Heroku and AWS users... You don't have a business. - <AUTHOR>

In fact, Heroku and AWS have a boatload of micro-businesses, one of which you run.
If you're serious about your business, you'll host your own servers at a colo (TWO colos if you're really serious) on different network segments/providers, and use Heroku/AWS as a scaling mechanism and NOT a primary computing platform.
They don't care if you lose customers, as long as you don't cancel YOUR account.  They'll get more new customers tomorrow due to the bad press, simply because those customers were out of the loop and just now heard about Heroku or AWS and it looks cool when they get there.
Running your own servers is the responsible thing to do if you want to OWN your business and not just look cool by using the latest brand named cloud service thrown around by everyone.
No, Heroku/AWS zealots will not agree with me, but they've never run their own data center. They have no experience.
Get real people. The cloud is just a REALLY expensive way to sell shared servers.
Why do I say this?
I run my own servers on 3 dedicated 1gbps connections, and while you pay $0.12/GB on AWS/Heroku (actually, Heroku costs more, but they bury it in their worker pricing so it looks free), I pay $0.01 per GB. That's right, 1 cent per GB.
While an 8-core machine costs me $0.42/hour all tolled (machine, power, space), you pay almost $0.66/hour on EC2 with no SLA, meaning you're not ALWAYS getting the same machine specs every minute of every hour. You're getting a MAXIMUM commitment of resources, not a MINIMUM commitment.
Yes, I own my own machines. No, they ARE NOT expensive if you know how to buy them.
Heroku has been down 3+ hours this time, and last year had a 70+ hour outage. On my own servers, I haven't had 3 TOTAL hours of downtime in 5 years.
If you want help with server deployment strategy, contact me directly. <comment><USER2> >> They don't care if you lose customers, as long as you don't cancel YOUR account.

Untrue (though I suppose it's possible they don't give a flying fuck, and you can ignore the rest of this post), their success is based on the success of their client(s). The same is applicable to all sorts of vendors providing services. It is in their best interest that every one of their clients is successful, in the same way it is of interest to your datacenter facilities that you continue to grow.

>> They'll get more new customers tomorrow due to the bad press, simply because those customers were out of the loop and just now heard about Heroku or AWS and it looks cool when they get there.

Certainly valid, and that is one of the benefits of having many clients vs. a few "big" clients. That doesn't reflect bad on heroku, aws, etc: it's just the nature of the industry they're in. The same applies to your datacenter renting out 1Us at a time instead of whole racks.

re: more clientele tomorrow -- plausible, possible, sure! The same applies to datacenter facilities that go offline.

>> Running your own servers is the responsible thing to do if you want to OWN your business and not just look cool by using the latest brand named cloud service thrown around by everyone.

There are benefits and drawbacks to {running,renting,owning} your own hardware in the same way there are drawbacks to using "cloud" providers (IaaS/PaaS). Let's not ignore those.

What is applicable to both scenarios however: build redundancy into whatever is important to you. Something, somewhere will fail & you'll be brought offline otherwise.

>> No, Heroku/AWS zealots will not agree with me, but they've never run their own data center. They have no experience.

I'm not a heroku / aws zealot, I run a competing hosting provider and I think they have their place in the market -- otherwise they wouldn't exist.

>> Get real people. The cloud is just a REALLY expensive way to sell shared servers.

It's fairly inexpensive to be honest -- it's cheap compared to having a team of sysadmins floating around touching things all day long. Quite frankly it isn't all that expensive in light of the fact that $client doesn't have to concern himself with hardware all day long.

>> I run my own servers on 3 dedicated 1gbps connections, and while you pay $0.12/GB on AWS/Heroku (actually, Heroku costs more, but they bury it in their worker pricing so it looks free), I pay $0.01 per GB. That's right, 1 cent per GB.

Kudos, you also worry about hardware all of the time -- I've got ~2-3 racks and I spend my days worrying about replacement gear, physical security, network topology & all kinds of other things that one running an app. probably doesn't want to concern themselves with. I mitigate this on behalf of my clients, and they send me money for space & bandwidth in return for them not having to worry about it all day.

Heroku & aws do this, too as do many other vendors.

>> While an 8-core machine costs me $0.42/hour all tolled (machine, power, space), you pay almost $0.66/hour on EC2 with no SLA, meaning you're not ALWAYS getting the same machine specs every minute of every hour. You're getting a MAXIMUM commitment of resources, not a MINIMUM commitment.

Colo. is definitely cheaper, at face value, but quite frankly most of the people on HN are concentrating on building applications. Their mental bandwidth needs to be spent on those applications, not hosting (though, obviously hosting is still part of the equation). Those people who are offline right now would be offline in the same scenario if their dc went offline due to power-outage/$random-reasons-things-go-offline.

Why? Because the people offline right now didn't build redundancy into their applications, and they wouldn't have if they had dedicated servers or an entire rack, either.

>> Heroku has been down 3+ hours this time, and last year had a 70+ hour outage. On my own servers, I haven't had 3 TOTAL hours of downtime in 5 years.

Congrats. Inevitably, a UPS will overload, a switch will die & you'll eat some downtime too. It happens -- build redundancy into your application / service to ensure that thy facility is irrelevant when the time comes.

That applies to everyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some good points, not all correct.. but we're seeing some major sites out right now that, if I were invested in them at the VC level, I'd be looking at the CTO to justify their decisions for using Heroku/AWS without _at least_ a non-cloud backup. I may even be looking to fire someone.

>> Kudos, you also worry about hardware all of the time

Patently untrue.

I haven't thought about hardware once in three years because I have an admin whom I've personally trained that worries for me. He knows how to scale hardware and software because I've showed him how to do it properly, and he has earned my trust.

I get to spend every minute of every work hour coding solutions. If you're a business owner and YOU still worry about hardware, then you need to fire your admins and hire rockstar-level admins. My admin spends no more than 2 hours a day on colo management because he does it the right way.

>> Congrats. Inevitably, a UPS will overload, a switch will die & you'll eat some downtime too. It happens -- build redundancy into your application / service to ensure that thy facility is irrelevant when the time comes.

I use external DNS to handle dynamic re-routing to an alternate colo should connectivity or power to this one fail. Even with this setup, it would cost more than 2 times as much to do what I do on the cloud, even if I used EC2 committed instances.

What's important is NOT to have NO downtime. What's important is to be PERCEIVED to have no downtime.

Customers should never see downtime from you. It should be transparent to them, giving you a 100% uptime public personna.

<comment><USER2> >> Some good points, not all correct.. but we're seeing some major sites out right now that, if I were invested in them at the VC level, I'd be looking at the CTO to justify their decisions for using Heroku/AWS without at least a non-cloud backup. I may even be looking to fire someone.

And I'd be asking why they don't have redundancy.

>> I haven't thought about hardware once in three years because I have an admin whom I've personally trained that worries for me. He knows how to scale hardware and software because I've showed him how to do it properly, and he has earned my trust.

But not everyone using heroku / aws / etc. have this same guy, trained by yourself, available. Thus, they use a service that makes that aspect of it invisible to them.

Downtime still happens irregardless.

>> I get to spend every minute of every work hour coding solutions. If you're a business owner and YOU still worry about hardware, then you need to fire your admins and hire rockstar-level admins. My admin spends no more than 2 hours a day on colo management because he does it the right way.

Admittedly, I don't worry about it as much as I'd let on -- but there's still some aspects that I dig into by choice to make certain everything is in good working order, and that there are ample replacements on-site to mitigate the 'worst case scenario'. As a CEO, I fight on behalf of my users & clients daily, even if that means wasting mental bandwidth on what might be defined as someone elses' job.

In a perfect world none of us would have to worry about hardware or downtime. Heroku is responsible for Heroku, and AWS is responsible for AWS -- and every user thereof is responsible for themselves and their operations.

Colo. might be the answer for some of them, but it's not a perfect world either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FOSDEM 2017 talks recordings available (500+) for viewing (.mp4 and .webm) - <AUTHOR> http://video.fosdem.org/2017/ <comment><USER2> Well, half of the talks are actually released.

