'No Poach' Deals for Fast-Food Workers Face Scrutiny - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/business/no-poach-fast-food-wages.html <comment><USER2> This is despicable. It's one thing for firms to do this for high paying white collar jobs (like the SV no poaching scandal), but to do this to people making poverty wages is just awful.

<comment><USER3> It's really odd too - what's the advantage?

Not to be offensive but these people do low skilled work. You can onboard another employee relatively quickly.

A part of me would think it's there to avoid turnover costs because I imagine these businesses have decent turnover given the low quality job and pay, why not bounce to a new job if this one sucks or is too stressful?

<comment><USER4> We had no poach deals with other franchises when I was a hiring manager. The idea was:

1\. Other franchise owners knew each other by name and would call each other up when they found their employee were hired by us. Enough harassment and you tire or worry that they won't help you in situations like running out of product or selling/purchasing stores from you

2\. The kind of person looking to sell themselves often were often trouble and weren't what we were poking for. Signal to noise ratio was terrible in these situations

3\. Since we paid so little, a wage war was a sort of Mutually Assured Destruction and good employees were worth much more than we were paying them. Why chance that?

4\. Training a new employee was a lot of time and money - a week with another employee just to make them somewhat competent in their station and a month so they could reliably hold their own. Then do that for every station the employee was expected to work (5 - 6 for a non-kitchen employee)

I only "poached" if I was sure I would withstand a tongue lashing from the office and I was almost told to stop the hiring process on one after I had offered them a job.

Glad I'm out of that industry

<comment><USER5> How is that not illegal collusion?

The franchises have set themselves up as separate companies for their own benefit, but when it would benefit employees they work in concert?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Legally, two different Arby's locations are independent competing companies, but in practice they act as extensions of the parent company. (Similar to the "independent contractor" nonsense going on in the "sharing economy".) So we're really talking about poaching _within_ a company and there's pretty good precedent that companies are allowed to have these kinds of internal rules.

<comment><USER7> As you noted there is a legal slant to this and that's all that matters if we're hand-waving away ethics and morality.

<comment><USER6> From an ethical perspective, the fact that all Arby's locations pay the same doesn't sound that outrageous, but I don't work in fast food so maybe it's really a tragedy.

<comment><USER8> The whole point is that they _don 't_; that workers have been barred from seeking jobs that would _pay better_ at another franchise.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately every company operates that way; once you accept a lowball offer (which you usually don't even know is low due to salary secrecy) you can never get out of the hole except by quitting.

<comment><USER9> ... or getting a competing offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, these terms are horrible for low wage workers, but these are also bad for tech workers.

Does anyone know any any groups in NY agitating to ban these terms for all workers? I would be quite interested in participating in such a group. Bonus points if anyone knows groups interested in restricting the rights employers have to IP employees create outside of work hours/scope.

<comment><USER11> I dunno about this specific issue, but the DSA are probably among the most active proponents for labor rights issues and could definitely connect you with other people working to combat this. I'd hit up the local chapter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The restrictions, often referred to as no-poach clauses, do not stop workers > from switching from, say, an Arby's store to a Wendy's, but can keep an > employee of one Arby's location from taking a job at another.

That's an interesting twist.

<comment><USER13> especially since alot of fast food spots are not owned by the fast food company, they are owned by the franchisee who in all senses of the word, except for meeting xyz standards of the brand, operates an independent business entity.

next thing they will do is say that employees of one franchise of a conglomerate brand cannot leave and go work for another franchise of the same conglomerate brand (which happens to own 5 different brands, including ChickenLicious, BuildaBurger, SteakMachine, FreshCrunchy, and SugarCoffee)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> a question arose in a couple places about the difficulty of onboarding. I worked at a fast food restaurant for 4.5 years (roughly 3K hours) during high school and college.

When I started, I was asked directly not to switch to another store without letting them know. It wasn't a threat, just a courtesy. I believe the given reason had something to do with anti-poaching.

Just a guess, but I could see a group of 6 people at one store saying "let's go over to the other store" together. Losing one person isn't a big deal, losing 6 people from a shift is an expensive pain. I doubt it happens often, but it doesn't feel like a stretch to me.

As far as onboarding goes, my job performance continued to improve for at least 2 years. They were getting one hell of a bargain at $8.80 back in 2007. When I started, it was mostly washing dishes. A few years in, our team could push 130 cars and $1,400 through our drive thru in an hour.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but those 6 people from one shift aren't all going to up and jump ship at the same time for shits and giggles. If they're doing that, then it's because they're feeling mistreated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Companies have way too much power these days. What kind of person comes up with this? How can you treat low wage employees like this? Have these people no couth?

<comment><USER17> My Grandmother would mention what things were like in the 1920s and 1930's and none of this surprises me at all.

<comment><USER18> As bad as things are, we don't have employees working insane hours, in horrible conditions, for poverty wages and being rewarded by losing limbs now a days.

OH wait.... [1]

1: [https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the- deadly...](https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly-world- of-private-garbage-collection)

<comment><USER19> Also [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation-a...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation- and-abuse-at-the-chicken-plant)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> when I worked in fast food, many employees already worked two jobs at two separate restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER21> This sort of systematic wage suppression is why America is cruising towards socialism. You can crush the workers only so much, then they rebel.</comment>


The Anthropology of Hackers (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/the-anthropology-of-hackers/63308/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> If you read this and want more like it, the author of the article (Gabriella Coleman) wrote an excellent ethnography on the culture around hackers and free software, which is also available through her site: [http://gabriellacoleman.org/Coleman-Coding- Freedom.pdf](http://gabriellacoleman.org/Coleman-Coding-Freedom.pdf)

The timing might be a little confusing; my understanding is that the book was born out of her dissertation written before 2010, predating the article in the Atlantic, but this book was published after the Atlantic article came out (so it may be even more refined than the article, and certainly more in-depth).

It's longer (on the order of ~250 pages), but it's really great, and one of my favorite examples of Anthropology investigating and thinking about technology and the people that live and breathe it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I grew up after the open source revolution of the 80's and 90's, but my parents did not get internet until I was in high school. At one point though, I read "How To Be A Hacker" and tried to emulate that world when I started to learn programming. I fell out of love with as I grew up, but there's still a bit of nostalgia for that world to me(false nostalgia - I was never part of it).

I chronicled my journey and why I stopped liking it: [http://www.ahalbert.com/technology/2013/04/02/hackerpolitics...](http://www.ahalbert.com/technology/2013/04/02/hackerpolitics.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I hate the word hacker. It's completely meaningless today anyway.</comment>


Show HN: Social network buttons for Twitter Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://noizwaves.github.io/bootstrap-social-buttons/

<comment><USER2> Nice. It's just a collection of background colours for the buttons, though. These don't have any functionality, not even add the icons.

But nice eye candy anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> really nice and useful. Will use it for sure</comment>


Email as an Interface - <AUTHOR> http://ryanhoover.me/post/50734379955/email-as-an-interface

<comment><USER2> The lists under "Reducing Friction" aren't comparable. In the first list, point 1 and 2 should both be in the second list as well. Point 3 and 4 are the same thing. Also, often the link in the email would open a page that would automatically do the action for you. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only real difference seems to be that the button doesn't have to open a new page to perform the action.

</comment><comment><USER3> debbugs had this since…forever?</comment>


Do one more - <AUTHOR> http://www.justsaywen.com/do-one-more

<comment><USER2> I like all these 'do one more' euphemisms, but they do a great job of promoting Burnout Culture...</comment>


Search is a Hard Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/udi_manber_search_is_a_hard_problem.php <comment><USER2> _'... apparently, when Udi was demoing this for Larry Page, he asked why the images weren't translating. Obviously, there is still work to be done, but it is quite amazing ...'_

That's got to be a joke. Aside from being time consuming, not scaling well it's beyond even googles core skillset(s).

<comment><USER3> Searching text inside images seems like an obvious thing for Google to do. Translating is just the next step beyond that. It's a hard problem but not insurmountable. If someone wanted an idea for a company to sell to Google...

<comment><USER4> Add a layer of interaction to the process. The default behavior would be to leave the text in images untranslated, but when viewing the translated page there would be an easy way to select specific images for translation. There would also be a "translate all images" option. Perhaps an even better product to create would be an interactive translation overlay that semi-intelligently created "areas" on a page (such as body text, images, menus, etc). You could simply click on the area you desired to have translated. The app would take note of which areas you clicked on and if you browsed to another page on the same site would automatically translate the corresponding area on the next page.

<comment><USER5> Brilliant, I'd love to have such a translator.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you going to adopt Blazor this year? - <AUTHOR> Server-side Blazor has been around for a little while now and it was announced last week that Blazor WebAssembly is now production-ready. Have you started adopting either one or do you plan to any time soon? <comment><USER2> Just started investigating it, but I'm not really a front end guy, just forced to get my hands dirty during some MVP prototyping. If you find good resource or have good/bad experience, please do post about them.</comment>


Medium – Welcome to the internet's first open paywall - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/creators <comment><USER2> $5 is not a sustainable amount of money. It just isn't. I don't know why people in this space keep coming back to this ruinously low rate.

Charge. More. Or. This. Will. Fail. Too.

Sincerely,

(theoretically) a competitor.

