Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53416206 <comment><USER2> Transfer pricing and tax havens are draining money out of the economies of most European countries, breaking the virtuous cycle where consumer spending also leads to salaries, taxes and more investment in the community, to keep the economy going - instead we have a shrinking middle class, as the fuel is drained from the engine. Ireland, Luxembourg and certain other countries are complicit in this. We clearly need better tax laws to combat this, but I'm glad the commission is trying to fight this to the extent they can within current laws, and I hope they win the case on appeal.

<comment><USER3> >Transfer pricing and tax havens are draining money out of the economies of most European countries, breaking the virtuous cycle where consumer spending also leads to salaries, taxes and more investment in the community, to keep the economy going - instead we have a shrinking middle class, as the fuel is drained from the engine.

An alternative interpretation is that the high degree of taxes and regulations in Europe is preventing the growth of new companies there, resulting in fewer jobs, opportunities and investments. If Apple was a European company Europe would be getting a lot more taxes from it. In spite of Europe's larger population, in the past few decades it has produced way fewer new Fortune 500 companies than the US (and now also fewer than China).

<comment><USER4> The main reason behind the lack of EU successful startups is that they can't attract talent because they can't pay employees in stock options which means that when one happens to succeed only few people get rich, instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich and some of them go on to create beer startups.

There is no such cycle in Europe, and it's all because the lack of stock options. Without them, startups only offer very low pay with little to no reward, and good luck trying to attract the top talent startups actually need to succeed.

<comment><USER5> Sorry that's complete nonsense. it's routine in Europe and the UK to offer stock options. what's more you're only taxed when any gains are actually crystallised - so much more attractive / less risky than the US.

<comment><USER6> That's.. how it works in the US. I have options. I haven't paid any tax or received any actual stocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Standard Ireland stuff. They want to bring jobs to Ireland, so they create international corporate tax loopholes. My understanding is these loopholes mostly allow US tech companies to make large real profits in Europe, have them attribute to an Irish office, but then bullshit the profits away by claiming things like paying licensing fees to themselves, for their own tech, paid to a subsidiary in an even sketchier tax haven. So they have zero European profits, and thus zero taxes, on paper.

This isn't ILLEGAL, Ireland is literally creating laws to intentionally make these loopholes legal, as it gets tech companies to open offices in Ireland, and bring jobs with them. Many (myself included) consider it deeply unethical, but courts judge the laws, not the ethics, so if you're like Apple, and basically in a position where you can write your own laws, then you won't be found guilty in a court of law.

<comment><USER8> It seems to me absolutely ethical. Any country can make whatever tax laws they want to get an advantage over other countries. If the EU and its population want to ban this practice, they should reorganize the tax laws.

<comment><USER9> The ethical problem here is the consequence of the same game theory you're citing as a solution - the next country can always cut taxes more

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry, I still don't see the ethical implications. Is universally lower taxation inherently unethical?

<comment><USER11> >Is universally lower taxation inherently unethical?

When services that take care of people depend on taxes then yeah lower taxation without a backup is inherently unethical.

<comment><USER12> Efficacy of these services is not a given relative to low tax + charity.

Additionally, lower government revenue should require cuts from other areas first, like military and corporate subsidies. We shouldn't accept that any of the supposedly missing Apple tax revenue should affect the poor or uneducated. To threaten such seems unethical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to > pay it," Apple said in a statement.

We have come to accept that certain tax payers (ie. corporate or well lawyered individuals) can chose where their revenue should be taxed. It think it has become obvious that this freedom distorts the spirit of taxation in most (all?) countries. I think it is fair to prevent double taxation across countries but IMHO revenue should be taxed as close to the source (revenue- generating-event) as possible.

> "We're proud to be the largest taxpayer in the world, as we know the > important role tax payments play in society."

The old PR line Apple (and others) have been repeating ad nauseum... No one questions your place in the ranking, people care about the proportion (rate) you end up paying. If you're among the largest companies in the world by revenue it's not surprising that you'd be among the largest tax payers.

<comment><USER2> The problem is that the current system for international taxation of trade among daughter companies was devised during a time when international trade consisted of things like bars of steel, for which there is a well-defined daily market price, so it's easy to audit and prevent companies from profit- shifting to avoid taxes. Today, daughter companies trade things like 'the Google search algorithm' and 'the Nestle brand' \- IP, which by definition is unique, so no market price exists, so auditing it is impossible, making it a free-for-all for multinationals to get taxed wherever they want.

There are proposals for updated international taxation rules to prevent this issue - for example this one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formulary_apportionment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formulary_apportionment) The problem is to get the OECD to agree on updating this.

<comment><USER14> This sounds like a way to tax corporate profits in proportion to the amount of VAT, property tax, employment taxes, etc. already paid in each country.

Wouldn't it be simpler just to tax those things? We already collect those taxes, and can set any rates we wish. Why not just abolish the the tax on corporate profits?

<comment><USER15> I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion, but I do think it's important to emphasize that Apple is collecting VAT across the EU and paying large quantities of money to all EU countries as a result. The amount of tax revenue generated by VAT will be an order of magnitude larger than income tax, since the former is on revenue and the latter is on profit.

<comment><USER13> Yet, VAT is not Apple's money, it's the end consumer's.

<comment><USER15> The money used to pay income taxes also was the consumer's money originally. It's really all the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the original finding:

"The Commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 percent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 percent in 2014." [1]

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

<comment><USER17> Meanwhile, the working people in Germany are paying 20 percent to 35 percent income taxes in their salaries.

<comment><USER18> Working people in Ireland also pay high taxes on their income.

In Ireland you pay 20% income tax on the first €35,300, and 40% on income above this amount (if you are a single person, there are different cut-offs for married people and one-parent families).

You also pay an additional Universal Social Charge on all income over €13,000 - between 2-8% depending on your income level, or 11% for self-employed income over €100,000. Add on pay related social insurance (PRSI) of 4% too.

<comment><USER19> Don't forget the ridiculous property prices and rapacious rental market. The skyrocketing unchecked insurance costs and the 25% VAT and the total of 33% tax on cars (VAT + questionably legal VRT). Ireland is only a low tax economy if you don't live here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not surprised by this. The European Commission's original decision was based on a technicality related to the fact that Apple did not use the "classic" double-Irish arrangement when setting up their companies in Ireland, but instead used two branches of the same company. If Apple had set up the double-Irish with two separate companies (like most other multinationals), there would have been no question that what they were doing was perfectly allowed under Irish and EU law.

I was always skeptical that this decision would stand up under appeal, since the argument that they received a special benefit from these tax rulings (relative to other multinationals) never made much sense. They were actually worse off under this arrangement than they would have been if they had just done the proper double-Irish in the first place, like Google and Microsoft and everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER21> For anyone curious about the background, here's the original basis of the European Commission's claim in this case:

[https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_16_...](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_16_2923)

Selected quote:

"The role of EU state aid control is to ensure Member States do not give selected companies a better tax treatment than others, via tax rulings or otherwise."

</comment><comment><USER22> Living in Denmark and having worked for the tax system (SKAT) here I am glad that this ruling was overturned. I believe that Margrethe Vestager should clean up the tax system here in her home country of Denmark before trying to clean up the tax system in Ireland. The tax system here is slow, corrupt, beaurocratic, and prosecutes the weak and vunerable, while letting people who are famous, or people who owe billions that are hard to prosecute off the hook.

<comment><USER23> What's wrong with the Danish tax system? Do you have gripes on the technical side, how its hard to use as a consumer or what?

<comment><USER22> I guess it is not easy to say what is wrong with the system as there are many deep rooted cultural issues at play here. What I have seen however is that the danish tax system has fined many well intentioned tax payers, often when the problem was that the SKAT themselves have made a mistake. And then at the same time many people who run businesses are able to avoid tax by negotiating with SKAT. I guess the problem is that instead of being run as a public service which is funded by the public, it seems to be run like a business now, trying to get income any way it can. This is partly caused by the compartmentalised departments in Skat and internal prosecution targets

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Irish media spinning this as a win for the irish people, while there are ongoing talks of increasing income tax on normal people to help cover the cost of this pandemic. Disgraceful.

<comment><USER25> Apple is ultimately normal people as well, either buying from them or working for them.

<comment><USER19> Really? Can I write off depreciation of my assets (car, house etc) against tax?

<comment><USER26> Sure! You just need to form a company, then declare your assets as belonging to your company, and not yours.

<comment><USER19> Pretty sure the tax man will call that "benefit in kind"

<comment><USER26> LOL I am sure you are right, I was joking of course :-)

<comment><USER19> Wasn't funny

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The ruling is here:

[http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=228621&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=9563817)

</comment><comment><USER28> It doesn't seem to be an Irish tax bill, it's a EU tax bill which Ireland opposes.

