Show HN: I built a desktop radiation monitor with Raspberry Pi, brass and wood - <AUTHOR> https://www.balena.io/blog/show-tell-a-steampunk-desktop-background-radiation-monitor/ <comment><USER2> I was wondering how you would detect radiation with brass and wood, but it turns out this was actually talking about how to build a snazzy enclosure and not at all about how to detect radiation : /

<comment><USER3> I assumed that someone had made a sensitive bolometer.

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

Wood is a thermal insulator, so with care, one might be able to build a thermistor bridge capable of detecting the differential temperature rise between pieces of brass when a source was placed near one brass-piece.

I, too, found that the expectations framed by the title were not met by the article. It's a pretty box, though.

<comment><USER4> >By 1880, Langley's bolometer was refined enough to detect thermal radiation from a cow a quarter of a mile away.

Sidenote: that sounds like even F-22/35 should be visible half a globe away in IR

<comment><USER5> Be careful of that inverse square law—it's a doozy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks fantastic! Well done!

Why didn't you go full brass on the decatrons, instead of mixing stainless and copper? Same goes for the counter box: you only wrapped 2 sides when you pro'lly could have wrapped the whole thing in brass... you probably saved yourself 10 hours by not doing that, but you're already in for what, 30 hours already?

Now I'm going to nitpick. :) My only critique is the high gloss finish on the wood looks unfinished in the final assembly picture: you can see drips/wrinkles, and the grain wasn't filled which isn't a good match with high gloss, or if unfilled a hand-oiled finish would not have called attention. This is a consequence of working with mahogany. (And what's with the hand filed-gouges in the cutouts. Yes they are hidden, but details count, man!)

I'm also jealous you have a machine shop. Very jealous.

Super job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the compliments, and I appreciate your eye for detail and nitpicking :) I don't even wanna think about how many hours I put into this thing. It was one of those projects when you've got some free time you just keep working on it, then eventually, one day, it turns out there's nothing else to do.

For the Dekatrons, it was simply a case of I had 50mm stainless steel bar already in the shop, but the biggest brass I had was probably 30mm diameter. I bought a whole load of bar stock offcuts from an auction years ago and pretty much everything I make is made from that lot. That being said I broke so many tools trying to work with M2 threads in stainless that I could have just bought some brass bar!

As for the dips/wrinkles in the case, those were caused by my use of an oscillating drum sander. There's a photo in the blog post where you'll see I used the drum sander to bring the lid to size. I foolishly let it mark the previously pristine planed surfaces, and didn't realise until I had coated it with gloss. This is definitely a lesson learned from this project, I won't make that mistake again.

I have no defence for the hand-filed gouges hidden in the openings, and not filling the grain - more lessons learned for next time there. :)

Thanks for the comment!

<comment><USER7> Super job. More nitpicking: the real fanatics line up the screw heads to the geometry of the piece. For instance the Dekatrons would look nicer if the screwhead slots would form a circle too.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're totally right of course, I was very afraid of snapping those little guys off :)

<comment><USER7> Quarter turn before breaking is the right torque ;) Again, super job. Be prepared for a lot of brass polishing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The wood, the brass, the tubes, the clicks, the faint light from the indicators, the tech . . .

Absolutely beautiful, thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER9> the title reminds me of a Mitch Hedberg joke: """They say the recipe for Sprite is lemon and lime. I tried to make it at home. There's more to it than that."""

This is awesome though, I especially like the mechanical counter.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great work! I liked how well the vintage look and the modern core fit.

I'm not sure where I read it but it was stated that the Geiger counters which are manufactured after the Chernobyl (?) incident were not as accurate as those manufactured before it. The reason is that all the metal after the incident and the radiation experiments performed afterwards is contaminated with radiation particles which alter the radiation readings of the Geiger counter. Correct me if I'm wrong about this one.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about Chernobyl specifically, but so-called low background steel from before 1945 is harvested specifically for use in radiation sensing applications. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- background_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)

I think most of the radionuclide contamination comes from Cold War atmospheric nuclear testing.

Some low background steel is recovered from sunken battleships!

<comment><USER12> On a related note - the day the German fleet (which went on to be scuttled at Scapa Flow and to become a source of that low-background steel) must have been quite an incredible sight - possibly one of the largest collection of warships ever (40 battleships, there were only 7 at the Normandy Landings):

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30128199](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30128199)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wanted to work with dekatrons (my initials are dek) but the actual dekatron tubes want 300+V, which exceeds my personal comfort level. However there is a nice kit with all the necessary electronics: [https://threeneurons.wordpress.com/dekatron- stuff/variable-d...](https://threeneurons.wordpress.com/dekatron- stuff/variable-dekatron-spinner-kit/)

<comment><USER5> I wonder how many people ever get to work with equipment that has the same name as they do!

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great device, and great content marketing.

Remember well that Balena are the people who built spyware into a SD card flashing tool: essentially a GUI for running dd.

[https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/2497](https://github.com/balena- io/etcher/issues/2497)

</comment><comment><USER15> 3.6 roentgen. Not great. Not terrible.

Very cool project. Always impressed the level craftsmanship some people have.

<comment><USER16> If anyone wants some context about radiation dose units across various orders of magnitude, I recommend the charts in this DOE chart (see page 6) [1]

[1] [https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe- ioni...](https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ionizing- radiation-dose-ranges-jan-2018.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Was expecting someone to downvote me because they haven't seen Chernobyl on HBO. Haha

<comment><AUTHOR> The opening line of my blog post was almost a reference to this, then nobody I had proof read the post got it so I took it out :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Incredible! Thank you for writing this up & sharing this! I'll need to come back and read every word later but wanted to share my thanks. We need more like this on HN and less of the politics

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks amazing. Dekatron tubes are great, I didn't know what they were called, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember seeing this role (maybe it was [https://workaline.com/listing/38e26af8](https://workaline.com/listing/38e26af8)) listed at Balena last year.

What a fantastic job. Free hardware and freedom to build super interesting projects as long as you can fit Balena in somehow. It's also a much better alternative to facebook ads or similar for a company's marketing spend...

</comment><comment><USER20> I like seeing some of these "ephemera" projects highlighted (like the kosher search engine and the manila folder 777).

We can do some cool stuff.

Thanks for sharing this!

</comment><comment><USER21> Lovely piece of work. Scary how active those old gas lamp mantles are (in the video). Makes me wonder how radioactive your average campsite is, given that those things tend to crumble to dust when you change them.

<comment><USER22> Not very. The predominant isotope of thorium is an alpha emitter with a half- life measured in tens of billions of years.

Looking at the video, the counter appears to peak around 200cpm, or (per the Grafana dashboard screenshot) about 2 microsieverts per hour. That'd take 50 hours, a little over two days, of exposure to add up to the dose of a typical chest X-ray. And that's for a whole mantle, placed directly adjacent to the tube; it's not obvious in the video, but the dose rate is highly dependent on distance. Spicy gamma emitters aside, most small samples drop to background just an inch or two from the detector.

So I wouldn't worry all that much about it, really. Eating a mantle, or breathing the dust from a freshly replaced one, wouldn't be a great idea; I'd expect it to increase cancer risk to a degree probably commensurable with some number of years of smoking. (Probably fewer years than I racked up, back when I still had the habit.) Nor would keeping a mantle in your jockeys, or your bra. So don't do any of those things.

But buried, or even just mixed with dirt? I'd worry more about falling into the fire, and that's not something I worry about a lot, even if it does typically get pretty drunk out every time I ever go camping with anyone.

<comment><USER23> For comparison I have seen statistics that a granite countertop, or granite flooring can emit around 1.7 microsieverts per hour. Granite is mildly radioactive. I imagine working in an old 1920s era office building with granite column facing materials and granite hallway flooring would be a lot more radiation load on the body, unless you spent dedicated time every day seeking out and handling gas lamp mantles.

Lots of people have marble and granite countertops in their kitchen...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is really beautiful craftsmanship! It will definitely influence my own projects in the future, thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the compliment Peter, if I can inspire others like yourself to get building, I'm happy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is really fun. I love the idea that something so old looking is running some state of the art stuff behind it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Very well done, Chris, this look gorgeous, and super well detailed!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Greg, nice to see you here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, beautiful work!

Where can I find more, similar projects to this one?

It doesn't even need to have electronics in it, I just have the itch to try and build something, but literally do not know where to start.

<comment><USER28> for inspiration .... [http://www.lovehulten.com/](http://www.lovehulten.com/)

<comment><USER29> This is great! I especially love the PET De Lux. Saving this one for later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The sheer amount of work ! Well done and beautiful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - it was _so much_ work, but super rewarding as the thing looks beautiful on my desk. It's awesome to see it's appreciated :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Steampunk was fun, but it's kind of over. I've done the brass and wood and gears thing.[1]

(I miss the TechShop era. For most of the life of TechShop, I had a membership there.)

