Family-Run Farm Sues FDA for Right to Say Skim Milk Is Skim Milk - <AUTHOR> http://ij.org/press-release/family-run-farm-sues-fda-right-say-skim-milk-skim-milk/ <comment><USER2> It is not clear at all from this article, but I make a guess that what is going on here is that the FDA requires that skim milk be fortified with vitamin A to replace the vitamin A that is lost when the milkfat is removed. This farm didn't want to do that.

<comment><USER3> From the article: "Milk contains healthy vitamins and minerals that are naturally stored in either water or fat. Because skim milk is made by removing the fat from whole milk, skim milk has more water-soluble nutrients like calcium but lacks fat-soluble vitamins A and D. The FDA requires dairy farmers to add synthetic versions of those lost vitamins to skim milk in order to label skim milk as "skim milk." Without the fat of whole milk, the vitamins break down in skim milk before reaching consumers. In other words, the FDA manages to confuse American milk drinkers without providing any health benefits."

The addition of vitamins seems to be a useless step (because they break down without fat and do not provide health benefits in the end) that probably costs some amount of money that could be saved by a small scale farm. Also the marketing value of being able to honestly say "100% natural, no additives" etc. is another factor.</comment></comment>


A Chinese JavaScript framework that aims to challenge JQuery - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/drduan/minggeJS/blob/pr/95/README_en.md <comment><USER2> Aren't they about 5 years late? JQuery was an absolute lifesaver when we had to deal with IE5.5 and IE6, there was no querySelectorAll, the event model was different in IE vs. the rest of the world, many CSS properties had to be prefixed, and the box model was all screwed up. All of those are fixed in modern browsers, and most of the time you don't need JQuery at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I had never use jQUERY before because I hate JQUERY badly.

Not entirely sure why he hates it if he hasn't used it. Clearly a sign of NIH syndrome gone wild.

> How about start an new one JQUERY that using my mind.

Obviously this guy hasn't heard of neither Zepto ([http://zeptojs.com/](http://zeptojs.com/)) nor Cheerio ([https://cheeriojs.github.io/cheerio/](https://cheeriojs.github.io/cheerio/)).

> BTW, MingGeJs works with IE 6, 7 and 8 very well.

Isn't that why jQuery still has the 1.x.x release ([https://blog.jquery.com/2013/04/18/jquery-2-0-released/](https://blog.jquery.com/2013/04/18/jquery-2-0-released/))? And even the upcoming 3.x.x release plans to put back compatibility as a "compat" release ([https://blog.jquery.com/2015/07/13/jquery-3-0-and-jquery- com...](https://blog.jquery.com/2015/07/13/jquery-3-0-and-jquery- compat-3-0-alpha-versions-released/)) instead of a separate version (1 being backwards, 2 being the no-IE).

Also, who uses IE 6-8? IE8 EOL is January 2016 ([https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle?p1=13418](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle?p1=13418)). Microsoft is not even looking back at IE9 and 10.

> MingGeJS has a huge and distant goal that means taking over half of users of > JQUERY in the whole world.

Good luck with that. jQuery has been around since 2006 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery)). That's almost 10 years (at the time of writing) of accumulated knowledge, testing and patience from people around the world. Compare that to the 10 days (at the time of writing) life of that library.</comment>


How I Became Fake News - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake-news-charlottesville-215514 <comment><USER2> I hope this stays on HN despite the occasional moratorium on political content.

I'm pretty careful not to share anything remotely political so as to avoid my public profile taking on too much polarizing content.

But I'm astonished and disappointed by the capacity of some to forfeit objectivity in the name of what seems to me like a cult of personality.

EDIT: I'm happy to burn my karma to speak my mind. Downvoters, please join the debate.

<comment><USER3> I'm quite used to articles like this appearing as (flagged) by the time I click the actual comments.

It would be interesting to know who is constantly flagging the articles, either users hell-bent on hn being only about tech, or right-wing people that don't want to be reminded about this.

<comment><USER4> > users hell-bent on hn being only about tech

I think communities, like ours, having this attitude is very self-destructive. We can't keep trying to operate in a silo and exclude politics from our discussions. Especially when a lot of us work on tools that exasperate these political problems.

<comment><USER5> I understand where you're coming from. At the same time, not every forum is the appropriate forum for every discussion. Some are better suited for particular topics. The experience of discussing political issues on HN is often very fraught and I think it's a very open question as to whether it ends up being constructive or destructive to the HN community as a whole. I think it's very important to be able to talk about political issues. I'm not sure HN can consistently have constructive conversations on divisive topics and remain the platform it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I didn't see anything about "fake news?"

There are conspiracy theorists and assorted wackos in any sizable group of people. I'm not surprised at the threats he has received. Amazed (in a bad way) and disappointed that people like those making the threats exist. That such warped brains exist. I'm not saying they should be wiped out, just sad to realize that this state of mind is even possible.

But I'm not surprised or shocked.

Anyway, scanning through the article, where was the fake news commentary?

<comment><USER7> The "fake news" part is the allegiation that everything was a ploy by the leftist media to discredit the right.

<comment><USER6> alleged by whom? some conspiracy theorists? who cares?

Fake news would be a mainstream media outlet declaring that George Soros paid the driver to drive into the crowd.

Nothing like that was alleged in the story though (unless I missed it). He just mentioned conspiracy nuts threatening him on twitter, email, etc.

<comment><USER8> > On Thursday, Hannity broadcast claims on his radio show that the protesters > in Charlottesville were paid.

I suppose that would include the author.

<comment><USER6> Paid protesters are no secret. Doesn't mean they all are.

<comment><USER8> What? Citation please.

[http://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/counterprotesters-paid- char...](http://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/counterprotesters-paid- charlottesville/)

<comment><USER6> [http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/project-veritas- actio...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/project-veritas-action- robert-creamer-donald-trump-rallies/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The image at the top of the article was extremely jarring. My immediate thought was whether anyone in the image died, and then my stomach sank with the sense that the use of this image for the topic of fake news is exploitative and disrespectful.

If anyone who read the article disagrees I would like to hear your point of view. I closed the page after only a few seconds.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the image is jarring.

I think that graphic images like this, or of terrorism, or of warfare are a necessary check for those of us who are so disconnected from these events. It does not strike me as exploitative.

Previously, I had seen video of the car driving away, reversing, and video of the aftermath. I had not yet seen this still image, it's very striking. It is clear to me that it is sheer luck that the devastation and loss of life wasn't worse than it was.

> I closed the page after only a few seconds.

If you're disturbed by the image I really recommend that you consider reading the article with your browser's auto-image-load feature disabled. I don't think there's any downside to reading the article. After you've read it, decide on the merits of what the author's written and any credentials they have whether it should be credible.

<comment><USER9> Thank you, that is a very thoughtful recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A teacher of mine tied tourniquets on boylston street and was accused of being a part of some Jewish conspiracy that used the Tsarnaevs as a fall guy.

</comment><comment><USER11> These things happen when people, with MH issues, thinks there are different teams, like the Cowboys vs the Giants or Republicans vs Democrats. There is only one team in America, Team USA.

Down Votes from people who didn't read the article? Author's life was threatened for taking the video of the crash.

<comment><USER11> Wait how are people taking what I am saying? They didn't read the article?

He posted the video of the crash on twitter and did interviews all Sunday. The alt-right conspiracy was he was planted there to take the picture. His life was threatened. Those are the people with MH.

<comment><USER5> I sympathize with the sentiment that we should be looking for ways to work together. I suspect what people are responding to is your reference to "MH issues", which I read as mental health issues. Unless you're speaking clinically, which is difficult to see how in this case, it's name calling, which is explicitly against the forum guidelines.

<comment><USER11> Well when people threaten to kill the poster of the video of the incident based on conspiracy theories I would think I am okay in saying MH?

<comment><USER5> When you say MH do you mean mental health? If not, please ignore the remainder of my comment. If so, I don't think so. It's just name calling, unless you're referring to specific clinical issues. I doubt you're attempting to attribute particular diagnoses here. If you don't mean specific issues, then it's so broad as to be meaningless, and that goes back to name calling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You know why this is fake news, because:

> I witnessed a terrorist attack in Charlottesville.

[http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake- news-...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/fake-news- charlottesville-215514)

> Fields has already been charged with second-degree murder, ...

[http://wtvr.com/2017/08/18/james-fields-jr-charged- with-5-ad...](http://wtvr.com/2017/08/18/james-fields-jr-charged- with-5-additional-felonies-in-charlottesville-car-attack/)

> Murder ... by any willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing ... is > murder of the first degree... . All [other murder] is murder of the second > degree... .

[https://vacode.org/2016/18.2/4/1/18.2-32/](https://vacode.org/2016/18.2/4/1/18.2-32/)

The 2nd degree murder charge means that the killing was NOT "willful, deliberate, and premeditated."

Of course, the author is not actually saying that Fields is an accidental terrorist. The author isn't saying Fields used violence to pursue a political aim without any willful, deliberate, and premeditated intent to do so. The author is lying. The author is trying to trick readers into assuming facts which are not. That's why it's fake news.