 _One rather curious feature of this case is that if the ruling had gone the other way, and Ireland had been on the losing side, its "punishment" for breaching EU law would have been to receive a large amount of money: taxes the Commission said were owed by Apple._

</comment><comment><USER29> For Every tax haven and tax cut there is a school not being built, a hospital not created. Nor does zero taxes pay teachers and nurses nor roads.

<comment><USER30> Yes, taxes should be 100%, for the nurses!

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people."

Economists universally agree both personal and corporate income taxes should be abolished and replaced with taxes on carbon, wealth etc.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six- policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate)

</comment><comment><USER32> Is there any concensus at all on how global corporations _should_ pay tax? These sort of cases illustrate how institutions think they _shouldn't_ handle tax, but it's not clear to me how we apply tax to a globalised economy? It's seems to be a hugely complex issue with many different stakeholders. Where is the nuanced discussion about these issues that falls somewhere between "Corps are evil" and "innovation is vital"?

<comment><USER33> Why should corporations pay even more tax? They're paying salaries, which are subject to income tax, and stock gains are also taxed when sold. Also, any sales they generate are subject to VAT/sales tax. Not to mention property taxes for their offices, etc.

<comment><USER34> How do corporate boots taste there, bud?

<comment><USER35> We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop.

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

<comment><USER34> lmao

all 0 requests to stop, just constant downvotes for telling people, rightfully, how much boot they're guzzling

<comment><USER35> 5 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786339)

3 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22939116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22939116)

9 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21198326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21198326)

Also, your account's posting history is egregious: [https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=mdszy](https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=mdszy). This is not a borderline call. Accounts that post like that get banned here, regardless of what they're espousing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > "This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to > pay it," Apple said in a statement. "We're proud to be the largest taxpayer > in the world as we know the important role tax payments play in society."

That's a really beautiful example of spinning the story of what's going on.

<comment><USER37> Apple pays an effective rate of 21% on foreign earnings, 35% on income earned from cash invested outside the US and over $10bn in corporate taxes overall. That doesn't include property taxes, payroll taxes, VAT, etc, etc. They are the biggest tax payer in the world.

The conventional view is that Apple pays no tax, Ive seen that asserted on HN many times, but it's just flat out not true. If you wan to say the above isn't enough, sure, fine that's an opinion you're entitled to hold. I don't even necessarily disagree, I think there's a reasonable case to be made that we are excessively incentivising the concentration of capital but that's a question for voters and politicians not individual companies.

<comment><USER38> companies don't pay VAT because they claim it back on everything they buy

they do however collect it

<comment><USER39> They pay VAT on the value they add between what they buy and what they sell. Hence, Value-Added Tax.

<comment><USER38> no they don't, they collect it, but the consumer pays it

this is the entire principle behind VAT

<comment><USER40> You're actually both right.

A company collects VAT from customers when they purchase. But it also buys from suppliers at a lower value. It pays the difference in the two VAT numbers (from customer-to supplier) to the VAT authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This isn't over, they'll go to the European Court of Justice for sure.

<comment><USER42> They'll appeal most likely but their chances of success look slim.

<comment><USER41> It could be. But they're only going to piss off the EU even more with these moves.

Right now Apple is probably winning a battle but might be losing the war. The next big EU mandate, besides tackling climate change, will probably be clamping down on tax shenanigans.

Next time they won't even be able to win anything as the law will be explicitly against such corporate maneuvers.

<comment><USER43> Are you sure? I think that countries that benefit from such schemes (e.g. Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg) can veto, sink such proposals before they land, or simply partially comply.

For instance, the Netherlands announced a withholding tax on royalties for 2021 "for cases where abuse is involved" [1] after international pressure. The way I read this is that they are building a facade where it looks they are complying with other EU regulations, but in reality it's business as usual. This way other EU countries have no appeal to these schemes as the Netherlands can say "we looked into these allegations, but no abuse there" and do nothing.

[1] [https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Docume...](https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Tax/dttl- tax-netherlandshighlights-2019.pdf)

<comment><USER41> There are countries that benefit from it, and they can veto.

However, the reality is... realpolitik still exists. If Germany and France decide things should really change, what negotiating power do you think the Netherlands or Luxembourg or Ireland really have?

For example the Dutch economy is basically hitched to the German one, Germany can find a lot of creative ways to inflict a lot of pain on the Netherlands if it really wants to ;-)

<comment><USER26> Let me introduce you to the New Hanseatic League, you will be surprised what an aligned group of small countries within the EU can achieve: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hanseatic_League](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hanseatic_League)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > _Dutch MEP Paul Tang called the ruling "deeply unfair".

"I suspect that many people in Ireland think... 'Why is there a company that pays 0.05% in taxes?' I pay more taxes than Apple, for that matter. Many people pay more taxes."_

Does this guy pay nonzero tax _in Ireland_ at all?

Would he pay more tax than Apple if he resided in Ireland?

Or is he just saying that he pays more personal tax than Apple _somewhere_ on the planet (such as, oh, in the Netherlands) and therefore Apple should pay at least that much in Ireland?

</comment><comment><USER45> Also Ireland is off the hook, if you remember they also disagreed with the original ruling and maintained that they were not offering special deals to various companies like Apple. Instead they benefited from the massive influx of liquidity in their banking system, and all that implies on their domestic economy.

They have since reportedly closed down this option in their tax code because of optics, and they probably don't need it so much anymore.

<comment><USER26> Are you sure we benefited from that "massive influx of liquidity in their banking system"? That was loans not gifts, my income tax as an Irish person has never been so high, as we will be repaying that "massive influx" for a generation, the burden we must bare to stop that bank system failure from spreading through the eurozone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> What could possibly be the motivation to say no to 13bn EUR in tax revenue just to suck up to big corporations like Apple?

To me it stinks of private deals made behind closed doors.

Why else would politicians not give a damn about their own country. As long as their ass is dry.

I just hope the EU don't give up. I actually see hope when the EU is made up of people from all sorts of countries, that even a Danish woman can go up against this corruption. DO NOT GIVE UP.

<comment><USER47> > What could possibly be the motivation to say no to 13bn EUR in tax revenue > just to suck up to big corporations like Apple?

Because if you do that they'll keep their offices open there, which employ a lot of Irish people, as well as bring in a lot of business travelers (current situation not withstanding). Keeping employment up, especially good tech employment, and the PR that goes with it, is probably worth a lot more than 13B.

<comment><USER48> What good PR is there in being know as scraping other EU countries of it's tax dollars? Ireland would still had good tech employment as the only sizable English speaking country left in the EU.

<comment><USER30> Ireland has a low tax rate, other countries are free to lower theirs. This is not a 'race to the bottom' for the simple reason that people will vote out a government that gives too much to multinationals at the expense of the people. Low corporate taxes are _extremely_ popular in Ireland, so it's obviously working there.

On the other hand, if you're referring to where taxation occurs, then other countries are free to change their rules to make sure taxation occurs where they want it.

Simply put, Ireland is successfully out-competing high tax, high waste countries (like most of the rest of the EU), and they are sore losers about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Honestly, if we really wanted to do something against mega-corps, we wouldn't:

1\. Use their products

2\. Vote for people that support them

3\. Just complain and take no action

Since we don't do any of the above, can't be surprised at the outcome. We are all to blame.

<comment><USER50> It is not easy to avoid these mega-corps though, they make it very hard. If you go to the supermarket, how do you know any product that you pick is not coming from a shitty mega-corp? How much time an average person is willing (or able to) spend to check they are not giving their hard earned money to a mega corp? Maybe they will spend a few hours researching when they shop for a high ticket item like a computer, but a chips bag? water bottle? 3$ chocolate?

Then there are monopolies like internet service providers. Even if people want to switch, they can't, in many places.

Unless there is mass awareness, nothing is going to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Some irish background:

About 30% of Irish GDP is "leprechaun economics." Funds that transfer through ireland without touching anything, and "would disappear if you tried to touch it." If you look up financial statistics that rely on gdp (eg oecd stuff), they're nonsensical.

This isn't a normal "bidding for jobs" situation.

We recently had an election that upended political norms. The two major parties (like US republicans and democrats) now have <50% of parliament seats. So they now collaborate, almost like a single party. They even negotiate with third parties (recently the greens) jointly.

What tipped the balance was a "left wing wave." The largest party in this wave is Sinn Fein, a nationalist-republican party. Their campaign focused more on left wing issues than republican ones.

In any case, this whole leprechaun economics thing is rarely mentioned. Ostensibly, the political turn should have turned on leprechaun economics. Almost no one mentioned it though.

The benefit to Ireland isn't clear to me. Apple, Google, etc do have real operations here. They employ people and such. But, it's not clear how these relate to the tax evasion. I have never heard an explicit articulation or quantification of benefits.

Politically, I think people just assume that it's beneficial because it's sneaky. A weird expression in irish chitchat is "say nothin!" It's part of a whole dialect (or kant) of gestures & phrases to communicate collusion. It's a part of irish culture, and it plays here.

