Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems? - <AUTHOR> Are there any well funded tech startups / companies tackling major societal problems? Any of these fair game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_issues
----
I don't see or hear of any and want to know if this is just my bias or if there really is a shortage of resources in tech being allocated to solving the worlds most important problems. I'm sure I'm not the only engineer that's looking out for companies like this.
Ran into this previous Ask HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24168902) that asked a similar question. However, here I wanna focus on the better funded efforts (not side projects, philanthropy etc).
One example I've heard so far is Tesla. Any others? <comment><USER2> If you're interested in having an impact I highly recommend visiting [https://80000hours.org/](https://80000hours.org/)

The biggest impacts can often be made in areas that are most neglected and have high negative or positive outcomes. At the very least it will help you form a mental model of how to spend your time and the types of problems to focus on.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing. Their emphasis on the neglectedness of an issue and focusing on the margins is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At CIONIC, we're tackling how to overcome disability through precision bionics. Whether a diagnosis at birth (Cerebral Palsy, Spina Bifida) or an acquired disease or impairment (Parkinson's, issues resulting from a stroke), we're engineering sleek, wearable solutions that will provide comprehensive analysis and precise augmentation to enhance human performance, restore physical function and increase independence. Check out more information here: [https://cionic.com/](https://cionic.com/)

<comment><USER5> This looks cool. Why do you think this hasn't been done before?

<comment><USER4> Good question. I think it's the right time for the confluence of technology and human need. It's not an easy problem, but it's an important one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Loon from Google/Alphabet [1]. They are attempting to connect remote and rural areas of the world. They are currently providing commercial service in a difficult to reach/low ARPU area in Kenya [2].

Loon uses standard 3GPP (LTE) protocols, so devices are available at low cost and even lower in used markets.

I don't work for Loon or Google, just interested in HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo Satellites) to provide low cost connectivity.

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

[2] [https://medium.com/loon-for-all/loon-is-live-in- kenya-259d81...](https://medium.com/loon-for-all/loon-is-live-in- kenya-259d81c75a7a)

Edit: fixed references

<comment><USER7> Wow, Project Loon. It's been a while since I've thought about it. It seems kind of pointless now, doesn't it? StarLink will displace it in a couple of years.

<comment><USER6> One disadvantage with Starlink is the need for external antenna. With HAPS, project Loon and HAPS Mobile [1], you can use regular mobile phones and modems making it cost effective for most people. The idea would be for an operator to have terrestrial network in urban/sub urban areas and high altitude cell towers in less dense areas. This way you can use the same subscription and device.

Starlink could also be used to provide backhaul to cell towers which work with standard 3GPP protocol and provide the same service as terrestrial networks.

HAPS Mobile has got a good video (< 5 min) on what it is and their vision [2]

[1] [https://www.hapsmobile.com/en/](https://www.hapsmobile.com/en/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/zxWODb6Uqgs](https://youtu.be/zxWODb6Uqgs)

Edit: I've no affiliation with HAPS Mobile, Softbank, Google :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out the startups working at incubators like Greentown Labs: [https://greentownlabs.com/](https://greentownlabs.com/).

Not all these companies will make it. There's a risk associated with working on these problems that is not always countered by the rapid revenue growth associated with a well-funded tech company. Having worked at a company that was briefly situated at Greentown, I will say there is an energy associated with working there. It made my optimistic that people are actually working hard on these problems, and we have a chance at solving some of them within my lifetime.

<comment><USER9> I spent 18 months working as a SWE at a company within Greentown Labs. I can confirm the companies there are all committed to making a meaningful impact around the domains of clean energy / green technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stuff that Saul Griffith works on: [https://www.saulgriffith.com/](https://www.saulgriffith.com/)

In particular, Otherlab companies: [https://www.otherlab.com/](https://www.otherlab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> What it means for a well-funded company to tackle big, meaningful problems?

Most (not all) of the people (engineers, founders, leaders, etc) I talk to want to work on these problems. Google and Facebook are both driven by missions to do this. They get a lot of things right. They also get a lot of things wrong. So does Microsoft. But take a look at the mission and impact of both the Gates Foundation and the Zuckerberg-Chan foundation and I think you'll see that the founders care deeply about the impact that they are having. Execution on that impact is another matter.

The best companies focus on a specific well defined problem. When looking at companies, ask what problem they are trying to solve. Is this a mission that you can get excited about?

Next, is the company approaching this problem from a direction that resonates with you? Is there approach likely to work? What are the risks and potential side effects?

Facebook has done a lot of amazing and wonderful things. It's also created some problems. You have to balance that tension. All well-intentioned efforts come with risks regardless of whether those efforts originate from government, non-profit or business activities.

I'd encourage you not to slip to far into a cynical view of the world. Yes, there are lots of problems. Fantastic. Focus on what you can change and go find solutions.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you want to use your technical skills to make a difference in the world, a lot of less glamorous options are out there: working for a non-profit, working for a university, school system, library system, or other government entity of your choosing.

> One example I've heard so far is Tesla. Any others?

Lol, Tesla is not an example. They are a carmaker. Nothing Tesla does will change the world for the better. In fact investing in automobiles in any form is counter-productive when we should be reverting post-war city design mistakes. The best thing for the world would be to live in walkable communities with inter-city trains taking care of long-distance travel.

Tesla is a great example of the flaw in your question: looking toward a highly-funded company out to change the world is an impossibility. Highly funded companies are expected to produce revenue growth. That's it. There's no such thing as a for-profit company out to solve world problems unless solving those problems involves increasing profit.

So, like I said, what you're looking for is probably a non-profit, a government agency, or research institution.

And don't expect to get highly competitive salary to do work that helps people.

<comment><AUTHOR> > "Highly funded companies are expected to produce revenue growth."

Yup, this is exactly what I was hoping wasn't true: That it's impossible to be both well funded, high revenue growth AND do so while tackling a meaningful problem. \---

Don't want to make this thread about all the ways in which Tesla is a bad example (just first one that came to mind).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about a tech company using data to accelerate the creation and approval of cancer fighting drugs: flatiron.com (acquired a couple of years ago, but still independently operated)

Interested in improving the state of the art in detecting cancer - paigeai is building automated pathology tools.

A somewhat USA specific one, but goodrx is helping folks afford medications.

Quite a few of those "issues" in your link get you way past traditional Tech company turf, but all will need software engineers! There are a lot of cool biotech companies out there who would need software engineers!

</comment><comment><USER14> Say you worked in a software development organization that was dysfunctional, shipped updates 3-4 times a year and had lots of infighting/political battles between teams. A vendor came by talking about a new development process with a cool tool touting amazing features - do you think buying into this process plus tool is going to solve your organizational problems?

Is tech the right tool to attempt solving societal problems?

If Tesla's goal was to have an impact on climate change they should allow other car companies to purchase their batteries and motors to build from. Or actually build an economical car, sub $25k, no self-driving or fancy features, no performance mode, etc. Just a working, fully electric car that any working- class person could buy, globally. That would have much more impact than building luxury electric vehicles.

<comment><USER15> Their goal is absolutely to drive down cost. Right now they're battery- constrained, so it would not make sense to sell them to third parties. If Tesla can only sell a given number of cars, it makes financial sense to sell them at a higher price. The extra revenue serves to build more factories and grow faster. As production keeps scaling, average selling prices will keep going down. If they'd attempted to start with a $25K car, they'd producing no cars today.

<comment><USER16> I view them as the iPhone of cars right now. And thats by design. Maybe if they take away all the bells and whistles and just ship out a barebones electric car for regular people, it might get mass adoption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Plenty ([https://plenty.ag](https://plenty.ag)) is trying to scale hydroponics using plant science and automation. (I worked here till a few months ago.) Indoor agriculture is going to supplement our nutrition needs in the future. Plenty is focusing on flavor as its selling point, and after eating Plenty produce, everything else seems like eating cardboard.

<comment><USER18> Why'd you leave--just curious?

<comment><USER17> I wanted to do more creative work, whereas the work at Plenty was more about problem solving.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh interesting, I guess I've always thought about problem solving and creativity as being one and the same. Mind expanding on this a bit?

<comment><USER17> Ah I should have been more specific. For some context, I learned software development on the job and later studied Human-Computer Interaction. I want to be at the intersection of software and design.

Software Engineering at Plenty involved a lot of creative problem solving. But I wanted to work on visually creative projects. Some of my initial projects at Plenty did involve interactive UIs, but as I gained better understanding of our stack, I was required to do a lot more back-end work which wasn't very exciting to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! Got it! That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> International Justice Mission [1] and Thorn [2] are tackling child trafficking, sex trafficking, and modern-day slavery successfully (IJM internationally, Thorn in the US).

[1] [https://www.ijm.org](https://www.ijm.org) [2] [https://www.thorn.org](https://www.thorn.org)

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know that I would use Telsa as an example. Sure, they are replacing fossil fuels with renewables, but I see this as trading one dirty commodity for another. Lithium mining is environmentally damaging and the impact will likely get worse as demand increases. So maybe a step in the right direction, but definitely not a true solution.

<comment><USER21> Tesla is actually a good example assuming that you believe that lithium mining is better than coal mining or at least an equivalent problem.

