Interstate (YC S11) Goes 2.0, Adds Paid Accounts, Chat & Embeds - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/06/yc-funded-project-management-tool-interstate-goes-2-0-and-freemium-adds-chat-embeds/

<comment><USER2> Looks great, congrats guys.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a cool app, but these guys need to implement some basic SEO. A google search for "Interstate project management" doesn't put them on the front page.

They need to do the basics like have helpful title tags so Google can provide decent link text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks and you're 100% right. We pretty much haven't done any SEO work yet (we've spent the last several months just rebuilding the app) so SEO is definitely on our internal roadmap.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin mining on a 55 year old IBM 1401 mainframe: 80 seconds per hash - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2015/05/bitcoin-mining-on-55-year-old-ibm-1401.html?m=1&x=y <comment><USER2> This is the new "I installed Linux on my (calculator|washing machine|furby)", isn't it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Works out to 394 mhash/m

(m=millenium)</comment>


SMCprog – First in the World Programming Unit for Apple SMC, EFI BIOS, T2, SSD's - <AUTHOR> https://smcprog.com <comment><AUTHOR> SMCprog is a unique tool for working with Apple products. First of all, we created this device in order to simplify and speed up the work in our workshop. SMCprog is able to work with almost all Apple devices - be it an iPad, iPhone, iMac or Macbook.We paid special attention to SSD hard drives - SMCprog has the ability to restore damaged SSD drive firmware from Samsung, Intel, Intenso, Kingston and of course Apple. At the same time, there is no need to remove the controller chip from the SSD drive board or from the logic board of the computer (in case the hard disk is soldered on the logic board).The main and most unique feature of the SMCprog device is its ability to reprogramm Apple SMC chips and EFI BIOS chips with the ability to immediately enter the correct Serial Number of the repaired device. An important addition is worth noting is that all the necessary firmwares are pre-loaded into the device's memory - select the product, model, enter the serial number and start the programming process!In the fight for the right to repair, we could not ignore the function of the co-processor Apple T2, through which Apple wants to deprive us of this right. We managed to bypass the check for compatibility and originality of the components performed by the Apple T2 chip. With the help of SMCprog it is possible to completely disable the compatibility check (if necessary, it can always be enabled again). Now it is possible to remove EFI Lock password on all models, even with T2 chip.A rechargeable battery is an important element of any modern portable device. With the help of SMCprog, it is possible to reset the batteries of the entire Macbook family to the factory state. This feature allows you to extend the battery life up to 500 recharge cycles, as well as useful if one or more battery cells were replaced.For the iPad and iPhone product families, SMCprog also has a number of useful features, such as checking battery status, LCD screen testing, and Lightning power meter.Theseare not all the features of SMCprog - work on improving the device continues. We will continue to improve and expand the capabilities of our device. Together with the device you get access to regular software updates.</comment>


Explain Like I'm Five: The Government Shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n8saz/eli5_whats_happening_with_this_potential/ccglcba

<comment><USER2> It's much easier to explain as if certain legislators were five...</comment>


Ask HN: Is it time for a public GPG audit? - <AUTHOR>

With GPG being a common destination for those concerned by the recent privacy revelations, it bothers me a little that I can't find any audit or security review of GPG's codebase.
The Wikipedia page says that a German IT ministry funded a windows port, the EU Agency for Network and Information Security list GPG as part of their index of tools and claim it's in use by some related parties [0] but don't go so far as to recommend it. Considering that several governments within the EU are allegedly complicit in the SIGINT scandal, I don't think their word counts for much.
GPG is open source, but while the code is readily available the knowledge and background to determine its security is somewhat rarer. Would you be willing to contribute to a project to fund a public audit of the codebase? If so, what sort of people would you like to see participate.
[0] http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/cert/support/chiht/tools/gnupg-the-gnu-privacy-guard <comment><USER2> That's not really how "audits" work. Coordinated public audits are responsible for a tiny fraction of all vulnerability discoveries. Most discoveries are independent. There would probably be a fairly poor return on investment for funding an official audit.

Bear in mind also that even though _you 've_ never heard of an audit of GPG, GPG is actually a pretty high-profile target. Smart people have already looked at that code pretty carefully.

Since GPG is an open source project, a better approach would be to find a way to sponsor a bounty for vulnerabilities in GPG. But here too you'll run into problems:

* It will take fo-re-ver to adjudicate what does and doesn't qualify as a serious finding. Google and Facebook manage this problem by hiring very smart vulnerability researchers and allowing them to come up with criteria pretty much by fiat. Here, you're going to end up in a 2-month-long argument about whether man page bugs are vulnerabilities because of the nature of the project.

* Output of these programs is nonlinear and unpredictable, so it'll be tricky to figure out how much money needs to be set aside to satisfy reward payouts. In the meantime: who holds that money? And where does it go when the bounty outlives its utility?

If you really want to do some good, consider starting a project (which would require no funding) to either:

(a) Build a replacement GPG in a more modern development environment, _or_

(b) Annotate all of GPG's source code.

<comment><USER3> >(a) Build a replacement GPG in a more modern development environment

(c) Build a replacement GPG that developers can (easily) use as a cross platform library.

<comment><USER4> This has already been done by people who understand the fundamentals of crypto. Check out [http://nacl.cr.yp.to/](http://nacl.cr.yp.to/)

It is even available natively in Go [http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.crypto/nacl](http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.crypto/nacl)

<comment><USER2> I thought I might have been this site's loudest proponent of Nacl, but maybe not? Here, though, Nacl isn't a useful suggestion; it isn't compatible with PGP. (There is a project that wrapped PGP's UX around Nacl's crypto, but one presumes it's virtually unused, since it can only talk to itself).

<comment><USER5> Nacl is good, but is Go a suitable language for crypto work yet? I understand there were some reservations in the past, though I can't recall exactly what those were.

<comment><USER6> I think Go is in a bit of a chicken-egg problem right now w.r.t. crypto. I recall one of the core devs saying you shouldn't use it for anything where security really matters, because their implementation hasn't really had the tires kicked. The tires probably won't be kicked as much with that sort of suggestion though either.

<comment><USER4> Go serves HTTPS for many Google properties and is a first class citizen for security applications internally.

<comment><USER6> Good to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Git provides us with a great deal of transparency.

Here's an overview of GnuPG's committers:

      Werner Koch:      2677 commits over a period of 5764 days.
      David Shaw:       1197 commits over a period of 3807 days.
      Marcus Brinkmann:  202 commits over a period of 3753 days.
      NIIBE Yutaka:       53 commits over a period of 641 days.
      Moritz Schulte:     39 commits over a period of 1756 days.
      Timo Schulz:        29 commits over a period of 896 days.
      Stefan Bellon:      21 commits over a period of 765 days.
      Repo Admin:          9 commits over a period of 2634 days.
      Andrey Jivsov:       8 commits over a period of 37 days.
      Ben Kibbey:          6 commits over a period of 20 days.
      Neal Walfield:       5 commits over a period of 1 day.

So it looks like the codebase has been touched by remarkably few hands!

This doesn't negate the need for a code review of some sort, but it does suggest that it would be difficult for an outside agent to silently introduce changes in master without the core developers noticing.

EDIT: Formatting.

<comment><USER8> I think it would be rather easy to infiltrate a development team, especially a geographically distributed one.

<comment><USER9> What about cracking the password to one of those people's Git account, and then submitting a commit without anyone knowing? What if Github is compelled by a National Security Letter to allow others to modify source files and erase the logs for those changes? What if one of those guys is the next Sabu - facing 50 years in jail unless they cooperate?

<comment><USER10> You realize that you cannot modify a commit's content without modifying the commit hash for every subsequent commit?

Your attack would be practically impossible against a git repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is time for a public OpenSSH audit.

Word on the street is the code is horrific and last I checked was not even checked into git, in any way, yet.

<comment><USER12> It's not checked into git... because they use CVS.

<comment><AUTHOR> The OpenBSD guys are usually pretty good at security, but does CVS have the integrity verification of more modern RCS?

Since OpenSSH is probably responsible for more data than GPG, (the importance of that data aside) I think you're spot on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would it make sense to somehow record what was audited and by who, in "machine readable format"? Something that would allow others to later check how much the audited parts of code (or code that the audited part is relying) have changed since the audit.

Could be for example just a simple message "Audited, file: aaa/xyz.c, checksum 3ea1b.. revision 1c030.." signed with auditors public key.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's always a good time for a revision of privacy/security tools.

</comment><comment><USER15> Have a look at the changelog. It's not as if people haven't been looking at it.</comment>


Code Reviewing My Earliest Surviving Program - <AUTHOR> http://lihaoyi.github.io/post/CodeReviewingMyEarliestSurvivingProgram.html <comment><USER2> is a daily posting necessary?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862735)</comment>


VCs should stop abusing nondisparagement and nondisclosure agreements - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-03/if-silicon-valley-wants-to-be-decent-it-should-give-up-ndas <comment><USER2> Let's acknowledge "nondisparagement" clauses for what they are: one party's intent to intimidate another. They are a coercive tactic not unlike those deployed by dictatorships or cults: designed to invoke fearfulness and repression of facts or truth.

