Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-loses-political-battle-to-simplify-tax-filing-process <comment><USER2> This whole thread is full of comments from people who obviously haven't read the article / listened to the podcast in question[1].

Joseph Bankman proposed ReadyReturn in California, which is the kind of tax return pretty much the entirety of the rest of the western world uses. I.e. instead of an empty return, it's pre-filled in with the details the government knows anyway. This vastly simplifies things for most people, especially those whose main income comes from working one job.

This was in no way a change to the tax system, or what taxes people had to pay. The government would just hand you a filled-in form instead of an empty one, so you could make corrections instead of filling it in from scratch.

It had north of 99% approval ratings by the people in the test groups for it, something unheard of when it comes to government programs.

As a parlor trick Bankman would carry around a thick binder with the feedback the program had received from taxpayers. When he wanted to convince someone he'd start paging through it and ask the person he was talking to to say "stop", to ensure he wasn't cherry-picking. He'd then start reading raving reviews of the program starting at that page, some in all-caps from people who couldn't contain their excitement.

It didn't make it into law, partly due to lobbying by the likes of Intuit, but more interestingly, I thought, because Grover Norquist, the well known promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" took the counterintuitive view that just making the process easier equated to a new tax, since taxpayers might end up paying taxes _already_ on the books that they might have previously unintentionally evaded.

That to me is the most bizarre detail about this entire story. It's likely that it would have passed if not for the strange interpretation of one man to this not-a-new-tax of it effectively being a new tax, and his ability to sway the Republicans due to the political power his "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" holds over Republicans.

1\. [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax- hero)

<comment><USER3> I think that a major component of Norquist's thinking is that the more painful people find taxes (including the process of calculating them) the more they'll support his agenda of "a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub".

<comment><USER4> I think it's also akin to the withholding tax. If people had to write a check every year, there would be outrage to the amount people are actually paying. Instead, they are grateful for the government "giving" them a tax refund!

<comment><USER5> I don't think so. 45% of Americans pay zero income tax, even accounting for withholding.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, zero FEDERAL income tax but most of those pay for SS, Medicare, and state taxes. Those in a lump sum vs withholdings would still be a different experience.

<comment><USER5> That's not withholding though (as the parent referred to; withholding towards your federal income tax bill); as you mention, that's payroll taxes, which you're going to get in retirement back as entitlements.

Consider what would happen if the IRS was efficient enough (through these automated tax accounting systems) to not get an interest free loan from working America for an entire year (ie dynamically modifying every pay period how much was collected in federal tax withholding based on estimated total year tax liability); the federal government would have to be more judicious about its cash flow.

You'd think that's something Republicans and small government advocates could get behind. Go figure. "Fiscal conservatives" in name only.

EDIT: For the pedantic: s/IRS/US Treasury/ in my comment.

<comment><USER6> "IRS gets a loan" is metaphorically true in a sense but really doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The IRS doesn't actually get money from taxpayers at all. The IRS is just the bureaucracy that determines things. The money that you "pay" in federal taxes is just dollars that are _deleted_ out of existence so that the dollars _created_ by federal spending don't create inflation.

The federal government's "cash flow" is made up entirely of creating dollars out of nothing by spending and deleting dollars out of existence by taxing. The federal government doesn't "have" dollars.

[http://www.moslereconomics.com/wp- content/powerpoints/7DIF.p...](http://www.moslereconomics.com/wp- content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf)

<comment><USER7> > The money that you "pay" in federal taxes is just dollars that are deleted > out of existence so that the dollars created by federal spending don't > create inflation.

Does it mean that taxation in another country is different than taxation in US? Especially in a country where local currency has a fixed exchange rate to US dollar? They presumably can't create money that easily.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it's TOTALLY different. The U.S. power globally is EXTREMELY tied to the use of the dollar internationally. Everyone else who uses dollars (or has currency pegged to the dollar) is under major economic control and influence of the U.S. Oil priced in dollars is huge.

When the U.S. left the gold standard it was giant fuck you to all the countries who held dollars and could no longer exchange them for gold. The U.S. maintains and exercises military power globally in part to protect the dominance of the dollar.

Note also that state/local taxes in the U.S. are _completely_ different from federal because they can't just make dollars and can only spend dollars received through taxes (which are not deleted in that case) or received from federal spending (or in some cases through the state itself doing business in the market).

<comment><USER8> No it's not. Don't spread bullshit.

Taxation works pretty much the same way everywhere. The central banks are separate entities in any modern state/economy/monetary zone. The federal and state/local taxes are the same. The federal government takes on debts like states. You might remember the brouhaha about the debt ceiling and the big sequester in the past few years.

The Bretton Woods system was doomed to fail anyhow, it was a nice try to help the non-US post-war economies, but obviously as soon as some problem arose in the US (looming rise in unemployment), the system fell apart.

The petrodollar thing is real, but it's not important. The US import-export is enormous, the trade with China/India and the EU has a lot more influence on the dollar than oil interests. (And thus conversely the US power structure won't use the US central bank to try to exert power, because it'd fuck up its own economy the fastest - because the US benefits the most from global trade.)

<comment><USER6> Are you actually aware of the points in the link I posted?

The import/export issue is real in the sense that Chinese folks holding U.S. dollars could buy up lobbyists and land and such in the U.S. if we let them. It's not real in the sense that we could, if we wanted, just give every U.S. citizen an extra $50,000 to dilute the buying power of foreign holders of dollars. That would be aggressive for sure, but we have the power to do that. It's a complex set of arrangements here.

Yes, the U.S. benefits the most from the current arrangement, so we aren't interested in screwing that up. But we could and would take action if the foreign-held dollars started getting used in ways that were bad enough for us to do something about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Correction: this proposal would not have simplified taxes (i.e., the California tax code). It would merely have simplified the filing of tax returns for the most common case, salaried workers receiving all of their income from a single source.

Very big difference. HRBlock and Intuit are heavily vested in maintaining the current tax filing system. They are not, however, meaningful players in the attempts to rewrite the tax code.

<comment><USER10> In new zealand, we got rid of having to do tax returns for salaried/wage earners a number of years ago. Makes life easy for a vast majority of people. You can still do a return if you want to though. For the tax department it cuts down on how much infrastructure they need.

<comment><USER11> I think that's optimizing the wrong thing; people should be aware of the amount they are paying in taxes.

<comment><USER12> In the UK each pay-as-you-earn taxpayer ( I.e. tax calculated automatically and deducted from net income ) receives an annual statement of their tax and figuratively how it was spent e.g. £800 on health, £105 on defence etc

<comment><USER13> Whereas in the US most people don't pay any attention to where their tax dollars go. Meanwhile, President Trump raised our already ludicrous defense budget _another_ $50 billion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live in Sweden. Just a few days ago I audited and filed my returns for 2016, it took me about 2 minutes.

1\. Go to skatteverket.se (IRS), enter your "personnummer" (SSN).

2\. Open the BankID app on my phone, which contains an X509 certificate identifing me, issued by my bank. Enter my password to decrypt the cert's private key and sign the authetication ticket from skatteverket.se.

3\. Audit my pre-filled returns. Contains all information about income tax, captial gains tax and so on.

4\. Press "Sign", enter password in BankID again to sign the returns.

5\. Smell the roses.

<comment><USER15> I live in Ireland. I don't file any returns since I have a single source of income, my company/government figure it out for me => 0 time wasted.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I would think that they at least would want a signature from you.

Seems harder to argue cases of tax evasion if you as an individual have not officially stated that you have no additional incomes other than the ones your gov knows about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just for thought: suppose the tax system became so simplified that only goods X, Y,and Z were taxed at rates a,b,c. You pay aX+bY+cZ in taxes per year. It would be easy for voters to campaign their politicians to lower tax rates and easily verify.

Obviously in the real world there aren't 3 levers to adjust: there are probably thousands or tens of thousands. Apart from the lobbying, politicians may themselves desire this, because it would allow them to lower those 3 very- public levers to claim they lowered taxes, while at the end of the day maintaining the same level of spending because they just offset those losses over thousands of other levers. After all, things have to get paid for.

Then at least they can tell the public: "Hey, I lowered tax rates." And when the public's wallet doesn't feel the savings, the politician still wins votes because as far as the public can see, they lowered those tax rate levers. Compare that to a politician under the 3-lever system. Either they lowered taxes or they didn't.

What I'm suggesting is that a complex tax system allows politicians to take the heat off themselves when the public demands lowered taxes, while still maintaining the amount of money the government takes in to cover the budget.

<comment><USER17> That's exactly why we have a proliferation of taxes and tax breaks instead of a simple tax system. Perform a thought experiment. Say we just have a straight 35% income tax. Now, say you need to raise additional revenues. Do you (1) raise the single tax; or (2) impose a new tax on some specific part of the economy? Option (1) gets _everybody_ mad at you. Option (2) gets only a tiny number of people mad at you.

