Show HN: A simple way to annotate code - <AUTHOR>

I needed a solution for annotating translations for learning Japanese.
I wanted something that created output documents like backbone.js's awesome annotated source code [1], but couldn't find it, so I made it.
Hopefully it's useful to you for annotating code, translations, or any arbitrary text.  I think it's great for educational material.
site: http://www.getannotations.com/
source: https://github.com/chromano/annotate
Pull requests welcome.
[1] http://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html <comment><USER2> I think the examples are good, it works well for both those cases. Theres a big difference between editing something and annotating it with little comments on corrections, vs [http://www.getannotations.com/](http://www.getannotations.com/) where both are prominent.

</comment><comment> git-pull Good work man.

Can you make the license permissive? MIT, BSD or Apache?

For the code presentation, Have you seen pycco? [http://fitzgen.github.io/pycco/](http://fitzgen.github.io/pycco/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice work!

It'll be great if the textarea for commenting grew in height as you typed more.</comment>


EC2Instances.info – Easy Amazon EC2 Instance Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://www.ec2instances.info/ <comment><USER2> This just got added to my reference bookmarks. Very nicely done.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm developing my own ICO, who wants to be a part of it? - <AUTHOR> I have an idea in the area of machine learning that I've been thinking about related to storing algorithms and their returns in smart contracts It's attracted attention of investors to the tune of $20 mil. I need to find a team. Anyone interested? <comment><USER2> I'm interested

</comment><comment><USER3> I am in.</comment>


What personality is that blog? - <AUTHOR> http://typealyzer.com/

<comment><USER2> This is very cool! I think it would also be cool for bloggers to link to an analysis of a site using a GET link, e.g. <http://typealyzer.com/?url=www.techcrunch.com>. This might also lead to viral growth (if desired).

</comment><comment><USER3> It was correct for both my technical blog, and my personal blog on which I tend to pontificate, but incorrect on my weight-loss blog (no, I haven't lost any yet).

Overall, that seems pretty good, as the only inaccuracy is on a site on which I post short, one sentence updates.

</comment><comment><USER4> See also: <http://genderanalyzer.com/>

<comment><USER5> It was 79% sure my blog was written by a man but it was 74% sure my girlfriend's blog was written by a man as well.

I'm not impressed.

<comment><USER6> You need a larger sample size before being impressed or unimpressed. If it's 74% sure of something, it _should_ be wrong a quarter of the time; if not, its confidence estimate was too low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tried all three of my blogs, personal, tech and gardening and got three different answers. I'm definitely a T but all others are up in the air. For what it's worth, I float back and forth between INTJ and ISTJ. My personal blog was ENTJ, my tech blog was ISTJ and my gardening blog was ESTP. That last one seemed really odd and I dug in a little further.

It appears that my gardening blog has been hacked at some point and literally hundreds of links for viagra and other fun stuff has been added to my page. No wonder the TypeAnalyzer thought I was a doer. Now I'm off to try and fix it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. My blog home page is only titles, and that wasn't enough data for a correct prediction - it said I'm an ESTP. With more data (i.e. my rss feed) it was spot on: INTP.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious how this can pick up on introversion vs extraversion. It would seem that such would be difficult to analyze just based on a person's writing.

<comment><USER10> Easy. Blog: extraversion. Empty page: introversion.

<comment><USER8> I know you're probably joking, but that's a really ignorant and unsubstantiated suggestion. I'm _strongly_ introverted, yet I blog and (gasp) argue with people online.

Introversion is _not_ the same as being shy, awkward, diffident, or mute. It has more to do with what situations energize you, which ones drain you, how you enjoy spending your time, how you relax, _et cetera_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm an especially strong ENTJ, but my blog (zachaysan.tumblr.com) is classified as an ISTP. Is there an explainable reason for this?

<comment><USER12> Yes, what is normality called personalitype refers to the idea that you ARE something, which is BS. What words you have used at a particular moment (if unconciuos about this) shows two interesting things however: a) What parts of reality you focus your attention to about a situation (the people, the facts, the values etc) b) Your cognitive preferences over time. Call it a personality type if you want to or just "a people-oriented type" etc

<comment><AUTHOR> (FYI: mattiasostmar is the inventor of the Typealyzer.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mine was exactly right: INTP.</comment>


What's wrong with how Medicare pays doctors - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/medicare-fee-schedule-basics/ <comment><USER2> There are plenty of problems with Medicare, but patient input into pricing is not one of them. One of the comments on the article sums it up nicely:

"The information asymmetry between the doctor and patient is so great that a patient's judgement about the value of a given treatment is meaningless. Not to mention that people are irrational actors. To go back to my pharmacy example: demand for cosmetic treatments is often less elastic than it is for treatments that will keep a person alive."

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the PDF: <http://nihcm.org/pdf/NIHCM-EV-Berenson_FINAL.pdf></comment>


Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas - <AUTHOR> http://www.tenthcave.com/2011/10/plea-for-help.html <comment><USER2> I'm American. My wife is Argentine. We live in Argentina in large part because when we wanted to marry in 2006, we couldn't get her a permanent visa to live in the USA.

Her fiancee visa was in fact quickly approved, pending an interview at the US consulate in Buenos Aires. We waited and waited, called, had our lawyers call, and the response was always "when the consulate is ready to make an appointment, they will call you." They never called, leaving us in limbo for over a year and saddled with thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Eventually we grew tired of the uncertainty. I moved to Argentina, we got married, and we've lived here ever since.

Argentina is not perfect. But the legal status of foreign residents here is much clearer than in the USA. As the husband of a citizen, permanent residency was automatic provided I didn't have a criminal record in my home country (I don't). I am allowed to vote in municipal elections. And, now as the father of an Argentine citizen, citizenship is also automatic if I want it.

You might think that Argentina can afford to be generous with immigrants because it has nowhere near the load of foreign residents that the USA does, and to an extent that's certainly true. But on the other hand, Argentina has fairly large immigrant communities (from Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia and China), more social welfare services (basic healthcare is free here), and a lot less financial resources than the USA.

Having now lived somewhere else and been on the "other side" of the immigration issue, I feel indignant and outraged when I read about how my country treats non-citizen residents.

<comment><USER3> I married my wife overseas in 2007. In 2008 we applied for immigration at a US embassy (I sponsored her as my spouse), waited a couple of months, and received an appointment date. My wife was granted a visa at the appointment. I made a comment during the interview on how the process was so painless and the consulate basically said, "well, you guys are married". 3 years later, she is a US citizen. I think the fiancee visa route plays second fiddle to family immigration. That and maybe the Buenos Aires consulate needs to get their act together. It's a shame you spent so much money on lawyers as well :| Good luck to you...you may want to try again now that you are married.

<comment><USER4> Is this a personal experience that you are generalizing or it is actually faster to get a wife to the US vs a fiancee? Any link to actual law is appreciated.

<comment><USER5> Does "fiancee" even have any legal defintion in the US? Nobody signs anything when they propose and I'm pretty sure that states don't recognise it as a legal status, at least not until various common-law cohabitation conditions comes into play.

<comment><USER6> It's a particular type of immigration Visa the K-1 is a "Fiancee Visa". Note that you are required to get married within 90 days. The point of it is to allow US Citizens to get married within the US to non-US Citizens.

[http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_2994.htm...](http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_2994.html#1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a kid I always wanted to go to the USA, maybe even live there. So many things to see, the business opportunities and the propagated freedom were very attractive.

During the last decade though, the USA have done a fantastic job of eradicating every bit of what was left of this dream. Nowerdays all you hear from them is how Hollywood is destroying little guys' lifes for downloading a bunch of songs, exporting those policies with force to other countries, insane financial schemes and starting several wars.

Right now I am planning a trip to Japan. A country, which was hit by a nuclear meltdown crisis, floods, earthquakes and more. I'd still choose it over going to the USA any day. Maybe that's something to think about.

The USA are going down fast and it doesn't look like there are changes in sight in regards to their handling of immigrants, the wars or the rampand self-made economic problems.

And that is a shame.

<comment><USER8> Ever since Obama came to power American Visa system got fucked up. I work for a consulting firm and people are denied Visa on arbitrary grounds such as "we are not satisfied with your purpose of visit", "why you need to meet your customer face to face" etc.

Even that is fine but funny thing is that same person is allowed visa for the same purpose when he applied next time :)

American under Obama have started some kind of cheap protectionism.

<comment><USER9> Do you really think it is related to Obama's administration, or just a general trend of official xenophobia and terrorist mumbo jumbo over the past decade?

<comment><USER8> Not sure but there is a correlation because this trend has escalated ever since he has planned for a re-contest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An interesting factoid. There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country.

