Ask HN: Abusive-seeming legal threat from Semalt - <AUTHOR> Hello HN.
I run AbuseIPDB, a free distributed IP threat analysis database that allows users to report abusive IPs (spammers, bruteforcers, etc) through an API, webform, or Fail2Ban integration. We have over 30,000 users and almost 50k IPs reported per day.
I received a legal letter today from Semalt, a company that is probably familiar to many of you as a shady SEO company. They're mad because one of our users flagged one of their IPs on our site with the following comment:
https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/220.127.116.11
"Bot that promotes semalt.com SEO through web log referrer click bait spam with fix-website-errors.com, keywords-monitoring-success.com and keywords-monitoring-your-success.com. Does not identify itself as a bot, nor does it follow robots.txt. Clickbait link includes your domain name to let the bot's master know they got through. Primary site has form to gather domain names."
Semalt says this:
"The above mentioned materials do not contain any truthful information, and you ignore our attempts to clarify the issues related to your abusive comments and articles. You choose to ignore us and continue spreading false information. Our company has never been involved into the distribution of referral spam.
On the contrary, we often suffer from fake referral traffic on our website. The Semalt company has no doubt that you have used the trademark of our company in your publications not by accident but on purpose hoping to attract customers (readers) by using the popular brand/product name. [...]"
Full legal letter is here, including all of the threats of suing for damages, invoking GDPR, etc etc. For what it's worth, they didn't even bother contacting us through the website before sending this.
https://www.scribd.com/document/381802760/Abuseipdb-com-Abuse-Letter
Has anyone else crossed paths with these guys before? It it worth responding to or acting on?
Thanks for your input! <comment><USER2> Same here, we have one of the most authoritative blog posts on the topic of referral spam and it, of course, mentions semalt who were one of the first to use this tactic of "promotion" of their service:

[http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2015/guide-referrer- spam-g...](http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2015/guide-referrer-spam-google- analytics/)

We got the same letters, sent to our ISP, instead of us, and we are a legal entity, easy to identify and contact in multiple ways. Legalese is shit, of course, we will stand our ground for sure. Unfortunately, due to procedures by our ISP we might need to temporarily remove a part of the content until the issue is resolved.

<comment><USER3> Got the exact same email from them today. I removed it as I'm not a legal expert and thought it looked authentic, but glad to know they don't really have any legal power to do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also received a very similar letter in an email. I had an article on my site from several years ago about how to block referral spam, and Semalt was one of the sites I listed. I've deleted the article but did not reply to the email.

I feel a bit bad that I deleted the article as everything in it was truthful and helpful to people looking for that info. However, I don't want to get into a legal fight (although that's probably unlikely).

The only thing I can think of that I could possibly be in trouble for legally is that I called these sites referrer spam and ghost spam. However, so have a thousand other sites and what they did really seems to fit the definition of that exactly.

I read online that these sort of letters are supposed to be delivered by mail, not electronically. Additionally, I wonder about the statute of limitations is on this.

Anybody have any free, anonymous legal advice?

<comment><USER5> Calling the sites referrer spam and ghost spam is correct. It's spam, which is illegal in some countries, and visitors did NOT come from Semalt.com to your website. It's fake, and I'd continue to call it what it is: referral spam and ghost spam.

Some even tracked down the Semalt botnet that was doing this referral spam and ghost spam. So you're absolutely in the right by calling it what it is. What semalt did was absolutely referral spam. They claim it wasn't them, but they certainly profited from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I received the same exact message from Semalt about an article I wrote back in 2014. I'm pretty sure this is a scare tactic since I can't find any reason for them to "start legal proceedings", and the letter they sent is clearly copy and pasted since one of the field wasn't updated from the last person they messaged. Also, they have no reason to mention GDPR – it has nothing to do with this situation.

Just in case, I contacted a lawyer – I'll fight it if it goes further since I don't appreciate being bullied by a company like this, and nothing I said was false.

</comment><comment><USER7> We also recieved this letter from Semalt concerning a blog-article about referral spam.

We contacted our lawyer and he said that the reasons mentioned in the letter are rubbish. Our blog-article doesn't concern any trademark-violations and it certainly has nothing to do with GDPR.

The only critical point might be, if we said something wrong about them. But we have the facts and there are lots of other sites that say the same thing. So we won't delete or edit our article and we'll see if they really go to court and risk losing.

I hope some of you will do the same - that will make it easier for all of us!

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes I received the same letter. I did a review on Semalt on my website sharing my opinion which was not very flattering. Their letter said they are going to sue me for damages from 2014 until now.... however I didn't even have my domain purchased until 2015 and the review was obviously written even later than that. I removed my review from my website because I don't want any drama but I ignored their letter. They then sent the same letter to my domain registrar and they emailed me.

A legal letter should be very precise but their letter could not even get their dates right. On top of that it says to Sir/ Madam when my full name is clearly shown on my website. I can't take that seriously. They cannot even take the time to write my name?

</comment><comment><USER9> I think Semalt sent the same letter to anyone who has mentioned their wrongdoing or how to block it... I think most of them do not even want to bother or any trouble with the company. Simply delete the article because it was like big topic in 2014. Now because of GDPR, they are trying to abuse it and cover all of their shits.... i don't even wanna bother with them.. I just deleted the article..

<comment><AUTHOR> Does GDPR have anything to do with this? None of their PII is posted. GDPR doesn't let you force anyone to delete anything about you from their site.

<comment><USER5> I don't think GDPR has anything to do with this. You're correct, none of their PII is posted, and you didn't save any of their PII.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been contacted too. I'm not planning on removing my article either. It feels like a bluff. I find it odd that their first course of action is to threaten legal action. Not exactly the way to win friends and influence people. If they really wanted to get on the right side of this they would acknowledge what they did and then approach people with an apology. Meh.

</comment><comment><USER11> I received this letter for my web site too, for an article that was published before I bought the site. Since I didn't write the article and couldn't even say if it was true or not, I just deleted it to avoid a possible fight. However, I do believe that their claims have no teeth and it is just a scare tactic. I emailed them back at their generic company address because they didn't even leave a reply-to address in the contact form.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know several blogs and sites who have written about the semalt referral spam back in 2014 that have gotten legal threats against them.

The letters claim trademark infringement. They own no trademark in the USA, and there is one in pending status in their own country. Would claiming you own a trademark (yet you don't officially own one yet) be an issue?

If you've written about how to block Semalt referrer spam, you're just informing your readers about how to block referral spam (the domain doesn't really matter). So that falls under fair use.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've had exactly the same thing today in my spam box. I didn't open the attachment, but I assume it's regarding a negative article I wrote.

Everything I wrote was the truth, and I can back up everything I said, so I'm not concerned.

</comment><comment><USER13> Same here. I think it's fair use, It's public service to fight spam. I don't think a judge will side with their argument that we're trying to take advantage of their great reputation :-).

Just like with any claim troll without merits, the best course of action is to ignore them.

<comment><USER14> I received the same email and attachment. Talked with the local police and they said it seems like a scam and told me to contact Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority. So, I sent the email and PDF to them. I'm not taking any of this.</comment></comment>


Algorithms for the Masses - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.barrons.com%2Farticle%2FSB50001424052748704551504578489963625123642.html%3Fmod%3DBOL_twm_col&ei=z8KbUcjyE4X50gGr5oG4Bw&usg=AFQjCNHyMjaVR_VYtVSfkkraKHdebiwiqw

<comment><USER2> Your "google search; copy url; paste" is showing.

<comment><USER3> This only goes to show how influenced I am by brands; as soon as I clicked the link my reaction was "this isn't google, what's the point in reading this!" and went back...