Tesla's utility-level batteries (MegaPack) make wind and solar projects more economically feasible since any excess wind can be stored instead of being sold at negative rates when its not being used. These batteries will allow the replacement of many coal-powered generator plants since those are typically used for peak times when we need more energy. They're responsible for pushing the electric car revolution forward (making it fashionable), which is forecasted to lead to less peak energy usage and a more balanced usage during non-peak hours (since people will be charging their cars at home after hours). In theory, this reduces the need to make upgrades to the US electricity distribution network and we should lose less energy transporting it. This also reduces the need for oil, and could prevent more wars in the middle east (since their major resource is less valuable)

<comment><USER20> I can agree that the view of whether something is helping or not could be subjective.

That's not necessarily true about the infrastructure. The estimate I saw said if all the gas cars were replaced with electric ones then the infrastructure would have to double or triple depending on how much off-grid equipment is adopted. I know my house would need an upgraded connection to handle a 50amp charger. I'd probably need a whole extra line and panel if we needed to charge 2 or three cars at once.

<comment><USER21> I was actually thinking about the long-distance transmission lines, but that's a good point about potentially needing to upgrade local lines. As a non-EV owner, I can't discuss much but I was under the impression that you could just plug in to a normal wall socket for a slow charge. I suspect that you're referring to the Level 2 quick charging station. If that's the case, that would certainly impact you depending on how old your house is and whether you're running your own solar panels

FYI, if you have a source, I'd be interested in reading about it.

<comment><USER20> I can't find the original article I saw this in (8 or so yrs ago), but here's one that talks about some of the infrastructure sizing issues (45 vs 100 kVA). The second one talks about current grid storage/production and the need for increased capacity.

Good news is that we are nowhere close to the breaking point, but the numbers in the article are way less than if all (or even half of) cars were replaced with EVs. It should take a long time to get to that level of adoption anyways.

At least for me, I would want access to fast charging options, whether in homes or at dedicated stations for trips. The 8 hour charge is great for daily usage though. I wonder how that time can hold up as the range gets longer (increased capacity with same 15 amp wall plug).

[https://www.fleetcarma.com/ev-clustered-charging-can- problem...](https://www.fleetcarma.com/ev-clustered-charging-can-problematic- electrical-utilities/)

[https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-influx-electric- vehicles...](https://techxplore.com/news/2020-07-influx-electric-vehicles- grid.html)

<comment><USER21> Thanks for adding the sources. I'm 80% sure that The Grid [[https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans- Energy...](https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy- ebook/dp/B01DM9Q6CQ)] had discussed electric cars helping solve some of the distribution/transmission problems, but that was from the view of the large power companies, not the smaller local munis (and maybe paired with smart meters? It's been a while since I read it). However, after reading the two articles you cited, it's actually just moving the bottleneck and in the wrong direction to a point where it's harder to manage changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Forward ([https://goforward.com/technology](https://goforward.com/technology)) is building an entirely new healthcare system to empower doctors with advanced tools to facilitate early detection, prevention, and personalized care – supported by data – with a nationwide network of primary care clinics in cities across the country.

If you're interested in playing a major part in one of the most ambitious missions of the past decade and want to work with individuals who use their talents for good, then you should check out Forward.

See our open roles here: [https://goforward.com/eng](https://goforward.com/eng), or reach out to me directly at email@example.com with your resume.

Check out this article written by our CEO, Adrian, about how we plan to rewire the healthcare system here: [https://blog.goforward.com/dont-bail-out- healthcare-rewire-i...](https://blog.goforward.com/dont-bail-out-healthcare- rewire-it-fe2d8ad7a5f6)

Watch a video tour of one of our doctor's offices here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnJEsoGmh-8&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnJEsoGmh-8&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a good one! Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is start with Gates Foundation. It is addressing some of these problems

</comment><comment><USER24> Telsa, Gates Foundation, etc. Ugh. Please stop 'helping' us.

My general guess is that anything actually worthwhile will have little to no private funding behind it.

Global heating. Racism. Soil extinction. Fascism. Disenfranchisement. Inequality. Female disempowerment. etc.

I guess there is government cheese for global heating. Not sure how much useful work would be done outside of government-run and/or -funded laboratories.

And anything that could potentially start out as being at least notionally- well-intentioned will come around to being not that.

My general thinking at this point is I have to find or help to create a small, well-organized group of people who start a not-funded social movement that will oppose almost everything most philanthropists and investors and do- gooders actually care about.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly what I was hoping this thread would disprove. But so far I think you're probably right. Private interest just doesn't seem to be seriously willing or able to tackle the big issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One could argue that Purism, Social Purpose Corporation, is trying to fight with pollution (by providing devices with lifetime updates and choosing their sources) and supports human rights (by using exclusively free software, by creating a new market for surveillance-free user-respecting devices, by trying to shift manufacturing from China to USA).

[https://puri.sm/about/manufacturing-and- sourcing/](https://puri.sm/about/manufacturing-and-sourcing/)

Not sure if you consider them "well funded" though.

<comment><USER26> From China to US... surveillance-free?

<comment><USER27> I'm so bummed out that they're basing themselves and manufacturing in the US. It's such a risk that it's difficult to make sense of the reasoning with anything else than that they're already compromised, possibly simply by funding capital that comes with conditions. Not saying I believe that's the case but how else can you explain it?

<comment><USER25> I do not understand people who think that trusting a company is all about geography or funding. The real trust should be built when you and everyone else can verify everything and speak up whenever something is wrong. Most companies do not even allow any reasonable verification (by closing their sources and schematics). Purism is the most transparent company I know.

<comment><USER27> The problem with the US specifically is that the intentions of the current team and founders doesn't decide in the end. It's entirely plausible for them to be compromised and gagged, against their will.

It's also not necessarily something that more than a very small number of people in the company needs to be aware of.

This is due to how legislation and the operations of federal agencies work.

Over the past decade, I feel USA has become pretty damn close China in this regard if you put all countries on some kind of scale.

Anywhere in the EU would have had way less of that risk.

I could also add that I had similar feelings with Keybase for a long time; promising team, solution and openness (though not to the extent of Purism). My main gripe was the US location. And then they were acquired by Zoom. This kind of nihilistic dynamic is also more common with US businesses, even if it's just a cultural thing.

<comment><USER25> 1\. Purism have the warrant canary.

2\. You can check the source code and schematics. Can you do this for any other company in any other country?

3\. At least there are courts in the US, not so in China. Practically all electronics is produced in China.

> My main gripe was the US location. And then they were acquired by Zoom.

So the actual problem turned out to be NOT the location, right? Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation, so it's hard (impossible?) to buy them.

<comment><USER27> 1\. Can't be trusted

2\. I'm not saying I can recommend you a better company with a comparable product. But with the way they're positioning themselves, they have extremely high standards to live up to.

3\. Fair point. Let's see how the Assange trials go.

Yes, China is a concern but if you're going to provide a better alternative, why make your base and operations in one of the top 3 remaining global concern countries?

I've been keeping checking in on Purism for years and have been close to ordering early several times but this uneasiness is what has been preventing me from pulling the trigger.

You are totally free to make a different judgement call and I respect supporting a good cause where you believe in the team. I also do still hope that Purism does become successful and grow and the team is showing promising progress.

Sadly the US is just too corrupt to have this be trustable and sustainable as things look now. I hope they realize this and move. And that we see more actors in this space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Do a web search for the term "impact investment". You will find some information on what you are looking for.

<comment><USER25> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_investing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_investing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Type Studio disrupts all the over engineered video editors by developing a text-based editing approach. [https://typestudio.co](https://typestudio.co)

</comment><comment><USER30> Sahara Forest Project [https://www.saharaforestproject.com/](https://www.saharaforestproject.com/)

Desalination + desert greening + solar + farming. Awesome

</comment><comment><USER31> Lexria ([https://www.lexria.com](https://www.lexria.com)) is focused on helping solve student loan debt issues through bankruptcy.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been working at Zipline for over four years now. We're building a scalable and reliable UAV based delivery system with a focus on making medical supplies accessible to all humans that need them. We're operating distribution centers in Rwanda, Ghana, and North Carolina, and I believe we're still the only such system operating in production.

I'm an embedded software engineer, and I work on a lot on the firmware running in the vehicles, as well as in all the various ground equipment we've developed to make our system easier to operate. I also touch a lot of "high level" python to build out developer tools and when interfacing to the company's broader software stacks. It's important for our system to be as automated as possible so that we can hire and train local flight operators to serve their communities with minimal engineering support. I think that's something really cool about Zipline. Our flight operators are the most awesome, dedicated employees, and they're in the trenches launching hundreds of flights per day through extreme rain, heat and cold. I want to say that something like 1/3 of flights are for medical emergencies, too.

I've been very happy working here, also. It's a really good group of people. Everyone's dedicated and self motivated to move quickly, without compromising family or work life balance. We try to keep communication within the company as flat and direct as possible, too. There's no corporate politics or egos to maneuver around. Our CEO's car is one of the crappier cars in the parking lot. For surprise medical reasons I had to take quite a bit of time off at a really quite terrible time in the schedule earlier this year, and my coworkers happily picked up the slack and sent me an embarrassing amount of very luxurious chocolate.