Say someone from Africa or South America. They can't simply save enough money, get on a plane, land at JFK and then after 10 years or whatever time become citizens. They would have to be persecuted in a terrible way before being granted asylum, have to marry a US citizen, find a company that would hire them.

I think that is very interesting given that this country was founded on immigrants just hoping on the boat and coming here, either to build a better life or because things got terribly bad where they were.

I personally went through the whole process and it is a fucking mess. I knew how to deal with it, because I dealt with bureaucracy in the old country. I can sense an annoyed low level clerk's power trip coming on before they notice it. Such individual need special treatment. You never want to fall into anyone's cross-hairs, it seems like they would destroy you just because they can.

Also know someone who works for immigration. It is quite a dysfunctional entity. Very inefficient. Lots of internal mistakes, unpaid interns do the job searching through databases and picking people out for violations & deportation. Next time you know someone was picked out -- chances are some kid thought their last name sounded funny and it caught their attention.

<comment><USER11> > _There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home > country._

Are there countries where this is possible? This is a real question, I'm not snarking---is there some country X where I could just up and say, "I want to move to X" and just go there and make it my permanent residence? (I know that there are some countries that _in practice_ don't _enforce_ their requirements, but I thought all countries had them.)

<comment><USER12> Every country has their requirements, and to a greater extent they enforce them. However, some countries make it downright impossible for a foreigner to become a resident or a citizen, while others make it exceedingly easy.

For instance, if you wanted to become a permanent resident or a citizen to the Dominican Republic, all you would have to do is get there (via sea or air), go through the motions, submit the paperwork and pay the taxes.

You would start by buying a US$10 tourist card, as a permit to enter the country, which will be approved unless you are obviously wanted by Interpol.

This will give you 60 days, during which you can apply for your provisional resident visa. For the resident visa you will need to provide, aside from the usual forms and tax payments, proof of solvency, defined as about 13k dollars in assets (cash and property) at the current exchange rate, and a letter of sponsorship from any good-faith Dominican citizen with in-country legal residence.

Within the first two months after this visa you can apply for a provisional residency card. About four months after the application, you receive your provisional residency card, which lasts a year. At about the year mark, it does not matter much if it happens before or after, you can apply for your permanent residency card. That last one lasts 3 years and is indefinitely renewable (as long as you do not commit a horrible crime).

After two years of uninterrupted legal residency in the country (i.e. at least six months and one day per year) you can apply for naturalization.

All the while, you are free to engage in productive business from day one. You would be taxed differently, on account of not being a citizen, but you would be allowed to work for a profit. If you happen to aquire assets in-country, there is leeway to have the sponsorship requirements waived.

Legal translations, medical examinations and notary public fees carry the burden of the cost of the process. Taxes will run you up less than $100 in total. The entire process is fairly inexpensive and could probably be done with less than $1000 dollars.

<comment><USER13> Note that the landing with $10 requires that one has to be from developed world.

And there is also a pretty similar procedure to get green card in USA, the EB5 route.

<comment><USER10> There is a bit of difference between $10 and $1000000 but , <sarcasm>aside from that, it is the same</sarcasm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> US immigration sucks. What bugs me most is that the US is founded on immigrants, so it's basically the descendents of one group of immigrants telling those 'late to the party' that they can't enter, or in this case that they have to leave.

To do this to someone that has been there for a lifetime and then some is ridiculous.

Too many lives have already been wrecked to satisfy little minds and to get stamps on pieces of paper.

Immigrants like these are the ones a country should hope to receive, not to turn away at some arbitrary future date for bureaucratic reasons only.

Disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER15> I hate to say it but from a brief reading of the information, it sounds like their asylum was first denied back in 1997, and they've been fighting it ever since. They certainly have the right to fight it, but it's been an uphill battle for almost 15 years, so the outcome certainly doesn't seem like a surprise.

The person is obviously a great entrepreneur, he probably should have just left on his own accord instead of fighting it to the point where he's thrown in jail.

The ridiculous thing is that he's in the US, paying his taxes, creating income, etc.... why throw him out? I suppose it's because he applied for asylum that was denied, and they are throwing him out to prove a point, but the entire thing is just counterproductive to what we want in this country.

<comment><USER16> The point is there are rules. To come to the US you can either:

1) Apply to INS, wait in line, enter the lottery and follow the law.

2) Hop on a plane and hope they don't catch you.

He chose route 2, and is now paying the consequences. Just because he's an entrepreneur doesn't give him any more right to be here then any other would be immigrant, and it certainly doesn't give him the right to jump the line

<comment><USER17> The point is: there's something wrong with the rules.

<comment><USER18> Maybe, but you can't complain if you choose to disobey the rules and they catch you.

Especially when the rules are just "dumb" rather than "immoral". That is to say, the United States is morally entitled to set rules about who can and can't stay in their country, and the rules at the moment are quite dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see anything in the linked post about "meeting quotas".

Can we please avoid making headlines unnecessarily hysterical?

<comment><USER14> I think that referred to this bit:

"By coincidence, Frontline this week is broadcasting a feature, 'Lost in Detention', outlining the increasingly aggressive measures to deport immigrants. The key clip begins at the 17-minute mark outlining the arbitrary goal of 400,000 deportations, including "Non-criminal removals". "

From [http://mapbrief.com/2011/10/19/political-hypocrisy- economic-...](http://mapbrief.com/2011/10/19/political-hypocrisy-economic- ignorance-the-case-against-atanas-entchev/)

<comment><USER20> What does a Non-criminal removal mean? Like who would be in that category? Just people who's visa expired?

<comment><USER21> Non-criminal removal is for people who are being deported after an appeals process. Basically they petitioned for a change of visa status which was denied and eventually all their appeals were turned down. Key is that because they were following the legal appeal channel, they were at no point in the country illegally.

<comment><USER22> So by ramping up non-criminal removals, does that mean they are actively trying to reject more appeals just to meet quotas of people they must deport (as opposed to rejecting or accepting them on the merits of the case)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From the Case Summary: "Atanas Entchev ("Entchev") entered the United States in August 1991 as a nonimmigrant exchange visitor on a J-1 visa. His wife, Mayia Entcheva, and son, Enislav Entchev, entered the United States in 1992 and 1993, respectively. They were authorized to remain in the United States until July 30, 1993. Before their authorization expired, the petitioners applied for asylum. Entchev argued persecution based on his political beliefs in opposition to the Communist party, which ruled Bulgaria until 1989."

So they applied for asylum on political grounds in 1993, because the Communist party was dethroned 4 years earlier. Well...

</comment><comment><USER24> I earn for a living freelancing for US companies. It has always baffled me that I am allowed to do it legally only if I stay outside of the USA.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps it is because they don't want you to pay US taxes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm the son of an immigrant and married one as well, so I'm quite sympathetic....but....he has not explained why his status changed from being legally in the U.S. to some other status....

<comment><USER27> He wasn't a legal immigrant. His status never changed.

<comment><USER28> From the post, that is not clear. It opens with "After living legally in the United States for over 20 years [...]"

From the case file, however, it seems like they entered with a J-1 visa and before their authorization to stay expired, they applied for asylum.

<comment><USER29> Perhaps by "living legally" he meant he'd never been in trouble with the law? That he was a productive member of society?

I don't necessarily agree with the immigration laws in the U.S., but I think you have to live within the laws a country has instated.

<comment><USER28> I think in this context, "living legally" means you are not Out-of-status by overstaying an I-94, issued to you by the USCIS (fka INS) officer at the point of entry.

IANAL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And reactions at [http://mapbrief.com/2011/10/19/political-hypocrisy- economic-...](http://mapbrief.com/2011/10/19/political-hypocrisy-economic- ignorance-the-case-against-atanas-entchev/) and [http://blog.entchev.com/2011/10/17/a-call-for-help-for- atana...](http://blog.entchev.com/2011/10/17/a-call-for-help-for-atanas.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm an Australian, currently living in the US on a green card via being married to an American. While I sympathize with his plight and I also strongly believe that when you choose to enter a country, you should respect it's laws. He did willingly come to the US and overstay his visa, so therefore broke US immigration laws. Now I don't necessarily agree with the US immigration process, I believe it's rather tough and unfair not to mention a little demeaning and insensitive.

What do you do though, the immigration system doesn't seem to be set up to handle exceptions. Once you make one, you have to grant exceptions to others. It's a tough dilemna, Atanas has been seemingly a constructive member of society, hopefully paying taxes along the way. It would be a shame in this sense to punish such a person.

<comment><USER31> It should be acknowledged that Australians have a special and easy way for coming to US and getting permanent residency. For example, if an Australian wanted to start a business in US, you are automatically qualified to apply for residency right away. (My information is based on what an Australian couple told me 5 years ago in the US).

