The stack we choose: Erlang, SmartOS, Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://blog.project-fifo.net/the-stack-we-choose-erlang-smartos-clojure/ <comment><USER2> I saw your presentation about project FiFo in Erlang User Conference 2014. I asked you what does Joyent think about it, you said they're cool with it (gave you a t-shirt?). At that time, however, Smart Data Center was not open source.

Do you still work on FiFo, even with SDC being open? What are the main its selling points compared to SDC?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I absolutely still work on fifo, actually 0.7.0 is around the corner right now and gets polished for release.

To the second question, I'll answer that from a 'out of the box' perspective so things go not off the rails because 'when doing X/Y then you can also ...' because as you pointed out both are now open source systems and with enough effort you can make them do everything. Obviously I am a bit biased here, if only for the reason that I know a lot more about FiFo then SDC but I'll try to be as objective as I can. That said I'd really would like to hear what someone with lots of experience with SDC and a bit of FiFo experience thoughts on this are.

The first difference to me is the heritage, while today both are open source, FiFo was born as a open source / community project and has taken this path from the first day. SDC is an commercial product that was then open sourced, which as Bryan pointed out in one of his talks is something really really complicated.

The second point for me, and perhaps the biggest one, is resilience. FiFo is build on the cloud premises of 'everything will fail', systems are redundant, it is master less, leverages CRDT's to mitigate the eventual consistent data model it uses. And that is something that wasn't added to FiFo but was part of it's design from the start (when you heard my talk on the EUC you might remember not always successfully ;). SDC uses a more traditional design, it was build to run on a single server and now Joyent is adding failover and replication to it. (I won't vouch for the correctness of this since it is hard to say what the design was like pre open source but it looks like this is the case from the outside).

The third advantage I see is that with fifo you can start with as little as 3GB as memory in a zone on your system then grow that system as you grow. You have to chose a sensible number of v-nodes but pretty much going from 1 to 3 to 5 servers isn't a issue and thanks to the great work Basho did on riak_core as simple as a single command. SDC comes with a own dedicated server as deployment which makes it rather resource intensive on that front. (I don't count the COOL images that run in a VM here).

Fourth, FiFo runs on vanilla SmartOS, you can not use it one day, decide you want to give it a try and it will just pick up on your setup, and then toss it away the next day and everything keeps running as if nothing ever happened. SDC has special platform images and at least in the past it wasn't as simple as not running the head node to get rid of SDC.

Tachyon, which will have it's full premier with 0.7.0 but is already available as a separate package. Developed together with Lucera it is a monitoring system for servers. Based on kstat to collect metrics and a special metric database to handle the load it can handle second level resolutions for decent installations. So that gives you historic usage and performance metrics on every server and every zone in your system, which is I think unparalleled at the moment at least at this resolution.

What we do with backups and in result the option of cold migration of VM's (kudos to the LeoFS folks at that point) is something new which can be quite interesting for some people.

Last but not least we have a dog as a mascot, which is just so much better ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can somebody explain what project fifo actually does? Even after spending a bit of time on their web site, I can't tell what problem it's meant to solve, or what appropriate use cases might be.

Is it in the same general work-scheduling space as mesos? Kubernetes?

<comment><USER4> It's a (pretty great!) cloud orchestration software. Think OpenStack, CloudStack, SDC or an open-source AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, but way too short. Could have gone into a little bit more detail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Anything particular that interests you? There is always room for a followup :)

<comment><USER5> Hmm, not specifically, but if I was being pushed, maybe a little bit more about how you found the f/e with clojurescript/om.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I may just air a pet peeve: Why do projects name subsystems things like "sniffle", "howl", "jingles" instead of something that gives a freaking clue about what that system does?

OpenStack does the same thing with "cinder" and "nova" and "horizon" and "neutron"

I guess it's trendy but what's with names that have no relation to function? It really adds to the learning curve or ability for someone on the outside to have a conversation about the system and understand in broad strokes what is going on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Multiple reasons

1) It gets really complicated if every single server is named 'api-server', even with this names we ran into name conflicts and had to re-name our packages to fifo-...

2) Mnemonics, since all the names have a link to their task (jingles is an exception here for historical reasons and will be deprecated with the next release). FiFo's naming scheme is dog themed, howl is the service handling API/HTTP and communications - a dog howling, communicating with others. Snarl is the rights management server, think a guard dog snarling at new person. Sniffle is the business logic server, 'sniffing' all things out and understanding them.

3) As a developper I am spending hours a day in the code, and some of them can be really frustrating, having to deal with snarl doing something wired is a lot more pleasant then dealing with generic-aaa-server doing something wired, at least reading the name makes me smile every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone tell me what libzdoor is? They list it among other C libraries in this article, but googling it I couldn't find any information about it. Even the github repo has no README. Very unusual not to be able to find info about a library, don't think it's ever happened to me before!

<comment><AUTHOR> libzdoor is an extension of libdoor[1] done by Joyent. It is focusing on using doors to bridge the barrier between none global zone and global zone. Handling zone events such as boot, shutdown, deletion. It is used in a the sshd plugin that allows a process in the global zone to manage ssh keys (and ssh key access) into zones.

[1] [http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1464/libdoor-3l...](http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1464/libdoor-3lib.html)

<comment><USER7> Ah, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "After some rather unpleasant experiences with angular.js we ended up rewriting the entire UI in ClojureScript / Om."

What specifically did you not like about AngularJS? And which version did you use?

<comment><AUTHOR> The version was: Angular 1.2.4

The problems in no particular order and what improved:

* need to mess with gulp, and npm and their interaction vs. simply having to deal with lein * Dependency injection is a freaking mess to debug, and it lead to an incredible spaghetti code, clojure is quite clear about where which functions come from * The split between service, view, controller, scripts, styles, filters, directives is adding to the nice noodle feeling of it, Om/cljs does not force a layout so it's possible to arrange things as works for you * The dependency tree from npm was HUGE and included a bunch of unnecessary dependences which made it impossible to build the UI on our build servers so we had to include the 'compiled'/distribution results of it in the git repository. Lein projects split between development deps and production deps, so everything complies nicely and only what is needed for a release is included in it. * The split between HTML/JS/in-html-code/in-js-html is a mess. With CLJS/Om we have all code and layout in s-expressions. * 'Everything is a callback' is in my opinion a bad programming model, still some callbacks in CLJS but a lot less and the functional model of clojure makes it easier to deal with. * Mutable state is a pain to deal with. While not entirely gone this is a lot less of a issue to deal with since it's exceptionally clear of what is mutable and what not, in most cases you only have to worry about function parameters that's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We use vanilla SmartOS, so that there is no dependency on FiFo for your > running VM's. You could just switch FiFo off and all your VM's would > continue to just work.

Please, just 'VMs'. There's no need for the apostrophe.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Some people find the syntax to be odd,

Perhaps he hasn't heard of Elixir and its fluid interop with Erlang libs?

