Become a farm worker - <AUTHOR> http://www.takeourjobs.org/ <comment><USER3> There was a local news story (in CA) about this initiative last night where the reporter was asking random people if they would work as a farm worker.

It was interesting in that most folks said yes they would, with many citing illegal immigration and how it is ruining the nation. Funny moment was when an unemployed person also said yes, then was offered a job on the spot, and answered 'but I'm still collecting unemployment.' The reporter then asked when his unemployment runs out, the good citizen refused to answer and walked away.

<comment><USER4> Personally I don't think the people who answered "yes" are cut out for the jobs anyways.

I've worked in minimum wage jobs before (janitor, field work) and I just don't see how the work ethics of an average American worker will suffice on a farm.

People complain when they work in air conditioned offices, how will they survive standing in 100 degrees weather in a field?

<comment><USER5> I'm sure your observations are much more relevant than anything else that exists in time and space, but it might shock and amaze you to learn that:

1\. Many "average American workers" are still farmers, and

2\. Before the supply of labor was manipulated via deliberate government policy, almost all farmers/farm workers were "average American workers".

<comment><USER6> Are you kidding!?! Very few American workers are farm laborers or farmers. The entire agribusiness sector employs less than 2% of the US work force, which is quite a precipitous drop from the 40% of so it employed a century ago. Workers did not leave the farms because they were pushed out or because the government manipulated the farm labor market, they left because the work is hard and the pay has always been low.

<comment><USER7> The decline in the percentage of Americans who work in agriculture is due to advances in farming technology, not due to low pay. Now one person with a giant combine that didn't exist 100 years ago can do the work of tens or hundreds of people.

<comment><USER3> Depends on what you're farming - technology certainly has an impact with crops like wheat and potatoes - grapes, lettuce, melons, citrus, berries, etc. are a whole different story and require manual labor with technology having less impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would I become a farm worker when I could just collect unemployment checks?

A proposal for reducing unemployment: anyone physically capable of doing farm work is not eligible for unemployment benefits. Obviously this is a non- starter with the current political leadership...

[edit: to be clear, this only applies until there are no further vacancies in farming jobs.]

<comment><USER9> The problem is that with the immigration situation, those jobs pay less than minimum wage, have horrible working conditions, and people often don't get paid. That's why the solution is a) A border fence, b) Much more strict employer enforcement, and c) Amnesty for those here, once a and b are accomplished. That way, the workforce stabilizes, and there is work for people in the U.S. who don't have a lot of skills. There probably aren't a lot of these people on HN, but many people just aren't going to be able to work a high-end job. We need something decent to do for those people. The problem is that right now, you can't have a first world existence on what a farmhand job pays.

The second step is probably drug legalization, because our drug laws have turned Mexico into a failed state, and it's impossible for Mexico to build a decent economy with the level of crime that they have.

<comment><USER10> This is something that actually has puzzled me for a while, so if someone can provide me with some economics insight I'd appreciate it.

The question is: why does it make economic sense to refuse a cheap labor force? If suddenly some aliens came to the US and said "we have figured out a way to get free food. have all the food you need here", would there be complaints about the number of farmers that are losing their jobs or unfairly competing against free products?

Theoretically, it seems to me that the positive aggregate effect on consumers is larger than the negative (and very regrettable) effect on the farmers. For this reason, wouldn't it make more sense to have the consumers compensate the farmers by helping them pay for their education, etc, so that they can find new jobs? This seems to me as the efficient way to think about immigration.

Where I come from (Mexico, of all places), I hear people sometimes complain about how computers shouldn't be allowed on certain government offices, since they will leave thousands of people without a job. I'd say that, if they can find a different job, then we can all be better off by finding cheaper production factors.

<comment><USER11> > The question is: why does it make economic sense to refuse a cheap labor > force?

Cheap to whom? Cheap to the employer does not mean cheap to society.

Note that we have "cheap" people, they're just in the wrong places.

And yes, I've done farm labor for a couple of seasons. My father worked seasons in different parts of the country.

<comment><USER12> "Cheap to employer does not mean cheap to society" Perhaps, but it's difficult to quantify the overall cost-benefit of a cheap labor force, so I'd stay away from arguing either way without presenting numbers. On the one hand, a cheap labor force leads to cheaper goods/food; on the other hand, a cheap labor force means tax payers have to pay for health benefits, education, etc. Are savings more than the costs? If anyone has numbers that'd be great to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People who think the US agricultural sector couldn't survive without illegal labour need to look at the Australian example. A helluva lot of food gets produced in Australia without the need for a permanent third-world underclass. How? I guess it's a combination of higher wages (a good shearer can make upwards of $500 a day, frinstance) and greater automation, which presumably increases prices somewhat, but realistically not by much.

(There's also a class of visas for foreigners who want to do some fruit picking as part of a working holiday. These mostly wind up getting taken by backpacking students from Europe.)

People who think the US agricultural sector couldn't survive without subsidies _also_ need to look at the Australian example.

<comment><USER14> Australia doesn't have a large supply of cheap labour next door, so it's hardly surprising that wages for farm workers are much higher.

<comment><USER13> Sure it does: it's called Indonesia, it has twice the population of Mexico and half the GDP (I know, I was surprised too!). What it doesn't have is a porous border between the two; of course the fact that it's a sea barrier (only ~50 miles though) instead of a land border makes it much easier to close, but if the US had the political will it could make the US/Mexico border a hundred times less porous than it currently is.

<comment><USER15> There's also the offshore concentration camp Australia set up for the immigrants who do come across: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detentio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detention_facilities)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A former co-worker of mine in Germany has a small farm, and required some workers for the asparagus harvest. Most of them come from Poland or the Czech Republic. But now the government had a program where long-term unemployed people had to accept any job or be penalized accordingly. So for the first day of the harvest, a big percentage of his workers were Germans for the first time.

On the second day, none of them returned.

</comment><comment><USER17> Recently I spent a day working on my friend's farm, and I came out of that in absolute awe of people who do it as a job. I'm reasonably fit, and I felt exhausted like I never have at the end of the day. There couldn't have been news more upsetting than "You have to do it again tomorrow." (Granted, I'm physically pretty lazy.)

It's hard, hard work, and the people who do it get undercompensated because of a lot of bad regulations and incentive programs gone awry.

<comment><USER18> _It's hard, hard work, and the people who do it get undercompensated_

It seems to me that you're implying that appropriate compensation is proportional to the difficulty of the work.

I assert, instead, that appropriate compensation is proportional to the productivity of the work.

I have never accepted the notion that hard, physical, agricultural labor is a job "someone" must do, any more than cleaning toilets is [1]. I allege that we lack the requisite farm automation to eliminate the hard jobs _because_ there are people willing to do the work so cheaply.

[1] Search for "urinal elephant"

<comment><USER19> > _I assert, instead, that appropriate compensation is proportional to the > productivity of the work._

Productivity puts a ceiling on the compensation (If the farm owner is only getting $10/hr of productivity out of the laborers, there's no way they're going to pay more than $10/hr in the long run because they lose money if they do.), but supply and demand in the labor market decides the rate. It'll generally below the value that employers get from the workers (meaning that the employer profits from the arrangement).

Now it's a little more complicated than that because of imperfect information (the farm owners don't know how many people are going to come around looking for work or how little pay they'll take) and imperfect competition (Even if a worker hears that he could make twice as much 500 miles away, he might have to take the job where he is if he has no good way to get to that area with better jobs.), but that's how it works in theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Trouble is people that need jobs like this probably will never hear about the campaign.

FWIW, I'd take a job if 1) I needed one and 2) I couldn't find anything more in my line of business within a period of time. I'm not opposed to working at a farm; I just think my skills are better used elsewhere.

<comment><USER13> Trouble is, if you actually _do_ try taking their jobs, see what happens. Most illegal-dominated farms probably wouldn't even hire you.

I commute through a ghetto full of largely-unemployed folks who apparently have nothing to do all day. I'm sure a few years out in the sticks picking strawberries would do them a lot of good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> To stretch a programming analogy, freedom and immigration are two of the key standard library modules on which the USA's phenomenal strength has been built.

It's a nation of immigrants. Immigration has provided a hard-working, motivated and passionate population out to create a better life and with entrepreneurialism deeply rooted in its DNA. Immigration drives economic activity. Immigrants with the guts to risk guns and bureaucrats are the same as the ones who start businesses and change countries. The Mayflower was a boatload of immigrants.

Individual freedom, a laissez-faire economy, free markets and free trade (comparatively at least) when combined with immigration have created a great nation. It's created wealth, prosperity and happiness not just in the US, but all the nations it has influenced in the last 200 years.

There was a time when the USA proclaimed to the world: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

There was a time when an American President called out "Tear Down this Wall" to another nation that erected barriers between peoples.

The standard library might need some patching, but for the entire world's sake let's hope those two modules don't get deprecated any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER22> Having recently left a farm job, (tonsillitis brought a premature end to my tenure) I figure maybe I'll share a bit of my insight on the situation.

First off, the farm I worked on was fully organic, so there was a ton of work to do, and to do the work we had 6 residents, in addition to a series of day laborers to do it. I was a resident, but the latter is what I think the campaign is endorsing. We had ~12 acres of produce in fields/greenhouses and a commercial kitchen. We ran a CSA program, sold to small coops and independent grocers, and set up at farmers market - total gross was around 600,000, growing at around 50%/yr (estimated max production was about 1.2 million gross)

Not all that information was necessary, but it's kind of interesting.