Same thing for tax breaks. Say you want to cut taxes. Do you cut the marginal rate, which helps everyone (even non-voters), or do you target cuts in a way that helps people who are likely to vote (homeowners, people with employer- paid health insurance, old people, etc.)? Same thing with business tax breaks. Do you cut rates for all businesses, or do you target them for businesses that are big employers in your state/district?

<comment><USER18> Yeah but a flat tax would be extremely regressive. If you had a simple equation like tax% = x/4 + 10, where x is your tax percentile, politicians could loudly say that they wish to increase or decrease the slope of the line and people would know that increasing slope would mean a more progressive tax.

<comment><USER19> If it had a standard deduction and all investment income was counted the same as wages, it might actually be more progressive than the current system, depending on the exact numbers. Payroll taxes are mainly what affects people at the lowest income levels.

<comment><USER20> I like this. I think our democracy (or whatever we've got now) will continue to crumble until and unless "we, the people" get a sense, individually, of the cost of paying for what we pay for, and our share of the cost. Until that happens there will be no honest discussions about what we really value and prioritize.

Your proposal would do that neatly. The system is way out of whack, lends itself to corruption, crony capitalism, rent seeking, and entitlement. We all have our favorite tax breaks (which is why it's been so hard to change), but we really need to get back to basics: every dollar you get is income taxed at some level, and everyone gets some standard deduction, and that's it. No weird industry tax breaks (because, arbitrarily, politicians decided we wanted more, or less, of a certain thing: cars, homes, solar, coal, etc...), just clear numbers we can grapple with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The currently posted link doesn't have the audio/transcript, but here's a few relevant links from last week:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax- hero)

[https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who- fought-t...](https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the- tax-lobby/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I was pretty surprised to see Zoe Lofgren's name pop up as an anti tax filing simplification advocate. She's the rep from CA's 19th District which covers San Jose (but not the rest of Silicon Valley) and generally a straight down the line liberal. This is not even Intuit's core district -- that would Anna Eshoo's 17th (previously 14th) district which covers Mountain View and Palo Alto. As a resident of this district, I guess I have something to write in about.

<comment><USER23> According to open data[1] the largest contributor to her campaign is Intuit and it's employees.

[1] [https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N000...](https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00007479)

<comment><USER24> "According to open data[1] the largest contributor to her campaign is Intuit and it's employees."

And without even looking, I am going to guess it's some _shockingly low number_ ... let's take a look ...

Ding!

$30k. That's all it took.

Should we have some fun and see if $31k is enough for (whoever this lady is that nobody has ever heard of) to tattoo "rsync.net" on her forearm ?

$32k ? What should our offer be ?

Maybe she can help councilman Ben Kallos pull the rickshaw.[1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13972360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13972360)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face: fix money in politics, and half of these issues will no longer be intractable.

<comment><USER26> How do we "fix money in politics" without chilling free speech?

<comment><USER27> We put all candidates online, for free. They are not allowed to spend money on getting elected - although they can spend their time (generally speaking, sometimes studying, a particular problem, history, how other countries do it, etc).

Citizens subscribe to individuals, and groups of individuals, that best reflect their views. Additionally, citizens will be exposed to views that are slightly or significantly different based on an algorithm.

On voting day they can print out their vote and either mail it or bring it to the polling place with their ID.

While I like the idea of short races (1 or 2 months) this system could easily be a constant presence in people's lives; and a constant presence in the elected official's life, as their decisions are recorded and weighed against their stated principles. This would force pols to be explicit about any horse- trading.

Ultimately such a thing is a specialization of social media in the same way the liver is a specialization of muscle. Note that there is no place for "party" in this system, except insofar as it defines a grouping.

<comment><USER27> Right speech is independent of its volume. Money can only increase volume, so get rid of it. Money isn't speech, it's amplification of speech, and as such should not be protected.

<comment><USER28> If a candidate makes a speech in the woods...

You proposal is a recipe for electing only celebrities, who don't need money to be amplified.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps. But my hope is that such a system would help individuals discover and articulate their own personal principles, and then connect them with others with similar views. I suspect that with a little help everyday voters would far prefer to vote for the candidate that does the right thing than the candidate that they merely recognize. (I might be wrong about that but it's a worthy experiment).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I did some work for the IRS several years ago to explore the same idea. There are many benefits, including simplicity and accuracy of filing (closing the $500B tax gap), as well as better fraud protection (another $25B).

Protectionism of the tax return industry is common, but not the primary reason. Instead, the biggest pushback is from taxpayer advocacy groups. The issue is this: for many Americans, particularly _low income_ Americans, their tax refund is the largest check they receive all year. _Delaying_ that refund in order to receive all tax information (e.g., from banks and employers) and pre-populate a tax return would push back initial refund checks by 1-2 months. This is tantamount to political suicide.

<comment><USER30> If you receive a huge tax refund from the IRS, that means you set up your initial deductions improperly.

If your sole income is 1 main full time job, it's really not hard to estimate your taxes to the point of having a refund under $500. That way you don't government use you as a bank for 0% interest and have more money throughout the year.

To preempt some of the responses - no, let's not denigrate poor people for their spending habits and pretend like somehow getting the refund is better than having that money during the year.

<comment><USER29> You're not wrong, but we're leaving the world of "logic" here and moving into "politics and optics". Most people can't wrap their heads around, "What do you mean I won't be getting $1,200 in March!? $100 per month? Who wants that!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am not surprised at all. Intuit, H&R Block etc. spend much money in D.C. just to keep tax codes complex so that they can sell more copies of tax filing software, at the cost of all tax payers.

</comment><comment><USER32> Would it have killed them to at least mention his name is Joseph Bankman in the summary?

<comment><USER27> Good point. I wonder if the omission was an oversight or intentional (his name would make finding an alternative source trivial).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Honestly, I think it'd be better to start a non-profit that releases tax software, first. It could compete with tax software, like from Intuit & H&R Block, as most of the needed services are rather simple. It would either charge just enough to cover costs, or be completely free, if donations for the year was sufficient. The tax software support could be done on a contract basis, where people certified people could login and handle queries on an hourly rate. The work from home crowd would love it.

Build it out enough, and then push a few legislative mandates:

1\. All taxes have to be easily payable in tax software.

2\. All taxes have to be payable online.

3\. Every tax jurisdiction has to offer a tax estimation service, where they can download pre-calculated data to use in tax software.

Should make predatory companies like Intuit disappear in less than a decade.

<comment><USER34> Absolutely. But don't think that you'll have an easy time of it. Expect that 501c(3) status won't come, because ultimately it's the IRS that makes that call, and they've already been suborned or cowed to the pressure of the tax preparers.

Expect your credentials to be challenged. You need a license to prepare taxes for other people - And I expect they'll try to say every developer who touches a line of code must have one. Expect character assasination, and every mistake to be amplified. Buzzfeed will run "10 dangers of using open source software to do your taxes". The forms will become even more of a moving target than they are now, and APIs will absolutely not be public.

But it's a fight that should be fought. This is the kind of thing that makes better government, kicking and screaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm an American working in the Netherlands. Filing US taxes has improved, a lot last year in my opinion, since it got easier to file electronically for free... But compare: I got a letter from the Dutch government a few weeks ago saying I don't need to do anything since as far as they can tell my situation hasn't changed since last year. In the US, some people believe that the tax return that they get every year is some kind of bonus. Here, my employer withholds the correct amount. Why is that so hard?

</comment><comment><USER36> I wish there were more information about what, specifically, the pilot program included. The main detail I got from the story is that the tax returns were pre-filled with income information.

I think that's useful, but I see no reason to expect a priori that the government would end up doing a better job with that than the private companies (like Intuit and H&R Block) whose revenue depends on doing that well.

The comments that suggest that Intuit and H&R Block were lobbying to keep the tax code complex don't make sense to me. Maybe they are, but that's not what they were lobbying for in lobbying to defeat this particular, reform is it? Rather, they were lobbying to keep the pre-filling process private.

Or did I miss something important?

<comment><USER37> Intuit and HR block are a bunch of crooks.

They have lobbied for a variety of anti-tax payer causes. Namely stuff like: [https://psmag.com/h-r-block-and-intuit-are-still-lobbying- to...](https://psmag.com/h-r-block-and-intuit-are-still-lobbying-to-make- filing-taxes-harder-b94a0f41ffa1).

There is a really good reason to think that the government would do a better job -- most peoples tax situation is dead simple. Even if H&R block found deductions every once and a while that the IRS didn't -- which I doubt would happen realistically -- H&R block charges something like 200 dollars. It seems incredibly unlikely that they would save more than 200 dollars on average.

