Ask HN: Is your employer paying for your new office space, your home? - <AUTHOR> Since the beginning of the pandemic some of us have seen some of our economic perks disappear, in some cases these were a significant part of our income. The main reasoning in many companies is that we are not using the company office so we don't get the company perks.<p>But we are in fact using a new office, that many of us have had to isolate from the rest of the family and house, effectively removing this useful space from our homes. Is your company paying part of your rent to compensate for it? <comment><USER2> My company is paying for any necessary equipment people need to work, but that's about it. I can't really imagine most companies compensating you for you working at home itself though for a few reasons.

1) Many companies are doing pay cuts. They're not going to pay you for something like this if your base salary isn't even what it should be. It's time to be saving money. Companies are trying to limit spending wherever possible.

2) Most companies are assuming that not everyone is even going to work their regular amount due to children, and other duties. I don't particularly expect people to be compensated more for working at home when it's possible people can't do their job as effectively as before.

3) A lot of companies don't even pay you for commuting time or other similar commitments that are required for getting into work. If they did pay for that, then you would actually be getting a pay cut for working from home since that's time saved.

4) Plenty of companies that already hire people to work remotely, do not pay them more because they don't work in an office. That said, they may pay for your internet since it's considered essential for you to do your job, especially if your role requires decent internet (eg software dev/operations/on-call rotations).

These are just a few reasons of the top of my head.

<comment><USER3> Those are good reasons. To add to that:

1) Companies are still paying for office space right now, even though people aren't using it. If they reduce their physical spaces in the future, the capital will likely go into hiring more people, which I'd rather see.

2) It's tricky from an accounting perspective, though I like the one-time stipend idea mentioned in the comments here.

3) Not having a commute saves time AND a lot of money, I've personally spent a few hundred dollars upgrading my desk / accessories to get comfy, but saved many times that on commuting and misc expenses.

4) Adding to the above, there are many things that companies generally aren't expected to pay for, like wardrobe, transportation, food, cell phone, etc. It seems like home office falls into that bucket as well based on precedent. Maybe that will change, but I don't have any expectations that it will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm genuinely curious what economic perks have disappeared that were a significant part of people's income?

I consider free food a perk, but it is not income. I consider income to be monetary compensation. So I'm curious what kind of monetary compensation perks people had that disappeared.

Myself I am spending a lot less money than before when I had to drive into work everyday. I spent usually 70-90 minutes each day driving and the cost of fuel. For me it has been a net positive on the economic side for me working from home.

Do I miss free soda and snacks? Yep! I'll admit I'm starting to get tired of only eating food we prepare ourselves. So I'm looking forward to doing some more takeout in the future and hopefully actual sit-down dining at some point.

</comment><comment><USER5> 5 yrs ago, I got a loaded iMac 27 with extra monitor plus up to $200/month for internet and phone expenses, but I never exceed $100 on both. They've also reimbursed my headset and office chair.

My company has been the most generous I've seen so far, and we were a small, 40 person company, now 64. I'm grateful for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> My company won't even let us take home a keyboard from the office, let alone actually pay for anything. So I'm working entirely from the one thing they did let me take home - my laptop. Productivity loss from only having one tiny screen and a bad keyboard is noticeable but as I've told my boss "I haven't got any monitors or a desk at home".

</comment><comment><USER7> I am finding it increasingly ironic how WFH is no longer being perceived as the panacea of productivity and happiness that it once was.

I've been doing WFH for 5 years now. The amount of money you are saving by WFH full-time, assuming you properly leverage the opportunity (i.e. cooking own meals and multitasking chores), far outweighs any paltry notion that could be provided in recompense for you dutifully enshrining a guest bedroom as your employment zone.

I am also pretty sure they aren't paying you for those rounds of Overwatch you sneak in between PR review requests. But, they also can't tell you are doing that, so it seems to work out OK.

<comment><USER8> > I am finding it increasingly ironic how WFH is no longer being perceived as > the panacea of productivity and happiness that it once was.

Forced WFH is very different from planned WFH. There are quite a list of things you might not have with Forced WFH, that isn't an issue with planned WFH, because it's, well, planned:

* a dedicated "work" space, be it a room, a desk you can convert, or even a desk at all. The couch/bed/random chair will have to do. You just can't buy it either if you are living in a small appartment.

* childcare (if applies). Though luck for single parents.

* reliable internet connection, or an internet connection at all.

* reliable phone line , or the capability to use a phone at all (dead zones are still a thing).

* organizational structure to support remote work, including working communication tools

Note: every single item applies to at least a coworker (small team of 10 persons) or my close family.

<comment> em-bee a single parent wouldn't be able to work in an office without childcare either, so working at home would not change that.

<comment><USER9> I believe a lot of single parents had this covered by school, the current variant of forced WFH in a lot of countries has an added bonus of "school from home" which does change the childcare situation quite a lot.

<comment> em-bee right, the current situation is of course extra difficult for single parents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the US, deducting home office expenses are often a trigger for an audit, and can cause problems when it's time to sell the house. If your employer is paying for some of it, things could get really messy with regards to ownership. Consult a tax expert or CPA.

<comment><USER11> You can't deduct home office if you're full time employee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No. I've seen companies offering up to $1,000 to buy products for their home office. I haven't seen any companies offer rent subsidies. Anyone else?

<comment><USER13> Same. Companies pay for headphones, webcams, chairs, even internet, but not rent.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that what your salary is for?

<comment><USER15> If my home is my work place, then no (unless you're a contractor of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My company is still keeping me employed. Sounds good enough in my book

</comment><comment> a-saleh On the bright side: * no pay-cuts, all the benefits are still there * the mandate to have at most one day W.F.H. a week will probably be relaxed even after this is over * we have one time allowance of a low-ish sum to get some gear sent home (mostly would cover keyboards/mice/headphones) * managers are fine to approve more * everybody is understanding of the lower productivity

On the less positive: * no monitors? * we still pay for the big empty office * paying for rent is not really an option?

</comment><comment><USER17> Current employer basically offers no perks apart from paying salary, which I reckon is a neatly decoupled way to structure life. BYO lunch, BYO social life, BYO health insurance (largely covered by public system). Employer offers salary in exchange for services, as an exchange that does fine.

Employer gave everyone a bit less than AUD 100 as one off bonus to help cover home office supplies (which is then taxed).

In Australia, can claim AUD 0.80 / hr as tax deductible working from home running expenses at end of financial year -- this is federal government tax office policy, independent of company policy. [https://www.ato.gov.au/general/covid-19/support-for- individu...](https://www.ato.gov.au/general/covid-19/support-for-individuals- and-employees/employees-working-from-home/)

One small downside is that I can no longer drink the mediocre free coffee at work. But can instead make my own coffee at home, which is more enjoyable (better coffee + better ritual). Costs me about AUD 0.26 in beans and AUD 0.06 in electricity to produce each 1L french press payload of black coffee, so cost is negligible.

Don't have to lose 1.5 hours of my life commuting to work and back every day, don't have to sit in noisy shared office environment where we don't even have fixed desks. On the whole working from home is a massive net win. My working from home setup is sub-optimal (small apartment, little space) but that said home is a lot better than the office and I don't want to ever go back!

Compared to other sectors of the economy or other employment situations where low-paid workers who are already vulnerable are laid off, no longer have any income, and have experience in industries that are approximately dead (tourism, hospitality) absolutely nothing to complain about at all. Still have a job, still have regular income, no drama.

</comment><comment><USER18> In NZ there was announcement companies can pay something like $10 USD a week for employees using home office.

Personally I expense 1/3rd of my housing costs as home office - totally normal practice here.

I think that's one of the bigger benefits of self-employed + remote deal. It's a pity regular employee expenses benefit employer only.

<comment><USER19> In the UK you can claim a small tax allowance if you have to work from home - [https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at- home](https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My house is not an office. It will never be one. It is my home if they pay, they will decide what to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER21> My company is paying $ 200 if someone wants to buy something to help with home office setup. On top of that, we are allowed to take equipments from office in case feasible. IMO, one of the reason that company doesn't want to spend more is saving cash in tough market.

</comment><comment><USER22> My employer has been encouraging WFH for a while but mandated it for half our office before government requirement (didn't want everyone in key teams sick at the same time). We have been allowed to buy a monitor and have been supplied with a new laptop; we can also borrow any of the kit we need for the duration (I have borrowed an additional monitor). I moved house last year and chose one within walking distance to work and with an office (personal computer is also there). Tax authority allows tax-free compensation if employer requires WFH but that might complicated tax when house selling.

</comment><comment><USER23> No. We are not even allowed to bring a monitor home temporarily during this phase. Explicitly forbidden to take any kind of working equipment.

So I guess we're expected to work in the 15" laptop? No wonder productivity goes down.

<comment><USER15> It's not only productivity that goes down, but one's health if one's not careful.

Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been working from home for two years. My employer hasn't paid for anything in my home office. I have company issued computers and monitors (nothing amazing), the same ones I was using when we still had an office, but that's it.

Honestly, my expenses besides that have been minimal. I bought a new office chair once on my own dime, but that's pretty much it. I'm still using a long card table for a desk that I've had for probably a decade now. Internet costs I was already paying for anyway.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm positive that tax law would get in the way of such a scheme.

<comment><USER11> Can you tell me more about how tax law would get in the way? Self-employed can take a "home office" deduction on their taxes. Full time workers can as well, but its slightly more complicated.