<comment><USER2> > You know why this is fake news

You have distorted the meaning of this term. It was originally applied to fly- by-night online "publications" who have no background or experience in journalism making spurious claims later shown to have no backing evidence.

This is an eyewitness account of an attack (the authr does describe it as terrorism, yes) and later the response to their account and video recording. The video substantiates his account and the response is likely backed with evidence (police report regarding white powder, etc).

You dispute the author's claim that it should be called terrorism. That's pretty subtle overall IMO, and does not make the article or the publication worthy of being described as "fake news." Please choose another term, like "hyperbole" or "exaggeration".</comment></comment>


Lumen – A semi-modular analog-style video synth for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://lumen-app.com/ <comment><USER2> Looks cool and fun, but what is it used for?

<comment><USER3> Maybe for visuals at a party/rave/festival?</comment></comment>


Google Fiber to pay nearly $4M to Louisville in exit deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/google-fiber-to-pay-nearly-million-to-louisville-in-exit/article_d4c86640-5f85-11e9-8876-9f013c02d337.html <comment><USER2> I do appreciate Google's bold and visionary dedication to bringing their model of starting up a project, half-assedly supporting it, and subsequently abandoning it when it becomes a little bit hard out of the software world and to the physical world.

<comment><USER3> My large regional cable provider recently tripled the cost of modem rental to $15/month so I bought my own.

Opened the next bill but instead of seeing a $15 drop it was the same. Thought it was an error but no, they just unilaterally raised prices on a bunch of other services.

What can I do? There's no other option for me.

I get there are Byzantine local and state regulations that make last-mile internet unprofitable or a low-margin, commodity business, which is presumably why Ruth Porat and other bean counters at Google killed this effort. But improving America's internet is a social good that Google could invest its massive profits into; instead leadership would prefer to build repression- enabling tools to compete in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Years ago when I thought of Google I thought of their search engine. Then I thought about them in terms of their successful software like Google Maps, Docs, Chrome, etc. Then I started to become more aware of what they were up to and thought of them in terms of their new motto, "Be Evil". Now I mainly think about Google in terms of a company that kills products and initiatives. I can't think of a single other company that has less of an ability to follow through than Google. Their newer motto should be "When the going gets tough, quit."

<comment><USER5> Microsoft is rapidly approaching "When the going gets tough, quit" territory. Windows Mobile was a vastly superior operating system, but it was dropped because it was only in third place. Android is still catching up to it's feature set. They've just more or less abandoned Cortana, relegating it to Office and an integration for other voice assistants. Edge, which while buggy beat Chrome on power consumption and performance more often than not, has been dropped for a reskin of Chrome.

Which is to say, Microsoft no longer appears to want to compete with anyone in any market where there is a leading competitor that isn't them.

<comment><USER6> >Windows Mobile was a vastly superior operating system, but it was dropped because it was only in third place

Putting aside the claim that Windows Phone was a superior operating system...Windows Phone PEAKED at 3% of market, that was prior to spending $7 billion on Nokia in a desperate attempt to keep going. They dropped to 0.1% of the market at the beginning of the 2017 when they terminated it. It's ludicrous to suggest they could rebound from that. As for superior OS, they shipped Windows Phone 7 in 2010 without the ability to cut and paste text.

[https://www.recode.net/2017/7/17/15984222/microsoft- windows-...](https://www.recode.net/2017/7/17/15984222/microsoft-windows- phone-mobile-operating-system-android-iphone-ios)

From the manager of Windows Phone, paying and even writing the apps for companies wasn't enough for them to want a Windows Phone app...

>"We have tried VERY HARD to incent app devs. Paid money. wrote apps 4 them.. but volume of users is too low for most companies to invest,"

<comment><USER5> A new operating system has 0% of the market. Which is to say, I would argue that building for the long haul is almost always preferable to abandoning ship. And now that we are realizing how badly we need a real alternative, it's gone.

I wouldn't say it had fallen to 0.1% of the market on it's own, Microsoft literally just stopped investing in it for years before it was officially killed. There's dozens of unreleased prototypes and for a while Microsoft just didn't provide ANY hardware options. Much like the death of the keyboard slider form factor on Android, the lack of sales came from consumers having no options to buy than not wanting the product.

Your attempt to criticize Windows Mobile by referring to it's state in 2010, not 2019, mostly renders it an irrelevant argument. (Though Microsoft has regularly launched things too little, too late, I would agree.) Windows 10 Mobile is still superior today to the latest release of Android, and receives security updates faster and more regularly. The next version of Android is planning to introduce features Windows Mobile has supported since launch.

<comment><USER6> MSFT spent $7.2 billion dollars on Nokia in 2014 to try to increase their market share, which failed.

>Much like the death of the keyboard slider form factor on Android, the lack of sales came from consumers having no options to buy than not wanting the product.

I think it is very safe to say that no one wanted a Windows Phone, despite the backing of MSFT and tens of billions of dollars spent.

<comment><USER7> Microsoft spent that money to stop the bleeding that their last non-corporate OEM (HP being the only other OEM making devices, and those only targeted to big enterprise) was likely to either go bankrupt or switch to Android because of the race to the bottom of cheap Android (and Android knock-off) hardware changing the phone market. Microsoft buying Nokia was a much a symptom of the problem as an attempt to correct it.

The platform didn't fail for lack of fans or for lack of merits, it failed as much because hardware is a tricksy game and Android played that game better and didn't anger the US Telecoms while doing it. (Microsoft had the US Telecoms actively avoiding trying to sell Windows phones, which certainly didn't help.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $3.84mil over 20 months + $150k donation to a local non-profit. Hard to see how this isn't an easy exit for Google.

Glad it isn't my city. Two years of eye sores and random road construction to patch up neighborhood streets sounds like a real pain, to say the least.

<comment><USER9> Google certainly did some damage, but road construction has become a norm here outside of Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I read "exit deal" I tend to think about an agreement being reached to terminate a contract.

This is an incorrect assumption.

This is only Google making the City of Louisville whole for damage to their road infrastructure.

<comment><USER9> This is a market exit, wherein Google is making Louisville Metro whole for damage done to our roads while rolling out a service to a tiny fraction of the metro only to give up and walk out.

<comment><USER11> haha Google seems to do this with a ton of projects. Make it half way and give up. They do it so publicly so often there's a whole Wikipedia page for every project they've started and killed.

Just got another one to add to the list.

<comment><USER12> They're just trying to find something as profitable as search ads, which will _never_ happen given that Adwords is a high margin cash printing machine. Hence why every other product of theirs ends up in a graveyard because it can never compare to its monopoly on search

<comment><USER13> All of these are assumptions (some cynical). But what is the actual reason Google is experimenting with projects in this manner? I wonder if Google is using their data-based approach here.

<comment><USER12> For someone like Google, there's no point in pursuing a product line they're not dominant in. It's all just speculation, but either google is just godawful at managing acquisitions or side projects, or they don't bother to pursue product lines where its profitable but not overwhelmingly so

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you look at the map at the end, they really didn't get very far in rolling it out, just a few neighborhoods (11,000 households). Works out to about $400/house, which seems reasonable.

<comment><USER15> I bet the owners of those houses could sell them to IT/steaming/gamer minded folks for a higher price than average.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure it happened several times, and the buyers are now screwed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny to see how hard physical reality hits the Valley types, which is saddening because G has very smart people, it'd be wonderful for them to continue working on real world problems maybe it'd change their culture a little bit as well. Their surpluses have to go somewhere, and the FANGs are sitting on a lot of cash they might be able to put to better use than simply by managing it like a hedge fund.

</comment><comment><USER18> Instead, they should build their network there, as promised. Though $4M are peanuts in comparison with costs of building it.

<comment><USER19> "The payments, to be made over 20 months, will cover removing fiber cables "

WISPs should be allowed access to the fiber network instead of removing it.

<comment><USER5> The fiber isn't salvageable. Google did an "experimental" deployment which turned out to be utter trash. The short summary is they dug tiny little trenches in the road, and filled the gap above the fiber with foam. Vehicles, snow plows, and construction happened, which all happens to fairly efficiently rip the guts of their network out.

That's why Google is leaving: They don't want to redeploy the entire network from scratch.

<comment><USER20> This is true - I've seen the pictures and it wasn't pretty.

But surely the lead ins to the houses (the fibre in people's front yards) is useful still? That is, after all, the costliest part of a fibre rollout.

<comment><USER21> On side streets I heard the quality of workmanship dropped even further, from micro-trenches with cabling a few inches below the road surface to cables that were barely covered and eventually becoming tripping hazards.

<comment><USER22> Possibly Caused by shoddy work by contractors as well - I have heard documented horror stories of contractors cutting the ends off telegraph poles to make emplacing new poles quicker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why can't they just leave the infrastructure there in case somebody else decides to utilize it at some point?

<comment><USER24> Because their infrastructure failed. Nature is forcing it out of its tiny trench and on to the roads, where it's getting cut by cars. You can see the state of it in the link below.