<comment><USER30> True, Aussies now have the E3 visa which is a work sponsored visa just for Aussies. But I came here years before that happened. I had to convince someone to give me one of the very rare H1B visas just to come over to be with my then girlfriend. We eventually got married and I applied for the greencard.

I'm not sure about auto qualification if you want to start a business. I think you need something like $1M in the bank to prove that you have the resources to start...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I know this is an unpopular opinion but, having worked for the government and as an attorney I think it is always sad when families are deported but it is not outrageous. The laws are the laws and they apply equally to (almost) everybody. When people over stay their visas they have broken the law, there is no getting around that and no amount of hard work, tax paying or community involvement can change that. People are arrested and jailed everyday under inequitable laws (crack/cocaine sentencing discrepancy comes to mind) but the way to fix it isn't to get caught up under that law and complain about it.

It's unfortunate that this man will have to relocate but I feel more sympathy for his son than him.

</comment><comment><USER33> As much as I sympathise with the guy for going through all this I can't help but think that it's all his own fault.

USA, like many countries, has a strict immigration system in which you must play by the rules and follow the process to become 'legal'. Just living in the country is not enough, you must apply for residency by qualifying in some way.

Unfortunately, it's quite tough to qualify to stay in the US for most people. Skilled immigrant visas are notoriously difficult to attain (there's no simple points system like Australia for example) and so you must look to marriage to a citizen, asylum or the green card lottery. If you think marriage is the easy choice you'd be wrong too.

As someone who is going through the process right now, it can be difficult, expensive, depressing, demeaning (having to prove your relationship is 'real') and downright frustrating but right now that's the way the system works so you must work with the system. This guy obviously didn't and now he's paying the price.

</comment><comment><USER34> Shame is that this guy is most probably Bulgarian and he holds the burgundy passport, which enables him to do his trade almost all over Europe (except for Belarus, Moldova, etc) without having to deal with any bureaucracy or the 'you dirty outsider' attitude. I really don't get it what so many people see in the US.

<comment><USER35> >I really don't get it what so many people see in the US.

1) US and EU economies nearly equal each other in size. [1]

2) You only need one language in the US to reach the entire market.

3) I don't believe for a second there isn't prejudice against outsiders in each individual European country. Wikipedia hosts an article written just about tensions regarding Polish people entering the UK! [2]

1 [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html)

2 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- Polish_sentiment_in_the_Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- Polish_sentiment_in_the_United_Kingdom#United_Kingdom)

<comment><USER34> I generally agree with the first point, with the difference that the economy growth in Europe has been several times higher during the past decade and that trend will continue. Also the debt problems in Europe are less serious than the ones in the US. Also, EU is not going to grow only within - Croatia is joining in 2013 and after that other countries will follow. So Europe has a much greater potential.

2) Well, i18n is nothing hard these days, at least from a technical perspective, also you could reach certain market types using only English quite well in Europe.

3) Yes, this is true, however these problems are visible only in small parts of certain tiers of society. Shortly, the chances of meeting people who openly display negative sentiments against foreigners are smaller if you run a company consulting about GIS, than if you are a plumber/gas station clerk or whatever.

Also, by "'you dirty outsider' attitude" I meant that attitude being displayed by the government, which is very typical in the US.

For example I am a software developer, who comes from one of the 'new' countries and currently lives in another 'new' one, but I have spent significant time in an Western European country and so far I haven't had a single problem with bureaucracy (and with drugged-out undereducated unemployed youths with too fragile minds as well) at any of these places, which compared to Entchev's case of 'they got my entire family under arrest and ruined the life I have been building for the past 20 years' is a whole world of difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> We have the same issues here in Austria, it always feels backwards when somebody well integrated gets kicked out "because the law is the law". It's also one of the main tools for populist politicians to mine for votes ("Fear!"). Although it might seem to be a complicated issue in the end it's not. It's just plain stupid.

</comment><comment><USER37> > ... _our 18-year immigration ordeal_

I wonder what this is referring to and how it reconciles with

> ... _living legally in the United States for over 20 years_

Something tells me there's more to the story than what's in the linked post.

<comment><USER38> He came to the US on an exchange visa. And then he brought his family. And then his visa expired. And then he applied as a refugee. And clearly he is not a true refugee, he just likes living in the US. And he should have left in 1997 but he's been fighting that order in the courts ever since.

I think it might be an unpopular opinion, but in reading the legal doc, he doesn't have much of a case to stay. He should have been deported 14 years ago. The real tragedy is that it took so long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I really feel sorry for him and his family.One more victim of the stupid, time-consuming US immigration laws.I completed this immigration ordeal and witnessed many of my friends in immigration limbo.It is an extremely difficult, frustrating and time-consuming experience, not to mention it sucks whatever you earn.

There seems to be some confusion related to his legal status.He entered US legally and applied asylum for him and his family.During this period, they are in legal status. After they apply for asylum, they have no control or information over that process.If the immigration process was fast enough, none of this would have happened.When the immigration rejected their application after a long time, they filed an appeal which was rejected again.Now they have run out of attempts via the asylum option and are being kicked out. I hope they can try some other category.

<rant> The immigration process, with so many different categories and quotas, is a huge bureaucratic mess. The are still using papers and just recently started using online documents for some processing. It is the second highest profitable government agency minting money out of immigrants. The process can be streamlined and made faster even with the current policies. But who cares about legal immigration anyway? Let those "aliens" stand in line and wait forever. I personally know many friends and families living with constant fear and uncertainty for almost a decade or more.

The policies and rules are just too confusing and inconsistent.Two identical immigrant families can go through completely different process, duration and rules depending on whether a knowledgeable or ignorant immigration agent processing their files. </rant>

</comment><comment><USER40> This seems extremely harsh to me. And also stupid not to value this man's contribution to the U.S.

In 2004 I arrived in Spain as an American and found a programming job at the international division of a sizable U.S. company. But everything was under the table, and that company did not want to sponsor a visa for me. But even when I was illegal in Spain I still had access to better free health care than the uninsured do in the U.S.

Fast forward to 2008, I was still living in Spain and had done some great work for a unrelated startup that was purchased by a much larger U.S. company. I was still in Spain illegally, but this major U.S. company on finding out my status was willing to help me out in any way to become legal here.

Spain has something called "Social Normalization for Exceptional Circumstances" which means if you have been in the country for three years illegally and have a company sponsor you, they will give you a work visa. You also have to be integrated in the community and speak the local languages well. So in 2008, this major U.S. company paid a lawyer and helped me through that process, something that I am exceptionally grateful for. During the time I worked for this company, my work helped bring in millions of Euros of contracts to the international division of this company in Spain.

Now in 2011 I still live in Spain, have the freedom to change jobs or work for myself, and after 7 more years I could become a citizen here, on the condition that I am always working and living in Spain during those years. That means 15 years from illegal to full citizen. I doubt I will stay that long, and don't actually plan on becoming a Spanish citizen, but knowing that if I had a family here and have that option is amazing. Now I am happily working for a Spanish university research group, fully legal.

And I have to say, I think it is disgusting to take a man, and especially his son who has lived in the U.S. since the age of two and treat them like criminals when the father has been actively contributing to the U.S. economy in one of the areas that the U.S. excels at. To criminalize this contribution is to spit in the face of all those immigrants who became American and made America what it is today.

 _And it is also denying the basic human rights of this individual.This clearly violates Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights_ :

Article 15.

        * (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
        * (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

I strongly believe that 20 years of crime free residence and contribution to a nation deserves citizenship, and if I choose to, that is what I would receive in Spain after starting here illegaly.

 _Edit: As noted in the comments below, actually this does not violate Article 15 at all. I still stick with my conclusion though._

<comment><USER21> _This clearly violates Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights_

No it doesn't, no-one in this story is being deprived of their nationality. In any case, the prohibition is on arbitrary deprivation, and a 15 year long court battle is not arbitrary.

<comment><USER40> You are right about that, I made a note on the post above. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Another funny thing about US immigration law is, that if you are an international student in the USA (on an F1 visa) you are entitled to work only for the university that has issued you this visa. For everything else, you have to use your OPT (Optional Practical Training), which is a pool of twelve months, that you can use to work for somebody else, while holding an F1. I will not dig into details such as the fact that it costs about $400, and it takes ~ 2 months to apply and be allowed to use a chunk of your OPT.

If you are an international student and not on OPT, you cannot legally work full time/part time/do an internship with the startup your friend just launched (or any other company, on this note). You may want to risk spending your months, or doing some other jazz, and then try to figure things out, but as we can see from the case at hand these maneuvers do not work out well for everybody.