The upshot is that no one really understands why we have this system, but no one wants to give up the game by talking about it.

$13bn is a lot of money here, about $3-$4,00 per person. It's shocking how little political debate we have on this... not even from those who want to spend this money.

</comment><comment><USER52> This will hopefully be overturned in the higher court. More importantly, all the Dutch/Irish tax loopholes should be closed.

</comment><comment><USER53> The commission can still appeal the decision.

<comment><USER54> Given this disastrous result for the Commision -- I don't think they will but I'm not sure.

They'll be accused of wasting time and doubling down will further enrage EU citizens unless they can ensure a favourable outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Here's what big tech companies don't pay their fair share of:

* defence

* education

* infrastructure

* health

* etc

But our political systems are so corrupt there's nothing can be done about it because they just line the pockets of the political parties who in turn make sure they never have to pay their fair share.

<comment><USER33> Why are you constraining it to "big tech"? All large companies in all fields want to avoid paying tax as much as possible.

<comment><USER56> In the end, it comes down to the amount of resources and influences different parties have in society.

Corporations have become more powerful than ever thanks to globalization. Globalisation has also reduced individual goverments power over land/resources. (this is why supranational is a thing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Next time EU needs to hire the lawyers that Apple had. Is sad to see corporations milking the planet

</comment><comment><USER58> It's not clear what type of tax are we talking about ? Is it corporate tax on gross income ?

</comment><comment><USER59> Isn't the obvious answer to this an EU wide corporation tax or minimum corporation tax rate?

<comment><USER60> No. Tax is not an EU competency, which is what the whole point of this appeal was from an Irish perspective. Of course it could be made one as part of a treaty, but I don't see that France/Germany's approach to taxation is inherently better than Ireland's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'd rather pay Aple 13bn and have them stop their idiotic business practices.

<comment><USER62> can you give an example of a few of their "idiotic business practices"? They seem to be market-leading in quite a few areas.

<comment><USER61> They are doing lots of stuff that is bad for users and good for apple.[0][1] We could list some and argue but even if you don't agree it is possible for the peoples representatives to negotiate deals. (Or do we need a separate union for this?)

It would be somewhat of a pain in the ass to figure out a legal model that doesn't create unfair advantage/disadvantage but I leave that as an exercise for the law makers.

Users want something like a TB worth of compatible storage on icloud or google drive or $whatEver, for "free" and a pony. Apple can be like, that would be 4 euro and 22 cents per EU citizen, 2.34 billion for compatibility with other hosting providers and no to the pony, we don't do ponies.

[0] - [https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1073)

[1] - [https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1075)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is a disgraceful verdict for the Irish people. We laid ourselves bare as a tax haven for MegaCorps, and now we're not even seeing the benefits.

<comment><USER25> > We laid ourselves bare as a tax haven

This sort of silly emotionalism gets the conversation nowhere. If you can't write good rules to make companies give you money for efforts mostly done in other countries, what do you expect?

<comment><USER64> > If you can't write good rules to make companies give you money for efforts > mostly done in other countries, what do you expect?

You make it sound like writing such rules is easy. I don't know of any countries thst have succeeded in doing so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> how about international agreement that a half of taxes are paid to the buyers residence nation, and half to the sellers' residence nation?

</comment><comment><USER66> Probably a good time to sell AAPL seing that peek

</comment><comment><USER67> EU needs to solve this problem at its roots and put pressure on tax Haven states directly. If that necessitates a reform that gives expanded authority to EU so be it.

<comment><USER68> I'm not confident that the EU will address this situation, much less solve it. The government in Brussels does not want to be known for challenging domestic tax policy that has existed for years, especially in a post-Brexit era. I could be wrong, and maybe the EU will put pressure on small tax havens in order to give reassurance to working class citizens in larger countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am Irish and perfectly fine with this being overturned. Irish capitalists will love it, Irish socialists will hate it, same as the rest of the World it depends on your personal prism. Overall seems the EC claim was weak enough to be overturned by appeal, so clearly not a water-tight case, burden of prove not strong enough:

"The EU's General Court said it had annulled that decision because the Commission had not proved that Apple had broken competition rules."

</comment><comment><USER69> This is major loss for everyone</comment>


The NSA's guide to the internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/may/27/nsas-guide-internet-weirdest-thing-youll-read-toda/ <comment><USER2> Some of the quotations here are actually rather profound observations about the Internet.

> Remember those who use the Internet to do harm, to spread fear, and to carry > out crimes are like the mythical Minotaur who, as well as being the monster > of the Minoan maze, was also it's prisoner.

<comment><USER3> It's more like a profound case of projection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good lord, muckrock makes it sound like a 651-page treatise on Rule 34.

In all seriousness and still on the topic of rules, page 305 is the most useful one I've found so far in my brief skim ([http://i.imgur.com/r9vw4gj.png](http://i.imgur.com/r9vw4gj.png)). I'm still flipping through it, but I might actually give this whole thing a read if only because it feels like I'll learn something new about OSINT.

</comment><comment><USER5> This document proves that the NSA hires not only mathematicians, but also English majors.

<comment><USER6> A not small percentage of mathematicians I've met have been plenty eloquent.

<comment><USER7> Solomon Golomb, who died this month, is an example of a linguist (in the sense of "speaks multiple languages") who also made fundamental contributions to the theory of digital codes and was recognised for this by NSA (mysteriously "for contributions to a program of national significance" which he never heard anything more about). He was a mathematician, while most linguists (however you interpret the term) aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Page 22 mentions browser wars, and recommends setting up both IE and firefox. It mentions 'new' features such as tabbed browsing (IE), non-html parsing (RSS feeds), alongside a slew of security improvements.

It would be interesting to see the 2015 section on this (especially considering the mobile v desktop feature divide).

</comment><comment><USER9> I sometimes wonder if NSA / CIA respond to FOIA requests with documents produced explicitly to answer them. Is there anything that would prevent NSA from giving out a 'fake' document or field guide if the FOIA request was non- specific enough?

<comment><USER10> Reading the document gives me the impression that someone saw the request and went, "Let's have fun with this one, guys."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious why NSA's AppLocker paper has been put behind a DoD membership site when it was previously public. It it part of the same movement that prompted the FBI to remove/hide its public guidelines for using strong encryption?

Ironically, it even gives a certificate error now:

[https://www.iad.gov/iad/library/ia-guidance/tech- briefs/appl...](https://www.iad.gov/iad/library/ia-guidance/tech- briefs/application-whitelisting-using-microsoft-applocker.cfm)

<comment><USER12> You need the DoD Root CA to be trusted for most of these sites to not pop on the alert, and it does not ship with most OSs if any.

<comment><USER13> What could possibly go wrong with installing DOD's Root CA? Uhmmmmmmm

<comment><USER14> Very little, since it's primarily for internal DoD use. It was never meant to be a part of the commercial 'web of trust' nonsense, and exists so that DoD doesn't have to trust idiots like Comodo.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. It's also a logical extension of their COMSEC doctrine which led to things like NSA's EKMS:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OT, but this article consistently crashes my phone's browser before it's done loading. Admittedly, it's an older phone, but to take it out completely is rare... I wonder what the page is doing that it takes exception to?

<comment><USER17> Embedding a 651 page PDF in an iFrame?

<comment><USER16> That'll probably do it...or this unnecessary magnification mouseover thing.

<comment><USER18> That confusing zoom bubble slowed my browsing experience to a crawl, so I didn't get past the first couple of pages. Really annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> speaking of internet memory... in case anyone was confused, this is from 2013 - [https://www.wired.com/2013/05/nsa-manual-on-hacking- internet...](https://www.wired.com/2013/05/nsa-manual-on-hacking-internet/)

</comment><comment><USER20> So the NSA is basically a bunch of scientologists. So I guess Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible is IRL???

</comment><comment><USER21> The NSA will not allow something to be unclassified that is valuable. The purpose of declassifying this document is likely connected to deception.

<comment><USER22> Look at the original publication's header and footer. "Unclassified / For Official Use Only".

It was never classified to begin with.</comment></comment>


New YouTube TOS says that it can terminate anyone "not commercially viable" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/du95s3/ysk_that_youtube_is_updating_their_terms_of/ <comment><USER2> What does "not commercially viable" means? Sounds vague.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not surprised. Screw them.

<comment><USER4> It's sounds more like the clause that a company can terminate a feature that you may be using and making money from if they don't find it financially viable anymore.

It's really a pretty standard clause

<comment><USER5> I hope we can all agree, being a "standard" clause doesn't exlude it from being absolute bullshit.</comment></comment></comment>


Skeuomorphism - <AUTHOR> http://skeu.it/

<comment><USER2> Hey all. I'm the curator (punch me in the feelings for saying that) of Skeu.it.

