Show HN: FounderPhone – make customer support personal with SMS - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! We're Parthi and Kunal from FounderPhone (https://founderphone.com). FounderPhone is a shared customer support inbox for SMS and calls in Slack.
We've built and shipped 7 products recently and if there's one thing we've learned, it's that your personal relationship with your customer is your secret weapon as a startup. Having customers email firstname.lastname@example.com or message a bot via Intercom doesn't feel personal. People are skeptical they will ever get a response. We've had a lot of success giving out our phone number to the top customers we really care about and telling them to text us whenever something comes up. Apparently, lots of great founders like Patrick from Stripe did this for their VIP customers while growing their startups.
The problem is that a single SMS inbox isn't sustainable at scale. So we hacked together a solution for ourselves where we made Slack a shared inbox. When a customer texts or calls me, our team can also see the messages and incoming calls. We can discuss how best to handle the issue in Slack and then anyone can respond via text. For calls, anyone available can redirect calls to their own number. From the customer's perspective, they're just texting a single number. They're not frustrated with messy tickets or being routed to 3 different people. They will always read your responses because it's in their SMS inbox instead of being lost amongst their 20,000 unread emails.
This is just the start! We're looking into building a whole suite of software to make customer support feel both personal and immediate. We're making an integration with Segment and Sentry to alert you when a customer has an issue so you can reach out to them about it before they complain to you.
Text our FounderPhone (510) 756-2522 with your name or email email@example.com if you have any questions. Thanks for checking us out! <comment> yjftsjthsd-h I'm a _little_ sorry to rain on your parade, but this seems like you're turning a personal contact back into a normal support system. "Hey, here's my direct contact info" works _because_ it's not "our team can also see the messages and incoming calls. We can discuss how best to handle the issue in Slack and then anyone can respond via text". You've just reinvented a support phone number, and as soon as customers actually try to interact with it the whole charade will collapse.

<comment><AUTHOR> For larger teams that aren't startups, we don't intend for this to be used for everyone. We think it should be reserved for your most important customers. In a lot of B2B businesses, a handful of customers account for the lion's share of your revenue. You want to build a personal relationship with them and make sure they are taken care of and happy. We think it's best to stratify support and give your most valuable customers direct access to your core team vs general support where they can get lost. It's worked well for us (we have 10s of customers) and we think it can work for just "VIP" customers at larger companies

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h So like an account manager, but a group of people rather than a single person? I suppose that could have value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I think this is a great idea. It seems like it's getting a lot of resistance due to the dishonesty.

On the website it looks like the message is purposefully withholding the information that A) the text went to everyone, and B) the person who replied wasn't 'Richard"

But the value is the customer received a personal-feeling experience even though it wasn't actually what they probably thought. And you showed that by having the customer say, "Yo Richard!" as to imply that they had their guard down and were being informal.

I could argue that even though it is dishonest (in that withholding information can be regarded as a form of dishonesty), it is still ensuring greater success by creating a perceived personal relationship. And that's also psychologically beneficial to the customer and their success with whatever product is being supported.

It seems like you will have to be very careful in how this experience is portrayed, marketed, and worded to get around the subterfuge aspect.

A technology approach could be to have it automatically say, "I forwarded your text to John and he replied "I restarted the server for you. Everything should be working."

You're in a delicate position where the value in your startup is due to a psychological perception that's based in withholding information. You'll need to trot down that path very carefully so that you still can maximize the psychological benefits to the customer while minimizing the appearance of deceit.

But I think it definitely provides for a great customer experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your thoughts! Yeah, technology is making everything more distant and impersonal. We're trying to figure out how we can make business to customer interactions feel like you're actually cared for by a real person instead of a nameless entity. We definitely have a lot of work to do to figure out the right way to scale that while keeping it authentic. This is the first step

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat product, we rolled something similar to this using Slack where we manage the phone system, etc. I especially like how you can reply within Slack and text back the customer. Seems like your major problem with this startup is usage costs as text messages and phone calls can quickly add up. We are a small team of ~7 people and our monthly Twilio expense is twice your price here. I.e., not priced high enough.

I might prefer this product with a slight change: instead of trusting you my business phone number, maybe I could simply point my Twilio endpoint to your servers? That way you are not soaking up passthrough costs of customer usage; plus, I don't have to worry about getting my number from you after all my customers are familiar with that number. Anyways, it's a neat concept. I have provided our phone system to other businesses and can totally see the value in this product.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can do that for you. We can give you the API endpoints to hit from Twilio. Want to shoot me an email at email@example.com or text at 510 756 2522?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We've built and shipped 7 products recently and if there's one thing we've > learned, it's that your personal relationship with your customer is your > secret weapon as a startup. Having customers email email@example.com or > message a bot via Intercom doesn't feel personal.

Agree with the personal relationship with the customer part. But if the email is <realname>@company.com, wouldn't that be personal? I do see giving a phone number as way more involved with the customer.

> From a customer's perspective, they're just texting a single number. They're > not frustrated with messy tickets or being routed to 3 different people.

Isn't that what happens here in the backend — some messy ticketing system in Slack (which I gather isn't a ticketing system) and several people handling responses for the same customer/issue and a potential lack of coherence in responses?

I don't mean to pick on you. I really see value in providing a phone number to customers and telling them they can text or call anytime. But somewhere your marketing message seems a bit off to me, and doesn't make sense on the points you're railing against.

All the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

A phone number is a lot more personal and immediate than email. We intend for this to be used with your most valuable customers, where you want to give them a direct line to someone senior at the company.

We started with Slack since it's an easy way to get your team on board without them having to adopt a new tool. We've already started speccing out a web- based tool to handle more complicated triage tasks.

The point on marketing message is appreciated. FounderPhone has worked well for us and our customers right now, and we think it can work for keeping account managers or founders close to their VIP customers, where you really want to be on top of any of their issues. We'll think about how to message that more carefully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, man! I run a small web agency, and deal with A LOT of clients texting me and my account managers.

Hate on here aside, I think this is a solid idea. Keep up the good fight.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support! Would love to chat to see if we can help or what you would want. email@example.com or 510 756 2522

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is cool. You may already know this but Talkbin [0] was building this for physical locations back in 2010/2011\. I remember them having a "text the owner" sign in Coupa Cafe off of University Ave.

They were acquired by google 5 months into it [1] and after that I remember seeing the signs in Crate and Barrels for a while, then google shut them down after dwindling usage [2]. I always thought it was a cool idea.

This was all pre-slack and the focus was physical locations vs. other tech founders so will be interested to see if now is the right time vs. then. I've certainly noticed more and more companies relying on text to stay in touch with me from a comms standpoint (HealthIQ comes to mind from recent interactions, but even our doggie day care primarily communicates with me via text now).

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/talkbin](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/talkbin) [1] [https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/25/google-acquires- talkbin-a-...](https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/25/google-acquires-talkbin-a- feedback-platform-for-businesses-thats-only-five-months-old/) [2] [https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/28/google-shuts-down- talkbin-...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/28/google-shuts-down-talkbin-a- feedback-platform-for-businesses-that-it-acquired-in-2011/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing those companies out! Really appreciate it. I actually know two of the TalkBin founders

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I built something like this for my own texting needs, though it was app-based. The biggest killer is that Twilio doesn't yet support group texting.

Unsure how many people will attempt to group text a company founder, but that part ends badly. It's surprisingly good for MMS/etc handling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we're actively trying to figure out group texting. Right now it looks like the individuals in the group are texting you

<comment><USER7> Yup. I ended up blocked in the same way. You might want to reach out to Twilio and get another vote for this feature on their roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We currently use Front to achieve something very similar:

A few questions:

\- Do you support MMS (photos and videos)?

