Death of an adjunct professor - <AUTHOR> http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/death-of-an-adjunct-703773/ <comment><USER2> It would seem like there would be some kind of middle ground where adjuncts should be paid a little more and get health care, and students pay less in tuition. $3,500 to teach 50 students? Where does all the tuition go? That's enormous overhead for buildings and administration, especially in a low cost area. Even you turn the $3,500 to $10,000 with a raise and health care baked in, it's only $200 per student. (I'm making assumptions on class size)

<comment><USER3> I've worked as an adjunct professor at a community college. Class sizes appeared to average around 20 students there, rarely above 30 and sometimes around 5. In that environment, $3500/class seemed pretty reasonable.

<comment><USER4> _In that environment, $3500 /class seemed pretty reasonable._

OK, but how are the professors expected to live on that ? Independently rich or retired cannot account for any size-able number. CC are subsidized by the state and county, or at least should be.

<comment><USER5> Many adjunct professors are people who have full-time jobs doing something else. A friend of mine did this one semester to make some extra money. He worked full-time as a structural engineer, but took a long lunch three days a week to teach Introduction to Statics at the university we both attended. He said it was fun to do for one semester, but he computed that he was only making about $10/hour when you included the time to prepare for lectures and grade papers.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, teaching has a way of ballooning to fill whatever time you have. Teaching one class feels like just as much work as teaching three, partly because either way you have to be available to students outside of class - office hours, answering email, and so on. I can't imagine teaching a single university class "for fun" while holding down a full-time job. Certainly it's not something I've seen very often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Duquesne has claimed that the unionization of adjuncts like Margaret Mary would somehow interfere with its mission to inculcate Catholic values among its students._

I see. So treating old people in this way and leaving them in trouble after you squeeze them out is a part of those "Catholic values"?

<comment><USER8> Read the next sentence: _This would be news to Georgetown University -- one of only two Catholic universities to make U.S. News & World Report's list of top 25 universities -- which just recognized its adjunct professors' union, citing the Catholic Church's social justice teachings, which favor labor unions._

<comment><USER7> Well, their Catholics are apparently less hypocritical than Duquesne's Catholics. I'm not sure, doesn't this simply reinforce what I was trying to say?

<comment><USER9> The "Catholic values" you criticize and approve of are not "catholic". Forgive the pun.

Edit: I see a way to read your statement as saying that Duquesne has a twisted view of Catholic values. Which I could agree with. However there is another reading, not difficult to stumble into, where you are trying to make a general statement about Catholic values, which I could not agree with.

<comment> guard-of-terra This just proves that every Catholic is also a man (or woman) perfectly capable of sin and malice, and so we would be pretty happy if every single one of them would stop moralizing forever. Stop thinking that they are more right and more good just because; and behaving after that.

Where can one unsubscribe from ever hearing of how religion tells us how to do good and from ever facing any religion-based opinion?

Because I feel I still live in the _medieval times_ when I do.

<comment><USER9> Hear my kind tone of voice encouraging you to engage.

If you feel that hypocrisy gives you a free pass to avoid engaging with a very deep belief system with a philosophical head start on you of no less than centuries, and your capsule summary of the Roman Catholic church is "medieval" and "moralizing"...

I would say you actually need more exposure to Catholicism, not less.

Hypocrisy is a universal... so it is actually a horrible signal if you are trying to figure out what to believe. And Christianity at least has a history of facing this issue head on.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

\-- Jesus, in Matthew

<comment> guard-of-terra I just don't see this head start preventing a single person from doing same mistakes. This belief system seems like brain busy work: it makes you occupied for some time but does not make you a better person any more that any reflection will do when you are ready.

Add mythology to the mix and the system becomes net harmful.

Regarding Jesus: I just don't see "common christian" variety sort of people care about Jesus. Yes they claim they "love" him, but they just aren't trying to understand who he was as a person and therefore gravitate to beliefs that would make him facepalm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where does Social Security Medicare and Medicaid fit into this? She was 83 and well below the poverty line shouldn't she have been getting help from a t least one if not all three of those program?

<comment><USER11> She should have been drawing SS since she was 70. It would be Medicare not Medicaid and I am not sure how it would have helped since she was already being treated for cancer.

Contracting positions are hell on earth if you don't put money into savings. Even if you work 25 years you need to put money away. We really don't have a national pension system[1].

I would be curious how the whole Microsoft contracting lawsuit would apply in this case. It seems it would have some relevance.

1) and looking at how underfunded the state one are, I don't see any hope in that direction

<comment><USER12> I believe SS benefits are indexed to earnings; if she had spent 2.5 decades earning $25k per annum her ss benefits may have been quite low

it's worth noting that $25k pretax (and note $25k seems to have been a high), even at a modest tax rate, could easily fall (post income, fica, etc) to $18k post tax. Or $1500/mo.

medicare should start shortly after the 65th birthday, but people still have to buy Part B and either part C or D. afaik part B requires a typical 20% contribution; this can be quite painful if you're living / attempting to maintain a house on $1500/month

old age is no picnic, particularly in the usa, and that goes double for people who don't have significant savings

<comment><USER13> Benefits vary based on income, but they're heavily weighted toward the low end. So, a poorer person will get lower benefits, but their benefits will be a greater percentage of their income.

Doing a fast calculation, someone who earned $25k (this year, not every year with prior years taking into account how earnings change) would probably get about $14k/yr in social security. So, it isn't a huge amount of money, but it would bring it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My sincere condolences to the family of Margaret Mary Vojtko.

Regarding the subtext of adjunct professor / student tuition abuse and exploitation for the keepers of the 'trademark and databases.'

We are almost facing the event horizon of a black-hole; sub-star level lecturers are facing obsolescence. Mega-corp is trying to establish a stranglehold on what may be the 'database.' The database will determine your personal 'trademark' status in society and its integrity is something worth fighting for.

</comment><comment><USER15> Everyone here should demand an explanation from Rev. Walsh. You can e-mail him at: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER16> I feel for Ms. Vojtko's family, but I don't feel like complaining about adjunct professor salaries is being fair.

These positions are short term contract (6 months-1 year) and are not meant as long term employment. These positions are meant for people from industry to come in a teach a class on a specific topic they are experienced in. These positions are not research positions, or anything of the sort.

Many of the people in adjunct positions have a completely separate full-time jobs, or perhaps are retired. Offering them health-care seems silly, because a large number of them already receive health care.

So parading one lady who treated the position as some kind of career path as proof that professors at college's need to get paid more is silly. I understand that my professors are going to be higher paid than most (Software/Computer Engineering) but earning upwards of $200k with a great deal of perks is fairly common.

<comment><USER17> > These positions are short term contract (6 months-1 year) and are not meant > as long term employment.

From the article:

"Margaret Mary Vojtko... had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years... Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities."

And further information, with sources, backing this up: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States#Adjunct_Professor_compensation_and_academic_use)

Lots of colleges are hiring adjunct professors to teach undergraduate courses, rather than full tenure track professors. As they reduce their tenure track hiring and increase their hiring of adjunct professors, it stops being a short-term contract for a visiting professor, and becomes the only viable career path for many people in academia.

The problem is, when many people think of professors they think of the same tenure track professors that you're thinking of; fairly well paid, good benefits, great job security (once tenure has been achieved, that is; before that, the job security is pretty dicey), lots of academic freedom. What they don't realize is that more than half of actual professors are actually low- paid adjuncts with poor job security (and a good chunk of the rest are tenure track but don't yet have tenure).

On top of that, you have post-docs and grad students doing most of the actual research (and some of the teaching as well), and you realize that academia looks pretty grim. Low paid people with low to no job security perform most of the actual work, while people think of them as high-paid folks with strong job security.

<comment><USER16> I am unable to actually find an sort of source for the statistic that "Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities."

It seems to go back to the SEIU, a group that is attempting to unionize adjunct positions. I have seen it quoted in a number of ways, including "50% of part time faculty at universities are adjunct." and "50% of teaching positions at universities are adjunct."

I would like to see some sort of actual report that shows the source of that. My (very limited, anecdotal) experience seems to indicate much fewer than 50% of professors are adjunct. It all depends on how you count these things.

<comment><USER17> Following the citation in the Wikipedia article to [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/11/13/hoeller](http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/11/13/hoeller) which links to [http://www.aaup.org/our- work/research](http://www.aaup.org/our-work/research) which links to [http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/AAUP_Report_In...](http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/AAUP_Report_InstrStaff-75-11_apr2013.pdf), there's a chart on the first page with trends between 1975 and 2011.

In 1975, 45% of teaching staff was tenure or tenure-track, 34% non-tenure- track (full or part time), and 21% grad students. In 2011, it's 24% tenure or tenure track, 57% non-tenure-track, and 19% grad students.

Now, part-time employees may make up a smaller proportion of actual teaching time than full time, but remember also that tenure track professors and grad students spend time doing research as well, not all of their time is spent teaching.

How many of your professors did you know the status of? I know that that certainly wasn't something I kept close tabs on when I was in college; there were a few professors who I knew well enough to know their status as tenured, tenure track, or not tenure track, but for many I didn't pay attention. Many of the adjunct professors are likely teaching intro-level classes that everyone is required to take; your freshman English or writing or math requirements.