<comment><USER4> I had the same reaction. I don't think this is really about brands though. I've gone to links to domains I didn't recognize as much as this one. The reason I immidietly closed it was the fact that the domain was not was HN said it was made the link feel spammy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that - I had a link copying issue, and thought I was adding the Barron's destination and instead got the hyperlink from the Google search.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tulsa Remote - <AUTHOR> https://tulsaremote.com/#hero <comment><USER2> I'm saddened by all of the negativity in these comments. So many people falling back on the old stereotypes of the South and Midwest, people who have clearly not spent time in these places. I live in a small city in Kansas and have worked remotely for SFBA tech companies for over 10 years. I moved here from the Seattle area. I can tell you that life is amazing when you make Bay Area money and live in a small Midwestern city. You can build a beautiful, new house with lots of space and spend far less than rent on a SF 1 bedroom apartment. You can walk to work--drivers are friendly out here--at a coworking facility (we have two in my little town alone) and eat lunch for less than $10 no problemo. You can find almost anything you need locally and if you can't find it here, you'll have plenty of spare cash to book a five-star hotel room in the big city for the weekend and go shopping.

People are super friendly and contrary to what so many of you mistakenly believe, not judgmental. Gay couples live openly and happpily here. I've never met a racist or seen anything racist; indeed, nearly half of the houses on my block here in the affluent side of town are either black or mixed-race families. Kids play in the streets together every day and they can walk to the bus stop without the parents worrying about an Uber driver running them over.

I hope that someone here takes Kaiser/Tulsa up on their offer and reports back. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

<comment><USER3> It's gotta be judged city to city. Charleston, south Carolina is chock full of straight Jim crow racism, and I'd hazard to say that's the majority there.

It's not fair to apply that stereotype to Tulsa without going there and checking it out, but I think it's a reasonable concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Admittedly this is aggregate for the whole state:

[https://www.usnews.com/news/best- states/oklahoma](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oklahoma)

      Overall Rank Out of 50: #43
      Health Care #48
      Education #39
      Economy #36
      Opportunity #38
      Infrastructure #31
      Crime & Corrections #34
      Fiscal Stability #22
      Quality of Life #17

Those aren't great incentives for people with families to want to move. Might be more tolerable for younger folks?

Of course, getting fresh tax revenue etc may be important towards getting those various things improved, and Tulsa might be significantly better than the rest of the state.

<comment><USER5> But where are they ranked in BBQ? I moved to North Carolina from SF Bay Area and NC has much going for it ... but North Carolinians think NC BBQ is like top-3 (Lexington style, Eastern style, etc.) -- but I don't see it. I much prefer Louisiana or Texas BBQ. I'll say other aspects balance out the mediocre NC BBQ.

If Oklahoma / Tulsa BBQ is in the top-3 that might make up for a few of the deficits.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand, isn't a BBQ a device you put in your garden? How can it differ per state?

(not sarcastic, I'm just a clueless foreigner)

<comment><USER7> You're thinking of a grill, which is used to make the BBQ. As for how it differs from state, I think it's the recipes for the BBQ that differ (some places use vinegar, others use ketchup).

<comment><USER6> But it's about the habits in people's backyards right? Or about restaurants?

<comment><USER8> Pretty sure they are comparing BBQ restaurants which are definitely a thing, and differ in style from state to state.

As you've implied, if you're cooking the meat yourself in your backyard then you can do any style you want. I believe "true bbq" can be considered more time consuming than just throwing meat on a grill, and would involve the use of a smoker and perhaps other equipment. It's not just grilling meat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me a lot of patio11's fascinating write up about Japanese Hometown Tax. It makes total sense for small cities to pay for high earning remote workers to move there. Perhaps this will become a trend. [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2018/10/19/japanese-hometown- tax/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2018/10/19/japanese-hometown-tax/)

<comment><USER6> It's related to hometown tax how? Because both have descriptions that include the words "town" and "money"?

<comment><USER9> Because it could create a situation where small cities and counties are competing against each other to win the favor of workers. It's not an identical situation, and arguably this competition already exists, but it's much more obvious when direct cash incentives are being offered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Spent 6 months on a project in Tulsa. I'm a big fan of the place. I was in the downtown area and ended up staying in the Mayo hotel most weeks. The incredible thing was that I was in a ~1500 square foot apartment style 2 bedroom with full kitchen and was paying on average 129/night. These rooms were 5-600 a night on weekends but the place was a ghost town during the work week. It was right next to the blue dome and bands like Pearl Jam, rob zombie, Katy perry all stayed in the place while I was there. Downtown becomes a ghost town at 5pm but there is a decent night life as well. I would totally live there.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been working remote for 7 years, more recently as a software developer consultant. I showed this to my wife about two hours ago and she got really excited. Neither of us like where we are living now, and have been eyeing a relocation to Texas, notably Austin or possibly Dallas. But this is definitely worth a look, based on what we've seen so far.

I'm curious if others in the tech crowd are considering the same. If you are please post your story. It would be encouraging to see other interested this offer. Heck we could be neighbors.

<comment><USER12> Just got back from Austin and Dallas. Your options are going to be a lot deeper in both of them. And if you have a family, nothing in OK, sounds very encouraging on the education front.

<comment><USER11> I don't disagree, as I've been to both places in the past year scoping it out. But what has me intrigued about Tulsa is how far they are going to improve the area.

Let's assume this experiment works, and they draw 200 high-wage tech and creative class workers to the area. Over time, a community forms, startups are launched, and investments are drawn to the area. Quality of life improves, and it draws more of these workers and there's a sort of multiplier effect that transforms the area.

IMO Dallas and/or Austin would be a no-brainer but the cost of living has shot up dramatically in the past few years. But in the end, I guess you get what you pay for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/21/7-us-cities-that-will-pay- yo...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/21/7-us-cities-that-will-pay-you- thousands-of-dollars-to-live-there.html)

Financial relocation incentives don't appear to be anything new, but the alternatives never seemed to ring any bells for me. Hard to pin down precisely, but I think part of it was the fact that a lot of them were asking you to settle down in what might as well be the frontier in terms of urban density and amenities, or maybe the city in question was a burnt-out husk of its former self (a different kind of frontier almost), or maybe the incentive wasn't so much cash as much as loan assistance or some other thing that doesn't sound as sexy.

Looking at the website, pretty obvious that they're not asking me to settle in a small town or a burnt-out husk of a city. Despite my biases against Oklahoma, I get the sense that this is a pretty exciting place to be. On top of that, the incentives actually seem very practical. It's cash, plain and simple.

I like it, if you couldn't already tell.

<comment><USER14> I live in Tulsa now. Don't do it.

Just because this website says it is exciting doesn't mean it is. They are throwing money at the issue of a brain drain and lagging economy.

Tons of people who "went to school in Tulsa" don't live there now because it is the opposite of exciting.

<comment><USER15> Thought experiment: you are now Mayor of Tulsa and have received a $100M grant to "make Tulsa exciting". Assume the situation is that whatever you propose would not be opposed.

What would you do?

<comment><USER14> Allow new business to be created without the city's red tape and dismantle the old-boys club that drove away innovation for a century.

<comment><USER16> > dismantle the old-boys club

How?

<comment><USER14> > Allow new businesses to be created without the city's red tape

Mostly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I mean WOW the comments here are snotty against Tulsa. Relatively little discussion of the incentive itself, the fact that a single private individual is paying for the incentive (!!), or other dynamics of relocation to cheaper, easier towns for remote work.

I visited Tulsa a few months ago to just check it out. I enjoyed it greatly. The Tulsa Gathering Place is absolutely unreal for a free public park. There is enough going on there to make it a worthwhile place to move to for a few years. A considerable amount of very high end architecture and art there.

I am doing a multifamily development with similar (not nearly as generous) relocation incentives tied in through a medical district. Very interesting way to move the needle and encourage shifts in living. For most cities, this is a much cheaper way to approach affordable housing as well.

