Tax Cuts Don't Lead to Economic Growth, a New 65-Year Study Finds  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-economic-growth-a-new-65-year-study-finds/262438/ <comment><USER2> Please know that in periods of "high personal tax rates" business owners declared their income through their companies thereby lowering their tax rates. You would have a company car, company vacation, company dinners, you can even make it company policy to pay for the employees children college education, etc... This is the same reason any comparison of income equality over time is meaningless. Since income was declared through different avenues.

To understand the tax implications of economic growth you have to look at the tax payments as a percentage of GDP as well as compliance costs. In the US tax payments have held steady at about 18% of GDP since WWII until recently. People hunt for loopholes no matter what. But when rates are low you don't have to look for loopholes, so you can deploy your capital more efficiently. Thus generating economic growth. This is why tax cuts often stimulate large economic booms. Capital that was sitting in say tax-protected muni bonds will move into the market and be deployed for business expansion and thereby hiring.

There's so much evidence to the contrary of this article, even Obama's own counsel of economic advisories share the view that tax cuts stimulate economic growth. Christina Romer, his former advisor wrote a paper on the subject. What they do is look at country around the world to collect more data points for a better regression analysis.

Also note that when you say "tax cuts", not all tax cuts are made equal. For a tax cut to be effective it needs to change long-term behavior. So credits and such have a near zero or negative effect while rate cuts have a positive effect. The most beneficial being capital gain rate cuts (ie every time they have been cut, revenues from the tax have increased), corporate, and then final income tax rate cuts.

-Really going to down vote me without refuting any of what I said.

<comment><USER3> That is a strong set of claims, and as long as you hold it, you are utterly to any set of facts that might dispute it.

According to IRS figures, the top 400 tax payers today pay income taxes below 16%. According to the best available figures, the top theoretical tax rate during the 1950s was over 90%, but the average tax rate paid by the top approximately 400 people was 51.2%. Obviously they used a lot of tax loopholes. Obviously they still wound up paying, in real taxes, a lot more than the very rich to today.

Of course if you refuse to believe that the real figures were reported to the IRS, you can believe any figures that you want. But it is pretty hard to reasonably come to the conclusion that the rich today are paying similar tax rates to the rich 55 years ago.

As for taxes and economic growth, it is a trivial piece of economics to conclude that collecting more in taxes immediately takes money away from the economy. However it is only slightly less trivial to conclude that the amount of damage it does is proportional to how likely that money was to get spent. Given that the poor are likely to spent more than the rich, that means that we should prefer to tax the rich more.

 _Therefore_ if you're going to levy taxes (and there is no reasonable way to avoid the need to), it is more efficient for all of us to tax the rich more heavily. Instead of taxing them less, which is what they keep telling us we need to do.

(I, along with many of the people on this site, pay a greater fraction of my income in taxes than Mitt Romney does. But is this really good public policy?)

<comment><USER2> >the top 400 tax payers today pay income taxes below 16%. According to the best available figures, the top theoretical tax rate during the 1950s was over 90%, but the average tax rate paid by the top approximately 400 people was 51.2%.

Big problem... You're comparing two completely different things. The 16% number is based on the fact that most of the wealth earn their income through capital gains which is taxed at a lower rate. So you're comparing income taxes to capital gains taxes. Two completely different items, apple to oranges.

> But it is pretty hard to reasonably come to the conclusion that the rich > today are paying similar tax rates to the rich 55 years ago.

You're second point is also wrong. The rich actually pay a higher percentage of the tax burden when rates are cut. Look at the 20's. Taxes were slashed and the percentage of the income taxes paid by the rich doubled. Same today happened with the Bush cuts. The top 10% pay 71% of income taxes, and top 1% around 40%. Here's a chart to show you: [http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/top10-percent- income-e...](http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/top10-percent-income- earners)

How much more exactly should the rich pay?

As for capital gains. You don't want to raise it, unless you're out to punish the rich, since when it's lowered it generates more revenue. When it's increase, it generates less.

<comment><USER4> > _How much more exactly should the rich pay?_

This is an idealogical framing of the conversation. The opposing idealogical framing is:

How much greater economic inequality can society tolerate?

<comment><USER5> One day, your side will realize that it is your attempts to "fight economic inequality" that have resulted in the economic inequality you rail against.

It is this lack of understanding of economics that makes it easy to manipulate you come election time.

And the more your policies destroy people's lives the more you demand even more centralized control.

<comment><USER6> Yes, an entire "side" profoundly misunderstands basic economic principles.

Which side was it, do tell, that created faux think tanks in the 70s to espouse a particular economic philosophy? These would be the same think tanks that seem to simultaneously advocate for the "marketplace of ideas" and then shun their members when they show a lack of ideological purity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is absurd. The tax increases may well have been in _response_ to favorable economic conditions, in other words, _an effect, not a cause_.

I'm certainly not saying that's the only explanation, only that we don't know. But the article argues that the cause -- tax increases -- produced the effect -- economic growth. It is equally likely that the relationship is reversed.

This is what prevents economics from being a science, and why widespread science illiteracy makes us all fools.

<comment><USER8> Let's try this then:

Assertion: "high" (greater than 50%?) marginal tax rates make economic growth impossible.

Evidence: Top tax rates between 1940 and 1980 were between 70 and 90%. Growth was higher than it was after 1980.

Conclusion: the assertion about the harmful effects of a high top/marginal tax rate is false. (I think this process is called "induction").

Note that this does not prove that high tax rates are beneficial, only that they are not harmful.

It's certainly possible that the general slowdown since 1980 is due to other factors, such as growing scarcity of cheap energy and other materials. But investigating alternatives will screw with the livelihood of somebody in the top 0.01% income earners, so one might argue it's harmful to your health to push too hard for such :-)

<comment><USER8> Note that I am NOT arguing for a linear relationship in any way, shape or form. Clearly, a tax rate that approaches 100% prevents any activity from taking place in the open.

Also, one could argue that a property tax would be better than an income tax as a way to enforce maintenance of the commons and to provide infrastructure and an educated work-force. (I tend to favor use of taxes as "investment", rather than "money for nothing")

<comment><USER5> You're knocking down a strawman. The position is that higher tax rates reduce economic growth. Your evidence does not contradict that assertion. Doesn't even touch it. Further, you're dealing with claims and a study that are ideologically driven... so more precision is required, not less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am shocked, absolutely shocked that the vast majority of economists have been right for decades. Next thing you'll tell me is that limited quantitative easing or government spending increases employment!

<comment><USER5> I'm not at all surprised that people brought up on political propaganda think that this propaganda represents the opinion of the "vast majority of economists".

The reality is, anyone who knows anything about economics knows that taxes inhibit economic growth.

The idea that this is wrong, is so absurd that it should be laughed at.... only the problem is, most americans are absolutely ignorant of economics and thus can be tricked into believing it. Or in your case, assuming that "the vast majority of economists" think this, and have done so "for decades".

Frankly, it is astounding how much you have rejected economic as a science while thinking the partisan ideology you're pitching is "economics".

<comment><USER10> Any economist worth their salt knows that taxes may or may not inhibit economic growth. Taxes invested in infrastructure, security, and education may actually increase growth long term. Taxes wasted on corruption will most definitely hurt growth. Property taxes also encourage people to put properties to work, inheritance taxes encourage more dynamism between the generations (discourage old money aristocracy), and so on. Overly harsh taxes on the rich will also encourage avoidance (honest or dishonesty) and migration (negotiate your own rate with a swiss canton), while regressive taxes on the poor will lead to riots and revolts.

Societies are complex systems and managing them efficiently is actually (gasp) quite difficult.

<comment><USER11> _Societies are complex systems and managing them efficiently is actually (gasp) quite difficult._

This is _precisely_ the core tenet of conservative fiscal policy. The idea of coordinating any economy of non-trivial size from a central position is a fool's errand and invariably puts drag on the economy.

<comment><USER10> The USA is hardly a very centralized system; a lot of taxation happens at the state and local levels, while spending as a share of GDP isn't crazy compared to other developed countries (who mostly consider us very conservative). From some cruddy numbers I found via a quick Google; if someone has better numbers, please share, Federal government spends 25% of our GDP, state/local another 15%, we spend 60%. Of course, we spend money we haven't earned (lent from other countries), so say the federal government taxes at about 15% of the economy (states/locals don't go into debt as much, so they are probably roughly event at 15%). T

Sources:

[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.ht...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html) [http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2011/apr/22/ma...](http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2011/apr/22/mark- warner/mark-warner-says-federal-spending-near-all-time-hi/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article well illuminates the dictum to beware analysts picking their own time horizons. Calculating impact from five-year growth rates is problematic for business cycle, responsiveness, and exogenous factors.