[1] [https://vimeo.com/124065314](https://vimeo.com/124065314)

</comment><comment><USER32> I wish there was a cheap way to calibrate low-cost or surplus radiation monitors.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow man. Nothing to add, this is just gorgeous

</comment><comment><USER34> It is known that the banana contains small amounts of radioactive postassium, perhpas it would be possible to use a banana for scale?

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

</comment><comment><USER35> Obviously a marketing piece, but a _ton_ of work went into it, so I'm sure HN will be kind ;) In any case, this is a very awesome build!

<comment><USER36> Marketing? It's a one off build.

<comment><USER37> It's marketing for the cloud iot platform on the blog

<comment><USER38> Also wood. He used wood and clearly is in deep with the hardwood movement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


21st-Century Shooters Are No Country for Old Men - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/02/no-country-for-old-men

<comment><USER2> Video games are also affecting real life sports. Modern football players who have been weened on NFL Madden appear to be better at tactics and reading play formations.

Also, there was an instance where a NFL player executed a move from the video game.

 _But increasingly, according to Chris Suellentrop in this month's Wired Magazine, the trend has reversed. A generation of actual NFL players, raised on games like Madden NFL, are bringing the influence of video games into their real play._

<http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/02/05/04>

<comment><USER3> Let's just hope no soldiers attempt a rocket jump in the real world.

<comment><USER4> When you can't respawn, it's horrible hard to learn the technique where you get nearly no damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This just underscores the importance of social networking within gaming, especially for the older demographic. You want to play with your friends that are online at the time, not with a bunch of strangers (who are younger, better, and more immature). The recent revival of small-team coop is also along these lines (l4d, borderlands).

</comment><comment><USER6> Even as an older teenager the 11 year olds were just so fucking annoying. I really wish Microsoft would allow for some sort of age, or at least maturity, certification thing where I could say, "No, I do not want to play with 11-13 year old racists who think that Nigger is the best and funniest word in the entire world."

<comment><USER7> I'm with you. Unfortunately, that applies to the whole world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an older gamer, I found that general fitness has a huge impact on reflexes. It's an ironic but effective motivation for making time for exercise.

There also seems to be a crying need for tiered online playing. Every other sport has them, often A, B, C etc level teams, to solve the same problem that it's not fun to be totally outclassed. The frustration level has to be challenging but attainable.

<comment><USER9> The Xbox 360 uses TrueSkill for matchmaking. Not perfect but better than nothing. I don't think the PS3 has anything similar.

<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Time to play" is a big factor, certainly. I've been playing Bayonetta lately, a Devil May Cry-style fighter, and while I'm pretty sure I have the raw skills to master the game, I sure don't have the _time_. (Or, if I had the time, the desire. But I certainly don't have the time.) I'm not lost in the action on the screen or incapable of understanding what I should do or what's going on, I simply don't have the time to put that stuff in my cerebellum where it needs to be to play at the highest level. For example, in the "Hard" mode, there are sounds that when you hear them need to immediately trigger a particular button press (dodge), ideally with a high degree of accuracy as well. I can do it when I concentrate, but you need to be able to do it without concentrating because there's other stuff to concentrate on, too.

But I also observe that these are also exactly the games you hear about the younger folk being so dominating in, that is, the games you need to have the time to download reflexes into the lower brain.

Oh, I don't deny that you get worse as you get older, nice and slow so as you can pretend it's not happening, and in a hypothetical fair fight my 15-year- old self could presumably beat my 30-year-old self in reaction-based gaming. But I don't think that explains the utter domination, I think that explains only a small part of the difference. The utter domination comes from having the time to train reflexes.

Also, interesting counterpoint: <http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1399> , the part in the first blockquote.

The other thing I would observe is that the controllers I grew up on were _terrible_. Everything pre-Nintendo was mushy and introduced what I now consider readily-visible latency into the game control. In hindsight, the Genesis controls were pretty mushy too, and even the Nintendo I call out was noticably more mushy than the Super Nintendo controller, the oldest controller I can still use today without cursing at the latency. This robbed my generation of valuable years of high-feedback gaming. I've played some of these old games in emulation in the past few years, and they are distinctly easier than I remember them, and I think that's mostly because when I play them in emulation I'm using modern controllers. (In particular, I played Beamrider on the Atari 2600 with original controllers and on the GBA through the Atari collection cartridge, and on my first try on the GBA I got further in the game than I could back when I was 12 or so on the original controllers. (If you think that doesn't jive with my age, you're right; it was old even by then, but the device was still functional. Those 2600s were pretty robust.))

</comment><comment><USER11> Part of the articles argument seems to be that growing up with fast paced shooters gives younger players more of an advantage. I have to wonder, though, if rewiring the brain for fast twitch reflexes through FPS games is actually good for the young, developing mind later in life.

</comment><comment><USER12> Most of my on-line gaming has been console-based, so I can't compare to current PC gaming. The issues covered in the article are very familiar to me. Leaving aside the juvenile name-calling, the younger players do seem to have a different approach to the games, and possibly an advantage. In the case of MW2, GRAW, and other tactical shooters, it seems to me that the younger players prefer the "run & gun" modes that favor fast motor reflexes. The older players (including myself) gravitate toward the modes that favor better team coordination and a more methodical approach (at the cost of having to listen to complaints about "camping").

<comment><USER9> Players tend to fit within certain play styles. The most famous is the Bartle study which has four categories: Killer, Achiever, Explorer, Socializer. Your style of play falls into the Explorer category, which favours strategy. The people who are really fast at killing are Killers, obviously.

If you want your target market to include all four types you must provide something for all four types. The problem is that the Killer group is easiest to provide for so it's very easy for it to dominate.

[http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2005/01/styles-of- pla...](http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2005/01/styles-of-play-full- chart.html)

I've submitted the link to HN so it has its own thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1111406>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my experience, console gaming takes the social experience of online gaming and turns it ass backwards. Instead of selecting servers from a list, which is essentially like picking what community you want to play with, you are thrown in with a bunch of anonymous strangers who in all likely hood are going to act like juvenile asshats.

I believe there is a social theory that relates to this, and I think PG wrote something on it, the whole "as groups get bigger they get less personal and more people are asshats" thing. Well, online console gaming has short circuited the process there...

Do you recall those stories about people who became life long friends or got married after they met in Everquest or WoW? I don't expect you'll hear many stories like that about xbox live or playstation online.

<comment><USER14> _I believe there is a social theory that relates to this, and I think PG wrote something on it, the whole "as groups get bigger they get less personal and more people are asshats" thing. Well, online console gaming has short circuited the process there..._

Perhaps you're thinking of this... ah, theory? <http://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I witnessed this with my younger brother. The last game I played seriously online was Halo 2. I was 26 when it came out an my brother was 11. During the first year I made level 30 on Live. My brother couldn't touch me until he turned 15 and Halo 3 came out. He ended up playing it sooner and more and I just never was able to catch up.

But I believe it's pretty much hours played that makes the difference seem so large. The top pros are probably young because every bit of twitch reflex makes the different at that level, but I think you can still play at quite a high level when you're older (okay I'm only 31 now). PC games might be a good place because having the resources to run a game at max resolution on a very large monitor can make a big difference.

</comment><comment><USER16> That's exactly how I felt when I played paintball a while ago.

<comment><USER17> It depends on the environment. I was an avid paintball player for about 7 years, as was my dad, and he always managed to outclass a lot of the people on the field. He wasn't the fastest guy with the ability to dump the most paint on the field, but he was tactical and could cooperate well. After the first or second game of the day, people were vying for him to be on their team, even if they'd shrugged him off as some old fart before.

<comment><USER18> I figure this is natural. I figure it would have been the same way in video games, if it wasn't for:

1: twitch reflexes are important

2: the cost of practice is zero- no risk, no $$$- so kids with lots of time can log massive playtime. Traditionally being older meant more experience, but now because of the growth rate of games, a young kid has more experience with modern fps's than an older player

3: there's no physical risk to the player. I feel this changes the landscape a lot; in the real world, say in the army for example, the chance of death changes everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like there is a new gaming market needing attention. Or maybe handicapping players.

</comment><comment><USER20> I play games with friends or alone, never with strangers. Problem solved.

I have yet to play QuakeLive on anything other than practice mode.

<comment><USER21> And now you have a new problem : Scheduling games when all your friends can play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm 44 and used to be pretty hot on games -- like in the dark ages 15 or 20 years ago. But I gave them up a long time ago. They got simply too addictive and time-consuming.

At Christmas my 14-year-old got me to play Halo 3 with him and his two brothers, 24 and 21. Not only was he killing me with ease, he was mauling his brothers easily as well. It got so bad that he would run up and stand still in front of me just so I could shoot him and get a kill.

I mostly felt like one of those little plastic ducks in the shooting gallery.