<comment><USER18> I grew up in Tulsa as a minority. Went to Jenks Public schools.

Two students in my graduation class got accepted to Harvard, and others to MIT, U Penn, and Duke. They have gone on to become successful tech entrepreneurs and professors. The graduating class after my year had 4 students accepted to Stanford.

Non est ratio ad gustum ... Über Geschmack lässt sich nicht streiten ... Les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas ...

There is a reason why almost every language has an idiomatic expression to express the same idea.

Tulsa may be a great place for you, it may be a not so great place for you. But dismissing an idea based on no real experience and innate prejudices is pretty stupid.

<comment><USER19> Hey there, another Jenks graduate here. I'm currently more towards the OKC area but definitely would love to live in Tulsa again. It's a laid back kind of place, great cost of living, plenty to do... Not for everyone I'm sure but perfect for me.

I think the state of education in our state is a pretty big problem, but there are nationally ranked high quality schools like you said, Jenks, Union, Norman.

<comment><USER20> [https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/oklahoma-senior- from-j...](https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/oklahoma-senior-from-jenks- accepted-at-all-eight-ivy- league/article_2dba31cc-c6bf-5920-ad7e-a55c5a615f7c.html)

[https://www.tulsaworld.com/goodnews/how-i-got-here-how- sarah...](https://www.tulsaworld.com/goodnews/how-i-got-here-how-sarah- cameron-was-accepted-to/article_7fe84dca-09dd-5fc9-a815-46e6225b3ea4.html)

Oklahoma senior from Jenks High School accepted to all 8 Ivy League schools

Sarah Cameron boasts a long list of extracurricular activities, including academic clubs and an impressive tennis career. Now she can brag about her eight college acceptance letters, all to Ivy League schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't qualify for this offer, and I wouldn't accept it if I did. I have a ragweed allergy. I was horribly ill when I lived in Kansas, probably at least in part because it is ragweed central. Oklahoma is also ragweed central. So that doesn't work for me.

I liked Oklahoma when I went through there. I spent a few years kind of wishing I could live in Oklahoma. I am a homebody who spends a lot of time online. I need a few decent places to eat and shop, but I can kind of make my own fun.

I mostly don't understand complaints that a city is "boring." I mean, if it has 500 people, okay, I can see that. I need a certain amount of city fabric. But I don't really get it when that gets said about big cities. Tulsa is 400k people.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a sister who recently bought a house in Tulsa. Their house is so large it's got rooms she's forgotten about... Pretty new, pool, nice neighborhood. Cost less than $300K. I don't know about the school district (Jenks). I'd sure like to see some progressive voters move down there.

<comment><USER23> >I'd sure like to see some progressive voters move down there.

Related to this, I wonder what the born&raised locals would think of this incentive. (gentrification?)

<comment><USER22> There's a lot of oil money in Tulsa, has been for decades. I'm not sure they'll notice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Both Oklahoma and Vermont have close to a 5% state income tax on the first 100k of income, so for many on HN, this is more like a rebate on state income taxes over the first 2 years. I guess if you always dreamed of moving to these places this could be that little nudge to finally try it out.

<comment><USER25> This means that states without income tax (WA, NV, TX, TN etc) are yet still more enticing for most high-earning professionals. I agree with other commenters saying this doesn't do much except help the people who always were considering moving to OK/VT.

<comment><USER26> I've never understood this thinking. A state has a certain amount of expenditures in their budget. They have to acquire those funds somehow. If they don't collect income tax, they bump up food tax, or hotel tax, or restaurant tax, or diesel tax, etc. The money is coming out of your wallet one way or the other.

<comment><USER12> I live in a state without income tax and moderately high property taxes. This arrangement tends to favor the rich, inheritance owners over the working class. In a state income tax state, my taxes are dependent on me working, and a smaller percentage goes to property.

In a property tax state, my taxes are entirely dependent on the property market, regardless of how much or little I make. When there is a budget shortfall the bureaucrats juice the millage rate. Property re-assessments go up, rarely down. And if you owned property for a long while you pay less in taxes than someone younger and on a lower salary.

<comment><USER27> > This arrangement tends to favor the rich...

What a complete and utter lie. What hole are you pulling these "facts" from?

> And if you owned property for a long while you pay less in taxes than > someone younger and on a lower salary.

You mean, someone retired and unemployed vs. someone at the peak of their career?

Man...you are projecting so hard, it's palpable.

<comment><USER28> > What a complete and utter lie.

Don't accuse others of lying when even a modicum of good faith points to them simply holding opinions different from yours.

In this case, they are also right. At least under the assumption of taxation linear to property value.

Thats because richer people tend to spend less (as a %) of their income on housing. I hope that's intuitively obvious: making minimum wage, you're likely to spend 40% or 50% of income on rent. At the other extreme, the Bill Gates of the world spend about a Pentium III rounding error of their income.

It's the same with every other consumption taxes. Often, the first $100,000 in value or so are free. That helps a little, but only for the balance between the poor and the middle class. It's almost impossible to adequately tax the super-rich within this framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I predict this is going to start a trend. For a whole lot less than the $48,000 a job municipalities paid to attract Amazon why not spend a fifth of that and draw in thousands of remote workers?

<comment><USER30> As long as there is not also a trend at companies to offer more remote jobs that unfortunately won't help too much.

I would appreciate it if both things become a trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Similar initiative from Vermont:

[https://qz.com/work/1289727/vermont-will-pay-you-10000-to- mo...](https://qz.com/work/1289727/vermont-will-pay-you-10000-to-move-there- and-work-remotely/)

<comment><USER32> I looked into moving to Vermont but the main problem was that there was an extreme lack of housing. The cities in Vermont are incredibly small and have very little in the way of new developments. I tried trawling Craigslist but I just couldn't find many attractive places to live.

<comment><USER33> Keep in mind that Craigslist may not be the best way to find an apartment. From what I've seen, smaller cities don't tend to use online services for things like apartment hunting. Things are still done the old way: word of mouth, posting signs on the apartment itself, newspaper classifieds.

<comment><USER34> This is very true. I had a fantastic apartment that I got by walking in and asking about availability. They always seem to have something available within a few months, but don't advertise at all, anywhere. Yet remain at near-100% occupancy.

Actually the only ad they really have is a "now leasing" sign with a phone number near the entrance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Remote workers already know they can live anywhere, and $10K is nice but for a professional software engineer it's not _that_ great. So while I'm not looking to move, I'm curious what they're using to entice me to want to live there.

What I see is ... a whole lot of drinking-related activities. "Experience" Oktoberfest, "Toast" at lots of bars, "Hang Out" at lots of other bars, "Brew" more beer. I wonder if this is more a reflection of what's in Tulsa, or who their target audience is.

<comment><USER36> I think it's target audience. If you're in late 20's early 30's and single it hints at a vibrant social life that could lead to a relationship. It's probably easier to move your single self than transition to a long distance relationship or move your whole family. The cash incentive too of $10k goes a lot further in your 20's.

<comment><USER37> I wonder if they thought that explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is Oklahoma still refusing to fund their schools so they can stay open 5 days a week?

<comment><USER39> Colorado is doing this too because tax increases go to referendum votes and we can't convince people to actually pay for school funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > $10,000 cash.

One thing to note, the state income tax rate in Tulsa is 4.44%, so if your business makes $100,000 a year in profit, expect to pay around $4,500 in state taxes. I live in the great state of Tennessee with zero state income tax, and I'd much rather be in Nashville than Tulsa.

<comment><USER41> Plus Nashville is surrounded by Tennessee and hundreds of musicians and music lovers. Tulsa is surrounded by Oklahoma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Tulsa native here. Don't do it unless you want to be surrounded by religious nut jobs.

