YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/can-high-profile-bay-area-tech-incubators-basic-income-plan-work/ <comment><USER3> Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of?

If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and his family by learning some vocational skills.

Choosing Oakland in particular has interesting connotations, considering that it is a major industrial center where there may be lots of opportunity for skilled workers.

Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal.

Of course, there are still a great many people who truly could take advantage of the basic income experiment because their other options are severely limited for whatever reason.

<comment><USER4> There are already lots of great free (or very cheap) ways to educate yourself but all of them require time and energy. If you spend most of your time and energy working an awful job just to survive you can't take advantage of these opportunities.

Take away the need to invest time and energy into basic survival and you can suddenly take advantage of a lot of cool things that were previously not accessible to you.

<comment><USER5> even ignoring the grind that is an awful job: Community College is cheap and has all sorts of vocational training... if you can take Monday Wednesday Friday off between 9:30 and 10:15 then again between 1:00 and 1:45.

The intersection of Jobs-That-Can-Work-With-That-Schedule and Jobs-That-Can- Pay-Enough-For-CC-AND-Food-AND-Shelter is tiny and flooded with existing students.

<comment><USER6> There are people out there that wouldn't be able to cope with that. If you're on low income and have a family to support and, equally as important, nurture, then you are gonna struggle to find time, money and energy for community college.

With the strains of poverty, health issues increase. Sometimes this could lead to involvement via social services. At this point, education is a pipe dream.

I've been there. Still am there. I could spend the evening reading educational books. Sometimes I do but always at the expense of what needs to be done. Always st the expense of the little family time I have (I see my kids perhaps one hour tops weekdays - that is a luxury compared to what I used to have).

This is with a system where the state, currently begrudgingly, helps me out a great deal. I whince thinking about countries where the social security net isn't as helpful.

It requires a lot of optimism to keep yourself a float in a situation like this. College, through my eyes, is a wonderful idea that is a bit too on the optimistic side at the moment, even for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One year is too limited in my opinion. If you want to see what people will do with basic income, you have to give them the feeling the money is near infinite. One year looks to me its not enough to drop everything, as you will know it will soon come to an end. The paychological barrier for me would be at least 5+ years.

Then again if I know it will come to an end in xx years, I will feel more inclined to work harder. It's like a deadline.

<comment><USER8> See [http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic- income](http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income): this one- year study is just a pilot, it works as a preparation for a longer-term one.

<comment><USER9> What if they don't tell the people when the income is going to stop coming in?

<comment><USER10> Doesn't seems all that ethical thing to do even though it would give a better picture of how it would work.

<comment><USER11> They've said they're working with an external IRB. Not telling them would be a _massive_ issue for informed consent, and at least if I was sitting on said IRB would generate a pretty firm "Um...no."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can I make a suggestion?

I have several acquaintances who work in the trades (carpentry, house framing, fence building, concrete driveways/sidewalks/porches building, window/door installers, painters, etc.).

Buying and rehabbing real estate over the past several years, I've met a lot of these folks.

Most of their ability to earn a living wage has been decimated by unchecked immigration.

So I suggest we start there -- give all the tradespeople in our area, who were born here and have now seen their livelihoods decimated -- a living wage.

That way, we can tell them "yes we've fully endorsed unchecked migration, and your jobs are gone, but here -- have this living wage."

 _What a nice gesture on the part of we the elite!_

<comment><USER13> Its not the immigration its the illegal pay and lack of benefits that they are given. The construction industry is based on underpaying migrants. If you have been rehabing homes then you certainly took advantage of this too.

Look in the mirror.

<comment><USER12> Actually, I cannot possibly 'take advantage' of illegal labor -- maybe the people who I hire to do the work do that.

If you're rehabbing properties in this area (Silicon Valley) you cannot give work to people unless they have a Contractor's license, which you can verify here:

[http://www.cslb.ca.gov/](http://www.cslb.ca.gov/)

There are many reasons for _only_ hiring licensed contractors:

1) your homeowners or commercial insurance will not be able to 'weasel out' of covering a loss if the contractor has an in-effect license (who got injured or who caused injury or any type of loss, really)

2) you can check their fixed address so that if you need to serve them (for small claims, or a lawsuit, etc.) -- you know you can find them

3) no language barrier, so it's possible to 100% eliminate any possible misunderstanding of the outcome that the hired work needs to achieve

In 2005 a buddy of mine hired a presumptive illegal from the Home Depot parking lot. I alerted my friend "not sure if you've seen this yet, but the guy is using a hand saw to cut and hang your sheetrock"

Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw

Mein gott.

<comment><USER14> How do you think sheetrock is supposed to be cut?

You score it with a knife and snap it for long straight cuts.

You use a hand saw for complicated or non-straight cuts. Or you might use a small rotary power tool but it really doesn't make any difference.

<comment><USER12> ?? How do I think sheetrock is supposed to be cut? Did you _really_ intend to ask that?

You ask me that after I said:

"Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw"

I think the point you missed was "he's insinuating using a hand saw is not the correct way, that's why he said Anyone dumb enough to hire an illegal probably deserves a guy who cuts and hangs sheetrock with a hand saw"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really want to know how the conversation went with the folks in the control group.

"Hey, we're doing a study where we give money to a bunch of people... Not you, though."

Ha!

<comment><USER16> The control group could be blinded (they're unaware what is being studied).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would individuals be restricted from using any government social welfare programs during this period? Many advocates propose funding basic income by disbanding current safety nets.

If recipients are living in public housing, collecting food stamps, accepting federal student loans, or any other form of indirect government aid, then it skews the results.

<comment><USER18> It might skew it, but YC is probably trying to answer a more fundamental question. If people are provided a minimum lifestyle what will they do? I don't think anyone really knows if it will be a golden age of entrepreneurs and self improvement. Or if people will just sit on the couch, have kids till they can't afford them, become addicted to drugs.

<comment><USER19> The former. The latter is a racist caricature of welfare.

<comment><USER20> Lets interpret the claim charitably - people on welfare have reduced work effort, increased fertility, and increased drug consumption. Do you assert that any of those claims are false?

<comment><USER19> The assertion is that none of those are inherent qualities of a group. Reduced work effort is a chicken egg issue. Of course people on welfare are going to have reduced "work effort" \-- joblessness is probably what made you have to get it in the first place.

Same with drug consumption. I would question any "higher drug use" measure as selection bias -- investment bankers aren't generally being drug tested are they? That doesn't mean the overwhelming majority are not eager to earn a productive living.

I think it would be great to drug test for it (but damn expensive and not very libertarian). I bet you'd see a lot of well off people not opting for the free income because they "don't need it" whereas they'd line up for it without a drug test.

<comment><USER20> A further claim is that increasing welfare reduces work effort. Is this disputed?

I don't know why we are discussing drug tests for welfare, but simple arithmetic provides a very low bar for them to be cost effective. Google suggests a drug test costs $10-30. If welfare costs $15,000/year, then you only need to have a 0.2% positive rate for it to be worth it.

Do you think folks on welfare do drugs at a rate lower than 0.2%?

<comment><USER21> > you only need to have a 0.2% positive rate for it to be worth it.

What do you mean 'worth it'? Do you think that the benefits to society of giving someone $15k/yr in welfare are $0?

If so, why not argue for just abolishing social welfare programs altogether-- you can even save yourself the cost of all those drug tests!

If not, why do you think society should forgo those benefits because the recipient failed a drug test?

<comment><USER22> I think it was more of a "follow the money" kind of argument. Governments want to collect as much and pay out as little.

One way to pay out less is to create a barrier such as drug testing. according to the math, drug testing is "worth it" to that end. Its also fairly politically acceptable compared other more extreme examples such as lowering the welfare amount, random denials or killing poor people.

Naturally, I'm not in favor of any of those options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "I think that there's a culture at YC that just making money isn't that interesting."

That's a tad disingenuous. I'm sure "anymore" might clarify it, but it's easy to say when you are rich.

<comment><USER24> well fwiw, I'm a staff member, wouldn't consider myself rich, and that culture is what keeps me wanting to work there--I'd be pretty bored if it was more like a traditional VC firm.

<comment><USER23> Fair enough. Apologies if that felt disrespectful.

It just seemed silly language to me, especially in light of the program focusing on how money can alleviate the majority of poverty's struggles.

<comment><USER25> I think it enhances the message of the BI experiment. The folks at YC have enough money to allow pursuit of their interests. Another poster quoted a study indicating there are 50 million people below the poverty line in America. If bills were not a concern, how could those people impact society by following their interests in entrepreneurship, science, literature, art, etc?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> YC blog post here [http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic- income](http://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income)

</comment><comment><USER27> Imho any basic income program must be universal. It won't survive if it is seen as handouts to the poor. This both stigmatizes those who receive it and opens the program to abuse. Everyone should receive the income, rich and poor. That ensure that those in power (the rich) take ownership of the program and protect it.

Nor should the income be withdrawn as a form of punishment. If we start picking and choosing then the incentive is always to cut away the least powerful, disenfranchised criminals being the least powerful of all.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand how the math on basic income is supposed to work. If we gave this amount of money to every person in the US it would cost $7.2 Trillion dollars, roughly double the entire US federal budget. How is this supposed to work? Do only certain people qualify for basic income?