Dang kids. Wish they'd get off my lawn. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> And that's why I still play HOMM3 and Disciples 2... or any turn-based RPG for that matter (mainly japanese ones).

</comment><comment><USER24> Play games on the PC, where voice chat is usually opt-in.

<comment><USER25> And where the younger players like to use cheats and hacks...

Though personally, I'm still playing Modern Warfare 2 (since I never played the previous ones, the "flaws" that PC gamers are complaining about don't bother me) and even though I'#m told theres hacks and cheats out, I still seem to be holding up well enough, so I hope before it begins to bother me, I'll have got bored of the game.

And yeah, seems few people on the PC even bother with voice chat.

<comment><USER26> And that is why single player PC is more compelling to me. I could see left 4 dead being interesting to play with a few friends but us old guys don't have the time anymore. Sigh.

<comment><USER25> Yeah.. I agree. I generally prefer single player games too. I mean, I like the idea of playing with other people - but those same other people also turn me off because I can't enjoy the game environment, gameplay and experience without someone else imposing what they feel it should be on me, even if thats not how I want to play.

I play a few multiplayer games with friends sometimes and the experience is much better because we can agree how we want to play.

Having said that, occasionally I do play multiplayer games with people and have a lot of fun doing it - counter strike a few years ago, rainbow 6 vegas 2 last year and modern warfare 2 this year.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


American airlines to start charging for luggage over ticket prices - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/business/22air.html?_r=2&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, this is getting ridiculous. Does anyone here know what it would cost for hiring a chartered flight? Assuming people are more flexible about their travel dates, I wonder if some sort of collaborative scheduling could be done via the Internet. Basically, what I'm proposing here is analogous to strangers sharing a taxi - just with a chartered airplane and greater travel distances.</comment>


What problem did Twitter solve? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> None. It's a fallacy to believe a startup has to invariably solve a problem to go out there; companies like Foursquare or Zynga weren't solving much either.

</comment><comment><USER3> People like to talk (tweet). People like others to listen to them talk (follow). People like validation (retweets, followers). People have short attention spans (140 chars). People like to be "in the know" (alternative to news source rss feed). People like to feel important (verified).

People will always be people. Twitter isn't a new idea. It just lets people be people.

</comment><comment><USER4> It started out solving the one-to-many messaging problem (i.e sms for groups; what whatsapp and the kin are going after now)

</comment><comment><USER5> When you read a newspaper (a thing of the past) you read headlines. If a headline catches your eye, you read the heading/intro, if you're still curious you read the article. Twitter has allowed to converge all the headlines that might interest you into a single real time inbox, not only from newspapers but from whoever or whatever you're interested in. If there is more depth than a simple headline, there will usually be link to an article/video/photo/etc where you can dig into more info about that headline. It's the revolution of "NEWS" and everyone can broadcast or share/refer what they think it's "interesting".

</comment><comment><USER6> Twitter solved the problem of dead-easy, publish-from-anywhere communication.

Restricting the length of a tweet solved the (perceived?) problem of having to say something meaningful in order to publish on the web. They removed many of the barriers to publishing and by virtue of getting a large user base solved the problem of reaching a large, captive audience for free.

More than anything, they solved the problem of there being no platform in existence that was adequately public, connected, and pointless enough to contain the terse, unsolicited musings of the modern human mind.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Blogging was too much effort

2\. Not having everyone's mobile number to send SMS messages to the world

3\. The need to be heard - even with nothing to say

4\. Provides a tenuous form of contact with celebrity.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ask someone you know how comfortable they are writing/reading an article(blog entry). Then ask them how comfortable they are writing/reading a sentence(Tweet).

Twitter helped deal with the problem of many people being uncomfortable with expressing themselves in longer forms of the written word. It also works for those with short attention spans. Combined with a following mechanism, that has proven very effective.

<comment><USER5> It allows people who go more in depth into things (i.e. writing long articles, producing complex content) to use the more shallow masses to broadcast (retweet, comment, like, follow) their stuff. So everyone can can participate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They blew up because it became the first mainstream way to contact celebrities. They are staying where they are because it's a great service.

<comment><USER10> Got that right. But not just celebrities... also people in places who you otherwise would not have a direct channel to.

<comment><USER11> spot on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Twitter is a buffet restaurant. On the buffet is practically every piece of food that caters to your unique and particular diet.

Look at the data. Joe Blow doesn't have a million followers. Celebrities and public figures do.

@Shaq is not going to blog. He will post insight into his life.

It's a standardized framework for communicating links, ideas, news, and media.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fan clubs. The desire to have them, the desire to participate easily in them. The ability to create new ones, and to connect with other similar clubs.

Humans gotta do things to each other, or individually they go mad.

</comment><comment><USER14> Stupid confession: I can't figure out how to use twitter. I have asked. And asked. I can't wrap my brain around it.

So I honestly have no idea what the point is.

<comment><USER15> You aren't alone.

Just seems a lot of people use it to follow what famous people "tweet." Want to know if Tom Cruise is using the bathroom? Better check twitter...

If you aren't interested in fame/famous people then twitter has little value.

<comment><USER16> Just replace "famous people" with people you care about. For example, I follow the tweets of several Firefox employees, the big names in various programming languages, my senators, etc. I do also follow some celebrities, but thinking that Twitter is Tom Cruise in the bathroom just makes you sound horribly out of touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> boredom mainly and loneliness

I dont use it much

</comment><comment><USER18> the world was tweatless. they fixed it ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: Why Skype is so buggy and unreliable? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Asking "Why Skype is so buggy and unreliable?" is not a serious request, just a snarky comment. What are the bugs you have identified? When and how is Skype unreliable? If your comment is serious, you need to provide more information. And then you need to file a bug report (or reports) with the software owner, Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER3> Skype works O.K. for me.</comment>


Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments - <AUTHOR> http://www.vagrantup.com/blog/feature-preview-vagrant-1-6-docker-dev-environments.html <comment><USER2> I've just started using docker (I had to reimage my linode to take advantage of the recent upgrade). I've got nginx and postfix containers running. If anyone can offer some thoughts on the following points I'd be grateful.

1) I built two Dockerfiless on my laptop (one for nginx, one for my postfix setup) tested locally, then scp'd the Dockerfiles over to the server, built images and ran them. I didn't really want to pollute the registry with my stuff. Is this reasonable? For bigger stuff, should I use a private registry? Should I be deploying images instead of Dockerfiles?

2) The nginx setup I deployed exports the static html as a VOLUME, which the run command binds to a dir in my home dir, which I simply rsync when I want to update (i.e. the deployed site is outside the container). Should I have the content inside the container really?

3) I'm still using the 'default' site in nginx (currently sufficient). It would be kind of nice to have a Dockerfile in each site I wanted to deploy to the same host. But only one can get the port. I sort of want to have a 'foo.com' repo and a 'bar.org' repo and ship them both to the server as docker containers. Don't really see how to make that work.

What I think I want is:

\- a repo has a Dockerfile and represents a service

\- I can push these things around (git clone, scp a tgz, whatever) and have the containers "just run"

Not sure how to make that fit with "someone has to own port 80"

<comment><USER3> 1) Testing a Dockerfile, then scp'd it to the server, doesn't guarantee that it will build successfully on the server. However if you build successfully an image and push it to a repository - it will definitely work. Based on this, you can decide which one works for your setup. If you are on a production setup, I would say that you should use tested images, instead of hoping that the Dockerfile will build correctly.

3) As far as I understand your problem is that both containers would be running their own nginx, and would have to take port 80 for example. If this is what you mean, you could just EXPOSE port 80 from within the container, and it will automatically be mapped to a random port like 43152. Both containers would be mapped to different random ports (for example 43152 and 43153). You could then install Hipache and route different domain names/sites to different containers, essentially having Hipache proxy in front your Docker containers setup.

EDIT: There is also a project called Shipyard, which is Docker management... what I described above is called "Applications" inside Shipyard.

[0] [https://github.com/shipyard/shipyard](https://github.com/shipyard/shipyard) [1] [https://github.com/dotcloud/hipache](https://github.com/dotcloud/hipache)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I currently have an ansible script which can set up a web-service on any Debian/Ubuntu box, and can be invoked

1) over SSH, or 2) by Vagrant when provisioning a VM.

Docker, on the other hand, provisions it's containers from a rather simplistic Dockerfile, which is just a list of commands. The current solution to provision a container through ansible is rather messy[1], and shows that Docker's configuration doesn't display the same separation-of-responsibilities as Vagrant's does.

Luckily, this lets me use Docker as another provider through the Vagrant API. Woooo!

[http://www.ansible.com/blog/2014/02/12/installing-and- buildi...](http://www.ansible.com/blog/2014/02/12/installing-and-building- docker-with-ansible)

<comment><USER5> Using ansible inside of Dockerfile's means that you do a full rebuild of your image for every minor change, and when shipping images, you ship the full image every time instead of a small delta.