<comment><USER43> Check out any news article posted here on obesity and health. It's full of smart people that have embraced psuedoscience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was in Oklahoma for several years of my childhood. Would not recommend for anyone who isn't a white Christian. Granted, I was in Stillwater, but OKC and Tulsa are only a little better.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is very cool, great website too. I actually looked up Tulsa while reading this. Well done. When I search Tulsa in Google maps the default street view is a desert looking place though. I wonder if they could affect that.

</comment><comment><USER46> you'd be real close to one of tulsa's best features: [https://www.youtube.com/svseeker](https://www.youtube.com/svseeker) \-- dude's building a giant scientific research boat in his front yard and will host just about anyone that wants to help him work on it. i've been out there twice and it's awesome!

</comment><comment><USER47> Why not offer incentives to employers to create remote jobs? That's really where the bottleneck is.

<comment><USER48> They don't necessarily want more remote workers, they want to attract workers that already have out-of-state jobs so they can collect the easy income tax and income from you living there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Tulsa's geographic upside is the nearby Ouachita Mountains. There's hiking, climbing and caving, moreso than in nearby cities like Dallas or Wichita.

The downside is five snowy days per year and eleven above 100 Fahrenheit, and occasional cases of scary spinning sky triangles. This rules it out for me.

<comment><USER50> Oklahoma is ground zero for crazy severe weather. I think they turn the tornado sirens on at the start of spring and just leave them on until about mid summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> [https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Tulsa](https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Tulsa)

Yeah...No.

<comment><USER4> That's self-reported data, rather than anything officially sourced.

<comment><USER51> Which is arguably more reliable than "official" data.

<comment><USER4> 26 data points is utterly useless as a representative sample.

Even if it wasn't, people tend to overestimate crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> If Tulsa would just abandon its racism and religious bigotry I bet they'd attract a lot more folks than this offer will.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd love to have some Amazon-style incentives for my remote company to build an "office" in Tulsa.

I've been thinking of a hybrid remote work environment where we just have lots of remote workers that live near each other and can co-work say 2-3x per week - meetup for coffee or have mini hackathons say 1-2x per quarter.

</comment><comment><USER54> Its interesting - given the 48k/job incentive that was being talked about for the amazon hq2, I wonder how the 10K in Oklahoma incentives compares. Of course, one is a corporate incentive in a place where a lot of skilled workers would likely be either way, and one is a place trying to attract talent, but on some level, it makes me wonder if the outrage over the tax incentives actually makes sense. Given the state income tax revenues and local economy inputs, it would seem that a 10K RAC (Resident Acquisition Cost) for someone making > 50K would be a no brainer assuming they still in Oklahoma for 4 years and the tax obligation is 5% to the state. Not sure what the numbers would look like in NY instead and whether the opportunity cost really applies since it would likely be full of ppl either way.

</comment><comment><USER55> Yeah but then you're living in Tulsa...

If the housing assistance wasn't tied to a specific apartment complex I'd seriously consider it though.

Just relocated back to my home state of California and my wife and I are already planning to leave when the lease is up.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm a bit confused by the city/town split. I'd definitely describe Tulsa as a city, but then again I'm coming from a 150k people city and living in a 20k people town at the moment. The website seems to use them interchangeably, and I remember an article some time ago describing Austin as a "town" people move to.

What are the thresholds in the US before people start saying something's a city?

<comment><USER57> IMHO, a town has one main street with the majority of businesses on that street. Don't believe any of the bullshit you read about Austin, it's not a town now and it wasn't a town even back in the 1970's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Posted on the sister thread...

I think this is a really smart move, but not enough. Most remote employees, well, the ones they want to attract, make good money. 10k frankly isn't much, especially to uproot and move. Tulsa isn't really near anything, nor does it have a fallback job market. Speaking for myself, maybe 30k or a free small house could convince me, not 10k and a possibly discounted apartment...

<comment><USER59> Yeah. The $10k is essentially a relocation package for anyone with a family and a house. Clearly those folks are not the target audience, sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> For this to work, you have to live in Tulsa.

</comment><comment><USER61> What I've never understood- what prevents me from, as a remorlte worker setting up a business in a tax haven and charging through that... I mean if this loophole is available to extremely well off individuals and companies why not for services...

<comment><USER62> I think they usually tax by where you do business (which is usually where you live, for remote work), not where it's incorporated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Random thought: why doesn't the DNC use all their money to fund voter relocation programs? Surely the surplus of California and New York voters could move the needle if they were injected into smaller districts across the board.

<comment><USER64> I can't articulate how your comment makes me feel, but please no.

<comment><USER63> I'm not advocating for it, I'm earnestly asking why they don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Funny enough, the residents of my SF peninsula town (San Carlos, but most others have the same attitude) have had enough of people moving here and want the flow to stop.

Glad to see this initiative by Tulsa.

</comment><comment><USER66> It seems like every dozen threads or so in the last year have at least one thread with bizarrely cantankerous / dismissive replies, with a few lonely voices saying _when did you all get so unhappy?_

Tulsa's initiative here is _really, really good_. It doesn't matter if you want to live in Tulsa, specifically (fine! don't move!), and it doesn't matter if the incentive is high enough to make it Worth It to You Personally.

What matters is that somebody has figured out that the dynamics of the Amazon HQ2 bidding war (roundly critiqued elsewhere, but I'll leave that for another thread) _apply to individual remote workers as well_ \--- in other words, potentially to basically everyone reading HN.

Quit whining, and start celebrating. Get this in front of your own city. Show them that there's an opportunity. It has never been a better time to be in software.

<comment><USER67> I'm not sure about everyone else, but I can point to a very specific date as to when we all became unhappy

<comment><USER68> November of last year.

<comment><USER69> Y'all were pretty miserable before that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> No direct flights from SF or NYC :(

</comment><comment><USER71> Hmm I wonder if I'd be eligible for this after having left Oklahoma post high school...

</comment><comment><USER72> Still way cheaper than what New York and Virginia are paying for HQ2

</comment><comment><USER73> I wonder if it would be useful to start including political culture in these comparisons. They tend to focus on cost of housing and "quality of life" metrics like the existence of third wave coffee and cocktail bars. And yet, clearly, there's more to decisions than that. So many people who are queer, minority, or allies, disgusted by Trump and those who vote for him, may deeply resent living in hostile environments. I'm not saying this as a political statement but genuinely trying to highlight a major factor in deciding where to relocate.

I can cite many anecdotes of folks who have tried living in different environments and fled due to (lack of) diversity and the political culture. These pitches and comparative analyses should give it due consideration.

<comment><USER33> > I can cite many anecdotes of folks who have tried living in different > environments and fled due to (lack of) diversity and the political culture.

The opposite is far more common. White Flight is not just the name of my Bee Gees cover band.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Ironically, Tulsa had a chance to be a thriving business center around the turn of the century. Unfortunately, the business owners were the wrong skin color as Tulsa was known as The Black Wall Street.

In 1921, a white mob killed hundreds, and white police officers flew planes firebombing 35 blocks, in the first use of air bombing in anger on American soil.

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

Part of me is happy to see that they're so desperate for business that they're pulling this.

<comment><USER75> What city do you live in and do you judge them by what they did 100 years ago? Not sure why that is relevant.

<comment><USER76> Are you arguing that the people from that event 100 years ago either all had a change of heart and raised their kids in respect of other humans, or massively left Tulsa for whatever reason, despite their attachment to the town ?

Because short of that, 100 years is roughly two or three generations, and that's a short time to change the cultural composition of a town's wealthy layer.

<comment><USER77> By extension do you judge and dismiss everyone living in Germany today with the same rationale?

<comment><USER76> A lot of things happened to Germany, from the outside, from the inside, a lot of the people who participated died from the war or in the aftermath, people who survived went through a lot, be it through direct trials or post-war education to children overwatched by the surrounding countries.