[https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/deduct-home- office-v2/](https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/deduct-home-office-v2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My company will not pay you. They will allow you to buy common equipment through their supplier and have it shipped to your house, obviously after manager approval.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not paying for rent, no, but we have been issued a one-time bonus (100 USD I think) for whatever you need.

I think it's indeed a valid question. I am sympathetic to small businesses that can't afford such expenses, but I went from my amazingly ergonomic setup to sitting on a chair that doesn't provide proper back support, using a non- adjustable desk where my keyboard doesn't even fit.

I am worried about my posture and health.

<comment><USER27> >I am worried about my posture and health.

If this is a concern may I ask why this wasn't dealt with at all before covid19? I'm guessing but think it is fair to say you've probably used your desk & chair prior to this WFH covid19 but that same setup existed then as it does today.

<comment><USER28> They probably didn't come home and sit in it for hours on end each day.

Myself, I've been WFH for 6 years and have a nice setup in a detached garage/office. But once schools shut down, I had to migrate back into the house, sitting the dining room table in order to also take care of the kid during the workday. After a month, the old 2nd-hand kitchen chair I was sitting on actually broke, so I brought in my desk chair. By the end of the second month I accepted that this was going to be much more permanent and I ended up purchasing a new desk and chair for inside the house, much smaller than what's out in my office, but usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I expensed a large monitor, but that's about as much my company has offered to pay. I'd love to purchase a proper desk for myself while my spouse uses the other desk we have, but I don't have a lot of space for it, and honestly feel my employer should foot the bill, not me.

</comment><comment><USER30> We have a generous hardware budget. Some people have used it for home office stuff but most choose to just buy it with their own money so they can keep it if they were to leave or use it outside work.

Some people get noise cancelling headphones or monitors with their budget.

</comment><comment><USER31> No, they just gave us a Laptop and a docking station.

</comment><comment><USER32> My employer gave everyone in the company a one-time $500 stipend, no questions asked.

</comment><comment> 0-_-0 Why would you have to isolate from the rest of the family and house?

<comment><USER33> Have you tried to work with several kids running around? You can't just have your laptop on your living room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yep, I'm getting up to $50 total for office supplies.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some "healthy" startups in the Columbus, OH area? - <AUTHOR>

Would also be interested in any trusted resources for this sort of search! Thanks :) <comment><USER2> [https://www.crunchbase.com/search](https://www.crunchbase.com/search) (change location to Columbus on the left)</comment>


Google's App Aesthetic - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2014/11/googles_app_aesthetic <comment><USER2> The reason Google's app's look Android-y on iOS is on purpose, Google want iOS users to become familiar with Android apps and android design so if they consider switching, it is less foreign, if they pick up a friends Android, the visual cues are somewhat already ingrained.

A friend picked up my Windows Phone a few months ago and was having a play. He instantly got how it worked, and in the apps he said "yeah, I really like how this works like the skype app on my iPhone, it's really cool". He hadn't made the connection that Skype is owned by Microsoft and the design was consistent across Microsoft mobile apps and devices.</comment>


Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems <comment><USER4> Stepping back for a moment, this thorough debunking of Reinhart and Rogoff's flawed paper means that now there is NO evidence that government debt exceeding 90% of GDP somehow negatively impacts growth.

Let me repeat that: there is NO EVIDENCE that more government debt causes slower economic growth -- just theories.

I wonder what all the government deficit scaremongers will say to this!

\--

PS. For reference, the often-cited paper by Reinhart and Rogoff can be downloaded at <http://www.nber.org/papers/w15639.pdf> and the new paper debunking it can be downloaded at [http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/worki...](http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_301-350/WP322.pdf)

\--

PS#2. An Excel typo was partly to blame for Reinhart and Rogoff's errors! Reminds me of the Excel typo that allowed the "London Whale" silently to rack up billions of dollars in unexpected losses at JP Morgan: [http://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of- exc...](http://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/)

<comment><USER5> There may not be empirical evidence for the magical 90% level, but we don't need empirical evidence to know that at some point interest payments will require highter tax revenues which will reduce disposable income and hence consumption.

Obviously someone is on the receiving end of those repayments, but if that someone is not putting money in the pockets of those same taxpayers and instead decides to finance a power plant in Thailand then GDP will inevitably suffer.

I'm not a government deficit scaremonger by any means. I think Krugman's (and others') argument that the U.S. government can borrow very cheaply and should therefore act in a countercyclical manner for the common good is plausible. I'm also convinced that the crowding out argument is bogus in an economy that suffers from too little demand whilst corporations are sitting on tons of cash.

But we should not lose sight of the fact that interest rates are a highly psychological affair. Once trust in the ability to repay debt gets eroded things can get out of control very quickly. So we should be scared at least a little bit.

That said, the U.S is probably the one entity on this planet that is furthest away from that point. Even Japan with it's 245% debt/GDP ratio can borrow at 0.5% for 10 years whilst their currency is crashing and the central bank is announcing a massive QE program twice the size of the U.S one.

But if the U.S ever gets to the point where Japan is now, that's when I'm starting read up on agriculture or the hunter-gatherer diet.

<comment><USER6> There's obviously some point where having too much debt is bad, but if we go back to the classical "country as household" oversimplistic analogy, I doubt you'd find evidence that people who have mortgages over some magic value relative to their income suddenly start getting smaller annual raises.

<comment><USER7> I prefer we not go back to any oversimplistic analogies. That's part of what makes these debates so insufferable. A nation's economy isn't a household budget. A company isn't a person. A nation isn't a person.

I don't really see much value in someone's axiomatic understanding of all of economics premised on the belief that they are smarter than people who study economics (even if they are; probably they are!). I'd much prefer to hear from someone who is less smart, but who admits the subject is too complex for them to fully understand and who can be bothered to go out and actually attempt to measure something (rather than telling me what it must be).

I guess I'm saying I think I can learn more from an honest person than a smart one. Now I'm questioning why I am wasting my time reading hacker news again.

<comment><USER8> You don't read HN for nuanced and broadly-informed economics perspectives.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I often find myself wishing there were an "Economist Hacker News" of sorts.

EJMR is the closest thing to HN for economists, and it's trash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is The Reinhart-Rogoff Result Based On A Simple Spreadsheet Error?

Oh my goodness, no. That's the least of it. They took all Commonwealth countries, found the periods where they had over 90% debt-to-GDP ratio, and EQUAL WEIGHTED them regardless of length or country.

I won't do a better job of explaining this than the article: "U.K. has 19 years (1946-1964) above 90 percent debt-to-GDP with an average 2.4 percent growth rate. New Zealand has one year in their sample above 90 percent debt- to-GDP with a growth rate of -7.6. These two numbers, 2.4 and -7.6 percent, are given equal weight in the final calculation, as they average the countries equally."

Wow.

<comment><USER11> That _in addition_ to the Excel error, this is just stupidity. I can't believe it got as far as it did, except that certain groups really wanted to believe its conclusions, even though they were false.

<comment><USER10> Yup.

They also subjectively ignored the post-WW2 period for most countries; coincidentally when countries had high debt and grew like crazy.

I bet that if you started with the desired results in mind for a study like this, you could create a list of variables to try and pick the combination that maximizes your metric.

Then provide a post-hoc justification for each choice.

For example: * debt-to-gdp 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%

* Ignore years after ww2 (the war was an externality)

* Don't ignore years after ww2 (why would we? they're years.)

* Ignore years after ww2 for countries that got aid from US (removing an externality)

* Ignore years after ww2 for countries that did not get aid from US (most countries did, don't want to mix the sample)

* Ignore years after ww2 for countries that were in the European theater (removing an externality)

* Ignore years after ww2 for countries that were not in the European theater (not affected by war like rest of globe)

* Ignore years after any war (externality)

* Weigh by population of country at time of study (lazy way to account for size of industry)

* Weigh by population of country by year (better way to accounts for size of industry)

* Equal weight for all countries (easy to explain)

* For each country, take periods of high debt-to-gdp and compare against periods without high debt-to-gdp; then compare countries equally (easy to explain-ish)

* Take each period of consecutive years with a high debt-to-gdp ratio and call each period one sample point. Average these inequal-length points together and compare against all years of low debt-to-gdp (Come on! Nobody would believe-- oh no.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This actually isn't news. Questions have already been raised as this paper was never peer reviewed [1] (Jan 2013), which states:

> According to their C.V.s [2], it's been published in the May 2010 issue of > the American Economic Review, which is a special non-reviewed "papers and > proceedings" issue.

So I really don't know why anyone listened to this in the first place other than it furthered their pre-existing political agenda.

This is why any paper should be _required_ to release:

\- the _raw_ data supporting it;

\- the assumptions, exclusions and weightings made to produce the final data; and

\- any code used for a model.

All of these issues are particularly problematic when it comes to climate science.

[1]: [http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/no-90-percent-debt- thre...](http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/no-90-percent-debt-threshold- hasnt-been-proven)

[2]: <http://www.carmenreinhart.com/c.v./cv-in-pdf/>

<comment><USER13> " _This actually isn't news_ "

This is news. "We can't replicate" a landmark study (yes, it was an intercontinental landmark study) is very different from "we have found the specific errors that make this study faulty".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wait -- so apparently it's acceptable in economics to publish big important papers with broad-reaching public policy implications without releasing the data on which the paper was based? That would never fly in the sciences.