Also recall that the more prestigious the school, the less likelihood that they will rely heavily on adjunct professors. Smaller state schools, community colleges, and for-profit schools may use them more often. Edit to add: the AAUP has another report that breaks down the faculty by school, and you can clearly see that these kind of non-tenure track and part time professorships are much more common at community colleges, smaller less prestigious schools, and for-profit schools, with some of them having 100% contingent (non-tenure track) faculty: [http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/AAUPContingent...](http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/AAUPContingentFacultyIndex2006.pdf)

And further, they may be named different things, but be roughly equivalent in job security, prestige, and benefits. Lecturer, instructor, visiting professor, visiting lecturer, assistant or associate teaching professor, etc.

<comment><USER18> Nonetheless, the AAUP document seems to show that even at US public doctoral and research universities, in 2005 non-tenure-track employees made up about a quarter of the full-time faculty and about 40% of all faculty if you include the part-timers (p. 18). There's also the issue of graduate students who teach or do research work. The numbers apparently included teaching grad. students, but only those which had been self-reported by their institutions as "employees" rather than recipients of valuable teaching/research experience (p. 10): it's not hard to imagine some under-reporting there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ugh, I was hoping that the "death" was just a metaphor, and that this was just an essay about the end of adjunct teaching as a viable job...which, I guess it is. I'm starting as an adjunct instructor next week, and I'll be getting $1,000 for about 13 hours of actual teaching time and who knows how many hours between classes doing grading/planning. But I have a regular job, this is just a night class. I can't imagine someone actually depending on adjunct work for the pay

</comment><comment><USER20> Distressing, but it leaves me wondering what Ms. Vojtko did until she was 58. Had she retired from some other job, gone back into the workforce after the death of a spouse?

</comment><comment><USER21> Disgusting. Disgusting and disgraceful.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yup, heard stories like this a thousand times.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone told the Pope yet?</comment>


Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/apple-pairs-with-pinterest-for-better-app-discovery/?_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is a major app store problem that a lot of developers, particularly indie developers, have complained about, but Apple has seemingly ignored so far. It'd be quite amusing if the answer turned out to be "just plug Pinterest's engine into the app store"... if it was that simple.

Then again, it's hardly a hard problem - it's just one that Apple has done almost nothing significant about over the years. Practically any solution is better for developers (and users) than the current status quo.

<comment><USER3>
      Then again, it's hardly a hard problem

Eh, I'd expect app discovery to be reasonably hard when you have a few hundred thousand developers and marketers incentivised to do anything they can to game the system.

<comment><USER4> Funny you should say that ! I came across these images less than a day ago.

Here is an image of what looks like a worker in China manipulating App store rankings using an array of some hundred 5Cs.

[http://i.imgur.com/EWyVh0X.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/EWyVh0X.jpg)

And here is an image purportedly showing the prices for a Top 10 spot in Apple's App Store, achieved through ranking manipulation.

[http://i.imgur.com/TZuf1iP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/TZuf1iP.jpg)

[1] This disturbing image of a Chinese worker with close to 100 iPhones reveals how App Store rankings can be manipulated

[http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-shows-how-fake-app- stor...](http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-shows-how-fake-app-store- rankings-are-made-2015-2)

<comment><USER5> They probably only affect the Chinese App Store. The stores are separate, and the Chinese one is censored.

<comment><USER6> I very much doubt those iOS devices are hooked up to Chinese credit cards. In fact, I bet that they are set up to cycle through a series of credit cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A bit OT, but is it at all possible to browse pinterest.com from an iPad? All I get is a full-screen non-dismissible overlay forcing me to install their app. Any ways around this?

<comment><USER8> No, there is no way around it. It's a verrrry annoying strategy and I'm not sure it's worth the aggravation it causes to people like me with only a casual interest in pinterest.

<comment><USER9> Isn't there a "Continue in browser" button right under the "Continue in App" button?

<comment><USER7> Would you look at that! It wasn't there when I posted the original comment.

Not much better now though. Now the bottom half of the screen is covered by "continue/login" overlay and the top third is covered by fixed toolbars, leaving a sliver of peephole for the actual content. They really go out of their way to annoy the hell out of anyone without an account, don't they? You'd think they'd learn a thing or two from Quora's ill-fated experiments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looking for relevant apps in the Apple App Store is a growing problem. This should be a feature built within the App Store. Why can't Apple do the same? Why do they need another application/service to do the "app discovery" for them?

<comment><USER4> The App Store search is ( and has ) always been a farce. I don't think I've ever not not used Google to search for the relevant app and then jump to the Store to "Get" it.

I never see analysts charging Apple with sheer negligence in these things.

It's not for the lack of resources. They have warchests both here and offshore. Why they don't get behind these pesky problems beats me. I mean these are elementary things. Using your competitor to search for apps in your store has to be downright cringe-worthy.

The only explanation for this has to be that Apple is shoring up every last nickel for something much much larger. In the years to come we shall likely see Apple heading into complete virgin product territories.

Apps, phones and tablets must seem like a distraction - a sideshow if you will - to the people in the know at Apple. A distraction from the real mother lode of things they have been working on.

If proven true, this has to be the greatest execution of strategy secrecy and misleading of onlookers and industry watchers alike, every seen at a corporation.

Nothing else explains why such scant attention is paid to basic things like search, voice recognition (Siri which is again a laggard compared to Google Now / Cortana) or maps or any other facets of the Apple ecosytem.

<comment><USER4> Ha.

I wasn't even too far off when I predicted this. Looks like Apple has hundreds working on the car,per WSJ.[1]

[1] Apple Has Hundreds Working On An Electric Car Design, Says WSJ

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/13/apple- car/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/13/apple-car/)

[2] Apple Gears Up to Challenge Tesla in Electric Cars

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-titan-car-project-to- chal...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-titan-car-project-to-challenge- tesla-1423868072)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Knowing of Apple's review process for each app (and each update) and seeing the number 1.4 million made me wonder how many employee's Apple has reviewing.

My initial guess was that it must be quite high but a little research [0] turned up some interesting results. It turns out the app review team is pretty understaffed and has to deal with absolute trash all the time. It also clarified the pornography policy, which, according to the article, is a way to expedite the review process. I wonder if the strictness of the policy came about because of the clogged app review process or just happened to help alleviate that particular process after the fact.

Of course, this is relatively anecdotal, coming from one former employee, and published in 2012 but I found it interesting. I do respect Apple's unwillingness to compromise on quality here.

[0] - [http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-it-really-sucks- to-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-it-really-sucks-to-be-an-app- reviewer-for-apple-2012-7)

</comment><comment><USER12> The 'ease of app discovery' was doing fine as long as apple didn't kill of every app that made app discovery easy.

</comment><comment><USER13> Tangential, but: for a while I was wondering what the idea and use cases of Pinterest are like, and this article seems to offer a decent explanation. (I know I'm not alone in this as the question seems to regularly pop up among HN comments in related threads, so I thought it might be worth a note.)

> Pinterest's philosophy is that it can help nudge people into doing things — > be it buying a coffee maker or trying a new recipe — by letting the site's > 70 million estimated regular visitors search for and save for later the > things that interest them. If I'm looking to buy a good espresso machine, > for instance, I could head over to La Marzocco's website and pin a link to > the $7,000 GS/3 to my Pinterest board to buy it later.

<comment><USER14> People planning weddings or home decoration used to have scrapbooks where they pasted in cutouts from magazines showing ideas they liked.

Pinterest is the online version of that.

<comment><USER15> People still have scrapbooks, and for lots of reasons more than that, including simply as a hobby.

It's also very similar to vision boards (actually, I think the similarity is stronger, and may be where the "pin" metaphor comes from).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> if you can install an app from google play store's website to your android phone then why can't apple provide the same feature?

<comment><USER17> I would imagine Apple's intent would be to potentially allow that on pinterest.com, or perhaps on any site which pays a hefty fee.

The closer we can get to selling apps directly on websites, the more the app store becomes irrelevant. You still have to go through review to get the file signatures, but perhaps you can pull the binaries from a different source.

That would be a really interesting vertical.

<comment> jon-wood I think they were referring to the feature on the Play store which allows you to request an app be installed on another device from the web interface, rather than being able to download APKs from the internet.

I find it a really nice touch when I've been linked to an app from another site to be able to instantly get it installed on my mobile without having to fish it out of my pocket and do something silly like take a photo of a QR code.

<comment><USER18> I agree on its usefulness. On a couple of recent occasions I've read about an interesting Android app while at work, logged into my Google account, gone to the Play Store web interface and told it to install the apps on my tablet at home. When I got home the apps were already installed and there were notifications reminding me to try them.

I'm surprised that the App Store doesn't have a similar feature.

<comment><USER19> It does, you just have to do it from iTunes.

<comment><USER20> If you have to use iTunes, that doesn't sound similar at all. There's a huge gap between virtually any browser you're willing to log into and a computer that you can run iTunes on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the sentiment in here that search in the app store sucks, but I don't think it matters much.

