How to Avoid Spam Filters - <AUTHOR> http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/how-to-avoid-spam-filters/html/ <comment><USER2> This is a cop-out article that MailChimp can direct its customers to when they ask "how to disable spam filters." I worked in support for another ESP, and customers would often have unreasonable expectations about email delivery rates. Enough industries are corrupted, that customers thought that with enough money, we could bypass spam filters, or ensure 100% deliverability (never mind that half their email addresses didn't exist). I even had someone ask how they could make sure that everyone would open and read their emails. Like we sold some sort of Orwellian device that would hold people's eyes open and indoctrinate them to buy a specific Insurance.

<comment><USER3> The best answer, in my humble opinion, is "Don't send SPAM".

If you only send mail to people who have willingly opted in, not through trickery, pressure, inducement or some BS promotion, they'll actually want to read your mail and won't tolerate it being binned with the SPAM.

Unfortunately, a lot of business people don't get that.

<comment><USER4> Except this isn't nearly enough. Email is quickly becoming like the SEO industry. It's not just enough to "have great content" to ensure you're ranked highly.

You have to manipulate it at the whims of the search engine / email provider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd also add - your unsubscribe link should work, and work immediately, with no extra effort. There's no reason why it should take 48 hours for the unsubscribe to actually go through, or why I need to jump through 20 hoops after clicking unsubscribe to actually do it, or especially for the unsubscribe to not work at all. If your unsubscribe link is at all tricky, then I'm hitting report spam. Because you are, in fact, spam.

Speaking of ranty complaints, why does the linked page auto-scroll to the top when you click on it? That's lame and annoying.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, people shouldn't click the unsubscribe links anyway. Spammers use that as a way to make sure people are actually reading their emails.

<comment><USER7> This is true for newsletters you never subscribed to in the first place. But unsubscribing from mailing lists you once subscribed to should be possible (and done) through the unsubscribe link. There are a lot of valid reasons (change of interest, frequency of mailings ...) and I agree with the parent that unsubscribe links should work immediately and not try to discourage you from unsubscribing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having worked both sides of this (for companies mentioned in the article, even) I would label this "How to Play nice in the Email Space." Techniques for avoiding spam filters are much more nefarious.

<comment><USER9> I agree, but I bet an article titled "How to Avoid Spam Filters" gets a massively larger number of hits from search results than one titled "How to Play Nice in the Email Space."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Instead of "educating" marketers, Mailchimp should instead enforce double opt- in.

I've marked ~80% of emails reaching my inbox from Mailchimp as spam because they were sent without my permission. Yet I haven't seen a double opt-in flow in forever and I doubt marketers are going to change their mind about it.

What would also work would be for Mailchimp to allow a __user__ to opt in to double consent. From then on, no Mailchimp customer can send emails to me unless I confirm their initial request.

<comment><USER11> Double opt-in is great. I actually recently got a complaint email from a reader complaining about how difficult it was to subscribe to my newsletter which I found to be hilarious.

One of the reasons I use double opt-in is because it means that the subscribers have to really want to subscribe and not do it by mistake. That seems to help improve the open rate which can be used as a selling point against other newsletter in my field with a higher subscriber count, but low open rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unfortunately most people who are looking for an article like this are looking for "How to send spam and avoid spam filters", not "How to respect the attention of my valuable customers in such a way as to not offend their spam filters."

<comment><USER13> Tons of legitimate emails are caught in spam filters. The filter rules are mysterious and secret, and differ between clients. Gmail now has a >20% false positive rate for Linus Torvalds: [https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/DiG9qANf5PA](https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/DiG9qANf5PA)

<comment><USER12> That was a bug that was fixed. I would say someone like Linus Torvalds has a very unusual pattern of mail, getting a huge volume of mail from a single source that happens to be a mailing list.

<comment><USER13> I wasn't aware of any bug. It's just that the spam filter is super hostile to emails from lesser known sources. This was posted just the other day: [http://liminality.xyz/the-hostile-email- landscape/](http://liminality.xyz/the-hostile-email-landscape/)

It's about how it's basically impossible to set up your own mail server, because everyone assumes you are spam by default. They don't even give you a chance to prove otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Best way to avoid spam filters is to not send spam.

<comment><USER15> There is a surprising number of people who don't know how to unsubscribe. To them, the spam button is their first response.

<comment><USER16> I always hear people claim this, and yet I've never signed up to TechTargetWatch or whatever the hell these people call themselves.

And curiously, they're always emailing a spamtrap.

And as soon as I unsubscribe from TechTargetWatch, I start getting spam from WatchTechTargets, to whom I've also never subscribed, and who also deliver to the same spamtrap address.

But never mind that, I have a rather more paranoid perspective on not using the unsubscribe link. Clicking through to that unsubscribe page...