Cato's reply is here: [http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/tax-rates-impact- economic-per...](http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/tax-rates-impact-economic- performance-but-other-policies-also-matter/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Just a reminder that since there's actual power at stake here (votes) it takes extra work to write a quality comment on this kind of article. The difficulty is equivalent to trying to have a discussion where some unknown but real amount of money will go to the political party whose policies are closest to those advocated in the top rated comments. This makes it genuinely hard to think clearly on this kind of topic.

Because of this it's extra important to be non-partisan, which is hard. Try it though, it's a fun exercise!

My comments: I strongly agree with one of the conclusions of the article, that we should be "humble about taxes as a tool for growing the economy." However, I'm suspicious about their reasoning. I'm not a statistician, but doesn't a sample size of one seem a little . . . low to anyone else? It seems fairly likely to me that if you examined more situations, you would find that taxes are generally not a tool for growing the economy, are sometimes beneficial, and are sometimes strongly detrimental.

For instance, say you're running a city-state in East Asia. Given that you're competing against Hong Kong and Singapore, I'd guess that low taxes would be essential to economic growth. On the other hand, say you find yourself in charge of Somalia now, or Poland in 1938. I don't know about you, but personally I'd really be digging the infrastructure/tanks respectively.

This makes me pessimistic that accurate conclusions can be drawn from a study like this. For instance, say you're rich in 1960s America but you don't like the high taxes. Where else would you _go_? Now there are lots more options.

</comment><comment><USER14> Happy to hear it. I think it's time to try a 100% tax rate and see how that goes.

<comment><USER15> Agree. Let's ban profits altogether, punish companies daring to fire people by putting their CEOs in jail and then nationalize their assets, redistribute all money around all classes of societies to remove once and for all the inequalities of life, providing government jobs for everyone and we will be closer to a real paradise on Earth.

Oh wait. Russia tried that. For more than 65 years. It did not work too well for them.

<comment><USER16> > Oh wait. Russia tried that. For more than 65 years. It did not work too well > for them.

You might want to learn a little bit of history before spouting off the conventional wisdom you learned in 8th grade.

Russia for hundreds of years was a total backwater. At the turn of the 20th century it was incredibly far behind the rest of Europe. Under communism Russia became an industrialized superpower that rivaled the US. Ultimately the communist system collapsed, but partially because of its own success. The impoverished denizens of pre-Communist Russia had never been able to force democratic reform, but with the economic growth under communism arose a commercial class that was able to force some level of democratic reform.

<comment><USER15> It is conventional wisdom because it goes against all human instincts that the fruit of your work should your own property. That is why all communist systems ultimately fail, because they kill all incentive to work hard and to innovate since no single individual can get the benefits of their own work.

Let me laugh at your "superpower" claim regarding Russia. For dozens of year that "superpower" had to rely on importing wheat from the US to keep feeding its own population. Being able to launch rockets while your people are literally starving (and I am not talking about being "hungry" as we see often nowadays) is not an achievement, it is an utter failure.

There was no economic growth under communist Russia: it was simply spoliation of people's property to feed certain sectors of the industry (the ones that were "successful". Like Bastiat said, there are "things that you see and things that you do not see". Focusing only on the achievements of Russia makes it easy to forget the massive failure of its system in all other endeavours.

<comment><USER17> >> they kill all incentive to work hard and to innovate

At that time, the USSR was pretty advanced technologically. And it's citizens we're and still are pretty advanced academically.

One explanation why the soviet system failed was due to inefficiency in investing in oil production(which led to a mini soviet peak oil), because the wrong incentives at the institutional level.

But wrong incentives at the institutional levels are pretty common in capitalistic countries: the 2008 crisis is one example.

<comment><USER15> I am not talking about government-sponsored innovation (all countries with enough cash are capable of doing that), I was referring to spontaneous innovation (people setting up businesses by themselves to create new products/services and add value to society). Obviously when you are in a fully state-controlled economy, none of that stuff can be allowed to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Next week: Economic Growth Doesn't Lead to ________, a New 65-Year Study Finds

Fill in the blank.

Do people want "economic growth" or whatever that might be assumed to lead to, or do they just not want to donate money to their country through their government?

One is kind of indirect and speculative, the other is direct and immediate.

</comment><comment><USER19> The headline is needlessly inflammatory.

A better headline might be "tax rates and growth only poorly correlated in one particular country in a limited period with the highest rate of technological change in recorded history".

</comment><comment><USER20> We are running a massive balance. We have a tremendous national debt.

Our economic growth hasn't been paid for yet.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. Lets cut defense and military spending substantially.

<comment><USER22> Yes, because summarily removing all of that spending would certainly have no drastic follow-on effects to the national economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The number of significantly different tax policies over those 65 years is very small--less than a dozen. So concluding anything from such a small number of samples is impossible. Thus it's not surprising they find "no correlation" between taxes and economic growth.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been looking for reasons to retire, and if the tax rate were 90%, I'd be out.

<comment><USER25> Do you understand marginal tax rates? Hypothetically if tax rates did move to 90% on personal income this would most likely be triggered on such a high tier of income you would already be working because you want to, and not for financial need. Also once you average out the tiers leading to 90% you will pay a lot less than this 90% you're throwing out there.

Edit: spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> LOL. No shit.

No one actually thinks this. It's called pandering to the base.

</comment><comment><USER27> It took a 65-year study to prove something that should be obvious to anyone with a little bit of common sense?</comment>


Sketch Programming: A Precursor to Test Driven Development - <AUTHOR> http://blog.antarestrader.com/?p=38 <comment><USER2> The authur seems to be so close. Quick sketch. Fill in the details. Implement new features one at a time. If you design the thing well, you shouldn't have to have any idea what these things are going to do and you can add functionality later. And test new features as they're thought up and added.

Or you could write the same code over and over. I don't like typing that much.</comment>


Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/pornhub-wants-to-buy-tumblr-and-restore-site-to-former-porn-filled-glory/ <comment><USER2> If I were Pornhub, I'd really low-ball them. After all Verizon wrote down the purchase by 30%? [0] and I'm sure they just want rid by now. So between 10% - 50% is a good offer.

On Pornhubs side, it's essentially a steal. They could very well foster a good atmosphere when it comes to porn and then offer through their mindgeek advertising platform access to Tumblr for their marketing affiliates.

These marketing affiliates spend ALOT of money on ads and it's very profitable if you know what you are doing.

If they started to get their own studios or their affiliates in creating films (actresses) in the recording space to use Tumblr to blog and not use twitter. Again, this would drive engagement by quite a margin.

There is so many things Pornhub could do here to make hundreds of millions off the back of Tumblr and they have the management to do it.

[0]: [https://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-looking-sell- tumblr-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-looking-sell- tumblr-2019-5)

<comment><USER3> Also, the whole issue that sparked Tumblr's decision was illegal content, and Pornhub most likely has the resources and technical capability to detect and remove it quickly, whereas Tumblr was a ghost town of moderation that attracted the worst types of content.

Of course, Tumblr needed a sheriff but they chose a nuclear weapon and the rest is history.

<comment><USER4> Isn't Pornhub filled to the brim with illegal content as it is?

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that they and their subsidiaries actually own a lot of the content that you're probably thinking is "illegal" or "copyright infringing" [1]

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

<comment><USER4> I've seen a lot of like "boutique" porn videos on PornHub that seem to have come from small-ish porn sites. Don't really know if PornHub owns the rights to those. Also, I've also seen some foreign porn flicks there and I also had my doubts about those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If there's one thing PornHub is good at, it's generating positive PR for itself. I'm always very impressed how much of Reddit - often very skeptic all about corporate manipulation- will roll over to have its tummy tickled by Pornhub.

<comment><USER7> Reddit has quite a few blind spots when it comes to obvious advertising. Disney properties get a free pass, for example.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate](https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate) started to gain some momentum and was killed fast.

My guess is that the professional community, people that earn money manipulating/contributing paid-content to Reddit, is quite big. Or, at least, their impact is really big. Most people are just readers and Reddit professionals have time, motivation and knowledge to game the system.

I have fun reading Reddit. And I read it very often. But, I do not trust all the enthusiasm about any movie/service/app or similar that the community generates. It is usually over the top and not very useful to actually get a good idea of the quality of such a product.

I think that as a society we need to develop new mechanisms to deal with the situation. Probably regulation is one of them. But, for people to able to understand that not everything in the internet is true is also important. It will take time, people still think that reality shows are real, but I think that is feasible.