\- Do you support creating auto-reminders to follow up with specific customers?

\- Can you set up an autoresponder that responds when users sends a specific key message? Eg if the customer sends "Start" then can you autoreply with a canned message?

<comment><USER9> Yes on #1. We dont have auto-reminders or an autoresponder, but could certainly build them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Or, if you don't want to use Slack, but still want to use SMS to communicate with your customers, check out [https://www.switchboard.chat](https://www.switchboard.chat).

This use case really resonated with folks in the real estate and educational spaces.

<comment><USER11> > you don't want to use Slack

Thanks, I was hoping someone would share something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats on launching!

How does this compare to something like OpenPhone ([https://www.openphone.co/](https://www.openphone.co/))?

<comment><AUTHOR> They're a great company competing Google Voice. We're really trying to focus on customer support and success. We don't want to be a general purpose business phone since other companies like OpenPhone are doing a great job there already

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still don't understand the value in this. How is this different from Apple Facebook Zendesk et al. contact platforms which provide certain level of anonymity to the customer ? Also is this a matter of simple Twilio to Slack hook integration ?

<comment><AUTHOR> This assumes you want to build a personal relationship with your customer. Think high value customers. You would want to provide a concierge like service in that case vs making it anonymous and distant

It's a Twilio/Slack integration, but it's actually a fair amount of work to get the nuance right. We handle calls, text campaigns, etc. We're also looking into a web based shared inbox for teams not in Slack

<comment><USER14> Have you taken a look at SignalWire instead of Twilio? Syntax-compatible XML, less price gouging so might be able to help offset some of the costs to make these products even more affordably awesome.

<comment><USER15> Hi Startledmarmot, I happened to notice this post. I'm Travis Stoliker and I'm a VP at Signalwire. I don't want to interrupt the thread but I wanted to give you my direct email so you can get a hold of me anytime. email@example.com. Thanks for the shout out on here. If you need any credit to try out our service if you haven't already done so, just shoot me an email! If anyone else would like some credit just let me know. Take care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If this takes off its gonna accelerate the sms app becoming a feature rich email-like client with folders, send-later, fwd/delete rules, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're thinking a step ahead. Yeah, I think businesses are going to start using SMS for marketing because it's not a saturated channel like email. We're trying to do customer support which doesn't deal with high volume of spamming. If SMS does take off, iOS and Android will beef up iMessage and Messages to handle spam and separate business from personal texts

<comment><USER17> is support for RCS in the roadmap?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a customer I would never use this. I'd much rather email someone than have to chat with them. I always look for the email contact option.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like the idea alot.. but not in the US

<comment><AUTHOR> We can technically support non-US. It just would be prohibitively expensive right now. But we can keep you posted!</comment></comment>


New developers, a piece of advice. Learn a text editor - <AUTHOR> https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2018/09/21/learn-a-text-editor/ <comment><USER2> It is nice to have tools that don't require 30 seconds to boot up, just so you can view some xml (Looking at you visual studio). But the recommendation of vi or emacs...just why? I scratch my head when people recommend 30 year old tech.

Those who use vi and emacs to their full potential are that generation of developers who grew up with those tools. Nowadays, why wouldn't you use something like VSCode as your main text editor? Atom? Or even n++? Unless you are confined by your job to an sshterm or something. If you want to LEARN a text editor you might as well pick one of the modern ones with all the nice modern QOL updates. The tech-flex of developing in a terminal is so dumb.

And VI? Why not VIM? VI is like recommending ANSI C over C18.

<comment><USER3> Author here.

Good points. One of the reasons I gave to learn emacs or vim is that they're available _everywhere_. To me, that has a lot of value.</comment></comment>


Data visualization accessibility: help me help you - <AUTHOR> http://camlorn.net/posts/March%202017/holman-prize-application.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a project that a friend of mine is working on.</comment>


Everything I Learned in College was BullShit - <AUTHOR> http://www.genjuice.com/2011/02/14/everything-they-told-you-in-college-was-bullsht/

<comment><USER2> You chose a bullshit major.</comment>


1 Million Users: What I Learned - <AUTHOR> http://www.jotform.com/blog/68-1-Million-Users-What-I-Learned <comment><USER2> Great story, thanks for sharing. Shows that dedication and hard work make a business and that overnight success is like winning the lottery!</comment>


Lithium-ion batteries start to take on the big stuff - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/17352944

<comment><USER3> Lithium is a finite, and more importantly - concentrated - <USER2> unfortunately. We should aim to make use of more abundant metals such as zinc.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone have use for currencycare.com? - <AUTHOR> I picked this domain up from another HN member last year with the intention of doing something with it, but ended up, not. When he transferred it to me he asked that if I don't use it to put it back into the HN community. So I am doing that. It expires in about 3 weeks, so I'd like to move it sooner rather than later so I don't have to renew it before transferring.<p>If you're interested, shoot me a reply or an email ( j <dot> curcio <at> me <dot> com ). <comment><USER2> Maybe one of the healthcare related cryptocurrencies or ICOs, if that is somewhere you want it to go.</comment>


Seattle Police Department orders two more drones for $150k - <AUTHOR> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2012/oct/11/two-seattle-police-drones-sit-unused-department-se/

<comment><USER2> Muckrock is a national treasure.</comment>


Dumb Security Questionnaires (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://latacora.micro.blog/its-weird-to/ <comment><USER2> Having recently gone through an external security assessment, this article is really on target. Especially worth reading are the "top 4" threats at the bottom of the article, which I'll extract out here:

      - A developer is going to leave an AWS credential somewhere an attacker can find it.
      - An employee password is going to get credential-stuffed into an admin interface.
      - A developer is going to forget how to parameterize an ORDER BY clause and introduce an SQLI vulnerability.
      - A developer is going to set up a wiki or a Jenkins server on an EC2 instance with a routable IP and an open security group.</comment>


Hangman's hardest word - <AUTHOR> http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/hangman-s-hardest-word-discovered/1408256

<comment><USER2> Except of course that people don't guess randomly. If the object is to beat a computer (as in the article) that will work, but if the objective is to beat a human j..z isn't all that hard because there are only two words in the English language that match that pattern and only one of them is 'printable'.

<comment><USER3> That's only using the older variant of hangman where you start with the first and last letters. I think the article is pretty clearly discussing the more modern, "wheel of fortune" variety.

<comment><USER2> That's got to be a cultural thing, I've never even heard of wheels of fortune combined with hangman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the discussion from the last time this was posted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601978></comment>


'Drinkable' Potato Chips: The Products Keeping Your Phone Grease-Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/feb/06/koike-ya-one-hand-chips-greasy-snacks-clean-phone-solutions <comment><USER2> I use chopsticks to eat potato chips. I find that it works pretty well for keeping my keyboard grease-free. (And spoons are good for popcorn, btw.)

<comment><USER3> Me too! My gf's kids think it's weird, but I don't like to have greasy fingers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Used to drink chips as a child.

Salt & vinegar flavour, smashed up and poured from the bag. Breath in and you would get a hit of vinegar fumes.

Not sure how healthy that is that is, but we are talking junk food.</comment>


Can you learn to code and build an app in a month? Here's what I made. - <AUTHOR> http://davidmckinney.com/blog/2014/2/20/learning-to-code

<comment><USER2> You're selling basically a bunch of static quotes for 1.99? Wow. Not to be flame-bait, but man, that takes some guts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats. I think it's pretty impressive what you've accomplished.

</comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely you can, and you will do it again and again with different technology stacks and different languages.</comment>


Confessions of an ex-TSA agent - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-confession-102912_full.html <comment><USER2> On The Media has been running an initiative to get lawmakers to answer basic questions about TSA and DHS policy. The agency has been stonewalling reporters so they've asked that citizens call lawmakers directly and ask a series of questions.