As for sponsorship, from the employer's perspective, the whole visa sponsorship application process costs about $10k, which is not little money for a small company.

<comment><USER42> "Another funny thing about US immigration law is, that if you are an international student in the USA (on an F1 visa) you are entitled to work only for the university that has issued you this visa."

Isn't this all part of the 9/11 hysteria ? I am not sure but I was told that before 2001 you could work part time for any employer you wanted if you came here on a F1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Flagged, title is misleading. Nowhere does it say anything about quotas. The person claims to have been in the US legally for 18 years, but if you read the lawsuit, it's far from being clear, on the contrary. He has filed appeal after appeal, maybe timely, maybe not.

</comment><comment><USER44> Immigration lawyers love to to offer asylum because these cases can go for decades and anyone can "participate". It also looks attractive to the prospective immigrant when an alternative would be to go through EB or investment immigration. However, if you are deciding to seek asylum on a lawyer advice you are most likely not qualified. Real refugees don't become refugees voluntarily. They also don't have lawyers. Yes, it's much easier to claim asylum than go through non-fraudulent immigration. However the consequences of an asylum case falling through are also much harsher.

</comment><comment><USER45> USA's immigration laws are pretty hilarious when you remember the majority of the population are immigrants themselves who pushed the natives out the way all those years ago. It's a country founded on immigration.

<comment><USER18> The "natives" are immigrants too, just from slightly earlier.

We're all Africans.

<comment><USER45> Well yeah there is that! I generally find political discussion on immigration wholly distasteful, and often parading itself as xenophobic/racist propaganda.

The whole immigration issue boils down to "we got here first! nah nah ne nah nah!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Reminds me of this amazing story of the undocumented journalist: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an- und...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented- immigrant.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER47> People here arguing that the US should accept more immigrants from all over the world because "the US has been built on immigrants" need to get their facts straight:

The "National Origins Formula" was only abolished in 1965. Before 1965, US immigrants were 90+% white.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Origins_Formula> [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965)

This is fact, not opinion.

I'm not arguing a certain side here, but want to point out that those who say "the US has been built on immigrants" might be nostalgic to a past that never existed.

</comment><comment><USER48> why does this story seem like troll bait?</comment>


What happened when a software company stopped working for a week - <AUTHOR> http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/04/down-tools-week-the-results.html

<comment><USER2> _Rather than write up the results, here's a video that Anthony put together._

WTF? Some of us are busy and would love a quick write-up. Not everyone is a teen that can spend all day watching YouTube videos. Hell, some of us work places where we can't even see the video if we wanted to!

<comment><USER3> You're kind of darned-if-you-do, darned-if-you-don't with content creation for certain audiences: text is rarely remarkable because it is quickly consumed and (if you're lucky) maybe retweeted, which produces nearly no value for the business. Video is harder to duplicate and might actually attract some links, and is easier to consume for the average Internet user than text is (oh goodness, if you collect stats on online attention you might as well start popping Prozac now), but it doesn't fly with the group that wants to get in and out of your article in 45 seconds or less.

Decisions, decisions.

<comment><USER4> audio + digital dictation = text?

Just a suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why a video with no summary? (I don't want to view a video, unless it really advances the point)

<comment><USER6> I agree. Does anyone have time to watch and give us a summary here on HN?

<comment><USER7> Basically, everyone worked on either internal tools (better reporting for testers, etc.) or new initiatives ("SQL Pony" or some such). Plus they fooled around some and made a video.

So not really a "down tools" week as much as it is a "work on something tangentially related to work (with your tools) and have a little fun" week.

<comment><USER8> So they really didn't stop working for the week. They just re-focused on some of the things they should have been doing all along in order to make development easier. Everyone seems to forget that tools and infrastructure should come first.

<comment><USER9> Because they shouldn't - at least not in the early stages.

Once you know what you're making, shipping product comes first through about fiftieth. If tools get you on the shortest path to shipping product then do that, but _ship_.

It's Jobs' biggest contribution to theory. Real artists ship.

If you don't know what you're making, or should make next - which is a real challenge for big companies - then what RedGate do (and they're an awesome company) makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This idea always struck me as a little childish. Do developers who are creative enough to make useful tools need to be constrained to some one-week window in which it's allowed to do so?

<comment><USER11> No, but in the real world of deadlines, collaboration with teams that have their own different schedules, priorities, etc., they very often need a one week window not constrained but instead _opened_ such that they can actually get something done about items in the important but not urgent quadrant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Red Gate's doing a bang up PR job.

</comment><comment><USER13> A easy takeaway for me from the video was that people are more productive when they work on things that interest them. This just makes sense.

What was interesting to me is that it wasn't as much of Google's famous "20%" concept. All they highlighted were people working on new commercial products that they wouldn't have had the freedom or option to build in the normal course of their jobs. There didn't appear to be diversity in scope or direction.

</comment><comment><USER14> i would hardly say they "stopped working", yeah?

this really does look like a recruiting video -- nerf guns? check. balloons floating away into the blue, blue sky? check. generic downtempo house musak? check. "why do i like working at redgate"? check.

they also all look really tired and i would too if my "fun week off" was compromised of building a "object-level recovery tool for sharepoint".

</comment><comment><USER15> This must be part of their recruitment drive[1]. I guess something like this is necessary when it's so hard to get excited about your company's products.[2]

[1]<http://www.red-gate.com/careers/free_ipad.htm> [2]<http://www.red- gate.com/products/index.htm>

</comment><comment><USER16> It's worth watching the video - if you [maukdaddy: "work places where we can't even see the video if we wanted to"] then don't watch it - you'll just get very jealous because you'll have no hope of getting your organisation to do anything remotely this good.</comment>


The World's Most Innovative Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/innovative-companies/

<comment><USER2> Awesome quote: "Innovators ask provocative questions that challenge the status quo. They observe the world like anthropologists to detect new ways of doing things. They network with people who don't look or think like them to gain radically different perspectives. They experiment relentlessly to test new ideas and try out new experiences. Finally, these behaviors trigger new associations which let them to connect the unconnected, thereby producing disruptive ideas."

</comment><comment><USER3> This was a very interesting list. I like to see redhat on it, it seems to prove there's a viable open source revenue model. Also I'm interested as to why Baidu is "one of the most innovative", sure they're big but is that innovation - also from my limited memory of the press around them I'm pretty sure they cooperate with the chinese gov't on blacklisting search terms and general information hiding from the chinese people - definately not innovative.</comment>


Obama: I will be the Democratic nominee - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/03/election.democrats/index.html <comment><USER3> Hi guys.

I love discussing politics. Talking about your philosophy of life, government, and moral obligations to your fellow man (or not). Even the idea that political choices are mostly emotional and then justified by logic is a way cool topic.

Just let's not do that here, okay? I like you guys, and I'm not interested in pissing off half the crowd with my political views. Nor am I interested in reading a bunch of "heck yeah!" posts about any party or candidate -- I find them pedantic. I've got plenty of other places on the net for that stuff.

Now a story about opportunities for how startups are making big bucks with new technology in the campaigns? -- love to see some of that stuff.

<comment><USER4> I'm just the opposite. I hate discussing politics. When I'm with family or friends and stuff like this comes up, I go in the other room.

Oddly, political discussions here don't bother me so much, just as long as they are "occasional", not regular. I like to hear what people here have to say.

And it's easier to click the back button than to go in the other room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> News? Sure.

Hacker News? Not so much.

<comment><USER6> At this point, my faith in this community is slowly being evaporated. Where I would normally look to this site as quite possibly the most objective source of information (from a entrepreneurial perspective) and a source of honest opinions and as a frequent internet observer (I really do place so much value on all of your comments and to my knowledge, almost all of them have had a significant impact of my life and my decisions), I am scared to what this community has become. As someone who followed digg and reddit from the early days, I transitioned to this site because I valued all of your opinions, which I believed to be honest. All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent. I really am just so confused as to what I said that has offended the community to result in such an extreme display of downmodding (including those that disagree with me). Please just explain yourselves and opinions rather than downmod all of the threads opinions.

EDIT: As an indicator, my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know what aspect of what I said that has made all of you to so passionately enforce such an action. Maybe I have not established relevancy to the hacker community as to why this story matters and that is fine (or maybe you all just disagree which is fine with me as well). I cannot reiterate enough, for my sake, please just let me know what I said that was so offensive. Please refute.

EDIT 2:

I just would also like to say that this comment has no relation to the one that has been associated with my comment (the one that has been placed below mine because the one it is associated with has been deleted).

That comment goes as follows: Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.

<comment><USER4> "this community is slowly being evaporated"

No it's not. Have faith in pg and the rest of us. This stuff happens all the time and we survive just fine. How could you know this after only 28 days.