The obvious thing keeping people from working on a farm is the work. There's not a lot of beating around the bush there - it's hard work, you're out in the sun, it gets up above 100 REALLY easily in the greenhouses and occasionally in the fields, there's a lot of bending over and kneeling down - which I think we are becoming worse at as a species, and it can get really dirty.

Complaining about any of those obvious things, will get you branded a whiner - and farmers HATE whiners. One whiner can destroy an entire day's labor. I'm not even close to kidding - a negative work attitude is a problem in most places, but in a situation like this, it's absolutely toxic. Whiners on our farm rarely came back after lunch either by their own volition or strong suggestion (it usually didn't take much.)

Which brings me to my next point: it's surprisingly easy, at least in my experience, to get fired from farm labor. (no, I didn't get fired) Farms need labor, but they generally run on really tight margins and can't afford to lose money on unproductive labor.

Unfortunately, another thing that consistently leads to unproductive labor is something I tend to do a lot of - talking. I arrived in rural Wisconsin eager to find out people's life stories (which I assumed were going to be more interesting than many proved to be) only to find out that, for the 10+ hours a day we were working, I was pretty much barred from talking. Due to my residency, I was allowed a little more leeway with this than the day laborers, but sometimes I would be having a great conversation with one of them without thinking about it and they would get fired at lunch. (I felt really bad about that)

But the work on a farm can be incredibly rewarding - it's work that you can look back on and think you really accomplished something. Not to mention a strong sense of connection to the food chain which I think is sorely lacking (to our serious detriment) in modern society. I would recommend it, but there's one more thing that could be an issue for the average starting in this line of work: safety.

Many of us grew up in absurdly safe environments with anything of any particular risk or danger generally abstracted out of our realm of awareness or relegated to a distant location. Mike Rowe had a fantastic bit about this in his presentation to the Future Farmers of America. His speech, on the whole, was similar to his TED talk in some ways, but he drove it home with a slightly different point. He (to uproarious applause) suggested "Maybe OSHA doesn't have it right; maybe PETA doesn't have it right..." He went on to suggest something that I kept in my mind every single time I started up a roto tiller or rode around on a fully extended forklift fastening parts of a greenhouse:

"The second you think somebody else cares more about your safety than you do... you're in trouble"

The best part is, you can substitute in other things for safety too. (success, future, children, equipment, code, etc) But this is what we have a hard time with in our culture. People don't want you to get hurt, but on a farm, there's not usually a guy whose job it is to go around making sure everyone is safe - it's everyone's own job. You may not think it, but this can be very frightening. And it extends into quality of work - if you're only doing a good job so someone will come by and say "man, you did such a great job weeding that onion patch for 9 hours" you're going to be even more disappointed than you were when you found out you were going to have to weed the onion patch for nine hours.

I guess I'll call it here, as this is getting out of hand, but don't be so quick to call the unemployed wimps - it's insanely difficult work (gets better after a week or so) and it's a very daunting lifestyle that most comfortably employed people would similarly poopoo.

Also, there's a surprising amount of paperwork involved in farming (especially organic certification) and I've been brainstorming a way to use technology to alleviate some of that burden - if you're interested, email's in my profile.

<comment><USER23> > _there's a lot of bending over and kneeling down - which I think we are > becoming worse at as a species_

I don't think this is true, in general. Hard manual labor, combined with poor diets and poor healthcare left our ancestors with wrecked bodies by age 45–50.

Well, you might be right that overweight people can't bend over or kneel down as easily as fit people. But the main thing stopping fit people from kneeling down a lot is that it's unpleasant (and we have neat inventions like ubiquitous chairs), not that we're less inherently capable than in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I often see people on street corners clearly standing there to get day-worker jobs. If you rent a U-Haul truck, they'll be there, eager to work and get paid.

I always thought this could use a bit of high tech. It should probably involve a web site to request workers and an SMS solution for people out and about. It should also have some sort of vetting and recommendation system to replace the quick size up that happens in person.

At the very least, why not have a day laborer office where people can sit in a chair instead of on a street corner. It could also double as a financial or immigration advisory role. That would be a great non-profit to make.

<comment><USER25> Such offices exists here and there, sometimes to the discontent of the neighborhood. The vetting and recommendation service might unfortunately serve as a handy resource for the INS, though.

<comment><USER24> It is in the best interests of the immigrants to at least approach some form of legitimacy, and regular employment can help that. It is doubtful mass deportation would happen. Also, do those folks on street corners ever get busted? If not, would a center for them get busted?

<comment><USER26> It probably would in Arizona, but anywhere else it would just be a sensationalized Fox News headline:

'Internet hackers organize illegals to take american jobs.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> forget the farm - nice work with fresh air. How about carpeting job? Closed, unventilated rooms and halls, asphyxiating smell of melted plastic - <USER2> carpet sheets are melted together. I never been so happy of being a software engineer, MS in Math and and Green Card holder as when i passed by these poor Mexican guys who were carpeting the hall of our apartment building. 30 seconds of passing through this smell - i almost vomited.

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks to automation the number of people employed as farm labourers has fallen dramatically within the previous century. The farm worker endures a hard life of continual struggle, with the constant threat of technological unemployment hanging over them.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm intrigued that no one has talked about the meta-aspects of this PR/marketing move by the UFW. How many other unions would have the guts to issue a call for workers to come take their jobs?

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd do it if it fit my situation.

Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it!) my opinion doesn't count, because I have no reason to take up farm work- I am gainfully employed elsewhere for better wages, in school, and pretty far from most farms. Even once I graduate, and have to find a new job, economically it's wiser to remain unemployed and search for a job.

I am unhappy about that, and it's tempting to say "screw what's smart" and work in the fields for a while after I graduate. Especially to show that we Americans are not _all_ wusses. I just have to figure out how much that'd screw me over...

</comment><comment><USER31> When I was in japan I worked on two organic farms for about a month total. I did it through the wwoof program which is available all over the world. It was a great time. Even though the work was really tiring on some days I still felt happy without the crazy distractions and responsibilities of school and a part time job. Probably the happiest I've felt in a while.

</comment><comment><USER32> We need a massive increase in LEGAL immigration (and the resources dedicated to processing them) and an equally massive crackdown on ILLEGAL immigration.

If either side is honest in their position, this would be the best solution.

</comment><comment><USER33> The best way to improve the lives of hard working, blue collar Americans, is to have them compete with desperate, starving illegals with no rights. Why would you hire someone with rights when you could hire someone, who if injured, you can just push off the back of a truck. If you don't enforce the law, then you force everyone to break that law in order to be able to compete with the scumbags who hire illegals.

</comment><comment><USER34> Hacker News?

</comment><comment><USER35> Is this hacker news or political action news?

Flagged.</comment>


Congress wants to make Sub S shareholders pay more payroll taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/17/tax-increase-senate-hedge-funds-personal-finance-s-corp-payoll-taxes.html?boxes=Homepagelighttop

<comment><USER2> As the article said, there's already a "reasonableness" test for setting a correct salary for the work that an S Corp. owner does. If owners are still not setting reasonable salaries for themselves (and pay the appropriate additional employment taxes), then we need more enforcement in that area—not a new law.

Of course, this is really just a money grab on behalf on the politicians which affects a limited number of the (most productive) tax-paying population.

The net effect of this is that S Corps that use their retained earnings from year-to-year to build their business (employ more people and spend money in the private sector) now would be saddled with not only the income taxes on that money (which they already pay), but also a 15.3% (up to the Social Security limit) and 2.9% surtax above that.

Next, you know that Congress would love to remove that annual Social Security limit and make all income above the Social Security limit taxable at an additional 15.3%—for everyone.

<sarcasm>Why not? The "rich" aren't paying their "fair share." So, we need to soak them some more.</sarcasm>

<comment><USER3> What really bugs me about this legislation is who it targets. Obama's entire campaign hinged upon a commitment to avoid imposing new taxes on the "middle class" and going after big money hoarders who evade taxes. Those who operate S-corps aren't the ones avoiding massive amounts of taxes. This is a backdoor way of increasing taxes on the upper-middle-class, and it really sucks.

<comment><USER4> Aww, gee, well in that case I assume Obama will veto it, since in this video he makes a "firm pledge" that "no family making less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year will see any form of tax increase":

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8erePM8V5U>

<comment><USER5> This isn't a tax increase. People taking this informal tax "deduction" are counting on the IRS never reviewing their tax returns. As it stands today, and as it stood when Obama took office, if the IRS gave any of these shady returns a second look, the filers would wind up in tax court.

<comment><USER4> I don't pretend to understand the details here, but if it's just a question of better enforcing existing laws then why is there a bill?

<comment><USER5> If you don't pretend to understand the details, why do you feel comfortable making political arguments that rely on them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _(C) DISQUALIFIED S CORPORATION- For purposes of this subsection, the term 'disqualified S corporation' means-- ......_ _(ii) any other S corporation which is engaged in a professional service business if the principal asset of such business is the reputation and skill of 3 or fewer employees._

This phrasing, quoted from the bill, seems open to lots of interpretation. My business sells advertising on websites I've created. Is the principal asset of my business my personal "reputation and skill" or is the principal asset the websites themselves (which required my skill to build, but are distinct from the skills themselves)?

