Ask HN: Good iPad apps for children to help with learning? - <AUTHOR>

I introduced my niece to Angry birds on the iPad today, which she loved and picked up really quick. I started looking for other apps to help with teaching, specifically Maths and English but couldn't find anything good.<p>Does anyone know of good iPad apps (free of paid) that are aimed at children (age 4-10) that could help with learning? <comment><USER2> DragonBox. It's a game of match and eliminate symbols according to some basic rules, e.g., remove the same from each side. Usually around level 12 is when you realize the rules are algebra.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this looks really great. Will definitely check this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.gazziliworld.com> have some great educational games

</comment><comment><USER4> [shameless plug]

We build collaborative educational games on the iPad. You should check out Equator ([https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/equator-2-player-problem- sol...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/equator-2-player-problem- solving/id550498003)).

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't have specific apps to recommend right now. But you can find children apps reviews at these sites:

<http://momswithapps.com/> <http://childrenstech.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> search maddie and matt on the apple store. its free</comment>


Here's what fruits and vegetables looked like before we domesticated them - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinsider.io/fruits-vegetables-their-ancestors-science-evolution-history-2016-2 <comment><USER2> I try to bring this up to explain to people that no food is natural. This is exactly why I don't worry too much about GMO products. We have been messing with genetics through artificial selection for thousands of years, doing so in a lab doesn't make it worse.</comment>


Show HN: Referer.io – Target website content based on referrer url - <AUTHOR> https://www.referer.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder here :)

You can see a demo of the product working when you click on the link. A welcome message will show up at the top welcoming all Hacker News readers.

Also the pricing table at the bottom is 100% dynamic. We actually have three pricing tables: one for HN readers, one for Product Hunt readers and another one for everyone else.

Questions or comments, just let me know.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't understand what the service actually is. Is it a library? An external service that must be called from Javascript?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a no code solution.

We already have the Javascript plugin. You just install it on your site and through the admin interface you can then start configuring what content to show based on the referral url.

Does it makes sense now?</comment></comment>


10 packing tips for lightweight travelers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jordandegeus/10-packing-tips-for-lightweight-travelers-756c673408a <comment><USER2> The submitter is quite dedicated to self-promotion:

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


My own private basic income - <AUTHOR> https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/karl-widerquist/my-own-private-basic-income <comment><USER2> > I lucked into money.

The basic point is that he gets paid more whilst not doing more "work". For those whom "Work" is the only lever they use to convert into money, they see inequitable work:cash ratios as "unfair" (a morality statement).

Market economies do not function on work, but on value. He did the same work in a high value scenario. A glass of water provided in the middle of a developed city is worthless and thus free. A glass of water provided at the right time in a desert is invaluable and thus expensive.

My takeaway is this: Always meet the highest value need you can, and as well create additional value by helping others to meet higher values than they current do. Low placed people may not be able to "work" their way to upper echelons, but they can invent, intuit or otherwise create high value leverage of their's and others' work. I dont see it as unfair that a person making $1 a day is unlikely to become a deca-billionaire in their lifetime (total mobility); instead I want to ensure they have some mobility so that they can always better their situation, maybe by an arbitrarily selected 2x multiplier.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't disagree more. As a society (and this goes from a community to a global scale) we should make it a priority to give everyone the resources to meet their maximum potential. I don't mean that we should give everyone a million dollars to invest of their own. What I mean is that we should ensure that everyone gets provided with a good education and food/water/shelter, etc.

The author specifically mentions the people making about $7 a day doing manual labor in Qatar, and that they were a lot shorter than he was primarily due to lack of nutrition. Do you believe that these people should only be able to aspire to making $14 a day? Maybe not all of these individuals are hard workers (by nature. I'm sure they are essentially forced to be hard workers to survive) or smart, but a lot probably are, and it's because of an unfair system that didn't give them access to food and education that they have to work in Qatar to make a living.

You may see this is simple economics, but I see this as a modern form of slavery: keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always be a cheap source of grunt labor.

<comment><USER4> > keep people poor, underfed, and uneducated so that they will always be a > cheap source of grunt labor.

Poor, underfed, and uneducated is the default position for human beings. We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing.

There is no conspiracy to "enslave" anyone, nearly all public health and wealth measures over the last 100 years are overwhelming up and to the right. That growth did not happened through magic or luck and certainly not from some misapplication of noble intentions (see communism), but through the slow accumulation of societal benefits, over time, across an open market economy.

It is not and will never be "fair", there will never be equality of outcomes, but jesus, we've faired a lot better under this system than by the whims of kings and politburos trying to distribute "fairness" with a clumsy iron fist.

<comment><USER5> >We were born into this world, as a species, with nothing.

Some people are born with nothing, others are born with just about everything. Many laws, regulations, etc exist so that JUST existing with nothing is not feasible.

It is nigh impossible to live in this world like the birds do, flying from one food source to the next, roosting wherever you find comfort. Those with means have entire departments to police the underclass off of their property and setup obstacles to make sure riff-raff does not even get on the public property next to their private property (just look at how public transport is set up in big cities).

We protect those with means, ensuring those without cannot even live without selling their labor. Die or work. It's a little like slavery (I KNOW there are large differences between traditional slavery), you must be able to see that?

>but through the slow accumulation of societal benefits, over time, across an open market economy.

Pretty sure most of the improvements we have made for the common man, at least in the US, have come at the behest of those born with nothing standing up and saying "we won't work unless the rewards are distributed better/we get a 40 hour work week/we get cleaner and less dangerous work conditions/etc."

>It is not and will never be "fair", there will never be equality of outcomes,

No one wants equality of outcomes, equality of outcomes would not seem fair to most people. Instead we want equality of opportunity.

We can improve, most of us know it, and even though most improvement will only effect our kids or grandkids, I will still keep bitching that we need to improve until we're AS GREAT AS WE CAN BE.

<comment><USER6> >Pretty sure most of the improvements we have made for the common man, at least in the US, have come at the behest of those born with nothing standing up and saying "we won't work unless the rewards are distributed better/we get a 40 hour work week/we get cleaner and less dangerous work conditions/etc."

Yes. These improvements were won through the most thoroughly and deeply _market_ behavior possible: raising the price on what you're selling.

Labor price-gouging capital is a beautiful sight to see. Usually only capital remembers it can do that.

<comment><USER7> > Labor price-gouging capital is a beautiful sight to see. Usually only > capital remembers it can do that.

This was a pleasure to read, although it made me wonder what the optimal unit of labor is to still have a functioning competitive market. If all capital was controlled by one entity, no market could exist -- that's basically why the US has anti-trust laws. The same is true for labor. Seems like for each market there must be an optimal unit of labor (number of workers in a union, for example), to balance well-being of an individual worker with functioning of the market. Hard problem, though.

<comment><USER8> Yes, the problems that monopoly creates are analogous problems to the problems with large unions. The union management seeks to increase their own power, and the larger the union, the more possibility to abuse that power. However, the upside of having an institutional way to apply political pressure for the benefit of the worker can definitely outweigh whatever abuses and inefficiencies most unions create.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow I am astounded that all the comments so far are trying to tear down this person and what he is saying, and very transparently because there seems to be something threatening about this idea that he got where he has through luck. Why do people find this idea so threatening?

I got where I am today due to luck. I did work hard. But I know other people who work hard too. Who are just as capable. They just didn't get assigned to the class with the really awesome, motivating teacher. Or randomly picked out of the pile by a recruiter for a call. Or happen to wind up working somewhere where they made friends with a guy who was well connected. Etc.

To discount luck's role in how people get successful is a huge blind spot.

<comment><USER10> >To discount luck's role in how people get successful is a huge blind spot.

That's the fantasy of meritocracy, fulfilling itself. When someone thinks that gold coins spray from their asshole every time they update a Git repo, they can comfortably presume their role is paramount in the value created. Of course, every library linked, every bit of infrastructure required, every calorie of energy delivered, every man-year of education needed by users - this all disappears in a cloud of self-regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gosh. OP made me sad with his thesis.

"1\. For owners, work is optional."

... As an owner I wish this were true. For me and most owners I know work is mandatory, and its 60 hour weeks and a lot of sleepless nights. There is no safety net. There is no unemployment. I get no workman's compensation. I have no employment law protections. Its, as one HN comment said some time ago, "a suffering contest" a lot of the time.

"2\. ...your stuff will keep on making money forever."

... Again, I wish this were true. Lifetime income producing investments are hard to find where volatility, fees, inflation, taxes and life's circumstances don't erode value. Sure, the truly wealthy are set. But most business owners are not truly wealthy, and the exit strategies just aren't there in many industries.

"3\. We can get entrepreneurship without the enormous rewards to ownership we have today"

... Anyone whose dealt with the day-to-day grind of owning a business would be especially offended by this comment. A firehose of pain, suffering and risk flows to the owner in the form of litigation, regulators, employees, vendors, customers, bank officers, etc., etc. I've equated it to a "lazy susan" dispensing aggravation in every conceivable form. Its the reward - if you can get it - that makes it worthwhile. Try just getting divorced as an owner and you become an instant convert to rewarding ownership.