"my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know"

You never will, so don't waste any mental energy worrying about it. That's just the way it goes.

"confused as to what I said that has offended the community"

You haven't "offended" the community. Some people just downvote without commenting. Once it gets going, sometimes it snowballs. Forget about it and move on.

"All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent."

Great! Keep it up and do your part. Forget about the other crap.

I have noticed that discussions about what is "appropriate" get lots of upvotes ot lots of downvotes or both, without much logic. Hacker content threads, OTOH, are our bread and butter and are generally well received and appreciated. Stick with the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this is awesome, this is covered on the TV News, so it does fall within what the rules consider off-topic. But threads like this have come up rarely enough (one previous Obama thread?), that the rules can be broken.

Go Obama.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic.

Though I guess Obama is kind of an interesting new phenomenon, but probably not new to anyone here.

<comment><USER8> Yeah...however, the outcome of the presidential election would deserve to be on the front page.

<comment><USER9> But this isn't the outcome of a presidential election. And anyways, why should the outcome of the presidential election be on HN? Its not especially relevant to hackers, and I'm quite certain people will see the news elsewhere - <USER2> usually gets a lot of coverage.

<comment><USER8> I think it is relevant to hackers. It might not be hacker-specific, but it significantly affects all kinds of things, many IP related.

<comment><USER9> You could say that about basically any politics story - the point is that when politics are involved, discussions like this one happen. Politics has made Reddit's frontpage basically unreadable to me, and I would hate to see that happen here.

<comment><USER8> All I'm saying is the outcome of a presidential election is a legitimate exception to the politics rule. The rest, sure, it's irrelevant to hacker news. I stand by my downvoted opinions.

<comment><USER10> I think in an idealized HN, even the outcome of the Presidential Election wouldn't get upvoted, although I'm sure that in the real HN it probably will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone wants to read his tech policy, here it is. This election is a battle for net neutrality.

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/>

The education policy is also good, it basically comes down to "spend more money on education."

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/>

<comment><USER11> Is there even a positive correlation between throwing more money at education and having better-educated kids? It looks like at some point over the last thirty years, we got to the point that the administrative cost of distributing the next dollar for education exceeds one dollar, so the extra money gets soaked up by bureaucratic inefficiencies.

But whatever! It's only billions and billions of taxpayer dollars spent by a monopolist that buys its product from a cartel! Clearly, the important thing is to give more money to this completely deranged system, rather than fixing it.

<comment><USER12> I've never understood this mindset. Don't conservative types like you believe in market influences? How could spending more money NOT improve education levels?

Just a couple of examples off the top of my head: 1) Spending more means higher teacher salaries. Higher salaries attract better talent, which means better education. 2) Spending more means better facilities and supplies. Decent materials and supplies lead to a better classroom experience.

I went to a dirt-poor high school in south Georgia. My chem teacher was senile, our textbooks were 14 years old and falling apart, and the sinks leaked chemicals onto the floor. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but more money would have helped my school a TON.

This whole "bureaucratic inefficiency" argument it a catch-all that greedy rich people like to use as an excuse to not help out the less-fortunate.

<comment><USER11> "Don't conservative types like you believe in market influences? How could spending more money NOT improve education levels?"

It's insulated from the actual market. Government schools are a _de facto_ monopoly, since they sell their product below cost, and you have to pay for it even if you don't use it. They also use a teacher's cartel to supply their teachers, and this cartel pays a lot of money to lobbyists who craft our education policy. Given these layers of monopolies, cartels, and corruption, your reference to 'market influences' makes little sense.

"1) Spending more means higher teacher salaries. Higher salaries attract better talent, which means better education"

I'd rather figure out how to fire the bad teachers rather than hiring new ones. Imagine how much money we could spend on new teachers if we shut down the rubber room: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10education.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10education.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

"Decent materials and supplies lead to a better classroom experience."

Oh. Does this mean "I looked at what kind of school supplies people used fifty years ago, and concluded..." or "I imagine..."?

"This whole "bureaucratic inefficiency" argument it a catch-all that greedy rich people like to use as an excuse to not help out the less-fortunate."

Or this whole "spending other people's money on a system that has only gotten more pathologically ineffective as billions of dollars of other people's money has been spent on it" argument is just a way for people to feel good about themselves without facing reality. Or maybe it's pointless to attribute someone else's argument to their biases, especially when you can't disprove the argument!

I think we should accept that school is not for everyone. I think we should get people out of school when they can contribute more to society by working rather than disrupting classrooms. It's a travesty that so many otherwise useful 14-year-olds are earning their straight-D report cards for years (and spending my money to do it!) when they could be mopping floors, flipping burgers, etc. I would have been happier working full-time when I was thirteen, instead of going to school and only getting to work evenings and weekends. Surely I'm not the only one.

<comment><USER13> Rich towns with high tax revenue tend to have good schools. Poor towns with low tax revenue have worse schools. It's often obvious just in the building and materials.

There are a thousand ways that schools could be improved--giving up on students and sending them to flip burgers full time at 14 is not one of them. That only serves to perpetuate the self-feeding cycle of poverty, crime, and poor education. Breaking the cycle is going to be hard and expensive.

Education needs more money _and_ smarter money.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. Fortunately, there are experimental data available! School busing programs have sent poor kids to rich schools for years. Somehow, test scores are still declining, though.

 _giving up on students and sending them to flip burgers full time at 14 is not one of them._

At what point is joining the work force 'giving up'? And how recently did this become the case? Also, do you not think there are any jobs that don't require at least a high school education, or do you think that a high school education is important even if we know in advance that the person who gets it won't be using it?

<comment><USER13> You have experimental data? Wonderful, link away.

You were complaining that "otherwise useful" students were doing poorly in school rather than working minimum wages jobs, specifically mopping floors or flipping burgers. The poster was complaining especially that they were "wasting your money."

 _At what point is joining the work force 'giving up'?_ You are "giving up" at the point when you "give up" on doing better than a minimum wage job with no high school degree. It's very hard for a person of average or below-average intelligence and ambition to move beyond this—and these average people are the people we have to consider.

 _And how recently did this become the case?_ This is a flippant question, but here's an answer anyway: Around 1870 public education became universal. Prior to that, we weren't even trying, and hence, could not "give up."

 _Also, do you not think there are any jobs that don't require at least a high school education, or do you think that a high school education is important even if we know in advance that the person who gets it won't be using it?_

There are many jobs that do not require a high school degree. In fact, there are examples of people without a high school degree doing almost every kind of work there is, and getting paid all sorts of different salaries for it. But we're not talking about exceptions here, we're talking about average people. And a high school diploma is very valuable for most people. [http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/site/c.kjJXJ5MPIwE/b...](http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/site/c.kjJXJ5MPIwE/b.2060901/k.1D47/Value_of_high_school_diploma_underscored_by_international_report.htm)

I believe that a high school education is valuable in itself, beyond financials. If we're going to have a democracy, it would be nice to have voters have some idea of what's what. It's also valuable in parenting. These concerns, however, are really not necessary to show the value of a high school diploma.

<comment><USER11> The previous poster made a claim about poor students in high-quality schools. I thought it was an interesting claim given that there have been experiments to that effect. Someone who says "If X, I bet Y!" should be happy to hear that "Someone tried X -- do you know if they got Y?"

 _You are "giving up" at the point when you "give up" on doing better than a minimum wage job with no high school degree._

You're not "giving up" on the workforce when you stay in school? Also, are you "giving up" on school if you don't pursue a BA? An MA? A JD? A PhD? A postdoctoral position? A professorship? Tenure? A Nobel? Fields Medal? When you say that they "give up" you imply that they don't do something because it's too hard -- I'd rather say that they do the right thing, which happens to be the easy thing. I've "given up" on being a novelist, or an athlete, or a mathematician, or a drug lord, because I don't have the skills for that job.

I like how well your link controls for the possibility that smart people pursue higher education. I eagerly await the Center for Public Education's (they're neutral, too!) report on how height income, because most people under five feet tall don't even bother to join the labor force.

 _I believe that a high school education is valuable in itself, beyond financials._

Okay. There are lots of things that I think are valuable, but that I don't insist you pay for. If you're spending huge amounts of other people's money, you probably owe them some assurance that it's not just because it sure would be nice to have what you're buying (regardless of cost?) but that they will get their money's worth.

 _If we're going to have a democracy, it would be nice to have voters have some idea of what's what._

And they're learn this from government schools? How many teachers will tell kids that their government is horribly inefficient, or that their country has veered far from the values that its founders fought and killed for? Your argument might be persuasive in general, but I'm opposed to democracy so it doesn't sway me in particular.

<comment><USER13> If you have data, please share it. The only bits of info I found were that busing students from one neighborhood to the next didn't have much effect either way.