Thanks for the support!

I'm enjoying the debate here and won't get too much into it. For those arguing what is and isn't skeuomorphism, you're missing the point of the showcase.

Skeu.it, as specified on the masthead, celebrates arbitrary and gratuitous user interface decisions. Specifically, this means the misappropriation of visual artifacts designed for evoking familiarity in both form and function.

So yes, in my joyfully entitled opinion, using a big piece of frosted glass, with paper hanging from a rope, with magic buttons that somehow exist on lined paper, is a foolish design choice. Really, I wouldn't even call it a design choice, I'd say it's more just a collection of photoshop tutorials masquerading as an interface. Unnecessary skeu is the 2012+ version of the House Industries' "Crackhouse" typeface (<http://www.houseind.com/fonts/crackhouse>) appearing on every website and flyer 10 years ago. It's a classic, recognizable typeface...but stare at that for a moment, think back to how it didn't really make sense to announce free puppies or a car wash in deconstructed type, and let the understanding wash over you. Mmm, delicious understanding.

I have no hate towards skeu ("skeuomorphism must die" is silly) at all. In fact, I defend it:

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-of- skeuomorphic...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-of-skeuomorphic- interfaces) (from last year, a bit outdated)

Thanks again, and please send any good candidates my way (@303, @skeuit) for skeu.it!

 _Edit: Proper capitalization, the official end of my majuscular laziness._

<comment><USER3> Agree with your fight, thanks for carving this site about gratuitous user interface decisions, really. However, I am puzzled that you don't apply this to your writing and use proper capitalization.

<comment><USER2> Caught! I've been chastised for this laziness too many times. It ends now. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So skeuomorphism is now anything besides Windows Phone style "pure digital"? Shiny = glass, black texture = leather, blue texture = denim, etc? That's going to be really, really boring.

I don't know why texture is such a bad thing. Of course you can overdo it like anything, but personally I prefer Reeder with a light paper-pulp backing texture instead of a plain light peach background.

For example, what is so bad about this?

<http://skeu.it/image/24908403424>

It almost feels like people are calling it skeuomorphic so that's how they expect the developer to feel about it. I don't think regular people look at these as real world metaphors, expecting them to function as they do in real life. That feels to me like a theoretical user posed by developers that doesn't actually exist.

In reality, people see it for what it is. Design flair. Whether or not it's unnecessary or helps the user with the app is missing the point entirely. Design that's pleasing to the eye shouldn't get in the way and cause problems, but it doesn't have to accelerate your use of the service to be positive overall.

Aero Glass is a great example. It gets mixed opinions, but I think we can all agree that it's far better than Luna and IE actually looks pretty great with it. There is no skeuomorphic benefit to having glass everywhere. It's simply design flair. With that in mind, I still prefer it.

<comment><USER5>
        For example, what is so bad about this?
        http://skeu.it/image/24908403424

Because it reproduces a hypothetical real-world object, that not only doesn't make any sense (what is a sheet of paper hanging from a glass panel anyway?), but doesn't add any meaning to what this interface is supposed to do?

You _can_ use skeumorphism where it makes sense. The problem is that login form has _no_ analog in real-life, so in this one designer just went crazy for the sake of it.

EDIT: Yay, let's downvote.

<comment><USER6> > The problem is that login form has no analog in real-life, so in this one > designer just went crazy for the sake of it.

That is not a problem. A problem is: "it is hard to use", "it uses a lot of bandwidth", "people dislike it in A/B testing and buy less".

<comment><USER7> "it uses a lot of bandwidth" is exactly the problem that skeu-craziness is. Purposeless high-resolution backgrounds and animations waste storage space, bandwidth, cycles, and developer time. Time/money spent adding a fake leather texture is time/money unspent on functional aspects of a product.

<comment><USER8> > Purposeless high-resolution backgrounds

So you're against textures full stop, not just skeumorphism? Because of course high-resolution textures are not necessarily skeumorphic.

> Time/money spent adding a fake leather texture is time/money unspent on > functional aspects of a product.

Using a fake leather texture takes about as long as using some other texture or choosing a solid color or choosing which direction the gradient goes in... You're either spending time on design, or you're not. Even being minimalistic takes time and intention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My designer friend and I are laughing so hard at this that we're crying.

In all seriousness, this is the perfect tool for showing people how skeumorphism can be taken too far. I actually like many of these designs, but the point is that the metaphors don't actually help, and sometimes only add to the confusion. (Denim weather app? Pea coat button loops for on/off switches?)

<comment><USER10> In all fairness, lots of these are just people on Dribbble flexing their photoshop muscles.

The peacoat on off switch wouldn't be great in your app (unless you're selling peacoats or something) but it still looks kinda cool.

<comment><USER11> The peacoat on/off switch is causing a lot of cognitive dissonance in me right now. It's so pointless, but so adorable. I want to make a peacoat-related app just to have an excuse to use it.

<comment><USER11> It turns out that I don't know my garment lingo well enough. That kind of closure on a coat is called a "toggle" so it's a sort of visual pun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The audio plugin example is typical because the vast majority of music production software exhibits a great deal of skeuomorphism. I personally don't like this because it increases the cognitive load in trying to figure out an interface, and I don't feel like it helps make things more intuitive than a non-skeuomorphic interface -- rather the opposite, it becomes more confusing.

This is one of the reasons I like Ableton Live ( <http://www.ableton.com/suite-8> ): it has a simple, consistent user interface elements and the entire user interface happens to be vector based. Not only is it easy to navigate and understand, but the fact that it is vector based allows it to have a resolution-independent interface that can be zoomed in/out. Which addresses another problem with music production software: they tend to use tiny fonts and other UI elements which makes it hard to read when used with a high-PPI monitor and/or when the monitor is far enough away from the user (which seems to often be case in many studio setups). And once you've done a highly graphical skeuomorphic interface that uses lots of bitmaps, scaling doesn't always happen smoothly.

On the other hand, many people like skeuomorphic interfaces when they've had past experience with actual audio hardware. Reason ( <http://www.propellerheads.se/products/reason/> ) is one such example where the interface is so skeuomorphic that is often considered a hardware simulator. People who have past experience with such hardware often love Reason because they are able to draw upon past experience to understand the interface. I suppose in this case, this is a very appropriate use of skeuomorphism.

People like me who don't have experience with such hardware aren't necessarily going to appreciate this, though some people will enjoy it even without past experience with hardware because some people simply enjoy visually appealing graphical interfaces. So it's a tough call which group of people is in the majority and who you want to cater to. Personally I like music/audio software to focus on it's core task of being a music creation tool, and less on being graphically impressive; but that's just me.

<comment><USER13> The other thing to consider is that audio processing is resource intensive. Many times you need to run many things at once and performance suffers.

Guess what else is resource intensive? Graphics. So everytime you have gratuitous graphics (e.g. a guitar plug-in that has one or two controls but goes to ridiculous lengths to reproduce a graphical image of, say, a guitar pedal), it takes away some of your resources.

I think you're right though. The interface is aimed at people who are used to looking at gear. That is the intended audience. They wanted to sell to the same people who were buying physical gear. Unfortunately it alienates anyone who understands how to actually use a computer beyond pointing and clicking or keyboard shortcuts.

I mentioned it in another comment in this thread, but if you want to see how things could be done in a "UNIX way", check out snd from the guys at Stanford CCRMA. It has a long history, longer than Ableton, probably as old as Sound Designer, the precursor to Pro Tools, though I'd have to check the dates. These guys clearly "get it". This is how computers and audio should intersect.

But, functionally, it's not a substitute for MOTU, Ableton or Digidesign, unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> <https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/snd/snd/snd.html>

"Snd is a sound editor modelled loosely after Emacs"

As an Emacs user, I am very much intrigued and will have to try this out. Thanks!

<comment><USER13> I really shouldn't have said "UNIX way". It really is more a "LISP way" I guess. LISP predates UNIX. My point was just that it's an "interface" that's more in line with how computers actually work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand all the hate for skeuomorphism lately. Who cares if the todo app uses a design that makes it feel like a leather bound paper notebook. The point of design is to make something functional and beautiful. As long as it doesn't actively make the functionality worse, and some people like they way it looks, _what is the problem_?

<comment><USER15> I see the current skeuomorphism trend, in a way, as cargo-culting. People saw some questionable, but not entirely dreadful uses of it (basically Apple's effort) and thought, "yeah that looks good! I'm going to give my app an awesome real life texture!"

Take the denim weather app design for example.

To what extent does a denim effect, that one would associate primarily with jeans, have anything to do with the weather? Did the designer think to question that, or was it just a case of mind-bogglingly detailed texture being the in thing?

I mean, if you can't come up with a reason for that particular choice of visual metaphor other than "it looks good", then was it really the right choice?