What do you gain by using ansible inside of your Dockerfile? I find ansible pretty useful to set up a bunch of Docker images on a server, but I haven't found it very useful to actually build the images.

<comment><USER4> I've not used Docker before, so this is all postulation: Dockerfiles don't look great for complex software setup processes, being just a list of commands to run on the machine.

We already have provisioning tools which attempt to solve this problem, so I'd much rather write one definition which can be applied everywhere, whether to virtual machines, Linux containers, or hosts running on physical machines.

Maybe I'm just trying to use Docker incorrectly? My particular use-case is setting up software (CKAN[1]) in an Ubuntu environment, but the server I have access to is Arch Linux, and the software is I/O-heavy, so I imagine that a container would probably be better than a VM.

<comment><USER5> "just a list of commands to run on the machine."

A provisioning script is essentially just a list of idempotent commands to run on the machine. But given the way that docker works, idempotence is not required -- if you change a command, Docker rolls back to a known state and runs the command.

A provisioning script might be slightly "higher-level" than a Dockerfile or shell script, but I find the difference is minimal, that the number of lines of code required are similar. Many provisioning tools provide libraries of pre-built recipes you can utilize; Docker provides a repository of pre-built images.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really cool. It'd be great to be able to piece together development environments from dockerfiles even quicker than you can now.

One of the great things about docker is that once you've played about for an hour or so you've already picked up most of it. It's not like Chef or Puppet – configuring environments using VirtualBox and a VM is really simple. I wonder how fast this will make things.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been looking for a way to integrate docker into my existing workflow. This integration takes nothing away from Docker and just makes Vagrant that much more flexible and valuable to teams already using it and newcomers. Can't wait to run this through its paces.

Curious, how is the default "proxy" vm on macs sized?

<comment><USER8> Just make sure you still use Dockerfiles. Otherwise you'll be missing a big part of Docker's features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a really great step forward - thanks Mitchell!

I've recently spent a couple of weeks doing a deep dive into Docker, so I'll share some insights from what I've learned.

First, it's important to understand that Docker is an advanced optimization. Yes, it's extremely cool, but it is not a replacement for learning basic systems first. That might change someday, but currently, in order to use Docker in a production environment, you need to be a pro system administrator.

A common misconception I see is this: "I can learn Docker and then I can run my own systems with out having to learn the other stuff!" Again, that may be the case sometime in the future, but it will be months or years until that's a reality.

So what do you need to know before using Docker in production? Well, basic systems stuff. How to manage linux. How to manage networking, logs, monitoring, deployment, backups, security, etc.

If you truly want to bypass learning the basics, then use Heroku or another similar service that handles much of that for you. Docker is not the answer.

If you already have a good grasp on systems administration, then your current systems should have:

        - secured least-privilege access (key based logins, firewalls, fail2ban, etc)
        - restorable secure off-site database backups
        - automated system setup (using Ansible, Puppet, etc)
        - automated deploys
        - automated provisioning
        - monitoring of all critical services
        - and more (I'm writing this on the fly...)

If you have critical holes in your infrastructure, you have no business looking at Docker (or any other new hot cool tools). It'd be like parking a Ferrari on the edge of an unstable cliff.

Docker is amazing - but it needs a firm foundation to be on.

Whenever I make this point, there are always a few engineers that are very very sad and their lips quiver and their eyes fill with tears because I'm talking about taking away their toys. This advice isn't for them, if you're an engineer that just wants to play with things, then please go ahead.

However, if you are running a business with mission-critical systems, then please please please get your own systems in order before you start trying to park Ferraris on them.

So, if you have your systems in order, then how should you approach Docker? Well, first decide if the added complexity is worth the benefits of Docker. You are adding another layer to your systems and that adds complexity. Sure, Docker takes care of some of the complexity by packaging some of it beautifully away, but you still have to manage it and there's a cost to that.

You can accomplish many of the benefits of Docker without the added complexity by using standardized systems, ansible, version pinning, packaged deploys, etc. Those can be simpler and might be a better option for your business.

If the benefits of Docker outrank the costs and make more sense than the simpler cheaper alternatives, then embrace it! (remember, I'm talking about Docker in production - for development environments, it's a simpler scenario)

So, now that you've chosen Docker, what's the simplest way to use it in production?

Well, first, it's important to understand that it is far simpler to manage Docker if you view it as role-based virtual machine rather than as deployable single-purpose processes. For example, build an 'app' container that is very similar to an 'app' VM you would create along with the init, cron, ssh, etc processes within it. Don't try to capture every process in its own container with a separate container for ssh, cron, app, web server, etc.

There are great theoretical arguments for having a process per container, but in practice, it's a bit of a nightmare to actually manage. Perhaps at extremely large scales that approach makes more sense, but for most systems, you'll want role-based containers (app, db, redis, etc).

If you're still not convinced on that point, read this on microservices which points out many of the management problems: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/4/8/microservices- not-a...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/4/8/microservices-not-a-free- lunch.html)

You probably already have your servers set up by role, so this should be a pretty straight-forward transition. Particularly since you already have each system scripted in Ansible (or similar) right?

To run Docker in a safe robust way for a typical multi-host production environment requires very careful management of many variables:

        - secured private image repo (index)
        - orchestrating container deploys with zero downtime
        - orchestrating container deploy roll-backs
        - networking between containers on multiple hosts
        - managing container logs
        - managing container data (db, etc)
        - creating images that properly handle init, logs, etc
        - much much more...

This is not impossible and can all be done and several large companies are already using Docker in production, but it's definitely non-trivial. This will change as the ecosystem around Docker matures (Flynn, Docker container hosting, etc), but currently if you're going to attempt using Docker seriously in production, you need to be pretty skilled at systems management and orchestration.

There's a misconception that using Docker in production is nearly as simple as the trivial examples shown for sample development environments. In real-life, it's pretty complex to get it right. For a sense of what I mean, see these articles that get the closest to production reality that I've found so far, but still miss many critical elements you'd need:

[http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/easily-deploy-redis- backe...](http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/easily-deploy-redis-backed-web- apps-with-docker--cms-20405)

[http://www.powpark.com/blog/programming/2014/01/29/integrati...](http://www.powpark.com/blog/programming/2014/01/29/integrating- docker-with-jenkins-for-ruby-on-rails-app)

[http://blog.buddycloud.com/post/80771409167/using-docker- wit...](http://blog.buddycloud.com/post/80771409167/using-docker-with-github- and-jenkins-for-repeatable)

[https://journal.paul.querna.org/articles/2013/10/15/docker-u...](https://journal.paul.querna.org/articles/2013/10/15/docker- ubuntu-on-rackspace/)

(If you know of better ones, please share!)

To recap, if you want to use Docker in production:

        1. Learn systems administration
        2. Ensure your current production systems are solid
        3. Determine whether Docker's benefits justifies the cost
        4. Use role-based containers

Shameless plug: I'll be covering how to build and audit your own systems in more depth over the next couple months (as well as more Docker stuff in the future) on my blog. If you'd like to be notified of updates, sign up on my mailing list: [https://devopsu.com/newsletters/devopsu.html](https://devopsu.com/newsletters/devopsu.html)

<comment><USER10> As someone just now learning how docker works, I absolutely agree.

Personally, I think there are some new-ish interesting immutability ideas that can be explored with regards to static files. It's not clear to me whether static assets (or even static sites) belong inside the container. I would be really interested in experienced folks' opinions on the immutability of the image. Where do you draw the line on what goes inside it and what's mounted in?

<comment><USER11> This is my general rule of thumb, but bear in mind it's only my approach. I'm not even going to claim that it's good. Just that it works for me...

Is it source or configuration? Then its external to the container, either mounted at runtime of the container (typically always true for source code) or injected into the image at build time through the Dockerfile. Application source is almost always mounted, things like nginx/apache configuration files are nearly always injected during the build process.

I prefer this approach because my source is decoupled from the image, and if another developer wants a dev setup free from Docker, he/she can do so.

I prefer the source I use for config files because it allows me to keep the dockerfile, the configuration files for various services, and a readme all beside one another in source control. This allows other developers to get a basic idea of the container's configuration (if they so desire), and also modify that configuration if they want to tweak/alter a setup.

I see the configuration file approach being potentially a bad idea, but with the small group I currently work with, we're all fairly comfortable making configuration changes as necessary and communicate those changes to others effectively. I don't know how well that approach would hold up at scale.

I would do the same thing with static sites and files, I think. Why? The static site isn't the part of the system, it's the product that should be executed on the system. Therefore, at least in my opinion, it should be as decoupled from that system as possible.

But, like I said, this is just my philosophy. I'm sure someone else will have an equally valid but totally opposite approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fantastic! Was just about to look into using docker with our current vagrant workflow.