[http://project.wnyc.org/otm-detain/](http://project.wnyc.org/otm-detain/)

<comment><USER3> Cool! Has anyone here done this?

<comment><USER4> I'm normally not a fan of that type of thing. To me it's like a ddos attack on the phone system.

Edit: ddos attack on the phone system of the legislators. Nothing wrong with calling. But enabling people to call en masse without even the friction of having to look up a phone number (which is easy for sure) for the purpose of helping the media do their job just doesn't work for me.

Has nothing to do with whether the questions need to be answered or not. But potentially overloading a representatives phone system is not the way I think it should be done. (5 people calling a day is not overloading so of course I'm assuming that this would result in more activity).

Now of course considering how much people don't like spam and junk mail (which are really way less intrusive en masse than the phone ringing) I'm curious why people are disagreeing with my basic point.

<comment><USER5> Shouldn't you be a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse to talk to their constituents more than you should worry about their phone lines being tied up while their constituents call them?

<comment><USER4> Explain the connection between this:

"a little more worried about the fact that politicians refuse to talk to their constituents"

and this:

"The agency has been stonewalling reporters"

While reporters are also constituents stonewalling reporters is different that stonewalling constituents.

<comment><USER6> For the vast majority of people and issues, the media is the primary source the populace can rely upon to gain information about an issue. Obstructing, impeding, suppressing or in any other way hindering the access of the press is tantamount to doing the same to the population at large. This is why the Fourth Estate is critical to any democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my favorite stories came from one of the linked articles that he wrote while still on the job.

[http://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/confession-x...](http://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/confession- x-the-things-they-ran-through-the-xray/)

 _I recall one time I did a bag check on a man from Detroit, once the auto- making capital of the world. Having been informed by the x-ray operator that there was a bottle of water in the bag, I pulled it out and quickly sensed that something was slightly off. Then, I realized what it was: there was an enormous dildo rubber-banded to it. I then had an epiphany, spreading over me like a sunrise, beautiful and exhilarating: he wanted me to have to deal with the dildo. He did it on purpose. In rubber-banding that dildo to the water bottle he knew we would target, he seemed to say:

"Yes, I have a dildo, federal officer. Even after the horrors of 9/11, I am still alive; full of vitality, love, sex and, later tonight, that large dildo rubber-banded to the water you are about to confiscate from me. That bottle of water, bought with hard-earned American dollars to relinquish my bodily fluids, so as to make me strong and keep the wheels of commerce of this great nation turning. In taking my water, I want you, federal officer, to know that the terrorists have won, and that you are complicit. I want you to see my dildo. To hold it in your hand; to know that I, as well as my fellow passengers and countrymen, are strong and resilient.

That we, the people of this great nation, can, and will, snap back, like that rubber band."_

<comment><USER8> On the way to my bachelor party, my friends snuck a foil-wrapped dildo into my luggage in the hopes of eliciting a TSA response. Thankfully, it didn't work.

<comment><USER9> How did it fail? Did the TSA not find it, or did it just not elicit a response?

<comment><USER8> Either they didn't see it, or they did, but didn't care.

Either way, we all got a good laugh about it when I unpacked at our destination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why we don't take a page out of the Israeli's book is beyond me. They have been dealing with this for much longer, have made the mistakes we are currently making, and have learned from them.

Their airports don't have long lines and pat downs by ill-trained employees (lines of course exist, but they are shorter and not what we in the US are used to). Instead they hire fewer, educated and skilled persons, many of whom are, behaviorists to determine potential threats. It works; the last successful airport attack in Israel was in 1986, and they have prevented many since.

I remember reading about this in an interview with an ex Israeli defense minister years ago, but I couldn't find that article. This one sums it up though: [http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.is...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/)

<comment><USER11> While I think the TSA is largely a sack of shit, Israel's solution is hardly a panacea.

Israel has basically 1 major airport, and 2 minor airports. They further are based heavily on profiling. I don't expect the Israeli model would fit well to the US, which has 19 airports with more traffic than Ben Gurion, and a much more dynamic set of threats.

<comment><USER12> Israeli security is based on profiling, but not racial or religious profiling. They profile primarily on the nations you have passport stamps for. If you've been in a country that is known to harbor and train terrorists, you're gonna get the microscope. I feel like this is healthy profiling.

<comment><USER13> What about Oklahoma City? Does this put the US on that list?

<comment><USER14> What amount of security screening is going to stop a truck full of explosives from going off?

<comment><USER13> None. Screening is not the only tool out there. What happened to good old fashioned detective work?

In both law enforcement and journalism, we are no longer willing to fund proper investigative work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _"I'm not trying to tread upon your First Amendment rights," she said. "All I'm saying is: Couldn't you have run those First Amendment rights past the legal department first?"_

Welcome to modern America.

<comment><USER16> As usual, the issue is quite a bit more complex than presented here. In modern America, government employees' free-speech rights are _broader_ than they used to be, not narrower. The underlying principle here is that when you identify yourself as a government employee, you are in some sense speaking on behalf of the government, and as your employer the government has an interest in regulating the speech of its officers, not least to ensure an accurate reflection of its legal position. The author would [edit: probably - I haven't checked] have been perfectly at liberty to express the same viewpoint without self-identifying as a TSA official. A century ago this would have been an open-and-shut case...in favor of the government.

[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publice...](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publicemployees.htm)

<comment><USER17> I tend to think Pickering v Board of Education makes the speech protected _even if the speaker identifies himself /herself as a government employee._ At least, I would argue that such self-identification is so crucial to the speaker's message and so valuable to the public as to be protected.

I suspect that Garcetti v. Ceballos doesn't invalidate this position. In Garcetti, the issue was statements _made pursuant to professional duties._ I don't believe a letter to the editor criticizing your employer could be considered an action taken pursuant to your duties.

I'm just speculating, though. I can't be sure a given court would agree with me. So any government employees reading this shouldn't take my word for it.

<comment><USER16> It's easy to think of edge cases where it's a problem though, and then you get into tricky political questions about how to regulate the content of speech. For example, imagine a disgruntled TSA employee pens an article excoriating Muslims and suggesting that they be forbidden to travel (Constitutional impediments to such a policy notwithstanding). This would be very problematic for reasons that I hope are obvious; but all speech were constitutionally protected how would you _legally_ distinguish between that critical of the TSA and that critical of some other class of people without privileging one set of political opinions over another?

I'm no expert on the Constitutional law in this area - it just seems like a very obvious can of worms, of the sort that the courts prefer to punt on.

 _I don 't believe a letter to the editor criticizing your employer could be considered an action taken pursuant to your duties._

I think you could easily say you took an oath to the United States as opposed to your immediate supervisor, although in cases where people have made such arguments courts often seem to take the position that one should exhaust one's administrative remedies first - ie make complaints through channels, escalate to appropriate Congressional committees if necessary, etc. etc. Given the purpose of the TSA, national security issues could also come into play but I have no idea how those shake out.

<comment><USER15> _For example, imagine a disgruntled TSA employee pens an article excoriating Muslims and suggesting that they be forbidden to travel._

They _should_ be allowed to do that. And any publication willing to try to sell ad space flanking such drivel should be allowed to as well.

Freedom of speech is specifically and ultimately for _the speech that you don 't like_. I find the ideas behind your hypothetical article abhorrent, but I absolutely and unwaveringly think _people should be able to say those things_. My main motivations for this stance are two-fold:

1\. Preventing speech we don't like invites a slippery slope. If today we say you can't write articles excoriating Muslims, what's to stop us from barring editorials espousing atheism tomorrow? Or any religious stance but the current, socially dominant one the day after that? Better to allow distasteful discourse today than to risk dissenting discourse tomorrow.