[https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city- as-...](https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city-as-a-failed- experi-1833244198)

<comment><USER25> Wow that's not what you expect when you think of Google engineering. In some other photos the actual fibre is now above the ground.

<comment><USER7> It's the new picture of Google Engineering for at least some of us now. It's very hard to trust a company that failed this spectacularly, doing something so clearly very dumb.

<comment><USER26> This. I was thrilled when Google announced Louisville would be getting service. Louisville is a relatively tiny city in comparison, and not long after the announcement both AT&T and Time Warner/Spectrum lowered prices AND raised speeds. AT&T dramatically increased their own fiber rollout too.

When I first started hearing about the micro/nano trenching issues... I was really shocked Google would be so careless and downright stupid. After being allowed to use the poles, they chose to trench? In a city that not only regularly floods, but has near-constant road construction? Never mind how little quality control they imposed on the contractors to trench the lines, half of them appear to have been laid on the ground and half-ass covered with some dirt. It's an absolute disgrace of civil engineering, particularly from such a large and engineering-centric company.

Also, just as an aside, now that Google has completely abandoned Louisville and we're left with Spectrum and AT&T in most areas... Both have raised prices, and it appears that AT&T is starting to slow it's fiber rollout in some areas.

<comment><USER7> As I pointed out in another thread, Louisville is in the middle of Karst country and hugely restricts underground work for very good reasons due to all the limestone underneath the city. The city was very clear they had to use the utility poles because more than a century of civil engineering backs up the city's reliance on its utility poles. Google knew trenching wasn't a viable solution in the city and they did it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's not much at all

<comment><AUTHOR> better then $47, I guess, if all you think about is money

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Isn't there already conduit in these cities to put the fibre in? In my part of the UK the existing phone lines run in conduits underground and you can add a new line in there fairly easily. If they don't have conduit I wonder if they could run the line in the sewers, which already run to most houses and are large?

<comment><USER28> The only reason Google tried the nanotrenching is because AT&T fought them tooth and nail on using the telephone polls.

<comment><USER25> Why were poles the only other option? What about conduit underground?

<comment><USER7> Among other reasons, the city is in the heart of karst country [0], which is to say that most of the deep rock under it is water-soluble Limestone. Everything dug below the city needs to be carefully managed to avoid cave-ins, sinkholes, water problems, etc.

(This geographical topology is also why for instance Mammoth Cave National Park is nearby, and has one of the largest known and explored cave systems in North America.)

The city has a very robust utility pole grid and almost all of its infrastructure has always been on utility poles.

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

ETA: Which is also to say that utility poles were not just the only _other_ option, they were the _only_ sustainable option period in this city, with this climate, and this geography. Google knew that going in to the project and still decided to try something different that history should have convinced them was doomed to fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good to see Google spending the money to fix the damage to city streets. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER30> If any utility work need to dig perpendicular to the trench, wouldn't cut the fiber right away?

</comment><comment><USER31> 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons

We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact email@example.com or call 502-585-0811.

<comment><USER32> How much should a small local news organization in Louisville, KY be expected to pay to comply with laws on random other continents? I think they made the right choice here.

<comment><USER33> It would cost less to just ignore the foreign law than to "comply" by blocking foreign users.

<comment><USER34> In the short-term, sure.

In the long-term, that might lead to your staff being arrested for contempt of court the next time they go on vacation to Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice looking roads are more important than the internet?

<comment><USER9> Google isn't bringing the internet to Louisville. So yes, nice roads are better than the internet that Google isn't providing us.</comment></comment>


Google puts Chrome OS on your TV with its own HDMI stick - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/31/google-chromebit/

<comment><AUTHOR> I really wish I could use a phone or tablet as keyboard and swipe interface for devices like this.</comment>


Computer Scientists Wield Artificial Intelligence to Battle Tax Evasion - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/business/computer-scientists-wield-artificial-intelligence-to-battle-tax-evasion.html <comment><USER2> > Could the federal tax laws — 74,608 pages of legal gray areas and welters of > credits, deductions and exemptions — be accurately rendered in an algorithm?

Funny how the discussion is never to simplify the code

Government is very good at creating their own problems. Then they get to complain about how there's not much money for actual benefits to the population

The tax code should be designed to fit into 100 pages (or even better, 20 pages)

Reducing nominal taxes AND complex deductions would probably result in a net gain in revenue

<comment><USER3> Everyone wants to simplify the tax code. They just want to simplify the parts other people like. We could cut out a big chunk by getting rid of farm subsidies. My wife (went to high school and college in Iowa) doesn't think that's acceptable. We could simplify by getting rid of all the handouts for older people (mortgage interest deduction). My parents, who save tens of thousands in taxes each year from their McMansion, don't like that idea. I'd love to have a flat tax with no brackets. But my liberal friends like the whole progressive taxation thing. The tax code is a soup but it's one that reflects an equilibrium of all these interests.

Also, the idea of government creating a complex tax code just for funsies is naive. The tax code is huge because accounting is complicated, and taxation is basically a superset of accounting. The GAAP rules are 25,000 pages. That's probably the lower bound in how much you can simplify the tax code (without incorporating the GAAP by reference, which basically would outsource writing tax law to a private organization).

<comment><USER4> I own a home with a mortgage. I would gladly trade the exemption for a simple, fair tax code.

Accounting in large part is complicated because of the tax code. Revenues - Expenses = Profit is not complicated otherwise.

<comment><USER5> > Revenues - Expenses = Profit is not complicated otherwise.

LOL. Nope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Better idea: use the AI to aid people in filling out their taxes instead.

Even better idea: simplify the tax code

<comment><USER7> Singapore's tax code fits on 4 pages of A4 and they have a 99% compliance rate.

<comment><USER8> It's more hassle to cheat than to pay your taxes, since they are also famously low.

<comment><USER9> Also, since tax rules are so simple there are no ways to cheat, because that usually comes with complex and vague rules of tax deductions, which Singapore simply does not have.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you'd have to hide your income. And that's harder than getting it misclassified in a more complex system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not use it to find corruption in government - that would be much more useful for the most.

<comment><USER11> Buffer overflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The tax code should be simplified, and tax rates should be flattened as well.

A vast improvement over the status quo would be that everyone pays the same low percentage, no matter the amount they make. If you make your money honestly (and the vast majority of us do), it isn't morally right that you get soaked from the very moment you begin to succeed.

<comment><USER13> Of course it's morally right--the people who are doing best in society have the highest obligation to society, just like the strongest and most capable in a family should be the one bringing in the bread. We even instinctively recoil when we see the deadbeat who won't work, forcing their children/siblings/whatever to support them.

We even used to have a common phrase for it, _noblesse oblige_ , though that's fallen out of favor in the last generation.

<comment><USER14> Society is not your family. Your responsibilities are very different in both. But the main issue is who decides what your social obligations are? Helping people is a moral issue and right for "me", but may not be a moral issue for somebody else.

So, I disagree, this is not an obligation. I know that this is the debate of the likes of Rawls versus Rothbard. Just could not help replying.

<comment><USER13> Well, ultimately, we all decide what our social obligations are, because we live in a democratic society. We discuss, we persuade, we elect, we vote, and so on. The conversation never really ends, and each new generation chooses again for itself where to draw the line.

But things, historically, have gone pretty good for everyone, the more the rich chip in, and pretty badly for almost everyone(though better for the rich, of course), the less they do.

Now, I get that a lot of people decide "these are the principles I think are important, and damn the consequences," but I think that's silly--if a principle I like ends up leading to a crummy society in one way or another (e.g. I don't think pollution should be regulated, full stop, and suddenly everyone has shitty air quality), then I'm going to rethink that principle. Others stick to their guns no matter what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Soon: tax consultants using artificial intelligence to battle tax anti-tax invasion artificial intelligence leading to a new arms race...

<comment><USER16> Heck yeah! Matter of fact, I proposed this when the tax shelter boom was happening a long time ago and I said then I doubted it was original. The reason is that scandals like BCCI show the accounting has to be a maze as much as possible. So, logically, the next trick is to have software that automates creating that maze while still able to get the truth out of its for parties with access. And get money to the right place.

At the time, I saw malware authors doing it with program obfuscation kits. Accounting information systems were often boring programs following simple rules. The obfuscation of accounting similarly followed straight-forward rules albeit with different rules for different schemes. Automating them should also be straight-forward. And need no AI whatsoever: just templates, heuristics, and maybe source code in Unlambda or INTERCAL.

[http://www.madore.org/~david/programs/unlambda/](http://www.madore.org/~david/programs/unlambda/)

<comment><USER15> Yep. I work in finance and have seen inference engines used to work out investment goals. It doesn't take much to turn those into tax goals :)

There is a ton of money in writing something that does this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe governments should stop being such a big spenders. The problem is that they never cut their costs and people seem to accept that (at least in Europe). What are these people (politicians) even doing the whole day? Most countries in Europe are super small and quite easy to manage.

<comment><USER7> Well this is how it works: there's an economic boom and profits are up and payrolls and bonuses are up and because these things are taxed as percentages tax revenue goes up too. Some of it gets spent on stuff, like schools and hospitals or whatever, but most of it goes on the salaries of public sector workers.