The problem of selection bias is of course going to be very present as always. One of the toughest issues with public policy is that there's rarely data up to a scientific standard of proof. It's possible that the amount of money spent on an education has nil effect. One simple counterargument is this: you can't learn about computers if you don't have them.

1)"Giving up" You're using a slippery slope argument. I think a minimum wage job with essentially no opportunity for advancement at 14, is too early to "give up." That's the example that I responded to.

This is a place where we have to set a number -- it's currently at 16. This is a fairly subjective call, as there are a thousand different concerns that could reasonably move it one way or the other.

2)Value of an education A decently educated populace has great value, to me. I'm willing to pay for it. On the contrary, a bad education is not worth all that much. I believe the solution to bad education is to make it better, not to get rid of it forever.

3)Democracy How about basics like what the supreme court is and how to locate Iraq on a map? If you want to tell people about the founders, it helps if they know who the founders were and what the constitution is. No one is going to vote for your viewpoint if they don't even know what it is you're talking about.

We seem to disagree about some basic matters, so trying to argue about a high- level issue like education funding and the drop-out age is probably fairly futile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One point to bring it on topic: Obama has by far the best use of the Internet any candidate has ever had. From fundraising to volunteer recruitment to local organization to event coordination, he blows the competition away.

<comment><USER15>
      Number of Obama Meetup groups: 71
      Number of Obama Meetup group members: 4,037

      Number of Ron Paul Meetup groups: 716
      Number of Ron Paul Meetup group members: 28,870

Source: <http://www.ronpaulstats.org/Meetup_Groups.html>

      Largest single day online Ron Paul fundraiser: $6.2 million
      Largest single day Barack Obama fundraiser: Errrrmmmm....a lot less.

Of course, if you want to get semantic, I suppose you could say Barack Obama's done a better job using the Internet; the Internet has done more in the way of using Ron Paul.

<comment><USER16> Not to bag on RP, who is a very interesting candidate, but those fundraising numbers are pretty misleading.

Let's look at the totals (<http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/>)

Barak Obama - $265,439,277 Ron Paul - $34,442,643

<comment><USER15> The comment I was responding to was solely about the Internet. Barack Obama has done much more in the way of the traditional $2000 dinner events, while probably 90% of Ron Paul's funds came over the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Warning: Posting in the thread for Obama winning the presidency will get you downmodded uselessly.

</comment><comment><USER17> There has to be a better, quicker way to choose a new president. This is worse than big brother (the tv show).

Is it any wonder so few vote when they have to endure years of this before hand?

</comment><comment><USER18> I half-agree that this isn't HN material. Half, because I'd really like to hear about HN users' views and opinions about politics.

<comment><USER19> I can sum it up for you: they pretty much represent the normal political spectrum, but there are a _lot_ more libertarians, and probably fewer Bush style conservatives. If you want to see the results of such a discussion: libertarians vs more left-leaning (a lot more in some cases) vs a few lonely moderates, have a look at reddit. It's generally not that entertaining, and I'd much rather talk about things we all have in common rather than those that divide us.

<comment><USER20> > things we have in common

Right, like the undeniable facts that vim is better than emacs, Macs are fundamentally more secure than Linux, the gphone will be better than the iPhone, 37signals is overrated, ruby is better than python...

<comment><USER19> emacs rules, dude! But at least in those debates, we're some of the more qualified people to comment, whereas with politics, it's just the same tired old blah blah blah that you hear everywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> PLEASE DONT MAKE THIS REDDIT V2

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm so happy this happened, because this will finally save the world! (Not)

(To all non-US folks, like me: if the US were really so important as they think to be, it would suffice to save them, and all of the world would be safe and happy.

There's only one _big_ problem here: the progress of US is often based on regress of too many other countries, and especially very poor ones...)

</comment><comment><USER23> how l33t of him.

</comment><comment><USER24> The rampant down-modding for differing political views on this thread (which has no business being on Hacker News in the first place) is ridiculous.

<comment><USER25> It is not ridiculous, since people aren't downmodding to express a difference of opinion about what the person said. They are downmodding to assert they do not want to hear any political opinion on Hacker News, because--as has been said--there are countless other venues for hackers to express and debate political opinion; Hacker News is not one of them.

Notice therefore we see something interesting regarding the HN system. In essence, this is exactly what pg had in mind. Karma is taken away for comments and not just submissions, so that users will adapt to the Hacker News atmosphere. As we have seen from this thread, politics (even "news" like the first ever black general election presidential candidate) is simply not something people are interested in seeing on HN, and if people keep discussing it, they will be downmodded into oblivion, effectively maintaining the current HN mindset (since, presumably, people with negative, or quickly decreasing karma, will not want to continue posting on HN).

The only thing that could break such a system is a vast shift in the mentality of the community (which is not a bad thing since it would still keep the community happy, although it's very unlikely to happen), or a massive influx of new people into the community (which is why pg wants to keep the number of new signups per day low).

<comment><USER26> it feels to me that more assholery has resulted from "HN-vs-not HN" than what would have from a political discussion

<comment><USER27> Think over the long term.

If there's enough HN-vs-not-HN assholery over the short term, political topics will show up less often and there will be less need for both kinds of assholery. If political discussions are allowed to run unchecked, assholery remains at a constant level (and HN enters a downward spiral).

<comment><USER26> that sounds like a slippery slope. this is the first political topic i've seen in a while, and it's about a fairly significant milestone. i think people know this isn't a general news site

<comment><USER27> You may be right, but I'd rather err on the side of caution.

(Being a non-American who's absolutely sick of the 24/7/365/∞ circus you guys call "politics" has probably affected my opinion somewhat)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this not dead? Politics should not be the top story - I thought there was a strict ban on politics?

<comment><USER28> No strict ban, just caution - the reason given as politics tending to be divisive, even among intelligent groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> awww. i wanted hillary to win, because she has bill

</comment><comment><USER29> Why is it that every time a political link is posted on here, it gets up- modded like crazy, while at the same time collecting dozens of comments full of meta-discussion about what types of links should and should not be on HN? Seems to me that if you don't like a link, you should just not up-mod it, and certainly not waste your own time by commenting.

<comment><USER30> Because ignoring them doesn't work. If you don't fight to keep things on- topic, you'll just end up with another Reddit in a few months.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. Without a downmod arrow, bitching about upmodding is part of the system. The idea is that if every political article degenerates into a bunch of people bitching that political articles shouldn't be posted, then eventually people will learn not to post political articles.

<comment><USER31> True. Even with a down arrow, it's not helped Reddit (helped == make me want to read the front page), hopefully the bitching is more effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Let's hear it for a crippling capital gains taxes!

<comment><USER32> Whoops, I meant 'Go Barry!'

<comment><USER10> I hate Obama as much as anyone, especially for tax reasons, but I modded you down anyway just for trying to start a political argument.

<comment><USER33> how does one "mod down"? I see only and "up" button. Thanks.

<comment><USER34> The mod down arrow has some sort of minimum karma threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ithink the Dems have the right man fr the job - Obama is a wonderfuly intelligent man who will bring all the requisite nuance and intelligence to the presidency (his choice of favourite films, for example, reveals a man very sensitive to different aspects of culture within America, and indeed the world) - but unlike Kerry, he's got the charisma and power to not have that come off as 'flip flopping' (the most ridiculous branding to ever decide an election on - a shameful year for the USA, that was). Internationally, he comes off as a sensitive and reasonable American patriot - I think this is a very good combination for international relations.

</comment><comment><USER28> This sucks for the Democratic campaign in '08 - Obama/AP/CNN says he will be nominee, Hillary campaign says they are mistaken, Democratic party can't say much until the convention. Doesn't seem like much of a time of unity... hopefully, we'll all come together by November.

<comment><USER7> She actually said they were mistaken? From what I watched of her speech she completely ignored the issue.

<comment><USER28> _The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening._

From: <http://blog.hillaryclinton.com/blog/main/2008/06/03/163233>

That's pretty fishy wording, and her newer posts seem to be very close to conceding...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My god, this whole comment thread is people wondering out loud if "this is hacker news" or not. Give it a rest. No it's not hacker news, and no it doesn't matter. If you're really concerned with the purity of a website, you're going to have to find out who upmodded the thing and then ban them.

As I said a long time ago: The democrats have one chance to lose this election, and that is to nominate Barack Obama. Oddly, given that McCain is basically a moderate democrat himself, a loss by Obama would probably tend to neuter the GOP and result in an overall advantage for the leftist program.

<comment><USER7> The prediction markets like Obama. <http://www.intrade.com>

McCain has been around for a long time and has said a lot of contradictory things -- it is easy to edit videos together to make him look like a fool. A flip-flopper, if you will.