2\. I find it convenient when noxious assholes out themselves as such. It makes my life so much easier when people who think these kinds of things fly their flag loudly and proudly, _so I know whom to avoid_.

 _how would you legally distinguish between that critical of the TSA and that critical of some other class of people without privileging one set of political opinions over another?_

Easy: _you don 't_. Speech is speech is speech. Allow it all, or risk it all.

Now, a critical caveat here is that we're talking about _speech_ , and not _incitement_. Expressing an opinion, however vile, should be sacrosanct. Encouraging people who might share your opinion to visit violence (and I don't just mean _physical_ violence) upon the targets of your noisome nonsense is something entirely other. And I think that's a reasonably easy distinction to draw, as well, without privileging some opinions over others.

<comment><USER16> I don't agree with your position.

Look at the balance of harms in this example. On the one side, a TSA employee whose expression of sincere opinion is restrained by his employer, the government. On the other side, millions of innocent people who feel dissuaded from air travel on the grounds of national origin (see below) because they don't believe they'll be properly treated at airports and because they fear assaults , even if only verbal, from passengers emboldened by the slight imprimateur of official support for their prejudice.

(I say national origin rather than religion because most people seem to be in the habit of making judgments based on the former. Post 9/11 people like Sikhs were attacked because they were foreign-seeming and from a part of the world that has a lot of Muslims, even though Sikhism is a wholly different religion. a woman named Fatima Mubarak might be a Christian but most people are going to assume Islamic affiliation based on her name. Likewise, it's easy to imagine or identify people who are Islamic but statistically unlikely to be identified as such. In the aggregate, we're pretty superficial).

You have a balance of harms here, and I think ultimately courts would choose the harm that affects the fewest number of people, especially given the existence of numerous avenues for dissatisfied TSA employees to raise grievances through administrative channels rather than by trying to whip up public sentiment in favor of their political view.

Please note that it's not the speech excoriating someone else that I'm saying should be regulated - it's the publicity by the angry person of their official position with a government agency in connection with that speech, which shI say should be restrainable by the agency. If the TSA agent in this example thinks the agency so wrong-headed, s/he could resign from the TSA and then write things like 'I quit the TSA because they don't recognize the threat posed by Muslims' \- to which the TSA could reply 'We are required by law to treat everyone equally and it is our policy to do so, which is why we parted ways with this employee.'

Now I totally agree that it's convenient when 'assholes out themselves as such.' The thing is that when they're in uniform (so to speak) what's convenient to you or me may be intimidating to someone else; things look quite different when you're a spectator rather than the target of someone's bias, and the appearance of official sanction for that bias amplifies the intimidatory effect. I'm saying that the interests of the agency in being seen to serve the public fairly and in accordance with law outweigh the interests of the individual agency employee who feels constrained by the agency's code of conduct.

<comment><USER18> I disagree with your position.

When we regulate free speech -- in any way whatsoever -- we open ourselves up to greater regulation of free speech. Free speech is a special privilege in that only unrestricted free speech can argue against restrictions on free speech. Once you grant restrictions against free speech, you open yourself up to a position where your speech becomes so restricted that you become unable to even argue why it should be less restricted.

Furthermore I strongly disagree that restrictions on speech should be relative to either the social position of the speaker, or the harms posed by the speaker. If our justification for preventing speech is that the speaker's speech could be mistaken as the official position of some group (in this case the TSA), then this gives us a legitimation to shut down _all_ speech, as we can simply twist the speaker's position as being representative of some group to which they're tenuously related. A woman wants to speak out unpopularly against x? Well, we can claim she represents all women, and her speaking out would sour the position of the public towards women. A black man wants to speak out against unpopular y? Same argument. Jewish? Same argument. And so on. This is why speech is an _individual_ right, regardless of circumstance.

As for the (in my opinion, unpersuasive) argument that the harm caused by speech should be legitimation to close down certain speech, no speech in-and- of itself is harmful. Speech is just speech, and _cannot_ itself be harmful. It is people's reactions to speech which causes harm. Even if we claim certain classes of speech (say, yelling fire) have predictable outcomes that can cause harm, we also have to accept that harmful speech can sometimes be necessary. When the founding fathers spoke out against the tyranny of the British (or so I hear; I'm British!), this lead to a civil war which cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. Same again when Lincoln spoke out against the separatist south. Same again when Churchill spoke out against the Nazi threat. Yet few would argue the harms caused by these pieces of speech should cause them to be banned, even though these pieces of speech resulted in the deaths of millions.

This means that we cannot be logically consistent when we claim to ban speech based upon harm, so we either have to change our justification (i.e. admit that it's not really harm we're avoiding, but specific types of harm), or admit that we're being illogical in selecting lesser harms (discomfort felt by non-Americans, in your example) as justification to shut down speech, and greater harms (the deaths of millions, as above) as protected speech.

Honestly, free speech is simply too fundamental to both democracy and philosophical/scientific progress to tamper with. No matter what lesser right you put up against it, you'd have a hard time convincing me that it should trump free speech, the right which underlies our very society.

<comment><USER16> I'm not proposing to regulate speech. I'm proposing to regulate people's ability to leverage their position as government officials to emphasize their speech. When you speak in uniform or publicize the fact of your position as a public employee, you're no longer speaking solely for yourself, but wrapping yourself in the mantle of authority.

Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

 _Furthermore I strongly disagree that restrictions on speech should be relative to either the social position of the speaker, or the harms posed by the speaker. If our justification for preventing speech is that the speaker 's speech could be mistaken as the official position of some group (in this case the TSA), then this gives us a legitimation to shut down all speech, as we can simply twist the speaker's position as being representative of some group to which they're tenuously related. A woman wants to speak out unpopularly against x? Well, we can claim she represents all women, and her speaking out would sour the position of the public towards women. A black man wants to speak out against unpopular y? Same argument. Jewish? Same argument. And so on. This is why speech is an individual right, regardless of circumstance._

No, that's bollocks because employment is a bilateral contractual relationship. I don't choose to be a man nor is the fact of my masculinity subject to the agreement of the male community, therefore it's meaningless for me to say that I speak for all mean by virtue of happening to be one. Someone in a position of authority in an organization by definition stands in an agency relationship to that organization. The very word _authority_ implies an ability to act as the of author of that organization's decisions.

 _As for the (in my opinion, unpersuasive) argument that the harm caused by speech should be legitimation to close down certain speech_

I'm not making any such argument. If you think that, you have wholly misunderstood my position and I apologize for my lack of clarity in explaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do government employees enjoy full protection from the First Amendment? It's not a simple yes or no answer. Whether a given utterance is protected depends on a variety of factors, but probably the most important one for low-ranking TSA employees is that the speech must be of public concern to be protected. I suspect that a front-lines TSA officer who writes a letter to the editor about the TSA would be entitled to First Amendment protection, per Pickering v Board of Education.

Here's a bit more info, with summaries of relevant cases:

[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publice...](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/publicemployees.htm)

<comment><USER16> Oh snap, I just posted that same link ;)

I do urge participants to look into this, because the 'bill of rights > everything else' viewpoint frequently expressed on HN (and the US internet in general) is both fairly recent and misguided in that it implicitly assumes a two-tier constitution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The bit about racial profiling is spot on, but heavily understated. People who are clearly U.S. citizens are merely inconvenienced and embarrassed by the TSA's shenanigans. If you know somebody from either the middle-east or a country noted for supplying narcotics (e.g. Mexico) who has flown through the U.S., even just to transfer to a connecting flight, ask them what their experience was like. The TSA treats U.S. citizens like Hollywood celebrities by comparison! The stories I've heard frequently cross the line into what any reasonable person would define as outright abuse. Obviously, few victims stand up for themselves.