<comment><USER15> > That would never fly in the sciences.

Or would it?

[http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/mcintyre- grl...](http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/mcintyre-grl-2005.pdf)

Regardless of what side you come down on w.r.t. this particular issue (and I realize it's a sensitive one), the fact that global policy was influenced by a paper that used secret, _buggy_ Fortran code to manipulate a data set is extremely concerning. This is not good science.

Publishing data _and_ source code should be a requirement these days.

<comment><USER16> I don't think it matters what side you take; the study you link to has long been debunked.

<http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm>

<comment><USER17> There is no serious rebuttal or debunking of Mcintyre contained within that post. Even if we ignore the details of that specific controversy, it is still obvious that there are

1) big problems in the climate science community with regard to data and replicability (see climateaudit for more than you could ever want)

2) massive statistical problems with reconstructions. See Mcshane and Wyner 2011.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The most incredible and depressing aspect of this is that it will have no impact whatsoever on policy makers, leaders or their supporters.

Can anyone imagine Paul Ryan or Cameron/Osborne coming out and admitting their policies are based on nothing more than gut feelings unsupported by anything? What about the countless pundits who've spent years squawking about austerity? The notion is laughable.

<comment><USER19> Worse than that: the people who like a Ryan and his type actually respect gut feelings _better_ than wonky data.

<comment><USER20> With the computation, they still find 0-30 debt/GDP, 4.2% growth; 30-60, 3.1 %; 60-90, 3.2%,; 90-120, 2.4% and over 120, 1.6%

I wonder what you'll conclude with that data.

<comment><USER19> Why the ad hominem, bob13579?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting to note that one of the authors of the original paper, Ken Rogan, was the chief economist at the IMF 2001-2003. He also joined the group of 30 in 2008, an economic policy organization that is very influential in things like the Basel accords, IMF governance and matters of finance in Brussels.

Many of these organizations rely on private data to support their policy decisions, or rely on private analysis from similar organizations. That's hard to criticize because at least some of it would cause serious harm to the folks who provided it, or enable high finance players to front run policy actions to huge profit.

But what to make of an insider like that refusing to release data that had no market risk or legal restrictions in place. It's not hard to imagine that his primary goal was support of an economic philosophy and would have been just as happy to publish a paper that claimed high debt/gdp rations promote growth.

It certainly makes me wonder if this kind of approach is part of the culture in some of these policy and international finance organizations. If the data relied on by the IMF/ECB/etc as they've effectively reformed governments and imposed major budget changes can't be made public, then you're highly reliant on them to be ethical and extremely diligent.

If there's any significant amount of philosophy trumping science in the european restructuring, one begins to wonder if some of the weaker euro members are still actual democracies.

</comment><comment><USER22> I see a lot of comments here to the effect that this means debt is a free lunch now. Would that it were so - we could get rid of taxes, as well as Medicare and Social Security withholding. And nix the Obamacare penalty. And, of course, buy everyone a pony.

Sadly, ponies are a finite resource until such time as the government figures out how to print more of them. Debt still has a multiplier less than 1 - <USER2> less, for large amounts of debt.

All this article means is the magic number where debt starts to cause deep hurting is somewhere above 90% of GDP.

</comment><comment><USER23> Serious question - not trolling. Even if increasing the deficit does not affect GDP (and I'm in no position to even comment on whether or not I think it does) - how is that sustainable? I mean, AFAIK the argument behind increasing government spending is as simple as "it solves problems" - <USER3> provides help to those in need, affects the economy, etc. But why won't this at some point collapse? And if it will at some point collapse, why do we think politics will allow the government to behave any differently as we near that time? So again - serious question - I fail to see how we can expect government spending to grow without eventually consuming 100% of everyone's income or collapsing entirely (and I understand that many people may consider the former a good thing).

edit: And this may be because I don't know where the money comes from to begin with. If I keep getting bigger and bigger loans and there's no way my income will allow me to pay these loands back in the foreseeable future, then won't everyone just cease doing business with me at some point? Does "debt" in a government context act differently, and if so, why?

<comment><USER24> Some historical notes:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png>

The US national debt during WWII was around 120% of GDP. In the years that followed, that ratio fell to below 40%. However, we didn't appreciably pay off our debts, the real dollar amount stayed a little over $2 trillion. We accomplished this feat, of course, by substantially increasing the GDP. It is easy to realize that it is fine for debt to continuously grow, so long as the GDP grows faster.

Also, the only president to entirely pay off the national debt, Andrew Jackson, triggered one of the deepest depressions in US history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This surprises me - Reinhart and Rogoff are both very well respected economists, and neither is a culture warrior type - they've published enough (Including "This Time Its Different", a great book to understand the history of financial crises) that I almost wonder if there's more to this than meets the eye at first glance. I realize the first tendency is to "burn the witch", but I'd like to learn more.

<comment><USER26> "both very well respected economists"

Not any more. This is a career killer. I wouldn't be surprised to see them accepting posts with the American Enterprise Institute or Cato in short order.

EDIT: also, Barry Ritholtz is generally perceived as an honest broker on these things, and his commentary is here: [http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/04/did- reinhart-rogoff-scr...](http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/04/did-reinhart- rogoff-screw-up-their-debt-research/)

<comment><USER25> I realize most of HN is left-of-center, but Cato in particular is not fluff. Specifically on the two, Rogoff was Chief Economist of the IMF (I spent a summer interning when he was there), and no one considers either of these economists as crazy-right wing types (the IMF, by American political standards, is probably a centrist Democratic type, even if it does make some very stupid calls for austerity from time to time).

There's always room for disagreement because economics is the dismal science (as one famous line put it, Harry Truman wanted to find a one-handed economist - so they wouldn't always answer "X could happen, on the other hand, Y could happen), and answers aren't as binary as they sometimes are in the hard sciences. I'm curious to see what Rogoff and Reinhart respond to this with.

Edit: thanks for the Ritholz piece - hadn't seen that. I certainly am not claiming that there's no mistake - I just want to see what the defendants in this have to say, so to speak.

<comment><USER26> I wasn't casting aspersions on their previous credentials, but if anything that magnifies the seriousness of this situation. It looks a lot like unethical cherry picking of data (the 'coding error' is really of secondary importance to me).

I know economics can be considered on the transition from hard to soft sciences, and even within the field you have very soft-science schools like the Austrians to very quantitative approaches like 'freshwater'. But that doesn't seem to apply here. Maybe if they added caveats to their methodology it would have been different.

I'm also not dismissing Cato or AEP out of hand, but nobody can deny that they are partisan think tanks. Their primary purpose is to provide cover for policy proposals, not original research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Debt and growth are obviously separate entities that are hard to correlate. Intuitively it makes sense that debt doesn't inherently slow growth, and could even speed growth.

Reducing the problem to a personal level, you borrow money to buy a good car which enables you to work a higher paying job. This scenario makes the case that debt causes growth. From a policy standpoint if you borrow money for long term infrastructure and growth opportunities you could easily see debt as a net positive.

OTOH, you run up your credit cards to buy a better TVs or to buy 'friends'. In this instance debt can only lead to eventual poverty and ruin.

Which type of spending do you think is happening more often at a federal level?

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't it more plausible that public debt is caused by government deficit spending, which causes economic growth, but a temporary kind of growth that is only as good as the government's ability to continue spending?

<comment><USER29> Well, that assumes the non-existence of "multipliers". The concept of a multiplier is that if a government debt-spends on something, some of the effects will be able to continue on their own power and contribute to economic growth after the government spending stops. That would be economic growth that wouldn't happen if the debt-spending didn't happen.

It's also sort of the heart of Keynesianism. The counterpoint is the more intuitive certainty that if times are tough, everyone should tighten their belts, including the government. That's sort of what drives the austerity efforts.

<comment><USER28> Is there evidence for or against the existence of multipliers? Sorry if this is a basic question.

<comment><USER29> That's the crux of the entire debate. There arguably is plenty of evidence of multipliers, but the problem is that when your lab is the entire society, there's no counterfactual - there's no control group. So you can never quite say that in the absence of the debt spending, the multiplier effect wouldn't have happened.

Anti-keynesians (hayekians?) point this out regularly and like to say that the burden of proof is on the keynesians, which will of course be impossible for the keynesians to ever prove. So that's where they get their handhold on arguing against keynesian theory. (Note I'm only a hobbyist with this stuff so my explanations may be way off - this is just my own sense of it.)

Now, there's something to be said for sometimes accepting something that is not potentially provably false. I think Darwinian evolution is an example of something that is not a strictly technical theory, but there's been such a body of experimentation over the years that you pretty much have to accept it as fact anyway.

And there's work done in modern Causality about how to tease out causality from correlation in the absence of counterfactuals. I've been trying to struggle through a causality textbook by Judea Pearl but it's really weird advanced stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Dropping back the frame for a bit - Jeff Sachs is on EconTalk this week, and he says what ( IMO ) should be the idea under scrutiny - employment prospects for people without college degrees have declined quite a bit since 1973. The present relatively high debt/deficit load was a result of an attempt to trade debt/deficits for higher employment using a ... somewhat intentionally-blown housing bubble. It didn't work. Something mysterious is "regulating employment down" in the system, and we don't seem to have a good handle on it. Tyler Cowen has posited a weakish "zero marginal product worker" hypothesis that does not seem to be easily decidable. Sachs' idea is that this has been developing since about 1973 and we haven't addressed it yet, and that this failure is a failure grounded in weaknesses of social science itself.