I'd argue that my business (and others like it, which I'm sure there are many here) doesn't fall under that description since (1) the principal asset is the website, not me personally, and (2) even if my skill is the business's principal asset, my personal reputation certainly is not, and the bill stipulates "reputation and skill", not "reputation or skill".

</comment><comment><USER7> It's called HR 4213, the Senate has been debating it all week. They might pass it today. Sen. Snowe of Maine introduced an amendment that would junk the S-Corp dividend payroll tax. It's called S4342.

[http://www.govtrack.us/congress/amendment.xpd?session=111...](http://www.govtrack.us/congress/amendment.xpd?session=111&amdt=s4342)

<http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4213/show>

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it always a loophole? Can't it be legitimate some of the time?</comment>


36 to Love: Gorgeous Android and iOS apps based on the 36 questions to love - <AUTHOR> http://thirtysixtolove.me

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the upvotes guys - this is my first app, and it's going to be on the Steve Harvey show today!</comment>


Ask HN: Whats your favorite backpack for everyday carry? - <AUTHOR> My current backpack is falling apart and can't neatly contain all my my daily carry anymore. My current job is Network Security so I have a lot of accessories (red team, blue team daily carry laptop, work laptop, various usbs, antennas, wireless cards, etc). I need something that is going to hold up and not break the bank as I will probably  pick up a new one  as an 'early birthday present' to myself. I was just wondering what everyone else was using. Thanks for the input! <comment><USER2> I guess you would like to see this thread: "Ask HN: Do you carry a backpack? Which one?" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13369197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13369197)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd strongly recommend you check out [http://www.carryology.com](http://www.carryology.com) for all sorts of bag reviews.

They are currently doing their 2017 awards, which are broken down by category such as best work backpack - [http://www.carryology.com/best-work-backpack- top-10-the-fift...](http://www.carryology.com/best-work-backpack-top-10-the- fifth-annual-carry-awards/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I might be a tad late to the game, but I'm really happy with my Wenger. Specifically this one : [http://wenger.swissluggage.com/proddetail.asp?prod=600628](http://wenger.swissluggage.com/proddetail.asp?prod=600628)

I previously used one from SwissGear too but found the Wenger a bit more robust for my commute heavy life.

</comment><comment> ng-user Spend the money and get a GORUCK GR1

<comment><USER5> I've had one for 2 years. I loved it.

Then it got stolen. I don't think I'll buy another one. It's heavy and abrasive.

Right now I'm looking at Tom Bihn's Synapse 19/25\. I'm also considering the ubiquitous Jansport SuperBreak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been using SwissGear Maxxum 16" Computer Backpack (Red) since 2013 (January). I really like this backpack:

[https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images1000x1000/swissgea...](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images1000x1000/swissgear_ga_7303_13f00_maxxum_16_computer_backpack_1005553.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER7> Looking at your list of stuff, I'll offer the cautionary tale that walking around with a big backpack can cause injuries.

About a year ago I went to NYC for a business trip with a heavily loaded backpack and wound up twisting my ankle; this slowed me down for at least six months and still hurts a little on a bad day. A few years back I had a similar incident where I tripped while carrying a heavy backpack and smacked one of my quadriceps on the sidewalk. I managed to walk a mile and a half to work, but when I got out of my chair I found I couldn't walk. At the urgent care I got a prescription for Percocet, which was a big help; I was off my feet for 2 weeks, but the injury healed pretty quickly.

As a result, I reduced what I carry and developed some travelling methods to minimize weight, such as "living off the land" as much as possible, putting any pills I take for a day in a separate pill bottle that I throw away when it is empty.

</comment><comment><USER8> I actually don't carry anything apart from a thin wallet and my smartphone.

Everything else is in the cloud and I have a computer at my desk.

</comment><comment><USER9> Arcteryx Blade 20</comment>


The Inescapable Town Square - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-inescapable-town-square <comment><USER2> If you like the author's writing, I highly recommend his newsletter, The Convivial Society with more thoughts and links on the intersection of technology and society. [https://tinyletter.com/lmsacasas](https://tinyletter.com/lmsacasas)

</comment><comment><USER3> The social media platforms are exactly that, platforms.

The giant social media monopoly's have deceitfully hidden under the category of publisher for long enough.

Platforms host publishers. The argument that a publisher hosts publishers is not valid.</comment>


Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/technology/bitcoin-ripple.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=5&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F01%2F04%2Ftechnology%2Fbitcoin-ripple.html&eventName=Watching-article-click <comment><USER2> I just read a critical analysis about Ripple [1] then saw this thread on HN. I quote the conclusion

"XRP is 100% premined, Ripple holds 60% of the supply, controls which nodes are selected as "trustworthy" to confirm transactions, while they have paid nothing to create those tokens that people are so willingly buying at $4+ per piece and thereby make the creators insanely rich. Let us call it what it really is, digital fiat, the renewed version of the debt-based traditional fiat system, leveraged by latest technology – which eventually has nothing to do with cryptocurrency whatsoever."

[1] [https://cryptoyoda1338.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/the-truth- ab...](https://cryptoyoda1338.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/the-truth-about- ripple/)

<comment><USER3> I should make my own cryptocurrency, generate $60 billion out of thin air.

<comment><USER4> You don't even need to go that far, just generate a bunch of UUIDs and sell them to people.

<comment><USER5> When you can explain why people trade hard-earned cash for cryptocurrency but would never buy your UUIDs, then you'll understand the flaw in your argument.

Hint: It's not because they're stupid or deceived. Go deeper.

<comment><USER4> Follow me on this one. If I hold all my currency in a service like Coinbase, how do I know that I actually bought bitcoins? All I see is a pretty interface that says "you have x bitcoins" and maybe a list of hashes and whatnot.

To a non-technical, these hashes and numbers are totally meaningless. As long as everything is done through my service (coinbase, for example) nobody has any idea if there are actually bitcoins behind these numbers or not. You can't hold a bitcoin, I can't ask you to mail me them so I can verify that they exist. The only thing you can do is trust the blockchain, which you definitely need a technical background to understand.

So yes, with enough smoke and mirrors, I believe you could setup a service to sell people UUIDs. It hinges on non-technicals using only my service though. Obviously you couldn't do this with a real cryptocurrency, because the blockchain would tell you if the coins actually exist or not.

<comment><USER2> I might be wrong, but if you keep your coins on an exchange they are in a wallet of the exchange, with a private key of the exchange. They are linked to your account but that information is not stored in the blockchain. It's in the contract between you and the exchange. Very similar to fiat money in a bank computer. To own your bitcoina they must be in your computer. Make backups, trust your hardware. I suggest a pre 2013 Atom :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple other discussions from earlier this week.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16071731](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16071731) (Yesterday)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057883) (Two days ago)

I found the top comment in yesterday's thread rather interesting. If there is a hard cap of 100 billion Ripple coins that can exist, and Ripple Labs already owns 60% of them, at today's price of $3.33 that would mean Ripple Labs has $3.33 * 0.60 * 100billion = $200 Billion in assets, making it one of the largest companies in the world. It's complete madness.

<comment><USER7> but they can't sell any of it without annihilating the market. It's like I sell a diamond to my friend for 1 billion dollars, but she pays me 1$ every year for a billion years. So formally I am a billionaire, but actually I am one diamond short.

<comment><USER8> It depends. Surely they could not instantly dump all of their "ripple assets" and expect the market to absorb it. But currently the 24-hours trading volume is 6.6 billion USD ([https://www.livecoinwatch.com/price/Ripple- XRP](https://www.livecoinwatch.com/price/Ripple-XRP)). A huge part of that may be wash trading due to some zero-fee exchangers. Nevertheless I am speachless how relatively speaking a lot of money is actually being poured into this right now.

<comment><USER9> > Surely they could not instantly dump all of their "ripple assets"

They can't. They've escrowed that 60 billion away and will release it to institutions at regular intervals. Any XRP that isn't bought will be put back in escrow. The executives that have large amounts of XRP themselves are contractually obligated to not dump it. They can only sell a certain amount per week. I think its like 10,000 or something (but I could be wrong on that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whenever I see extremely disproportionate volume coming from Bitthumb I'm immediately skeptical it's anything more than a pump and dump cycle. Same thing happened with BCH among others.

<comment><USER11> yeah bithumb is insane. I'm scared to assume how much money involved and why nobody is trying to/cant arbitrage this. It's like complete noncence at this point. Whole different price universe. And i can't belive that it is some random korean dude that can't register on bitfinex or some other exchange and buy the coin he wants with 30-60% discount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this's not a bubble I don't know what it's

<comment><USER13> Since everybody and their grandmother is telling these days it's a bubble, I've somehow come to the believe that this time it's not a bubble. Why?

Well, during the mortgage crisis, very few economists would actually claim it was a bubble. Perhaps it was 5% - 10%. At least this was what appeared in the news. The big shots at the central banks didn't see this bubble either, for the most part. But now every big banker is saying Bitcoin is a bubble.

For the dot-com bubble it was much the same. The majority of people (economists, bankers and the like) that should recognise a bubble were only able to call it a bubble in hindsight.

The more I hear this is a bubble, the more of my spare money I will invest into cryptos.

<comment><USER14> > Well, during the mortgage crisis, very few economists would actually claim > it was a bubble.

During the mortgage crisis, basically every notable economist and economic commentator was calling it a bubble; some had been for several years, and some only very late (but still before it popped), but it absolutely is not the case that the concept was rare my stated.