Still don't understand why it takes so much time to cut a video and add a banner in the first 10 seconds.</comment>


Ask HN: Just what, precisely/technically, does the green name mean? - <AUTHOR>

I'm happily reading people's opinions about C++ compilers[1] and I'm distracted by chandlerc's username.  Sometimes it's green, sometimes it isn't.
This is inherently offensive to my insistence on rigid understanding: there must be a pattern!  I set out to find the system's explanation for its workings; surely somewhere is listed the minimum karma, set timespan, or other voodoo that determines who's new and who's not.
But I couldn't find it.  This is where someone can very quickly strike me dumb by pointing out it's right <a>here</a> and anyone with a brain would have found it.  Well.  I didn't, ok?  Site policies ought to be pretty accessible, ok?
Then I started thinking.  Is there any purpose to coloring a username green besides simple elitism?  It seems chandlerc quickly earned his stripes, to the extent that a green username _doesn't have any real meaning_.
Why is the separation of new people more important to this site than, say, the highlighting of the name of the submitter?  Do we really think that alienating new people--whether that's the intent of the feature or not, that's what it does--ought to be that high in the feature queue?  Does a green name _really_ help you filter out noise?
I have no idea whether I prefer to see comment scores.  But I'm suddenly, surprisingly filled with distaste at the green user name, not only because the mechanism isn't clear but because the mechanism doesn't do much.
You may consider my gears thoroughly grinded.  Erm--ground.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2577481 <comment><USER2> He's a new user. Simple as that.

This may help your rigid understanding: <http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories>

<comment><USER3> That's interesting, I hadn't thought about it (or read about it) much but I had assumed the highlight was for particularly useful commenters. Maybe it was the choice of green, which obviously intends to convey newness, but I took it as green for go/positive/yes.</comment></comment>


Shady TLD Research: .Mom and Our Q1 Wrap-Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/shady-tld-research-mom-and-our-q1-wrap <comment><AUTHOR> Chris Larsen of BlueCoat Security (now part of Symantec) has been profiling "Shady TLDs" for several years, with a particular focus on the proliferation of new TLDs.

Many of these are, to 2-3 nines, exclusively shady content. In the interest of keeping blocklists to a manageable size, and encouraging responsible management of TLDs, blocking these in their entirety is often recommended.</comment>


Cops are raiding the homes of innocent people based only on IP addresses - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/349359/cops-and-ip-addresses/ <comment><USER2> > a raid based on the IP address alone seems unreasonable.

Unreasonable to whom? If it intimidates people into switching off their Tor nodes, then to the cops it was probably worth it.

(I am a fan of Tor in case you think I am in favor of this kind of intimidation).</comment>


Announcing TypeScript 2.6 RC - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/10/12/announcing-typescript-2-6-rc/ <comment><USER2> I was concerned that it would be difficult to use the new `--strictFunctionTypes` flag due to all the 3rd party typings not conforming to this flag. However, sandersn fixed[0] many popular packages not long after this feature landed.

I've been using TypeScript for 5 years[1] and it has been a great experience,! Even these (occasional) "breaking" changes are relatively easy to navigate.

[0]: [https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/pull/18654#issuecomm...](https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/pull/18654#issuecomment-336274851)

[1]: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/10/02/types...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/10/02/typescript- turns-5/)</comment>


A stunning year in climate science - <AUTHOR> http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/15/year-in-climate-science-climategate/

<comment><USER2> Hysterical website brought to you by Center for American Progress.

From their website

 _Our mission is to transform progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world._

addendum: for those confused, this is political advocacy and its probably not a good idea to post this stuff here unless you want HN to become reddit. Oh, how can it be advocacy if everything is true? Sometimes its not what you say, but what you leave out.

<comment><USER3> Given that most of the article is made of highlights from 10 scientific articles published in such high profile reviews as Nature, Science, or Nature Geoscience, I do not think you can reduce it to "political advocacy" from a "hysterical website".

<comment><USER4> Ignoring the 'hysterical' epitaph for a moment, it is fair to note that the website is openly a political website.

Selecting high quality scientific articles to bolster my political argument doesn't stop my aim being political - it may just mean that I have a convincing argument!

It is fair to be wary, however, of the process of selection in situations like this - these were 10 articles selected from many. Why were they chosen? Was the process of choosing neutral (such as in an independent literature survey) or political in nature?

This is where the nature of the site may give reason to look more closely, especially where they top and tail the actual science with partisan name calling, such as the reference to people concerned with the transparency and reliability of the climate science processes (ie 'Climategate') as the "anti- science crowd".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wasn't expecting much from this article but it links to recent research in high impact journals. The ones that caught my eye were:

 _Science_ : Vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing and venting

 _Nature Geoscience study_ : Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred

 _Royal Society_ : "There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record."

<comment><USER6> As a disclaimer, I should first say that I haven't read any of these papers in detail and that I therefore can't comment on their validity. I also don't wish to take a pro- or anti-environmentalist stance. I'm strictly neutral. I'm just talking about the nature of research publications.

Many of us in acadaemia are aware of a perceived phenomenon whereby "fashionable" (for want of a better word) topics get published and/or attract research. From a cynical (yet often accurate) perspective, researchers have become adept at framing their research proposals in the context of the topic _du jour_. I'm not saying the research is bad, just that funding is easier if you mention buzzwords.

My point is that acadaemia goes through cycles of particular interest in certain topics. The funding gets allocated to it and the journals are more likely to publish research relevant to the "fashionable" topic than other research. Now, I'm not saying the research is flawed; just that if you fund research into environmental change, you're probably going to find a lot of environmental change. If tomorrow you decide to massively fund research into extraterrestrial life, you will see a surge of papers in high-impact journals about that very subject. The environmental change hasn't gone away, it's just that fewer people are trying to publish data about it.

Perhaps for that reason we shouldn't be impressed by the sheer volume of research or the perceived quality of the publishing journals. We shouldn't panic because the number of papers on the subject has increased by several orders of magnitude in recent years. We should get a clear picture of what is going on, ignoring the funding bias, and once we have analysed the data from a balanced perspective and we see that it spells certain doom for all of us, _then_ we can panic. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested to hear what the HN community thinks about this article. Last time I said anything about the "environment" a bunch of people responded with "Whatever hippie, go back to the woods then!" I'm an entrepreneur and a lover of tech, but without our environment... we're sorta ya know... screwed!

<comment><USER8> I would like to see words such as "our" and "we" removed from the debate. "Our planet", what must "we do", etc. It doesn't help. If it's "ours" it's someone else's problem. What shall "we" do? Nothing.

Better would be to make it direct, from up high: "YOU won't be able to do X because of Y. This must be done now otherwise Z."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The response in the comments here is perplexing to me.

The article is presenting well-cited scientific studies, with summaries and disclaimers where statistical issues have been correctly raised. Together, the article's point is that the "climategate" emails were a distraction that the media followed instead of all of the numerous studies coming out in the same year on the subject.

With that in mind, yes, it may be political advocacy, but no one here has raised any real reason why the research behind them shouldn't be taken seriously. If someone posted a list of articles coming out at the same time that rebutted their findings, I might think differently, but as it is I can't help thinking from observing the response here that the article's point may be truer than even its writers imagined. There's real science here! Discussion about the discussion is a distraction from it. If you think we shouldn't be discussing climate change, show me why you think the research is bogus instead of just telling me "political issues don't belong on HN". It's political because there's a lot of money at stake, not because the science is controversial; and please, if you think I'm wrong about that, show me why. I really, really, really want to be. Other scientific articles are fine on HN, so why not this?

</comment><comment><USER10> _Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing."_

I look away from the glow of this noisy MacBook, and ponder how foolish I am to be typing this on a computer that in only a few distant years from now will no longer work. I know that global ocean temperatures have been rising steadily for the past 100 hundred years -- this is based on maps of world ocean temperatures displayed to the public in the lobby of an Ocean Sciences building that I was able to view years ago.

Yes, Number 1 [http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline- ocean-p...](http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean- phytoplankton-global-warming-boris-worm/) is stunning. Don't stay stunned for too much longer.

<comment><USER8> But if we're stunned and apathetic we don't need to do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _> The last year or so has seen more scientific papers and presentations that raise the genuine prospect of catastrophe (if we stay on our current emissions path) that I can recall seeing in any other year._

Missed a great opportunity for a hockey-stick graph! :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Sure maybe this like many other sources sensationalizes things but one of the problems with climate is that I just can't see worldwide action until either it is right in governments faces ie. to late, or they are drawn in my sensationalist tones on correct science.

Climate is one of those things that governments will be able to wash there hands of if everything turns bad, because no one can be 100% sure of causes and the whole climate gate thing the article was referring to.

I don't really expect any drastic action as unless every country acts those who don't will have a big trading advantage, at least in the short term.

<comment><USER13> Ah... a pet topic of mine.

This starts at home; and _always_ will do if we want to make a difference.

Reduce your energy usage, buy local produce, install solar (and other sustainable) power. All of these changes can be done for very little additional cost. And if you _really_ care it is the approach to take.

With enough of us doing these things it increases pressure and awareness a lot more than blogging about it etc.

While the final fix rests with the governments, we have to do our bit. Just, we're going to have to do it first.

At the moment "Green" is big business; but it is not so much actual green, as "brand Green". With enough consumers going after more eco-efficient lifestyles it increases the real green market and therefore pressure at a national level.