<comment><USER29> I've found that doing the math absolutely doesn't factor into this. That's where it falls apart--it's not the most efficient if you're giving money to people only to have to reclaim it from 90% of them. It's a fun thought experiment but at a national scale the math really falls apart because there isn't an external source of funding to grab money from.

<comment><USER30> Did you know that the US has Social Security and Medicaid and taxes already, taking money and paying money?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure I get the logic of doing this in one of the most expensive areas to live in the US.

<comment><USER32> Wouldn't the argument be that people trying to get by there would be among those most likely to be forced to make poor long-term decisions due to short- term cash crunches?

If rent's high, you have less flexibility to make lifestyle changes since you need to work more hours / jobs just to pay rent (making it hard to take classes), invest in things which will save money over the long term, or do things like move closer to work/school to save time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I hate to be critical because I love the core idea, and YCRs wonderful corporate generosity. However, this is path dependency in action, in all it's anti-intellectual glory. The only value that will be extracted here is the publicity/marketing value. If they can somehow leverage that into some kind of state or federal government supported largesse, I will happily stand corrected.

But in the absence of that, as scientific experiments go, and dressing it up as such is a waste of money. I'm sure enough people have told them that by now. YCR says it's for figuring out the logistics, which implies some kind of future action. The only problem is if they wanted to do this correctly, this isn't going to be very useful way of figuring out the logistics for eg. people who speak Swahili. See my comment here for more info on why: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11812563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11812563)

I would love to be wrong but I doubt it. The study will no doubt make for interesting reading - if it's published.

<comment><USER34> The financial side of the project is definitely...interesting. Another poster pointed out that tax-funded UBI would work like a redistribution of wealth. Almost any other way - funded by Angel/VC donations, Kickstarter, using another tax pool (having Congress pay for it), taking loans or increasing the US Federal debt, or even by pillaging other countries - would still just be a redistribution of wealth.

There is one other way - Expansion of the overall money supply. But this is well-known to result in nearly equivalent inflation. Humans somehow want a certain percentage of all money - not just an arbitrary amount. This percentage may be extremely small for some - 0.0000001% of all money, or less - but when the total number of dollars increases, each person wants an equivalent percentage increase in the total number of dollars they get. This may be Bitcoin or ISK or priceless paintings instead of dollars, or whichever currency of the day.

Has there been a UBI monetary-policy model produced that doesn't invoke large inflation or heavy wealth redistribution?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most places won't let you rent without making 2.5 times the rent. So for 2k that's $800. In Oakland that gets you an SRO, a single room, or you can live in a box truck.

[https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/eby/apa?query=oakland&ma...](https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/eby/apa?query=oakland&max_price=800)

<comment><USER35> Yeah I thought that too somehow...they say "$1-$2K" and I'm like...is that really a basic income wage?

<comment><USER35> Though in retrospect that's for one person, maybe they could rent a room? I assume if a family is on this they each get the $1K? kids too? unclear...

overall the experiment is "slightly different" than giving the poor yearly tax refunds (ex: it gives money to the rich and the poor) so...maybe useful :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Great idea. I hope it works. Even if it doesn't work, if it provides experimental data, that will be valuable.

One line I didn't like from the article:

 _It's obviously difficult to lift people out of poverty. According to the White House, as of 2012 (decades after President Lyndon Johnson 's "War on Poverty"), approximately 15 percent of Americans (or 49.7 million people, including 13.4 million children) live below the poverty line. Worse still, "only about half of low-income Americans make it out of the lowest income distribution quintile over a 20-year period." (As the old saying goes: "It's expensive to be poor.")_

I think this can be very misleading. Is the poverty line a good definition? And if everyone's standard of living rises over 20 years, is it an issue to be in the bottom quintile? I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that it's very shabby statistics. (Maybe I just shouldn't read articles like this)

</comment><comment><USER37> I tried really hard to find papers by Elizabeth Rhodes on basic income but I could not.

I was just wondering if she did lot of research on the topic that made her the most suitable candidate for the job.

</comment><comment><USER38> One aspect that I've not heard discussed is the likelihood that a portion of those being granted a basic income will be exploited for their new-found cash. Has this been considered at YC and if so, what are their approaches to minimizing it?

<comment><USER39> This is why I wish the sample size was bigger, closer to that magic 2000 person populace that gives a relatively random cross section. I just don't think they're going to get the value they need out of this limited experiment. 2000*24000 = 48million... I'm sure they have that kind of scratch laying around.

<comment><USER35> Yes, but to truly understand the implications wouldn't it have to be like...the size of a whole country?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm concerned about bias in this in form of the Hawthorne effect for one group and something akin to Learned Helplessness (or self-fulfilling prophecy) for the other.

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

The Hawthorne effect can apply if they tell the group receiving the money about the expected benefits of basic income. They know the spotlight is on them. They're also getting special treatment. They might work more and do better in this situation than if basic income was the norm similar to how welfare is the norm but doesn't get people out of poverty. Whereas, it's the opposite if the control group is told about the scheme: people in an economic rut with likely negative outlook that just got slighted on basic income and will be watched to see if they will fail. They'll likely fail either by default or barely trying although some might be motivated to work harder to stick it to observers.

If Y Combinator is reading this, I suggest countering it with careful presentation to each party. Especially to the control group. Tell them they're simply being observed as part of a study on poverty in Oakland and where people end up over time. Absolutely no talk of basic income or another group.

For benefiting group, countering Hawthorne effect is less my expertise. Old trick of making both groups feel like they're getting special treatment or advantage can't apply here. Perhaps water down the effect by describing it as one of a series of experiments... with descriptions of various approaches... to help lift people out of poverty along with theory of each. Mention positive, neutral, and negative outcomes that are common on existing welfare. Mention the potential the new approach offers. Mention that they're selected to try it for a year with the results entirely on them but observed to inform future studies. Effect is still there but with a balanced presentation instead of overly-positive or specific push from researchers presenting it. Information overload might even drown out Hawthorne effect to make them focus on whatever is last thing said.

The control group I'm pretty sure on but other possibilities are speculation. Consider how to handle benefit group carefully. Regardless of methodology, I'm glad to see YC doing it as it might help some people regardless.

<comment><USER22> too late now but in future ones maybe they could do 3 groups and pay 2 groups in various amounts. One group gets the "full amount", another a "half amount" , the third nothing. Tell the first two groups they're getting the Full amount. see if there is a difference in responses.

<comment><USER40> That's an interesting expansion on it. Would be especially interesting to see difference between full and half.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm confused. Isn't this already being done various places around the world already? (e.g. Alaska, Puerto Rico) Why not study people in those places? Better yet, nearly everybody in those places is getting the benefit, so the experiment isn't poisoned by the culture (you're the only one in your neighborhood getting a benefit - others treat you differently)

<comment><USER35> They kind of dismiss "other places that do this" by saying they want to see how it'd work in the US

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic- income](https://blog.ycombinator.com/basic-income)

I had a similar initial question, since I heard once that Germans (?) already have a basic income system in place, though possibly only for the poor ($500/month plus housing or something like that). Though I suppose "that's Germans, not us" or what not.

<comment><USER41> Huh. Last time I looked, Alaska was part of the US.

<comment><USER42> So is puerto rico

<comment><USER41> In a sense

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I hope they will be taking the Hawthorne effect into account here.

I am fundamentally a proponent of UBI but the last thing we want are experiments in pseudo environments.

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

<comment><USER44> This is a huge issue that is very hard to solve at this point. The obvious solution, not telling people about the experiment, is out. It reinforces the skeptics who think of this as a way for YC to brand itself more philanthropically, because from a research perspective it's just expensive, grandiose hogwash.

Edit to say that I too support UBI, and actually helped pass a resolution at my Congressional District's Democratic Party convention in favor of UBI.

<comment><USER43> Yes.

Sounds like we have the same concern despite our support.

The last thing I want is useless data. The hawthorne effect is actually at play in many other situations and is generally an underestimated issue with qualitative research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is this a minimum so that the 2k number is whatever the net would be, so that people who currently have jobs would have their income supplemented?

I was very interested in Even as a company designed to approach challenges like these. I can't imagine how difficult it is to take on a study like this, I'm rooting for them to be successful and hope they share the resulting data. It should always be close to our thoughts - lack of a living wage causing long commutes from soon-to-be gentrified neighborhoods, all in the shadow of Chomsky's Responsibility of Intellectuals.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm very interested to see the overall outcome of this research. While the intentions are good, my initial expectations of this are not very high. I look forward to be proven wrong.

</comment><comment><USER47> > "Overall the idea is to take money we make from YC [and], rather than all of > the partners cashing out... putting it into research," Krisiloff told Ars. > "I think that there's a culture at YC that just making money isn't that > interesting."

I do understand the intended meaning of that sentence, and clearly it's more than admirable that these people are putting their money where their mouth is, but I really wish SV people would stop talking this way as it's tone deaf and counterproductive.

Several billion for them and a million and a half for a few people in Oakland implies that they do still find money somewhat interesting.

<comment><USER48> This experimenting may give them insight into what life and how behaviours present themselves when people are being supported, and then give them a heads-up knowing where people are then willing to spend their cash - <USER2> necessities as well as extra spending money (if they are given it).