\- indicates that the email address is valid

\- indicates that the email address goes to a person

\- affords the opportunity to set a tracking cookie or fingerprint the browser

\- associates the tracking cookie/browser fingerprint with a person

No thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can you do one on how to avoid Spam too</comment>


The Four Possible Timelines for Life to Return to Normal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-social-distancing-over-back-to-normal/608752/ <comment><USER2> What happened to The Atlantic!? How did they forget to add "five years, because Trump!!!"?</comment>


Intel Skylake Review - <AUTHOR> http://anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation <comment><USER2> Pros:

\- 64GB for desktop (finally!)

\- 26 PCIe lanes (i.e. multiple fast M.2 PCIe NVMe, making 5k/4k RAW video previewing possible in real-time)

OK:

\- very small performance increase comparing to Haswell two generations ago (Broadwell?)

\- DDR4 performance matches XMP DDR3 performance; to see any difference you need to use quad channel configuration

\- SGX, the jury is out on this one (double-edged sword, could improve security but also turn into a complete malware mess due to enclave isolation and inability to detect running encrypted botnets once they gain ring 0)

Cons:

\- power consumption is up (!?)

\- no AVX-512 for desktop

<comment><USER3> SGX is terrifying. Botnets are not the main problem. Windows (N+1) using SGX to make it hard/impossible to remove the spyware (and other junk)[1] is the problem. As an example, take a "trusted" environment[2] and add SGX as a way of keeping end users out of the TEE.

While it is still early, SGX may be a key battlefield in the War On General Purpose Computing.

[1] e.g. the stuff discussed recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/rjbzWyB.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rjbzWyB.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Very terrifying indeed. IMHO these days there is far too much freedom being traded away for security, and users are gradually conditioned toward it. The thinking is almost like "How about we put everyone in prison, because some percentage of them will become criminals anyway?"

Back then it was relatively easy to patch your OS --- even if it was proprietary and closed-source --- to make it behave how you wanted to, if you knew what to change (see all the Windows customising forums for an example, and the whole cracking community.) You didn't have to give up proprietary software completely and move to something like Linux. Now it's become much harder, and I feel that the middle ground between fully open-source and fully closed has mostly disappeared as the two communities are gradually distancing from each other.

[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

<comment><USER5> It's "terrifying" but it's also something that's often desired. For example, SGX could enable things like a trusted Bitcoin mixer. Or a trusted telephony provider. Remote code trusting is pretty cool for such scenarios where the other option is "well, sure, you gotta trust the site, but...".

The downside is that it'll be too juicy for DRM and games to pass up, and that's shitty and most likely outweighs the benefit. Perhaps if Intel had limited SGX to server workloads and gave us AVX512 instead.

(I'm guessing on SGX here. I am unaware of any detailed info on how exactly it'll work, how the remote attestation works.)

<comment><USER6> Lots of info here: [http://sgxisca.weebly.com/](http://sgxisca.weebly.com/) Not a whole lot on remote attestation though

<comment><USER5> Thanks, that looks very useful!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 64GB! Sixty-four! For a desktop/laptop architecture! At 64GB (GiB?) main memory we're getting to the point where you could copy the entire working set of the OS to memory from disk on boot and then simply save to disk periodically. So long as you have a battery/UPS that'd work. Is that a crazy?

I'm currently on 3rd gen, the i7-3537U. My dream machine would be 13/14" laptop w/ 1080p (though 4k-ish wouldn't hurt), Skylake i7, usb-c, hdmi out, 16GB RAM, 256 decent SSD. Have I forgotten anything?

<comment><USER8> I would say it's very sad that we have only 64GB. We should be allowed to install at least 128GB or 256GB in consumer grade mainboards. Similarly for a developer workstation one has to choose a Xeon to get more cores, but a smaller GPU and twice as many cpu cores in the non-Xeon line would be great because enthusiasts don't use the iGPU anyway. Developers don't need a fast GPU unless they really need one and then any iGPU is too little too slow so most chips should have more cores in place of bigger iGPUs. It's true that your office clerk workflow doesn't benefit from more cores due to legacy software, but software developer workflows benefit a lot when building code or running virtual machines or running (modern) concurrent applications. It's very very sad indeed that AMD is the only x86 vendor who puts more cores on consumer chips. Let's hope Zen will force a change.

<comment><USER9> Don't people use GPUs all the time now because of Netflix and movie streaming? My old laptop's GPU would always kick in when I played something in 1080p.