If everyone in the country went and installed solar panels tomorrow....

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is absolutely no scientific evidence of man made climate change. [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647#)

</comment><comment><USER15> Climate-science has become an oxymoron.</comment>


Tablets take waiting out of restaurants: E la Carte on the cover of SF Chronicle - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/14/MNQN1MOOOU.DTL

<comment><USER2> Anything would be better than sitting at your table waiting for your waiter to wander by so you can ask for the check, then wait to get it, then wait for the waiter to come back for your credit card, then wait for the stupid slip of paper you sign that nobody will ever look at.

</comment><comment><USER3> With all the Android (and the iPad) options out there, why do they have to roll out their own tablet hardware at all? (besides the obvious "because it's rugged" answer, which could obviously be solved with a case on any other tablet)

<comment><USER4> No reason you couldn't do both, and just have the smartphone app interface with the same system the in-house tablets do. (And not everyone will leave a smartphone.)

Menu systems are simple, and don't need much in the way of processing power. They don't need to be full-featured web browsers, or be able to run high-end games. An e-Ink screen would be enough for most places. This approach even makes sense from a recycling point of view - just use screens from old iPads or Kindles for the in-house tablets.

<comment><USER5> The value in high-end processing is the multimedia upsell. Replacing a paper menu doesn't require much processing power, but it's worth a lot to increase the check average and/or improve margins by promoting higher margin items.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _...prefers to order his lunch from a computer rather than a server._

This sentence confused me momentarily. "Hmm. Isn't a server just a type of computer?"

</comment><comment><USER7> _"I actually dread human interaction of any kind"_

> Well ok, necessity _is_ the mother of invention.

 _"People say it's very inhospitable. But it's the epitome of hospitality. It empowers the guest to get in and to get out."_

> Wow, the irony (and sadness) are overflowing.

The only time I can really see this being more useful to me, is when I can't get a hold of my wait(er/ress) to bring the check or run my card. And here's a better idea that I'm a give you all for free. Near field communication with cellphones and a chip in the table. Open up my payment app, close and pay for the check with my cellphone. Put a few bucks tip on the table and leave like it's the old days before credit cards.

<comment><USER3> One good use for tablets-on-bar-tables I thought about, years ago, was the exact opposite: make people interact, sending messages between tables and the such. Then I've read an individual somewhere saying that "meeting people face to face is too creepy, that's why everyone prefers online dating".

Goes hand in hand with this comment. Scary faceless world..

<comment><USER7> Maybe at a bar or restaurant specifically for this purpose but at most places it wouldn't fly / would be useless.

<comment><USER3> most bars and nighclubs ARE there for this purpose :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > and even calculates the tip

Who the hell are you tipping?

<comment><USER9> The person that brings you your food and takes away your plates?

<comment><USER10> \+ all the other people they have to tip out to like the host, bussers, etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has all been done in Japan for 5 or 6 years now. There are plenty of Izakaya in Japan that you order from wireless color tablets. They have the entire menu in color with pictures of every item. They've been around since at least 2005.

(Izakaya = the type of place Japanese people drink which is most easily described as booze and tapas)

<comment><USER12> And in California during the same period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about a mobile app which would allow me to pre-order from food trucks? I work in downtown Chicago, and there are a bunch of trucks around everyday (but not within 200 feet of a "real" restaurant entrance, of course!). Imagine that the food trucks all posted their menus to foodtruck.com in the morning along with their schedule of locations/times. I could then see a menu of food available within an N minute walk of my building, pre-order and pay, and then go pick-up my bag of food. The food trucks would just have a net-connected tablet onboard which would alert them of purchases. They could mark menu items as unavailable when they run out. By taking the uncertainty out of deciding to leave one's desk and find a food truck, business could increase. Perhaps owners could also be given geospatial/temporal demand pattern information with which they could optimize their positioning.

<comment><USER13> I'm working on this ATM, will be launching in a few weeks. starting in Perth, Australia but will try to launch in the US as soon as we have a little traction. Great to hear that there's demand for this service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Suri dropped out of the prestigious university and got a job in a sports bar > in Cambridge to learn the ins and outs of the restaurant business.

This really puts the "No really, talk to your customers on occasion" battle into perspective. For so many of us, the first reaction to this kind of idea is to fire up an IDE, not to temporarily change careers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't think of a way to complement this with out pointing out the obviousness of it. Good job and good timing!

In a way I'm surprised the large chains haven't already started to use customer-facing touch screen ordering, especially with the huge bump paper and printing costs went through several years ago.

<comment><USER15> McDonald's has been testing self-service kiosks on-and-off since at least 2004. There must be some barrier to adoption that's holding it back.

That, plus most quick service restaurants do a majority of their business in the drive-through now. Ever see a line of cars out to the street and then go inside the store? Empty counters.

<comment><USER4> True, and there's an element of the McDonalds crowd that would be uncomfortable with touchscreens. I was thinking chains like Luby's, Bob Evans, Applebees, etc, more than fast food. There's a labor issue at work here, too. You're not cutting into labor with sit-down restaurants like you are with fast food. Just making the existing labor more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Most people don't notice good service; they notice bad service. For any restaurant that already has good servers and good training, this type of thing will destroy the flow of service and the interaction between guests and servers.

<comment><USER5> I spent about a year in 2003 trying to launch a similar start-up. Restaurant owners told me that they would gladly trade a normal distribution of customer satisfaction for consistent-but-average experiences. Why? If you have a great experience, you might tell a few people. However, when you have an awful experience, you'll tell a hundred.

<comment><USER16> Those owners probably aren't great at training their staff and/or don't understand the intangibles that make for a good service experience. You might be able to sell the owners on your product. That doesn't mean the owners can sell their customers on your product.

<comment><USER5> The owners understood quite well what made for an amazing experience, but they didn't feel they could ensure that each customer would receive that experience given the issues they had in hiring and retention. One thing that shocked me was that I didn't get pushback on the likely increase in credit card usage. While 1.6% is a horrible portion of net margins, it's a small price to pay for keeping greenbacks out of employees' hands. There's a shortage of competent people in America who are willing to serve food at [Chain X] for more than a few months while finishing up school, etc. Most who will opt into serving long-term will seek higher-end restaurants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Didn't Nolan Bushnell try something similar to this in Mountain View not long ago?

<comment><USER5> He seemed to be focused on the idea that people would want to play games on the tablet -- nevermind that handheld game machines existed before he even opened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> All of this is just fluff until mobile payments become a reality. I don't want to remove the waitstaff, I want to remove the wait. I should be able to pay from my phone when I am done ordering and walk away.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't go to a restaurant _just_ to eat. It's a social event. I go to hang out with friends, people watch, and just be around people. You can order in if you really hate human interaction that much.

<comment><USER5> A social event with the waitstaff? No one is saying that you can't talk to the restaurant staff, even when using a tablet -- you just aren't beholden to them for service.

<comment><USER19> Actually, yes. Does that sound crazy? I'm not talking about bad servers, I'm talking about good servers. Also, servers let me ask questions and help me discover new food I would probably not try. That's just me though, maybe I'm special.

<comment><USER5> You aren't unusual. A good server will beat automation hands down. It's the power of a bad server to fore a bad experience upon me which makes me love the tablet as an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of Uwink, a restaurant based on this kind of idea. I enjoyed going there and the place was always busy but I guess it wasn't successful enough to survive.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great, now all restaurants can have the ambiance/experience of a Sheetz or Wawa gas station!

</comment><comment><USER21> hooray! (i'm an investor)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd prefer if people like this just stayed inside and did not have to interact with the rest of us normal humans...</comment>


Hacking with a Hacker - <AUTHOR> http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=1999

<comment><USER2> Reading this made me feel good. I feel like not enough hackers in my generation appreciate some of the history surrounding hacker culture. I read Levy's books a million times as an adolescent, and am currently going through "What the Dormouse Said" by John Markoff. A dream of mine has been to write a follow-up to Hackers someday. A book of the same style picking up where Hackers left off in the mid-1980s. It could cover NeXT, GNU/Linux, Netscape/Mosaic, Valve, Google, Facebook, up to modern hacking on the frontier of biology, education, and the rebirth of hardware hacking. I feel like every generation should have a volume similar to Hackers.

<comment><USER3> Both of those are excellent reads. "Dealers of Lightning" is another you might want to check out.

edit: oops

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a minor typo; it's "Dealers of Lightning".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "He responded, "when there's something interesting to publish, it'll be published." He seemed to have a sort of disdain for "salami science", where scientific and mathematical papers present the thinnest possible "slice" or result possible."

Very inspiring!

</comment><comment><USER5> What's the Buttonhole Trap?