The closest your statement is to truth is that there weren't lots of people accurately predicting the timing of the bubble popping, but that's a different thing than recognizing the bubble.

> For the dot-com bubble it was much the same.

It's true that he dot-com bubble was much the same as the mortgage bubble, but only in that it equally did not match your "no one was calling it a bubble" description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, he's pretty rich... if he cashes all his Ripple at the price point of the current highest bidder. However, said bidder will not want all of it, so some will go at a lower price, and so on. Eventually the price may become extremely low due to the very high supply (which diminishes demand again). I wonder if this is taken into account. All crypto starters are rich in their own coins but they can never cash it in, at least not all at once.

Same holds true for "normal" money since the gold standard was left behind of course.

Their wealth depends on someone willing to pay a price, she or he is willing to pay said price because she or he expects the next person to pay even more at some point. Classic pyramid. Bad? I don't think so. Heading for an eventual crash? I think it will, at some point. Hopefully I'll get rich before then.

What Ripple has going for it is that they may actually succeed at making it a system banks will adopt. If futures become available, insuring parties against fluctuations during transfer, Ripple may have actual value over just the next girl/guy wanting it more than you.

<comment><USER16> Wanna be billionaire buddies? Issue 1 billion teekertcoins, I'll buy one from you for $1 if you do the same.

<comment><USER15> Sounds good, Three Commas Club here we come! (Let me first start with a course on constructing Blockchains though... or who cares, lets just use an Excel file for bookkeeping!)

<comment><USER17> Gotta use Google Sheets or it won't be decentralized /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The thesis statement here is value itself is an arbitrary concept and is such because we say it is. It's completely imaginary, often times irrational and a shared fiction. The fact that we have conventional billionaires at all is almost a ridiculous concept in and of itself, as any amount of tangible work is always done en masse, not by a singular person. Works can be created by individual contributors but it is the mass that gives them value. Put those people on an island and those works become meaningless.

In the case of cryptocurrency, the work here is being done, again, by many people. Economics is, as a fundamental matter, the study of choice. People are, for whatever reason, choosing to do both work and ascribe value to these systems, and it just so happens that these systems are designed in such a way to funnel that work into the hands of mostly a few. This is not owing to any revelation or discovery or intellectual pursuit, but represents pure greed and capitalism --- the selfish pursuit of benefit from fellow man.

Whoever says bitcoin and the other currencies are some kind of panacea that will free us from the shackles of government fiat, big corporations and stymied control of wealth need only look to stories like these, which, are proof that this is just a different and new kind of master.

<comment><USER19> Which one of these properties of cryptocurrency is imaginary?

      Coins cant be faked or duplicated
      No one can create them at will
      They can be transmitted quickly/globally with low fees (excluding bitcoin of course)
      You can store them yourself, no bank needed
      Sending huge sums of money is no problem
      Relatively simple design, 8 page white paper
      Has worked as designed for almost a decade

Seems like crypto has a lot unique intrinsic value that surpasses traditional currencies to date.

The only thing imaginary is your imagination. Crypto is very real. Even people on an island would eventually find a common denominator in which to store value which has many of the same properties above.

<comment><USER20> > No one can create them at will

Didn't Ripple Labs create 100 bilion ripple at will?

<comment><USER21> Yeah ripple is a token not a currency they can generate new ripple at will but since the founder has a large stake he has an incentive to not flood the market. But ripple is not the future it's a stopgap running on centralized servers it's not revolutionary like etherium

<comment><USER22> Because the Ethereum people only created 80 million tokens out of thin air?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious if the venture investors in Ripple (seed, Series A, b, etc) benefit at all from the uptick in XRP. I assume an equity investment did not take the form of coins when those deals were done. Hopefully for those VCs I'm wrong. Anyone have an idea?

</comment><comment><USER24> We had three stories about Ripple appearing in front page in 3 days. What's going on?

<comment><USER25> Just read the headline of this article and you'll realize why the current Ripple psychosis is newsworthy. What has happened the last week is historical and scary.

<comment><USER26> It's the signal the mania stage is nearing an end.

See: Yasumitsu Shigeta

They're playing musical chairs right before the implosion. Ripple might be worth a couple billion dollars as a dangerous speculation. PayPal, an actual, real, live, huge, global, payment & money transfer system, is worth $92 billion.

Some people say you can't place a value on something like Ripple. Sure you can, treat it as an actual business, measure its prospects over the next 3, 5, 10 years. What are those business prospects for the next few years? Not much, less than that of Square and Stripe.

Ripple is just this bubble's CMGI or Internet Capital Group. Bitcoin is this bubble's Cisco or AOL (if it's lucky). The junk ICOs are DrKoop.com or TheGlobe. There's nothing unique about what's going on, history is rhyming as it so often does. It's a likely indication the global liquidity asset bubble party - spurred on by so many central banks pumping crazy levels of liquidity into the global economy for a decade - is reaching toward a climax, again.

<comment><USER27> Can you explain the Yasumitsu Shigeta reference? I tried Googling but I don't get it.

<comment><USER28> From what I gather, the founder and chairman of Hikari Tsushin Inc. Once among the world's richest people, until Hikari Tsushin lost 99% of its stock value in 2000.

EDIT: found this[1]

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/nov/25/internetn...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/nov/25/internetnews.business)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ripple is not Bitcoin competitor because Ripple is not a cryptocurrency.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is no different from billionaires that hold massive equity stakes in their own companies, including Zuckerberg.

> Yet the fortunes of Mr. McCaleb and Mr. Larsen are not nearly as durable as > those of other people on the Forbes list given that the value of virtual > currencies fluctuates wildly. If Mr. Larsen wanted to access his wealth by > selling Ripple tokens for dollars, it would likely drive down the value of > Ripple tokens — and his riches.

People keep trying to apply a different higher standard to cryptocurrency in order to prove why it cant function as legacy asset classes.

Honestly, I think its because people dont know how the equity/currency/commodity markets work and are synthesizing standards while watching crypto billionaires get minted on the fly to justify their missed opportunities.

In Ripple's case, the founders are probably more liquid than other equity billionaires. Ripple traded 7 billion usd today, Facebook only 2 billion.

And I dont even like Ripple, but right now I have to fight ignorance outside of the crypto arena.

<comment><USER31> The difference is very simple.

If you buy all ripple tokens in existence, they are useless. If you buy all facebook stocks in existence, you own facebook.

<comment><USER30> All ripple accounts require 20 xrp which cannot be moved so this is an impossibility to begin with

Xrp holders have some function in the network, I forgot

And you could name the price for anyone else that wanted xrp or to use the network

Although I would say Ripple's XRP is not the settlement solution Id be looking for, I wouldnt say owning 99.999% of them makes it worthless

Owning all of a commodity doesnt make it worthless, even when that commodity is a unique collection of cryptographic signatures

<comment><USER29> if i have 20 ripple but can't spend them - how is that different from having 0 ripple?

<comment><USER32> You gave someone else $40 for free.

<comment><USER29> right, i gave them to "open my account", now i have 20XRP that i can't spend - how is it different from having 0XRP that i can't spend?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looked into both Ripple (XRP) and Stellar (XLM) and invested more into Stellar because of...

\- the much better scaling than traditional coins (semi-central structure)

\- the track record of the founder Jed

\- the fuller feature set including the creation of new tokens like ETH but easier

\- the recent announcement like IBMs partnering and stress tests, Kin moving to Stellar, Signal's founder creating his coin on Stellar

\- Stellar's lower market cap, so there's still room above

I think Ripple is also good but has a different focus and since the original founder of Ripple left to Stellar, I am a bit more into Stellar.

<comment><USER34> I looked into the top15 currencies by market cap. I decided to stay away from cardano/tron/iota/bitcoin cash/dash/neo. Stellar is my favourite so far other than bitcoin even though I don't 100% understand the consensus algorithm yet.

<comment><USER35> Why do you lump bitcoin cash with the other pointless coins? It is better at being bitcoin than bitcoin except for speculative purposes (so far).

<comment><USER34> Because I don't find anything that does better than litecoin. Also this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JarEszFY1WY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JarEszFY1WY) shows the fundamentally different viewpoints between bitcoin and bitcoin cash. As someone mentions in the video what bitcoin cash is trying to do is implement business logic inside the protocol which is a layer violation.

<comment><USER35> Litecoin is basically following Bitcoin's approach to scaling which will leave it congested if it gets popular enough. Litecoin already has much higher fees than Bitcoin Cash. Litecoin's development has basically been nonexistent since it's invention and has only been copying Bitcoin ever since. Bitcoin Cash is also quickly gaining merchant adoption with for example BitPay, something Litecoin has failed to do in many years. The network effect is a powerful thing.

That Bitcoin Cash would implement "business logic" is just wrong. It simply removes the artificial blocksize limit and does not try to prevent users from utilizing 0-conf if they so choose. From that point it is Bitcoin which is forcing out valid use cases (low value transactions, opt in 0-conf).

<comment><USER34> Bitcoin cash's approach to scaling is just not sustainable and leads to centralization. You cant just increase the block size each time the mempool fills. In a couple of years no one would be capable to run a full node on consumer hardware. Also you open up all kinds of different ways for the network to be attacked. With a 1MB block size an attack block will take 40 seconds to validate with a 2MB size it will take 14 minutes. The correct solution to scaling is a Layer 2 protocol.