On a side note, I dislike the usage of this in native app design. You'd get those ridiculous apps in Windows XP with bonkers custom UIs, including Safari and Quicktime, for that matter. Now apps in OSX are skinned in odd ways (in Address Book's case, detrimentally so) and Windows 8 appears to be aiming for a consistent look and feel.

<comment><USER16> A todo app uses a design that makes it feel like a leather bound paper notebook is skeuomorphism. A weather application is with a denim texture is just a weather app with a denim texture. It could just as easily have a squiggly line texture or have a solid purple neon background. It might be ugly and stupid but that doesn't make it skeuomorphism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> See to me, some of these examples aren't skeuomorphic. This for example, I've never seen a leather item in meat-space with aluminum buttons. Or a big platic/glass button.

[http://skeu.it/post/29492973628/in-space-no-one-can-see- you-...](http://skeu.it/post/29492973628/in-space-no-one-can-see-you-skeu)

<comment><USER9> I think that's part of the point here. The visual metaphor of leather doesn't make much sense, and is only there as an ornament because it (apparently) looks attractive. Why include the leather at all, if it's not a helpful metaphor for using the product?

<comment><USER16> Design?

Some of these are actually pretty attractive and don't appear to interfere with the usage of the app. Others aren't so attractive and many more are hard to use.

Why is a texture automatically worse than a solid colored background?

<comment><USER9> I wasn't arguing that texture is worse. When used appropriately, it's generally better than solid colors, both in terms of UX and just visual attractiveness.

But there is a certain category of textures that seem to come up most often on this site. Things like leather, denim, paper that perhaps remind users of rough, tactile, durable materials. These metaphors get a lot of use, especially on iOS, and I find that it's funny to call them out sometimes. Sure, it's attractive, but also perhaps a bit derivative.

<comment><USER3> Anything to back the claim that textures are "generally better" in terms of UX? Studies? Statistics? A/B testing?

<comment><USER9> That was just opinion. Should have made that clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If skeuomorphism didn't have a name, I bet no one would give a shit.

<comment><USER19> Haha, completely true. It also helps that the name is kinda fun. There were a lot of nerds messing around with XMLHttpRequest back in the day, but it got a lot cooler when Adaptive Path christened it "AJAX."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a designer, I couldn't agree more. Skeuomorphism can be great if done right. Nowadays visual designers (who are wannabee UX folks) think any sexy texture (leather patterns) can increase usability of an app. Even startup founders think the same. They don't realize design is not the shiny new coat of paint, design is how it works. In fact if your users think "it works fine", it means you've done great job. Your objective is not to hear "wow it has sexy design".

<comment><USER16> I've been a software developer for many years and sexy design sells. For good or bad, that's the way it is.

<comment><USER20> Somewhat agree. Dropbox didn't sell because it had shiny icons for folders or sexy web interface. It sold because it provided immense value and it just worked. Same can be said about Google, YouTube, Microsoft Word etc. None of them had sexy design to start with but they simply worked and provided great value to end-users.

<comment><USER16> You've picked apps with necessarily minimal interfaces; the only exception being Microsoft Word. Word doesn't need a new UI every other year but it gets one because, without making the UI sexier each year, people don't buy it.

I like this anecdote from Raymond Chen on this subject: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/14125...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/141253.aspx)

<comment><USER21> "You've picked apps with necessarily minimal interfaces;"

 _Necessarily_? Have we really forgotten what search engine UIs looked like before Google came along?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Remember when you were 4 or so? And you had a "busy box"? Just a bunch of levers to move, buttons to push, dials to turn?

A well-done skeuomorphic interface, I submit, can be a busy box for grownups. What's wrong with having a few things in your life that partake of both "toy" and "tool"?

<comment><USER23> Do you have an example in mind?

<comment><USER22> Well, here's a post on the blog under discussion of a brightly-colored UI that definitely has a "busy box" vibe: <http://skeu.it/post/28492549355/crysonic>

(A lot of music software has this ultra-skeumorphic vibe. I guess to appeal to luddite musicians? Or just because it's fun to do. Maybe both.)

A lot of the skins from Audion ( <http://panic.com/audion/index.html> ) had a busy box/toy kind of vibe too, though the animation was pretty limited: <http://panic.com/audion/gallery/previews/panman.jpg> <http://panic.com/audion/gallery/previews/contragrav.jpg> \- the better ones, for me, had this kind of "here's a cool vinyl toy for your desk, except it's virtual, and plays music".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Evidently built by someone with a skeued sense of humor.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think the main point being made is that the design shouldn't be distracting unless that is the point of the design. For login forms to be hanging from keys, and paper to be hanging from bolted glass panels is nonsense, and a distraction. Unfortunately what different people find appealing, others find distracting, but that's what usage metrics and testing are for- to help determine what does and what doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER26> Skeumorphism is including or retaining historical design elements for now non- functional purposes.

The author asserts that Microsoft's Metro design moves away from it, but his screenshot of Metro shows several instances:

\- a paper shopping bag icon \- MSFT stock symbol \- icon of analog alarm clock with bells \- gear icon for control panel \- manilla folder icon for windows explorer

And does anyone else cringe at the HTML slipping through on AT&T?

The simple fact is that building on previous experience is useful. Anachronistic visual remnants of previous technology can lend familiarity to a new interface, reducing learning curve and increasing acceptance (e.g., rivets on denim jeans).

Sometimes designers go even further and purposely introduce even more skeumorphic elements, going for a "retro" feel.

Some people like it, some people don't. It isn't always done well, and it isn't always done badly.

<comment><USER2> If the link went to the Fast Company article, your comment would make much more sense!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm going to go against what seems to be the opinion of lots of designers and bloggers these days and say: I actually like skeuomorphism, if it's well executed.

EDIT: I'm talking about _visuals_ now. How it affects usability is part of "well executed".

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're still complaining about this, I'm here to tell you to move on.

</comment><comment><USER29> Skeu is saccharine, and that's why it sucks. Mouthful of gloss. Yuck.

</comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me of one of the first biggest lessons I've learned about the web - make it better than reality. Sadly, Jakob Nielsen found this out in 1998 [1] and we still can't get past it.

> _It is painful to use the Web, so we need to reward users: give them > something new and better that they didn't get before._

[1] <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980308.html>

</comment><comment><USER31> The anti-skeuomorphism crusade is more distracting than the designs it calls out. If I were a designer and if I had any influence, I'd add some gratuitous skeu-ness to a design just to attempt to calm the skeuphobia sweeping the design world.

</comment><comment><USER32> LOL "COME ON DOWN THE THE SKEU WAREHOUSE! WE'VE GOT LINEN! WE'VE GOT WOOD!" <http://dribbble.com/shots/662571-Mo-Tab-bars?list=following>

</comment><comment> simba-hiiipower best line: _FUCK USABILITY WE HIRED A 3D MODELER AND WE'RE GOING TO GET OUR MONEY'S WORTH!_

<http://skeu.it/post/28492549355/crysonic>

<comment><USER27> That thing is an audio plugin for music production. That sort of UI is what many producers _want_ , because they want it to resemble the actual hardware they had two decades ago. Whether this thing was an actual product or not doesn't make a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if skeuomorphic designs will be looked back at and be viewed like we now view the interfaces from the 90s, with huge amounts of bevel and emboss, shadows and gradients.

<comment><USER2> I believe this will be likely. KPT FTW!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Real quick go at it:

<http://jsbin.com/edoyoc/4/>

</comment><comment><USER35> This is pretty awesome, but I wish they had called "Skeu You" instead.

<comment><USER2> I considered that, but decided the pun was more about my own disappointment than aggression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Kitsch UI 4tw!

</comment><comment><USER37> I personally hate recognizing anything. If you think about it, even distinct text characters one next to each other are a skeumorphism from movable type.

Obviously the only correct interface is a simple vertical list where hovering over invisible areas of the screen reads you out loud an option and then clicks it. Actually why read it out loud at all, a skeumorphism from interacting with a person.

The only correct interface is a blank screen representing state with groups of pixels that turn off and on without any skeumorphism, but simply representing the state the program is in. Like the LED light showing whether your monitor is off or on, but 1280x1024 of them.

anything other than that is just art monkey fluff, designers butting into electronics where they don't belong.

a good rule of thumb is: if you recognize what's going on instead of having to decode it, you are dealing with bullshit overpriced overdesigned fluff.

</comment><comment><USER38> Updated title no longer matches the content of skeu.it, which displays extreme skeu, not just skeu in general or quintessential examples of skeu.

Also, skeu.it is really about textures and fail skeu, not actual skeumorphism, which is about retaining obsolete details from a previous form, not just pleasing textured imagery.</comment>


Concepts Behind Association Rule Mining - <AUTHOR> http://www.techleer.com/articles/238-concepts-behind-association-rule-mining/ <comment><USER2> >To achieve more efficient results we need to reduce the itemset and for this we apply Apriori algorithm whose principle states that if an itemset is infrequent, then all its subsets must also be infrequent.