I can't find a more evenhanded and clear statement of the problem than his.

</comment><comment><USER31> > _In a new paper, "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? > A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert > Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst successfully replicate > the results. After trying to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results and > failing, they reached out to Reinhart and Rogoff and they were willing to > share their data spreadhseet. This allowed Herndon et al. to see how how > Reinhart and Rogoff's data was constructed._

What's amazing to me is that no one, until the researchers spotlighted here, apparently thought to ask to see the data? Isn't this part of peer-review?

Things like this is why I love being part of the open-source community. People may brag about and diss each other's code performance to an unnecessary degree of hostility, but at least we can all check the code and run it for ourselves.

<comment><USER32> > Isn't this part of peer-review?

iirc, the paper wasn't published, let alone peer-reviewed. it was "discovered" and used as a justification by people who may or may not understand the deeper issues involved.

<comment><USER33> That's not true, it was published in the American Economic Review, which is apparently a very well-respected journal.

[http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?hs=1&fnd=s&doi=10...](http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?hs=1&fnd=s&doi=10.1257/aer.100.2.573)

<comment><USER34> I believe it was published in a section of the journal that does not require peer-review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Putting on my tinfoil hat, I wonder if this error was intentional or unintentional? Was the errant conclusion known to be false by any who propagated it? If so, by whom and to what end?

For example, perhaps the US and Euro governments wanted to justify some tough measures of fiscal restraint and increase public support, and they wanted to keep it from being delayed until collapse was impossible to avoid. (See, I'm not totally jaded. But I can think of plenty of worse scenarios too.)

The "flaws" seem to be too large (and some deliberate) to be unintentional, but maybe I give too much credit. I've just noticed too much misinformation being spread by those who should know better, and coincidentally seem to benefit the most from it. I'm suspending my judgement until I learn more, but anyone else have any insights?

</comment><comment><USER36> This article give a better explanation: [http://www.businessinsider.com/thomas-herndon-michael-ash- an...](http://www.businessinsider.com/thomas-herndon-michael-ash-and-robert- pollin-on-reinhart-and-rogoff-2013-4)

<comment><USER37> The source is actually:

[http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally- rep...](http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated- reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems)

and the paper (including the data and code files upon which the results are based!) is:

[http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04dea...](http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/publication/566/)

<comment><USER36> Thanks. I should have known better. I don't think Business Insider creates original content (well, they do create some, but not much).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Mainstream economics is centered around recommending policies that ensure bond-holders are paid. It all leads back to that. If there is too much debt destroying the underlying economy causing bond interest payers to default, lower rates. If rates go to zero, print money to pay the bondholders. If that causes inflation raise taxes and cut spending to pay the bondholders (a.k.a austerity), etc. The political economic dimension of the relationship between bondholders and the people who pay there interest is an important missing component from our understanding.

<comment><USER39> Hmm no, if there is inflation, enact a one time wealth tax and then cancel those money.

Also, you can print money to increase supply, this is what the Asian miracle is all about after all. Too bad they didn't print money to increase demand...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Randy Wray's view: [http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/04/17/no-rogoff- and-...](http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2013/04/17/no-rogoff-and-reinhart- this-time-is-different-sloppy-research-and-no-understanding-of-sovereign- currency/)

concluding paragraph makes so much sense:

"More than five decades ago, Abba Lerner gave the answer to this question. If there are involuntarily unemployed (we would add underemployed) people it means the deficit is too low. The government should either cut taxes or increase spending. It is certainly debatable which one is a better policy, but that's beyond the scope of this paper. When is the deficit too large? When it's over 3%, 7%, 10%? Again, there is no magic number and anyone who comes up with a universal number simply misunderstands the modern monetary regime and macroeconomics. In opposition to magic, Lerner proposed "functional finance"—the notion that the federal government's budgetary outcome is of no consequence by itself, but rather, what is important is the economic effects of government spending and taxing. When total spending in the economy, including government spending, is more than what the economy is able to produce when employed at full capacity, the government should either lower its spending or raise taxes. A failure to do so will lead to inflation. So inflation is the true limit to government spending not lack of financing. Government debt is merely the result of government deficit and hence the same applies to debt as well."

</comment><comment><USER41> Are we describing running the same formulae on the same numbers as 'replicating' these days?

Did real economists always consider these results provisional/dubious/bogus and the fact that they were used as the basis of policy is to the shame of our policy makers and press, or is the field of economics so messed up that research based on schoolboy errors can become the accepted view within the field?

</comment><comment><USER42> Other discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5559483>

</comment><comment><USER43> It seems clear to me that government debt in modern fiat-credit economies isn't really debt in the same sense that private debt is debt. It doesn't behave like private debt. I don't think debt is even the correct term for it. Maybe we need a new one.

</comment><comment><USER44> Where do I find the paper that links GDP to sustainability or quality of life? You can have a compulsive debt driven society and still have strong economic activity, no? Or is "economic growth" really an indicator of economic sustainability?

</comment><comment><USER45> Official response to the critique by Reinhart and Rogoff: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5560829>

</comment><comment><USER46> I think this is another example of why we must start with apriori approach to economics (and all learning for that matter) and only resort to posteriori methods as a secondary methodology. In this case we can prove logically that inflation reduces the investment capital available and that will always result in a decrease of production. If that is accepted arguing about how bad we can make something before X milestone seems a little less important.

</comment><comment><USER47> The point is: don't copy Europe's austerity disaster.

</comment><comment><USER48> _This is also good evidence for why you should release your data online, so it can be properly vetted_

Reinhart and Rogoff may reach exactly the opposite conclusion, given the embarrassing publicity. For me this is an illustration of why publishing just your conclusions without data (or code, or whatever details are germane to your field) is so common.

</comment><comment><USER49> They accidentially, the whole economy.

</comment><comment><USER40> Mike Norman called out the flaws in Reinhart and Rogoff a while back: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkKxN1H1P10&list=UUZhuQXt...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkKxN1H1P10&list=UUZhuQXtpH2dXeEAX_5MKGow&index=4)

</comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if this sort of error is less common in 2007+ thanks to the addition of tables.

<comment><USER51> As ernardom points out above (below? predict-o-karma where are you!), this involved much more intellectually serious errors than just the calculation bug. They both missed (or possibly cherry-picked) countries and misweighted them.

<comment><USER11> I would venture to guess that they'd be entirely incompetent at whatever software they attempted to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I enjoyed reading "This Time is Different" I think their discussions of debt has motivated us to look at this concept in more depth. Maybe we can improve on their crude excel spreadsheet analysis. Then someone should do it!

</comment><comment><USER53> > In fact, [the past] tells us that a larger deficit right now would help us > greatly.

That conclusion is quite a jump from Reinhart-Rogoff is flawed.

</comment><comment><USER54> Apparently economics is harder than chess.

</comment><comment><USER20> The correction actually bolsters the claim that more debt leads to lower growth.

0-30 debt/GDP, 4.2% growth; 30-60, 3.1 %; 60-90, 3.2%,; 90-120, 2.4% and over 120, 1.6%

<comment><USER55> there's a big difference between claiming that >90% debt leads to (slower) growth of 2.2% and claiming that it results in (negative) growth of -0.1%. In the first scenario, you don't grow as quickly as you'd like, in the second scenario your economy is actually shrinking and you're entering a death spiral.

<comment><USER20> You're setting up a straw man. That's not my argument. The argument is that the data bolsters the claim that more debt correlates with slower growth.

<comment><USER55> No I'm not. I know what your argument is, and it's disingenuous. It's like saying that you only have one pet in your apartment while glossing over the fact that the pet is an elephant.

Nobody disputes the idea that more debt can result in slower growth. But there's a huge difference between saying that growth with high debt levels has historically been about 2.2% (compared to a more desirable 3%+ with lower debt) and saying that high-debt-growth has been -0.1%. That's an error of 220% in the wrong direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Does economics have peer-review? Excel is tolerated in an academic journal?

<comment><USER57> What do you mean "Excel is tolerated in an academic journal?" Excel is a perfectly fine tool for doing all sorts of data analysis without knowing how to program. This same error could've been done in a "real" programming language just by messing up some subscripts.

<comment><USER58> It's good for doing one-time analyses, but hard to automate when you have many inputs that are updated as time passes, or if you need to feed the output of one spreadsheet into another.

Tangentially related: I've been thinking recently about how hard it would be to teach a real programming language to Excel users. They would already have some grasp of functions, arrays, and variables. I think the analogues might have some pedagogical value.

<comment><USER59> I teach a short session on moving analysis from Excel to SQL. Many power Excel users make the jump pretty smoothly. Once you get them thinking about a work flow moving from one table to another, they get it.

But we're talking here about some very bright people accustomed basically hacking the one thing they know to get results. It's a subset of "Excel users" generally.

<comment><USER60> Is this online anywhere? I'd be interested in checking it out.

<comment><USER59> No, but hit me at the email in my profile and I'll send you the deck. If you're in NYC I'll sit down with you.

<comment><USER60> Great, thanks! Though I'm not seeing an email in your profile.

<comment><USER59> Huh. I've filled the field, it doesn't display. Whatever.