<comment><USER10> I believe that streaming video can make use of GPU acceleration for decoding (to take some load off of your CPU).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I can't see myself retiring by i5-3570k since it's not a sufficient bump in performance for me (even with DDR4 quad channel). So, I'll have to wait and see what Intel does with its iGPU technology. If the iGPU technology gets as good as a gtx 970 (or r9 290x) then I might buy one of their next generation CPUs when they come to market. :/

<comment><USER11> From what I've read, the Skylake GPU capability is a step backwards from the Broadwell ones, though it may be that's because the audience for the two chips released so far is considered to be gaming enthusiasts, who will probably have one or more discrete cards anyway.

<comment> norea-armozel Yeah, it just seems like only AMD understands that you have to marry the GPU with the CPU aspects of the processors now. And I don't know if AMD can keep it up at this rate considering some of the projections hint at a potential default around 2020.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> CPUs seemed to hit their sweet spot around 2010 and have not made a huge amount of practical progress since. Up until about 2 weeks ago my gaming PC was running a i5 750 a processor released back in 2009 and still able to run all but the most demanding games on max settings GTA5 being the exclusion. Even my video cards (GTX660ti in SLI) are on older side having been released back in 2012/2013?.

Recently My PSU Blew and took the motherboard with it so I purchased a i5 4460/Z97 Combo for about $300 from Amazon which clears up the bottleneck in GTA5. This CPU is already a year old but I'm glad to see it's within 1-2FPS of the new chips in most games. Most likely won't even need to look at upgrading for another 5 years.

I think to some extent intel is backing themselves into a corner with this release, their last generation was so good (i5 4690k or 4460) that Skylake seems rather lackluster.

<comment><USER11> Was looking at this earlier today as my machine is about 4 years old now.

From what I can tell, moving from my i5-2400 (Sandy Bridge) to the i7 6700K (Skylake) would apparently buy me about a 70% performance boost. But then moving to a 4790K (Haswell) gets me a 69% boost. And I could get a 40% boost by buying a 3770K (Ivy Bridge), and then I wouldn't even need a new motherboard, RAM etc....

<comment><USER12> DDR3 and DDR4 are about the same performance and Skylake supports DDR3. You most likely don't need to upgrade your RAM regardless.

<comment><USER13> Skylake supports DDR4 and DDR3L but the slots are incompatible; motherboard manufacturers need to choose one or the other. All the Z170 boards I've seen do not have DDR3L slots. Even if they did, DDR3L is lower voltage than DDR3; standard DDR3 will never work in a Skylake board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As I'm slaving over a hot laptop in the middle of summer, I have to ask. Will this generation allow for cooler machines?

To be honest I write text files and email for a living. Can anyone recommend the coolest yet snappy laptops? With plenty of memory, min 16gb, "retina" display. Perhaps next year's Macbook with no fan is a candidate? Though I don't mind a fan.

I have a "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz" with "Madison [Mobility Radeon HD 5730 / 6570M]", which is a few years old. Looking for something new that has half the heat output, and is hopefully faster.

</comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know if Skylake comes with SGX extensions?

<comment><USER2> Yes, that was one of the main points of architecture overhaul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So I'm planning on building a new gaming rig because my current PC is still running Sandy Bridge. Would you guys recommend Skylake? I found this MoBo + CPU + Memory package on Newegg for $500:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=19-117-601](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=19-117-601)

From my understanding, the i5 CPUs are great for gaming and i7 is great for running multiple applications at the same time. I appreciate any help, thanks!

<comment><USER17> I'm about to build a new rig as well and was waiting on Skylake to see if I wanted to jump in. After seeing the reviews and price points, I'm going to pass and go with Haswell. The pros do not justify the price premium to me. Right now the difference for me is around $150, which I'd rather sink into the video card.

Also, I've read that the Skylake CPUs don't come with a cooling solution, you have to buy your own third-party cooling solution which adds to the cost. I know many people think the stock cooling sucks, which it does for overclocking. But if you don't overclock, the best reason for a third-party cooling solution is to reduce noise.

Currently I'm planning on an i5 as I've never seen an advantage to having an i7 for gaming. An i5 and a good video card is all you need.

<comment><USER18> If you care about spending an extra $30 on a CPU cooler, I'd say Skylake is definitely not for you.

If you're getting Skylake for gaming you should probably be planning to drop $400 (or more for a bigger size) on an Intel 750 SSD.

<comment><USER17> When pricing on a budget, yes, $30 can be a big deal. Let's see, $250 CPU + $30 cooler (realistically, should be higher) versus $200 CPU that suits my needs just fine. Gives me an extra $80 to maybe upgrade elsewhere that might make a bigger difference to my goals.

Why exactly is a $400 SSD suggested to go with Skylake for gaming? Why not a $100 SSD? What does the size of the SDD have to do with Skylake? I'm failing to understand your point.

<comment><USER18> If you're not interested in spending the money to get top-tier performance, there's absolutely no reason to buy Skylake right now.

The Intel 750 is NVMe, the next generation of storage interface. The 750 can outperform a SATA SSD by 10x in reads, and even versus an outstanding SATA SSD will get you at least a 4x increase.