It's in my opinion one of the very few example of a recovery after such events.

I came across the "Black wall street" event of Tusla a while ago, and in comparison I don't get the impression that anything was really done to in reparation or even to change the course of things, almost the opposite.

To not be too personal about how shitty I feel it is, from the wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot#Aftermath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot#Aftermath)

> In the end, no one was convicted of charges for the deaths, injuries or > property damage.

> A group of influential white developers persuaded the city to pass a fire > ordinance that would have prohibited many blacks from rebuilding in > Greenwood.

> No prosecution took place of any whites for actions committed during the > riot. The city settled into an uneasy peace, and decades of virtual silence > about the events began. It was not recognized in the Tulsa Tribune feature > of "Fifteen Years Ago Today" or "Twenty-five Years Ago Today".

To address the "people living today are innocent" part, it's not a matter of being part of the crime or not, but wether the Tusla culture is tainted by its past or not. And to have a culture change, there needs to be recognition, reflection and rejection of past issues, with a strong will to compensate and overcome. Is there any of that?

From the outside, I'd wager Oklahoma wouldn't still have an active branch of the KKK if there was such a dramatic shift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> This is very forward-thinking. Props to whoever came up with this.

</comment><comment><USER79> Interestingly enough, the topic of tonight's CBS TV show, "Young Sheldon", was this very topic of moving to Tulsa for work.

At least it's an interesting coincidence to me. Not that I ever watch TV or anything.

</comment><comment><USER80> They sound desperate.

Why would you move from one place to another place to be a remote worker for a third place? This would make more sense if there were businesses in Tulsa which needed more workers.

<comment><USER81> Tulsa wants your tax income. If Tulsa can make it attractive, and a person's cost of living is reduced some people may take them up on the offer. Since many remote works choose where to live, a paid opportunity to move could be an ideal situation.

Tulsa has made an offer, that you aren't interested does not mean Tulsa is desperate.

<comment><USER82> But in actual fact, they are desperate. Property values are dropping, they can't attract people to live there because it's an exceptionally boring place to live.

<comment><USER83> I have worked full-time remote for almost my entire career, yet I've ended up in big cities exclusively (aside from a couple of few-month stints in a far- flung place every now and then). Why?

\- most places who beg for workers of any kind are really boring

\- I don't ever want to live somewhere where I'd feel like I'd have a really hard time finding a new job if my current job fell through

\- since I'm remote, and travel a lot, access to nonstop flights to almost anywhere is a massive convenience

These kind of programs can probably be a great deal for a very narrow slice of remote workers, the freelancers who are at a stage in their life where a big house and yard and easy access to Costco is more important than arts and culture and nightlife and being able to pick from 2 nonstops to LA or London every hour. And thats OK.

The only catch is probably whether the cities who are offering incentives to family-minded remote workers who don't care about the big city amenities can offer school districts and parks and stuff like that which is important to that audience... "Tulsa" doesn't exactly have a brand that makes me think of it as a place to raise a well-rounded child with diverse educational and extracurricular opportunities, but that could very well just be a branding problem.

<comment><USER84> The town has its merits. The arts--especially museums--are quite good, as is a lot of the downtown architecture and housing in midtown ( _gorgeous_ houses). It is an oil town after all. With that also comes its fair share of conspicuous consumption in terms of shi-shi restaurants and shopping if that's your thing. The oil industry has also brought in more diversity than you'd think, particularly people from the middle east. The music scene used to be great though fairly country oriented (with lots of blues, rock and swing influence and a big independent/DIY aesthetic), though that genre has certainly lost almost all of its vitality and I expect Tulsa's music scene has gone the same way. The philharmonic and ballet also used to be decent (could be still?) and tickets may be cheap and available enough to just drop in if you're interested.

In terms of big-city amenities, arts, culture, nightlife, etc. it definitely beats the South SF Bay area on all fronts except cheap, delicious Asian restaurants. But it can't compete with LA, SF proper, DC...

You can also expose your children to experiences like having horses, which is harder in cities, but contributes to well-roundedness in a variety of ways. You can even go to the museum in the morning and go ride horses in the afternoon because getting from A to B is easy.

That being said, it is a pretty conservative place, and it's a long way from anywhere that's not (outside of college towns), and it's a long way from anywhere that looks different except the Ozarks. You'd probably be fine as a non-surfing liberal atheist except dating could really suck. Life could also be pretty hard for various ethnicities and other sorts of minorities, but less so than most other places within a thousand miles.

WARNING: DIGRESSION

In my experience with many of these places though, a lot of the problems are with the mindset, both of the city itself and of individuals who kind of fall in line.

You can move to a big coastal city and feel the energy of the place--movers moving, shakers shaking--and it's kind of true but it can be very hard to tap into that energy unless you're already connected and have a fair amount of disposable income. If you want to do things, make things, start a business, paint, build boats, join a band, or whatever, it's a lot easier to do in a place where you can afford a garage and not live 40 min outside the city, and where you aren't slammed just trying to pay $3000/month in rent.

If you want to be an active participant in arts, music, crafts, etc. it is generally easier to do in a place like Tulsa or Salt Lake City. You'll have more time and perhaps more income, and networking is pretty easy when the networks are small. You may or may not outgrow the scene eventually. The downside is that people spend a lot of time bitching about how nothing is going on in their small scene or small city and how it'd be so much better to be in a big city with the famous people in their field, and this can be demoralizing to the more sensitive or inexperienced.

However if you want to be a passive participant, a spectator, then it's probably better to be in a city where you can go from gallery to gallery and drink wine and gossip, or if you have the cash on hand to see the luminaries in your musical genre of choice play every Friday night.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What should I learn next? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
In the last 4 I've been working full time as iOS Developer. I do like the job, so not really planning a career shift at the moment. Still, I'd like to learn something new!
My current skills are: - iOS Native
- Android Native - Python (Scripting, Backend, Django, ...) - Not deep knowledge of many other languages and platforms (Delphi, SQL, OpenGL, basic CSS and Js...)
I am looking at many tech I'd like to lear more about: - Web Development with React - AI (Deep Learning) - Game Development with Unity
What do I pick? <comment><USER2> Have a look at the MixedRealityToolkit from Microsoft. I'm learning this and Unity because I saw a very different future when I put the Hololens 2 on the first time.

<comment><USER3> I second this. I think you are in a good position to move to AR/VR applications with your background in iOS/Android if you learn this stuff.

Hololens is already out and has some good developer resources. Apple is supposed to have something in the pipeline for release sometime in the next couple years (could just be a rumor). If that happens, I think that would be the catalyst for mainstream adoption. I wouldn't be too surprised if google redesigns and rereleases Glass to compete too.

<comment><USER2> The big difference in HoloLens 2 is the hand tracking, it's superb. It's the future.

I don't think Apple Glass will have that when it comes out, re: privacy. The parents lack cameras, but may have some form of lidar? Maybe depends on the one you look at?

<comment><USER3> Very cool. I did a little work investigating HoloLens for my company. We were able to setup a visit to a Microsoft office to try them out. This was a couple years ago before the 2 came out. It was still pretty cool.

I'm surprised they aren't used more extensively in industrial companies. They would be great for training. Citi Bank has a video on YouTube that demos their vision of use for financial companies too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pick a technology that (1) interests you, else you will ask the same question again in N years _and_ (2) is in demand by prospective employers.</comment>


Serve-Stale in BIND: Akamai's Contribution to DNS / Internet Resiliency - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.akamai.com/2017/09/akamais-dns-contribution-to-internet-resiliency.html <comment><USER2> I have been doing this for many years i.e. storing IP addresses permanently instead of relying solely on a cache and constant lookups of the same names, day after day, week after week.