Yes, rent-seeking monopolies are bad. Yes, more needs to be done to create opportunities for wealth creation by employees - to give them the freedom to say "no". No, punishing ownership isn't the answer.

UPDATE x2: I'm really not confusing types of owners. The author's thesis is broad not only in the article, but in his works in general. Access to passive income investments (eg. REIT's) is among the few places small business owners can go to rent-seek. Rent seeking is bad under a few sets of conditions but doesn't deserve author's indictment.

<comment><USER12> You're conflating two different roles: owner and operator. While many owners, particularly of smaller businesses, wear both hats, your responses to points (1) and (3) arise out of wearing the operator hat, not the owner hat.

For the companies that comprise most of the economy (less than half of U.S. GDP is attributable to small businesses), ownership and operatorship are distinct roles. The CEO of GE is not the company's owner; the shareholders who own GE don't face the travails of operating it.

<comment><USER11> US small businesses, collectively, are the largest employer of US citizens, especially at the margins of society where the author's "right to say no" is at its weakest. Its these small businesses, trying to accumulate wealth through property rights and rent-seeking, that would be disproportionately impacted were the author's philosophy to be adopted.

<comment><USER13> The author's philosophy is not to prohibit rent-seeking, but to tax it appropriately.

Given that it's currently taxed less than income from labor, I don't see what's so controversial about that notion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Owning land is certainly a private basic income.

Consider that land prices (and therefore rents) basically reflect the surrounding economy. By buying land you are essentially profiting from the work of everyone else in that economy, forever, and only taxed minuscule property taxes.

IMHO [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George) had the correct solution; tax land (though not the structures developed on it) at it's full market rental value. And the concept should apply to ownership in all resources.

</comment><comment><USER15> > _My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired > me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar_

Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university is just luck.

Have we we reached peak luck yet? Is there nothing ever we can do to improve our circumstances and our lives?

This is like a new age of economic predestination, where everything has been predecided for you by God and there's nothing you can do. Calvinist and BI proponents apparently have a lot in common.

<comment><USER16> > Apparently going to high school, studying and passing the SAT, applying and > being accepted into university, studying, passing, and graduating university > is just luck.

I genuinely thought you were sarcastic. Being born in circumstances that allow you to do that is luck, even in the developed world.

<comment><USER17> Its only luck if you consider every person independent of their ancestors, rather than a product of their ancestors.

<comment><USER16> Well yes, I consider who your ancestors are as part of being lucky, as you don't do anything to deserve who your ancestors are. What would you call it?

<comment><USER17> Context and motivation. Being able to provide an experience for your descendents motivates you to act. Without that ability, there is no reason to do anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > [in the US] people who don't need their income are taxed less than people > who do

I'm not American; I don't know the tax structure. But I can't even imagine that this could possibly be true, or what is true that is meant.

Without looking it up, I would assume that the USA subscribes to progressive taxation, under which the richer pay _more_ tax in both absolute and relative terms.

Even if it has a flat _rate_ of tax, (a structure, incidentally, that makes far more _intuitive_ sense to me) the richer are still paying more tax in absolute terms, and equal in relative terms.

What Earthly metric is the author using?

<comment><USER19> Let's look at Person A vs Person B.

Person A is a football player and makes $1 million in salary per year. This is all taxed progressively, meaning that Uncle Sam takes off 39.6% of most of his income. As a result, he pays close to $400k in taxes.

Person B is an investor. He invests in Applied Materials, and they have a very good year. His stock is now worth $1 million more than it was at the beginning of the year. Some of it, he sells - he's gotta eat, after all. That sold stock is taxed like income. Note that as long as he isn't living like a rockstar, he probably didn't sell enough to put him into the top tax bracket; he's just paying his expenses.

The remainder is taxed at about 20% - capital gains is taxed at a lower rate. Thus, because he can control how much of the stock he sells, Person B ends up paying somewhere around 60% of the tax that Person A pays.

This system screws over people who make most of their income through salary and benefits those who make most of their "income" through investments.

<comment><USER20> It's even worse than you describe. For the part he doesn't sell, no taxes are owed on the capital gains. Only when capital gains are realised, are taxes owed. If he holds onto that stock forever he can keep compounding forever, without every being taxed.

<comment><USER21> Well you also can't spend paper gains, you have to sell and therefore pay taxes.

And you could, you know, lose money in the stock market.

<comment><USER22> Not always true about paying taxes - inherited assets are "bullet-vested" to the time of inheritance, with taxes only on increase in value after death.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can someone clarify this piece for me? I don't understand how the author is able to completely avoid taxation on the rents.

>My wife and I don't need the money we make from owning most of the business. We live off the salaries of our jobs, and reinvest virtually our entire share of the business. These reinvestments count as "losses," and so officially we have never made any income or paid income taxes on our share of the business.

<comment><USER24> If they took any sort of money from their business, it would be taxed as income. But if the money just stays inside the business and is used to buy more rental buildings-- what's there to tax? So the business keeps growing and growing.

Case A: the owners take a paycheck of $100,000. It gets taxed at 30%, they get $70k.

Case B: the owners take no paycheck but instead buy a $100,000 property through the business with the business's earnings. They pay no tax but now own a $100,000 property which will now augment the business's earnings further. Down the road years later, they finally take a paycheck at $300,000, which is taxed down to like $180,000 or something. Still more than 2.5x the Case A payout, and let's not forget they own that much more property now on top of everything else.

<comment><USER25> But in Case B, wouldn't they have to pay the corporate income tax on that $100,000 before they buy the next property (39.1% in 2017)? I thought each property is a capital expense which gets depreciated over time. So you can't buy a second property with your profits and deduct it as an expense in the current year. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER24> You're probably not missing something. I could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ignoring the logical fallacies the author makes, one thing jumped out at me. He's not buying the average home in South Bend. If he's only paying $180/year in property tax, the assessed value of his average home is around $9K. A quick look at Google shows the median price (from Zillow, so a grain of salt is recommended) of $65K. If he and his brother are buying up $9K homes, his average mortgage is under $50/month. I'm sure that he's doing the socially responsible job of only charging his tenants just a little over his full costs...

<comment><USER27> Keep in mind, this piece is based on an older one. Looks like it dates to 2010. He probably bought up mediocre places during the end of the housing bubble for very little money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> TLDR

Guy in financially comfortable position feels guilty, decides his education, willingness to live in Qatar, etc shouldn't really be worth this much, completely discounts the idea that anything actually matters, it is all merely "luck" and that's it.

Sounds like an existential crisis, not really a good commentary on the concept of basic income.

<comment><USER29> TLDR

Guy reads an interesting article that threatens his idea of success, incorrectly summarizes the article and resorts to personal attacks against the author.

Sounds like threatening core beliefs makes you defensive, not really a good commentary on the article itself.

<comment><USER28> FYI: I am a woman. I am homeless. I get a lot of flak from people because I am not pro UBI when people seem to think I should be simply because I am homeless. Instead, I believe we need to view our current situation as The Second Industrial Revolution and do whatever the next evolutionary step is to make paid work a lighter burden while raising quality of living for the masses. I am pro gig work done right.

Also, your comment is basically a personal attack.

<comment><USER30> > Also, your comment is basically a personal attack.

Isn't yours? (The first one)

He used your comment as a framework.

<comment><USER28> Mine is a criticism of the actual article. The reply to mine is a personal attack against me, a member of this site. This is generally understood to be a violation of the site guidelines, though they don't explicitly say "no ad hominems."

 _In Comments

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER29> > Mine is a criticism of the actual article.

No it wasn't. You literally claimed the author had a mental break down. That's not an attack on the article, it was a direct attack on him. I literally formed my comment _exactly_ as you did to relay that point.

You seemed to have taken such issue with the idea that the guy is lucky, you attacked him personally rather than attack his point. I don't _entirely_ agree with the author. I don't entirely disagree with him. But if you want to make a point, attack his conclusions, not him.

<comment><USER28> _Existential crisis_ and _mental break down_ are not remotely the same thing. And noting that he seems to simply feel he somehow doesn't deserve this or feels guilty and his article is also not really well backed is a valid criticism. This piece looks to me like someone venting emotionally about their guilt at feeling they don't really deserve more than others. This is not really a good argument for creating basic income. Many people feel guilty for being born into wealth and privilege. That guilt is not some kind of objective evidence that basic income will solve the problems we currently face where we generally expect automation to eliminate certain jobs.

It's fine for people to think basic income will be a good solution to the situation before us. I don't happen to agree with that position. But personal guilt and appealing to some just world fallacy is not a substantive argument for why we should try to make this happen.

<comment><USER29> > And noting that he seems to simply feel he somehow doesn't deserve this

At no point in the article does he say that. He simply stated he was lucky. He was born in a country that made it such that he would NEVER be able to end up like the workers he encountered. Thats absolutely true. That makes him (and you) lucky and certainly more successful relative to them.

