Tim O'Reilly's Reflections on Apple's Tax Avoidance Tactics - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/posts/JpobfLAreyo <comment><USER3> This is a classic example of singling out one particular actor for blame when the problem is clearly systemic.

There is little value for society to spend its time saying, "Apple is bad because it minimizes, within the contours of the law, its tax burden." And, contrary to Mr. O'Reilly's assertions at the beginning of his piece, I don't say this because I think Apple can spend its money better than the US Government can. For this argument, I don't care either way because it's irrelevant; he merely dismissed a strawman.

The question has to do with our tax code. Is it achieving the goals that we created it to achieve? If so, then there is nothing to discuss, so presumably it's not. If it's not achieving its goals, let's look at the entire picture and talk about where its failures are and how we should change it. Attacking any one particular company is merely a distraction that impedes our ability to discuss the things that actually matter.

<comment><USER4> When that actor is that largest player on the stage, and the article (and Tim's commentary on it) make clear that many others are simply playing the same game, then your criticism falls doubly flat.

The biggest and most profitable companies are avoiding huge portions of their tax obligations. It's a systemic problem. Both points are made by the NY Times piece and Tim O'Reilly's commentary on it. It's hardly a distraction.

And yes, the underlying dynamics of the problem are manifold. Both statute and regulation should change.

<comment><USER3> Unless you alleging fraud, then it's patently incorrect to say that Apple is avoiding its _obligations_. Apple is merely demonstrating what their obligations under the law are, and people aren't liking what they see. That's fine; let's change the tax code.

<comment><USER4> Given that 1) the law involved is tremendously complex, that 2) enforcement and compliance actions by the IRS are hugely underfunded and undermanned, and 3) that corporate and monied America has an undue direct influence on the legislative process, including tax legislation, then I'd say that de facto fraud if not de jure fraud is an open question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to hear about a PERSON who routinely went out of their way to overpay for a service. When was the last time you arrived at a store, saw a shirt, and said, "I'd like to pay you an extra $10 for this shirt because I believe in what you're doing."

Never.

For that matter, when was the last time you called up the IRS and said, "Dammit America, you're doing such a good job, I'm sending an extra $5,000."

Never. In fact, the most you or I have ever given extra is the $3 election fund.

Let's stop joking around, people. Companies, like people, are going to find ways to pay as little as possible, so long as it's legal. Let's stop blaming Apple and blame ourselves: reform the tax code to be simple, fair, and progressive.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to hear about a PERSON who routinely funnels their income tax through a different country so that they pay less tax, despite not really living or doing much business there, nor stamping Designed In Different Country on everything they make.

<comment><USER7> You can't legally do that. That's an important difference. But you can do other things to reduce your tax burden, and people _do_ hire tax professionals to do that. H&R Block even has a "Maximum Refund Guarantee".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A classic substitution, substituting an argument that government should exist for an argument that a government should get a given bit of money. It's not the same question, and following that substitution to its logical conclusion leads to the government needing 100% of the money. (And I do mean _logical_ conclusion, not extreme conclusion. This is a fallacious argument.)

Those libertarians he references are strawmen.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. From what I understand, he is not talking about _government_ needing the money, but _society_ needing the money (in his example, which is, after all, the central reason for his post, he talks about him taking in money for a group of people to organize an event for everybody).

This maps well to his addressing those "strawmen" libertarians. Most libertarian rhetoric builds on the fact that people have been made suspicious of government and are suggested to think of government as "the other". Likewise, you seem to try to force his argument on its head - Nobody argues whether government should exist and you suggesting it makes me wonder how closely you've read the post.

"The Government" is the subgroup of society who have been elected by the rest of society to invest part of societies resources to the advantage to everybody. The basic math being that society will be better off having spent the money in that way than had it kept the money. Whether or not you agree that that is happening, that is the basic plan.

Tims post simply says: If we want to be a society, that comes at a cost and somebody has to pick up the tab at the end of the night and the system to make that happen is called taxation.

Claiming that this in itself "fallacious argument" because _you_ actually know what his argument is seems ambitious, but I simply have no idea where you take that from. Let's argue the reverse: Since you don't seem to disagree that a government in itself is a good concept, who do _you_ think should pay the price for it?

<comment><USER8> "If we want to be a society, that comes at a cost and somebody has to pick up the tab at the end of the night and the system to make that happen is called taxation."

Your own summary simply repeats the fallacy. That someone must pick up the tab does not imply that the tab must be larger than it is today, or that the tab must be paid for by this particular chunk of money. It does not follow. It is not a logical argument.

It isn't even about libertarianism. It doesn't even rise to the level of an argument against libertarianism, because it isn't well-formed enough to even be called a proper argument. "We need a thing" and "We need more of a thing" are _two completely different arguments_ , and you shouldn't allow one argument to be substituted for another without noticing.

<comment><USER9> Well, that's another thing that nobody is arguing. Maybe that really is where you misunderstand Tim's position: He does not say we need more taxation, he says that there are actors in the game that do not pay their fair share.

You're doing your own argument a disservice by trying to modify the position of your opponent. That's not how discussions work.

The position that Tim (and I) argue is simple: There is X amount of money that it costs to run society. While, yes, we constantly have to figure out what that amount is, there is no question that it should be paid by everybody in that society. And that the stronger players (who both benefit most from a well funded society and who have the most to give) should be decent enough to step in appropriately.

<comment><USER3> Were you 'decent enough' to pay more in taxes than you owed this year? Of course not. Why should anyone else feel compelled to do so?

<comment><USER9> Phew, I'm not sure whether I even have to respond to that non sequitur.

Obviously I'm not a big corporation and obviously we're talking about tax loopholes here, not paying extra taxes on top of what you owe.

<comment><USER10> What is a loophole, if not something that reduces the amount of tax you owe?

Concretely, how do you propose Apple calculate how much tax they owe if "the amount the law requires" is not the correct amount?

<comment><USER6> I'm sure it was the intent of the framers of tax law that large corporations should funnel a third of their income to a different country as part of "the amount the law requires".

<comment><USER10> Apple is a company, not a mind reader. How are they to know where to funnel the money except where the law tells them?

<comment><USER6> I think you'll find the law does _not_ say "US corporations should funnel their money to Ireland". Apple (and other corps) hire people to find edge conditions in law that they can exploit - they are not the doe-eyed innocents 'complying with the law' that you're painting them as.

They are dodging tax laws using technical loopholes, not complying with the spirit of the tax laws. Stop being an apologist.

<comment><USER10> How hard would it be to write a law that says "don't funnel your money to Ireland"?

<comment><USER6> If you think it's that simple, try writing to your representative with your solution to the problem.

But ultimately the issue is you painting them as innocents in this, 'they're not mind-readers', when the main article suggests that they were actually aggressive pioneers in finding ways to dodge the spirit of tax laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> His family example doesn't really work. If we had all agreed to throw this big party then each person who agreed stated his obligations to the party. If someone had not agreed to the party, they simply would have not payed and not come. This is not how it works with the government. You are forced to come to the party and pay for it to make everyone else happy. It does not matter that it cost you or that it is not what you want to do. You must surrender yourself for societies "greater good."

It is also worth mentioning that happiness is a subjective value. It is pointless to draw a conclusion about what make society happy when only individuals can be happy. If someone goes their own way, they are not leaving happiness on the table, they are seeking it out elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't see how Tim's conclusions follow from his premises.

If we are supposed to think of general taxation and the overall amount of government spending as reasonably justified on the grounds that these things were the outcome of a democratic process which "the people" (somewhat indirectly) agreed on, doesn't the same logic suggest that _the loopholes_ are similarly reasonable and justified?

Loopholes aren't a bug in an otherwise perfect system; they are _part of the negotiating process_ that produces laws. If it weren't for the loopholes, legislators wouldn't be able to find support for tax rates as high as they are. The loopholes are there for a reason. The loopholes are _part_ of the exact same "social contract" that produced the taxes.

<comment><USER9> No, that would be overly relativistic. There is a huge corporate culture that drives tax law lobbying. This has created a situation where tax law more likely reveals the will of the corporations, not the will of the people.

<comment><USER13> There is a huge government union culture that drives spending law lobbying. This has created a situation where spending laws more likely reveals the will of unions, not the will of the people.

<comment><USER9> That may or may not add to the problem, yes, I'm not an expert in that area. If I was forced to guess, though, I would still say that most of the money influx comes from corporations.

<comment><USER13> You'd be wrong. Plenty of money comes from unions.

<http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A>

However, the point I'm making is that once we claim the democratic process doesn't justify the taxation side due to lobbying, we also can't claim the democratic process justifies the spending side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The whole point of taxes is that we can't rely on voluntary donations to fund public goods. It's pointless to argue that people or corporations should voluntarily pay more taxes than they're legally required to pay.

<comment><USER9> > _It's pointless to argue that people or corporations should voluntarily pay > more taxes than they're legally required to pay._

[[Citation needed]] - don't see what you're talking about in the post - <USER2> is arguing that?

<comment><USER15> Are there major corporations already doing this ?

<comment><USER9> I don't know and that's not what I was asking - I tried to clarify that I was asking OP to cite where in the post that this discussion is about somebody argued that corporations pay voluntary, additional taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I admittedly have a poor understanding of corporate taxation and offshore avoidance, but this example makes sense to me. Though government is not a family, and it is safe to say all parties will act selfishly. This may further his argument that there should be no tax exceptions or render it irrelevant, I'm not sure.

