Bitcoins up another 42% since August 1st - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg30zigHourlyztgSza1gSMAzm1g300zm2g25zi1gAccDistzv

<comment><USER2> As I have written before, perhaps the greatest contribution the Bitcoin experiment will make to humankind is to teach you and me and our neighbors more about the realities of economics. Many of the ideas about how to mine Bitcoins, store Bitcoins, and trade with Bitcoins as a medium of exchange illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of any other medium of exchange in a world full of human beings seeking personal advantage. Seeing the discussion of Bitcoins here on Hacker News reminds me of the last time that the price of gold (in United States dollars) crashed, and the arguments beforehand that such an occurrence was impossible, for instance. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" is still an important principle of investment. Anyone could make a steady increase of wealth trading in almost any commodity, if only one could time the market. The trick with Bitcoin trading as with all forms of commodity trading is to somehow outsmart most other investors and time the market better than everyone else who trades Bitcoins. Good luck with that.

AFTER EDIT:

See a somewhat related story with interesting comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391312>

posted on Hacker News today.

<comment><USER3> "perhaps the greatest contribution the Bitcoin experiment will make to humankind is to teach you and me and our neighbors more about the realities of economics"

I most certainly wish this was the case, however the cycle of booms and busts rarely teach anyone anything. Think about how they were documented in the 1800s, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds specifically, they STILL teach that book in plenty of schools, and yet the same idiots believe this time, things'll be different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bitcoins are still great, but until their price starts to stabilize, they'll never become cash replacements. Right now, Bitcoins cannot function as a 'store of value' in the sense of currency because they're so volatile.

<comment><USER5> At the current price level and market cap, stability for bitcoin is still not possible, because bitcoin needs to increase the amount of users using it to be more useful. Inevitably, this means the price of bitcoin will rise.

Hopefully, the current growth in price is not a bubble.

<comment><USER6> > [..] bitcoin needs to increase the amount of users using it to be more > useful. Inevitably, this means the price of bitcoin will rise.

I'm not so sure if this is 'inevitable' since bitcoins in itself have no value at all. I know the same can be said about fiat money, but at least that's what _everyone_ agrees is legal tender, as opposed to just a bunch of idealists or people who need a way to pay for shady stuff. But bitcoins are not like commodities, or labour, or whatever else has limited supply and non-zero utility.

Personally I'm not even touching bitcoins with a 10-foot pole. The day some government decides bitcoins are becoming a real alternative or even a threat to government-controlled money, they will shut the whole gig down and all your bitcoins will be worth nothing.

One thing I never understood about bitcoins, is what other problem they solve besides scratching some ideological itch some people have with money controlled by central bankers and governments (which I can imagine are valid concerns for some people). Effectively bitcoins are just like fiat money; worthless tokens that have no intrinsic value besides the trust that some people have in them to hold their value. Trust that is not actually based on anything either. At least the dollar has a government with a big military behind it that can assert their influence on areas where real wealth is concentrated. I'm not saying this is a good thing, just making the observation.

<comment><USER7> You are exactly right that bitcoins are exactly like fiat money, and have no intrinsic value. You actually unintentionally explained what you don't understand. Fiat currency is a problem because it can be so easily manipulated by the governments behind it. Just like the dollar, bitcoins have value only because people believe they have value. Your statement that at least the dollar has a government with big military behind it is exactly what the problem is that bitcoin solves. Bitcoin does NOT have a big government or organization controlling it, so unlike the dollar, no single party can inflate the currency. Central banks are able to create money out of nothing, therefore creating something with perceived value without offering anything of value in exchange (i.e. inflation). That leads to all kinds of problems, as we're seeing with the global economic crisis right now. While Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic value, it also does not have a way to be inflated. The system by design creates DEFLATION instead, so the currency becomes more valuable(infinite divisibility handles issues with deflation). Since there is a finite number of bitcoins that can ever be mined, it acts much more like gold than like the dollar. Gold cannot be inflated by any government. If bitcoins gain mass adoption, then they will begin to look very similar to gold. The main difference being that they are purely digital and have no intrinsic value(thus making gold still a better currency).

<comment><USER6> > You actually unintentionally explained what you don't understand. Fiat > currency is a problem because it can be so easily manipulated by the > governments behind it. Just like the dollar, bitcoins have value only > because people believe they have value. Your statement that at least the > dollar has a government with big military behind it is exactly what the > problem is that bitcoin solves.

I think you misread my comment. I'm aware of the fact that people like Bitcoins because there is no government/central bank that can manipulate them. To me, that's a red herring though, the proverbial 'itch that Bitcoins scratch' for some people. I don't think Bitcoins solve any issues related to wealth preservation, and I don't think they offer any advantages as a store of value compared to other forms of wealth/value or currency that are not (directly) government controlled (at least not in similar ways as fiat money), such as commodities, precious metals, art, production capacity, etc. In fact, I think anyone holding lots of wealth in Bitcoins will someday lose all of it, in an instant.

The point is, that even though there is a limited amount of bitcoins, and even though governments have no influence on the supply of bitcoins or who holds them, they can still affect the value of bitcoins in dramatic ways. For example by legislation that makes any form of bitcoin trade illegal. Or maybe it doesn't even require legislation, maybe just the threat of legislation to curb bitcoin trade will cause people to lose trust in Bitcoins altogether. Just because the government can't inflate Bitcoins, doesn't mean it cannot destroy the trust some people have in it.

I mentioned military power not because I think it's a good thing, or an insurance against the depreciation of wealth expressed in fiat money, but as an example why fiat money is at least backed by _something_ , unsustainable as it is. In times of resource scarcity or world-wide economic collapse, military power will 'buy' you (or at least some) the means to survive, not some virtual currency that nobody has a use for in times of distress.

> Since there is a finite number of bitcoins that can ever be mined, it acts > much more like gold than like the dollar.

It acts like gold, but it is not gold. Gold is a tangible asset that has been a proven store of wealth since as long as we know about the history of human civilization. Gold is shiny, you can store it somewhere, make handy pieces out of it and and take it with you, people like holding and looking at gold, almost anybody, anywhere in the world will take gold in exchange for other goods or services. Smart governments are stockpiling gold at an accelerating rate, because they damn well understand that someday in the future dollars, euro's or yens will be worthless. Bitcoins are nothing like that. They are purely virtual, strings of bits, just like Linden dollars, or WoW gold. I think it is extremely unlikely people will ever lose faith in gold as a store of wealth, but I can imagine many scenario's where people will lose faith in Bitcoins. It will happen, trust me.

The money supply and inflation/deflation thing is purely theoretical. Hyperinflation doesn't occur because governements purposefully manipulate the money supply, but because paper rectangles and metal circles are useless if nobody has a use for them. I know the same can be said about gold, but I would bet everything on gold outliving Bitcoins as store of wealth. You don't need a PhD in economics to recognize this.

My advice: don't put your money in bitcoins. If you don't trust fiat money, buy tangible assets, invest in yourself, learn how to generate utility and wealth after the inevitable fiat money crash.

<comment><USER5> _It acts like gold, but it is not gold. Gold is a tangible asset that has been a proven store of wealth since as long as we know about the history of human civilization._

Once somebody mine an asteroid full of gold, the whole Gold as money will come to an end. However, gold will become a more useful commodity in industrial/medical/electronic/etc applications since they are cheap.

Thousand years of history mean nothing when something change the whole playing field. There's nothing remotely implausible about asteroid mining except the necessary development of a space industry. As far as I am concerned, gold is living on borrowed time.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that many people are interested in preserving their wealth until after 3000 AD, so let's forget about science-fiction scenarios.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Commercial asteroid mining will be reality within this century, and is already attracting investment. Look up Planetary Resources & friends.

There are individual asteroids that have more easily extractable precious metals than the entire present earth supply, should we have a good method of returning them to earth. The mere existence of these ought to start playing a number on the metals markets once planetary resources starts doing something newsworthy.

<comment><USER6> People who I assume know much better what they are talking about (space agencies, scientists) have already commented on these wild space mining fantasy you are referring about. It's a ridiculous idea that is nowhere near technical or economical viability, and there really is no horizon on which it will be. To mine asteroids you would first have to build a permanent moon base, and drive down the costs of space missions down to the point that a single payload brought to earth would be worth more than the required investments.

Just because some nutters invest their excess money in some sci-fi fantasy doesn't make it real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bitcoin still has some technical problems to figure out. Currently the blockchain is over 2gb and will get larger, faster as more people use it.