</comment><comment><USER13> Vagrant was a huge step forward for managing vm environments, but I'm afraid its integration with Docker is forced and misguided.

For instance, the idea of ssh provisioner does not jive with Docker. The better approach is run the container with shared volume, and run another bash container to access the shared volume. If you are just starting to look at Docker, I would recommend to use Vagrant to provision the base image, and leave the heavy lifting to Docker itself.

<comment><USER14> What you described is actually the default way the Docker provider works, which aligns with the best-practice of how Docker is used: you can launch a set of single-process containers that don't support SSH, but have volumes mounted, links, etc. Then you use `vagrant docker-run` to launch one-off containers with bash, or run scripts, etc. The first two videos and examples show this.

To be clear: see the first example Vagrantfile that is in the blog post. Then read down further and see `docker-run`. You can use that to launch another container to get a bash prompt. This is _exactly_ the workflow you describe.

We built exactly for this. :)

We also support SSH-based containers, but you can see that it is explicitly opt-in (you must set "has_ssh" to "true"), also showing that it really isn't the normal way things are done.

Vagrant is about flexibility, and we surface both use-cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks promising, though the message "Warning: When using a remote Docker host, forwarded ports will NOT be immediately available on your machine" was a bit disappointing.

Given that it transparently wraps boot2docker and handles proxying SSH connections, I had hoped that it would also transparently manage the port forwarding to the host VM, as that's a much more common use case with Docker than SSH access.

Nonetheless, it looks nice!

</comment><comment><USER16> I have wanted this since Docker was announced last year. In my eyes the biggest gain of Docker for development over VMs is boot time. Now I can turn all my Vagrant VBoxes to Docker containers, and work much faster. Thanks to all the maintainers for the hard work.

<comment><USER5> vagrant-lxc provides the fast boot times of Docker too, and it's been working well for most of the last year. It's too bad you didn't know about that!

<comment><USER16> I did know about and tried vagrant-lxc, and even the per 3rd party vagrant- docker implementations. None of them worked well or provided the right amount of ease of use and features that Vagrant and Docker provided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone explain to me - are containers based on a base OS, or are they capable of running on any OS? I see the 'run anywhere' taglines and it just doesn't make sense to me.

I imagine that docker containers have to be provisioned in some way, and if you're provisioning with `apt-get` then it's not going to work when deploying to a redhat OS.

Essentially, I understand Docker containers to be lightweight virtual machines rather than applications that can be deployed to anything running the docker service. Am I on the right track?

<comment><USER18> As long as the userland is supported by your kernel, you can run it within a container on that host. You build your custom containers off of a base container that has the initial userland in it already. This is normally the first line in a Dockerfile:

`FROM busybox` or `FROM ubuntu:latest`

<comment><USER17> Thank you, that makes a lot of sense and finally clears it up for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if Vagrant will eventually do what Fig[1] does.

[1] [http://orchardup.github.io/fig/](http://orchardup.github.io/fig/)

<comment><USER14> Although I've heard of Fig, I just took a closer look for the first time. From the docs, the Docker provider is a super-set of it. Meaning: Vagrant + Docker can do everything Fig can do and then some. I may have missed some detail, but at the very least all of the major pieces are there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the best piece of news to start my Wednesday morning that I could've asked for. I've been slowly converting the entire team in the office over to Vagrant, and am using it for everything. I recently started playing with Docker and wanted to explore deployment of our web apps using it, and now I'll be able to slot it in to my existing workflow! Vagrant is amazing :)

</comment><comment><USER21> What's the ETA for 1.6?

</comment><comment><USER22> Bit late to this game, but in theory would this let me do the following?

1\. Set up a VM using CentOS to mimic my deployment environment

2\. Distribute that to several people, including some running Windows and OSX, and have it automatically set up, with all parties reliably in exactly the same environment.

<comment><USER23> This particular post was a feature announcement, but Vagrant will indeed do that. For a summary, see the homepage under "Vagrant will change how you work," \-- [http://www.vagrantup.com/](http://www.vagrantup.com/)

I've personally used it for creating and iterating quickly on Puppet scripts. I've seen it recommended for devops with Chef also. See also: [http://www.packer.io/](http://www.packer.io/) (for making your own gold master vm images; written in Go by the same guys)

<comment><USER22> Excellent, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does Vagrant do any setup to allow you to run Docker within the dev container, say if you're working on a project that you wish to ship as a Docker container image?

</comment><comment><USER25> Can I publish docker images I create with vagrant to the index? What does that workflow look like?

<comment><USER8> You can "docker push" any binary image to index.docker.io.

However if you don't use a Dockerfile, you won't be able to use the Trusted Build feature, and other users won't be ae to verify which source the image was built from. So your image will remain a second-class cotizen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> These feature previews need a download link, or at the very least a release date.

</comment><comment><USER27> So when is this going to be hooked up with consul for a bit more magic?

<comment><USER28> What kind of magic are you looking for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Any idea as when can we expect 1.6 being shipped?

</comment><comment><USER30> Is anyone else really offended by the name of their product? I mean why didn't they name it Gypsy or Hindu, maybe Eskimo or Shemale? So many groups out there just waiting to be further denigrated, trivialized and then commoditised. Fuck these guys.

<comment><USER12> At least they changed the logo to look more professional [http://www.h-online.com/imgs/43/7/8/2/3/4/7/Vagrant_200-3429...](http://www.h-online.com/imgs/43/7/8/2/3/4/7/Vagrant_200-3429d23a5e4bf82f.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I almost got excited but then yawned.

It's nice but it still doesn't fix the issue with people who have medium end machines where you develop in a VM full time and want to be able to run a VM within a VM.

For example with fairly old but still reasonable hardware you cannot run virtualbox inside of an existing virtualbox instance.

If you have a windows box and develop full time in a linux VM you cannot run vagrant inside of that linux VM because unless you have a modern CPU it lacks the instruction sets required to run virtualization within virtualization.

Now using docker instead of a VM would work but docker only supports 64 bit operating systems so anyone stuck with a 32bit host OS still can't use vagrant and has to resort to using raw linux containers without docker which is really cumbersome.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure why I got down voted to eternity.

If you have a great dev box with a ton of ram then using docker or a VM is irrelevant. You can just set the whole thing up in a ram drive and things are nearly instant, assuming you're using virtualization for short lived tests on some provisioned server that matches your prod env.

With an older machine and a 32bit OS (ie. 2 gigs of ram) you can't do anything except run 2x 512mb VMs side by side within a host or a single ~1GB VM on its own so it's a real let down to see they decided to use docker instead of just plain LXCs which do work with a 32bit OS.</comment></comment>


A 16-Level XSS Challenge, held in summer 2014 (plus one hidden level) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cure53/xss-challenge-wiki/wiki/prompt.ml

<comment><USER2> On level 4, it is assumed that the attacker owns a domain name. Given solutions use 2 unicode characters for the domain name, totalling 6 bytes. The actual shortest domain name in use is 'uz' ([http://uz/](http://uz/)) which is a registrar for .uz, Uzbekistan's ccTLD, making the answer shorter by 4 bytes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a link to the puzzles without the solutions?

<comment><USER4> [http://prompt.ml/](http://prompt.ml/)

Looks like it's not responding though.</comment></comment>


A Lost Monument to Industry and Traditional Urbanism - <AUTHOR> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/a-lost-monument-to-industry-and-traditional-urbanism/ <comment><USER2> The old Penn Station, mentioned in passing in the article, was apparently incredibly beautiful and aesthetically a rival to Grand Central Station (which itself barely escaped becoming the home of an office tower [0]). For those interested Mashable had a great article that featured some spectacular photographs of the old Penn station [1].

[0] [http://gothamist.com/2016/05/25/fred_papert_grand_central.ph...](http://gothamist.com/2016/05/25/fred_papert_grand_central.php)

[1] [https://mashable.com/2015/07/20/original-penn- station/#NAhQI...](https://mashable.com/2015/07/20/original-penn- station/#NAhQIG_6TPqT)

<comment><USER3> Recommended listening: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/penn-station- sucks/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/penn-station-sucks/)

The tearing down of old Penn Station is what kickstarted the movement to preserve historical buildings. Grand Central almost certainly would have met the same fate, had Penn Station's destruction not served as a wakeup call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Today, Americans have grown more cautious; when it comes to old buildings, we now have laws at our disposal that allow us to designate and preserve what we value. Yet the enactment of such laws, at such a late stage, illustrates how the Singer's fate coincided with another milestone: an end to the idea that American industry might be trusted to build permanent things, without answering to the deeper values of law or community or tradition.

Given the state of American cities, I wouldn't say this has worked out. American cities are defined by preservation: of property values and of plentiful free parking. These laws are used to prevent change of any kind. Building a neighbourhood on par with great American neighbourhoods like Beacon Hill and SoHo is basically impossible.