<comment><USER9> > > _[https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate](https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate) > started to gain some momentum and was killed fast._

Killed how? They've got 168,000 subscribers and seem to be fairly active.

<comment><USER10> Socially killed. It was turned into a joke quickly, and most people seem to roll their eyes and mumble something about tinfoil hats whenever astroturfing is brought up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope they succeed.

Tumblr is not really my thing and neither is porn, but I have been dismayed by the seeming trend to criminalize and stamp out all expressions of consenting adult sexual behavior on the internet. It would be nice to see some successful push back.

<comment><USER12> How is porn criminalized? If anything, it's the opposite.

Pornstars are heroes for kids nowadays, we should be trying to avoid kids getting their sex education from PornHub, not favor even more exposure.

<comment><USER11> I didn't say _porn_ was being criminalized.

Just curious, can you give me a list of _good_ resources for sex education?

<comment><USER13> How much education do you really need for safe sex?

<comment><USER11> I was molested for a few years as a child. I ended up suicidal and frigid.

I spent a year in therapy in my teens and 2.5 years in my twenties. I read stacks of research-based books to educate myself.

It took me decades to learn to have sex safely without being some man's victim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was discussing companies who use Tumblr for official communication, like System76 and NPM, on another story earlier this week, and how it's cringy and not a good look IMHO. (My comment was flagged for some reason despite having 5 points and 8 replies. How does this site work?)

I hope PornHub does buy Tumblr! Can you imagine how quickly all the corporate blogs would scramble off of the platform to avoid association with a porn site!?

<comment><USER15> Why is it cringy? It's an easy way to host a blog. I'd rather any company focus on their main business rather than futz around with blog hosting.

<comment><USER16> Medium would be a better place to host a corporate blog. When I think Tumblr, I think porn not corporate blogging. Although to be honest, that image is fairly recent for me. I only heard about the depths of Tumblr porn after it died.

<comment><USER17> I would argue the exact opposite. Tumblr is pretty agnostic when it comes to the way your content is presented, you can even hide all social features without a problem. I roll my eyes when I see a serious company using Medium as its blog platform, with its absolutely obnoxious "haha lets make it official ;)" popups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Off topic: I am genuinely curious, why doesn´t Pornhub create a Youtube competitor? it is probably the best positioned company on earth to do so. Any info as to why they haven´t done it or why it would be bad idea for them to do so?

<comment><USER19> Someone brought up the same question on /r/showerthoughts on reddit, and one of the Pornhub employees said that there had been internal talks about it, especially after Youtube started demonetizing tons of channels, but they weren't actively developing anything. The main issue I can see would be advertisers not wanting to be associated with the brand, even tangentially. YouPorn had sponsored an esports team that ran into issues being allowed to tournaments because the tournament sponsors didn't want their brand name to be presented alongside a porn site.

<comment><USER20> I mean, the biggest issue is saying the team is affiliated with a porn site. But if "MindGeek" sponsored an eSports team, my guess is most people would be fine with it, in part because they didn't know that it was a company that owns porn sites.

While obviously they'd restore adult content to Tumblr, my guess is they'd keep Tumblr as a somewhat mainstream brand, and not let it be too directly associated with their existing properties to maintain mainstream appeal. A YouTube competitor would fall along the same lines.

<comment><USER21> It would get out though. There'd be a lot of hoops that PornHub would have to go through to make a wholly owned subsidiary they could use to spin-up a YouTube/Vimeo like platform on and it not come back to pornhub in the PR/advert sense.

Although we all know a few people here and there who don't know YouTube is owned by Google, the majority of people do understand the YouTube + Google/Alphabet relationship.

<comment><USER22> > the majority of people do understand the YouTube + Google/Alphabet > relationship

I think this is very tech centric view. I asked my wife (tech savy enough but doesn't work in the industry) and she didn't have any idea who owned Youtube, and had never heard of Alphabet.

I know it's only one data point, but I think it's easy to be blinkered when actually the truth is probably that most people outside of tech have no idea about tech company relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Verizon and Tumblr are so poorly matched. Pornhub would be a much better home for it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Definition of "porn" is too much different for Pornhub and Tumblr. For former, it's kafkaesque-lovecraftian movies with Hollywood-level effects depicting impossible forms of multi-person sexual intercourse, for latter it's usually just photos of women with uncovered breasts.

I can't remember seeing "real porn" on Tumblr.

<comment><USER25> There was plenty of hardcore porn tumblr. But I agree, many of people posted softcore on their main blog, but it was rare to see hardcore reposts on someone's discourse blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> pornhub is one of Mindgeek's properties. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek) I've never understood their business model - they seem to host endless illegally uploaded porn yet more and more porn seems to be being created. Not clear where the money is made ultimately. Mindgeek dominate the online porn world which gets huge traffic. [https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in- review](https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-review) Tumblr was historically another repository of illegal uploads of other people's adult materials.

<comment><USER27> Yes the economics of this industry are really puzzling to an outsider. As someone who has tried running ads on these properties it's hard for me to imagine how anyone is making money in this business. And yet...

<comment><USER28> My guess is the sheer volume of traffic they get makes it appealing for certain advertisers. Throw in the upselling to premium features and that they don't have to pay much if anything for the actual content, and there's probably some pretty good money to be made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is in a way a variation of what Playboy did for porn back in the day. You claimed to read it for the articles (and the writing was good) but got to glimpse at porn as well. With tumbler quite possibly pornhub is wanting to do the same thing. In other words give people a legit reason to use tumbler (content that is non porn) so they can sneak a peek at porn. Now they can't do that now with pornhub (at least under that brand and domain) and even if they started a new brand from scratch how would they build up non porn ('the articles') content. If the price is right (big if) no doubt this is a legitimate strategy.

</comment><comment><USER30> It'd be interesting to see if Verizon will take their money. I could see a lot of their executives being squeamish about it.

<comment><USER31> Why's that? Verizon already sells porn.

<comment><USER32> Care to elaborate on this point?

<comment><USER31> Verizon (cable specifically) already sells "adult content" in the form of premium channels, like most cable providers in the U.S. In fact they have defended carrying of such channels by saying consumers want the choice. While they don't produce it, they are certainly making money off of it and defending the choice to do so.

See [https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/verizon-defends- decisi...](https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/verizon-defends-decision-to- offer-incest-and-child-themed-porn-on-video-on-demand)

<comment><USER28> Well, there's "adult content" and then there's porn. The stuff on cable channels is pretty much "soft core" which stops just short of a certain line. I guess that's how they can defend it.

<comment><USER33> Pay-per-view hardcore content is a thing. They make bank on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think Tumblr is a lost cause. The younger generation has shifted to Instagram/OnlyFans and Reddit for their porn fixes.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why don't they just have their engineers create their own Tumblr clone? Tumblhub or Tumhub or Pornblr. It would probably be cheaper than buying Tumblr.

<comment><USER36> I might get downvoted for this, but...I can't believe you didn't think of the name "Cumblr"

<comment><USER37> -spits out energy drink all over my keyboard-

....Thanks for that.. LOL

<comment><USER38> Pornhub, Tumblr, and the rest of the Internet: Causing various fluid spills onto keyboards, since the late 20th century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mellow-lake-day Original article that broke the news: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/pornhub-i...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/pornhub- interested-in-buying-tumblr)

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the only problem with this, is that there is still a solid 35% of the user base that doesn't want porn. So, there is a very fine line.

<comment><USER39> Honestly, those users were using the site even when porn and other such content was allowed, and clearly weren't bothered by existence on the platform overall. So if they allow it again, then so long as they don't promote these blogs to users who don't care for them, no one's gonna be bothered.

It's like Reddit; yes it allows adult content, but since you're not forced to view subreddits that allow it, no one cares.

<comment><USER38> _Honestly, those users were using the site even when porn and other such content was allowed, and clearly weren 't bothered by existence on the platform overall._

"Someone, somewhere is thinking thoughts I don't approve of!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm reminded of the Perry Cox quote:

> I'm fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there'd only be one > website left, and it'd be called "Bring back the porn!"

</comment><comment><USER41> Finally I can get all my gay kinky porn back now.

</comment><comment><USER42> Honestly if PH doesn't do it I feel like Cards Against Humanity will now that the idea's been floated.

</comment><comment><USER43> Well at least someone still knows what the internet is for.

They'll make a bundle.

</comment><comment><USER44> So, Tumblr will soon become the twitter for pornstars.

</comment><comment><USER45> wow, this post was submitted 5 hours ago and has 311 points and it already fell off the front page? someone here doesn't like porn at all

</comment><comment><USER46> I like Resolute's comment below the article:

 _I 'm not sure Verizon's "buy high, ruin it, sell low" strategy is going to pay off._

</comment><comment><USER47> Great. They should do that.