Bitcoin Cash's mantra is that they want people to treat 0-confirmation transactions as safe which is absolutely the opposite of what the whole protocol is about. Check this infographic that was tweeted a few hours ago [https://twitter.com/Bitcoin/status/949019786704547842](https://twitter.com/Bitcoin/status/949019786704547842)

<comment><USER35> This black and white thinking is just not practical. "Since very large increases will disallow nodes on consumer hardware we will block any increase" is just poor engineering.

The approach of Bitcoin Cash is to allow the increase when possible. 8MB is for example perfectly doable today on consumer hardware. Investigations are ongoing for how large the blocks can become and improvmenets are being made on for example propagation time and allowing faster startup of nodes.

For example 1GB have been propagated and validated in a timely manner by consumer hardware existing today. (Not saying we should bump it up right now, but the capabilities are here).

> With a 1MB block size an attack block will take 40 seconds to validate with > a 2MB size it will take 14 minutes.

That's just wrong.

Edit: Because Bitcoin Cash eliminates the quadratic hashing problem.

> Bitcoin Cash's mantra is that they want people to treat 0-confirmation > transactions as safe which is absolutely the opposite of what the whole > protocol is about.

No it's not. There are different degrees of safe which Bitcoin totally fails to acknowledge. Buying a coffee with 0-conf and a basic double spend heuristic is perfectly fine and has been done on Bitcoin until full blocks (and RBF) killed it, for example by shapeshift. xmr.to which converts Monero to Bitcoin is also accepting 0-conf for smaller amounts.

Here again the extremist black and white thinking is bad.

> The correct solution to scaling is a Layer 2 protocol.

No, the correct solution combines on-chain and off-chain scaling.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Modest Proposal for Facebook: End Facebook Live - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90323717/a-modest-proposal-for-facebook-end-live-streaming <comment><USER2> If you're going to make a reasonably out-there suggestion like this, perhaps don't use "A Modest Proposal" because it gives your suggestion a certain context you may not want...

<comment><USER3> Revealing my ignorance here, are you seeing a reference to "A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick" by (pen name) Jonathan Swift?

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

<comment><USER4> I definitely interpreted the title in that way; it was somewhat confusing for me, as at first I assumed that the article was going to be satire (or at least a strawman) based on that</comment></comment></comment>


Ideas to parse the email text in order to grab data from it? - <AUTHOR> I'm building a small app which basically reads my emails on gmail and collects data from my bank transaction emails of type purchases, withdrawals and credits. I'm doing it so to put all my transactions at one place. In order to pick data from those emails, i am just splitting the entire text by spaces and collecting data by hardcoding its index in the text. Now that it is working fine , if the template of those emails changes then again i have to change the indexes. I found out that NLP can help in this regard. But i want to know if there are any other ways to do it ? <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure Apache Tika [0] will do what you need (and lots more).

[0] [https://tika.apache.org/](https://tika.apache.org/)

<comment><USER3> Do you happen to know of any alternatives not written in Java?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Flexible command line tool to create graphs from CSV data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mcastorina/graph-cli <comment><USER2> Definitely seems like a nice API on top of matplotlib.

I've started using gnuplot a lot after hearing Brendan Gregg mention it a few times. It fills a great niche for making decent graphs without having to write code.

[http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo/](http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo/)

<comment><USER3> I hadn't used gnuplot, but when my UPS was dying, I decided I needed a realtime graph of it recharging/discharging to see what was going on.

I called the apcupsd api from the command line and output some stats to a file that I'd formatted into columns using awk/grep, I then found that I could configure gnuplot to draw a graph from this file, and then update itself automatically as the file changed.

All in all, it took me 10 minutes to put together having not used gnuplot before and did exactly what I needed. I could watch the graph update every few seconds/minutes and keep an eye on what was happening, and because I had written the data to a file first, I could always go back and re-plot it later if I had found anything interesting to re-plot for.

End result; UPS is dead, get a new one :D

<comment><USER4> I did the same thing during an internship where tensorboard wasn't available on our training clusters - instead I just dumped all of the training metrics I needed into a tsv and made a gnuplot ascii graph. Worked brilliantly and took no time to set up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. FYI: Find more more CSV tools at the Awesome CSV pages [https://github.com/secretGeek/awesomecsv](https://github.com/secretGeek/awesomecsv) and [https://github.com/csvspecs/awesome- csv](https://github.com/csvspecs/awesome-csv) Cheers. Prost.

</comment><comment><USER6> SVG emitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, I hadn't thought of this!

It uses matplotlib to generate the graphs, which can save svg files though. This sounds like a good feature to add.

<comment><USER6> plotly (Python and R) and ggplot (R) can do SVG. Its increadibly useful for generating rescaleable web views.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> what are the advantages with respect to gnuplot?

<comment><USER8> How do you use gnuplot to plot a CSV file non-interactively? The only way I could find was

      gnuplot -e "set datafile separator \",\"; set term png; set output 'foo.png'; plot 'foo.csv'"

and if that is the best way then that's one particularly obvious advantage of graph over gnuplot.

<comment><USER7> All this verbosity can be solved by a particular .gnuplotrc, but I see what you mean.

Personally, I would rather do

        <foo.csv tr ',' ' '|gnuplot -e 'set term png;plot "-"'>foo.png

<comment><USER9> For quick plotting I use this gist for gnuplot, [https://gist.github.com/jxy/88f2972d3994dfea06fd2d3833b7ac8a](https://gist.github.com/jxy/88f2972d3994dfea06fd2d3833b7ac8a) which generates an ascii art plot.

But I don't really use scripts for other gnuplot terminals, because custom tailoring for individual data set is always required to make any figure presentable. I usually go through ConTeXt to generate PDF file for its TeX features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> can I plot certain columns, or based on title in the first row?

<comment><AUTHOR> Columns can be chosen using the -x or -y flags. By default the x column is the first and the y columns are everything else.

You can specify either the column name or number (1 indexed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 2D plots, not graphs...

<comment><USER12> I think you're using a domain specific definition of a graph. These certainly meet the English definition of a graph[1].

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=define+graph](https://www.google.com/search?q=define+graph)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> maybe you can put some examples on the front page of the repo.</comment>


Minimalism Isn't the Alpha and Omega of Design - <AUTHOR> http://designpepper.com/blog/post/minimalism-isnt-the-alpha-and-omega-of-design/

<comment><USER2> There's a reason why modernism is modern and the rest are mostly historical. A lot of historical approaches to aesthetics are overly flowery and complex by today's standards. This is because in the historical context the fact that any of this was possible was remarkable and something to be emphasized. Today most people don't think it's that remarkable that you can cram a bunch of flowery crap into something, or make it super-intricate and fragile and still transport it. Those are solved problems.

With that said, however, I love Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and a bunch of less minimalist (compared to Bauhaus) modern styles. But they are minimalist compared to those historical styles. In some ways they are partly a streamlining of the more interesting parts of some of more historical styles. They aren't "minimalist" in the technical sense of that term, but I'm not sure that e.g. Apple's products are minimalist in that sense either.

It's hard for me to come up with examples of things that are really totally non-minimalist, like Baroque, that I'd like to see in e.g. software or computer hardware... Maybe some of the spinoffs of Russian constructivism. Some of them aren't really minimalist at all, and many are awesome.

EDIT: Here are some examples of non-Bauhaus-style web design that are still modern. Might be better than looking at historical architecture.

<http://www.pho-ku.com/> \-- The Designers Republic (Russian constructivism inspired)

<http://joshuaink2006.johnoxton.co.uk/> \-- web designer's blog I've always found pretty :)

<http://www.happycog.com/create/> \-- there's a good variety here, most of which could be construed as minimalist, but none of which seems Bauhaus-y.

<comment><USER3> I think people tend to conflate functional (how it works) minimalism with aesthetic (how it looks) minimalism. (I just made those terms up but they seem to work nicely.)

Functionality and aesthetics are connected but I would argue that functional minimalism doesn't have to lead to aesthetic minimalism.

Aesthetic minimalism is a specific look: a specific color palette, a specific set of fonts, a specific use of illustrations and photos, a specific use of geometries and space.

Some of those specific properties of aesthetic minimalism may indeed lead to better functionality like less distraction and better readability. Much of the rest of it is mostly fashion. There is a wider range of aesthetics with which your design can work and be functional — I would very much despise living in a world were all everyone ever wants to achieve is a minimalist look.

I would also argue that functional minimalism is always a laudable design goal, independent of your aesthetics. At least when your goal is designing something that people are supposed to use and not, say, art. (I should again emphasize that both are obviously connected. You can't make your aesthetic choices independent of your functional choices, it's just that there is a wider range of options than just aesthetic minimalism.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a developer who sometimes gets stuck with design work for websites. Having no design training whatsoever, I find that minimalism is the form in which I will embarrass myself the least, and the one which requires the least amount of photoshop/illustrator know-how to get running. For me, it is the path of least resistance that still gets the job done.

I agree with the author entirely, minimalism is big right now, but it's silly to take that as a sign that it is the One Divinely Ordained Design Choice. But I wonder how much of minimalism on the web is a result of situations like mine.

<comment><USER5> "I think [Steve Jobs'] choice of a minimalist aesthetic comes from his fear of making the wrong aesthetic choice."

If Alan Deutschman is correct, you are in good company.

That said, I think many people forget that, while it's harder to screw up a "minimalist" design, it's also harder to create truly outstanding minimal design. The recent minimalism trend only perpetuates the conflation of simplicity and easiness.