Also the transaction speed is really low - usually like 10 minutes to really confirm payment and at least half an hour to really confirm (around 10 mins a new block is created, and to ensure that block will stay in the chain you want some more blocks on top of that as well.)

Also.. the transaction rate isn't even 1 per second, if Bitcoin replaced visa for instance it'd be 2000/s, which means new blocks might contain 2000/s over 10 minutes of transactions, so new blocks are going to get huge.

All in all, bitcoin is going to need some big central bitcoin banks to speed transactions, and store the blockchain which isn't necessarily bad. Your bitcoins can still be stored locally under your private key, but banks will provide processing, while multiple banks provide verification of each other's stored blockchains.

<comment><USER9> And then these banks get together to form a banking system, and then this banking system decides it needs a central governing authority to be able to make important collective decisions efficient and implement them effectively and seamlessly.

And then they decide to call it the Federal Reserve Bitcoin Bank

<comment><USER10> Periodically there are proposed protocol changes. A while back I saw a proposal on creating a set of rules that allowed for crowdsourcing-style transactions. (You could send bitcoin to an address, but the transaction did not become valid until the amount at the address reached a certain amount.) I didn't hang around long enough to see the outcome of this proposal, but what I did notice was that only the major bitcoin mining pools got to vote on it.

This is a factor of bitcoin being "decentralized" that I don't think many people fully internalize. Anybody could change the protocol, and all that will count toward acceptance is the number of nodes acknowledging their transactions. If a change is unpopular or made without widespread consensus, the blockchains split and now you've got two mutually incompatible currencies. In practice this will probably just mean that you're always under threat of a split unless everybody accedes to the changes that mining pools propose, since they control so many transactions. Alternately, new mining pools could be created that let members vote proportionally to the work they've done for the pool. It's both scary and interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The more I think about this, I get a feeling that bitcoins are solving the wrong problem. The real problem is not of currency (though it is a problem, but just not as big), but of deep flaws in society due to capitalism. Let me explain.

Today there are distinct classes of society, and social mobility is decreasing in the US [1] and is frustratingly slow in the developing world.

The problem we are facing is that the producers are have become extremely productive due to capital and technology and are able crush those who do not have the access to the capital and technology. The people who are not in this privileged group are caught in a vicious cycle are forced to remain consumers and are getting more and more dependent on these super producers.

What money essentially does is facilitates information flow in an economy and enables complex contracts between a number of producers and consumers. The problem is not the information flow is not correct, the problem is that there is terrible inequality.

Bitcoins are seen as a hedge against large scale systemic collapse or slow corrosion of the nation-state. If the collapse / corrosion happens, we really do not know what kind of alternative systems will emerge.

The only way, to prevent such a collapse, in my view is to encourage local products and services in a big way. Bitcoins may not really help.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans- to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from- lower-rungs.html/?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER12> > The problem we are facing is that the producers are have become extremely > productive due to capital and technology and are able crush those who do not > have the access to the capital and technology.

This is a common mercantilist fallacy -- that the problem is we just have too much production. I submit that we have the opposite problem: goods and resources are too scarce, rather than too abundant. More efficient production is the solution, rather than the problem.

> The people who are not in this privileged group are caught in a vicious > cycle are forced to remain consumers and are getting more and more dependent > on these super producers.

I agree that the focus of the economy is consumption, but this is indicative of the problem as well. We need to encourage entrepreneurship. By this I do not mean subsidies -- more in terms of cultural encouragement and removal of legislative and regulatory obstacles.

<comment><USER13> It seems there is some misunderstanding. OP didn't say that there is too much production. The argument was rather that the barriers to entry are too high (very high capital costs etc.). This creates self-perpetuating oligopolies.

By the way, the whole point of the economy is to enable consumption. If there was no consumption, there would be no point to economic activity.

<comment><USER12> > The argument was rather that the barriers to entry are too high (very high > capital costs etc.)

Really? You are saying this on Hacker News? Where we gather to assemble and identify our comparative advantages and engage in entrepreneurship with capital on the order of thousands of dollars?

You can also be a agricultural entrepreneur or a mining entrepreneur or steel entrepreneur. Admittedly, the competition in these arenas is indeed very stiff, and they have invested a lot of money in efficient production. As an individual, you have little comparative advantage in such industries. But if you have some insight into how to make these industries even more efficient, then you will have no problems securing income or even starting a consulting business.

> This creates self-perpetuating oligopolies.

I disagree. The bigger they are, and especially once the economies of scale diminish as the market is saturated, the harder they fall. Waste and communication issues provide a natural limit. We run into problems when the state intervenes to keep dinosaurs alive. What's good for GM is good for the country, and all that.

> By the way, the whole point of the economy is to enable consumption.

Yep, consumption is enabled by production. Human needs and wants are limitless. If we actually lived in a world of abundance and not scarcity, people would not need jobs and there would be no need for production. We would lounge around all day in the land of milk and honey.

> If there was no consumption, there would be no point to economic activity.

Consumption will never go away. We consume food, water, shelter, etc. The only way consumption goes away is if humans go away. And when humans (or preference-satisfying agents, to be clear) go away, then economic activity ceases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Barring outside factors (hacking, breach of trust, etc) the price of bitcoin is naturally bullish given the current ways to trade them. Since there is no large scale operation providing a way to short bitcoins, there is no one "investing" in their price decline. This simply means that anyone buying in using USD now needs to cash out at a higher price to make a profit (on most exchanges) and anyone who has coins would not want to make the market tank since that just devalues what they have.

I realize the above is a simplification and there are many other factors (and there could be malicious participants), but overall this will continue to push the price up.

<comment><USER15> Would it be hard to start a service to let people short bitcoins? You'd basically just be "lending out" the bit coins to people and making interest.

Would there be a lot of regulations to deal with, or no?

<comment><USER16> Services have existed with margin/option trading, but some of them have shut down because they were hacked. New ones that come out every day are too insecure to be trusted.

In fact, just today a margin trading website was exposed as having tons of SQL injections and storing user passwords with unsalted MD5 hashes. Until somebody can step up to the plate stability will be an issue.

Which reminds me, I have a rather nice domain name and experience with bitcoins and security, if only I had the financial/regulatory know-how...

<comment><USER14> Stop worrying about the financial and regulatory know how and just try out your idea. You might find it goes nowhere and you will have wasted your time thinking about "regulations". No one is going to shut down your website making 10$ a month and if you do start to grow then you will be able to pay the right people to deal with the right problems.

<comment><USER17> With all the recent hacking of Bitcoin services, maybe it's this kind of thinking which is causing more problems.

<comment><USER14> I don't think regulation helped any of the banks with high profile credit card hacks recently. Don't confuse regulation with security. Regulation is not necessarily in place to provide security for the end user, only barriers to entry. Once you do start to grow obviously the correct precautions should be taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are relatively low volumes but steady price gains over the past month.

This could be a sign that a lot of people want to get into the market quickly without reasoning about the price. When we look in the order book of one of the larger exchanges (mtgox) we see that there is not much market depth on either side[1].

This coincides with large volume peaks when articles are published, for example August 3 when bitcoin broke the $10.00 price this was widely published about (also on HN).

[1]<http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> Bitcoin price will continue to rise unless something happens causing confidence in the currency to collapse. It is designed to never inflate, and as more blocks are confirmed, we see that it deflates.

<comment><USER20> Well, sort of. Its designed so that the number of bitcoins in circulation approach some constant, but that doesn't tell you anything about the value of bitcoins, because the long term value of bitcoins is going to be something like the value of the market served by bitcoins divided by the number of bitcoins. So if, say, Silkroad gets shut down by the authorities then I expect the value of bitcoins would crash. Or if banking regulations change to make using bitcoins more cumbersome, or whatever. And you'd expect to see the value to bitcoins drop during recessions.

<comment><USER19> I'm referring to the real inflation of the currency: There is no mechanism for new bitcoins to be created when all blocks are confirmed. You need to create new currency to avoid deflation because populations grow.

<comment><USER21> Deflation is just another word for long periods of decreasing prices (not VALUES). What's wrong with that? Because of their infinite divisibility (it's equally easy to spend 1 millionth of a Bitcoin as it is to spend 1 Bitcoin) they do not share is the problems deflation poses to traditional money.