The terrorists didn't win. The TSA became the terrorists.

</comment><comment><USER20> This quote has had me thinking all morning:

 _" The thought nagged at me that I was enabling the same government- sanctioned bigotry my father had fought so hard to escape."_

</comment><comment><USER13> I really wish more people in government had the gumption that this agent has to speak out about how public trust is being abused.

On a different not, I'm certain that I'm not the only one who read the Selectee Passport List in the voice of Yakko, Wakko and Dot.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting how they mostly got a pass this past holiday travel season.

Barely saw anything about them. So even the media is looking the other way now.

<comment><USER22> I feel like TSA is relaxing some of the security measures, just a bit - perhaps so there is no major media outrage so people will still trust them. Here and there there have been times my fiancé has not been made to take everything off and get a patdown. Scanners feel like they're decreasing in number so you can at least try to pick the metal detector lines again.

That might just be me with my TSA PreCheck and recent international non-US- destined flying talking though. Protip: fly business/first class or be part of PreCheck and revel in the pre-9/11 style of security. You know, the one where I wore all my jewelry, a sweater, and my boots through the metal detector, set it off, and the TSA agent just waved me through with a smile. Where I also didn't empty my water bottle or unpack anything at all - in fact, told not to even think about unpacking. Oh I feel so safe!

<comment><USER23> My typical airports have completely eliminated metal detector only lines except for Pre✓™.

Pre✓™ seems like extortion - I have a passport, DHS has my fingerprints (for unrelated reasons). Why should I jump through additional hoops, and give them more money for something that they've already collected from me? If they really wanted to know if I was a flight risk, wouldn't they have already used all of the information they already know about me? If not, why!?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> i went through the airport yesterday on my way to watch the Broncos win the super bowl. TSA had a new procedure which required travelers to touch a screen and give up their fingerprints then get their hands swabbed in order to collect DNA. later in the procedure travelers are asked to show their ids, which are then placed under 'infrared' scanners. given all the recent discussion about the pseudo anonymity of our interactions with various software services i found this to be more almost as intrusive as body scans. essentially, the tsa could be doing the following:

1\. touch screen so we have a fingerprint 2\. touch again if it didn't work the first time so we potentially have 2 fingerprints 3\. swab finger for DNA sample that we'll link to step 1 and/or 2 4\. place id under scanner which we'll link to steps 1-3 5\. triangulate all these data points over many years until the TSA has a complete database with everyone's unique identifying info...

</comment><comment><USER25> Really, nobody's gonna say it? Okay, fine. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. You, guy wearing the uniform, you the mindless meat puppet acting out nonsensical policy directives. Without you, there is no system, yet you choose to participate in it, you enable it, you make it real.

I understand some people have no choice, family to support, made bad choices in the past that limit their opportunities now.. but you, good sir? You get no pass whatsoever. Young, male, educated -- one would expect you'd try harder than to settle into a TSA job.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thought this was a great website with great content, reading this interesting article without annoying pagination (though the option was there if I had wanted it) at a comfortable font size.

Clicking through to the homepage, it turns out they also feature a call to censor Snowden: [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/edward- snowde...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/edward-snowden-nsa- snow-job-102740.html?ml=m_b7_1)

Never mind. This makes me doubt what I just read.

<comment><USER27> Lolz. I really wish I could figure out a way to fit this comment into a #ShitHNSays tweet.

<comment><USER26> Try a blog. They seem to work with posts of more than one sms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I started questioning all the TSA security after I recently watched a demonstration on how you could make dangerous weapons with items you can purchase after you go through security. It is quite scary. The people that want to cause harm will always find a way.

I have not been outside the US, I am curious on the security around the world. Namely, flights headed towards US airports. Do they have to go through body scanners?

<comment><USER29> I fly to the US a few times a year. Until a year ago from Switzerland either direct or London, now from Tokyo. Never seen a full body scanner outside the US. There is a bit of security theater though, which might pale in comparison to the TSA, like a security officer at ZRH giving me a 'old school' (read: no private areas) pat down because, as he told me, "I was the 12th guy in a row". At NRT they check your ID or passport prior to entering the airport and may glance at your bag, due to the troubles when they opened the airport. HND doesn't have that IIRC. TL;DR, this seems mostly limited to the US from my experiences.

<comment><USER30> I do believe the first deployment of these scanners was at Amsterdam's Schipol airport. They were deployed at the time of the infamous Underwear Bomber that supposedly led to the US deploying them. This is the same Schipol airport where the Underwear Bomber went through security before boarding his flight to the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Anyone else think "Rapiscan" is a perfect name for those machines?

<comment><USER32> Paging Dr. Funke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> new hero! and his book seems like it will be good: [http://playbooknovel.com/](http://playbooknovel.com/)

<comment><USER34> A bad job is never wasted on a good writer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I always opt out from the body scanners, and I have yet to see another person do it (which implies very small number do, otherwise by pure chance I'd see somebody do it by now). Looks like most of the Americans just don't care. BTW, never took me excessive time and I've never been harassed or inconvenienced in any unusual (as opposed to usual for TSA) ways for opting out.

Also, from this article, next time TSA employee tries to feel my ass looking for a bomb, it would be interesting to think about him as an aspiring satire writer. I wonder if that would change the experience.

</comment><comment><USER36> Its all been lies all along. What a shock.

Our government does so much propaganda in collusion with the media. Every time anything happens, we are treated to news stories about how security is being beefed up. The reality is that there reality isn't much they can do except show more security on TV and hope you'll conclude "ah, they are on top of things."

</comment><comment><USER37> I wasn't a bit surprised to read any of this. Even the candor with which the author shows himself to actively and tacitly promote and sustain the unprofessional and compromising conduct in which he and his colleagues engaged.

I'm not sure if that transparency is due to his arrogance, or ignorance of how much he contributed to the problems we all deal with. No matter. Business as usual.

Ballsy? Maybe. 'Hey everybody! I'm a self-identified slacker, unqualified to be entrusted with responsibility. Here's my name. Here's my picture.'

Still, very disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER38> From the why-anonymity-is-important department.

Truth will out.

</comment><comment><USER39> In a funny way I find this reassuring.

After all the worries, posting from various places, TOR, and in the end from home, no one went after him even though he clearly ridiculed the TSA. It's kind of sad that we even have to consider that, but in these days of NSA abuses it's nice to see democracy at work.

</comment><comment><USER40> Code red alfalfa. Ok that was a little redundant :)

<comment><USER41> Code red alfalfa hot papa. THAT was the as redundant as full body scanner pat down security check anal probe passport sweep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This reads as if the author considers himself in league with Edward Snowden.

</comment><comment><USER43> All you need to know about those performing the TSA roles can be learned from one trip through a security line, where some fat obnoxious woman screams at paying customers and american citizens like they're children and berate and segregate (for further humiliation or harassment) anyone who dares question anything or do anything but be blindly and unwaveringly obedient.

<comment><USER44> I didn't think it was necessary to call her fat.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Building LinkedIn clone, recommend me a stack - <AUTHOR> I'm building a LinkedIn clone and am open to try a new language/platform/framework. What one would you recommend, how have you used it, and what is your overall impression of it compared to other tools you've worked with? Front-end and back-end suggestions welcome. <comment><USER2> If you expect this to grow into a huge platform, as in completely replace LinkedIn, use Django, if not, use MeteorJS. Django will allow you to scale very quickly, as it is more robust. However, the learning curve for Meteor is much smaller and will allow you to get a very modern, reactive application up and running quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, that kind of info is useful to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are doing it as a CV showcase type thing looking for a job I would do it in C# , why are you doing it?