<comment><USER6> A semi-flat stick with a thread sized-length loop thru a hole at one end, too short to pass over the stick's opposite end, say, loop can be stretched 95% to stick length. By passing the loop through a button-hole and scrunching material, it's possible to loop it around the button-hole. Can be maddening to first time victims. Easy to make. I've witnessed "This is impossible!" more than once.

I wish we had a wise-old hacker Bill curmudgeon in the neighborhood.

<comment><USER7> This seems odd to be. I honestly think I would have figured this out in a few seconds at most, even if I'm not usually very good at this bind of trick puzzle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, I haven't thought of Bill since I read "Hackers"...</comment>


Life as a Fake Beauty Queen in Small-Town China - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/life-as-a-fake-beauty-queen-in-small-town-china/382409/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Years ago I remember reading stories of a market for "White" guys to rent themselves out for business meetings in China. If you looked anglo, and could look presentable in a suit, the Chinese companies would hire you to make them look more serious as though you were their American officer/VP.

[http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.peop...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.people/)

<comment><USER3> I live in Asia, and I need to get in to this business clearly

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whoever this girl is, she has a good future as a writer.

<comment><USER5> It makes me want to know more about the writing process for pieces like this.

Does she write it alone, and send it off to various publications who might edit it slightly but otherwise run it as written (or not at all)?

Is she paired with a ghost writer who complements her amazing story with similarly amazing writing?

It seems unlikely (in general) that the people with the best stories also happen to be the best writers, so I would assume there is a lot of ghost writing and editing going on, but it would be great to know more about how this particular sausage is actually made.

<comment><USER4> She is a college grad, so I'd giver her the benefit of the doubt. Sure there is an editor involved to provide feedback, but she could have been studying to be a writer anyways. E.g. Journalism is a tough field to find a job in, but plenty of kids have a talent for it, so go off and get crazy life experiences to write about.

<comment><USER5> That is where I think I come down on it too.

There are (probably, I don't really know) so many people out there who are either good writers or have good stories, it would not be so surprising if there are a significant number of people who are both.

Doing a quick google turns up [1] and [2], which describe her as

"Meredith Hattam is a web designer and writer based in New York, and an advisory-board member for the Model Alliance, a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry."

Her homepage [2] also points to [3], and the writing there seems to live up to a similar standard. I can't tell if she writes everything on there or has simply submitted a story, but the tone of the few pieces I looked at sound very much like her.

Her blog is also quite interesting [4]

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/meredith- hattam/](http://www.theatlantic.com/meredith-hattam/)

[2] [http://meredithhattam.com/](http://meredithhattam.com/)

[3] [http://waitingroomny.com/](http://waitingroomny.com/)

[4] [http://meredithhattam.com/blog/](http://meredithhattam.com/blog/)

<comment><USER6> It's right there at the end of the article:

 _MEREDITH HATTAM is a web designer and writer based in New York, and an advisory-board member for the Model Alliance, a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, there's a cottage industry for booking young models as fake national beauty contest winners to participate in fake international beauty contests. The quotes are surreal:

"My first stint as Miss America for hire had been that September, in the desert oasis of Dunhuang, for the city's International Grape Festival. It was a surreal experience in which 40 models, including me, were paid to walk down a catwalk for about 2,000 locals. Later, we rode camels across the dunes of the Gobi Desert, crisscrossing the sand in single file. The photos of all 40 of us on camelback—some only in bras, to dodge tanlines—are wonderfully absurd."

"For the second pageant, in October, I was hired to cruise around Dalian in a fake gold Mercedes golf cart with five other girls for three days, in an effort to lure potential buyers into investing in a miniature replica of Versailles. A printed guide to the event offered fictitious backstories in Chinese about each contestant, and her purpose there."

"Of the nine 'fashion shows' I booked while in Beijing, only two were on a runway. The rest were fake pageants, car shows, and trade shows—but I was not informed of their nature until I was en route to the events. Models flagged as having low earning potential will do fake pageants frequently, as they're easy to book. I once met a Russian teenager who was stuck traveling on a bus for 10 days across rural China as 'Miss Argentina.'"

<comment><USER4> Chalk it up to new money and not knowing how to spend it. I'm sure China will develop better taste eventually (goes for ad agencies, their clients, and the customers being vied for).

Until then, we'll have things like this: [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/09/content_188894...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/09/content_18889439.htm)

<comment><USER8> Yes, one day, the Chinese will develop better taste in advertising, like [http://www.rsvlts.com/2014/01/02/hottest-go-daddy- girls/#1](http://www.rsvlts.com/2014/01/02/hottest-go-daddy-girls/#1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's the modeling business. Talk to anyone who's done it. Below the top 100 or so supermodels in the world, models make less than a mid-range programmer. Most modeling jobs aren't glamorous. There's trade show work, being a "booth bimbo". There's catalog modeling ("OK, next is item 25631, the blue sweater, and hurry it up, we have twenty more to shoot before lunch"). Mostly there's doing something else while waiting for the next gig. Ask any actress/model/waitress in LA. It's a really short career, too; at 25, you're over the hill.

<comment><USER3>
        > It's a really short career, too; at 25, you're over the
        > hill.

Meh, maybe. My Mom makes some pretty good pocket money ($600 a day-ish) as a photogenic grandmother and general old lady doing catalogue and advert work for cruises, insurance, retirement homes, that kind of thing.

<comment><USER8> How many days per year?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The voice in this article is very familiar. Is this the same author of the woman that wrote about high-worth dating in New York? Living in a hotel room with multiple women while going on dates with rich guys... I can't remember the details and I've done some initial google searches but haven't found the original.

The voice, the situations, etc in this article feel similar to what I remember of this other article.

<comment><USER11> Is this the article you're talking about?

My Summer As a Professional Pretty Girl in the Hamptons [http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/07/my-summer-as-a- professional-...](http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/07/my-summer-as-a-professional- hamptons-party-girl.html)

<comment><USER10> Yeah! That's it. Thank you.

I would bet that the sounds and smells of riding a camel across the desert in China are similar to riding a rich old fat guy in a hotel room in New York...

<comment><USER12> Haha! Have an up-vote for your distasteful but hilarious comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Agreed - beautifully surreal quotes, lovely writing style, fascinating subject.

She wrote a piece back in January[1] that gives a lot more insight into the logistical and management aspects of the arrangement, as well as the risks (financial and physical).

[1] [http://fashionista.com/2014/01/model-in- china](http://fashionista.com/2014/01/model-in-china)

</comment><comment><USER14> I just don't understand this fascination of Asian, and more so East Asian peoples, with the West. Replica of Eiffel tower? Why would you want that when you have the forbidden city, the great wall and maybe countless oriental palaces??

Especially after how badly China was treated by most western countries (and Japan) during the Qing dynasty.

<comment><USER15> It is a quite complicated subject. It is partly a result of colonialism, partly of nationalism, partly of globalization and partly of the way world unfolded after WW2.

Basically, beginning of the century, when Asian countries got 'freedom', all the political leaders who got power were educated in western philosophy. They read western books, spoke western languages as a sign of education and adopted competing western ideologies as the model of society. The old, native one was discarded because it was a memorial of defeat. And people accepted it. You can see that everywhere - Gandhi was a barrister who wore coat before he become a monk (and all his lieutenants, from Nehru to Ambedkar, wore suits), Mao wore western clothes. Korean, Japan - they are the best examples of it. Rich people had become rich by following foreigners, and when foreigners left them alone, these same rich westernized people became rulers. Since then there is a fascination with everything west. There are some poor people who are still clinging to the old system, if they can. But the middle class has almost no option if they want to get rich.

As I said, it is a very complicated topic in sociology and there is no way I can explain it, as much as I understood it, here. I am eventually planning to write a book, starting from a dedicated blog. Will update here when I do.

<comment><USER14> I would really love to read such a book! I have been researching a lot on this topic myself, to be honest. Specifically about why India and China (the "East") are so far behind the west. And in the case of India at least, the fault lies a lot with the way history is taught. It is assumed that India was a mostly agrarian economy and the people had no way of defending themselves from superior European guns. While that is partly true, it also had a huge industry in both firearms and metal working before the British conquest, apart from Textiles.

So for India I could understand that colonialism created a West-oriented culture, but couldn't see why so in China, which was never under a foreign power. Your point about the rulers and intelligentsia being westernized makes sense in this context.