<comment><USER3> I guess the question is whether they get would enough people to pay if they charge more.

As a side ponder - I wonder how many businesses are killed by bad price- points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't believe there is not an ICO in there somewhere.

<comment><USER4> Check the client-side JavaScript just to be sure. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They're being tricky about how payments are computed.

Lots of black-box mumbo jumbo about "engagement" and "reading time" and "claps", but nothing specific or concrete.

If 2 million members pay $5 each per month, that's $10M. Does Medium keep 10% for themselves and distribute the rest to authors?

Or do they keep 70% for themselves?

If I'm going to put my content behind a paywall, I deserve some idea of how the revenue is shared between me and the platform.

<comment><USER2> > _They 're being tricky about how payments are computed._

I would be too. I imagine it will be proportional to views and time-on-page. Being too specific will encourage automation.

Disclosure: I have on-again, off-again worked on pretty much the same concept for several years. As have several others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone on HN pay for medium? What content on the site encouraged you to do so?

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems to claim that you can publish stories behind the paywall without putting them on medium's (imo horrible) platform, but it doesn't say how you do that.

Also, this is certainly not the first attempt to do this.</comment>


Kill Hollywood? Let's fix politics instead: kill lobbying. - <AUTHOR> I read the 'Kill Hollywood' RFC, gave it some thought and came to a conclusion that killing Hollywood is not a Value Adding Intention (tm).  I understand that the RFC is a response to SOPA&co which is obviously pushed by Hollywood.
My thoughts went: "Should we-the-people retaliate against some influential business (sector) every time they successfully lobby for their own interests against the interest of the wider public?"
On which I concluded: "No we should fix politics instead, that's where the problem originates, that's where we can fix it once and for all."
And the most obvious fix I see is to criminalize lobbying (= power to the wealthy) as it is against democracy (= power to the people) in its very nature.
Just to name a few sectors that successfully lobbied for changes that (imho) harmed the wider public: banks, car industry, big-oil, big-pharma, big-food, military contractors.
Some simple math: if business (sector) X puts in 5M for a lobby on issue Y; the probability of success on their lobby campaign is 0.5; then the payoff of the campaign is at least 10M.  Now where do those 10M come from?  From everyone that is not X.  In other words: the honest people --who do not try to influence politics outside of the public discussion-- lose from the wealthy mega-corps.
Lobbying is currently a fast growing industry itself:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/01/washington-lobbying-grew-to-32.html
So please YC use your influence to fight the real bad, and "Kill the Lobby" with an RFC :) <comment><USER2> If you remove lobbying from a political system then the elected officials exist in a vacuum with no information coming from outside sources. Remember charities and NGO's also lobby government (as well as the churches, mosques, temples, big pharma, little pharma, oil, mothers for this or that, fathers for other stuff, governments for war, governments for peace.... this list is endless).

The problem isn't lobbying. It's corrupt elected officials who at best accept bribes/payment to fund an overly expensive electioneering machine. The problem is that lobbying happens with no public over site and now accountability.

The problem is more complex than just removing lobbying. Do you really want government making decisions without asking companies advice? The same companies that the government expects to implement strategies?

Say for example the USA predicts a 20% increase in crude oil use over the next 10 years. Where the refineries should go, where the oil is best sourced, how the petrol products are best distributed are all important questions that the oil industry is well placed to help answer. Not dictate of course but their opinion should matter.

EDIT: Before anyone accuses me of supporting the current system please give me the benefit of the doubt. I understand the system is inadequate as it stands but to remove lobbying just creates another problem of equal gravity.

<comment><USER3> The point is that greed is dependable and stable. If you can depend on something that won't ruin the economy or society, then at least that works as a guarantee against worse excesses. And let's face it, even large corporations have a stake in maintaining a veneer of free enterprise (even though they tend toward cronyism).

Consider that idealistic politicians are also capable of more damage than corrupt self-interested ones.

The solution is not to seek for selfless idealists (who may be dangerous), but to remove power from politicians (to the extent possible) or at least to move decision making as close/locally as possible to the areas affected.

In a way, those interested in politics to make money would be less interested in it for the pure sake of having (then preserving) political power.

Here's one way to start: remove direct elections of senators. It makes lobbyists having to deal with 50 separate state legislatures rather than 100 individuals.

<comment><USER4> > _The point is that greed is dependable and stable. If you can depend on > something that won't ruin the economy or society_

That statement shows exactly why "libertarianism" and all associated doctrines are built on a solid foundation of ignorance of human nature. There's nothing you could argue, really, when the other party is not even aware of the basic axioms.

<comment><USER3> Just in this context of a political system, having a self-interested politician is _less dangerous_ than having an idealistic one. Mind you, there are good and bad idealists, but their impact is greater; and since politicians generally are negative, it's better their impact be restrained at least by that narrow sentiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recognize that Lawrence Lessig is beating this particular drum lately, and he's probably way smarter than me. However, I can't escape the idea that money is the mother's milk of politics. It's like water in that it always finds a way through an obstacle, no matter how much you put in its way. If you eliminate overt lobbying, organizations will find a way to route around whatever laws are in place to lobby covertly, in ways that are likely much harder for the average person to detect.

Furthermore, I'd point out that, depending on the form of a ban on lobbying, the recent SOPA protest might not have been able to happen. Google might have been prevented from blacking out their page as would Wikipedia, lest they run afoul of anti-lobbying laws. That's something worth thinking about.

It's also not just the business sector that has lobbyists. There are tons of other groups. The Sierra Club and NRA are two biggies that come to mind. As an individual, it's much more efficient for me to throw in with one of those groups to ensure my interests are protected than it is to do it myself. Both are exceptionally effective at getting what they want because they spend all day keeping an eye on elected (and unelected) government officials and their continued existence hinges on their success.

I'm not arguing that we have to _like_ this current situation, but it's hard for me to think of a _better_ scenario that doesn't infringe on the rights of people to assemble as a group and voice their opininon via financial support, advertising, etc... Just because some of the time we don't personally like the result of lots of lobbyists, doesn't mean this is the root of all evil. In the end, all the money in the world isn't going to compel ordinary citizens to vote for someone who doesn't have their interests in mind. Exhibit A would be John Corzine who had an incredible fortune at his disposal in his reelection bid as governor of NJ and _still_ lost to Chris Christie in 2009.

<comment><USER6> The way I see it, the only reason political parties need such vast amounts of money is to spend it campaigning. If you reduce the need or ability to campaign, by restricting advertising or making voting compulsory, the demand for money is lessened, and some industry or another threatening to pull their support isn't such a big deal.

<comment><USER7> How would making voting compulsory reduce the need/ability to campaign?

<comment><USER8> A huge part of campaigning is either driving your own turnout (field operations) or suppressing the other guys' turnout (negative ads). Additionally, there's a philosophy of "suppress turnout in general and it will probably help me", which statistically is a good move for Republicans, most of the time.

The argument is that compulsory voting would disincentivize these activities in favor of issues-based campaigning. I agree although I'm not sure I agree strongly enough to favor compulsory voting.

<comment><USER4> How about "single payer" campaign funding?

You want to contribute money to politics? Sure, feel free to pour some into this big barrel over here. The proceeds will be evenly divided between all candidates.

<comment><USER7> At the party level, or just to "politics" in general?

<comment><USER4> Nation-wide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You are missing the point. PG didn't say "Kill Hollywood" in order to get revenge on them for SOPA/PIPA. (He _did_ title the piece in a provocative manner that _suggested_ he was seeking revenge. That title certainly bought the piece some notoriety.)

Instead, PG said "Kill Hollywood" because the SOPA/PIPA debacle finally made it apparent to him that these industries are ripe for replacement. Imagine you notice that some middleman in a purchasing chain is starting to try very hard to include terms in their contracts that prohibit their customers from going directly to suppliers. This might make you realize that this middleman is scared of becoming unnecessary as customers go directly to suppliers. The middleman is in a position to know their industry really well... perhaps it's time for you to start up a business matching up the customers with suppliers directly (for a tiny cut, of course), thus killing off the middleman and making yourself a successful company in the process.

Well, that's what PG saw going on here. The SOPA/PIPA behavior made him realize that these media companies are focusing on keeping their position rather than on improving their services, which made it obvious that they are in danger of LOSING their position. What a perfect time to launch a company intended to profit from the large-scale changes that will be happening anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is good economic literature on how bribery evolves into its more transparent and regulated form, lobbying, as a society develops. There is an equally developed literature on the returns on lobbying. Book-ending all of this is the legitimate claim that no elected official can be expected to understand everything of consequence and so will probably need to be "educated" (the base claim of every lobbyist, whether in good faith or not).

Killing lobbying, sadly, is not an option. It will force the influence vectors under the table and cause all sorts of nastiness. People wanting to influence power isn't bad; it just needs to be effectively channeled.

What is needed is more _transparency_. Going both ways.

Going up, we need some way for politicians to effectively guage the support or opposition to a proposed piece of legislation. The ad hoc activism model we have going now is Dark Ages crap.

I can see a future where reps and senators pledge to use an online polling platform for bills that voters registered in their district sign up to voice up with, and where not pledging to use such a system will be anathema to one's campaign.