The reality is, way too many of us are more prudish than we should be, and we are all humans after all.

</comment><comment><USER37> Genius.

<comment><USER48> They simply saw their stats drop; did some math, and drew conclusions. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's bizarre that it's legal for me to look at pictures of a naked person, but effectively illegal to use technology to do so, just because advertising is subject to the whims of a moralistic and prejudicial minority.

<comment><USER50> I think it's the minors that are illegal and that's what Verizon is afraid of.

Adult sites are perfectly legal.

Also US is a very religious country (some parts) compared to other western nations. So that's where some of this comes from.

<comment><USER49> It's really just the moralistic people pressuring advertisers. Minors can find a way to get their hands on a Playboy, but we don't stop selling Playboy in shops just because that can happen.

People interact online through a select few pieces of tech: smart phone apps, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter. Just saying "adult sites exist" is like telling people to drive over to the wrong side of town and shuffle into a seedy porn theater. The malware-laced pop-up ads, and the lack of creative, multifaceted sexual expression, is what happens when you effectively banish a form a culture from the commons.

<comment><USER51> The issue wasn't that minors were looking at the porn but that there was a lot of porn _of_ minors on Tumblr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I remember one of my teachers in grade school speaking out against the Moral Majority and other pro-censorship types in the 80's. The quote she was up in arms about was something along the lines of how, "We must constrain the imaginations of our children."

Today's problems have nothing to do with people reading, imagining, creating, and thinking. Problems in 2019 have to do with people engaging specifically in groupthink and "othering."

Censorship, exclusion, and suppression do not reduce groupthink. Rather, those actions increase groupthink. Those actions create hothouses of concentrated groupthink insulated from criticism, skepticism, and the moderation of reality. (Also, if some honest introspection is done, one often finds that those actions are themselves _motivated_ by groupthink.)

A live and let-live society where people are free to self-express lets people learn in the context of a reality more complicated and richer than just themselves. A live and let-live society lets people transcend their own small circle. It is the best antidote to the small minded groupthink that creates oversimplified, dehumanizing caricatures of people and reality.

It's suppression and censorship that causes people to retreat into such small circles, allowing groupthink to fester.

<comment><USER52> The story of tumblr is really not about free speech suppression. They had a mix of explicit and non-explicit content, and had to choose one to decide what kind of advertisers to pursue. They chose non-explicit and it didn't work.

<comment><USER38> _The story of tumblr is really not about free speech suppression. They had a mix of explicit and non-explicit content, and had to choose one to decide what kind of advertisers to pursue._

Given the events of the past several years, I highly doubt the people with the ad dollars are innocent of free speech suppression. EDIT: Specifically, the people asking for YouTube suppression through "advertising" concerns were tied in with the people coordinating hit pieces against YouTube content.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0IYzF- zLMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0IYzF-zLMw)

<comment><USER52> Disney saying "don't put my brand next to porn" isn't speech suppression. Happy to consider your opinion, though I'm not so curious as to watch a 24 video to learn about it.

<comment><USER38> _Disney saying "don't put my brand next to porn" isn't speech suppression._

That has nothing to do with their suppression of even mainstream news and commentary, like Phillip DeFranco.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Terminally-ill scientist completes transformation into world's first full cyborg - <AUTHOR> http://mirror.co.uk/tech/terminally-ill-scientist-completes-transformation-20871943 <comment><USER2> He has a machine for breathing, a tube going directly into his stomach, and one exiting his bladder. A bunch of other stuff like speaking and wheelchair movement he is using eye tracking and software. Calling him a cyborg seems accurate at this point, but he plans to go further. It will be interesting to watch his transformation.</comment>


The State of Augmented Reality - <AUTHOR> https://sayduck.com/2019/09/27/state-of-ar/ <comment><USER2> Read the article expecting to find a review of different apps and ecosystems, maybe some big picture thinking.

Instead I read a description of Apple products and a sales pitch for OP's company.

Title is perhaps a tad inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER3> I experienced what was apparently "state of the art" AR at E3 this year. It was Unreal Garden using HoloLens. If you've never tried AR, you're not missing anything. The experience was that of looking at a minuscule and low res lcd screen a few inches from your face. Not only is it awkward at first but the visuals aren't very clear and the headset is very bulky. I would argue AR through an iPhone camera is much better.

In fact AR is especially bad compared to VR where the experience is fully immersive. With AR you get a confused blurry reality where you can literally see the seams and this messes with your brain that something isn't right.

<comment><USER4> That is why I am excited about TiltFive - AR TableTop. Restricting the environment to a table (31" by 31") makes the experience more aligned with the existing hardware. Still teathered to a laptop/desktop but you get 110° fov with 720p each eye. Once developers and users get a sense for mixed reality better/more novel applications will get more development. AR productivity software feels revolutionary.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Maybe if you didn't need to move around as much and you were looking at a fixed point in space I could see how it could feel more immersive. It's interesting to note that AR feels more natural the less you move around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is annoying, but the technology is impressive. Some videos of actual apps show a solid lock on position in the world.[1] Unclear how well this works when stressed, but at least in brightly lit areas with lots of edges the tracker can follow, it looks OK.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuO31Ro2ypg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuO31Ro2ypg)

</comment><comment><USER6> If Apple created a way to launch proper AR experiences basically from a link without having to download a full app - a bit like a snapchat lens, I think they'd clean up in AR.

WebAR is OK but too limited. Just give me some javascript control of not just the objects but how people interact with them and I'll make you something awesome.

I think there's a huge missed opportunity here for Apple, for developers, for users.

<comment><USER7> WebAR is a term these guys invented. On iOS there are main 2 technologies:

\- usdz (standardized zip file of pixar usd and assets) \- reality composer (proprietary new format in iOS 13. you can add limited interactivity, but all scripting is in a limited graphical language) \- also apps with ARKit + your custom render or SceneKit

<comment><USER6> Basically I'm saying why not make something that merges the best of both of these - quick/instant to download but with proper scripting so you can make more I sterwetinf stuff than just a object viewed in front of you, at least JavaScript, ideally swift. I'd love that from both an end user and developer standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Outside of Pokémon and Ingress - interacting with AR through a tiny phone screen still seems gimmicky and only mildly helpful.

Kinda feels like AR needs smart glasses to be adopted culturally before it has its moment. Thoughts?

<comment><USER9> I can see another use: if a phone could show a camera feed with directions overlaid on the street.

<comment><USER10> Google already does this with "Live View".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Call me old fashioned, but 2nd screen AR is not really augmented reality to me. Augmented Reality in its core means there can be virtual objects in my "reality" that look real. It's not about looking through a phone screen.

</comment><comment><USER12> AR Quick Look is not Web AR. You cannot write web code (JS, HTML, CSS) to interact with your AR elements within your scene. It's very easy to spot fake Web AR: do they have a link on their website that you can click on and it works on all phone browsers? No? It's some proprietary stuff that is wasting your developers' time.

The current state of AR is * Hardware is not there yet. Phone-based AR is the current hardware until then. * Fantastic content is still in the work. Content creators and developers are aware that app download is the biggest slog on distribution. Nobody is going to download (and keep) your app to experience AR for 5 minutes. Most AR experiences last less than 30 seconds. * True Web AR, where you can literally go to a link on your browser and experience interactive AR, is the best medium for content delivery. Write HTML, CSS, JS and get AR content. This works on both short-form (< 5 minutes) experiences and long-form (>5 minutes) experiences. * Foundational layers of AR are either missing or vendor lock-in: persistence object (e.g. come back to the same space tomorrow and see the same thing), multiplayer (e.g. see the same content from your own angle with your friend), distribution (e.g. the same content getting specialized for different form factors), creation tools (e.g. environment scanning, object scanning, ...).

Many (see other comments) people are correct when they say that phone AR is not what AR should be. That even the Hololens or the Magic Leap are not it. This will change with time but it's a catch-22. You need some hardware to get more content to get more hardware to get more content.

</comment><comment><USER13> At least for the browser, current AR efforts all fail short of having low enough latency to allow the projections to "stick" to the marker area when the camera is moved. Another thing is the poor support for bigger, multi-marker areas. I wanted to create a local multiplayer game with smartphones rendering stuff on the ground but the current technology just isn't there.

</comment><comment><USER14> An unrelated 2012 article with the same title: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350924)

<comment><USER15> Wow, thanks. Sobering to see how, in a sense, how little has changed since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What happened to magic leap?