Deflation does encourage saving over consumption, yes. But I love the fact that products in the electronics markets have had long term predictable price declines over many decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I believe/hope that this rise is not really a bubble, but driven by the rising difficulty, which is due to the availability of cheap(er) fpgas. Also the rise is _much_ slower than last summer and supported by much larger trading volume.

<comment><USER23> The bitcoin price drives the difficulty, not the other way around. [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/419/is-there- empi...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/419/is-there-empirical- data-about-a-relationship-between-bitcoin-price-and-difficult)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Obviously, this bubble-like rate of growth cannot be sustained, yet the bitcoin economy has more participants than the previous price spike in June 2011.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure if stripcoin.com is helping or hurting the situation either.</comment>


Amazon product pages are down? - <AUTHOR> http://downdetector.com/status/amazon/map/ <comment><USER2> 503 responses no longer occur, but much content is missing, replaced with a "We're sorry, an error has occurred. Please reload this page and try again." indicator.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am seeing this as well. Getting 503's for almost every product page I click. I have met a lot of the dog's of Amazon, however.</comment>


Docker and Security - <AUTHOR> http://blog.docker.io/2014/02/docker-and-security/ <comment><USER2> Containers are great for isolating trusted applications from one another to ease deployment, but using them for multi-tenant security is ill advised.

Since all containers share the same kernel, any local privilege escalation vulnerability in Linux can be used to escape the container. Such vulnerabilities are much more common than vulnerabilities in mature hypervisors, so virtualization is the safer choice.

<comment><USER3> This, and also bear in mind that kernel crypto state, particularly for the RNG, is shared.

<comment><USER4> Oh, fuck. I hadn't even _thought_ of that. That's disaster.

<comment><USER5> only if you're expecting containers to somehow be a unicorn that lets you give people you don't know have your root password. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, does Docker run their blog in its own docker container? If so, it crashed!

<comment><USER7> Oops. Looks like a little hiccup but we're back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was this written in response to an irresponsible disclosure?

<comment><USER7> Hi

We didn't have an irresponsible disclosure. We did recently present some of this information and were asked about our security policy. That policy wasn't yet published or announced so we decided it was important to get it out there, especially leading up to the Docker 1.0 release.

Please feel free to contact me, firstname.lastname@example.com, if you have any questions or concerns about the policy.

Thanks!

<comment><USER8> Hm, maybe my comment sounded more harsh than I meant it to - I was more curious because I've seen similar statements from other companies after something bad had happened. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 502 Bad Gateway _</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any alternatives to basic income? - <AUTHOR> Basic income has some nice properties but quite some disadvantages, too. Is there any research towards alternatives that would help keep the society together once the machines really kick in? <comment> a-saleh In my opinion, basic-income, though a general concept, can't really be generalized. Any actual implementation will be an alternative to any other actual implementation.

Social policy seems to be hard to get right.

I.e. one thing I heard, that a certain level of universal-basic-income is being implemented in the US, by generous disability benefits. If you then feel that you no longer have ability to do meaningful work (especially in the rural areas), you can collude with your doctor to make yourself a diagnosis that you would qualify for and would qualify you for disability benefits. As they say, these days there are no healthy people, just insufficiently diagnosed ;) Then you can survive doing odd-jobs to supplement your now-almost-basic income.

But I get that making something like this general might just cost too much. And there might be unwanted sideffects.

I.e. in my country, you can apply for housing subsidy. This was supposed to help low-income households. In reality, it mostly helped people providing housing for of certain segment of almost-homeless people, where they no longer have stable address, and they barely scrape by to pay ther rent, mostly one- bed in a how income hostel. So, when the subsidies came, owners just raised the price of a bed by the ammount of subsidy. This created an interesting poverty-trap, and several cities are trying to fight back to untangle this. What doesn't help is that many of the trapped people are ethnic minorities, which then can be used by less savoury politicians in their municipal politc campaigns.

</comment><comment><USER2> The concept of basic income seems kind of absurd to me, honestly. Infrastructure is crumbling, the educational system is slowly falling apart, urban areas in certain cities are becoming less and less maintained, etc. I see no reason why basic income would be preferable to a Public Works Administration-style program that pays people to do these tasks.

<comment><USER3> > I see no reason why basic income would be preferable to a Public Works > Administration-style program that pays people to do these tasks.

Basic income naturally scales up with improvements in productivity driven by automation and reduces labor market friction and enables adjustment to changing conditions.

PWA beginners increasingly obviously pointless, wasteful soul-crushing make- work with progressive automation and increases labor-market friction obstructing adjustment.

The latter works as a short-term collapse in demand for a kind of work that is expected to recover, the former is a long-term alternative to means-tested else programs that mitigates adverse incentives and other inefficiencies.

Both are potentially useful but don't address remotely the same set of problems.

<comment><USER2> > PWA beginners increasingly obviously pointless, wasteful soul-crushing make- > work with progressive automation and increases labor-market friction > obstructing adjustment.

I don't know what this sentence is supposed to mean. Can you clarify?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hello, my startup Free Essentials is going to solve universal income privately by paying our members to consume our already free products and services. Since our products will be free, all our revenue will come from advertising, transaction fees, and data. Initially, we are going to establish ourselves with water and then we will expand from there. Please take a look at the commercial for our first product FreeWater and you'll get the big picture. Best, Josh [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd748KfMnLY&t=7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd748KfMnLY&t=7s)

</comment><comment><USER5> One alternative would be an economy that spends surplus on large goals: infrastructure mega-projects, big science, interplanetary colonization, technological moon shots, etc. That would "soak up" a lot of employment, especially at the top, and have effects throughout the entire economy.

A lot of people find that distasteful because it implies a degree of authoritarianism beyond what basic income would require.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some would argue that Job Guarantees could perform a similar function. Personally find them a rather depressing idea, but you'll find plenty of arguments for and against.

<comment><USER7> Guaranteeing work or rather forcing someone to do work even if it doesn't provide any value or serve any purpose while at the same time you could provide them with a basic income for no work at all seems downright cruel to me.

Guaranteeing work ultimately boils down to work for work's sake and arguments like "idle hands are the devil's workshop".

<comment><USER6> Agree 100% (hence my "rather depressing"). The advocates are definitely out there, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the UK we have a constrained housing supply, I'm pretty sure any basic income would just inflate property prices and end up in the pockets of landlords and the already wealthy.

I'd prefer a return to the sort of social housing we created post war, where it wasn't just for the very needy but ordinary people in low paying jobs.

<comment><USER9> Or if a lot of people stopped working and lived on basic income it might drive down the cost of housing to sell to those folks.

<comment><USER10> No, it would be the exact opposite. If I know you have a guaranteed $200 a week in your pocket, the floor for negotiations rises to that level, because in a high-demand market, if you won't tap into that money to pay me more, someone else will.

<comment><USER11> Except there's still competition. If renting becomes $200/wk more expensive, then sharing a room, or living with family, or move out of the area (to somewhere that still has BI but less constrained housing) becomes $200/wk more appealing and that'll make the difference for some people. Rents would probably rise, but not the full $200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's the old Jubilee system (redistribution of land): [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(biblical)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_\(biblical\))

</comment><comment><USER10> There have been ideas floated that use crypto-currency models. The advantage of "programmable money" enables a few things which would not be possible with conventional currency.

I'm not advocating this, but I've heard of several models for a merit-based economy (which I reject as it's only really viable under authoritarianism), but it illustrates a way in which this might work.

All individuals receive a fixed number of tokens daily. Everyone gets 100 for example. However, you're taxed based on merit, as defined by attributes in your wallet. If you have a bad driving record for example (comparable to receiving many traffic tickets), what costs me 20 tokens might cost you 21. You're penalized for misconduct at the point of sale. However someone who volunteers with a charity for 10 hours a week might only pay 18 for the same goods. The merchant/service provider is reimbursed the same, regardless of the cost, as all excess token taxes are pooled and the difference is allocated from that if the sale price falls under the base price. Merits and demerits are fixed to be issued at a 1:1 ratio.

Another option would be to simply impose a luxury tax on non-essential goods, and use that to finance essential goods. Less Universal Income, more Universal Food Stamps... You might pay 25% more for that new car, but you can always walk into a store and pick up a bag of food staples or simple pharmaceuticals. They key here is that's it's not just for the poor or disabled, and everyone pays the luxury tax. However, naturally those with more disposable income will likely spend more and thus pay more of the tax. This works in local economies (a small town for example), but doesn't scale up with population very well because locality plays a huge role in costs. If kept local however, there's no cost advantage to centralized administration, and it could end up costing everyone significantly more to run variants of the same programs on the local level. And then you might just make your luxury purchases two towns over (or online) where their tax is lower, lol. This system has been used in the past, but global economics in place today negate the efficacy of this model.