<comment><USER11> Considering they are also using Clojure, LFE, or Lisp Flavored Erlang, might be a better fit than Elixr with two Lisp languages. It too has seamless interop with Erlang.

<comment><USER10> That's a good point, and it does look like a cool project</comment></comment></comment>


Bee Sting Theory of Poverty - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/ <comment><USER2> I've been in a temporary situation where I faced many of the issues I think poor people face. What happens when you are that poor is that you realise the huge mountain above you that you have to overcome to going back to where normal people are, and you just kind of accept where you are now and potter along and try to survive everyday without considering all too much how to get out.

For example, I had $4000 debt. There was no way in hell I could ever pay that money back, considering that I made $900/month which did not cover my monthly expenses. So let's say a month ends where I spend $800 and only have $100 left. Am I going to stick it towards paying off the debt or just buy some new shoes or so? That debt is so huge that I know that saving $100 will still take me so many years, that I just accept the debt and go buy myself some shoes.

Poverty starts when you resign yourself to being poor. A friend of mine is poor - I called him to lunch and brought out $5000 and I told him that if he can think of any idea at all for a business, I would invest these $5000 in his business. I would not check his idea, I would not bother him if it was viable, I would simply give him the money.

Up until today, he has not come to me to pick up the cash. But he still complains about how he has no money. That's the thing - he is resigned to being poor. Becoming rich will mean a lot of work, it's an ardous and long task, and I really don't think he wants to do it, even when the money is offered to him in that manner.

<comment><USER3> Part of your friend's reluctance may simply be a lack of desire to start his own business. I've made similar offers to select family members (with higher dollar amounts) and nobody has taken me up on a single offer. When I ask them why not, they tell me they don't want to take the risk of starting their own business... then go right back to complaining about their horrible boss/small salary/current situation.

<comment><USER4> I think the two of you might be overlooking some of the social pressure involved in taking thousands of dollars from a close friend. If I made that offer to any one of my friends, they'd turn it down every time. They might say it's impossible, or come up with some other excuse, but most of the reluctance will come from having to see me again if their idea fails.

If you changed your offer to something like, "Hey, I've got about $5k laying around, and I want to start a business, are you interested? What do you think _we_ should do?", you'd probably see more action.

I personally think this has more to do with your friendship than the idea of your friends being mentally "poor".

<comment><USER2> Of course, that could be, but what I am offering him is money I don't need, FOR OUR FRIENDSHIP. I know that the money is likely to be lost, and I have already taken that into consideration. I want him to also TRY, also make that step and stop complaining.

If I really wanted something, and someone offered me the opportunity to do it, yes, it may fail and I may lose that friendship, but if that stops me, it means I don't believe in myself enough! It may fail, but it may also succeed! Yes, failure in this case may also mean losing a friend, so the stakes are a little bit higher, but as a friend, he knows that I know he is likely to lose the money. So even if he fails, I will just smile and be happy that at least he tried.

But it's the same trap, you see? He does not want to do it, because he is afraid of failing, and losing money and the friendship. So he can say no, and give that as his excuse, but is that any different from any other excuse?

In this case, I could posit that the risk is even less because I am there to help him, if the money is gone he will not be in debt, he will just be back to where he started.

And you know what? Sooner or later, friends who don't stay at the same socio- economic level drift apart. Yes, there are exceptions, but in most cases people have friends in the same economic class. So people try to bring their friends up, like I try to do, and the friends who don't even want to try, will sooner or later lose that friendship that they don't want to risk.

<comment><USER5> Taking money from (or loaning money to) a friend is fundamentally a bad idea, and it's quite possible - given that your friend is poor - that he's already taken money from a friend who promised that were "no strings attached," and later lost his friendship when it turned out that wasn't exactly the case. The fact is that people are generally more emotionally tied to their money than they realize, and they end up being more upset about losing it than they thought. I'm not saying _you_ are like this, but most people are, so how would he be capable of knowing that you're different, especially if he (or someone he knew) had a negative experience with this before?

It was kind of you to offer the money, but I wouldn't make negative assumptions about your friend for not accepting it. Consider the possibility that he has good reasons for not accepting it, and that those might be the correct reasons - that he may actually be better off without it in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Poverty causes poverty." I couldn't agree more.

I think the model is exactly right: too many miseries, not enough motivation to alleviate them. But I don't like the proposed solution of giving away money; that fosters dependency.

I think the best approach is a personal one. Friends I've had who were poor were sometimes poor due to circumstances beyond their control, but most often they had just never learned how to live differently. They hadn't been taught how to handle money. They didn't understand budgets. They ate fast food; we cooked. They bought tons of toys; we had fun money, but it was tracked and budgeted. They bought pre-packaged sausages; we bought potatoes. They failed to pay bills for months on end, constantly fighting fees and debt collectors. We tracked and budgeted everything. For some of these people, it was totally lifechanging just being friends with my family--seeing how we ran a clean household on a shoestring budget, and saved money.

A poor person who's good friends with a not-really-poor person has a lot of advantages. Not-really-poor can alleviate some of the worst pain of poverty: help out when they need a lift or a dinner or an advocate or a place to stay. But the major advantage is lifestyle modeling. Poor can see what Not-Really- Poor does that makes it all hang together, that solves all the problems at once. And he sees how he could maybe get there himself.

Economically mixed neighborhoods, a sense of neighborliness, hobby groups (say, gaming) that cut across social classes and create friendships. I have observed these things to effectively combat poverty.

<comment><USER7> >But the major advantage is lifestyle modelling. Poor can see what Not-Really- Poor does that makes it all hang together, that solves all the problems at once. And he sees how he could maybe get there himself.

Hmm.

We pay our mortgage and bills on time (mostly), we cook for ourselves, we use second hand washable nappies, walk rather than driving (we need a car for our work though; walking may actually cost more I've never done a complete analysis but have heard this suggested), have second hand and donated clothes and toys and furniture, cancelled our TV license, grow some of our own food, etc., but we're still poor.

How poverty causes poverty for us is that we can't afford as healthy food as we'd like. We don't have time/money for entertainment (except the net which is needed for work) and we get excluded from social activities by entry costs (we can't afford to go out to meals or buy drinks at the pub, etc.).

Moreover as we have a mortgage on a house we have maintenance costs which we can't afford, this is a time bomb really as dilapidation is progressive, early action avoids more cost later. I should now be doing repairs for winter but can't really afford them.

We could be poorer, we can afford 3 meals a day again and even some non- essentials, and largely this has been a choice to value a particular lifestyle and promotion of creativity over material values.