Then there's a downturn, profits are down, people are getting laid off, no bonuses are paid and because these things are taxed as percentages, tax revenues are down. But your public sector workers demand to be kept in the style to which they have been accustomed, and the money has to come from the government's "real" spending.

Then the next cycle rolls around, and every time the public sector ratchet up their pay and benefits a little more, until eventually that's all the government can spend money on. There is a very good case that people employed by the government, should not get a vote, because they cannot be objective.

<comment><USER18> Not really, governments regularly cut back in the short term. The real long term ratchet is people keep wanting the government to do more, ex the EPA did not exist in 1969. Health benifits don't get to provide 1990's levels of care they need to keep up with an ever expanding array of new and more expencive treatments. Domestic partners now qualify for government benifits. The public never says, we don't need you to do this anymore.

Hell we have started doing DNA testing for Robbery's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > A _recent paper_ by Mr. Rosen and four other computer scientists [...] > demonstrated how an algorithm could detect a certain type of known tax > shelter used by partnerships.

The bit.ly link to the paper in the article is broken. The actual PDF can be found here - [http://taxprof.typepad.com/files/taxpaper.pdf](http://taxprof.typepad.com/files/taxpaper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> Yay. Solving the important problems of our lifetime...</sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER21> Who is John Galt?

<comment><USER22> Someguy who lives in Brooklyn. Has a trust fund.Tells you about how great he is and how the man is always keeping him down.</comment></comment>


U.S. Privacy Board Says NSA Internet Spying is Constitutional - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/07/02/327760878/u-s-privacy-board-says-nsa-internet-spying-is-constitutional

<comment><USER2> > ...and the use of queries to search for the communications of specific U.S. > persons within the information that has been collected.

So it seems that they are collecting everything, then getting a warrant to search through that collected data for the target. Why don't they need a warrant to collect the data in the first place? Seriously, I'd like a straight answer.</comment>


Ask YC: What financially successful companies have been born out of YC? - <AUTHOR>

I have been following HackerNews and PG for about a year. I like the general ideas, but am curious because I simply do not know the answer:<p>What YC funded businesses turn a profit while sustaining paid employees? <comment><USER2> where do i start? google?

<comment><USER3> Naw, they weren't YC funded.

(I kid, obviously)

To the OP: reddit was bought by conde nast. I'd imagine that gave them some cash.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, that does not really mean they were profitable though. I mean, companies that have a working business model - not just a drive traffic and sell out model (though that can be lucrative).

<comment><USER3> That is a working business model. They have more money than they began with after expenses. Hence: profit.

If you are asking for a 37Signals model, I believe there are a few, but given that YC is an place that you get funding from, they're going to pick companies that are going to give them ROI. Because of that, the results will be skewed towards models like reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wufoo

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting company, could be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I _believe_ Octopart is turning a profit.</comment>


Ask HN: I made $1.01 yesterday. What next? - <AUTHOR>

On Monday night I couldn't sleep.  I had a domain name that I'd bought (http://fstr.net) that wasn't getting approved by the parking provider.
It was just sitting there, doing nothing and I couldn't stand it.  So I thought why not put some web games on it?
So I coded... and coded ... and coded ... and by 3AM I had a page, with a database that linked up a bunch of games that were declared "embeddable" by their owner (addictinggames.com).
Tuesday, it made $0.50 on Adsense.  Yesterday $1.01.
Now if only I were able to scale that up by about 80 times (using only part time labor) and I'd be able to 'take the pay cut' so I could switch into scaling it up by about 200 times for a great big raise!
Reading HN has really opened my eyes to the fact that the internet is made by people.  It doesn't have to be created by corporations - but it's something that anyone can do.  Holy Crap! Even me.
I just checked my profile and I've been a Hacker News reader for 94 days.  With the income I've earned from this project, that's an income of over a penny a day so far...  Let's see if I can ramp that up?
I want to put some time into improving the technology.  Initially I was loading a random list of about 1000 games - but I've changed that to show the games sorted by order or user rank.
I've also got game tag and category data - so I can add navigation, maybe a fun, self updating 'active search' type of thing (I'm already loading the games via ajax)
I'd like to pull from other games sources - many of the big games sites allow you to host their games (since they get the linkback on the flash load screen)
Some even have revenue sharing on the ads inside the game as well.
The page desperately needs to be optimized in terms of adsense placement.  I'm getting a 1.5% CTR and I've got friends who have shown me placements that they earn 30% off of.  He tells me he's got optimizations that earn him 70% CTR.
I'd also like to redesign (again) so it looks a little more polished and professional.  So far it's really just a ~8 hour hack job and ugly.
But earning a dollar on the first day?  That's a bit encouraging.  I'd love to make a real, sustainable 'gig' out of running a games site (or any site for that matter) ...
I really think HackerNews might be the type of place that has the advice I need (and might be able to warn me off of some of the pitfalls I might run into).
Anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated (a hell of a lot cheaper than an MBA program ;). <comment><USER2> Don't believe the notion that making 100 websites that earn $1 a day is easier than making 1 website that makes $100 a day. It's not.

Create value, make users want to stick around, iterate, grow.

<comment><USER3> _However_ , making 50 sites that make 500 a day is a lot easier than making one site that makes 25000 a day. _A lot_ easier.

<comment><USER4> Making 1 site that makes 500 a day is quite difficult. Just ask about 99% of people here on HN that have tried.

<comment><USER3> Guess I didn't get the memo. I'm not quite at 500 yet, but it took 12 hours to make a site that makes 250 a day. I'm sure I can easily bring that up to 500 (for instance, the site doesn't even render in IE right now). And I can make another 10 like it.

In response to FreeRadical: It's all about the point of diminishing returns. I spent 6 years on my first site, and it's a huge amount of work with literally thousands of manhours put into it. Just a month ago I launched another site, intended to be a minimum viable product that I can just develop and leave, and it's working out OK thus far. Don't get me wrong, the first is very much successful (2MM+ pageviews a month), but that's thousands of hours I could have put into making multiple other sites, each making a lot less but relatively more.

<comment><USER5> _but it took 12 hours to make a site that makes 250 a day_

I'd really like to see the stats on that.

Every time someone tells me that they spent (small amount of hours) on a website that (makes more than $1 a day) they are exaggerating to the extreme by not including advertising, hosting, domain expenses and maintenance time.

<comment><USER6> I was like you for a long time, until two things happened:

1) I met someone who is running a site that took him a few hours to build, cents to run (AppEngine) (plus $20 for two domain names) and makes over $1000/month (yeah, so he's spent more time since then, but not much.)

2) I build a site that cost me $15 to build ($10 domain hosting, $5 - refundable - to join an affiliate program), hours to build (it's basically a blog on Wordpress) and makes me nearly $200/month.

I can't say I'm an expert, but one way to duplicate this is to find a vertical problem domain with a lot of interest (ie, busy forums), find some problem they have (often it's some kind of calculation that people always have trouble with) and build a crappy, ugly tool to do it for them. Make the calculation URL addressable, then put a short note in a forum saying what you've done and follow up by using it in a few discussions.

<comment><USER7> But what part actually earns you money?

<comment><USER8> I've had best responses with Amazon's affiliate program. Made about $130 bucks from something like 5 or 6 blog posts. Hourly rate worth it? Nope. Was it fun? Yep. Basically what I've learned is that Google's dynamic ad placement is the last thing you should try. Putting in an ad (or affiliate link, there are even services that will auto do this with Javascript, so you're users wont see and you don't have to be part of a billion referral programs. Gray hat? Maybe.) that actually targets what you are talking about is so much more effective.

<comment><USER6> I've written a context sensitive affiliate adserver that serves relevant ads via Javascript. That works reasonably well, but I do need to optimize the ads themselves some.

<comment><USER8> That is really cool. Have you open sourced it? It's JavaScript in the first place so I know anyone can see it in your site, but it would be cool to track it on Github.

<comment><USER6> No, it's not open source.

Not much in in Javascript - just the part that displays the ad. All the intelligence is on the server, mostly in Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 30% to 70% CTR is nearly impossible. You can only get it in very specific cases.

1.5% CTR is pretty good for Adsense. If you can get it up to 5%, consider yourself lucky.

<comment><USER10> Recently, I had to find a new copy of lame_enc.dll for a computer I just bought. Every site I landed on (besides sourceforge) had three or four "Download" buttons. I wasn't confident that ANY of them weren't ads. I'm sure those pages have a great ad CTR.

<comment><USER11> I recently did a survey of those sites, and a large number of those links are links to other similar paid products that have more or less relevance to what they're linking to or are of the '$5/month virus check' variety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This isnt answering your question but i've got a quick suggestion for you dev wise.

Cache those images on your front page, then stitch them together into a big sprite and then use CSS to display the specific image from the sprite. It'll greatly decrease the load time on that page.

Ref: <http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/>

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't you want to decrease load times? Or do you think people are more likely to click on an ad, if they have to wait longer?

<comment><USER14> Doing that would decrease load times for repeat visitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Product differentiation would be an obvious next step:

\- Start growing a player community(which is how Kongregate works)

\- Place more extreme filters on quality or genre(this is the basis of sites like physicsgames.net).