<comment><USER15> I would recommend Pankaj Mishra if you are interested in this topic. Specifically for China, here is an article: [http://www.outlookindia.com/article/A-Poet- Unwelcome/281819](http://www.outlookindia.com/article/A-Poet-Unwelcome/281819)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The whole culture behind this is also an interesting phenomenon: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai#Shanzhai_culture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai#Shanzhai_culture)</comment>


The future of food delivery - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/20/grain-series-a/ <comment><AUTHOR> We're hiring - [https://grain.com.sg/jobs](https://grain.com.sg/jobs). Let us know if you guys have any thoughts too.</comment>


How an Australian team won the robot soccer world championships - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/how-an-australian-team-won-the-robot-soccer-world-championships-20150806-gitl5s.html

<comment><USER2> UNSW has always fielded a strong robotics team, ever since the start of the robocup competition: [http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/about-us/help-resources/for- stude...](http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/about-us/help-resources/for- students/student-projects/robocup/)

They were either first or second the first 5 years of the competition and have generally stayed at the top of the rankings every year.

What's fascinating about Robocup is that each team releases the source code to their robots at the end of each competition, which means each team essentially starts at an equal position every year. What differentiates top performers is their ability to innovate and improve every year.

</comment><comment><USER3> If the robots are all the same, why are the aussie's robots so much faster? Do they take more of a risk on balance?

<comment><USER4> The code is not the same; behaviours and inverse kinematics are pretty much never the defaults (they suck). So each team tries to work on things its members are good at, and it seems Australians are particularly good at that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ask an ex-member of the Dutch Nao Team anything =)

<comment><USER5> What's the current state of team strategies implemented in this competition? Every robot going for the goal on its own? Simple passing forwards? Blocking? Double team on the ball carrier? What's the most number of intended passes in sequence that a team carries out in practice?

Thanks.

<comment><USER4> In general, afaik, team strategies are not really developed in depth. This is simply because actually governing the robots is exponentially harder than anything else, and a robot that does not know where it is on the field, where the ball is or is unable to move is also useless - no matter what advanced tactic you decide to deploy. And these are REALLY hard problems!

Other problems are: understand which side of the field is actually yours (it's not uncommon to do autogoals, since the field is visually symmetrical), how to understand where you are after a referee repositions you, how to distinguish friendly robots from adversaries, not fall down every five seconds.

And still the game is driven by simple hardware physics: the robots engines tend to overheat very often, which basically results in the robots "melting" on themselves since they can't support their weight for very long. And there how much money a team has to spend comes into play heavily..

So to get back at your questions, not much. In general if you can shoot in the general direction of the enemy's goal more often than your adversaries, you will probably win =)</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Our First Investment, $20,000 in Balbus - <AUTHOR> http://blog.roughdraft.vc/post/44617668100/announcing-our-first-investment-20-000-in-balbus Rough Draft Ventures, a student-run venture capital firm powered by General Catalyst, has made their first investment in Jack McDermott's Balbus, Inc. Jack is a junior at Tufts University <comment><USER2> The story of Jack stuttering during his pitch meeting to the RoughDraft partners and FIXING HIS STUTTERING WITH HIS APP RIGHT THERE IN THE MOMENT IN FRONT OF THEM is freaking unreal. Bilal tells it here: [http://bznotes.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/roughdraft-vc- studen...](http://bznotes.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/roughdraft-vc-students- makes-their-first-investment-in-a-student-startup/)

Inspiring story. I'm pulling for this guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was pretty incredible.

Here's Jack's post from this morning on the origins of Balbus and what this investment means to him and his company:

<http://blog.jackmcd.me/post/44584577942/onwards-upwards>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As someone who has a stutter. Good for them. I will check out the product later.

Somewhat unrelated. I really hate how you cannot see a web version of the Apple store. If I click the link app it tells me to install iTunes. I don't want to. I just want to check out the app now, see the price and hopefully motivate me to get it when I get home..

xbox, playstation, google play stores all allow browsing. Weird Apple doesn't.

<comment><USER4> Thanks @bobsy! I appreciate your kind words. Apple indeed does have a web version of iTunes to preview each app, here you go: <https://itunes.apple.com/app/id467558411>

best,

Jack

Founder, Balbus

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Got to hang out with the folks at Rough Draft last night – I am glad to see that their passion for helping entrepreneurs is finally coming to fruition. Keeping in mind that these are students making these investments (many who were simultaneously studying for midterms this week), it is truly inspiring to see such energy in the Boston ecosystem. Keep up the good work!</comment>


You should avoid SSL for your applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.cossacklabs.com/avoid-ssl-for-your-next-app.html <comment><USER2> In my experience SSL/TLS is used because HTTP is a decent protocol because it works almost everywhere, including behind proxies and firewalls. Support out in the real world is vast, so it's hard to find cases where another client- server protocol will work in as many scenarios.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly the point we're leading to - if you need vast heterogenous support everywhere, you're doomed to use TLS/SSL and you'd better cook it well, cause it has plenty of problems.

But, from our point of view, most non-web-developers (mobile? distributed applications? there are plenty), who now use SSL, but can afford themselves either avoid HTTP at all, or implement decent cryptographic stack on top of it, because they control both client and server, and don't need multitude of platforms to talk in the same way.

That's the point we're leading to in this article.

<comment><USER2> I guess I was thinking mobile using a home/corporate wifi network, which means you're back to (possibly) dealing with proxies, etc. Even if you control client and server, your protocol has to work over the network you are running on. Today that's HTTP based.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, network is TCP/IP based last time I've checked, but yes, most people today tend to organize such communications over HTTP for simplicity (although it's not that good at all), I get your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree that tls/ssl is really old complicated system with lots of cornercases in implementation. It's okay, but only if it's implemented in a proper way. I, as app developer, tend to skip to 'what should I do' section, and it's good this time!</comment>


Panel of graphics experts discusses Vulkan - <AUTHOR> http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/panel-discusses-vulkan-khronos-paris-chapter <comment><USER3> Vulkan is the successor to OpenGL - this discusses what that means and some of the decisions that went into it's design and implementation.

<comment><USER4> That's perhaps overstating the case right now. Vulkan is _much_ lower level than OpenGL, not to mention the many libraries, engines, and tool suites built on top of OpenGL (and OpenGL's traditional competitors). Vulkan is an interesting development, but it's still very young and I'd say its future is far from certain. I think this article pulls out some of the tensions well, esp. in things like the differing perspectives of IHVs vs. ISVs.

Speaking personally, I'm mostly curious as to whether Vulkan is positioned to help show the way out of the GPU driver hell that the industry seems to be in right now. Related, will we see any vendors come forward with open source Vulkan drivers, perhaps even precipitating public discussions between IHVs and ISVs over software vs. driver vs. hardware performance issues? Hope springs eternal... ;-)

Robert Menzel's "Should I Switch to Vulkan?" flowchart is one way to get a quick read on Vulkan's positioning vs. other options:

[https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699501481632886786](https://twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/699501481632886786)

<comment><USER5> Vulkan is much lower level than OpenGL but that's not very relevant - you can easily have a layer that sits on top and provides higher level utilities - <USER2> advantage over OpenGL being that your layer is transparent and a part of your code base/environment which you can debug _and_ modify - not some BLOB driver.

Realistically the reason why Vulkan is not that interesting outside of AAA games is that OpenGL ES 2 became ubiquitous only recently and it took years for stuff like web browsers to implement it and then there's all the mobile fragmentation, and finally there's Apple with their own standards and API.

OpenGL ES3 is not even close yet and it's exposing tech that's been available for close to a decade now on desktop.

Best case scenario for Vulkan adoption is someone comes up with a really good OpenGL OSS/Apache licensed (no patents or copyleft) implementation on top of it, everyone agrees it's a good implementation and just ships that on top of native Vulkan drivers.</comment></comment></comment>


Panama Papers Reveal How Wealthy Americans Hid Millions Overseas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/us/panama-papers.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER3> I really believe the best way to combat tax evasion is to make the tax process easier, more efficient, and less burdensome, especially to wealthy earners.

It is _insane_ the amount of work that I put into my taxes each year, only because we have a small business and doing things right versus doing things wrong is a difference in the tens of thousands of dollars. The extraordinary amount of loopholes and special interests means you need experts. And as I've said before here, the current tax system exist in the interest and benefit of large companies, not small companies or individuals.

If we instituted an overnight 9%, 9%, 9% "Simcity Tax" system and eliminated the massive tax loopholes that exist in all levels of the tax code, then I guarantee that money would come _pouring_ back into the United States.

<comment><USER4> No offense to you but that is absolute and utter bullshit. The tax process being exploited has nothing to do with it being inefficient and burdensome. It is in fact that way to obfuscate the external influences that incorporated all the loopholes that very well trained attorneys that only the wealthy can afford are incentivized to take advantage of.

Your 'institute my idea and it will fix everything I promise' idea has basically been why many Presidents have been elected and yet nothing has really improved.

