.

I'm sort of wary learning to code iPhone programs as well -- it seems cool, and there's lots of interesting ideas there -- but do I really want my hard- earned development skills to be dependent on the whims of Steve Jobs?

<comment><USER14> Hearing this, I thought I'd jump in. The stack is open-sourced. The Flex SDK and BlazeDS (if I remember correctly) are both open-sourced, as well as the AMF specifications. There is absolutely no reason why you could not write AS3 code and MXML against the Flex libraries and build your own Flex application without Flex Builder (the IDE, which costs a paltry $199-$299 last time I checked).

I've done it, and it does work. Is it a pain? Of course it is. Do you get the Adobe built data components you get with the advanced and charting editions? Nope. Can you build them yourself? Of course, and there's a bunch of open source controls & components you can download too.

You really have to be careful whilst criticizing a company who essentially gave away their protocol and build tools. They could just as easily have marked that IDE and tookit up to $1,000 and we'd still buy it.

<comment><USER7> The stack is not open source -- the player is a blob.

One of my co-founders like flex and have programmed some admins in flex, in xml. Myself I don't care much for flash. I've dome some actionscript programming and presentation development but I only do it if I really have to. I much prefer to work with HTML/Javascript. My co-founder would like us to work with flex instead of rails which he dislikes. I have no love for programming in XML, so the middle ground is that we have coded up some small web frameworks in java with seaside-style html generation. It works fairly well.

<comment><USER14> I'll agree, Flash Player is not OSS (though projects to emulate this do exist), and it can be a royal pain but...

You can definitely use Rails with Flex. Flex is not a server side language or framework. It can interface with all of them really well through web services. Heck, I'm pretty sure Flex can even inject and call JavaScript functions on your pages. Rails can render things to XML amazingly well, and you can still build an HTML response as well while maintaining the functionality of the Flex application.

Your co-founder is comparing apples to oranges, but whatever works for you all is great. Just don't let the tools limit you.

<comment><USER7> I like flash/flex when it's used as part of a site, to display video, a game, or some presentation. There are too many benefits from using standard HTML as to not use it for the main plumbing of a site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What put me off was that mxlmc was really slow (10-seconds-to-compile-a-hello- world kind of slow). Also, I find that debugging HTML/CSS/JS stack is really easy with Firebug et al, whereas debugging swf's isn't quite a walk in the park.

With that being said, every development environment will have its warts. If you're sick of HTML/CSS/JS, nothing is stopping you from using whatever you want. Look at the QuakeLive guys, for example.

<comment><USER16> Don't invoke mxmlc every time -- that has to start up Java, and that's what's slow. There's a compile "shell" named fcsh that comes with the Flex toolkit that starts up a JVM once and lets you recompile without having to relload all the libraries.

<comment><USER17> Fcsh is indeed a lot faster than mxmlc. I've written a small shell script that stands in for fcsh and provides an interface like the standard mxml compiler (mxmlc) so that you can just call it (like you would call mxmlc) and have it return an exit status instead of dropping you into an interactive shell like fcsh does. It's called fcshctl:

<http://hasseg.org/blog/?p=194>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The "cross-browser" compatibility is greatly exaggerated by adobe and "widget" programmers who don't have to do heavy application programming. I have been working with a large team for two years on a website with heavy flex integration and we have had far more browser incompatibility problems with the Flex than the HTML/Javascript portions. Rendering is very consistent across browsers but the network stack is largely handed off to the browser which introduces all kinds of problems. Also, things like transparency and background mode can massively degrade in the wrong browser/OS pair which means testing all of your supported platforms for performance and turning off features accordingly. The network stack is very hard to get right on all browsers. Big surprises like Internet Explorer can't parse an XML file over HTTPS if caching is disabled for the resource. Thats right. Now considering that virtually all XML API calls out there disable caching, this is really annoying. So basically we had to detect when a Flex client was calling our services and remove the no-caching headers. And of course, since you don't want to cache you have to add in a nonce on the url or it will never be called again. Also, Flex can't by default handle anything other than HTTP 200 so better recode all of you server processes to basically be Flex specific, returning Flex friendly HTTP codes and headers. The Flex network stack is simply pathetic. Our QA team tests the Flex application on all supported browsers. They do not even bother anymore with the HTML portion because errors have become so comparatively rare.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do you use jQuery for your ajax? That should resolve many of the cross-browser issues.

<comment><USER20> There's nothing unique about jQuery in that regard. GWT would solve the same issue.

<comment><USER6> jQuery is unique in that he wouldn't have to change backends to use it. Similar to Prototype/scriptaculous or Mootools. GWT requires a Java backend - it's a non-trivial effort to move to.

<comment><USER21> Check out [http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web- Toolkit/browse_thr...](http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web- Toolkit/browse_thread/thread/3e518bfd7ea88de1) for people using client-side GWT with PHP, Python, .NET. There no absolute need for Java on the backend with GWT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why not HTML/CSS/JS?

You can use it for web, widgets, iPhone/Android Apps. It's free, has a low barrier to entry, is easy to update, and has extensive documentation, both free and commercial.

I'm not saying that Flex doesn't have it merits, but as a long time web/flash developer, I'm finding myself using Flash/Flex type stuff less and less (Thank You, JQuery!)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's the texture. HTML/JS/CSS feels like paper. Flex/flash feel like plastic.

Shoptalk looks great btw. You'll probably want to allow multi-selecting users - dragging them one by one can get tedious.

</comment><comment><USER24> BTW: V. classy operation at SmallTalkApp... wish I could have entered a suggestion via your "Feedback" button... without going through Bloomplex's "question handling". Makes it feel way less like I'm actually connected with developers of STA... taken away to "getsatisfaction.com ...

As for the original topic, I feel your pain over losing a chunk of life "to fix cross browser HTML/CSS/JavaScript issues". But I appreciate your raising the flex issue; the ensuing discussion has convinced this noob that he neeeds to study up on and experiment with it.

</comment><comment><USER25> First off, flex is not flash. Do not confuse the two. Flex is the fast, just works, flash is the pretty.

Secondly, the reason webby people don't like it is that they can't scrape it, tie it in seamlessly, etc. The reason it may be a good idea for your business is that it is 1000x easier to whip out a consistent, good flex website then the equivalent in cross browser complaint javascript/jquery/whatever

<comment><USER26> Flex is absolutely Flash. It is simply a library/toolkit for Flash development.

<comment><USER25> ORLY? Then tell that to my current flash only performing client how you easily add the flex libraries to his project.

Oh wait, you can't.

Seriously, they're not the same thing. Flex is a toolkit _that compiles to swf_ but its not flash.

<comment><USER27> Definition troubles. Flex generates content for the Flash Player. The Flash authoring tool generates content for the Flash Player. So do you define "Flash" as "output runs on the Flash Player" or as "created using the Flash authoring tool?"

<comment><USER28> output that runs on the flash player. that's all the users care about.

<comment><USER25> That's not flash. That's swf files.

Flash, as something you hire developers for, is an authoring environment. As of CS3, it is not very compatable with Flex.

CS4 actually as adobe tying them together a lot better, but I've yet to put enough time in on CS4 projects to know one way or the other how well they have.

While _you_ may think of flash as "that which runs on a flash player", a vast majority of people developing software in this arena think of it as "that which is written with the component of Adobe Creative Suite 3/4 called Flash Builder"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well first, you're writing a chat app.

In this case Flex might be the right solution for you. Heavy back and forth, it dosn't really need to be indexed by browsers.

You likely want some sort of combo with Flex and HTML.

The border issue is kind of a non-starter and not really relevant for a broader discussion (BTW I just use the new CSS rules and let new browsers have rounded edges and the rest get squared - easy enough)

</comment><comment><USER30> Are there any screen readers that support Flex content?