Basically we don't want for more education on frugal living but I can see that others do. Indeed we have friends with more money than us (and in particular a friend on benefits!) that we try and encourage to make savings when we see them wasting money.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, this is an aspect of poverty often overlooked: when you have no money, everything is so much harder and more expensive. You can't just hop in the car and go downtown for the cost of a little gas; you have to do something like dig up bus fare and wait at a stop for two hours. Tossing a load in the washer instead of hauling it to the laundromat, dishwasher meaning a device rather than a person, buying and storing in bulk because you have an extra freezer. When you're poor, time and money saving devices like these sure would be nice. And then there's the neglect of routine car and house maintainence that becomes acute and expensive, doctor's bills when you couldn't even afford insurance, late fees for missed payments, credit cards that hike the rate on you when you become a "risk". Seems only the rich could ever afford to be poor.

I don't know much about life on the cheap in the UK (which, from your references to nappies and TV licenses, I gather is where you're from). It sounds to me like you know what you're doing.

Over here (in the US), if someone complained they didn't have enough money to eat healthy, I'd be awfully concerned. Unless you have an exotic notion of 'healthy' that involves concepts like organic food and complex carbohydrates, it really is pretty cheap to eat healthy. If you're so poor that you're giving up things like spaghetti, potatoes, rice, beans, carrots, cheese, and milk for ramen, and you've been doing it so long that it's impacting your energy and lifestyle, you're in a really bad way.

Over here I'd encourage you to apply for EBT and look at local food banks. No shame in it. Helping people avoid that kind of poverty trap is what those programs are _there for_.

There definitely is a level of poverty where the money saved starts to be destructive, and it sounds like you're in it. Sorry to hear that. Sorry to hear you're committed to a mortgate in the midst of that; that makes it hard to downsize, match your income, and take some of the pressure off. Mortgages and creative lifestyles can be a bad mix.

I hope you get the cash flow going the right direction sometime soon.

<comment><USER8> I am sorry, I don't agree with this at all. I have never had a car, I have never had a problem with laundromats, and I have never bought bulk amounts of food to store in a freezer. For almost a year, I didn't even have a fridge.

These are not the reasons that people are poor, and they did not keep me poor. These DO NOT make it harder or more expensive to live.

Most people I know do the washing once a week, whether they have a laundry or not. I can not conceive of a way in which washing ever day can make your life better or richer.

Catching the bus actually makes things cheaper for you, no need for parking, insurance, gas, cars, etc...

And bulk buying meat is not going to save you that much. There are a lot better things you can do for your diet that will save you money, and improve your health.

<comment> william-newman When I was in high school, I travelled by city bus while holding two different ultra-low-end programming jobs. I think you are underrepresenting the advantages of having a car.

If I expected to be earning and living on less than perhaps $12 an hour for an extended period of time, I would probably choose to go without a car, likely by moving someplace like Dallas TX (where I live now, and where the local wages vs. cost of living seem reasonably favorable) and renting an apartment very close to a bus line on a major suburban business artery. Judging from my high school experience, from many observations of foreigners living off their science grad school stipends, and from everything I've noticed in my years in Dallas, that'd work reasonably well. But doing without a car would constrain my life in important ways (including job options, education options, and general time efficiency) and I'd be very motivated to find economical ways to reduce the problem, e.g. sharing a car, or getting (and probably learning to maintain) an economical motorcycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We've seen this article before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156177>

It was crap then and it's crap now. Karelis doesn't understand econ, but criticizes it because econ disagrees with his thought experiments and political leanings. His theory is nothing but traditional econ with a modified utility function. It has rather perverse implications (i.e., we should tax the poor but not the rich), and as the article notes it does not agree with experiment.

The best reason for completely ignoring Karelis: "ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - _but in how familiar they feel to all of us_ , rich or poor."

<comment><USER10> _Karelis doesn't understand econ, but criticizes it because econ disagrees with his thought experiments and political leanings._

Sounds like a model economist to me - because of his political leanings, he doesn't like what the oversimplified toy models of the more mainstream theories tell him, so he invents another toy model with different oversimplifications, and claims that it's more fundamental. Surprise, surprise, it happens to reinforce his pre-existing beliefs!

Isn't this the way the game is always played in the soft sciences, where we can't actually figure anything out for reals?

<comment><USER9> I say he doesn't understand econ, simply because he says "traditional economics doesn't apply" and then describes a theory which is traditional econ with a simple mathematical modification.

Also, the theory of diminishing marginal utility has been tested empirically many times. While quite a lot of econ is the theory spinning you describe, DMU is pretty solid and accepted by economists of all political stripes (it's the primary argument for progressive taxation, among other things).

<comment><USER11> If traditional economics applied to the poor, a whole lot of things would be working a whole lot differently now.

So it seems he's right about that. Whether he actually understands economics or not. And it's likely that he does understand traditional economics to some degree, it's not hard, he prob took intro, micro and macro like everyone else. Those models quite clearly do not apply to the poor or else we'd see a different poor.

<comment><USER9> _Those models quite clearly do not apply to the poor or else we'd see a different poor._

Could you explain this statement in more detail?

<comment><USER11> If traditional economics, specifically "Econ 101" (which is actually what he disparages in the article) applied, the poor wouldn't be so dumb with their money, wouldn't be the biggest buyers of lottery tickets, drop out of school disproportionately just for being poor, etc.

According to "Econ 101", people are supposed to pursue their rational self- interest and maximize utility regardless of their conditions. Which is a bit of a problem with all of economics, and a _huge_ problem when it comes to applying it to the poor.

Does that make sense?

I read an interesting paper a few months back about the lottery ticket thing. This guy's theory was that it actually was rational, because many poor people don't have access to bank accounts, they just buy a scratch ticket every day and that's effectively a probabilistic bank account. Dunno that I buy it. But a neat thought.

<comment><USER9> Traditional economics characterizes the poor as having a very high discount rate. Thus, they assign a low value to events which might happen in the future - that is, a high paying job in 5 years is less valuable than using meth now.

In much the same way, I (a middle class person) would rather have $100 now than $102 in 50 years.

As for lotto tickets, traditional econ says the poor derive utility from playing lotto, not just from winning. Am I foolish and not obeying the laws of economics for buying video games, which have an expected payoff of $0?

<comment><USER11> So, the original author's point was that the discount rate thing applies differently than you're applying it.

They're not choosing less satisfaction now rather than more satisfaction later. They see things as hopeless (too many bee stings), throw their hands in the air and say screw it. A 0% chance of a high-paying job in the distant future discounts to 0 utility at present for any discount rate.

<comment><USER9> Karelis isn't talking about discount rates at all.

He is claiming the poor have a flat utility function with a kink at zero. I.e., the ability to cure 1 bee sting (out of 5) now is worth nothing to them, only the ability to be bee sting free holds utility.

<comment><USER11> I think to understand the point I'm trying to make, we could re-examine your previous statement: "Am I foolish and not obeying the laws of economics for buying video games, which have an expected payoff of $0?"

If the laws of economics predict that you shouldn't buy that video game, then you're not foolish -- they are.