</comment><comment><USER17> The family analogy is heart-warming, but scaled up to a societal/country level it can lead to destructive practices like nepotism and tribalism.

<comment><USER18> The way I usually say it is like this:

Communism works best between two spouses, a little worse with immediate family, a little worse with extended family, a little worse with orthodox religious communities. People can see the trend. As the number of people that get involved goes up the total number of connections goes up n + 1 choose two and the chance that you deeply care for them goes down.</comment></comment>


Cross Platform simple and secure password management from commandline - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lucasepe/pwsafe <comment><USER2> is there any way to password protect passwords when using the cli? not sure how i feel about stuff like that ending up in bash history

<comment><AUTHOR> the password is read from console without echoing and is not saved in history. Here the specific code: [https://github.com/lucasepe/pwsafe/blob/cf86ca21f88ff86dc181...](https://github.com/lucasepe/pwsafe/blob/cf86ca21f88ff86dc18126936db76c3ed094e38c/cmd/internal/utils.go#L34) and here a great description about the ReadPassword function [https://www.mycodesmells.com/post/reading-password-input- in-...](https://www.mycodesmells.com/post/reading-password-input-in-go).

Give it a shot...download the binary for your OS and play with it. thanks, luca

<comment><USER2> hey thanks for the reply and the info~! i'll check it out</comment></comment></comment>


Zero day exploit for Firefox 3.6 - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Zero-day-exploit-for-Firefox-3-6-936124.html <comment><USER2> Am I understanding this correctly, Intevydis sells exploits to people who want to make bot nets?</comment>


Skype is down - <AUTHOR> http://heartbeat.skype.com/2017/06/skype_connectivity_problems.html <comment><USER2> Over 24h now for me.</comment>


Blockchain reading list - <AUTHOR> Looking to get informed. A guided reading list would be blessed. <comment><USER2> Try a google search, e.g. "site:github.com awesome blockchain"

[https://github.com/naolduga/awesome- blockchain](https://github.com/naolduga/awesome-blockchain) seems fairly comprehensive</comment>


Scientists claim to have mapped unconscious human thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1117286.html

<comment><AUTHOR> With a neuroscience background, I can attest that this is yet again another example of hyperbole in pop psychology. However, it is interesting to note that PG said in one of his essays that the human mind constantly constructs a model unconsciously of the world around it.

That rang true to me because I've always noticed a phenomenon that occurs when I go to the mall. I get extremely tired (mentally) after just 2 hours. Why? My hypothesis is that I've taken in an unusually high amount of stimuli in those 2 hours by seeing, and possibly not even being aware of, thousands of items, prices, and faces.</comment>


Using Enumerated Types in Python - <AUTHOR> https://johnlekberg.com/blog/2020-06-06-enum.html <comment><USER2> Enums are best when combined with a language that does pattern matching and that can warn you if you forgot a value in your case statement. Python lacks this, so there is no spectacular benefit of using enums over just a list of strings.

<comment><USER3> The article is incredibly misleading. Python Enums are way more powerful than what is showcased there.

First, rudimentary/basic enums are as simple as instance variables on a class and allow super-helpful IDE "auto-completion" that doesn't necessitate the use of magic-strings to at least "set" the enum. I've been using this ridiculously simple trick since 2.5 ten years ago. Magic-strings are bad, and even worse when you have a disparate code-base in a dynamically typed language. Example:

        class MyEnum(object):
            Pass = 1
            Fail = 2

        my_value = MyEnum. <-- at this point, the IDE gives you code-completion.

Second, real Enums added as a language-feature along with type-hinting are almost 100% on-par with statically typed languages. See:

        class MyEnum(Enum):
            Pass = 1
            Fail = 2

        def my_func(did_they_pass: MyEnum):
            if did_they_pass.Something:   # IDE / type-checker will go nuts here.
                print("Something")

Edit: Forgot the main point. Switch/case uses are only a small sub-set of the uses of Enums. So even basic/crappy enums are better than magic strings in a dynamically-typed language. Also, please don't use "list of strings" for enums in Python, there are much better ways to do that sort of thing that preclude unnecessary bugs popping up.

<comment><USER4> So, you don't use open("w"), do you ? You use the non magic open(os.O_WRONLY) of course.

Because magic strings are bad.

<comment><USER5> I will now - thanks for the tip! :)

And, moreover, this will inspire me to ask "How many other traditional magic numbers/strings/etc have I gotten used to that might be defined more readably?" strcmp, I'm looking at you!

I know your post was sarcastic/snarky but it was genuinely helpful

<comment><USER6> f.tell(offset, os.SEEK_CUR) over f.tell(offset, 1)

[https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.SEEK_CUR](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.SEEK_CUR)

I wish the docs on f.tell at least mentioned the option

[https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/inputoutput.html#methods-...](https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/inputoutput.html#methods- of-file-objects)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It always feels a little clumsy when these class generators require the name of the identifier to which they are assigned.

      Clown = circus.Actor("Clown")

Why is it needed, instead of just creating an anonymous class?

      Clown = circus.Actor()

Or allowing the class factory to manipulate the current namespace?

      circus.Actor("Clown")
      bozo = Clown()

I feel like I am perilously close to answering my own question, but not close enough. I'm sure there's a good reason, but I don't know enough of the Python internals to figure it out.

<comment><USER8> > Why is it needed, instead of just creating an anonymous class?

I think the question should be: why do you want an anonymous class? If it's sufficiently ad-hoc that it doesn't warrant a name, you would typically use a dict.

> Or allowing the class factory to manipulate the current namespace?

I think that would just be considered too surprising and non-standard behaviour (other Python functions don't get to modify the scope they're called from).

<comment><USER7> Named tuples, the example I called out, are a good improvement over dicts for adhoc structs that don't require full class definitions.

But you're right. It's hardly cumbersome to create classes that simply exist to contain data in a sightly more structured way than a dict.

<comment><USER8> > Named tuples, the example I called out, are a good improvement over dicts > for adhoc structs that don't require full class definitions.

Doesn't a lot of that improvement come from the fact that they have a name, though? I guess you could argue for an "UnnamedTuple" which only enforces tuple size and member names. But if you're able to specify the member names, it feels like the thing being represented is concrete enough that you should be able to come up with a name for it, and that having a name would be beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recently I started to use enumeration classes instead of enums ( where it fits)

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/architecture/microse...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/architecture/microservices/microservice-ddd-cqrs- patterns/enumeration-classes-over-enum-types)

If you develop in c#, I would definitely recommend trying it out

A better example can be found here actually: [https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2008/08/12/enumeration- cl...](https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2008/08/12/enumeration-classes/)

<comment><USER10> What's the basic idea here? That instead of ints or strings, your enum values themselves are instances of custom classes with whatever behavior you want?

<comment><USER9> If I would describe the use-case:

If you use switches with enums for functionality, this is a better way ( personal opinion). Since Enums quickly need more than 1 switch and this could wrap that behaviour

Your description is also pretty good

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have constantly struggled over how to deal with this problem. The biggest need for enums has been function arguments which can be one of a few values.

In the end, the Literal class from the typing library seems like the simplest, least wordy solution. Pycharm and mypy capture any mistakes you make which seem more than sufficient for my use cases.

<comment><USER10> Why not use Enum anyway, which works fine with MyPy? I don't mind the verbosity, it's a one-time commitment to what, 10 extra lines of code?

<comment><USER11> Issue is I'll now need two imports everytime I call this method, which becomes mildly annoying. I was doing this, but a lot of times the Literal type seems more than sufficient. It also seems to play real nice with pydantic so it's an added win!

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure what you mean by "two imports".

If you define your Enum subclass in the same file, you use one import for enum.Enu. If you eschew enums and use Literal, you use one import for typing.Literal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Prefer using named tuples over enums in Python.

<comment><USER13> Named tuples and enums do entirely different things (loosely-speaking: the former are product types, the latter are sum types).

You also probably want dataclasses [1] instead of named tuples.

[1] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/dataclasses.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/dataclasses.html)

<comment><USER12> They do different things but in the wild are used in the same way. Data classes are not immutable so it would not be ideal for what I used named tuples for.

<comment><USER13> Data classes can be made immutable using 'frozen=True'. It sucks that it's not default though.

Can you give an example of how you use enums and named tuples in the same way? That just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me, but maybe I'm missing something.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Okta Acquires Stormpath - <AUTHOR> https://stormpath.com/blog/stormpaths-new-path <comment><USER2> The downside is that Okta pricing ([https://www.okta.com/pricing/](https://www.okta.com/pricing/)) appears to be per User, instead of usage based (per API call) the way Stormpath is. This will make a migration much tougher. Auth0 appears to have better pricing imho ([https://auth0.com/pricing](https://auth0.com/pricing)).

<comment><USER3> Alex (Stormpath CEO) here - we're working on self-service developer pricing for Okta. We're announcing the news before pricing was baked so our customers and users could have as much transparency as we could offer, as early as we could offer it.

I'm a big believer in clear, transparent pricing that works for all customers. Please stay tuned.

<comment><USER2> Thanks Alex, I appreciate that. Is it your plan to launch self-service pricing prior to the API shutdown at Stormpath? I'm hoping yes so that it is as painless as possible.