Since I joined, my team has grown from just me to about a dozen people, and all the growth has done is made us busier with all the cool projects we're taking on. We're generally always hiring across the company, and especially on the embedded engineering team. Since I've been around a while, I tend to focus on broad architectural work while helping out on whatever project is the most on fire, and try to give newer team members a chance to focus on projects that they can own long term.

[https://flyzipline.com/careers/](https://flyzipline.com/careers/)

This is what I've been working on improving this past week. If you sign an NDA, I can tell what relevance it has to 1980s rap music... [https://youtu.be/FeSCEalMOL8?t=85](https://youtu.be/FeSCEalMOL8?t=85)

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://fairphone.com](https://fairphone.com)

</comment><comment><USER33> Cruise Automation. Startup that pays as well as FAANG.

</comment><comment><USER34> You can make an impact by solving important local and global problems by investing your time, career, and savings; by listing and comparing solutions.

As a labor market participant, you can choose to work for places that have an organizational mission that strategically aligns with local, domestic, and international objectives.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alignment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alignment) ... "Schema.org: Mission, Project, Goal, Objective, Task" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141)

As an investor, you can choose to invest in organizations that are making the sort of impact you're looking for: you can _impact invest_.

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

You mentioned "List of global issues"; which didn't yet have a link to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (the #GlobalGoals). I just added this to the linked article:

> _As part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN Millenium > Development Goals (2000-2015) were superseded by the UN Sustainable > Development Goals (2016-2030), which are also known as The Global Goals. > There are associated Targets and Indicators for each Global Goal._

There are 17 Global Goals.

Sustainability reporting standards can align with the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, the GRI standards are now aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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

Investors, fund managers, and potential employees can identify companies which are making an impact by reviewing corporate sustainability and ESG reports.

From [https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable- develo...](https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development- goals/goal-12-responsible-consumption-and-production/targets.html) :

> SDG Target 12.6: _" Encourage companies, especially large and transnational > companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability > information into their reporting cycle"_

From [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21302926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21302926) :

> _> What are some of the corporate sustainability reporting standards?

> _> From > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability_reporting#Initi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability_reporting#Initiatives) > :

> _> > Organizations can improve their sustainability performance by measuring > (EthicalQuote (CEQ)), monitoring and reporting on it, helping them have a > positive impact on society, the economy, and a sustainable future. The key > drivers for the quality of sustainability reports are the guidelines of the > Global Reporting Initiative (GRI),[3] (ACCA) award schemes or rankings. The > GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines enable all organizations worldwide > to assess their sustainability performance and disclose the results in a > similar way to financial reporting.[4] The largest database of corporate > sustainability reports can be found on the website of the United Nations > Global Compact initiative._

> _> The GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) Standards are now aligned with the > UN Sustainable Development Goals (#GlobalGoals). > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Reporting_Initiative) > _

> _> > In 2017, 63 percent of the largest 100 companies (N100), and 75 percent > of the Global Fortune 250 (G250) reported applying the GRI reporting > framework.[3]_

What are some good ways to search for companies who (1) do sustainability reports, (2) engage in strategic alignment in corporate planning sessions, (3) make sustainability a front-and-center issue in their company's internal and external communications?

What are some examples of companies who have a focus on sustainability _and /or_ who have developed a nonprofit organization for philanthropic missions which are sometimes best accounted for as a distinct organization or a business unit (which can accept and offer receipts for donations as a non- profit)?

How can an employee drive change in a small or a large company? Identify opportunities to deliver value and goodwill. Read through the Global Goals, Targets, and Indicators; and get into the habit of writing down problems and _solutions_.

3 pillars of [Corporate] Sustainability: (Environment (Society (Economy))). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability#Three_dimension...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability#Three_dimensions_of_sustainability)

<comment><USER34> "Launch HN: Charityvest (YC S20) – Employee charitable funds and gift matching" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907902) :

> _We created a modern, simple, and affordable way for companies to include > charitable giving in their suite of employee benefits._

> _We give employees their own tax-deductible charitable giving fund, like an > "HSA for Charity." They can make contributions into their fund and, from > their fund, support any of the 1.4M charities in the US, all on one tax > receipt._

> _Using the funds, we enable companies to operate gift matching programs that > run on autopilot. Each donation to a charity from an employee is matched > automatically by the company in our system._

> _A company can set up a matching gift program and launch giving funds to > employees in about 10 minutes of work._

</comment></comment><comment> doopy-loopy2 Tesla

</comment><comment><USER35> Boston Dynamics. Their robot overlords may one day replace us thus neatly solving most of our problems.

<comment><USER36> Replace us? Isn't it enough to just enslave us, feed us scraps and tell us what to do? Lot's of startups are working on that. (It's called the gig economy.) :P

Footnote: I'm not this critical of the gig economy, just couldn't resist the opportunity for some gallows humor. :)

<comment><USER37> But what would a robot sufficiently smart/powerful to enslave us actually need us to do?

Entertain them?

<comment><USER35> Sure. Pets. We could perform tricks in exchange for slices of robot made pizza. Sentient robots may get bored too. Weird bipedal monkey creatures with delusions of grandeur should be good for a laugh at least.

<comment><USER37> Mmmm, pizza!

[https://youtu.be/okVM0sSwmNQ](https://youtu.be/okVM0sSwmNQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Are there any well funded tech startups / companies tackling major societal > problems?

Why would you look to tech companies to do this?

Isn't this what charities do?

<comment><USER39> isn't this what _governments_ ought to exist to do? "promote the General Welfare" is within the first 30 words of the Preamble.

<comment><USER40> Promote - as in cheerlead, facilitate, protect - not as in, well, try to do by forcing participation.

<comment><USER20> Exactly. It's designed from the perspective of protecting people's rights, and by protecting those rights promotes the common good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> DLT labs. They are providing Blockchain solutions check out Walmart logistics they have built for their transport partners.</comment>


Show HN APIs that connect buyers and suppliers across the Travel Industry. - <AUTHOR> http://www.travlegatex.com <comment><USER2> Fixed link: [https://www.travelgatex.com](https://www.travelgatex.com)</comment>


Best Practices for Data Modeling - <AUTHOR> https://www.stitchdata.com/blog/best-practices-for-data-modeling/ <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _In general, when building a data model for end users you 're going to want to materialize as much as possible. This often means denormalizing as much as possible so that, instead of having a star schema where joins are performed on the fly, you have a few really wide tables (many many columns) with all of the relevant information for a given object available._

Where "materialization" means whether a relation is created as a view (rather than a table).

I'm not sure I agree with this. Personally, I think it's better to primarily normalize and write all queries as close to functional programming as possible. Which means opting for computation on the fly during development and relying on the underlying database infrastructure to optimize internally. Then denormalize or dupe data via views and caching after bottlenecks have been identified. Otherwise you're fighting premature optimization during development.

That said, there could be a place for materialization in log-structured storage (LSS):

[https://jvns.ca/blog/2017/06/11/log-structured- storage/](https://jvns.ca/blog/2017/06/11/log-structured-storage/)

I'm thinking that the future of all of this could be LSS on distributed consensus algorithms like RAFT, then devoting some amount of cache to building out materialized relationships that can always be derived from the log. Then we could have our cake and eat it too with fast durable writes and low- overhead reads without joins.

If anyone has an example of this, I'd love to see it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article has more fluff in it than Ron Jeremey's condo circa 1995

<comment><USER4> It confirmed the things I've learned in the past year. Not sure what you're talking about. If you have something more constructive, tell us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know if there are any resources on how to design data warehouses for non-relationa data such as images, both unprocessed and processed?

</comment><comment><USER6> > IDs should get an _id suffix, and primary keys should be called $OBJECT_id > (e.g., order_id, user_id, subscription_id, order_item_name_id).

Wrong. Be consistent. All id's are named ID or id. Consistency is key.

Most of the article is filler and style choices.

<comment><USER7> No, clarity is much more important than consistency. And I much prefer to see an expression like

      O.order_id = CO.order_id

than

      O.Id = CO.order_id

<comment> roland-s If you're using table aliases like "O" you're already throwing clarity out the window. The following is perfectly clear and readable IMO:

        Orders.id = Customers.order_id

and also indicates which column is the primary key and which is the foreign key. What about other column names duplicated across tables, should

        Orders.created_at = Customers.created_at

become

        Orders.order_created_at = Customers.customer_created_at

Scope exists for a reason, don't be afraid to use it!

<comment><USER7> The reason we use aliases is it almost only in toy-examples that most tables are called things like Order. I won't fill my SELECT with row after row with CustomerOrderRowHistory...

And your second example kind of prove my point. When it it written out like that it become obvious that you are trying to compare diffent quantities. There is clearly something wrong when you are trying to join on order_created_at = customer_created_at which isn't at all as clear with your way of writing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin adoption in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://daltoncaldwell.com/bitcoin-adoption-in-2015 <comment><USER2> If you look at the all-time USD transaction volume, it seems pretty clear that it is growing:

[https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction- volume-...](https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume- usd?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=)

Using the same slope, I'd expect about $110M USD/day this time next year (from about $70M now). As bitcoin's usefulness is tied to the number of people using it (like email), it would be strange to see explosive transaction growth so early on.