The courts are very reluctant to hear any of it from contract-smacking plaintiffs going after people they claim "disparaged" them. The whole basis of our judicial system in the US was designed around citizens' rights to criticize overbearing institutions (like the monarchy of Great Britain when a lot of people decided to ship out) freely and without fear of repression by the institutions being criticized. Hence the extensive First Amendment protections that came soon thereafter.

 _Google, that great beacon of transparency, was accused in a lawsuit of using a broad confidentiality measure that prevents employees from ever talking about their work at Google—or, hilariously, from so much as writing a novel about a Silicon Valley tech company without company approval._

This is disconcerting. The bigger a company gets, the more it needs to rely upon a set of public values rather than fine-print legalese. Employees should be encouraged to challenge the upholding of values at every front... even publicly, if necessary, if that company diverges from what it says it's all about.

<comment><USER3> NDA's have a solid use for preventing exposure of sensitive IP or technical infrastructure knowledge. Outside of that, they should be banned completely. In general we ought to be demanding a lot more transparency from both our public _and_ privately owned institutions, especially once they've grown to the size of Google, Facebook, etc.

<comment><USER4> NDAs - to the extent they have a solid use - should be written up in law (including case law) such that you don't have to sign them. It should be obvious that I don't go to my companies competitor with our source code (and copyright law prohibits that already). Can I go to our competitor and recreate from scratch our algorithms in their product, what about modify their algorithms that do the same things as ours - at some point you have to draw a line of yes/no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd much rather see an end to "non compete" agreements. I should have a right to get another job, and my previous employer should have no more rights extended over me after our employment agreement is finished.

<comment><USER5> OK. Sure. Unenforceable in California.

Now what about the other 49 states? My buddy in Pennsylvania couldn't get a job at the Apple Store because of a non compete with Best Buy.

This extends beyond the bubble of the bay area and even tech. It's a problem in virtually any industry, anywhere.

<comment><USER6> IANAL, but I doubt your friend's non-compete with Best Buy was enforceable, unless of course he was dealing with trade secrets or managing long term sales relationships.

I imagine the idea of a ordinary floor rep dealing with trade secrets would raise some eyebrows at court.

[http://www.beckreedriden.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/nonc...](http://www.beckreedriden.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/noncompetes-50-state-survey-chart-20170204.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I also doubt an ordinary floor rep has the ability to press a case like that to court. Lawyers aren't free.

<comment><USER7> Would Best Buy really sue an ordinary floor rep, though?

<comment><USER8> To intimidate all the other employees? I'd believe it. Companies do act similarly when they go after individuals or mom and pop stores for trademark infrigement

<comment><USER9> Trademark infringement is a little different, because a company has to protect its mark to avoid losing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This isn't solely a Silicon Valley thing. An NYC startup I worked for for six months 15 years ago required me to sign a nondisparagement agreement when I realized that the company was going nowhere (the carrot was that I kept the signing bonus they lured me with).

I didn't catch that there was no time period specified.

Every year I receive a terse letter from their law firm reminding me of my obligations under the non–disparagement clause.

<comment><USER11> I think you are in violation of your terms! You can't even admit you have signed this.

<comment><USER10> Probably. Still find it surprising that they continue to be in business, perhaps all of their revenue is seizures from past employees (they have no notable products nor service nor revenue).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, when you visit Google on business, don't sign their visitor NDA. They still let you in; they just give you a badge that identifies you as not having signed the NDA. If someone at Google is insistent, meet off-site. There are good restaurants on Castro St. in Mountain View.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I left my last company I was offered $30,000 for my silence. Most people in important positions were offered money as they exited.

I left the money on the table. It was very very hard for me to do - because I am a saver. But I could not agree to the nondisparagement terms.

<comment><USER13> In my last acquisition, as a regular employee, I had to sign a very extensive non-disparagement. I actually provoked a fight because, if I were to obey the letter of the contract, it banned criticizing the acquirer in any way. Before rewriting, I couldn't even offer critical feedback to my new boss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ha ha this is Silicon Valley where in effect NDAs are advisory at best. I attend conferences where I see people (non-execs!) from competing companies having lunch.

I'm pretty sure McClure's activities were well known by his peers, who simply couldn't be bothered taking action

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure what NDA's which deals with trade secrets have to do with legal compromise agreements which is what the article appear to be about.

Obviously written by a well meaning Journalist with no knowledge of HR/IR issues.

<comment><USER16> The article also mentions non-disparagement agreements -- maybe it's including them under NDAs?

<comment><USER15> Yes but they are very different things which was my point

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do VCs actually agree to sign NDA on early startup terms?

<comment><USER18> They are referring to NDAs that the VCs send to others (employees, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why would Silicon Valley want to be decent?

<comment><USER20> It would appear that appearing to be indecent is bad for business. One way to appear to be decent is to actually be decent. As always, it's about the bottom line.

<comment><USER21> Being indecent is sometimes even better for business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Have I just ignored it until now or has the quality of bloomberg diminished so much? It's the second time I read a total worthless article from them just today.</comment>


Steve Blank argues it's time for Entrepreneurship Schools to replace B-schools - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2011/03/09/startup-guru-steve-blank-says-its-time-for-e-schools-not-b-schools/

<comment><USER2> Unlike B-school they have to be cheap though. What I would like to learn:

-Basic Finance , statistics, accounting

-Awareness around incorporation etc.,

-Hiring: how to get the right people

.. Any more?</comment>


Ask HN: does anyone here use wolfram alpha? - <AUTHOR>

Do you use it? How often? For what?<p>I'm just curious. <comment><USER2> Wolfram Alpha came out just before I started Calc II. I credit Wolfram Alpha as the reason I was able to go through Calc II, III, IV, and Differential Equations this year.

I'm able to grasp advanced math concepts, but I have trouble actually working math problems on paper as math _classes_ are usually taught: I understand the concepts and why we're doing things but I accidently transpose symbols, make algebra mistakes, and write down arithmetic wrong. I get distracted so easily that I'll stop and start 10 times on one problem because I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to be working on a problem, when an idea about something unrelated pops into my head. It's just the way my brain is wired - I don't think linearly, my mind is constantly going down multiple parallel threads at once like a Best Buy full of TV's tuned to different channels. I think I have severe ADHD and a very mild form of dyslexia, but I've never been diagnosed - when I was in school, teachers didn't understand that you can be both gifted and impaired at the same time, just in different ways.

So throughout all my math courses it's been constantly frustrating to intuitively grasp the concept many times faster than the other students, and yet see them outpace me with rote mechanization while I struggle to not get the symbols in my equations mixed up.

That's why Wolfram Alpha has been a godsend - I can use it as a sort of "debugger" for my math work; it helps me figure out where I'm making mistakes in my mechanical manipulation of the symbols. It levels the playing field.

<comment><USER3> You should really get a copy of Mathematica. The app combined with MathWorld is just fantastic.

<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/>

[http://www.wolfram.com/products/student/mathforstudents/lice...](http://www.wolfram.com/products/student/mathforstudents/licenses.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very rarely. I find it difficult to write my queries so Wolfram understands what I'm trying to get. In the amount of time it normally takes me to get the answer from Wolfram, I could probably have gotten the same answer through a bunch of different searches on google or bing.

<comment><USER5> Same here. It's wonderful if you know what data you want to work with and that's already curated in there, you can do all sorts of clever things. Browsing the datasets or creating new definitions/ search spaces etc...not so good. I fear Alpha is doomed to remain a glorified reference book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used it to check my answers on all my differential equations homework this last semester. I was excited to see it did fourier!

</comment><comment><USER7> I use it for humor. It's nice to view a site that received a TON of press/hype but never really took off in a big way. Kind of like Cuil...

they are both good for an afternoon chuckle.

</comment><comment><USER8> For one - The 2$ ipod app comes very handy in school and saved me the ~70$ I might have needed otherwise to get a TI calculator for math class.

</comment><comment><USER9> Once in a while. Someone asked what the average salary for teachers in new york were. I pointed her to wolfram

</comment><comment><USER10> I use it for solving equations, or graphing things.

<comment><USER11> Same here; I use it as basically a free web interface to Mathematica. I don't do any normal search on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> when I want specific data points about something (stock price, units, basic statistics).

</comment><comment><USER13> only used it to compare companies profiles (shares, employees, revenue and such)

</comment><comment><USER14> I occasionally use it to cheat in math homework. Sometimes to figure out the way to reduce a function or to verify my answers.</comment>


4chan has been DDOSed - <AUTHOR> http://status.4chan.org/

<comment><USER2> Well, at least nobody can accuse them of not having a sense of humor; from their status page: "We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al.—an exclusive club!" :)

<http://status.4chan.org/index.html#2340645311017721788>

<comment><USER3> That's just the owner of 4chan, who I doubt condones the attacks his community performs on other sites. This status page doesn't represent how the channers feel about not being able to access something _they_ want to access.

<comment><USER4> I like your emphasis! I will never ever tell my story enough of how I was in a really sad story in a developing country, badly in need of (a lot of) cash and ended up borrowing what is here several months worth salary from a local friend to settle the issue because I couldn't withdraw from ATMs thanks to Anonymous.