<comment><USER3> Yes. It's currently my highest priority and we're making good progress. It won't be perfect of course but it will be a good first start. I don't have a date for you, though, but our goal is ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was not please when I saw the answer to this FAQ question:

      Can I use a Stormpath SDKs (like Java, C#, and Node.js) with Okta?

      We are not migrating the Stormpath SDKs to work with the Okta API. Together with the Okta team, we will develop robust, new SDKs for the Okta API, but these may not be available before Stormpath is shut down. Okta has a REST API that provides functionality similar to the Stormpath API. This can be used in the interim while new Okta SDKs are being developed.

It doesn't make any sense not to have the SDKs available long before the shutdown date.

<comment><USER5> While we are not porting the SDKs, we are targeting end of April for framework integrations, so most Stormpath users can migrate with a pretty simple version upgrade. Most users are working with these and not our base SDKs. We are prioritizing: Java Spring Java Spring Boot Node Express ASP.NET 4.x ASP.NET Core

<comment><USER4> When can we expect a base SDK for Node.js? I am currently using both the Express SDK as well as the base Node.js SDK.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have official timelines for this, but we'll be working on these as soon as the integrations get finished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to the FAQ they will be shutting down the Stormpath API in 6 months. [https://stormpath.com/oktaplusstormpath](https://stormpath.com/oktaplusstormpath)

FAQ also says you will need to export your data from SP and, presumably, manually import it in to Okta. If thats the case its going to be hard to do it without end user disruption.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heyo! I work on this process @ Stormpath / Okta. It will largely be an automated process in two stages: export then import. You'll be able to do multiple exports / imports, so you can continue running in production on Stormpath while testing on Okta.

The flow is pretty simple: export your Stormpath data (no interruption), import to Okta, test, then when you're ready to go 'live': export from Stormpath again and pause servers, import to Okta again (to get new things added), and switch code to run against Okta.

We'll be releasing more details soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats to both teams. As a side note, last summer my startup joined Angelpad's accelerator program.. during that time I reached out to @alexsalazar with a laundry list of questions about B2D sales strategy and how he was thinking about the difference and similarities to a traditional b2b sales team structure. He was incredibly supportive and willing to share knowledge and his experience! Thanks again Alex!

<comment><USER3> You're welcome! Always happy to help. Startup is hard work, gotta pay it fwd. :) Good luck with Outwork!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What are the on premise alternatives? Not sure I want to move all my users to Okta just get burned again with a deprecated cloud API.

<comment><USER9> Passport ([https://www.inversoft.com/products/identity-user- management](https://www.inversoft.com/products/identity-user-management)) provides an on-premise option as well as a private-cloud solution (single tenant). This helps you protect your data but also prevent issues like the API being shut-down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like a great strategy. If you can't beat them, just join them :)</comment>


Dark Mode by Default – 95% of People Prefer Dark over Light Mode - <AUTHOR> https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/25/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-Default-With-95-Percent-Preferring-it-Over-Light-Mode.html <comment><USER3> It seems that their data is mostly coming from their own user base (the discord data is biased as they admitted), which is mostly comprised of programmers and other techies. I don't know how far this generalizes to the rest of society.

I personally like dark mode during night time, but almost always prefer light mode by default. There's just something about dark mode that is... gloomy and depressing. It feels like an overcast day, whereas light mode feels like a bright sunny day. I've noticed that most techies do prefer dark mode, and I also recall reading that techies are disproportionately night owls - I wonder if there's a correlation there. I suspect though that this preference is reversed for the general population.

<comment><USER4> > I've noticed that most techies do prefer dark mode, and I also recall > reading that techies are disproportionately night owls - I wonder if there's > a correlation there.

If I may be mildly unflattering for a moment, I think it's just a trendiness thing. Dark Mode looks more like a terminal and signals "I'm a real big-boy hackerman" or something.

If someone has real data showing it actually causes less eyestrain or something, I'm willing to change that opinion.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure everyone has their own specific reasons. And what you suggest might be true for a subset of individuals. For me, I prefer dark mode for a couple of sight related reasons:

\- It makes my eye floaters much harder to notice

\- Light backgrounds on screens, especially white, tend to hurt my eyes more than darker ones

<comment><USER6> > Light backgrounds on screens, especially white, tend to hurt my eyes more > than darker ones

It was (and still is, but read on) for me until I realised that it was not light mode but _backlight_ that was too strong. It was actually initially better with dark modes, low contrast stuff like zenburn, or (solarize light or dark) but only got worse later.

The moment I realised that was a backlight (and ambient light, including temperature) issue I moved back to light mode.

The above mentioned solutions have the nasty side effect that people usually increase backlight, which just makes things even worse!

<comment><USER5> I usually have the brightness on all my devices very low (10-20% typically, but have to go 100% if I'm outside and it's particularly bright).

I also use f.lux/nightmode on all devices.

<comment><USER7> I usually have my phone at 0% brightness, but that I can still see something is a clear indication it's not actually 0%. The screen is still too bright for me if it's the only light source. Same for audio; I basically only switch between mute and minimum volume because everything above is too loud for me.

I hate that there's no way to acess more fine-grained levels below the arbitrarily imposed minimum. I realize most people would think their phone is broken if they could get it into a state where it doesn't produce any perceivable output despite not being explicitly off. I just wish there were some secret handshake I could use to confirm that I'm okay with having to find the brightness control while not being able to see anything; I already do that when I'm outside in the bright sun.

<comment><USER8> On my phone running iOS, in addition to the brightness slider there is an option under Settings -> General -> Accessibility Display Accommodations to "Reduce White Point", which I can use to further dim the screen.

<comment><USER9> I think this is nearly identical to using a dark theme; it doesn't actually reduce the brightness of the backlighting.

I have been wondering for a long time what determines the backlight minimum, why can't we go darker? Surely phones can be expected to be used in pitch black?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The recent trend of introducing separate "light" and "dark" modes is a band- aid solution to the larger problem: modern interfaces lack contrast. Everything is either mostly-bright or mostly-dark, and I find both physically tiring.

I was playing around with a virtualized copy of Snow Leopard last weekend. Coming from modern macOS, what I find most visually striking is always the range of tones. The beautifully deep gray window chrome fades into the background, and pushes white content to the forefront without rendering it blindingly bright. Colored accents on interactable elements make the interface easy to scan. When I squint, I can still see everything.

You'd never consider adding a dark mode to this interface—or at least, I personally can't imagine what one would look like, because the interface is neither light nor dark to begin with. The result is far easier on my eyes.

<comment><USER11> That's a great point -- before Microsoft introduced "flat design" which everyone else then copied (both Apple and Google), there was both a lot more variation in background colors _and_ varied usage of color generally.

I understand and sympathize with the philosophy behind flat design -- that it intentionally puts the interface in the background (low contrast, less variation), so whatever content you're consuming (photos, videos, book text) is the focus.

But I also sympathize with your point -- that when you _want_ to use the interface to _do_ stuff rather than merely scroll through content, it's simply _harder_ now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's novel right now, just as dark-on-light displays were novel when Lisa and Macintosh were introduced. Also, I suspect nostalgia (or anemoia) is involved.

However, research shows that dark-on-light (positive polarity) displays are better for most people most of the time, with some exceptions.

For those who want to go deeper, several studies and papers are cited in the article _The Dark Side of Dark Mode_ : [https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the- dark-side-of-dark-mode/](https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark- mode/)

<comment><USER13> I have cataracts just outside the center of my vision, and they are more visible against a white background. For this reason I prefer dark mode, as they are not visible, they just distort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Personally I can't stand dark mode. It literally hurts my eyes. Strain after a few moments and interlacing ghost lines that linger in my vision for a minute.

Does anyone else have this?

Is it brain cancer?!

edit: Thanks, I'm pretty sure it's not cancer.

Question: But why me? Age? Staring too long at monitors? Drugs? It doesn't seem to effect too many others.

<comment><USER15> Dark mode can cause strain on eyes. Lower total brightness means your pupils open up to be able to take in more light. Wider pupils means lower depth of field, i.e. less stuff in focus immediately in front of/behind whatever you are currently focused on. You are more susceptible to having to refocus from subtle movements with a lower depth of field. The less of a steady state your focus, the more the muscles involved in focusing are engaged, which might be a cause of the strain you are feeling.

Similarly, this is why your eyes can hurt while reading in dimmer settings. It's not because low light itself is somehow harmful while reading, but because your eyes have a harder time staying focused as you naturally move while reading.

edit: I adopted light themes everywhere after reading this, probably [https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/53268](https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/53268) . Knowing depth of field from photography helped this make sense, as well as understanding (from conversations with a doctor in my family) that the generic feeling "strain" is most likely associated with muscle activity than anything else.

<comment><USER16> I use dark mode with large text for this reason. It's definitely true that you can read smaller text with light backgrounds, but the comfort is higher for me with less light from the screen, so I'm ok with less info on the screen and dark background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know many people my age who can still handle dark mode.

It was easy for me many years ago. I looked at command lines all day and no problem.

Now I see blurry lines for 10 minutes all around me if I have to spend any length of time in a command line interface, or look at an article in dark mode.

This is, unfortunately, an accessibility issue, not a design issue.

<comment><USER18> I'm older, my eyes are getting pretty bad, and I have to have dark mode. This is why data on this is important.