<comment><AUTHOR> project for a friend that could become his business/SaaS platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use diaspora or gnu social as a framework, the code is already there and open source.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, looking into it!</comment></comment>


My Philosophy on Dot Files - <AUTHOR> https://eklitzke.org/dotfiles <comment><USER2> > People abuse this system like you would not believe. The main offenders are > people who copy oh-my-zsh and a ton of plugins into their dot files > directory.

I have a hard time seeing this as "abuse". This is the late 2010s, not the early 1970s. Modern file storage medium is cheap and has come a long way. When laptops are shipping with (at minimum) 500GB hard drives, cloning a 5MB Oh My ZSH repo is arguably taking advantage of a well-known open source framework. It's not necessarily a black-and-white litmus test of technical incompetence versus not having the time to create something from scratch. Least with frameworks like OMZ and Antigen, I know that other people with more free time than me are reviewing the code and constantly improving it.

Disclosure: I keep the following at the beginning of my .zshrc:

      if [ -d "$HOME/.oh-my-zsh" ]; then
          ZSH=$HOME/.oh-my-zsh #leave this alone
          source ~/.oh-my-zsh/oh-my-zsh.sh
      else
          git clone https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh
          ZSH=$HOME/.oh-my-zsh
          source ~/.oh-my-zsh/oh-my-zsh.sh
      fi</comment>


The war between the city of Los Angeles and its mountains - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/los-angeles-should-be-buried/

<comment><USER2> Glad it references the McPhee "Los Angeles Against the Mountains." essays. It included in the McPhee book "the control of nature'. Three interesting essays on the flood control of the mississippi, controling volcanoes in iceland and the mudslides of the sanGabriel mountains. McPhee's writing isn't always the clearest, but his topics are realy interesting. Plus he gets people to open up and talk to him.

As people spread out around cities they'll bump into these natural hazards more and more. People aren't good at assessing risk.

</comment><comment><USER3> The flooding and landslides of 1969 killed 91 people, not "more than a 100 people", as the article claims.

(See <[http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/heavy-rain- leads-...](http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/heavy-rain-leads-to- landslides-in-southern-california>.))</comment>


Show HN: Project Ivory - a minimalist forum for intellectual discussions - <AUTHOR> http://pivory.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Current Features:

1) Simple uncluttered interface using a single-page design. Most functions are hidden and can be switched on / off with a quick swing of mouse in fullscreen mode. For example, click the top-right corner for an even cleaner view.

2) The two columns can be navigated separately: back / forward / refresh for each of them. Use mouse wheel to scroll.

3) All posts of a person are integrated into his / her user page feed, and you can jump between the exact positions in the user page and the topic page, such that you can easily read everything from the interesting users and discover good topics.

4) You can focus on someone to only show his / her posts inside a topic, and then defocus on one of them to get to its position inside the original topic.

5) You can post on your or other's user page directly. And you can follow users and be followed. You can also create, edit and delete lists of topics.

6) You can edit / delete you posts, and rename / hide / lock your topics at any moment. Hence you can even use it as a todo list or a bookmark organizer.

7) TeX and Code support. Good for scientific and programming topics. You can customize the font type, size, and line height. The site is also very friendly on your data bandwidth.</comment>


Lauren Krakauskas of Freaker USA on Kickstarter and Shark Tank - <AUTHOR> http://teenpro.net/blog/podcast-ep3-lauren-krakauskas

<comment><USER2> Regarding Freaker (not necessarily the article): My mentor now is the COO (... basically CEO, just not on Paper for Zach's style); he's repeatedly said that Zach is one of the smartest people he's ever worked with, and that Zach put on an act for the Tank, for the Tank's sake.</comment>


Central Banks Have Become Irrelevant - <AUTHOR> https://themarket.ch/interview/russell-napier-central-banks-have-become-irrelevant-ld.2323 <comment><USER2> The article mentions at several point how the "financial repression" will be negative to investors. But what about for the majority of the population that holds little to no financial assets?

 _Are you expecting a repeat of the financial repression that dominated the decades after World War Two?_

Weren't those decades also characterized by unprecedented economic growth and increase in standards of living? Isn't what the author says government will do perfectly defensible from a Keynesian perspective, not to mention from a democratic perspective (why should unelected central bankers have this sort of economic powers over duly elected representatives?)

<comment><USER3> "Financial repression" is one of those heavily loaded political terms that annoys me, because of the implication that the investment class are _owed_ a positive risk-free rate of return even if that's at the cost of the rest of society.

However, when I started reading this article I thought it might be a rant about ZIRP, but it's actually much more sensible. It's extremely level-headed, refers to pragmatic evidence, and isn't interested in name calling.

On the other hand, he still doesn't articulate what he means by "financial repression" very clearly.

>> The cornerstones of the last period of financial repression after World War II were capital controls and the forcing of domestic savings institutions to buy domestic government bonds. Do you expect both of these measures to be introduced again?

> Yes. Domestic savings institutions like pension funds can easily be forced > to buy domestic government bonds at low interest rates.

This is kind of already happening .. voluntarily? Treasury rates hover around zero.

I think the time may have come to re-evaluate capital controls while we're re- evaluating globalisation and its positive and negative effects. Is transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to opaque structures on tiny islands _really_ good for the general public?

> If we're taking the next 10 years, I see inflation between 4 and 8%, > somewhere around that

That's .. worse than what we're used to, but not a disaster? What really matters is the link between price and wage inflation. Remember that most members of the general public in the west aren't worried about inflation eroding their _cash_ assets because they have none or are negative (mortgaged). But we _are_ worried about our salaries being eroded.

UK bond yields: the coalition government spent the lives of disabled people propping up "austerity" nominally to protect the credit rating, which it promptly threw out the window to in the course of Brexit. It seems likely that the UK situation will get worse.

Another thing to think about: state control directing credit to businesses to increase employment was a big part of how China has achieved spectacular growth rates over the decades since consolidating power at Tianamen.

<comment><USER4> > "Financial repression" is one of those heavily loaded political terms that > annoys me, because of the implication that the investment class are owed a > positive risk-free rate of return even if that's at the cost of the rest of > society.

The investor class aren't owed anything and the jaw dropping foolish policy of bailing out losers needs to stop.

But two points; first just to be clear on terms there is no such thing as a return that is free from risk. The term 'risk free returns' means no risk of the contract counterparty welching on the terms of the contract. The other background risks still exist. Nobody knows what the return on bonds will be in real terms and investors get involved in them with the knowledge that the investment could well be worthless or worth-negative in real terms.

Second - if the rate of return is negative then that really just means nobody rational will be willingly to lend the money to the government. So while I may not be owed a positive rate of return (which makes sense, I can't force anyone to borrow from me) there is no fair situation where I accept a negative (or nil) expected rate of return for taking on real risk.

<comment><USER5> > The investor class aren't owed anything

I don't know about your country, but in my country, you would be generalizing. There isn't a specific "investor class" because a large percentage of the population invests due to industry-wide organized pension funds.

<comment><USER4> They aren't owed anything either. If bad decision makers are rewarded then the situation will only get worse and people who don't know what they are doing will accumulate more market power.

There needs to be some sort of program to keep people fed and in decent accommodation; but there is too much to be lost rewarding people for standing by idly while bad decisions get made with their money. It is not going to work out well in the long term bailing out specifically the people who are screwing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think central banks cause deflation by increasing money supply through lower interest rates. Here how that may works the newly created money does not flow to wage inflation they flow to investing in more automation software/robots/machines. More automation is deflationary products become cheaper to produce lowering their cost to consumers. Further more, wages are no longer local through globalization so local central banks cannot fully control wage inflation on a global market as cheaper wages products from foreign wages are imported. There has been a race to the bottom from central banks on low interest rates where countries has competed in lowering their currency by lower interest rates. This cycle is now somehow broken.