That is the day I truly realized there was at least one person I could ask anything, so I'm not too mad at them. Well maybe that's because I put myself into that situation too :)

<comment><USER5> When did Anonymous disable an interbank network?

<comment><USER4> That's a very good point! I actually have no proof that they were the cause of the problem. I assumed it was them because it happened at the same time and I remember a news saying that Visa and MasterCard services were disrupted.

<comment><USER6> As far as I can tell, they only disrupted their web pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't this happen once every couple of months?

</comment><comment><USER8> No news here; 4chan gets DDoSed all the time. Whether it's Kimmo Alm from Anontalk, or the orange box fiasco (not necessarily disparate events), or a back-raid, or, or, or... They make themselves a target. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with recent activities.

</comment><comment><USER9> An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves everybody blind and toothless. Obviously.

<comment><USER10> I critiqued this usage before so... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1706850>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, the irony.

<comment><USER12> I wonder which three-letter agency is doing it? EDIT: Or could it be the BofA War Room?

<comment><USER13> My guess would be that 4chan is somehow DDOSing itself, in pursuit of some subtle poetic irony outsiders like us simply could not understand.

<comment><USER14> The packets are coming from inside the house!

<comment><USER15> Ebaumsworld. It's always Ebaumsworld.

<comment><USER16> I miss the Something Awful vs. Ebaumsworld internet fights from back in the day.

<comment><USER14> In _my_ day, the goons were always fighting against the farkers. Ebaumsworlds didnt reach their radar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone fancy heading down to the anonymous IRC chans to find out what they're saying about it? I would but I don't know where they are, and I don't want to think about what horrors the anon crew might have googlebombed to the top of the "4chan anonymous irc channel server" results.

<comment><USER17> That query has the first result leading to 4chan.org/faq. Their IRC channel is located at #4chan at Rizon (irc.rizon.net)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, at least those kids might take in some Vitamin D today. Some might even do something interesting.

<comment><USER19> Nah. They'll just go to SomethingAweful.

<comment><USER20> No they'll probably just run an auto-refresher and play Xbox and spam up Halo: Reach with moronic chatter and team kills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't this like pissing into the cell pool?

</comment><comment><USER22> Begun, the cyberwars have.</comment>


Vintage motorcycle mechanic on the loss of craftsmanship in America - <AUTHOR> http://www.yatzer.com/vow-27-liberty-vintage-motorcycles-adam-cramer

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm biased living in a college town and working at an engineering company but if I look around I see tons of craftsmen in all areas - <USER2> building robots, treehouses, chicken coops. Maybe motorcycles aren't as popular as they once were and it's harder to work on a modern engine but I don't think things have fundamentally changed.

Also, I live in an area where there are tons of farmers, hobby and commercial. Almost every one of them is a tinkerer.

And of course, software is a craft too. You just don't get your hands dirty.</comment>


PIPA support collapses, with 13 new Senators opposed - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/pipa-support-collapses-with-13-new-opponents-in-senate.ars <comment><USER2> The most interesting part of this article is that PIPA is now effectively a Democratic (capital D) bill with almost twice the number of co-sponsors, in part due to the Heritage Foundation's opposition.

I wish the Democrats would give similar weight to the ACLU or similar organizations. Maybe this is why people say organizing Democrats is like herding cats.

<comment><USER3> The Communications Decency Act, DMCA, and Clipper Chip were all Democratic initiatives, too.

<comment><USER4> The CDA vote:

      Democrats: 30-16 in favor
      Republicans: 51-2 in favor (1 not voting)

Neither party looks good in that vote, but one party looks like it lacked even a significant principled minority...

The DMCA was a Republican initiative legislatively, but passed on an unopposed voice vote and was of course signed by Clinton. Cosponsored by 7 Republicans and 3 Democrats; drafted by the office of Howard Coble (R-NC), who also pushed it through the committee he chaired.

If you want to assign blame by overall party control, both laws, along with the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, were passed by a split government, with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, and Democrats controlling the Presidency. So I guess they're "bipartisan achievements", for which we can thank the 1996-1998 "dream team" of Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Trent Lott, who set an inspiring example in pushing through so much major legislation rather than letting themselves be mired in partisan gridlock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Another co-sponsor, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) echoed that sentiment. He blamed > Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for "pushing forward w/ a flawed > bill that still needs much work."

What a load of dreck. You're a co-sponsor, there, Roy, not some poor, helpless stooge. Sure, it's _all_ the _other_ guy's fault. Suddenly, it's "flawed". For some reason. Before, it was a perfectly fine bill to censor the Internet. Did I get that right?

<comment><USER6> Yes it's lame, but if that's what it takes for Republicans to back off, then I guess I'll live with it. Now we just have to wait for the Democrats to realize that the public hates the bill and they can't let the GOP score a big PR win - in spite of the 90% of entertainment industry lobbying that goes to Democrats.

<comment><USER7> _in spite of the 90% of entertainment industry lobbying that goes to Democrats._

I would like to verify this. Got a source?

<comment><USER6> Yes I do: <http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?ind=C2400>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _About 35 Senators have not committed to a position, perhaps reluctant to do so for fear of angering either deep-pocketed Hollywood campaign contributors or their constituents back home._

To me this illustrates the problem with lobbying.

<comment><USER9> Ironically, I read your comment and though I agree completely I tried to consider the opposite argument.. that lobbying is effectively a natural democratic condition since it's done with money that comes from consumers.... BUYING FUCKING MOVIES AND MUSIC.

[Edit: presumably downvotes are for cursing. Sorry, I adore naughty words... To be clear though, the point I'm making is that I'm infuriated at the fact that money I've spent doing exactly what the MPAA/RIAA wants me to (pay for legal content) is being used to limit my freedom. For some reason it's a realization I've only just arrived at, and it certainly makes me want to think twice before feeding the beast anymore. Effectively, this legislation is the best argument for stealing content that I've come across.]

<comment><USER10> The influence of money is not naturally democratic. If there were a ban on corporate money in politics this would not be occurring.

<comment><USER8> I often don't understand why there isn't

<comment><USER11> There isn't a ban on independent expenditures by corporations because such a ban would unconstitutionally abridge of the right of freedom of speech and of the press. It would abridge the rights of (1) the individuals who jointly own the corporation and (2) the individuals who may wish to hear the speech whose dissemination is being restricted.

Corporations don't have a constitutional right to even exist, but provided that they do exist, Congress cannot enact a content-discriminatory restriction on speech funded by corporations.

<comment><USER12> The people you're arguing against are taking a utilitarian view of the problem. You're arguing from unexamined principles. Provided that companies exist as legal persons, shouldn't they be allowed to vote too? What about incarceration in the event of wrongdoing (manslaughter)? Isn't the treatment of corporations as arbitrary in these cases as in the one you refuse to make?

Clamping down on corporate political speech would hardly restrict the speech rights of individuals. It would simply force organizations wishing to fund political activities into funneling the money through individuals with no legal recourse if the funds ended up used for something else. And it would increase the cost of the activity as compared to the present since individual recipients would be taxed for the additional income at progressive rates depending on the amount spent.

<comment><USER11> >Provided that companies exist as legal persons

Nothing I've said relies on the legal fiction of corporate personhood. I was careful to speak only of the rights of natural persons.

>Clamping down on corporate political speech would hardly restrict the speech rights of individuals.

I respectfully disagree. If corporate political speech were unprotected, then Congress could have outlawed the SOPA protests by reddit, Google, and other corporations. Do you not feel that this would constitute an abridgement of the rights of the people behind reddit and Google to help inform the public about the nature of these bills?

If a group of individuals can join together and form a corporation to publish a book on almost any subject, but are specially prohibited from publishing a book endorsing or opposing a candidate or bill, then it seems to me that such a prohibition would clearly be an unlawful violation of the First Amendment, because it discriminates against certain speech based on the content of that speech.

<comment><USER12> If this is a question of principle you've surely already lost; there are plenty of non-controversial areas in which organizations are afforded greater or lesser rights than individuals based on their functional role in society: non-profits and charities are expressly forbidden from political campaigning, while the New York Times can legally publish Wikileaks in a way that Julian Assange apparently cannot.

I'm sure a sensible law can find a way to reduce soft-money flows without wiping out forums and newspapers. Nor is anyone saying that organizations cannot express political viewpoints. The question is about the corrupting influence of soft-money flows and if the situation is too complex to allow for that, it is surely too complex for limited liability corporations to exist in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I called Sen. Cornyn's San Antonio office earlier today to voice my support for the Senator's opposition.

I'm the first to admit that he may or may not _actually_ be in opposition, but calling and telling his office that I'm glad he's publicly stated such is still important.

Please, do the same if your senator has made a similar statement.

<comment><USER14> I have to imagine in the tangled web of politics there may have been many initially 'for' it who really weren't for it in spirit - their position was tantamount to monetary contributions and towing the line.

In the end what truly matters is that that they represent the wishes of their constituents. I find this protest and its results a glorious thing. But we're only getting started. Unfortunately no position changes for CA (at this moment :)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a hard core social liberal, but given all this I'm forced to really think if Democrats, particularly Boxer and Feinstein deserve my vote [read: they don't].