<comment><USER4> I'd say this is why we need software to respect accessibility and configurability. We didn't need "Dark Mode" in Windows 95 because we could configure the crap out of our native widgets. Then using the web as an application platform became a thing, accessibility was jettisoned in the name of "muh design!" and all personal computing has suffered for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish there were more "medium" themes.

I usually find light modes too harsh, but I think that's because the background is often pure white or close to it, as opposed to something softer.

I think dark modes look cooler and I like the aesthetic from an artsy perspective, but they're not something I enjoy working in all day. I like the lower contrast ones to an extent, but they're still not ideal.

My preferred Visual Studio theme has been Humane, which is one of the rare ones that fall somewhere in between. I tweaked it to make it a tad darker, but was fairly happy with it out of the box. In any case, I feel like these kinds of themes are underrepresented; there is an overwhelming number of dark and light themes out there (mostly tweaks of other themes, or just plain bad) and I really wish more would aim for the middle ground. Largely because I'm actually not a fan of the color brown and would like to see a semi-light theme based on something else, haha.

[https://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for- visua...](https://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for-visual- studio)

<comment><USER20> I like Gruvbox for the same reason

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem is, that many of the developers are mistaking the Dark mode with BLACK mode (like Opera GX, Telegram's night mode, Android's [MIUI's] dark theme, and similar themed applications). Dark mode - as with Discord - <USER2> really about having the contrast _reduced_ and overall making the whole experience more dark greyish, which reduces strain on the eyes. Try this with BLACK instead, and you'll start to cry after a couple of minutes (yes, I know, I'm old and grumpy..). The very popular dark themes, like Monokai are popular exactly because they respect these very simple rules: 1. dark does NOT mean black, 2. reduce overall contrast. I personally HATE the fact, that with Opera GX for example, you don't even have the _ability_ to choose if you would like to use the Dark mode (which is, again, BLACK mode in reality).

<comment><USER15> how does lower contrast reduce strain on eyes?

<comment><USER21> I think this article sums up pretty nicely the reasons. Go to the chapter 'Do dark themes help your eyes?': [https://www.maketecheasier.com/are-dark-themes- better-for-ey...](https://www.maketecheasier.com/are-dark-themes-better-for- eyes-battery/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dark mode is great when you're using a screen casually close to bedtime and don't want a painful bright light.

It's also great when you're doing image or video editing and need to be able to see full contrast in the dark areas, without being overwhemlmed by bright light surrounding.

 _But_ it's objectively _far_ worse if you're reading significant amounts of text, for the simple optical reason that light bleeds inside of lenses, including in your eyes -- that white "pollutes" black but not vice-versa.

Thus with black-on-white text, letterforms stay separate, clear, and legible. Any light spreading simply makes the letterforms appear, say, at 10% brightness instead of 0% brightness. Zero problems with legibility, still plenty of contrast.

But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read. Now granted, if you're 15 years old with perfect vision, it may not be particularly noticeable or objectionable. But the older you get or worse eyesight you have, the more it becomes a big problem.

So dark mode is nice to have, but for most apps going dark-only is objectively bad for accessibility, and legibility generally.

<comment><USER22> > But with white-on-black, letterforms glow with blurry edges and connect into > each other. Not on the screen, but on your retina. The same way streetlamps > at night appear to have a halo. Words take more effort to read.

I, uh, don't see a halo. Never have. I see streaks/starbursts, kinda like this quora post [0], except I've seen streetlights like that my whole life (so I don't think it's an eye problem like they suggest). Maybe that influences why I find dark mode easier on the eyes? No blurring, but it's also not sharp enough to cause the starburst.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/What-are-those-peripheral-rays-of- ligh...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-those-peripheral-rays-of-light-I-see- whenever-I-stare-at-a-bright-light-at-night)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 95% of what people? I know people of both persuasions in about equal numbers, which makes me question the 95% number. Personally I hate dark mode except late at night as staring at a dark screen and then walking away from my desk makes me dizzy.

<comment><USER24> This isn't 95% of the population. This is 95% prefer dark becausw the light version is awful.

More of a click-bait title than necessary. 95% of discord users prefer dark would be more accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm definitely in the camp that light / dark mode should match the time of day or ambient light level. I love having "light mode" in the morning, but at night I always prefer dark mode. But this is because I have a huge amount of ambient light in the room in the day, and at night I have none. Dark mode is unreadable to me when the bright sun is shining on a monitor. Not so with light mode.

</comment><comment><USER26> In the old days, apps simply used the system color scheme. That allowed one to globally choose what they wanted. Now everyone has to implement light and dark "skinz." Color me not impressed.

<comment><USER27> Users also expect prettier designs than the standard GUI widgets from the OS nowadays. Custom themes also could lead to ugly visuals in apps and accessibility problems.

<comment><USER4> Not really. Designers expect prettier designs than standard GUI widgets, I'm not convinced users have _ever_ wanted non-standard widgets. In fact, more than a decade of bitching-about-java has taught me that users _hate_ non- native widgets. But hey, developers love them so fuck users.

Native widgets play significantly better with all accessibility tools, in part _because_ native widgets are so customizable. You didn't need bespoke "Dark Mode" that was some designer's wet dream of what an interface should look like, you could just customize your widgets for what you needed: [https://66.media.tumblr.com/19cb7fe3e0eef36debbd0167d6e6e0ea...](https://66.media.tumblr.com/19cb7fe3e0eef36debbd0167d6e6e0ea/tumblr_mwjaieyign1t2as4so5_1280.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wish HN would get a dark mode, and I don't know why major apps like WhatsApp etc. are still dragging their asses over dark mode support while smaller apps with more complex UIs have already supported it for months.

<comment><USER29> Maybe because the small apps have a very targeted audience that enjoys dark mode. If you ask 10 random people on the street only 1 will probably know what "dark mode" is or would think about actively switching to it.

<comment><USER30> Dark mode is a talking point for both iOS and Android imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> After trying both light and dark themed interfaces for a few years, I concluded that for me there's only one setup that works: light theme with low brightness (monitor setting) and 'flux'/'night light'. That way, my monitor looks just like everything else in my office, like reading a newspaper. That's one of the many ergonomic improvements that help me stay alive.

<comment><USER32> Yes, I think that's the sanest choice. Also doesn't require a lot of theming (and some applications don't have themes) or other weird stuff (inverting colors on pdfs?).

Also reducing the backlight saves battery.

But I still think that a little bit more low-contrast would be nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> While I also prefer dark mode overall, the majority of dark editor color schemes strain my eyes more than light ones. Primarily this is because they use really bright saturated colors or solid white text on dark backgrounds, which makes my eyes strain as if they are looking at LED headlights during a night drive. OS X uses nice muted yet distinct colors on both ends of the brightness spectrum. I wish I could find an IntelliJ theme that matches the same spirit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. SOLID white #ffffff on black #000000 is a rough scheme. The whites need to be muted a bit so they're light grey basically.

<comment><USER34> I used grey on black for many years but recently switched to pure white. It is much easier to read.

I have my monitors set fairly dim, about 120cd/m^2. This is what most colorspaces expect the whitepoint to be, but it is very dim compared to the maximum amount of light a monitor can put out. It is about 12/100 on my monitor.

[https://hub.displaycal.net/forums/topic/what-monitor- brightn...](https://hub.displaycal.net/forums/topic/what-monitor-brightness- is-recommended/)

Anyway, my point here is that #ffffff is not any sort of color you can see, merely a number that represents the maximum possible amount of red, green, and blue. If that's too much light, you can turn it down. You can also play with gamma curves to change the relative intensities down to pure black. Some people use 2.2 in dark rooms and 2.4 for "normal" indoor illumination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> People like novelty. Dark mode is something new in UX design. I'm not sure I'd read into it any more than that until a few more years pass.

<comment><USER36> Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront of screens and to greater and lesser extent _everybody_ spends lots of time infront of screens nowadays.

That being said, I have pretty good luck with browser plugins that auto dark mode websites reasonably well. I'm not sure I'd go redesigning the entire web with darkmodes in mind when plugins can do a good enough job.

<comment><USER37> > Dark modes are a lot easier on the eyes if you spend a lot of time infront > of screens

[citation needed]. Why do people keep making these general statements. Every time they do counter-examples immediately appear in replies. Why can't we all agree that we're all different and it's largely a matter of preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I prefer light mode + f.lux or Redshift.

There's no need to stare at cold blue light all day long.

Fun fact, there is actually a CSS media query for selecting dark/light themes:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme)

</comment><comment><USER39> I far prefer dark mode for "chrome" and OS theming, etc. but _not_ for documents. So the idea that just because I have dark mode selected means I want every site to look like a porn site and my emails to all have back backgrounds is very wrong. I want normal documents, just as they were, but with a dark _theme_ around them.

</comment><comment><USER40> This seems like something where 'cheap talk' is a serious problem. You're not even surveying or polling users, you're hearing from self-selected ones. And even if you get a representative sample, what people say is different from what they do: users may not even know if they genuinely prefer it. Lots of design is subconscious, and there are measurable effects like additional milliseconds in loadtime where I doubt anyone would ordinarily be able to notice without sitting down with a stopwatch - it just _feels_ worse.