<comment><USER14> Intrade's markets on the election are ripe for arbitrage: 4.2 the price for the Clinton nomination, and 6.0 for her winning the general. What's that, a 43% profit with very very low risk[buy the nomination, sell the general: can't win the general without the nomination]?

<comment><USER7> The problem is that the Intrade market is small, requires a wire transfer + personal docs to deposit money, and is almost certainly illegal in the US. I've wanted to play there many times, but I've never wanted to go through the process of getting my money to Ireland.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple: Working from Home - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=6_pru8U2RmM <comment><USER2> God damn I hate these new Apple ads.

This is what made me love Apple: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz0F5cLlazk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz0F5cLlazk)</comment>


'Billionaires' Book Review: Money Can't Buy Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120092/billionaires-book-review-money-cant-buy-happiness <comment><USER2> I love the subtlety of this defence of the wealthy. Peons don't worry about all that money the 0.01% have extorted from you by rigging the rules, they are not happy. Don't worry about their corrupting influence on democracy and society because some of them sometimes lose (like Meg and Mitt). Move along and leave your betters alone - isn't it time for you to phone in your vote for American Idol?

<comment><USER3> Did you miss this statement "The single biggest donor to political campaigns just now is Tom Steyer, a Democrat with a passion for climate change."?

If all the wealthy people had the same goals and views, then you'd be in trouble, but as they having competing ideals, what it seems America ends up with is the wealthy trying to outspend each other to gain political favour, which, according to the article, they have been unsuccessful at doing.

The 99.09% may not have the money, but they've got the vote, they've got brains, creativity, and the persuasive effect of numbers.

The question, what should those capabilities be pointed at resolving?

Blame the rich may be popular right now, and I'm all for a more equal society, particularly bringing up the income of the lowest 50%, but I doubt a heaping tablespoon of sarcasm is going to get us there.

<comment><USER4> >If all the wealthy people had the same goals and views, then you'd be in trouble

One must of course speak in generalities but it seems obvious they have at least one goal in common: to remain wealthy & empowered, come what may. Which of course has implications for which public policies succeed and which fail

As for your statement that the wealthy have not gained political favor -- not true: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." [http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs- echochambers-27074746](http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746)

<comment><USER5> > One must of course speak in generalities but it seems obvious they have at > least one goal in common: to remain wealthy & empowered, come what may. > Which of course has implications for which public policies succeed and which > fail.

The self-interested voter hypothesis has been examined empirically quite a bit and the lack of evidence for it is pretty surprising. To avoid the risk of cherry-picking, let's look at a few papers that support your assertion, and look at how _they_ describe the literature.

In the first paper, "Caught in the Draft: Vietnam Draft Lottery Status and Political Attitudes,"[1] the authors found that eligibility for the Vietnam draft had a significant and quite strong effect on political opinions. Here's how the authors describe previous research on self-interest and public opinion:

> Self-interest effects have been notoriously elusive in public opinion > research. [...] "Longino (1973) found more negative attitudes toward the war > among those with low lottery numbers, but not to a statistically significant > extent (reaffirmed by Bergen's (2009) reanalysis), while Aspler (1972) found > more disapproval of the draft. Yet,civilian attitudes toward (or related to) > the war in Vietnam have been shown to be at best weakly related to self- > interest indicators whether one has a family member or friend serving in > Vietnam (Lau, Brown,and Sears 1978, Mueller 1973). Indeed, Lau, Brown, and > Sears (1978) find "no evidence that the self-interested had distinctly self- > serving attitudes toward the war" (p.479).

Here's another paper, titled "A Reconsideration of Self-Interest in American Public Opinion,"[2] let's quote their introduction:

> A fairly extensive body of research has investigated the weight that self- > interested concerns carry in defining the opinions that citizens come to > adopt (e.g. Bobo and Kluegel 1993; Feldman 1982; Green and Gerkin 1989; > Kinder and Kiewiet 1981; Lau, Brown, and Sears 1978; Sears, Hensler, and > Speer 1979; Sears, Lau, Tyler, and Allen 1980; Sears and Citrin 1982; Sears, > Huddy, and Shaffer 1986; Tyler 1990). Over and over in these studies the > same conclusion emerges: the evidence for self-interest effects is, in most > cases, weak at best. In an early review of this literature Lau and his > colleagues concluded that "[i]n all these cases, self-interest, defined in > terms of real or potential impact of a policy issue upon the individual's > personal life, had only minor effects on policy attitudes and upon behavior > connected with them" (Lau, Brown, and Sears 1978, 479). More recent reviews > have reached similar judgments (e.g. Citrin and Green 1990; Kinder and Sears > 1983; Sears and Funk 1990).

They buck the trend of looking at _material self-interest_ to look instead at subjective self-interest--"asking respondents to indicate whether the policy would have (national health care, school funding) or has had (affirmative action) either positive or negative consequences for themselves personally," and find a strong effect on opinion. (Given what we know about the human tendency to deny _all_ costs of a favored policy, or deny _all_ benefits of an unfavored policy, I fear that this is a pretty thorny definition of self- interest.)

A third paper, "Self-Interest and Public Opinion Towards Smoking Restrictions and Cigarette Taxes,"[3] finds that nonsmokers are "far more enthusiastic about tightening smoking restrictions and increasing cigarette taxes than smokers, particularly heavy smokers." Unfortunately I can't find an ungated version, but here's their abstract:

> A burgeoning literature suggests that self-interest has little influence on > policy preferences. In sharp contrast are the findings discussed in this > paper. [...] We conclude by discussing several explanations for the apparent > discrepancy between these results and the pattern of null findings > characteristic of the self-interest literature.

So, three papers, all of which support your claim that political opinions are self-interested. To describe the existing evidence, they use words like "notoriously elusive," "weak at best," and "pattern of null findings." You can look through the literature yourself but what "seems obvious" has been studied quite a bit, and the evidence that our intuition is correct has been surprisingly sparse.

[1] [http://www.columbia.edu/~rse14/vietnam_rev_Feb2010.pdf](http://www.columbia.edu/~rse14/vietnam_rev_Feb2010.pdf)

[2] [http://www.electionstudies.org/resources/papers/documents/ne...](http://www.electionstudies.org/resources/papers/documents/nes010876.pdf)

[3] [http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/1/1.short](http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/1/1.short)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor." In college I worked as a security guard, and was astonished to see to amount of seemingly wealthy people shop lifting. It didn't make any sense, other than the thrill? Minorities, and seemingly low income people were watched the minute they walked on the door. If they did steal they were always arrested. The wealthy shop lifters were allowed to steal if they were good customers(spent a lot). Not one was ever arrested. While I was there a doctor's wife would steal weekly--she was given a stern warning. I'm tempted to name the store. On another note; employee theft was usually higher than customer theft. I though that store was an anomaly, but that's not the case; security professionals try to keep the real truth a secret.

<comment><USER7> My anecdotal experience is the exact opposite of yours.

As a teen, I worked shipping and receiving at a Macy's in the mid-to-late nineties, and frequently hung out in the security camera room. I watched them follow thieves on the cameras while we waited for them fill their bags with a felony-level amount of merchandise before giving chase - chases I was at times enlisted to participate in.

Not a single thief was "seemingly wealthy," and we never, ever, let anyone walk out with merchandise. If anything, the opportunity to catch a rich person in the act would've been immediately seized, if only for the novelty.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I guess the well-off thieves figure out pretty quickly which stores will let them get away with it. Since it sounds like they also buy things from the stores they steal from, it might even be profitable to let them do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmmh, I remember reading a study (or studies) that showed wealthy people are generally more honest, the larger point being that you are unlikely to thrive if you are not virtuous or lack high character.

That said, I'll quote from "As a man thinketh" by James Allen where he says some thing along the line of: When people look at successful people who are cheats and unsuccessful ones who are honest, they forget to analyze all their other traits. The successful cheat may have serious talents, work ethic etc that make him successful despite his dishonesty and the unsuccessful saint may be lazy, unambitious or have other faults that make him unsuccessful.

<comment><USER10> The wealthy might have less incentive to lie in the small everyday transactions that make an impression. The English of the 19th Century regarded the Irish as inveterate liars, perhaps not considering the disproportion in power between the official classes (English and Anglo-Irish dominated) and the rest of the population.

As for the unsuccessful saint, presumably he regards sanctity rather than wealth as success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The part about money not being able to influence politics does not ring true to me. Sure, perhaps isolated cases like Mitt Romney and Meg Whitman may not have succeeded in winning some election, but then you have Koch brothers using newspapers and television networks to push their brand of politics.

"Another study, by a coalition of nonprofits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below twenty-five grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent."