I wish there were more fiscally conservative and socially liberal Republicans.

<comment><USER16> Democrats have been the ones balancing the budget in the last decades. Republicans are fiscal conservatives in name only: [http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/07/why-the- gop-...](http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/07/why-the-gop-are-not- fiscal-conservatives.html)

<comment><USER17> This is why the tea party was born. Republicans that didn't truly believe in limited government needed to be removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here are the senators seeking re-election this year. Asterisks indicate those who are newly opposed to PIPA.

      Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
      Tom Carper (D-DE)
      Bill Nelson (D-FL)
      Ben Cardin (D-MD) *
      Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
      Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
      Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
      Jon Tester (D-MT)
      Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
      Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
      Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
      Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA)
      Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
      Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
      Joe Manchin (D-WV)
      Richard Lugar (R-IN)
      Olympia Snowe (R-ME) *
      Scott Brown (R-MA) *
      Roger Wicker (R-MS)
      Dean Heller (R-NV)
      Bob Corker (R-TN)
      Orrin Hatch (R-UT) *
      John Barrasso (R-WY)
      Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

<comment><USER19> I hope Feinstein gets primaried. Her support for PIPA is sick.

<comment><USER20> Boxer supports PIPA as well.

Another example of how things could be better if Northern and Southern California split into two states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Embarrassing that more Democrats haven't come out in opposition, especially given the amount of money they traditionally raise from Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER22> They also raise a disproportionate amount of funding from the entertainment industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do they have to pay the lobbyists back? (serious question)

<comment><USER24> Of course not - that would be evidence of bribery. These campaign contributions are "gifts" with "no strings attached" - but good luck getting the money next time!

<comment><USER25> Of course they will gt it next time. I think perhaps you misunderstand how contributions work.

Special interest groups contribute to everyone. They don't pick and choose. Half the people they contribute money to don't even get elected.

At the end of the day there may be questions of scale, but corporations are perhaps the most bipartisan of entities. They understand that the party doesnt matter as much as the person. Regardless of the election outcome they've bet on the winner.

They also understand the tension a politician is under. So this bill gets killed - big whoopee. There are a dozen more like it waiting to be written. Time will tell if the populace have the staying power - corporations certainly do, and politicians have nothing but.

This is a bill that strikes at the best disseminator of information known to man. The only reason it has got so much attention because those that control the Internet (Wikipedia et al.) firstly care enough about this bill, and secondly have a way to communicate with lots of others.

This is an improvement over just big media, but only really concerns bills that are Internet related. There have been plenty of worse bills in the past, and there will be plenty of horrible bills to come. Until voters come to understand that their responsibility extends to more than just making a cross every 4 years (and many don't even do that) then we can't complain if others are filling the void.

<comment><USER26> "Until voters come to understand that their responsibility extends to more than just making a cross every 4 years (and many don't even do that) then we can't complain if others are filling the void."

that is the truth, and an ugly truth it is. But given the increasing complexity of human society, and various other vested interests, its no wonder moms and dads cannot make an informed choice over who to vote for. The problem isn't one of 'dont give a fuck', its one of 'how do I give a fuck when I have mouths to feed and work to go to'.

Mean while, the top 0.1% lobbies some more...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Rubyists Should Care About Messaging - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/why-rubyists-should-care-about-messaging-a-high-level-intro-5017.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that services/messaging will be the "next cool thing" for people doing Rails development.

There's only so much Ruby you can fit into a single process.

If you're afraid that not having ActiveRecord back your forms in the same Ruby process (and are using Rails 3), check out <https://github.com/joevandyk/monkey_forms>. It'll let you provide a simple layer between your forms and the backend storage mechanism (be it ActiveRecord, a RabbitMQ service, or whatever).</comment>


Dracula Pro - <AUTHOR> https://draculatheme.com/pro <comment><USER2> Why would I pay for a theme that has been free for over 5 years now? Bundling your free and open source tools and selling them seem like the most crooked way of building a business. I just don't get the point at all.

> Got laptop stolen, had to reconfigure everything. VSCode settings sync > anyone? or pushing your .vimrc to a git repository? If you're a developer, > you definitively know about a hundred different ways of backing up your > settings.

> License for 3 computers Just WHAT? Is this an April fools?

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and been using it for years but that's not the proper way of asking for financial support. I'd pay for a Patreon, or any kind of other financial support instead, before buying this kind of unreasonably expensive package.

<comment><USER3> How it's different from Sublime. Sublime by default free to use, however it has Dev channel where you need to pay to use it.

Everyone who has creativity, can sell their products on their own wish. Love it, buy it. Not interested, ignore it. But this sort of criticism is not expected!

<comment><USER4> >Everyone who has creativity, can sell their products on their own wish.

Agreed. But HN isn't really the place to promote your for-pay products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I carefully selected 4 monospaced programming fonts that fit perfectly with > Dracula PRO.

What does that mean? Is he just bundling some free fonts, or did he actually license some commercial fonts?

Rather fishy that it's so vague on details.

</comment><comment><USER6> Creator on the sales of this: "From $0 to $20,145.92 in 2 months with a side project

A thread... [https://t.co/8Sb9ZprsQT"](https://t.co/8Sb9ZprsQT")

<comment><USER7> As someone who studied typography and who knows color by heart from both the scientific as well as the artistic side I can't believe people fall for the mumbo jumbo written on this page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice color theme, but $49 for three computers seems a bit high when comparing to what's available in the market.

<comment><USER9> That's the "intro price", the regular price is $79! I don't fault the dev for trying to make money on this, but I don't see this making much money, especially for editors like Vim.

And what's to stop someone from knocking this off? Can you copyright a color theme?

<comment><USER10> When your color scheme costs as much as Sublime Text...maybe you should lay off whatever you're smoking.

<comment><USER11> it's insane when it cost more than a complete IDE (eg: Webstorm is $59 a year)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you use Intelli-J IDE's you should check out [https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8006-material-theme- ui](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8006-material-theme-ui) "Dracula Pro" looks a lot like this with a different font (which is also an option in Material Theme)

</comment><comment><USER13> "Hand-picked Typography"

lol

As opposed to, ya know, computer-picked typography? what is this?

<comment><AUTHOR> No mention on what's picked also. That's a shame.

99% certain it's Fira Code, Ubuntu Mono, IBM Plex and Hasklig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I manage to get the actual color hex codes, can I create themes based on them? No copyright involving colors, correct?

</comment><comment><USER15> Do I need to buy this just to find out which fonts they're recommending?

<comment><USER5> Fira Code appears to be one of them, at least that is used on the website. A handcrafted recommendation of mine would be to try Iosevka ([https://typeof.net/Iosevka/](https://typeof.net/Iosevka/) ) or Input ([https://input.fontbureau.com/](https://input.fontbureau.com/) ). I really like the narrow-width fonts, lets you fit more code on screen.

<comment><USER15> They're the ones I'm already using. I want to know what I'm missing out on! I've never seen Input though, so thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> He cited color theory. Isn't color theory made up of an arbitrary choice of three colors? Additionally the color spectrum is one dimensional because it's really just frequency of light.

Geometric symmetry on an arbitrary mapping of the actual one dimensional concept of color to a two dimensional plane doesn't really "improve" anything. If you like it, you like it because of your opinion, please don't cite any pseudo science to make your case.

<comment><USER12> If you use Intelli-J IDE's you should check out [https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8006-material-theme- ui](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8006-material-theme-ui)

"Dracula Pro" looks a lot like this with a different font (which is also an option in Material Theme)

<comment><USER12> oops, didn't mean to post as a reply</comment></comment></comment>


Google's plan for world's biggest online library: philanthropy or piracy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/30/google-library-project-books-settlement <comment><USER2> I continue to fail to understand why anybody but Google's competitors are up in arms about this now. Google scanned a bunch of books - entered a gray area in "Fair Use", was taken to court, _and then came to out-of-court settlement_.

Amazon is free to negotiate the same settlement with the book publishers.

Google is making available a sizable number of _out of print_ books - that is, those books that can not be purchased from Amazon - and, here is the important thing - _Only with the permission of the rights holders._

The only real major take away for Google are the "Orphan" works - that is those books who no copyright holder can be found for and are out-of-print.

Does anyone out there who is not a competitor of Google see this as a bad thing?

<comment><USER3> __Only with the permission of the rights holders.__

I don't have knowledge of the specifics of the case but I believe Google only have the permission of an organisation representing authors, not the authors themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://books.google.com/books?id=WuHYXm4tH3EC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=WuHYXm4tH3EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=subject:+Science+Fiction+&as_brr=3&ei=_QGbSriPIabUyQTWoo3rDg&rview=1#v=twopage&q=&f=false)

I can get hooked in a book then on the left is a link to Amazon for me to buy it... I think this is potentially more beneficial to Amazon then threatening.</comment>


Socialism, American-Style - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/opinion/socialism-american-style.html <comment><USER3> Why is socialism such a boogieman in the USA? I just don't understand it. Does everyone in the USA think they're a temporarily embarrassed millionaire?

I hear so many horror stories from the USA. People's lives ruined because they lost their job, got injured or have some addiction problem. But those same people will curse socialism in that same breath if asked. I just don't understand it.