Going down, we need something that makes campaign financing more effective. By more effective I mean that instead of finding out about donation opportunities ad hoc I have a systematic way of ensuring I have considered every candidate and that every candidate has been evaluated on every issue pertinent to me. Not terrifically complicated software.

Second stage of top-to-bottom transparency revolves around informing voters, but I think that is fairly well covered for the amount of influence it has and the number of people who regularly and actively follow elections.

</comment><comment><USER11> Lobbyists are further proof that shipping code wins and they know this. We can discuss this all we want in the blogosphere, but so long as they are the ones implementing the laws, those are the implementations and architectural decisions we're going to have to live with. Congress is a commit generator, and most of the "code" put in front of them for review are written by lobbyists.

From my understanding, it isn't Congressmen that write the laws most of the time. AFAIK, many laws are written by industry and then handed to Congressmen read and modify, and such bills are handed with explanations and arguments to why they are needed. Such a process with always result in laws that move in the interest of lobbying powers due to the very nature of how negotiation works. In every negotiation, you have an "anchoring" effect, where the final outcome will be near the starting point. With that in mind, lobbyists define the starting point and therefore where the anchor is hooked on every debate.

The only solution I can come up with to this is a requirement that every single bill needs to be drafted in the open with a commit history of who made each and every commit to a bill. Only with this in place would we be able to see how much of the laws are written not by government but by industry. It would also give the people (specifically active concerned citizens) a voice early on in the process so that the position on which the "anchor gets hooked" is more balanced and representative.

Politicians, and especially lobbyists, today say things to the effect that it is difficult to draft laws and discuss things out in the open. What those that complain about this fail to understand is that that is the very essence of democracy. Democracy starts at the beginning of the discussion of public policy, not at the point at which policy comes to a vote.

Dodd, during his speech where he remarked that SOPA was a watershed moment, even said, "the white noise has made it impossible to have a conversation about this. We've gotta find a better way to have that conversation than we have in the last two weeks." This attitude is a clear sign of someone that doesn't understand what a democracy is. That white noise is democracy in action and the best thing we can do is make sure that democracy is happening at the inception of every idea that evolves into a law.

We basically need a super easy, useable git for laws accessible by everyone.

<comment><USER11> According to this article 65% of bills are written by lobbyists: <http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_15452125>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are too many in the tech community that are susceptible to such bullshit reductionist viewpoints. You don't gain anything from ignoring the fundamental features of reality. There are two inescapable points:

1) We live in a highly interdependent society of 300m people. Such a society needs to be governed. Indeed, it needs a lot of government, like any amalgamation of people that are forced to interact with each other. The debate about "more versus less government" is only sensible in the margins. Its really more of a question of "good versus bad government."

2) The public needs to advise elected officials. Because of (1), elected officials have a huge range of issues to deal with. It is literally impossible for them to educate themselves about those issues. Lobbyists fill to role of educating officials.

You're not going to be able to run a society that has, e.g., no regulated industries (see 1) or one where representatives of those industries do not weigh in on that regulation (see 2). Forget about such childish ideas.

Stuff like "get rid of lobbying" is as useful in political debate as statements like "get rid of gravity" are in aerospace engineering. Yes, that would make certain things easier, but...

<comment><USER13> Please provide your reasoning for your assertion in (1). You did not explain why you "need" government of presumably central authority, as opposed to something like an agreed-upon set of protocols operating at a local level.

Please also explain your reasoning for (2). It does not seem immediately obvious that the majority of the public has anything useful to say about policy whatsoever.

<comment><USER12> One can imagine a distributed system of organization, akin to what is used in the internet, but that's still organization. I'm personally a fan of pushing more authority down to the courts, which are both distributed and local. However, at the end of the day it becomes a question of where particular authority exists rather than a question of a need for the existence of authority.

We live in a highly interdependent society of 300m people. Highly specialized division of labor has given us a society where any person depends on probably 10,000 others for their basic needs, and modern technology has given us a society where nearly every human activity has the potential to harm large numbers of people. However you want to structure it, you need government to ensure the harmonious operation of such a society. Government is indeed an emergent phenomenon in human societies. As Google grew from a startup to a multi-national, it didn't have the conscious intention of growing a management layer for the sake of having more management. Yet, Google has a lot of management. Indeed, even in computers we see operating systems exploding in size and complexity as computers themselves become more functional and complex.

Techies take it for granted that startups grow management as they mature, that operating systems get more complex, that schedulers and out-of-order execution structures eat up increasingly large amounts of die-space in CPU's, yet there is a large contingent that thinks that a government running the affairs of 300 million people could be dramatically (meaning 10x, not 25%). Techies don't bat an eye at an OS that takes up 20% of your memory right off the bat, but in the face of a federal civil service payroll that amounts to 1.5% of GDP, many complain loudly of "too much government." Now, there are good arguments to be made that we could trim here and there and maybe get an effective government half the size (though it should be noted our federal system by design doesn't lend itself to particular efficiency), but do you think a federal government with a million employees and $1.5 trillion in expenditures would be so qualitatively different from the one we have now? Of course not.

Re: lobbyists, I didn't say anything about the majority of the public having useful things to say about policy. I said that 1) there are lots of policies that need to be made; and 2) there is no practical way for elected officials to make such policies without input from the affected parties (i.e. lobbyists).

Let me give you a very specific example. Here in Chicago we have two very dirty coal power plants. They're the product of an elementary market failure (the power company that profits from their operation doesn't bear the staggering health costs of that operation). They're also the product of a basic democratic failure (the health costs are highly localized to poor communities, so in effect voters choose to get cheaper electricity at the expense of a poor minority). Shutting down those coal plants is almost certainly the right thing to do, even on a purely economic calculus. Now, a legislator could read up on economic externalities, demography, and public health, and come to that conclusion. Do you think a group of state legislators, who all work part time, are going to be able to do all that? Hell, all that theory would go completely over the heads of many HN-ers, much less most Illinois state legislators! Someone needs to collect the data, estimate the health consequences of the plants, estimate the economic consequences of shutting them down, put together a policy proposal, and tell a legislator in 5 minutes why it is a good idea. That someone is a lobbyist (whatever you choose to call them).

<comment><USER13> (upvoted for good answer, thank you sir/madam)

I would agree that government through some mechanism is needed--thank you for clarifying your position in that regard.

Note, though, that some of your examples--Google's management, OS complexity, and so on--are actually very much contested in some circles. People _accept_ that their OS of choice may be bloated, but few I believe _want_ that.

There's an interesting question present, though, in the "running the affairs of 300 million people", right? To what degree does the government actually "run" those affairs, and ought the government do so?

As regards to the Chicago thing--that sucks, good luck. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live in Connecticut, and people should be aware that we have a great campaign finance system here (best in the country, IMHO) that's made an enormous difference reducing the power of lobbyists at our State Capitol.

To show how the system works, I'll give an example. A typical State Senate campaign runs a budget of about $100k. Under our Clean Elections system, participating candidates must raise $15k in small contributions of $100 or less per person. They then qualify for a grant from the state of $85k to round out their budget.

The grants are funded by state auction of unclaimed property and the like, not by taxpayer dollars (though even if we didn't do it this way, clean elections would still be a worthy thing for taxpayers to support).

This system is purely voluntary, but 75% of all candidates participated in the last state election. Our current governor was the first ever elected under this system.

Of course, this kind of reform doesn't happen out of the blue. A previous governor of our found himself thrown in jail for bribes and corruption. Afterward, both parties found themselves competing to "out-reform" the other, and this campaign finance system was the result.

Politically active folks I know tell me that lobbyists at the State Capitol in Hartford are less than half of their former selves. They still exist, but don't hold nearly as much power as they once did, when we called our state "Corrupticut."

Our system isn't perfect, but I think it's far better than anything that's done in any other state.

More states should move in our direction, but that will require overcoming their own lobbyists first. Not easy, but we are proof that it's possible.

Sadly, many outsiders don't like our system. The US Supreme Court also might destroy it (and a similar system in Arizona). It would be like Citizens United all over again.

But don't just take my word on all of this. Here's more info for the interested:

<http://prospect.org/article/clean-election-state>

<comment><USER4> Money for political campaigns should be a "single payer" system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lobbying in its most basic form is simply free speech. I _should_ have the right to assemble with like minded people and say whatever I want. We should also be free to contact politicians with the message, or pay for ads on TV with our message. How do you stop this and claim to be a free country? I don't much care for Citizens United, but I am certain the founding fathers considered political speech to be covered in the 1st Amendment.

I agree with the idea, but the devil is in the details. Congress should start with a cooling off period for staffers to work for lobbying firms, but I don't even know what it means to "criminalize lobbying".

<comment><USER6> Another way to look at it is that lobbying distorts free speech. Instead of each person having an equal, free, say, a person with more money has a 'greater say', if that makes sense. Sooner or later we'll have to work out whether free speech or true (as far as representation goes) democracy is more important to us.

<comment><USER16> Trying to "equalize" free speech just hands vast swathes of power to the people who get to define "equal". Speech is intrinsically unequal in effectiveness and there's no way to make that go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An important measure to change the skewed dynamics of political financing in the US would be the additional funding of political parties with money from the government. An example of this is Germany, where parties receive money from the state according to the number of votes they collect, in addition to other funding sources. This relieves the pressure to raise money from corporations, and makes politicians less dependent on "money interests".