And if that was the case, let the market sort it. H&R block could say bring in the returns, and if the IRS messed up we'll find it and split it with you in some fashion.

<comment><USER36> I don't have a strong feeling about the statistics here. But I guess a $1,000 mistake on 1 in 5 of all returns does a little unlikely. Bigger mistakes on fewer returns also seems unlikely since the higher the bracket, the less likely you're relying on any default or software.

But I take the point that H&R Block and Intuit could simply start from the filled out returns provided by the gov't. Harder to understand their objections given that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> California has the initiative system that means ultimately the voters _can_ make changes to the system without involving a recalcitrant or corrupt legislature. For better or worse, many of the big changes in government in the state were enacted through this process. For example, proposition 13, which drastically changed property taxes, proposition 14, which moved the state to a "top two" primary system, proposition 11 and 20, which changed redistricting and made it less partisan. etc. etc. Moreover the side with more money for advertising doesn't always win these proposition elections.

<comment><USER39> I'm pretty sure the problem would be that the second someone like Grover Norquist came out against it, you'd lose a huge amount of support. The fact that those very same people would love the system if they tried it (as the 99% approval of the system attests) is irrelevant.

That said, it would be interesting to see it put to a vote.

<comment><USER40> California passes ballot propositions all the time that Norquist (and the often more relevant in California, similarly aligned Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association) oppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I find it troubling how many commenters here are so passive to automatic, mandatory payroll tax deductions, that they overlook how effective those payroll tax deductions actually are (and how Norquist is right, if for the wrong reasons).

Yes, government payroll deductions are convenient. Yes, all other things being the same, they make your average salaried worker's life easier. And yes, they absolutely mask how much you are paying in taxes, by softening the psychological impact of making an annual tax payment with money _you earned_ , instead slowly pilfering the money from each paycheck. Most importantly, it ensures you never get to see that portion of the money you earned in the first place -- it doesn't hurt as bad to lose something you never really had.

I personally think this should have passed -- if nothing else, to force the IRS to reveal all the information it really has on you. However, the opposing argument has a point that shouldn't be dismissed as completely ridiculous, because a pretty indisputable side effect would be more apathy regarding taxes, which is not a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER42> Sending taxes in the US by mail was unnerving for me, I don't know if things have changed but basically you put the envelope in the mail box and then .. you don't know, no receipt from the IRS, nothing. What happens if the envelope is lost? In all the countries I've lived you submit your taxes and you get and instant receipt or acknowledgement.

</comment><comment><USER43> I am impressed that it only took $35,000 to get lobbyist help to get this law proposal that far.

There's a lot of talk here about efficiency and many efforts to strive for it. What would it take to raise 10x that much and provide Prof. Bankman with a war chest that stands a good chance of succeeding?

</comment><comment><USER44> Seems like a good opportunity for a crowdfunding campaign.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is infuriating because the simplified tax system is objectively superior. Any Congressperson who voted against this was either 1. stupid or misinformed 2. bought out by Intuit.

It seems to me that the only way to mitigate the effect of lobbying, aka legalized bribery, is to publicly call out the politicians who sell out.

Is there a list of representatives who voted against this bill?

</comment><comment><USER46> I love this idea in theory, and basically revisit it every year during tax season.

The tax/tax prep lobby is strong, and perhaps needfully so, as a whole bunch of people have their livelihoods wrapped up in it, but I often wonder if that whole industry is not actually a net negative for the economy.

edit: How do we help this idea take flight?

<comment><USER47> Remember that every dollar spent on intuit, and every hour wasted struggling with bullshit tax forms (deliberately the status quo because of Intuit) means Americans can afford less time and money using _your_ product and buying _your_ services. That is, these billions of dollars and incaculable frustrations wasted by Americans to line Intuits' pockets are a drag on the overall economic activity-- less money circulating in the economy, less ability to buy from each other.

Fuck Intuit. They exist to make everyone's lives worse. But don't forget, the government forces them them to offer their software free for certain lower- income Americans:

[https://www.irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes- for-...](https://www.irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free)

No idea how much longer this will exist. I'm guessing it will soon quietly go away or be marginalized even more than it was in GWB's adminstration (when the income minimum was reduced significantly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I can't see the article, but I suppose it mentions, that Intuit and Co. bribed officials to oppose this idea.

<comment><USER49> It does becasue they did; well in a lobby sort of way so it is legal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The problem I have with the popular "simplify" US tax proposals is that they mostly do it by repealing whole sections of the tax code, ending up super regressive and/or hurting the poor and middle class and helping the already rich.

Flat tax @ a high rate: Neutral or slightly helpful to the rich, crushing to the poor and middle class

Flat tax @ a low rate: Windfall to the rich, the resulting gutting of government programs hurt the poor and middle class

Eliminate taxes on dividends: Windfall to the rich, neutral to the poor and middle class who don't benefit from dividends

Eliminate many deductions and loopholes and reduce top tax rate (one of Trump's proposals): Rich are likely better off, no help to the poor and middle class

Reform AMT: Helpful to the rich and people with stock options, no effect for the poor and middle class

Eliminate income phaseouts: Helpful to the rich, no help to the poor and middle class

Eliminate estate or gift taxes: Helpful to the rich, no help to the poor and middle class

Eliminate income tax in favor of sales tax or VAT: Windfall to the rich, crushing to the poor, probably negative for the middle class

The ability to file your taxes on a postcard isn't worth it if it means advantaging the already advantaged.

<comment><USER51> Have you considered that the tax system shouldnt /help/ anyone? Trying to further social policy via taxation is about the least efficient way to do it.

Treat all income the same, do not allow deductions, charge a medium rate (10-25%), exempt the first 35-50k a year - no special rates for married filers (everyone files single), no deductions for dependents.

Eliminate corporate income tax entirely, replace with a VAT and a financial transactions tax (.25% of any transaction).

<comment><USER50> Any tax system will have winners and losers, including no tax system at all, including one where the treasury burned the collected money rather than used it to pay for social programs. Who ever designs the tax system directly chooses the winners and losers--it cannot be avoided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Trump promised to make taxes much simpler. Let's see if he keeps his promise.

</comment><comment><USER53> It would be nice to know each legislator's reasoning. Maybe there's something real in the againsts, or at least makes it more difficult to take a flakey position. Statements should have to come with votes.

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder if it would be ok for the IRS to charge for this service. Maybe then it would be justifiable to the Republicans who oppose on the basis that it would make raising takes easier.

<comment><USER11> You think it would be more palatable to Republicans if more money went to the government for the privilege of making taxes less transparent?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've always wondered, why can't we just pay one tax? Say make income tax 1.5x what it's now and cancel all other taxes. That way it'll be even easier!

<comment><USER56> Wealthy people are against that. They prefer regressive taxes, like sales tax, that will be shift much more of the burden to the poor.

In fact, there's a whole batshit-crazy tax plan called FairTax that proposes changing all taxes to a simple sales tax.

<comment><USER57> Honest question, why is it batshit-crazy?

<comment><USER58> The biggest argument against it is that it is incredibly regressive. Poor people generally spend higher percentages of their income on stuff where rich people save higher percentages of their incomes. So for example, Joe makes 51k/year but spends 50k/year. At the 23% tax rate that FairTax proposes, he pays $11.5k - a $2.5k "prebate". This works out to an effective tax rate of ~18% (with today's tax plan Joe's effective rate would likely be about 7.5% for income taxes and 7.5% for Social Security and Medicare. I.e. a lower tax burden.)

Compare that to a rich person. Susan makes 250k per year but only spends 150k/year and saves the other 100k. She pays 23% on the 150k = 34.5k minus the 2.5k prebate which makes for an effective tax rate of 12.8%. I.e. Susan makes more each year but pays a lower rate of taxes. These numbers get even more insane when you have 10 million in income but only spend 1 million a year. We basically are subsidizing investing and rich people are the biggest investors.

<comment><USER59> > We basically are subsidizing investing and rich people are the biggest > investors.

What's wrong with subsidizing investing? Without investment in capital we'd all be subsistence farmers tending the fields for 12h a day.

If some rich guy wants to make $100 billion and spend 1% on himself and 99% on improving the world for future generations through investment, that's great, no?

I guess it comes down to whether you believe the government can invest those same dollars more productively than rich individuals.

<comment><USER56> It's not that subsidizing investing is bad. It's that we're subsidizing investing _by shifting the burden to people who pay income tax_.

If someone makes $100M by inventing an amazing product, and someone else makes $100M by earning interest on the fortune he earned from his mother, which of those behaviors do we want to encourage?

Earning money from investing is often a passive way of using money.