People's behavior changes radically when you give them experimental situations that involve gaining or losing money -- they're way more risk averse with losing 100$ then they are with changing their odds of winning 100$. This isn't baked into the assumptions that economics makes, and neither are a million other wrinkles of human behavior.

"What economists say" isn't the be-all and end-all, it's just another prism to be used.

<comment><USER9> _If the laws of economics predict that you shouldn't buy that video game, then you're not foolish -- they are._

The laws of economics make no such prediction, and they make no corresponding prediction about lottery tickets. That's the point.

There are places where the laws of economics don't work, I just don't believe that your previous post (or Karelis article) identifies any of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The core argument amounts to:

\-- quote --

"The core of the problem has not been self-discipline or a lack of opportunity," Karelis says. "My argument is that the cause of poverty has been poverty."

\-- end quote --

Being Indian, I have spent a lot of time observing and thinking about poverty from childhood, and in recent years, doing something about it. I believe he has hit the nail on the head with his analysis of the problem, yet I completely disagree with his solution, which is negative income tax i.e direct government cash to the poor.

Here is where I believe he is right. Poverty is a "phase transition" effect: there is a point of being too-poor below which you lose all motivation to better yourself, not only because there are too many problems but also because those problems are all interlinked, so solving just one feels utterly pointless. Spend time in any very poor neighborhood and you will see this. That poverty threshold would be different for different people, and you can aggregate these thresholds for a distinctly identifiable group to come up with a "group poverty threshold", which itself is a function of the group's history and culture. Once you are below that threshold, poverty is very hard to escape. You can state that as "poverty is the cause of poverty."

Yet, I also completely disagree with his solution - direct cash grant from the government. To prove the absurdity of it, imagine this on a global scale. Is the solution to Indian poverty then massive transfer of resources from the rich world?

So what is the solution then? Here is a sketch: the trouble is there are so many interlinked problems it is not even clear where to start. It is utterly chaotic. To overcome it, first create a very small "Zone of Order" (one room, one household, one neighborhood, one small company, one city ... whatever) where you establish clear, orderly systems. China called this the "Special Economic Zone" which they modeled by taking advice from Hong Kong and Taiwan businessmen.

Once you prove that working, scale it up. You have to bootstrap from that "Zone of Order", however small that is. At a personal level, it could be just one small corner of your shack or one hour a day of order, and for a country like India, it could be one city.

You can generalize this principle: the solution to any self-referential problem ("poverty is the cause of poverty") is bootstrapping from a very small seed. In fact, I believe most intractable problems are self-referential.

On a related note, read about "Charter Cities" [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the- poli...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically- incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/)

<comment><USER13> It's not simply a lack of money. Americans were poor for a long time and yet progressed. It's the poison of being surrounded by people who don't wish to progress for whatever reason: it threatens their place in the hierarchy, they lose control, it creates fear in them, they have self-doubt, they are envious of others, etc. Individuals can be plucked out of that environment and be given hopeful surroundings in which to progress. But any individual who doesn't want to change won't change despite all the help they're given. Try getting someone to give up drink or drugs when they don't want to despite the self- and other- harm they are creating. It's like that.

<comment><USER14> The real problem isn't that people are poor (they lack money), but that people are broke (they have debts they can't clear).

Those debts can be actual money owed or other essential expenses (i.e. insurance, repairs, education, etc). Once you are broke, then paying off your power bill won't make a big difference, because you will still have to fight off the credit card company ... and you will still be broke.

Think of it in terms of a GPA. If your GPA is 1.5 (poor), you still have an incentive to work hard and raise it to 2.0. But if your GPA is 0.3 (broke), then even if you work hard you still won't pass. So why bother?

People do drop out for other reasons (drug issues, mental health, and so on) but the article raises a very important point - people drop out when they are broke and can't make ends meet (in the near future) even if they work hard.

<comment><USER15> I've always seen the words broke and poor used in the opposite way you are using them. Being broke is a temporary situation, being poor is more of a state of being. e.g. Elon Musk is broke but he's not poor.

<comment><USER14> I'm using them in a similar way. Elon Musk won't solve his problems by getting a part-time job at Wallmart, so why should he bother? The same is true for a lot of people who are also broke, but happen to be poor as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think a lot of us can empathize with this theory. Motivation increases as a tangible milestone is in the near term and if nothing is within a reachable distance it becomes increasingly difficult to start down the path. It's similar in concept to all of the problems people have completing a project because the end goal is no where in sight.

The interesting part is how you use this theory to help the impoverished. Can you just throw specific vouchers at the situation to alleviate some of the problems, as the end of the article suggests? I don't think this is feasible - it moderately resembles the Gulf coast debacle right now. Sure you can stop some of the problems, but rarely does it solve everything.

The book sounds interesting, but all the reviews state that the author lacks data to back up his intuitive claims. I'd love it if he could provide some hard evidence to the theory, though I bet the most intuitive social claims often are hard to prove scientifically.

</comment><comment><USER17> _"It's Econ 101 that's to blame," Karelis says. "It's created this tired, phony debate about what causes poverty."_

This question is based on faulty assumptions. There is no _cause_ of poverty: it is the natural state. Tens of thousands of years ago, all of our ancestors were running around barefoot and naked. Just a few generations ago, none of our ancestors even had refrigeration nor access to antibiotics.

So every one of us comes from a line of people who didn't enjoy nearly as much luxury as we've got today. The reason we're no longer in that situation is because we (that is, ourselves and our progenitors) have worked our way out of it.

<comment><USER18> I think you have a point. Most of the people in poverty in America right now are materially better off than almost everyone 500 years ago, and most of the poor in America remain better off than most of the people in say Afghanistan.

With that said, the close tie in to material wealth is your place in society. A good hunter-gatherer might have none of the luxuries we take for granted now, but he probably has the respect of those around him and looks around and sees he is well off compared to his comrades. He is likely to be happy, and to feel that his work is paying off.

A poor person in a ghetto may look around and see many others that are much better off than he is. He may see that many people outside the ghetto give him no respect, and that even many of the well meaning ones look at him with pity. He may react to this with determination to improve and leave the ghetto. But he may react with anger or resignation, and he may feel (whether accurate or not) that no amount of work will help him change his lot in life. He is vastly better off in a material sense than the hunter gatherer, but worse off in terms of his place in society and his (perceived) ability to improve that place.

It is this emotional response to the social issue, much more than their material situation, that is cogent to the situation.

<comment><USER9> _Most of the people in poverty in America right now are materially better off than almost everyone 500 years ago, and most of the poor in America remain better off than most of the people in say Afghanistan._

Or even better off than most of the people in America, 1960.

<comment><USER15> Is this true? My grandparents were poor in 1960 yet had a big house and a decent car, a coffee maker, a big yard, etc. Why are poor people better off now? Because they have the internet?