> his article is also not really well backed is a valid criticism

This is a story about something personal, its not a scientific piece. His "backing" is simply that being born where he was, in part, is the reason he is where he is. That's not subjective, that's an absolute fact.

> This piece looks to me like someone venting emotionally about their guilt at > feeling they don't really deserve more than others.

You are free to interpret it that way, but he never actually _indicated_ anything you took from it. It seems your own perspective on basic income highly skewed your perspective before you started to read it, and everything he said was used to justify your preconceived notion.

> Many people feel guilty for being born into wealth and privilege.

I would imagine the majority don't.

> That guilt is not some kind of objective evidence that basic income will > solve the problems we currently face

No, studies (some of which have recently began) will indicate whether or not basic income will work. This is an article about someones personal experience, once again, not a scholarly article or study.

> It's fine for people to think basic income will be a good solution to the > situation before us. I don't happen to agree with that position.

Unlike you I think it's something that needs to be studied _before_ I draw any conclusions. The irony here is your just as guilty as what you accuse the author of: you emotionally respond to something with zero evidence for (or in your case against) it.

<comment><USER28> Look, I read the article and inferred that he feels guilty. There isn't really any substance there and it is full of ridiculous assertions indicating that his labor, willingness to live in Qatar and stewardship of capital all have essentially zero real value and, thus, do not justify his cushy existence. This is a bad path forward for how to make the world a better place. If no one is doing any labor and no one is acting as a good steward, the world rapidly goes to hell. Even if you posit that all our jobs will be replaced by robots, we will need good stewards if we want good quality of life generally for all people. Someone will have to make decisions about the robot factories, etc. Given how widespread an impact those things would have, these would need to be wise to a very high standard in order to not be disastrous.

Then you come in and mirror my language and start off with "guy..." I am an active participant on HN and open about my gender. You referring to me as a _guy_ tells me you don't actually recognize me or know who I am. It also tells me you didn't so much as click through to my profile. It is trivially easy to determine my gender and you didn't do that much. That means you know literally NOTHING about me, thus all statements that follow your description of me as a _guy_ are made up out of thin air. They aren't any kind of valid criticism with any kind of basis in actual facts.

As for UBI, I am not closed minded about it. I am willing to consider a good argument for it. In fact, I would love to see a good argument for it. But I don't think an experiment like the one being done by Sam Altman tells us anything useful. It is obvious on the face of it that if a small subset of people get extra funds for a specified period or time, they will tend to do better than most people around them. This is not real world conditions for what will happen if UBI becomes a reality.

I think there are much better proxies to look at for trying to infer what will happen with UBI and these are real world examples. This includes things like what happens when someone wins the lottery (2/3s are bankrupt within 5 years) and actual historical efforts to share and share alike (communism, which was supposed to be a peasant paradise, but was a disaster). I have had pertinent classes in things like Social Psychology for trying to gauge what is likely to work with actual human beings in actual reality, not some experiment. I also write about my thoughts on UBI and related matters here:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey, South Bend made an article on the internet and it wasn't even about our mayor!

Rental income here is a bit weird because you have in general a very poor town, with a very expensive private university with old money funding houses for students. I bought my house here for a fair bit less than it would cost to rent something half the size.

<comment><USER32> I live in an area where college students cause an imbalance between the cost to rent vs buy (the purchase prices in the area are lower than you'd expect given the rents).

I'm constantly surprised that the market doesn't arbitrage this away. I suppose that is due to the fact that the real estate market is less efficient than others (both due to liquidity and transaction costs) and that being a landlord is harder than people suspect.

In either case, its always made me leery of rental real estate as an investment vehicle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems to state the obvious to me, but looking at the comments on the article, I'm in a minority.

<comment><USER34> People with a solid grasp of economics are, sadly, a minority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> He talks about the unfairness of "our economic system" but he makes his income from Qatar's economic system. Qatar likes to spend their oil money on western professors to give themselves an air of legitimacy.

As for renting out property, it's never effortless or risk-free. If it was, the rate of return would drop to that of other minimum risk assets (e.g. treasury bonds).

<comment><USER36> Our economic system is global even if our politics are not. The salaries Qatar pays are as influential in his life as any job he could have gotten stateside. The prices of oil and coffee beans are set internationally. Raising the minimum wage locally influences global capital flows away from your area, removing regulations directs global capital towards you. Zoning laws that restrict building and inflate property values will attract investors 5 time zones away on the other side of the planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> On some level, this is basically "capitalism 101." If I don't need my resources now, I can put them to work so that I can later benefit from them. This leads to me having productive assets, which pay me some return.

If I could not acquire productive assets, there would be much less reason to save. And it's unclear how one would save, as banks would likely not exist either. You can solve this problem somewhat by having a centrally planned economy. But then you have the problems that hit those.

<comment><USER2> The benefit of productive assets is that people who otherwise would not be able to produce high value outputs are stuck making lower value ones. By working with another's assets an individual can create more value than alone, and somehow split the difference with the asset owner. Workers maybe need to start to fight for a better split, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

<comment><USER37> Yes, yes. Or governments can enforce a more equitable split through taxes. But you still have to give some benefit to those who save, else there will be no reason to do aught but consume all one produces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Fantastic article.

Some takeaways:

* Our economic system claims to reward "work", but the reality is that it rewards ownership and extracting economic rents.

* Increasing value does not necessitate that being the result of one's "work". For example, land values rising are the result of other peoples' work (eg. neighboring properties, government policies, general economy). The landowner is compensated through the labor of others.

* Economic rents aren't taxed enough ("The business pays property taxes, but they average about $15 per house, per month – minuscule compared to the rent we make.")

* Labor is taxed too high relative to capital gains

* "Luck" plays a huge factor, and luck and hard work aren't mutually exclusive. If I'm born into a poor family in a ghetto, naturally I'm going to have less opportunities than being in an upper class family with enough funds to perpetually support me (eg. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates)

* We need a Universal Basic Income, ideally funded by taxes on economic rent (eg. land value tax)

Our economic system is like a big game of monopoly where all the properties are already owned. You start off with whatever money/property you inherit from your parents, and have to work yourself up. Meanwhile, the rentiers are profiting off the backs of the laborers without doing anything. Sure it's possible to add "properties" to the board (ie. starting businesses), but that doesn't scale.

At least Monopoly had a UBI in the form of the $200 you get every time you pass "Go".

</comment><comment><USER39> So this is the part 2 to the "how to retire at 34" article from a few years back..

<comment><USER40> Agree - seems to be a greatest hits of personal finance ideas with current buzzwords mixed in like "basic income" and "privilege" that aren't central to the post. Be a saver not a spender. Invest in things with strong cash flows relative to the purchase price. Use your personal connections, such as family members that can make good business partners. Take lucrative boring jobs if you can stomach them. Be lucky.

<comment><USER41> The core of the article is luck into making way more money than you need. Use spare luck to find a honest someone that knows what to do with that money. Retire.

That's not really what personal finance are about. Unless Vegas Holiday Brochure count as Personal Finance: go to a casino, win big, retire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The article is about something that should be obvious, capitalism: money goes to the capital owner.

Of course this has a lot of problems, but it's the best we have today. On this system, the rules of the game are: we need to work and spend less than we earn, and use the money to accumulate more capital, an not buying more things.

<comment><USER43> In the US, the vast majority of gross national income goes to labor not capital. FWIW.

<comment><USER13> Of course, there's also a lot more laborers than capitalists. By orders of magnitude.

How about per capita for each group?

<comment><USER43> BLS says about 153 million Americans are currently working(1). Gallup says 52% of American Adults are invested in the stock market(2). There are about 235 million adult Americans. 52% of that is 122 million.

      153 million laborers vs
      122 million stockholders

Pretty close! And that's just stockholders. There are, of course, many other forms of capital.

1\. [https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000)

2\. [http://www.gallup.com/poll/190883/half-americans-own- stocks-...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/190883/half-americans-own-stocks- matching-record-low.aspx)

<comment><USER13> If someone is deriving 90% of their income from labor, and 10% of it from stocks, then I don't think it's meaningful to call them "capitalists". It's technically true, yes, but in a way that doesn't make sense in the context of this discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I agree with the author's points. There have been, almost certainly, Einsteins who have lived and died in poverty without ever having tasted a book. I feel like a basic income for everyone is supportable and would give people falling to an unknowable fate the lift they need to go beyond surviving. Less work seems to need to be done with tech advances today, but the only thing a job replacing robot seems to do is take the incomes of two u people and give it to the person who owns the robot. The slippery slope is that we will eventually do this for most jobs, if we survive long enough as a species, and I agree we need change to evolve as our society does.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm having a lot of fun lately thinking about everything in cryptotokens:

Everyone gets 3 basicMealTokens and 1 basicFun token.

However, in SF, there are only sfMealTokens which require 20 basicMealTokens.

In Vietnam, 1 vietnameseChickenPlatterToken is only half a basicMealToken.