Sorry, no.</comment>


The Nile Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/damelang/nile <comment><USER2> I've seen it from Alan Kay's talk 'Is it really "Complex"? Or did we just make it "Complicated"?' [0]

Though GH repo is not updated for more than 3 years and maybe it's just my inexperience or I am spoiled, but from lack of proper documentation I have no idea how to setup and use this language? On what platforms does it work?

Also looking in the examples, it looks somewhat APL'ish due to use of special characters. How do I type them (and do it quick) on regular laptop?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link. I had problems understanding what Nile was all about from reading the slides, which provide very little in terms of context and explanations.

Watching that talk and hearing that Nile is a declarative streaming language from the research group where Bret Victor works, I now understand what are the practical applications of such language.

<comment><USER4> Here's a more interesting demo of Gezira: [http://tinlizzie.org/~bert/Gezira.ogv](http://tinlizzie.org/~bert/Gezira.ogv)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering why this was implemented as a language, rather than as a library in, say, Python or Haskell.

Is "streaming" something that is overlooked in conventional programming languages?

<comment><USER6> I think the philosophy behind it is that they (View Point Research Institute) want(ed?) to be able to create lots of domain specific programming languages _easily_. So being able to implement those little languages from scratch and not as part of an existing language was part of the research effort, not just the language itself.

They have created tools like OMeta2 for this purpose, because they think that this way every problem is expressed in the natural language of the problem domain. A huge compiler like GHC with its >= 100.000 lines of code runs also against the goal of creating a system that needs orders of magnitude less code (I think their initial budget was ~10000 lines of code).

<comment><USER3> The Viewpoints Research Institute is going to be the Xerox PARC of our generation.

They're developing this really cool computing model which is user-friendly and extendable, and it just makes sense for removing unnecessary details in programming, allowing you to center on one aspect of the program at a time - reducing complexity in a way that classic text-based languages + IDEs are not able.

It improves the current state of interaction with computers, in the same way that PARC's windowing desktop with direct manipulation improved over the existing form-based applications of the time. I expect the next 30 years of computing tools to be heavily based on that model.

<comment><USER7> You might consider shifting some of your enthusiasm from VPRI to CDG Labs, where a fascinating group has come together around Alan Kay.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-29/sap- looks-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-29/sap-looks-to- xerox-for-r-d-inspiration-builds-idea-lab)

<comment><USER3> Yeah - I'm already following the development of Apparatus, the visually programmable slide editor. I didn't know they were related through Alan Kay, but it doesn't surprise me to learn it. :-)

[1] [https://github.com/cdglabs/apparatus](https://github.com/cdglabs/apparatus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat. The speed-up with respect to cores is particularly impressive (though it would be interesting to know the exact conditions. Or is just some type of average-case?)

</comment><comment><USER9> A very well designed DSL. And I did not know about Maru before, it's quite impressive.</comment>


Quickly counting lots of stuff in little RAM: CountMinSketch in Python - <AUTHOR> https://rare-technologies.com/counting-efficiently-with-bounter-pt-2-countminsketch/ <comment><USER2> Yahoo has a full library of production Sketches; that is, fast approximate algorithms for computing stats on large datasets.

[https://datasketches.github.io/](https://datasketches.github.io/)

Hyperloglog for fast COUNT DISTINCTs is included in this library, as well as quantile sketches, reservoir sampling sketches, theta sketches, etc.

[https://datasketches.github.io/docs/TheChallenge.html](https://datasketches.github.io/docs/TheChallenge.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there any benchmarks for this Yahoo lib? To trade performance/accuracy numbers, rather than impressions.

There's no shortage of various streamed counting implementations; the sweet spot of Bounter [0], the Python lib from the original blog post, is its super simple use (drop-in replacement for Python's built-in Counter), small memory footprint & high performance (optimized C underneath).

[0] [https://github.com/RaRe-Technologies/bounter](https://github.com/RaRe- Technologies/bounter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Eric Zhu has a Python library called datasketch also. The docs are good and I found the code a great help in understanding implementation details of some methods. I am not using his code in production but it was a great outline for how to implement certain techniques I wanted to use in a Scala project.

[https://ekzhu.github.io/datasketch/index.html](https://ekzhu.github.io/datasketch/index.html)

[https://github.com/ekzhu/datasketch](https://github.com/ekzhu/datasketch)

I don't know how how CountMinSketch compares with Zhu's HyperLogLog and HyperLogLog++ for cardinality counting, in terms of speed/memory/accuracy. But if you're interested in Bounter you may well be interested in Zhu's code too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting link, thanks. HyperLogLog is a simpler algo in a way, as it only estimates the _set cardinality_ ("count distinct"), as opposed to _frequencies of individual items_.

Bounter includes HyperLogLog as well (mentioned in the blog post); it comes for free with its optimized CountMinSketch.

<comment><USER3> Good point. I mention it because Zhu's code, the Yahoo datasketch code (mentioned in another comment), and Bounter all seem like they may be of interest if you are trying to solve certain classes of problems or just like probabilistic algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That header that comes up every time one scrolls up is an absolute impediment to reading this.

<comment><USER5> Right-click, Inspect, go up a few levels, Delete element

<comment><USER4> Wow.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Digg 4.0 might make me a Digger again - <AUTHOR> http://innovationhype.com/blog/why-digg-4-0-might-make-me-a-digger-again/ <comment><USER2> I think the main problem with Digg _is_ the community. There's too much focus on the people and not enough on the content. This creates a sort of "timeocratic" social platform where the people that can spend the most time on the site control the site. On hacker news and reddit, submissions can rise to the front page solely based on content rather than social position. This allows new users to submit content, creating a more diverse upcoming feed, and more interesting content in the long run.

Adding more social-oriented features will simply amplify the submission problem for new users.

<comment><USER3> I dunno, being able to pick who's diggs/submissions you follow in a personal stream seems really damned useful to me. That way people I know create great content I can follow their digg stream to see what they're doing without necessarily needing to follow their twitter or the like. If people use it the way it seems meant to be used could be awesome.

<comment><USER4> Not sure if you knew this or not, but reddit has had this functionality for ages. Add people to your friends list, and go to /r/friends. Alternately, you can pick up someone's submissions rss feed, and I believe even their likes and dislikes if they opt in to make them public.

<comment><USER3> But does reddit let you claim RSS feeds and auto post them as submissions? Supposedly Digg 4 does this.

<comment><USER4> No, it doesn't. It's come up in /r/ideasfortheadmins before, but I don't recall hearing any official word from the admins on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been working on a site for the better part of the past year that I made to try to address a lot of the issues that caused me to leave Digg and to a lesser extent Reddit called <http://chirplinks.com> and Digg 4.0 is getting dangerously close to some of the ideas I had when I first started building it.

As the OP mentions, as the Digg community grew larger the frontpage stories became less and less relevant to me and frankly, pretty crappy, and I found myself pining for the days of old when Digg was largely a tech-geek community. The big reason I spend most of my time on HN is because the demographic is a lot more focused.

The light bulb moment for me came from my time playing with the Twitter API and getting more into Twitter in general. I had spent all this time cultivating my friends list on Twitter and I was getting a lot of great links from them, but not enough to where it would replace a good bookmarking site like HN or Reddit. It then occurred to me if there was a system that would intelligently start adding my friend's most trusted friends to my social graph based on the links I click on, save, hide, dislike, etc. I could build out my own social bookmarking community that was highly focused in on the things I am personally interested in.

So a friend of mine and I built it and actually just recently (quietly) took it out of closed beta to get some feedback. If anybody is interested in trying it out, feel free, although to get the full effect you need a Twitter account with a decent amount of friends. We plan on removing this restriction though so that anybody can jump in, pick a few topics of interest, and start growing their mini-Digg so to speak.

The problem I see with Digg is that they're trying to become yet another social network (YASN as I call it). I honestly can't see myself going through the process of finding friends all over again - I barely put in the effort to manage Twitter and Facebook. We built Chirplinks to work perfectly well without a full network effect. We figure why force users to build another circle of friends when they've already done that on other sites.