Another idea eschews the money aspect entirely and instead reduces the standard work week, freeing people up to pursue supplemental employment if they choose, start a side business, etc. This actually has more practical implications. Studies have shown in most office work, companies are effectively only getting 28 hours of work out of people in a 40 hour work week, and less in industrial jobs. Reducing the work week to 30 hours (at the same net salary) made no negative impact on productivity. Companies got the same amount of measurable work, for the same cost, but gave the employee more free time. Going from 40 hours to 30 potentially creates 25% more jobs if you need 24/7 coverage, but also increases the cost to the employer. However, with 25% more jobs available, you can get a part time job to work a full 40 hours (or more) if you want, ideally in another industry. Then if the industry you're in takes a dive, there's some resilience to layoffs. You already have other employment and skills in another field. The idea is rather than give people a basic income, less money could be used to provide tax exemptions to companies who adopted this model to offset their increased costs of hiring. You take less from the company, but that is more than offset by the value generated by the increase in employment and tax revenues generated from that productivity. The problem here is with skilled professions that are in high demand. For example, you can't do this with ER doctors, we don't have enough of them as it is. Not all professions and industries benefit equally. But this isn't without precedent, before the establishment of the 40 hour work week, most people were working 80-90 hours. It's doable and there are advantages, but it's not universal.To be implemented, it must be voluntary, not compulsory, but with changes made to the law to extend things like health benefit eligibility to people working under 40 hours. Then it can be slowly adopted naturally by those who benefit the most from it, and their experience and improvements in implementation can inform industries who may want to adopt it but will have less margin for error.

Keep in mind, universal basic income is already available to everyone. They're called "dividends". You pay into an investment and receive a portion of the profits at fixed intervals for assuming a portion of the risk. This is superior to a UBI, because you have to opt-in, contribute as much or as little as you want, and you get control over how the money is managed. People get butt-hurt when you say this, and counter with the same statement:

"Not everyone is an investor, many will lose the money, so it's not universal".

But that's true of a UBI too. Some people would take the money and invest it to grow their wealth, some people will buy food and housing to subsist on it, and some people will piss it away on weed and video games. Those are all valid choices, but they have consequences in regard to the financial prosperity of the individual.

There are plenty of good articles about unconventional economics here: [https://countermarkets.com](https://countermarkets.com)</comment>


Shimport: Use JavaScript modules in all browsers, including dynamic imports - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Rich-Harris/shimport <comment><USER2> The author highlights support of dynamic imports multiple times. But why; is there something particularly interesting about it? Other module systems did this ages ago, e.g. RequireJS, so it's not like that's the main reason to adopt JS modules.

<comment><USER3> The interesting part is that it's officially part of the ECMAScript spec and HTML standard, and this library is just polyfilling it temporarily until more browsers implement it – so eventually you can use the exact same syntax and function calls without this library.

Things like RequireJS have certainly served people perfectly well, but they're just systems that folks came up with and implemented in userland rather than any official standard – you will always need a library to use them.

<comment><USER4> A minor nitpick, but the dynamic import proposal [0] is actually in stage 3 of the TC39 process [1].

Although you are correct that the WHATWG HTML spec requires implementing the import() proposal if JavaScript is supported.

[0] [https://github.com/tc39/proposal-dynamic- import](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-dynamic-import)

[1] [https://tc39.github.io/process-document/](https://tc39.github.io/process- document/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > in all browsers

Does it work in IE9 (still relevant since it is mandated by certain governments)? The GH README has no statement of browser support.

<comment><USER6> It looks like it expects Promises to be implemented (there's a Promise.all call in the minified unpkg version), so unless you add a Promises polyfill then I'd say it isn't compatible with IE9.

<comment><USER7> > so unless you add a Promises polyfill then I'd say it isn't compatible with > IE9.

I agree with your technical assessment, but I'd put it: just add a Promises polyfill and it's compatible with IE9.

This is of course assuming someone is paying you large amounts of money to make a website that works on IE in 2018 - the gulf is so huge these days between the 4 major evergreens that's a bunch of extra work, but if you have a customer with fat pockets, then be my guest.

Edit: you added something about governments - which governments require IE9?

<comment><USER8> I can't speak to 9 but I have to work on a site that requires Java applets (yeah) and the only browser left is IE 11. So until that changes it gets supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also the recent alpha release of SystemJS [https://guybedford.com/systemjs-2.0-alpha](https://guybedford.com/systemjs-2.0-alpha)

</comment><comment><USER10> Can you cache modules?

</comment><comment><USER11> > new Function('import("' \+ src + '")')();

oh god the horror. using EVAL AND not escaping the input. Can't you just check presence of `require`?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately no, because `import` is special syntax that just happens to look like a function call. It's not actually a function/object/etc. in the global scope. Here's what Google's guide to `import` says about it:

> Note: Although import() looks like a function call, it is specified as > syntax that just happens to use parentheses (similar to super()). That means > that import doesn't inherit from Function.prototype so you cannot call or > apply it, and things like const importAlias = import don't work — heck, > import is not even an object! This doesn't really matter in practice, > though.

Using eval (or the Function form of it in this case) doesn't seem like a huge issue here, because if you're accepting a user-supplied `src`, it doesn't have to contain any malicious syntax escapes in the `src` string itself to do whatever it wants...they could just supply a perfectly normal script URL of their choosing that will be executed anyway.</comment></comment>


How LearnBoost listened to teachers, built new Web-based gradebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/07/28/learnboost-bets-on-better-tools-for-teachers/

<comment><USER2> I could go on for hours on this topic, but here are a few points off the top of my head (I work in Infosec for one of the largest districts in the country):

\- Security. FERPA, student information, disclosure laws, etc. If you want districts to use this service, then you are going to have to get VERY serious about security and document it well. A lot of contracts will want indemnification for data breaches, some huge insurance amount, etc.

\- Interoperability. For anything more than a single school you better integrate with Active Directory, Novell, or at least offer some type of LDAP integration with an authentication store. The web-based, we store your login credentials model, doesn't scale well for multiple schools.

\- Interoperability v2. Student Information Systems (SI) are FAR more complex than just the gradebook software. Usually the gradebook software must integrate with scheduling software, reporting software, some type of long-term storage/report card/transcript software, special ed software, analytics/reporting software, horrible 1980s state reporting software, etc. At the very least you're going to need a way to send/receive data back and forth. Securely.

\- Parents. Online access to Little Johnny's grades, assignments, etc is a must these days. Helicopter parents want to know every damn assignment little Johnny had today, what grades he got, why in the hell he didn't get 100% like he should have. That data better be available via web site, email, and text messages. Oh and how do you tie a student to a particular parent? What about divorces? The complexity around this is huge.

\- School districts. You might find it difficult to get single schools to use their own gradebook software (charter/private schools are easier). A lot of districts mandate that schools use one, centralized gradebook system for obvious reasons (see Interoperability). If you don't have every enterprisey feature the district demands, you won't get the business. Gaining traction in larger school districts is tough. The bureaucracy is every bit as crushing as the Federal government.

With all of that being said, this is a market that is RIPE for exploitation. SI systems SUCK, usability is atrocious, and the vendors bend school districts over to shake $$$ out. A lot of the current systems are inefficient as well (think 30+ web servers just for the front end).

One area you might want to market heavily - the cost savings from outsourcing the technology. Districts spend a fortune running their own servers, datacenters, tech staff, etc. for SI systems. As budgets get worse, showing a cost savings by outsourcing will look more attractive. But you're going to be fighting a VERY ingrained resistance to giving up control of data to a 3rd party.

* Views expressed are my own and not representative of my employer, and other such caveats _

<comment><USER3> You are exactly correct on this. Gradebook software that doesn't have parent access (and cover the associated problems and security issues) and interoperability with other SIS is a solution without a problem. Or perhaps better: a problem with many solutions, including Google spreadsheets.

<comment><USER4> The parental access is a really small piece depending on where you are. The larger the district the more important it is from what I've seen. The district my wife teaches in just moved over to Infinite Campus and it has very little to do with the parental access features and everything to do with the data retention and security issues, federal accountability, and all the tracking features. It's horrible software but it checks all of the boxes on the bean counters and mid level managers check lists at the district and state offices.