(that's not rhetorical; if anyone knows of one, I'd like to know)

<comment><USER31> Yes, Flash Player has sent text to the big two (JAWS and WindowEyez) since 2002 or so, and is also supporting an opensource screenreader effort: [http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2009/08/adobe_supports_...](http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2009/08/adobe_supports_open- source_nvda.html)

(I think Apple may have finally added an API which browser plugins can access for their text-to-speech, but I'm not sure how many people have moved over there yet.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> this comment is loading....... loading.......

</comment><comment><USER33> I think you've answered your own question. Flex sounds like a good fit for your project.

</comment><comment><USER18> The number one request in our user feedback forums is to get rid of Flex/Flash.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is anybody using Flex for embedded systems? Any thoughts on that?

<comment><USER6> While not a traditional embedded system, I built a HTML/CSS/JS/Flex app that lives on a touch screen kiosk inside a museum.

<comment><USER34> Did you encounter any problems while using Flex? Was it stable? Did it need to be restarted often, etc.?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I know it's not practical at the moment due to lack of deployment, but how does flex compare and contrast with silverlight/moonlight?

</comment><comment><USER36> wow this community is friendly. i'll keep my opinions to myself from now on. peace.

<comment><USER6> Constructive comments and criticism, please. You are welcome to have and share opinions, but please back them up with reasoning.

<comment><USER36> So the rationale is, if an opinion isn't thoroughly explained, it's better that nobody hear it, regardless of whether or not the opinion is valid or makes sense?

<comment><USER6> Abrasive words require support to back them up. Otherwise you're just calling names.

<comment><USER36> "polishing a turd" is an expression. [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=turd+polishin...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=turd+polishing)

also, why is there no reply link under your comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> in my humble opinion, flex is like polishing a turd. premature optimization.</comment>


Show HN: Shade – Color contrast checker for Mac with WCAG 2.0 recommendations - <AUTHOR> http://halogensoftworks.com/shade/ <comment><USER2> Cool! I authored a web based accessibility tool called Graybit some years ago. It allowed you to enter a web address and browse the web through its proxy, which converted all CSS, html and images to their grayscale equivalents. The idea was to simulate complete color blindness to raise awareness and encourage higher contrast and things like using underlines for hyperlinks.

<comment><AUTHOR> GrayBit looks awesome!</comment></comment>


AllTheWeb closed by Yahoo early April, no-one notices (1999-2011) RIP - <AUTHOR> http://alltheweb.com <comment><USER2> A few years ago I emailed Hotbot (owned by Lycos, owned by someone or other) about buying the domain, just out of curiosity of what they would want for it. They never responded. I'm not sure if it's because 1) they don't want to sell, 2) I'm a nobody who couldn't possibly afford it or 3) the page is so outdated the email address I tried is dead.

There are many of these old web properties that are long since dead, but could still be of some value to a startup. It's too bad they were all purchased by companies who don't see that value.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yahoo! Where good things go to die!

</comment><comment><USER4> Yahoo made it pointless when it removed FTP search, which was basically the point of that site when it started.

<comment><USER5> What is FTP Search?

<comment><USER4> Back in the day, anonymous FTP were a sizable part of the web (especially for good quality source code and scientific data/papers/comment). Some of them stored full backups of the lion's share of USEnet (and still do to this day).

FTPsearch filled a large void, and was blazingly fast compared to other search engines. In these days you waited for 15-20 seconds before the likes of Yahoo, Lycos and Altavista started showing results. Without tabbed browsing, to boot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the "youngsters" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlltheWeb>

<comment><USER6> I had all but forgotten that AlltheWeb (and by extension Fast) had its origins at my university. It's unfortunate that it was not more successful. Norway needs more innovative web technology companies; when Fast will completely cease to exist in a few years (it was acquired by Microsoft 3 or so years ago), Opera will be the only notable web technology company remaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At least Altavista is still going strong.

<comment><USER8> About once a year I go to AltaVista.com and Lycos.com to see if they still exist. I wonder sometimes if people go to work everyday at these companies, or if they're just a server somewhere now.

<comment><USER9> Not only do people still work at these companies but you could be one of them: <http://info.lycos.com/jobs.php>

<comment><USER10> In the "SEO Analyst" requirements:

> Understanding of link building and content syndication are required > > Bachelors degree in a related field

Did universities start selling SEO(-related) degrees already?

<comment><USER11> Related is probably marketing, business, or something CS-y.

<comment><USER10> I was mostly joking, since their formatting made it look like those two were the same bullet point.

My question still stands though, has anyone heard of a SEO degree, or some kind of online marketing degree (maybe with a SEO class on the curriculum)?

<comment><USER12> This one is endorsed by seomoz: <http://www.marketmotive.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Alltheweb, the internets fine source of pornvideos. Once upon a time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Rest in peace ftpsearch.ntnu.no, you were the best way to find all the fresh warez pubs in the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think Google ultra domination of search have been a minus for search innovation, most of new search service are forced to die in their infancy, no time to put on a fight. Real competition for Google will profit the Internet and us users.

<comment><USER16> DuckDuckGo has done some good in improve the visibility of the non-search issues related to search. I especially like the focus on privacy as well as the !bang syntax (Try !django us phone field). Plus a simple add-on is all it takes to change your default search provider.

I think innovation on "search" itself has matured enough where you aren't going to see a radical improvement in results. Google become the market leader thanks to crushing competition on quality of results, but that was a decade ago. At this point there isn't enough room to differentiate in the field on results alone, but I don't think that is a symptom of Google's dominance.

Take a look at Bing's flight results. Useful in that I care about prices and dates, not which site I buy a ticket through. Almost Wolfram Alpha style applets inferred from the search terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> AskJeeves and Dogpile are still going strong. I could have sworn Dogpile didn't look so spammy before..

<comment><USER18> We're just Ask.com now and are the 40th ranked site on the Internet according to April Alexa estimates.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, just reminiscing about the past. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


AVM vs Cybits: Router vendor claims customers can't modify GPLed Linux code - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/465070/43fec23ce5f4527b/

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this story quite disturbing: not only does AVM claim that customers cannot install additional software on the routers that _they purchased_ , but they explicitly claim that those customers do not have the right to modify GPLed software on those routers either, despite taking advantage of those rights themselves.

Quoting the article: "Jaeger said that he asked AVM if it really meant to make that claim against the GPL software, and AVM affirmed that."</comment>


The Science on Women and Science [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/-the-science-on-women-and-science_160107817595.pdf <comment><USER2> These days, reading this fragment:

 _We have reviewed overwhelming evidence that genetic and hormonal differences between males and females are major causes of sex differences in behavior. These include differences in social behaviors in infants, play behaviors, interests, activities, educational and vocational goals, choices of occupations, patterns of cognitive abilities, and the frequency of extreme giftedness in spatial, mechanical, and mathematical ability. The dominance of female doctoral students in the life and human sciences and of male doctoral students in the inorganic sciences and engineering is consistent with and predictable by sex differences in interests and ability patterns. The greater social interest and ability of females than males is evident in infancy. The differing play activities and interests of boys and girls share similarities with sex differences in the play behaviors of nonhuman primates. Interests, activities, values, and vocational goals that differentiate girls from boys and women from men are strongly affected by the level of fetal androgen exposure or tissue sensitivity to androgen._

...feels like reading forbidden material.