People also seem to conflate functional and aesthetic minimalism a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I disagree with the statement that minimalism is just one style. There's something more fundamental to it than what can be encompassed by sweeping it under the carpet of "style".

Minimalism along with its cousins of Utilitarianism and Tufte-like information design all seek an elegance through elimination of components that are not vital to some singular goal of the philosophy.

       Utilitarianism: capacity generation/utility
       Tufte: information and interpretation
       Minimalism: content and structure

The importance here is that given that our brains have limited capacity for attention, these philosophies help us the most so long as our goals reside near the goal of the designer. With a lot of other "styles" displayed in the article the goals were less practical and further from the end user with intent to express the glory of god or the power of a monarch. They are fantastically beautiful, but in those cases beauty is orthogonal to their function (meeting places and homes).

So that's the twist. You can make ornate, anti-minimal designs so long as their beauty lies at least somewhat alongside the purpose of the website. It's long been the maxim of web design that Users Spend Epsilon Seconds at Your Site and unless the purpose and content is clear like gunfire you're out of luck. But then you've got "functional beauty" such as that contained within detailed arts like typography. Each has a distinct utilitarian flair, but espouses a lot of craft via excessive care for detail.

So, some examples:

       http://wufoo.com/
       http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/royal/
       http://blog.iso50.com/
       http://joshuaink2006.johnoxton.co.uk/
       (mbateman already mentioned Joshua Ink, but it's just a really good example)

And really, though it's not the same medium, the maximalist style of David Foster Wallace is from the exact same creche.

Of course, the catch is that with every added element, you take the risk of having your design run away from you. It's a viciously hard thing to do, I think, keeping beauty and purpose aligned.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can appreciate the value of various styles, and I think the world would be worse off if all artists decided to reduce their work to some definition of its "necessary" components. Art helps to evolve us. It's also probably impossible to define the "necessary" components for most art.

However, I think there are shades of gray in the question of minimalist design for websites. Web applications aren't like Melk Abbey, Queluz Palace, or the Grand Palais. They aren't meant to be _beheld_. They're meant to be used at an intricate level, and it can often be harder to do that when there are ornamental or otherwise decorative components to the design. I still think the author's thesis is true - that minimalism isn't the end-all of design. But I do think that - on balance - minimalist designs are more effective than other designs for web applications.

Other kinds of websites (Some websites _are_ meant to be beheld, after all) can lose value with a minimalist approach - or not.

<comment> saint-loup >>>Web applications aren't like Melk Abbey, Queluz Palace, or the Grand Palais. They aren't meant to be beheld.

So is architecture, in a way. Living in a house is close to _using_ it. It's almost interaction design. (Arguably, it's more true of houses than of monuments.)

<comment><USER7> It comes down to the level of intricacy in the usage. The extent to which I use...

 _...the Sistine Chapel_ \- Stand in it.

 _...my house_ \- Live in it.

 _...a web app_ \- Click all sorts of buttons, encounter alerts, make micro- decisions.

As the intricacy of usage increases, so too does the risk of negative distraction (as opposed to positive distraction, like being awestruck by the Sistine Chapel's ceiling and not hearing a friend call my name).

<comment><USER8> My house: cook in it, sleep in it, exercise in it, practice music in it, work in it, build furniture in it, wash my clothes in it, entertain guests, dine in it and so on and so forth.

Most web apps: browse it.

Can't remember what my point is, but that you're oversimplifying on the first two examples and expanding the web app example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my experience, "web designers" arguing in favour of simplicity is for greater usability, not necessarily better design.

On a related note, the giant fixed background image on that website makes scrolling choppy and unusable, so I can understand the argument for simplicity in web design.

<comment><AUTHOR> What web browser & OS are you using? I'll be happy to check out the scrolling issues.

<comment><USER9> Chrome and Firefox on OSX both experience the issue. Safari is smooth. The problem disappears without the background-position set to fixed. The transparent effect would be lost, but it actually still looks good when the background just scrolls by default.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the details. Chrome and Firefox on my Windows machine are quite smooth, but I didn't test them on a Mac.

I'll look into this further.

<comment><USER10> I'm on Firefox 3.6.8/Win, and I have the same problem. It's more a problem with the browser itself (FF4 with retained layers should have no problems I guess).

This also happens when you abuse with shadows (text or boxes/divs).

edit: @joshuacc, since I can't reply directly to your comment: It probably depends on the machine resources. I'm on a 5y old notebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know that it happens on your machine as well.

I've switched the background image to scroll until I can do proper testing, though I haven't been able to reproduce it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apple has been so successful with its minimalist approach that everybody else is falling over themselves to imitate it. It's getting a little tiresome seeing one computer after another that looks like a German kitchen appliance. Hopefully in this decade people will have the courage to branch out a little more and explore other aesthetics.

<comment><USER12> Apple does seem to be a big trendsetter in this regard, so I hope that at some point they will come up with designs that are a little more imaginative. You know, the way they did around 1998-2001, with the colorful and curvy iMacs and iBooks, that stood out from the square/beige box crowd. (Same CEO and same designer that are responsible for today's colorless rectangular products, by the way.)

<comment><USER13> I actually preferred the square, beige boxes, compared to a lot of the boxes they sell nowadays. It was very sturdy, harder to scratch, didn't look dusty after a couple days, and because of the shape easy to clean, store or transport. Downside: sharp metal ends.

Take the interior of a modern case, with the airy wires, no screws drive bays, air filter, put it in a square beige metal box and you'd get a great utilitarian box for office or general geek use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author's examples are not relevant to the argument. If you're just trying to design something that is, on its face, beautiful, there are obviously many viable styles besides modernism. The goal of web design is different from the goal of palace design or ornate ceiling design. Web design must be usable or it has failed. I think a better analogy in the physical world would be the design of tools. If you were driving nails all day, would you rather use a modernist hammer or a hammer that looks like that Rococo table?

I take his point that modernism has become close to dogma for some web designers, but I don't see how an abbey built in the early 1700s relates to a website.

</comment><comment><USER15> Simplicity, or what I prefer to call "cleanness", is an enduring type of design - it is not a single style like "modernist", unless you consider Shakers and many even older vernacular styles modern. In web sites designed to inform rather than entertain, simplicity is a must, and even then they are still not very good at informing. Anything that gets in the way of that is bad. Buildings are functional, but the problem with the post's comparison is that all the gingerbread and painting on a building is orthogonal to the function of a building, where on a web site any added ornamentation directly affects its usability.

</comment><comment><USER16> Many good points in this thread.

I would add that modern computer tech is very, very unstable. The designers of Baroque art and architecture were building upon hundreds of years of tradition. Web design is not yet a twenty-year-old field.

The problem with new fields is that you need to optimize for rapid change. The parts of your design need to be interchangeable. And the audience sees such a variety of experimental designs - the standards are in such a state of infancy - that it's important to design things that are easily discoverable and quickly grasped. Both of these factors tend to favor minimalism.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good point that's worth exploring more. Not sure if I'll get around to it myself, but I'd love to see a post on this subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sometimes I feel that "minimalism" is used as a crutch for designers who are unable to commit to bold aesthetic choices. The downside, of course, is that it's nearly impossible to distinguish oneself and to develop an idiosyncratic style when everything but function is stripped away. And sometimes the function is to dazzle with more than five colors, to show that the designer was able to harmonize multiple elements, where then we're beyond design as mere function, thus undermining the minimalist program a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER18> The term 'design' is taken differently here, with more emphasis on art than engineering.

If you're engineering a piece of work, your design will surely be better if it is minimalistic. But if what you mean by 'design' is an artistic approach, certainly minimalism is not a goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> "If you're engineering a piece of work, your design will surely be better if it is minimalistic."

That all depends on what you mean by "engineering." :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the goal of design is to make the aesthetics match the functionality. In software, the greatest challenge is making something that at it's core is very complex, with all of the code that it takes to make it happen, and make it simple for the user. The minimalist design represents this goal visually in the product.

But there are many other things where the experience or an emotional reaction is the goal, not usability. For example, in music, if the focus of a song is a really great melody, then you want to simplify the surrounding parts so the listener isn't distracted from the melody. This is similar to the modern design we are discussing. In metal music, the goal is energy, so each part is very rapid and complex to give more energy to the song. The drums keep driving, the guitar keeps moving, etc. This is not minimalist because the goal is different. Imagine a theme park. The goal is fun and immersion. So, the pathways in a theme park are not minimalist, they are winding and meandering and take you through the park where the journey is the goal. All of these things exist to match the goal of the product.

</comment><comment><USER20> The wallpaper on that article is so useless and distracting I actually closed the window before I read 1 word.

Minimalism may not be the alpha and omega, but it's definitely something.

Edit: In all seriousness, minimalism is about defining the problem clearly, finding the least number of things needed to solve the problem, and discarding things that don't. Just like in computer science, it's about finding the most generic answer possible. Steve Jobs isn't afraid of making the "wrong" choice, he's afraid of making a choice that's too specific.

Properly generic design has GREAT mass appeal, whereas while super graphic focused design may have much more appeal to a subgroup. Sometimes super graphic focused design IS in fact minimalism: when you need to target a subgroup of culture specifically and with a high impact, an Apple-generic product simply will not work. In that case using embelishments solves a very clear problem: appeal. Apple simply appeals to the biggest audience they can.