Load times are actually pretty important for games, and after a GPU I don't think there's anywhere you could spend extra that would give you more quality of life.

You'd already be looking at $250 for a similarly-sized high-performance SATA SSD, so the price difference isn't that large. You aren't getting high performance even as far as SATA for $100.

<comment><USER17> I cannot disagree, I think that you actually supported my point for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Will latencies for DDR4 modules come down over time, or is there some fundamental limitation to the standard?

I'd be curious if anyone knows what Intel's long term plan for L4 eDRAM is.

<comment><USER20> Are those absolute latency increases in nanoseconds, or just bigger numbers in clock cycles? The clock cycle counts will increase as effective clock rates increase, but the real latency in nanoseconds could still be the same or lower.

<comment><USER19> Realized time might be the same or lower than DDR3, but I was more interested in the cycle counts (RAS, CAS, etc..). Latencies typically do increase as frequency increases, but better modules usually still support lower latencies.

DDR4 uses a lower voltage, which is typically bad for latency, but I'm wondering if there's some other fundamental limitation to the standard.</comment></comment></comment>


How to check to see if your Android phone will work with the new smartwatches - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/27/less-than-14-of-android-phones-work-with-googles-new-smartwatches/

<comment><AUTHOR> You need to use a Chrome browser on your phone and be prepared to wait. I got a blank screen for a good two minutes before getting an answer.</comment>


JsPoker - PokerBot Tournament written in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://markpercival.tumblr.com/post/73598704764/js-poker-open-source-poker-bots

<comment><USER2> Love the concept and platform, also thinking about how now with NJ allowing legal gambling online, a raspberry pi serer farm grinding out winnings, just a thought.

Great stuff - will take a look this weekend and see if I can put something together :)</comment>


Internet could save Earth says Gore - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/internet-could-save-earth-says-gore/2008/11/09/1226165363539.html <comment><USER2> Al Gore could save Earth says Internet. (well, depending on what forums you visit)</comment>


22-year-old launching a credit card that automatically cancels your free trials - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/donotpay-josh-browder-credit-card-cancels-free-trials-2019-7 <comment><USER2> Don't freeload without it.

His first project seems to have merit, but this one is a commerce-killer. I'd be embarrassed to have it in my wallet.</comment>


Google News Archive - <AUTHOR> https://news.google.com/newspapers <comment><USER2> Sort of related, a little more well known and also not very well advertised:

PC Magazine (Feb 1982 - Jan 2009):

[https://books.google.com/books?id=V2588uIxmAQC](https://books.google.com/books?id=V2588uIxmAQC)

Infoworld (Dec 1978 - Mar 2007)

[https://books.google.com/books?id=KzAEAAAAMBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=KzAEAAAAMBAJ)

Network World (Jan 1986 - Dec 2003):

[https://books.google.com/books?id=nBkEAAAAMBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=nBkEAAAAMBAJ)

New Scientist (Nov 1952 - Dec 1989):

[https://books.google.com/books?id=4BfSdk4mJfcC](https://books.google.com/books?id=4BfSdk4mJfcC)

Popular Mechanics (Jan 1905 - Dec 2005):

[https://books.google.com/books?id=BtEDAAAAMBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=BtEDAAAAMBAJ)

Popular Science (May 1872 - Mar 2009):

[https://books.google.com/books?id=wzsEAAAAMBAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=wzsEAAAAMBAJ)

Many, many hours can be spent browsing these...

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. This is so neglected it still has the old google logo on it. It is a good resource but that level of neglect makes me wonder how long it will last.

<comment><USER4> It might have lasted this long because of neglect. If someone starts working on it, a bean counter might notice and axe it altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would be great to have as a downloadable data set.

</comment><comment><USER6> some of these are being mislabeled.

for example: [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=3yMDF_cvnR8C&dat=1908...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=3yMDF_cvnR8C&dat=19081128&printsec=frontpage&hl=en)

the article is from 1980, not 1908.

<comment><USER7> How about the Baltimore Afro-American [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=JkxM1axsR- IC](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=JkxM1axsR-IC)

Google says the paper is from 1794, but it is actually from 1974. This is understandable because the paper itself has the same mistake on the first page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a way to get pdfs of those in high quality?</comment>


Building Clojure Projects with Leiningen - <AUTHOR> http://zef.me/2470/building-clojure-projects-with-leiningen <comment><USER2> These instructions are a bit outdated - the project skeleton can now be created using the "lein new" command.