I'm from the Netherlands, and I'm proud to say I live in a socialist country. It means that if I'm doing very well for myself, I'll give up a bit more than I would've in a strictly capitalist country. Instead of paying 25-30% tax, I'll pay 50%.

And that doesn't matter. If I'm earning 300k+ in a year, I can miss it.

In return I know that my life is safe from being destroyed, regardless of social class I'm born in or will move to. My parents don't have any money? It doesn't matter, education is free. If I have or get some disability, I will be taken care of. If I get injured, I will be taken care of. If I get sick, I will be taken care of. By the community. Anything else, in my book, is uncivilized.

\---

To those citing governments destroying incentive structures (can't reply - your comment is deleted), I strongly suggest looking up the Dutch model for infrastructure. In a very, very summarized example, the government gives subsidy to private/public hybrid organizations. Those organizations compete in the regular market. In order to qualify for subsidy you need to meet the government standards. Think internet companies, hospitals, etc.

You're perfectly free to set up a 100% privatized hospital in the Netherlands - you just won't qualify for government subsidy.

<comment><USER4>
      It means that if I'm doing very well for myself, I'll
      give up a bit more than I would've in a strictly
      capitalist country. Instead of paying 25-30% tax, I'll
      pay 50%.

      And that doesn't matter. If I'm earning 300k+ in a year,
      I can miss it.

      In return I know that my life is safe from being
      destroyed, regardless of social class I'm born in or
      will move to. My parents don't have any money? It doesn't
      matter, education is free. If I have or get some
      disability, I will be taken care of. If I get injured, I
      will be taken care of. If I get sick, I will be taken
      care of. By the community.

Here, I'm only referring to the sensible, politically astute contingent of Americans who yet don't warm up to socialism or even high taxation for that matter. I'm not talking about the impulsively right-leaning lot here.

I think such Americans genuinely question if such a smooth trade off - <USER2> paying a good chunk more in taxes and a proportionate increase in the standard of living of those on whom that increase in taxation is supposed to benefit - is ever possible in a government that is rife with dysfunction, graft and bewildering inefficiencies at every level. The examples of this present themselves at regular frequencies - say the botched roll out of the healthcare website [1] a few years ago - in the glare of the American media, which don't exactly help either.

Further exacerbating this problem is that bright young Americans [2] don't want to serve in the public sector in similar rates as in Northern Europe.

[1] Obamacare Website Costs Exceed $2 Billion, Study Finds

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare- website-costs-exceed-2-billion-study-finds)

[2] 'Pro-Government' Millennials Take Government Jobs, Discover They Suck, Move to the Private Sector

[http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/17/millennials-take- governmen...](http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/17/millennials-take-government- jobs-discove)

<comment><USER5> As far as I recall the Obama Healthcare Website was not developed by the government. It was developed by a private company. The front end was developed by Development Seed and the backend was developed by a multi-national.

That's what I mean about propaganda. To say this is the doing of socialism is pure propaganda.

<comment><USER6> As long as it is state funded I see no difference. I bet if it would have been developed by the `state engineers` it would even fail worse.

<comment><USER5> If it was State run then you could say hey the State failed to deliver. This was a private company which failed to deliver. And the private company, if you actually look it up subcontracted it, so you can't say hey there was no private Capitalist oversight over the project, you know greed to make things run efficiently.

<comment><USER7> But even subcontractors on government projects are subject to the same limitations as the prime contractor. So many limitations and increased overhead are imposed on government contractors, it's not surprising government projects fail in ways a similar private project would not with similar funding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Commodities without an alternative (e.g. water) and natural monopolies (e.g. networks) should be owned by the public.

There is no point in having a market, when only one option makes sense or it is irrelevant which option you choose. There is no point in having competition, when it cannot improve the product or any process of its making.

In these cases private ownership just leads to cartels or innovation in marketing departments alone, both rising prices.

Having said that, the difficult part is to determine these cases and to figure out how to transition the privately owned companies into public property without stealing it or overpaying for it.

Another difficulty is to judge, when something suddenly stops to be one of these cases (e.g. postal services with electronic messaging as an alternative to it).

<comment><USER9> > Commodities without an alternative (e.g. water) and natural monopolies (e.g. > networks) should be owned by the public.

Why do you think there's a water shortage in California right now?

<comment><USER10> Lack of snow melt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> State-managed capitalism and socialism are not the same thing. Putting a state-run monopoly in private hands (which is what's usually done), instead in state-run hands ... where the risks and profits are held by the same entity instead of the public bearing the risk and the private sector getting the profits? That's socialism? No...

This guy's a professor of political economy ... what a terrible word choice he's using.

According to him, not blindly gifting away the collectively-held public commons into the hands of private capital to sell it back to us is now called "Socialism".

What's next? Insisting cities which build private sports stadiums with public funds participate in profit sharing instead of just presenting the stadium with a little bow on top to some billionaire? Woah, Socialism cometh!

The real thing that's happening is that people want a fair shake... "If we're going to be on the hook in the bad times, then we should see some of the good time too." The companies that were bailed out with public funds now have record private profits ... that's the problem. It's got zilch to do with socialism.

<comment><USER12> Most of the examples in the article are about state-owned, state-operated enterprises, such as sovereign wealth funds, utilities, oil and mineral extraction, etc.

In fact, I could not find any example of "putting a state-run monopoly in private hands" anywhere in the article. Did you even read it?

> According to him, not blindly gifting away the collectively-held public > commons into the hands of private capital to sell it back to us is now > called "Socialism".

That's quite a strawman there. He never argued anything remotely like that.

<comment><USER13> I think those to examples are intended to describe "privatization" as it's often done (i.e. badly from an purely economic perspective, because it's partly/mostly ideological) which is, as you note, the exact opposite of the article's focus, which is state run stuff that makes economic sense.

That's combined with pedantry about the term "socialism", which has confused some readers of the comment.

So _kristopolous_ appears to approve of certain things being run by the state, and would prefer that not to be described as socialism, as it might put people off who immediately dismiss anything with that label, and lead to more economically silly privatization or public subsidy of private profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Many of these examples might be more specifically seen as a variety of Georgism [1]. There are a bunch of variants, but the general idea is a claim that everyone has a right to their share of proceeds from economic rent, especially land rent and mineral wealth, in some forms also proceeds from utility-like infrastructure. Since everyone is held to own an equal share of these by right, the revenues should be either distributed equally to everyone as "shareholders" (as in the Alaska dividend), or used to finance public goods.

There are some overlaps with socialism, especially social-democratic models of government. But clearly the full social-democratic program is nowhere near popular in conservative areas of the US. If you look at why only _these_ specific ideas are popular in those areas, one commonality is that they have a Georgist feel to them. Or at least, I'll propose that as a hypothesis.

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

<comment><USER15> We must also take into account what the alternative is. If the alternative presented to Gerogism is that the natural resources would be taxed, and these proceeds will be spent by the government, many conservatives and libertarians will side with the Georgists. The conservatives and libertarians are not necessarily supporters of basic incomes or similar schemes, they are often simply against increased (discretionary) government spending, and believe that distributing the funds to the people will have cause less market distortion and malinvestment.

<comment><USER14> I agree that's probably a factor. But I think many conservatives in these cases _also_ prefer a nonprofit or dividend-type model to a more libertarian- style private-ownership model. The Tennessee-valley opposition to privatizing the TVA is an example.

And in Alaska, the choice isn't only between paying out a dividend and letting the government keep the money. Alaska could simply abolish the severance tax entirely, and just let private mineral-rights owners reap the full profits. But that's not popular at all, even among people who identify as conservative. My suspicion, besides people voting their interests (probably a significant factor) is that unlike in the case where someone creates a product through their own labor, in the case of oil extraction, there is doubt that private land or rights owners really "deserve" the full profits from exploiting a resource they didn't create, but for various historical reasons happen to now own. Rather it seems to be more popular to allow them a profit on their extraction effort, but recapture some of the underlying value of the mineral asset for the people in general. (Texas also has a severance tax based on this kind of rationale, in its case used to fund government in partial lieu of an income tax.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The US Army is the biggest socialist organisation in the US. They provide medical care, educational grants and benefits, housing etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> One should in my opinion not forget about two things here:

\- The US American arms industry

\- Welfare and other benefits for veterans

I think when it comes to citizens and industries somehow related to military the US has a history of applying (some) socialist principles, which is interesting, because it actually was used to "fight socialism".

<comment><USER14> There's an interesting-looking book on that subject coming out this fall: [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286139](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286139)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> San Francisco rent control policy is another example of weird and conflicting policies in the U.S. I can't believe a policy like that is in place in the United States!

<comment><USER11> how so?

<comment><USER18> It's against free market

<comment><USER19> The market can only exist within a framework of laws, therefore it's exactly as free as we make it.

A completely free market couldn't exist outside of anarchy, which would very quickly stop being free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article is misleading. It is far away from the concept of the socialism. I live in country in which were everything in public property for 40 years. It totally destroyed our state and the society as well..