Anyways, I'd love to hear some fellow HNer's opinions on it, even if you don't want to try it out just feedback on the general concept would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> From the video, it looks like their target audience would be excited by a tagline reading:

 _Digg v4: now with more Facebook!_

The styling, the focus of the UI, _wow_. I mean, sure, it'll probably work, but yikes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a google reader on steroids. I'd use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is certainly my hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think I'm going back to slashdot instead :)</comment>


Crown Flash, rare weather phenomenon of aurora-like streamers emanating a cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPk0mKVnnCs <comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_flash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_flash)

In a thundercloud change of its electro-magnetic field causes ice crystals to change refraction of sunlight. But it looks like something that seems unlike a natural phenomenon.</comment>


Nobody sure what new start-up actually does - <AUTHOR> http://undergroundmgzn.com/2013/10/04/nobody-sure-new-start-up-actually/

<comment><AUTHOR> "BumbleFizz's website features a description of the company as "a hyperlocal disruptive transmedia social network integrating across the crowdsourcing and B2B verticals" alongside a stock photograph of a man in a suit eating a apple."</comment>


The Cost and Complexity of Cgo - <AUTHOR> http://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/the-cost-and-complexity-of-cgo/ <comment><USER2> Interesting! I wonder if someone can help me with a problem I'm facing with cgo. I'm trying to include go runtime as apython module (.so) and the code appears to work fine as a standalone program. But when I try to run it from a pre-forked process manager (say Celery for python) the code gets stuck at runtime.futex (from strace). I guess some interplay of python and go runtime w.r.t goroutines. I feel Go is not meant to be embedded in Python runtime.

Code here: [https://github.com/lazyfunctor/pymosaic](https://github.com/lazyfunctor/pymosaic)

Edit: Added last line

<comment><USER3> "I feel Go is not meant to be embedded in Python runtime."

I suspect that it is going to ultimately be your core problem. Even if you make it work with specific versions or specific modules, it'll always be fragile.

Like many modern languages that embed an event loop into themselves one way or another, the Go runtime expects to fully own the target process. It makes it difficult to play well with others, because the "default" C-based runtime provides so few guarantees that it's difficult for two otherwise C-compatible runtimes to "play nice" with each other. It's part of why the JVM and .Net are so interesting for cross-language development; the VM provides a richer, better-specified "base layer" that multiple languages can use, enabling much easier interop.

It's a death-by-a-thousand-cuts sort of thing; hypothetically nothing really _prevents_ this, but in reality you're probably not going to want to take the time to make it work which may very well involve custom modifications of either runtime, when you should probably just go ahead and set up some RPC connections. (JSON's a nice default to prototype quickly, but depending on your needs you may want something like protocol buffers or the half-a-dozen competing libraries.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "C managed memory" problem is definitely ugly. Some libraries and APIs allow you to protect yourself from this by giving you the option to supply the memory yourself, instead.

If your library can be used completely with you managing the memory, you can use Go's allocator. E.g. libopus:

        size := C.opus_encoder_get_size(C.int(channels))
        mem := make([]byte, size)
        p := (*C.OpusEncoder)(unsafe.Pointer(&enc.mem[0]))

This way, all memory is on the Go heap.

Not every C library will support this, but those who do make CGo a lot more bearable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing. I think you mean 1000 not 100 "100 goroutines come pretty much for free in Go;"

<comment><AUTHOR> [cockroach labs employee here] Post corrected. Good catch. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for the pointers, cockroachlabs. Your posts really help developers building real applications on Golang.</comment>


Ancient public library discovered in Germany - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/31/spectacular-ancient-public-library-discovered-in-germany <comment><USER2> What the article doesn't really clarify: Cologne was a Roman _colony_. The full name was Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. "Colonia" means "colony" but it's also the highest tier of recognition Roman cities could have. Cologne was the Eastern-most Roman city of its kind in "Germania".

A side-effect of all of this is that you can't really dig anywhere in Cologne without encountering some Roman artifact or ruins (unless they have already been recovered/destroyed previously).

<comment><USER3> Since "colonia" originally denoted _any Roman outpost_ established in conquered territory, you can't invoke the word as a singularly significant element of the city name.

Mainz was also part of Germania and is much further East.

The current extent of modern Köln is much wider than that of the Roman city of 20,000 people, so you'd have to dig in very specific places to find Roman artifacts.

<comment><USER4> The colonia status survives in the name, that's indeed the main significance. There were of course hundreds of coloniae. Some similar, in that the status also gave the town its name today. E.g. Lincoln, England from "Lindum Colonia". Not every outpost in conquered territory was a colonia though. Some were oppida, while others were military outposts

In contrast to CCAA and Augusta Treverorum, Mogontiacum (Mainz) was not a colonia. It was primarily a military post. The main difference is that citizens of a colonia were in fact fully Roman with all the rights and duties. It was also part of a different province - Germania Superior, whereas CCAA was the centre of Germania Inferior.

Mogontiacum (Mainz) is further east than CCAA. One of it's purposes was to secure the Limes, but there was a comfortable buffer between the Limes and the town itself. Further north, the wilderness basically began when you crossed the Rhine at Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten) or in fact CCAA...

You'll find the majority of Roman artifacts in an area roughly a third of the size of medieval Cologne, which itself is basically just the very city centre of Cologne today. However, a lot of digs were made along the roads leading out of Cologne since these were prominent burial sites for rich Romans. These roads follow the old layout until today...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They didn't mention it, but I'm assuming that no scrolls or actual library knowledge is recoverable from the site?

Whenever I listen to history people talk about all the sources that have been lost, I dream that someday someone will uncover an ancient time capsule under their house and find a pristine collection of lost works that some wise person squirreled away for future generations.

<comment> dan-robertson If a truly large archive were found then who's to say that it could survive long enough to be properly studied? There are multiple sources of untouched ancient texts today which aren't much studied. Off the top of my head, I've heard there are chests full of (roughly 1000-year-old) Arabic manuscripts littering the Archbishop's palace in Toledo, largely untouched due to a lack of interest/number of scholars (and perhaps it is hard to get access). There are also many manuscripts spread out across private basements in Timbuktu, those have survived several threats but who's to say they will survive more? On the other hand we have hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, most of which are unread (they had the advantage that when a library burns down the tablets are often fired instead of destroyed). It is hard to decide what is worth prioritising before it has been read.

The one solace we can take is that modern techniques may let us read manuscripts after they have been largely destroyed.

<comment><USER6> At least for cuneiform tablets, somewhere I read most of them are utterly boring, mostly inventory and transactions. Maybe you could pass years sifting through it to finally find something valuable.

<comment><USER7> Here's the cuneiform scans if you're interested:

[https://cdli.ucla.edu/?q=news/machine-assisted- translation-c...](https://cdli.ucla.edu/?q=news/machine-assisted-translation- cuneiform-texts)

<comment><USER8> That's only the announcement that they will be scanned?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the whole "public" library theory is a bit off. Just because it was a public building does not mean it was anything resembling what we would call a public library. More likely, it was a government library, like a registrar, or for tax documents, census data, or something similar.

<comment><USER10> That depends on perspective. Certainly any building that banned women would not sound very "public" today, but within the ancient context would fit the model. It may have been open to citizens, men, non-slaves, who could read. That would have been a very small group. Setting aside our modern notions of equality, that sounds like a public library to me.

<comment><USER9> Except all we know is that:

1) It was in a market area.

2) It was well built.

3) It had cubby holes that probably held scrolls.

That's all. The rest is speculation.

<comment><USER10> That's all we have from digging up most historical buildings. People build careers on determining a building's use based on things like door width and wall thickness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly, I just visited what I believe is generally regarded to be the first community-owned public library in the world: the Biblioteca Maletestiana in Cesena, Italy, established 1447. It had books in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, all chained to their desks so that patrons couldn't walk off with them. And the chains worked: the books are still there.

</comment><comment><USER12> ... how sure can they be it's not the town archive they lost to metro construction work a couple years ago?

</comment><comment><USER13> Just the walls of the library, not the library itself, the papyri.

</comment><comment><USER14> Alas, no scrolls found.</comment>


Blockchain nerds – Thoughts on applying token features to web/mobile apps? - <AUTHOR> As a developer working in the crypto space, I've always thought that applying blockchain features (scarcity / authenticity / traceability / security)  to my own applications could be very impactful. If my app was wrapped in a blockchain protocol, I suddenly would have access to noteworthy capabilities. I could control the supply of the app's distribution, which would imply to the consumers of the app that it is now a scarce resource. This would subsequently add value to whomever owns an instance of it.
To help visualize this, imagine a digital concert ticket with blockchain token characteristics. At a basic level, it is now authentic, traceable, and secure. It is on chain. What if you could add app-like features to it, make it do things when someone redeems it at an event? Some tickets could transform into backstage passes with exclusive content and could be considered a collectible. These collectibles are rarer than the tickets themselves and can be sold on an exchange to a "superfan." You start to see that layering an ordinary ticket with blockchain characteristics greatly enhances its potential.
I would love to open up a discussion to see if anyone had thoughts/ideas on the matter, whether or not they think standard apps could benefit from blockchain?
Full disclosure: I currently work for a company called vAtomic and we have been working with BlockV and their "Virtual Goods" protocol like the one I just described for a few months now.
Take a look at their github if you're interested: https://github.com/BLOCKvIO/documentation <comment><USER2> That is extremely cool! Lots of potential there...</comment>


Facebook bug disables accounts - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/16/technology/facebook_bug/index.htm

<comment><USER2> My personal theory about that bug is that it was intended to prevent spammers, which would've been a good thing.