Looking at all-time number of transactions, it's difficult to make the case that adoption is static:

[https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all&s...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=0&address=)

</comment><comment><USER3> If Reddit decides to use Bitcoin sidechains for its Reddit Notes, it might give Bitcoin adoption a push.

</comment><comment><USER4> Every new announcement for bitcoin is about how its easier to spend but never any real announcements about making it easier to buy, the fees are high, the waits can be lengthy, and limits on amounts are low. Until this changes I dont see much else changing.

<comment><USER5> I bought some bitcoins in early 2013 and then tried to buy some a few months ago. It's more painful to do now and I lost interest in having to tie to a real bank account, ID verification, etc.

I realize that a lot of crackdowns have been made to make BitCoins less anonymous and prevent laundering, but it ultimately hurts the UX and the utility I get from owning BitCoins isn't enough to make me want to jump through banking hoops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with all of these graphs is that the rise of cloud players like Coinbase means that a lot (and I'd think probably most) of the Bitcoin transactions taking place these days are off-chain.

Coinbase can settle most trades internally and push out any 'interbank trades' onto the chain. Some of the patterns others have noticed could be them settling internal accounts, not sure though.

<comment><USER7> Did you read the words too? What did you think about this part?

 _Regarding the prospect of growth in value exchange occurring via off- blockchain services: I still think we would expect to see off-blockchain value transfer manifest itself on-blockchain, in much the same way that buy and sell pressure at a single off-blockchain service flows throughout the entire ecosystem. If an off-blockchain service did somehow manage to become an "island" and transact increasing amounts of value without any of the growth showing up on-blockchain… it would be bad for bitcoin on a number of levels._

\--

 _the rise of cloud players like Coinbase means that a lot (and I 'd think probably most) of the Bitcoin transactions taking place these days are off- chain._

It's ironic that you so often see these comments forecasting how in the future most bitcoin activity will occur in these single authority corrals, or 'cloud players' as you call them. It's really no different from saying "Most people using bitcoin in the future, won't actually be using bitcoin."

So it raises the question of, if the future of using bitcoin is not actually using bitcoin, what is the future of bitcoin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the article... "Taking these three charts together, the relatively static USD transaction value per day metric in 2014 appears to be the result of the falling market price of bitcoin being offset by increased transaction volume."

...and then...

"Perhaps this is all just a coincidence, but it appears that 2014 was a year of relatively static demand for transacting value through bitcoin. Static demand implies that either 1) the number of people using bitcoin to transact value has been relatively stable, or 2) the number of people in the ecosystem using bitcoin to transact value is growing but offset by churn/decreased usage by other participants."

Am I being slow here? The graph showed the number of daily transactions was increasing over 2014, yet the conclusion being reached is that the demand for usage of Bitcoin is static. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but from where I'm currently standing it doesn't make sense.

One thing that needs to be understood about Bitcoin usage is that the transactions are not always for whole Bitcoins, it's increasingly common to see trades for fractions of a Bitcoin. The protocol explicitly allows this... [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_divisible_are_bitcoins.3F](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_divisible_are_bitcoins.3F)

If trades of fractions of a Bitcoin are being made frequently, then it does not mean there is a demand problem, but rather that prices are readjusting.

<comment><USER9> The transaction volume has gone up, but the value of a bitcoin (in USD) has gone down, so the total volume (not in bitcoin but in USD) is about the same.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I understand that, my issue is with the term "static demand". To me static demand implies that there is not growth in usage if Bitcoin as a currency, yet the opposite is true. Its price compared to USD is immaterial. Imagine a well used traditional state-led currency, traded with increased fluidity within that country, despite being devalued on currency exchanges. The internal demand has gone up, foreign exchange is of secondary concern, prices will continue to fluctuate as the market matures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Taking these three charts together, the relatively static USD transaction value per day metric in 2014 appears to be the result of the falling market price of bitcoin being offset by increased transaction volume._

This touches dangerously on correlation-implying-causation.

<comment><USER11> Read it again, I think it's just math. If there is a certain amount of transaction volume, at a certain bitcoin value in USD, that just adds up to a certain USD transaction value per day, right?

<comment><USER12> At first I agreed with you, and thought the author only wrote 'appears to be' to hedge their sentence, because they didn't think it through 100% to be sure of their reasoning.

But consider: does the sentence read exactly the same if we rewrite it as,

>Taking these three charts together, the relatively static USD transaction value per day metric in 2014 appears to be the result of the increase in transaction volume being offset by a falling market price of bitcoin.

Not at all!! So the author really is saying something that implies a causative effect: the price is falling, so people how need a certain transaction amount (in real terms) will transfer more.

This makes perfect sense when you consider the authors follow-on sentences.

So absolutely, the author is making a causal relationship. The author even justifies it (pretty well in my opinion.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not sure how I'm supposed to take this seriously when the author doesn't use logarithmic graphs.

If you look at a non-logarithmic graph of money and try to draw conclusions from it you will draw the _wrong_ conclusions. It's inevitable, it's just how humans perceive graphs.

If you want to avoid this common error, use a logarithmic graph. The fact that the author did not points to a lacuna in his knowledge, and such a lack makes me wonder about the rest of his writing.

It's just such a _basic_ error.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure I follow. Isn't one supposed to select a scale which allows the compiled data to be clearly and informatively expressed? And doesn't the data compiled so far fit comfortably on a linear scale?

Would you recommend using a logarithmic graph because you expect Bitcoin use to increase exponentially? In that case, wouldn't the use of a logarithmic scale at this point imply a direct belief in the future of Bitcoin use?

<comment><USER15> > Would you recommend using a logarithmic graph because you expect Bitcoin use > to increase exponentially? In that case, wouldn't the use of a logarithmic > scale at this point imply a direct belief in the future of Bitcoin use?

This is pretty much it exactly, and why the whole "OMG log graphs!!!" thing pops up in finance only when you're talking about Bitcoin and its alts.

Though even then I can't figure out why, you only would want log graphs for exponential growth or decay, which isn't something we're seeing out of Bitcoin except for a brief period of tulipmania.

<comment><USER13> No, that's not correct in the slightest.

> pops up in finance only when you're talking about Bitcoin

If you are looking at linear stock value graphs you are being mislead. If you want to make correct decisions based on graphs they must be logarithmic (except percent graphs). Any stock trader that uses linear graphs will lose his shirt. (And I am well aware that the default stock graphs are all linear.)

> you only would want log graphs for exponential growth or decay

No, that's not correct (for the common meaning of exponential meaning "huge"). You want a logarithmic graph anytime the future value of something depends on the present value (i.e. the mathematical meaning). Which is most of the time. Most things in the world, the amount you have today influences how much you will have tomorrow.

It's actually rare to want a linear graph. You only want that when how much you have tomorrow has nothing to do with today.

So population should be logarithmic (the more people you have the more will be born), but infant mortality per capita should be linear (future levels of infant mortality do not depend on how many died in the past).

<comment><USER12> ars, I think the position you're taking is a bit strong. The author expressed the relationship between transaction volume and price, to reach a certain daily transaction amount: this implies he's perfectly aware that the relationship isn't linear (a move to twice the transactions at half the price is the same movement, irrespective of the price you're asking at - even though it looks like a larger swing if the basis is larger). But the fact that the shape doesn't show this as nicely as the shape you'd like does, doesn't mean that we can't follow the author's reasoning. Why not drop him a line by email explaining that his post would benefit from logarithmic graphs, since htey show the relationships he's discussing better.

<comment><USER13> > Why not drop him a line by email

I wanted to, but the site has no place for comments and no info on how to reach him.

His conclusion at the end is that the total dollar volume is approximately flat, and he bases this on the graph, but it's not completely flat - it's bumpy, so you can't actually tell on a linear graph if it's flat or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://blockchain.info/address/1ABn5L14hXXJ9RowWEpUcsDc8HXq...](https://blockchain.info/address/1ABn5L14hXXJ9RowWEpUcsDc8HXqHXFre6)

If you look at that and click on the destination, then do the same again you'll see someone pushing out 10s of thousands of very small transactions per day across the network. They do the same thing pretty much every day I've checked(the above is an old link since its the only one I had handy).

The days I've checked though these sorts of things have accounted for 30-50% of transaction volume.

They are odd not just because of the volume of transactions but the size of them and the fact that they pay a fee for every one. Ideally for the amounts and frequency they would be grouping many outputs into a single transaction to save on fees.

I think its safe you ignore transaction volume for the near future and recent past while this is going on unless you start accounting for it.

<comment><USER17> A few weeks ago I made a script to look for transaction chains like this in the blockchain, and it turned out they have been going on every day since mid-2010. Currently they account for 20-25% of tx volume but the percentage was much higher in the past (up to 50-60% for some days in 2012). For most of 2014 it was about 15%.

I'm not sure what the sender of these transactions is doing (trying to inflate tx volume? some badly written software?strange mixing algorithm?) though even if you discard those transactions from analysis it doesn't change the overall picture much.