EDIT: Wikipedia article going into more detail, see under 'Political Revenue': <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_finance_in_Germany>

</comment><comment><USER18> Lawrence Lessig has much to say on the subject:

[http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/01/02/lawrence-lessig-on- money-...](http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/01/02/lawrence-lessig-on-money- corruption-and-politics)

Basically, publicly-funded elections could remove the corrupting influence of corporate money. Still not clear on how we get there, but I may pick up his latest book to learn more

<comment><USER19> Great google talk on the subject for those interested:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it's important to note who the lobbyists are trying to speak for: it's you as a voter. Same with money.

Bottom line: you cannot buy a political office anywhere in America. You still must be voted in. You also cannot directly give money to a politician for their personal benefit; money can only be contributed to their (re-)election campaign. It's valuable because it buys media (that's 60% or more of a campaign cost).

So money, and lobbyists, are just proxies for large blocks of votes.

To fix this problem, you really need voters who stand by their own principles and aren't overly influenced by one-sided media (that's the only reason a politician needs money).

You also need to somehow disconnect the influence of media and advertising from actual voters. Would love to hear ideas on that particular problem.

More realistic changes include those that Lessig proposes: finance campaigns through what is effectively a capped tax credit offered to every taxpayer to allocate among candidates as they see fit, then repeal Citizens United.

<comment><USER4> > _So money, and lobbyists, are just proxies for large blocks of votes._

No, it's not.

I only have one vote, and a few bucks to donate.

Ritchey Rich Jr., over there, has only one vote, and $100 million to donate. He trumps me by many orders of magnitude. And his money is a proxy only for his own self-interest.

 _That_ is the real problem nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lobbying is constitutionally protected, and rightfully so. Without such a protection, the government is under no obligation to open a dialog with citizens. When people organized against SOPA, that was lobbying. That ability to talk with your representatives and leaders should not be removed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was very amazed to learn that in the USA you can legally give money to politicians so that they would vote for something. It is illegal in my country and I have trouble finding rationale why on Earh, could this be legal anywhere?!

<comment><USER23> >so that they would vote for something.

That is illegal, here's what wikipedia has to say

>Similarly, political donors are legally entitled to support candidates that hold positions with which the donors agree, or which will benefit the donors. Such conduct becomes bribery only when there is an identifiable exchange between the contribution and official acts, previous or subsequent, and the term quid pro quo denotes such an exchange.

<comment><USER4> > _That is illegal_

It is _technically_ illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What the OP really meant, I think, was kill corporate contributions to candidates/officials/campaigns.

A company should certainly be allowed to hire someone whose soul job is to educate politicians.

Probably though, they should not be able to buy them fancy dinner, give them gifts, etc. Probably it is even fair to say that lobbying _must_ be transparent. Either through some new system which interfaces citizens with their officials; or, through some direct transparency with regard to intentions of the lobbyist.

Money is the problem, not the lobbying.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's a number of little things that would make lobbying less effective.

\- Move legislators back to their home district

\- Term limits

\- Permit them to only accept contributions from registered voters in their district

\- repeal the 17th amendment

<comment><USER26> Congratulations, you've empowered the permanent bureaucracy.

<comment><USER27> He said "term limits" not "remove all power from elected officials." We already have what you call a "permanent bureaucracy" - it's called the civil service. It executes orders from elected officials - the President, cabinet officers, and every civil servant's paycheck is dependent on the good will of Congress.

Limiting the influence of lobbyist's campaign contributions will empower ordinary citizens since elected officials will be more dependent on pleasing us to get elected rather than pleasing large donors so they can use large donor money to run media campaigns to get elected. Reducing the influence of large campaign donors will not give the civil service any more power than it has now.

<comment><USER28> The civil service is corrupt along with staffers and legislators themselves.

The problem is the revolving door between industry and government... the promise of being able to sacrifice yourself politically translating directly into a cushy job in industry that's gained billions by the malfeasance... high profile examples are legion: Dick Cheney, Dick Gephardt, Pat Toomey, and (more timely) Chris Dodd.

I don't know the best solution but an airgap of related employment (say, 2 years) would probably slow this process down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Should, could, would - are all nice and all.

Convincing democratically-elected representatives to stop receiving money, money they use to buy votes, is a futile fight. Even if you do, many will just be corrupt and still accept money or other kinds of payment. IMHO, I'm starting to think that this system is really good - at least you have the means to find out who paid what and to whom.

Killing Hollywood, or at least doing something to make them think twice the next time, now that's doable.

<comment><USER30> I think the money needed to buy votes is a rather US specific problem and maybe not that hard to attack. As example - in Germany we have 2 laws for reducing the dependency of political parties on private sponsors. The first is that TV stations have to send a certain amount of political spots before elections for all acknowledged parties and the parties only have to pay the self-costs of the stations for that time (around 35% of the price for commercial advertisement). The second law is that parties that get above 0.5% or 1% (depending on the type of election) receive money for each received vote (up to certain limits to prevent that parties just take part in an election to make money from that). I don't say it's perfect and there is still a lot of financing going on beside that, but it shows that the fight at least isn't futile and that it is possible to reduce the dependencies on sponsors.

<comment><USER31> If countries outside of the US can manage to run their government without extreme interference of lobbyists, then there is certainly a way for us to do it, too. The problem here isn't "well, how will politicians get accurate information without having to spend loads of time doing research?" It's more an issue of the culture in the US. If we make a shift towards a system more like the one in Germany mentioned above, it will become the cultural norm in the US. The problem is making that shift and breaking our current financially- driven habits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The lobbying system enabled hollywood, but it didn't force it. They _could_ have attempted to make an honest profit. Plenty of industries do. Instead they _chose_ to attack the internet. They _should_ be held accountable.

I'm sick of the "corporations only want to make money so shouldn't be held accountable" meme. The fact that they have no intrinsic consciences makes it _more_ vital that they be held in check by extrinsic punishments.

</comment><comment><USER33> I see lobbying reform as just a bandaid to the root of the issue. The root of the issue seems to be that congress just has to many opportunities and decisions to make for the welfare of a giant and growing population. They are open to input from millions of different parties all trying to grab a piece of the taxpayer pie.

I really think the solution needs to be limiting the decisions that congress can make by limiting the amount of funds made available to them. The idea that congress should control all of the tax payer dollars made sense when the only expenses were Infrastructure and Security. But now there are just too many expense possibilities.

I would love to see some "real" action against the way congress is spending our money. What if everyone didn't pay their federal taxes in April? If I a board does a really terrible job at running a company, they usually don't get paid and often lose their jobs. Sure we have elections, but it's very clear that these elections favor the incumbents (ahem, lobbying). What if we really challenged their structure?

<comment><USER34> Most people don't pay their taxes in April. Or rather, their employer pays their taxes on their behalf (withholding). Those that don't have withholding (self employed) have to pay quarterly (well, not technically, but you do pay extra). Also, there's this bit:

"The Treasury itself publicly acknowledges, in a fact sheet on the history of the U.S. tax system posted at its website, that wartime withholding not only "greatly eased the collection of the tax," but "also greatly reduced the taxpayer's awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e.[,] it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future.""

(from <http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2092>)

</comment></comment><comment> buff-a The fundamental problem here is not money. It is not lobbyists. It is the artificial market of privileges created by the members of the US Government.

The US Government should _not_ have the power to regulate Doctors, drugs, food, oil, imports, exports etc. It should _not_ have the power to go to war without clear and present danger. It should not have the power to make the Oil business viable by stationing floating fortresses in the gulf at our expense.

For those of you who want to tell me that we need "People To Regulate" Doctors, Drugs and Food: ask yourself, "Is the head of Monsanto the person I want to regulate Food?", because that's what you have. To Regulate Transport Safety, you have a man who makes high-power X-Ray machines.

The problem is not money or lobbyists. The problem is that there is a reason for them to spend their money. Of course, there will be a small number of fundamental rights that will need to be safeguarded - but they will be small, clear and understandable by Citizens.

</comment><comment><USER35> Coming from India, I would see lobbying as an essential part of democracy. At the end of the day, businesses need a way to get to law makers and get laws passed that favor them. The alternative is in India. There are no real lobbyists like you have in America. Companies find it hard to run perfectly legal businesses in a left leaning country. They resort to bribing even to get things done, something that would be trivial in US. Here in US, you have law makers like Gingrich who take up a job as a lobbyist/consultant for companies while taking a break from their day job. In India they take bribes and continue to work as law makers to perform the same thing. I would take lobbying any day vs. bribing. I think of it like this. Left leaning parties oppose lobbying and eventually end up taking bribes. Right leaning parties OK lobbying and play it by the rules by setting up lobbying companies and declaring themselves as lobbyists.

</comment><comment><USER36> It kills me inside when people talk about democracy as though that's how the United States always was and want to "restore the democracy"

Please watch this video before you decide to toss around the word democracy. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXuGIpsdE0>

</comment><comment><USER37> When I last argued for eliminating lobbying, it was pointed out to me that lobbying is supposed to equal representation, and "don't I want a representative government?"

What about limiting lobbying? The amount of money involved is obscene, at some levels. Why not change it to one US dollar per lobbyist maximum?

Although this may not be a great idea, my general intention is to level the playing field a bit, make the job less attractive/lucrative.