<comment><USER3> They are actually way outdated. This is from Leiningen 1.0. Leiningen (now 1.1.0) has changed a lot since then. Best to refer to the source: [http://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/README.m...](http://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/master/README.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might be of some use: <http://pastebin.com/f10cbf605></comment>


Ask HN: Best tool for writing an e-book - <AUTHOR> One of the things I've decided to get done in 2012 is to write an E-book about living on a boat, partially because of some of the feedback I've gotten here on HN when I've mentioned that I live on a boat. It seems like a good niche that hasn't really been covered well before.
Anyway, I've looked around for the right software for such an endeavor, and haven't really found anything that seems like the perfect tool for the job. I know that quite a few people here have written e-books, so presumably someone else here has had the same problem and has some experience they'll hopefully like to share.
Here are my main criteria:
- It needs to be an online tool like Google docs, since I'll be writing and reviewing from different computers (some kind of solution with dropbox and a native program could work too..).
- It needs to be able to handle large amounts of text (obviously...)
- It needs to be able to handle formatting of both text, graphics and pictures in a simple way. An e-book about living on a boat will include lots of pictures with descriptions, etc. I'm thinking that the optimal output would be HTML, since this is so standardised that it will be easy to convert to all the different formats for ebooks later.
- It needs to have a good overview, so I can easily shuffle between different chapters. Eg. not just one long file.
Any ideas or suggestions? <comment><USER2> Having just wrote a blog last week, "E-books are not easy!" I really can't tell you that it's going to be easy :)

I wrote mine by looking at the EPUB format and setting up gedit and a bash script. Here's a nice guide for all of it: <http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/Introduction.shtml>. Once you run the script, there's a nice little epub-checker over here: <http://threepress.org/document/epub-validate/>

From there, Calibre (<http://calibre-ebook.com/>) will load/translate your epub file. Also it will load it to your devices for checking. As much as I like complaining about formats and such, I found this process very similar to writing a website -- lots of xhthml and xml. Nothing too tough.

Once you're done, then there's finding a publisher. Amazon will take a MOBI file, LuLu takes an epub, etc.

There are a zillion details to writing an e-book. If your question is narrowly-targeted at "how do I physically make an e-book" then the answer is not so bad. I did it all from scratch. There are a bunch of third-party tools that will help you also.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Daniel :-)

<comment><USER2> One note -- one of the mistakes I made early on was moving to xhtml too soon. I found it was easier to edit and rewrite in MS Word (or whatever), then copy- and-paste over to xhtml when I was getting close to publish. Otherwise, if you're doing it all by hand and have a bunch of chapters and formatting and such, refactoring can be a bear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The best tool is probably whatever you use to make webpages.

epub is basically a simple variant of html that uses xml to deal with chapters and assets. You zip the whole bundle up and rename it and bam! epub!

<http://blog.threepress.org/> is probably the best and most useful resource for learning about this sorta thing, half of the stuff is random tech and the other half is stuff to get it done.

another thing: amazon's kindlegen is actually a great resource if you're targeting that platform. You can generate a mobi file pretty easily and their example is actually incredibly resource-rich.

But really, the whole thing is just a webpage wrapper with limited css and no js, so go nuts and have fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually considering doing a small webapp with a treeview on the left side of the screen (<http://www.jstree.com/>) and one of the many HTML editors on the right. That way I'll be able to shuffle around chapters easily (each node in the tree would be a chapter, and it's easy to create sub-chapters) and just write stuff in the HTML editor.

At the end you can have a "view all" button that puts all the chapters together and presents them as a HTML page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Boat living high five! My wife and I lived on a boat for the last two years; we're back on land now while we downsize to a smaller boat.

If there's a HNer out there who wants to try this, I have a boat for sale that's fully equipped for liveaboard mobile consulting!

<comment><AUTHOR> where's it located?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen Leanpub (<http://leanpub.com/>) mentioned in the last few ebook threads. If I understand correctly, you write in markdown and save it to a shared Dropbox folder. They handle all the compiling for you.

I'm writing an ebook about nootropics right now and am using Scrivener. It's really great for organizing and rearranging your content. It's an executable, but if you save the files to Dropbox you can work on it anywhere (which has Scrivener installed)

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you looking to sell it on the Amazon Kindle? If so then it will need to be in doc format. [https://kdp.amazon.com/self- publishing/help?topicId=A2RYO17T...](https://kdp.amazon.com/self- publishing/help?topicId=A2RYO17TIRUIVI)

If you are comfortable with MS Word, it is available online: <http://office.live.com/>

I think the most important thing is that whatever you use it be something you are comfortable with.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am using Ulysses from "The SoulMen"

<http://www.the-soulmen.com/ulysses/>

OS X only though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have a look to the new kid on the block: <http://pressbooks.com>.

</comment><comment><USER9> Try this - <http://liberwriter.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> isn't adobe indesign the most popular choice for this?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd say if you like markdown or text files you should take a look at pandoc and using it to convert to your epub see here: <http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html>

<comment><USER12> I use Pandoc and find it _very_ helpful.