<comment><USER9> The poor of today also have the house and the car. They also have air conditioning, a washer dryer, a microwave, cable TV and other such things. No one had that in the 1960's. In fact, a big chunk of the 1960's poor didn't even have a flush toilet.

[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understanding- poverty-in-america)

I got curious why you mentioned that your grandparents had the coffee maker. It's because they were actually pricey in the 60's: $29.95 or $215 in 2009 dollars! A coffee maker was actually pricier than a wii.

[http://www.dadsvintageads.com/viewitem.php/dadsvintageads/pd...](http://www.dadsvintageads.com/viewitem.php/dadsvintageads/pd959405/Vintage_Ad_1960_Toastmaster_Toaster_Coffee_Maker_Fry_Pan)

<comment><USER19> and free libraries, etc. You're way better off being poor in the USA than in the middle of Africa, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This sounds very much like some of the theories that one hears when talking about the causes of procrastination when faced with an overwhelming task. For example, the quoted section here:

[http://lifehacker.com/5508417/the-overwhelming-wave-that- mak...](http://lifehacker.com/5508417/the-overwhelming-wave-that-makes-us- procrastinate)

One difference between the two cases is that the situation with many of the poor may be such that the problem they are facing may be unsolvable (i.e. it's not just a matter of 'getting to work') or at least unsolvable given the current framing of the problem. This means that the rational solutions that people suggest for procrastination problems, such as breaking the current task into small chunks, are not rational solutions to the problems the poor face. Hence the bee sting theory.

</comment><comment><USER21> Single page:

[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is an extremely intuitively satisfying explanation to me, and I've been on both extremes.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. Upvoted.

When I was younger, I used to look at poor people and condemn them for being lazy and irresponsible. It's when I started paying bills that I realized that many lower middle-class lives hang by a thread - a missed paycheck can sometimes be catastrophic.

I often wonder what I would do if I were poor. I'd have hope-I'm a smart kid, eloquent, so I could dig myself out of it. But what of those who, through no fault of their own, are not so lucky? To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem.

If you follow international news, you've probably watched the drama unfold here in Jamaica over the extradition of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke. A resident of Tivoli Gardens, the inner-city community where Coke was from declared on local news that 'Jesus died for us, so we will die for Dudus.' Many people I know were upset by her statement, because they don't understand. Sure he was a criminal. Sure he was involved in drugs and murders. But when he's the one sending your six kids to school, paying for medical care for your grandmother, and providing swift and effective justice, let's just say your loyalties will not be to the state that has repeatedly signaled its lack of care. Fuck the 'social contract.'

Now you know why they called him "The President."

<comment><USER24> * To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem.*

The way the gap (chasm, really) between rich and poor keeps growing makes me worry about more mayhem in the future. People who feel persistent despair and lack of hope (regardless of if that feeling is "right") don't operate in the same universe of "rational decision making". That behavior ranges the full span of self-destructive (what the article was about, mostly) to full on sociopathic.

This is not to say that I have any new or novel ideas on how to fix the problem.

<comment><USER23> Exactly! The core issue is _lack of hope._ When hope is gone, all is lost.

And then you see someone driving by in their brand new Mercedes, and you can see in their faces that they've never had to work a day in their lives, it fills you with a boiling rage at the unfairness of the world. To hell with law. To hell with society. I'm gonna get mine. To be honest, it's difficult to blame them.

Note, I've never been poor. Growing up, the only times I went hungry were when I was too lazy to cook - there was always food in the house. So I was kind of naive. I remember my father (he was a pastor) once telling a congregation that he told the Lord that if he ever reached a point where he couldn't feed his family, he would just run away. So I didn't really know the facts of life.

Now, the veil is being lifted.

This, perhaps, is where religion is most useful. If you can convince the poor that there is some sort of 'divine plan,' then people can come to terms with their suffering.

On my way to work each morning, I pass people in the streets, begging alms. They gather at the stoplights, and come to the car windows with their hands outstretched. That is their life, day in day out. Are their lives _really_ worth living? I'm not sure. I'm just not sure.

Maybe Schopenhauer was right about life. I tend toward nihilism quite often these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've always liked the idea of "learning or earning" whereby if you become unemployed you get a welfare benefit to study for 3, 6 or 12 months in university or vocational training and then guided through improving your CV and then you hit the job market again. But I come from, and live in, various countries where there is decent welfare, universal healthcare and deferred interest-free loans or token fee university education so that's in place more or less anyway although it could be formalized and streamlined more. A lot of infrastructure would need to be put in place for such a system to work in the USA.

<comment><USER7> >But I come from, and live in, various countries where there is decent welfare, universal healthcare and deferred interest-free loans or token fee university education so that's in place more or less anyway although it could be formalized and streamlined more

Where?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Guh, I can't read this on my nexus one because www.boston.com keeps redirecting me to a mobile site that doesn't have the content.

<comment><USER27> I couldn't emphasize more, I hate it when websites do this. What are they possibly thinking! GRR it really grinds my gears.

<comment><USER28> Agreed. Nypost does it as well. I can't even comprehend how stupid their IT dept could be to allow this to go on for so long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Karelis seems to describe a psychological condition known in animal and human psychology as "learned helplessness":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness>

The key insight is that poor people feel that they lack control over their condition. Thus, any marginal effort is perceived to be 'useless'.

If you don't feel like checking the above link, read the following excerpt and draw your own analogies:

\---- In part one of Seligman and Steve Maier's experiment, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group One dogs were simply put in the harnesses for a period of time and later released. Groups Two and Three consisted of "yoked pairs." A dog in Group 2 would be intentionally subjected to pain by being given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group 3 dog was wired in parallel with a Group 2 dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't stop the electric shocks. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3 dogs, the shock was apparently "inescapable." Group 1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless, and exhibited symptoms similar to chronic clinical depression.

In part two of the Seligman and Maier experiment, these three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus, in which the dogs could escape electric shocks by jumping over a low partition. For the most part, the Group 3 dogs, who had previously "learned" that nothing they did had any effect on the shocks, simply lay down passively and whined. Even though they could have easily escaped the shocks, the dogs didn't try. \----

</comment><comment><USER30> "But ultimately, he believes, the strength of his arguments is less in how they fit with the economic work that's been done to date on poverty - much of which he is suspicious of anyway - but in how familiar they feel to all of us, rich or poor."

I love this statement. I'm absolutely sure that the majority of theories to do with psychology/economics are based on intuition, much more than they are based on "hard facts" (because it's very hard to get hard data on these kinds of things). I'm happy he at least admits it.

</comment><comment><USER31> There have been some poverty studies in India that shows that the lack in belief that "things could be different" may be the cause of some irrational behavior.

What I wonder from the article is what happens if you take a poor person and pay off everything and get them started with an education. Do they fall right back into debt? I have always suspected that having a child while a teenager is too big of a cost to dig your way out of.

<comment><USER32> in India

This may not translate well into the U.S., since India has a history of a strong caste system that enforced poverty. "Things could be different" was not true for the Harijans.