If it is really impossible to support more than one theme in the long run, this seems like a perfect use-case for an A/B test: randomize half your users into dark-mode and half into light-mode, and track total attrition and activity over the next few months (and not some proxy variable, switching to dark mode is too important to use some unreliable intermediate measurement).

</comment><comment><USER41> this is frustrating because I have diplopia and so my life looks like: [https://i.imgur.com/IHWBflS.png](https://i.imgur.com/IHWBflS.png) when you have white text on a black background. This affect doesn't happen on "light" mode systems...

<comment><USER42> Funny. I thought that's how bright on dark text looked for everyone. Couldn't see the shadow until I tilted the screen.

Do I have diplopia or do people with diplopia see more of the effect?

<comment><USER43> I just switched back and forth from vi in my terminal to that image a couple of times. I see the blurring on that image immediately, every time. I don't see anything like that on the terminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I only have a few apps on my old Mac that have a dark mode UI. Pixelmator is one of them and the small tool windows blend into each other and it's hard for me to discern their boundaries. And I strain with the tiny text on them. I really wish it had an option to turn that off and rarely use it because I can't.

I don't like it at all. Makes me wonder if it's because I'm getting old and my vision isn't aa sharp as it used to be.

My main monitor has a "low blue light" setting that I do like though. It took me a bit to get used to it but I can really feel the difference if I turn it off now. I've since adjusted my two peripheral monitors to lower the blue light settings and that's helped reduce eye strain a lot for me.

</comment><comment><USER45> The Dark Side of Dark Mode [https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of- dark-mode/](https://tidbits.com/2019/05/31/the-dark-side-of-dark-mode/)

"To summarize, a dark-on-light (positive polarity) display like a Mac in Light Mode provides better performance in focusing of the eye, identifying letters, transcribing letters, text comprehension, reading speed, and proofreading performance, and at least some older studies suggest that using a positive polarity display results in less visual fatigue and increased visual comfort. The benefits apply to both the young and the old, as that paper concludes"

</comment><comment><USER46> I hate dark modes, but I don't actually care what the default is -- as long as I can still set a light mode.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have using VI for years now and I prefer black background with green text, and I'm sure most people do. When I transitioned over to a modern IDE Atom/Code/Sublime, the first thing I wanted was to have a decent dark theme. I did try few of them but it was hard on my eyes(maybe because my eyes have adjusted to what I have been looking at for years) I finally settled on Code editor and its been ok so far.

<comment><USER48> Badwolf is my personal favorite dark theme: a nice black with orange and red.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Dark mode is my favorite and I appreciate more apps and websites adding support. Recently I've seen Slack and Perforce finally get official dark themes.

For websites that don't have good dark themes or user styles, you can use the Dark Reader browser extension to toggle it on any website - [https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/)

</comment><comment><USER50> The main problem with this being a "mode" is that I don't want it in 100% of cases. For instance, on the Mac it was originally possible to darken only the menu bar but now that is only allowed if _everything_ is dark. Frankly, in many cases it makes more sense to mix these effects, e.g. it might also be nice to have darkened sidebars in lighter windows.

Another reason I don't want it on all the time is because a lot of things still have _really terrible_ Dark themes, to the point of being eyesores. It is amazing how much more the choice of colors matters in dark themes, and if this is wrong it is almost unusable.

Some web sites had long used primarily-light or primarily-dark themes, and it is now weird that some of them try to "adapt" to your dark/light "mode". Frankly, it usually looks worse when they switch to their less-refined alternative and I would rather they either put a lot more effort in to both themes or just keep the original look in all cases.

</comment><comment><USER51> Can someone post some links to studies? I remember reading that your screen brightness should be close to the ambient light level, and it does help my eyes when I do that adjustment, but I don't know why. White screen = brighter screen, so dark screens at night would make a less-bright screen, and vice versa, which seems to back up the theory.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wonder if there's a correlation between how lit people's environments are and their dark/light mode preference.

I usually prefer light themes, and I keep my computer room pretty well lit and I _never_ use my phone in bed, so I never find light themes to be blinding. The brightness of the screen matches my environment.

</comment><comment><USER53> URL goes to Localhost, assuming they meant o have [https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/25/Dark-Mode-Should-Be- The-D...](https://getpolarized.io/2019/11/25/Dark-Mode-Should-Be-The-Default- With-95-Percent-Preferring-it-Over-Light-Mode.html)

<comment><USER54> The canonical URL in the meta data is wrong, points to localhost:4000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Dark mode turns laptops into mirrors, especially if they are glossy. Any office that has overhead tube lights is a poor match for dark mode apps. I even go with light terminal schemes in this case, and I have a strong preference towards dark console apps.

It's even worse with laptops where screens are angled slightly towards the ceiling.

Same goes with IDEs - I use dark in the evening, when there's low light, and light schemes in offices - just to reduce contrast between screen and rest of world, and to eliminate mirror effects on the display.

Mobile apps however, light mode all the way! I just turn the brightness down. Glowing text is painful on small screens.

</comment><comment><USER56> Am I the only one where "dark mode" interfaces really screw with the eyes?

<comment><USER57> No, you are not. :) People have been looking at dark words on white paper for quite a while now with no ill effects, and I've never felt an inclination to invert the relationship. Even in 1980 I preferred the very few CRT terminals that operated in "light mode".

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Translated to actual, y'know, facts, 95% of people don't change Discord from the default, before most stop using it at all.

This has exactly zero usefulness as an measure of what any group (even Discord users) prefers.

</comment><comment><USER59> The funny thing is that Dark vs Light mode is actually not an absolute.

Personally I prefer dark modes.

Currently I use light modes.

Why? Because when there is a possibility of glare, light mode dominates. By far. At work there is a high probability of glare. My quality of life improved drastically when I switched to light mode for everything. Even my terminal.

When the room is dark, dark mode is way easier on the eyes.

So really what we need isn't one preference, but a variation based on lighting conditions of the room. A color sensor on the monitor could easily determine which of the two to use.

Not practical ATM. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER60> Been using dark reader addon in both chrome/firefox, and love it. Bright white in the eyes when your trying to relax and read is amazingly offensive. I use it on HackerNews too.

<comment><USER61> Thanks for this recommendation. Just installed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I think the rise of dark mode is mostly related to really good displays. Dark mode looks like shit on CRTs and even older flat panels with poor contrast.

<comment><USER63> And OLEDs in particular, where black stops transmitting light at all. (And saves power, too.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Heck yeah. Totally agree. For my app I'm working on dark true dark modes and then try to do true dark/true black on mobile.

Black looks much better on mobile IMO ...

<comment><USER64> Neat tidbit that I learned while working on dark mode at my company. Don't use true black. It looks amazing on OLED screens at rest but it results in a weird sluggish appearance when scrolling. This is because there is a lag time between pixels going from off to on.

The material team at Google made a blog post about it which I recommend going through: [https://material.io/design/color/dark- theme.html](https://material.io/design/color/dark-theme.html)

The quote around the OLED: "On OLED screens, turning pixels on and off can cause a delay when the screen is scrolled, making the pixels blur."

As an example, the facebook messenger app uses a true black background and the delay is _very_ noticeable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I think most tend to want dark mode because as humans a sea of white or some off shade of white requires so much attention from our brains to constantly scan/identify things that stand out (much like a blinking red button). I try to use light yellow/orange/brown and depending on overcast/night I'll switch to a shade of purple/green. I can't stand super dark themes.

</comment><comment><USER66> I prefer light mode by default. I think there should be an os level setting if you prefer dark or light mode.

And yes there is a certain level of fashion between dark and light mode which seems to move back and forwards every now and then. This reminds me somehow of the moves between Terminal(thin) -> Server(thick) to Workstation(thick) -> Tablet(Thin) -> Cloud(Thick) -> Client side(Thick).

</comment><comment><USER67> I was told long ago in the newspaper business that "dark mode" ( background darker than foreground ) was unprofessional / hacker looking, and "light mode" ( background lighter than foreground ) was the opposite, and I wonder if that generality still holds true in the corporate world?

</comment><comment><USER14> As long as there's a choice between dark and light mode I'm happy. Heck I don't even really need a customizable interface color setup anymore, I've given up on that.

IMHO "Hot Dog Stand" on Windows 3.1 was the best it could ever be. Dear god don't let Hot Dog Stand be the default.

</comment><comment><USER68> Light themes are superior from a usability standpoint: [https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or- white-c...](https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-color- theme-is-better-for-the-eyes)

</comment><comment><USER69> I find default dark mode all of the day super depressing but later at night I find it easier to use with the lights out. So the balance iOS uses for auto enabling dark mode to me is pretty good. It would be nice if more websites would allow me to use it but at least reader mode supports it.

</comment><comment><USER70> Black text on white background may lead to myopia and white text on black background may be preventive. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x)

</comment><comment><USER55> Instant 'dark mode' bookmarklet / scriptlet:

javascript:(function(){body=document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];body.style.backgroundColor='black';body.style.filter='invert(100%)';})();

If only I could work out how to stop it from inverting the images too....

<comment><USER71> Maybe you can apply the invert property on images too?

But you might be interested in these browser extensions:

\- Dark Reader

\- Dark Background and Light Text

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> It's not a problem of dark or light. It's a problem that choosing white @ 6500 K as background color is perfectly stupid. Default backgrounds for windows and internet sites should be sepia. That's what do Amazon with Kindle software, very successfully.