<comment><USER59> > If someone makes $100M by inventing an amazing product, and someone else > makes $100M by earning interest on the fortune he earned from his mother, > which of those behaviors do we want to encourage?

What's the difference between inventing the product himself and investing in a founder who otherwise would have had to get a regular job? Remember -- he could have spent the principal on yachts, cars, and jets instead; _that 's_ the behavior we want to disincentivize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The US oligarchy strikes again, even in California, crazy. It works in almost all Western countries. Filing my taxes takes about 15mins each year.

</comment><comment><USER61> If you are a foreigner, you are most likely not complying with the tax code unless you hired a competent CPA. TurboTax won't do.

</comment><comment><USER62> FWIW, here's an email I sent to Prof. Bankman last April:

\---

I read with interest your letter about the Tax Filing Simplification Act of 2016, and your article "Simple Filing for Average Citizens: The California ReadyReturn." I agree that the tax filing burden on taxpayers is far too high, and I am encouraged that legislators are trying to do something about it.

But I am concerned about the details of actually accomplishing this given the complexity of the federal tax code, even for what appear to be "simple" situations. For the past five years I have volunteered with the IRS's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program and helped low-to-moderate income taxpayers file their taxes. One of the first things I learned was how frequently a taxpayer's total tax is affected by factors other than what is on their W-2 or otherwise reported to the IRS. Examples include:

\- complex calculations of "support" to determine whether a live-in relative is a dependent

\- exact payments, and nature of payments, made to schools (generally not accurately reported on the 1098-T)

\- business expenses

\- which months the taxpayer had health insurance (often not reported correctly, or reported to a different person) and, if no insurance, whether an exception to the penalty applies

\- what portion of the property taxes paid by the mortgage company on behalf of the taxpayer was for ad valorem taxes (the only kind that is deductible)

\- what gambling losses are there to offset the gain reported on a W-2G?

\- [litany of qualification questions for various education benefits]

\- which exceptions apply to an early distribution from a 401(k)

Although each of these individually sounds like a corner case, my experience is that in aggregate a large percentage (perhaps more than half?) of the tax returns involved information that the IRS has no way of knowing.

So for advocates of IRS-prepared returns, of which I understand you to be one, I wonder what the response to these issues is? I can think of three:

1\. The IRS should assume whatever results in the maximum tax liability, and it is up to the taxpayer to determine whether they can reduce their liability further.

2\. The IRS should guess based on some combination of factors, and the taxpayer is responsible for verifying the guess (and is assessed penalties if they don't fix an incorrect guess?).

3\. We should drastically simplify the tax code so these issues go away.

Each response has some obvious problems.

Anyway, this is just something that has been on my mind, so I hope you don't mind this email out of the blue to try to solicit feedback from someone who might have given the issue some thought.

\---

He never responded, so I am still left wondering the same questions.

<comment><USER2> I've never had to file US taxes so this might be a stupid question, but how exactly are the people in your example worse off with ReadyReturn?

Isn't ReadyReturn just e.g. summing up their reported wages for the return, which they'd need to do accurately anyway if they were filling it in from scratch?

Yes, if you have a pre-filled in tax return nothing that the government doesn't know about & which might be deductible is going to be on there, but that's the situation you were in already, wasn't it? Now you'll have more time to fill that out, instead of doing menial work like manually summing up your monthly payslips to arrive at a yearly total.

Or is ReadyReturn somehow structurally flawed in allowing you to either file for a simplified pre-filled in return with no amendments, or having to do an old-style return from scratch?

When I file my taxes in The Netherlands all the concerns you've raised are addressed through a system where most of the information is pre-filled in. I.e. they know how much I make so that number is on there, but they might not know about a few other deductibles, those are established through a series of questions you answer.

E.g. "do you own a house" -> "what type of mortgage" -> "do you pay a land use fee?" -> that's a deductible (to cite one made-up example).

Most importantly it establishes a workflow where if something is a deductible (unless it's something really obscure, manual returns still exist), it's going to be on the online tax form.

So even if the initial implementation is bad just establishing that process is worthwhile, because there'll be political pressure to make it better next year, and the year after that.

<comment><USER62> It's not a stupid question at all.

In practice the U.S. tax code is not quite as simple as "Here is the tax burden for your income level; tell us if you have any deductions." Right off the bat, you need to determine your "filing status" (single, married, head of household, and some less common options) from a list of five choices, each of which has different rules for all the calculations that follow. Furthermore, for a large portion of people making modest incomes, various tax credits, most notably the "Earned Income Tax Credit" but also education and child-related credits, cause enormous swings in their taxes, for example perhaps from $1,000 to -$3,000 (many people pay negative income taxes).

None of these things can be determined by information the government has. So for many people any "provisional" return that the government is likely to create will be very inaccurate.

Now, you suggest that maybe this would just be some sort of provisional return that could be adjusted to match your correct situation. That is a fine idea. But in order to make that convenient, the government would basically need to develop their own implementation of TurboTax. That has its own issues (is the government likely to do a good job? will they apply the laws in a biased way?) but even if they are resolved we are still talking about a vastly greater effort than "just give people a pre-filled return." So I would ask advocates for simplifying tax filing to either admit that they are demanding that the government author its own fully-featured tax preparation software, or explain how they will otherwise address the complexity of the U.S. tax code.

<comment><USER2> What you're saying makes sense, but doesn't at all jive with the reported 99% satisfaction rate in the pilot program.

Wouldn't more than 1% have noticed an increased tax burden? Or perhaps the focus group wasn't diverse enough.

<comment><USER62> It sounds like the 99% satisfaction rate was "of the people who filed their taxes using ReadyReturn" so it presumably excludes those who observed, or suspected, that the result was not correct and made alternative arrangements.

That said, I will also admit that this article is really about California state taxes, which are substantially simpler for most people than federal taxes. I got off on a bit of a tangent because Prof. Bankman seems to claim that the same approach will work for federal taxes as well, and in general most people perceive these issues as linked: automatically prepared state taxes are seen as a step towards automatically prepared federal taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> > Joe, though, discovered that Intuit had been very busy lobbying against > ReadyReturn - meeting with lawmakers, giving money.

How the hell do Americans not think that this is BRIBERY? Are you kidding me? It's one thing to "talk" to politicians, it's another to _tell them to vote a certain way and then giving them money ". For crying out loud. Sometimes the U.S. can be _really backwards* compared to other modern societies.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is why I pirate Turbotax every year.

Fuck Intuit. Fuck H&R Block.

I'll give them money over my dead body.

<comment><USER65> Why would you need a new version every year? Does the tax code change that frequently?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: In what areas I can work if I am good at distributed systems - <AUTHOR> I like distributed systems, I just started learning the concepts and algorithms in distributed systems. But I am wondering how I can benefit with the knowledge. I am looking for answers in following perspectives: 1)Can I get job specific to distributed systems? 2)Any ideas how to apply these concepts in any side projects. 3) Any community specially related to distributed systems <comment><USER2> Depends.

1) Do you know how they work internally and maintain them (devops job).

Can you build them (ex: [http://www.scylladb.com/career-post/software- developer/](http://www.scylladb.com/career-post/software-developer/) ) ?

2) Build a nosql or contribute to an open-source one. See scylladb, seastar- project, seastar-pedis for examples. See [https://github.com/phaistos- networks/Trinity](https://github.com/phaistos-networks/Trinity) and try to make it distributed (by including it in vespa.ai for example ). Create modules for redis. Contribute to citus-db.

Or look at stack overflow jobs site with distributed systems. See their requirements and start building a resume with those.

Makes sense ?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the pointers

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Look into stock trading robots, the are a good candidate for distributed systems

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please help me understand how distributed systems involve in stock trading robots</comment></comment>


Real Life Manifestations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Its Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.m1l.asia/articles/52 <comment><AUTHOR> The earliest substantial work done in the field of AI was by Alan Turing to decode a large proportion of the radio communications in the 2nd World War. AI has come a long way from there and the progress has been rocky and unpredictable. As of the 21st century, AI empowers a host of technologies that impact our everyday lives. From voice assistants to video games, self-driving cars to web searches, AI has become inevitable.

<comment><USER2> 3-4 News and Hype Cycle completed since 1960s</comment></comment>


Map Shows the Animal Most Likely to Kill You in Each State - <AUTHOR> http://www.wideopencountry.com/u-s-map-shows-deadliest-animal-in-each-state/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=partner&utm_term=authtx&utm_campaign=authtx <comment><USER2> Hmm... I thought given the statistics on traffic accidents [1], a human would appear on each state.

[http://vehicle-fatalities.findthedata.com](http://vehicle- fatalities.findthedata.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's missing humans.

</comment><comment><USER4> What in the world is going on in Florida?

</comment><comment><USER5> Scorpions in North Carolina? WTF?