</comment><comment><USER2> In the context of the recent Google affair, this paragraph struck me in particular:

 _Unconscious Bias against Women? There are serious ethical issues in accusing people of unconscious bias, which, on the one hand, assumes guilt unless innocence is proved, and, on the other hand, denies the possibility of such proof.195 A frequently cited paper that purportedly establishes biases against women in the awarding of graduate fellowships by the Swedish Research Council employs illegitimate statistical procedures and fails to establish what it claims (see appendix).196 Moreover, a study of fellowship awards in 1998 by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) found no evidence of systematic bias against women.197_</comment>


Austria: The up-and-coming early-stage investment capital of europe - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/08/austria-the-upcoming-early-stage-investment-capital-of-europe/ <comment><USER2> Traditionally Austria has many problems with founding of startups. In particular the culture does not embrace failure, the social security net is ridiculously tight and rewards people who do not work a bit too much, the taxes are high and the rules and regulations are strict. None of that is new however.

What is new is that for the first time in a long time this has been acknowledged as a problem and it would appear that the ones in charge are genuine about wanting to change this.

Taxation wise I think it would be nice to improve things a bit but if you do the math a fully insured person in California will have to deliver a similar percentage of their income to the state so I think this is mostly a marketing problem than an actual issue.

We will see how this goes. In the last few years many of my friends and collegues when to the states and I really wish that some of that talent will eventually come back. There is a lot that is wrong in Austria but the quality of living is great and at one point in life this matters a lot.

<comment><USER3> Here's one of Austria's most famous exports.

Arnold's 6 Rules for Success: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQO_OoNASU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQO_OoNASU)

Surely it can't have been too bad for him!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apart from missing venture capital, the biggest hurdle for a flurishing startup ecosystem is of a cultural nature. Failure is still somewhat of a taboo in Austria. Risk aversity is taught from an early age on in most households.

That being said, things are starting to move a little. Small hubs develop around universities in Vienna/Graz/Linz, with regular meetups for networking. Much of it is in its infancy, and attending those events sometimes feels like being in a badly acted version of Silicon Valley. But it's still better than not having them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I live in Austria, founded (and sold) a company years ago and have invested in 2 startups (6 figure each) - and I believe this is a misleading PR article. Austria has lackluster, under-funded universities, unattractive tax rules for companies and higher-paid employees and the country is dropping in most competitiveness, growth rankings that matter for startups. Infrastructure is good, but hiring good developers e.g. is very difficult because salaries are both low and burdened with high taxation, so they look elsewhere.

Personally, I wouldn't found another company in Austria. There are many better places in the EU, Ireland is probably the best option right now.

<comment><USER2> > Austria has lackluster, under-funded universities, unattractive tax rules > for companies and higher-paid employees and the country is dropping in most > competitiveness, growth rankings that matter for startups.

Correct. However I think the hope of many here is that it's going to change now.

<comment><USER6> Not with this traditional socialist/conservative government keeping everything it's always been.

And let's not hope the FPÖ takes over! They've fucked up good back when they had a chance. With their corruption and strong association with the industrial's association (Industriellenvereinigung), they are more interested in not helping start-ups than any other party.

<comment><USER2> In case you missed it things are already changing. It would be nice if Neos would get support but they will not largely because the population values stability and conservatism. Politics can't change that.

<comment><USER5> Nothing at all has changed. The new chancellor is just trying a new spin to attract younger voters again and part of it is positioning Austria somehow as an attractive country for startups (while at the same time discussing a "machine tax" to please marxist voters). I don't know if paid articles in various magazines are part of the campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You don't want to pay the ultra-high taxes and social security in Austria. While corporate taxes are ok, they went berserk with personal income.

<comment><USER7> If you make a decent salary, expect a hard 50% to go to the state. No reduction for marriage or children.

<comment><USER8> The 50% tax rate is a marginal tax rate. If you would earn e.g. 100.000 EUR per year, you would pay about 39% (tax plus social security). 200.000 EUR per year -> 42% (tax plus social security) totally. This calculation was done for an employee, not for the employer.

Also, there are things like child support, tax credit and allowances as well as social security benefits. In the best case, you will not need to pay for health insurance for your children till the age of about 24 and so on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Vienna! ha ha ha. You better have some VC if you want to afford that kaffe. I was there for a few days earlier this year & felt like I was getting fleeced at every turn.

What is the point? About 30 minutes drive you come to Bratislava. They have the Euro, they have the more affordable everything.. including old slavic roots who kick some serious butt at everything programming & math related.

Nice parks though.

<comment><USER10> Was it just garden-variety tourist fleecing, or did you head outside the city centre? Vienna's definitely pricier than Bratislava and Brno, but I've never found it to be outrageous. Also since both of those cities are so close I don't think it's out of the question to be based in either and seek funding/investment in Vienna is it?

<comment><USER9> It was just inside the center. A few others said this to me.

I've travelled to Morocco and felt insulted at being constantly ripped off because I was a tourist. Well, now I know it doesn't happen just in Morocco.

<comment><USER10> Ok I think we are talking about different things. I'm just saying that in a western city popular with tourists (think Paris, NY, London, Dublin) things like accommodation, drinks and food will be pricier. Sounds like you're meaning something different, which I haven't experienced

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So it's Austria this week? I thought it was Norway last week.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't remember who said it, but I remember someone saying there was one question you should ask yourself when reading any news story... Why am I reading about this now? In other words, for what purposes is this story being shared right now?

I'm not suggesting there's a conspiracy behind every story, and there are often benign explanations that can coexist with dramatic ones. What I am suggesting is that question is a vital one for seeing through media spin, regardless of whether it's intentional or unintentional.

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be hard to attract talent in Austria. Brno is real startup hub in that region.

<comment><USER14> Brno? Startup hub? A city where no one speaks English and foreigners are treated bad by locals can not be compared to a multi-cultural city as Vienna.

I studied in Brno and I have friends working at AT&T and IBM. They even have a ruby group meetup.. But a startup hub??? No.

<comment><USER10> It's certainly not a startup hub yet, but you're absolutely wrong about nobody speaking english and foreigners being treated badly by locals. I don't know what problems you had when you were here, but I'd be willing to bet that either you were extremely unlucky and had a couple of really bad experiences (can happen _anywhere_ ) or you're overreacting.

<comment><USER14> hm, no. Most foreigners I know (and I knew a lot as I happened to organize events among other things) have the exact same view.

<comment><USER10> Agree to disagree. But what you describe is absolutely not what me (foreigner) and my foreign friends and colleagues have experienced.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet Yields Uneven Dividends and May Widen Inequality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/world/asia/internet-yields-uneven-dividends-and-may-widen-inequality-report-says.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0 <comment><USER2> posted just over an hour ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10899757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10899757)</comment>


New executive order allows federal agencies to bypass environmental laws - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/05/trump-executive-order-environmental-laws-covid-19-economy/ <comment><USER2> At the same time, you have to admit that these environmental reviews were weaponized by people such as NIMBY's to prevent infrastructure being built by tying up projects in years of environmental reviews. In the last several decades, the US forgot how to do infrastructure. I doubt we could get the NYC subway ever built now, for example.

Something needed to be done. This is heavy handed now, but maybe we can achieve a better balance in the future.

<comment><USER3> Is your statement that you don't think the country could technological complete the NYC subway (barring any bureaucracy challenges)?

<comment><USER2> I think the bureaucracy challenges including the various environmental challenges would blow up the time and cost so much that it would be infeasible. There is also the issue that we have not done such a big infrastructure project in a long time, so there would be a learning curve again.

<comment><USER3> It's an interesting claim but not really factual or able to be proven/disproven unless we were to complete the project ourselves :).

My own opinion is we could (in this situation let's just pretend to bureaucracy) build the entirety of the NYC subway.

My main reasoning is a) we have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to build underground [1] and b) we have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to build trains [2].