That's invaluable data and if they can use profits from their ecosystem to support a growing community/ecosystem that supports this, and then discover or create increasing productivity within that community then the model could replicate and be adopted by wider regions.

In reality it does mean giving away a % of earnings to the masses - like a tax, however if that % is less than what people pay on average currently in taxes to government, and the productivity level is higher - then it should naturally compete and takeover (save status quo systems trying to block and cause friction).

<comment><USER49> >In reality it does mean giving away a % of earnings

Not necessarily. Part of the reason for this research is figuring what to do if the robots replace us for the most part. In that situation wages would likely be low and a lot of the value would move to the market cap of the leading tech stocks that controlled things. The government could tax that, as cgt or wealth tax or similar, rather than wages.

<comment><USER48> Right, thanks for clarifying - I had meant earnings of a company as well (or any task that gets done and has a 'profit' associated); perhaps earnings wasn't an appropriate word to for me to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It might take more than a year... And is this more than the dole? Basic income for me is 100k a year.. So that means starting a startup.

<comment><USER35> I guess the question they're trying to answer is "will poor people use this as a means to step up" because...for somebody already making 100K/yr I'm not sure how much effect the extra $12 or $15K is going to have, honestly. I mean nicer vacations? a slightly better house? The only real interesting data point to me is for the poor people, does it allow them to "step up". It might, today's US dole just provides at most food and shelter, so perhaps they'll use the money to ... get some education. Of course, if that were the case wouldn't they already be using their yearly "tax refund" to go and get education? Most people don't seem particularly adept at that for some reason...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think this is to be welcomed but I would also be interested if YC published a study on the tax arrangements used by its companies. Inequality is heavily linked to reduced government big budgets caused the culture and abuse of offshore trusts, the double Irish etc etc. Minimum income is important for the future but governments have to be actually able to collect the revenue in the first place...

<comment><USER52> Do you believe that there are any illegal tax arragements used by YC's companies? Because I have to say that if there is not, the problem is on the governments side - not theirs, and trying to have the business side of things solve that kind of problem seems really strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Control group or not. If YC wanted a scientific experiment, then they should have conducted it in silence.

<comment><USER54> Why?

<comment><USER35> To avoid the Hawthorne effect.

<comment><USER54> Operating in silence would not avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why not just have a YC charity?

<comment><USER56> Good question. I believe the thinking behind the UBI experiment is that YC wants to specifically do an experiment. Not start a charity. Maybe down the line YC would consider starting a charity but I don't think that's in their gameplan. This is specifically to answer a very explicit question. Charities don't normally do that sort of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> YC's attempt at delaying the coming proletariat uprising.

</comment><comment><USER58> Can you live off of 2k in San Fran?

<comment><USER5> Oakland, and: probably not very well. but you can still work, you can stop spending every day stressed about how your entry level retail job isn't giving you enough hours, or you can afford to set two or three days of the week as "unavailable and take some classes. You can stop worrying that taking the day off to interview for a job will be the difference between making rent that month.

Although for reference 2k a month before taxes is the equivalent of a $12/hr 40hr/wk job. I don't live in Oakland but here in Albuquerque thats considered a pretty good job.

<comment><USER58> yeah or you could be smart and take that money and the time it gives you to either learn a skill that will make live a ton more comfortable and or start a business that makes you and employees money.

I am very happy living here in Maryland as cost of living is inexpensive and govt. IT jobs are plentiful and the pay is good.

<comment><USER5> That would be the take some classes option, yes, and in many places even 1k a month before taxes would be enough to say "fuck work" entirely and focus on learning. I suspect 2k in Oakland is only enough to say "fuck full-time work".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> They'll do nothing and buy drugs and alcohol.

People have been doing that with free money since forever. You can't package the free money in a different way and expect different results.

<comment><USER60> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11976433) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I liked it better when Y Combinator was giving this kind of money[1] out to founders who could use it to build a business. Old text: "In 2005, Y Combinator developed a new model of startup funding. Twice a year we invest a small amount of money (average $18k) in a large number of startups (currently 82)" I note that $2k/month for 12 months is $24k, so that's more than their old investment size.

Meanwhile, now, it's calling its investments of $120K a "small amount of money"[2], while calling this kind of money ($24K for a year) a basic "income" and not actually treating it as an investment. This bothers me.

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/20120614131411/http://ycombinator...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120614131411/http://ycombinator.com/)

[2] [http://www.ycombinator.com/](http://www.ycombinator.com/)

<comment><USER62> Agreed. I'm a broke developer who would love nothing more than a small living stipend to work on my own projects and contribute to open source. If I had just enough to get by and be able to code all day I would be so happy.

<comment><USER63> So basically you are one who would benefit from a basic income. Why is a "living stipend to work on [your] own projects" better than a basic income which too would allow you to work on your own projects?

<comment><USER61> I hope with a little thought, you can come to see the difference between formally investing in a startup which is trying to get off the ground, and handing someone an income no questions asked...

To put it in simple terms, you get what you pay for. If you invest in someone's startups, they'll deliver a startup (or fail); if you invest in someone's lifestyle, they'll deliver a lifestyle (or fail).

It's what makes a broke college student asking their parents for some money different from a homeless person who has just spent the money he had left on alcohol, asking for some money.

I am probably running a high risk of being misinterpreted. When a programmer becomes homeless and needs money, then that money is different from when someone who got out of prison for beating someone up has no money.

basic income makes it sound like the latter; whereas building a business is a lot more like the former.

you can disagree, but please do so eloquently.

<comment><USER63> > To put it in simple terms, you get what you pay for. If you invest in > someone's startups, they'll deliver a startup (or fail); if you invest in > someone's lifestyle, they'll deliver a lifestyle (or fail).

Whether this is true or not is exactly what needs to be figured out. So far, this is just a prejudice.

> When a programmer becomes homeless and needs money, then that money is > different from when someone who got out of prison for beating someone up has > no money.

And if that person just out of prison was a programmer? Would that change something? What exactly makes a programmer better than anyone who served his time and deserves a chance?

> I hope with a little thought [...] you can disagree, but please do so > eloquently

Sorry, neither thinking nor eloquence are my forte. But I did indeed work with homeless people and ex-convicts. Try it and you might see they are people too.

<comment><USER61> one of the great business discoveries of the past few hundred years is that people respond to incentives. I won't respond to the rest of your comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is the stupidest idea ever, for a lot of reasons that anyone can find in a basic class or a few web searches on economics.

Why did this get voted on in the netherlands? Why is this being tried in America? This is dumber than communism.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'd like to know if the people responsible for promoting this idea will be punished for the lives that are going to be inevitably destroyed?

The last time we did something this stupid with predictable chaotic results required a corrupt president and retired general. So apparently it has gotten easier since then, to convince people that the shit they're eating is ice cream.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'd bet money that most of the people will spend their free dollars on drugs and alcohol.

<comment><USER64> I'd take your bet. There are studies showing otherwise.

"This study documented large, positive, and sustainable impacts across a wide range of outcomes including assets, earnings, food security, mental health, and domestic violence. It found no evidence of impacts on alcohol or tobacco use, crime, or inflation." [1]

But that was in Kenya so maybe it would be different somewhere else?

[1] [https://www.givedirectly.org/research-at-give- directly](https://www.givedirectly.org/research-at-give-directly)

<comment><USER59> I concede, under different economic conditions a program like this might be very successful, but in America it will attract lazy people like flies to shit.

<comment><USER60> You've already posted many uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. That's not what this site is for, so please don't do that. Instead, please read the site guidelines and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

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

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

<comment><USER59> I did read them before making any posts. I apologize and I'll try to ensure my comments have substance.

I dont recall ever being 'uncivil'. My problem is usually being too kind, in fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> "If you're low on income and have a family to support" then you made poor life choices and natural selection comes into play.

Like it or not it is a force of nature.

<comment><USER6> Right, because you know my life well enough to make that kind of judgement.

It's a nice, clever cop out but ultimately a cop out. Bicyclist gets hit by a car. Loses his legs. Did he make poor life choices? I wouldn't say so. Say that same bicyclist has built a career as a great door to door sales man. Now he's on hard times. Did he still make poor life choices? Should we, then, all avoid bicycles and work in door to door sales, even if those two things happen to be things people enjoy and, on the whole, beneficial?

You can think of an unlimited number of scenarios where someone has fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. In fact, the most callous and unhelpful thing to say is "you made poor life choices bro" like you even know what you're taking about.

<comment><USER59> Are you kidding? Riding a bicycle in the street is the very definition of a poor life choice.

Haha I got downvoted, probably by people who ride bikes.

Hey I love bikes, bikes need their own lane. When I grew up the government told me I could not ride my bike on the sidewalk anymore, so I stopped riding bikes. People who ride bikes in the street get hit by cars all the time. You accept the risks of the activities you participate in. Don't whine about how unfair it is. If you aren't willing to accept those risks then you should not engage in risky behavior.

<comment><USER65> You don't need to ride a bike to get crippled by a car accident. You can choke on a piece of food while eating dinner. You can fall in the shower awkwardly and get paralyzed.