<comment><USER31> That was part of the study. Researchers observed more irrational actions compared to say rural china or vietnam. Having that feeling that things wont change will cause you to give up and do what is deemed irrational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Most of the social help programs that I have seen so far, except for unemployment, are overrun by scammers. I lived in a section 8 apartment for a while and the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades. For these people there is nothing at this point in their lives that is going to change they way they live and think. Educating their kids is the only way to break the cycle of poverty.

<comment><USER34> > the same people qualifying for $25/month rents were driving Escalades

I have not known this to be true. The handful of people I know who qualify for section 8 don't own cars, or have 15yo beaters.

<comment><USER33> I can't say I have done a formal study, it is just an observation in a single city. The Mint Blog published some numbers on illegal immigrants where it was claimed that over 60% of section 8 was claimed by them. Most of them get paid in cash so it is easy to adjust whatever they make to meet the section 8 qualifications. Also a lot of the households have more than one adult working so going over the $30k qualification threshold doesn't take that good of job if it is split between 2 or 3 people.

There are definitely people that have fallen on hard times and people on disability that needs the help section 8 provides, it just makes me angry that they are in the minority of people being helped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> He was on C-SPAN Book TV in 2007: <http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/200788-1> In true C-SPAN tradition the video has 21 views :).

If you don't have flash you can get the video with RTMPDump (<http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu>):

rtmpdump -W [http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay...](http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf) -s [http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay...](http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf) -r rtmp://video.c-spanarchives.org:1935/fastplay/../trimmed/200/200788/200788-1_01.flv -o 200788-1_01.flv

rtmpdump -W [http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay...](http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf) -s [http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlay...](http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf) -r rtmp://video.c-spanarchives.org:1935/fastplay/../trimmed/200/200788/200788-1_02.flv -o 200788-1_02.flv

</comment><comment><USER36> Poverty will always exist, because poverty in its truest form is the perception of inequality.

As timwiseman said:

>With that said, the close tie in to material wealth is your place in society. A good hunter-gatherer might have none of the luxuries we take for granted now, but he probably has the respect of those around him and looks around and sees he is well off compared to his comrades. He is likely to be happy, and to feel that his work is paying off.

Imagine a world where every citizen was equipped with one spoon. They only needed one spoon, and they only ever used one spoon. Now say a few citizens acquire _two_ spoons. They never use these spoons, and they don't need them. But suddenly, everyone who only has one spoon starts to feel inferior.

If we woke up tomorrow and everyone had the same amount of wealth, it would be necessary to redefine poverty. The feelings that accompany poverty would still exist, albeit for a different perceptible difference between people.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science- news/3315638/Rela...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science- news/3315638/Relative-wealth-makes-you-happier.html) I can't find the original study, but this article references it.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think the sort of poverty I sense around big company development is of the same sort. Employees are often beset by clueless management, crushing bureaucratic paperwork, WTF bad code, useless demoralized coworkers, &c...

This results in people saying stuff like, "If you find yourself in a warm tub of shit, just have the good sense to stay there where it's warm and no one's likely to attack you." Yes, I actually had a coworker say that to me once.

The attitudess of such workers are very much like the attitudes of those in poverty as described by the article.

</comment><comment><USER38> The question is: why do you let your car have many dents?

Why some people fall deeper into poverty and some other get out of it? Is it just a question of luck? Of help? Of energy? Of will?

<comment><USER39> First, let us correct your assumptions: Very few Americans get out of poverty. Social mobility rates are surprisingly small in the United States. The American Everyman is very likely to die in the class into which he was born.

Secondly, not falling into poverty in the first place really is a question of help. Wealthy people (read: almost all HN users) have networks of wealthy people to assist them when times get hard -- parents, children, siblings, friends.

The poor do not. Poor folks have networks of other poor folks. If I lose my job and my house, I have a year of cash and goodwill to live on, couch-surfing and stretching savings. If a member of the working poor suffers a setback on the way out of poverty, he could be back to square one, or worse, in a matter of weeks.

<comment><USER40> _Very few Americans get out of poverty. Social mobility rates are surprisingly small in the United States. The American Everyman is very likely to die in the class into which he was born._

Not true: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#Economic_mobi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#Economic_mobility_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER41> _Moving between quintiles is more frequent in the middle quintiles (2-4) than in the lowest and highest quintiles. Of those in one of the quintiles 2-4 in 1996, approximately 35% stayed in the same quintile; and approximately 22% went up one quintile or down one quintile (moves of more than one quintile are rarer). However, 42% of children born in the bottom quintile are most likely to stay there, and another 42% move up to the second and middle quintile. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 39% of those who were born into the top quintile as children in 1968 are likely to stay there, and 23% end up in the fourth quintile. Children previously from lower-income families had only a 1% chance of having an income that ranks in the top 5%. On the other hand, the children of wealthy families have a 22% chance of reaching the top 5%.

According to one study, the income of a person's parents is a great deal more predictive of their own income in the United States than other countries. France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark all have more relative mobility than the US, while only the United Kingdom is shown to have less mobility._

It's a point of contention, at any rate.

<comment><USER40> The exact degree of economic mobility might be a point of contention, but I see very little merit in the statement that "very few Americans get out of poverty" or "The American Everyman is very likely to die in the class into which he was born." The data says otherwise.

<comment><USER41> Perhaps more likely than in much of the developed world, however. There doesn't seem to be any reason to think the US has _high_ economic mobility.

<comment><USER40> Again, how is this relevant in the context of the claim that there is almost no economic mobility in the US?

This is sort of like claiming that we have hardly any people in the US because China and India have so many more. We still have hundreds of millions.

<comment><USER41> It's relevant because we're talking about poverty in the context of policy and values, and if the US is falling short on poverty metrics compared to the rest of the developed world, then it's evidence we're doing something wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> interesting story: I lived in Los Angeles from the age of 19 to now age 26. My mother died this past november. Before this had happened, I was living my life in Los Angeles. I had big ambitions and I knew where they were taking me. Work was in abundance, during which I had been working for myself for three years developing websites, and working on my startups. It was picture perfect in ways that work would come to me.

Now, I live in Sherman Texas, A very small town where I grew up and once dreamed of big things, expensive things which would become mine to keep. The loss of my mother was very difficult, yet I have now opened a new candy store, and leased a large office loft downtown. I've gone through every penny in the transition. One of the most important things that I realize now is that- things in life do not last, whether it be riches of material wealth, love, spirit, or my own motivation. One thing can I can be certain of is my own mindset, temporary defeat, and a loss of hope- or the ultimate poverty.

I currently have a broke down car that beeps as I drive it as if it were a time bomb, too much office space, and an inheritance of real-estate that has become a burden in expenses that I can no longer keep up with. Every new project that comes my way somehow disappears before my eyes (I've never had this much trouble closing a deal).