I think the goal was to prevent those fake messages from women asking me to click and visit their website.</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for teaching 11yr old to code? - <AUTHOR> A friend reached out to me recently asking where I would suggest he go to help teach his 11 yr old daughter who wants to learn to code (He is a lawyer, so not going to be super helpful until she has to negotiate the mediocrity of corporate compliance and license requirements).
Frankly, i'm surprised how hard I'm finding this question to answer. I think part of if it is that I don't want to get it wrong, and the other half is that I love that we're talking about a young woman who wants to get into this field, so i double want to get it right!
So my ask, what would you suggest? People with first hand experience with kids here I'd love to hear from you! <comment><USER2> Question is open for 5 hours and nobody commented yet.

This question comes up regularly. There's been a couple of threads with dozens of links and advice in the past. Even ages as young as 4 year olds. Search for 'ask hn teach child' [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20hn%20teach%20child](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20hn%20teach%20child) Similarly for the words son, daughter, niece.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll give that a try!</comment></comment>


A reading comprehension test (re: http://News.YCombinator.com/item?id=2670876) - <AUTHOR> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3213

<comment><AUTHOR> The WSJ interview of David McCullough got a fair number of comments here recently (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2670876>), and the interview prominently mentions the claim that "Just 2% of [US high-school seniors] understand the significance of Brown v. Board of Education."

This Language Log article dissects that claim.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your favorite open source project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Postgres. Mature, continuously improved and growing product from a friendly and professional world wide community. [https://www.postgresql.org](https://www.postgresql.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> first that came to mind: [https://github.com/drone](https://github.com/drone)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't fully understand what this is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OpenBSD</comment>


Facebook Timeline Cover Template - <AUTHOR> http://xhatch.com/2011/09/pimp-my-profile-facebook-cover-template/

<comment><USER2> Waiting for no one, relative to none Answering to not a thing, except the rising sun</comment>


Form Constants of Optical Mineralogy - <AUTHOR> http://www.dataisnature.com/?p=2199 <comment><USER2> Of all of the surprises I had as a geology undergrad, I would rank the beauty and information content of looking at thin sections of rock under cross- polarized light in the top five or so. Really, really spectacular, especially mafic igneous rocks (those with high Mg, Fe +/\- Ca such as basalts and gabbros), metamorphic rocks, and even limestones. The range and vibrancy of the interference colors is breathtaking, and seeing things like halos of radiation damage around zircons (high U and Th content) was a bit shocking.

I'd like to recommend folks to take a look if they get a chance, but really, I have no idea when anyone would get that chance. Petrographic microscopes are expensive and I don't think universities would be that cool with hordes of outsiders oohing and aahhing in the labs. Did anyone get to do this in high school?

<comment><USER3> Not in high school, but my father was a geologist, so I did see some of this.</comment></comment>


Hacked for Android – The first mobile coding game - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackedapp.com/?beta=true

<comment><USER2> I don't want to be that guuy, however it is really irritating to both ask the e-mail address and ask to join the Google+ group to get a client side game (besides uploading challenges), I just lost my whole interest in this.

<comment><USER3> This is unfortunately how the Google Play beta channel works... Maybe we should switch to production.

<comment><USER4> I love the game, but IMO there are a couple of major bugs to fix before releasing it : -It often crashes when you switch to another app, then return to it. -For some reason, the app does not have any sound anymore, after a couple of levels. -Some time after resuming, the level changes randomly.

Again, I love this game (and you talk about it at droidcon was pretty interesting) but there are a couple of issues to fix.</comment></comment></comment>


Graal Tutorial at CGO 2015 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af9T9kFk1lM&feature=youtu.be

<comment><AUTHOR> To give this the context that the moderators removed when they changed the title, Graal is a new dynamic compiler (JIT compiler) for the JVM from Oracle Labs. It's used, in amongst other projects, as the compiler that backs the high performance implementation of Ruby and C extensions, JRuby+Truffle.

[http://www.chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/](http://www.chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/)

<comment><USER2> I just want to say you are one of those rockstar programmers right now. I was talking today with a co-worker about JRuby and your research, and even he was impressed.

I am just starting to get back into programming, and because I need credit coursework I have to start off with Java this time. 1yr to 6m ago, I was dreading that prospect. But your work, other JVM languages like Clojure, and the undefeatable power of JVM web stacks on things like Tech Empower benchmarks make the uphill battle to understand Java so long, but seem so much more fruitful than when I would look at Java prior before I read so much cool Java research and practice on HN, Reddit, and elsewhere in that time.

So thanks for your work. I one day hope to understand at least 1% of Java internals and understand your Graal and Truffle work.

I will check in next decade when I am ready. :-)</comment></comment>


Nuclear war survival skills (1987 Edition) - <AUTHOR> http://www.oism.org/nwss/

<comment><USER2> This book is filled with expedient nuclear war survival technology and techniques, developed at Oak Ridge and all tested for real (e.g. the instructions for shelters were handed to a semi-random family who'd then try to follow them, with the researchers video taping the whole thing, using this sort of process to iterate the instructions and designs). Some of the stuff has been tested in simulated nuclear blasts, others in suitable radiation fields, and the shelters are simple X feet of dirt provides a Y protection factor.

These are _expedient_ , for people who have ~ 24-48 hours of warning before the heavy fallout hits (although there are also blast shelter designs, but it's best to get far enough away that that's not likely an issue).

There's also a lot of good advice that's useful for other types of emergencies, like where you might have to survive on mostly wheat for some period of time (how to prepare it, how to sprout it to get the vitamins you need, etc.) As Bruce Clayton said in his own survival book (which advised getting this one first), if you're prepared to survive a nuclear war you're pretty much prepared for any lessor threat.

 _Highly_ recommended.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the overview. This is one of the things I love most about HN. Sometimes I see something that seems interesting linked, I click and see it's very long and I'm not sure I should read it. Then I go check the comments and there's usually a comment like this one that helps me decide if I should or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Might not be worth reading the whole thing, but the first couple of chapters are interesting enough.

I've never been sure why so many people make fun of the old "Duck and Cover" campaign. Sure, it won't help those within the immediate vicinity of the bomb much, but there's a certain donut-shaped area where you're a hell of a lot better off ducking and covering than not ducking and covering.

<comment><USER4> Well I know that the thing that I'm making fun of is 40 years of schoolkids, including myself...IN AUSTRALIA, no less...reminded frequently in school to live in fear from terror falling from the skies of bullshit enemies designed exclusively for their ability to provide 50+ percent of our tax dollars to the military complex.

That's quite a funny joke if you think about it.

<comment><USER5> It's easy to trivialise things after the fact, but it is not irrational to fear nuclear war or authoritarian states.

Australians are taxed far too much, but have never been taxed at 50% in a time far I know of. Perhaps during wartime.

What do you mean when you say 'designed exclusively'. Surely not that nationalist authoritarian states with nuclear weapons and decades of stand-off are the result of an Australian government conspiracy to give night terrors to children?

<comment><AUTHOR> "provide 50+ percent of our tax dollars to the military complex."

I think he meant that a lot of his tax dollars went to the military (or maybe he was talking about Americans?), not that he was taxes at a rate of 50%.

<comment><USER3> The top Australian tax rate is near-as-dammit to 50% (47% last I checked, plus 1.5% "because we can" levy). I think the great-grandparent was implying that 50% of his taxes went to the military though, which is completely false; it's closer to eight percent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I want to give credit where credit is due; I found this manual because it was linked on Michael Anissimov's blog:

[http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2010/04/dispe...](http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2010/04/dispelling- stupid-myths-about-nuclear-war/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's a link to a pdf and another pdf guide from FEMA since you probably won't have reliable internet access in a nuclear attack.

[http://www.nukepills.com/docs/nuclear_war_survival_skills.pd...](http://www.nukepills.com/docs/nuclear_war_survival_skills.pdf)

<http://www.nukepills.com/docs/FEMA_Nuclear_War_Survival.pdf>

<comment><USER2> Be very careful with anything that was written by bureaucrats inside the Beltway instead of the results of the research at Oak Ridge (this book). Much of what came from there will get you killed, as detailed in NWSS, e.g. through inadequate ventilation resulting in too great a heat buildup.

But your general point is well taken; get hardcopy today, and it's a very good idea to get the official NWSS book since the scaling from a copier or electronic printer will throw off the calibration of the Kerney Fallout Meter (a electroscope radiation meter that you make out of aluminum foil (for the electroscope leaves) and a can (plus desiccant and a few other odds and ends)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not exactly something I was expecting to find any humor in - but have a look at "Night scene in a trench shelter without light."

<comment><USER8> This in chapter 11.</comment></comment>


How to delight users? - <AUTHOR> http://kintya.com/2013/05/04/subtlety-delights-users/

<comment><AUTHOR> What enterprise apps are delightful?</comment>