<comment><USER5> We spend so much space on parking. Our local hospitals most recent achievement is a new parking lot. More floor-space than the rest of hospital, and bigger in footprint than all the rest of the campus. Future archaeologists will probably think we were a society of sentient cars that kept people as pets.

<comment><USER6> [https://youtu.be/wFaHArkYLsM](https://youtu.be/wFaHArkYLsM)

"This animated short proposes what many earthlings have long feared -- that the automobile has inherited the planet. When life on Earth is portrayed as one long, unending conga-line of cars, a crew of extra-terrestrial visitors understandably assume they are the dominant race. While humans, on the other hand, are merely parasites. An Oscar® nominee, this film serves as an entertaining case study."

<comment><USER5> That was perfect!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Today, Americans have grown more cautious; when it comes to old buildings, > we now have laws at our disposal that allow us to designate and preserve > what we value. Yet the enactment of such laws, at such a late stage, > illustrates how the Singer's fate coincided with another milestone: an end > to the idea that American industry might be trusted to build permanent > things

Ironically if preservation laws were there in 1908 then the Singer building would likely never have been built because it would mean demolishing some old two-story building in the "historic downtown financial district".

<comment><USER8> Indeed. But there's necessarily some judgement in these things, and it's very very hard to judge the 60's concrete blocks as superior to the best works of 1906.

<comment><USER9> I think it's just another irony of history: At all times, people tend to be ambivalent about contemporary buildings, while they hate buildings of the previous generation (50 years old) and love everything older than 100 years. You just have to read what people have said in the past, and you recognize this pattern.

<comment><USER8> You really believe this? That the only difference between the old Penn station and the new one is that we aren't quite nostalgic enough about the new one yet? It's already older than the other one ever was.

Some eras built grand public buildings as symbols of their pride and progress. Some knocked them down.

<comment><USER10> yes. i really believe that. ill be the rare voice to say i like current penn station. i like that smell that i think comes from the breaks of commuter trains. i like the simple linear layout. i like the shops that line the mezzanine of the lirr.

but most of all i like penn station because it reminds of a time before the divorce when i would come into the city by train with my father.

whats my point here? my point is that weve deluded ourselves into thinking we have architectual taste when really all we have is nostalgia on a societal scale. whatever buildings were most cost effective to make during high times eventually become the definition of good. its only obvious to me because i have the misfortune to see my fav building shit on by every "expert".

<comment><USER8> Certainly affection for things you have a personal connection to is different. For most of us this applies to certain foods, and certain paintings, books, too.

Maybe my point is that it's not just "whatever buildings were most cost effective to make" \-- those I agree come in many flavors. But Penn station was nothing like that. It was a grand and very expensive statement of confidence, permanence, and belief in the virtue of public space. Of the idea that the plebs catching the train would notice and appreciate the classical features. There were many many such statements made at that time.

<comment><USER10> At the time Penn was buily Long Island was still a place for the rich (think great gatsby) and the PRR lines to other cities were still an expensive affair. Travel was not a commonplace thing like airplanes today.

GCT and NYP werent built for the civic enjoyment of the plebs out of the kindness of Vanderbelt et al. Quite the opposite in fact. They were built so that the railroad and its rich clients could show off just how far above the plebs they really are. They built monuments to themselves greater than any church built to god. It wasnt faith in the public it was a middle finger to it, just like salesforce tower is today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In fairness to the powers that dismantled the building, Singer itself was probably on the ropes or well on its way, at least in the sewing machine market. Postwar, the sewing machine market at the low end was flooded with import clones of the classic Singer 15 (see next paragraph), and zigzag machines from abroad were taking a bite out of the higher end of their market[0]. Combine that fact with the fact the needle work industries had left NYC at that point, and it probably made sense to demo the Singer building. All that said, I do wish it was still there to see.

I own a Singer 15. In a residential setting, it'll keep doing what it does well for another 200 years with a little care. It isn't an industrial machine, but if you can't do it once on a 15, it's even odds it can't be done at all. All that said, it's a straight-stitch only machine; they aren't technically complex (for a sewing machine). The imports I've seen are also excellent machines.

[0] Interesting thread: [https://sewing.patternreview.com/SewingDiscussions/topic/561...](https://sewing.patternreview.com/SewingDiscussions/topic/56161)

<comment><USER8> But lots of buildings find new owners, new uses. Was the building that specialised for sewing-machines? It seems a crying shame to have lost so many of the highlights of an era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recommend the book Lost New York by Nathan Silver, to anyone interested in these lost architectural icons of New York City.

It was originally written in the midst of the NYC preservation debate of late 1960s, which resulted from the destruction of buildings like the Singer building, the old Met Opera House, and especially Penn Station.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fun fact: Singer had a profitable high-tech aerospace business [https://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/24/business/singer-s- aerospa...](https://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/24/business/singer-s-aerospace- success.html)</comment>


The great mismatch  - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21528433 <comment><USER2> _"Compared with previous bursts of global integration and technological upheaval, the changes now taking place in the labour market may produce an unusually large number of losers... The priority for policymakers must be to keep the number of losers as small as possible."_

I don't think that's a very good priority to have. Policymakers should prioritize maximizing the number of winners, maximizing their winnings, minimizing the number of losers, and minimizing their losses. Naturally, there are other priorities as well, such as personal economic liberties and the environment. Prioritizing just one thing leads to myopic and destructive policy, in this case excessive protectionism.

The article as a whole is reasonable, I suppose I'm just annoyed at journalists using poorly-thought-out throwaway lines as the conclusions of their articles.</comment>


Show HN: Venture Dealr – Visualize and turn the knobs on VC financing concepts - <AUTHOR> https://dlopuch.github.io/venture-dealr <comment><USER2> The section about "Underwater Options" is describing what would happen assuming a _Participating_ Liquidation Preference. It's a little misleading, because the vast majority of liquidation preferences nowadays are _non- participating_. It's an important distinction.

A 1x non-participating preference means that before anyone is paid out, the investors get their money back. The remainder, if any, is distributed pro-rata to other stockholders. For example, if the investors had put in $25M and owned 50% and the exit was for $30M, the investors would get $25M and the last $5M would be split between founders and employees.

A 1x participating preference is much worse. It means that the investors are paid back first, and then still participate in the payout according to their ownership percentage. In the same example as above ($25M in, $30M exit, 50% ownership), the investors take their $25M back, then the last $5M is split between the founders and employees _and investors_. Thus, the investors get a full $27.5M and the common stock holders see their payout decrease by another 50% vs a non-participating preference.

<comment><USER3> Why would the money of the preference not be counted as a payout floor? So, if you and I own a company 50-50, and you have a 1x preference for $25M:

* If we exit for $25M, you get all of it.

* If we exit for $25-50M, you get 25, I get the remainder, up to 50 (because we're 50-50 and the minimum for you is 25).

* If we exit for any more than 50, we split it in half.

Does that not make more sense?

<comment><USER2> Right, that's what a non-participating preference is. The first example I gave. Luckily, that's how most preferences work these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the clarification, something I'll have to add.

Out of curiosity, how does it work across multiple rounds? I implemented 1x participatory preferences as a simple lifo queue... For non-participatory preferences, are there any complications in calculating the "everybody goes equal from here up" point (50 in the above example) when everyone got in at a different round? Can you have some participatory preferences mixed with non- participatory ones? Is there a good reference for that (at least for a typical case)? Or is this a "call your lawyer" thing?

<comment><USER2> A preference is just a term on the investment. They could be mixed. It can get pretty complicated.

Take this scenario: (A) Series A non-participating 5M, (B) Series B non- participating 10M, (C) Series C participating 10M, owns 25%. Founders own 50%, no options pool. Company sells for 30M.

        - C gets 10M first
        - B gets 10M next
        - A gets 5M next
        - 5M left over, only C is participating; A & B are just floors.
        - Pro-rata, remaining ownerships ratio of 50:25 = 2:1.
        - 5M/3*2 = 3.33M goes to founders.
        - 5M/3*1 = 1.67M goes to Series C investors.

Total tallies:

        - Founder:  3.33M.
        - Series A: 5M.     ROI: 0%
        - Series B: 10M.    ROI: 0%
        - Series C: 11.67M. ROI: 16%

This is mostly for intellectual curiosity, though. If you're a startup founder today… just don't take on any investors who ask for participating preferred. If you're an investor, don't ask for it, it makes you a vulture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the very rare cases where an infographic outperforms text:

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/10/14/understanding-...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/10/14/understanding- how-dilution-affects-you-at-a-startup/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome page, learning a lot. As someone who never really understood this song and dance, here's my feedback. I think you should include a more direct explanation of pre- and post- money valuations. Sure, it's really simple: Premoney+money=postmoney, but that doesn't mean it's common knowledge. Second, the explanation of the option pool shuffle is important to understand the example; it shouldn't be a subtext of an asterisk in the second column. I would also recommend being more direct with the definition of effective valuation as well at the time of its introduction.