<comment><USER6> The scorpion represents "other venomous arthropod", 'other' meaning not a hornet, wasp, or bee.

It may be the fire ant that causes many of these deaths [0].

[0] [http://www.4pawspetsitting.com/poisonous-bugs-north- carolina...](http://www.4pawspetsitting.com/poisonous-bugs-north-carolina/)</comment></comment>


Computer Science for Babies - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588772263/computer-science-for-babies

<comment><USER2> this project was put together by a very dedicated friend of mine - i've seen some of the prototypes, and was pretty amazed at what he's put together.

don't plan on having kids myself, but i know a few adults that might be amused :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The aim is an entire series, starting early. Computer Science is a way of thinking, not just electronics.</comment></comment>


Ask News.YC: Do you experience highs while coding? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Recently I had the wonderful experience of solving a hard problem in a very elegant way. I spent hours going through iteration after iteration, each one slightly more ugly than the last, until I stumbled upon an amazingly simple solution that completely solved the problem far better than any of the previous methods. I spent the rest of the night revelling in the clarity and simplicity of the solution; I've never taken any drugs, but it must have felt very much like being high. Does anyone else experience similar highs while coding?

Shawn

<comment><USER2> Some Lisp coders have mentioned brain orgasms when discovering something great about the language.

I was bouncing around for a few hours when I removed 20 lines of Python and replaced it with one line

<comment><USER3> Recently, I've been on a high when I got my lisp code to run 60% faster by changing 10 lines of code. I think I tend to experience relief more often than high while coding. Highs are like a promise that something good is going to happen soon. My brain is telling me I have an answer just let me find the words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite coding "high" is sleep deprivation mixed with dangerous levels of caffeine. I'll sometimes work until ~5AM and be really tired, then get a "second wind" and be wide-awake until the afternoon coding like I'm on speed.

There's also the excited "holy crap this is cool" high, which is more like a tingling giddiness at how interesting something is. Like a child who can't sit still the night before Christmas. Nothing motivates me more than this feeling.

<comment><USER5> I can second the first "high" (sleep dep + pot of coffee). Afterwards I usually crash pretty hard though. I do usually find the time extremely productive. Maybe because the rest of the world stops being interesting from 3-7am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is an energy apparent when giving order to chaos, which to me happened when I really nailed how my web app would order its information presentation in an elegant way to the public, which would in turn order people's minds in the way they view the topic of the site, Israeli technology (I would Hope).

</comment><comment><USER7> I tend to come up with ideas while pacing around away from the computer, and thinking of a better way to do something is a kind of "high". Sitting at the computer tends to be less high-level thinking and more implementation detail. But when something works, that's a high, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes. But they're different from being high via chemicals.

<comment><USER9> far33d, why would this be different. The same sensory pathways are initiated regardless of the stimulus. Repeated positive stimuli generate the feeling of addiction.

The same pleasures can be had while coding.

<comment><USER8> Coding never gave me a hangover or visual hallucination.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you know your donation is making a difference? - <AUTHOR> A goal for my family this year is to donate much more to non-profits that we feel match-up with our beliefs. For those of you who donate on a consistent basis, how do you select which orgs you give to? How do you know that they are actually helping and staying true to what they advertise?<p>Do we just have to put our faith in the non-profit and hope that they are actually doing what they say? <comment><USER2> I prioritize my giving to local, small non-profits. I usually have a relationship with them beyond the check I write (I have volunteered or been a board member).

If you are giving to big charities (because they match up with your values), they have tons of data on what they are doing with the money. They also sometimes have internal funds you can donate to that are earmarked to only be spent on a specific activity -- just ask.

<comment><USER3> Good advice...I tend to focus on "local" needs, as well...you can often gauge their effectiveness quite easily because you can see efforts and results first-hand...

I've volunteered and served on boards, too...a great opportunity to connect with your "community" and gain a deeper understanding of the issues affecting it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've referenced Charity Navigator* a few times, but haven't looked much deeper than that--basically using it as a quick reference.

* [http://www.charitynavigator.org/](http://www.charitynavigator.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Checkout GiveWell ([http://www.givewell.org/](http://www.givewell.org/)). They are ex-hedge-fund guys who wanted to apply quantitative methods to this very question.

Also, from a personal standpoint, I try to give in accordance with Peter Singer's recommendations that you should help the worst off first (So things like Malaria Nets and de-worming). It's easier to be sure you're making things better if the money goes to treating a life-threatening disease that can be prevented for a few dollars a head.

</comment><comment><USER6> One thing you can do is contact the organizations and ask for some documents about what they are doing with the money and other data. All organizations waste money or use it ways you might not like. But I think you have to do some research. Ask for the data from the given organization and make an informed decision from there. Any non-profit should have this data available in some form for you.

You can't really control how they use it. But you can see what they accomplished in the past. Look at what they are planning for the next few years. And then evaluate at the end of the year and see if you feel like they did what they said they would.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you believe that "non-profits" are making more goodness in the world than for-profits?

<comment><USER3> Good question...my answer is not always...

But, the non-profits I typically support function as "safety nets", providing niche goods or services that would otherwise be unavailable to their patrons...quite often those are quite basic--food, clothing, healthcare...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should read Giving 2.0 by Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. She goes into depth this and many other aspects of philanthropy.</comment>


Did the FBI Plant Backdoors in OpenBSD? (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/12/did_the_fbi_pla.html

<comment><USER2> Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER3> The principle behind the Betteridge's law of headlines is sound. It's definitely reasonable to exercise skepticism when a journalist is unable to support a claim with evidence. However, it's absurd to suggest that a failure to find evidence means that any assertion made by the piece is bogus.

If a journalist publishes a story titled "Do police investigate crime?", the answer is obviously wouldn't be "no."

I don't think mentioning the law itself adds much to the conversation—certainly not the "can be answered by the word no" part.</comment></comment>


Widely used open source software contained Bitcoin-stealing backdoor - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/hacker-backdoors-widely-used-open-source-software-to-steal-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> This is a follow-up to yesterday's "Backdoor in event-stream library dependency" [1]. Apparently the payload puts cryptocoin wallets that use node at risk.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18534392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18534392)</comment>


Show HN: New Cancer Drug Candidates - <AUTHOR> https://experiment.com/projects/synthesizing-and-testing-a-new-drug-candidate-for-treating-cancer <comment><USER2> In the graph at the bottom there is a comparison of a usual drug and a previously designed drug. It looks much better against cancer cells. Do you have a similar comparison against normal cells? Perhaps the bt1 drug also kill more normal cells than carboplatin.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone know a web solution for video chat? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know of a solution in which a web visitor can enter their Skype, Facetime, or GoogleHangouts details into a website widget that will initiate a video chat connection with a support agent in whatever channel the user indicates? <comment><USER2> I don't know of such a solution. However, my own side project / startup ( [https://keveo.tv/en/](https://keveo.tv/en/) ) is based on such a concept :) - a website widget where you can immediately initiate a video chat connection with a support agent. It's based on WebRTC, so it doesn't work on iPhones, but it works well everywhere else. If you want to try it out, mail us at info at keveo.tv :)

There are several like it, some are free. The best one in my opinion is Appear.in, but they don't provide a widget.

Here's a vendor directory:

[https://webrtchacks.com/vendor-directory/](https://webrtchacks.com/vendor- directory/)</comment>


Dell PowerEdge T30 – My 2017 File Server - <AUTHOR> https://www.stum.de/2017/05/07/dell-poweredge-t30-my-2017-file-server/ <comment><USER2> This is really a very good prize for the setup. The last NAS I setup in 2010 was an ITX Atom, 640GB HDD, 2GB RAM, in total 165EUR, quite comparable when extrapolating the specs towards today. I personally think it is total waste to run a 290 Watt powered device 24/7 for personal reasons only (please think about utilization twice and then think about global warming) and would go for a SoC solution nowadays.</comment>


Donald Knuth celebrated his 80th birthday in Piteå - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2Fnyheter%2Fvetenskap%2Fvarldens-framsta-datavetare-donald-knuth-firade-80-arsdagen-i-pitea%2F&edit-text=&act=url <comment><USER2> Sounds like an interesting performance.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have the feeling that George RR Martin talked too much with Donald Knuth.

</comment><comment><USER4> Machine translation has become really, really good. I did not spot many mistakes.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it was understandable to this non-Swede. Here are phrases which stick out for me as not-quite-English (I'll ignore things where I thought the preposition was a bit odd, like "to his honor" instead of "in his honor".)

"At physical education they said it would be really difficult." . That should be a physics education, not? And that preposition is weird. Perhaps "Regarding a physics education, they .."

"yesterday the retired Stanford professor filled 80 years" \- "filled"? He turned 80. Is this a Swedish idiom?