Tech workers are paid in techWorkTokens which can be exchanged for 200 basicMealTokens each or 100 basicFunTokens, or 1/1000th of a Tesla token.

Token transfers have friction so it is advantageous to maintain a surplus of tokens most easily transferrable (least hops) to what you want.

To ease this, SF maintains a sfBasicToken and makes the market to transfer tokens from all over the world to sfBasicTokens. sfBasicTokens have an advantage in that you can pay for things easily instead of paying 67.34 redditStatusTokens.

Some old geezer is willing to sell his house for a legacy usdToken, a token so old it had a physical representation and no historical memory.

The basicFoodToken ideas doesn't pan out. SF starts giving out sfBasicFoodTokens instead. However large numbers of people realize an arbitrage mistake and live like kings in Thailand, taking advantage of the buying power of sfTokens due to the Thailand people wanting to make it big with their startup dreams in the Bay Area.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER46> Its not two big lucky breaks it should be actually three big lucky breaks. Being born as a human is the first lucky break every human being on the earth gets. If you think about it 'merit' is man made. Nature most of the time works on pure chance.

</comment><comment><USER47> > No one is going to give tens of thousands of dollars every year to some guy > who owned a couple of houses and said he knew how to manage more,

Well, not no one. There are hard money lenders who will loan money to "some guy" to do more or less that.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think it's awesome to make critics about how capitalism is bad by using Qatar where basically no freedom exists and everything is controlled by the state. Not even mentioning actual slavery.

<comment><USER49> the homes he rents out are not in Qatar. and he gets to teach for so much money in Qatar because he's a highly educated white westerner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> What I got out of this was the suggestion to fund Basic Income by taxing unearned income. I'd like to read more on how the numbers would actually work out. If that were the only funding source of BI, then how much impact would that be on the rich, and how much benefit would that be for the people that could use BI?

<comment><USER51> There is no such thing as "unearned income". Assets are risky.

<comment><USER43> Unearned income is a technical term. Here is the IRS definition:

[https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch31.html#en_US_2016_pu...](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch31.html#en_US_2016_publink100046613)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Read this essay (which is, as it goes, pretty good), then go back and take a look at, say, the first book of Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_. In particular the prices of commodities, labour, stock, and rent, as well as the factors influencing wages of labour (chapter 10).

[https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations)

It doesn't hurt to consider Ricardo as well.

From Ricardo, we get the Iron Law of Wages, and the Law of Rent. Key to understand is that these move in opposite directions:

* Wages tend to the minimum subsistence level, all else equal.

* Rent rises to claim the surplus value afforded.

That is, _wages_ are based on the input _costs_ , whilst rent is based on the output _value_ (use value). The third element, _price_ (sometimes "exchange value"), is what's at question.

(I distinguish _cost_ , _value_ , and _price_ as three distinct concepts. This is a long-standing question, and in my view, a grossly confused one, in economics. They're related, but not deterministically. In the long term, C <= P < V. Bentham's "utility" is an exceptionally red herring. More, very much in development: [https://redd.it/48rd02](https://redd.it/48rd02))

Note that this means that _rent_ is determined by the pricing behaviour. If you're a "business owner" but you're not capable of extracting rents, you're either selling commodities or labour, you're not collecting rent. The term here is in the sense of economic rent. Simply "owning a business", without the economic circumstances which give rentier power, isn't sufficient -- don't confuse what it is you're _doing_ with the _systemic construct_ in which you're doing it. Weiderquist emphasises this point specifically, several commenters here clearly haven't grasped it.

Another elided discussion: rents are associated with _access control_ , and can be thought of as authority over some (virtual or physical) gate. They're a natural element of any _networked structure_ , in which nodes and links exist, most especially where some nodes have higher value, or control more flows. I believe though can't yet show that all cases of rent involve a fundamentally networked structure, again, virtual or real. My concern is that this may be a reflexive definition, I'm trying to determine that it is or isn't.

Another element of this is compensation for labour. Smith lays out five elements determining this, and I find them durable and comprehensive. In the Widerquist's case, the combination of requisite skills, and comparative unattractiveness, of teaching in Qatar, allow him to claim both a high wage and favourable working conditions (including a lighter-than-typical workload). This falls straight out of Smith. That is, he earns his salary "by doing a job few others are both willing and able to do".

If you're looking at the macro view, realise that these don't scale. That is, the innate and acquired capabilities to teach at University level are not widely distributed through the workforce, and the lack of appeal of various sorts of work is sufficient to dissuade (or prevent, or disqualify) others from taking part in it.

There are other elements here as well: the complimentarity of time and skills, on the one hand, with money, on the other (the classic business partnership). Tax structures (and who they benefit). The relationship of wealth and political power. Smith again: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." One of the shortest and clearest sentences in WoN, incidentally.

</comment><comment><USER53> "We have a basic income – a permanently growing basic income – not just for life, but forever."

Eh? Nobody has ever had this, and nobody ever will.

</comment><comment><USER54> Well success is either based entirely on luck or entirely on merit, and I'm sure we'll figure out which of the two it is real soon now.

</comment><comment><USER55>
      nor is there a combination of bad
      choices that could conceivably put
      me in their position from my starting
      point.

Guess again.

<comment><USER36> An American born citizen will (statistically) never be an indentured servant / migrant slave in oil rich countries.

<comment><USER55> I can conceive of a combination of bad choices that could place a person in such a predicament. Unlikely choices, but choices, when taken, certainly resulting in the described outcome.

It's not an inaccessible scenario, but unlikely to be anything other than a forced outcome for someone like the author. For those in mind, who actually face the true reality, it's usually accidental.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> You'll all will talk and conclude absolutely nothing. IQ distribution is cancer and you're all getting confused with one another.

</comment><comment><USER57> This guy sounds like a real shithead.

He makes his living teaching the children of totalitarian aristocrats at a faux university, is saving for the future on the backs of the poor back at home, and gets a kick out of having indentured servants at his beck and call.

I wouldn't shed a tear when his little empire of dirt collapses.

</comment><comment><USER58> There can only be so many people at the top.

</comment><comment><USER59> If you live in America you can do what you want. You can study hard and get a scholarship to college even if you are really poor as a kid. I know a poor Mexican immigrant who's kids all got college degrees for free. It doesn't really matter if you grow up poor (in America). There are many people who are very rich precisely because being poor as kids drove them to work hard. What does matter is if you grew up in a stable family. If you don't have that you get really whacked out paychologically, and it can affect people for their whole lives. People look to the government to tax and spend to solve social problems. However, oftentimes the government is the cause of such problems in the first place. For example, we see a huge number of people in prison today. Well studies show that 60% of people in prison grew up without a father in the home. The government today actively promotes divorce and children out of wedlock through paying single mothers. The "compassion" has raised a generation of young people who are lost. America has more money than ever but our families are falling apart, torn up by divorce and pornography, and our young people are paying the price. The government should focus on supporting strong families, and you would watch and see so many major social problems evaporate. I know that I am where I am today because of my dads positive influence on me. Without his support I would be nowhere right now. Every kid needs a loving family. It's time the government starts trying to promote that.

Of course in Quatar they have serious human rights issues that need to be resolved. I'm just talking about in America.

<comment><USER60> > I know a poor Mexican immigrant who's kids all got college degrees for free.

I know many upper middle class kids who got college degrees for free (parental scholarship).

> It doesn't really matter if you grow up poor (in America)

Like I said above, and the author claims, it does seem to matter quite a bit if you grow up poor or not poor.

> There are many people who are very rich precisely because being poor as kids > drove them to work hard.

There are probably many more who are rich precisely because being rich as kids drove them to being rich as adults.

> However, oftentimes the government is the cause of such problems in the > first place.

Oftentimes you drive on the roads the government provisioned, visit the parks past presidents enacted, live in the security our GI WW2 vets created, so on and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> for the articles description: "how [the economy] rewards people who own stuff rather than people who do stuff"

i cant believe i never summarized my own feelings that succinctly. of course the reality is it does both, but i think its way out of balance towards ownership rather that doing.

<comment><USER51> Capitalism rewards value. "Doing stuff" is not inherently valuable.

<comment><USER61> i smell tautological reasoning. people are paid what they deserve cause thats what the market decides? ok- if that is your premise, then i have a couple follow up q's:

1\. do thieves deserve the money they steal? 2\. are there people who profit from things that are legal but shouldn't be?

those are abstract q's that i think point out how saying "people are paid what they deserve" is wrong. if you reject that because you draw a distinction between "deserve" and "value they create", then i think "value" is kind of meaningless. in that case, it has the literal meaning you ascribe to it (i.e. it is what you call the amount of money someone pays for something), but nothing beyond.

i run into this view very often on here- that capitalism is fair because it pays you what you are worth. but thats so so lazy. you may not agree with me about how its unfair, or that its even worth worrying about, but id hope you would grant me that that premise is just a way to _not_ think about the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Property tax is $15 per month in South Bend for a house? Wrong. Capital gains is taxed lower than income? Wrong -- sometimes it is, sometimes the other way around. Multiple factual errors.