In addition to adding the new software it's been mandated that every teacher use it and all other grade book software has been banned. Even if what learnboost is producing is the most amazing thing in the world these teachers can't use it. The existing system is such a pain in the ass there is also the added issue of no teacher wanting to do double data entry.

Any company that wants to break the stranglehold these companies have in the space is going to have to come in with a complete solution at a lower cost. Most of the software will also be required to run within the existing infrastructure or be dropped in, so forget about running on one of the various cloud infrastructures.

<comment><USER3> Interesting.

 _and all the tracking features_

What do they track? The kids' progress through the grades?

<comment><USER4> Well, tracking the kids through the grades is already done via cumulative files. Those contain grades, scores on standardized tests, records of disciplinary action, records of social services issues and that type of thing. All of that is being digitized now. In addition to all of that things like attendance are tracked with finer granularity as it's directly related to school funding. Then there's things like what period of time was the student on the free and reduced lunch program. How many meals did they receive during that time. That all gets tracked, again, for federal funding purposes. I'd have to pull out the Infinite Campus manual to get the details on some of the other things that are tracked, but I was quite surprised at all of it when I first saw it. Unfortunately in addition to their primary role as education, teachers are being asked to do more and more paper pushing and handling other duties pushed on them by politicians.

Some of the data they keep track of is useful. For example, it's very difficult to get kids into the special ed program these days. You have to put kids through various phases of testing, and each phase requires a different amount of time between them or different benchmarks for evaluation. Some of these systems can keep track of that so as a child moves through the grades each teacher can pick up where the last left off. Sometimes it can take a couple of years for a child to start receiving special education services which is unfortunate because at that point they are even further behind where they should be. This is the direct result of parents not wanting their kids singled out or alienated by being labeled special education. So in that case the tracking is probably a good thing since there are definitive records of what steps have been completed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious whether these guys will have Blackboard waving its (many bogus) patents at them...

<comment><USER4> I didn't think blackboard had any patents pertaining to grade books but in their collaboration and online lesson pieces. Even so, most of them wouldn't likely hold up in court now due to Bilski.</comment></comment>


Russian Gamedev Company Playrix to Challenge Tencent and Activision - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-17/billionaire-brothers-crushing-it-with-gaming-powerhouse-playrix <comment><USER2> After looking at the games they produce, I conclude that they're not a "gamedev company", they're nothing but dirty whale ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_roller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_roller)) hunters.</comment>


Copywriters: Key ranking factors to watch out for - <AUTHOR> https://gathercontent.com/blog/seo-for-copywriters-key-ranking-factors-to-watch-out-for <comment><AUTHOR> _" Today the Google algorithm is much more complex and, frankly, better than it was just a few years ago. Google doesn't rely on such a simple measurement as "keyword density" to determine search relevancy. But, if keyword density is over, how is Google determining what your content is about?"_

I often see these, _" lets hack google agorythms"_ to improve listings. I can see the purpose, but why can't they improve their product? Is google that dominant your sales suffer compared to competitors?

<comment><USER2> Yes. Typically it's "Google rank equals money which equals better product which means even better Google rank." Having an eye on the ranking becomes a business metric and we wind up with the Internet he have today, with Seoul optimised pre launch landing pages and other garbage.</comment></comment>


Why I want Swift to be your first language - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronblock.com/thoughts/2015/8/21/why-i-want-swift-to-be-your-first-language <comment><USER2> Why I don't want Swift to be your first language (from a student's point of view):

1\. Where am I going to test my applications? Not all students have Apple's products (I never had any of them). On the other hand, if I use Python, or Java, or C/C++, I can test my application wherever I want.

2\. As far as I know, Swift will be open source (at least, that's what Apple said). But Swift is not open source _at the moment_ (please correct me if I'm wrong).

3\. Swift is a new language. If I type "Swift tutorial" on Google, and I type "Python tutorial" on Google in a second tab, I'll get much more relevant results for much more platforms when I type "Python tutorial".

I don't care how good the syntax is. If a programming language is not currently available on like every platform and if I can't build my application using whatever I want to use (including a text editor and a compiler), it's not a good choice for students no matter what you say.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the end of the article, the author gives several reasons why he won't be teaching Swift to students yet. He includes each of your points. (With the assumption that eventually they will be moot.)

<comment><USER2> Nope.

He lists that there's no Windows IDE, which is far from being able to run the program everywhere and using whatever I want to use to build it (as I have said it). I also think that .NET languages (like Visual Basic .NET and C# .NET) are not a good starting language, even though one of them was my starting language thanks to my high school and my college (both taught me Visual Basic .NET for one year). Plus, he states that Swift is open source at the moment, which, as far as I know, is not true. He didn't mention any of those three points I made.

EDIT: Replaces .NET with .NET languages.

<comment><USER3> Once it's open source, isn't it logical to conclude that there will be open source runtimes that run on non-Apple products? Give it a year or so.

<comment><USER4> Not even a year, about a month. Swift for Linux will arrive with the release of Swift 2.0, which will coincide with the release of Xcode 7, which will coincide with the release of iOS 9 ... which will coincide with the announcement of the next iPhone, which should be around late September, as usual.

<comment><USER3> Hm, do you think it'll only take a month for it to be ported to Windows?

<comment><USER4> I'm not an LLVM expert, but Swift is an LLVM frontend, so once it's open source, I think it should work for the various backends?

Right now the issue is library support - swiftc can already just spit out LLVM IR: [https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/2427](https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/2427)

The stdlib would be included in the open source release.

Linux boxes would fulfill "non-Apple product" though. Unixy programming languages like Swift and Python have always been weird on Windows.

<comment><USER5> Could you elaborate on Python being weird on Windows?

<comment><USER6> Python is a set of packages. On Windows, you're supposed to use a distribution, such as Anaconda.

Even then, building some of the fancier libraries (with native code) by hand is bit involved.

In fact, Anaconda works very well on Windows, as long as you don't require extreme latest versions of modules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is missing what I think is the zeroth skill to teach beginning programmers - a love of hacking on things and getting results.

It's why I think Javascript is the best language to teach beginners. Yes, it's an ugly language. Yes, it has significant structural problems. Yes, it will bite you in hilariously difficult to find ways. But that doesn't particularly matter compared to teaching them that they can futz around with code and get interesting stuff done.

<comment><USER8> Processing is also pretty good, for a similar reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lost me when he mentioned that ARC is better to teach than GC.

I'm the least fan of GC as anyone else but needing to have intro students worry about cycles seems like the last thing you want to teach first.

<comment><USER10> I don't see him state that. His argument seems to boil down to:

      1) I want to use a single teaching language.
      2) We need to teach them about memory management.
      3) C style manual memory management is too hard for beginners.

If you accept #1 and #2, you can't start with a language with the full 'magic' of garbage collection, as it would have to be the only language, and you cannot teach #2 with it.

If, in addition, you accept #3, ARC makes sense to me. You can have your pupils implement quite a bit of advanced data structures such as trees and tries before you hit your first cycle, but there are 'real' data structures that use them, so you won't have to make up some artificial example to find one. Until that time, you can let your pupils think that the machine reuses memory as soon as it is no longer referenced.

I think his arguments make some sense, but I am not sure I'm fully behind #1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The static-void-main-string-args argument is trotted out so often and to me is the most facetious. Every language has some syntax to learn and with any learning process it will need to be handwaved away. Basing any kind of decision on such a trivial thing seems odd to me.

<comment><USER12> Trying to discourage the use of a language because of `public static void main` is as absurd as trying to sell a language because it lets you write `println("hello world")`.

Don't believe anybody who uses either of these tactics.

<comment><USER13> Discouraging the use of a language, and discouraging the choice of a certain language as the first language non-programmers are exposed to are two very different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article was a reasonably persuasive argument for why Python should be your first language. Maybe someone should write "Why I want Swift to be relevant to non-Appleheads".

<comment><USER15> Except for the part where he specifically mentioned Swift's ARC as something to expose Intro students to vs. Python's garbage collection?

<comment><USER16> Isn't ARC almost exclusive to "Apple languages"? It seems like GC is much more relevant.

<comment><USER17> Not necessarily, C++11 has smart pointers which have reference counting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With the exception of "Named parameters, a life sentence." every argument work for a Lisp based language as Racket for instance.

<comment><USER19> I'd also argue that a super simple language like Scheme (or stripped-down Racket) would be pretty close to ideal for a pure intro class.