The same could be done for political positions, as well. It is my understanding that when the framers put this union together, they could not make a living being a representative. When all was said and done, they went back to their real method of earning a living, whether farming, law, medical practice, etc.

</comment><comment><USER38> The problem is not lobbying, the problem is politicians know their term in office is finite, and they must continue to work on their career development while in office. Essentially, the big corporate lobby groups and politicians have an unwritten contract: A politician that pushes for favorable industry legislation is guaranteed a good job when his term is over.

The only solution I can imagine to mitigate this problem is to keep politicians in the government after their term has ended _forever_. I have no idea what they would do, maybe review legislation, be in committees, or just stay home. But, given the average age of a politician, I would imagine the increased payroll would not be to onerous.

<comment><USER39> Correct, and I'd like to add to your thought. Another problem is consistency. "Business (sector) X" has an income stream, a lobbying budget, and a handful of focused and related political goals. Politicians know this. Also, lobbying is an investment with an implied ROI. This is not the case for "everyone that is not X," who will likely not repeatedly throw money at an issue for many years to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> We must think of the system as a whole. Analysis it as a whole. Then change it for the better. Both lobbyist and politicians are running the system. I dream of a day where the Internet can support a direct democracy, instead of a elected representatives.

</comment><comment><USER41> In Australia we have a government run registry which documents all lobbyists and their activities: <http://lobbyists.pmc.gov.au>

The closest I could find in the US in a quick search was followthemoney.org and the Senate Office of Public Records site (which maintains an archive of filings as required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act).

Is transparency just a matter of making these isolated pieces of information more easily accessible and transformable/visual... and using an easy call to action to petition or donate to pro-bono lobbyists who serve the public as counteraction to corporate (or even foreign) lobbying.

</comment><comment><USER42> Part of the problem is that it's only labelled "lobbying" if you don't like the cause.

Corporations paying for legislation relating to oil drilling rights? That's lobbying. Unions paying for higher teacher salaries? Well, that's different!

</comment><comment><USER32> Lobbying is a fundamentally stable thing. As you observed, the economic incentives to do it are strong. And lobbying is a very general thing. Truly blatant bribery _is_ illegal, but there are many, many ways that someone with money can help a politician and communicate what they want in return. It's hard to imagine closing that off without massive collateral damage.

Hollywood, on the other hand, is vulnerable. They're a middleman in a world that doesn't like middlemen. If we destroy them once, they won't come back.

</comment><comment><USER43> The problem isn't lobbying. The problem is the corruption that occurs when lawmakers grow dependent on campaign cash (much of which comes from those who lobby for wealthy interests).

</comment><comment><USER44> That was exactly what i thought when I read that call: they are aiming for the wrong enemy. I thing you should add Old Media along with lobbying, they are both dinosaurs. The way to go about it is this: divert the public's attention from major mass media, give them easy access to information about politics, and promote public discourse. Make politicians unable to hide their actions and intentions, but also train the voters to look into the substance of matters, not superficialities.

<comment><USER4> Transparency is good - but keep in mind, mass brainwashing practiced by the likes of News Corp. makes it useless, or at least reduces its efficiency greatly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm not expert on the subject but one should also consider how it goes into countries like France where lobbying is already illegal, but still happening in other ways or channels.

</comment><comment><USER46> Completely agree, as I stated yestarday in a comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3500939>

Lobbyists are the cancer of Democracy.

</comment><comment><USER47> The athenians had a way to kill lobbying / corruption:

Make it a democracy with direct participation, removing professional politics out of the equation. If everyone is participating in any vote (and this should scale now much nicely thanks to technology) and magistrates / executive branches were randomly selected for short mandates and with oversee of the complete electorate, then the only person to corrupt would be the citizens themselves. And that is a lot more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER48> Agreed, but you need to go a step further; it's the Presidential system that needs to changed.

google "Presidential vs. parliamentarian system" and you'll see what I'm talking about

<comment><USER49> Also the de facto 2 party system. It is really silly to expect all datapoints spread all over the axes of a multidimensional system to be quantized down to only 2 alternatives. This is a travesty of democracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The problem isn't lobbying, it's bribery. We accept as normal at the national level behavior that might be prosecuted at the local level, but would almost certainly get the rascals thrown out of office. Perhaps the strangest thing about American culture is the almost complete lack of corruption in every sphere except politics.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think the problem is lobbying.

The problem is that we, as electoral body, are interested in politics _only and only_ if something outrages like SOPA happens.

It is not enough just to show up and vote who whatever had nicer TV comercial. Know your representative, talk to him/her, call offices, etc. Be involved.

</comment><comment><USER52> Casino Jack documentary is a pretty good insight into the more unfortunate side of the lobbying process.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Jack_and_the_United_Stat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Jack_and_the_United_States_of_Money)

</comment><comment><USER53> I remember someone suggesting we monitor the democratic process using something like github for legislation documents.

It probably wouldn't end lobbying entirely, but it would make the process a lot easier to monitor.

</comment><comment><USER54> If you criminalize lobbying, won't it simply move to the backstage (like it does in every country where it is a crime)?

On a related example from the past, how well did criminalizing alcohol work?

</comment><comment><USER23> One way to improve the situation is to remove the limit on representatives of 435.

The constitution originally provides for 1 rep for every 30,000 people. If say we go back to that.

</comment><comment><USER55> Why not do both? Why not kill hollywood, and kill lobbying? What, exactly in Hollywood is worth saving?

</comment><comment><USER56> As some people have pointed out lobbying isn't all bad - the problem is the disproportionate influence of organisations with lots of money and corruption.

How about this for a solution: regulate lobbying like sex. Anyone can do it but you can't pay a professional to do it for you.

</comment><comment><USER57> Lobbying is protected by the constitution. Best of luck.

<comment><USER58> Then fix "our" Constitution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Money in politics is the root of all current evil.

</comment><comment><USER59> Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

</comment><comment><USER58> To illegalize lobbying permanently, we have to clean house as a nation (easier said than done). That amounts to doing at least three things on a permanent basis:

1\. Purge congress, and rehab it with genuinely honest legislators (not career politicians) --- for each and every state (or at least the vast majority of them).

2\. Purge at least 5 corrupt Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) members, and replace them with honest, real justices. But you can't just fire SC justices (unless we change the law, that is; see #1, above)... so this process could take time (i.e., not overnight). And two more things relating to SC justices: first, we need to remove or rehab the corrupt farm system of justices which feeds corrupt ones to SCOTUS candidacy in the first place (and probably the farm system for politicians for #1, above), and second: ...

3\. We need to purge the executive office of corruption, including the political party running as both democrats and republicans --- and rehab our political system to create real choice, honest Presidents and cabinets, and select honest SCOTUS justices (i.e., second part of #2, above). Only then should we expect to make any real progress as a nation, or more to the point, only then should we expect to have any chance to derail our current national train wreck.

So, your observation and point are spot on, but we have our work cut out for us. We need Democracy to work, but ours has not been so resilient under pressures of wholesale internal corruption. Can we recover our democracy, or, as far as our national political will is concerned, are we already the walking dead (harsh, but perhaps true)?

Bottom line: we need to rehab our democracy, our nation, our culture, our political expectations, and our political will, and perhaps our political science education system (i.e., from missing in action to addressing organized corruption head-on in curriculum), and then have a go at rehabbing as a nation.</comment>


Hacker takes down CEO wire transfer scammers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/06/hacker_hacks_ceo_wire_transfer_scammers_sends_win_10_creds_to_cops/ <comment><USER2> The accounting guy at an office I've worked for once got a spoofed email from the CEO asking for bank account info to initiate a wire transfer. Thankfully, the first thing he did was bring it to me to verify authenticity. "This doesn't sound like [our CEO]", he said. "It's not rude enough."

<comment><USER3> We've gotten them too. I think we would have caught it regardless but we've always had the bank require two officers to sign off on any transfers anyway. Seems like the hassle is definitely worth it compared to losing millions of dollars.

<comment><USER4> This. We've done this for 30+ years and it's saved us countless times.

<comment><USER5> Seconded Even the smallest club /organisation I have been involved with normally has multiple signatories ( 2 out of 3) for even the smallest cheques.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _" We sent them a prepared PDF document pretending to be transaction > confirmation and they opened it which led to Twitter handles, usernames, and > identity information."_

I'm glad to see that PDF is still a safe format....

<comment><USER7> Use a sandboxed PDF reader, like PDF.js.

Or use one that just doesn't support all the retarded features, like KDE's Okular.

<comment><USER8> Until you need to submit your taxes using the retarded features.

<comment><USER7> I don't think any country would be stupid enough to do that.

In most countries, you just use your eID and a smartcard reader to login, and fill out an online form.

<comment><USER9> Which requires ActiveX :(

<comment><USER7> Does it? ElSter works with JS (and a local authenticator program that interfaces with your smartcard) nowadays, too. Java or ActiveX were only required many years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well at least the scammers got more savvy, the previous template they used was really bad, AKA: "I am Prince/Ambassador/Prime Minister from <InsertRemoteCountryNameHere> and my funds <InsertBigAmount$$$> are locked in <BigForeignBank> (...)"