<comment><USER5> It may also be interesting to add levers for duration of time between financial events. Then we can look at the exit analysis from an investor's point of view and understand a little bit more about investing at different stages... then you could add levers for success rates at each stage (Dave McClure tweeted a visualization of this recently)!

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you link me to that? Would love to understand better what's important and what people look for in that sort of analysis.

<comment><USER5> [https://twitter.com/davemcclure/status/647824009992626176](https://twitter.com/davemcclure/status/647824009992626176)

If you look at his account around that date, he has a few more tweets on a similar topic. I don't think it's really necessary to understand your main topic, but it could be fun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish more fresh grads and folks new to startups understood these concepts, particularly around how preferences work and that you can't just multiply # of shares by strike price given all of these considerations.

Great job on elucidating these concepts!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Realizing I didn't know any of this is what started me on this. Pass the link on next time you meet a fresh grad!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love this, it really helped me put into perspective the decisions a founder can make and how it can effect the later stages. I haven't worked in the startup world and I don't have a very good understanding of business so this helped put this corporate finance stuff into perspective.

I would love it if you could add other choices like bootstrapping/family and friends money, accelerators, cofounder issues, and board seats. These kinds of business issues are really hard for people outside of the startup world to understand the consequences of, I personally would really find it helpful. Would make a really good interactive fiction or idle game as well :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't have anything substative to add other than thank you so much for making such a cool visualization. I found it really helpful!!

</comment><comment><USER9> _Their percentage stake is how much they put in relative to the pre-money valuation._

Directly above this statement is a bar graph that says "investment 20% equity", while this statement led me to expect it to say "25%". (20% makes more sense to me, but that would mean s/pre/post/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a 2M slice (money) and an 8M slice (pre valuation). The 2 is therefore 20%. I guess "relative" is a bit of an imprecise term. Tried to keep the formulas out of it to make it more approachable, but I'll see if I can be more precise. Thanks!

<comment><USER9> "Relative to" seems plenty precise to me. If you're dividing $2M by X and getting 20%, X = $10M, which would be "post-money".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great visualization, thanks!

The underwater options is scary. What I wonder though is what happens if the exercise price is larger than the stake is worth. Since nobody would exercise their options, would not that money be split over the rest of the stake holders?

So when the ROI is negative for some parties, it should grow on the other parties. Isn't that so?

<comment><USER11> These are options and not shares. So I assume the value of unexcercised options add to the company's issued stock when the options expire.

</comment></comment><comment> babl-yc This was really well done and fun to interact with. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would love to see a similar infographic for real companies using crunchbase data

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear that a lot but you need two numbers: money raised and valuation. Precise valuation is generally kept secret. Even in an IPO my understanding is the numbers never make it out into SEC docs or anything. If you know of a company that has shared this info, would love to see it and tell their story!

<comment><USER13> The valuation of a public company is easy--it's the "market cap." or the number of outstanding shares times the share price.

The S-1 filing for an IPO has to include a cap. table and the share price is right on the front page of the S-1.

<comment><AUTHOR> To figure out the dilutions, we need the valuation at each round. My understanding is only the IPO valuation is made public, not the per-round breakdowns.

<comment><USER13> Right, after the IPO everyone is automatically converted to common but for the history of past rounds you need to look at the charter.

The charter is publicly available from the secretary of state wherever the corporation is incorporated. It will state how many shares of each series of preferred stock is authorized. Also, if there is price-based anti-dilution protection (typical in non-seed investments), the charter will state the "original issue price" of each series (i.e. the price per share when first sold). You can check the amount actually sold in the company's SEC Form D filings (also public) and work out the historical valuation that way.

This doesn't account for things like notes converting at a discount, milestones, adjustments for down rounds, etc. But it is possible to get a rough idea of the valuation trajectory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Best experienced using Chrome_

I'm getting flashbacks to 2000-era HR systems...

<comment><AUTHOR> Turns out there are still differences in browser svg engines and animation rendering. Tried to work out most of the quirks :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really neat visualizations. Is it based on d3.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> D3 and react, built with webpack. Checkout the source repo!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Keep track of home devices that need updates? - <AUTHOR> How do you keep track of your home devices that need software updates/patches?  Devices such as: router, modem, camera, IoT stuff, etc.<p>I feel like there should be a central place to know about them and know if there is an update i need to run. <comment><USER2> Automatically repeating todos in Things.app, that have a link to the manufacturer's web page where they list BIOS/Firmware updates. The todos are set to repeat 2 months after they were last completed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ubiquiti networking gear surfaces updates in their controller software and gives you one click upgrades. However it lacks a notification service other than subscribing to their forums, would be useful if it was built in.</comment>


Best Space Pictures of 2010: Odd Aurora, Ring of Fire, More - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/photogalleries/101130-best-space-pictures-2010/

<comment><USER2> "Big Bear's Sunspot" reminds me of the eye of Sauron.</comment>


Cache side channel attacks: CPU Design as a security problem - <AUTHOR> https://cyber.wtf/2016/06/16/cache-side-channel-attacks-cpu-design-as-a-security-problem/ <comment><USER2> I am reminded of something from Levy's _Artificial Life_ book. In Thomas Ray's _Tierra_ artificial life simulation, one of the viruses learned to exploit information left over in the virtual processor's "registers" from a previously executing virus.

I had something similar happen in an artificial life program. My collision resolution had a bug in it, so organisms exploited that to make it easier to reproduce. (Everyone could occupy the same square, so that made it much easier to find mates. It's kind of like SF.)

<comment><USER3> Where would one go to get started in building artificial life programs? I find the idea very fascinating.

<comment><USER2> _Where would one go to get started in building artificial life programs?_

Just do it. You probably won't break any new ground, but it will be fun. You can dig up Levy's book from the library. There's also "Wa-Tor" from an old Scientific American article. You could probably knock this out very quickly drawing on a browser Canvas in Javascript.

There's quite a bit out there on Genetic Algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good god those color choices are terrible.

<comment><USER5> I refrained from commenting earlier but I've upvoted you because something about that thin font + red + gray background was very difficult to look at, i.e. literally my eyes were moving elsewhere involuntarily. I'd be interested to know if there's a known color selection phenomena that causes this kind of reaction.

<comment><USER6> It's a form of grid illusion[0] that makes you take notice of movement in the background.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a problem for designing hard real-time systems as well; in order to ensure predictable timing, you often end up being forced to disable caches completely.

<comment><USER8> Does that impact what type of memory topologies that you use too(I.E. SRAM only)?

I've only done soft-realtime and disabling caches sounds crazy to me on anything reasonably fast.

<comment><USER7> Unless you can fit your entire application into faster RAM, you usually can't do SRAM only. And yes, it is crazy, but hard realtime is a whole different ballgame. Fortunately, your actual deadlines are usually pretty lenient, and you can often devote the core to a single task, so being slow isn't as big of a concern as you'd think. Another common thing you can do is maintain an SRAM scratchpad or two, sometimes with dedicated circuitry for handling the really latency-critical part, so you have full control over what goes in cache.

<comment><USER8> Oy.

That reminds me a bit of the SPUs on the PS3 where you had only 256kb of local memory and had to DMA everything in/out. How do you deal with MMUs? Do you just manually map each DRAM bank to a specific task and not even try to share them?

<comment><USER7> > How do you deal with MMUs? Do you just manually map each DRAM bank to a > specific task and not even try to share them?

Pretty much.

<comment><USER8> Oh man, fun times.

Thanks for the insight, seems like an interesting space. I've done the 8-bit micros which are somewhat hard-realtime but never something at a larger scale.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Patent application for a Vacuum Balloon Airship [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/patents/US20070001053.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the kind of stuff that irritates me. Here is an application for a patent on something the 'inventor' clearly cannot build (if you actually do the math there isn't a material yet that can withstand the pressure of being a vacuum 'bubble') they were talked about in Verne's books, and Diamond Age, and everywhere anyone who is has a science background says "Hmm, if we could have a vacuum we could lower the net density and float."

I'm wondering if you can file an Amicus brief with the Patent Office.</comment>


Curl Goez Parallel - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2019/07/22/curl-goez-parallel/ <comment><USER2> The curl project continues to be a fantastically run project

\- It has stayed focused on one problem area, and only providing enough functionality to solve that set of problems (fancy way of saying it hasn't bloated)

\- It is well documented and new features are well communicated

\- When it does add features, the maintainers are features slowly and focus on quality. This is also in part because curl is such a fundamental tool that a lot of other software that relies on it would break if it wasn't rock solid

Just check out the length of the PR for this "simple" change of making the functionality parallel: [https://github.com/curl/curl/commit/b88940850002a3f1c25bc648...](https://github.com/curl/curl/commit/b88940850002a3f1c25bc6488b95ad30eb80d696)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like an incredibly useful feature, and until I read this, I assumed that cURL already did parallel transfers.