Now a subway is probably harder because you need to combine the two things and there are probably complications to figure out how to build under a city, but I don't know any further knowledge on the topic.

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

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High- Speed_Rail](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hyperbole, and sensationalist title: Executive orders cannot be enacted so easily, it can be disputed in congress and lawsuits can and will be brought forth to contest them.

But this isn't new, the Keystone XL debacle pipeline was essentially the same thing that marked a new norm. Propping up these dead industries, mines and pipelines, with typical plutocratic nepotism has to be the most prevalent thing in Washington. And while this speaks to me directly as an environmentalist, I can't help but think of all the BS bailout bankster/corporate welfare we've seen decade after decade despite whatever administration is in office, which is what essentially enables these corporations to lobby the Government to do this in the first place.

<comment><USER5> This is a systematic dismantling of environmental protection that has been ongoing for years.

Here is a list of 100 environmental protections that are being rolled back, 66 of which are already complete.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump- envir...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment- rollbacks.html)

<comment><USER4> > Here is a list of 100 environmental protections that are being rolled back, > 66 of which are already complete.

That's horrible news, I just don't think attributing it to a single administration does anything but distract from the real concern. Hating Trump is not just sensible given his myopic and senseless presidency, its become entirely blase and often just an knee-jerk reaction to the REAL CATASTROPHE Megacorps have inflicted on the Earth, unabated by any administration. I remember when water sources near fracking sites under Obama were catching on fire:

[https://reason.com/2013/07/05/the-top-5-lies-about- fracking/](https://reason.com/2013/07/05/the-top-5-lies-about-fracking/)

No to mention all the water tables being depleted in Central California, which not just feeds the majority of the US, but also a lot of the rest of the World with food exports.

I think what needs to be implemented is what was proposed with Ecocide legislation and Law and to have it be enforced with the full arsenal of not just lawyers (as most Megacorps can skirt around this and pay a settlement and continue with business as usual) but actually make them lose business licenses and have their Insurances rates balloon 1000X for every infraction and eventually taking their Market Share:

[https://ecocidelaw.com/](https://ecocidelaw.com/)

People who argue against this as some anti0business apologist need only see the devastation one single pandemic has caused to the World's economy; thank god we're not at Water War levels that have been spoken about since I did my Undergrad in Biology in the late 2000s.

We have them in earnest in Colorado, and have had it in California since I was born in the mid 80s so I know what its like nearly all of my Life. But if the whole World had this going on simultaneously because we polluted all of the potable water I'm convinced we'd be looking at outright genocides of entire continents by Warlords and the re-introduction of slavery to build and run make-shift desalination plants.

And I honestly don't think that's hyperbole, slavery returned to Libya after the fall of Gadaffi and Libya was the richest nation in Africa and often referred to the Switzerland of Africa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Different article about the same event: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23422469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23422469)</comment>


America's Largest Health Insurer Is Giving Apartments to Homeless People - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-11-05/unitedhealth-s-myconnections-houses-the-homeless-through-medicaid <comment><USER2> Wait why are so many people shitting on this idea. This seems to me to be exactly what people are always comparing about, "big companies only care about the bottom line they don't care at all about suffering." Right here there is a private company trying to help ease the homeless problem and everyone is just shitting on them for not doing the way they think they should or are getting angry at them for making a profit on it.

If we constantly dump on every person and company who makes any attempt to help address a social problem simply because it doesn't solve the whole problem or because they don't do it in the way we want or think is effecient, people are going to stop trying to do anything.

Sure maybe this program didn't solve homelessness in Phoenix and maybe it didn't help significantly reduce the percentage of people that are homeless but you know whose life it did significantly help? Steve and every other person who got a home, so sure maybe this didn't change homelessness in America radically but it did radically change homelessness for those people.

<comment><USER3> I think this is a positive development, but to me it highlights how sad it is that so much of America sees investment in its own people as "wasteful spending."

Protecting the most vulnerable people and ensuring people don't fall into the trap of poverty is an _investment_ that should occur at the governmental level. There are many such governmental investments that would alleviate serious long-term problems.

My biggest frustration with the American government and American business- oriented culture in general is a lack of long-term thinking. We know that "a stitch in time saves nine," but instead we decide to go the nine stitches route. Put more nerdily, people do not properly respect the implications of exponential growth.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit"

\-- Greek proverb

<comment><USER4> America makes more sense when you consider that Civil Society (as in the third sector) is mostly dead, and what is left is extremely fragmented. There is no cohesion, very little shared culture, and a lot of outright animosity between groups. They aren't countrymen, they just happen to live in the same legal boundaries.

When people in this mindset see homeless they don't think "This is a member of my society that is suffering", they see an Other. Put another way, plenty of old men want to plant trees, they just only want their own group using the shade.

<comment><USER3> Racism. It's mostly driven by racism but we're not allowed to call it that.

<comment><USER5> Not allowed to call it that since when? It seems to me that we're allowed to call everything racism these days. E.g. Warren talking about "environmental racism, economic racism, criminal-justice racism, health-care racism."

I don't disagree with your point in a certain sense, but your framing is fluffy and unsatisfying. America is one of the least racist countries in the world. For example, 82% of French support banning Islamic head coverings, versus just 28% of Americans: [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2010/07/14/french-supp...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2010/07/14/french-support-for-ban-on-full-islamic-veil). I'm a Bangladeshi married to an Oregonian. (Not like Portland, like rural Oregon coast.) I've lived in red states, visited rural parts of the country, and currently live in a precinct that voted for Trump. The degree to which Americans are willing to accept you into their communities, given minimal attempts to conform, never ceases to amaze me. (And when I hear about how "profoundly racist" America is, I can't help but think sheepishly: "man, what would they say about Bangladesh?")

So how much explanatory power does leveling charges of racism really have? Clearly racism exists and is a bad thing and produces many problems. But racism is also a structural problem endemic to humans, not anything unique to Americans. How much can you really rely on racism alone to explain the level of division within American society?

<comment><USER6> A lot of divisions in America are driven by generations of policy based on racism - from redlining, white flight and zoning policies that changed the structure of cities and are now used as weapons against newcomers and change, to the very existence of many cities and governments that were created in order to be a separate white space from the larger cities nearby, and the use of these boundaries to avoid funding the basics of society for everyone (school districts, libraries, roads, etc).

The vast majority of Americans are not racist in the sense that they are personally antagonistic to an individual of another race. But many of them are racist in the sense that they think black people on average are poorer because they have shitty culture, not because white people historically prevented them from buying land, prevented them from being educated, prevented them from using opportunities like the GI bill, etc.

<comment><USER7> > A lot of divisions in America are driven by generations of policy based on > racism - from redlining, white flight and zoning policies that changed the > structure of cities and are now used as weapons against newcomers and > change, to the very existence of many cities and governments that were > created in order to be a separate white space from the larger cities nearby, > and the use of these boundaries to avoid funding the basics of society for > everyone (school districts, libraries, roads, etc)

I've got some bad news: when you solve racism, these problems will still exist. Because the elites will never want to live nearby poor people and zoning laws ensure they don't have to

<comment><USER8> If you "solve racism", then redlining and white flight still exist? I mean, that's true in the sense that even after the next generation stops being overtly racist, there will still be a systemic bias against black people by dint of their parents and grandparents having been confined to disinvested neighborhoods. Other than that, I don't see how your rebuttal makes sense.

<comment><USER9> > If you "solve racism", then redlining and white flight still exist?

I think he means that it will be replaced by something else and the _end results_ will be the same. A lot of problems we attribute to racism will be there due to some other cause. Problems have multiple sources, and solving one will not solve the problem. A common debate in society is precisely about how much of a given problem is due to racism. Some people assume it's very high, and others say it is just one amongst many.