\- Invest in some exclusive content. This is expensive and probably a bad idea at the early stage, but the fastest way to get started is to go onto FlashGameLicense and browse the stuff that's up for bid or auction.

I would suggest taking some time to figure out your focus before you go too deeply into the site optimization, else you'll build the wrong thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - driving traffic via sponsored games would be in the long term plan. I'm still not certain if the traffic is sustainable.

After all, after friends and family finish checking it out, who do I have left? Everything gets a 'blip' at the start with your first facebook post "he friends, check it out" then trickle until search engines find you.

I wrote a game for KONG once. I like how it works there. (<http://www.kongregate.com/games/lythrdskynrd/dizzy-ship>)

There is a question of the value of sponsored game traffic VS a good PPC campaign. What point do you decide it's worth throwing a few hundred down on a sponsorship? I'm not sure :)

</comment></comment><comment> i-like-water Congrats on the site and getting started on a project.

How are you driving visitors to the site currently?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://imgur.com/kw2av>

:D ummm. ycombinator

I read another comment about reddit / stumble / digg / etc... So I'll have to go there next. For today, once I get tag-navigation done (it's looking pretty sweet already) then I guess a reddit submission.

Since I regularly read reddit I'll feel a little more comfortable with the community there. Hopefully they'll be as supportive as HN is :)

I really do feel nervous about making sure people like it, and making sure it's good enough to show off.

Showing work in progress to HN is a bit of a different story because we're all such "doers" around here. I guess I just feel "safer" starting here. (if that makes sense?)

<comment> i-like-water ycombinator may be a good temporary boost of traffic while you're on the frontpage of HN but you'll need to look at a more sustainable way of generating traffic - this is where I struggle the most. I run an ecommerce company that does a moderate bit of traffic (around 70k uniques a month) - 70% of my traffic is PPC (Google, Yahoo/Bing) and the rest is done through organic optimization. My business has a very low repeat customer ratio due to our market (sorry can't explain this bit i don't want to share my company publicly). Here is what i've learned:

I fucking hate SEO. I've spent well over 100k hiring and firing contractors from around the world. I've worked with some of the biggest names in SEO down to the most unknown people in India. We spend a lot of time trying to manipulate search engines to work the way we want them and it's all a game. If i were in your position i'd focus around creating content people WANT to use and leverage communities like this to help figure out how to improve them so WE market the product for you (this isn't easy though - you have to be EXCEPTIONAL). General SEO/SEM tactics are good to know and practice, but i really believe the best/most sustainable approach to a successful site is creating something people actually want and are willing to tell their friends about. Don't let this bit of discourage you, create something great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OMG "it's made of people"!

Yeah it's a mindblow when you realize this. But it's not made of people who spend 6 hours a night watching tv.

There has never been a better time for creators, of all kind.

<comment><USER17> I wish that people would remember that "it's made by people" when they email customer support. Sometimes people can be so harsh.

<comment><USER16> I worked in technical support for 12 years. Yeah it's amazing how people treat other people over the phone or email.

<comment><USER18> Working in tech and retail showed me this. I decided to make it up to the world in general, in a small way.

So now, every christmas, I find some of the services I use (like my bank, full of VERY helpful, friendly people) who have call centres active on Christmas day, and I ring them and say thanks and Merry Christmas.

The only downside is occasionally someone will cry because a random stranger wished them a Merry Christmas because they're at work.

<comment><USER16> That's awesome. We had a customer who would call in about once a week just to say hi and thank us. It's not supposed to work this way - but I guarantee she got the best service of any of our customers. I once had a customer call me back after a bad call, and apologize for being rude. It did nearly make me cry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hmmm, having brought this here, and showing that it can be monetized relatively easily... expect competition ;-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Free tip:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/webgames>

I don't know how many of these are going to be embeddable, but I drop by there every once in a while when I feel like procrastinating and sort by "top" for this month or whatever.

This is great for you because people are essentially finding games for you and crowd-sourcing a rating. The top games are usually pretty great. A handful have actually blown me away.

</comment><comment><USER21> Dont make 100 websites. Optimize this one. SEO and compelling content. There are plenty sites that can help you with SEO if you Google for them. There was even someone in the community offering services pro-bono. But do also make your website more compelling/attractive. Integrate some value added service if they give you your email. Like a high scores page or newsletter. See if you can't make the games multiplayer and get some competition going.

</comment><comment><USER22> Obligatory clickable:

<http://fstr.net>

<comment><USER23> I'd lose the atrocious bevel on logo, looks positively amateurish. What's wrong with plain old outlined font? Also, you need the bare minimum of added value: let users rate games. Put the ratings in a database. There, you just add some value.

Alternatively, a hand-picked selection of games is more value to me as a visitor, than if you had every flash game in the universe embedded on that page. No one has the time to play all those. Choosing which ones are worthy of wasting your time is the hardest part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Logo changed. I just dropped the bevel as advised. Better?

Ratings and comments "incoming" - on the list. There's a lot of feedback on here so It's going to take me a few days to prioritize everything.

Facebook comments are quick though. I've done that before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Consider monetizing with game related affiliate programs. There are lots of toolbars, gaming sites that pay $1-$3 CPAs which will improve your eCPM.

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems like the last the web needs is another half assed Flash games site.

<comment><USER13> You can't argue with profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I'm still at my "collect underpants" phase :)

(EDIT: for anyone who doesn't get the reference: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You might like to check out my distribution feed - loads of great games zipped up ready for distribution or embedding from a wide selection of the top devs and portals:

<http://playtomic.com/games/catalog>

You can pull it all in via script through the very customizable feed:

<http://playtomic.com/games/feed>

Portals are a lot of work though. You'll need a strategy - find keywords you want to target, optimize and build links towards them etc.

You can also license games through <http://www.flashgamelicense.com/> which gets your branding in games and funnels traffic back to you.

<comment><USER27> Your site crashed my browser and in turn my Mac. I never even saw it.

<comment><USER26> Really? Weird ... I have hundreds of users and nobody's reported any problems. Was it the feed or the catalog link?

<comment><USER27> catalog - I must admit I force killed the browser (Firefox) after a while, but it resulted in an unkillable process. Therefore I had to hard reset the Mac.

<comment><USER26> Might have been the straw that broke the camel's back ... it loads a couple hundred thumbnails since I haven't gotten around to paginating it / sorting that stuff out yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've got a gaming website, like yours, but not as smart looking: <http://www.funnygamesspot.com>

What I suggest is getting a Facebook fanpage up, and corral all your friends. You could get a following for your site that will revisit it again and again.

Good luck, and nice work!

<comment><USER29> Nice! Are you making any money on your site?

<comment><USER28> Averages out to less than a buck a day, so it's not a money maker by any stretch of the imagination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 1.5% is really not bad at all! How much traffic do you get per day?

I'd change the URL structure from numeric to keyword bases (happy to help with apache config if you like).

I'd also provide a search box, powered by google search so you can still get ad clicks. Add an addthis.com button to each page to build backlinks and virality.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on my third day of traffic so far. Waiting for analytics to arrive. I had about 50 visitors yesterday and think I might be approaching 1000 for today :)

I've upgraded to adding TAGS & Categories for links - but am still stuck with numbers on the games codes. I think you might be right though, in terms of SEO that will improve value.

Unfortunately, at the moment, I'm populating the game page via ajax so google won't really know what pages I've got on there until after I follow up with those recommendations of yours.

I think it's good advice though.

<comment><USER30> yeah, fstr.net/arcade-game is better than fstr.net/651

for memorability but also hugely important for SEO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey, you've hit the big time. Become an angel investor and give me the $1.01, I'll turn it into $5.27 by next Tuesday.

</comment><comment><USER32> How many hits did you get for the past few days?

What were the traffic sources?

You might be able to do more targeted advertising to bring in more users, although that would obviously cut into your meager earnings at this point.

Anyways, good on you for executing on an idea! Many people don't even get to that point.

</comment><comment><USER33> With CTR of 1.5% and 245 visitors, it looks like you are making $0.5 per click. Is it true? It seems to me it's ridiculously high price, or at leaast not sustainable in the long term, isn't it?

I'm learning web programming, trying to start up little sites. Please leave me your email or drop a line: nleschov at gmail

<comment><AUTHOR> email sent. we'll have a chat and see if I can't help you out a bit :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hi Alex, nice work and congrats on your first step =) Have you ever thought of specializing in showcasing just educational games/ flash games? I think it would be very valuable and it would easily catch on among parents/young kids. You could also link it to educational resources like Khan Academy, etc..

</comment><comment><USER35> Contact me

I can help if lookin into gaming revenue.

email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER36> How do you drive traffic to this site?

I think there's a reasonable claim to be made that your ad placement is deceptive. It looks like a navigational menu for the website.

Either way, good luck :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Bravo and congrats! You have earned that first dollar. A dollar isn't always very significant in everyday life but that figurative dollar is for you. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER37> Please. Fix. Logo. It's the only part of your site that really looks outdated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. In terms of everything else, I admit it's poor. I cranked it out quickly in fireworks and agree.