Also, taking down a scammer operation is quite a noteworthy endeavor! But, let's not forget the "reverse-scammers" are also doing a public service:

[http://www.419eater.com/html/letters.htm](http://www.419eater.com/html/letters.htm)

Some of this stuff is hilarious.

<comment><USER11> Just finished reading most of "Busted!" Wow, this website's gold. I love to read this kind of stuff. Do you have any favorites you'd mind sharing?

<comment><USER10> There's one where he gets the scammers to dress up and take pictures to proove who they are ... you can't make this stuff up :) I'll try to find the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "We sent them a prepared PDF document pretending to be transaction > confirmation and they opened it which led to Twitter handles, usernames, and > identity information."

Wait a second? If you are doing a Wire Transfer, it means you have the Scammer bank account name, routing number and IBAN.

How, in hell, this is not enough to identify the fraudsters?

<comment><USER3> Sometimes it's the bank account of an innocent third party they have hijacked. Or it's opened with false credentials.

<comment><USER12> Receiving 3million USD in your account from a foreign account doesn't trigger any bells? I assume the false credentials account is, probably, brand new and the person in unknown to the agency/public.

Seems sketchy to me.

<comment><USER13> There is a scam where a Nigerian prince says he needs your help, he will send money to your back account and needs you to withdraw that and send him cash. Of course he will let you keep a portion of the money for your trouble.

Only in this scam the prince actually sends you money, so you gladly send some to the prince and keep the rest.

Of course, the cops then want to know why the money from some poor guy's life savings ended up on your bank account...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whoever takes down criminals like this wire transfer scammer is a hero. Fuck crackers, scammers, and other douche bags.

<comment><USER15> (Using a throwaway for obvious reasons here.) I couldn't agree more. Lately I've been taking down scammers left and right. For instance, my wife got a text recently trying to phish Bank of America accounts. She gave me the URL, and I emptied their database and took the site offline. These people are straight-up evil.

<comment><USER14> It may seem like I was doing something pretty obvious: preaching to the choir. But it takes intention, effort, skill and at least some passion or anger drive motivation to follow-through on something like this. It's worth saying out loud that it's an act of heroism.

<comment><USER16> Praising this isn't necessarily a good idea. I'm the last to say something like that, but the CFAA is legitimately terrifying.

To see how little tolerance people have for hackers, look at the Steubenville incident: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/51ot8u/act...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/51ot8u/activist_who_helped_expose_steubenville_rape_of_a/d7ebmwe)

When you do something like this, a mistake -- even a minor one -- can turn you from a heroic vigilante into the hunted.

The point of an indictment is to indict you, but people generally talk about accusations as if they're fact. That would give me pause before executing a plan like this, no matter how moral.

For example, ta_the_gray didn't use Tor, or else their comment would be marked dead. That means they're putting a _lot_ of faith into HN to conceal their IP address. Hopefully they used Tor -> VPN -> HN, but even then, how did they pay for the VPN? Stuff like this takes a lot of training and preparation to pull off flawlessly.

Of course, if you live outside of America, your situation may be different.

<comment><USER14> I'm in the U.S. and I've never been a hero of any sort, just to clear the air on that. :-)

This is my last post of the night so I don't have to time right now to read all that you mentioned and maybe it's not necessary. You're saying that making a mistake going after a cracker or scammer or other douche bag of this sort can easily backfire on you if you make a mistake? The conclusion you make then is don't do it? I'm not even disagreeing if this what you're saying. If it's truly not so much heroism as I claimed but in fact reckless stupidity then I'll concede the match on this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like terrible security to send millions of dollars to arbitrary destinations based on an email.

<comment><USER14> Jesus, no kidding. You'd think that _at least_ a phone call to verify. Presumably, with that much money involved, it's worth a few minutes on the phone for each one.

<comment><USER18> You'd think.

I think a lot of businesses have this or something else coming. There is such a massive indifference to security around in certain companies that reporting legitimate issues will feel embarrassing.

<comment><USER14> I agree. Frankly, I think most people don't give a fuck about security. I can't explain why. If all this shit was happening at gun point, we'd have declared a massive national emergency by now. But because it's "cyber" it does not seem to freak the fuck out of people like it should. I wish I understood.

<comment><USER19> From my experience, it's a combination of "What's the worst that could happen", "It wouldn't happen to us", and "That's what we have insurance for". Not the most reassuring thing.

<comment><USER18> > Not the most reassuring t

Especially when it happens at companies that sells to high-value targets :-/

<comment><USER14> Or even noodles or ice cream cones

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Those Windows 10 password hashes only last a few hours when subjected to > tools like John the Ripper.

Is this on a single Xeon or high end GPU or some enormous equipment farm? How can Win 10 have such a fast hash? Let me guess, backwards compatibility with some ancient windows release?

<comment><USER19> Raw NTLM, and yeah, it's not terribly fast, but it's relatively simple to get up to gigahashes a second (I've got a box that churns out 21 GH/s on raw NTLM). Plus, it's not salted, so it's trivial to just grab every hash and crack them all at the same time. Just keep in mind that you are unlikely to get a raw NTLM unless you've pwned a machine. Network sniffing and spoofing will get you a NetNTLMv1 or v2, and they are much slower, and salted.

<comment><USER5> Its a known weakness working at British Telecom I had to (legaly) break into a clients systems and brute forcing NTLM was how I did it.

I made sure I had sign off from a very very senior manager to ok this though I did not want to get on the wrong side of our internal security guys.

<comment><USER19> I'm basically outsource red team for a bunch of smaller companies, so I'm cracking NTLM, both NetNTLMv1/v2 and raw all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I am all for hacking the scammers, its a little sad that it is so easy to steal information from Windows 10.

</comment><comment><USER22> Are cops actually prepared for this sort of thing? If you handed them the information and was like "Here's a hacker, take them down." The cops have a division or something for cyber security enforcement or whatever? I'm just asking as I don't imagine police officers being the tech type regarding hacking.

<comment><USER23> Like a lot of things, I'd imagine the capability varies tremendously among the different police departments. I wouldn't be surprised if New York or London police have sophisticated detectives dedicated to cyber-security. (I also wouldn't be surprised if they're still woefully outmatched, either)

Meanwhile, if I were to deliver this info to my local police department, I have very little faith they'd even know what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER24> When local police arrived, I had to explain Skype to them. This is when I realised they probably couldn't do anything about it.

<comment><USER25> It could be that their security experts were in their early twenties and had never heard of skype.

<comment><USER26> My 13-year-old brother and sister are on skype constantly. If the computer's open, skype is running in the background.

Skype is also well-known among current chinese college students.

Basically, I think it's unlikely that anyone in their early twenties has never heard of skype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't get wire scams. So you send money to the hacker's account and the hacker transfers it immediately to another bank?

<comment><USER3> yes

<comment><USER27> And the international banking systems in place, with all their power and money, are somehow unable to roll back transactions when it comes to multiple banks.

Sounds more like banks are the real scammers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does this work?

The CEO is ostensibly supposed to wire cash into the mark's bank account, but needs their banking info?

<comment><USER29> Someone pretending to be the CEO emails the CFO, CFO makes the payment. As mentioned they usually compromise the email system first and look for similar requests, this way they know what sort of format the CFO is expecting and the figures that they deal with, try to make it look as usual as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So the hackers can fall for the same trap?

I wonder if there was a situation where a hacker fell for his own trap.

'Oh sweet! Got an email about p_n_s enlargement.'

'Wait a minute....'

<comment><USER31> > I wonder if there was a situation where a hacker fell for his own trap.

I once booby trapped the kitchen sink so the sprayer would shoot whoever turned on the water next... But then I forgot about it and went to wash a dish.

Does that count?

<comment><USER30> If it was an intelligent kitchen, with an IoT faucet and sink, then yeah pretty much.

<comment><USER31> Yep, of course it was, and the tap only poured Glaceau Smart Water. I hacked the dish sprayer with an sql injection.

<comment><USER30> Wow everything is smart in that kitchen, even the water.

Can you inject SQL into the Smart Water, or use a DDoS on it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So why are they tipping off the scammers to this technique?</comment>


The Digital Maginot Line (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/ <comment><USER2> > Like the original Maginot Line, this approach is about as effective a > defense as a minor speed bump.

No

The Maginot Line forced the german army to go through the ardennes. It bunched up all their forces into a tiny crossing surrounded by valleys rivers and other such obstacle.

Two french spotter planes saw this and reported back. The report was regarded as spurious.

Had the report been acted on, the invasion of france probably would have failed.

France and britian had by far the best kit and numbers. However the french were in disarray politically, and the british weren't really integrating properly.

So the real reason barrier was the lack of joined up political thinking.

<comment><USER3> I wonder what would have happened if the allies had screwed Belgium over and not advanced to protect it.

As well as the crazy political situation in France, their army was also far too top heavy and old, and relied on ww1 era comms. I saw the average age of the high command was something like 30 years older in France than Germany.

Maybe you could say the top heaviness was due to French politics, and that the the old generals did not invest in new comms, but I think that is a stretch.

But, yes, I agree with you. The maginot line did exactly what it was supposed to do

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah yes, this is Venkatesh Rao's site, who is some kind of "futurist".