<comment><USER8> Right, but the comment above addressed that directly, and was met with a dismissive response. In fact: the roughest neighborhoods in cities like Chicago are a direct result of racism. It's not controversial or even disputable: you can look at a crime map, superimpose the redline boundaries, and see the correspondence immediately.

Is _everything_ a result of racism? I have no idea. I kind of doubt it. But the comment above gave specific examples of things that impact us to this day that are clearly based on racism, and that won't be solved simply by a generational shift in attitudes (which has largely already occurred in the US).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This whole situation is just really messed up. What's happening with this company is great, but we should not be in a position as a society where a homeless person can't get housing until living on the street has made them so sick that it's profitable for an insurance company to buy them an apartment. This particular solution is definitely a positive thing, it's just a small bandage over a massive wound.

<comment><USER11> The end stage of neoliberal technocracy is this kind of Rube Goldberg management of suffering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Homelessness is not going to be fixed till it is addressed at the federal level.

There are difficulties: there are different homeless population types characterized by Mental health, substance abuse, cost of living, unemployment, etc.

Also because of a reaction to heavy handed policies of the past, it's difficult to institutionalize those who need mental health intervention.

That said we could at least tackle the easier population whose issue is an economic one.

<comment><USER13> Can we declare a "war" on homelessness and redirect some military spending? Maybe instead of another fighter jets, nuclear aircraft carrier, or nuclear missiles, we can help our citizens instead.

I would be a lot happier paying taxes if the spending ratios were reversed.

<comment><USER14> Why do you think it's a money thing? Major cities already spend a lot of money on homelessness, and the richest cities are often struggling the most. It's not obvious to me that they'll succeed if they just get a bit more funding.

<comment><USER15> That's because a large portion of homeless people have drug addiction and/or have mental disease. Just giving them a place to stay doesn't cure the root problem.

<comment><USER16> Homeless people, like everybody else, usually have many problems. You can fix their problem of not having a home by giving them a home. Once somebody has an address and a little more stability, your chances of dealing with other issues goes up.

<comment><USER17> Yeah the issue is that housing them together puts the woman down on her luck next to the guy with a violent drug addiction and then you have to kick him out when he starts attacking people.

<comment><USER16> So don't house them together.

<comment><USER17> Oh? Which demographic is deserving of living with violence?

<comment><USER16> None, of course.

You aren't suggesting that providing housing to the homeless will lead to more violence than when the homeless live on the streets, are you?

<comment><USER17> No, I'm suggesting that we bear less responsibility for violence experienced by homeless on the streets than the responsibility we would had if we provided housing and forced the homeless to live in them. In the same way the government is not responsible for discord in my relationship with my friends, but would be responsible for discord between me and the police.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nitpick: Title should read "America's Largest Private Health Insurer." America's largest health insurer is the government, via Medicare, Medicaid, and similar programs.

I'm interested in seeing how this corporate-funded/corporate-managed program compares to the many housing assistance programs that are funded by public funds or private donations.

I'm sure there are plenty of businesses out there that already help fund such programs indirectly by donating to charities that run affordable-housing programs.

But it will be interesting to see what happens when the businesses are running the programs directly, cutting out the nonprofits as a middleman.

My somewhat pessimistic take is that any efficiencies that might be gained by applying more rigorous business methods will be offset by lack of domain knowledge and for-profit perspective -- seeing a homeless person as a problem to be solved rather than a person to be served.

That said, I'm all for large corporations trying their best to address homelessness and housing insecurity, even if they do so imperfectly.

<comment><USER19> To nitpick your nitpick - this "private" insurer is actually a government contractor, administering Medicaid for individual states.

> The research and development lab for this experiment is a pair of apartment > complexes in a down-at-the-heels corner of Phoenix called Maryvale. Here, > Brenner is using UnitedHealth's money to pay for housing and support > services for roughly 60 formerly homeless recipients of Medicaid, the > safety-net insurance program for low-income people. Most states outsource > their Medicaid programs to private companies such as UnitedHealth, paying > the insurer a per-head monthly fee—typically $500 to $1,000—to manage > members' care. The company's 6 million Medicaid members produced $43 billion > in 2018, almost 20% of total revenue.

...

> To keep down costs and avoid the difficulty of running a health-care system, > most states contract with UnitedHealth and its competitors to establish what > are called Medicaid managed-care programs. In 2017, $264 billion, almost 50¢ > of every Medicaid dollar, went toward care for the 54 million people on > private Medicaid plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > This is just sad. This is just stupid," Brenner says. "Why do we let this go > on?"

Because this is practically textbook definition of a perverse incentive.

What about healthy homeless people? Do they get homes? We are encouraging people to be sick and to a abuse the ER. And what about all of the working poor who are doing the right thing, but still have to pay half of their income in rent?

The reason we don't provide homes is you can never just provide homes to the ones who'would have abused the ER' but instead have to provide them to all homeless.

Also, as sad as it is to admit, there is a portion of homeless who you could literally buy a house for, and they will still end up homeless.

I hope I am wrong and this program works out.

<comment><USER21> On the contrary, a lot of homeless people's primary impediment is the fact that they don't have their own living space. There's a lot of evidence that "housing first" is an effective way of combatting homelessness [1].

More broadly, unless a system is truly overwhelmed by bad actors, I'm inclined to not worry about them at all. Is it really that important that we _only_ help anyone who "truly" need it — and burn the whole system down to that end?

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

<comment><USER22> > More broadly, unless a system is truly overwhelmed by bad actors, I'm > inclined to not worry about them at all.

It's more expensive to means test many of these programmes than to just hand the money/benefits out.

But it's a common human bias that cheating must be prevented, even when it doesn't make sense in the aggregate.

It's a cognitive limitation we have to get beyond.

This is why americans don't have universal healthcare, because they are obsessed with making sure that no one gets care who doesn't 'deserve' it as much as they do, even though it would actually benefit them in the aggregate if everyone in society was cared for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the sort of thing Tim Faust talks about in the concept of health justice. If we move people into a single payer system that takes care of them long term, it will suddenly be obvious that we need to do more stuff like this as it's more expensive and stupid not to.

</comment><comment><USER24> _" In 1986, Congress enacted a law to bar hospitals from turning away patients who are unable to pay. Any hospital with an emergency room that participates in federal health programs must evaluate and stabilize every patient who comes through the door, including those who are uninsured, indigent, addicted to drugs, or mentally ill."_

That's part of what pushed the price of health care up - huge numbers of people going to fully equipped emergency rooms for problems that could be handled by a GP or a nurse-practitioner. It's free health care for all, done all wrong.

</comment><comment><USER25> I want all the insurance companies to get together and go a calculation and see if banding together and opening a nationwide series of no questions asked homeless shelters with meals would bring down their costs at all. They could each contribute an amount that was proportional to their market share or something similar. Off the top of my head I want to say it wouldn't be worth it, but if this article is accurate, and the costs for insurance companies are actually going down, then who knows.

<comment><USER26> Conversely, if this helps one portion of the economy that greatly then it will surely benefit the entire economy even more - or at least equally.

Precisely why I would say this should be a governmental system of bare essentials living and housing. Every dollar spent on people with nothing will be spent by those people and increase aggregate demand, economically, and health, at a societal level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Dr.: "Hello, Mr. Smith, here's your Rx: one home."

If that's the reframe it takes, more power to ya.

It's uneconomical to let the homeless remain homeless. Such a blindingly simple fact.