If I've heard or read about some specific app, I can find it by name pretty easily. For everything else, google and the web works just fine. Right, it's an extra click or two but I don't really think that qualifies as a "problem"..

</comment><comment><USER22> The AppStore needs improvement desperately, but the idea that pinterest could help here is a joke almost as bad as the AppStore itself. Even if pinterest didn't suck like hell in its own right, using it would still break integration. Who would buy iOS apps from pinterest?

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand how apps would get pinned in the first place. Is Apple going to create pins for every app that would show up in searches on Pinterest?

</comment><comment><USER23> It probably will solve the app discovery problem for some users, but not for me, for the simple reason that I do not have it. I am an app junkie and over the years installed close to 500 of them, keep 200 of them on the phone, and regularly use maybe 50 of them, 10 most useful ones almost every day.

Between app store search, google searches for specific features or integrations, apps that come with devices like activity trackers, reviews in blogs, and occasional promo actions in Starbucks, I think I have it covered.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hackers, What you say about this app discovery site - [http://appcrawlr.com/](http://appcrawlr.com/) ?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Add: [http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/bits/2015/02/12/apple- pairs-...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/bits/2015/02/12/apple-pairs-with- pinterest-for-better-app-discovery/?_r=0&referrer=)

<comment><USER24> We changed the url to that from [http://blog.pinterest.com/post/110786995184/install-the- best...](http://blog.pinterest.com/post/110786995184/install-the-best-new- iphone-and-ipad-apps-from) because it is more informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I develop apps for friends and family, and offer them on the app store for the curious. I have used Pinterest in the past to post screenshots, and a few customers have mentioned they saw it on Pinterest.

Despite the phenomenal FUD, no one ever says they can't find an app they want. They try out the top 5 and pick one. Or make their own if they are industrious.

Huge numbers of shovelware apps aren't really a problem, but realize its time to focus on marketing that mediocre app if you want it to sell better.

The market is dictating the success of all those mediocre app developers properly: relegation to 2nd class and app obscurity.

<comment><USER14> FUD? So you search for "twitter" and try the top five apps.

#1 is Twitter's official app. So they get a point for that.

#2 is Instagram. Close but no cigar.

#3 is TwiGrow which looks like some kind of scheme to get more followers.

#4 is Pic Jointer, an app to join photos together.

#5 is Happy Park, a theme park game.

It doesn't get any better after that. Waze, Flipboard, emoji keyboards. I don't know how far you have to get down the list to actually find another twitter client.

<comment><USER25> 99% go with #1.

Its a twitter client, it works, why bother with anything else?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: iOS Development Nuggets weekly email newsletter - <AUTHOR>

I have been writing iOS apps for a few years and wanted to get into the habit of writing regularly. So I started writing a weekly newsletter about iOS app development. There are several programming-related newsletters that curate links and annotate each with a short comment. They are really useful for keeping tracking of new stuff. There are also several newsletters that deliver quality in-depth content.
iOS Development Nuggets doesn't complete with them. What you get is a short tip every week, usually code related that you can read in a few minutes and hopefully, pick up something useful. Occasionally, I throw in a few links to open source code or apps/services that I find useful. Depth-wise, I'd say this is mostly for developers with beginner-medium level knowledge of iOS app development.
I have never actively promoted this since I never knew when I would give up, but after writing weekly for 2.5 years, I think it's time :) Also dusted off the old Twitter account I set up a long while back: https://twitter.com/iosdevnuggets.
URL goes to email archives and sign up form. Let me know your thoughts and any suggestion to improve. Thanks!
http://hboon.com/iosdevnuggets/ <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://hboon.com/iosdevnuggets/](http://hboon.com/iosdevnuggets/)</comment>


Ask HN: How would you download a browser without a browser? - <AUTHOR> Theoretically, let's say you have a brand new laptop that is fully functional but has no built-in browser. (You also don't have a phone or any other separate device.) How would you download a web browser without being able to see the web? <comment><USER2> Wait for the AOL cd to come in the mail?

<comment><USER3> Now you are showing your age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Windows you can use FTP in Explorer. Or, if you want to do it from the command line, type in Powershell:

>Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -OutFile $output

On *nix you might have curl or wget installed.

On Android and iOS use their respective app stores.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most of the curl/powershell answers assume you know the URL to download it from, which might not be correct since they are usually long and not easy to memorize.

However, considering the scenario on the question, I would assume that browser vendors would create very easy-to-remember URLs so you could get their browser without having to memorize 100-character-long URL e.g. mozilla.org/firefox.[exe,bin,sh,deb]

<comment><USER6> I agree, that the browser vendors should do this for this purpose. Perhaps also add a file "downloads.txt" which explains them so that you will know which file to download (even if the file you want to download isn't a web browser).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're stuck on windows maybe you could try this:

curl -o fi.exe -L -C - "[https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox- stub&os=win64&...](https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox- stub&os=win64&lang=en-US") && ./fi.exe

</comment><comment><USER8> Debian based OS is easy: apt install firefox

Other Linux OS, consult your package manager of choice.

Mac should have curl or wget that you can use (plus safari, but we'll ignore that).

Windows has Invoke-WebRequest in Powershell that you can use (plus IE/Edge, but we'll ignore).

You can do a Google search with those command line tools to find the firefox install page and download the installer.

What prompted this question? Real problem?

</comment><comment><USER9> Keep a liveboot USB handy with OS that has a browser. Boot with it. Save a few installers for common browsers on a USB/SDC/local NAS etc. If your on *nix, wget/curl/ftp/scp/sftp the files from a known location. You can do the same in Windows in powershell or CMD

</comment><comment><USER10>
      sudo apt install firefox

</comment><comment><USER11> You download lynx, text based browser, via ftp and download Firefox with lynx.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some devices that claim not to have a browser do actually have a browser, as it is used solely for Wi-Fi captive portals.

I seem to remember that the Nintendo Switch has one of these 'hidden' browsers.

</comment><comment><USER13> >new laptop that is fully functional but has no built-in browser

doesnt exist, either its fully functional and has a browser, or its missing operating system.

</comment><comment><USER14> MacOS: install [https://brew.sh/](https://brew.sh/) , then 'brew cask install firefox'

Linux, e.g. 'sudo apt install snapd', then 'sudo snap install firefox' ([https://snapcraft.io/install/firefox/ubuntu](https://snapcraft.io/install/firefox/ubuntu))

<comment><USER15> Why not get Firefox from apt?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the 90's, the answer was FTP.

</comment><comment><USER17> Homebrew, Chocolatey, apt, or curl.

</comment><comment><USER18> wget, curl.

</comment><comment><USER19> Bittorrent or FTP

<comment><USER8> Getting BitTorrent installed seems like it would be a challenge. FTP seems possible as most OSes preinstall it, but what FTP server has a browser installer and how would you find it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> wget / curl or your OS package manager</comment>


How to Cut the Poverty Rate in Half - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-cut-the-poverty-rate-in-half-its-easy/280971/ <comment><USER3> Guaranteeing $3000 a year isn't exactly what the Swiss have on the ballot. They are proposing the equivalent of $2800 per month. [1]

Sounds like a socialist idea right? But in fact the libertarian in me loves it - if implemented, it removes the need for vast swaths of government. If everyone is guaranteed a basic income, you no longer need vast systems to manage all the means-tested programs. No social security, no disability, no unemployment insurance, no retirement programs and tax shelters. No need for minimum wage. The list goes on and on.

And that's why it won't happen here...

[1][http://www.salon.com/2013/10/11/rather_than_savage_cuts_swit...](http://www.salon.com/2013/10/11/rather_than_savage_cuts_switzerland_considers_star_trek_economics/)

<comment><USER4> As a libertarian myself, I am also sympathetic to the basic income proposition. I like the idea in principle, but feel more experimentation is warranted. I like the premise of trying it out in small increments.

My chief concern is that progressives will ask us to explain how we contend with people who despite being given a stack of currency still manage to squander that, leaving themselves hungry, without shelter, or without savings. They may not say that now, but I think that challenge would eventually arrive. I personally favor family and charity as a last safety net, but progressives routinely dismiss those as impractical or insufficient.

My pessimistic side believes that a portion of the progressive inclination for central planning comes from a fear of allowing people to act stupidly and suffer the consequences. In other words, it's not necessarily that they _want_ to manage the allocation of funds and/or delivery of services and products to the poor, but that they believe if they don't do this, bad decisions will be made, leading to suffering. Meanwhile libertarians such as myself routinely are naively optimistic, believing everyone will make decent or good choices in spending their basic income (knowing to put some into healthcare, some into savings, and so on).

<comment><USER5> > My chief concern is that progressives will ask us to explain how we contend > with people who despite being given a stack of currency still manage to > squander that, leaving themselves hungry, without shelter, or without > savings.

Pay every weekday morning - it fixes the food part

Shelter is tough because we are not trying new things anymore. You rent an apartment or rent / buy a home. We don't have many cheaper shelters like capsule hotels[1] or maybe some modular-type apartments. Innovation in shelters is not a thing and seriously hampered by existing laws.