<comment><USER18> They're just a wallet that's making lots of small payments. You're looking at a change address that gets used once.

I'm not sure why these sorts of transactions would be considered ignorable. If you have a large bank balance and most of your payments are for groceries, does that somehow make those payments irrelevant?

<comment><USER17> I'm talking about particularly large chains of transactions (like hundreds or even thousands of transactions within the same day, often with most of them included in just a few blocks).

If they actually need to pay to that many different addresses it would be far superior to make a single tx with multiple outputs.

My first theory was that someone is trying to inflate tx volume and the simplest idea they came up was scripting the Bitcoin client to make thousands of small payments in a row.

<comment><USER19> It can be just a popular service (hence the high number of transactions) with a standard wallet implementation, ie. one transaction per withdrawal. Yes this is inefficient, but I dont see a reason why to automatically assume that this is an effort to inflate transaction volumes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fred Wilson posted better adoption metrics which are a more accurate (and more impressive) record of how Bitcoin is doing: [http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin- adoption-metrics/](http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/) It is smarter to look at these than at merely the number of transactions.

<comment><USER16> So many vanity metrics though.

Coinbase and blockchain publish wallet numbers which is used here and is another useless.

When they start publishing MAU I'll be impressed until then I'll just see wallets as a vanity number that is always going up.

Number of uniquely used addresses is being inflated by actions like the one I post about above.

Merchants and Merchants annual revenue are again vanity metrics. Merchants like wallets above does not accurately reflect current demand(go look up every story of people trying to travel using coinmap and finding almost all the merchants listed no longer accept bitcoin). Merchants annual revenue inflates the importance of companies like Overstock and Dish.

If VC investment was a good metric to follow we'd all be using Flooz and Beenz.

Hashrate has more to do with the improvements in ASIC miners than growth in usage/adoption.

And number of bitcoin repos is silly since everyone in the bitcoin space wants to be a bitcoin developer so the number of vanity repos is astounding.

<comment><USER20> Are you denying all these metrics as a whole, and implying that Bitcoin's usage is either stagnating or declining?? You can't be serious, can you?

<comment><USER16> >Are you denying all these metrics as a whole

I'm denying the ones I've commented on are important.

>implying that Bitcoin's usage is either stagnating or declining

I think it is but thats not what I'm implying. I'm implying that people heavily invested in bitcoin tend to use vanity metrics like this.

That said the things I look at that make me believe bitcoin is stagnating/declining are things like the continued slide of the price over the year, Bitcoin Black Friday 2014 being a huge failure, Overstock missing their bitcoin sales expectations by 17 million dollars. Basically every vendor I've seen comment on sales has said there have been pretty much none this year. The fact that 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and there has been no breakout in the general public. Everyone seems vaguely aware of bitcoin but no one is investing any time in learning anything about it because it solves problems that most people don't care about(freedom) and creates problems they do(security).

Now I just see people in the community rallying around remittance and the killer app that will save bitcoin but the actual transfer of funds isn't the expensive part of remittance the compliance around the transfer of funds is and the existing services that do remittance cheaper using bitcoin only work now because they are ignoring compliance completely. They will either get more expensive or be shut down in the near future.

<comment><USER21> > Bitcoin Black Friday 2014 being a huge failure

No, BBF 2014 was a huge success: "we saw an 82% increase in the number of merchants who completed transactions compared to last year's BBF", "Both Gyft and NewEgg experienced their best day of bitcoin sales ever" \- [http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black- friday-2014-...](http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black- friday-2014-recap.html)

> every vendor I've seen comment on sales has said there have been pretty much > none this year

You are wrong, which is why you quote no source. 2014 was the best year ever for bitcoin sales. See the BBF numbers above. CheapAir recently passed $1.5 million in bitcoin sales ([http://www.coindesk.com/cheapair-litecoin-dogecoin- flights/](http://www.coindesk.com/cheapair-litecoin-dogecoin-flights/)). Newegg, although they quote no numbers, was sufficiently pleased with their Bitcoin sales that they decided to accept them in Canada in August. Same thing for Overstock who decided to expand bitcoin acceptance to their international market.

> Bitcoin solves problems that most people don't care about(freedom) and > creates problems they do(security).

Bitcoin solves a lot more than that. You must not be very familiar with it. I will give you 2 basic examples. The most important problem that Bitcoin solves is fraud: a merchant who receives a payment in bitcoins can be _assured_ it won't be "charged back" or "cancelled" due to fraud, because Bitcoin payements are cryptographically irreversible. So once a merchant receives a payment in Bitcoin, the product or service can be shipped or executed ASAP with no risk of fraud. And conversely, Bitcoin solves the problem of financial theft for customers: if Joe Schmo decides to pay a trusted merchant like Dell in bitcoins (as opposed to using a credit card) he can be assured that if Dell is hit by hackers who steal CC data, they won't be able to financially steal from Joe, because the payment he made in bitcoins authorized cryptographically a certain amount of coins to be transferred, nothing more. Whereas if Joe had given his credit card information to Dell, hackers would have been able to initiate any number of other transactions.

Now, I do recognize that Bitcoin is not automatically easy and secure to use. But there are plenty of smart people working to make this happen: cryptographic 2-party escrow to deal with untrusted merchants (which is superior to 3-way escrows used by the traditional financial system: removing the third-party escrow simplifies the trust model), hardware wallets to deal with wallet security, etc.

> the actual transfer of funds isn't the expensive part of remittance the > compliance around the transfer of funds is

That's false. Compliance in the financial industry is mostly automated: it is just software checks like who sends what to who, and data logging/retaining records. The most expensive part of the business is the requirement to have physical presence --offices and employees-- to deal with the need to be able to handle cash deposits and withdrawals. Bitcoin services make this cheaper because they don't need physical presence. [https://www.sendbitcoin.mx](https://www.sendbitcoin.mx) for example accepts deposit by sending coins to their service, and they rely on the ATM network of an established bank for withdrawals. They are cheaper than Western Union for the same reason why simple.com is cheaper than traditional banks: they don't have physical presence.

<comment><USER16> >No, BBF 2014 was a huge success

Notice they changed the metric from the number of sales to the number of merchants? Because it was a huge flop.

>"Both Gyft and NewEgg experienced their best day of bitcoin sales ever"

Congrats to those two companies. That doesn't change the fact that the event was a flop.

>You are wrong, which is why you quote no source.

I quote no source because I'm too lazy to go search through the /r/bitcoin posts. Go search for accepting/started/etc then contact the merchants and see what they say. Better yet search for "no sales" or similar, search for complaints about coinmap they generally revolve around a store not receiving any sales, getting rid of bitcoin and having the user be stuck. Or look at Adafruit.

>CheapAir recently passed $1.5 million in bitcoin sales

It's been over a year since they started taking bitcoin we have no indication if they are seeing growth or shrinkage in sales with just one figure.

>Newegg, although they quote no numbers

Enough said.

>Same thing for Overstock who decided to expand bitcoin acceptance to their international market.

This being the same Overstock that recently announced they missed their bitcoin target by $17 million dollars? Overstock is helpful in that they release their figures regularly so you can plot the decline in sales on a chart easily.

>The most important problem that Bitcoin solves is fraud

It solves fraud for merchants by removing consumer protections. Merchants having no fraud doesn't matter if no one uses it because they don't want to get screwed over by merchants. (Look at all the complaints related to Tigerdirect and bitcoin orders).

>And conversely, Bitcoin solves the problem of financial theft for customers: if Joe Schmo decides to pay a trusted merchant like Dell in bitcoins

Note the trusted part? What about all the millions of other merchants online? Or do you expect everyone to centralize into a few trusted retailers? Besides that there are plenty of trusted merchants who make mistakes sometimes that require charge backs. With bitcoin you're out of luck.

>he can be assured that if Dell is hit by hackers who steal CC data, they won't be able to financially steal from Joe

If they steal his CC data he can be sure they won't be able to financially steal from him either since he is insured against loss by his credit card company.

Unfortunately for Joe he isn't a security expert and his odds of losing money due to accidentally installing a coin stealing virus are way higher than the odds of him losing money due to Visa not accepting his fraud claim.

>cryptographic 2-party escrow to deal with untrusted merchants

A new one appears every few months at which point I post the reason they don't work and the developer moves on.

>The most expensive part of the business is the requirement to have physical presence --offices and employees-- to deal with the need to be able to handle cash deposits and withdrawals

That is another very expensive part of it. It's required because you're often dealing with the unbanked who can't just have an exchange deposit money in their account. Again bitcoin doesn't solve this problem.

>Bitcoin services make this cheaper because they don't need physical presence. [https://www.sendbitcoin.mx](https://www.sendbitcoin.mx) for example accepts deposit by sending coins to their service, and they rely on the ATM network of an established bank for withdrawals.

They do actually need a physical presence to compete with the services that have a physical presence. There are a lot of people who can't receive a bank transfer.

Sendbitcoin.mx will not be around for long once the bank they utilize finds out they are using their service for remittance because they are avoiding all regulations which make remittance to MX expensive. If it was so easy to do remittance using the ATMs surely the bank that owns the network would be doing it by themselves and raking in the money.