Interesting that the interest rate will go up and the potential effect on mortgages.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this is probably one of the more important/insightful articles that's been on HN in some time.

<comment><USER8> This guy also predicted significant inflation back in 2010 during the last crisis which...didn't happen. Take it with a bag of salt.

<comment><USER7> Always take articles like this with various amounts of salt. My thought is most of what he's saying sounds plausible and it's relatively easy to see if it begins to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a tortured logic this interview follow.

It's funny that the period from the second world ward to the neoliberal revolution in the 80's is considered by this guy a bad thing. It was a period of grow shared by a big part of the population. I suppose if you work in the City or Wall Street, something like that looks like the end of the world.

And he believe two contradictory things, he thinks that politicians control the central bank and that they need private saving institutions to control the bond yields. But if you control de central bank you already control the yields (see Japan), you don't need any private institution help.

Mainstream economics is arriving to what Modern Monetary Theory has been telling us the last 20 years. There are not insights in this article that have not been repeated again and again by the MMT people.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Politicians have gained control of money supply and they will not give up > this instrument anymore

The issuing of money is a key aspect of sovereignty. So, if anything, it's "restored control of money supply".

But even this is a misrepresentation, since most money in modern Capitalist states is created by commercial banks, through a Fractional Reserve mechanism:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional- reserve_banking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking)

in a nutshell - banks only hold a fraction of the money they give out as loans, i.e. when they make loans they literally create new money.

It's also a slight misrepresentation since governments are mostly not-really issuing their own money, just telling banks to issue a lot of loans. Having said that - the states may need to issue money to cover failing loans (or otherwise introduce stiff austerity programs).

When the state issues money, it is typically not debt-based like commercial money. (officially it may be registered as sovereign "debt" to the central bank, but that debt is just an artifice, and is never collected).

\</comment><comment>----

> QE was a fiasco. All that central banks have achieved over the past ten > years is creating a lot of non-bank debt. Their actions kept interest rates > low, which inflated asset prices and allowed companies to borrow cheaply > through the issuance of bonds.

But that's what they set out to achieve! That's the policy that government - or perhaps we should say, large corporations and financial institutions, through government - chose to enact. It is an aspect of the collective insanity of capitalism that millions of people lost their homes, and got no bailout or public housing etc. - but the financial institutions who had inflated the bubble of speculation and helped drive those people into ruin were showered with cheap money (after some of them having been bailed-out outright at public expense).

</comment><comment><USER11> >Governments have taken control of the money supply.

laughable.

The economist Wolfgang Streeck debunks this entire premise in his book 'how capitalism will end.' after the 1993 financial crisis and 2008 market collapse financial power eclipsed the state through the introduction of debt and credit as the means of financial operation. First at the personal level, through blank-check irresponsible issuance of credit cards and mortage loans, then through the insistance that states and entire nations operate on a debt model, sacrificing traditional tax revenue from the top earners instead for a system of infinite term, low and even zero interest credit. all they have to do is prove their solvency through austerity measures, which absolve the wealthy from paying evermore taxes in the process.

Streeck even highlights how this happens in the EU, with northern nations routinely subsidizing obstinant southern nations in an uncomfortable exchange to push them toward a debt structure that only benefits the wealthiest. He makes a compelling argument that everyone knew what greece was doing, even encouraged it, and yet walked away blameless after the crisis.

the only way central banks benefit the political class is in their employment as a cudgel to punish the wicked. Central banks disarm valid opposition like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Kim Dot Com. Or at least they did, until cryptocurrency.

</comment><comment><USER12> X22 report had been talking about Trump taking control of the Fed since april. There's a reason X22 get 100k-300k views per youtube is episode, he is constantly right on the money.

I'm glad the rest of the intellectual class are finally acknowledging that the government has seized control of the central banks.

X22 says we are going to see tremendous growth in our economy starting in Q4. His track record of being right on the money gives me optimism.

<comment><USER7> I think the entire point of the article is that governments have a way of pumping money into the economy that doesn't require central banks...

<comment><USER13> But that is not what Trump is doing. He is using the Fed to take on as much debt in the nation as possible. Why? Because there will be an audit of the Fed and it will be discovered that the Fed has been misusing their funds. This will allow the US government to cry foul and dis-organize the Fed - in effect, declare bankruptcy.

What does that do the US? It basically stimulates the economy by forgiving that debt the Fed bought.

What does it do to the central banks to whom the Fed owes money?

Naysayers take note: The IRS stopped all collection actions back in January. IRS filing and payment deadlines were delayed. How was that possible? The president just can't wave a magic wand and make the Federal Reserve jump through a hoop. Or can he? What's the current EFFR?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The amount of debt being created by governments, willy nilly, with lack of oversight due to 'COVID' is just scary. And that's just regular debt, not the broad-money creation problems articulated in the article.

Anyone with the power to 'invent money' is going to abuse it an fight to the death to keep it.

COVID was/is a fight, we're going to have to fight to rationalise finance, it may never happen.

Since 2008 we've been living in a weird kind of financial fiction.

FYI consumers have been 'paying' huge kinds of inflation on their homes. Having some degree of inflation would put that to bed quite nicely and it may not be so bad for quite a lot of people.

<comment><USER15> Hardly willy nilly. It is in accordance with the Keynesian economics school of thought. It's simply that the Chicago school of thought is getting out of fashion.

Also, debt is currently cheap to get, so for the government not to invest would be rather unrational. And that is ignoring the downside on the income of a tanking economy.

<comment><USER16> God, I'm so tired of hearing this: "debt is currently cheap to get, so for the government not to invest would be rather unrational".

Debt is cheap BECAUSE we had a financial crisis, BECAUSE we let people who shouldn't have indebted themselves indebt themselves.

There will be grave consequences an suffering in enabling inept people and corporations take on more debt.

<comment><USER17> You can only borrow if you have collateral to discount against.

The question is whether the bankers know how to do their job properly and can assess collateral.

<comment><USER16> But isn't collateral a tried an tested measure of knowing if you are actually able to repay your debt?

Who would know better than the bankers, politicians?

<comment><USER17> Lending stops when people run out of collateral. It's not the interest rate that determines what people can borrow. It's how much collateral they have.

The financial collapse was due to bankers failing to assess collateral with sufficient haircut.

<comment><USER16> Could you explain your last phrase more concretely?

In my country mortgage loans stop when people don't have the downpayment of 5%-15% of the mortgage or when they have already indebted themselves for more than 45% of their income.

Other loan types are also capped when you debt level exceeds a certain threshold of your income.

This all seems reasonable to me.

It also seems reasonable that banks would not issue more debt to people when their collateral value drops in market values, such as housing market bubble bursts.

<comment><USER18> Quite simply this: [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nina.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nina.asp)

Banks wanted customers and wanted to fill their goals: "loan X per yr."

That's why the mortgage loans went boom.

<comment><USER16> Aren't the NINJA loans an example of why we need more bank regulations and tighter loan cheks instead of making banks hand out even more loans?

<comment><USER18> Government bonds/markets are a different story than mortgages.

If you own the bank $100k, you have a problem.

If you own the bank $100Bi, the bank has a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CoinSwitch – Aggregator of Cryptocurrency Exchanges - <AUTHOR> https://www.coinswitch.co <comment><AUTHOR> What is CoinSwitch?

CoinSwitch.co is a year old exchange aggregator that supports 300+ coins and 45,000+ exchange pairs - the highest in the world. It currently aggregates KuCoin, Cryptopia,Bittrex, Changelly, Shapeshift, Changer, ChangeNow and will be adding HitBTC, OKEx, LiveCoin and Huobi.