<comment><USER11> You can get any one of a number of infections.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Yarn – Better Twitter Threads on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1279802070?pt=14149&ct=hn&mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Yarn for iOS is a simple utility app that combines Tweets into a unified thread, making it easier to follow "tweetstorms" that end up in your Twitter timeline.

I made Yarn because I found it really difficult to follow threads on Twitter, particularly ones that were partially retweeted into my timeline.

You can select a Tweet from within your favourite Twitter app, or browser, and use the iOS share sheet to open it in Yarn, which will then stitch the thread back together in the correct sequence.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, I'd love to hear them! :)

Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Recovering applications? - <AUTHOR>

My HD just crashed.  Not too worried about the files courtesy of Dropbox, however, the applications that I downloaded I obviously have to download again.<p>I remember seeing a site out there that let you bookmark all the different apps you have and with one click start downloading all of them.  Anyone know of the company or url? <comment><USER2> <http://ninite.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> AWESOME! Thank you!</comment></comment>


NumPy 1.19: Support for Python 2 removed - <AUTHOR> https://numpy.org/devdocs/release/1.19.0-notes.html <comment><USER4> What I don't understand is that python2 and python3 are still advertised as the same language. For Python's developers, this is arguably the case - <USER2> on Python2 source code, they made some changes and just published a new version which they called 3.

For some short-lived buzzword tech start-up, this does not matter - <USER3> overwhelming likelihood, start-ups from 2008, when python3 was released, will be bust by now. Also, most web code which was written in 2008 will be rewritten by now.

For the big internet companies, this also does not matter: They have the manpower to just rewrite their code. Likely, the second version is even a bit better.

On the other hand, for research institutions and companies which use complex, long-running enterprise applications - that type of companies that run COBOL, too - the situation is entirely different. A python program for Python2 will not run on Python3. A Python3 program will not run on Python2. The code needs to be rewritten and tested again, and in many cases the people who wrote it originally, and all their implicit knowledge of their domain, are not around any more. Perhaps most affected are scientific organizations which use a lot of code in long-running projects. For these users, Python2 and Python3 are, for all intents and purposes, different languages.</comment>


How Much I Money Made From Side Projects In 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pseudocoder.com/archives/2009/01/04/how-much-money-i-made-from-side-projects-in-2008/

<comment><USER2> Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and eventually, maybe one of those projects will take off and start generating a decent amount of profit.

A few years ago when I was a consultant, in my free time I worked on my World of Warcraft guild's website and after a year and a half, I realized it was better than the vast majority of other guild sites out there (imo), and thought, maybe I could charge for this if i made it a service. So I spent 6 months rewriting my own guild's site to make it "general purpose" allowing other guilds to create websites.

The thought was, "maybe I can score a few extra bucks on the side." I launched in May of '06 and was profitable immediately, and by January '07, business was so good that I dropped consulting altogether to focus on the guild hosting site.

So keep plugging away. I probably had 5 or 6 projects (Frozen Custard Stand CMS system anyone?) that I worked on "on the side" before this one actually turned into a profitable venture.

<comment><USER3> Wow. May I ask, how profitable was the WoW meta-guild site?

<comment><USER2> I don't remember how profitable 2006 was (since the income was combined with consulting at the end for taxes), but for 2007 and 2008, it was something like $90k revenue each year. 2008 was on a course for a bigger year (March did $14k) and then it seemed all WoW interest dropped considerably after July (if you look at the alexa ratings for the main guild hosting services, they all took the same dive). It's nothing massive or anything, but it's a reasonable living for providing gaming service to folks who are pretty much just like me :)

<comment><USER4> July 2008 is right about the time Age of Conan launched. I wonder if that's really what caused the drop?

<comment><USER5> Which immediately makes me wonder how easy it would be to scale chops' site to service other MMOs. If you could get it to the point where you can release a fully-featured guild website on the launch day of each new MMO you might just be on to something :)

<comment><USER2> I should have specified that it is actually multiplatform. The site currently natively supports about 15 MMO games, and has an interface for customizing and specifying your own game parameters (level cap, tradeskills, classes, races, etc).

WoW is just the biggest player by far. Currently I host approximately 88% WoW guilds. The other "bigger players" are EQ, EQ2, Warhammer, AOC, FFXI, and LOTRO, with Warhammer being the biggest non-WoW game at 2%.

WoW just has so many more players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The great thing about side projects is that they only get better -- your code stays written, your marketing snowball gets better, age and inlinks bring your rankings higher, etc. (If your business plan does not have these features, for example if you are planning to sell iPhone applications which have a shelf- life of cut apples which have been soaked in agar[1], you may wish to reconsider.)

2006: $1k of bingo cards

2007: $10k of bingo cards

2008: $21k of bingo cards

2009: ...

[1] Don't try this at home, kiddos.

<comment><USER7> $21k in bingo? kudos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We developed SourceGuardian.com as a side project from my main company (Inovica.com) as we had a need for PHP encryption and were not prepared to pay the thousands of dollars that one company was charging at the time. We developed it for our own sites and then packaged it up to sell it to others. We had some teething problems with the earlier versions, but we're still here a number of years later. It's still a side project (and we have a few of them!!) but it brings in revenues of around $70,000+ a year. There is a team of three people though that worked on this side project and which share on this.

We also run:

www.europeantenders.com - Around $20,000 a year

www.ukscrap.com. This did amazingly well when scrap values were high (we were doing around $2000 a day) but they have become quite low at the moment so its only just covering its costs.

Hope the above helps. Happy to provide more info or help to anyone who wants it

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks so much for posting this. Very cool.

RSS Talker is sweet. Matt, if you're reading this, and if you don't mind, here are a couple critiques:

The title of this page should really be the info in that bubble: "Track Amazon Price Changes With an RSS Feed". This should be the biggest, boldest font on the page.

I don't think the average web user is very familiar with the terms ASIN and ISBN. It could be as simple as "Enter your email to track a specific product on Amazon." The How It Works section can explain more.

Can you make it just an email service for people without RSS feeds?

This site has a ton of potential. It's a shame that Amazon's commission rate is so low. It would be awesome to open it up to any web retailer that is signed up through a service like Commission Junction. Some of them offer 15% commission. I'm sure you've thought through all of this.

Good luck!

<comment><USER10> I use a similar site right now: <http://camelcamelcamel.com/>

I think their interface is a bit cleaner than RSSTalker and probably more developed right now.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I have put quite a lot of work into it since January 2008. The site has been very profitable since launching in April! Here's hoping that continues in 2009...

Suggestions, feature requests, and bug reports are all welcome =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ask HN: What's better: Having multiple side projects; or devoting all time to one single app? Which has better chance of bringing in more revenues?

<comment><USER13> I'm a fan of the "throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks" approach. Build lots of different things until one starts to get traction, and when one does, focus your attention on that.

<comment><USER14> That's good for well sized projects for the time frame that you're willing to commit to.

However, from my experience in the past, I actually tried that on a number of BIG projects - knowing only a couple of things:

1\. The ideas were big - thinking about 50k LOC at minimum.

2\. I had too much ego to let them go

Bad, bad mistake. Bad rs.

I scaled back to just working on 1 big project, and maybe toying with 2-3 smaller projects, and it has worked out better.

But the essence of your advice is right - work on a number of projects, and focus on one that works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I seriously don't see the point of advertising how much money I'm making off a given site. If someone else knows that putting together a site like RSSTalker will eventually bring in thousands of dollars annually with a minimum amount of maintenance, doesn't that increase the chance that my site is going to get cloned by someone else?

If I were to visit RSSTalker and not know whether or not the site was profitable, I would be less likely to take the time to consider cloning the site.

<comment><USER16> Honestly the reason I wrote the post wasn't to advertise the sites or brag about the money (which isn't all that much to brag about anyway).

I originally started the blog with the goal of focusing on these type of side projects, whether they are mine or not. Check out the original mission statement: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070224000551/www.pseudocoder.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070224000551/www.pseudocoder.com/about)

I'd since gotten away from that, but it's something that still interests me. I posted this because I wanted to be transparent with my sites and hoped it would inspire others to do the same.

As for people copying the sites...go nuts. Enjoy the long nights and dashed dreams...I know I did.

<comment><USER17> This is Hacker News, you are free to do that. It inspires us actually.

This is why I go back to Hacker News everytime. I list the reasons again: 1) Because bunch of smart guys hang over here. 2) There's just so much to learn especially on starting a startup, this is one topic that I love because it teaches us something. 3) Because of PG.

And I think this topic teaches everyone of us something worth posting here in HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't for the life of me figure out what planbookedu.com does, even after watching the screencast.

It's a calendar? With only all-day events allowed? And with TinyMCE?

What am I missing?

<comment><USER19> I had the same reaction. I think if he just spent some time in creating a clear message and then putting that message on the front page he might see an increase in users. If you think about the average user they need to have the selling point made a clear as possible, more so if we're talking about the average teacher ;^).

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the criticism...copywriting isn't my strong suit. In my defense I think the site makes sense if you're a teacher. At least that's what my wife (the teacher) tells me :)

<comment><USER17> Your wife has some associated bias. I totally agree with them, you can increase your revenue like 5 times if you just made that clearer.