</comment><comment><USER21> He points out that minimalism isn't the "best" design, just a different style and a designer has to pick the most appropriate one. While I wouldn't call this an earth shattering new insight, it's still is a fair point.

But his examples are poorly chosen to underline his position. You can't point to designs that have come and gone and disprove that simplicity is an attribute of good design. He should have pointed to other contemporary styles that are clearly not as simplistic as possible but still "good" (for example the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao [1] or the Beijing National Stadium [2]).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_National_Stadium>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the examples. I agree that mine could have been better chosen. I might add some of the ones from this thread to the original post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 'But in point of fact, this notion of reducing a subject to its "necessary" elements isn't a universal principle of design. It's a principle of modernist design.'

Depends on what is meant by "necessary". Baroque art achieves a particular effect by virtue of its ornamentation.

Still, offering a definition of good design that happens to describe minimalism obviously isn't helpful. It's the sort of question begging that just leads to needless arguments.

It's more useful to try to understand how you can have a minimalism site on one hand, and an ornate, busy site on the other, and they can still both look good.

<comment><USER10> > [...] Depends on what is meant by "necessary". Baroque art achieves a > particular effect by virtue of its ornamentation. [...]

Except the fact that you're presenting information (being it a webapp, or just a restaurant site).

<comment><USER22> You are also presenting ambience and attitude, which effect the user's perception of your site and business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In a noisy, communication oriented environment is it any wonder that design has tended towards simplicity. The examples of historical design given all communicate a superior status for the family/institution that had requested it's construction. Granted, similar vanity projects of today also tend towards minimalist design principles. Perhaps this is a reflection of the increased importance that society now places on communication.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why minimalism is good for the web:

Making something overly artistic with excessive eye candy might be timeless for a historical chapel or castle, but looks horribly outdated in 5 years on the web.

Remember all of those painfully cheesy flash intros for restaurant websites? I bet they thought they looked so futuristic and the coolest ever at the time.

</comment><comment><USER25> The author suggests minimalism is trending upward, but I haven't seen this. What gets called "minimalist" is often still full of ornament and unnecessary complexity.

e.g look at all the weird curves on Dell's current desktops - those curves are all ornamental.

</comment><comment><USER26> The documentary, Helvetica, is worth watching to see various typeface designers' love/hate for the severity of the minimalism implicated by Bauhaus.

</comment><comment><USER27> Holy crap, did he really use Flash like THAT for his nav buttons?!

<comment><USER28> He's using sIFR for "non-standard" web fonts. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIFR>

If you look at the code in the article, you can see that the HTML is pretty clean, and the Flash is injected by js at runtime. This means searchability isn't compromised, and the page degrades gracefully for non-Flash-enabled browsers. But it does kinda break copy-and-paste.</comment></comment>


How many of you are looking for your next startup? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious how many are not involved in a startup currently, but in the thinking/planning (not coding) stage. <comment><USER2> I am currently looking at applications of Machine Learning and have been thinking about launching a startup. I would have started programming 6 months ago except that my geographic area is sub-optimal for finding people who are sufficiently motivated to make the necessary sacrifices.

</comment><comment><USER3> funny you ask. i just posted <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027584>.</comment>


Student 'Interns' Forced to Build Apple iPhone 5  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinasia.com/student-interns-forced-build-apple-iphone-5-foxconn-returning-schools/

<comment><USER2> Man, Foxconn is pretty evil.</comment>


Gin, Sex, Malaria, and the Hunt for Academic Prestige - <AUTHOR> https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20190724-king-mead <comment><USER2> This was a really good read. It's a thoroughly enjoyable peek into the private lives behind influential careers.

I especially enjoyed the parts about Margaret Mead and her efforts to simultaneously sort out her relationship to herself as a misfit seemingly unsuited to the world into which she was born and the question of how to have a serious career as a woman in a man's world.

<comment><USER3> I really liked this article also. I just happen to be reading "Guns, Germs, and steel" so it was fun to actually get some close up perspective from someone doing field work. The discussion about the changing relationships was quite interesting. I am grateful that Mead reported on herself and the other scientists along with the supposed subjects of their field trips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well that headline was a journey. I feel like the author was going for sort of a Hunter S. Thompson kind of style, but the underlying story unfortunately just wasn't interesting enough to pull it off.

<comment><USER5> The underlying story in most of Hunter S. Thomspon's books is barely interesting (a guy gets an assignment to cover a motorcycle rally, misses the action, gets stoned with his lawyer friend in Vegas, they meet a girl, have a few drug episodes, skip town, come back to cover a cop convention, have a few more drug episodes). It's all in the style and insight, not the plot.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  What do you think of a "law advisor" that goes through your email? - <AUTHOR>

This would be a tool that you would install locally on your computer that would go through your email pointing out various laws that you should know about.<p>These laws may come from many countries (e.g., if your emails concern business involving many countries). <comment><USER2> I think this might make a useful service where a lawyer charges $X per word of an email to look over and knows your general situation. I don't know how useful a software tool can be, but then again I don't know much about this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you give a more specific case study where this would save me from a huge mess?</comment>


Mesosphere launches SDK and developer program for its Data Center OS - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/15/mesosphere-launches-sdk-and-developer-program-for-its-data-center-operating-system/

<comment><USER2> DCOS looks great from a marketing standpoint, but have you ever tried to use Mesos + Marathon? What a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER3> I would be interested in hearing more. I find it interesting but haven't had any practical experience, so it would be nice to hear from the other side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love me some Dater

<comment><USER5> Sounds like competition to Tinder. That being said - this is awesome! Excited to start playing with DCOS.</comment></comment>


Why Smelling the Opposite Sex Can Age You - <AUTHOR> http://aging.nautil.us/feature/276/why-smelling-the-opposite-sex-can-age-you <comment><USER2> In mice and fruit flies.</comment>


Successful People Who Wake Up Really Early - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-early-risers-2012-1

<comment><AUTHOR> unfortunately it doesn't say when they go to sleep...</comment>


CSS Variables are here - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/css-variables-are-here

<comment><USER2> Not to be too snarky: but what feature of CSS variables can't be emulated just as cleanly with a little jQuery? There is always going to be a spectrum between "style" and "behavior" attached to elements, and it strikes me as much more productive to try to solve the problem at the level of a programming environment instead of a no-longer-quite-as-static-as-originally-envisioned style description language.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't jQuery require client-side javascript? If so that precludes its use for crucial parts of CSS in my mind.

Hasn't anyone thought of implementing a "static" version of jQuery that makes modifications at compile-time on the server?

<comment><USER4> ycfeeds.com uses server-side jquery and (although ycfeeds.com does not do it much) can manipulate dom styles and add class names to elements using CSS3 at "compile time".

<comment><USER5> How does server-side jquery work? Are you running it through Rhino or SpiderMonkey or some other javascript implementation before it hits the client?

<comment><USER4> Rhino, using John Resig's "env.js"

<comment><USER5> Awesome. Thanks :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I posted about this before on HN, but I've implemented CSS variables using PHP as an intermediary. This implementation is coded to the same spec that webkit is using, so the stylesheets will be usable once more browsers support it. You can peep it here:

<http://interfacelab.com/variables-in-css-via-php/>

Probably pretty easy to port to another runtime.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool! Though, this will be one of those features which is only useful in years to come when Firefox 4 and IE9 supports it, sadly. But once it has a wide audience it will be an amazing feature!

<comment><USER8> Agreed. But alas, I hate it when these features are announced, because they will only tease me for years to come until it's widely released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I read somewhere that the W3C originally didn't want to do this because it deemed that CSS shouldn't become a programming language. Ten years of nightmarish style sheets later...

<comment><USER10> This change definitely won't make it a programming language - they're not even real variables, they're more like XSLT's definition of variables. Also known as constants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> CSS variables also here

<http://moonfall.org>

</comment><comment><USER12> Long overdue. But it's good to see it implemented!

</comment><comment><USER13> Great!

They will make my life easier.

Only if HTML implemented the same concept, one can dream.</comment>


Wealthy rent-seekers who profit from unjust government policy - <AUTHOR> https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/48/the-real-takers/ <comment><USER2> Professor Michael Hudson, economist often talks about this. He wants the US to have a national bank which can provide financial services to the population at cost. He also often talks about the lack of infrastructure investment and privatization hurting the economy.

Basically the infrastructure can be viewed as a 4th factor of production, like capital, labour and land. Government subsidized, low cost infrastructure allows for a more competitive economy, because of lowered costs for businesses and individuals.

His thesis is that the end of the 19th century it was understood that government investment in infrastructure and public subsidy for services allowed the USA (and other countries) to become globally competitive. But now the opposite is occurring.

<comment><USER3> Why would a national bank be better than credit unions which already operate not-for-profit?

<comment><USER2> Well that's fine too - the important thing is that they operate on a non- profit basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I may agree with certain ideas and disagree with others in this piece, this article (which is a book review) reads like a series of angry platitudes that often come into conflict with one another. Interestingly, many of the regulations and policies that are stated to redistribute "income and wealth upwards to elites" are decried and called for repeal by those very same elites.

My least favorite thing about politics, the national conversation, and resultantly the media is weak platitude based arguments that willfully ignore the complexities surrounding virtually every issue we face today.

<comment><USER5> > willfully ignore the complexities surrounding virtually every issue we face > today.