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish there was a mainstream medium that discussed (and made accessible) the real risks and benefits of policy ideas. The biggest policy decisions our government makes are more or less discussed and debated through anecdotal stories shared in op-ed pages of major newspapers. (Note: I'm talking about policies pushed by both sides of the aisle, not just this particular op-ed.) This seems to be the biggest driver of polarization in the political sphere, as individuals tend to seek out op-eds that reinforce their own views in an exercise of confirmation bias, instead of thinking critically about what the positive and negative effects, plus potential risks, would be.

Personally, I tend to default to looking for free market/libertarian solutions to societal problems based on two major risks. First, if the government fails to deliver the good or service promised (like energy for your home, or healthcare), you normally have no other alternative to choose from. This can cause an entire population to suffer greatly, especially given the government is most often tasked to providing fundamental goods and services most necessary for human life (water, energy, healthcare). Second, choosing your government to provide a solution for you is fundamentally saying that 1 (non)elected government official can offer a better solution than ~330 million other individuals (in the US). Statistically this is highly unlikely, even considering the advantage of coercive power the government-provided solution possesses. I'm not opposed to government control over productive capital in some arenas, but any policy idea needs to mitigate and address these two fundamental risks. Very few policy proposals pass this test, and no mainstream media source exists to provide an objective risk analysis of the ideas and policies being debated by our elected officials.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Moreover, contrary to conventional opinion, studies of the comparative > efficiency of modern public enterprise show rough equivalency to private > firms in many cases. (They aren't perfect, of course: Many public agencies, > boards and corporations that control enterprises are not fully accountable > or transparent in their operations.)

Companies get efficient if they have to. Competition is one way to force their hands. (There might be others, like public oversight?) Private vs public ownership doesn't make too much of a difference.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why people insist in say "I live in a socialist country" when they clearly does not live in one?

Welfare State has nothing to do with socialism

</comment><comment><USER24> To the americans here, please understand that socialism is NOT communism. Socialism is regrouping a lot of different things (including the most extreme form of communism) and please do not mix the two together.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps today the meanings are different (one is a superset). But according to Von Mises:

"In the terminology of Marx and Engels the words communism and socialism are synonymous. They are alternately applied without any distinction between them. The same was true for the practice of all Marxian groups and sects until 1917. "

[http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1060#lf0069_label_908](http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1060#lf0069_label_908)

Also, uses of "Liberalism" has been changed even more throughout the history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > _The fund collects and invests proceeds from the extraction of oil and > minerals in the state._

This is not at all "Socialism".

BTW, state-owned factories almost always failed (numerous examples in 20th century Europe).

<comment><USER22> > BTW, state-owned factories almost always failed (numerous examples in 20th > century Europe).

Industrial factories, yes. Local utilities seem to do well enough in Europe.

I wonder if there's a principled difference?

<comment><USER26> Quite a lot of private factories have failed in the west too. Factories are very vulnerable to globalisation.

Utilities, on the other hand, are a natural monopoly inherently tied to a geographic location. They're not producing a "product", but instead a commodity that's the same for all customers. Many utilities are _mostly_ forms of "road" \- they just happen to be wire-shaped or pipe-shaped roads.

Note the _mostly_. Telecoms and electricity have two parts: the central, complex, services; and the big mostly-dumb network.

<comment><USER27> well Telecoms networks can be quiet complex and in the USA broadly you had more complexity at the local plant level than say the UK does.

Its the last mile that makes telcos's natural monopoly's not the exchanges/switches/central offices

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Why is socialism such a boogieman in the USA?"

Because every single time it's been enacted in the past 100 years, it's resulted in the deaths of millions of its own citizenry. Because the very basis of the american legal system and the american legacy (not to mention english common law) is based on individual over collective rights. Socialism is, quite simply, unamerican, by definition.

<comment><USER3> You're going to have to back up those bold claims for them to hold any value.

Also, please do not confuse 'unamerican' for 'bad', and 'american' for 'good'. In fact, I'd argue that the american economic and social system is broken (and thus an 'american' social system does mean a 'bad' system). Your 1% is depriving the 99% of most value.

<comment><USER28>
      please do not confuse 'unamerican' for 'bad', and 'american' for 'good'

That's your own projection, not mine. I clearly stated in my comment that socialism was unamerican because it goes against the founding principles of the country.

I don't deny the current system is broken. It has been for a long, long time. But, if you think socialism is the solution, you haven't been paying attention to history. Socialism always results in tyranny. It did in Russia. It did in China. Vietnam. Korea. Even the Nordic countries, who had the best chance of pulling it off, have started to suffer under its weight.

<comment><USER29> > Socialism always results in tyranny.

Anarchist Catalonia? (Admittedly, it didn't last long, thanks chiefly to a different bunch of socialists, who were in turn defeated by fascists.)

<comment><USER28> I remember reading that a particular author, Franz Borkenau, was highly critical of the communists in Anarchist Catalonia, describing the terror they inflicted on Barcelona in his book _the spanish cockpit_.

Interestingly enough, he was also one of the pioneers of the totalitarianism theory. He argued that Vladimir Lenin created the first totalitarian dictatorship and that nearly all communist and fascist states were totalitarian in nature.

<comment><USER29> > I remember reading that a particular author, Franz Borkenau, was highly > critical of the communists in Anarchist Catalonia, describing the terror > they inflicted on Barcelona in his book _the spanish cockpit._

Are you referring to the Stalinist oppression that began with the Barcelona May Days in 1937, or to anarchist atrocities in the city before then?

<comment><USER28> The description of the book I'm reading doesn't specify, but from what I understand, Borkenau spent a few months there in '36 and in '37, so he could have written about both.

The book just made it to the top of my to read pile. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin Has Infected Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://forums.tagpad.com/questions/16/bitcoin-has-infected-reddit

<comment><USER2> (Disclaimer: I have a "bitcoin net worth" of about 10 BTC.)

The first thing I thought of when I discovered Bitcoin was micropayments. I can understand the comparisons of Bitcoin to a pyramid scheme, but I don't think they're valid.

A better example would be the founders not of a company, but of a state. After Alexander swept through the middle east, his generals suddenly became extremely wealthy and powerful due to their positions as de facto rulers of successor states and their control of the silver mines of Macedonia. Note that both the precious metal and the authority of the generals were necessary components of a stable currency: the durability, divisibility, and malleability of silver made it a superior medium; but a silver coin not stamped as the general stamped his coins was considered counterfeit at worst and much less valuable at best (since the new government would not accept any but its own coins as payment). This was a necessary protection against the sudden inflation and arbitrary redistribution of wealth that could be caused by a gold or silver rush.

Much later, King Henry I of England perfected the use of tally sticks as currency. Without going into detail, his tally sticks were designed to prevent counterfeit and to minimize the trust between parties necessary to use the sticks as currency. Just like the idea of using one's military supremacy and control of a source of precious metals to convert military power to wealth and financial power, the tally sticks were essentially an information technology. The paper currencies of today's governments are the current state of the art in financial information technology.

This is why bitcoin is more like an upstart state than an upstart business. Businesses don't compete with state currencies. Throughout history, the power to mint one's own currency has been largely (but not totally) reserved to the rulers of states. What makes Bitcoin so interesting is that it's taken the historical requirements of a working currency and attempted to eliminate one requirement by doubling down on the other. Bitcoin has no political authority or military might to enforce its use in trade, but it does have a very innovative information technology foundation. The question is, can a currency survive on the latter alone?</comment>


CoderBack - The cloud in the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://coderback.com The cloud in the cloud... can you imagine it? <comment><USER2> Great! It's interesting if you invite 3 or more people!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are you a coder? It can be interesting for you!</comment>


5-min limit to trick the mind into forming a learning habit - <AUTHOR> http://planblabs.net/drops/

<comment><USER2> Seems interesting! What if I want to go over the limit? Is there a way to disable it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, you can get some extra minutes by sharing it with your buddies or buy time via IAP. It's an experimental business model in this genre and seems to be working pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> tried the app and learned basic danish pronunciation with it - it seems to deliver, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER4> Good job! :)</comment>


Moody's lowers EU rating outlook to 'negative' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19472857

<comment><USER2> Didn't Moody also give AAA ratings to those junk bonds that triggered the housing crisis? I think all the rating agencies did?

So why are we listening to them again?

<comment><USER3> Yes. S&P, Moody's & Fitch seem to have the collective IQ of a kidney bean.

Then you have trillions in pension funds shifting overnight because government regulations depend on the output of these rating agencies. You could shift regulation away from these, but maybe you might have your national debt downgraded? Ratings agencies pretty much terrify governments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What kind of organization is Moody's? Who watches them? Who made them qualified to issue ratings? Are they accountable for their ratings? Why would anyone listen what they say?

<comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_Recognized_Statistic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_Recognized_Statistical_Rating_Organization)

What kind of organization is Moody's? - They are an NRSRO.

Who watches them? Who made them qualified to issue ratings?

"The U.S. Congress passed the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006, Pub.L. 109-291, 120 Stat. 1327, enacted September 29, 2006. This law required the SEC to establish clear guidelines for determining which credit rating agencies qualify as NRSROs.

Are they accountable for their ratings?

"In February 2009, the SEC promulgated amended regulations designed to address concerns about the integrity of the process by which NRSROs rate structured finance products,"

Why would anyone listen what they say?