> I personally favor family and charity as a last safety net, but progressives > routinely dismiss those as impractical or insufficient.

It was the way of things in the early days, but we really need to stop making it difficult for third-partys to actually provide these services.

1) yes, this is not long term or family friendly, but I've live in worse than what I saw in videos of these things.

<comment><USER6> People with these needs having a steady source of income, low as it is, is likely to drive competition to serving their needs. We might well find more innovation there.

<comment><USER5> I keep thinking you are right, but it just seems like all the regulators and people's perceptions are going to kill any innovation. Never mind the government screwing the market with loans to people who couldn't really afford houses to get houses[1].

We got it in our heads that you must buy a home and our definition of home is fixed. In my wilder moments, I wonder what would happen if a standard "module" size and connection (structural support, door location, water, electric, etc) for apartments happened and you could plug the modules into buildings. I'm sure there are 1,000s of other ideas.

1) small fact, those programs won't loan money to Native Americans on reservations since they cannot take the land anymore. Not sure that's actually a bad thing, but it is odd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's some back of the envelope numbers...

The federal government spends:

-878B in Social Security and disability

-961B in healthcare

-422B in welfare

So that's about 2.26T just in these three categories. For a single year.

We've got about 320 million people in the US.

So this comes out to about 7,000 a person for these three categories.

You want basic income? That's fine, just use it as a replacement for some of these programs. Instead of running a vast bureaucratic network managing these benefits, just hand out a check every quarter.

This is hilariously simplified and a slightly more sophisticated system is what's known as a "negative income tax."

Here is Milton Friedman (yes, Milton, not Tom) advocating for an NIT: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM)

Want to keep going? When it comes to education, it's about 10k per child for k-12 spending if you include state and local spending. A high school of 2,000 kids should have a budget of 20 million... and with a student/teacher ratio of 20, would be equivalent to $200,000 per teacher. Take 50% of that to run facilities/admin and you've still got a six figure salary.

<comment><USER8> And for people saying $7K/person pales in comparison to the Swiss $36K/person, remember to consider that people who make a lot more would get a lot of their $7K taxed away anyway - so it's probably closer to an effective $15K-25K a year considering this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know this is a cause celebre among some libertarians, but dang if it makes any sense to me. I'd love to see it applied, though. It's a good thing to be proven wrong :)

I see two lines of inquiry here. First, does this work on a small scale? Many HNers have lots of disposable income. I see lots of people buying expensive electric cars or talking stock options. So put your money where your mouth is. Go find 10 people who are poor and give them each 15K. I'd offer three stipulations. 1) It has to be anonymous, 2) It has to be one-time, and 3) you should anonymously follow-up after 6 months.

I suspect at the end of six months you'll just find the same poor people, even though technically you've offered them half a year's salary at 30K. But this is very easy to prove one way or another. Somebody like Zucerberg could probably run a sample of 100 or 500 without much problem. I'd love toe see the results.

My second line of inquiry is: does this work at scale? In other words, is the political system capable of simply giving out money? I seriously doubt it. From what I've seen, a simple program, especially involving lots of money, will grow in complexity very quickly. Yes, technically you should be able to direct-credit anybody with a bank account within seconds. I have deep reservations that anything like that would actually happen, though. If you got 50% of the money to the poor you'd be doing well, and I wouldn't bet on that much traction.

The larger point is that literally trillions have been spent over the decades on poverty. Programs have been created and executed by some of the smartest people in the world. People who have managed empires of tens of billions of dollars have went down this road. And poverty still abides.

I'm not saying it's intractable. I'm simply saying that caution is in order here. "Prove it" is the correct response when offered really simple solutions to problems that have stumped thousands of others. Don't write a flashy article, don't persuade me in an opinion column, don't show me some economic study. Prove it.

<comment><USER10> > _I suspect at the end of six months you 'll just find the same poor people, > even though technically you've offered them half a year's salary at 30K._ //

Isn't this rather like complaining that a hungry person will be hungry next meal-time even if you give them a meal now?

<comment><USER9> To clarify:

The hypothesis on the table is that you can only measure by poverty by income. That is, if you gave a person making 0 per year 30K per year they would suddenly have an apartment, healthcare, transportation, and all those other things that most other people who make 30K per year have. A certain amount of money over a certain amount of time is the thing to be adjusted (maximized?)

To test this, use a substantial amount of money and a non-trivial time period. 15K and six months come to mind because the sum of money is large enough to do quite a few things and the time period is long enough to allow various random things in life to occur. I'd think you could also test at greater income levels. In fact, to do it right you'd use 15K, 30K, and 45K and time periods of 6, 9, and 12 months.

So when you come back, you're not looking for poverty to be "solved", whatever that means. You're looking on the previous time period to see if that person lived the same as somebody who was making a similar amount from a job. Did they have access to shelter? Food? Did the money last? And so on.

I'm by no means suggesting that poor people are going to blow it all on booze and cocaine (of course, some will), but that _you 're measuring the wrong thing_. This is a classic example of managing to whatever the metrics are, instead of the underlying condition. Put a different way, we shouldn't care how much money anybody makes, but whether they live a comfortable, happy life and have access to opportunity. But whatever my personal bias, an experiment like this would put in sharp relief whether or not the hypothesis had legs or not.

<comment><USER10> > _if you gave a person making 0 per year 30K per year they would suddenly > have an apartment, healthcare, transportation, and all those other things > that most other people who make 30K per year have_ //

It's a poor premise. There's a wearing down effect that poverty has. Over time one can rely quite a bit on past wealth - for example clothing starts wearing out after a year (shoes) but can last decades depending on wear. [estimated periods:] A house needs re-roofing in 20 years, a boiler needs replacing in 10 years, a car needs replacing when it's 15 years old, et cetera.

It's quite easy to live on a low income for a shorter period. In 6 months you're still using all the things you had when you were better off - <USER2> you still have some foodstuffs. Coming the other direction in 6 months of higher income you'd still be spending on those things that have worn out.

The $15k for 6 months would make a dramatic change, IMO, but not necessarily one that a casual observer would notice. As an example, I would probably still be wearing worn out clothes but the house would be in a good state of repair, we'd have a fully working cooker and washing machine, etc..

> _we shouldn 't care how much money anybody makes, but whether they live a > comfortable, happy life and have access to opportunity_ //

Yes, amen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm supportive of basic income, but slightly apprehensive of side effects. I think it would have to be rolled-in gradually so as not to shock the economic system.

Some other potential pros not mentioned in the article: \- lowers barriers to entrepreneurship \- allows parents to stay home and take care of young children \- lowers barriers for re-education \- could reduce costs of social services (through elimination of complex programs)

Side effects I'm curious about: \- how will BI impact minimum wage? \- how will BI impact entry level jobs? \- how will BI impact cost of basic goods?

Also, the 'poverty line' should actually be location dependent because of the difference in food and rent costs in different places. Should BI be location dependent too?

<comment><USER12> One paradox of money is that the more you distribute it, the less it is worth.

When you think about it, this makes sense. If it's easy to come by, it's proportionately "worth less."

<comment><USER13> The actual distribution is an upside-down parabola, a "frowny shape".

Think, for instance, what would happen if one billionaire bought up the entire world supply of Bitcoins for ideological reasons (meaning: he never reaches a point of diminishing marginal utility as the price of BC increases). First, there would be a price bubble as everyone holding bitcoins gets the highest price they can. Then, everyone who had formerly used bitcoin but now sold to the billionaire would migrate to some other crypto-currency, leaving the billionaire eventually holding utterly worthless cryptographic certificates accepted by nobody at all.

<comment><USER6> I see that it's lower at the ends than in the middle. I don't see that a parabola is a good fit - especially not from your example, where my intuition says it'd look more like a bubble bursting than a smooth rise and fall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lower the poverty line to the median income of people who are currently under the poverty line.

You can repeat this as many times as you like to make the poverty rate arbitrarily low.

<comment><USER15> A lot of statistics like this in the UK are published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which openly admits to using a relative measure of poverty, the bottom third. So say your neighbours on either side were watching Blu-Rays and you had a humble DVD player. They'd count that as "poverty". Every now and then their PR machine will arrange for headlines like "one third of children live in poverty!!!" which sounds terrible in a developed country, but actually, is completely meaningless.

<comment><USER16> Is there anyone doing better reporting of poverty in childhood?

Or is the problem more around behaviours and societal stuff than money?

A Channel 4 documentary is a poor source of information but the breadth and depth of the problem is shown in programmes like Skint. The nihilism of multiple generations, the apathy, the learned hopelessness. [http://www.channel4.com/programmes/skint/4od](http://www.channel4.com/programmes/skint/4od)

While these people may not be objectively poor[1] the children have obviously sub-optimal lives.

[1] People have homes, and food, and heat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Even as a right-winger, I'm in favour of universal welfare, provided this isn't offered as a bolt-on to existing means-tested welfare. This should be implemented as a straight replacement, so that we can reap the cost savings in administration.