I like the colors - but the bevel is low quality. I'll have to make an effort on the logo in round 2. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does Google permit telling how much are you earning with Adsense?

<comment><AUTHOR> yikes! thanks for this comment.

I'd actually just announced the earnings (as I wanted to share) - but my ignorance of their policy in this respect has given way to caution.

I've deleted the post where I say the exact $ value of the earnings and instead will just say that it's managed to buy a pizza dinner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Make $2.00 today.

</comment><comment><USER40> how are you getting the game data? going to each game and copying the info? or did you automate it?

</comment><comment><USER41> Start promoting it to get traffic. Leverage stumbleupon, reddit, facebook/twitter, and possibly organic.

Adsense pubs who make good money have sites that get a veritable shit ton of traffic every day, or have sites with ads with incredibly high CPC amounts</comment>


Show HN: I made a fast and distraction-free Tech news reader with serverless - <AUTHOR> https://newssup.com <comment><AUTHOR> I made a fast and distraction-free Tech news reader show the most voted articles - a react, cross-platform, serverless, react-native-web app. [https://newssup.com](https://newssup.com)</comment>


Fisker Debuts Atlantic Electric Car After Securing $392 Million in Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/04/fisker-atlantic-debut/

<comment><USER2> Edit the title: it's a plug-in hybrid, not an electric car.

</comment><comment><USER3> I want a full electric like an affordable version of this <http://www.commutercars.com/> Tango. Maybe a little lighter and shorter.

Or something like a Nissan Leaf except smaller, two person max, less expensive.</comment>


A Critical Problem: Safety at Los Alamos - <AUTHOR> https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2017/06/19/a-critical-problem/ <comment><USER2> Incredibly irresponsible, and exceedingly hypocritical.

Before you can start work, Los Alamos National Labs requires an inordinate amount of safety training.

Despite two weeks of videos like this [1], managers think it's ok to make their reports risk the fate of Slotin.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDsTc2oWGSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDsTc2oWGSI)</comment>


Army's £113M recruitment website 'was 52 months late' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46561779 <comment><USER2> The £113m was not for a website.

It was for a recruitment contract in totality for a decade (total £622m) including all efforts to recruit for the UK army, including everything that involves... of which a small part was the website but it was supposed to be integrated into everything and included running the old legacy system in parallel for a long while..

The details are in the report [https://www.nao.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Investigat...](https://www.nao.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Investigation-into-the-British-Army-Recruiting- Partnering-Project.pdf)

But the headline is not the story.

<comment><USER3> The whole contract was actually £1.36bn over 10 years (NAO report, p.2), and the £113m covered the new online recruitment system (including the costs of running the old system longer than expected) and was triple the budget (p.6).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These outsourcing companies seem to have reached the point where their core competence is winning bids rather than delivering projects.

<comment><USER5> Capita's nick name is Crapita in the UK which tells you what you need to know.

I am sure my current (small) employer could have done better I could spec the architecture for a the site (I have worked many large related sites ) recruit a few extra good devs and bobs your uncle.

<comment><USER6> I'm a former Capita employee.

Internally, by the time your idea has been discussed across the thirteen departments involved with implementing it and it's been OK'd by a committee, its pros and cons weighed up between a pile of alternative vendors and the delay of requisitioning some virtual machines for it to run on, you've already solved it, thrown something live on AWS (or the server in the corner of your IT dept's cupboard) and moved on with your project. It's just slow and painful to the point where internally people avoid process.

Externally, they can't. They'll have used some massive heavyweight CMS to write plugins to achieve what a small team of decent Django/Rails devs could have written from scratch in a month.

<comment><USER7> I had a quick look and it looks like a fairly vanilla ASP.Net MVC project?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://apply.army.mod.uk/login](https://apply.army.mod.uk/login)

Is this the website?

The HTML is full of comments like:

      <!-- This was a temporary Single Sign on fix - I think it's no longer needed?  SVL -->

      <!-- This is being done since bundling is currently breaking css files!!!-->

I'm not calling out the developers, I'm sure they didn't get £113m, but where did it go?

<comment><USER9> The two comments you've quoted are literally the only comments that indicate hacks or broken things in the entire HTML source of the linked page. There are other comments, but they are innocuous descriptive comments and not indications of problems - things like:

        <!-- Adobe Analytics script (2 of 2) -->

Saying it is "full of" comments "like" the ones you've quoted is just plain not true.

<comment><USER8> The assets have many lines of commented out code and comments like the ones I mentioned:

[https://apply.army.mod.uk/Content/Scripts/custom/RoleFinder....](https://apply.army.mod.uk/Content/Scripts/custom/RoleFinder.js)

I'm not calling out the developers, but I would suggest many people here would not allow chunks of commented out code in the projects they work on. It suggests poor use of source control, meaning the site won't be maintainable and will have to be replaced. Of course it's likely this is because of conditions placed on the developers by their managers, those are the people I'm taking issue with here.

I'm just miffed off that as a UK taxpayer we're on the hook for this. Again. If I'd paid for this site personally I'd be upset.

<comment><USER9> Eep. I agree that that's a bad look.

I also like the way that in one event handler in that file they check for the existence of stopImmediatePropagation before calling it and if it's not there they fall back `cancelBubble = true` to support old IE versions, but that in another spot they happily call stopImmediatePropagation() without any check. I'm not certain, but that certainly _looks_ wrong; it seems like they'd've been better served by a polyfill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's impossible to judge from the information in the article whether this is an absurd and unjustifiable waste of money or not. It doesn't tell us anything about the requirements, only that the project was to build "a website".

[https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) is a website. Facebook is also a website. Spending £113m to build Motherfucking Website is insane; spending £113m to build Facebook is a bargain.

As other commenters here noted, we can easily imagine extremely complicated requirements. The backend requirements for a "recruitment website" for the military might include all sorts of background checks, including pulling criminal records and automatically trawling social media for content posted by candidates and doing NLP analysis on it to detect warning signs of extremism. There might be some sophisticated proprietary analytics portal for monitoring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. And while there might be a good writeup elsewhere on the web on what exactly this project consisted of, and I'd welcome relevant links, based purely on the content of the article we just don't know.

Calling it a "website" without giving any hint of the requirements makes it sound like the army paid £113m for the digital equivalent of a recruitment brochure, yet I seriously doubt that's the real story here. I'd expect HN commenters to be more skeptical of these kinds of portrayals, rather than uncritically accepting the media narrative.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think everyone here assumes that Capita actually tried to use the 113 million and so they are confused as to why the website is so poor. It's much more likely that about 10 million was spent on the website and the balance lined the pockets of various people in government and at Capita.

</comment><comment><USER11> These projects are incredibly complex that fail for a variety of reasons, most of them to do with politics, conflicting requirements, too many stakeholders and decision makers, and too many people with little to no interest in or grasp of the technology involved.

First and foremost the lesson should be that the army should have its own dedicated IT department.

Also, any company peddling 'digital transformation' should be a red flag to start with.

<comment><USER7> "army should have its own dedicated IT department"

I'm sure they did at one point - I remember hearing a talk at a conference from someone who handled their salary side of things maybe 5/6 years ago. He was talking about the difficulties they had in managing master data (e.g. how many people actually work for them) and came across rather well.

<comment><USER11> That sound really interesting, I'm sure there are lots of subtleties to working for the armed forces that wouldn't become apparent to an outside contractor that would come in even if it was for multiple years.

Also these big contractors would usually customize existing (CRM) products to deliver these projects, many of them may not be a good fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Outsourcing giant Capita was awarded the £495m contract for Army recruitment in 2012 - but has failed to hit soldier recruitment targets every year since."

There's your problem, you gave it to Capita.

The whole PFI model relies on the pipedream of being able to just hand a piece of paper over from the Minister's desk detailing what they want, as if they were sending the intern out to buy milk, and magically getting the right thing back. In practice it requires all sorts of complexity and control; the project management is actually _harder_ than just straightforwardly doing it inhouse, agility is impossible, and the opportunities for cost inflation are huge.

There is no real penalty for failure, and no real competitive market since the tendering process is so complex and expensive, and in any case the relevant small number of firms already have the Minister on speed-dial. Besides, the outsourcing inevitably ends up "too big to fail", in that when a bankruptcy _does_ happen like Carillion the state has to take over the cost of sorting it out anyway.

<comment><USER7> Interserve is also in a lot of trouble:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46505688](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46505688)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We're all familiar with over-exaggerated claims of being able to build them something in a weekend, but £113m for a recruitment web site?!

<comment><USER14> It's worth reading the full report: [https://www.nao.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Investigat...](https://www.nao.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Investigation-into-the-British-Army-Recruiting- Partnering-Project.pdf)

<comment><USER7> The MoD paid all that money and doesn't even get ownership of the code!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "Army ads 'won't appeal to new soldiers'"

> "Capita has consistently missed the Army's recruitment targets, with the > total shortfall ranging from 21% to 45%, the NAO said."