It's the wrong metaphor. The Maginot line was supposedly impenetrable for keeping clearly labelled troops on the other side. The modern situation is something much more porous, much more like Cold War (counter)intelligence. Or this discussion of "interpretative superiority": [http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2018/02/18/why-corbyn-is- th...](http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2018/02/18/why-corbyn-is-the-only- effective-remainer/) (although I disagree with the conclusion). A system that can detect ideological incursions, vector an intercept response, and shoot down memes that get over the line. Analogy between forum moderation and those Phalanx CIWS systems for shooting down missiles.

The West doesn't _have_ a central ideological defence system though, or at least not since the Cold War. Instead it's more like an immune system. Individual agents wander around the body politic attacking ideas they find unfamiliar. Responses to ideological challenge happen _not_ through central coordination but by the actions of individual and factions.

The effectiveness of this system has become an autoimmune disease that can be exploited by pathogenic actors. The US police are a good example of this: their ideological defence is so strong it can cover even crimes committed in broad daylight on video.

<comment><USER5> Pathogenic actors don't even wander around. See the description of how the Committee on Public Information prepared a hitherto-isolationist US public to enter WWI. (I think in one of Bernays' books, or maybe the Creel report?)

They used knowledge of the social graph to proceed clique by clique, triangulating such that their point of view appeared to come from multiple independent outside sources. In 1917.

<comment><USER4> The daily mail published the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter) in 1924 and tried to do the same thing just very recently in alleging that Corbyn was a Czech spy. Different century, same tactics.

(see my comment below about "identity" being irrelevant to bad actors)

<comment><USER5> or, one century prior and more subtly, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch)

as to identity: [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm) notes

"First point to note is the character of the source. There are several choices on this: the true source (who really got it out?) and the ostensible source (whose name is signed to it?); also, the first-use source (who used it the first time?) and the second-use source (who claims merely to be using it as a quotation?). Take the statement: "Harry said to me, he said, 'I never told anybody that Al's wife was a retired strip-teaser.' Mind you, I don't pretend to believe Harry, but that's what he said, all right." What are the possible true sources for the statement of fact or libel concerning Al's unnamed wife? What are the alternatives on ostensible sources? First use? Second use? The common sense needed to analyze this statement is of the same order as the process involved in analyzing the statement: "Reliable sources in Paris state that the visit of the American labor delegation has produced sensational repercussions in Moscow, and that Moscow, upon the basis of the American attitude, is determined to press for unification of the entire German labor movement.""

and more directly to your point (that overt identities may not even matter), I would say Zweig's Schachnovelle is an extended meditation on parties who continue politics by openly unlawful yet unopposed force.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (a) I have former-Yugoslav colleagues who believe that "Information Wars" were already at work last century.

(b) in Maginot's defence, junior french planners may well have imagined a Blitzkrieg, and rightfully discarded it, assuming the germans wouldn't have an energy source. A coal-based army doesn't move quickly.

The french were to learn that a synfuel-based[1] army _can_ blitz. The germans, on the other hand, _had_ to blitz: after failing[2] to reach Grozny and Baku to replenish energy stocks they were put on the defensive.

Crude Rules Everything Around Me

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Prelude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Prelude)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls#/media/File:Volgograd_and_the_Motherland_statue.JPG)

[https://books.google.ch/books?id=6_h3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.ch/books?id=6_h3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=hitler+maikop+grozny+liquidieren&source=bl&ots=4_Zyj- jHAQ&sig=ACfU3U0Erz0VOEaHfxX5UAYA1Ue5qVWE5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvi_Ke7ZfqAhURQhUIHUfDBasQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=hitler%20maikop%20grozny%20liquidieren&f=false)

<comment><USER4> You've reminded me to add _The Prize_ (Yergin) to lockdown reading. And that I miss theoildrum blog.

(I would also appreciate an ideological history of the Yugoslav war, how neighbors were persuaded to murder one another so readily and what should be learned from it..)

<comment><USER6> You might, as I do, prefer written sources, but I must recommend watching (even just the first part of) this BBC documentary. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDADy9b2IBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDADy9b2IBM)

<comment><USER5> especially 8:00-9:20 and 12:00-13:15

also 31:40 "All the changes we made to the structure of Serbia were implemented using perfectly legal means. We followed the proper procedure."

(Milošević's projection game appears to have been strong. Everything was everyone else's fault.)

This _was_ a BBC production, so we expect to see the NATO side, but given that Milošević's lawyer had a fool for a client, I am not feeling poorly at being inclined to their editorial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Ardennes, it turned out, was not impenetrable. Moving through the forest > would perhaps have been a futile effort for an army using the attrition > warfare strategies prevalent in World War I, but it was vulnerable to new > modes of warfare. As the French focused on building the Maginot Line, the > Germans developed exactly such a new model of warfare — Blitzkrieg —and sent > a million men and 1500 tanks through Ardennes (while deploying a small force > to the Maginot Line as a decoy)._

While not outright false, this isn't exactly true. Ardennes' forest was in fact near impenetrable, but the Germans took the road. It would have been more than feasible to stop them while on that road, but before a decision could be made as to attack them there, they were through and it was too late.

The _débâcle_ had many causes but the major one was a failure of thinking. In 1938 an important French general, Louis Chauvineau, wrote a book called "Is an invasion still possible?" in which he, of course, answered by the negative. The book enjoyed a modicum of success and had a reprint in... 1940: it was still in bookshops in France when Hitler was parading in front of the Eiffel tower.

Beware of experts.

</comment><comment><USER8> After reading this it occurs to me that a key aspect of the real world that is missing in the digital variant is identity. When people believe they cannot be seen they are prone to doing things that they might not otherwise do. If one needed a licence to drive on the information highway where digital-traffic violations had fines and/or jail terms, things might be different.

Sounds un-workable? Perhaps. But there was time when anyone could drive an animal powered vehicle with no certification. Once transportation technology became too powerful regulation had to follow to prevent chaos. How different is the current situation? Why does the local radio station, with 5 KW transmitter, need a FEDERAL license but Facebook and Twitter do not? Political leaders in the early 20th century seemed to understand the power of electronic media and did not shirk their responsibility to manage the society they found themselves in.

I am of the opinion that the current flock of political leaders, many of whom were born before the micro-computer existed are incapable of drafting the appropriate balanced language for this century. It will therefore fall on those born in the digital era to figure it out but the speed of digital change means we are already late and damage will be done before solutions exist.

<comment><USER4> Much of the most egregious ideological warfare is carried out in public in newspaper columns under people's own names. And on the other side whole categories of discussion can only exist while pseudonymous; see the other thread on the front page about slatestarcodex.

If we're talking transparency, we should look at "think tanks" and their funding.

Identity is not sufficient to deal with rule violations, either. We know who killed Breonna Taylor, it's just a choice not to arrest them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article isn't worth the time. TL;DR: A lot of digital ink was spilt about a digital Maginot line, but skimps out on spilling ink for the solution

> The solution to this problem requires collective responsibility among > military, intelligence, law enforcement, researchers, educators, and > platforms. Creating a new and functional defensive framework requires > cooperation.

So the solution is that we must work together, starting with the military? Is there something actionable here?

> It's time to prioritize frameworks for multi-stakeholder threat information > sharing and oversight. The government has the ability to create meaningful > deterrence, to make it an unquestionably bad idea to interfere in American > democracy and manipulate American citizens.

What deterrence are you proposing? The kinetic kind?

> It can revamp national defense doctrine to properly contextualize the threat > of modern information operations, and create a whole-of-government approach > that's robust regardless of any new adversary, platform, or technology that > emerges. And it can communicate threat intelligence to tech companies.

And that's it? Reading the content from think tanks at least put out something more substantial.

<comment><USER10> there's no solution. this is an open problem

the first step, IMO, is stating it correctly i.e. we must state the problem correctly so we may ask how it can be solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The France's "Maginot Line" is used here as a metaphor to ground the author's idea--increasing stories of security breaches and disruptive cyber-terrorist acts are visible signs of the top-down dark state.

Ok. And on the other hand, technology is integrated into society. Technologists (private actors, employees) will see opportunities and vulnerabilities, and make black/white hat choices (like in finance?). And, sprawling organizations with unaccountable funds and charismatic managers will form groups (sounds like an interesting job and more fun than, you know, work) and possibly do some unethical $#it and hide behind lawyers and money. //End dialectical rant

Nicely written, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> > There is a war happening. We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: > an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological > extremists leverage the social infrastructure underpinning everyday life to > sow discord and erode shared reality.

Cite maybe? Like what is this even referring to? Some level of specificity would be great.

<comment><USER13> It is all fear mongering. Any foreign state propaganda drowns in superior domestic.

Disconnect the nuclear reactors from the internet allready and calm down everyone. It is not like "russian hackers" is behind the riots in the US or bad covid advice.

<comment><USER14> I'm amazed by the daft things people believe about Covid. The best thing a foreign power could do to take out a nation would be to get them to fight among themselves, and there is fighting all over the place, from memes to counter memes, to riots in the streets.

I just can't tell if foreign agitators helped it along, or if it didn't need any help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the first couple paragraphs, he says that the Cold War involved shadowboxing (it involved numerous medium sized wars, just not WW3) and that the Maginot Line was ineffective (it was quite effective, that's why the Germans went through the forest to get around it). I stopped reading.