"We had specialist equipment" \- perhaps "special equipment"? Is it for specialists to operate, or is it unusual equipment?

"the world's premier computerist." \- I haven't heard the word "computerist" before. It's only been mentioned a few times in all of HN history ([https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22computerist%22&sort=byPopul...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22computerist%22&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment) and [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22computerist%22&sort=byPopul...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22computerist%22&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) )

"How does a computer do when it's going to search for something like when you googlar?" \- Perhaps it's supposed to be "What does a computer do when it's going to search for something, like when you use Google?"

"when he began to study physics in the 1950s, he first happened on a computer." I think that "happened" should be "came across"?

"there would be a total of seven bands" \- What is "bands"? Volumes?

"Now Donald Knuth writes on Part 4B" \- I believe "Now Donald Knuth is writing Part 4B" is better.

"To make music of Revelation book he he dreamed about since the early 1960s" \- I know what it's saying, but it's a very odd sentence.

"and stands in a fantastic hall" \- The word "stands" sounds odd.

But again, yes, the machine translation here is quite good.

<comment><USER6> "När du googlar" is literally "when you Google". Ironic, he could translate others but not himself ;). "Datavetare" would be more correctly translated as "computer scientist" and I'm surprised it doesn't do that. It's the literal translation, just like "naturvetare" means "natural scientist".

<comment><USER5> Might Google be doing this deliberately in order to prevent their name from becoming a generic trademark?

That is, quoting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark) , "Google has gone to lengths to prevent this process, discouraging publications from using the term 'googling' in reference to Web searches."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician, has died at 101 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/science/katherine-johnson-dead.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, whose death at 101 was announced on Monday by NASA, calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong's history- making moonwalk, let it return to Earth."

The quality of work, done by hand, is just staggering when you think of the consequences that could have transpired if mistakes had been made.

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know how this fits with the many digital computers NASA used for mission planning (inc. trajectory planning)?

See e.g. [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680020624](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19680020624) for Gemini.

<comment><USER3> According to Hidden Figures (which to the best of my knowledge is quite accurate in representing Katherine Johnson), she actually hand checked most if not every calculation performed by the digital computers and often found miscalculations due to programming errors.

<comment><USER4> Digital computers were in their infancy - at one point in that brilliant movie the critical calculations are passed through the digital computer twice and got different answers. Katherine was asked to repeat the calculations and her result was then used.

The movie also shows Dorothy Vaughan teaching themselves how to program those first machines. Remember that pretty much noone had any programming experience, and there are still pitfalls today for people doing science calculations on a computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It must be weird to go from being completely forgotten for your contributions to the moon landing to becoming famous, the main character in a major Hollywood movie, and have a building at NASA named after you.

<comment><USER6> My Dad and I watched 'Hidden Figures' a couple of weekends ago. Its such a great movie. To think that this one person was able to do that floored me.

I told my Dad how lucky we are to be born with various abilities that we then nurture and develop. The sky's the limit when we do the things we were "born" to do.

This lady's mind was really meant to doing such calculations. So good!

I'm not sure if she wanted that attention, but she deserved it. I'm sure, being 97 years old and now getting famous isn't that bad. I can't imagine people taking too many photographs and interviews of here.

<comment><USER7> It's a great movie. I read a bit about her afterwards. One cool thing is that some of the parts that I assumed were made up by Hollywood to heighten the drama (like Neil Armstrong say "I'm not launching unless she does the calculations") weren't fabricated. That actually happened

<comment><USER8> It was John Glenn not Neil Armstrong

<comment><USER7> Whoops, it's been a while since I saw the movie

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't have time to do a virtual shrine for Larry Tesler but I've done an incomplete one for Katherine a while back (feel free to add or update):

[https://theymadethat.com/people/4dm0q9/katherine- johnson](https://theymadethat.com/people/4dm0q9/katherine-johnson)

imo it's nice to have a visual of someone's work

</comment><comment><USER10> She presumably waited until 101 so as to die in her prime.

</comment><comment><USER11> I invite everyone to watch the movie Hidden Figures.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the original Computers. All respect to her and other people that helped humanity achieve so much with so few.

</comment><comment><USER13> Rest in peace, and thanks for the inspiration of what a dedicated, hard working person can achieve. I'm glad she got to receive the recognition she deserved in her life.

</comment><comment><USER14> This was in a time Belgium had an expose of their Congolese people next to the monkeys at the World Expo 1958.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_58](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_58)

</comment><comment><USER15> I just watched Hidden Figures last night. What an unfortunate coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think this is worthy of the black band at the top of the page.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why no black banner?

<comment><USER18> logged in to ask this. copy / paste guy got a banner, why not her?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do we get a little black bar on the site for her?

<comment><USER20> I wish there was some sort of official guidelines on when the black bar is appropriate. There is no doubt that Mrs. Johnson helped accelerate the field of computer science and legitimized its existence, as not just a branch of mathematics, but a whole new field on its own.

The bigger question is, is that what the black bar is for?

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure, but we usually see it for pioneers in the field and in my opinion she certainly qualifies.

<comment><USER21> She was a pioneer in civil rights and advancing social mores. There's no question she has made great contributions to humanity. But in computing, she was one of numerous analysts performing calculations as part of a massive, sprawling government program. Millions of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians have died since and we honor very few of them. I admire Johnson enormously but her work in math is not what distinguishes her.

<comment><USER22> I'm curious why you think her work in math is separate and distinct from her work in advancing equality? I think her mathematics work alone distinguishes her but even if you don't, why do you not view her social contributions to the field as worthy of recognition?

Jackie Robinson was a great baseball player but his contributions to the game extend far beyond how he performed on the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Where is the black bar? And what are the guidelines as to who gets it? Or that is at the discernment of a few people?

#BlackHistoryMonth</comment>


CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Moore's Law at 50 - <AUTHOR> http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2015/04/moores-law-at-50.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "In 2014, semiconductor production facilities made some 250 billion billion (250 x 10^18) transistors. This was, literally, production on an astronomical scale. Every second of that year, on average, 8 trillion transistors were produced."

Mind boggling</comment>


New article series at catonmat: Detailed Summary of MIT's Linear Algebra - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/mit-linear-algebra-part-one/

<comment><USER2> Why do you care that this introductory course is taught at MIT?

For a course at that level, the professor's teaching skills matter more than his/her research skills. A professor from a lower-ranked institution that focuses more on teaching might do a better job for such a course.

I guess the real reason there is interest in the MIT course is because it is presented to top students and hence is more likely to be advanced and rigorous.

<comment><USER3> The article seems to answer the question:

 _I had already had two terms of linear algebra when I studied physics back in 2004. But it was not enough for a curious mind like mine. I wanted to see how it was taught at the world's best university._

...and...

 _The course is taught by no other than Gilbert Strang. He's the world's leading expert in linear algebra and its applications and has helped the development of Matlab mathematics software._

<comment><USER4> Your first point is good, but the second point is problematic. Just because someone is an expert and helped build software, doesn't necessarily translate to that same person being able to teach it. Teaching is a skill in and of itself.

Luckily other posters here vouch for Strang's ability as a teacher.

<comment><USER5> Someone who has a better understanding of the subject matter will usually have an advantage in teaching it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://videolectures.net/mit1806s05_linear_algebra/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Also available in iTunes:

[http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/mit.edu....](http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/mit.edu.1299892995.01299892999)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Btw, I started using twitter today! If you enjoy my catonmat blog, you should follow me on twitter here: <http://twitter.com/pkrumins></comment>


Why do we keep building rotten foundations? - <AUTHOR> https://davmac.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/why-do-we-keep-building-rotten-foundations/ <comment><USER2> GTK is really turning into an unusable mess. Shame really, GTK2 was much nicer to interface with as an end user than Qt3/Qt4, but GTK3 and its messed up UX and constant theming API breakage just makes it insufferable. (And that's before the "Gnome is the only desktop environment we target, all others can eat shit" political bullshit they're pulling with CSDs and whatnot.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to like GTK back in 2004. I still like the look-and-feel of it, but I'm never coding with it again.</comment>


Ask HN: does everything known by Google engineers exist in books? - <AUTHOR>

not just Google, but any great company with really good engineers, is everything they know (i don't mean about their products, i mean their knowledge as developers) anyone can find it in books or any other material. i just sometimes feel that they have some kind of knowledge above everyone else, and you can't find it except by learning it directly from them. for example: building high scale service. where you can learn to build something like that? and to be good as google's? <comment><USER3> Foundational knowledge? Yes, pretty much, especially if you take an expansive view of "books" to include all written / textual media (ie, including journal articles, web pages, etc.)