</comment><comment><USER73> I wish I could make the general internet dark mode (and I've tried extensions, they don't work all that well). Give me a dark mode HN. White backgrounds hurt my eyes. I'm looking at screens upwards of 16 hours a day, let me reduce some of that strain.

<comment><USER37> > I'm looking at screens upwards of 16 hours a day

I wonder why white backgrounds hurt your eyes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I like dark mode -- it has a sleek aesthetic.

The only time dark mode is bad is when you're doing a product demo in a darkened room, like at a conference. It's really hard to make out text in dark mode in a dark room.

</comment><comment><USER75> When you open your app, It says we collect cookies for feature usage. There is only one button "Accept". Where is this button called "Decline" ?

</comment><comment><USER76> System wide dark mode theme is only a recent thing. Browsers only recently added support for prefers-color-scheme to allow web pages to query system theme.

</comment><comment><USER77> I switch back and forth from time to time. For a while I like dark until I get bored with it. Then I switch to light until I get bored.

</comment><comment><USER78> Or for the Mac, just leave the machine in normal mode, and use the "invert colours" hotkey.

I've been doing that for years.

</comment><comment> mark-r Anybody else find it ironic that this revelation was made on a blog with black text on a white background?

</comment><comment><USER79> The first Macintosh UI was kinda the backlash to the default night mode of the original dos boxes.

</comment><comment><USER80> Are there any efforts to standardize a way to default to a dark color scheme if a website has it?

<comment><USER81> The prefers-color-scheme media query

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I immediately thought of this article:

[https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/11/10/just-putting-it- ou...](https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/11/10/just-putting-it-out-there- fuck-dark-mode-sucks-worst-awful/)

Just putting it out there: Fuck Callum Booth's opinion.

</comment><comment><USER83> Ironic that this article was published on a website that doesn't use dark mode.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have an iOS Hacker News app that respects the iOS dark mode setting?

</comment><comment><USER84> I heard dark mode might not actually help in terms of being easier on the eyes?

</comment><comment><USER85> This could easily just be a fashion trend.

</comment><comment><USER86> I am the 5%

</comment><comment><USER87> I don't like dark mode.

</comment><comment><USER61> Take note, web designers.

</comment><comment><USER88> Left shift + left alt + PrtSc = dark mode for word and all sorts via high contrast mode on Windows

<comment><USER89> High contrast mode is not dark mode.

<comment><USER55> It makes web pages like HN dark (in FF). I don't get why it takes so long to do it though, so toggling it is frustrating, and the side effects are pretty horrific as it throws boxes around everything.</comment></comment></comment>


Catting weird things to /dev/audio - <AUTHOR> http://everything2.com/node/660740 <comment><USER2> In 1979 I was debugging some Z80 assembler by putting a radio next to the processsor and picking up the RF noise. I could tell by the quality of the sound which loop it was in, and trace the execution as it happened. This was on a device that only had a serial line as its interface, and the problem was in the processing of the data, so it would occasionally just hang, making "standard" debugging impossible.

Later (1980) when I wrote a BASIC to Z80 compiler I used the same technique to profile the code and achieved a 5x speed-up by knowing which loops ran slowly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Several years ago I was stuck in a data centre over night upgrading our systems with other team members who were working remotely. I was desperately tired and done my part, but had to wait around to monitor things while the rest finished up. Instead of staring at the screen, trying in vain to keep my eyes open, I put /dev/audio to good use by writing a simple script to wake me when tcpdump picked up the traffic I was looking for. I was able to lay my head down, guilt free, and steal 20 or 30 minutes of precious sleep between testing sessions.

<comment><USER4> Could you tell us more? This sounds like a near-epic hack. I have an idea of how it would work. Whenever I tried dumping to /dev/audio it always came out too fast.

<comment><USER5> could have been as easy as 'tcpdump port XXYY' and nothing was being output until the event he was looking for... would have made a fast screech, i bet.

<comment><USER3> That was basically it. I knew I would start to see traffic on a certain port when the service was restored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >a good place to start, would be yes > /dev/audio, which outputs a high whining as the value 'y' is sent as audio over and over.

The key point of this combination is that yes outputs "y\ny\ny\n...". If you just send one character over and over you don't hear anything - I think the difference between adjacent character values determines the frequency of the output.

>Plus if there are any sound files on your drive saved in a lossless format they just play at random and then disappear back into the soup.

They need to be uncompressed (ie. contain raw audio data), not just lossless.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the better stories I've read was the guy who piped the output of ping to his speakers, turned the volume up, and went around the office wiggling the token ring cable listening out for the place with the unreliable connection.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio

I use it as a white noise generator, to cover ambient noise at night. Anyone know how to make a low pass filter (to make pink/red/brown noise)? I tried repeating the random source, to increase the wavelength, but it gets little R2D2 chirps and clicks in it (because of the step-like waveform):

      cat /dev/urandom | sed 's/./&&&&&&/g' > /dev/audio

<comment><USER9> I know it's probably not what you're asking for, but if you just want a white/pink/brown noise generator this is an excellent little flash app: <http://www.simplynoise.com/>

<comment><USER8> Thanks, that's what I'm using at the moment. I'd prefer a local solution rather than a webapp (but perhaps it doesn't make any difference?).

I tried their download brown noise loop, but it doesn't (always) loop seamlessly, even using:

      mplayer /home/user/8usb/SimplyNoise.com\ -\ Brown\ Noise.m4a -loop 0

I also tried downloading their flash swf itself, but it doesn't run locally (I expect it needs to phone home for the sound files).

<comment><USER10> You could try loading the swf in a browser, letting everything load up, and then checking /tmp.

<comment><USER8> An intriguing idea, but nothing there unfortunately (guess they keep it in ram.)

<comment><USER10> Weird. I would guess that would be browser/configuration dependent? I use firefox for this, and whenever I load up a flash movie (to be honest, I haven't tried it with anything else), it sits in ram until it's loaded, and then it gets cached in /tmp as a file named something like Fla[0-9a-z]+ .

In about:config there's the options:

browser.cache.memory.enable

browser.cache.disk.enable

and related settings. Disabling the memory cache might let you grab it.

If I get the spare time today, I'll see if I can't get the swf to pull out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Many years ago this facet of Linux was the thing that really made me realize just how astonishingly wonderful the central idea of UNIX (everything is a file) really is. It also puts in stark contrast those systems that haven't grokked this beautifully simple idea.

<comment><USER12> The irony is that the only reason Linus Torvalds spent so much time on Linux in the early days is because he accidentally made his dialer program use his minix partition to dial up his university. The dialer was fine with it... it even 'talked' back, destroying the data. He couldn't re-install Minix because he didn't have a copy of it. So he was stuck with Linux, and he was forced to improve it if he wanted to use his expensive computer.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. Sources?

<comment><USER12> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVTWCPoUt8w#t=22m12s>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It sounded like a dial up modem when I did this:

      cat /dev/mem > /dev/audio

Also, for some reason, this command makes it "beep" on every eleventh character you type. Probably something to do with buffers.

      cat /dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd > /dev/audio

<comment><USER13> Or try it with core dumps. [http://everything2.com/title/How%2520to%2520get%2520people%2...](http://everything2.com/title/How%2520to%2520get%2520people%2520to%2520clean%2520up%2520their%2520core%2520dumps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> even more fun

      wget http://www.wikipedia.com --output-document=- > /dev/audio

Download a webpage, output to soundcard. Works pretty well, I need to find a bigger page to work with though.

<comment><USER15> In a way it sounds a bit like modems of yore connecting :)

Edit: For a cool audio representation of the file size, try comparing Wikipedia with the Google homepage :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this possible on a Mac?

<comment><USER17> Yes, but you'll need to do the mknod yourself, and have a program running in userspace reading from the block special file (or fifo).

I've used portaudio from Python on OS X before for doing this kind of audio manipulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Find all the .wav files and play them: find . -name '*.wav' -exec cat {} > /dev/audio \;

I guess I don't have any at the right frequency, though :(

</comment><comment><USER10> If you have a remote machine that has a microphone plugged into it, you can use this to listen to what's going on in the room remotely.

</comment><comment><USER5> From the original document:

> In order for noise to happen there must be at least some variation.

It's pretty neat. The data pretty much represents the position of the speaker.

Audio stuff is pretty fascinating; I read a great book on explaining DSPs for audio processing. I'll have to dig it out of my closet.

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me old days I tried to listen to the linux kernel :D. A small typo I did filled up the terminal with lots of garbage. Later I learned I can rcover such a situation with..

$reset

</comment><comment><USER12> If your terminal gets messed up from catting random characters to stdout, type 'reset' and press enter.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you have Windows, you can play along to a degree using Cygwin and /dev/dsp instead.</comment>


Social contagion: Conflicting ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/04/social-contagion

<comment><AUTHOR> > " ... the researchers found that the best predictor of whether someone would > join Facebook was a subtly different factor: the number of distinct groups > that an individual could link up with through the site. Most people have > more than one social network: a group of one's old school friends, for > instance, is likely to have little contact with one's work colleagues, who > in turn won't have much to do with one's extended family. The more such > groups were present on Facebook, the greater the probability that an > individual would join."

This is fascinating given the recent discussions on identity, privacy etc. Specifically, that the ability to interact with _different social circles_ through one site encouraged people to sign up.