<comment><USER21> > Notice they changed the metric from the number of sales to the number of > merchants? Because it was a huge flop.

Most likely they quoted this number because 10 or 20 or 30% "increased sales" sounded less impressive. It doesn't really matter. The reality is that there are 82% more merchants who completed sales than last year, so no it was not a huge flop. By the way you still fail at providing any data why it was a "huge flop". Second time I have called you on this, and second time you ignore me. Burying your head in the sand saying something does not make that thing a reality.

> I quote no source because I'm too lazy

You quote no source because you have no source.

I am confident you are able to find some anecdotes on /r/bitcoin from a few mom-and-pop shops disappointed by their bitcoin sales this year. But anecdotes are not data. Data is the "+82%" number I reported above.

> This being the same Overstock that recently announced they missed their > bitcoin target by $17 million dollars? Overstock is helpful in that they > release their figures regularly so you can plot the decline in sales on a > chart easily.

Their sales are not declining anymore. They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day for the last 3 months: [http://www.coindesk.com/overstocks-2014-bitcoin-sales- miss-p...](http://www.coindesk.com/overstocks-2014-bitcoin-sales-miss- projections-3-million/) But I am sure you will ignore this piece of so called "data" and continue shouting around that "overstock sales are declining!!!!1!!one"

> Merchants having no fraud doesn't matter if no one uses it

"if no one uses it" -> that's the thing, people actually use Bitcoin, and pay with it: Newegg, CheapAir, Overstock, etc. So it really does matter to such merchants that Bitcoin removes the risk of fraud.

> Note the trusted part?

That's precisely my point: most sales are performed with trusted merchants. It is OK for a payment system to not provide the consumer protections of credit cards. That's why cash works. You go to a restaurant and pay cash because you don't care about giving up the ability to contest the charge: you trust the restaurant. For the same reason, when I go to a local restaurant accepting bitcoins, I have no qualms paying in bitcoins. There are SOME transactions for which Bitcoin does not work well out of the box, like paying an untrusted online merchant without escrow, but that's OK. Bitcoin doesn't have to satisfy 100% of use cases to be successful. You seem to see Bitcoin as binary: it has to be perfect or it can't work at all. But you are wrong. It is just like cash or credit cards: they don't work in 100% of use cases either (can't send cash online, my CC can't be used when I encounter the 3rd merchant of the day who only takes Visa/Mastercard but not my Amex), yet they are successful payment systems.

> Besides that there are plenty of trusted merchants who make mistakes > sometimes that require charge backs. With bitcoin you're out of luck.

I chuckled at this. Obviously you are unfamiliar with how it's done. The standard way of doing a "charge back" in Bitcoin is to ask the customer to provide a refund address. Easy peasy :)

> If they steal his CC data he can be sure they won't be able to financially > steal from him either since he is insured against loss by his credit card > company.

You completely ignored what I said: despite not losing money, it can be a tremendous annoyance and hassle to cancel and replace a CC, with the incident affecting your credit score, etc. These are real problems, real annoyances, NOT solved by credit cards. Bitcoin fixes that.

> Unfortunately for Joe he isn't a security expert and his odds of losing > money due to accidentally installing a coin stealing virus are way higher > than the odds of him losing money due to Visa not accepting his fraud claim.

Second time you completely ignored what I said: yes security is hard, but hardware wallets are improving security. You can't deny this.

> A new one appears every few months at which point I post the reason they > don't work and the developer moves on.

They do work (I have used one). Please enlighten us.

> That is another very expensive part of it. It's required because you're > often dealing with the unbanked who can't just have an exchange deposit > money in their account. Again bitcoin doesn't solve this problem.

Wrong. My example (sendbitcoin.mx) absolutely does work with the unbanked. The recipient does not need a bank account.

> They do actually need a physical presence to compete with the services that > have a physical presence. There are a lot of people who can't receive a bank > transfer.

Wrong. As I explained, my example (sendbitcoin.mx) does not need physical presence, as they rely on an existing bank ATM network, even if you don't have a bank account.

> If it was so easy to do remittance using the ATMs surely the bank that owns > the network would be doing it by themselves and raking in the money.

Banks don't do it for the same reason large companies often fail to innovate compared to small agile startups: inertia, redtape, etc.

<comment><USER16> >By the way you still fail at providing any data why it was a "huge flop"

Fewer transactions and lower volume than last year. Multiple vendors on /r/bitcoin claiming little to no volume either compared to last year.

>I am confident you are able to find some anecdotes on /r/bitcoin from a few mom-and-pop shops disappointed by their bitcoin sales this year. But anecdotes are not data. Data is the "+82%" number I reported above.

Right so reports from multiple vendors about lackluster sales are anecdotes. A vanity number like 82% increase with no indication of the size of the transactions, etc is data. How about the fact that bitpay has been claiming the 1m a day in transactions now for over half a year? How about that for no growth?

>Their sales are not declining anymore. They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day for the last 3 months

That is a decline

Here are the figures from their releases so far

Jan 10 - 130K Jan 11-29 - $26K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average

Now they are claiming $7000 a day. Given that the $7200 * the number of days left in the year = $3m I'm guessing we'll see that $3m number change again when they actually release their financials.

>That's why cash works. You go to a restaurant and pay cash because you don't care about giving up the ability to contest the charge: you trust the restaurant

Cash works like this because you are physically present with the merchant when you use it so you can validate immediately if you are getting ripped off or not.

>Bitcoin doesn't have to satisfy 100% of use cases to be successful.

Right but it has to satisfy enough common ones to convince users to make the additional effort to acquire it. It's not doing that.

>I chuckled at this. Obviously you are unfamiliar with how it's done. The standard way of doing a "charge back" in Bitcoin is to ask the customer to provide a refund address. Easy peasy :)

Yes that explains why there are no scams in bitcoin at all. And there were no complaints about Tigerdirect fulfillment related to bitcoin orders.

>You completely ignored what I said: despite not losing money, it can be a tremendous annoyance and hassle to cancel and replace a CC, with the incident affecting your credit score, etc. These are real problems, real annoyances, NOT solved by credit cards. Bitcoin fixes that.

But it's not a tremendous hassle. You call the bank tell them the card was stolen(or they detect it) list any transactions you didn't make and the money is refunded and a new card is posted. There are a handful of cases where it is more difficult than that. Do you have examples of it affecting credit scores?

>Second time you completely ignored what I said: yes security is hard, but hardware wallets are improving security. You can't deny this.

Walk me through the steps to buying and putting bitcoin on your hardware wallet that wouldn't be compromised by the user having a virus on their computer that targeted bitcoin.

>They do work (I have used one). Please enlighten us

Which one have you used and I'll tell you how to abuse it.

>Wrong. As I explained, my example (sendbitcoin.mx) does not need physical presence, as they rely on an existing bank ATM network, even if you don't have a bank account.

That is a physical presence. The fact that they are using someone elses physical presence doesn't mean they don't need one. It means they are using someone elses locations to subsidize their own. Companies tend to not like that which is why I would put money on sendbitcoin.mx being shut down within the next 6 months.

>Banks don't do it for the same reason large companies often fail to innovate compared to small agile startups: inertia, redtape, etc.

Actually there were a lot of banks doing the US->MX remittance up until a few years ago when regulations and compliance got to be way too expensive for it to be profitable.

<comment><USER21> > Fewer transactions and lower volume than last year.

Again, for the 4th(!) time, you have no data proving this.

> Multiple vendors on /r/bitcoin claiming little to no volume either compared > to last year.

A few anecdotes != reliable statistics

> Right so reports from multiple vendors about lackluster sales are anecdotes.

Yes. Your "multiple vendors" probably means "less than a dozen vendors", which is insignificant given there are tens of thousands of vendors in the world accepting Bitcoin.

> How about the fact that bitpay has been claiming the 1m a day in > transactions now for over half a year? How about that for no growth?

Ha! Now you change your claim. You talked earlier about a significant reduction, a "huge flop". Now you claim stagnation, no growth. That's very different.

> Here are the figures from their releases so far > Jan 10 - 130K Jan 11-29 - > $26K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average > Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average > Now they are > claiming $7000 a day. Given that the $7200 * the number of days left in the > year = $3m I'm guessing we'll see that $3m number change again when they > actually release their financials.

Sales were declining, but not anymore, not since September, not since the last 3 months. That is exactly what I claimed, and nothing more. I said: "They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day FOR THE LAST 3 MONTHS" (emphasis mine).

> Cash works like this because you are physically present with the merchant > when you use it so you can validate immediately if you are getting ripped > off or not.

Exactly, and I am glad to see you acknowledge that Bitcoin's lack of CC-like consumer protections is a total non-problem in such scenarios. You made it sound like such protections were absolutely necessary, at all time, or else Bitcoin can never work!!!!!1!one

> Right but it has to satisfy enough common ones to convince users to make the > additional effort to acquire it. It's not doing that.

Yes, and I think you will agree that "reducing fraud to zero for merchants" is a pretty major use case given that fraud is a huge problem for merchants online. As well as "being able to pay a trusted merchant online while guaranteeing not having a CC number that can be stolen" since financial theft is becoming more and more frequent.