Is it more resilient? Of course it is.

Periodically I update the stored addresses if they have changed, but to be honest most websites I visit do not change addresses very frequently.

Everytime I mention this idea on HN I get at least one reply insinuating it is stupid, unworkable, etc.

Now that BIND is storing addresses, I wonder if the responses to this idea will be the same.

The sensible thing for websites _that do not change addresses frequently_ (which I believe is a very large portion of the web) would be to provide users with advance notice of IP address changes, like ftp.internic.net is known to do. Maybe put it in a standard location like robots.txt.

As for the rest of the web that use load balancing and CDNs, no doubt that some added DNS indirection can sometimes increase "web speeds" for some users.

But not having to perform the _multiple layers of DNS queries_ to resolve names of Akamai customers can also increase "web speeds".

The web can seem significantly faster when the user is not required to do all those lookups.

At least, that has been my experience.</comment>


Dependency Injection in C++ Using Variadic Templates - <AUTHOR> http://gpfault.net/posts/dependency-injection-cpp.txt.html <comment><USER2> maybe i am missing something, but isn't a 'good ol' interface' and a traditional OO approach also able to solve this problem, and with much less machinery?

there is an advantage of knowing things at compile time with the template, but i'm not sure that performance benefit is going to be worth very much here.

there is also the advantage that you don't need an instanced class with a vtable, but can use something with no inheritance or even with completely static member functions and data as a dependency as well... this might be more useful.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I recently had to do some java work and had to come up to speed with Springs dependency injection. When it worked it was fine, but when something went wrong there were so many layers of abstraction and vague error messages it was a nightmare to try and solve problems.

I don't see what is wrong with the 'boring' way of dependency injection. If a class relies on another class, pass it in the constructor explicitly. It's simple and easy to follow the stack back to find problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there specific advantages to using this pattern over e.g. just having a service factory with reference counting?

</comment><comment><USER5> That's a nice explanation, however, there is already a boost candidate library: [https://github.com/krzysztof- jusiak/di](https://github.com/krzysztof-jusiak/di)</comment>


.NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") now on Github - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=roslyn#!/story/forever/0/roslyn%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=roslyn#!/story/forever/0/roslyn%20github)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, previous post have been about the move but it hadn't been done yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Roslyn on github, who would have imagined :)

</comment><comment><USER4> CodePlex should move to GitHub</comment>


Ask HN: How do you save your reference data? - <AUTHOR> Say some code snippet or instructions for doing something, workflow for common tasks, notes to yourself while researching, or anything you might want to come back to,  what is your process for saving and recalling this information later? <comment><USER2> Wiki on Github (particularly for runbook stuff.) Onenote.</comment>


Yahoo Homepage redesign going live - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-project-homerun-homepage-test-2012-10 Yahoo is in the process of rolling it out its new homepage. The revamped design is already up for many users, however it seems like only the landing page has been updated so far. <comment><AUTHOR> The new design doesn't seem to change much though. This is understandable since they started working on this before Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo, but it'd be nice to see how an entire redesign including a better way to categorize that left column would look. I especially hope that giant "astrology" section is just a module users can change out..

</comment><comment><USER2> This is most definitely interesting. I really liked visiting the yahoo page to get everything done from mail to chat to news etc.

Okay, it was 5 years back, but Yahoo just got stuck there. And, well, we all moved on.</comment>


Ask HN: What Is "the" Enterprise Container Ecosystem? - <AUTHOR> HN,
Given that we have a huge number of people playing around with the Container Runtimes and Ecosystems - is there a consensus building on which is the "Serious" or "Enterprise" Container Ecosystem ?
What is the most common "flavor" of Container Ecosystem that people use at this moment ? <comment><USER2> Use any provider that you most comfortable with or the one that have data center nearest to you. since at the end they are on open container project

* [https://www.opencontainers.org/](https://www.opencontainers.org/) * [https://runc.io/](https://runc.io/)

</comment><comment><USER3> EC2</comment>


American Lifespan By County - <AUTHOR> http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2012/05/03/american-lifespan-by-county/ <comment><USER2> I am sorry, I don't buy the "we are like several countries, you can't compare us to a single one !" argument. Japan is at 40% of USA population and its average life expectancy is on par with the highest county you can find in USA while their GDP per capita (PPP) is only 70% of the one in USA.

That shows a very inefficient use of USA's wealth and a very poor healthcare policy.

US states may be very different from each other, but their difference is far less that the ones between European states. You speak a single language, you have a single president, a federal senate, a federal army, a federal police, a powerful federal intelligence agency, and many institutions at the federal level. You have 200 years of common history as a single country, if we except the Secession period. Actually, I could understand that you could say that US is an union of two countries because of this episode, but a union of 50, no way.

Europe on the other hand is a territory that is divided in several countries with different languages, different religions, different history, several wars between them (the list is really really long). Being generous, you could say that we began a common history 50 years ago, but this was in fact only an economic union on a small set of goods (steel and coal IIRC) between 5 countries.

Apple to oranges, really.

<comment><USER3> _You have a single president, a federal senate, a federal army, a federal police, a powerful federal intelligence agency, and many institutions at the federal level._

This one sentence does an excellent job of summing up our failures as a nation over the last 236 years. One, gargantuan government can never hope to meet the vastly different needs of 300 million people living in highly diverse geographies, population densities, and climates.

So while the US should be treated like one country for all those reasons, those reasons should also be blamed for most of her failures.

<comment><USER4> I vote for school board, county supervisor, state governor, representative and two senators.

One monolithic government is a myth. It could even be argued that the fractured nature of US govt is responsible for wide variation is schools, infrastructure, moral laws etc.

<comment><USER3> Your school board, county supervisor, and state governor are flacid, neutered versions of their virile predecessors of the 19th and 20th centuries. All of them spend most of their time wrangling federal money.

And your representative and senators vote consistently along party lines, and, again, get re-elected almost entirely based on how much of their constituents' money they bring back from Washington.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This appears to be a reblog with a low-res version. The full interactive maps (in different forms) are the first three entries here: [http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data- visuali...](http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data- visualizations)

</comment><comment><USER6> Probably helpful to realize that the lifespan is determined more than just one metric, such as healthcare. Cultural differences between different regions likely plays a significant effect. For instance, my guess is diet leading to obesity helps to drag down life expectancy in the regions where the life expectancy is lower:

[http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jp...](http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/animated_map_slides/map26.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Not just cultural differences. Things like car accidents and murders also play a disproportionate role.

If nation A has 60 people living to 79, and nation B has 59 people living to 80 and 1 person being murdered at 20, A and B have the same mean life expectancy (of 79).

Though I suppose you could call things like murders and road safety "cultural".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this is what you're after:

[http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data- visuali...](http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data- visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore)

</comment><comment><USER9> _"In Collier, Florida, women live 85.8 years on average. In McDowell, West Virginia, they live to be 74.1. That's an 11.7-year gap"_

I would guess most of that difference is due to migration of elderly persons to Florida, not due to Florida being healthier or health care being better there.

<comment><USER10> Moving somewhere when you're old doesn't change your life expectancy.

You're confusing something else, possibly average age, with life expectancy.

If the elderly populations of long-lived Florida counties still largely come from migration, longevity may say much more about living and healthcare conditions elsewhere. As well as wealth effects reflected by the ability to retire to Florida.

<comment><USER11> _> Moving somewhere when you're old doesn't change your life expectancy._

It may increase the average life expectancy of the area you are moving to, though.

In other words, while the people who were born and raised in the area may have a low life expectancy, an influx of wealthy retirees will drag up the average life expectancy. In some cases the people moving to these areas may already be older than the average life expectancy.

<comment><USER7> Exactly - at birth a man is expected to live until age 75. At age 65 he is expected to live until 81.