"A Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO) is a credit rating agency (CRA) that issues credit ratings that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) permits other financial firms to use for certain regulatory purposes....SEC regulations also require that money market funds (mutual funds that mimic the safety and liquidity of a bank savings deposit, but without Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insurance) comprise only securities with a very high rating from an NRSRO. Likewise, insurance regulators use credit ratings from NRSROs to ascertain the strength of the reserves held by insurance companies."

<comment><USER6> So if I read correctly it's a US organisation, controlled by the SEC, giving european countries, UE and other structured financed products (is that novlangue for "country" ?) a note to estimate the financial credit reserve of said products.

Are there such european credit rating agencies giving notes to California or Kentucky ? We never hear about those on this side of the ocean :(

<comment><USER7> There are plans to set up European Agency's. Mainly to add balance to the US colored ratings.

For now you could also check the Chinese Rating Agency: "The Dagong Global Credit Rating Company, which lowered the United States to A+ last November after the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to continue loosening its monetary policy, announced a further downgrade to A, indicating heightened doubts over Washington's long-term ability to repay its debts." [http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/08/02/china.us.rating/i...](http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/08/02/china.us.rating/index.html)

Funny, communists lowering a credit rating because it's too socialist (Keynes and loose money policy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think they're right. The EU as it stands today will certainly add to a deeper new recession. However: They are highly selective in their ratings. They focus on the EU and seem to 'forget' the US (and Great Britain). Both are also deeply in debt and both have no plans to even reign in their spending.

<comment><USER8> Even some previously supportive economists now think that the UK's current right-wing government need to refocus on encouraging growth. They won't, though. This is class war not economics.

The UK is part of the EU, although not part of the Eurozone (thanks, Soros!).

And the US is doing better than the UK to the extent that it is focussing on growth more than on tax cuts for the rich.

<comment><USER7> "Refocus on encouraging growth" is fine. Disturbing markets with political preferences for 'this or that' is not fine and will deepen the recession.</comment></comment></comment>


The Healthcare.gov Fiasco - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dobt.co/post/63381111778/the-healthcare-gov-fiasco

<comment> matt-attack I find it interesting that the author took the time to riddle this article with links (even to a Walter White wikipedia page), but didn't use a link to Healthcare.gov in its opening sentence.</comment>


That daily deal you bought? Maybe not so great a deal after all - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thumbtack.com/2011/10/03/that-daily-deal-you-bought-maybe-not-so-great-a-deal-after-all/

<comment><USER2> This isn't anything new to Groupon. For as long as I can remember companies advertise many of their sales based on MSRP, or a jacked up initial price. Heck, I get coupons in the mail all the time from local and national pizzerias offering things like, "Large Pizza, Breadsticks, and 2 Liter for $20.99" when ordering each of them individually adds up only to $19.99. Many of Wal-Mart's "New Reduced Prices" are only $0.10 cheaper than the original price.

I guess the moral is that as long as people fall for it companies will continue to take advantage of the public's innate desire for "a great deal."

Off topic, but am I the only person that finds it annoying when company blogs don't provide an easy link back to their website? I understand wanting the header logo/name to lead to the blog homepage, but it still seems sensible to include a good link somewhere.

 _Edited to show the on-topic stuff first._

<comment><USER3> _"Large Pizza, Breadsticks, and 2 Liter for $20.99" when ordering each of them individually adds up only to $19.99._

This goes for every fast-food combo meal, as well. IME it's just a dime or so off the a la carte sum.

<comment><USER4> I've not found that to be the case. Usually I find that the sandwich and <size> fries will add up to, for example, $4.79, and adding a drink is another $1.59, but the combo price is $4.99. You're paying an extra 20 cents or so for the drink, which is IIRC still less than their cost for the soda, but I might be wrong in today's dollars. In 1990/91 when I worked at a Burger King, our food cost price for a medium soda was 5 or 6 cents, which included the cost of the cup/lid/straw and estimated "average" number of refills. I imagine its somewhat more in 2011, but possibly still under 20 cents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note well that this post is from a service that (a) competes with Groupon's value proposition and (b) appears to exist to provide the market intelligence they're arguing from in this post.

<comment><USER6> Hi Thomas, definitely agreed on the first. Our bidding model competes with Groupon's value proposition in the local services industry (hence our repeated plugs for the low rates you can find through a bidding site). We just think we can often find consumers a better deal than can be found on lots of daily deal sites.

As for the market intelligence, we're not a data provider. Actually, this is the first post we've ever written that surfaces any of the data we have. We have a data set that is pretty uncommon.

Market rates for local services are generally very opaque. We think the data we have on market rates for local services can be helpful in many ways (like this) to consumers.

Thanks for reading!

p.s. I'm Sander (thumbtack.com/who)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Groupon sells marketing. The daily deals sites, and everything on them, is finely honed marketing.

It's a beautiful psychological play. The % off, the timer, the social pressure - an automated version of the used-car salesman pitch. It doesn't matter what the absolute price is - studies have shown the consumers are more willing to buy a product that is at its "everyday low price", even when it's that price... every day.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the deals had special "Groupon only" pricing. Gilt Group went through this a few months back with their "Made for Gilt" specific items - they were selling inventory which had ridiculously inflated "retail prices" pulled out of thin air.

</comment><comment><USER8> I too find it annoying when company blogs do not link back to the company's own website. I read the article and wanted to learn more about Thumbtack. I don't MIND typing it in, but I should not have to...there should be an obvious link on the page.

</comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't Groupon target the somewhat higher scale part of each market (e.g. well-known restaurants)? Wouldn't this explain the higher-than-average prices, since those averages are computed over the whole market?

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course it isn't a good deal. In order to make money on groupon your "standard" rate needs to have a profit margin of 200%.

Advertising costs money so whenever something is "advertised" you're going to pay more unless the advertising generates enough business to get an economy of scale greater than the cost of advertising. Advertising makes a lot of sense when you have something with high capital costs but low per unit costs. (Think CPUs or software based businesses). When you're buying a service such as cleaning where most of the costs come from labour it's going to be difficult to generate an economy of scale great enough for advertising to pay for itself. In businesses with out great economies of scale the increased cost of advertising is going to be passed to the consumer.

You're always going to get a better rate on a service business by doing a little leg work yourself and cutting out the "middle man".

<comment><USER5> Hype and promotion to the contrary, the place Daily Deals make the most sense isn't in driving more people through a lower-margin but still-profitable offering. It's as a substitute for local advertising, which is for many businesses akin to just flushing money down the toilet.

Sensible Groupon offerings don't have to make money, or even fail to lose money. They just have to do so within the bounds of a marketing budget, and provide a better ROI than what the budget would have gone to otherwise.

<comment><USER10> Actually, sensible groupon offerings DO have to _make money_ (in the long term, or short term if you don't have credit).

The amount of money a rational organization should spend on negative ROI activities is _exactly_ zero. It's just as stupid to spend your money on a -25% ROI as it is on a -50% ROI, you'd be better off putting the money in a GIC.

<comment><USER11> What the parent meant is that these kind of offers make more money long term. Partly by exposing your business to new customers, and partly by the simple fact that many people see your company name.

So if you set aside a 10k yearly advertising budget, offering deals which make you lose 2k is perfectly reasonable - if you think the exposure and new customers are worth it. The advertising budget is already accounted in the yearly ROI, so you don't have to worry on each deal's bottom line being in red.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a Chess Champion Trains for the Big Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-chess-champion-trains-for-the-big-game-1479146491 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, I also wonder how all other tech guys prepare for your final Tech interview. I tend to get nervous on interview days where there are multiple rounds and you have to just wait and keep focused!</comment>


Suter - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suter_(computer_program) <comment><AUTHOR> Iranian military forces claim they have seen a cruise missile in radars and targeted that which caused mistakenly shutting down of the Ukrainian plane. Can it be the result of using Suter by US forces?</comment>


Facsimile of the Voynich Manuscript Now Available to Citizen Cryptographers - <AUTHOR> http://hyperallergic.com/335505/voynich-manuscript-facsimile-published-yale-university/ <comment><USER2> If you are looking to get this as a Christmas gift, note that there are actually two versions of the Voynich Manuscript being published this year.

The one mentioned here is a photographic reproduction done by the Yale Press, and is available from major sellers like Amazon for a reasonable price: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300217234](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300217234)

The other is a little more exotic. The Spanish publisher Siloé has been authorized to make a limited-edition 'look and feel' replica. They will handmake 898 full facsimiles, down to the wormholes in the pages. The expected price is €7,000-8,000.

So if you are asking for a copy for Christmas, make sure to be be specific to avoid a (possibly) disappointing surprise!

[http://blog.siloe.es/siloe-editara-la-replica-del- manuscrito...](http://blog.siloe.es/siloe-editara-la-replica-del-manuscrito- voynich/)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/21/voynich- manuscrip...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/21/voynich-manuscript- exact-replicas-to-be-made-of-worlds-most-myst/)

<comment><USER3> >The Spanish publisher Siloé has been authorized

Authorized by whom? I mean there's surely no copyright protection for the original anymore. (I hope at least but you never know).

<comment><USER4> With a manuscript that old, you'd need authorisation to look at it so you can see all the worm holes and artifacts.