It's my handle, at gmail.com</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Israel handles airport security - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother <comment><USER2> I have dual Israeli citizenship and have flown to and from Tel Aviv quite a few times.

* The line interviewers are smart people, and it's seen as a good first job after military service. In other places this might be seen as a dead-end or undesirable job.

* The atmosphere in Ben Gurion is very calm because everyone feels safe (or at least I do).

* The only time I've seen any mild panic was due to my (late) great-aunt. She was a neurosurgeon, but could be alarmingly absent-minded in daily life. She'd taken my sister and I to the airport for our flight back to London, back when we were both in our teens. For some reason, my great aunt had a kind of small suitcase on wheels with her that day, and when my sister and I stood in the queue, she left it next to us and went off to find the bathroom. The line moved forwards and the suitcase didn't. The security guards spotted this fact within about 30 seconds, and started asking whose the bag was. We didn't realise it was my aunt's, and after nobody claimed it they started ushering us all back and making radio calls. When my aunt came back we all got an earful from the security staff.

<comment><USER3> If you were an Israeli Arab, do you think you'd feel the same way about the situation at Ben Gurion?

<comment><USER2> What situation? The one where everyone flies safely?

You might get a bit more attention as an Israeli Arab, or as a foreign national, but the profiling is mostly behavioural. They might have a look through your things, but then again they they gave my dad's luggage a load of attention on a recent trip and he's an air force veteran.

It's also more or less impossible to distinguish (visually) Israeli Arabs and Sephardim/Mizrahim. You're not going to get hassle for having darker skin. I've got a hunch you haven't been to Ben Gurion or Israel, but if you did and had a hard time then that's a shame and I hope you have a better trip at some point in the future.

(And siculars I'm not an Israeli Arab, but valid question. I don't want to clog this place up by discussing politics, so I'm leaving it here.)

<comment><USER4> BS. Rebuttal follows.

The screeners have no problem distinguishing Israeli Arabs and Sephardic Jews. 30 seconds of conversation -- if not simpler cues such as clothing -- will resolve any ambiguity.

Israeli Arabs might not _always_ be hassled, but they are certainly lined up for "increased scrutiny" more often. A lot more often. I have enough friends who can attest to this experience.

I cannot count the number of times I've flown via TLV -- let's say that I've departed a few hundred times over the course of my life. How many times have I been taken aside for any kind of additional screening?

Zero. Never. Ever. Every time I have flown, I've received the abbreviated white-jew-boy questioning about my bags and whether they've been out of my sight. That's it. Nothing about me, ever. Obviously, they deem me to be inherently safe, else it would be wise to randomly subject me to extra screening once in a while.

Without getting into the advisability or ethics of racial profiling, we do it unabashedly in Israel, and that's a fact. Unlike the US, the threat profile is relatively narrow: Arabs and/or Muslims, and the one-time Japanese freelancers. Ergo, it makes practical sense to invest the majority of your screening resources in one place.

As harmless-looking, pasty-white, computer-geek Israeli Jews, we feel the touch of the security apparatus more lightly than everybody else. Don't let that fool you into thinking that everybody has it as good as we do.

<comment><USER2> Idan, I don't think you're really contradicting what I've written (especially with the Sephardic thing). I didn't deny that racial profiling took place at all, nor did I debate its merits or ethical status, I was asserting that it's not in any way the only factor. About your friends, it could be partly self- fulfilling. If they think they're going to be given extra treatment they might understandably act in a more nervous fasion, and as a result get flagged. However I'm just speculating here.

As a fellow pasty white computer geek I've had my bags looked at on a number of occasions and some equipment swabbed, same goes for relatives who live in Israel. A British-Asian friend of mine went on holiday to Israel this year and didn't get any hassle at the airport. This is all the data I have to go on. I'm not doubting your account at all, but neither is mine "BS".

(Anyway, didn't mean for that to sound so aggressive. Drop me an email and we can get a beer next time I visit and talk airports and code.)

<comment><USER5> As a brit I'd be more worried about them stealing my passport then giving me hassle directly :-)

(For those not aware: Israel got caught cloning passports of Brits travelling through their airports for identity theft purposes, despite the fact they had made an earlier promise not to do this again)

<comment><USER6> It beggars belief that the EU is allowing the transfer of it's citizens sensitive personal data there. [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1112/12242831...](http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1112/1224283152213.html)

<comment><USER7> Am I am saddened that I am no longer surprised that this is happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Article leaves out the very real and very big catch:

"Israel values its security, and pays for it. According to an analysis by Bloomberg News, Israel spends around 10 times more per passenger than the United States does."

A little more on that:

"[An analyst] estimated El Al's security bill at $100 million a year, which amounts to $76.92 per trip by its 1.3 million passengers. Half is paid by the Israeli government," Peter Robison wrote. The United States, in comparison, spent in 2008 $5.74 billion to monitor and protect 735,297,000 enplanements, or around $7.80 a passenger."

The TSA system is a production line - hire cheap unskilled labor, and train around a process and manuals.

In the USA the Israeli version would be very difficult in addition to very costly.

That doesn't even take into account the question of the uproar the system would cause with the suggestion of racial profiling.

References via:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFyfihM1e3G4&refer=politics)

and

[http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/07/would_you_pay...](http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/07/would_you_pay_25_for_71_seconds_of_scrutiny_in_an_airport)

<comment><USER9> I disagree on both counts.

1\. Costs: I think the value of preventing a terrorist attack greatly outweighs the $76/passenger cost of screening. Besides, it contributes a lot of value to the economy by (a) reducing the long lines we have in our airports today and (b) eliminating the unnecessary intrusive procedures

2\. Racial profiling: Behavioral profiling is not the same as racial profiling. Besides do you really think that the low-paid unskilled TSA workers don't currently do any racial profiling ?

<comment><USER10> Can I ask how are you comparing costs here?

76 dollars per passenger is an obscene amount of money: look at the dollar totals. In terms of lives saved, the TSA is already a gigantic waste of money. You could save a lot more lives per dollar by doing hundreds of other different things.

<comment><USER11> $77 per passenger is a huge amount, especially compared to the cost of a cheap domestic flight. But what is the hidden cost of the clusterfuck that American airports are becoming?

I would gladly pay an extra $38 per flight if it meant going through a sane, competent, and, if not pleasant, at least not overtly hostile system.

<comment><USER12> Why not even make it opt in?

Ticket price plus a 38 dollar "treat me like a human being" tax.

I'd pay it.

<comment><USER13> What has it come to when we have to pay more, just to be treated as humans?

<comment><USER14> Capitalism?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am a dual citizen (IL/USA), have flown in/out of many airports around the world, know my way around a security apparatus.

Every time the TSA pulls another ridiculous stunt in the name of "security", these Israeli airport security consultants get interviewed to death. Here we go again!

As before, every article on the subject stops short of highlighting the uncomfortable truth which precludes the TSA adopting the Israeli model: a lack of brainpower among TSA screeners.

The article correctly points out that the Israeli model is more about evaluating the person and less about evaluating their luggage. Problem is, evaluation implies good judgment -- a quality demonstrably lacking in enough TSA agents as to make a generalization accurate. The TSA does not employ the quality of manpower that it needs to in order to base its operations on subjective character evaluations.

Even if the TSA were able to foot the bill and hire/train such manpower, it would _still_ be unpalatable to enough people in the US that such a system would fail. Evaluation is inherently subjective and discriminatory. There is no impartial way to say "I'm deciding whether or not you represent a threat." Some agents will let their personal views influence their judgment. Some passengers will inevitably feel persecuted for their skin color, rightly or wrongly. Several lawsuits later, the system would be neutered to the point where agents are no longer free to exercise their judgment, and we're back to square one.

Finally, it's worth noting that the security expert in the article is spinning a rose-tinted tale of airport efficiency experienced mainly by Jewish passengers. Ask an Israeli Arab and you'll likely hear a tale of exasperating interrogations and adversarial, dumb agents -- much like the TSA.

I wrote more on the subject a few months ago, in a comment for a similar article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025173>

Feel free to ask me questions, I'll answer to the best of my knowledge.

<comment><USER4> Another way of looking at things: implementing the Israeli security approach in US airports is like trying to switch a large enterprise (say, IBM-large) from classical waterfall software development to agile methodologies. It's an almost impossible task because not every team can handle the flexibility, ambiguity and self-responsibility of agile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While many of the Israel procedures might be kinda hard to implement in the States or Canada (or elsewhere), there's really a few that really should be looked at. Like the whole containment thing.

"First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away.

Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation."

I mean... you gotta admit. That just makes so much sense.

<comment><USER16> Consider how many bottles of liquid the TSA confiscates in a day because they might be explosives. Now imagine actually treating each of those as if the agent really believed it was a threat in the style described in the article.

Does this still make sense?

<comment><USER17> In fairness, I get the feeling the TSA doesn't actually think any of these bottles of liquid are explosives, since they just throw them in the public terminal trash cans.

If they did treat every water bottle as an explosive, then yes, this procedure would make a lot more sense than evacuating the terminal.

<comment><USER18> Exactly - if they don't really think they are explosives, then why are they confiscating them in the first place? Either dispose of them properly or just let people on the plane with bottled water.

<comment><USER19> They don't think they are explosives. They think they might be precursors to explosives.