The problem is not simple but the root is; while the wealthy can influence the process of how much they pay in taxes, the system will continue to be in their favor. How do we fix that? Damned if I know.

<comment><USER5> You don't need to be a millionaire to use these tax loopholes. I calculated that it would take $2600 a year to maintain an offshore structure. That includes an offshore LLC and trust in Belize (the best jurisdiction). The Belize trust owns membership position in your Belize LLC, and your Belize LLC has control over the trust. Then you just appoint yourself as manager of the LLC. Once that's done, you can simply open bank accounts or brokerage accounts in the LLC name.

<comment><USER6> You can set up the structure, but you won't be able to defend it in court without bankrupting yourself when the IRS comes knocking. And that's exactly where the problem lies.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. It does not matter how clever your structure is if the IRS thinks it is fishy you are going to be in for a world of pain.

<comment><USER8> Which makes it particularly painful if you're innocent

<comment><USER7> Of course. I am an Australian living in Australia with no direct US business and the IRS is a pain for me to deal with. I don't know how US citizens and businesses manage it.

<comment><USER9> The US IRS? What do they demand of you?

<comment><USER7> Yes the US IRS with things like W8-BEN-E form when you sell to a US company.

They also make it more of a pain to deal with financial institutions since the institution needs to ensure you are not a US citizen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't read through the list, but I'm guessing the bulk of the names on here aren't very exciting. Our society is so litigious that it's in your absolute best interest not to let anyone else see your cards. This is especially true if you're a doctor or famous person.

I realize that this statement may be controversial, but I hope it's at least not very surprising.

<comment><USER10> > This is especially true if you're a doctor

Doctors hiding assets to insulate themselves from largely-meritorious malpractice lawsuits,[1] would be pretty interesting.

[1] [http://archive.sph.harvard.edu/press- releases/2006-releases/...](http://archive.sph.harvard.edu/press- releases/2006-releases/press05102006.html)

<comment><USER11> Most have malpractice insurance anyway

<comment><USER10> It would probably be simpler to provide patents with insurance against medical malpractice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you really want to prevent tax evasion then start taxing assets. You can't really hide assets (excluding a few minor ones like diamonds, but these are a tiny fraction of all assets).

If you tax assets like land, shares, buildings, mines, vehicles, bank accounts, gold, etc, then evasion is not possible and the useless wealthy that inherited (rather than created) the assets will start paying tax.

<comment><USER12> Show me a breakdown of total US wealth by _asset_ class.

I suspect much of that's going to be in intermediate or structured classes, to wit: corporate structures. Not merely land / building / plant / stock, but corporate entities themselves.

But seeing that spelled out might suggest the feasibility of your suggestion. It _is_ interesting.

<comment><USER7> You can of course tax shares just like any other asset. Anything that can't be hidden can be taxed :)

Don't quote me on this, but as far as I am aware the major asset class in the USA is land and improvements. Rather hard to hide either of these :)

<comment><USER12> I'm specifically interested in the breakdown. David Brin has been noodling along these lines for a while as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 40-70 billion is the estimate of tax revenue losses from this sort of thing? Does that strike anyone else as insanely low? You're telling me that the sum of all tax losses due to evasion is just equal to the net worth of our wealthiest private individuals?

<comment><USER6> Why would you bother going offshore if capital gains are taxed very low in most countries? For example, wealthy heirs can live their entire life, not paying a cent of income tax. Life is good if you can earn money by just booking capital gains.

Should the capital gains tax rate be higher, i.e. 50%, I dare bet the numbers would be a lot higher. Higher rates act as an incentive to avoid.

<comment><USER13> I think the main reason would be the estate tax. That's a huge, huge cost for inherited wealth. Maybe there is some way around that that doesn't involve offshoring, but that seems like a pretty big reason to me.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't call it a huge, huge cost. In the US it is the equivalent of being in the higher tax bracket on the portion that falls above the exclusion amount. If the value of the estate is $5.45 million or less then you pay zero in estate taxes. ZERO. Only the top 0.2% of estates pay any estate taxes and that is only on the value above the exclusion amount ($5.45 million).

<comment><USER13> Ya I was talking specifically about for high-net worth individuals, though. If you are worth 100 million, you're paying ~50 million in tax when you die. That's certainly worth sheltering.

<comment><USER14> or ~37.8 million, but ya. If your net worth is 100 million your kids should definitely get 100 million instead of 62 million. They practically earned it and definitely deserve it for being your kids. You wouldn't want them to wind up destitute.

Tell me this. If you hired your kids for a year and paid them 100 million dollars to do the job of being your kids how much would they pay in taxes? The answer is about $40 million. In the US _transfer of wealth is taxed_ whether its salary or just for the sake of little Johnny. Loopholes should be closed (if they were even legal loopholes to begin with).

<comment><USER13> ? You're arguing against something I didn't say. I wasn't saying they _should_ shelter it, or that they deserve to keep it. I'm saying that they're strongly incentivized to, so it makes sense that many of them would attempt it.

<comment><USER14> +2 it's a good point. Closing loopholes and enforcing large fines should help disincentivize the sheltering. If the loopholes are legal, just closing them will help tremendously. I am sure that "legally save me as much money as possible" is a common phrase heard by CPAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, these companies are basically the Tor router of money.

Recently NPR Planet Money also covered a related topic which was very entertaining. [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/05/27/479717380/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/05/27/479717380/episode-703-how- to-hide-a-million-dollars-in-plain-sight)

<comment><USER16> The interesting thing, in my opinion, is that all large wires are tracked by our government. We'd do much better to use all of this monitoring infrastructure to stop tax-evaders instead of searching for more terrorists .

<comment><USER17> In a way you guys do. AFAIK the only reason U.S. people have no fully private banking accounts more in Switzerland is because the country also provides us with Secret Intelligence information about who knows what.

AFAIK no other country got that deal so far, for anyone else in the world Switzerland still provides private banking accounts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One good way to improve taxation is to allow the IRS to modernize and streamline their ability to collect the taxes owed. Every year 100+ Billion is lost due to their inability to adequately collect taxes. Yet congress continues to kill their budget for political reasons and so they can't have enough resources to go after the politician's best buddies. Of course this would assume competence at the IRS to spend it correctly, a good question. But hamstringing the people who bring in all the revenue so you have to borrow even more is pretty dumb.

<comment><USER7> You do know this is a feature not a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it interesting that the general sentiment on HN seems to be that individuals should have freedom from government intrusion into their communications - but that doesn't seem to translate into the same feelings regarding their financial transactions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ponsoldt family appears to be exceedingly dumb, based on this article

<comment><USER20> Lionel Messi (the world famous soccer star) also appears on it. So does Emma Watson from the Harry Potter. I did find the list had some interesting folks I wouldn't suspect to be on it

<comment><USER21> Emma Watson claims that this was to shield the details of her private residence from the public due to threats against her. I don't see a reason to doubt her.

<comment><USER22> I'll just say that it's a pretty flimsy defense of her address... and now the address is public anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think domestic tax policy is fine. International tax policy is a mess. Currently, every country has a tax treaty with pretty much every other country - This means that the number of unique international tax treaties is O(n^2) - So if you consider 100 countries which all have treaties with one anther, that represents maybe 10000 unique treaties (if you consider each direction as a separate treaty)... And each treaty is like 50 pages. That's a LOT of work - It is very easy to make mistakes or introduce intentional loopholes without being noticed.

If we had a computer program with 1 million pages' worth of code (with no source control and a highly fragmented Q/A process) then your chance of your program being buggy is extremely high.

It's baffling that governments thought that it would be better to write up n^2 unique treaties between each other instead of having a single treaty (or limited set of treaties) that applies to all (a la Kyoto Protocol or Geneva Conventions)! This is such an obviously bad idea, one has to think that it was done intentionally... Probably the result of heavy corporate lobbying.

At least now some middle-class workers are able to benefit from this mess (before remote work was possible, pretty much only corporations and wealthy people could leverage this). I've heard about regular working-class people who live in Malta and work remotely for US companies and pay almost no tax - <USER2> is because of loopholes in that specific treaty. There must be loopholes all over the place.

Right now the system is biased towards helping accountants make big bucks.

</comment><comment><USER24> Has there been any indication that any of this will lead to audits? The last interview I saw related to this was someone from the IRS. He said they're far from having reached diminishing returns on hiring more auditors vs increased tax revenue. They're simply not that interested in getting every dollar they can (paraphrasing his words). I LONG to be wrong and would like these papers to have consequences.