<comment><USER63> > Capital gains is taxed lower than income? Wrong -- sometimes it is, > sometimes the other way around

Capital gains is always taxed equal (for short-term gains) or less (for long- term gains) than "generic" income, except for a few edge cases (e.g., in the very-low income range where additional labor income has a negative net effective tax rate due to EITC and child tax credit and long-term gains have merely zero taxes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Property tax is $15 per month for a house in South Bend, IN? lol. Capital gains is taxed lower than income? Wrong ("it depends"). I stopped reading there.

<comment><USER64> It is factually true that capital gains is taxed lower than income in the US.</comment></comment>


The best boilerplate app is the one you code yourself - <AUTHOR> https://mindthecode.com/the-best-boilerplate-app-is-the-one-you-code-yourself/ <comment><USER2> As someone who works for themself, balancing productivity with learning is on my mind a lot.

Yes, creating my own boilerplate is attractive from a learning experience. Except when it's not learning but figuring out how to configure Webpack. Or how to get HMR working. Then it just becomes a chore and I explore Github for the best boilerplate for my needs.

To me, a boilerplate and a library aren't significantly different. The former is just exposed a lot more.

<comment><USER3> Likewise self-employed, I find myself increasingly strict on making new knowledge 'pay rent'. It's heresy hereabouts to say "I don't want to learn that new thing" but if you spend a week learning a new framework or package to solve a problem when you could code up a custom solution in three days, you've wasted time. Learning is an investment and you only get returns if you benefit from the knowledge.

Sharpening your saw is great but if you just want some firewood you should use your trusty old blocksplitter.

<comment><USER4> _if you spend a week learning a new framework or package to solve a problem when you could code up a custom solution in three days, you 've wasted time._

However, if you code up a custom solution that ignores some important detail of some deeper area of knowledge like security or concurrency, then your "3-day" solution might literally wind up costing millions or hundreds of millions. (Exercise: Name some famous historical precedents from famous companies relevant today.) Of course, the downside for your garden variety consultant is probably only worse by a factor of 2 to 10, but the point remains.

This is why the mastery of knowledge and practical experience necessary to reliably do such a cost-benefit analysis is very valuable. The upside in making decisions like this is something like saving 4 days or a week of programmer time. The downside can be literally worth a 21st century fortune.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to disagree. Writing your own boilerplate can be a great way to learn a new stack, but I think seasoned developers should use (and contribute to) projects that are maintained by the community.

Whenever I come back to a boilerplate project, they're usually using the most recent versions of libraries, or they have some great new features. Examples:

* Rails Composer, for Rails apps: [https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-composer](https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-composer)

* Ignite, for React Native: [https://github.com/infinitered/ignite](https://github.com/infinitered/ignite)

I do have one hand-written script that I use for all of my static sites. It copies all the static files into a build directory, gzips HTML/CSS/JS, syncs everything to an S3 bucket, then makes an API request to Cloudflare to purge the cache. But I'm planning to move all my static sites to Netlify [1], so I won't need that script for much longer.

[1] [https://www.netlify.com](https://www.netlify.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Please don't put so many gifs near text, it is annoying and gives headache

<comment><USER7> And we can't read it at work without looking like you're looking at memes...

<comment><USER8> I find the occasional GIF acceptable if it adds something to the text or the presentation. In this particular article, I would get rid of the GIF at the top, but keep the one near the Subscribe box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ironically, I only added these header gifs to two recent posts i did as i read they increase readability (ux wise). Even though not convinced I did feel i should try.

Thanks for the feedback, i'll go back to content-only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm in need of js boilerplate. Currently I have a hacked together $, slickgrid, jdorn/json-editor, $-ui, bs3 setup I minify with closure-compiler. All 1.8MB(cdn) with my code 50KB.

I'm running the above on a flask/swagger api. But I need a backbone or something similar.

I looked at reclinejs but their more focused around the data. So missing some slickgrid functionality I need.

I tried to componentize it with mithril... but mithril great; the way I want to use it wrong.

So back to drawing board thinking of componentize with $.onmount next. I just need some small kind of mvc, I'm looking at backbone. But I need a slickgrid dataview that understands collections nicely :/

gah!?! why do I do this to myself!

<comment><USER10> Learn React and then use next.js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used Flask App Builder. Spent a lot of time understanding it. But way better than building my own.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron I keep thinking to myself that I should write a MEAN-stack boilerplate for myself, but it's finding the free time that stings me.

</comment><comment><USER12> I created my boilerplate app by customizing other boilerplate.

</comment><comment><USER13> I discovered this myself, creating boilers is underrated.</comment>


The Empire Strikes Back: Or AT&Ts Micro Cell Strategy Pt2--Response from ATT - <AUTHOR> http://www.blindreason.org/2010/06/empire-strikes-back-or-at-micro-cell.html

<comment><USER2> I like the notion that someone at AT&T thinks we should appreciate the fact that they don't micro-bill us for usage on our own wifi networks. You just know somebody at AT&T has a Word doc with 1000 revisions in it outlining exactly how they might do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The MSC is part of the core network, and it handles circuit switched calls/data, the SGSN is also part of the core network, and it handles packet switched data.

When AT&T is telling you not to use your femtocell for data, it isn't just because it puts an extra strain on their network, its also significantly slower than if you just used the wifi you probably already have to begin with. The extra hops it has to go through - from the femtocell, through your ISP, to AT&T's SGSN, GGSN, then out to AT&T's ISP, make it seem silly to want to use a femtocell for data.

In addition, I don't see any reason they can't charge you for the femtocell, even though it is using your ISP's resources you already paid for, it still adds value to your service.

The SIP gateways that providers like T-Mobile use seem like a better alternative to femtocell's anyways. With these, your voice and data both go over wifi, and only the voice will enter the core network. When you need to be paged on a mobile termination, the core network knows you are registered as a SIP guy, so it just sends you a SIP INVITE which reaches you over your wifi. When you roam back into the cell coverage area, it goes back to normal.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't read much about this, but I don't see how AT&T can justify charging you for the base station hardware as well as its continued use. If using the device does not use any of their services or network and is ONLY between your cell phone and ISP, what benefit does AT&T bring that warrants them charging you for using two goods/services (the micro-cell base station and your ISP's bandwidth) that you have already paid for?

This is a classic bait and switch, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER5> The prevailing theory is that AT&T is too incompetent to meter traffic based on source; since the double-billing is not intentional they don't have to justify it. Of course, now that they've been informed of the problem they have to either fix it or somehow justify not fixing it (I predict that "it's not cost-effective to rewrite the billing system to save a few dollars for a few people using femtos the wrong way").

<comment><USER6> They can definitely meter traffic based on source. You can get unlimited free calling with your microcell for $20/month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems this is the core of the question: Is your 3G DATA going through AT&T's core systems on its way to the internet or is it splitting out at the microcell and going directly to the wider internet?

If it's the latter - then it's nuts that they are charging against your data cap for usage that doesn't even traverse their network.

If it's the former, (which I suspect it is), whether it's just or not, they'd be within their right to charge for the transit load on their systems.

<comment><USER3> When you send packets of data out of your phone, there are several layers that are added onto your IP packet. Here is a basic diagram of the different nodes in the RAN and CN and which layers they operate on:

UE<->NodeB (Uu): <your data> | PDCP | RLC | MAC | <L1 radio stuff>

NodeB<->RNC (Iub): <your data> | PDCP | RLC | MAC | FP | <L2 stuff depending on IP/ATM/etc>

RNC <-> SGSN (Iu): <your data> | GTP | UDP | IP | <L2 stuff>

SGSN <-> GGSN (Gn): <your data> | GTP | UDP | IP | <L2 stuff>

GGSN <-> Internet (Gi): <your data> (finally!)

At some points your data's UDP/TCP headers might be compressed/uncompressed but thats the basic idea. Something needs to perform the functions performed by all these nodes. "Traditionally" the femtocell is a combination of the RNC/NodeB (aka the Radio Access Network).

Clearly it is possible to add core network functionality to the femtocell, but not only is it probably not worth it, the security implications are tricky (you would have to expose your HLR directly to the internet to be able to talk to the femtocell - instead of just your SGSN, which you would likely have special CN nodes for talking to femtocells).

So it is almost guaranteed to be the former. And it makes AT&T's recommendations make alot more sense. You don't even need to assume any malice in them.

<comment><USER7> Googling madly ...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Core_Network> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_switching_subsystem>

... OK, makes some sense now.

Their recommendations make sense. It's actually nice of them to recommend using WiFi where available (though you'd hope people would be smart enough to figure that out on their own.)

Looking at it from a bottleneck/financial perspective I wonder where the constraints are that cause them to want/need to limit data usage. If it's just the UE<->NodeB (Uu) bandwidth, then the femtocell addresses that and maybe they could prorate the data coming through it, if it's farther up the string then it's understandable.</comment></comment></comment>


Cashless Britain advances as contactless and debit cards thrive - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/may/23/cashless-britain-advances-contactless-debit-cards-thrive <comment><AUTHOR> As someone who lived in Norway in the past few years, I have always wondered why the local banks aren't pushing more for standard contactless payment like [1] instead they developed several competing QR code based solutions like Vipps [2], mCASH [3] and MobilePay [4].