<http://aging.senate.gov/crs/aging1.pdf> (see page 8)

<comment><USER10> Fair point. Though we'd be talking moving from a place with a median age of, well, roughly median age. Greatest mortality is in infancy, again in the teens / early 20s (mostly males from violence/accidents), then gradually increases past 40 due to general mortality (disease, illness, cancer, etc.).

I'm not sure that the delta from, say, 40-ish median to the slightly older skew of a retirement-centric Florida community would be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What the article doesn't seem to link is this: [http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data- visuali...](http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data- visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/overview/explore) , a nice visualisation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Tobias wrapped up this fine post writing, the "gap [between developed and underdeveloped counties] will be, if it continues, a major fissure in a future America."

WILL be? It already is. It's pretty much in line with the so-called red / blue divide in the nation.

<comment><USER14> I've been living abroad for well over a year now. I always have to explain when I get the inevitable questions from people baffled by the inanity of our politics that the U.S. is really like two different countries stuffed inside one border.

<comment><USER10> s/two/fifty/

There's a reason it's referred to as the united _states_.

In most of the world, "state" == nation. The US is an exception, but it's because the initial concept, pre-pivot, was of a confederated union of independent states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love heat maps like this: they pack crucial information in an easily accessible format. However, they should always be scaled for population density, otherwise it's very misleading. Does the huge swathe of green in Alaska counterbalance the few red spots in Florida? Probably not!

</comment><comment><USER16> The poor results on the map line up a fair bit with the cotton industry lines of the 19th century in this article <http://bigthink.com/ideas/21383>

Industry (dots) lined up with Obama voters from the article: [http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsov...](http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsoverlay1.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember one year, while out skiing in West Virginia, my wife fell and broke her arm. The ambulance ride to the _nearest_ hospital was about 1.5 hrs through some of the poorest and most ramshackle areas I've seen outside of the middle east and it ended at one of the smallest hospitals I've ever seen in the U.S. She received good care, but I can see many health choices being made in rural areas because

a) Too poor

b) Too far

If a resident of that area can even get their hands on a car, a 3-4 hour round trip to visit the medical center (not counting time at the center) vs. putting in another day on the job would certainly give me pause.

</comment><comment><USER18> Imagine if you live in a university town, but it just gets redistricted to include a neighboring industrial town. The life expectancy of your town just dropped, drastically.

But does that change your life at all? No, your life is exactly the same as before.

Same with these stats. Just because people who have lower life expectancies move or happen to live near you, it doesn't change anything about your life.

If canada and the US merged, the average life expectancy of the new country would go up, but that number itself wouldn't change anyone's life.

It's the same with arbitrary county groupings. If you live in a county with lots of poor people, they will have a lower life expectancy. That doesn't mean anything about you, though. If the border was different, you might live in a county with lots of rich people.

</comment><comment><USER19> just proves that having the most expensive (per capita) healthcare system in the globe does not really contribute to health(y) results

<comment><USER20> I don't think I've ever met anybody who thought America's health care system was better than that of many/most Europea countries - certainly not of any fellow English/Europeans I know, but also no Americans I know and have discussed it with.

<comment><USER21> I guess it depends what you mean by "best" - if the ability to pay is not a factor (i.e. you are very wealthy) then I suspect the absolute best care is probably available in the US.

However, in the UK we went for the option of having pretty good, but perhaps not the absolute best, available to _everyone_ , free at the point of delivery, regardless of wealth. With the option to pay for private care if you want it - either in the UK or abroad. Personally, I think this is a pretty good compromise.

<comment><USER20> In my book, the fact that the US healthcare system excludes people who can't afford it automatically drops it to bottom of the list, regardless of how amazing it might be for the rich.

<comment><USER4> Excludes is an extreme view. Anybody with the wit to stand in line can get free healthcare at an emergency room or local hospital.

I value living in a place where I can work harder to get better things for my family. Or work less hard and coast, my choice.

Making money is not a sport or game in America. Its real, its important, its meaningful and it motivates millions of us to work hard and smart.

I can pull out my gold card and get to the head of the line for a heart transplant, sure. That's not a failure, thats one of the strengths of a capitalist/free market country. It can be cruel, but life is cruel and honestly there is no 'fair' way to ration such healthcare. If you tried, the 'black market' (read: free market) would and does compensate anyway.

The free market motivates me. Some hunky-dory view of the world as full of free services for everybody does not.

<comment><USER20> Countries with free health care for everybody can still offer plenty of incentives for making money, I don't think anyone would argue the UK isn't a capitalist country, and if you came to live here I'm confident that the NHS wouldn't be enough to make you stop caring about wealth.

I'm not in favour of communism, but as far as I'm concerned, medical care should be considered a right not a priviledge - there's really no benefit to denying it for the poor.

(For the record, I fit into the group of people who could easily affordto go private with Bupa here in the UK, and I'm far happier paying more in taxes to subsidise the NHS.)

<comment><USER22> The UK is not a capitalist country in the proper sense of the term, it's a mixed economy.

I believe keeping what you earn is a right. You believe free medical care is a right. Not mutually compatible. Glad I don't live in the same country as you.

<comment><USER20> Is there any true capitalist country then? Where do you live that you don't have to pay any taxes?

<comment><USER22> _Is there any true capitalist country then?_

No.

And I do have to pay taxes. I live in a country where there _are_ a lot of people that _do_ agree with you (the US), so my remark was a bit facetious.

Actually, it's a double punishment to live here, because not only is the government taking lots of money to pay for the medical system, but Americans are too incompetent, broadly speaking, to run a centralized medical system. So the more the government spends, the more it sucks. At least you Europeans can make socialized medicine "work" in some sense of the term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> life expectancy at 80 is probably 5 years or so. So having a bunch of 80 year olds move to your county will probably increase it. Similarly, having successful, rich and long-lived people move out of your country at age 80, a few years before dying, will mean they don't increase your country life expectancy at all, despite the fact that they lived there for 80 years.

<comment><USER4> Not a lot of 80-yr-olds moving to the country, at least in Iowa. Mostly when folks get older, they move into the city with family or an apt or home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would be interesting to see the spread in life expectancy in Canada or Armenia. It's easy to shorten your life, even in a rich country but not so easy to extend it so I would expect increasing asymmetry as you go up. These comparisons should be done with distributions.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's interesting the places where there's a large apparent change across a border - for example North Dakota / Montana.

<comment><USER25> Likely the border of an Indian reservation.</comment></comment>


Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_im_not_going_near_spotify.html?cm_sp=most_widget-_-default-_-Why%20Im%20Not%20Going%20Near%20Spotify%20(and%20Why%20You%20Shouldnt%20Either)

<comment><USER2> This sounds like an argument for a Zune Pass model. As long as you keep paying, you get access to the whole library. But each month you also get to download 10 tracks, so even when you stop paying, you can keep your favorite tracks around. (They're DRM-free MP3s.)

<comment><USER3> The article is premised on the assumption we typically "own" our music, but I just don't think that's true.

We don't own what we hear on radio. Anyone old enough to have owned a vinyl record, 8-track, or cassette knows we "owned" those until the player "pwned" us and scratched the record, warped the record, or otherwise ate the tape.

The CDs I "own" mostly mark me as ... old with 1980s musical tastes.

I'm actually pretty happy with combination of Rhapsody and Google Music, though there are definitely some albums I wish Rhapsody would get (The Beatles, and, ... Soundtrack to American Werewolf in London, and, ...).

But actually Rhapsody, Google Music, and Squeezebox Server have made me purchase a lot more music than I have for a long time.

Of course, the music I purchase tends to be used CDs from Amazon for pennies plus shipping.