The article points out "the only thing standing in the way of dramatic poverty reduction and dramatic inequality reduction is, as always, politics"

Unfortunately we'd almost certainly see a rise in the cost of living (food / energy prices). If people can afford more, they'll be charged more - that's how free markets work.

</comment><comment><USER18> Want a quick and dirty fix? Kill half of the poor. Problem solved immediately. (I hate such rhetorical questions, so this is the ironic answer I always give)

There is no quick way out, and the various "basic income" schemes are untested on such a wide scale, and their consequences unknown.

Those who favour basic income on the hypothesis it will be balanced by a reduction of government redistribution jobs ignore a very important trend: governments never shrink - they grow with time (IIRC, in the US over 40% of the GDP is eaten by the gov)

<comment><USER6> _" (IIRC, in the US over 40% of the GDP is eaten by the gov)"_

[http://www.morganwarstler.com/post/44789487956/guaranteed- in...](http://www.morganwarstler.com/post/44789487956/guaranteed-income- choose-your-boss-the-market-based)

It looks like it's strictly less than 25%, though there could well be categories of spending that's excluding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any economics research into why this would, or would not, be a good idea? There are often unintended consequences to such a large change. My understanding, for example, is that having the tax deduction for home buyers simply leads to higher home prices.

<comment><USER20> > tax deduction for home buyers simply leads to higher home prices

This is actually a desired effect of a basic income. The poorest people often live in areas that are essentially cash starved with low real estate prices. There is often little incentive or ability to improve or maintain their homes. A basic income would provide the ability for many in such areas to spend on non essentials like home maintenance which could lead to higher prices and higher employment. Which in turn could lead to more pride in ownership and eventually end up re-invigorating those areas.

<comment><USER21> The poorest people _rent_ , so they have minimal incentive to improve their homes, whilst the relatively-wealthy landlords they rent from have every incentive to increase the rent, because their tenants' income has just gone up by 20% or more (as have their own taxes...) but little incentive to improve the property because the supply of low-end housing hasn't changed.

I agree that _some_ of the basic income given to some members of the working poor will end up being spent on productive improvements that benefit themselves and the people they hire to do it, but a lot of it will simply be gobbled up by inflation of essentials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "That security might not just keep people out of poverty. It might let workers demand better wages and working conditions, because they know they always have something to fall back on. In other words, it could level the playing field for the bottom 99 percent." This is exactly what America's corporate backers don't want. Who wants a workforce that has the ability to say no or to do anything other than beg for the chance to be hired at a low-paying job without benefits?

<comment><USER23> > Who wants a workforce that has the ability to say no or to do anything other > than beg for the chance to be hired at a low-paying job without benefits?

The workers, I would hope. Unfortunately, many people don't understand their own self-interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reduce the cost of living by $3,000 a year. Cut waste producing production, reduce co2 emissions, and the results scale out to the rest of the world's population.

How about a freemium economy? The fries are free but the salt and ketchup cost money.

The biggest lesson I've learned from running a company is blanket money tossing tends to be an excuse for intellectual laziness.

<comment><USER25> Where would you remove $3000 of costs per year? Reducing CO2 emissions would cause prices to rise since alternative forms of power are more expensive. What you really want to do is mandate a lower standard of living, which is by definition cheaper.

<comment><USER6> _" What you really want to do is mandate a lower standard of living, which is by definition cheaper."_

That's not at all "by definition" \- incarceration, for instance, is a horrible standard of living and is hugely expensive.

<comment><USER25> _shakes head_

<comment><USER6> My example was obviously extreme, but it wasn't purely a usage note - there is a meaningful distinction between forcing a lower standard of living and expecting reduced resource usage, and forcing reduced resource usage and accepting a lower standard of living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > High rates of poverty can, as a policy matter, be solved with trivial ease. > How? By simply giving the poor money.

It's been tried. It didn't work. How can the author of this article be so ignorant of history, not just of the many experiments in communism and socialism, but of relatively limited, well-intentioned programs like AFDC in the U.S., programs that are now recognized as having made the problem worse?

Giving the poor money is not, and never will be, "simple". Reasonable people may differ, but I personally think putting the money into education would be a better investment.

</comment><comment><USER27> My first reaction was "hell no".

My second was "there would at least be one and only one number to vote on and administer in this area of government"

My third "oh...wait, you can't live on 3k anyway. The rest of the machinery would have to stay and this would be in addition. Worse, next year its 3.5k, and then next 4k..."

So my counter is this:

Will it work if we give everyone 30k a year? Because that would actually simplify and change things.

Anything less and this isn't a serious proposal.

<comment><USER10> Our family income amounts to ~$4800 per person per annum. So you're proposing a 6 times income increase (we're in the UK). I think $3k is probably _just_ enough to live on in the UK and it's generally accepted that the cost of living here is greater, certainly it would be enough if one weren't spending ~50% of their income on a mortgage.

We run a car too (£1.30/l for petrol), if we weren't working we wouldn't need the car and we'd be able to get an allotment to supplement our food supply. I consider us to be quite well off yet, of course, relatively poor. We don't qualify for free school meals so apparently there are a lot (400,000 children in England alone do qualify) of people worse off than us and still surviving.

$30k per year sounds like it would be a massive disincentive to seek a wage, whether that would also amount to a large population who don't work or not is anyone's guess really (but I'd say yes).

<comment><USER27> Hrm. Maybe I misunderstood the proposal, which I consider radical, and took a wrong turn.

I'm working back from median household income in the US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Median_US_household_incom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Median_US_household_income.png)

I think the proposal's underpinnings are "lets pay everyone enough to live on, shrink all the complexity down to one number so we can all understand and impact what that one number is, and hope that those who produce for love of the game do so to an extent that allows us to keep the system running". Basically communism with a uber-capitalist kicker (slogan proposal: "Musk's gonna Musk").

From your comments, it sounds like you'd think that if we put 30k more per person on the table, the incentive to work would go away, and the poor are needed to work so it would break the system. Well, I believe we've already crossed this line with current entitlements and programs and there's already an advantage to not working.

This is a far right alt source so read it carefully and do your own thinking (could say the same for CNBC though!):

[http://www.zerohedge.com/article/entitlement-america-head- ho...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/entitlement-america-head-household- making-minimum-wage-has-more-disposable-income-family-mak)

In conclusion:

1\. 3k is just another entitlement added onto a haze of entitlements.

2\. The value would be a single number. We're giving it away inefficiently now, why not clean that part up and hope democracy/the light of day will bring a moderation to it. Likely not, but better than what is.

3\. 30k would be a better number if all other entitlement of any kind were truly going away and we were going to truly play it strait up.

4\. If I'm wrong on this and the number after cutting everything else off is really 8k or 10k or whatever, I'm still fairly skeptical we could pay for it.

5\. I've focused a lot of my life on not being poor-ish like we were when I was a kid. I think I'm pretty disconnected from what that word really means, and intentionally so, but thanks for the reality check anyway. If you'd go into more detail, I'd read it. Specifically, say you were poor but wanted to make something, would the amount of money you'd need increase and by how much?

<comment><USER10> I agree that the primary advantage to the state is in rationalising the complex system of benefits and payments down to a single system of assessment.

It strikes me that the disincentive to work can possibly be countered by employing on a limited-time basis those seeking the "benefit" in what would otherwise be uneconomic work. Litter picking is a classic example; sorting recyclables is probably a similar thing. Basically anything to act as a token contribution to the community.

> _Specifically, say you were poor but wanted to make something, would the > amount of money you 'd need increase and by how much?_ //

Certainly. We run a location-based business and want to move it to address a larger market but the cost of moving is prohibitive.

Similarly I've a couple of inventions I'd like to work up; one of which I'd need access to a decent workshop and a couple of months [proper] income to spend on testing and prototype development.

On a slightly different tack there are educational opportunities that my kids are missing out on which require finance - they're low level costs but still out of reach. (Example, we do basic [chemistry|physics] experiments at home, a bit more money would enhance them considerably).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > There is also plenty of room to cut tax expenditures on homeowners, personal > retirement accounts, capital gains exclusions at death, and exclusions on > annuity investment returns.

Let's use today's data and assume no changes in economic behavior.

</comment><comment><USER29> Unintended consequences rule. Taking people out of 'poverty' could mean they become ineligible for other programs, with a net reduction in standard of living. For example.

<comment><USER30> Then you find the benefits paid by all these programs, determine the expenditure per beneficiary and set one flat basic payout per week to all who qualify.

You toss all these other assistance programs in the trash. One central agency administers the money. EBT cards could be administered separately from the basic income card. The rules would be simple, the cards are usable wherever debit and credit cards are. All government agencies would be required to accept them as well.

There are so many aid programs just in the US alone I bet no one can find them all, even at the Federal level the number of programs which partially if not wholly overlap is costly. Then throw in state ones which do essentially the same and we waste an incredible amount on money in just administration.

One way to solve that duplicate effort, get the feds out or get the states out. One agency should be able to administer it all.

<comment><USER29> Very positive. Until somebody is incapable of managing themselves for a variety of reasons - not just mental health or drug addiction, but lack of education or self-control.