Since I recently moved back to China, I noticed that the mobile payment war has mostly settled, Alipay [5] and WeChat Pay [6] split the marketshare while Apple Pay and Samsung Pay tries to increase their influence with partnerships with UnionPay [7], the national banking union of China.

It would be interesting to know the stories from other countries.

[1] [https://www.visa.co.uk/products/visa- contactless/](https://www.visa.co.uk/products/visa-contactless/) [2] [https://www.vipps.no](https://www.vipps.no) [3] [https://mca.sh](https://mca.sh) [4] [http://www.mobilepay.no](http://www.mobilepay.no) [5] [https://intl.alipay.com](https://intl.alipay.com) [6] [https://pay.weixin.qq.com/wechatpay](https://pay.weixin.qq.com/wechatpay) [7] [http://www.unionpayintl.com](http://www.unionpayintl.com)</comment>


Lua vs Node vs LuaNginx - <AUTHOR> http://pointlessramblings.com/posts/Lua_vs_Node_vs_LuaNginx.html

<comment><USER2> Yet another hello world ab competition with no source code, setup, kernel parameter info or whatsoever

<comment><USER3> And this:

> My Lua/LuaJIT implementations don't process/read any header fields, nor do > they send any back (it's a simple server) I would expect this is the reason > Lua/LuaJIT appears to fast. However it does demonstrate that a single > process can easily handle 20,000 requests/s …

 _facepalm_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > And Node is perfect because it'll be working with Javascript on the > clientside, and not dealing with the http protocol.

I'm confused. What?

On the results, node didn't budge from 30 to 1000 concurrent connections, while the Lua servers just plain crashed, despite being faster at first. Conclusion: Lua is perfect for servers (?).

<comment><AUTHOR> No http protocol as in it'll just be socket based.

The Lua servers didn't crash; requests via browser worked fine during/after the benchmark. I'm not sure why ab kept hanging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Go also hangs at the end with a lot of concurrent requests. I think it has something to do with how it time outs http connections.

Maybe the same thing is happening with Lua?

Also what were the specs of the computer you ran your tests on?

<comment><USER6> Does this happen with keepalive on (-k option for ab) as well? If not, it might be some network resource starvation issue (connection tracking or TIME_WAIT, try "sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse=1" or "sysctl -w net.nf_conntrack_max=655360" perhaps).

<comment><USER5> It still happens with -k but I haven't tried the other tweaks.

I gave up micro benchmarking because once you factor in sessions and database access then everything goes in the gutter.

I've had a Go server outperform a Node server (same box, same data, same headers) by 5x when returning large amounts of json or returning large strings in general.

As soon as I had that data get returned by a database instead of hard coded strings using both language's best drivers for that database then the reqs/s evened out, in fact Node ended up performing slightly better for both latency and reqs/s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've successfully made one node server handle over 400K concurrent connections on a 24 core (4*6cores) and 32gb ram. Not with standard configs though. And I know there is more room to grow when the reverse-proxy gets out of the way. However this setup easily saturates 1gbs NIC, and never tested with dedicated 10gb uplink. If you are looking for ACID database application stack then you won't get anywhere near raw output anyway. So don't bother choosing any like you did. But If you are in the nosql business then you might get around some 10k iops with the right set of hardware and config tweaks.

</comment><comment><USER8> You might want to compare node against luvit.io instead of plain lua+luasocket</comment>


See how many times a URL has been shared on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://graph.facebook.com/http://news.ycombinator.com <comment><USER2> Twitter: [http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://new...](http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://news.ycombinator.com)

LinkedIn: [http://www.linkedin.com/cws/share- count?url=http://news.ycom...](http://www.linkedin.com/cws/share- count?url=http://news.ycombinator.com)

These APIs are marked private (as opposed to Facebook's) so use at your own risk.

<comment><USER3> I packaged a few of the private ones with this weekend project: <http://sharedcount.com> Unfortunately, only Facebook does URL normalization for you, so dumb things like trailing slashes have a big effect on the count.

<comment><USER2> > Unfortunately, only Facebook does URL normalization for you, so dumb things > like trailing slashes have a big effect on the count.

Is that true?

[http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://new...](http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://news.ycombinator.com)

[http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://new...](http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://news.ycombinator.com/)

[http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://new...](http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://news.ycombinator.com#foo)

<comment><USER3> I stand corrected. Twitter _used_ to suck at URL normalization, but it looks like they must have fixed it. But, Delicious and Digg both are a pain.

<comment><USER4> Is there an API for complete URL normalization, _including unshortening URLs_?

Facebook and Twitter, do basic normalization, but do not unshorten shortened links.

edit: This has already been discussed on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=577457>

edit 2: graphs.facebook.com will aggressively and unfortunately normalize any YouTube link to youtube.com. See, for example, [http://graph.facebook.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB8...](http://graph.facebook.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB8nV453mTc) This give the number of shares for youtube.com, not this individual video. I am not sure how to get facebook share stats for a particular YouTube video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com/> :)

Even [http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com/http://g...](http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com/) has a few shares.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use that on my HN mashup... <http://hnfluence.com/>

Also my nyt mashup... <http://influentialtimes.com/>

<comment><USER7> What API/URL do you use to get the bit.ly counts?

<comment><USER8> Probably the bit.ly API: <http://code.google.com/p/bitly- api/wiki/ApiDocumentation>

<comment><USER6> That's the one. All the api's I'm using here return json. The only tricky part when dealing with these api's is making sure the json can be parsed, trapping errors, making sure variables exist before calling them... that kind of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a guy at Yahoo that took a long list of news articles, etc and analyzed over 40MM "Likes" this way. Pretty cool charts came out of it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300300>

<comment><USER10> This guy is me :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yuri Lifshits made an entertaining presentation at yesterday's SHDH with data from graph.facebook.com. Link: <http://ediscope.labs.yahoo.net/>.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly how I learned that you can use <http://graph.facebook.com> in this way!

For those of you who weren't at SHDH, you can see Yury's talk from last night here: <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13439718> \- his talk starts at 14:40.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also, probably goes without saying, but this method includes JSONP support: [http://graph.facebook.com/http://news.ycombinator.com/?callb...](http://graph.facebook.com/http://news.ycombinator.com/?callback=foo)

</comment><comment><USER12> Statistically speaking it would be flawed to use this to compare and prioritize a list of urls in order to rank them by interestingness/attention/etc.

The reason is that pages that have Facebook like buttons embedded on them are statistically speaking going to have a higher chance of getting shared than those that don't (such as Hacker News - which doesn't have such buttons).

I guess it depends what you might use this for, but to me it seems to only have limited value.

<comment><USER13> We've been doing that on Maemo News (<http://maemo.org/news/>) for a few years now. Works well, especially if you couple it with local, HN-style voting and assign a separate weight for each relevancy source

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know at what point your IP would get throttled? If so, any usage guidelines if you plan on analyzing a large url set?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is their a way to see the specific names of each user who shared the URL on Facebook. For example, if a URL has been shared on Facebook through 9300 Users is it possible to get a list of all the users name(s) or is their a easy wat to see which users shared the url.

</comment><comment><USER16> see also <http://linkstore.ru/fbstat>

</comment><comment><USER13> Here is a PHP lib for getting these counts across quite a few services: [https://github.com/nemein/com_meego_planet/blob/master/calcu...](https://github.com/nemein/com_meego_planet/blob/master/calculate.php)

<comment><USER13> Quick usage example: [http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/calculate_the_impact_of_your_posts...](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/calculate_the_impact_of_your_posts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice find. Facebook should have a morning paper about all of the changes & additions they make. They never seem to stick to any one way of doing anything and drive developers nuts!

</comment><comment><USER15> Is their a way to see the specific names of each user who shared the URL on Facebook. For example, I have a Youtube URL that has been shared on Facebook through 9300 Users. Therefore is it possible to view the names of the 9300 users? When I right click the link on Facebook it directs me straight to the Youtube link and when i click see more it only shows the most recent 20 People who have shared the link out of the total 9300.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a shortcut for <http://graph.facebook.com/?id=abc>

Looks like fb made opengraph pages first class citizens on their namespace, should be interesting to see what else they get soon,

You can also do [http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=http://news.ycombinator.com,h...](http://graph.facebook.com/?ids=http://news.ycombinator.com,http://google.com)

To lookup multiple urls at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there a way to get sum of the share count for all pages in a domain?

This one only reflects share count of the specific page--or only the homepage if you pass a domain.