There are complexities, but every issue can be simplified. I think economic inequality can be boiled down to a few key issues:

1\. The Imperial War Machine: Iraq/Iraq II/Libya/et al -- very expensive, no economic return for anyone but the military-industrial complex [0]

2\. Economic warfare on Mexico/et al [1] in the 1980's -> Economic Refugees

3\. Free Trade -> more economic refugees (NAFTA put Mexican subsistence farmers [2] in direct competition with mechanized agriculture)

4\. Cost-disease: medical-industrial complex edition

5\. Concentration of wealth -> investors seeking returns for their investments.

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack- ma-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-says-the- us-wasted-trillions-on-warfare-instead-of-investing-in-infrastructure.html) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of assertions, but no real arguments. Weak article.</comment>


Video: Anybots Humanoid Robot Puts Telepresence on Wheels - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/video?id=961 <comment><USER2> I wonder if there would be a market for virtual vacations using a humanoid robot like this. I'm trying to decide what my price-point would be for a four- hour self-directed tour of Venice.

</comment><comment><USER3> AnyBots was smart to make QA follow a visual aesthetic. Those other bots looked like they were parts thrown together.

I wonder if QA could benefit from a tiny projector, which could display the operators hand moving. The operator could have a projector display what the robot sees, and then just point on the projected surface, which would then be projected onto the real surface.</comment>


Why There Are No Game Console App Stores - <AUTHOR> http://clayallsopp.com/posts/why-there-are-no-console-app-stores?

<comment><USER2> As an ex-EA employee, I think I know the real reasons. They're Target, Walmart and Carrefour. The packaged game industry is still beholden to retailers.

<comment><USER3> As an Xbox customer I always wonder why MSFT doesn't sim-ship their games on their Games on Demand service (and, why their GoD prices are never competitive). I guess it's the retailers.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Shelf space on retailers is still the most important way to advertise. After Steam hit brick & mortar PC sales hard, the retailers are now ready to immediately and harshly punish any platform that tries to do the same.

<comment><USER4> What? Before Steam, brick and mortar PC sales were already down. Even stores like Gamestop and Bestbuy lowered their inventory. At the end of the day people just wanted to pop in a disc and have the game work without worrying about patches, drivers, and expensive hardware config. I feel that this was one of the main reasons for the downfall of PC Gaming back then, besides consoles catching up in terms of graphical quality.

While Steam doesn't solve everything, it makes the software portion of config way easier; not to mention the games are way cheaper than what normal retail stores would charge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's more of a control and quality issue. Steam also has lots of AAA titles and no problem with race to the bottom pricing. Maybe it indeed is a hardware profit issue, but then valve would have similar problems. I honestly don't understand why they don't go full force on app stores, it would change the game and imo is their only chance to survive vs Valve and Apple.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why does Xbox Live Indies (previously called Community Games) not count? Microsoft has had that in for a few years on the 360. There are quite a few really good non-minecraft clones on that service.

As for Sony, what about the fact that they have a similiar thing on PS Vita with the Playstation Mobile Developer program.

<comment><USER7> Down voted since you apparently didn't read the article. The author specifically addresses Xbox Live Indies.

Before I read the article I agreed but turns out there's a pretty solid point in there. It's funny how the consoles are racing towards this whole notion of the physical media doesn't matter when that seems to be precisely where consumers attribute the value.

<comment><USER8> The article true Scotsmanned the Xbox approach and the above comment rightly describes this with the phrase "not count". The article's arguments are severely undermined by the Xbox ecosystem and its dismissal by the author is intellectually lazy and his dismissive claim is unsupported within the piece.

<comment><USER9> As someone making his full time income from game development for the past several years, the common wisdom among developers is that there's a handful of commercially successful games on XBLIG (which is not the same as the much more successful XBLA) & that you can pretty much discount that as a profitable option if you intend on making a commercial indie game.

It is simply a lot harder to make money on XBLIG than on Steam/app store/play market.

<comment><USER10> As someone who has never touched XBLIG as a dev or XNA, why do most of the games on XBLIG look so horrible? Is it just a bad SDK from Microsoft or can they just not attract top end development talent?

<comment><USER9> Low likelihood of profitability make putting a considerable budget behind an XBLIG game an irrational risk. Technically there is no reason you won't be able to make good looking games with xna (at least in 2d, not any worse than what you can get running on flash or iphone).

The "top end" developers mostly go straight to XBLA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The game price range on PS4 will be $0.99 to $60.

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122311-Sony-CEO- Gi...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122311-Sony-CEO-Gives- PS4-Games-0-99-to-60-Price-Range)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you're curious about the state of console development, there's an _excellent_ Reddit comment/thread @payne92 just shared with me:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18irx0/the_minecraft_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18irx0/the_minecraft_test_how_to_tell_if_your_console_is/c8fcm4v)

The long and short of it is a) developing a non-Xbox Indie game is incredibly expensive and prohibitive b) (for now) state of Xbox Indie game network and framework is crippled c) Steam is a much better, although still imperfect, beast to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER12> Over time Nintendo will probably sell all their classics on other platforms app stores, eventually just that like how sega have transformed into content only.

<comment><USER13> That's not clear. AFAICT Nintendo isn't losing money on each unit sold

<comment><USER4> No. Starting with the 3DS, Nintendo has finally started selling hardware at a loss.

[http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/nintendo- will-...](http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/nintendo-will-sell- wii-u-at-a-loss-rely-on-games-for-profit-1107450)

[http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/26/nintendo-confirms-that- it...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/26/nintendo-confirms-that-its- selling-3ds-at-a-loss-expects-that/)

However just like everyone else, this will eventually change once the cost of components starts going down.

<comment><USER14> It was making a profit again three months later: [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-25-nintendo-3ds- pr...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-25-nintendo-3ds- profitability-improving-despite-overall-losses)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> all the game consoles have app stores. seriously.

<comment><USER16> App stores, yes, but how difficult/expensive is it to get your code onto the console?

<comment><USER15> the title of the article claims there are no game console app stores. you are talking about a barrier to entry. two different things entirely.

<comment><USER4> I think everyone can figure out that he was talking about how hard it is for a small shop or lone developer to get their app on the big three console stores.

<comment><USER17> And yet, he has done nothing to investigate that idea.

<comment><USER16> Why do you say that?

<comment><USER17> Because he didn't evaluate how hard it is for a small shop or lone developer to get their app on the big three console stores, in any way. He's just jumping to conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "But when you've got an App Stores, you've got a race to the bottom."

Are game developers on i* competing on price in the same way? Or is the pricing model different? I would claim that the console games' revenues are front-loaded while i* games are back-loaded (many games include DLC for free, whereas apple games end up monetizing through lots of DLC)

<comment><USER18> DLC (very slow progression otherwise), rewards for sharing, and low budget production.

I prefer the Steam model myself. It fully embraces digital, and there are very steep discounts regularly, but in general the prices remain healthy and once you buy a game it's yours without BS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really hope that dev kits for the next gen consoles don't continue to be so expensive. If I own the console, I should be able to develop on it.

I don't think Sony and Microsoft are unaware that small indie developed games have been flooding the App Store. That being said, Apple has sold 410 million iOS devices and has paid developers $5.5B (2012 numbers).

Apple makes an absurd amount of money from hardware, while Microsoft and Sony sell their consoles at losses and need to make money back from software.

</comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't Playstation Mobile count? It's an SDK and accompanying store for publishing to the Vita and Playstation branded Android devices. I can absolutely see them extending this to the PS4.

<comment><USER4> How cheap is it to start ie how much is the dev subscription and how much do you have to pay for hardware?

<comment><USER20> $99/year to publish on the Store (at the moment, they don't allow Free applications).

SDK can be downloaded without paying.

Can develop on any Vita or certified Android device. (These: <http://www.playstation.com/psm/certified.html>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Playstation Mobile <http://www.playstation.com/psm/index_e.html>

No devkit, just download the SDK and run on your PC. It's free to try and costs $100 year to deploy to devices and actually self publish your game.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is an interesting question. Another is when will TV's get an Android game API "built in" like they have the "Netflix" and "Hulu" apps built in now. A game framework, an online store of games, an in game purchase mechanism, and one casino game. Blam the new world arrives.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nintendo is now officially selling AAA titles through the online store for DSi/3DS.

<comment><USER23> I wonder how well they are selling? In Europe they cost 45€ a game, and are locked to that console (not to your account). I guess this is so as not to annoy their retail partners - cartridges are a much better deal, can usually be found cheaper online, and can be swapped amongst consoles.

Having said that, I have bought a couple of the cheaper "A" games that cost in the 6-10€ range (V, Fallblox/Pushmo and another I've forgotten the name of). Mostly due to the lack of good 3DS games so far.

<comment><USER17> I really liked Nano Assault. Gunman Clive just released and it's very good, and only like $2.00.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> With the changed in PSN+ over the last two years and the inclusion of all the free games I'm sure in the next generation I'll just go for a PS4 and PSN+ yearly subscriptions and that will cover all my gaming needs.

</comment><comment><USER25> These "next-gen" consoles are boring. And they seem to not only want to keep the same old high prices, but also eliminate options like playing used games (next xbox). For true next-gen gaming I'll be waiting for Steambox for its affordable games and I assume it will have great support for Oculus Rift, too, from day one.</comment>


Santa Cap in VLC - <AUTHOR>

See the tray icon of your vlc instance. <comment><USER2> Like every year ;-)</comment>