I create my sermons in Pandoc's extended Markdown format and then side-load them to my Nook. Sometimes it is good to be the geekiest pastor around.

I have also found that Pandoc is still being actively worked on. My version was from last spring and I just found out that a couple of releases had been produced and that now it had a new feature I was wondering about where it can explicitly add a cover image.</comment></comment>


Three European Countries Block Tax on Tech Giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-06/french-push-for-eu-tech-tax-falters-as-italy-vows-to-go-it-alone <comment><USER2> As a french, seing french government officials trying to impose their knee- jerk « let's tax it » reaction to any kind of problem makes me absolutely sick. They're just a bunch of jealous incompetent insufferable pompous politicians than don't understand a thing about the private sector and so instead of trying to fix the numerous reason why we don't have any competitor to google / facebook etc ( such as our best engineers fleeing to silicon for the last 30 years) , and how come all those companies HQ in europe are in ireland, prefer to add tax.

That will solve absolutely NOT A SINGLE ISSUE , but it's just another income to feed the bureaucracy.

Thanks to the three countries that stopped this madness.

PS : i also find it outrageous that gafa don't pay taxes, but let's fix the tax heavens in Europe then. Don't start making special taxes on _revenue_ ffs.

EDIT : changed "income" to revenue.

<comment><USER3> Please help me understand why is it okay to tax people on income but not corporations?

<comment><USER2> Sorry, the project is actually about taxing "revenue", i fixed it, thanks.

Taxing on revenue means a corporation that actually loose money because its expenses (salaries, investmenst, etc) are larger than its sales would still have to pay taxes, making it loose even more money. It doesn't make any kind of sense unless you're targeting a very particular set of companies that you _know_ are making money. In which case you're taxing those companies, but you're also creating a law that makes it almost impossible for new companies to start competing.

<comment><USER4> It does make tons of sense. What doesn't make sense is running a business that doesn't bring profits. Taxing revenue is one idea end accounting shenanigans and unfair practices like price gauging to eliminate competition which is now tax advantages strategy. Iam not a fan of it for other reasons but it does way more sense taxing profits which is just non workable idea.

EDIT: replying to child (not possible to reply directly): your argument about high cost industries is bogus. A system without tax on profits would just make those services more expensive as they should be (they are mostly high cost because they are very environmently unfriendly). It would also make higher margin services cheaper (cause they can afford it and there is less spending power). Once you actually think about it and analyze various scenarios you will realize that taxin profits from the very beginning was based on intellectual laziness and lack of ability to predict outcomes of such policies.

<comment><USER2> You do realize the whole concept of a startup is about raising money because you know you can't both grow fast enough to conquer a new market while at the same time making profits ?

Also, some companies like industries have huge revenues but make few profits because of the enormous cost to produce what they sell.

Try thinking about the various cases and you'll soon realize there's actually a very good reason why corporates taxes have always been on profits, since the very beginning.

<comment><USER5> > You do realize the whole concept of a startup is about raising money because > you know you can't both grow fast enough to conquer a new market while at > the same time making profits ?

But undoubtedly a start-up during that phase also benefits from public education and roads, from state-subsidized internet and transport, from security provided by the police force etc and hence should also pay its fair share towards those costs?

<comment><USER2> i suppose you're french, because it's the one argument people keep repeating again and again whenever someone speaks about tax reduction: but what about the roads then ?

The problem (beside the fact that corporate tax on revenues is just one tax corporations are paying among others) is :

1/ every single developed country has roads and hospitals and schools. Look at how much they ask for tax and the service they offer (and no, don't believe what people in france tell you. We don't have the best hospitals by far, and we don't have the best schools).

2/ at which point do you think we should stop adding taxes ? Is there a limit, or will you always be able to say "but then, what about the schools and the roads" ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whether this policy is good or bad will depend on the details. But generally, in Europe, this kind of priposal is a populism magnet and a dancefloor for cheap politics.

"Standing up to multinational corporations and making them pay their fair share (ra! ra!)" is exactly the type of rhetoric our most generic politicians love.

An American equivalent might be some "government out of your hair" initiative to reduce professional liscencing.. or somesuch.

Once you've got something like that on the table, all the cheapest politicians come out of the woodwork.

On a serious not though, I think it's a good idea if (and only if) this names and addresses the problem which this actually intends to fix: company tax.

Companies have always been difficult to tax properly for 2 reasons. (1) "profit" is whatever your accountant says it is, and this is a manipulatable figure. (2) companies operate in multiple tax jurisdictions. Between these two things, these companies don't pay tax. Besides denying the taxman her due, this gives bigger piles of money and advantage over smaller ones. Not fair. Sad.