I would in fact like the Zune Pass model.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, his whole argument is based on this

 _Simply put: the way we consume music is fundamentally different to the way we consume movies and TV._

This used to be true, but I am not sure it is any longer - at least not for everyone. Listening to the same album obsessively over and over again is certainly a phase I went when I was younger, but now I am perfectly happy to listen to Pandora, especially as my tastes have broadened, and finding new interesting stuff to listen to trumps the need to hear the same familiar stuff over and over.

<comment><USER5> Don't underestimate the average consumer's taste for repetition. In the month I've lived next to my current neighbors, they have listened to a grand total of _one_ song. Many times.

And the songs you listen to now may one day be "classics" that you want to listen to again. Given the volume and diversity of present day music, that might only be possible if you have an MP3 stashed away somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Talk about a nonsense article. I have been using spotify ever since the very beginning in 2008 and I have yet to experience any of those issues. Besides. Even if spotify where twice as expensive it would still be a good deal if you listen to music a lot.

Much to do about nothing.

<comment><USER7> Wow, you haven't experienced any of those issues therefore they can't bait and switch?

<comment><USER8> Even if Spotify were to increase prices, it's not bait and switch.

This article makes no sense. Duh, if Spotify goes away, if you leave for any reason (rates, terms of service, whatever)... their music goes with it. That's how subscription services work. If Netflix goes away, I lose access to the movies that Netflix was letting me stream. The fact that someone is used to "owning" their music or re-listening more than you usually re-watch movies doesn't change any of the core principles of the business model.

One album costs $10. If I listen to that album once a day for 30 days (not EVER going to happen, but I'm trying to be generous), then I'm still only filling a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount of time I listen to music.

$10 with Spotify gives me effectively non-stop new music. In 6 months, I'll have spent $60 and had the benefit of listening to hundreds of albums. Even if something happens that I stop using Spotify... are you really implying that I haven't extracted good value from Spotify as a service?

If Spotify's price increases that I don't think I can get the same or a good value.... I just stop using it and go back to life as it was before. What is the lock in? There seems to be an implication that I will have "wasted" my money on Spotify since I have no music mp3s to show for it. Did my family waste their money on Netflix despite the fact that I don't own any of the hundreds of DVDs that they've watched or streamed?

I just don't understand this implied malice at work here. Besides, it (seems) completely ignorant of Spotify's existence in the rest of the world for some time now.

<comment><USER9> The article itself argues that we consume music in a way that is fundamentally different from the way we consume television shows and movies, thus rendering the comparison invalid.

<comment><USER10> And I think that that assumption/argument is invalid. I'm sure I've read somewhere about studies of user behaviour in, say, iTunes (your personal music) compared to on a subscription service like Spotify. The studies showed that people who had access to a limited amount of music of owned music would listen intensively (fewer songs, lots of times); whereas people with access to a subs service would listen extensively (more songs, fewer times). There was some stat about a favourite song being listened to far less frequently when there was more to explore.

<comment><USER6> Spotify stats show that the majority of people using spotify listen to non- chart music.

Humans are an explorative but economic species. When the cost of exploration goes down guess what goes up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't see the issue here. I pay peanuts to rd.io each month (can't get Spotify here in Vietnam yet) to have access to a vast catalog of music I want to hear occasionally or just preview. The small handful of albums I really care about I buy in FLAC format and backup in S3. I get the best of both worlds with a minimum of fuss. Subscription-based music services have significantly increased my enjoyment of music and freed me from the hassles of managing a big local library.

I don't care about DRM on streaming music because I know I don't "own" it.

<comment><USER12> Just for your information, I've been using Spotify in Vietnam for 10 months. You just have to sign up with an address in one of Spotify's launched countries, and pay the monthly fee ($4.99), since it won't work as free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's nice of this chap to tell us how we listen to music. I've been a Spotify subscriber for almost two years and if they jacked up the price or went bust, I wouldn't be upset or the victim of a bait and switch. He seems to think we're all music "addicts" who will do anything to get our fix when in reality I wouldn't care if I went a few weeks without listening to anything specific and then I could just patch it up by buying any albums I particularly missed over time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Once upon a time, a 24/7 persisting network was expensive / out of each for a lot of people.

Now, I at least have been enveloped in 3G / Wifi wherever I go (maybe I should go out a bit more ? ).

Even from an analysis perspective, buffering over networks (which I use) is good enough for music consumption (44.1 * 4 bytes in 1 sec if we consider wav being streamed. That's 44 KBPs needed to repro at original sampling rate. Our networks do several multiples of that right now. I can't listen to music faster than that.)

It is convenient, it is the future.

OP's conundrum is the same my grandfather faced a few decades ago when my grandpa thought "Oh Shit, if the local library closes, I am owned and have to listen to a radio or something to pass my time".

And the MAFIAA ? Well, they're setting themselves up for some severe disruption. I-Will-Fuck-The-World is not a sustainable business model.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been a Napster subscriber from some time and they are actively engaged in a version of this. They have two tiers of music: "free to stream" and "purchase only or :30 preview": they have gotten into the habit of moving tracks from one category to the other as they get popular or in some cases pulling entire albums from their catalogue for unexplained reasons.

While I'm sure what they are doing is legal it still is a shady "the first hit is free" type business model. So far the annoyance has been minimal as my tastes are not too mainstream but it still pops up far too often.

</comment><comment><USER16> > there's nothing to suggest that you'll be able to get the playlists on your > computer out as easily as Spotify does from iTunes.

It is actually really easy, I think they have an API for this. Once Spotify launched in the U.S., my friend switched from Spotify to WiMP (wimpmusic.se), and they could easily just import his playlists and boom he had all his music again. It's sure a heck of a lot easier than dealing with DRM - I still have a ton of songs from iTunes Japan (which _still_ uses FairPlay DRM) I can't play on my Android phone at all

</comment><comment><USER17> I never bought more music in my life than during Napster's heyday. Spotify seems to herald much of the same. It's going to be expensive.

</comment><comment><USER18> The guy who wrote the article is a "collector". I know one when I spot one. A collector accumulates things that he might one day come round to want to use again.

Other people who are prepared to pay know that pop music is fickle anyway. I don't know of too many people who'd dust off their Sonny and Cher albums for their guests (unless it is for Kitsch Nite).

<comment><USER19> Not everyone listens to the kind of "pop music" that doesn't stand up to repeated listening.

<comment><USER18> Spotify isn't for those people. It can't be everything to everybody,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My couple of years as a Spotify subscriber have radically changed my music listening habits. I used to buy records and listen to them over and over again. Now it's more about constantly discovering new music (eg. via Facebook links) and having a more casual relationship to it. I only buy the _really_ important ones on physical media, usually vinyl.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I buy a CD, burn it to my computer and then sell that CD, do I have to delete the MP3 copy on my computer? The law says yes; I "owned" the music while I possessed the CD. When I sold the CD I gave my ownership and my copies are illegal. I'd bet that 99% of people would keep the copy on their computer though. Until this perception is changed, the author's point doesn't really matter. Because I'm paying so little for Spotify and because of it's very history of struggle coming to the U.S., I know it could be temporal. As is pretty much everything, including the physical media which can also degrade.

Maybe services like Spotify will change that perception and the consumer and the industry will meet in the middle with a cheap subscription price. But unless all of the methods of illegally accessing music are closed, I don't think that'll happen.

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree. I think it's a good article, and it boils down to - if you're paying a monthly fee, don't do it for DRM'd tracks

</comment><comment><USER22> oh... and check out the comments down the bottom of the article... fun reading :)</comment>


Ask HN: Open-source forums for 2015 - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for an open source forum to integrate with my community site that is built using Wordpress.
The forum must work well on mobile and either be usable/visually appealing out of the box or be customisable. Ideally it would be a wp plugin but willing to look at other options.
Any suggestions for 2015? <comment><USER2> Discourse</comment>