<comment><USER25> IRS is just a bunch of people who want to do their jobs as best they can. Congress is the entity responsible for not funding IRS. IIRC I saw some Congressional testimony from the head of IRS a few years ago effectively begging for more money, because every dollar spent on audits and enforcement returns ~$10 to the Treasury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a non-US citizen living in the US, I'll be one of the first to criticize the US tax code, particularly for the onerous provisions it places on non-US citizens and US citizens living overseas (the latter is an honour it shares with Eretria and maybe one other country)

It's also true that the US tax code makes it pretty easy fodr the rich to legally avoid taxes. A good example of this is the carried interest tax credit, staunchly defended by the senior Senator rom Wall STreet (Chuch Schumer, "Democrat"). Only when making a bid for the presidency did Clinton jump on the bandwagon of repealing it.

But I have to give the US some credit here. The US is really the only one who is pursuing tax evaders. A notable example of this is pursuing Swiss banks. If you read some of the details of what these banks did, it goes way beyond avoidance and was clearly criminal behaviour that includes vague language to avoid culpability in discovery of communications, hand delivering debit cards full of cash without names and so on [1].

Some people like to criticize the US government for going after corporations for foreign income (the US being an exception in this regard). But really what's happening is companies are (ab)using transfer (mis)pricing, which in many jurisdictions is illegal.

What really bothers me is it seems like this idea has set in amongst wealthy individuals that their supposed philanthropic efforts cover their debt to society and that they don't need to pay any taxes at all. This is rationalized in various ways. The government is wasteful (true; can we cancel the JSF already?). Private philanthropy is more effective than public welfare. Also true but the rich aren't being philanthropic to pay more taxes or even the same amount of tax.

Honestly I think much of this "philanthropy" is thinly veiled social exclusion (you're not rubbing elbows with the unwashed masses at a dinner that's $30,000 a plate) and bragging, essentially.

Taxes pay for public infrastructure. That infrastructure and the political stability its tied to is an essential element in wealth creation. Most of these wealthy people owe their wealth to the very country they now seek to short-change.

As much as people like the criticize the robber barons (etc) of the 19th century (and into the 20th). The Astors, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies and so on. These people had their failings for sure but they also contributed, not to mention the legacy they left behind (turning the US from an agrarian backwater to an industrial superpower in the span of a century).

There's so much wealth now that's simply inherited, providing next to no value to society.

People usually say you become more (politically) conservative as you get older. Honestly I think I'm becoming more socialist.

Here's an example: owners of apartments in NYC pay a disproportionate amount of property tax. Single family home dwellers pay a much lower rate as these are the bulk of the voters. It's not quite as bad as Prop 13 in CA but it's not far off.

At the other end of the spectrum we have these super-luxury condos where a $100m condo (of which there are now several) pay taxes as if they were worth $15m. This heralds from the days of Bloomberg who argued that you can improve NYC by attracting the billionaires [2].

But honestly what does undertaxing billionaires who come here a few days a year do for the city really?

Historically war and revolution have been the ultimate redistributors of wealth. There's a reason Caesar's descendants don't own half the world. I think we can all agree that we don't want that but the current trend towards hiding wealth offshores and the bankers as willing criminal accomplices has to eventually give. The roads, bridges, police forces, military and so on don't pay for themselves.

[1]: [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2acaa1cc-d6fd-11e4-97c3-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2acaa1cc-d6fd-11e4-97c3-00144feab7de.html)

[2]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of- foreign...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign- wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Only millions? That's not so bad!

> officials estimate that the government loses between $40 billion and $70 > billion a year in unpaid taxes on offshore holdings.

I wonder how much the government loses out on per year in evasion. Not legal avoidance (Apple, Google, Microsft, etc) but illegal evasion.

<comment><USER28> 1,000 times one million is a billion, is it not?

From the article:

        Mossack Fonseca also had at least 2,400
        United States-based clients over the past
        decade, and set up at least 2,800 companies
        on their behalf in the British Virgin Islands,
        Panama, the Seychelles and other jurisdictions
        that specialize in helping hide wealth.

Also:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opinion/the-panama- papers-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opinion/the-panama-papers- sprawling-web-of-corruption.html)

      > With more than 14,000 clients around the
        world and more than 214,000 offshore
        entities involved, Mossack Fonseca, the
        Panama-based law firm whose internal documents
        were exposed, piously insists it violated
        no laws or ethics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The part where Mrs. Powers is rambling about the coming Obamapocalypse where he will devalue the dollar and return to the gold standard is staggeringly idiotic.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why don't the "nominees" of these fake account just move the funds and disappear?

<comment><USER31> Because they like living in the United States.

That sounds really silly, but there are a number of cases of overseas tax cheats who get caught then have the opportunity to flee before the tax man gets them, but they admit their guilt and pay the fines. A lot of them simply don't want to flee the United States and go live somewhere else.

<comment><USER32> I think OP is referring to the employees of the law firm that are setting up these trusts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What's wrong in it when Govt does the same? [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the- untold...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold-story- behind-saudi-arabia-s-41-year-u-s-debt-secret) [http://paste.ubuntu.com/16869423/](http://paste.ubuntu.com/16869423/)

</comment><comment><USER34> The IRS and DOT should start scrutinizing the foreign shell companies buying up properties in major US cities (NYC, SF, LA...), which contribute to the pushing up the real estate price. Otherwise those shell companies would still be popular among international tax evaders of ultra riches while average citizens paying the prices such as high housing costs.

For some reason the quote "The chamber (of secrets) has been opened. Enemies of the heir ... beware" fro Harry Potter just came up to me.</comment>


Uber wants to cut costs by shifting its engineering to India - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/uber-is-struggling-due-to-covid19-now-it-wants-to-cut-costs-by-shifting-its-engineering-to-india/articleshow/76768028.cms <comment><USER2> A better option: shift it's engineering to _everywhere else in America_ , and go full-remote, but pay less.

Imagine if Uber told it's developers: we're cutting salaries by 40%- but you are now full-remote, and we want you to live somewhere less expensive than SV. Spread out across America!

A lot of folks would quit. But some would see the incredible opportunity. In that situation, I'd move somewhere like Chattanooga TN- average rent at around $1000/month, vs SF's $3000-5000. Food is cheaper too. And being a city, it's far less conservative than you'd think (well, okay, it _is_ TN).

They could cut their engineering costs dramatically while improving the overall lifestyle of their developers.

And given we're soon going to be in a post-pandemic world where tightly-packed open offices don't exist anymore, they'd probably just be ahead of the rest of us by a few months if they did it.

<comment><USER3> This is not as good as it sounds just because it works for you.

People don't love moving, and they usually move for better work opportunities, not to accomodate a pay cut at their current job. Moving to a lower cost of living area also means moving to an area with less opportunities, and not to mention moving away from your social circles and the life you have established somewhere.

The only way I can see this working if uber started hiring bew remote engineers in the US, but asking their current ones to move from SF so they can take a pay cut?

<comment><USER4> To add to this when I worked remotely for two years I was always worried that if I move to a low cost of living city and I lost my job I will be screwed. No one would hire me at the rate I was paid with the SF company.

<comment><USER5> This has happened to me. Ended up working for a very scary company because they were the only local option that came close to matching my bay area salary. Moved back to the Bay Area less than a year later.

Lesson learned, I won't be moving again without a relocation package

<comment><USER6> This has always been my big concern with leaving a major tech city ( even to go to the suburbs ). your opportunities shrink.

I'd be curious if this will change as more companies offer full-time remote.

<comment><USER7> Silicon Valley (mostly) is "the suburbs." Although there are more tech jobs in downtowns than there used to be, in a lot of areas most of the tech jobs are in suburbs/exurbs.

<comment><USER6> It's a bit different here on the East Coast. While there are plenty of options in the suburbs - the number within an individuals commuting radius drops.

<comment><USER7> There are a lot of pretty bad commutes in SV too.

I live (well) outside of Boston. About 20 years ago, there wasn't a single real tech employer in the city. That's changed primarily with Kendall and the Seaport. But there's still a huge amount in Metrowest and some in the northern suburbs going up to southern NH.

I've been lucky that through several jobs I've never had a really bad commute except into Boston for a time--but I didn't have to do it every day and there is a commuter rail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, some rampant generalization in this thread. What most people outside of India seem to fail to understand is that most of the experience they have had and stories they've heard of are based off of poorly paid, not very highly skilled engineers employed at body shop consultancies.

There is also another class of software engineers in India who are as good as SV engineers who work at companies like Ola, Bookmyshow, PayTM, Flipkart etc. building quality products at quite a large scale. This is the kind of engineer who is also hired by FAANG/Microsoft/Uber etc. And these engineers are paid very well in comparison to the body shop guys.

So when Uber says they might shift engineering to India, that doesn't automatically mean quality is going to shit.

<comment> anonms-coward Yup, Flipkart has one of the best mobile websites of any ecommerce app. Far better than the likes of Walmart and Target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who worked at Uber from 2014-2018, I'd like to weigh in with some observations based on my experience.