But in the case of Google, it's pretty clear that they are constantly pushing the boundaries, sometimes doing original research, and creating new knowledge as they go. So, no, I don't think you could say that _everything_ they know is in "the literature".

If I had to break it down percentage wise, my subjective feeling would be that it's something like 90% "broadly known stuff" and "10% unique in-house knowledge", or something along those lines.

At the least, I would urge you not to ascribe god-like / superhuman powers/knowledge to the engineers at Google, or Facebook, or Yahoo, or Microsoft or Amazon or whoever. They're all working off the same core CS principles everyone is, they're just smart people working on hard problems and sometimes they discover some new interesting things. But, if you, as a smart person, work on hard and interesting problems, you're also going to discover some new and interesting things as well.

 _for example: building high scale service. where you can learn to build something like that?_

A lot of knowledge about building "web scale" services is moving so fast that it's not necessarily in _dead tree_ books, but that doesn't mean it isn't documented somewhere. That said, a lot of good stuff _is_ in dead tree books. Try looking at [http://highscalability.com/](http://highscalability.com/) for example, and peruse the "real world architectures" section, then look at their Amazon AStore for a good list of useful books. [http://astore.amazon.com/possiboutpos-20](http://astore.amazon.com/possiboutpos-20)

But if you want the very latest developments on various technologies - <USER2> balancers, web servers, big-data stuff, databases, a lot of the newest stuff is going to be on mailing lists, in blog posts, web pages and the like. Books tend to lag.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, i really appreciate your answer

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Books are typically quite a bit out of date if it's a rapidly progressing field.

More stuff ends up in journal articles, but about a year or so behind the actual work, and at a level of detail which is often problematic to reproduce. You typically have to treat it as a reverse engineering problem - but once you know the core ideas, that's often possible.

Then there's the mountain of "trade secrets" which never get published anywhere. A lot of compelling work in e.g. graphics falls under this case - although you might see a demo and overview at SIGGRAPH.

Publishing tends to be a net positive for serious commercial research work, even if the release has to be delayed. It's a solid process for documenting internal knowledge. It's also one of the main things that's going to interest other researchers in working for you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Consider 2 types of knowledge:

\- knowing that XYZ is the case, knowledge of facts, or "propsitional knowledge" as a philosopher might call it - probably a heck of a lot of Google engineers' knowledge of this type (except stuff which is personal to them, like what they did last tuesday or the content of some private source code) is in books.

\- knowing how to do XYZ or "performative" or "procedural knowledge" \- this sort of knowledge you can try and convey in literature, but often some lived experience is necessary to acquire it. Practising martial arts for 20 years might produce a different order of "knowing kung fu" than reading about it without the practice (Neo notwithstanding, the lived experience was artificially implanted there.)

I don't know, but I'd guess the knowledge you're impressed by is largely of the second type.

</comment><comment><USER6> Many large engineering organizations have internal document collections that detail past research and lessons learned. Google may be the most visible engineering organization, but many quiet financial and defense-oriented organizations have a wealth of information available, once you are inside. This info is commonly very specialized, so it would be unlikely to help you build the most scalable website or awesome mobile app, but might be useful in creating a toaster-oven that can survive a 100ft drop, being run over by a tank and lasting for 200 years.

Any engineering firm can develop a world-class knowledge base. But, that involves an engineering process, like starting projects with statements of work and conducting internal engineering reviews at certain milestones (all documented in whitepapers), not just by creating a Trello card or JIRA issue.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google staff members sometimes publish papers about their recent work: [http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Every industry has operational knowledge that is passed from person to person; that's why you'll often see younger companies hiring experienced people from older companies. In many cases you could rediscover that knowledge from first- hand experience, but it would take 10-15 years.

</comment><comment><USER9> It a matter of collective synergy of brains and thinking by the vastly experience engineers that results to the wonder u see. Books are hard particalarly technical and programming books thats why u cant get the knowledge from book. #imho

<comment><AUTHOR> so how to be as good as they are?

<comment><USER3> Learn the fundamentals, then work on hard problems. Hang out with as many really smart people - also working on hard problems - as you can. Read obsessively. Experiment and don't be afraid to fail from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps. But there is also knowledge from experience, which may not always be written down. But having knowledge from experience is not limited to Google Engineers.</comment>


Ask HN: Would HN be better without votes and with tagged streams? - <AUTHOR>

A thought occurred to me this morning...  A lot of reputable people posting interesting topics are stuck in the "new" page getting pushed down the page, further cementing their demise.  I used to think it was just me but today Florian Mueller, the chief blogger at FOSSPatents is drowning with only 2 points for this submission ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2880510 ).  Is it a boring topic?  Let's examine it...
Google... check! Software patents... check! Lodsys... check!
These seem to topics of interest to the HN crowd and very timely news.  We're not talking "The history of yarn and knitting patterns" here.
Did it just go unnoticed or is there gaming at play here to promote the submissions of a select few?
I honestly don't know.  My own submissions, which I thought would be inline with the average HN reader's interests, have suffered a similar fate and I took it upon myself to research getting on the HN front page.
The advice is bleak... 1. Be a super-important person. 2. Be part of a Digg-like clique which trades up-votes. 3. Make your own fake users and up-vote yourself.
I'm not super important and I don't want to lower myself by cheating. Instead I want to propose another option...
SCRAP THE VOTING SYSTEM ALTOGETHER!
Instead offer... 1. A giant fire hose with all the submissions for those who can handle it. 2. Tag-based streams where submissions can assign up to 3 tags to describe their content. (ex: "patents", "google", "lodsys")
HN readers can specify tags they're interested in (as many as they like in fact) as well as tags they are not interested in.  This filters the fire hose! They see news they want to see and avoid the news that doesn't interest them and there is no incentive to game the system.  They can turn off the filter and explore new topics if they wish too!
I PUT THESE QUESTIONS TO YOU...
Have you had your contributions to HN languish in obscurity when the next person posts something similar only to be launched to the front page within minutes? What do you think of these ideas? <comment><USER2> The reason they fall into obscurity is there's a crapton of people who are only here to submit their own website, or to build karma by submitting fluff (eg a gruber article where he literally just links to another site).

I do like your idea, except it destroys discovering stuff that is just plain interesting - like that "How can I do something meaningful" thread on the front page now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback!

I'm one of those people that posts links to updates on my blog. Advertising, in and of itself, is not a bad thing in my opinion. If you cured cancer but forgot to tell anybody nobody would stand to benefit. But yeah, some advertisers really go too far to grab your attention.

As for Daring Fireball, it's really great site and I learn a tremendous amount by visiting it, even if John Gruber's just linking to something. The traffic his site gets goes to help those to whom he links and the readers get introduced to new apps and blogs. It's no different than HN in some regards, only more curated.

In any case, thanks again!

<comment><USER3> When Daring Fireball (or any other blog) merely links to something elsewhere, it usually doesn't make sense to submit the DF post to HN: instead submit what DF linked to. In this case the DF post is superfluous to anyone who isn't directly following DF's feed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think there is significant influence from cliques. Things just stream down the new page too guickly, in part from lots of posts (as noted by benologist), and in part because it's annoyingly frustrating to try to skim downstream before the infamous HN Expired Link (which Hubski seems to have solved).

As for too many posts, that's not much of a problem, you can skim pretty quickly (notwithstanding expired links). Crap has its own smell and is easily avoided.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the stream moves too quickly, and this is where tagged-based streams would help. I think submissions would stick around longer in the filtered stream, exposing them for longer periods to people who want to find them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also thought of something suspicious in the front page when seeing the same repeated story jump to top in minutes and languish with 1 point just for having different wording (I then attributed the difference in success to that).

I happen to find more interesting stuff in the "new" queue than in the front page (among the crud, of course). Maybe the likes of the mass does not match mine.</comment>


Hewlett Packard Expects Up to 30,000 More Job Cuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/hewlett-packard-expects-up-to-30-000-more-job-cuts-1442351050 <comment><USER2> interesting they had a previous cut of 5000 people and again an increase in the cut of people and a split in the company and then a merger with small companies aruba connextreme lets see how this goes</comment>


What If We Never Run Out of Oil?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The best part of this rather traditionally long-winded article (not a jab, just the truth) from The Atlantic was the observation that the availability of energy to the individual almost exactly correlates with economic growth.

It makes me wonder if we are not completely misunderstanding the role of energy, making it into some kind of threat or something to fear instead of a huge enabler of human progress. Perhaps if we want flying cars and jet packs, if we want burgeoning economies with more employment and GDP, we should be doing anything physically possible to reduce the cost and increase the availability of energy to the average person.

You're free to solve that in any way you want -- nuclear makes the most sense to me -- but _if_ we have our heads on backwards, then we have a lot of well- meaning people who are actively trying to destroy our future by preaching conservation. Without knowing it.