<comment><USER17> It's ok. I have both a HoloLens 1 and a Magic Leap One [0]. The Magic Leap is kind of like HoloLens 1.5.

Unlike a sibling comment, I don't think it's a "borderline scam", but I do think the company is struggling to live up to their own hype. When it was released, it had a lot of problems. The latest OS update is much better. I first tried it around OS v0.17 and it was pretty shaky and crashed a lot. By v0.20, it was running much better, but that was like 6 months later. I think they felt pressured to release earlier than they should have.

I've been pretty busy at work with a mobile VR project, so haven't touched the Magic Leap in a while. Current OS version is 0.22. Curious to see how it's doing.

[0] I keep a full list of my hardware here: [https://seanmcbeth.com/vr.html](https://seanmcbeth.com/vr.html) Ask me anything about anything on the list. The notes on the page are a little outdated, as I have now used all of the hardware I have (and have it all readily accessible on a shelf at work). Maybe I'll update the notes tomorrow.

<comment><USER18> > I've been pretty busy at work with a mobile VR project, so haven't touched > the Magic Leap in a while. ... Curious to see how it's doing.

Magic Leap has always raised a swath of significant red flags, but for me, one of those red flags is that the company is based in Florida. As Roger Stone famously said, "Florida is a sunny place for shady people". I'm pretty skeptical of any company or person based there that makes transformative claims.

I would love to be downvoted and proven wrong about this in comments below, so if you have good counter-examples, please share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> All those demo gifs omit the one thing they all require.

Hands.

Stumbling around trying to interact with a magic window your holding is a crappy experience. AR is "second-nature", now?

Very few bother with the novelty a second time.

<comment><USER20> >Stumbling around trying to interact with a magic window your holding is a crappy experience. AR is "second-nature", now?

That is the primary way that most people interact with a computer and has been for years, so "second nature" seems pretty accurate. The people "stumbling around" are the ones with the VR goggles strapped to their heads, getting headaches and vertigo and running into furniture.

>Very few bother with the novelty a second time.

I feel like a few Ingress and Pokemon Go players might disagree with you.

<comment><USER21> Is there a sense in which Pokemon and Ingress and the Harry Potter game are "AR"?

Sure.

But they aren't the same thing that hololens or magic leap are trying to do, and conflating them with that kind of AR is silly.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 10 Could Track Absolutely Everything, MS Patents New Tracking Tech - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/windows-10-might-soon-track-absolutely-everything-you-do-for-your-own-good-508602.shtml <comment><USER2> Even as early as 1970, it was clear that like 1950's Russia everyone is the USA was to have a 'dossier', the brilliance of the USA system was that everyone was to type in his own dossier for the Government.

Gates & Balmer knew from day one that they wanted to rule the world, not just an industry. Windows 10 as the everywhere universal operating system. They'll give it away for free just like Android, the money is in information, as in getting the lemming's to type in their dossier, which is sold to governments worldwide.

Sadly I don't see much difference in Linux these days, these pre-bundled Distro's are no different than Windows, you have little control, or knowledge of what is being delivered. You can only 'trust', but what is trust Google from day one said "Don't be Evil", but Google is NSA, so what does it mean? When the devil himself say's Don't Be Evil? Perhaps Evil means Good?

In the context of 'Minority Report', tracking is all, anybody near a crime scene can be instantly marked as a suspect, any cop looking for an easy cash/gold confiscation can easily ID a person walking out of a bank with a large cash withdrawal ( asset forfeiture, aka highway men of the 1800's America ).

Information as always been power, spy's are the most valuable asset in War. Tracking a lemming and knowing his net worth has infinite value to Plutocrats who own and rule the globe.

The USA is a Kleptocracy, a Government owned and ruled by common criminals, having fleeced the USA citizenry to ruin, literally to the bone, they must now internationalize their criminal business to ID every MARK on the globe to be tracked and robbed, raped, murdered, and imprisoned.

These powers has made Bill Gates the richest man on earth, every evil doer on earth has 'invested' in Gates and his dream of domination of all.

We live in interesting times, should be interesting where this all goes.

The ultimate Orwellian society is where everyone plays without objection.

Sure some of you say, "You have nothing to fear, if your not a criminal", but the problem is that if you have an asset then you are somebody's MARK, lawyers make their money off tracking wealthy people, and once you know somebody has a net-worth, getting a judgement is easy.

Carnegie ( steel baron ) once said "Making money is easy, keeping it is hard", Tracking is all about knowing who has something to steal, all great fortunes were made by theft, including Microsoft, as DOS was stolen as well by Gates.

<comment><USER3> MARK?

<comment><USER4> One of the meanings of mark is "victim of scam / swindle". See definition 15 (!) [http://www.dictionary.com/browse/mark](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/mark)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >For the moment, Microsoft doesn't seem to be ready to bring this feature in Windows, but if the company is thinking of it, there might be a moment when some sort of implementation could be at least tested by the company. __That will be the moment when we can finally say "bye-bye privacy." __

Isn 't that a little bit hyperbolic? Why does collecting in-app usage data mean "bye-bye privacy" when we already have devices listening to us 24/7?

<comment><USER6> Agreed. If you want privacy, unplug the network cable on your computer.

<comment><USER7> Your solution is to achieve privacy at the cost of freedom.

Why don't we achieve privacy by empowering the users?

<comment><USER8> They won't pay for it and we have to eat.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Bloom: The Future of Credit - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hellobloom.io/introducing-bloom-the-future-of-credit-3b0d6ee04f24 <comment><AUTHOR> I applaud what these guys are doing, there are definitely serious flaws with the current credit markets driven by government regulation, but I'd like to draw attention to one aspect of the post:

"In countries rich and poor, access to credit is a fundamental cornerstone of social mobility. No matter your age, gender, language or nation, credit is the key driving force to boosting prosperity."

To be clear, this is simply untrue. Access to stable SAVINGS is a cornerstone of social mobility. Look at the industrial revolution, which drove the largest increase in standard of living for the largest number of people in human history, and it wasn't due to increased access to credit — it was due to having a relatively stable currency and increased SAVINGS (without savings there can't even be credit as there's nothing to lend).

The path to increased freedom and equality in society isn't more people being in permanent debt on their house — it's having a stable currency that allows people to save their money and pay mostly cash for assets like their house (ceasing to rely on credit to purchase a house will lower the average price of a house).

Bloom could do much more to promote equality and freedom in society by facilitating access to and promoting stable currencies (e.g. by dismantling central banks and letting the market return to more stable currencies such as precious metals or by making it easier to buy and store Bitcoin, which could potentially replace all fiat currencies used worldwide even if governments refuse to dismantle central banks, which is likely).</comment>


Ten things we've learnt about the surveillance state - <AUTHOR> http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/08/27/ten-things-weve-learnt-about-the-surveillance-state/

<comment><USER2> The problem with Mark Dreyfus is; as Attorney General his Ministerial portfolio includes managing ASIO and responsibility for leading legislation on Human Rights. Quite a conflict of interest and as the Government's chief legal officer he's the last person to defend the peoples' rights against Government.

EDIT: grammar

</comment><comment><USER3> But the rule of law is only for the media and whistleblowers, not for governments.

<comment><USER4> The rule of law is absolute, however its application is tentative and selective.

The plea bargain -- admissions of guilt where defendants are under threat of death and lifetime prison sentences -- has prevented 95% Federal court cases from proceeding, and it inches higher year-over-year.

Enron's disgraced and final CEO has had his prison sentence reduced significantly under an agreement to stop the legal ballet of refuting prosecution and wilfully forfeiting $42M for distribution to Enron fraud victims, effectively buying his way out of prison. "Too big to jail" indeed.

The US Government, at the behest of AT&T, Verizon, et al, unilaterally denied Samsung's lawful and justified victory in a patent dispute with Apple. Lesson learned? Don't bother with a healthy and useful patent portfolio, and do stay in the good graces of the US Government for there are benefits to signing into PRISM-like programs.

You will not have a hard time finding pro-state shills that happily declare that the state can do no wrong -- indeed, the law simply doesn't apply to government employees acting in the "nation's best interest."</comment></comment>


The First Ghost in the Shell Trailer Brings the Popular Manga to Life - <AUTHOR> http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-ghost-in-the-shell-trailer-brings-the-popular-1788920062 <comment><USER2> dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12947418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12947418)</comment>


DEFCAD Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rO54gzfite4

<comment><AUTHOR> You can sign up for more info via email here: <http://defcad.com></comment>


Ask HN: How do you backup 200TB across 15 servers onto a single 50TB server? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in a situation where I have a lot of data spread across lots of servers and I would like to be able to restore the data on a single server if it fails.
Suppose each server has less than 40TB.
The solution I'm thinking of is like RAID, but at a server-level; like a simple XOR of each server's data onto a single server. In the case of a server failure, XOR each existing server and rebuild the data from the failed server.
Has anybody done this? <comment><USER2> Firstly unless you have a lot of duplication in that 200TB you can't.