Introductions should be about learning how to reason about abstractions, and how to transform problem-solving from what's going on in your head into code. When you start out with something so rigid like C or Java you really confine a student's ability to reason about a problem because there's so much syntax to keep track of.

<comment><USER20> A Lisp-like language will only help you if you stay in the lisp world. A C-like will help you with most of the world's current languages in the Tiobe list.

<comment><USER18> That's so not true in my opinion. There is a whole generation that was raised with Scheme as first language (and SICP ), I am particularly grateful that I was part of that and today I program (or had programmed) in most of the top languages in the Tiobe list as you say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't look like a particularly radical change from any other so called modern curly bracket language to me. It also doesn't seem to have any native multitasking/multiprogramming features, at least none were mentioned on the Swift2 summary page. Anyway, what sort of students are we talking about here? If they are physics or engineering students then they will have to learn whichever language that the tools they use needs, if they are CS students then surely the language itself is one of the objects to be studied in which case there ought to be more than one.

<comment><USER22> It doesn't need multitasking/multi programming as a language feature because these are provided by GCD as a library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Swift is inherently tied to the OS X / iOS APIs (just as Objective-C is). It's a one platform language and will never be (and never intended to be) a general purpose language for all platforms.

<comment><USER24> Neither are "inherently tied" to OSX or iOS. They may be practically tied due to who drives them and their competitors lack of incentive to ever invest in them, but from a pure language point of view they are agnostic.

<comment><USER23> Almost the entire OSX API is built on the Objective-C object dispatch model. Swift and Objective-C are built for this model specifically.

It doesn't make sense to run Swift (or Objective-C) without the underlying platform API. You can do it (and Apple does; iTunes for Windows is built with such a shim) but it's not practical.

The only reason Swift even exists is that no other language (other than Objective-C) fit with the object model of the OSX API. So they had to make their own. As much as other languages don't interface well with OSX is as much as Swift doesn't interface well with every other platform.

<comment><USER24> You're wrong on all accounts. The Objective-C dispatch model is based on Smalltalk.

Most OSX apps and services still aren't even written in Objective-C and many (most actually) platform APIs are still in C.

You can compile Objective-C using the gnu compiler and have been able to for ages.

Swift is an amalgam of many different programming languages and styles, including Rust. None of which have anything specific to do with OSX/iOS about them.

<comment><USER23> > The Objective-C dispatch model is based on Smalltalk.

I meant the low-level dispatch of methods; the application binary interface that Objective-C uses to communicate with the APIs that make up almost the entire OS X GUI API. You can't mix that with the ABI for Windows API or any Linux toolkit (except GNUStep).

> Most OSX apps and services still aren't even written in Objective-C

Most OS-X apps aren't written in Objective-C? Really? Come on. If it was written specifically for OS X or iOS then it's almost guaranteed to be in Objective-C.

> You can compile Objective-C using the gnu compiler and have been able to for > ages.

Nobody says you can't. But the only real useful thing you can with that is link to GNUStep.

> Swift is an amalgam of many different programming languages and styles, > including Rust. None of which have anything specific to do with OSX/iOS > about them.

At the high-level you are right but on the low-level it's specifically designed to interface with Objective-C APIs which exist in OSes from only one manufacturer. You can't separate Swift from that. The fact that it's an amalgam of OS X specific technology makes it unsuitable for other OSes. It doesn't really have that much in common with Rust either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> At this point of time, being cross-platform (at least the 3 of win,mac,linux) is a basic 'hygiene factor' for programming languages. I mean, even experimental niche tools and hobbyist systems are expected to do that and almost all of them do.

I have access to all kinds of systems, but this is not a consumer item, and it _should_ work everywhere; a mac-only requirement is just as unacceptably limiting for general purpose computing as a windows-only requiremet.

</comment><comment><USER26> Swift isn't actually open-source yet, is it?

Once it is, I think the reasons explained in this article for using Swift as an introductory language make sense.

<comment><USER27> Maybe after they open source Swift they'll have some free time to work on Steve Jobs' announcement that FaceTime would be an open video calling standard.

Swift is not open source. It might be in the future, and if they do follow through, the release is slated for "later this year." I hope they do, but I also can't blame anyone who decides to wait and see.

<comment><USER22> FaceTime was prevented from being open sourced by a patent troll. Continuing to repeat misinformation about this in threads like this is not a reflection on Apple, and is clearly irrelevant to whether Swift will be open sourced.

Pay attention to Chris Lattner and his track record if you want a realistic view of whether the open source promise is likely to be kept for Swift.

<comment><USER28> And whose fault is that? I think is both sides. The patent troll for obvious reasons but also Apple (or Steve Jobs) for announcing something that they cannot achieve.

That is why people have a hard time believing any Open Source promises made by Apple. And yes I know they have some open source projects available right now.

<comment><USER22> By your logic, anyone who ever runs into trouble with a patent troll should never be trusted again. Clearly this is absurd.

<comment><USER28> No, anyone who promises things he cannot fulfill may have his trust in doubt. It doesn't matter if the problem was internal or external.

What would you think if Apple went to announce next Wednesday that the new iPhone will have a sapphire screen, but on launch (after a bunch of people preoder the phone) they announce it's normal glass because a provider couldn't deliver.

Whose fault would that be, the provider's? Apple's? Both?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The semicolon thing had me scratching my head. Are people teaching Java without an IDE that shows syntax errors very visibly?

<comment><USER30> hell, i work with python using vim and i can see syntax errors on it. it's really a basic feature when you are writing code.

also, swift has syntax that can bite new developers just like any other language.</comment></comment>


Tagging HN posts - #c22XGPpkLvs2vhop - zupa-hu

I'm just curious if it works to link to a HN post via searching for a tag in it's title instead of it directly - as you may know such upvotes are ignored.
Testcases. I expect both to work. Let's see.
With hashmark https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%23c22XGPpkLvs2vhop
Without hashmark https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=c22XGPpkLvs2vhop <comment> zupa-hu Should you be curious, they both work 2 hours later, and the hashmark is not highlighted on the search results page.

</comment><comment> zupa-hu Not working yet. Might need some time as the index may be updated every once in a while.</comment>


Best way to have a logo designed? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, any thoughts on the best way to find designers to build a great company logo?  Should I use 99 Designs and actively manage the designers  (with a guaranteed prize).  Or should I go to Logo Pond and Behance to find a custom designer?
I'm a rookie at this so your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
cheers,
-Andrew <comment><USER2> logotournament.com ?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks,

have you used them before?</comment></comment>


Delta Air Lines to furlough nearly 2k pilots in October - <AUTHOR> https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_31b29e31fa4937f395cb392d64336e1a <comment><USER2> So much for the pilot shortage that's been talked about for years.</comment>


How to Become a Silicon Valley Mogul in 10 Easy Steps - <AUTHOR> http://www.aialex.com/2007/07/23/how-to-become-a-silicon-valley-mogul-in-10-easy-steps/

<comment><USER2> you could have put a disclaimer:

Step -1: Get hold of Steve Job's creditcard Step 0: Stand 10 steps away from the Bank, with a gun in your hand NOW,Take the rest of the 10 steps forward. Easy! :-)</comment>


The Blind Men and the Elephant: A Story of Noobs - <AUTHOR> http://yehudakatz.com/2010/02/09/the-blind-men-and-the-elephant-a-story-of-noobs/

<comment><USER2> You can tell when someone asks a question whether they have bothered to try to get an answer by their own effort or not. Even if they haven't tried a different way you can usually tell if they are trying to provide you with help to give them the answer.

Instead of "how can I feed this creature" the blind man should say "how can I feed this creature, it appears to be a snake and my research has shown they eat mice, should I feed it mice?". One knows then what has been tried (or is being suggested), what assumptions are being made and can better aid them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm starting out in Ruby the last couple of months, but I've done a lot of Python, among other things. I've read other people criticizing the poor standard of documentation of some parts of Ruby and Ruby libraries, and from my recent experiences, I can sympathize. But as a maintainer of an open source library, I can also sympathize with the feeling that documentation always seems like a lower priority compared with new features.

Recently I've been getting a lot of user support requests that have made me realize I have to lift my own game when it comes to documentation. It is worth remembering that the 'Laziness' component of 'Laziness, Impatience, Hubris', includes a healthy dose of documentation:

"Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer."

From <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris>, quoting Larry Wall.

I found that to be good motivation.