1). While Uber has been very Bay Area-heavy, it has had a distributed engineering team for many of its core operations for a very long time. For example, many of its core infrastructure was built in Europe. Cross-timezone collaboration hasn't been the smoothest, but of all the large "FANGish" tech companies, Uber actually has the most experience with non-HQ teams building business-critical systems. Even companies seen as very progressive in terms of eng culture, like Stripe, seem to keep the core business close to HQ (this is my subjective observation, and I'd love to proven wrong here, because I think Stripe, as a whole, is awesome).

2). India is a country with many people and many engineers. If there's one strong believe I can state in this post, it's that there are many incredibly talented engineers who are living in India and are choosing to stay there. Uber has experience in building engineering teams outside of HQ. It's not a sure thing, but I think they can do it.

Happy to answer any other questions or comments.

(I guess as a disclaimer, I have zero financial stake in Uber, but I have some friends who still work at Uber, so that may or may not influence my opinion)

<comment><USER10> > of all the large "FANGish" tech companies, Uber actually has the most > experience with non-HQ teams building business-critical systems.

Tangential, but the core product of AWS, EC2, was developed in South Africa and (largely) continues to be today.

<comment><USER11> Huh, I didn't know that.

Although I would argue that S3 is the core product

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The challenge with outsourcing is management overhead and turn around times. Biggest mistake I see my customers make is outsource and not control the quality of the engineers.

Inhouse they have a sophisticated and long recruiting process. When outsourcing they take the first they get (and as a new customer, be assured, you do not get the best engineers but you need to fight to get them).

<comment><USER13> > The challenge with outsourcing

This article is not talking about outsourcing but offshoring. Uber still has total control on the people, the project and rewarding the right behavior. It will just happen in India instead of the US.

<comment><USER12> Working for a very large tech company as a technical manager with lots of offshoring to India and outsourcing to East-Europe and the Middle-East it didn't feel there was a difference between how outsourcing and offshoring worked regarding engineer quality or turn around times.

But you are right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does the SV crowd here see this? Considering that even entry web devs with only bootcamp experience often enough make >$100,000, outsourcing to India is a good idea, economically speaking.

Could a successful outsourcing project by Uber threaten all SV tech jobs?

<comment><USER15> No. To get the same amount of quality in india you'll be paying roughly the same - and then have cultural and timezone barriers.

<comment><USER16> What about moving to Europe? Salaries in the UK, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands are much lower than in the US, and even lower in Central/Eastern Europe. While the timezone barrier is still there (although lower than India), the work culture is basically the same as in the United States (except with more work-life balance).

Actually, why not Canada? Salaries are again much lower than Silicon Valley, the timezone is the same, the language is the same (except in Quebec), and it would be great to stop Canadian software engineers from moving to the US in droves due to lack of opportunities at home.

<comment><USER17> The difference b/w salaries in EU/E.Asia and India are not that large for FAANG-like companies IMO. It's likely the case that Uber will allow its Indian employees to relocate back to India, in light of both Covid and the new visa restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this a dupe from a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23713291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23713291)

</comment><comment><USER19> Well this has worked great for Boeing, a once great American engineering company.

On the other hand India has an excellent education system and highly skilled engineers, and any capital flow away from the five big cities in the world that sinks the vast majority of it can only be a good thing.

<comment><USER20> > India has an excellent education system

Explain in which way is it excellent?

Which part do you think Indian education system does well relatively?

<comment><USER21> A significant portion of the current SV crowd on H1b, is a product of the indian education system.

<comment><USER20> > A significant portion of the current SV crowd on H1b, is a product of the > indian education system.

Could you be more elaborate?

I can see that statement meaning wildly different things on HN and it doesn't answer my question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Shift innovation to India?

Have they seen India's track record on tech innovation? The education system there does not produce very innovative people or engineers. However they are great at following exact instructions so I'm sure that part of engineering team will do well

<comment><USER23> They produce plenty of competent engineers, but my layman's interpretation is the problem of capital being concentrated in Silicon Valley, so there's little chance for tech entrepreneurs to flourish within India itself.

<comment><USER22> No doubt they produce many great engineers, my argument is that they are not necessarily innovative (having studied in the same system, I've seen it first hand)

<comment><USER24> Innovation is a result of many factors, keeps changing with time. The Japanese were the top innovators for many decades, not so much anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If I were Lyft I would fairly quickly start plastering "Build in America" everywhere. If it isn't true, I would make it true.

</comment><comment> anonms-coward I think we might see more instances of this happening, not less. The thing is SF salaries are very high compared to just anywhere else in the world. There are many reasons for that (high rent, high concentration of talent), but I doubt these justify paying 300k when Uber can pay 80k to an engineer in India. To people saying the difference in salary is not large, it absolutely is large, and they can check [https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Uber/Google](https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Uber/Google) for some data points. Not to mention this is just salary, cost of employment will include more things like real estate costs, health insurance, all of which will make this even bigger.

Also, India has good enough engineering talent that product quality shouldn't be an issue given good technical leadership. If companies can hire people straight out of bootcamps for entry level jobs, they can sure get better value by hiring someone having a very good CSE education at much lower cost. Even the vast majority of work at FAANGs doesn't require a Dave Cutler or Jeff Dean. For example, majority of engineers at Google are not working on Search, Colossus,BigTable,Spanner,Borg or the most important technologies. Most engineers just need to know how to use BigTable/Spanner, and that is much easier than designing them.

</comment><comment><USER26> India is well suited for building and supporting applications like this since it has an extremely good talent pool that can manage and deploy solutions. Uber app in itself is not that difficult to operate and hence I strongly believe this is the right thing for shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER27> First we move the factories to others countries and now we are moving the brains. If this extend, this will be the end of middle class in west society.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was a Uber driver for two years and year after year they keep saying they are struggling. I really don't get it. On a ride where passenger pays 20 bucks, they usually keep something like 8 dollars. How can it not be profitable? The computational and human resource necessary to make a ride happen can't be that high. Maybe they should fire their CTO and CFO.

<comment><USER29> It's the growth that costs money.

Operational costs have only recently become a concern, after becoming publicly traded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What big thing do they still have to develop in their core app? They don't to send self-driving etc to India.

</comment><comment><USER31> How is code quality control in India?

<comment><USER32> No, it's cheaper because of huge difference in cost of living.

$10,000/month may not go far in SV, but in parts of India, you can live like a king, literally, with servants and such.

Rent for a studio apartment in India will cost less than $200. I'm not kidding. But a similar space in SV can cost 10 times more of that.

<comment> anonms-coward I think you replied to the wrong comment.

<comment><USER31> No, it's the right one, I removed controversial sentence

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What a huge mistake in my opinion if that goes through. Everyone who worked with indian companies should keep an eye on what's going on. Far too much more damage can be done!

<comment> anonms-coward I think you are comparing it to the wrong scenario. Hiring for your own company(Uber in this case) is far different than outsourcing to an Indian company like Infosys and TCS. Microsoft already has a huge presence in India, and so does Amazon. I have interacted with engineers in FAANG in both India and the west coast, and there is no huge quality difference in people on the same job levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wouldn't it only be fair for us to be handing more jobs to those with greater need in countries like India? Share the wealth, right?

<comment><USER35> Fair to whom? The investors who are now taking on a greater project risk? The SV developers who would be losing out on jobs?</comment></comment>


GitHub's CSS Performance (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/jonrohan/githubs-css-performance

<comment><USER2> Nice post. With expanded use of css3 features (gradients, shadows etc...) this will probably become more of an issue, but I hadn't really considered the impact that compile to css languages are having.

With the dynamic nature of the DOM, it's going to be very difficult to automagically improve selectors (that x% unused figure only accounts for the current users actions, not potential actions)

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know the mechanics of what's involved with auditing and graphing CSS sizes with Graphite? What's instrumented and when is it logged?

</comment><comment><USER4> only the slides? audio or maybe a video available?

<comment><USER5> from the description: [http://vimeo.com/54990931](http://vimeo.com/54990931)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have to click a button for a single line of text? No thanks.</comment>


The size of Africa, in perspective (photo) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/HistoryInPix/status/449647418544762880/photo/1 <comment><USER2> oldie but goodie. For those who are new to map-making, the reason Africa does not look nearly as big as it really is (and why Greenland looks so big) is because of something called "map projections", i.e. the choices that were made as to the formula for projecting a spherical earth onto a flat piece of paper. The most popular projection in use "mercator" favored an accurate representation of western europe and distorted other regions, the smaller size of Africa being one casualty. Here is more reading for those who are interested: [http://www.petersmap.com/page3.html](http://www.petersmap.com/page3.html)</comment>