Two areas you need to ask yourself:

1) What is the daily amount of change per server and with that the total amount that you need to backup daily or whatever frequency you need). 2) What is the initial uniquiness in the data being backed up. Mostly core OS and system with standard same local copies of data tables?

With that you can work out what you are trying to do form a need perspective. May be case of local imaging servers and doing differential backups automated. But if compression and duplication are not the case and/or high frequency of data then you will not be able to fit that data into a smaller area. You may only get 2:1 or less compression it is realy data centric and you need at least 4:1 and actualy better on all that data.

Look into the problem and define it better, with that a solution will be easier and may be case of proving that you can not do what you need may even need 400TB to back up those 200TB servers due to high volume data changes and need to be able to go back more than the last backup copy and may need to go back a month. Define the buisness needs, impact and with that the cost and budget as this is very much a case of working to a limitation when that limitation is not defined and may well be articifical and defeating in the objective to a cost that exceeds just adding more storage.

In short, define the problem better with regards to data and busness needs for backup -- hourly/realtime daily weekly and the type of data and how dynamic that data is. May be case of easy to do as realy only 1TB of data that changes across all servers each week, just do not know.

Then do not go about doing yoru own backup solution from scratch, as something to replace what you have worth a look if you realy know what you are doing and you may not. But do not reinvent wheels, many options/solution out there but until the true problem is defined then no easly solution can be given.

Heck do not even know if these are Windows, Linux, AIX, BSD or a combination of different servers and with that the options change. ALso factor in offsite aspect of backup as one electrical zapping from a storm or a fire could mess things up if that backupserver is sat next too the servers it is backing up. So many things to consider but above all sit down and define the problem in more detail as sadly the devil is always in the detail and better definition of the problem allows for easier solutions and over all less work as well as smarter work. It is a good leason too learn, just don't do it the hard way and write a backup system backed system on a fag packet problem and design.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like an outrageously dangerous place to roll your own system. What you're describing is some sort of reed-solomon type data recovery, though I've absolutely no idea how that would work in practise. Wouldn't you be spending all of your time updating the parity information?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, similar to reed-solomon/tornado codes in theory - being able to recover from lost data; but closer to RAID 5 in practice. I'm familiar with tornado codes, but that's beyond the scope of v1 for this.

Updating parity wouldn't be as much of a concern because real-time backups are not a requirement - getting a "snapshot" from each server at a current time would be enough; and we'd be able to recover to that snapshot.

For v1 I would assume no data is ever deleted from a server, so a recovery would from a single server failure would be possible. (but this is where additional redundancy would be useful via RS/tornado codes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tahoe-lafs, [https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs](https://tahoe- lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs) , is "an open source, secure, decentralized, fault- tolerant, peer-to-peer distributed data store and distributed file system."

It has the server-level RAID you desire. The FAQ states: ``You know how with RAID-5 you can lose any one drive and still recover? And there is also something called RAID-6 where you can lose any two drives and still recover. Erasure coding is the generalization of this pattern: you get to configure how many drives you could lose and still recover. You can choose how many drives (actually storage servers) will be used in total, from 1 to 256, and how many storage servers are required to recover all the data, from 1 to however many storage servers there are. We call the number of total servers N and the number required K, and we write the parameters as "K-of-N".''

It's a very active open source project, with full-time contributors (I think?), funded by their commercial arm, [https://leastauthority.com/](https://leastauthority.com/) .

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you looked at FlexRAID? I am not too knowledgeable on the depths of this topic, but I know it can back up over SMB/FTP. It's a very interesting engine as well, and if you decide to roll your own, you might get some inspiration.

[http://www.flexraid.com/](http://www.flexraid.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks very close to what I'm looking for, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Your proposed scheme might work, but the odds of a system failure are extremely high (like, what if 2 servers go out instead of one?).

How hard is your constraint? Can you just use an aggressive Reed Solomon codec with a ~1.5x blowup factor (so, 100TB of extra space instead of 50TB), and spread the chunks around to each of the machines?

<comment><AUTHOR> failure of 2 servers is a risk for the proposed design. for a v2, the system could use Reed-Solomon on the backup-server to add entropy and support the simultaneous failure of N servers.

Yes, a distributed design with the backup blocks distributed across servers would be adequate as well, even without the RS blowup factor.

<comment><USER6> This is your best bet: Distributing blocks to all servers evenly. Using RS to encode your blocks to limit storage space requirements, and make recovery obvious.

Also, make sure you don't buy all of your hard drives from the same end manufacturer. Most of these types of systems assume random hard drive failure... turns out drives can have highly correlated failures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hadoop is like raid for servers.</comment>


Nokia N97 Promotional Video vs Real Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobileinc.co.uk/2010/03/nokia-n97-promotional-video-vs-real-life/

<comment><USER2> Anssi Vanjoki (EVP Nokia), pretty much offered a mea culpa on N97 not meeting consumer expectations - "it has been a tremendous disappointment in terms of the experience quality for the consumers". Have a look at the video [http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11183_Video_Anssi_V...](http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11183_Video_Anssi_Vanjoki_on_the_N97.php)

<comment><USER3> Admitting your mistakes is a good start. The question now is whether Nokia have actually learned their lesson and if that lesson is the right one.

Statements like these, though:

 _"It happens every now and then in a big company, like Nokia, even if you have the most stringent quality control mechanisms."_

and

 _"We have taken the learnings and when Symbian^3 comes out you can rest assured it will be perfect."_

and

 _re:early adopters not getting answers from Nokia about the issues they have encountered - "Like I said, that was a surprise to us. It was not expected."_

make me suspicious that they have learned anything.

First these are not QA issues. The problems with N97 are not a result of obscure bugs that could have slipped through. The problems are result of bad design and development decisions. Unless Nokia is staffed entirely by blind and mentally retarded people, they cannot play the surprised-that-our-product- sucks card. And it is very discouraging that Nokia - the biggest mobile phone maker in the world and a company with decades of experience in the telco and mobile phone business - is just learning that user experience is the most important concern they should have when developing a new product.

<comment><USER4> :) Great comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My girlfriend has a 5530. It uses the same browser as shown in the video and doesn't have any of that stuttering. Best of all it cost £100 outright. It is a really solid little phone for what I paid for it. It even comes with a stylus tucked away which she uses all the time (not just for nerds apparently).

<comment><USER6> I used to like using a stylus. They are not so bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the best features of the internet: Bullshit Detector.

Not so long ago, it would have been relatively easy to get away with this kind of misleading publicity (at least long enough to make a pile of cash, which would be an incentive to do the same thing again). Now the backlash is big enough that this is discouraged.

</comment><comment><USER8> Silly kid. Why buy symbian when you can get an N900?

</comment><comment><USER9> The classic joke that explains this: "Bill Gates Goes To Heaven" [http://www.mooreschapel.org/fun/bill-gates-goes-to- heaven.ht...](http://www.mooreschapel.org/fun/bill-gates-goes-to-heaven.html)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I laughed on reading that: ''that was just the demo'' : ). I am typing this on a Nokia E63 and it seems kind of ok, though a robust budget device. I have to place the phone some distance from eyes because it's resolution is bright. Point is, there are still some nuggets of good engineering at Nokia. Just give them time to learn from mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have an E72, and the lack of flashy gfx transitions doesn't bother me at all. So long as it's responsive and doesn't make some painful-to-the-eyes glitch-out session during transition, I have never needed eye candy. It does it's job.

</comment><comment><USER12> same sh*t with n900 running maemo 5, in my experience.

<comment><USER13> Not really. N900 occasionally chokes, but it works quite smoothly.

N900 is definitely not the same sh*t as N97. The UI feels quite good actually.

<comment><USER12> I have skype, gmail and google talk accounts enabled and also screen locked with password. Often times UI becomes so unresponsive, that I'm not able to use it at all and have to restart (sometimes by taking out battery). Today someone called and screen didn't light up for quite some time, then it lit up but didn't respond to my input until caller gave up finally.

And this happens all the time.