> Yes that explains why there are no scams in bitcoin at all. And there were > no complaints about Tigerdirect fulfillment related to bitcoin orders.

Technological problems from one merchant's deployment of Bitcoin is hardly a sign that "OMG Bitcoin totally doesn't work and will never be adopted" as you make it seem to be. For every customer who experiences one issue paying/getting a refund in Bitcoin, there are many more customers who do so without any problem.

> But it's not a tremendous hassle. You call the bank tell them the card was > stolen(or they detect it) list any transactions you didn't make and the > money is refunded and a new card is posted. There are a handful of cases > where it is more difficult than that. Do you have examples of it affecting > credit scores?

Obviously, whether it is a tremendous or a minor hassle is a matter of personal experience, and a matter of how much of your life depends on credit cards. But my point is: it can be a tremendous hassle, and credit cards do not automatically make a theft a non-issue. Some examples of major hassles: having you card stolen and having to cancel it during a vacation away from home. After a theft you have to re-configure all automatic periodic payments that were due to be processed on the CC. You forgot to give the new CC number to your cloud service provider? Oops they can suddenly shut down your instances at 3am with little to no notice. Your wife had set up some other random online service paid through the CC, but you were not aware of it? Oops her online account will be closed as fraudulent and it will take multiple phone calls and emails to the support department to get it re-opened. The CC thief's actions lead to some negative events added to you credit history? Oops good luck spending multiple WEEKS contacting the credit scoring agencies indepedentently to get your records cleaned up, and submit the proper documentation to prove it was all due to a theft.

Bottom line: you know how some Bitcoin fanboys blatantly ignore its kinks? Well you are guilty of the same thing when you blatantly and childishly ignore the kinks of credit cards when they are stolen and have to be replaced.

> Walk me through the steps to buying and putting bitcoin on your hardware > wallet that wouldn't be compromised by the user having a virus on their > computer that targeted bitcoin.

You mean the same computer where the virus will also steal the CC number that the user enters on a website when making a payement? Hmm? How does this virus scenario demonstrates that credit cards are safer? If the user cancels the first CC, gets a second one, what prevents the virus from stealing the second CC number at the next purchase? CCs don't solve this virus problem at all.

However I can envision scenarios where Bitcoin hardware wallets actually solve this virus problem. The simplest one is: you could buy a pre-loaded cheap disposable wallet (maybe in the form factor of a credit card) hence completely skipping the virus-ladden PC.

> Which one have you used and I'll tell you how to abuse it.

I used casascius's Bitcoin Address Utility. It has a self-escrow (two-party escrow) functionality which is not user-friendly, but the it is cryptographically well implemented and very secure.

> That is a physical presence. The fact that they are using someone elses > physical presence doesn't mean they don't need one. It means they are using > someone elses locations to subsidize their own. Companies tend to not like > that which is why I would put money on sendbitcoin.mx being shut down within > the next 6 months.

We shall see.

<comment><USER16> >Again, for the 4th(!) time, you have no data proving this.

Go forth and compare [https://blockchain.info/charts](https://blockchain.info/charts) ignoring that the fact that they didn't mention sales at all is a pretty good indication.

>A few anecdotes != reliable statistics

A random statement about a random metric does not indicate growth

>Yes. Your "multiple vendors" probably means "less than a dozen vendors", which is insignificant given there are tens of thousands of vendors in the world accepting Bitcoin.

There are 10s of thousands of bitpay/coinbase accounts. That doesn't meant they are all still accepting bitcoin.

>Ha! Now you change your claim. You talked earlier about a significant reduction, a "huge flop". Now you claim stagnation, no growth. That's very different.

No change just another data point.

>Sales were declining, but not anymore, not since September, not since the last 3 months. That is exactly what I claimed, and nothing more. I said: "They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day FOR THE LAST 3 MONTHS" (emphasis mine).

And given they change their numbers reported every few months I don't believe for a second it has stabilized. I'll wait for their year end.

>Exactly, and I am glad to see you acknowledge that Bitcoin's lack of CC-like consumer protections is a total non-problem in such scenarios. You made it sound like such protections were absolutely necessary, at all time, or else Bitcoin can never work!!!!!1!one

Yes, in face to face transactions bitcoin would be a good solution if cash wasn't already easier.

>Yes, and I think you will agree that "reducing fraud to zero for merchants" is a pretty major use case given that fraud is a huge problem for merchants online. As well as "being able to pay a trusted merchant online while guaranteeing not having a CC number that can be stolen" since financial theft is becoming more and more frequent.

The problem is consumers aren't willing to give up their customer protections to improve the rate of fraud for merchants. All the merchants in the world could accept bitcoin and that fact won't change. Why would you be willing to increase your own fraud window just to decrease the merchants?

>Technological problems from one merchant's deployment of Bitcoin is hardly a sign that "OMG Bitcoin totally doesn't work and will never be adopted" as you make it seem to be. For every customer who experiences one issue paying/getting a refund in Bitcoin, there are many more customers who do so without any problem.

I didn't say that. I said that they were a trusted merchant and they repeatedly screwed up. And the customers had no easy recourse like they'd have with credit cards.

>Some examples of major hassles: having you card stolen and having to cancel it during a vacation away from home.

What happens if you lose your phone/laptop while on vacation with bitcoin?

>After a theft you have to re-configure all automatic periodic payments that were due to be processed on the CC. You forgot to give the new CC number to your cloud service provider? Oops they can suddenly shut down your instances at 3am with little to no notice. Your wife had set up some other random online service paid through the CC, but you were not aware of it?

Given that bitcoin doesn't allow for automatic pull payments you have to remember all your accounts and manually pay them every month anyhow. This isn't an improvement.

>Oops her online account will be closed as fraudulent and it will take multiple phone calls and emails to the support department to get it re-opened.

Bullshit. No company is going to do this without contacting you and fraudulent? Seriously what world do you live in. This would never happen.

>The CC thief's actions lead to some negative events added to you credit history? Oops good luck spending multiple WEEKS contacting the credit scoring agencies indepedentently to get your records cleaned up, and submit the proper documentation to prove it was all due to a theft.

Notice you haven't shown a single example of any of this? Because it is fantasy.

>You mean the same computer where the virus will also steal the CC number that the user enters on a website when making a payement? Hmm? How does this virus scenario demonstrates that credit cards are safer? If the user cancels the first CC, gets a second one, what prevents the virus from stealing the second CC number at the next purchase? CCs don't solve this virus problem at all.

If a virus steals my CC details and spends on them I get the money back in my account. Does that happen now with bitcoin that I'm not aware of or do you lose your money for good?

It is not the same thing so I ask again. Can you walk me through those steps or do you admit you cannot do it easily?

>I used casascius's Bitcoin Address Utility. It has a self-escrow (two-party escrow) functionality which is not user-friendly, but the it is cryptographically well implemented and very secure.

What happens if we set up the transaction and I don't send you anything? Your funds are now trapped at no cost to me.

<comment><USER21> > Go forth and compare > [https://blockchain.info/charts](https://blockchain.info/charts) ignoring > that the fact that they didn't mention sales at all is a pretty good > indication.

These charts do NOT show Bitcoin Black Friday sales, but all worldwide Bitcoin transactions. But even assuming they showed BBF sales, they prove you wrong, as they show a nice increase over time: [https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding- popu...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding- popular?showDataPoints=false&timespan=2year&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=)

So for the 5th(!!) time: you have no data proving sales went down.

> A random statement about a random metric does not indicate growth

The OP gave not 1 but 10 metrics showing growth: [http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption- metrics/](http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/) You discarded some of them as "vanity metrics", but regardless, that's better than the how many metrics you gave that presumably showed a decrease of Bitcoin's adoption? Oh yeah, zero.

> There are 10s of thousands of bitpay/coinbase accounts. That doesn't meant > they are all still accepting bitcoin.

Wrong. There are _millions_ of wallet accounts on bitpay/coinbase (see [http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption- metrics/](http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/)). Out of them, there are 10s of thousands of vendors accepting Bitcoin. These are widely accepted numbers. No one debates them.

So the "multiple vendors" (less than a dozen) you claim who saw fewer sales on BBF 2014 than on BBF 2013 are a completely insignificant number compared to 10s of thousand, or 10 thousand, or even 1 thousand.

> And given they change their numbers reported every few months I don't > believe for a second it has stabilized. I'll wait for their year end.

Sales vary from month to month, so the numbers reported vary from month to month. Shocking!

> Yes, in face to face transactions bitcoin would be a good solution if cash > wasn't already easier.

Except Bitcoin can be easier/faster/more secure than paying in cash. Ever seen how annoying it is to split a restaurant bill with multiple people when no one has the right amount of change? You can always transfer the exact amount with Bitcoin. Ever been waiting at the cashier's line when a guy in front of you is wasting time looking for the exact change to pay the cashier? A Bitcoin hardware wallet could pay in an instant with an NFC tap. Ever had a wallet full of cash stolen? A Bitcoin hardware wallet could be PIN-protected and could have a backup at home.