</comment><comment><USER28> Im going to go against the grain here but I think it might be good to be able to get good data on homeless populations. Much data now is not accurate. At the very least this will provide key data points that could help resolve and better serve these populations

<comment><USER29> One major issue with counting the number of people who are homeless is that most of them are not on the street, but are instead relying on friends and family for shelter. The people who live on the street are the spear tip of a much larger and broader group of people who are facing various degrees of crisis in finding housing. It is difficult to come up with a method that captures data about all the people who, for example, were evicted and spent several months living on couches and in their car.

<comment><USER17> Right, this is because the homelessness industry needs to justify its existence with ever inflated numbers. Someone down on their luck and staying with parents or siblings is not homeless and does not need intervention for shelter. In general, we should encourage extended family living as its economically easy and socially good. These 'homeless' need economic help, not shelter, and its likely that, due to their proximity to family or friends, this help can be provided in large part by the private sector as long as government policy encouraged the creation of jobs. Really, when civilians say homeless they mean what researchers call unsheltered, the subset of homeless living on the street. This group has much higher needs, typically around mental health and drugs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I could have guessed it was UnitedHealthcare before I clicked the link. Maybe instead of buying apartments they could spend a little money on their billing system, which has literally fucked up every single medical expense I've ever had.

</comment><comment><USER31> How long before getting one of these requires accepting smart home monitoring of things like your medication compliance?

"Our cameras caught you smoking, we're revoking your housing and your health insurance for lying about being a non-smoker."

<comment><USER32> Quite likely. People are very keen on this kind of thing for punitive reasons - being on the street will of course kill someone far quicker than smoking. "You have to give up smoking for the good of your health or we'll hasten your death" is the sort of thing Kafkaesque systems are built from.

<comment><USER26> Here's hoping that's not how it goes. But maybe blow back from that sort of homeless fleecing and privacy invasion would result in proper governmental homeless assistance. (But people currently have a high tolerance for privacy invasion so...)

<comment><USER32> There's definitely a faction demanding more cruelty to the homeless; they routinely have their property taken and destroyed as a sort of extra-legal punishment for being homeless in the "wrong" place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This actually makes a lot of sense. A large insurer is in a position to actually see the end-to-end costs and since they are regulated in such a way as to have to pay them, this turns out to be the best way to run their company.

</comment><comment><USER34> What a brilliant idea - focus on prevention and not just putting the fire out.

It makes far too much sense to ever gain popularity - and whoops, I just looked at the majority of comments in this thread and am not disappointed :(

</comment><comment><USER35> Smart idea, that actually saves them money.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Brenner shows me data on a patient named Steve, a 54-year-old with multiple > sclerosis, cerebral palsy, heart disease, and diabetes.

No patient confidentiality?

<comment><USER32> Names are usually changed in these circumstances.

<comment><USER36> When they change names, they usually write something like:

> Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy > of individuals.

The author did not write that. I don't see any evidence the patient consented to have his case published either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> UHC still made 12.68 billion net income in 2018.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=unitedhealth+net+income](https://www.google.com/search?q=unitedhealth+net+income)</comment>


How Postgres Makes Transactions Atomic (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://brandur.org/postgres-atomicity <comment><USER2> Submitter, or a moderator, please edit the title to re-add the word "How". That's done automatically, but sometimes it's wrong. It's especially so here.

Also, this remains as fantastic an article on PostgreSQL's MVCC nature as it was previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15027870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15027870)

<comment><USER3> I've noticed that too. In what cases is that useful? It seems unnecessary and actively harmful at times, like in this case.

<comment><USER4> It's a very common style of headlines recently, and a lot of the time you can remove the "How" without changing the meaning. For example, if I look down The Verge's recent posts, the first one starting with "How" is "How sampling and streaming are changing the future of music" [1]. Titling that "Sampling and streaming are changing the future of music" works fine.

I don't know that it's particularly _useful_ most of the time, it's usually just unnecessary. An example where it actually should have been removed that I remember was this article on The Guardian a while back: "Suburb in the sky: how Jakartans built an entire village on top of a mall" [2]. There's nothing in the article at all about how they built it. It's just a trendy headline style for some reason, and gets used even in cases where it doesn't apply, like that one.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870347/sampling- streami...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870347/sampling-streaming- despacito-charli-xcx-music-dani-deahl-future-of-music-vergecast)

[2]: [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/05/suburb-in- the...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/05/suburb-in-the-sky-how- jakartans-built-an-entire-village-on-top-of-a-mall)

<comment><USER5> Perhaps this cheapening of the word 'how' explains the prevalence of the academic literary tic 'the manner in which' in its place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the previous discussion, I discovered that the author used Monodraw to create the diagrams. I'm excited to check it out - [https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/)

<comment><USER7> Mac only?

<comment><USER8> If you want cross platform ascii diagram editor, then look at jave. It's old but still works.

[http://www.jave.de/](http://www.jave.de/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "How" at the beginning of the title is important: this is clickbait without it.

<comment><USER10> How is it clickbait rather than just a less than precise a description of the material?

<comment><USER11> As a headline, "Postgres Makes Transactions Atomic" would be read by many as being a new feature. Adding "How" removes that reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a minor typo, but in the first paragraph under the heading Defensive programming this sentence occurs:

> I won't go into subcommits in any detail, but it's worth nothing that > because TransactionIdCommitTree cannot be guaranteed to be atomic

From the context I think the word "nothing" should be "noting", as in, "It's worth noting".

<comment><USER13> Author accepts PRs via GitHub :) [https://github.com/brandur/sorg/blob/master/content/articles...](https://github.com/brandur/sorg/blob/master/content/articles/postgres- atomicity.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It might be a newbie question, but for my own culture, what is the impact of a given snapshot if the database is really big ?

I guess it all depends on what data we are touching, but let imagine I want to update all the rows for a table with 1 billions entries, wouldn't the snapshot be giantic ?

Or maybe I misunderstood what is a snapshot.

<comment><USER15> A snapshot is actually just a struct with a few transaction IDs (xids) and some other bookkeeping that describes which slice of the physically stored data is supposed to be visible to a transaction. The article shows the details of that. So the size of a snapshot is unrelated to the size of the database.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the information. I read the article but didn't understand it well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting coincidence that early yesterday I found this blog when searching for transaction patterns. I skimmed the transactions for idempotent apis (2017) and its part ii. Hadn't heard of it before but liked the diagrams

</comment><comment><USER17> Interested in how the author created the images; they have a beautiful, clear retro look.

<comment><USER18> AFAIK Brandur uses Monodraw [1]. It's so cool, I even purchased a license for myself, although the author of the app stopped its active development [2].

[1] [https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/)

[2] [https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance- mode/](https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance-mode/)</comment></comment>


Is there a need for an alternative e-commerce/web search and indexing service? - <AUTHOR>

I'm one of the engineers here at Lightcrest - I have a question for the Y Combinator community. We feel that the current search options for developers, publishers, and store-owners are limited and lacking features. Google eCommerce search is expensive ($25k+/yr) and Google web search is limited in scope, dumps ads, and doesn't provide nice features like typeahead. Google also doesn't provide aggressive indexing - even their new indexing service can take up to 24 hours to index new content. Other services like websolr and indextank have some nice options, but they don't let you go from 0-60 very quickly - you need to code up solutions using client libraries before you can get started, and there is no advanced crawling capabilities. E-commerce search solutions should let you rank and promote items on the fly. And you should have access to this kind of functionality for less than $25k/yr.<p>Would you use an initially free, eventually pay-as-you-go service that is substantially cheaper than Google's to address the aforementioned needs? <comment><USER2> Hey there, Nick from Websolr here.

Of course I'm a bit biased here, but where search is concerned, Solr is a really great option for you. Certainly I don't need to rehash all its features and benefits here, when you could just as easily figure that out with a bit of light research :)

It's a very fair point that getting started with Solr has a bit of a learning curve to it. With Websolr we (fizx and I) think we at least have taken the hosting and configuration side of that off the table. But there are still client libraries to learn, and schemas to configure. I think learning some of those basics is a great investment that will pay off, but the up front cost is certainly there.