<comment><USER18> Add the domain to facebook.com/insights and then you can download an excel spreadsheet with the daily totals, just sum these to get the total shares/likes for a domain

<comment><USER20> And if you want to parse the Insights data into pretty pictures and graphs that are easier to analyse than raw data, sign up for our private beta at PageLever.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Typos even have some shares, too:

<http://graph.facebook.com/http://www,google.com>

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks like hashbangs mess up the counting; e.g. <http://graph.facebook.com/http://www.twitter.com/> and [http://graph.facebook.com/http://www.twitter.com/#!michaelcg...](http://graph.facebook.com/http://www.twitter.com/#!michaelcgorman/)

<comment><USER23> You must encode it properly:

[http://graph.facebook.com/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitter.com%2F%23...](http://graph.facebook.com/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitter.com%2F%23!michaelcgorman%2F)

Note that encoding '#' as %23 is sufficient.

However, it doesn't show any shares and I'm not sure if that means nobody shared your twitter URL on facebook or if there's another problem somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> <http://graph.facebook.com/http://presentcat.com>

<http://graph.facebook.com/http://news.ycombinator.com>

My site is more popular than HN :D

</comment><comment><USER25> Another mini-app to show this and other FB sharing data: <http://www.keithmander.com/temp/socialabacus/>

Much like the others posted here, but a bit more AJAX and cute graphics.

</comment><comment><USER26> See how many times a URL has been tweeted on Twitter: [http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://new...](http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://news.ycombinator.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> Clearly their censorship efforts have failed:

<http://graph.facebook.com/http://lamebook.com>

<comment><USER28> hah, I've had lamespace.com for years (like, when MySpace was still relevant) but don't use it for anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Meta! <http://graph.facebook.com/http://www.facebook.com>

<comment><USER30> Real meta! <http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com>

<comment><USER31> Too meta [http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com/http://g...](http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com/http://graph.facebook.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Facebook: <http://graph.facebook.com/http://facebook.com>

</comment><comment><USER33> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2349290>

</comment><comment><USER34> Is this possible to see if URL was shared/liked by currently signed in facebook user?

</comment><comment><USER35> Does this only count public posts that "everyone" can see?</comment>


Cows on Russian Farm Use VR Goggles to Increase Milk Production - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/cows-on-russian-farm-get-fitted-with-vr-goggles-to-increase-milk-production <comment><AUTHOR> Very heated reddit discussion [https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/e2ii8m/requ...](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/e2ii8m/request_how_much_milk_must_a_cow_produce_to/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting idea but I call BS on this. First the cows would not be able to function. Second how would anyone know what the cows are really seeing? They don't have the same visual system as us. Third this is just the type of story that would go viral without much proof. I suspect some where there are a couple of Russians laughing their asses off knowing that they were able to pull this joke on everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> There were no studies. One cow in one farm has been fitted. No data on mill output.</comment>


The TED talks empire has been grappling with sexual harassment - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-ted-talks-empire-has-been-grappling-with-sexual-harassment-interviews-and-internal-emails-show/2017/11/17/39f9374a-cae7-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html <comment><USER2> The Atlantic published an interesting piece a couple months ago titled "Power Causes Brain Damage": [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-c...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power- causes-brain-damage/528711/)

It purports that Henry Adams wasn't so off the mark when he proclaimed that power is "a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies." The breakout quote here:

"Subjects under the influence of power, [Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley] found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk- aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people's point of view."

The high profile cases surrounding sexual abuse recently seem to indicate that the problem is systemic. It represents an illness of society, humanity, or a factor of both that we can only insulate against by understanding the root of what is causing the issue and how to work against it. It's not as simple as: Louis CK, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and crew are evil.

<comment><USER3> It's also not as simple as the perpetrators are "ill." There is a society that's setup to encourage this behaviour. Now I suppose the question is, do you put more emphasis on training people on what sexual harassment and assault is (I don't just mean boring corporate compliance seminars, but training from the time you're in pre-K to graduating college). Or do you view it in general as a problem with power, and realize that society needs to be organized in a less hierarchal manner?

<comment><USER4> "There is society that's setup to encourage this behavior."

Is that accurate or is it the opposite? It seems to me that much of this behavior is the animalistic mating strategies of males. Thus society is discouraging this behavior..

Strangely, while males harassing females is strongly discouraged, in western (as apposed to say Islam) female preening behavior which is basically the female equivalent of "sexual harassment" is perfectly acceptable.

<comment><USER5> Arg. The alt-right trolls have poisoned conversation to the point where I almost reflexively down-voted your comment, but I think that what you say is somewhat reasonable. Do you think that merely "preening" is sexual harassment? I know that it is considered sexual harassment if a man "moons" a female, so I guess by that same logic, much of the clothing woman wear and or don't wear could be considered "sexual harassment". I don't feel harassed simply by the looks of others, however. Do you?

Wikipedia defines sexual harassment as "Sexual harassment is bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors." [1] This is an ironic definition to me as a male. The times I have felt sexually harassed were when I felt that a woman asked for a reward in a sexual way, for example, asking for help using sexualized mannerisms, voice, body-movements. Exactly the opposite dynamic to the sexual harassment defined by wikipedia.

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

<comment><USER6> A big aspect of sexual harassment is whether there is an asymmetry of power in the relationship, so if those women asking for help in a sexualized way were your boss then that could be categorized as harassment. If you were random strangers then they probably feel they have to act that way to get your attention, which could be either insulting or flattering depending on the situation.

<comment><USER5> There is no indication that the TED attendees were taking advantage of a power differential. So it would appear that we are working with multiple definitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Breaking news: people who like attention and power also like to abuse their power.

<comment><USER8> The question is: who are the ones abusing their power? The alleged perps, or those who are claiming to be victims?

<comment> aaron-lebo Is that an honest question given the revelations of the last month?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That this post is flagged is a shame. It's a shame that speaking about sexism is still being treated as a political stance by many.

</comment><comment><USER10> Idk how to feel that it's Gretchen Carlson of all people driving this.

<comment> aaron-lebo These sexual predators have been operating and been enabled by others for a long time, seems like you need all the help you can get to expose that.

</comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks Finally, a type of celebrity scandal that appeals to the current generation

</comment><comment><USER11> Mass Hysteria

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought HN had rules about not allowing flame-topic political posts.

<comment><USER13> This isn't really a political post.

<comment><USER14> It's telling that some think it is.</comment></comment></comment>


THE USB KILLER, VERSION 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/10/10/the-usb-killer-version-2-0/ <comment><USER2> The author (I assume he's the one in the video) singlehandedly increased the price of already sparse IBM Thinkpads by $1.</comment>


To change your life, learn to write - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/d0df747e02c8 <comment><USER2> Writing is probably not going to change your life.

But by all means, write like crazy...it's a wonderful hobby! I've written ten (bad) novels in the last ten years and I've loved every minute of it. They've been read by less than 5 people.

If I cook dinner but only my family eats it is that a failure? If I play the piano but only for myself is that a failure? If I paint paintings that nobody buys is that a failure?

Of course not.

Writing is no different than any one of a thousand other human activities. Some pianists will reach a huge audience and change their lives as will some painters and some chefs. Most won't and that's totally fine.

We need to stop believing that "all is lost" if we don't "succeed" on the narrow terms defined by others. That goes for writing, coding, and everything else.

<comment><USER3> Did you ever consider publishing your writings online anonymously?

I think they could be very interesting to other people who also write as amateurs and show the results only to a couple of the closest friends, or don't show to anyone at all.

<comment><USER2> I've had some friends read things in a few cases and the reaction was basically "hey good job" which I interpreted as "it was ok" :)

If I thought there was a particular audience that would be interested I wouldn't be shy about sharing, but one thing that's kept me from going down that route is that I'm not really looking for feedback per se.

What I mean by that is that I'm not actually trying to become a "better writer" so my interest in ideas for improvement is a little low. It's mostly self-indulgence on my part and I'm somewhat inclined to keep it that way :P

I have found it enjoyable to talk to my wife and daughter about the stories and see what they thought, but I'll be perfectly honest and admit that my interest in that is also self-indulgent...it's a way to keep enjoying the world I created at their expense :D</comment></comment></comment>


B2B Sales Aren't As Simple As They Seem - <AUTHOR> http://dshipper.posterous.com/b2b-sales-arent-as-easy-as-everyone-says

<comment><USER2> Who told you that B2B sales was easier than consumer sales? I was working for a large tech company doing B2B sales before I left to start my own consumer focused business.

It's definitely much harder to acquire 1 "B" customer; however, their typical spend is much higher than 1 "C" customer. Perhaps that's what gives the illusion that B2B sales is easier.

As you stated, the sales cycles are long. You are at the mercy of the cycle. You gotta know where to invest time. It will kill you if you're not focused. Stay focused, take sales training, read books, have a mentor. Take my word.</comment>


A Whirlwind Tour of ARM Assembly - <AUTHOR> http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/asm.htm <comment><USER2> There are so many different variants of ARM assembler, it is difficult to keep track of them all. Somehow ARM managed to get away with it.

I have been hacking Assembler level on many different architectures. Cortex M0 is the first one where I actively try to avoid it. It's just no fun.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by 'versions of ARM assembler'?