Its galling to hand out money and have it gambled away or spend on cigarettes and whiskey. Don't laugh - a generation of women had to scrape by during the depression because the paltry paycheck went into a bottle. That's why we have food stamps etc - they can't be spent on anything but food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> this article is ridden with economic fallacies.

<comment><USER32> Half DH1, half DH3. You can do better!

[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

<comment><USER31> i know, and i don't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is the dumbest socialist propaganda I've read in quite some time. The end result of such an intervention is inflation, not poverty cuts. Because the money will be going out faster than it is collected simply because of logistics and population increase.

There is a famous event of this happening in the old west, large portions of land was just handed out in a state lottery. It changed nothing. This is not a sustainable solution to the problem of bad income mobility.

<comment><USER34> > This is the dumbest socialist propaganda I've read in quite some time. The > end result of such an intervention is inflation, not poverty cuts.

Presumably, redistribution increases inflationary pressure in some sectors and reduces it in others, but it only increases them across the board if it results in more money being spent, e.g., by increasing the domestic velocity of money, total economic activity, and aggregate demand. But that's not a bad thing, and the danger of high inflation can be managed by monetary policy -- tightening monetary policy in response to expansionary conditions that would otherwise produce inflation is pretty much monetary policy 101.

> Because the money will be going out faster than it is collected

Obviously, its trivial to aggregate benefit to a dedicated revenue source so that its money is going out no faster than it is collected.

> There is a famous event of this happening in the old west, large portions of > land was just handed out in a state lottery.

Presumably, this is a somewhat confused reference to the Homestead Act, which had a pretty significant impact on building the American middle class.

But, even so, a continuous redistribution through basic income is different than a one-time distribution of land.

<comment><USER33> First point: Inflation doesn't profit anyone, and it isn't strictly necessary, just hard to avoid. Handing out money that then, because of the hand out, loses a large portion of its value is not redistribution of wealth, but only paper.

Second point: Trivial? It has never been done so far. No government has managed to do this yet, it's the main source of inflation today.

Third point: It is different in that it's recurring instead of a one time hand out. The problems still remain. But the idea of "citizen pay" is not a new one. The problems remain: logistically difficult. Economically inflation removes the "wealth" being redistributed so people end up with nothing. Socioeconomically it removes pressure to invent wealth generating enterprises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why not do this for the entire world? :-)

<comment><USER36> Possibly because some lousy spoilers will object to working like a dog and financing the bloke down the street who doesn't.

<comment><USER37> This is somewhat de-fanged by the idea that said lousy spoiler _also_ gets the $3000. Its better than the current system where only those blokes who won't/can't (damn them/pity them) get the handout. People still work like dogs under the current system so... meh?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Take 20 men and give each a dollar. Lock them in a room for a week. At the end of the week one man will have all 20 dollars.

<comment><USER15> Wanna bet? ;-)

<comment><USER39> My money is on the bookie ... !</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Anybody tried (mt) Grid-Service? - <AUTHOR>

My current server setup cost me last nights sleep, so I'm looking for some alternatives.<p>I really like what I read about Media Temple's (gs) [1] thingy, because it ssems to be quite flexible. Anybody tried it or has any links to reviews?<p>[1] http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/ <comment><USER2> For throwing up a Wordpress blog and uploading files, it's perfect- you have effectively unlimited space, and the Grid server will scale no problem if you get onto Digg or Reddit. Speed is fine, the admin user interface is excellent, and it just works. Think of it as the iPod of hosting.

Now, for music, the iPod's all I need- I don't need FM radio and eight buttons for various functionality I'll virtually never use. Simplicity is a good thing when I need a basic feature set. And, if you're looking for personal web hosting, that makes (gs) perfect.

If you want to be able to customize every facet of your server, dive into the internals, and get something complex working, a distributed hosting service really isn't the way to go.

But for a blog or file hosting? Highly recommended.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your opinion colinplamondon. Not quite what I hoped for, but now I know what I have to expect.</comment></comment>


Tech Shares Fail to Join the Party - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-shares-fail-to-join-the-party-1461372935 <comment><USER2> Is anyone going to talk about the content of the article or continue on with the pay wall drivel?

</comment><comment><USER3> Full text, because people are having issues. BTW: Use the "web" link, but open it in incognito.

Technology sharesare struggling to regain favor with investors, even as the rest of the U.S. stock market is back near record heights.

Many of the industry's leading companies have followed up a rocky start to the year with weak earnings reports this week and are warning of more bleeding to come.

Business conditions for old-line tech stalwarts like International Business Machines Corp. and Intel Corp. have grown tougher, while Microsoft Corp. and Google parent Alphabet Inc.disappointed investors with their results this week. In addition, one of the sector's key sources of support—successful stock-market debuts by highly anticipated tech companies—also has dried up.

The result has been a selloff. Technology companies in the S&P 500 fell 1.9% Friday, nearly erasing the sector's gains for 2016. Alphabet's 5.4% fall Friday was its biggest since October 2012 and wiped out $29 billion from its market capitalization.

Investors have pulled a net $4.5 billion from technology mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in 2016 through the end of March, according to Morningstar. That follows three years of net inflows.

"The market is near all-time highs again, but I don't feel good," said David Rudow, a senior equity analyst at Thrivent Asset Management. "There's some good stuff out there, but it's not like things are rosy and things are booming, especially in tech."

[https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BF- AL125_TECHST_9...](https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BF- AL125_TECHST_9U_20160422180907.jpg)

A slew of technology companies is scheduled to report results next week, including Apple Inc., Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc., whose stock has risen by double-digits the past two years. Apple is currently projected to be the largest contributor to the tech sector's first-quarter earnings decline, according to FactSet.

The initial-public-offering market, which typically juices tech companies' stock prices, also dealt a blow to the sector this week. SecureWorks Corp. ended a four-month-long drought in U.S.-listed technology IPOs this week. But the cybersecurity firm's debut came at a lower-than-expected size and valuation, and its stock opened its first day of trading lower and ended the day flat.

"The technology IPO market was slow last year and will continue to be slow this year," said Colin Stewart, head of technology global equity capital markets at Morgan Stanley.

A strong debut by a new company can justify to investors that its public peers also deserve higher share prices. In the past year, however, shares of newly public tech firms have wobbled. A number of closely watched tech IPOs are trading below their IPO prices.

Gregory Becker, president and chief executive of SVB Financial Group, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, which works with start-up tech companies, said on a conference call Thursday that IPO markets could remain weak for some time. Lower valuations for privately held tech companies could instead drive M&A activity, he said.

There are now at least 146 private companies valued by venture firms at $1 billion or more, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Bankers and investors predict that only a minority of those companies would consider debuting this year. Several mutual funds have been slashing the valuations of privately held companies recently. "If I had a great company that didn't need the capital but could go public, this isn't the time to take it out," said Tripp Jones, a general partner at the venture-capital firm August Capital.

Even as publicly traded tech companies have traded lower, investors in private companies and executives worry that companies will struggle to match or exceed their most recent private valuations. Yet late-stage private capital has been drying up, which could push companies that need funding to go public.

"Companies are going to have to tap the public markets, because the alternatives in the private markets are going to be punitively dilutive," Mr. Jones said.

Executives on recent corporate earnings calls have highlighted a slowdown in tech spending due to concerns about the health of the global economy, which adds to uneasiness, analysts said. Fears of slowing global growth shook financial markets at the start of 2016, leading to a dropoff in business spending.

The slowing of spending on tech isn't necessarily going to last forever, said Hari Srinivasan, research analyst for the Neuberger Berman Global Equity Research Department.

"If the global environment doesn't go through any shocks and continues to recover slowly we could see tech spending come back in the second half of the year," he said.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 15% from the start of the year to Feb. 11, while the S&P 500 fell about 11% during that period. While both indexes have bounced off their lows, the Nasdaq still remains in the red for 2016. It's a big reversal from past years. In 2015 the Nasdaq ended the year up 5.7%, while it rose 13% in 2014—outperforming the S&P 500.

Even with recent declines, the technology sector isn't cheap, analysts say, which makes it harder to justify scooping up shares. Technology companies in the S&P 500 currently trade at an enterprise value—which includes debt and equity—that is 11.6 times its past 12 months of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, according to FactSet. That is up from a year earlier and well above the group's 10-year average of 9.8 times.</comment>


Show HN: I made an easy-to-understand 6502 emulator in pure C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/haldean/x6502 <comment><USER2> One of the most interesting parts of this code to me was the switch statement in the main loop. Professionally, I have run into programs that have massive switch statements with hundreds of cases in them, which I've always considered a "code smell". Your approach is interesting -- breaking everything up into logical groups, putting them in separate files, then using the preprocessor to put everything back together -- that's the first time I've seen that.

I'm still not sure how I feel about it -- you could argue that you have the same problem, but now it's spread out over many files. At the same time, I can look at the loop and have a pretty good idea of what it does and I can easily find what I'm looking for. I guess without OO, there isn't a great solution to the problem, although yours is probably a slight improvement, with the added bonus of getting me to think about the preprocessor in a new way.

Good work.