But I guess you have some point since I'm guessing that the Edu website gets noticed not because of Web search but word of mouth of teachers. And probably the teachers who spread this website to other teachers have well explained the product's features enough already.

But If you just upgrade the clarity of your site. The web searcher won't get trouble and know your site's purpose immediately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit behind Matt in sales, but I just launched a site the other day that does something quite similar to RSStalker, but specific to best selling books: <http://yowzas.com>

Best selling book lists are everywhere, but this one is near real-time due to AWS. I find myself browsing the site daily reading book reviews. I have category specific ones like <http://business.yowzas.com> and just like RSStalker, I have RSS feeds for each major category of best selling book lists.

<comment><USER11> Nice site! I dig the simplicity and usefulness of the design.

<comment><USER20> thanks! i really got sick of trying to find books on amazon. i essentially removed everything that i didn't care about... so, really i made it in part because i had an itch to scratch.

\- list of best sellers \- most helpful reviews \- books i also might like

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> RSStalker is a great idea. Glad it's worked out well for him.

</comment><comment><USER22> "All I did for marketing in 2008 was email existing users"

Seriously? That does not make any sense. Why not try a paid search campaign? Or networking with teachers via twitter? What is the purpose of building a business and then not doing anything to market it?

<comment><USER16> Frankly the old version of the site sucked. I finally got around to launching the new version this past summer. I was hesitant to push it considering I had no real QA other then myself. It would have sucked to spent a ton of time/money to market it and then find a huge bug that drove all those users away.

Now that it's half way through the school year and there haven't been any issues I'm more confident. But it doesn't make sense to market it now, since teachers are already in their routine for the year. Next August I plan on making a bigger push.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> later.rsstalker.com looks very useful, I will definitely use it. Great alternative to tossing everything into my bookmarks.

<comment><USER16> Thanks fuzzmeister. Let me know if you hit any issues. I coded and launched it in a weekend, so it may have some bugs. So far it's worked well for me though.

<comment><USER24> I clicked the bookmarklet a little before 3 PST for the Language Log page you should see in your db: it showed up on the webpage, but never made it to the feed (according to Google Reader).

<comment><USER16> The feeds are cached, so items may not appear right away. Plus there is an additional lag depending on how often Google pings the feed.

Anyway, I checked out your case and I see the link in your feed now. I plan on dropping the cache time once I get off the shared hosting.

<comment><USER24> Great - got it now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LifePaint Safety Spray - <AUTHOR> http://www.volvocars.com/uk/about/our-innovations/lifepaint <comment><USER2> To be honest, I was more impressed with their mission statement of "By 2020, no person will be killed or seriously injured by a Volvo". What an incredible goal! I hope they can achieve it.

<comment><USER3> Given how ahead-of-the-curve Volvo have been so far (e.g. outside air bags, automatic braking, etc.), I think they're well on track for that.

While they seem to be thought of as an old soccer-mom type car company, I personally think of them very highly.

<comment><USER4> I think the soccer mom image comes from their lack of "sport" focused cars. I looked at their lineup and saw nothing that looked "aggressive" or "sporty". All of the cars looked pretty even keel middle of the road "nice".

<comment> semi-extrinsic There are a couple of sporty offerings [1] from their in-house tuning company, Polestar (like AMG for Mercedes, etc.). And the 240 Turbo is still a entry- level rally favorite in Scandinavia. You can easily get 300 bhp, 50/50 weight distribution, manual shift and rear-wheel drive in a '94 model for about $6000, then spend about $1500 prepping it for the entry level rally class. (There is an even cheaper rally class called "Folkrally", where there is a rule to keep the cost down that says at the end of the race, anyone can offer to buy your car for $1700, and you're not allowed to refuse or you lose your rally licence.)

[1] [http://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/new- models/s60/s60-polestar](http://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/new- models/s60/s60-polestar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do cycle, and I do not see this as a bad thing, nor that it shifts the blame/burden/etc to me as a cyclist. I _am_ hard to see at night with my tiny rear light and my reflective vest that barely moves and the thin reflective stripes on my pants. If I sprayed the legs of my pants with this, the large area of movement reflecting in headlights would sure as hell make me easier to see.

I imagine it sure would help collision avoidance systems, and I can't be the only one thinking that. If it's that reflective for visible light, it's just as reflective for IR and possibly microwaves, and would make the user stand out on computerized collision avoidance systems.

<comment><USER6> That was the first rule of the motorcycle training course: you're harder to see. Worse, I've had people seem to make eye-contact with me and pull out, and then saw the shock on their face when they actually _noticed_ me; someone once described it as a bad check, where they're looking for cars, and since you're not a car the road's clear. (It's such a confusingly bad heuristic, too, since people seem to do that to trains and trucks as well.)

So to help things along, it's useful to be _conspicuous_. In overcast, low- contrast weather, I'd love for this stuff for my chaps when it's cold and drizzly.

EDIT: I wonder what the high viz stuff triggers in terms of object collision warnings in the head. Like, perhaps it seems like a sign, and that makes a person double check they're still on the road? I have that sort of knee-jerk check when someone with bright blue headlamps get behind me, since that color in a mirror used to invariably mean police.

<comment><USER7> Yup. "Nothing car-sized in my left mirror, turning...OH-SHIT-SINCE-WHEN-DO-I- HAVE-A-TRAM-WEDGED-IN-THE-CAR-DOOR?!?" is the most common collision scenario for light rail, just as "nothing car-sized in my mirror, let me open the door- OH-SHIT-THAT-BIKE-LANE-WASN'T-THERE-A-SECOND-AGO!!!" is for bikes.

Also, see that video I posted in response to GP - reflective stuff is at least an order of magnitude more visible at night than normal (even bright) clothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool marketing, but not a novel idea. There a tons of similar products. I have been told that the paint only lasts 2-3 weeks WITHOUT washing the clothing. I am also hesitant to spray any nice fabric with it. Unless you are in a bind, just use a dedicated riding jacket with reflective fabric.

<comment><USER9> I'm also concerned about the influence on the environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just in case anyone is interested in getting some, Volvo LifePaint is believed to be a rebranding of an existing product: Albedo100 Invisible Bright. Should be easy enough to buy some.

[http://www.wired.com/2015/03/lifepaint-reflective- paint/](http://www.wired.com/2015/03/lifepaint-reflective-paint/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool product. Sadly I don't think it would make a huge difference in London, as even the examples shown in their video suggest that the driver saw the cyclist but crossed their path anyway. I find London drivers (and pedestrians) see cyclists ok but are very poor at judging a cyclist's speed and stopping distance. Also a big part of getting around in London is about aggressively claiming space and navigating obstacles, drivers are far more concerned about collisions with other cars and large vehicles and are quite ok with pulling into the path of smaller vehicles and assuming they will stop.

</comment><comment><USER12> I got hold of this stuff when it first came out last year, its fun.

Amazon does a whole range of similar products, including one that's safe to use on animal fur. I've often been tempted to spray the cat - keep him safer when out at night, and the idea of a shiny cat is pretty amusing.

</comment><comment><USER13> They've been doing this to deer antlers for years now

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2014/02/20/280220511/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2014/02/20/280220511/these-reindeer-really-do-glow-and-its-for-their-own- good)

</comment><comment><USER14> Before we all get too excited, here is a real-world review of Volvo Life Paint - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzxGx76VQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzxGx76VQQ)

I read about the stuff when it came out, and was reminded of a similar concept: "anti-paparazzi clothing" made with similarly reflective material [https://www.betabrand.com/mens-reflective-flashback- hoodie-j...](https://www.betabrand.com/mens-reflective-flashback-hoodie- jacket.html)

The problem with both of these is that CAMERAS with FLASHES do an exceptionally good job of exaggerating the effect. So in the real world it will never be as bright.

</comment><comment><USER15> I run a cycling forum in London and a Volvo dealer recently approached us to advertise this and offer it for free for some cyclists to try.

Whilst we don't do advertising at all, and whilst this isn't for me I thought the free offer may be something people wanted to take up so I asked.

The response was loud and clear: Cyclists see this as victim blaming. As a way to externalise responsibility away from the operator of a multi-tonne vehicle to the operator of a 10kg pedal bicycle.

Of those who replied, most were angry that things have already got to the point whereby even wearing high-vis, helmets and having very capable lights... one of the first lines in any newspaper report on a cyclist being involved in a road traffic incident remains "the cyclist was wearing a helmet and a high- vis jacket". No mention of whether the lights of a vehicle are in working order, or the driver was paying attention and looking for other road users.

In fact, the onus seems to be wholly on the cyclist to be a beacon.

If a cyclist is hit by a vehicle, then the cyclist is presumed to be at fault if an overwhelming amount of evidence cannot be immediately proffered showing how visible the cyclist was.

That was kind of the thing that made me not want to try it either, but others found the words a hell of a lot better than I and there was real anger there.

All that said, Volvo have taken the unique stance of saying that they as a company will take responsibility for incidents where the cause was one of their automatic driving systems. For that they deserve considerable praise, but for this paint... no.