A word about crawling: it's definitely doable with Solr. The advanced approach is to use Nutch[1] to fetch and feed content to Solr. The simpler way is to use wget. In fact, I've got a basic shell script[2] to show off the latter :)

I'm always game to talk about how Solr can see more general usage, particularly when it comes to lowering the cost of getting started. So feel free to keep the questions/feedback/brainstorming coming.

1\. <http://nutch.apache.org/>

2\. <https://gist.github.com/774946>

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to work at a comparison search engine that basically didn't have the resources to devote to searching. We kept pushing for more resources allocated to this, but we just didn't have the bandwidth and/or capable engineers that were really experts at information retrieval.

Another engineer and I attempted to get search working right, but the difficulty when it comes to search is overwhelming and just not an easy engineering feat. Advanced search integration for integral user experience features, such as understanding user intention, query disambiguation, search term boosting, information metadata, typeahead, etc were very difficult to get right, hard to really test, and required lots of knowledge about information retrieval -- which a domain that not many engineers are familiar with.

I think a service that provides an easy to use API and allows the ability for companies to easily and effortlessly address some of the concerns above is always in need.

</comment><comment><USER4> not sure. part of the benefit of the use of client libraries is that I can make sure private data stays private - 'crawlable' content is going to make me have to format it in such a way as to make sense to the crawler, and deal with making sure it's not accessible.

do you have a way around that? or am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> We were actually considering both an initial crawling mechanism so you can "just go", and a very simple REST API for adding, updating, and deleting existing documents in the index. So you would be able to have both a 0-60 approach for getting your already-public-facing content into a sub-second search index, and also the ability to granularly submit document batches.

As far as security is concerned, one assumption is that if your content is already crawlable, it's not private. That said, it would be trivial to implement a mechanism for keeping private data private - and even public data from being indexed (i.e. with a meta tag.)</comment></comment>


Want Your Service Integrated With TweetDeck? It'll Cost You A Cool $50,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/01/want-your-service-integrated-with-tweetdeck-itll-cost-you-a-cool-50000/ <comment><USER2> I take it there are no open source twitter desktop clients yet? Or ones that support 3rd party plugins?

<comment><USER3> There's plenty of open-source ones, Witty (<http://code.google.com/p/wittytwitter/>) for example, its just that TweetDeck is continously marketed as "the popular client".</comment></comment>


Inside the Saudi 9/11 Coverup - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/ <comment><USER2> Coverup? Entire blockbuster films were made about this which explicitly linked the two (The Kingdom). Don't mistake people either not caring or not understanding with a coverup.

Watch the opening title sequence for one of the best summaries of the linked events building to 9/11 and the Saudi response here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW71JuzHr5o](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW71JuzHr5o)

<comment><USER3> The existence of unofficially recognized evidence and conclusions does not preclude a coverup. The government is not releasing documents or recognizing facts, and people who are open to a more sinister truth are marginalized.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm kinda amazed that after 12 years, info is not only leaking out, but is still painting a picture of what damn near everyone thought in the first place...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened had Flight 93 reached it's presumed target, the Capitol Building [1]. I was young at the time, around 12 or 13, but I do remember quite vividly the atmosphere of fear that engulfed my country in the wake of the attacks. I cringe to think of how much worse it could have been had Congress been directly and successfully attacked. Our democracy was already in an extremely fragile condition. A plane hitting the Capitol Building on that day likely would have guaranteed it's immediate demise [2].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93)

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

<comment><USER5> Wasn't our democracy destroyed anyway? No more civil rights, eternal war, single party rule (the rich guys) etc?

<comment><USER6> At least 'the rich guys' give themselves super high tax rates.

Edit:

For those who won't read the whole comment thread, the US has one of the highest top income tax rates in the OECD, one of the highest (or _the_ highest?) corp tax rates in OECD, _and_ arguably the lowest tax burden on poor/middle class in OECD: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates)

<comment><USER7> That was sarcasm, yes? Just checking!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Effective_tax_rates,_US_hi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Effective_tax_rates,_US_high- income.png)

[edit] Also: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Effective_Corporate_Tax...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Effective_Corporate_Tax_Rate_1947-2011_v2.jpg) [/edit]

<comment><USER6> First chart cuts off in '09, before Obamas tax hikes. Also probably doesn't include state/local income tax burden (!!). US has one of harshest tax regimes for top earners, and amongst most progressive regimes in OECD (arguably THE most progressive).

Second chart is straight nonsense: counts unrepatriated money - capital stuck abroad whilst awaiting change in broken US corp tax policy - as taxed at zero percent!

Both are cute gimmicks and nothing more.

<comment><USER8> Please, before you start calling things 'cute gimmicks', provide a citation, especially for this claim: "US has one of the harshest tax regimes for top earners".

Because per multiple sources, including this one: [http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/01/news/economy/millionaire- tax...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/01/news/economy/millionaire-taxes/) \- it's demonstrably wrong, and not even close:

"France has the highest tax rate with a 75% rate on millionaires. In the U.S., the fight is over whether to extend the top rate to little more than half that amount."

"In Washington, of course, the fight is over whether to raise the top rate to a level just over half the amount they are arguing about in France -- to 39.6% from 35%. By contrast, numerous countries have top rates in the low to mid-50s, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Japan and Sweden. The world's highest rate is levied in sunny Aruba, where people making more than $171,000 face a top rate of 58.95%, according to figures compiled by KPMG."

As does this link: [http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/14/think-your-taxes- are-...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/14/think-your-taxes-are-high- the-5-countries-with-the/) \- which also casts significant aspersions on your claim:

"For comparison: The United States

2012 top rate of income taxes: 35% (rising to 39.6% in 2013) Effective tax rate on $100,000: 26% (7.3% Social Security, 18.7% income tax) World rank on effective tax rate of $100,000: 55 Effective tax rate on $300,000: 30.5% (3.7% Social Security, 26.8% income tax) World rank on effective tax rate of $300,000: 53"

<comment><USER6> Top US tax rate is over 55%: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates)

Going over 58% in 2014, thanks to Obamacare levy.

Like I said, _one_ of the highest in OECD. And arguably most _progressive_ in all of OECD: US lacks severe excise taxes and VATs which target the poor and middle class, coupled with generously progressive income tax brackets.

And of course those infamously high US corporate tax rates: often double the rates of other OECD nations (same link).

<comment><USER8> Hmm, interesting link. Confusing though, because the citations for:

"55.9% (max of federal+state+local) 10%-39.6% (federal)[136] + 0%-13.3% (state)[137] + 0%-3% (local)"

lead to a link at the Tax Foundation that lists /only/ "Selected Federal Rates":

"136\. "State Corporate Income Tax Rates, 2000-2013". Tax Foundation. Retrieved 2013-05-17. 137\. "State Corporate Income Tax Rates, 2000-2013". Tax Foundation. Retrieved 2013-05-17."

Despite the titles thereof. I find it odd, too, that all the US references are to the Tax Foundation, which has had numerous criticisms leveled at it as a conservative think tank, not least of which:

"US economist Paul Krugman has characterised the Tax Foundation as "not a reliable source" while criticizing a report by the Tax Foundation comparing corporate tax rates in the United States to those in other countries.[46] Krugman has also accused the Tax Foundation of "deliberate fraud" in connection with a report it issued concerning the American Jobs Act.[47]"

There's all this not insubstantial disclaimer to your table:

"Some other taxes (for instance property tax, substantial in many countries, such as the USA) are not shown here. The table is not intended to represent the true tax burden to either the corporation or the individual in the listed country."