<comment><USER3> Even with OO, what would you suggest? A bunch of classes, classes, inheritance, and virtual methods to replace it? Great, now my logic is spread out all over the place.

I know that there are definitely cases in which an OO approach beats a bunch of switch statements scattered throughout the code (specifically, when checking the type of the input variable), but I don't think that applies here. If I saw an interpreter written in that way I would assume it was created by someone who didn't know what they were doing.

As an aside, 1) I can't stand the term "code smell" as it tends to be used by hipsters with little to no experience building complex systems, and 2) I realize that you posted your honest thoughts and did a good job of analyzing the approach taken by the author. I'm not trying to prop up a straw man here.

<comment><USER4> I just wanted to say that 'code smell' predates hipsters as a term, yo, and a lot of very experience engineers are right when they say 'this code smells' (i.e. I am suspicious of its suitability for consumption..) In my experience the term is something I learned in the 70's from the smelly retiring hippies whose code I had to maintain for a decade or so. ;)

<comment><USER5> "code smell" in the use that EpicEng complained about dates from the late 1990s.

To get a sense of its history, [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=code+smell&yea...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=code+smell&year_start=1997&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccode%20smell%3B%2Cc0) put a start date of around 1998. It was definitely in Fowler (1999) "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code".

See also [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CodeSmell](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CodeSmell) , which claims "A code smell is a hint that something has gone wrong somewhere in your code. ... KentBeck ... seems to have coined the phrase in the "OnceAndOnlyOnce" page" and points to "Refactoring" as earliest known use.

The phrase you refer to - "this code smells" \- and the implication that it reflects hygiene, has different meaning and intent. While related, they are not the same thing as a "code "smell." Compare "the wine smells" vs. "wine smell" to get a sense of how there can be a difference.

The modern use of the term "hipster" dates from 1999-2003, claims Wikipedia at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_%28contemporary_subcult...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_%28contemporary_subculture%29) , but it's easy to find things like the 1998 alt-comic "Urban Hipster #1" at [http://www.indyworld.com/uh/uh01.html](http://www.indyworld.com/uh/uh01.html) which predate 1999 and use hipster in its modern meaning.

In any case, the term 'hipster' is derived from a term in widespread use from the 40s-60s, which then fell into disfavor. To get a rough idea of the change in use pattern, see [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hipster&year_s...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hipster&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chipster%3B%2Cc0) .

Obviously the 1940s "hipster" term predates "code smell" as applied to computer code, because there was no computer code in the 1940s.

So no, "code smell" does not predate the term "hipster."

<comment><USER6> fit2rule didn't say that the term 'code smell' outdates the term 'hipster'. He said that the term 'code smell' outdates hipsters' use of it. Heck, even I remember hearing about a code smell or two in the 80's ..

<comment><USER5> Ahh, I see how you can draw that conclusion. The quote is "'code smell' predates hipsters as a term", which I interpreted to mean that "code smell" (as a term) is older than "hipster" (as a term, or as a movement), while you interpret to mean "was used by people before hipsters used it."

I agree with you that "code smell" did not originate from hipster use.

But I don't think EpicEng implied that either. The parent comment is "it tends to be used by hipsters with little to no experience building complex systems." I don't see in it an implication that hipsters came up with the term.

So if that is fit2rule's point, then it's rather like saying "fixed-wheel bicycles existed before hipsters" \- true, but a tangential remark which ended up derailing the conversation.

I know of no use of the phrase "code smell" before 1999, with its modern use. Could you speak more about your recollections from the 1980s? Was it used the same? Do you have a citation or reference?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, pretty much, and I admit it is a gross generalization. The term just bugs me because I see it used so often by people who lack the experience to understand why code which may not seem optimal to them was written the way that it was. I've also seen it used by smart people who know what they're talking about.

Who knew I would get such an education on the term "code smell"? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good job! As promised, the code is easy to read. Your major choices all make sense to me:

* you went easy on #define's, they obfuscate the code when used heavily

* you have a simple switch instead of an opcode table with function pointers or something like that (may seem more fun to write, harder to read for someone inexperienced)

* light on comments, which is also excellent, the code is self-documenting almost everywhere.

* the unusual includes for opcode categories are OK. If you wanted it to be more straight-laced C, could put them in separate .c files and break the switch into many switches, one per file. It's probably better the way it is.

One thing it'd be nice to add is a short guide, right there in README, in which order to read the source (e.g. start from cpu.h/cc to understand how the state of the CPU and memory is represented, then cpu.h/cc for the main loop executed once per instruction, etc.).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! That's a great idea; I'll write that up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I made something similar for the Z80: [https://github.com/ggambetta/libz80](https://github.com/ggambetta/libz80)

The interesting thing is that I wrote very little of the code by hand; instead I wrote a program that generates the opcode implementations from a concise specification. The end result is remarkably compact, and the whole thing was really fun to make.

<comment><USER9> A little hint for improvement: condition() could be implemented as a switch instead of a long if-chain.

Did you use this for generating the opcodes? The Z80 ISA encoding is quite regular and octal-based: [http://www.z80.info/decoding.htm](http://www.z80.info/decoding.htm)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the reference! This was a long time ago but I think I didn't use that decoding table. Just a couple of days ago I was reading about the x86 one, I really wasn't aware that opcodes were anything but random bytes mapped to operations.

As for the improvement, I never liked switch, for unknown reasons :) You mean an improvement in style, performance or both?

<comment><USER9> There's always a pattern to the opcodes, even though in some cases it's not quite so obvious (like x86 - it's octal too). The reason has to do with how it's implemented in hardware. The 6502's is only slightly less regular than the z80 and here's an interesting article about that: [http://www.pagetable.com/?p=39](http://www.pagetable.com/?p=39)

IMHO the switch would improve both style and performance, what caught my eye when I looked over the code was that different flags would require different amounts of time to execute, which _really_ seems an odd thing for an emulator to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> s-macke Reminds of my little 6502 CPU project for the TI92 calculator.

[http://simulationcorner.net/index.php?page=c64](http://simulationcorner.net/index.php?page=c64)

Only 30KB of code and it runs a C64 on it.

</comment><comment><USER10> 6502 is still currently used, by the way. The Tamagotchi games use a GeneralPlus 6502C, for example. There's a new Tamagotchi out this week that has NFC but is so much like the previous version otherwise, it's probably still using the same code:

[http://natashenka.ca/tamagotchi-friends- teardown/](http://natashenka.ca/tamagotchi-friends-teardown/)

<comment><USER11> The 6502 is still used widely in industrial stuff. Back in 2001 when I was still doing electrical engineering bits, as part of a project I received some brand new custom radio rig test equipment to integrate with an automated testing rig plugged into a PC running DOS (meh). We took it to bits to get access to the documented serial port header. Inside was a pristine gold turned pin socketed 6502. It was the only chip on the board that had that privilege. It was like it was being worshipped by the engineers.

We sent the test team who built it a big "you're awesome" card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to try this out without building it yourself, I've put together a quick Emscripten port, including the two demos: [http://jamesfriend.com.au/x6502](http://jamesfriend.com.au/x6502)

</comment><comment><USER13> So I'm working on an AVR emulator in pure C when I have time. 'tptacek gave me some hints on getting started: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5787373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5787373)

He suggested to take HEX as the input and I never looked back. I see this emulator just reads the bytes from the binary.

Does anyone know if the GCC AVR toolchain spits out a file I could do the same thing with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that's an interesting idea. I actually considered writing my own assembler to some format that I could read, but then I realized:

* It's way cooler if you can use other peoples' assemblers and still have your bytecode interpreter work

* Using other peoples' assemblers is a good way to sanity check any assumptions you made (this bit me with branches, for example; I was branching from the location of the current instruction when the spec is to branch from the location of the next instruction)

* It's easier to read binary than to read hex strings and transform them to binary.

Plus, transforming binaries to readable hex is as easy as "hexdump -c". :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "dispatching out to functions to handle each opcode carries unnecessary overhead in what should be the tightest loop in the project"

How about inline functions or macros?

</comment><comment><USER15> Recommended way to assemble the 6502 examples on OSX?

<comment><USER16> Looking up bin/xa on Debian lead me to

        xa65 - cross-assembler and utility suite for 65xx/65816 processors

This package is available in the Mac homebrew repository, so maybe try that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yeah, sorry; xa65 is the package name on Debian as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: MVPs and Fintech - <AUTHOR> For our fintech product, we need an inspection by a finance ministry, which would mean we need well thought out security and product. How do/have you approach(ed) this in an MVP sense? Building the least possible needed? Validating the idea differently (a la dropbox)? <comment><USER2> You need to understand exactly what the finance ministry expects of you.</comment>


Judge draws parallel between music sharing and unlicensed public performance - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/double-standard-unlicensed-bar-music-vs-p2p-users.ars

<comment><USER2> Interesting approach and I think it is a good direction. There are some differences though: sharing the files on the net is releasing them to a potentially broader audience. The patrons in a bar don't get to take home the music they listen to on their mp3 player. Maybe a comparison to unlicensed broadcasting is more appropriate?