EDIT: Also, API documentation isn't enough for new users. As the article points out, users need to be taught the basic concepts to know they are dealing with an elephant, not a snake. Without the basics it is hard to ask intelligent questions.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a solved problem.

<http://stackoverflow.com>

Pick your topic, search for questions, and ask them. Scala, Clojure, Squeak, Rails...

<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/scala> <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clojure> <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/squeak> <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ruby-on-rails>

These days it's much easier to go from noob to expert in whatever topic, even if the topic is a bit esoteric. The great thing is that you're throwing down breadcrumbs for the next guy.

<comment><USER5> A problem with learning difficult topics, and Rails apparently is one of them for a lot of people (try coming to it without a background in web development or OOP, for example), is that you don't even know what questions to ask.

Stack Overflow is _amazing_ for when you can concisely describe the exact issue you're having in such a manner that someone else can Google it for you. It is less amazing when you lack the mental framework to identify where the gap in your understanding probably is.

I think this is the cause of a lot of the complaining about "magic" in Rails. It isn't magic when it is working, it is only magic when it breaks. Then people often find, whoops, they don't have a good enough understanding of what is happening to diagnose what probably went wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is so true, yet when other people ask me for help it is so easy to say "read the api docs" even though I have gone through the same process and frustration.

The whole process of learned a new tool or language requires a lot of work. Sometimes the people who are new to it will give up because they simply were unable to understand some small issue. I suppose it is up to both parties, the leaders and the new developer. The leader has to encourage and support while the new developer must be willing to work hard and not give up.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good point. We do need to remember our own confusions when starting with rails, I remember looking at lambda and being totally confused, took me months to really grok blocks and lambda's in Rails.

Being worried about asking for fear of getting lmgtfy'd is not conducive to expanding a community.

<comment><USER8> blocks and lambdas in Ruby?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of course, there's a flip side to this:

<http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure the help vampire phenomenon is an example of the lmgtfy phenomenon and not a real problem (except in rare cases)

<comment><USER9> I've personally dealt with "help vampires"; they're not rare, and they tend (in my experience) to fall into two groups:

1\. People whose attitude is "I will remain as ignorant of as many things as possible for as long as possible". Try to point them to documentation which covers broad/fundamental concepts, or explain them yourself, and the reply you'll get is "I don't need to know all that, I just need to know how to do X". Learning enough to find your own way is, I've been told, simply a massive waste of time. Of course, later they'll be back with "now I need to know how to do Y", and again stubbornly insisting that there's no need to learn generalities...

2\. "plz send me the code" -- people who won't even learn the specifics of a task at hand, but just keep badgering until someone hands them fully-working code. Point them at appropriate documentation and, nine times out of ten, they copy/paste the first code sample on the page and come back to say it didn't work.

I see, on average, about one or two of these every day on IRC and mailing lists. Unfortunately, these behaviors tend to be successful in the short term: sooner or later _someone_ will step up and give the vampire what he wants, and the cycle will start all over again. Long-term, I don't know; I tend to be liberal with the /ignore, and I don't keep track of whether these people later evolve away from these behaviors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I'm new to something and get that feeling of having hit a barrier, I try to remember to "go broad before you go deep".

It's too easy to feel the tail of the elephant, think it's a snake, and then go off based on that assumption and waste enormous time. You have to avoid doing that. Make yourself consider assumptions before you work form them.

One way to do this is to force yourself to write out a list of ten strategies for helping to solve whatever problem you're stuck on. The ten-ways works for most things in life. Five isn't enough - you have to force yourself to really think.</comment>


Google Bought a Startup in May for $120M – Biggest NYC Exit No One Knows About - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-120-million-divide-acquisition-2014-10?utm_content=buffer290c4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer

<comment><USER2> The title now is "How 3 First-Time Founders Turned One-Third Of Their Employees Into Millionaires — And No One Found Out About It" as if the 1/3 number was fact, when instead it is just a guesstimate that the author heard.

For a startup of 70 employees with $25M of VC money invested and selling for $120M, typically the only ones that become millionaries would be the founders.</comment>


How to Update Your Existing Website Without Code – npm Init - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@felipelopes_68284/how-to-update-your-existing-website-without-code-npm-init-3f85ded31047 <comment><USER2> So, from the description this lets you make changes, in-page, and then presumably re-applies said changes every time the page laods their js.

This sounds like a pretty extreme solution honestly, and makes the service itself a juicy target for attackers.</comment>


Method to Grade Teachers Provokes Battles - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/education/01teacher.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> A common criticism of measuring teacher performance is that teachers will try to get the best students in order to get the highest bonuses. Apparently VAM solves this problem:

"My kids come in at a very high level of competence," [...] After she teaches them for a year, most score highly on a state science test but show little gains, so her bonus is often small compared with those of other teachers..."

It seem as if VAM gives teachers an incentive to seek out the students that they can help the most. Win.

<comment><USER3> It still assumes that the teacher has the most influence over their students, rather than the parents & the environment. I do not know if studies show results one way or the other here (suspect it's rather hard to tease apart).

A possible analogy would be that my bonus depends on the work of my teammates (and by extension, their environments). Except, in that case, my teammates have control over their environments are possibly more skillful than a student at managing their situations.

Mind you, I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't be evaluated. Just don't think this will be a magic bullet. And numbers have a way of taking on a life of their own, as if by quantifying something we are establishing something meaningful. In reality, the numbers will be used to justify whatever political agenda is running the show.

That, quite reasonably, is what the teachers are concerned about.

<comment><USER2> _It still assumes that the teacher has the most influence over their students, rather than the parents & the environment._

No it doesn't, since VAM measures deltas. Why would a poor environment cause a group of students to do well in the 3'rd grade, but poorly in the 4'th grade? If environment is the determining factor, then the value added should be close to zero for most teachers.

Some individual students may have their environment change, but this will average out over many students (with high probability).

<comment><USER4> Imagine two groups of students in two different environments. If students in the bad environment are incapable of realizing significant gains regardless of their teachers whereas students in the good environment are likely to manifest gains no matter how bad their teachers are, then comparing deltas won't help. What you'd need to do is rotate teachers into a variety of different environments. I mean, even a mediocre teacher should produce significant gains for a class of wealthy students: the more mediocre the teacher is, the more private tutoring her students will get to compensate.

Consider graduates from selective engineering schools like MIT. They tend to be very good. Does that mean that MIT is really good at undergraduate education? Of course not. In fact, MIT is pretty bad at undergraduate education. But that doesn't matter because the world's best engineering students are desperate to attend MIT and MIT can pick and choose.

I think this method holds promise, but like the GP, it is hardly a silver bullet.

<comment><USER2> _If students in the bad environment are incapable of realizing significant gains regardless of their teachers whereas students in the good environment are likely to manifest gains no matter how bad their teachers are, then comparing deltas won't help._

In that case, good teachers will avoid such students, and bad teachers will seek them out. This is actually quite a highly desirable result - we won't waste a good teacher on hopeless students, and a bad teacher can't harm them much.

As I said, VAM gives teachers an incentive to target the students that they can help the most. Now that I think about it, it also gives bad teachers an incentive to target students they can't harm.

The more I think about it, the more I like it.

<comment><USER4> _In that case, good teachers will avoid such students, and bad teachers will seek them out. This is actually quite a highly desirable result - we won't waste a good teacher on hopeless students, and a bad teacher can't harm them much._

That might be the case in a world where there was perfect information, no barriers to entry, and no significant asymmetries. In the real world though, a brilliant young teacher may get her start working with children damaged by, say, lead poisoning, and get no results. As a result, she'll be branded as incompetent. Since she's been branded as a bad teacher, she won't be able to get jobs in high performing schools with better students and will never get an opportunity to demonstrate her brilliance. Or she might be so discouraged by her failure that she leaves the profess altogether. You can imagine the equivalent problem faced by teachers of well-off children.

<comment><USER2> Nonsense. The students are hopeless and she has no power to help or harm them. Hence, her students perform exactly as well as they are expected to and her VA score is 0 (average). That's the beauty of VAM.

If student sensitivity is measured as well, she will simply be branded as "inadequate information to evaluate performance". If you are concerned that she might be really unlucky and get a class full of people worse than their statistical predictor, that's what confidence intervals are for.