Not that there's not pause for thought. But it's intriguing that multiple independent sources list our highest task rates around the 30th to 55th in the world, but yet the Tax Foundation lists at nearly the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >>A federal warrant for Awlaki's arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day. A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

Super handy that the US Government can kill people now without a trial or due process of any kind.

<comment><USER10> The US government has always been able to wage war, and has never required trial or due process to kill the enemy in war.

<comment><USER11> The constitution requires a declaration of war. That requirement has been withered away in recent years, don't you think? It was there to prevent exactly this sort of nonsense.

<comment><USER12> Article I, Section 8 says that Congress has the power to declare war. It does not specify that this declaration need take any particular form. I've never seen a convincing explanation for why Congressional authorization such as the AUMF doesn't qualify as an exercise of Congress's powers under Article I, Section 8. Especially considering that the practice of Congress authorizing military actions without a formal declaration of war dates back almost to the founding: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unite...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States#Military_engagements_authorized_by_Congress).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can't reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. "

Pretty significant sentence, in this case. Much hangs from it, in the sense that if the official government narrative and this classified information differ greatly - then the Federal govt has been involved in what is essentially a huge propaganda operation.

<comment><USER14> America _appears_ to have an analogue of Parliamentary privilege¹ written into the US Constitution (" _for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place_ "), so why can't they discuss it there?

      ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege

<comment><USER15> 'except Felony'

<comment><USER10> There's two separate provisions of the Speech and Debate clause:

1) Members can't be arrested while attending a session of their House of Congress, or while travelling to or from such a session, except in relation to charges of "Treason, Felony, and Breach of Peace."

and:

2) Members can't be held accountable for any speech or debate in their House _except_ by the same House itself.

The "Treason, Felony, or Breach of Peace" exception has nothing to do with the second provision.

<comment><USER15> Your argument seems to make sense, but why does everyone seem to agree that it would still be a felony, then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "She had accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleged serious security breaches and cover-ups and that intelligence had been deliberately suppressed, endangering national security."

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

<comment><USER9> From Wikipedia: "Edmonds testified before the 9/11 Commission, but her testimony was excluded from the official 567 page 9/11 Commission Report."

Publicly questioning the official 9/11 story is a great way to be ridiculed. The media and other propaganda outlets have so effectively labelled anything contrary to the party line as "conspiracy theory", discrediting anyone who points out the hundreds and hundreds of holes in the official story. The only credible theory (taking a cold look at the facts that have come to light over the past 12 years) is that AT THE VERY LEAST the US Government knew about 9/11 in advance.

Maybe, with time, it will become more socially acceptable to openly wonder what really happened. And probably by that time, most people won't give a shit.

<comment><USER17> Could you provide a summary or breakdown (with sources?) of the facts about the U.S. government knowing about 9/11 in advance (and allowing it to happen when they could have stopped it or evacuated the buildings, as you're implying)?

If you do have some knowledge I don't, putting it in an accessible form like that would be very helpful - a lot of 9/11 "truth" material is steeped in scifi conspiracy nonsense or global elite lizard people type stuff. Or if you ask for clarification, you're told to watch a 2 hour youtube video filled with "many experts agree that this is wrong" weasel words.

<comment><USER9> There's interesting information and links here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_9/11_Commissio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_9/11_Commission)

One particularly good example: John Farmer, Jr., senior counsel to the Commission stated that the Commission "discovered that...what government and military officials had told Congress, the Commission, the media, and the public about who knew what when — was almost entirely, and inexplicably, untrue." Farmer continues: "At some level of the government, at some point in time … there was a decision not to tell the truth about what happened...The (NORAD) tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public."[1] Thomas Kean, the head of the 9/11 Commission, concurred: "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."

[1]: [http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and- literature/r...](http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and- literature/reviews/the-ground- truth/article_97bbba18-d273-5995-96ed-33a05a57e1ed.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And for your viewing pleasure, the obligatory XKCD reference.

[http://xkcd.com/258/](http://xkcd.com/258/)

There is probably more than meets the eye because the brain matter behind them is making it so.

<comment><USER19> If you put everything under one name, it helps ridiculing the plausible theories by injecting stupid ones.

<comment><USER20> Yep. Ayn Rand called this "package dealing," though she wasn't thinkimng about conspiracy theories in particular.

For instance, "selfish." Is that pursuing rational long-term values, or is that victimizing others in a futile attempt at short-term gain? Catholic priests lumped them together _intentionally_ since the middle ages, and so it continues throughout our culture today to help justify various kinds of collectivism.

Today people are doing it with "conspiracy theories" to try to prevent challenges to their worldview. But the fact is, sometimes, conspiracies actually do happen!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The NY Post is not exactly the most credible news source.

<comment><USER22> and this is why the politicians and the media elites are able to brush off these uncomfortable facts

<comment><USER23> The burden of proof falls upon the claimant, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

If there is a conspiracy to wage war against the US, there better damn well be a more creditable news source than a sensationalist tabloid, owned by Rupert Murdoch, than the NY Post.

<comment><USER22> There's nothing particularly extraordinary in these claims.

<comment><USER23> Other than a foreign power, _one of this country 's largest trading partners_, aided and abetted criminals who staged the largest act of aggression ever inflicted on any country in the last 50 years.

You have an interesting definition of the word "extraordinary". Also, let me tell you about a little tea pot which is right now in orbit around the sun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What was the motivation for Saudi Arabia to carry out these attacks? Was it an independent decision by Saudi elite? Did any events take place that would encourage vengeance of some kind? And why did it take place just once?

</comment><comment><USER25> The Saudis were helping the US since we are allies. 9/11 was a false-flag attack.

[http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/04/loui...](http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/04/louis- freeh-interview.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rNR6Kbg5jJ8&](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rNR6Kbg5jJ8&)

In case no one has seen this.

<comment><USER27> A link with no explanation pretty much guarantees that no one will either.

<comment><USER26> The OP is pointing a finger at the Saudis. However, there are many unexplained discrepancies in the official account of 9/11 that suggests a deeper conspiracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Given this evidence, Leonard Peikoff's essay on the subject is worth examining. It was published a couple of months after the attacks:

[http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/courses01/rrtw/Peikoff.pdf](http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/courses01/rrtw/Peikoff.pdf)

<comment><USER20> For people who don't want to read the essay, I'll just say:

Peikoff argues that modern terrorism is almost entirely coming about through sponsorship by a couple of very, very bad states, and simply ending those states in a proper, just war would solve the problem and make "Fortress America" unnecessary. (Any mistakes here are likely my own, not his.)

maxharris, wasn't this actually a full-page ad in the NYT? Could be wrong but for some reason I thought it was.

<comment><USER28> Yes, this was a full-page ad in the NYT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So what? Most terrorist attacks on US were orchestrated by FBI or secred services, who spoon-fed attackers, give them bomb and 'catched' them. Nobody cares.

<comment><USER22> sadly this is exactly right - the American people don't care - they pretend they do but in reality they will just do what they're told to by the media and the politicians from whichever side of the one party with two faces they pretend they're aligned with

<comment><USER30> Speak for yourself. What about the thousands of families who lost loved ones in the attacks?

The American people have strong values and big hearts. You shouldn't confuse their apathy for politics as a lack of sympathy.

<comment><USER22> where did i confuse apathy for lack of sympathy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A very interesting documentary that many people haven't seen: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ue2nXcMDLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ue2nXcMDLs)

</comment><comment><USER32> What's Bush's interest in protecting the Saudis?

It certainly would have been a lot cheaper to invade SA than Iraq.

<comment><USER33> Wat</comment></comment>