If you are poor, look up, you're still alive. This life is a series of challenges, breath a fire that ignites your soul. Live to have hope, and continue dreaming. The difference between the rich and the poor is ones drive to act upon a dream, and fight without a moment of doubt.

The poor now, and the poor tomorrow are two different people, the ones who lift their own spirit, and the ones who drown in their spirit of misery.

</comment><comment><USER43> Bee stings is a bad analogy. It's more like trying to retain and adapt human dignity among exponentially more inefficient human processes. I agree with this article only insofar as multiple bee stings are exponentially more painful. But I disagree with it insofar as bee stings represent 'pain' instead of logistical nightmares and high risk situations, which is what poverty, the further down you go, increasingly involves.

I also disagree strongly that poverty leads to irrationality. That is a very dangerous and arrogant line of thinking -- and obviously reflects a lack of understanding with the rational choices poor people face.

<comment><USER19> My take is that irrationality (by somebody) or bad luck (by somebody) leads to poverty. Which leads to more irrationality. Which leads to more poverty. And so on. It can be a vicious cycle that is hard to escape from, mentally and financially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The theory of "car dent" and "no of dishes in sink" are kind of justified but the "protagonist" of the article i.e. no of bee stings does not fit with the theory of poverty at all. Does not matter if someone has one or ten bee stings, people get it cured for sure.

<comment><USER45> Suppose you get X bee stings (problems) in one day, and you have a bee string rate of Y per day normally. If you can only afford to buy cures at a rate of Z per day (let's be optimistic and assume it's greater then Y) it will take you X-(Z-Y) days to cure all your bee stings.

Now, a bee sting sucks, but it doesn't kill you. In fact, life without any bee stings is, let's say, Q times better then with. Yet, the difference between 1 bee sting and N bee stings is pretty much nil, they all hurt. The only real benefit occurs when you cross the threshold that lets you have no bee stings at the end of each day.

The theory, as I understand it, proposes that given a big enough X, a person with a small (Z-Y), won't bother with curing bee stings, regardless of Q.

<comment><USER44> My comment was meant for the literal meaning for "Bee sting". What if I replace "bee sting" with a "cut finger". You will say whether it is one finger off from your body or 10 fingers off... it hurts the same!!!... so no need to pay attention.

In theory your/author's logic sounds good... but practically it does not make sense. I would still say that the analogy of car dents OR no of dishes in the sink is a better way to present it. Its a little impractical to count "physical/bodily" pains in numbers.

<comment><USER45> I think you're taking the bee sting far too literally.

Although I do agree that the bee sting isn't exactly the best fit for an analogy, I don't agree the dishes in sink / car dents is any better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> [http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/why_do_the_poor....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/why_do_the_poor.html)

</comment><comment><USER47> when overwhelmed, reduce your frame/perspective so you can focus on one thing at a time.

</comment><comment><USER48> Lots of great comments here. I tried to refrain from commenting but it is a topic close to my heart.

I would simply add that as somebody who has been poor and upper-middle-class, and switched back and forth repeatedly, that there is a difference between poverty and despair.

Anybody can get poor. Some folks who are poor can get out of it given the right conditions, but folks who have given over to despair cannot get out of it, no matter what you do for them or what the conditions are.

People pass from poverty into despair very easily, unfortunately. This is closely related to the "what kind of reality do you want to live your life in?" question, where the issue is not what the externalities are, but rather what types of things do you want to assume and keep in your heart -- that working hard has it's own merit, that being honest is a better way to live, that educating yourself makes for a richer life, that trying new things can lead to good results. These may never ever be proven by personal experience: in fact, for many poor people it will all just result in more of the same. But by _believing_ them, as a group, the group does better than by not believing them. The belief has an effect of its own.

</comment><comment><USER49> Poverty is the realization of the 2nd law of thermodynamics as applied to economics. The easiest way to become poor is to do nothing, it works almost every time.

</comment><comment><USER50> Marx figured this out over a century ago and these people are still puzzled about the "answer"?

</comment><comment><USER51> >> Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices.

I think the lack of smartness is what makes people poor. I heard lot of stories of people who inherited millions and finished as poor as a blue collar employee.</comment>


Network security with ants - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news173108776.html

<comment><USER2> I may be missing a crucial point here, but this sounds like all it is is running a modular malware scanner off of a server, and checking each computer on the network.

This seems to fall under a classic problem (well, maybe not classic, but I see it a lot): people see something in nature and assume it will work on a computer. Taking a look at the metaphors used in the article, it looks like these researchers may have fallen into the same trap.

Worms in the digital sense are nothing like worms in the natural sense. Digital worms propagate by attacking a computer, taking it over, and then using that computer to launch out its own attacks at as many other computers as it can. The only way it resembles a natural worm, is because both of them leave a clear, followable trail, as long as you know where to look. While the natural worm's trail is in the dirt, the digital worm's trail is through infected computers. They're hard to trace back to their source, but it may be possible.

Assuming I understand the concept of security "ants" correctly, it will only work until viruses catch on, at which point it will be even more susceptible to attacks than current generation virus scanning. What so many people fail to understand is that once a computer is infected with malware, you cannot trust anything it tells you. I can't stress that enough, an infected computer can very easily lie to you. So, what it looks like from the article, is (for instance) we have 3000 "ants" running off a server, which each check every computer for a specific symptom of running a virus. If the computer has that symptom, more and more ants are sent to that computer to find and disable it.

To give this another metaphor: lets say we have 3000 police officers, who patrol a neighborhood with several homes in it. We know from experience that there are criminals who break into homes, and use it for all sorts of nefarious purposes. In a particular home, someone has broken in and set up a Meth Lab. A police officer comes up, knocks on the door, and one of the criminals comes to the door. The following dialogue ensues:

Officer: Hi, I'm checking for illegal assault rifles today. Any chance you guys have any assault riffles in there? Criminal: No. Officer: Ok, Have a nice day.

The problem of running a virus scan off the network is similar to the problem an officers faces without a warrant. The network scanner cannot directly check the hard drive and processes running on a computer. It has to ask the computer to check those things, and then report back to the scanner, or, alternately ask the computer to make those resources available to it and check them itself. All the malware has to do is make the computer it has infected lie to the scanner, and its free. This is difficult, but possible when the scanner is on the local machine. When its on the network though, it doesn't stand a chance.</comment>


Ask HN: Are they trying to fire Mark Zuckerberg? - sahin-boydas <comment><AUTHOR> With the possibility of interest rate rises, investors will increasingly want to be paid dividends. When shareholders get restless, the board of directors starts getting concerned, etc.

Looking at what happened to Travis over at Uber is an example of how things can change.

</comment><comment><USER2> Who is 'they'?</comment>


Ex-CIA chief Michael Hayden: What Edward Snowden did - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/opinion/hayden-snowden-impact

<comment><USER2> Yada, yada, our adversaries, yada, yada, betrayal, yada, yada, can no longer work in secret.