</comment><comment><USER16> (2018)

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for not tagging the title in the first place. Remiss of me, but no intent to mislead. Perhaps a mod might fix the title?</comment></comment>


The UBI already exists for the 1% - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/the-ubi-already-exists-for-the-1-d3a49fad0580#.1wuim2od4 <comment><USER2> I think one of the most ingenious political ploys in American history was when the wealthy convinced the working class that capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than income taxes.

I'll never forget having lunch with my co-workers, all of whom were paying 30-35% in income taxes, lecturing me that a 20% capital gains tax was unfair because the investor, "already paid taxes" on that money when it was first income, so taxing the gains amounted to double-taxation.

I've never understood the argument that raising the capital gains tax would slow economic growth either. Why would people give up free money just because they have to give a little more back to the government that makes the marketplace possible?

<comment><USER3> Inflation isn't deductible, which means that bonds can pay extremely high (real) capital gains rates. If the bond pays 2.5% nominal per year, and inflation is 2% per year, and you pay a 20% capital gains rate, then you make 0.5% in real returns and owe 0.5% in capital gains taxes. Which is a 100% effective tax rate.

Stocks are more forgiving, at 2% inflation, plus 8% nominal returns (6% real), and a 20% tax, you would pay 26.7% effective taxes. At 6% inflation, it would be a 40% tax rate.

So this all made more sense when taxes were reformed under Reagan, which had a high inflation environment as a backdrop. Realistically, it would probably make more sense to have inflation deductible and progressive, but equal rates for cap gains and labor income. (edit: for full equivalency, you might also need a rebate for capital losses).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Capital is not abstract, capital is a production input (not sure the correct English name for this), the same as iron, concrete, flour, etc. You don't find any problems in paying for flour, do you? Then why is it a problem to pay for capital?

Another thing. State "capital" has been done, it's called communism (or heavy socialism), it doesn't work. Why not? Because the people making decisions on State "capital" do not get any of the downsides. You burn 50% of State owned capital? Who cares, it's not yours anyway.

And final one - managing capital is work! Knowing where to put your cash is work and it has a huge impact. Think how much of an impact can have somebody investing billions in space exploration (Musk?), or aging, or cancer. There are plenty of big trends worth investing that will give humanity as whole immense benefits (just look at the past 100 years).

Capitalism is not perfect, post-scarcity is a real threat, but the author is making the wrong arguments. The real problem is what people will do once we reach post-scarcity? What religions will they believe? What philosophies? How will they spend their time? Can they bear a life with 0 problems (I am not so sure I could)?

<comment><USER5> > And final one - managing capital is work! Knowing where to put your cash is > work and it has a huge impact. Think how much of an impact can have somebody > investing billions in space exploration (Musk?), or aging, or cancer. There > are plenty of big trends worth investing that will give humanity as whole > immense benefits (just look at the past 100 years).

Musky investing a billion dollars into a company the produces things isn't the issue. Musk would be taking a risk to build something that can reasonably fail. The issue is that (with our largely service based economy) many large capital holders simply charge rent and rent seeker have negligible risk compared to the owners of physical capital.

<comment><USER4> You can't charge rent if you don't invest into something. If you know how to get rent with 0 investments and risks, please tell me, I'll pay you for some consulting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Putting aside the author's soak the rich rhetoric, the recommendation, which is basically to develop a sovereign wealth fund and pay UBI from that, has seen success. Norway, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been able to give back to their citizens through shrewd financial planning and resisting the populist urge of deficit spending.

In America, however, we've gone the other way, with gdp of ~$18 trillion, and federal debt also at ~$18 trillion, we've got a $63 trillion hole to dig ourselves out of before we can pay a net 10% of GDP out to support the poor assuming 6% real returns on the fund. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely we would ever see the political will for a such a huge austerity project.

Before you go saying we should just 'snag society's capital income' as the author recommends, do note that large scale nationalizations as we've seen during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in China and more recently Venezuela's actions under Chavez and Maduro have produced truly devastating economic and humanitarian results.

</comment><comment><USER6> Two points.

First, income from rent (say, for real estate) isn't divorced from work. The landlord has to make some arrangements for the upkeep of the property. The renter, by virtue of being a renter, can't be responsible for everything. If nothing else, the landlord must make and maintain a business relationship with a property management firm.

Second, critics of universal basic income have not neglected to note the destructive effects of the lack of useful labor among the upper classes. The decadent aristocracy has been a trope in fiction, history, and priestly sermons for ages.

Anti-Enlightenment scholars and traditionalist Catholics have pointed out that the nobles in the Vendee worked the fields much like the peasants. The nobles had more land and better land, but not extravagantly more. The Vendee and Brittany launched the counter-revolt that nearly ended the French Revolution. It was the provinces whose nobility were busy buggering mistresses in Versailles and Paris that fell most easily to the Jacobins.

<comment><USER7> Rent is said to be divorced from work for the wealthy people who did nothing and inherited their large dowry, buildings and land owned. The wealthy inherited person receives income without doing any "work". Sure, it's difficult getting up, taking showers and eating breakfast, figuring out what charitable function to go to that weekend, but some people don't call such folks with inherited wealth "working". Yes, having a place to rent and live in NYC is certainly useful for society. But the people with inherited wealth who own such buildings and receive income for doing nothing more than paying some firm to take care of their building aren't really achieving much. You could make a similar argument about say my investments in mutual funds in my 401k. I will (hopefully) make money off those investments. If I became very wealthy and say my grandchildren inherited them, I'd be happy my children had assets to help take care of them, but my offspring would be part of the rentier class.

Why is it a trope that some wealthy people don't do any work? It's no doubt true. Look at some of Trump's kids. Of course some wealthy people do lots of work.

Interesting to hear about 'the Vendee'. It's certainly true that the vast majority of nobles were not like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This poses the question: instead of paying out a monthly UBI, why not give every citizen the equivalent lump sum up front? They can then decide how to invest that money themselves.

<comment><USER9> For what period? A year? A lifetime? If the period is too long, you'll just get ridiculous inflation, and also the money has to come from somewhere (if the state doesn't want to borrow it all up front). I think the idea of UBI is to be sustainable, steady-state, so monthly seems a good interval.

<comment><USER10> Depending on how you wish to behave on a moral level a yearly payment might limit the expenditure of the program. For example a friend of mine applied for and eventually was accepted into the SSDI program. He was disabled due to the fact that he was addicted to xanax and heroin. You have to wait a decent period of time (6 months?) before the benefits kick in, at the end of that period you receive a lump sum for the period of time that you waited. Well my friend took his new found riches, ran to his dealer, and promptly overdosed.

I'd argue the cost savings are a net negative in that case but something to consider.</comment></comment></comment>


Jürgen Schmidhuber on Consciousness (AMA on Reddit, 2015) - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_am_j%C3%BCrgen_schmidhuber_ama/cp44iba/ <comment><USER2> It's an amazing theory and it fits a raw observation of the world beautifully.

If we are indeed problem solvers, what is the actual problem we're solving? Any?

<comment><USER3> It's essentially an evolutionary explanation, so the problem domain is anything that increases reproductive fitness, yes.</comment></comment>


Responsive vertical Timeline.css - <AUTHOR> http://christian-fei.com/tutorials/simple-vertical-timeline-with-css/#4

<comment><USER2> This looks really neat, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! I would love to know if/where you will be using it? If you like you could comment on the article and tell me there, would be much appreciated! :)

<comment><USER2> I might use it on my resume or my projects list. Not really sure yet.</comment></comment></comment>


Behind the scenes of a failed Hacker News launch - martin-adams https://meda.io/blog/startup/2016/05/22/behind-the-scenes-of-a-failed-hacker-news-launch.html <comment><AUTHOR> Looking at the previous submission, I found the text more compelling than the video: unsurprising me because editing is really hard and very time consuming relative to editing text or even audio. Video is linear and text with headings is more of tree and hence can surface an explicit hierarchy for conceptual importance, summaries, etc to the user/reader.

My take on launching via Hacker News is that for a vlog or even a blog, there's high impedance. Recognition is fickle; one popular submission poorly correlates to the popularity of the next and subsequent submissions; and even the most popular items fade quickly.

My intuition is that serial content, like many things, tends to obtain overnight success "after ten years of hard work" and that blogs and vlogs become successful one reader/viewer at a time.

It might be worth looking at Jeff Meyerson's softwareengineeringdaily as a peer study in the space. It's a fairly recent enterprise based on regular content that might be of interest to the Hacker News community. That said, he's focused promotion efforts mostly elsewhere. My impression is that over the years, Hacker News has fewer and fewer sources where every piece of new content stands a high chance of popularity.

Anyway, good luck.

<comment> martin-adams Thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Your observation over text and video is really great. You're absolutely right that video is too linear. I will consider carefully the use of video.

I will definitely check out softwareengineerdaily. You're right that building and audience happens one at a time. This is reassuring to me as it means I can focus on the long term.

All in all, this is a valuable learning exercise, and it's feedback like this which is invaluable.

Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment> e-sushi I like this… turning a (let's just call it) "fail" into the "breeding ground of something new".</comment>


GCHQ does not breach human rights, judges rule - andrey-p http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30345801

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe not directly, but indirectly???

besides, what's more human that a desire for, and expectation of, privacy in non-public settings.</comment>