BTW: Dupes:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9282607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9282607)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9318144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9318144)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9288521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9288521)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9288896](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9288896)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9527506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9527506)

One of those pointed to this road.cc article where the comments are revealing: [http://road.cc/content/news/147107-paint-yourself-visible- ni...](http://road.cc/content/news/147107-paint-yourself-visible-night-volvo- develops-new-life-paint-cyclists)

<comment><USER16> Wow, just wow.

I'm a cyclist myself and this kind of immature attitude just gets to me. I simply cannot fathom how to begin to justify it.

<comment><USER17> I'll give you some help justifying it and fathoming it: 30,000 people are dying on roads in the US every year. Because of cars, not because of invisible cyclists. Most of which, there is already a law in place that would've prevented it, i.e. when a crash takes place there has typically already been a law broken.

30,000 people, that's TEN 9/11's every year. Enough to justify ten wars, some would say. So it's well more than enough to justify politely telling you to go fuck off with your glow-in-the-dark spraypaint. People in cars - YOU go paint yourself. YOU grow up. YOU take responsibility and be mature.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that's just batshit insane. Sorry.

Some sort of symbolic protest against car drivers is not going to help your cause. Your target should be the designers of the road system. Until you fix that, this is a stop-gap.

Either way, in case you are more interested in surviving rather making a political point (the wrong audience), it makes no sense to reject something that can protect you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know what it's made of? Perhaps microscopic transparent beads with some water-soluble glue?

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been considering something like this for when I'm riding my motorcycle.

</comment><comment><USER20> Of course being more visible is going to be safer for you, but let's not let this put even more of the burden of safety on the bicyclist.

If this catches on, riding at night without it will be considered as dumb as riding without a helmet, when really nothing is going to protect you from a two ton metal deathtrap coming at you at 20 mph or above.

No criminality suspected.

<comment><USER7> The only difference from the rest of reflective stuff (armbands, pedals, wheel wire wraps) is the ad-hoc nature of the stuff. Me, I'll stick to the traditional reflective strips (plus lights).

The real issue is this: the protective elements are already widely available (to cyclists and pedestrians alike) and cheap - how is this more attractive to the current unlit and dark-clad "ninjas" than existing alternatives? In other words, the product might be useful to people who already _do_ use other safety elements - how is this aimed at the ones who _don 't_?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I agree. The only thing this has is being new and "cool." To me, it's just more inconvenient than wearing traditional stuff.

Bright blinking lights are the best way to increase visibility, and many people (in NYC at least) don't even bother with those.

<comment><USER21> Naah. High-visibility fluorescent yellow cycling jackets or similar attire are better ways: your body is a large blob that is much easier to notice than a little blinking light, especially if you're going along areas where there are lots of other light sources competing for the driver's attention.

But there's no reason you shouldn't go for both, of course.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Counterfeit Chips in US Military Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2037

<comment><USER2> Bunnie is well worth reading. This includes an interesting descriptions of various forms of "counterfeit" parts.

Some other Bunnie stuff that's been mentioned here:

[https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=site:news.ycombinator.co...](https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=site:news.ycombinator.com+bunniestudios)</comment>


Dry, the beloved country - <AUTHOR> https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/cape-town-drought <comment><USER2> The very witty title of the article is a reference to "Cry, the Beloved Country"[0], a famous South African novel from 1948 dealing with the racist social structures leading to Apartheid. (It deals with other things too). It's a great book and I would recommend it to anyone, even if you're not particularly interested in South Africa.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry,_the_Beloved_Country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry,_the_Beloved_Country)

[edit: typos]

<comment><USER3> One of the most interesting things I remember about "Cry, the Beloved Country" was feeling as though the book had a _rhythm_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The whole mood was contagious. My first night, I openly gagged when my > friend Paul put his hands into my dirty shower water to scoop it out for the > toilet. But a day or two into my trip, when I opened a friend's guest toilet > lid to a turd, I nearly squealed with glee. I have never been so thrilled to > see a previously deposited piece of shit in a toilet I myself hoped to take > a crap in.

It might be time to rethink happiness.

</comment><comment><USER5> great story, thank you for posting</comment>


The Age of Homes in All 50 States - <AUTHOR> http://www.zillow.com/blog/age-of-homes-181636/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=emm-0815_homesbydecade-decadesbutton

<comment><USER2> This is great, it would be better if you could zoom in to a state. You would be able to see migration patterns within cities and regions.</comment>


Major JavaScript projects depend on a 0.0.3-versioned package now unplublished - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/12012 <comment><USER2> It is so typical that an entire package used to do only one tiny, simple thing could break much of the JS ecosystem. There's even a comment that the package consumers _can 't do anything about it_. How about... writing their own replacement in literally 5 minutes and removing the dependency?

If you don't think the JS ecosystem is fucking insane, you should now.

See: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/left- pad](https://www.npmjs.com/package/left-pad)

</comment><comment><USER2> More info on unpublished packages: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510)</comment>


Putting Victimhood Behind You - <AUTHOR> https://genevievefiles.blogspot.com/2019/09/putting-victimhood-behind-you.html <comment><USER3> Great article. I wonder if different people respond to this kind of a message differently though..

I firmly believe in taking personal responsibility for my behaviors and my actions - however I think that is because I'm inherently wired to avoid responsibility and try to find the easy way out. Because of this, the only conscious way for me to effect positive change in my life is to strive for taking responsibility and ditching thoughts of victimhood.

On the other hand, I've known people who seem to be hardwired for responsibility so much that it is overwhelming for them and causes all kinds of anxiety (control issues).

For these people, would it be beneficial to use that conscious effort on relinquishing control and adopting more of a "victim" mindset?

<comment><USER4> For self responsibility to work, you obviously can only accept responsibility for things under your control. If you are taking responsibility for things outside of your control, I think the more appropriate solution is to learn some humility, rather than to adopt a "victim" mindset.

<comment><USER5> If you look at Karpman's Drama Triangle, you'll wonder just how many people fall into the 'rescuer' corner, and further than that, how you might get the saviour complex from it.

Just as you say, the response there isn't to switch to the victim or even the persecutor. The response is to break out of it.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think a lot of the rhetoric in this article could also be applied to people who struggled in school early on due to an unknown mental health diagnosis, essentially internalizing that they're either too stupid or lazy to succeed.

As someone who had great parents, but parents who denied mental health as an issue or excessively large tonsils as a trigger for sleep apnea and behavioral issues a lot in this article resonates. Especially given my experience finally seeking professional help after college and realizing that a lot of why I'd been struggling was because of ADHD likely caused by sleep apnea caused by my tonsils.

Seeing this drastic change in mood and my mental ability was life changing, but to this day sometimes I still catch myself re-itorating the words of my HS guidance counselor telling me I didn't have the grades to study at an elite college or to be an engineer.

<comment><USER7> This is kind of dangerous. The article is basically saying you should not demand more of society. I had problems in school and everyone brushed me off -- am I not right to be angry? Am I not right to demand I get the same consideration that others got? What do I need to do to do it, get back into school, and get the same free money?

<comment><USER8> Well, let's put it this way. Being a Polish-Jew in a rural, and very southern high school in Florida, one where I was considered a minority because there were no other minorities, wasn't all roses. Then when it came to being a white male applying for scholarships. More than half of those scholarship books pretty much told me that I need not apply. My post high school education is quite lacking because of it.

It took me a while in my 20s to realize how much of a benefit all of that was. And to quit being angry. Compared to all my peers from high school, I have a pretty damn good amount of resiliency. There's already a few known suicides in my graduating class, post-graduating. Plenty of drug addiction. Only a few folks really escaped like I did. But even them, when I touched based with them, it's all doom and gloom. In my early 20s, I faced an eviction, plenty of debt, debt collectors and lots of other problems that, well, never crushed me. Honestly, a lot of problems I shrugged off and found solutions. I think the worst thing that's ever affected me was my cats dying a few months ago. That, honestly, was the worst thing that happened to me, even though I was homeless for a while, couldn't find work, scrapped to pay for food. I could do all that again if I have to. Losing a pet... that hurts.

But that brings me to the next, and I think biggest benefit from all those problems from school. I have a "sixth sense" on people's intentions. Just a gut reaction that's been correct every time. You have no idea how beneficial this has been since I went into business for myself.

It also means, I have zero tolerance for assholes and incompetence. The time I save from wasting time on assholes, I spend on my real friends. I value my real friends and have tight relationships with them. Something my generation really doesn't have. Now, I am abrasive to people the moment I realize someone is underhanded, a user, asshole, etc. Even if they're mostly strangers and it's only been 5 minutes since I met them. But my friends are fully aware that I'm loyal, without end, to them. And thus far, every time I ignored that gut feeling on someone being bad, it always bit me in the ass. If I listened, I would find out from someone else a few months later on what bullet I just dodged.

At the end, the world truly owes you nothing. Having a rough life is actually a blessing. It builds resilience and teaches you to greater appreciate the good and not focus on the toxic. Without experiencing hate, you can't truly love.

Plus, you can't blame the entire world population over what a group of teenagers did. The older you get, the more you realize all teens, all over the world, are an equal amount of stupid.

<comment><USER7> That's ridiculous. Your life would be better without those hardships. You don't know that forgoing those hardships would leave you with other, more difficult hardships; and in any case, if you went without the hardships that limited your access to school you'd be making more money and could deal with your new problems with money.