Energy very well may be the 20th century's internet. The more everybody has it, the better off we all are.

<comment><USER3> _the availability of energy to the individual almost exactly correlates with economic growth_

A corollary might be that the more energy available per capita, the greater the environmental footprint of per capita. E.g. the McMansions of the megasprawl: rolling hills of former farmland are graded and leveled off, enormous balloon-like, energy inefficient stick frame houses pop up, and twice a day their inhabitants wait in lines of SUVs on the clogged roads between the exurbs and the suburban office parks. The entire enterprise is completely dependent on vast quantities of energy being available to participants in the system. People are comfortable in their SUVs and McMansions, and aspire to this lifestyle. But the environmental footprint per capita is enormous. Without some penalty for the external costs (which are long latency and hard to measure), there is nothing to slow the spread of this pattern of economic development.

In this light, when you say:

 _Energy very well may be the 20th century's internet. The more everybody has it, the better off we all are._

I suspect it is more like an upside-down U-shaped curve. People are indeed better off when we have sufficient energy per capita, but when we have a massive superabundance of energy, we negatively affect our environment to the point that real consequences start to kick in. Unfortunately, it is hard to know where we are on that upside-down U, and it is hard (impossible?) to distinguish overwrought hand-wringing about impending environmental doom from the real thing, until the real thing has started to have obvious, severe, and sustained effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What if we never run out of oil? What if there is no global warming? What if nuclear power plants never exploded?

I guess we are officially in denial now.

Jokes aside though, higher prices for fossil fuels are a reality and regardless of the size of future reserves, we do have to deal with that at least. The same goes for global warming. Regardless of whether we are the cause of it or not, we have to deal with the consequences. The same goes for nuclear energy. Regardless of whether more modern reactors are safe or not, neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima are solved problems and they won't get solved for another few thousand years.

Hence, my take is that we need to progress to a culture of perpetual sustainability and independence of as many external variables as possible.

</comment><comment><USER5> We never ran out of whale oil, but does anyone think we should go back to using that as our main source of fuel?

It isn't about running out, it's about cost and sustainability. Oil is getting more expensive and it isn't sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I get so tired of this totally incorrect narrative about the US being beholden to Iran or Iraq or whatever for our oil supply. Everybody should know by now that we only get 12.9% of our oil from the middle east TOTAL, let alone from any one country.

See:

[http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does- america-g...](http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get- oil-you-may-be-surprised)

</comment><comment><USER7> From [http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green- tech/en...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy- production/frozen-fuel4.htm):

"Many geologists suspect that gas hydrates play an important role in stabilizing the seafloor. Drilling in these oceanic deposits could destabilize the seabed, causing vast swaths of sediment to slide for miles down the continental slope. Evidence suggests that such underwater landslides have occurred in the past, with devastating consequences. The movement of so much sediment would certainly trigger massive tsunamis similar to those seen in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004."

Sounds dodgy to me :(

<comment><USER8> Gas hydrates are possibly one of the mechanisms involved in the Storegga Slide - which resulted in a large tsunami in the North Sea:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From reading these comments it seems most people only read the headline. Such a shame, because it was a really well researched, thought through and written article.

</comment><comment><USER10> >Brownouts will ripple across the landscape; control centers will call up big companies and beg them to turn off the lights; managers of ultrasensitive modern control centers will watch in horror as voltage drops lead to factory shutdowns. (Germany, a leader in renewable-energy use, is already facing this situation.

Kraut here. I have yet to experience this or read about it in the news, I think the author is either exaggerating or misinformed.

What is true is that renewables already are putting a lot of strain on the net and there are plans to invest in a lot of new power lines and switches to better stabilize the grid, but the tone of the article is just ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER11> We already are able to create artificial oil by ourself.[1] And the chemical formula is even better than turning lead into gold because it is turning CO2 into high quality oil!

It is fun to see how this is not talk in the media...

[1] <http://www.biopetroleo.com/english/>

</comment><comment><USER12> > [Natural gas] has already reduced U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions to their > lowest levels since Newt Gingrich's heyday.

That's true if you just look at CO2, but if you take methane leakage into account things aren't so pretty. Several studies have claimed that the overall greenhouse effect of fracked methane is as bad as coal's.

The gas companies dispute that, saying the data is poor. They're right about that, and the reason is that those same companies refuse to install monitoring equipment.

</comment><comment><USER13> The opening paragraphs about Churchill are fascinating

</comment><comment><USER14> I've always sort of envisioned that oil would become "motorcycle / classic car fuel" and whatever ugly cars normal people end up buying in the next 20 years would run on electricity generated by a combination of some sort of next-gen nuclear, wind, and solar. There's enough petrolheads that will gladly pay $20/gallon to take their Camaro to the track on weekends.

<comment><USER15> I'm waiting to see what the used market is going to look like for EVs.

I could easily squeak by w/ current electric car tech. I only need 40 miles a day to cover my routine.

The problem is that I can afford $500-$5000 used cars -- I can't justify spending $20,000+ on a new car.

That being said: I'd like an EV as soon as I can fit it in my budget -- I'm a petrolhead, and I need to do my part to ensure there's fuel left for my hobbyist vehicles and all the supercars I know and love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Excellent article - 'Energy 101' - and confirmation that Technology and Energy are the worlds two most important industries.

</comment><comment><USER17> Middle east stabilizes.

</comment><comment><USER18> _Running out of oil_ is not what should scare us. It's very easy to make the stuff, and we have tons of it, even now. What we're losing is the _cheap energy_ that came with the easy-to-exploit stuff that's dwindling. (Making oil, as any physicist would intuit as per entropy, will generally cost more than it's worth.) The energy ROI on Pennsylvania surface-level oil was 30:1 and up. That stuff's gone.

So-called "peak oil" (which we are probably at) isn't about "running out". It's a _behavioral_ effect (peak production) insofar as we have some choice (as a collective) in how much we produce. The Hubbert model says that "peak" occurs at the 50-percent point. Based on what I've read, I'd guess that (a) we are at peak production and will be at-or-near this plateau of 80-85Mb/day for ~20 years, but (b) decline will be slow and some of that will be the good kind (alternatives), and (c) we've used less than 50% of the world supply (meaning the symmetry of the Hubbert model _isn't_ the case).

Either way, we need to start working on alternatives. Global warming is a lot scarier than "peak oil". Markets work, and the bad case of "peak oil" that I consider credible is that our standard-of-living becomes like that of Eastern Europe (say, Hungary) for ~20 years. I've been there. It's not that bad. You have to hang-dry your clothes; you get used to that stuff. Climate change could kill off the species. That's much scarier.

Personally, I'm a fan of modern nuclear technologies, as a bridge until we're all-green. Most of the anti-nuclear prejudice in the US comes from known design flaws in plants that are over 30 years old that were built before people knew what they were doing. Modern, passive-safety nuclear plants just don't have those TMI/Fukushima/Chernobyl risks. There are dangers (perfectly safe energy production does not exist) but they're much less severe.

<comment><USER19> I live in Eastern Europe. How else do dry your clothes apart from hanging them?

<comment><USER20> Not sure if you're joking or not ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer> )... A couple of years ago I was sat on a train passing through Flanders (one of the richer regions in Western Europe), next to a Texan family. The husband noticed a clothes rack full of towels on a terrace, and exclaimed 'Look at that! Did you see that?! They don't have a clothes dryer! Those poor people, we should thank God we were born in Texas!'. Which was followed by much commiseration about how hard it was to find a proper church on holidays.

<comment><USER21> Living on the Texas Gulf coast, we line-dry clothes in the summer, when it isn't too humid. Our nosey old blue-haired neighbor had to comment to another neighbor about how unfortunate it was for us that our clothes-dryer had obviously broken, and we must not be able to afford a new one. What's really funny is that we have a privacy fence around three sides of our fairly large back yard. Due to the part of the yard where the clothes are hung, the view of the clothes is very limited from the street.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Parallel functional programming a blind alley? - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpcwire.com/news/John-Shalf-Talks-Parallel-Programming-Languages-96980349.html John Shalf, the team leader of the Advanced Technologies Group at the US National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, in this interview indicates that efforts would be refocused on functional programming as a promising avenue for parallel computation. This approach failed in the 80s and 90s, and I fear will continue to be a blind alley. My critique of parallel functional programming may be found on pages 42-47 in the main report (http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1005.5183) <comment><USER2> Here's the real article: <http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=1002557>

ADDED: the HN "blind alley" title is a mischaracterization of the article in question and the word "blind" is found no where in either articles.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I couldn't even find a paragraph hinting that

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, sorry, I'm new to how this list works, I meant to editorialise but it didnt quite work out.</comment></comment></comment>