<comment><USER3> But imagine if they could?! Right now, there is no technical reason why this is not possible, all hurdles are legal ones.

<comment><USER4> There is a distinct legal difference between performance of a work and copying.... if you were recording the thing at the bar and then distributing copies - it would be the latter.

The point the judge is making here is more like "Hey - in _performance_ related damages - we punish violators who _knowingly_ and _blatantly_ refused to follow the law to their direct commercial benefit, and the only pay a few thousand bucks in damages compared to the licensing fees. (4, or 5 figures in the extreme.)

Now, even though it's not the same issue precisely, it seems grossly out of place that a person at home who shared some music with a few people for non- commercial reasons is being assessed damages in the 6 to 7 figure ranges...and that just seems absurd.

I mean seriously - some Mom goes out and shares a song on some bittorrent setup - and we're saying she owes a MILLION DOLLARS?

<comment><USER2> The high figures seem to result from the fact that the *AA argue that the file was _potentially_ shared with _millions_ of people around the internet. I wonder why they are not required to prove every single instance of downloading that they claiming damages from...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm afraid that if this parallel becomes common, it will backfire. An unlicensed public performance, which receives a penalty of 2x the license fee, represents the song being played one time, to a limited audience. If one extrapolates from there the number of potential hearers/hearings from a shared file....

<comment><USER6> But they're looking at actual infringements. 1 download, 1 infringement. The size of the audience, potential or otherwise, is here nor there.

<comment><USER7> Exactly, what bothers me is how they don't have to prove how many time the files were copied (from her computer to another, she didn't do the infringement when she first downloaded the song.) to make up that 1.92 million number. If we had a number say $10 per song shared (ridiculous number 10 times larger that the real number) then if they can prove she at least shared those file once, that's $240. But they can't prove that currently so... the damages are in my view totally in founded.</comment></comment></comment>


Ford Attempts to Make Natural Gas Vehicles Relevant - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4345539.html

<comment><USER2> It's totally doable, but I wonder how difficult it might be to get going? LPG motor vehicles are common here in Australia. The main issue is infrastructure, but even then vehicles can be dual-fuel. That minimises the risk of vehicles being stranded without fuel, even if LPG availability is limited.

For fleet vehicles, a company could maintain it's own LPG supply. I wonder how cost-effective it would be in that case? Maintaining your own chunk of fueling infrastructure doesn't sound cheap to me.</comment>


The Man Who Guards America's Ketchup - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/09/02/754316710/meet-the-man-who-guards-americas-ketchup <comment><USER2> If you're seriously interested in the magic of Heinz Ketchup, this New Yorker longread by Malcolm Gladwell from 2004 remains the benchmark-

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup- co...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum)

<comment><USER3> Only slightly related to that but if you enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's piece you may also be interested in this episode from his excellent Revisionist History podcast where he tracks down why the fries at McDonalds don't taste the same any more:

[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke- my...](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my-heart)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That story reminds me, I once made my own ketchup. It's a lot of fun, but not very rewarding (see below).

You'll find many different recipes on the net. I chose one of them that I considered most promising, assembled the definitely countless ingredients, then carefully peeled and boiled down the tomatoes, and so on. The whole process took me about two hours, maybe even longer. Before you add the vinegar, it tastes like a delicious Indian tomato sauce.

The result after adding the vinegar tasted like the cheapest, generic no-name ketchup you could find. It wasn't particularly bad, just not nearly as good as Heinz. Whatever they put in their ketchup, it sure is some secret sauce.

<comment><USER5> Sometimes it just needs carefully sussing out the secret ingredient.

My wife has been trying to make green curry for years, but it was never as good as the Thai stuff. Then she followed the advice of a professional chef to not replace the kaffir limes by just any limes and actually try to obtain kaffir limes (which are bitter and not useful except for their peel). Boom! Her green curry is now as good as any in Thailand. Just changing the limes made a world of difference.

<comment><USER6> Did she attempt to dose cardamom? Did she use Thai basil? I'm not sure about the former in Thai cuisine, but the latter is highly recommended.

As for ketchup, it simply isn't spicy enough for my taste. Which makes it "boring". There's a Dutch variant called "curry" which contains spices and umami, but more sugar and less tomatoes.

Mayonnaise I desire with lemon, too (Belgian style). I like to make my own garlic sauce (Belgian mayonnaise, yogurt, cube-sliced garlic). Don't make it _too_ runny (too much yogurt). My fav sauce is green pepper sauce. It is similar to the garlic sauce as base, but with freshly grinded green pepper. I'll try a black pepper variant another time.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried brown sauce?

[http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/brownsauce.htm](http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/brownsauce.htm)

<comment><USER6> Yes, I have! You may regard it as similar, but not quite the same. The thing with "curry" (Dutch one ie. the sauce, not the -real- Asian one) is that different brands are not quite the same. If you focus on it, you'll notice.

I also find that the older I become, the less desire I have for sugar. I dislike if things are too sweet for my taste. Hence I no longer prefer (Dutch) curry as sauce, and also a reason why I love yogurt with mayonnaise as a simple basis for sauces. In that sense, German cream and German mayonnaise is also lovely as it contains far less sugar but has the same mouth feeling. In apfelstrudel mit Sahne, the cream compliments the sweet pastry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent a few years working as a cook, from crappy catering companies all the way up to a michelin-starred restaurant. At every level, it was a known "rule" that one thing you should never attempt to make in house was...ketchup.

<comment><USER9> I had a friend that worked for Jean-George in new york and brought their steak sauce with him to the restaurant we were working at. I swear to god, we had to order all these specialty fucking ingredients and dump a ton of labor into this one condiment and then people would just ask for A1 (or Ketchup).

Some things just aren't worth the effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huntz is a vastly superior product, for a similar (or cheaper) price.

Give it a shot!

edit: I made the switch a couple years back, when Huntz switched back to sugar (from corn syrup) and haven't looked back. AFAIK, Heinz still uses the high fructose rubbish.

</comment><comment><USER11> Kinda silly that we still can't make an objective measurement of taste, like we can for images, sound.

<comment><USER12> But we can. What we can't make is an objective measurement of whether something tastes _good_ \- much like we can't make a similar objective measurement for whether an image looks good, or a music piece sounds good.

<comment><USER11> The question in the article was about whether the taste of ketchup has changed over time. Now, can we measure the taste of something, record it, and compare it meaningfully to a new measurement? If there is a difference between both measurements, can we say if that difference is significant or not (i.e. would a human be able to tell the difference)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It kind of bothers me that in that picture of the farm the hills behind it look like a desert.

<comment><USER14> It's dry grass - you see hills like that in many parts of California. Some of my wife's relatives visiting from Poland had the same interpretation you did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Used to be made of oysters and walnuts. If we didn't allow it to change with public tastes, we'd still be putting that on our hamburgers?

</comment><comment><USER16> In the U.S. salsa has partly replaced katchup as a tomato condiment. I use it myself because I have to watch my weight and sugar intake.

<comment><USER16> oops, make that "ketchup"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is Facebook doing to combat pyramid schemers? - <AUTHOR> Lately I've been noticing exploitative characters post baits in popular groups. They don't disclose the details of the supposed part time job, but instead invite interested parties to private conversations, where it's easier to swindle the more likely victims. After they're uncovered, they delete the baiting post, part the group and block anyone that's onto them. All the proof of their scheme disappears, and there's nothing to report them for. Even if you can access their profile, they can only be reported for lying about their name, or using a personal profile as a business (which isn't really the case). <comment><AUTHOR> Even the Report feature in messenger doesn't cover that situation. Right now I'm able to report someone from a conversation for:

      - Sending suspicious links or attachments
      - Showing sexually explicit content
      - Insults or harassment
      - Suicidal behavior (??)
      - Not being interesting (???)</comment>


Why don't you provide a Windows build? - <AUTHOR> http://www.darktable.org/2015/07/why-dont-you-provide-a-windows-build/ <comment><USER2> I read this a while back. It fills my heart with pure joy.

Windows has not traditionally been a platform for hacking. That's not to say that people don't hack on it, but it's just not as available. So while Unix (big tent, all Linuxes, and macOS are in here) has from its beginning been all about hacking.

As people explore Linux they discover, oh maybe I have access to that source code, maybe I can fix that thing over there, maybe I can make that work on this new thing.

Since until recently Windows was a pay to play platform, it didn't really offer that same experience for people to dip their toes into hacking. This is all starting to change, so maybe there will be someone who steps up and does this port, who knows. It would probably be a lot of work though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This discussion from 2015 is pretty interesting: [https://discuss.pixls.us/t/darktable-on-windows-parthas- buil...](https://discuss.pixls.us/t/darktable-on-windows-parthas-build- thread/290)

</comment><comment><USER3> How about getting it to run under linux for windows from the new insider build?</comment>


Earth overshoot day is July 29 - <AUTHOR> https://www.overshootday.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was so sad to see this date move closer to the half year mark. They've made a map with user suggested actions and initiatives which looked useful but was a bit empty at the moment. There sure must be more things we can do in tech to help raise awareness for topics like this?! Would be cool to hear your ideas and suggestions!</comment>