Not to get off topic but...Did Capita miss the targets, or have the proles simply become wise to the ways of the powerful ruling elites? A pitch of "serve your country" certainly doesn't have the truth / appeal that it once had.

> "The Commons Defence Committee was told in October that the Army currently > has 77,000 fully trained troops, compared with a target of 82,500."

Now drilling down a bit...5,500 short? That's not even 10%. The raw number looks large-ish, but as a percentage (while short) doesn't feel unreasonable (in a real world sense).

<comment><USER12> Alternatively, it's a whole brigade short, and only slightly less than the total number of troops deployed overseas. It's not a great situation to be in given all the talk about civil contingencies planning or Ukraine-Russia incidents.

Difficult to say how effective the nationalism is. I see a lot _more_ "support our troops" than I used to, but it's been effectively monopolised by the right. I suspect the problem is the Army wants trained specialists a lot more than cannon fodder, and is unable to make competitive offers here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Capita admitted it had "underestimated the complexity" of the project."

Classic :D

<comment><USER17> Read that as, 'Capita didn't care too much to manage requirements and sanitize them but instead realised that they would get some sweet dough by stringing it out'

They should have capped the price up-front.

<comment><USER18> This, I don't get about government procurement. Why not set a fixed price; with reductions for overruns.

Sure, with small companies they could go broke, but Capita has been given half of the UK at this point.

<comment><USER19> If you set a fixed price you might get nothing. Half finished bridges and railways, that kind of thing.

This is of course why you end up paying 113M for something that should cost a tiny dragon of that. You're held to ransom by the contractor.

The thing to do might have been to recruit (!) some in house devs.

<comment><USER18> Well you get a half finished bridge and your money back, or as much money as the company has assets and then you have one less company trying to rip us off. Probably, you need a clause on C-suite assets being secured against the project.

"But no one will do that" I expect is the response. Must be some honest companies prepared to do a job for 100 times the cost?

<comment><USER20> > Well you get a half finished bridge and your money back, or as much money as > the company has assets and then you have one less company trying to rip us > off.

Setting up a new company costs a lot less than you make on a project like this.

> Must be some honest companies prepared to do a job for 100 times the cost?

Sure. But government procurement is often required to go with the low bidder (because of anti-favouritism rules) even when they obviously can't deliver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to hear anyone involved in this process answer the question: "Why wasn't any of the thousands of COTS solutions chosen instead?"

</comment><comment><USER22> The most interesting (IMO) part from the full report [https://www.nao.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Investigat...](https://www.nao.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Investigation-into-the-British-Army-Recruiting- Partnering-Project.pdf) Looks like it's not entirely the fault of Capita, but the Army's overall approach was flawed:

The Army initially attempted to develop the IT infrastructure

The Department approved the Programme on the basis that the Army would use its existing IT infrastructure to host the online system. In 2012, the Department was therefore responsible for developing the IT infrastructure to achieve this. Capita was responsible for developing the new online system. As we reported in 2014, the Department encountered problems with the delivery of the IT infrastructure, and deadlines were repeatedly missed.

The main problems were that the Department: • Had to manage a relationship between two providers who had no contractual relationship with each other; • Underestimated the complexity of what it was trying to achieve and, consequently, the resources required to manage the risks; and • Had an Army project management team that was inexperienced and under-resourced.

The Army originally intended to introduce the new online recruitment system by July 2013. In December 2013, it accepted that its approach had not worked and passed responsibility for implementing the whole approach – the hosting infrastructure and the online recruitment system – to Capita. The Department's Accounting Officer accepted that the failure to manage the dependencies between the Atlas and Capita contracts was 'unacceptable'.

Capita took responsibility for developing the online system.

Capita initially intended to use an 'off-the-shelf' commercial system but underestimated the complexity of the Army's requirements. It found the level of customisation needed to support the three Armed Services' recruitment processes meant that an off-the-shelf system was not a viable technical solution. In February 2015, it therefore began to develop a new bespoke system.

Capita then encountered problems developing the new application and missed launch deadlines in July 2015, April 2016 and April 2017. The main problems involved the scale of the three Armed Services' processes and requirements, and the number of interfaces with other IT systems. For example, the Armed Forces have over 250 job roles, each with its own eligibility criteria and rules, which means a new Army candidate can have 27 possible pathways through the recruitment process. Capita told us that these requirements made system development more complex than standard online recruitment systems.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sometime back I proposed Agile methodology for Govt officials. They laughed at it :(

<comment><USER24> The UK government developed a project management methodology called Prince 2. Which has a lot of similarities to, and is compatible with, agile. The rights to the methodology are jointly owned by the UK government and Capita, the contractor involved in this screw up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 1yr was wasted trying to convert an online web application the US use for recruitment to work for the UK. I heard it was doomed in numerous ways, especially being cloud based (not a good idea to have all the personal data on new recruits hosted offsite). How it was ever chosen defies belief.

The next year was spent building a bespoke app using a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool. Failed and abandoned after 12mths. How it was ever chosen defies belief.

The next 18mths was spent building a bespoke app with a different RAD tool (K2) supposedly that would enable catching up on the previous lost 2yrs by cutting lots of corners and doing 3 yrs work in 9mths. It was the wrong tool for the job and was never going to work. Management were told many times, and why, but they would just ignore it and tell us to carry on. They hired every K2 developer available on the market in the UK, but they seemed to be only used to building small apps in one or two person teams, whereas many of us were used to working in large teams building large complex systems. The K2 devs were considered the 'gurus' and everytime we raised the issues management would go and ask the K2 guys, and of course, they would dismiss our issues (often quite arrogantly) to protect their product. After 18mths it became clear, we were proven right and K2 was abandoned.

In all this time, the entire management was completely replaced 3 times. None seemed to have any experience in how to build a software application or website. They would make the most astounding statements that concerned many of us that they had no idea how to build not just a complex system like this, but any software application at all. We were told we werent allowed to talk to the project 'architects', and we later found out they were told not to talk to us (an instant recipe for failure by itself). When we did get to talk to them (unofficially) we soon realised why, they were also clueless. Next they tried bringing in external management, but they were just as clueless and didnt seem to know what to do either.

Of course the application was going to be large and complex, but was quite achievable if people who knew what they were doing were in charge. In my opinion the root problem is the same as in many other companies that develop software systems (and often the root cause of the many data hacks we see on the news): management who have no technical background choose the wrong tools for the job, hire incompetent numpties who dont understand software technology to do the work, and constantly try and cut corners you shouldn't cut to save time and/or money.

Even when a project is behind you should be able to say how much you have actually have completed, 10%, 20%, something (especially with 400+ people on it), but it always seemed nothing was ever considered 'complete'. We often said 3 x 10 person teams who knew what they were doing, with the correct architecture and development tools, could have built a working system in 12-18mths.

Reading the report, I find it repulsive the financial penalties have been reduced to keep Capita 'motivated'. Our armed forces deserve better. With all the cost cutting they endure, they need to recruit quickly and efficiently and fill 100% of positions they have to maintain an effective defence of our country.

</comment><comment><USER26> Prime example of crony capitalism [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism)</comment>


Elsevier Withdraws Support for the Research Works Act - <AUTHOR> http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/newmessagerwa

<comment><USER2> Didn't their open letter just say that they _support_ open access? Because this press release says they "still oppose government mandates".</comment>


Extreme frugality allowed me to retire at 32 – and regain control of my life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/mar/08/how-to-retire-early-frugal-spending <comment><USER2> While I am aware of the amount of money I "waste" (whatever that means) I feel this article doesn't actually tell us what these two started with.

If I only paid my mortgage and utilities, no longer had a dog walker, and spent only $30 a week on food (I know this must be possible, I was a student once :) ) I could save for 10 years and I'm still fairly sure I wouldn't have save nearly enough to retire</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use terminal based GUI applications? - <AUTHOR> I'm not referring to the typical CLI application that you call from the command prompt with some arguments and wait for the output. I'm referring to the kind of applications that draw an ascii-like user interface in the terminal. Examples include: vim, top, midnight commander or NetHack.<p>Is there any of these apps that you use frequently? Is there any particular thing that you like about these interfaces? <comment><USER2> The only ones I use you might think of as command line tools. top. Apache's monitoring tools via Lynx. Etc.

What I like about them is that they're information-dense and extremely performant; and a bit more discoverable than a CLI. What I dislike about them is that they tend to be poor at surfacing or highlighting _important_ information or providing context. And they're far less discoverable than a modern GUI.

</comment><comment><USER3> tmux + vim also screen from time to time</comment>


Automatic Login Links - <AUTHOR> http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2011/06/14/automatic-login-links/

<comment><USER3> As has already been mentioned in the comments on the post earlier today, emailing a direct login link or merely a password reset link actually do have different security implications: when an attacker gains access to the account by resetting your password, you will know about this as soon as you try to login yourself. With a direct login link you won't.

Furthermore, when offering direct login links you are training your users to not remember their passwords. A bad side-effect, unless you have only users who will never login except when notified.

<comment><USER4> > Furthermore, when offering direct login links you are training your users to > not remember their passwords.