This study is also unconvincing. You could say by percent the people making less than $25k are more generous, but the use of percents as a metric here is misleading. 2.7% of $150k+ is a minimum of $4050 while 4.2% of <$25k is at most $1050. Is it fair to say the wealthy are less generous when they are donating more money by one metric but not another?

<comment><USER12> > The part about money not being able to influence politics does not ring true > to me.

Yeah, it's true that you can't outright buy an election wholesale. But rich people are rich for a reason: they don't just throw their money away on things that have zero results. They spend so much on elections because it has real results. Maybe it sways a race by 4%. But if the race is decided by 2%, then that's enough to win instead of lose. Plus, some of that money goes to campaigning, some goes to decide which candidates are able to afford to run in the first place, some goes to lobbyists, some of it goes directly to congressmen in return for favors, etc.

<comment><USER13> You may be interested in this: "In almost every instance, senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators' roll call votes. Disparities in representation are especially pronounced for Republican senators, who were more than twice as responsive as Democratic senators to the ideological views of affluent constituents."

"Economic Inequality and Political Representation", Dr. Larry Bartels, Princeton [https://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/economic.pdf](https://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/economic.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an excerpt from a longer article in The New Republic, Extreme Wealth Is Bad for Everyone—Especially the Wealthy [1], which is a review of the book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust by Darrell M. West (Brookings). The articles are by Michael Lewis (the author of Moneyball and The Big Short, among others)

[1] [http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120092/billionaires- book-...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120092/billionaires-book-review- money-cant-buy-happiness)

<comment><USER15> Yes. Url changed from [http://theweek.com/article/index/274046/what-wealth- does-to-...](http://theweek.com/article/index/274046/what-wealth-does-to-your- soul).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery."

― Groucho Marx

</comment><comment><USER17> Some thoughts:

1) "Enough" by John Bogle is a decent read if you want more of the same:

> Two famous authors, Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller are talking at a party > hosted by a billionaire hedge fund manager. Kurt says to Joseph, "You know, > this billionaire makes more money in one day than you made in your whole > lifetime from your novel Catch-22". Joe responds, "Yes, but I have something > he will never have… enough."

2) There's a big difference between people wanting to give back and Picketty's proposal to tax the tits off the rich. I believe the difference is due to people's faith in government and the "buffer" they perceive they require. There is no shortage of people with an 8-figure net worth who just want to increase their wealth a little more, "just in case."

3) The "rich cancel each other out" argument may hold more for the US than for other countries. Not a criticism, just pointing it out.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think that it's terribly surprising that rich folks should be more likely to shoplift or steal candy than poor folks, for precisely the reason that Lewis identifies: the sums involved seem so much less important. I think it might imply that we are all constantly geting away with what we think we can get away with. That sounds right to me.

<comment><USER19> I think "the sum seems unimportant" is something a wealthy _sociopath_ might think. I'm around lots of things I could steal that feel relatively cheap, but I don't, nor do I litter, etc., not because I couldn't get away with it, but because it feels wrong and icky, and I would be ashamed of myself.

<comment><USER20> I grew up in a neighborhood in CA that gentrified fast since it was on the coast so I wound up with a lot of millionaire neighbors (doctors, lawyers, actors, pro sports people, a remarkable number of people who scammed government contracts). One thing about it was that the richer the people were, the more you'd find among them those who had a sense of really being better than people who weren't as rich - even if they basically stole their money it made them feel like they were special and successful and better than others because of it, and different rules applied to them. Certainly not all, but some, and they stood out. Their kids who I was in school with inherited that attitude, and did things that made my skin crawl, like doing school fundraisers and spending the money on a cocaine party, or getting a Corvette for their 16th birthday and crashing it since they'd wanted a Porsche (my god I hated that kid), shoplifting for kicks, or wasting expensive things in front of less wealthy people for entertainment. Having a lot of money can seriously mess with some people's heads.

<comment><USER21> I suspect you saw about 5 people being conspicuous out of hundreds of less exciting folks. I am sure some poor folks committed some crimes as well.

<comment><USER20> It was certainly more than 5, esp. in school where it was more like 5-10%. There were more than 15 kids at the coke party, and they were just one clique among many. I did try to emphasize that those people stood out.

There weren't anything that could be described as poor people in the area that I interacted with, certainly nowhere near my neighborhood, and the poorest people in the school district were middle-class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think one of the interesting things about this article is the principle of relatively and how people will tend to do things within their means. You're more likely to violate traffic rules if you have a more expensive car because it's faster than the other cars and you want to be able to utilize the car's features or you know if you do something wrong and get caught, you're able to pay off the fines because you have so much money. I'm sure there's a ton of rich people who are very happy, and I'm guessing the proportion of happy rich people would be about the same as the proportion of happy average people. I think one of the things these studies do is that they use the relatively small and highly selected sample size of rich people and compare them to a group of normal people and then come to a generalized conclusion of rich people being more miserable than average people. But I would beg to differ if you were to take rich people in other industries besides the banking industry, such as tech, healthcare, or natural resources you'd probably find a lot of people who love their loves.

</comment><comment><USER23> Counterpoint: _If money doesn 't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right_ [http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20%26%20WILSO...](http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20%26%20WILSON%20%282011%29.pdf) (PDF)

</comment><comment><USER24> This states the obvious: the very rich or very successful ones are not happy. Bill Gates doesn't have a better life than the first rickshaw you'll find in Kolkata. The main reason will probably because of the kids, which are not likely to be spoiled in the case of the rickshaw.

And this is where I find some demonstrations of pg fall short: the reason to start start-ups is to make huge money, but huge money is dangerous for the mind. In this case it is better to make normal and steady amounts of money, which normal corporate jobs provide.

I guess starting start-ups is only for those with very solid psychology, or for those already crazy.

<comment><USER25> Even though most people have convex utility WRT money this is not true for everyone. Some people need large amounts of money for big ambitious projects, others might have linear utility WRT money. For example, say you were donating a significant fraction of your wealth to effective charities. It is not clear you should have diminishing marginal utility towards these donations the way you would with personal consumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was published in November, weeks before the big shake-up at the New Republic [1]. It will be interesting to see whether or not the new New Republic will publish articles that go into an issue with this much depth and consideration.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/business/shake-up-at- the-n...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/business/shake-up-at-the-new- republic-franklin-foer-and-leon-wieseltier-are-out.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Why should we care about happiness? Poor people in dirt poor Indian towns where they all shit on the street are statistically happy. This is something to aspire to?

This whole genre of "happiness" pop-psychology seems essentially effete. Why don't we ask people how bad-ass they feel? Can money buy you bad-assery?</comment>


Hospital Chain Said to Scheme to Inflate Bills - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/business/hospital-chain-said-to-scheme-to-inflate-bills.html

<comment><USER2> Have you ever tried to get a quote before having a procedure done? I tried to get a quote for a CAT-Scan once. No one could estimate the cost of the procedure, even though there was a fixed cost associated with the equipment. How can free-market forces drive down costs when the costs are kept hidden from the customer?

</comment><comment><USER3> ...which is why public service infrastructure needs to be in government hands. The free market just messes it up.

<comment><USER4> Hear hear. We shouldn't let anyone with a profit motive near healthcare.

<comment><USER5> What about doctors?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the inevitable outcome of any business where insurance pays the bill.

Auto body shops are the same way...</comment>


Why you should (still) consider sending a year-end email to subscribers - <AUTHOR> https://explore.reallygoodemails.com/email-explorations-year-in-review-digests-828beb9e5633 <comment><USER2> I love these kinds of emails.</comment>


Shopify Launches Shop App - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/shopify-launches-shop-a-new-mobile-shopping-app/ <comment><USER2> Quick feature list;

\- Track deliveries (automated by connecting emails, tracks more than just shopify stores)

\- Keeps list of "followed" stores (can be manually manipulated, automated by purchases)

\- Show new items from stores

\- Show deals from stores

\- Show recommended products

\- Confetti when something gets delivered

</comment><comment><USER3> Called it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22957193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22957193)

A step in becoming the next Amazon.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is this the first step from Shopify to create an Amazon-like marketplace?

<comment><USER4> Yes.</comment></comment>


The Sad State of British Broadband - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dijit.sh/the-true-state-of-london-broadband

<comment><AUTHOR> My issue is that I literally only have a single option for outgoing internet, and always have since living here.

many people seem to gloss over this issue, but BT still has a monopoly here, and will refuse to move unless people kick up a stink.</comment>


[security] Go 1.11.3 and Go 1.10.6 are released - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-announce/Kw31K8G7Fi0 <comment><USER2> Be aware of this regression with 1.11.3: [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/29241](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/29241)</comment>