Why should I try it?

Users can compare prices of their favorite coins and buy it from CoinSwitch without having to create an account at any of the partner exchanges and on top of that, we don't maintain custodian wallets so users can receive funds on their own wallets.</comment>


Taking the Sears Time Machine for a Test Drive - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3538

<comment><USER2> Nice write-up, but _Let's not waste your time with suspense. The experiment's result is Sears Doesn't Have Shit.... CONCLUSION: PARTS UNAVAILABLE – STICK WITH E-BAY._</comment>


The Enormous Diversity Problem at AWS Re:Invent 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/kylegalbraith/the-enormous-diversity-problem-at-aws-reinvent-2017-bd7?utm_source <comment><AUTHOR> I was actually encouraged by the amount of women present this year. It seemed to be much higher than in previous years. That said, there still wasn't nearly enough diversity and I'm constantly looking for ways to get more people that don't look like me (white male) into technology and going to conferences like re:Invent.</comment>


Microsoft CEO defends US military contract that some employees say crosses line - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/25/tech/augmented-reality-microsoft-us-military/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also posted [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19250060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19250060) (after this post) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19247613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19247613) (before this post).</comment>


China tells government offices to remove all foreign computer equipment - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/09/china-tells-government-offices-to-remove-all-foreign-computer-equipment <comment><USER2> Seems this could be a win-win for China:

\- Increases the pressure of the trade war on the US.

\- Motivates China's already strong technology industry to develop equivalent specification technology for all components, which it can also sell abroad.

\- Removes the possibility of security compromised components from outside China and instead enables China to include its own backdoors wherever it wants.

<comment><USER3> Could also be a win for Lenovo laptop users if they improve their support for GNU/Linux, including offering it pre-installed. Which is the only option I can see open to them if they are replacing Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title misses " and software". Isn't Linux "foreign"?

</comment><comment><USER5> So the gauntlet has been dropped and a new era ensues.

<comment><USER6> No, this is them hardening their infrastructure. Getting rid of all the external sourced backdoors.

<comment><USER7> I guess both</comment></comment></comment>


Chicago-01: Research oriented cloud computing / MPI hybrid kernel. - <AUTHOR> http://saltyschemer.posterous.com/chicago-01-project

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't expect this to be built in a day but more like over the course of a year or more. I haven't written code for the project and the project is more of a planning stage. I hope to have an alpha quality release in 2 years.</comment>


NetSurf: Small, fast, free web browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ <comment><USER2> It looks like today is Alternative Browser Day on HN.

So for those who don't know it, there's also Xombrero: [https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xombrero](https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/xombrero)

It's based on Webkit so it's more compatible with the "modern web" than dillo/netsurf.

<comment><USER3> "dwb" is also webkit based but more minimal (Support for Adblocking, among other things)

[http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/](http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/)

<comment><USER4> and as an alternative: qutebrowser!

same concept as dwb but with Qt and not gtk for those who cares.

[https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser](https://github.com/The- Compiler/qutebrowser)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a bit hidden on the page in the documentation so I'll write it here to save people time:

NetSurf doesn't support Javascript properly.

For some that might be OK but for most it'll be a showstopper.

<comment><USER6> Is it "NetSurf doesn't support javascript and likely won't" or "Netsurf doesn't support javascript yet"?

<comment><USER7> They're in the process of rewriting the DOM handler to support dynamic changes from JavaScript. JavaScript itself runs well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> windows builds

[http://ci.netsurf-browser.org/builds/windows/](http://ci.netsurf- browser.org/builds/windows/)

not mentioned anywhere from download page

update: cannot open HN... no Ctrl-L

<comment><USER9> Not sure what you mean by "no Ctrl-L" (no shortcut to jump to address bar?); most connection issues with off-brand browsers are SSL-related:

[http://download.netsurf- browser.org/netsurf/releases/ChangeL...](http://download.netsurf- browser.org/netsurf/releases/ChangeLog.txt)

 _Removed support for all SSL versions due to vulnerabilities._

<comment><USER10> NetSurf seems to support SSL to the extent that it connected to my site, which scores an A+ on the Qualsys SSL Labs test, without any issues.

On the other hand, I agree that not being able to hit Command-L to jump to the address bar as with every other graphical browser (as well as many other browser-like applications) just… doesn't feel right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any https website that I visit with netsurf, I get this empty warning: [http://imgur.com/7bmDqnP](http://imgur.com/7bmDqnP) ... but I used the version available in my repo, which is 2.9 .

</comment><comment><USER12> NetSurf includes multiple framebuffer front ends, including: the Linux framebuffer, SDL, X and VNC.

The VNC server surface uses the libvncserver library to provide a straightforward unsecured VNC server. Multiple clients may connect.

</comment><comment><USER13> While I applaud competition, I fear that more browsers will make it ever more difficult to develop working code that doesn't break at the next update. I guess the middle ground is that developers are supposed to follow the major browsers, while the small browsers have to follow them too. This could work in practice (I suppose users have gotten used to things breaking on the web), but somehow it still feels like a failure of the field of Software Engineering.

<comment><USER14> Isn't this what standards are for? If everyone follows them then no worries..

<comment><USER13> Yes. This is the theory. But haven't you ever seen browser-support tables? For instance, this one: [http://caniuse.com/](http://caniuse.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://tkhtml.tcl.tk/hv3.html](http://tkhtml.tcl.tk/hv3.html) HV3 Tcl/Tk Web Browser

</comment><comment><USER16> Posting this from NetSurf. Pretty neat. Unlike Dillo, NetSurf managed to let me log in to HN, post, and upvote.

Currently it is consuming ~50M of RAM, about 10x less than Firefox with the same one tab.

</comment><comment><USER17> Most sites I tried were somewhat broken. But to my surprise my own website worked just perfectly (sans javascript powered comments and ads of course). And blazingly fast!

</comment><comment><USER18> The suckless guys have their webkit-based browser, surf [0].

[0] [http://surf.suckless.org/](http://surf.suckless.org/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm getting blocked visiting the site... weird.

> Your page is blocked due to a security policy that prohibits access to > category > Remote Proxies.

<comment><USER20> Probably because it has browser in the url or something idiotic. Complain to your IT staff who use blanket rules on their gateways,

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wonder if this will build on my old BeBox? Might be a reason to turn it on this year ..

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there any analysis of the security of this browser?

</comment><comment><USER23> Forgive me, but why is this on the frontpage?

<comment><USER24> You don't consider somebody writing their own browser from scratch to be frontpage worthy?

<comment><USER23> Fair enough, sorry didn't infer that from the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Called it!

"I wouldn't be surprised that now that both of them [Firefox and Chrome] are too complex, in a few more years someone comes out with a browser that is simpler than both of them and is intended to replace them both."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10400540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10400540)

<comment><USER26> Well, except that the NetSurf project was started in 2002. Other than that, you were spot on!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Low-power, distributed cryptocurrency mining for charity - <AUTHOR> http://www.computeforhumanity.org

<comment><USER2> It definitely looks great. Do you have any stats, like in X minutes, you are probably or averagely producing this much money?

Also, it helped me to realize that I have no info about cryptocurrency. It may be useful to do this in our own computers too, and maybe done with Python; so it can be used on multi-platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I don't yet have very many stats (partly due to how it's architected) but I'd like to in the future.

Agreed that multi-platform support would be ideal. Having only a Mac currently it's a tough avenue for me to work on but if you'd be interested in helping out on that front (or know someone who is), definitely drop me a line!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, creator here. I'm happy to answer any questions and welcome any/all feedback!</comment>