<comment><USER2> "instruction set" would be more precise.

There isn't a single ARM instruction set, as it is with x86, for exmple. There are many different versions of it. Sometimes there are even significant variations within a family. e.g. Cortex M0 lacks many useful instructions that are only available in the M3/M4.

<comment><USER4> It's the same on x86. Not all x86 processors have all the x86 instructions. There have been many extensions over the years.

The main difference is that x86 doesn't have low power processors like the Cortex M series so they didn't have to remove any instructions to lower die size (thus price and power consumption).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love ARM, I think it may be my favourite asm family, although MIPS has its aficionados and I'll always have a soft spot for 68000.

x86 is... like someone started with a simple mud hut and tried to turn it into a mansion by successively hot-gluing renovations to it over 30 years. There's really a tiny modernised flat buried somewhere in there which provides all the light and heat and amenities, but there's plasterboard all around it because they're trying to pretend it's really still the same old mud hut with a fancier roof. Truth is, the mud hut fell down decades ago and now it's all glue, duct tape and make-believe.

(I think my analogy got lost somewhere along the way there, but that's kind of my point. Bloody μ-ops.)

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems outdated. No mention of Thumb 2 and unified assembly, for example.

<comment><USER4> It's targeted at the Game Boy Advance, which has an ARM7TDMI (ARMv4) CPU.

<comment><USER7> That's pretty funny. I first learned ARM assembler on the Game Boy Advance in the late 1990's. I remember how hard it was to find good, clear docs for any of that, but they started to be formed because of collaborative efforts to homebrew GBA games. I wonder how many people got their start in ARM because of homebrew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How can he be so wrong when comparing compiled languages and scripted languages: "Every step up the ladder increases the human readability factor and portability, at the cost of runtime speed and program size."

Just think about readibility of Ada and Perl. What increases with higher abstraction levels is mainly the development speed.</comment>


Google "wontfix" a "panic pin code to wipe device" issue in Android - <AUTHOR> https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/121372590#comment9 <comment><USER2> How come this is worth talking about?

I am a real small dude that runs a real small SaaS app for a living, but I won't fix 1-2 customer requests a week. I don't do it for fun, and I know they are really important to the user that asked for them. But at some point you have to have vision for the direction of a product, and build features for that product that get you in that direction.

Some PM at Google decided that a panic PIN was not worth coding. I am guessing they say all the bad cases of it (my toddler typed 1234 and my phone bricked), and decided they would outweigh the good features. It seems a reasonable decision?

Does apple have a panic PIN? If so, I am not aware of it...

<comment><USER3> If you hold power + volume up on an iPhone for a couple seconds it disables biometric unlock. It flushes the unlock keys and only your pin will unlock the phone.

In other words power + volume up means the key to unlock your phone is in your head, not at the end of your finger or your face.

Apple does not have a panic wipe pin.

Personally I think a wipe pin is reasonable, just be VERY sure you don't type the wrong pin in by mistake.

Also, I wonder... would it even work? How long would it take to wipe 64gb or 128gb of flash? securely?

<comment><USER4> > _In other words power + volume up means the key to unlock your phone is in > your head, not at the end of your finger or your face._

That's not relevant to the specific request that was linked here (and that's why I think Google was right to close it, this is for one very specific use case and one very specific mechanism of solving it that may or may not actually work):

" _In my country (Russia, if you interested) policy try to force political activist unlock their smartphones for collect more evidence. They use tortures and threats of tortures for this. If you you can`t unlock because it wiped they don`t have motivation to use tortures._ "

That is, the phone _already_ doesn't have biometric auth, and the police will (allegedly) happily torture you until you reveal the unlock PIN.

<comment><USER3> > That's not relevant to the specific request that was linked here

Sort of accurate. The "in your head" part is mostly relevant to the United States 5th amendment, where you cannot be compelled by the court to reveal your pin.

So if you live in the United States, they are similar in practical if not technical terms.

If you live in Russia? You're going to need google to fix that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Misleading title? This was a feature request which the team feels like is obsolete. The title makes it seem like it was some buggy piece of code they decided to leave as-is.

Disclosure: I work at Google, but my views are my own.

<comment><USER6> Any notion why this would be obsolete?

<comment><USER7> I think the "obselete" part is the issue being open from 2018.

@ parent, it doesn't really seem like the title is "misleading" given we know the feature does not exist. although some might wonder if it did, so /shrug.

<comment><USER6> I suppose I understand, but don't they have a more descriptive tag, like "stale"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't imagine Google ever implementing that feature request. Apple had a PR nightmare after not unlocking a phone. Imagine the fallout if Google made it easy to quickly hide evidence from the authorities. It would be a legal and PR disaster, with the risk of having oppressive governments ban all Android devices.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a surprising threat model:

> _It would be great to have the possibility to set second pin code which wipe > your device without confirmations. [...] In my country (Russia, if you > interested) policy try to force political activist unlock their smartphones > for collect more evidence. They use tortures and threats of tortures for > this. If you you can 't unlock because it wiped they don't have motivation > to use tortures._

My mental model of law enforcement in the US is that they don't become _less_ inclined towards illegal violence if you anger them. If anything, I'd expect a "clear this subset of data, but go ahead and unlock the phone anyway so it looks normal" feature to be more useful.

(So I guess I think that this feature request needs more detail/discussion in order to be useful.)

</comment><comment><USER9> A Microsoft employee (Eric Gunnerson?) wrote that every feature starts with minus 100 points. I can't link that claim because Microsoft periodically decides it's now a hip exciting new company and throws away things that made it relevant. In 1995 it didn't surprise me that Microsoft didn't "get" the Web, but in 2020 it does seem kinda crazy that they still don't get it.

What Eric meant is, implementing features isn't a coin toss decision. The effort of adding even the very simplest feature, and then testing it, and documenting it, and supporting it, is enormous, so all of that weighs against any potential feature from the outset. If your feature should go on the list that's because it scores "plus 100 points" against those considerations.

</comment><comment><USER10> This sounds like a decent project for a student that could be contributed to something like Lineage OS.

</comment><comment><USER7> note: I don't even dabble, and getting my info from [1] so _salt_

with Qualcomm, if I'm not wrong, it should suffice to, with FDE, (transparently, on entry of pin), nuke the DEK (random key generated by Keymaster), and force a device reset; this does seem like an interesting usecase for custom firmware and/or magisk

[1] [http://bits-please.blogspot.com/2016/06/extracting- qualcomms...](http://bits-please.blogspot.com/2016/06/extracting-qualcomms- keymaster-keys.html)

albeit, if this does end up being implemented in some manner, wouldn't the fallback be a "confiscate electronic devices first for forensic" approach?

</comment><comment><USER11> It's misleading to suggest they won't fix an identified bug, as opposed to declining a feature request.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems like an extremely easy feature to add. A question I'm left with is what possible reasons could they have for not wanting to implement this?

<comment><USER2> There are literally MILLIONS of easy features you can think up for an android phone.

How deep do you want menus to go? Do menus 10-15 levels deep really help the end user?</comment></comment>


"Office Hours for White Men" and "Office Hours for Everyone Else" - <AUTHOR> A former CMO in Boston is hosting free office hours for the public, but in the name of increasing diversity in tech, he's limiting the number of office hours that White Men are allowed to take. This is spelled out pretty blatantly in the two buttons on his page, "Office Hours for White Men" and "Office Hours for Everyone Else": http://www.mikevolpe.com/office-hours
I get it, we need to increase diversity in tech. That's our noble cause right now. But how is this not even remotely seen as blatant discrimination? How is this so widely accepted in our industry that a high profile CMO feels completely justified in doing it? Those buttons so closely resemble the iconic "Colored Water Fountain" images from the MLK days that it's almost laughable. Seriously: http://blog.ericharmatz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/segregated-water-fountains.jpg
I think our community needs to have a very real and open discussion about this. <comment><USER2> I think this is an example of a mutually beneficial filter. To me someone setting up separate office hours for white men and for everybody else sends a strong signal: "this is a person you don't want to deal with; avoid!" On the other hand, it makes them more likely to meet people who endorse the same kind of thinking, white male or not.</comment>


How to gain widespread adoption of your design system - <AUTHOR> https://product.hubspot.com/blog/how-to-gain-widespread-adoption-of-your-design-system <comment><USER2> There are some powerful tools popping up lately to help with many of the challenges laid out in this article.

Straple (straple.co) and Abstract (goabstract.com) come to mind.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely especially if the gaps between storytellers, designers and development close, which is what these systems and products are trying to do.

The main issue with design systems is the sole focus on UI and UX and tend to neglect the Brand element which is what Straple tries to solve. We need to bridge the gap but not automate the process.</comment></comment>


Room temperature superconductivity - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.01482 <comment><USER2> Holy shit. I'm reading through the paper and citations right now. This is making me giddy. Last time I heard the furthest we got was with materials under unreasonable amounts of pressure. If this pans out things are going to change big time.</comment>