<comment><USER20> It's more subtle than that. They don't think they are explosives. They are merely ensuring that no liquids are taken through security. If no liquids are taken through security then no liquid precursors to explosives are taken through security. What's more, if it is known that no liquids can be taken through security then the bad guys won't even bother to take liquid precursors to explosives through security. This begs a number of questions but, in the meantime, security personnel can throw confiscated liquids into the trash without worrying too much about it.

<comment><USER21> > What's more, if it is known that no liquids can be taken through security > then the bad guys won't even bother to take liquid precursors to explosives > through security.

So the bad guys will just find another way to get their precursors through security. TSA's focus on _things_ just forces the bad guys to adapt; instead, it should focus on the bad guys themselves.

> This begs a number of questions

No, it doesn't. It may _raise_ a number of questions, but that's very different than "begging the question", which is a philosophical term for a circular argument. Please stop misusing this phrase and contributing to the general decline in modern English usage.

<comment><USER22> Language changes and evolves naturally over time, but that doesn't necessarily imply a decline. There's a point at which enough people use a word or phrase incorrectly that it becomes the correct usage (see can vs may). I'd argue that point has definitely been reached when the "incorrect" usage makes it into the dictionary. But the bigger point is that it seems completely ridiculous to think that your particular style of English is somehow the canonical one, and any variance from that standard constitutes a decline. English is composed of so many former errors, bastardizations, and amalgamations of other languages that I don't see how anyone can get too worked up this issue.

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beg>

<comment><USER21> Language exists for communication. I consider it a decline when perfectly good idioms must be laid to rest and replaced with newer phrases because widespread misunderstanding and misuse have led to inevitable confusion when the idiom is used in its historically consistent sense.

I know it's fashionable to profess a relativist/descriptivist approach to grammar, but when people use words and idioms in ways inconsistent with their historical meanings, the language is degraded: it becomes more difficult to express ideas that could formerly be expressed quite simply and clearly. When I'm forced to say "That argument assumes as a premise the conclusion it intends to prove" instead of "That begs the question" communication efficiency and accuracy are diminished, and we all suffer for it.

We do not apply a descriptivist approach to our children's language use. If they misuse a word or phrase, we correct them, because we know that their misuse will disadvantage them in pursuing the _goal_ of language, communication. We use a prescriptive approach in elementary school, in middle school, in high school, and in college. There is absolutely no reason why that same prescriptive approach, the one that preserves the utility of language and respects its goal, cannot continue to be used by the world at large. Fashion be damned! Leave your descriptivist ideology in the linguistics department. I care for communication, not ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I cannot believe people bring up Israeli airport security as an example of a system the U.S. should model. The security agents are neither intelligent, nor well trained, nor polite. The entire system is based on racism and I would take TSA security over the Israeli model any day. People were complaining here about a pat down search in public by a TSA agent equaling sexual harassment. I was actually taken to a public bathroom by an El Al agent and strip searched, purely because my last name "sounds Turkish".

From my anecdotal experience, El Al has security personnel that appears trained to a naked eye, but in reality is extremely ineffective, flawed, and unethical. I had the misfortune to go through El Al security four times. These all occurred in a span of two weeks, roughly in the same circumstances (I had to fly into Israel, fly out, fly back in, and fly back out). I can tell you that the outcome of their screening is heavily inconsistent and highly dependent on the prejudices of the particular agent doing the interview, and not necessarily on advanced training procedures.

I had the same answers for their questions every time. Two of the times the agents were Israeli jews who immigrated from Russia. Since we share a common background, both let me pass after very few questions because my trip details seemed perfectly reasonable to them. The other two times, I was interviewed by jews of clearly middle-eastern descent - both had no understanding of my cultural background, and both thought my trip details were extremely suspicious, subjecting me to a detailed search. So the outcome of the interviews was effectively random, which means they might as well perform random searches.

The interviews were highly unethical, inappropriate, and degrading. Even more importantly, they were completely ineffective, resulting in a random outcome highly dependent on each agent's personal prejudices. I don't know what good security looks like, but I can tell you that this most certainly isn't it.

<comment><USER24> You are just one data point.

<comment><USER25> That's only true in this very limited set here. Add me as a second one:

I'm white, male, as uninteresting as it can get (heh..). A little geeky perhaps, but I'm > 30 and every now and then have to prove that I'm > 18 for purchases or contracts. You know - the "Ohhh, you are really an adolescent?" type of guy. I shave every ~2 weeks and you probably cannot tell if I'm one week into the routine if we meet.

Still: Every single trip to IL ended with me being on the list of the suspicious people.

* I only did business trips and had a letter of the company that expected me (already crap on its own, but.. different thing)

* I travelled there several times and I'm sure they are good enough to correlate travelers from our german branch to our headquarter as being "probably genuine"

So.. A guy, plain as can be, fitting none of the discussed racial profiles (and no, I'm not shitting my pants during interviews either, so don't start the "you behaved erratic" thing), being targeted everytime: Another datapoint for the problems of the system.

I don't know _why_ I was targeted. I can only confirm that for me, every time I fly to Israel, these guys do waste time and money on me (and annoy me in the process, but let's ignore that for now), producing no result. Efficient? Not for me..

<comment><USER26> That security system is obviously designed with an acceptance of quite a few false positives. (Are you a political extremist?)

Maybe harassing you is white noise? (Pun mostly intended.) That is, to throw off attempts to analyze the security?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yeah, we have the best airport security in _Israel_ ;)

I witnessed a case, when a guy, who joked with the "profiling" girl, was escorted to his jet by security guard.

I second, that profiling is not by race, but behavior (and maybe accent). Their questions can be funny and sometimes even rude.

Still it's better than removing your shoes, posing naked and getting radiation.

</comment><comment><USER28> You get the feeling, going through Ben Gurion, that these are professionals working the security line. They're efficient, polite but terse, and thorough.

They definitely do behavioral profiling, but racial profiling they do not: Arabs and Americans and Israelis, etc, could go through without minimal questioning, but there were obviously people security paid more attention to than others.

I also didn't feel like a criminal going through their airport, which, in stark contrast, I did as soon as I got back to the US and went through customs and then TSA again.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation._

Or we can take naked pictures of children and grope people, taking hours to board planes, and evacuating the entire terminal at the first indication of trouble.

I really don't like my own tone of voice -- it sounds like I am ranting. But I'm not. At least I don't think I am. This is just common sense. Small, agile decentralized systems with an emphasis on layers and innovation are going to beat treating people like they were F-15s passing down the assembly line at a defense plant. This factory, top-down mentality has got to go.

I guess I'm just still amazed that we gotten this far out of whack. If you had told me we would be doing this, even right after 9-11, I wouldn't have believed you. Body scans? Invasive searches? Sure thing. Not a problem. Sign me up -- as long as its rare and happens on an ad-hoc basis. But what we have now? It's a total travesty. The lunatics are truly running the asylum.

(Ok, maybe I am ranting)

</comment><comment><USER30> I had a first hand experience flying out of Israel with the questioning side. For various accidental and benign reasons I got a little extra questioning, which was on the topics of: do I speak Hebrew?, what synagogue do I go to in the US?, and why didn't I have any checked luggage?

In the end I gave the guards the phone number of my relatives, and they talked to them, and that's how I got through the checkpoint.

So anyway, they do seem to focus on the person and their circumstances, and not on what that person is or is not carrying. Also, the guards were not the typical process-following types that you'd see at the TSA. Their job is to engage you in conversation, and make decisions without following a flowchart.

</comment><comment><USER31> Despite the overwhelming possibility of being downvoted it needs mention that the Israeli model _as_ _practiced_ may not be that good an example for US to follow. It has been documented by several respected human rights organizations and UN that Israel's security measures are often used as a proxy for punishment and harassment for disagreeing with the official govt line.

In spite of some erosion of liberties in US in the last decade or so, the American society continues to be orders of magnitude more open and free. I can confidently say that the way I will be treated by the American authorities does not depend on whether I or any of my family members were critical of American policy, neither is it dependent on places in US that are on my itinerary. Mention anything that remotely leans towards the UN view of the occupation to the Israeli security, or that you intend to visit any place in the occupied territories your experience will diverge dramatically (in its defense, personal anecdotal indicates that this may be regardless of whether you are Jewish or not).

It still would have been acceptable had that selective part of the treatment made the airport, the flight or Israel any safer. But it is not clear to me that the specialization based on the views of a traveller does. I am wary of copying a model that has a tendency for abuse unless I see convincing counterweights in place. All depends on the implementation details and the operational processes.

<comment><USER32> Did you even read the article?

<comment><USER31> Why wouldnt I ? Predictably enough, it seems the downvotes have started ringing in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This article is from 2009 and was submitted back to HN then - and had some insightful comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1024850>

</comment><comment><USER34> "Eight years after 9/11, why are we still so reactive, so un-Israelified?"

Because L-3 / Lockheed Martin / Haliburton / etc. don't sell training in behavior tracking / FACS? Isn't it all just a money-grab by the usual suspects?

</comment><comment><USER35> The biggest problem with adopting the Israeli model IMO is with resources. You would have to spend a lot of money training and hiring people who would be good at behavioral profiling.

The other problem is that Israel is a tiny country, they only have two international airports -- so they can focus all of their resources on those two airports. That's not the case here in the US.

<comment><USER36> I don't think resources are the problem. You can decentralize TSA jobs. San Francisco area just needs to monitor one airport or three bay area airports. So, I think decentralization is the key and saying that US has too many airports is not an excuse.