My mobile phone bill shrank significantly with n900 - I'm just not feeling like using this device.</comment></comment></comment>


The Consistency of Arithmetic [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://timothychow.net/consistent.pdf <comment><USER3> Odd that this sentence:

> Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

did not get a citation. Perhaps its so well known among its target audience that none was considered necessary. Since HN appeals to a broader audience, I'll supply the missing citation: It's from Wittgenstein's Tractatus - <USER2> very last line in fact. The usage is apt - as far as I can tell, Wittgenstein was making the same point about the difficult - even impossibility - of making meaningful statements outside of a formal language.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico- Philosophicus...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico- Philosophicus#Proposition_7)

<comment><USER4> Re: making meaningful statements outside of a formal language.

Well, yes I guess that makes sense if we're talking "meaningful" in a formal sense... but then we're again stuck with the definition of what "meaningful" is.

If I don't agree with your definition of "meaningful", then why would I listen to "your" philosophy? (EDIT: This is not meant to be personally confrontational, just a blunt statement of the essential problem.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very readable, and fun to read. More please!

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great!

I'd love to read a similar explanation about surreal numbers. Are surreal numbers in N or not? How do we know? (In my limited understanding, they're not easily excluded.)

<comment><USER7> The surreals have no relation to any of this. I'm guessing you've confused them with nonstandard natural numbers? In which case the answer is, well, what are we assuming? From the point of view of ZFC, of course there are no nonstandard naturals -- but PA can't prove this. Note that this is from the point of ZFC that PA can't prove this, since PA itself can't even formalize the notion of a nonstandard natural number (if it could, it could prove they don't exist).

In any case, surreal numbers are an entirely different system of numbers that exist in ordinary mathematics. As opposed to nonstandard naturals, which are a "what if we look at other ways of doing math?" thing.

<comment><USER6> Yes, nonstandard natural numbers are what I meant. Sorry!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Gödel's collected works vol. 2 one has the detailed argument by transfinite induction up to the first inaccesible ordinal. Interesting to have this as guidemap.

<comment><USER9> By "first inaccessible ordinal" you mean epsilon_0? (Probably you mean it in the sense of the first one inaccessible by addition, multiplication and exponentiation.) Because there is also a "first recursively inaccessible ordinal", which is much larger (also, not recursive: it's used to construct, by collapsing, the ordinal of Delta12-CA+BI, which is also much larger though recursive).

<comment><USER8> Yes I was being sloppy. epsilon_0 as the limit of iterating ordinal exponentiation by omega. Also the correct volumen is number 3.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who broke it? (DevOps Change Management) - <AUTHOR> Our company is getting bigger and we find it harder to stay aprised of changes (infrastructure, code, database structure, server config) across the firm that would impact the production environment. This hurts the most when we identify and try to fix newly discovered bugs. It's hard to know what chsnges across the teams may have caused it.<p>What are some good approaches/tools one can use for tracking these production changes? <comment><USER2> Do you have automated tests that run after your build? When do you build and do you have continuous integration (regular builds on check-in to scm?).

If you do then store every build and automated test results data. Try Tesults for this ([https://www.tesults.com](https://www.tesults.com)) - I am the founder and one of our programmers can get you setup, contact me directly if you want or email support. Basically this will narrow down the introduction of issues to a specific build and as long as the associated change/revision has been recorded with each build it will narrow it to down to a specific change or narrow range.

</comment><comment><USER3> The usual basics are hard to beat. Error logs to pinpoint the location of a bug. Info logs too to observe data or possibly timing issues with multiple users or things. And of course source control. After you know where in the code the error is you can use the blame or annotate features to observe changes in that area of code. Branch or tag at release points so you can apply fixes to the production version of the code without pollution of in-dev features.

</comment><comment><USER4> there is no tool more like process this is a good way to introduce change control

[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/implement-change- manage...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/implement-change-management- with-these-six-steps/)</comment>


Ask HN: help with my startup - <AUTHOR>

This is my first post, please be gentle :)
In 2009, with a friend, I launched gdocsopen.com, a way to use google docs for local office documents. After launch, we got some really good press.
Fast forward 3 years, after which I put some effort into the website & app, it's not working really well (2-3 sales / month). I realised that the market is really small.
What do you advise me to do? Move on or keep trying to succeed with this app? <comment><USER2> I'm with those who said it's in the market, for various reasons. In pretty much all respects, it's about the numbers. Is there a big enough existing market/potential market for your product as it is? Are there borderline cases that might be sold on your product if they had a free trial? Is there a bigger market if you shift to another variant like the web-based alternatives penologist mentioned? What's your margin for any of this? Are you deterring people with a long domain/name?

I realize I'm restating what other people said, but with many things, I think the math speaks for itself, or at least, it should. Run the numbers as ruthlessly and exactly as you can. Then make your decision based on that.

If your heart is in this, maybe you can adapt it somehow so that the numbers are more promising. But let the numbers speak.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the tip. The numbers were always saying to give up, since I put way too much effort, with little reward...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What sales volume were you receiving after the launch when your site was getting traffic from your press coverage?

If you were doing a lot of sales when you were getting good press you clearly have an application that people want and are willing to pay for. In that case you might be able to substantially increase sales by spending more time on marketing.

If you do decide to move on to something else, maybe you could offer the app for free and encourage social sharing both in the app and on the website. You could then move back to the project if downloads pick up as a result.

<comment><AUTHOR> even though I've got a traffic spike after the articles, I wasn't seeing that in the sales... There was no difference. I like the idea of offering the app for free, to see if there's any traction. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Why not take the price from $7 to $70?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would think the number of people who care about google docs as a full replacement for locally installed software would have to be very small so you need to grow towards a larger audience.

Maybe you can also support office365, zoho, and any other web based alternative to some locally installed piece of software. That would potentially allow you to pull affiliate fees for driving new customers to software you support and/or get some promotion or marketing from those companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about this approach, but wanted to wait until I have a proven concept. Google Docs has lots more users than zoho/office365. I like the idea with affiliate fees. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate the domain name honestly. Too long and 3 syllables, good domain names are 2 or less, you need something that is going to stand out and get noticed IMO.

The other issue is that Microsoft now uses "the cloud" to store all your data, treating your computer as a terminal, therefore people have no need for your service!

<comment><AUTHOR> about your first observation, don't know if the name is what's wrong...

that's exactly what my app does: it uses the cloud to keep any documents you open :)</comment></comment>


When Working from Home Doesn't Work - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/when-working-from-home-doesnt-work/540660/?utm_content=buffer0e316&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer&single_page=true <comment><USER2> They talk about research but don't show it. All the explanation they offer seems common sense, is there anything more than that? Software engineering research is notoriously less stringent than the hard science of the rest of computer science, and to the extent that it serves to justify a corporate strategy, invites substantial scepticism.</comment>


Chipforge opensource foundry [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/leviathanch/SITCON/blob/master/ORConf-20180921.pdf <comment><USER2> It's awesome people are working on this. Their progress is unfortunately is pretty hard to follow or even support.

Their low-tech process steps: [https://github.com/libresilicon/process/raw/master/process_s...](https://github.com/libresilicon/process/raw/master/process_steps/process_lowtech/process_lowtech_steps.pdf)

Lightning talk during the 34c3: [https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9256-lightning_talks_day_2#t=178...](https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9256-lightning_talks_day_2#t=1784)

For an idea of how you could build transistors in your (admittedly pretty large) basement: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrmqZ0hgAXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrmqZ0hgAXk)

HN thread with article about a home-made litographically-fabricated IC: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955549)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish I could be pleased. Summary:

\- they are offering a 1 um process

\- process specs contains very little information and a scary number of "(??)"

\- test wafer specs are at [https://github.com/chipforge/PearlRiver](https://github.com/chipforge/PearlRiver)

\- classically they have built (or will build?) a ring oscillator

\- no results published for test wafer measurements

\- again NO test data published

\- fab is a space at Hong Kong University of Technology

\- university fabs are often run on terrible equipment and by (to put it generously) trainees

\- every time the university trainee operator changes you're probably qualifying a new process on your design (yes this is a bit snarky)

Based on my experiences getting stuff out of a university fab "process"... I'd rather sign the lot of NDAs and pay the money. Wait time might be faster out of a production fab, and you can usually bank on the process being followed.

<comment><AUTHOR> In their defence, the sole fact that they actually managed to get started is already a miracle.

Whatever they present now, is not even "stage 1" of what it is to become once they will get any much substantial cash flow.

Their long term goal is to get to 180nm, or with a stretch to 130nm.

How they will get there without an actual fab, you may ask? The amazing thing is the fabs are actually there: HK has a number of _abandoned_ fabs built up to nineties technology level. They were once built by no name electronics companies in nineties, but they all went bust during the Asian crisis. And HK never managed to emerge as a player in semiconductors.