Original paper is at: [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/27/1116502109.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/27/1116502109.abstract)</comment>


Introducing the All New Trello Business Class - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trello.com/introducing-the-all-new-trello-business-class/ <comment><USER2> Github integration is something we were eagerly waiting for. We're using Waffle[0] and are reasonably happy, but it doesn't feel as smooth as Trello.

Very keen to give this a try and it's a major incentive for us to upgrade to Business Class. Trello is quite an amazing tool.

[0] [https://waffle.io](https://waffle.io)</comment>


Have you had the "AI talk" with your kids? - <AUTHOR> https://anxiousrobot.net/have-you-had-the-ai-talk-with-your-kids-a276c672e549 <comment><USER2> I have three children with my wife and we decided to teach our kids the hard way how to lower expectations and survive the last year.

We quit our jobs and moved to Puerto Rico and moved to a mountain top in the center of the island. Our goal was to show them what life is like in most other parts of the world where people struggle.

They run around and play in the forest, help tend the garden, and learn from us, books, and exploration. It's been our year of "disconnecting" from the rat race and learning how to thrive as a family of 5 on under $1200 a month.

We're packing up and moving to Ithaca, NY at the end of the summer but I hope none of us go straight back to a consumer-based lifestyle even though we'll have the income to do it.

When regular employment dries up and all they have is self-sufficiency, maybe they'll now have the tools to be content.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I hope you enjoy Ithaca. If you want to avoid cookie cutter consumerism, here are a few suggestions:

-Join a farm share. We have a zillion around here and it helps plan out meals ahead of time instead of being pulled into the event horizon of Wegmans.

-Speaking of, consider getting a meat freezer and hunting for deer. We have way too many and venison will last you for months. Just be mindful of your weapons - IIRC rifles are banned in Tompkins County.

-Don't take off the snow tires until at least May. Trust me on this.

-If you need contracting done, look to the Mennonites first. They work hard, they're affordable, and it's real quality.

-Take vitamin D supplements. The sun doesn't exist here.

<comment><USER2> Excellent suggestions, thanks!

We're looking at renting a house at the Ithaca Eco Community to help the kids with socialization and to continue the intent to let the kids open the door and just go out and play with friends in nature. One of the other benefits is that there are lots of other residents that grow food and they let you set aside land to grow your own stuff.

We're not really hunters, but it's never too late to learn. We'll get a freezer and probably try to find a local hunter willing to let me pay for processing in exchange for half of the meat.

Excellent suggestion about the Mennonites. Our goal is to buy some land within 10 minutes of town and build a small cabin during our first year. Then we'll use that as a stepping stone to build a real home over a few more years, depending on disposable income. We don't like financing things.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Great plan! If you don't plan on hunting you can get a cow/half cow easy.

Best place to buy land is to the east in the Dryden/Freeville area. Mostly because it's cheap and it has good bus connections. Anything in the town or city of Ithaca is (seriously) at San Francisco levels of cost relative to average income. The real house might be best placed to the south in the Danby area, since it's also cheap and there's a lot of south hill development (past IC) being planned, so the value is gonna go up in the next few decades. It's also the best way to get to New York (south via Owego).

I hope you enjoy the most good enough place in the world :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, two MIT economists, recently wrote a book about this, called The Second Machine Age (here: [http://www.amzn.to/0393239357](http://www.amzn.to/0393239357)). We're teetering on the edge of economic shifts, and we have a lot of questions we're going to need to ask about how people will live in a world where jobs simply aren't available.

When 60% of the workforce is unemployable, either there will be massive unemployment, and the crime, poverty, and starvation associated, or there will be a massive paradigm shift in how we think about employment, money, and scarcity.

I'm hoping we get to the latter before the former.

<comment><USER4> 50 years ago, society operated just fine with (to a first approximation) 50% of society not working. What happened was we had created an political structure and economy where the metric of "employment" became something to be optimized and effectively achieved an economic system driven to optimize that one number (mostly by screwing the poor) [0].

1) obsessing about employment numbers is exactly the problem.

2) it will be catastrophic unless we change our economic system.

[0] I'm talking about the weird "dual mandate" of the central banks - "maintain employment numbers" and "keep inflation in check": Mostly they have chosen to attack the first with policies encouraging positive inflation, occasionally ignoring the second altogether. A great way to keep employment up is to require people to get jobs in order to stay on a compounding treadmill of currency devaluation. So we see a lot more people entering the workforce too, with collateral damage that families now have to have two working parents, single parents can barely support their children, people go into massive debt to get past the first jobs gatekeeper (college) etc.

<comment><USER5> > 50 years ago, society operated just fine with (to a first approximation) 50% > of society not working.

Are you referring to the fewer women in the workforce 50 years ago? If so, with the increase of women in the workforce during and after WWII, I think "50% of society not working" sounds like a rough overestimation.

<comment><USER4> sorry, maybe 50 years is a bit too low, but yes that is the general gist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The solution is obvious: education. Education, education, education. Making it a truly common good will require a massive shift in the way most people are brought up in the west, which is why it won't happen over a couple years but rather over a couple generations, which is why it's high time we got going.

Once you can _do things_ in and with your head, the world becomes your playground. Once the kids understand that hurting people in any way is literally senseless, that the civil servant state and nine-to-five work is destroying intellect, once they realise the awesomeness that lies within that big melon everyone of us is carrying around, I think humanity as a whole can get out of this mess properly.

And I think enlightment is the _only_ way humans are going anywhere other than destruction, by whom- or whatever it may be. The consumer (a.k.a. mind- numbing) industry everybody seems to be so happy about is definitely _not_ the way to go. Forgive the metaphor, but plugging everybody into the matrix and feeding them bullshit 24/7 just to keep them _happy_ is not how we can stay on top of things and our intelligent machines. If the complex machinery that is a Human is reduced to a consumer, it is of no value to electronic machines out to solve the galaxy's problems (other than maybe as an energy source ).

It seems as though we won't be going anywhere far away from the solar system for a while, so instead let's go deep. Let's go into ourselves and discover the worlds inside that nature has provided us with.

<comment><USER7> _" The solution is obvious: education. Education, education, education."_

That's the traditional answer. It's obsolete. We've already reached "peak school", where sending more people to college doesn't pay off. (Especially if you have to pay for the schooling with loans.) About half of new US college graduates are not doing a job that requires their education.

Teach someone to do something, now one person can do it. Teach a computer to do something, now millions of computers can do it.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I did not mean more, but better education, so that by the time you get out of school, you can use your brain. That includes for example little things like reading food stickers to judge wether the ingredients are appropriate or not. In that context, I'm thinking about common sense, really. Now, common sense can't be taught, but it can be destroyed with pointless exercices, of which teaching programmes are chock full of.

Once you have a certain base knowledge (which wouldn't necessarily be the same for everyone, not sure about that), the brain, if given the freedom to do so, starts exploring possibilities, all by itself. Children need to have interesting, fascinating things to play with. Learning the tools then becomes part of the games and starts happening automatically.

> sending more people to college doesn't pay off. (Especially if you have to > pay for the schooling with loans.)

That's an economic problem, i.e. one humans have created themselves, thus it can, with the appropriate effort, be solved. In the perverse case of american student loans, it's just one issue in a whole system that cannot be profitable for more than a tiny fraction of its constituents.

> About half of new US college graduates are not doing a job that requires > their education.

So now that AI is taking over, let these people finally do something with their knowledge that they enjoy. (edit) That means stop with this productivity madness. Creativity, be it graphical, musical, philosphical, mathematical, whatever, is not productive. Let the machine be productive, let the human mind roam free.

> Teach someone to do something, now one person can do it. Teach a computer to > do something, now millions of computers can do it.

We are still a long way off artificial human intelligence, for a very simple reason: we do not understand ourselves. How do you plan on replicating our intellect as long as the same is misunderstood?

<comment><USER8> > So now that AI is taking over, let these people finally do something with > their knowledge that they enjoy

Because that's not a Nash equilibrium. Translation: if you do this you're dead, because anybody can come in, give a slight nudge to this system and it'll topple over entirely.

> We are still a long way off artificial human intelligence, for a very simple > reason: we do not understand ourselves. How do you plan on replicating our > intellect as long as the same is misunderstood?

Sure but most of the misunderstanding that we know existed came from OVERestimating human intellect. Not from underestimating it.

Example: chess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Presently I think we undervalue creative endeavors.

Something like this: [http://www.wired.com/2016/05/mysteries-chickpea-water- magica...](http://www.wired.com/2016/05/mysteries-chickpea-water-magical- substitute-eggs-no-really/) springs to mind as an example.

Are there going to be unemployed truck drivers, and ditch diggers... yes. Will there be a larger place for craftsmenship, and art, I would sure hope so. The question is how we get through the transition.

<comment><USER10> You're assuming machines can't be creative.

<comment><USER11> While they may one day be 'creative', I feel this will be the last bastion of human capability beyond AI. Luckily, the interesting thing about creative endeavors is that they are often a unique synthesis of many things. AI may create wonderful art, music, entertainment, etc., but this does not mean things created by humans won't still be valuable to other humans. Things would just be created in parallel and in communion with AI. That being said, the percentage of the population that can 'create' for income/profit may be very small. Hopefully by that point, we will create for the intrinsic value of creating and sharing, and not for money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My son is young and being silly he said he could drop out of school to become a truck driver for a relative. I had to break it to him that by the time he started to get somewhere with such a job he'd become unemployed due to self driving trucks!