Come to think of it, that sounds very convenient. How about a security model that links an account only to an email address? This implies that anyone who can read that email account can log in. For many purposes, this might be fine.

You could do without those nasty passwords entirely then. Logging in from a new computer without cookies stored means having yourself a new "log me in" email sent. Sucks if you have to open your email just for that, but then again, for some services, this might seldomly be a problem because of their email-oriented nature.

<comment><USER5> This is basically two-factor authentication, without the first factor.

Isn't Google Authenticator supposed to have an open API so that any service can give you a secure seed and then let you use your mobile phone to login? <https://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is all fine, with the understanding of exactly who gets to see the authentication token on its way from your server to the customer's inbox: any MTA and if the MTA's pass the e-mail to and fro in clear text, anyone on those networks (including your dear old ISP if you use them for your e-mail provider). Additionally, the webmail provider, and any plugin on the user's browser that can read content out of a web page.

If you are comfortable with that, great. Provide this feature as a nice option. However, if your service hosts any sort of sensitive information at all, or has anything to do with money, please don't turn this on by default. This is one step away from send me my password in clear text.

<comment><USER7> Yet when I get a reset password email the exact same things happen... so for sites where that reset password is good enough it is also good enough to send auto login links.

<comment><USER6> Yup. And sending reset passwords link is just as insecure. Just because it is the accepted practice does not mean it's a good idea.

Introducing some sort of security questions helps a bit, depending on implementation. Another idea would be to ask the user to create a temporary PIN, that is then used to sign the token, and is asked for again, when the user actually clicks the emailed link.

Lastly, users are more or less trained not to forward password reset emails. However, getting an email that says "Your stock is burning, click here to sell all." might cause the panic-stricken user to forward this email to his/her broker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "These guys are a bunch of farmers and not necessarily the most adept computer users."

Most of the farmers in my extended family are quite intelligent people, many of whom have masters degrees in agriculture.

If instead of "farmers" it said "women" the author would likely get flogged.

That said, there's a lot of good points in this article. SSL wrapping the entire thing so that the autologin URL didn't go over the wire in plaintext would be the obvious next security step.

<comment><USER9> I am an adept computer user who is also a moron. It stands to reason that there are also very intelligent people who are not very good with computers. I believe this is what the author was getting at.

<comment><USER4> Meh. The author implies that farmers are likelier to have no clue about computers than people who "would buy their fruit online". That's just nonsense, and it illustrates that the author has a very 1950's idea about farming.

Farming in western coutries these days is about running lean and highly automated businesses on tiny margins. Virtually all professional farmers are comfortable using computers and specialized software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This kind of URL is called a "capabilities URL" in security circles. It's a common pattern, and often considered more secure than username/password pairs, though its security depends on how the user protects it.

You can find more details here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability- based_security>

</comment><comment><USER11> If you can assume that your users will most likely use the same computer, you can make this technique slightly more secure. Have the random link only log you in if the device is recognized as one that has logged in with a password before. Combine this with two levels of "logged in-ness" and you have a pretty robust, easy to use system.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think he should at least attribute this article: <http://sneak.datavibe.net/20110614/please-dont-do-this/> for bringing up the discussion about login links, and would seem to be the most obvious source of inspiration for this post.

Don't get me wrong, the code and implementation brings something to the table on it's own. I just think the original author should get some attention too.

<comment><USER13> I wrote that post yesterday, but I am far from the "original author" - <USER2> was the first one I saw doing it. My original contribution, if any, is limited to "why doesn't everyone do this?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's probably better to allow the option for single sign-on instead (i.e. Facebook or Twitter). It's just as easy for the user, essentially the same difficulty level for the developer, and seemingly much more secure than sending tokens through email.

Of course, it does have a couple of disadvantages (not all users have Facebook/Twitter accounts or would feel comfortable with you having access to them, plus you're partially dependent on an external service), but I think for most applications SSO would be preferable to authentication tokens.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would love to see some data from a popular site about how often the "forgot my password" link is used and whether it is evenly distributed or only used repeatedly by a subset of the user base.

Another attribute that I would assume of "less adept computer users" is that they usually use the same computer for all their tasks. Again, I'd be interested to learn if the "forgot password" link is used less as more browsers are seamlessly integrating password remembering features.

</comment><comment><USER16> That's the method used by doodle.ch. A security breach in doodle is not very harmful. I don't know how about fruit business. Whenever money is involved, it is obvious that some people will try to cheat and abuse the system.

The one time use link is a nice trick and would be glad it passes the snake oil check because it provides a significant simplification.

What happen if they loose the link ? What would be the damage if the link gets exposed or stolen ?

</comment><comment><USER17> I do NOT want a link sitting in my email box that logs someone into any account anywhere. I might as well put my password on a post-it and stick it to my monitor.

<comment><USER18> This would be more akin to sticking it inside your (locked, but not necessarily 100% secure) mailbox.

I agree, though.

<comment><USER19> After sending it to you easily visible on a postcard, delivered by the originator handing it to somebody who happens to be heading in the same direction as your mailbox and who will do the same until it reaches said mailbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sorry, but "Automatic login links are no less secure" is an extremely flawed statement.

Automatic login links have the same issues, but them some more.

Please remember people WILL forward emails. This means that people WILL have unauthorised access to your system.

If you are implementing the system as you have described, you are being negligent to your users. You are also setting yourself up to be the next Sony.

<comment><USER20> If you really want to do something like this, PLEASE implement some form of out of band 2FA. For example, SMS a PIN to a mobile number once the link has been clicked. This gives the benefit of not needing to remember your password, but requiring more than just a forwarded email to sign in.</comment></comment>


Murder in Small-Town India - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/world/asia/murder-small-town-india.html <comment><USER2> > Over the past decade, in Russia and then India, I have been asked versions > of this question hundreds of times: Who are you to come here and tell us > what is wrong with our system? And it's true, the whole enterprise of > foreign correspondence has a whiff of colonialism.

I find the author's self-consciousness patronizing. India is full of people fighting this sort of thing in the country's backwaters, who appreciate the help from any source. (I don't imagine Americans find it colonialist when the Economist writes about the problems with _our_ justice system: [https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21654619-how-make- ame...](https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21654619-how-make-americas- penal-system-less-punitive-and-more-effective-jailhouse-nation)).

<comment><USER3> > I don't imagine Americans find it colonialist when the Economist writes > about the problems with our justice system

It's disingenuous to critique a fundamentally postcolonial argument (which is what the cited quotation represents) by referencing the US and its erstwhile status as a colony of England. The US is one of the three superpowers of the world, one of the wealthiest countries of the world, and itself an imperial power, which means that under postcolonial thought, it's more analogous to English media critiquing France or Portugal. Under this same lens, that's a completely different balance (or imbalance) of power than when the US critiques India (or any other developing nation that was decolonized in the mid-20th century, of which there are a lot).

You don't have to agree with the end conclusion, but if you want to critique it, you need to engage with it as a school of thought and either address the problem using that framework or find a compelling reason to deconstruct the framework.

<comment><USER2> > a compelling reason to deconstruct the framework.

Fine. As someone from an adjacent former British colony, I find much of the Western hand-wringing about colonialism in India to be misguided and presumptuous. Much postcolonial thinking is the cultural equivalent of "Not Invented Here" syndrome. Modern Indians looking to integrate into the developed world find this sort of thing as abhorrent as western onlookers do. They want to end these practices, they don't mind being judged by the standards of the developed world, and they don't mind the impetus created by international scrutiny of these injustices.

To make it more concrete: there is an activist organization somewhere in India that is thrilled to see coverage of this issue. In the New York Times of all places!

<comment><USER3> > Much postcolonial thinking is the cultural equivalent of "Not Invented Here" > syndrome.

This is very much not true, and I'd invite you to read some postcolonial theory to understand why, because those primary sources explain it in more detail than I can summarize here.

The remainder of your post after that line is factually true, and postcolonialists wouldn't even disagree with it necessarily, but that particular claim is not accurate.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's controversial to say that postcolonialism rejects the universality of European enlightenment values. That is, in my view, a mode of "Not Invented Here" thinking. Relevant: [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/04/how-does-the-subaltern- sp...](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/04/how-does-the-subaltern-speak).

> There has been no really prominent body of thought associated with the Left > in the last hundred and fifty years or so that has insisted on denying the > scientific ethos and the applicability of categories coming out of the > liberal enlightenment and the radical enlightenment — categories like > capital, democracy, liberalism, rationality, and objectivity. There have > been philosophers who have criticized these orientations, but they've rarely > achieved any significant traction on the Left. Postcolonial theorists are > the first to do so.

<comment><USER3> Okay, now I understand the issue. It looks like you're reading a description of postcolonialism written by someone who's explicitly opposed to the school of thought and treating that as a primary reference on the tenets of the philosophy itself.

If actually read the original essay with that title ("Can the Subaltern Speak?), you might see that Chibber's criticism is completely off-base, to the point of misrepresenting even objective facts about the principles of postcolonialism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty much completely jives with my feeling for the place after spending a couple months traveling through it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Life is very difficult here. And no one thinks of themselves as a villain. Villains especially.</comment>