Somehow we are to believe that there is a terrorist hiding behind every corner and under every rock, and that only by working in secret our government can keep us safe.

A rational person would tackle poverty, health care, debt, aging infrastructure, foreign policy, environment issues, etc, etc.

An irrational person on the other hand may be driven by fear and spends insane amounts of money and effort to protect against a perceived threat that is hardly more dangerous than lightening strike.

Even in the month of September 2001 more people in the US died in traffic accidents than in the 9/11 attacks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see they keep trying to portray him as a spy, or worse than spy.</comment>


US Immigration recognizes League of Legends players as pro athletes - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/07/15/95749/

<comment><USER2> As the article notes, this is a pretty standard immigration classification for people who travel to participate in competitive tournaments; chess players are classified similarly. It's not really about the U.S. immigration service "validating" anything as a cultural category, just classifying what kind of business travel the people in question are engaged in, from the perspective of immigration law.

</comment><comment><USER3> An issue I see here is the relatively rapid trend changes within e-sports compared to more traditional sports. What happens when League of Legends 2 is released (or everyone drops it and moves to DOTA 2)? Or Starcraft 3?

Would it not be more appropriate to classify e-sports as a single sport, with various subcategories for the individual games (or even game types)?

</comment><comment><USER4> They can even recognize professional players as militaries.

<comment><USER4> I am sure that a crazy gamer will be like Ender.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is 'athlete' really the appropriate term? 'Pro' yes. A pro LoL player is probably less athletic than pro pool player.

<comment><USER6> I only dabble with LoL, but in StarCraft, there is a physical element: it's really tiring to sustain a high APM while also maintaining accuracy.

Micro is certainly a different kind of physical prowess than sprinting 100m, but I think it's close enough to qualify.

<comment><USER7> Avid LoL scene follower checking in, most players are in fairly good shape. With the scene getting more serious and professional most teams are getting coaches that mandate healthy diets and exercise as part of a team's training, since you know healthy body healthy mind. So while the game might not be that physically intensive (though it definitely can be really stressful) most players do at least undergo some kind of physical 'training'.

Obviously differs from team to team and there are some overweight pros as well.

<comment><USER8> That still doesn't make LoL an athletic sport (a sport that requires athletic capability), it just means some athletic people play LoL.

I'm athletic and I play chess, but chess is not an athletic sport.

      ath·lete [ath-leet]

      A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.

      http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/athlete?s=t

<comment><USER7> Totally agree sorry if that came across differently in my comment :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Is Healthcare Reform So Complicated? - <AUTHOR> http://a16z.com/2017/03/10/healthcare-reform-history-tradeoffs/ <comment><USER2> The short answer? We make it so, and it doesn't help that for-profit insurance companies are capable of using large sums of money to lobby Congress. The United States has for years attempted to make a "free-market" solution for insurance, and it has yet to work. We're rated 37 in terms of the quality of care for the amount we spend. The ACA was flawed, but at least it helped to get more people insured. The replacement bill is a complete disaster. When the Heritage Foundation pans the bill, you know it's bad. The US should move towards a single payer system, but with the fear of the word socialism and the "I got mine" attitude of conservatives, it's going to be a long time coming.

<comment><USER3> Without transparent pricing, its not a free-market solution but an elaborate life-or-death scam.

Obamacare doesn't even try to fix the root problems because lobbying/corruption prevents any real solutions from happening.

<comment><USER2> A free-market will not solve health care issues. When it comes to shopping around for a new car, a computer, or a lawyer, a free market is fine. When you need to be rushed to the hospital for a heart attack or you need to undergo cancer treatments, the last thing you care about is the price.</comment></comment></comment>


JDK 8 Lambdas MOOC Course - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMod1hYiIvSZL1xclvHcsV2dMiminf19x <comment><USER2> This is a great class ... we've been promoting it to everyone (who uses Java) at the university where I work.</comment>


Ask HN: Good resources for new immigrants on how to settle? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone,
I'm an immigrant seeking information on how to get started in the US. Apart of the obligations of signing up with Selective Service, getting a SSN, setup a bank account, etc. I'm especially interested in the best ways of finding a job, house, friends, etc. and in terms of financial security, what to look out for when searching for a job. My background is Computer Science/Economics (M.Sc.) with 5+ years experience in IT consultancy and software engineering (iOS/Android).
Thanks for the help. <comment><USER2> 1\. House - get a roommate (or 3) if you're young and have no family living with you. They will be your main friend(s)

2\. Get a secured credit card from a credit union to build up your credit

3\. Take out a loan with said credit union after a few months (even if you don't need it)

4\. Friends --- work, meetup.com, gym classes, sports leagues, random bars if you're an extrovert. Go everywhere you are invited.

5\. Job - Use consulting firms here to get contracts and work your way in. Look for healthcare mainly,but a job in a decent sized city so you can connect with others (after an ok salary of course)

6\. Phone - Get a cheap prepaid cell

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I figured that might me a good starting point, but may not be worthwhile in the long run in order to built up property right? 2\. Can you recommend a specific credit union? What do I've to look out for? I'm currently in CA. 3\. Okay 4\. Alright 5\. What do you mean by "look for healthcare"? A decent salary for a software engineer would be what? 90k? What site do you guys use for finding a job? Indeed, Glassdoor, etc. or anything special? 6\. Check!

<comment><USER2> 1\. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by built up property. Right now your goal should be to connect with others and make friends, settling down in a house on your own isn't ideal at this time unless you have a family. 2\. Any credit union that'll accept you will do.

On the job portion, get a job that you like (can't stress this enough) that covers your rent+utilities, food and leaves enough to go out to eat a couple days a week as well as about 1K in savings a month if possible. Not sure what that is in california, but your an engineer so I trust you can use your skills to arrive at a decent figure.

Search for jobs anywhere you can get the word out, friends, indeed, LinkedIn etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You will realize soon that getting a phone can be very tricky.

Pre-paid plans are incredibly expensive and in order to get postpaid plan you need to have a credit history which takes over a year to build.

I made some friends and then joined one of their existing plans while I waited to build my own credit history.

Meetup.com is a good resource to get involved in the community and make friends. Also look for local volunteering opportunities on weekends to get you started on a social circle.

<comment><USER4> Phones can be cheap - I have a $30/month prepaid cell phone with 5GB, unlimited video/music. Paired with a google voice number, it's effectively unlimited everything. [https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tmobile-30-Wireless-Airtime- Card/...](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tmobile-30-Wireless-Airtime- Card/15443357)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great deal! But apart of the phone story, how do I build up a credit score quickly? I do have a decent amount of cash savings and everything I own is paid off..

<comment><USER2> Get a secured credit card from a credit union, not a bank, to build up your credit. That's what I did and it worked out beautifully.</comment></comment></comment></comment>