You've been brainwashed and deluded into accepting mediocrity.

<comment><USER8> I co-own a security firm with a friend and this past year we've been getting infrastructure projects. I hire people with college degrees and most of them have crippling student debt. Debt I dont have.

You got a lot of resentment in you and you need to stop thinking there are guarantees in life for someone. There isn't. The idea that theres a path made of velvet and lined with roses that offers you everything in the world is the brainwashed concept.

A person's character is built and forged through how they approach and deal with hardships. You can define yourself by being knocked down and staying down or defined by getting back up. I say this in hopes that someone reading this who's in a shit situation, like me about a decade ago, doesn't give up hope on themselves. A silly expensive piece of paper doesn't grant access for shit anymore. Except for crippling debt. It gives you access to crippling debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a real shame how difficult politeness and sorta-kinda-deference can be to decouple. I'm super confrontation avoidant. It's a problem I work on, but I want to be kind and respectful and liked, so I'll go along with a lot. Being kind and respectful and liked and saying a solid no is really hard. Even sacrificing those to say a solid no is hard. Weird how difficult it is personally to reprogram. Props to the OP for growing.

<comment><USER10> If people don't like you when you politely refuse them, they don't actually like you, they like for what they get from you.

A great test of friendship is to refuse someone for a simple thing, politely. A good friend will dismiss the matter and move on with no hurt feelings or issue.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, and yet that knowledge doesn't make it that much easier.

For example, if it's a project at work where we're trying to agree on direction, consensus must be built. Saying "no I disagree with that decision" (or that interpretation of an analysis or whatever) is quite difficult. When performance review time comes around, I get the feedback that I should speak up more since people value my opinion. And when I do speak up, it's well received, and we always have polite constructive discussions and everyone's happier for it, even when it ends up with "agree to disagree."

It's kinda the ideal scenario and yet it still takes such a huge emotional toll.

<comment><USER10> I've noticed amongst some of my friends with similar issues that they see disagreeing as being a kind of harm. That to make someone uncomfortable or upset is as bad as kicking them in the shin or yelling at them.

You can't feed a child nothing but candy. Candy is delicious and great, I love candy, but it's just sugar. To merely agree with someone all the same is to both undervalue their agency (what makes them human, their ability to engage critically and freely with new information) and over-value the norm. In other words, to agree with someone all the time is to give them nothing but sugar candy.

That's not license to yell or be a jerk. Please don't go around trodding on people and calling them sheeple. But do disagree with people because it both helps you and betters them. To engage with opinions we don't have, to consume information we don't like is the intellectual equivalent of eating your vegetables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think what she is saying is true, unfortunately the article is a bit shallow. I went into this article looking for examples of behaviours that mark people for victimization and strategies for changing those behaviours. I didn't find any, and despite searching I have yet to find a good guide to this anywhere.

There seems to be a vauge grey line between being properly assertive and being selfish or being a jerk. Finding the proper assertive behavior is especially a challenge for people who grew up in abusive circumstances and don't know proper boundaries.

<comment><USER12> What follows is my personal opinion. (Disclaimer, I'm a guy and I've not been abused, but I have had to deal with troublesome people and as a confrontation- avoidant person I've worked out some strategies for dealing with that. These strategies are more oriented towards avoiding panhandlers than avoiding abusers, but perhaps they can be useful.)

First, the interesting thing about "being selfish" and "being assertive" is that they actually overlap. If someone tells you that you're being selfish like it's a bad thing, that person is probably trying to manipulate you. They want you to stop being selfish so _they_ can be selfish. This is literally how they try to get their way.

Another way to think about it is that "assertiveness" comes into play when there is a conflict of interest. You want X, the other party wants Y. In this situation there's no way to satisfy both X and Y. At this point you can fight for what you think is right, or you can fold. The other people want you to fold, and if they're abusive, they're going to try and insult you or make you feel stupid until you do.

Which brings me to some concrete recommendations for being "assertive:"

1\. When walking, look like you have somewhere important to go. You're not meandering casually, you're walking with purpose. You're in charge. People are much less likely to approach you if it looks like you're going to turn them down immediately.

2\. In conversation, use the "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" approach. Operate in good faith until you feel that good faith is being abused, then retract it. Don't be angry, but don't let it happen again. "Forgive, but don't forget."

3\. Don't apologize for things you didn't do. If you are afraid and feel like you _have to_ apologize, then do it verbally but don't _believe_ it. Tell yourself that you're lying to this person about being sorry. You're not sorry. You're tricking them because they refuse to accept the truth.

4\. Think about the reasons people say what they do. Words coming out of a mouth are like symptoms of the mental state of the person. Don't just take them at face value but ask yourself: "Why are they saying this?"

5\. If possible, find people you trust who can be a sounding board. Especially if you think your own "assertiveness compass" is whack. Err on the rude side. Then literally describe your encounters to the trusted party afterwards and ask whether you were rude, so you can refine your social barometer.

6\. Protect yourself! You're a living organism and _you_ should be your number one priority. Nobody else has the right to make your decisions for you.

Hopefully that's helpful to someone. But like I said, I'm coming at it from a bit of a different angle, so I welcome any feedback / questions.

<comment><USER8> I agree a lot with you. But something about the definition of assertiveness you gave...

I think it's better to approach it as a means of making sure you are taking care of yourself, so you have the ability to take care of others.

Like, let's put it in terms of being forced to work late. Why should you do it? For the same reason you work that job anyways. To provide for yourself and/or for your family. Either you are spending time on your family(or yourself) or you're making sure they(or just you) have a roof/food/etc. Thus, if you have to work late, you don't do it for free. You already miss out on family/me time. Thus, you get financially compensated. When you go with that mindset, the conversation naturally functions differently. This is how I negotiate contracts too. I don't discount. I never do. I always get something of equal value in return. If you just willy nilly throw out 10% of your quote, obviously you lack personal value. Whether it's money now, money later or bartering, I hold to my value. I dont think anyone should throw out personal value for the needs of others without truly good reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's obvious that this article is immensely helpful for anyone as an individual, but it also address the larger problem. My understanding, from my own life and what I've read, is that almost all abusers were themselves abused. Preventing someone from being serially abused, even if it doesn't deal with abusers immediately, leads to a reduction of abusive people in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the piece.

That's exactly why I blog about the things I do. People who have really had something terrible happen need a way out and it's typically very problematic for others to reach out to try to help them.

It's problematic because helping someone can set up a situation where they expect you to keep helping and others may agree that you "owe" them. Giving once can become a trap where they keep making demands and you don't know how to extract yourself, so best to just _not help._

And if you help people based on their sob story, then they don't learn to be productive members of society. Instead, they learn to be con artists who extract money based on pity because, hey, that works and they need to eat.

It's maddening for me because I've tried to figure out how to earn my way and there seems to be no way to get taken seriously for that. There seems to be no way to convince people I merit an adequate earned income. I'm viewed as a "charity case," which isn't a nice thing to say about someone.

But, yes, we need to find ways to help people actually escape such, if only because the alternative is the Prison-Industrial Complex and other very broken models that do not constitute a healthy society.

<comment><USER14> I don't know if I'd agree that it's best to just _not help_. I've been in situations like the one you describe, especially with regard to monetary help, and found that it isn't really all that hard to disengage if that becomes necessary. I start that process with what some might call a "come to Jesus" talk, where I explain that I can't just keep giving money away to what looks like no good end, and lay out what I need to see - concrete steps toward leaving an abuser, getting treatment for substance issues, whatever - <USER2> I'll be willing to consider doing so again. Where I can, I offer resources that might help, even if that's just best guesses - which is all too often the case, our society mostly sucks at helping anyone who really needs it - but I offer whatever I can. After that, I just say no or don't respond, unless I see what I said I needed to.

I mean, yeah, it sucks to have to do, but you're not wrong that some people will just bleed you dry if you let them. Some won't, though, and in my opinion they're worth taking the risk, because sometimes all someone needs really is just a hand up to where they can start climbing out of a hole on their own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me respectfully suggest that you are an exception.

I've had a lot of serious problems in life. I've always sought to resolve them with an eye towards being able to stand on my own two feet.

The vast majority of people who have helped me, especially in a big way over some period of time, didn't really want me to ever succeed in standing on my own two feet. Most of them wanted to be needed and aimed for remaining my crutch. They were actively angry if I tried to actually stand on my own.

I've ended a lot of relationships based on their inability to see me as anything but a _charity case_ and their open hostility at my desire to actually become a functional human being. Such people want to help, but only so much. If you want to grow beyond their vision of what you are capable of, there may be hell to pay. They may actively be vengeful and seek to _keep you in your place._

<comment><USER14> Sure. I've been on the wrong end of people like that, and it's not a good place to be. But that's a separate question, I think - that of whether or not to _accept_ help, vs. whether or not to _offer_ it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm having a dreadful day and I think we are probably talking past each other. I will just note that I never suggested that _it 's best to never help._ I used a lot of provisional language, like _can_ and _may_.

Suffice it to say this is a thorny problem with many potential pitfalls from both sides and I blog in hopes of providing a path forward that involves fewer pitfalls because reading my blog doesn't create a one-on-one personal relationship, which is where either giving help or receiving it can turn into trouble you didn't anticipate.