<comment><USER5> Authorization to maintain the integrity of the artifact yes. Authorization to publish a copy of it? No. High resolution PDFs are freely available[0] and there already exists a crappy bound edition of these PDFs[1].

(Do not buy the linked to book. It's very subpar. Multipage foldouts are shrunk-to-fit, and there's no accompany text. It's literally, just the archive.org images printed and bound.)

[0] [https://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript](https://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1599865556/ref=oh_aui_deta...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1599865556/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

<comment><USER4> Yeah but my point is that it will be pretty hard to produce a replica where you charge thousands per book with just a high resolution PDF alone.

You want to see how the book looks in 3D, in real lighting and at different angles. A PDF cannot convey how that will look. The only way to produce a high quality replica is to look at the real thing and work to match how it really is.

They would need authorisation for that access.

<comment><USER5> Yeah but that still doesn't mean that Yale Library authorized the production of the the replica. They authorized access to the original. Nothing more. I can go to any library or museum and once granted access do anything I want with the data I acquire. Now granted, they may be curious about why I wanted access, and maybe I'd even do it under supervision in order to mitigate damage, but the data and the manifestation of that data becomes my own original transformative creative work. The library doesn't own it, or even a part of it, unless a specific agreement was made regarding that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure how a photo-print of the manuscript will help cryptographers. Doesn't the digital version available at archive.org provide better opportunities for analysis?

[https://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript](https://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript)

For example, a friend of mine is fascinated with the Zodiac Killer's unsolved ciphers, so he put the note into a program, where you can replace the cryptic symbols in the serial killer's note with various letters:

[http://www.oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/](http://www.oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/)

A printed-book of the Voynich Manuscript--to my mind--actually _reduces_ the ability of cryptographers to decode it (if there's even anything there to actually decode[1]). I would love to see the symbols in this book broken out into a font where we can run statistics on them, replace them with various letters from different alphabets, and seek patterns in their occurrence.

[1] An analysis of the manuscript found the distribution of words " is not compatible with natural languages": [https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07435](https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07435)

<comment><USER7> > I would love to see the symbols in this book broken out into a font where we > can run statistics on them, replace them with various letters from different > alphabets, and seek patterns in their occurrence.

Odds are, if there was a 1-to-1 relationship between symbols and letters, someone would have figured it out by now. So a font may be statistically interesting, but probably not a major tool towards solving the puzzle.

<comment><USER8> Username checks out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I don't hang in the right circles, but has anyone done a serious look for number words? I can't imagine that document would be void of quantities, especially in the recipes section.

Counting and enumeration systems can reveal a lot about where something is from.

<comment><USER10> The short answer is "probably, yes". This thing's been pretty exhaustively analyzed. After an afternoon of armchair research, I personally felt the evidence lead most to a fascinating fake made much later than its claimed origin date in order to fetch a high asking price. In any case, check it out sometime, it's fascinating. I may pick up this reprinting.

<comment><USER11> I also find it fascinating.

Have you read Stephen Bax' paper on partial decode based on botany?

[https://stephenbax.net/?page_id=11](https://stephenbax.net/?page_id=11)

I find it quite compelling.

<comment><USER10> I have not, thank you for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still haven't heard of a better theory explaining Voynich Manuscript than this one: [https://xkcd.com/593/](https://xkcd.com/593/).

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the most fascinating unsolved puzzles I've read about. I like to believe in the "alien" theory although it seems the least probable :)

</comment><comment><USER14> What would the explanation be according to Occam's razor here?

<comment><USER15> The Occam's Razor explanation has already been proposed by Randall Munroe: [https://xkcd.com/593/](https://xkcd.com/593/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> ...So, anybody up for a game of Druids and Dicotyledons?

Yes, everyone else already linked the strip, but I couldn't resist.</comment>


Hooray: The Second Derivative of the Unemployment Rate Improved - <AUTHOR> http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/horray-second-derivative-of.html

<comment><USER2> I never thought I would be a fan of writing about statistics. But Nate Silver has become a must-read.

<comment><USER3> Uh,

Sure, it sounds clever but taking the second derivative of noisy data is poor statistics as far I'm concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep in mind that unemployment figures are not a simple polynomial. Specifically, an _improvement_ in the second derivative (not even necessarily positive) doesn't directly imply that we're going to improve. The article mentions this too:

>\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

The $787 billion question, of course, is whether a decrease in the rate of job losses indeed portends a recovery, or whether such data is subject to false starts.

>\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

I'm all for optimism, but there's enough short-term fluctuation in economic statistics that this is like getting the faintest whiff of baked goods and wondering whether we're all getting donuts next week.

<comment><USER5> You can also quote an article by using asterisks:

From the help <http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc> :

 _Text surrounded by asterisks is italicized, if the character after the first asterisk isn't whitespace._

</comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Contrarian view: <http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data>

"actual" unemployment if computed the way it was in 1992: 19% for "shadowstats version of U6" versus "official U6"

<comment><USER6> Also note that the "birth-death" model fudge-factor they used for April was 226,000 which was about double what it was for March.

Watch out for revisions as well: "February was revised down from -651k to -681k (-30,000) and March was revised from -663k to -699k (-36,000). See a pattern there? That's 66,000 jobs that were reported as existing but revised out later."

[http://market-ticker.org/archives/1026-Unemployment-Fried- Da...](http://market-ticker.org/archives/1026-Unemployment-Fried-Day.html)

<comment><USER7> Don't forget the phantom ('seasonal') 60,000 jobs created by temporary hiring for the census...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Using the term second derivative obscures the meaning here somewhat. 'Deceleration' would be a more accessible concept to use to describe what's happening. It doesn't mean we're going backwards yet (i.e. net employment gains), but the rate of loss is slowing. At least that's what they told me in Physics class.

<comment><USER9> I don't think there's any obscurity; this is high school calculus. If the rate of change (first derivative, negative in this case) is slowing, that means the second derivative is positive here. I'm not yet convinced this is a sign of things to come, however; there are five inflection points in his table where the rate of loss improves.

<comment><USER8> I'm not saying the terminology is wrong or anything like that. I'm just saying 'deceleration' is a more concise and comprehensible way of talking about changes in the second derivative. You might be surprised how little high school calculus most people have retained.

<comment><USER10> Or how little high school calculus people have taken. At my high school not even precalculus was a requirement. Of a graduating class of around 300, I'd say 30-45 students had taken a calculus course.

I agree that acceleration would be a much clearer term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just a slightly associated random data point. Across the 10 yard border Canada announced their own surprise - 35k net job increase in April: <http://www.thestar.com/business/article/631083></comment>


Hardware Store Elimination - <AUTHOR> https://travisdowns.github.io/blog/2020/05/13/intel-zero-opt.html <comment><USER2> Isn't hardware store elimination when you order all your lumber, sheet metal, tools, etc. online and have them shipped straight to your door?

<comment><USER3> In retrospect, this was quite a poor name. I won't want anything to think their Home Depot will be taken away from them...

Perhaps someone can rename this to "Skylake CPU Store Elimination".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent article, as usual, Travis.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice read!

<comment><USER5> Can you try micro bench marking Apple Cores? Nobody seems to be doing that, yet people claim they are the best in business.

<comment><USER3> I don't have any Apple cores easily available, but the code [1] is open if anyone wants to try it (I don't know how POSIX-y the iOS compile environment is, though).

One caveat is that just because you don't find a performance difference, doesn't mean the optimization isn't happening. It could simply be the case that write throughput is not the limiter, but rather the latency * occupancy product is the limiter. E.g., if it takes 50 ns to go from L2 to RAM, and there are only 10 buffers available to hold these requests, then the maximum bandwidth is 64 bytes / 50 nanos * 10 buffers = 12.8 GB/s regardless of the maximum possible bandwidth of each component.

An eliminated store may still take this full latency (since it still has to read the value from RAM), so even if all writes are eliminated, the performance may remain at 12.8 GB/s - but you would save power and memory and L3 bandwidth for other cores... but the optimization would be tough to detect by looking at performance alone. You'd need to look at performance counters (does those exist for iOS devices?).

[1] [https://github.com/travisdowns/zero-fill- bench](https://github.com/travisdowns/zero-fill-bench)</comment></comment></comment>


How the U.S. Screwed Up in the Fight Against Ebola - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-24/ebola-drug-zmapps-development-delayed-by-pentagon-agency

<comment><USER2> "The federal government does not know how to write a check". --- Well, actually it is very very easy for a government to write a check. Except that in the US, it has been made so extremely hard for them, that stuff like space travel, general and medical research just doesn't get funded quickly enough. These regulations have their merits, but the downsides are hardly ever discussed when people want to stop federal overspending...

</comment><comment><USER3> "why were there so few doses [of ZMapp] on hand?"

Don't underestimate how hard it can be to make medicines, especially novel new ones for rare ailments.

<comment><USER4> That's a rather loaded question. It assumes that the drug is well-tested and is considered a cure, rather than an experiment. Furthermore, while ebola has always been a concern, the current outbreak is without precedent, so no major preparations were in place.

Yeah, it sucks that there's not enough ZMapp to go around, but on the other hand, it's not done yet.</comment></comment>