HK government is facing a dilemma, they have to do something with them, but bulldozing a FAB, even a nineties era one, is not an option. And here the Chipforge comes.

<comment><USER4> > HK has a number of abandoned fabs built up to nineties technology level. > They were once built by no name electronics companies in nineties, but they > all went bust during the Asian crisis.

This is __absolutely__ the most cyberpunk thing I've read all year. Truly, we live in the future.

A question arises - how much work would it actually be to bring up a fab that's been dead for several (much less a dozen) years? Wouldn't the fab basically need to be ripped apart and completely refurbished by now? Or are the most important pieces fairly immune to physical degradation when abandoned without regular ongoing maintenance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite a lot, but still incomparable to doing it from scratch. FAB require very unique equipment, not used in any other industry. Like water filtration plants that can make ultra pure deionised water in tenths of cubic metres per hour, process gas recycling plants, industry specific automation equipment, etc

Even a nineties tech level, a FAB still costs a megaton of money.

The most unique proposition here is that a prospect of getting an actual FAB with a lot of automation, and not a laboratory coaxed into manufacturing role is within the grasp. You can't have that anywhere else in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi all. I'm leviathan, the guy from the lightening talk and the talk here: [https://youtu.be/kiTcaRqzOmY](https://youtu.be/kiTcaRqzOmY)

In fact you really can get factory buildings basically for free from Hong Kong government because they don't know what to do with the building, but there is also a fab which actually is still in use (not heavily though) We're in talks with some of the folks who know the owner of the fab and are having a meeting with him very soon.

They actually have automation of the production line to a certain degree, so we can most likely stem it if we can get two more members into the team.

For now we are just planning the layout and mask set and making sure everything is correct, so that we can provide reliable measurement data in order for you guys to start designing.

Since the HK dollar stays for ages already on 8HKD ~ 1USD but the Reminbi is getting more expensive, we will at some point be cheaper producing here in Hong Kong.

You can however just sign NDAs and shove the money up into the ... wallets ... of big companies like SMIC.

If however you wanna be sure that there are no CIA backdoors sneaked into your mask set I'd suggest our service.

I also accept BitCoins BTW as payment for the chips ;-)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the vision of creating an open set of processes and standard cells that every foundry could offer is a good one, but they aren't particularly motivated to sign up.

I am not confident it will motivate the foundry that this will get any additional customers or will (as a process) be able to fill extra capacity.

That said I tried briefly to get some folks together to buy the old Atmel Fab building as a working fab post Microchip acquisition (as I recall it was a 1u fab) but people were talking 10's of millions which wasn't what I was thinking especially since I believe the plan of record is (or was) to just scrap it anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, any background info on that?

<comment><USER6> On what? The increasingly short supply of fabs in the Bay Area? Apple bought Maxim's 6" line, Microchip closed Micrel's old 6" line. Intel pretty much shut down everything they had in the early 2000's (there are data centers now on the land previously used for the fabs) I am pretty sure that Zilog used to have an R&D Fab over on Bubb road (not sure what happened to it).

I started on the quest because I like to wander around the various auction liquidation shops in the Bay Area which often clean out a building and just sell all the gear they pull out for pennies on the dollar (the recent round of biotech closings lead to lots of refrigerators and incubators and microscopes and such). As I saw 4" and 6" wafer equipment go through these places I asked "What would it take to 'rescue' one of these facilities intact?" (basically a clean room with a full set of machines inside). And made inquiries.

Occasionally I would know someone on the inside who can route my query to the right person but if not one typically ends up at either the corporate development group or the corporate assets group. The sad reality is that the land/space is more valuable than a working, low volume, semiconductor line for 'older' processes.

As a result you have to pay the land use cost rather than the disposal cost and it really isn't an economical sort of thing at all (you'll never be able to make back the money you invest even if you sell the chips). And what that means is that even when you have friends that think it would be 'neat' and could fund such an effort, the math just doesn't pencil out.

If you run at the problem the other way and offer to buy all of the gear, and basically reconstruct the line in a new location, then you have to build a clean room, get a bazillion permits for the chemical storage, build a LNOX plant, and pay to upgrade power to support what the fab needs. Again, the math doesn't pencil out.

What that experience taught me was that in the Bay Area at least, you're not going to be able to purchase/save a fab that the owner no longer wants for any sort of a reasonable price. This is especially true if all you intend to do with it are low volume and open source chips in it.

<comment><USER7> Did you consider using modern e.g. DLP chips or so for a maskless fab? It would not work on too modern nodes anyway, just due to the restriction to ~405 nm by the aluminium reflectors on the chip turning i-Line and deeper into more and more heat you can't get away from the chip. 180 nm seems to be what one could hope for with an immersion stepper at 405 nm without too much trickery, but the next one up should be possible with dry exposure. Hit me up if you want help or so with a maskless, sane-priced-chips yielding fab. There are just so many applications once you have the same price per chip at 1 or 5 or 100. Things like custom hardwired monolithic analogue compute could enable e.g. micro drones and likely lots of other stuff if it's cheaper to use some tool to generate the analogue or mixed circuit that will replace all logic parts on some circuit board, leaving only power handling components and those that don't work inside an IC. Maybe the freedom to create a monolithic version of an HB100 radar module, allowing a heterodyne design due to the savings from integration, with the needed experimentation being possible just because iterations are neither expensive nor long (comparable to Chinese PCB manufacture, so something under a week).

<comment><USER6> This is a good thought. The short answer is of course no, I didn't because I was looking at preserving an existing line rather than build a new one. However I think there is a lot of merit in penciling out a closed cell[1] (mostly) dry line. The cost to develop the equipment would be pretty high though, perhaps prohibitive relative to the ability to resell that gear.

[1] Where wafers are always in a closed container, no clean room required.

<comment><USER7> Oh, I very much meant using the chemical technology, and just replacing the steppers in one of the lines with the maskless ones.

For the closed cell line, which problems are you seeing? Any special use cases for making chips on a process that emphasizes uniquness so much? I mean, apart from maybe being able to do AOI after the front of line processing to hard- route metal around (presumed) defects, in order to reduce the cleanliness requirements for actual monolithic wafers. I mean like if you have a 2D, routing mesh of compute, and you need to worry about routers having defects that tank your yield in wafer-scale chips, you can design the front of line masks to allow wiring one or maybe even more clock delays into the mesh link (without significant cost to the attainable frequency/minimum delay) and also just not connect the link from one or more neighbors over (on the other side of the defect router) to the defect circuity, so that routing between the nodes around the defect one isn't impacted, and neither are any delay cycles. The one node is broken, but it'd just be something a compiler would have to work around.

Other things like hardwired crypto keys might be of use, or hardwired logic for these <15 ppi very, very wide aspect ratio LED screens that are anyway configured for some fixed text to scroll by. Or some analogue IC that is detuned from theoretical values to compensate for the not-precisely- manufacturable discrete capacitors (and inductors), as e.g. the needed Q-factor/voltage of the resonance doesn't allow mechanical trimming components to be used, as they'd induce corona discharge if close enough to not murder the Q-factor.

Digital control is in nowadays even for fast feedback loops, but you can't beat the latency of analogue PD controllers. Good luck compensating single- digit MHz vibration actively with a piezo and e.g. optical interference pattern contrast sensing with some photodiodes like done with 4 of the latter for a CD drive. I'm confident that the power driver is a harder part, given that you want it to follow lumped-element behavior and not distributed-element effects, so you can cope with random noise of sufficiently low frequency to fall within the bandpass range of the control circuity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If DIY chip fabrication takes off even a little, I hope they use safer chemicals than the industry did back on those nodes. Safety and simplicity should be top priorities IMHO which would also help such a thing proliferate.

I like the idea of having a local fab for my own designs. Even if they're not that complex.

<comment><USER9> Are there currently safer chemicals available for semiconductor fabrication?

The dangerous part is stripping the oxide layer off the wafer. That's currently done with fluorides, which are really nasty to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Their website

[http://libresilicon.com/](http://libresilicon.com/)</comment>


Understanding Windows Core OS and Microsoft's 'Polaris' for Modern PCs - <AUTHOR> https://www.windowscentral.com/understanding-windows-core-os-and-polaris <comment><AUTHOR> This article gives a pretty good understanding of where Windows is going in the near future and how it will compete with ChromeOS and potentially iOS on the desktop. I really don't keep up with Windows development much so this was an interesting overview of the future at Microsoft.</comment>


Migrant children describe neglect at Texas border facility - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/46da2dbe04f54adbb875cfbc06bbc615 <comment><USER2> Why are so many people fighting to keep these facilities impoverished and dysfunctional. They need funding to do their jobs!</comment>