As for barriers to entry and imperfect information, VAM also doesn't provide green energy or solve P=NP. All it does is improve incentives and give administrators a better measure of teacher performance.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Let's rally for Lavabit to fight for the privacy rights of the American people - <AUTHOR> https://rally.org/lavabit#post_0HNWFXPPKeq <comment><USER2> Strategically Ladar's fight seems like a good thing for all of us, but in general I am bothered by the focus on "the American people", and the idea of political fixes based on the US constitution. I hope that HN type people are thinking strategically about the big picture and not seeking to promote the rights of a minority, potentially at the expense of the rest of us. I can't really tell though.

<comment><USER3> You're right... however I can certainly imagine every country of means jumping on the surveillance bandwagon if they haven't already.

At least the US has a constitution that forbids this. It's a good time to take a stand. It won't be solved globally, but piece by piece.

<comment><USER4> The question that the wording of the appeal raises in my mind is: if the warrant first presented to Lavabit related to a non-US citizen who was using the service, would Mr Levison have followed the same course of action?

<comment><USER3> I think so, how could you sell a security service with a backdoor only for foreigners? Doesn't make sense from a technical point of view.

Also, it doesn't seem that he had a problem with warrants, just opening it for everyone at once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just donated some more at [https://rally.org/lavabit](https://rally.org/lavabit).

Godspeed Ladar. You're an inspiration to us all.

<comment><USER6> Amen.

I'll admit to glancing woefully at my purse-strings, then tightening them the last time I saw Lavabit's defense fund.

Between the EFF, ACLU, and other organizations I have suddenly have found great cause to donate to, I didn't feel like I was ready then.

Now that most of the full story is out, I read it, laughed out at Ladar's shear balls, and donated, deciding to skip some meals to make the budget meet if necessary.

I mean, that 4 point text ploy is straight out of a smart-ass-high-school- student's attempt to cram as much as possible on his "1 index card allowed" cram-sheet.

<comment><USER7> _Within a month, Lavabit still had not complied to the court 's satisfaction—in fact he handed over pages of the key typed in 4-point font—and Levison was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine for each day he did not comply. On August 8, he shuttered Lavabit entirely, destroying the company's servers._

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/lavabit-defied- or...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/lavabit-defied-order-for- snowdens-login-info-then-govt-asked-for-sites-ssl-key/)

just in case you're wondering (I was)

<comment><USER8> He should have done it in Wingdings too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Donated.

Normally I'm hesitant to post one word comments like that, but in this case showing your donation breaks conformity behavior in large anonymous groups like the innocent bystander effect.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well i've decided to donate a little for the good cause BUT i also don't like the "American" word in the title.

It seems to be a typical American thing to state it like this (i read it in many news articles about the mass surveillence topic) and I find it very repulsive because it somehow states "we, the Americans, are superior". That's a disgusting thing to say about oneself in my opinion.

"Let's rally for Lavabit to fight for the privacy rights of the people on the internet"...

</comment><comment><USER11> I donated earlier tonight. I am thinking I will send a matching donation to the EFF as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> It just feels so juvenile — first he doesn't comply, then he says he'll comply, then he refuses to comply, then he's ordered to show cause and represents himself (!), then he prints out the encryption key in 4-point font in a clearly noncompliant gesture.

Yes, there are privacy issues at stake, but there's a much more mature and reasonable to way to conduct oneself than it seems like he has.

<comment><USER13> Suppose you're a typical nerd who lives buried in software all day long with relatively little contact with the big bad world. (Need any more proof of Levison's nerdiness? Lavabit used to be called Nerdshack. By the way, I don't mean anything negative by "nerd".) All of a sudden, you find yourself in the middle of the Snowden controversy, with a very real possibility of going to prison. You don't have much money, either. You don't know what to do. Under such circumstances, are you sure you would respond any more "maturely" than Ladar Levison did?

Levison made mistakes. Today's Wired article makes that clear. He was probably scared and confused. He should have sought legal counsel as soon as he received that first court order, preferably by calling EFF right away, but for some reason he didn't seem to have done so. His failure to work with a competent attorney (or maybe he ignored good legal counsel) probably caused more damage than what was strictly necessary.

But what happened, happened. What matters is what's going to happen next. If we're willing to stand up for a child pornographer's right to keep his hard drive encrypted, I think we should forgive Levison for his confusion as well. Thanks to his blunders, the case has now blown up into something completely different: for example, the Government's right to require the disclosure of SSL keys.

<comment><USER14> Way to be condescending about it dude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Only the American people?

<comment><USER16> Anyone can donate, this isn't running for political office. It is a legal fund.

<comment><USER2> Maybe the question is, why would I donate to fight for the privacy rights of a small minority of the world's population (which as it happens doesn't include me)? Potentially, the answer is that by making it harder for the NSA to spy on Americans we make it harder for the NSA to spy on the rest of us. The concern is that focusing on US political / legal fixes potentially still leaves the majority of us vulnerable to mass surveillance. I haven't seen as much exploration of this question as it seems like there ought to be.

<comment><USER17> At least, the Americans should fix their constitution to say that their institutions ain't allowed to spy on any human without proper judical oversight. Otherwise, as you, I don't care about their legal system.

<comment><USER16> That is actually what the constitution says. The US government should get warrant when spying on anyone regardless of who they are or where they are. The limitations are placed on the government, not the other way around.

It is only by legal convention that the US government does warrantless spying on non US citizens and gets away with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> proud to help fight the good fight Ladar - thank you for standing your ground!

</comment><comment><USER19> donated - lets give this guy some help

</comment><comment><USER20> I assume by American you mean USAian? Either way, doesn't everyone else deserve privacy too?</comment>


A Case for Those Extra 10 Pounds - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704464704575208082569868428.html

<comment><USER2> In this article, self justifications for fat folks. Think about it... 10 extra pounds, right? We burn on average B calories per day and we consume E calories per day. There is a delta of D = E - B calories. If S=Sum(D, time1, time2)<-3500 we lose a pound of fat in time2-time1 and conversely if S>3500 we gain a pound of fat. That's how human beings work. So, if you're 10 pounds overweight and you want to stay ten pounds overweight? You must adjust your lifestyle so D=0. There's no magic that happens to make some people gain more or less weight, though base metabolic rates differ. So, you're 10 lbs overweight... If you cut 500 calories per day (have a salad instead of lunch... D=-500) you'll lose that 10 lbs in 10 weeks, the you can lose the weight then readjust to D=0 later. So, why not just spend those 10 weeks and look good?

<comment><USER3> Is this comment even serious? You've been on this site for nearly two years now... how many articles have there been that talk about this issue, explaining that the equation you have given (while true) doesn't work because E and B aren't necessarily independent? Consuming less calories can change your metabolism, affecting your burn rate. The body is a complex hormonal system, its not that easy.

<comment><USER2> Of course it's serious and not the first time that I've made it here. I have read articles that attempt to criticize this model for nutrition and fitness and I have rejected them. While the body may be a complex system, simple equations often effectively model complex systems. Think about predator/prey dynamics and the relatively simple differential equations that very effectively model it for biological research. The equation I stated is approximately how the body works and it is effective for all but the most aberrant scenarios. Of course there are limits - most people cannot lose or gain more than 2-3 pounds per week. Within those limits, this model is extremely effective. E and B are effectively independent. We're not trying to solve an equation here and get EXACTLY X amount of fat loss in Y amount of time. If you can estimate D to be approximately -500/day then you'll lose approximately a pound a week. You'll have more error in your measurement of B and E than you will see as a result of a change in metabolism.

edit... fix typo and note that I currently weigh 187lbs and I used to weigh 225 lbs. This model was a very effective guide for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Financial Times' Twitter, tech blog hijacked by the Syrian Electronic Army - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/financial-times-twitter-tech-blog-hijacked-by-the-syrian-electronic-army/ <comment><USER2> So can someone explain to me what they could possibly hope to accomplish by hacking into media companies? That they could publish propaghanda and have it go unnoticed? Its a serious question....I have no clue here.</comment>


Searching for Visually Similar Artworks - <AUTHOR> http://ai.sensilab.monash.edu/2018/09/17/similarity-search-engine/ <comment><USER2> if the dataset fits in memory (less than 1-10 million entries) it might be faster to do a full matrix multiply in numpy instead of the approximate nn search, as it avoids disk read. I haven't tried benchmarking this though.

also, I might have skipped over it but most implementations do pca on the high dimensional feature vector as the data tends to be sparse, is there any reason it's not done here?

</comment><comment><USER3> I get the feeling intellectual property lawyers are going to have a field day with this one. . .</comment>