<comment><USER37> You can enter any major airport securely by flying in from a smaller, regional airport. So you need to secure those.

But you can get into a smaller, regional airport securely by flying in from an even smaller airport. So you need to secure those too.

We have _a lot_ of airports in the US that need to be secured.

The better response is to tell Americans that airplanes are a terrorist target, just like busses (which _are_ bombed all the time in Israel, thanks to their stellar airport security making airlines a harder target), and to remain vigilant.

That is all. Taking off our shoes, submitting to naked photographs and (just for fun) radiation is beyond laughable. It seems people would rather be demeaned than live in (an irrational) fear. Sad.

Even sadder: more Americans will die by choosing to drive rather than fly. Somehow, I doubt Big Sis sheds a tear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Although it was fairly explicitly pointed in the article (by Rafi Sela), I'm not seeing much of it discussed here. I think a big part of it is cultural. Americans may object to this but I believe that, by virtue of having been shielded from any major aggression on its territory outside of 9/11, they don't know how to react to threats in a reasonable way. Most of what has been done by the government since then resembles more knee-jerk, fear-tainted overreaction than a sensible response to a grave, but also well documented abroad, problem. Mr Sela uses the "Americans-take-too-much-shit-from their government" line but I believe this is simply out of inexperience in dealing with these issues.

</comment><comment><USER39> I was once late to the airport (in Israel) where I was scheduled to pick up my mother. I parked the car and ran towards the gate.

A guard was standing at the entrance with her hands crossed doing nothing by observing. When she saw me coming she made a few quick steps towards me and signaled me to stop and stand aside for questioning. I felt a bit uncomfortable, first because it was abrupt and I was being singled out, but also because she was behaving like a shepherd dog trying to seize my eyes (which I later understood why). She was very polite and dismissed me after presenting my ID and answering a few short questions.

This got me thinking about the silent perimeters, and how smart it is they were only engaged when triggered. The take home lesson for me was: smart earns respect. They were a step ahead of me and I was responding, not them.

</comment><comment><USER16> The TSA has already attempted the behavior profiling..

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/06/behavioral_pro...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/06/behavioral_prof_3.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> This solution is all well and good (i will disregard issues of legal liberties afforded in this country for the moment)

But it doesn't scale,Israel has one single main airport, the US has dozens of points for international entry, and many more domestic. It is easy and fairly cost effective when you have one location you have to worry about.

<comment><USER41> "But it doesn't scale,Israel has one single main airport, the US has dozens of points for international entry, and many more domestic. It is easy and fairly cost effective when you have one location you have to worry about."

People say this, but it makes little sense to me. Compare having one factory that makes a product, vs having a hundred factories that make that same product. The latter is much more cost efficient per factory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So, I have been to this airport traveling as a press photographer, which means you have an interesting itinerary and lots of interesting bits of kit in your luggage.I can add a little human aspect to this article. Last time the guy in front of me at the for mentioned first shielded baggage screening was suspected of having an explosive prompting the entire security machine to life and an evacuation. A false alarm and 30 odd minutes later I am again standing in line, pretty wasted at 5 in the morning. During the whole process the staff stayed very polite and very efficient, making the process quite painless.

Every time I get treated rude and unpleasant by security staff/goons in my own home-country airport for really no good reason what so ever, I think about this. I feel that a little manners & humanity would go a long way in getting support for security measures.

</comment><comment><USER43> There are two notions of directing people, named after German words: Auftragstaktik and Befehlstaktik.

Auftragstaktik: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics> Befehlstaktik stands for "detailed order control".

It looks like Auftragstaktik is used in Israeli airports and TSA employ Befehlstaktik.

To quote an article about Auftragstaktik: "Ironically, since WW2, only the Israeli Defence Force seem to have come close to matching the Wehrmacht of WW2 in the exercise of command in this style".

So, they just use their military training and applied it to another field. And people from military works as screening officers at airports, for that being very good first job after military. Very clever.

</comment><comment><USER44> What I hear is the Israeli border guards have juvenile, petty behavior. What comes to mind is denying Noam Chomsky entry into Israel back in May. Also the border guards who put 3 rifle rounds through Lily Sussman's MacBook. 21 year old Lily had Arab letters stuck on her MacBook's keyboard. Before anyone tells me I haven't been to an Israel airport, I haven't been to the moon either but I still know it is mostly rock. Link to shot MacBook incident: [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/video-interview- with-...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/video-interview-with-macbook- bullet-girl/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Just because it's runs more efficiently doesn't make it more desirable, it is after all - a militarised society, I don't particularly want to go to the US at the moment as it's moving that way.

</comment><comment><USER46> Doesn't Israel also destroy the homes of any bomber's family? (seriously, google it)

That is more likely the deterrent. So should the USA do that too for all our domestic terrorists?

<comment><USER47> I don't know why you were downvoted because house demolitions are indeed official policy in response to terrorist bombings.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces#House_dem...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces#House_demolitions)

<comment><USER48> Just one reason from many: because it doesn't deter anyone without a house in Israel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm not sure if I'd really feel better when surrounded by armed soldiers and being questioned a couple of times on my way to the plane (also inside the bus that takes me to the airport as I understand) than if I would just have to go through a security gate, eventually take off my shoes and get my baggage scanned by x-ray. I mean, I was a couple of times questioned at the airport, with the usual questions ("did anyone other than you have access to your baggage?", etc.) and once they ordered me to open my baggage - and that didn't make me feel more safe or anything like that, rather uncomfortable and a bit pissed of, in a "wtf? do you seriously think I'm gonna explode the plane or what?" way. Shortly speaking, I prefer to go through all those gates, have my baggage checked by security guys themselves ("go ahead, there's nothing there") than being bothered by some questions and be "under suspicion". Don't know, maybe it's just that I'm from Europe and we don't care.

<comment><USER13> The current system in the US strictly follows a flowchart. It has no preparation for anything other than "generic terrorism".

With an infinite set of previously unthought of plans, this is a system terrorists can game to their advantage. The Israeli system requires competent individuals trained to adapt to any scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> _"This is to see that you don't have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious," said Sela._

Sorry but what do heavy metals have to do with airport security? is this just typo or have I completely lost my understanding of basic explosives chemistry and other terror related topics?

<comment><USER51> I don't think you have a real understanding of terror related topics as it applies to Israel. In an area of the world where getting ak47's is easy as heck - you can go a few countries away from Israel and buy them at open air markets - it makes a lot of sense to make sure no one is carrying guns and other weapons made with heavy metals into your airport.

The security is made of layers - just because they are checking for heavy metals doesn't mean that they don't know anything about (or are ignoring) plastic explosives or ceramic guns.

<comment><USER52> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_(chemistry)>

I've always though that heavy metals mean stuff like uranium and lead...

<comment><USER50> Exactly nosse! I meant "heavy metals" versus "metal". The latter makes sense. The former doesn't. I am sure you can hurt people with manganese for instance, but a gun would make more sense, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This kind of analysis has a major flaw: these two countries are apples and oranges, by sheer size. We've seen this before: when pundits comment on relative outperformance of infrastructure, education, etc., they forget that the US is a really, really, big place-- and things may not scale as well.

Israel has 2 international airports. The US has quite a few more. So the solutions presented here may not scale well as there is no true "funnel."

</comment><comment><USER54> The same article was commented by Bruce Scheiner on his blog. [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/adopting_the_i...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/adopting_the_is.html)

Very interesting comments, bottom line "Israel model does not scale well".

<comment><AUTHOR> True but no one is suggesting that the USA should mimic the Israeli system slavishly, they should however learn from it and devise their own system with the intention to detect and deal with the potential bad guys as early as possible while disrupting every one else as little as possible.

Henry Ford did not invent car manufacturing nor did MacDonalds invent the beefburger, they just made mass manufacturing scale well. The USA needs a transport security system which works at American scales and doesn't tick people off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It all sounds absolutely reasonable (and dare I say pleasant) but how well does something like this scale? I am thinking Heathrow with 5 terminals with, I guess, 10 different entrances each where people arrive from.

</comment><comment><USER56> _Published On Wed Dec 30 2009_

Wow, this is an old article. Interesting how the idea seemed to get completely ignored by the MSM and government for the past year, while things just get worse at the airports.

</comment><comment><USER57> Related Article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1897940>

</comment><comment><USER58> Flew there with my girl friend. We were very happy to be there 2 days only after sudden invitation to see a prospect. So when we handed our passports to the interviewer to get the Israel (Holy land!) visa Stamp, we were laughing of sheer joy to be there. Interviewer glared at us and asked abruptly: "what makes you laugh?!"

<comment><USER58> Hey guys who downvote: we were happy(!!) to arrive in Israel where friends of mine (who did Aliyah) where waiting for us all rejoicing themselves. That should be a ok/secure reason and attitude when arriving landing at the desired airport! (It turned out to be one of the greatest trip of our life: TelAviv, Jerusalem, the Dead See and the most fantastic En Gedi kibboutz).

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps it was a rather boring anecdote and seemed almost off-topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Here's a Facebook approach to airport security:

[http://www.google.com/buzz/amichail/TgPjwEJCJup/A-simple- sol...](http://www.google.com/buzz/amichail/TgPjwEJCJup/A-simple-solution-to- eliminating-terrorism-on)

<comment><USER10> or.. we look at the number of people who have been killed in terrorist attacks, and compare it to _everything_else_. Then spend the money on the more important stuff first.