</comment><comment><USER13> A machine probably isn't going to make unique hand-made tables. There's a trend right now, we mock hipsters for their love of "artisinal" products.... but in an age where machines make everything the same, I think people make things that aren't. If you just want a table, you can go to ikea and get the machine made table that everyone else who doesn't care bought too. If you want that "one good" product, you can ask an artist to make one. Or you can find a place with tools, and make it yourself.

To me the future is one where we all have access to the basics, and you choose to have a few things that are of quality.

The catch is, making things by hand isn't very profitable. I think a minimum income paid for by machine "owners", distributed to everyone frees normal people find the work they LOVE instead of just "work".

If I didn't have to worry about money, i'd split my time between the woodshop, and designing a new programming language.

<comment><USER14> Well, no, the machine will make custom tables that look just like the "unique hand-made table" at a fraction of the price, with customization, so if you saw a table that you like but you wanted yours to seat 6 instead of 4, you upload a couple pictures of the table, and tell the machine to replicate it with a larger tabletop.

Some people will still pay the artisan to create the table, but most will continue to take the cheaper route.

<comment><USER15> There's still creativity though. In one video ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc907FbLK4U&t=3m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc907FbLK4U&t=3m30s)) the woodworker is using electricity to obtain a unique burn pattern in some wood (the details of which aren't given, sadly). This is something I would not have thought of doing.

Could this be automated? I guess, once someone has thought of it. But could the thought of this be automated?

<comment><USER16> >(the details of which aren't given, sadly)

Looks like he's using an electric stick welder clipped to some nails driven into dampened wood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >> "and rehashing that tired trope about how old jobs that got displaced by new technologies eventually were replaced with new, but different jobs we couldn't fathom at the time.

That's not the case this time. This time it's different."

I guess the point here is that the author cant fathom new job types in the future, so therefore there will be no new job types in the future. Glad we got that one settled!

This argument has been going on literally for hundreds of years. Just because the author cant fathom new job types proves nothing.

People lose jobs because of decisions made by other people. Science will not ever come to an end, and there will always be new job types because of that.

Just imagine when commercial space travel becomes a serious thing. They will look back and say "did you know once a month they used to argue on HN about how in the future there will be no jobs? They were so silly because they didnt know about space travel."

And then someone else will say "yea they were wrong then, but this time its different..."

<comment><USER18> We already see hints of previously unfathomable jobs.

OK, so in Wall-E, no one did squat because the ship was self-contained and fully automated. But let's ponder the world that exists somewhere between today and Wall-E.

Entertainment is a profession. It's "kind of a rare one" right now, but it's becoming more and more of one. Whether you're "YouTube famous" or "that kid on Vine" or you've got a Twitch channel that makes you money, people pay just to watch other people _be entertained_ or do something "useless" but somehow interesting.

Obviously, the bigger question in that article was "how money will be distributed and exchanged." Can a huge plurality of people be "Wall-E entertained" sustainably, while some do "critical" jobs (if there are any critical jobs that are still done by humans - hardware/network maintenance, software programming, will the vision of the future be determined by humans or AI?)

<comment><USER19> How are the people supporting the entertainers getting money? By doing their own entertaining?

<comment><USER18> Yes - that was a big part of my question. Can the masses simple be entertained (a la Wall-E) without contributing anything?!

<comment><USER19> I'm not certain you understood my question, or perhaps I misunderstood your statement.

It seems to me that you're saying a small minority of people will work as entertainers (and presumably get paid for doing so) while another small minority fulfills critical functions that can't be automated, and the majority sits back to be entertained.

What I'm not clear on is where the money comes from to pay the entertainers and the critical maintainers, if the majority aren't working. The money can't come from the masses, because the masses aren't employed. Are you suggesting that in this scenario, it's a post-scarcity society, money is never transferred at all, and that's why it works?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What strikes me as odd about apocalyptic "the perils of the singularity" navel-gazing is that we automatically assume that machines, and ONLY the machines, will improve far beyond our capabilities - perhaps even infinitely.

Why shouldn't we improve as well? Every day it seems there is a new story about further advances in amazing / fast / cheap / etc. gene splicing technology, or some new breakthrough in understanding how cancers work, or how longevity may be achieved, or how to correct color-blindness, etc.

Is it any less presumptive to assert that humans will make ourselves more and more amazing, as it is to assert that machines inevitably will?

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe, in my rosy colored view and after some really serious growing pains, widespread AI would finally allow humans to pursue art and knowledge without worrying about the basics.

<comment><USER22> I think it would just be hard to justify pursuing knowledge and art when the AI will also do that better than you, in it's spare cycles.

I agree that there is a timeless quality to learning sports or arts that are obsolete, but at some point... it might be kind of depressing.

<comment><USER21> That sort of assumes that the point of doing either of those things is to be better than everyone else. I personally find the activities alone to be worthwhile.

Besides, the reality of superior ability wouldn't be anything new. For everyone of my abilities, it seems incredibly likely that there exists another human somewhere that might be considered "better" than me.

<comment><USER22> So, with art, I can acknowledge that the point isn't to be better.

But what about collecting knowledge? Sure, you could help analyzing the genome & biology of a rare butterfly with all your free time. Say, maybe it would takes computer-assisted humans several years. But the AI could finish it in a month! Wouldn't you feel silly about that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think we should think about Advanced Chess (aka Cyborg Chess) in this context. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess)

Humans already operate on a very high level of abstraction. I'm not aware of how my food is being digested, I'm not aware of how my muscles are being maintained. (Although, come to think of that, I do wish I could direct my muscles to get swole without going to the gym.) I'm not really aware of every photon my eyes capture, I'm given a blurry "executive summary" that has the contrast in the center turned up to 11, and the color spectrum I see has had a clustering algorithm run on it.

Similarly, executives in a company don't always know what's going on in the day-to-day of their reports. They have an idea, but they don't actually solve the problems, and in same cases they don't even know how to solve the problems.

We use computers to help inform our decisions. As long as we can continue the path where humans work _with_ AI, we will have some place with them.

</comment><comment><USER23> The people who will reap the rewards of machine work will be those that own machines, directly or indirectly through corporate ownership, or own valuable assets, like mining rights or intellectual property.

These people will end up with the lion's share of money.

Then who will the machines produce value for? The hyperrich in this situation of course.

So a few people will be both the owners and the superrich consumers. From a purely mathematical standpoint, this will result in a vibrant economy.

From the perspective of the 99% or 99.995% this will be a disaster. But the history of life is the history of the winners.

The only way to change that will involve a serious redesign of civilization from the bottom up. I am for that, but human beings don't seem to be well suited for that task. The mindless muddying of every important political issue of our times by news, corporations and politicians suggests most of the human race is going to take a huge hit and then waste its miserable time fighting about why instead of coming together.

<comment><USER24> And who exactly will buy their products or services if they have most of the money?

Machines don't buy stuff. Selling only to billionaires isn't much of a market.

There is the idea of universal income, but then that theoretically just keeps this sort of insanity going longer.

<comment><USER25> >There is the idea of universal income, but then that theoretically just keeps this sort of insanity going longer.

Yeah, that's the real issue, at some point, AI will likely render capitalism as "unmaintainable" \- but humans aren't very good at changing, and switching from capitalism to some kind of post-scarcity Star Trek economy is going to "hurt" too many of the rich and powerful for them to agree to it - so it will be fought. It will be fought with the armies that the rich and powerful control - and it will be very, very bloody. I don't think I'll live to see it (I'm almost 50), but I think it will happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26>
      I like to think
      (and the sooner the better!)
      of a cybernetic meadow
      where mammals and computers
      live together in mutually
      programming harmony
      like pure water
      touching clear sky.

      I like to think
      (right now, please!)
      of a cybernetic forest
      filled with pines and electronics
      where deer stroll peacefully
      past computers
      as if they were flowers
      with spinning blossoms.

      I like to think
      (it has to be!)
      of a cybernetic ecology
      where we are free of our labors
      and joined back to nature,
      returned to our mammal
      brothers and sisters,
      and all watched over
      by machines of loving grace.

Richard Brautigan, 1967.

(Edit, format)

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, if we establish a basic income and produce enough to suffice then people will live as the aristocracy lived the past hundreds of years. Basically European gentlemen of means did not work.

The major _if_ is the basic income part - if this is established, psychologically people will adapt to the eternal weekend just fine.

</comment><comment><USER28> Two points... First, never underestimate the power of middle management and custom automation tooling. Second, you aren't really going to be able to outsource the plumber, mechanic and electrician any time soon.

<comment><USER13> A plumber is a person who has knowledge of plumbing, tools, and a will to do it.

What if AR helped people with the knowledge part, the "sharing" economy helped people with the tools part, and "wanting to save money" helped people with the "will" part.

<comment><USER29> "Massachusetts law prohibits any one but a licensed professional from installing, removing or repairing plumbing. The reasons for this may not, at first, be obvious, but public safety blah blah blah..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm looking forward to the day AIs post intelligent comments on Hacker News. Perhaps there will be a new AskAI section.

<comment><USER28> I think Microsoft already tried that on twitter... it didn't end well.</comment></comment>