I just don't see how modern democracies can address something like this. It's at the nexus of all the things we suck at (politically) at the moment. Cheap idealogy, corporate interest groups, and complicated systems.

<comment><USER4> This is because taxing profit is a very bad idea. It leads to situations where two companies doing exactly the same thing pay different taxes because one uses less efficient (and often more polluting) technology or just chooses to buy luxury cars for the employees instead of showing profits. The tax on profits is a tax on honesty in accounting and even if accountats are honest it's still impossible to determine fair value of things like offshore licensing.

Once you accept taxing corporate profit is a very bad idea the solutions magically appear: tax consumption and things we don't want (pollution, land usage etc.) It's very easy to make consumption tax progressive if you want that (higher rates for luxury goods, refunds up to X amount per month, funding social services with it etc.).

There is no reason to debate what a company based in country at the end of the world should pay or how your neighbors choose to tax their companies. If they do business in your country the revenue is collected by consumption tax. If your country is nice to live in people will move and pay tax there. The incentives are right for the politicians: make your country businesses friendly and a nice place to live and for the companies who move to places which are more business friendly and better to operate in as tax rate isn't an issue anymore - everyone sets their consumption tax rates and everyone who sells there must oblige.

The countries setting their corporate tax to near 0% have the right idea. I hope they won't be bullied of their position.

<comment><USER7> > This is because taxing profit is a very bad idea.

Wouldn't the same argument hold for _income_ tax then?

I mean, I can evade income tax to a certain extent by making my boss buy me a nice car, computer, bicycle etc.

<comment><USER8> He can't, if he buys it as company expense then it's not your property.

But yeah same is true for income tax, my country has a really high wage income tax at top bracket (close to 50% with health&benefits) that kicks in really fast, but profit income tax caps at 20% because people would just take profits out of the country if it was higher. so a lot of people work around it by invoicing their salary as self owned company pay min wage and take the rest as profit.

<comment><USER4> It makes some sense because wages come with a lot of benefits guaranteed by labor law while self employed people take a lot of risks but in general I see progressive taxes as a bad idea inviting scams. It's better to tax consumption of luxury goods at higher rate and/or use more tax revenue to fund social services mainly poorer people use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple and Facebook are currently building massive datacentres in Denmark, and Google has bought two plots for future datacentres.

They have definitely been wooed to denmark, labour and consumer electricity prices are some of the highest in the world.

[https://facebook.com/OdenseDataCenter/](https://facebook.com/OdenseDataCenter/)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-denmark/apple-to- bu...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-denmark/apple-to-build-second- renewables-powered-data-center-in-denmark-idUSKBN19V0MJ)

[https://stateofgreen.com/en/partners/state-of- green/news/goo...](https://stateofgreen.com/en/partners/state-of- green/news/google-invests-in-second-data-centre-location-in-denmark/)

<comment> shaki-dora I doubt that some data centers make much of a difference. Those tend to be employ maybe two cleaners, one depressed robot and one or two jaded administrators, plus their pot dealer.

They also don't buy anything locally, except electricity at negotiated prices close to or below the costs of production. Maybe they lead to some earnings/profits to be at their location? Considering the issue discussed here, I doubt that.

<comment><USER10> > Those tend to be employ maybe two cleaners, one depressed robot and one or > two jaded administrators, plus their pot dealer.

You just wrote the plot to The New IT Crowd..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't even need to click the link to know that Ireland was gonna be one of the three.

It's like they have a vested interest, or something.

<comment><USER12> Yes they're an obvious one. I was surprised though that Luxembourg wasn't listed whist Sweden and Denmark are.

I'd be interested to here their objects if anyone can point at a fuller article or discussion of the issues.

<comment><USER11> This is from earlier this year, so the debate may have progressed since then, but Sweden and Denmarks' concerns seem to stem from the way in which the EU aims to apply the tax.

>"A digital services tax deviates from fundamental principles of income taxation by applying the tax on gross income, i.e. without regard to whether the taxpayer is making a profit or not," Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson, and her counterparts from Denmark and Finland, Kristian Jensen and Petteri Orpo, said in a joint statement on Friday.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-digital-tax/nordic- cou...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-digital-tax/nordic-countries- oppose-eu-plans-for-digital-tax-on-firms-turnover-idUSKCN1IW337)

<comment><USER13> It's an intriguing concept.

What effect would a tax purely on size (income rather than profit) have on the world economy, if everyone were to adopt such policies? It would discourage large companies and encourage small ones.

It seems like employees do better when there is a bigger and more diverse marketplace for work, ie, many smaller companies. So they would win out, hopefully.

Customers may or may not do better. It would encourage companies to keep prices low to reduce gross income, and give an advantage to incumbents in the same marketplace. But one Amazon with it's fulfillment centers, delivery networks, etc, is more efficient than two overlapping half-sized Amazons. Twice the delivery trucks means twice the delivery costs and pollution.