</comment><comment><USER4> How was this done before, GNU parallel + curl?</comment>


Failure of Yahoo's Alibaba Spinoff Would Have Messy Consequences - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/business/dealbook/failure-of-yahoos-alibaba-spinoff-would-have-messy-consequences.html?ref=dealbook&_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> I think this a pretty important issue here as if the IRS does come after YHOOfor the tax liability from spinning out BABA then it won't be fun at all being a YHOO shareholder.

How much pain might YHOO be in for? Well consider the stock has already gone from $50 at the start of the year to $27.60 now. it could be in for another halving in value.

Now consider if you are an employee of YHOO here is your situation:

\- your options are underwater

\- the only asset you own that wall street likes was just sold off in the most expensive and disastrous way possible

\- your CEO has outlived her honeymoon phase so she'll have to do something to save her job, this usually means massive layoffs to show that you are getting costs under control

\- Silicon Valley is in a phase where anyone with a pulse can get a job.

What do you do? Do you stay and stick it out with a company that could see their stock got to $10? Or do you start talking to the Facebook and Google recruiters who start calling?</comment>


U.S. Moves to Thwart Use of Foreign Acquisitions to Dodge Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/business/dealbook/us-acts-to-end-use-of-foreign-acquisitions-to-dodge-taxes.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is happening because unlike almost every other developed nation the US has a worldwide tax system. Almost every other nation has a territorial tax system. The rest of the world with their territorial system taxes income earned within that country, the US rather taxes income worldwide, regardless of where it is earned.

For example, if a British company earns income in Germany, its pays German taxes on its German income. But if a US company earns income in Germany it pays both German taxes and US taxes.

This is not about avoiding tax on profit earned in the US, after the inversion companies continue to pay US taxes, they just don't pay taxes on income earned outside of the US.

<comment><USER3> And the US double taxes their citizens living abroad the same way.

As an American making the same money as your non-american co-worker you are left with a lot less just for having a US passport.

It is even possible you have never set foot in the US yet are required to pay uncle sam's taxes.

Wanna get rid of your US passport? Not before you pay 10 years projected taxes and pay an abhorrent fee. You will also be listed on a government website so you can be shamed like a sex offender.

<comment><USER4> The fist $100,000 income isn't taxed this way[1].

And it's not abhorrent. If you earned enough money to think it's advantageous to lose one of the most valuable passports in the world, you probably earned that money in large parts due to the support of the people and infrastructure of the United States. You don't get to drop your duties once you win big.

[1] $97,600 for 2013, $99,200 for 2014 and $100,800 for 2015

<comment><USER5> American Imperialism at its finest. "Since we're the best country in the world, you couldn't have possibly become rich without us, and therefore you must pay to leave us!"

<comment><USER4> Greatness aside, you probably couldn't have become rich without roads, national defense, clean water...

<comment><USER6> Those things aren't exclusive to the US.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but if you earned your billion on the backs of US peoples and infrastructure, you have to pay a toll when you leave.

<comment><USER7> But what if you weren't even born in the US, much less have ever set foot in the US. Do you think it's fair to "pay a toll" when you're working in a foreign country?

<comment><USER8> I don't think that's what he's saying. I think we are talking past each other, myself included.

a) cole seems to specifically be talking about very wealthy people who did work and earn money in the US but who renounced citizenship largely for tax purposes (e.g. Eduardo Saverin)

b) cole talks about the foreign-earned income exclusion, which is misplaced (for people like (a) this is very different from income earned on investments and for wealth which is subject to the exit tax)

There's a smattering of outright incorrect things too like having to pay taxes for 10 years after renouncing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those of you starting companies that may one day be worth a lot of money, there is a key insight to draw from this: it is better (from a tax point of view) to be a foreign company than a US company.

This is especially true if you expect most of your future customers to be outside the US.

In the long run this gives an operating advantage to foreign corporations -- again for tax efficiency only.

In the intermediate time frame all governments change their laws all the time, and there are going to be changes in tax rules coming that will make cross- border SaaS sales painful for tax load and administrative burdens, for instance.

Your choice is when to flip your business from US to foreign status. You can see the government attacking late-stage inversions because that is where the revenue and political brownie points are.

This tells you that early-stage migrations are still possible and may be cost- effective for you. At some level, for small companies, practical considerations can be used to offset unfavorable tax rules. (Translation - amounts are small enough to not matter, or be swamped by normal expenses so that they don't matter).

The US tax system is King Canute.

Source: I am an international tax lawyer in my real life.

<comment><USER10> > The US tax system is King Canute.

Interesting, I had never heard this phrase before. Are you referring to this? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_waves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_waves)

<comment><USER9> Yes that is what I meant.

The pointless arrogance of the powerful is the lesson.

This is expressed in various ways, from the HN chortling about ignorant legislators attempting to define pi = 3, to the extremely correct observation that the bond market holds far more power than any central bank.

Politicians are mortal and fallible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Yet even by the Treasury Department's own admission, the latest rules will not be enough to completely halt the flow of companies seeking to renounce their American citizenship, just as the two previous rule changes did not. Such a move would be possible only with an overhaul of the tax rules by Congress, which few believe will happen soon.

I would have loved to have more info about that. What other loopholes didn't this fix? What are they proposing Congress do in this overhaul?

</comment><comment><USER12> In this global economy, as long as nation states exist and are inhabited/colonized by supranational corporations the tax loophole will always exist. That is the root of the problem: the incompatibility issues of the old nationalism with the new globalism.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can someone explain the history of the US worldwide tax regime? Why is the US so out of step with the rest of the world on this?

<comment><USER14> Here:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/05/18/tax-history-why- u-s...](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/05/18/tax-history-why-u-s-pursues- citizens-overseas/)

And [pdf file]:

[http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=dlj)

tldr; it's a century old patch-work remnant from the Civil War to WW1 era. The US Government at this point does not want to give it up, because it means giving up tax revenue (and thus has implications for how much they can spend), and there's nothing they hate more.

<comment><USER15> It's not clear why it would really _need_ to change.

People who have left the United States and will never return, chose to renounce their citizenship because of it. ... Ok, so?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another attempt to close the loop holes in the US's byzantine corporate tax system doomed to failure. The Treasury Department says as much in the article.

A flat corporate rate on income earned, in the US, minus income lost, in the US, equals taxable income, done and fair. If a corporation can't compete in the US without support of its international shell games, then it probably wasn't competitive enough to matter anyways.

<comment><USER17> For that matter, there are good arguments to be made to simply eliminate corporate income taxes entirely. After all, any profits ultimately flow to individuals and their individual tax returns. Of course, good luck ever getting that passed politically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To quote Peter Schiff on this "Tax avoidance isn't the problem. It's a solution to the problem. The problem is taxes!"

</comment><comment><USER19> Capital is mobile.

<comment><USER20> It's only as mobile as laws will allow it to be. Sure, it's a leaky bucket, but you don't need to patch all the leaks.

<comment><USER21> Capital is fully mobile because people are fully mobile.

<comment><USER22> Ever try to take twenty thousand in cash through airport security? Here's a secret: Those millimeter wave body scanners are only incidentally for drugs and weapons.

<comment><USER21> Yeah -- you're right. I was making a different point involving how wealth is built. It takes creative capital. It isn't just money. So stick with an uncompetitive tax system, and eventually the brightest won't end up on your shores, and they'll live, create, and bank elsewhere.

<comment><USER20> Generally when people say capital they're referring to large amounts of money, sufficient to fully-capitalize a business venture. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million and up. A "capital-intensive" industry is one in which you need a lot more than this to enter the market.

Also it's not exactly easy to emigrate. People may be mobile, but they're not liquid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The solution is not to force us companies to pay tax with yet another layer of positive law, but not to tax them at all, anywhere, unless they wish to voluntarily pay taxes.

<comment><USER24> How would that solve the problem?

<comment><USER25> It solves the problem of illegal tax evasion, by making it legal. See? Problem solved!

<comment><USER23> Exactly. Taxes are morally wrong.

<comment><USER25> No. They're not. It's the way how we as a society pay for common things.

<comment><USER23> But how do we agree to pay for them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> About time the greedy corporations pay their fair share. #FeelTheBern

<comment><USER27> Please don't. Not because of your particular view, but because garden-variety politics are off topic on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> as long as politicians keep spending like they do, the US can't afford to lose any tax revenue

<comment><USER29> True but higher taxes do not always correlate to higher revenue, as the make (legal) tax avoidance more valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> About time, nothing to see here?

<comment><USER31> There would be something to see, if we could come up with a "solution" to this problem that actually had a chance of working. So, no.</comment></comment>