> The problem is consumers aren't willing to give up their customer > protections to improve the rate of fraud for merchants. All the merchants in > the world could accept bitcoin and that fact won't change. Why would you be > willing to increase your own fraud window just to decrease the merchants?

You assume that customers who pay in bitcoins had to "give up" credit cards. This isn't necessarily true. Bitcoin opens up new markets for customers who didn't even have the ability to use a credit card before. For example Overstock couldn't sell in many countries because these countries weren't supported by their credit card processors. But accepting Bitcoin lets Overstock sell in any country in the world. So customers in some random country are now happy to see a new option to shop at that just didn't exist before.

Also, I think there are quite a few reasons why customers would be willing to give up the credit card protections. For starters, some merchants offer Bitcoin discounts, like Air Baltic who removes a 5.99 euro fee when paying in Bitcoin ([https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtWPJVvCMAAPgzG.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtWPJVvCMAAPgzG.jpg)). Other merchants can waive the 2-3% fee that credit card processors usually charge. Other merchants don't take credit cards when the amount is less than a certain amount. And in other cases, the customer might want to NOT give his CC number because he does not want to risk it having stolen (read any of the numerous stories of restaurant waiters cloning and skimming customer's cards: [http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Dave-Busters- Waitress-A...](http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Dave-Busters-Waitress- Arrested-Skimming-Customers-Credit-Card-250705311.html)) You cannot deny that these are all very good and valid reasons for preferring paying in bitcoins.

> I didn't say that. I said that they were a trusted merchant and they > repeatedly screwed up. And the customers had no easy recourse like they'd > have with credit cards.

Everything I read indicates they screwed up by mistake, not by malice.

> What happens if you lose your phone/laptop while on vacation with bitcoin?

Bitcoin hardware wallets can be PIN-protected and backed up.

> Given that bitcoin doesn't allow for automatic pull payments you have to > remember all your accounts and manually pay them every month anyhow. This > isn't an improvement.

More and more hosted wallets let you set up recurring payments.

> Bullshit. No company is going to do this without contacting you and > fraudulent? Seriously what world do you live in. This would never happen.

Yes it does happen.

> Notice you haven't shown a single example of any of this? Because it is > fantasy.

Yes it can happen. A friend of mine had a credit card that she was not using anymore that was stolen. The only reason she noticed the theft is because one day she was looking to get a car loan. The financing company ran a credit report, and it ended up returning a credit score lower than what my friend expected. The report showed that one of the factors that lead to a negative score was listed as "AMOUNT OWED ON DELINQUENT ACCOUNTS". The detailed history showed that a thief used the stolen credit card for an expensive purchase a few months back. My friend never received the credit card bill because she had moved and never updated her billing address on her credit card account (so the bill presumably went to her old address). So she thought she had a zero balance on this credit card, but in fact a high balance was due for multiple months which lead her account to be tagged as delinquent. It took her about 3 months of phone calls and writing letters to get this sorted out, and get her credit history fixed up.

I have no way to prove it, but I swear this is a true story. I wish people like you would stop clamoring how amazing the consumer protection feature of credit cards are, because although they work well in some cases, there are stills tons of scenarios where financial theft causes majors hassles and annoyances that credit cards DON'T solve.

You don't even have to look very far for other fraud problems that credit cards don't solve. Heck, with most credit card issuers, if you happen to catch a fraudulent payment made more than 60 days ago, you typically don't have any recourse because it's too late to file a claim...

> If a virus steals my CC details and spends on them I get the money back in > my account.

But the attacker still has your CC details and if you file a claim for a fraudulent charge, the attacker can place other ones, as many times as he wants. So you have to keep cancelling fraudulent charges all the time. After a point you get sick of it and cancel and replace your CC. But the virus will steal again the replacement credit card number, hereby making it impossible to use ANY credit card on this virus-infected computer. The attacker will in effect have permanent authorization to spend your credit card funds, until you remove the virus or until you stop using this virus-infected PC for internet purchases. So for the 2nd time: how will credit cards somehow solve magically this virus problem? They can't!

> Does that happen now with bitcoin that I'm not aware of or do you lose your > money for good?

Bitcoin can completely solve this virus problem, with proper processes and wallets: have the private addresses stored on the hardware wallet (inaccessible by the virus), and verify the payment address by an out of band mechanism. For example if you suspect the PC where you were about to complete the purchase may be infected by a virus, use a smartphone or another PC to verify the payment address the merchant wants you to send the bitcoins to. If both show the same address, send the transaction from the hardware wallet. So the ECDSA-signed transaction exits the wallet, and the virus will have no chance to steal the bitcoins as it would involve modifying the transaction bytes and breaking the signature.

> What happens if we set up the transaction and I don't send you anything? > Your funds are now trapped at no cost to me.

But you have no financial incentive to do this. History shows that malicious economic actors in the VAST MAJORITY of the cases act maliciously to gain something from it, not just for the hell of it. Therefore this two-party escrow system works well enough in almost all cases, except in the 0.001% of cases where a malicious actor acts maliciously just for the hell of it. And, as I said earlier, Bitcoin doesn't have to solve everything to be successful, it just has to satisfy the majority of use cases. Remember that our discussion about escrow systems started by talking about how to deal with untrusted merchants. That's exactly a case that would be solved by this two-party crypto escrow system. A malicous merchant doesn't set up an online shop with fake items, and go through all this effort just to lock bitcoins up in the ether. A malicious merchant wants to make financial gains, and this two-party crypto escrow prevents him from being profitable running such a scam.

PS: Merry christmas!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The curious rise of the 'white left' as a Chinese internet insult - <AUTHOR> https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/chenchen-zhang/curious-rise-of-white-left-as-chinese-internet-insult <comment><USER2> Consider an average American liberal. He or she consumes more energy and generates more entropy than an entire African village, yet she believes in the virtues of environmentalism. He or she is a heavy consumer of goods and services of multinational corps, and yet a great believer in artisanal consumption. He or she has lived all her life in pampered comfort and safety, and does not believe in war, famine, rape, slavery, dictatorships, in false assumption that they will never happen again, because the world is what she's seen, not what it is.

<comment><USER3> sounds like you did a pretty scientific study of liberals. come on, mudil - you can do better than such weak stereotyping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quote from article:

'Although the emphasis varies, baizuo is used generally to describe those who "only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment" and "have no sense of real problems in the real world"; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to "satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority"; they are "obsessed with political correctness" to the extent that they "tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism"; they believe in the welfare state that "benefits only the idle and the free riders"; they are the "ignorant and arrogant westerners" who "pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours".'

</comment><comment><USER5> China has an extremely large expat community which stays in close contact with the mainland trough social media. Their view of the occidental left is mainly based on the gossip about it from the expat community, and such gossip is usually very negative considering how the two cultures are at odds.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like communist propaganda is alive and well in China.</comment>


Uploading Gone in a Flash with Flash 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/flash-10-uploading-swfupload

<comment><USER2> Please note this is only a problem if you're trying to prompt the upload from outside of Flash, or without a user action to cause the prompt to appear.

For Flex applications that have an upload button, for example, this should not be an issue. As long as the upload prompt is called from within a user- generated event (i.e. the user actually clicked on something, which raised an event, which ended up arriving at your code), this will not interfere.

Also, this has been well-known for some time.

<comment><USER3> Good to know. Our Rails app uses a Flex uploader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for posting this–this is actually huge for us because we use Flash- based bulk upload tools in all our apps.

<comment><USER4> Us too. You might be interested in this work though: <http://swfupload.org/forum/generaldiscussion/790?page=1>

Another reason we use this - we use PHP, so we'd also have to use Ruby or Perl to do progress bars.

<comment><USER3> Ah, nice. We use SWFupload in our PHP apps and a different Flex uploader in our Rails app. Not sure if the Flex uploader is affected by Flash 10. I'll have to check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The new YUI release now includes a flash uploader that works with Flash 10.

Can be used in two ways: Either you configure a sprite that the flash uses to show the button, and the user clicks on the flash button, or the flash inserts itself as a transparent overlay on top of the existing upload button.

Works well, though getting express install to work with the YUI script takes a bit of hacking...

</comment><comment><USER6> Does this impact the FileReference object which we use for uploading?</comment>


The disproving technique of lateral thinking: brainstorming big ideas - <AUTHOR> https://founderpanel.com/articles/full/the-disproving-technique-of-ideation <comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested to see if anyone can think of some good inverted scenarios and post them here - I just came up with a couple on the fly for this article, but I want to start keeping a list just for these.</comment>


Visa: The Undocumented Security Problem Inside Intel - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/03/29/visa-the-undocumented-security-problem-inside-intel-what-you-need-to-know/ <comment><USER2> The article title is actually:

      VISA: The Undocumented Security Problem Inside Intel -- What You Need To Know

And in this usage, VISA is actually an initialism, and so should not be made mixed case.</comment>


Technical overview of how 3d displays work - <AUTHOR> http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~gf/Research/Volumetric%20UI/3-D%20Displays%20A%20review%20of%20current%20technologies.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, this appears to have originally been published in _Displays_ 17(2): 100-110 [1997], though the technology has barely changed (in particular, the no-glasses 3d technologies that the article discusses as still in development, are still in development today).</comment>