I only wish I was better at monetizing my writing. That's a hard row to hoe these days and it means I'm still writing for a pittance, which still leaves me wondering at times if I'm still a fool and a chump, benefiting other people and getting far too little in return.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of this good article as well. Confusing kindness with being polite/nice.

[https://www.outsideonline.com/2241096/how-teach-girls- they-d...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2241096/how-teach-girls-they-dont- have-be-nice)

</comment><comment><USER16> i hate seeing these things on HN...its another side effect of our manic PC culture

<comment><USER17> In the list of articles, each entry is really concise. It's really easy to just ignore the ones you aren't interested in.</comment></comment>


Designing Accessible Color Systems - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/au/blog/accessible-color-systems <comment><USER2> I built similar perceptually uniform color library: [https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma](https://github.com/neilpanchal/Chroma)

The sad part is that we have all these colors available in the physical world but representing in sRGB (or even Adobe RGB or DCI P3) space takes away all the fun. We have a narrow space to work within and it poses limits to what you can do. Vast majority of monitors in the world are barely capable of representing sRGB space, and even if they are, calibration is another issue. You can employ all kinds of science in representing proper colors but if the end user's calibration is not good, all bets are off.

Colors are a problem for interface design (and accessibility), it becomes a real challenge when dealing with quantitative data and build perceptually uniform colormaps with accessibility considerations, here is an amazing presentation of Matplotlib's new colormaps: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU)

<comment><USER3> > build perceptually uniform colormaps with accessibility considerations

That is impossible, color-blind people wont see them as perceptually uniform since the area with the color they can't see gets a lot darker. For example I can't see red text on a certain kinds of black background, as in I don't even recognize that there are letters there. I remember being on a presentation where the author apparently liked to play with colors, and several of the screens were just blank to me I didn't even know that I there were letters there I couldn't see.

<comment><USER4> > the area with the color they can't see gets a lot darker

Interestingly, for me (deuteranomolous) the colors I can't see often seem lighter. For example, green traffic lights appear white. I assumed this is because I can still see the light, it just doesn't get interpreted as green, but I don't know whether that's true.

<comment><USER3> Green lights are white to me as well, I guess they have a decent chunk of blue in them and people call them green due to the lack of red. (I see blue + green as white since I don't see red)

But if you see it as white as well then I'd expect your problem to be with the color red and not the color green.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ironically, even though the contrast ratio of the body content is technically passing the contrast threshold, it's unpleasant to read. It's the combination of the lighter shade of grey, small font size _and_ the thinness of the font glyphs themselves.

<comment><USER6> Great point! That's one of the reasons we also changed the fonts we use in our product interfaces around the same time, including removing any usage of `light` font weights. We haven't yet made a similar change to our blog design, but it would be a solid improvement for legibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > We built a web interface to allow us to visualize and manipulate our color > system using perceptually uniform color models.

Is this tool available anywhere?

<comment><USER8> Lyft built and released a similar tool recently for picking accessible colors, there was a HN post about it last month

[https://www.colorbox.io](https://www.colorbox.io)

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately the Lyft one is based on a much weaker understanding of color science and a much lazier implementation based on poor choice of basic color model, which results in poor output.

Kudos to Wilson Miner and Daryl Koopersmith for one of the few non-bullshit color picker articles to pop up here.

<comment><USER9> Edit: Sorry to any Lyft folks reading. "Lazier" is not really a fair or kind description. I was in a somewhat grumpy mood earlier.

In more neutral language: using non-perceptually-relevant color spaces leads to dramatic distortion of color relationships, and ends up misleading humans trying to interpret them.

It's great to see the Stripe team here recognizing the problem and attacking it in a more principled way. Let me echo calls for publishing the tool if possible. I've wanted to use a similar tool since at least 2006, but all the tools along these lines I have built for myself have been very hacky and not suitable for public consumption.

<comment><USER10> A bit off-topic, but thanks for getting back to this post with this follow-up. We (myself included) do this too often online, assuming the people we're talking about are not reading along, even though that does happen.

(I'm not from Lyft by the way, to clarify. Just a random reader.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article reminds me of Contraste [1], a free little app for macOS that allows you to quickly know if a combination of colors, for a text and a background, passes accessibility thresholds defined by the W3C, and thus is accessible to users with visual impairments. The app was made by Laurent Baumann, who is also the author of Couleurs, a free color picker, for macOS as well.

[1] [https://contrasteapp.com/](https://contrasteapp.com/)

[2] [https://couleursapp.com/](https://couleursapp.com/)

<comment> mark-r My experience with the W3C guidelines is that they don't work well in the real world. I think their definition of contrast is not quite right.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean, do you think 4.5:1 is an insufficient contrast ratio? I think that's recognized and why level AAA requires 7:1.

<comment> mark-r No, I mean the method of calculating contrast ratio does not reflect reality. Take a background of #969696, a medium gray. According to the formulas laid out in WCAG 2.0 [1], white text has a contrast ratio of 2.96 and black text has a contrast ratio of 7.1. So clearly black is better, right? Try it for yourself and tell me if the difference is as stark as the numbers suggest.

Of course this means nothing if you're legally mandated or simply told by your boss that you must follow the standard.

[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/)

<comment><USER12> The white and gray don't look that bad to me but it's not for me, it's for people with various vision impairments. Ignore your lying eyes, trust the math.

Also, to me the superiority of using black is more apparent if the gray is the background color.

<comment><USER13> A better example is when you have a #FF0000 red background. WCAG says you should use #000000 black text on it, but #FFFFFF white text is actually more accessible to people with color deficient vision[1] and, to my eyes at least, reads more easily and has more contrast.

[1] [https://accessibility.psu.edu/color/colorvisiondetails/#RK](https://accessibility.psu.edu/color/colorvisiondetails/#RK)

<comment><USER9> Please don't use a #FF0000 background under any circumstance.

It is an extremely colorful medium-lightness red which will be somewhere between unpleasant and physically uncomfortable to look at (not to mention illegible) irrespective of the foreground text color.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, #FF0000 was just an example. The problem also happens with other shades of red, like #F44336 from the old Material Design palette.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In my brief dive into colorspaces I got the impression that CIELAB isn't actually that uniform and there are better spaces available, such as DIN99o (actually DIN 6176). Is this right?

<comment><USER15> CIELab is not perfect, but is probably Good Enough, especially for the kinds of use cases as described in this article. One of its main flaws is lack of hue constancy, particularly in blue.

There are any number of colorspaces that have been proposed that are better. Some are complex and ad hoc, such as two different releases of CIECAM. Others are relatively simple, such as Jzazbz. IPT also comes up a lot. I think the issue is that there isn't anything resembling consensus on which of these "more perceptually uniform" color spaces we should use. So a bunch of efforts, including freieFarbe, use Lab.

<comment><USER16> Precisely this—while we only mention CIELAB in the post, we also tested other perceptually uniform color spaces in addition to Lab (and can switch between them in the color tool). In particular, we also tested CIECAM02 extensively. We found that both were sufficient for the level of precision we needed and that Lab's simpler lightness calculations are more closely aligned with how WCAG contrast ratios are calculated. We're definitely open to testing other color spaces in the future as we continue to refine our color palettes.

<comment><USER9> If you want something reasonably simple and fast to compute but which has been optimized to fit available experimental data better than CIELAB you could try [https://observablehq.com/@jrus/jzazbz](https://observablehq.com/@jrus/jzazbz)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have always been a fan of stripe product launch page. The text is clear and to the point, the graphics/animations are engaging, not annoying pop-ups, the color scheme is not hurting my eyes. The best UI/UX experience I have of any website. I remember the web page which had game of life as the background. Really geeky yet fun to watch. Also, stripe's REST API documentation is just too good.

</comment><comment><USER18> This looks like a good basis for a color scheme for code (vscode, terminal, emacs, etc), anyone working on this ?

<comment><USER19> That would be amazing actually - I frequently run into situations where some combination of colors doesn't have enough contrast in my editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How many distinct colours can I use in the same image and still be able to tell apart when the coloured boxes might be arranged in any order?

I'm trying to come up with a colour scheme that supports categorical labelling for as many categories as possible - that means I want the colours to be distinct from one another, to be able to recognise each category with ease, but at the same time cover as many categories as possible. With <10 categories it's easy, with 20 I struggle.

Can anyone make a suggestion? I am not interested in uniformity of lightness or linear progression, but maximal separability between nuances.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great stuff.

Do Stripe products make affordances for people who are color-blind? For instance, do "error" notifications always contain an icon for "error" as well as a red background/text color? The "Differentiate without color" option on macOS and iOS comes to mind.

[disclaimer: past Stripe intern]

<comment><USER6> Yes, it's part of our internal guidelines for color usage in product interfaces that color should never be the only visual means of conveying information. There's a lot of different ways that can be applied in different contexts, but it's something we discuss fairly often as a team when reviewing designs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One trick I found that youtube and google use is to make the light grey text not #777 (min allowed contrast on white background), but rather like rgba(70,70,70,.8). The alpha lightening makes it have enough contrast even if presented on a light grey background.</comment>