<comment><USER60> Maybe we should look at the number of times the US has been invaded by a foreign army, and conclude a military is not necessary...

<comment><USER37> Half a dozen? Do tell, how often is too often?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I want to chime in here as well.

Disclaimer/Disclosure: I plan to relocate to Tel Aviv soon (from Germany), the company I'm working for has its headquarter there. I like the country, try to learn the language etc.. But:

Every time I do the flight I'm nervous about the problems that _will_ come up. Coworker needed to strip to his underwear. Another one had his bag completely devastated several times. My (german, local branch) boss has probably more stamps from IL in his passport than anything else and does the trip routinely: I've never seen him getting through without problems, taking apart the hand luggage and asking lots of weird questions, sometimes for hours.

There are some procedures in place to make this easier in the future. For a while companies can now announce guests/coworkers etc. in advance and make their life easier by providing names, passport numbers and dates of arrival/departure in written form. But that takes time and sucks if you need to fly over "now".

Regarding the "safe" feeling: Nope, cannot confirm that. In Frankfurt the normal check-in is like this:

* Check in and get your ticket

* Pass the boarding pass control

* Pass the security (think ~TSA) control

* Move to the gate and board

For El Al it's like this:

* Talk to a "Security officer" about your plans to stay and your luggage. Who packed it? Where? Did you leave it for a second? Did someone ask you to bring something to IL? etc..

* Get a ticket and a token with cryptic (probably: "Search this one, Yes/No") markers

* Pass boarding pass control

* Pass security (~TSA) control

* Go to the gate

* Pass IL security, taking that token (and, every single time I traveled) sit down and wait for an officer.

* Answer lots of questions, let them check your luggage (again)

* Move to the gate, guarded by security officers with submachine guns (remember: We're still in FFM, Germany at this point...)

In Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion, it's the same. The most upvoted post was from someone with an Israeli citizenship. Yeah - right. There are two lanes in Ben Gurion, Israeli and "Other". The latter is crap, takes ages, needs you to be there while they x-ray all your luggage (this is before you get a ticket, so you are present with your check-in luggage as well). Lots of questions. And, from experience, you end up at a desk where someone tells you to open your (check- in) luggage, to search your underwear and private possessions in front of you.

Seriously: This is _not_ better than anything you US guys are currently complaining about. And no, this does _not_ make me feel safe, at all.

Edit: Something I completely missed to mention: The article actually tries to tell you that the process is quick and effective. Maybe (not sure) it is for people with an IL passport. For me it means being at the airport 3 hours in advance, instead of 45-60 minutes. Otherwise I'm just not able to make it. My next trip is schedule to depart at ~3 am, I know that I'll be on the _german_ airport at 0:00 - for the sake of this efficient process. Same on the route back. What an improvement..

</comment><comment><USER61> have flown out of israel dozens of times.

before you get anywhere near the terminal you are stopped and men with uzi submachine guns look in the car and ask a couple of questions.

these guys are razor sharp and know exactly what they're looking for.

you feel safe and nervous at the same time

</comment><comment><USER26> After reading this discussion, I'd be sorely disappointed if I ever flew in/out if Israel and wasn't checked out carefully. :-)

But they are probably good at profiling curious tourists too.

Reminds me of when me and a few friends bicycled around Northern Ireland once in the 90s. If I made a querying hand gesture to military at checkpoints if we should get over for questioning, they laughed, without even hearing my non- native English... ("More stupid tourists that just want to get close looks at our bullpups.")</comment>


Show HN: epist.ly now has an API for hand-written notes - <AUTHOR> http://letters.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi - I made this site. Any feedback you have would be great! If you want to place an order, you can press ctrl+c on the payment page and enter coupon code 'hackernews' for 50% off

<comment><USER2> Obligatory question, even so you probably don't want to answer it: Who is writing these letters? Is there some Mturk for physical "stuff" somewhere?

It looks like a really neat service. Hope you find some way to get this hooked up with some gift service or snail mail marketing corporations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Right now my wife is writing these letters (she has much better hand writing than me). I would love to hook it up to something bigger, like you say, and scale it - at that point we'll probably have to hire more writers. But the quality of the letters will always be really important to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Android OEM profitability, and the most surprising number from Q4's market - <AUTHOR> https://theoverspill.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/android-oem-profitability-and-the-most-surprising-number-from-q4s-smartphone-market/

<comment><USER2> "Let's be clear: I think Android is a boon to the world; quite possibly it's the best invention of this century so far. (I've said as much many times, but some people find this hard to understand.)"

Possibly because you mention this in the middle of a long screed about how your favourite sports team, sorry corporation, is "winning" against Android OEMs? As if that's the important part of this discussion about technology having a massive impact on the globe and the developing world?

Who made the most profit from the polio vaccine? Which corporation benefitted most from the green revolution? Which printing press had the highest gross margin?</comment>


Functional Patterns – Monoid - <AUTHOR> http://philipnilsson.github.io/Badness10k/posts/2016-07-21-functional-patterns-monoid.html <comment><USER2> This is one good simple explanation.</comment>


IPhone Case w/ Bottle Opener. - <AUTHOR>

A friend just launched his new product, the iBottle Opener.  It will be hitting stores early October.  Figured a few of you guys might need one of these.<p>www.ibottleopener.com <comment><USER2> <http://www.ibottleopener.com>

working link

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. Thanks. Couldn't figure out how to do that...</comment></comment>


Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23940/ <comment><USER2> Holy crap. If they did not have videos of all these technologies, I would not believe them. These prototypes work. They just work. It's only a matter of scaling up the detail and packaging it right for consumers. The future is here.

<comment><USER3> > The future is here.

The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. \-- William Gibson

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...tactile holograms?

GIVE ME MY HOLODECK. Please, please be in my lifetime.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't hold my breath. Touch screens were invented in, what, 70s? And it took somewhat 30+ years for it to be widely used by the average person.

<comment><USER4> assuming that we'll see change at the previous growth rate is silly if we get molecular engineering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like the scratchable input idea, but their gestures seem overly complex for realistic use. I think that double tapping on my desk to answer or hangup on a speaker phone call would be a nice touch to any smart phone. You could probably implement it with the microphones already existing on most handsets.

<comment><USER7> Many two or three microphones can do better? Distinguishing position or something. That can be very useful.

<comment><USER6> If you knew the position of the sensors, you could probably calculate a position from audio/vibration delays. You could make a kit for converting a normal whiteboard into a recording surface.

Simply place sensors on the board corners and tell the software about their placement and the dimensions of your board. You need three sensors to do a proper triangulation, but you only need two if you know the sensors are in corners. With only two _corner_ sensors, one of the two possible locations would be off the board, so you could throw that point out. If you can reliably sense whiteboard marker and eraser sounds, you could reliably "save" the whiteboard state.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't the delay between 2 sensors only give 1 delay, and thus one dimension? I don't follow how placing them on the corners makes this work.

<comment><USER6> D'oh! Sorry, you are correct. I was thinking you'd get two distances to point of contact, but you actually get relative distance of the point of contact with respect to the sensors. You are correct, you would need three sensors.

<comment><USER9> I was thinking you could use volume, which would work with 2 sensors as you describe, but I like the idea of delay as it's probably more accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This... is magic. Plain and simple.

Desktop fabricators, now "touchable" holograms.

What a great time to be alive :)

<comment><USER11> Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. :)

\--Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law (smiley added)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any idea how hard the ultrasound radiation pressure (used in the tactile holograms) would be to make?

I guess you just need transducers, and some software to time them correctly? That's unbelievable to me.

They say they can't get very powerful though or stray sound would damage your hearing. I wonder if there's any way around that? i.e., different frequencies?</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any hot startups hiring in Dublin? - <AUTHOR>

I am considering moving to Dublin and start a new life there.
I am a mobile passionate and I love the startups' world but I don't know any startup based in Dublin.
I have already built and pushed many iPhone app on the AppStore and some of them got download more than 600k times. I love designing nice products and facing new challenges.
If some of you would have some recommendations on where to work or to start looking for a nice job in Dublin, I would really appreciate! Many thanks! <comment><USER2> There are few startups in Dublin compared to say San Francisco but with that in mind you might try...

App development company <http://tapadoo.com>

General Tech Jobs in Dublin <http://www.prosperity.ie/category_job_search_19/it_jobs.html>

Good Luck and provisionally Welcome to Dublin.

</comment><comment><USER3> try looking here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607052>

<comment><USER2> Good Point. There's nothing specifically in Dublin on the list but there are a lot of companies looking for remote workers.</comment></comment>


Horticulture farming for economic emporwerment - <AUTHOR>

This campaign seeks to raise funds to help rural farmers better their lives through farming of horticulture produce at the same time being a source of healthy foods for communities abroad. <comment><AUTHOR> You can find their campaign at [http://igg.me/at/roypack/x/11677823](http://igg.me/at/roypack/x/11677823)</comment>


It's not a question of if she goes. It's when - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/what-mariss-mayer-might-do-next.html?cid=sf01002&sr_share=facebook <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that people aren't surprised at failure when you take a person who luckily joined the right startup at the right time and then think they have a clue how to run a huge company.

Yahoo was unquestionably a huge task for even the most experienced CEO, but for an inexperienced CEO, it seemed like a prayer at best.</comment>