Overall I'd be for such a system, provided it were not too onerous and didn't target specific companies.

<comment><USER14> It would not select against size. It would select against low margins.

Google and Apple would be fine. Amazon would be toast. Your local supermarket would be toast (avg grocery store margins are 1%). Any startups that are just scraping by, no matter how small, would be toast.

You would basically crank up the difficulty level of business across the board. This would generally help successful incumbents by making life punishingly difficult for challengers, who have to climb up through a period of unprofitability.

It is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER15> Supermarkets would just raise the prices though. It is not as if people can choose not to buy food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article doesn't say why Denmark, Ireland and Sweden opposed, but from a referenced article [1]:

> _Spearheaded by France, the plan has met resistance from countries such as > Ireland and Sweden, which question the wisdom of the EU going it alone given > the global nature of digital services._

First, not all services are digital, especially not Amazon packages.

Second, the "global nature" is a technological aspect. The corporations themselves are local to some jurisdiction, as are their clients.

This argument is similar to computing in the "Cloud": Technologically, the _service_ is perhaps global, but the physical manifestation of it certainly isn't. That data center is located somewhere, and when it goes down, one is reminded of the limitations of the "global" aspect.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/eu-s- divi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/eu-s-divisive- plan-to-tax-facebook-amazon-returns-to-spotlight)

<comment><USER17> >> The corporations themselves are local to some jurisdiction, as are their clients

My latest invoice from AMZN says "Sold by Amazon EU S.à r.l., UK Branch". Amazon EU S.à.r.l. is based in Luxembourg.

My order was one (single) LTO cleaning cartridge. Does anyone here think that cartridge even went anywhere _near_ Luxembourg at any point between manufacture and reaching me?

I doubt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the sole reason multinational corporations can avoid paying taxes, that they "have to" pay surprisingly large royalties to some sister company in a tax haven that "owns" all the rights to the mother company's trademarks and other IP? Isn't this the reason that a company like Google mysteriously isn't able to turn a profit in most European countries? And if I'm right, couldn't we make _that_ illegal? Couldn't we for instance require a company to prove that the IP it licenses is owned by someone who is not controlled by the same entity that it is itself controlled by?

<comment><USER19> But they should be able to pay something to sister or parent company because they actually use the software developed there. The question is how much. Probably not all of the profits. I guess it's really hard to determine and define strict and fair rules in this area.

<comment><USER20> It is rather likely that the intellectual property for the google or Starbucks brand or the work that led to Pfizer patents etc were not developed in Bermuda, Bahamas or Panama. It's hard to exactly apportion where but rather easy to point out that near-zero IP work was done where it was declared to be taxable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I feel that if that law was to pass, the affected companies would simply add that 3% tax to the prices European consumers pay, especially since this is a tax on the revenue and not on profit.

It's not like US tech giants have much competition to fear from European companies anyway. A 3% price increase isn't going to get anyone to switch to another service (except maybe in the case of Amazon's physical sales).

In the end, consumers would pay and this would add to the already large price difference between the EU and the US, due to the much higher applicable VAT in the EU, as well as other similar taxes applied in some EU countries (private copying levy [0], eco-participation [1]...).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy)

[1] [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éco- participation](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éco-participation)

<comment><USER22> But what is this price we pay for FB and Google services ? 3% increase on 0€ is still 0€.

We don't pay for Google with money but with our privacy. I'm perfectly fine with making my privacy more expensive to buy for Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting to note, albeit probably being irrelevant here, that both Sweden and Denmark are not in the monetary union (Euro) and have certain priviliges in certain areas of EU law (like the UK has).

</comment><comment><USER24> To save some of us outsiders from researching, can someone give a brief overview of the proposal? Specifically why new taxes are needed and how the targeting is specified (i.e. who is affected).

<comment><USER25> Its relatively easy. All the big tech crops are paying effectively below 1% of their profits in Europe and are moving almost all of their profits to tax havens. As these companies are very creative when measuring their localized profits, its easier and more fair to impose a tax at the revenue level.

I don't understand all the negative comments here. Look at the big profit margins of all big tech companies (maybe with the exception of Amazon retail) and ask yourself whether a moderate, unavoidable tax is really unjustified or will have negative effects on anyone (except maybe the shareholders). I don't think so and in my opinion tech workers should be a bit more mindful when thinking about these taxation topics. I prefer paying high taxes strongly to further social segregation, which will lead to the development of civil unrest and lower quality of life for everyone sooner or later...

<comment><USER24> I was trying to avoid giving my opinion. My curiosity was specifically around what conditions make a company subject to this new tax and its purpose.

Aside from my opinion on corporate taxing and government approaches towards it in general, I will give an opinion on new taxation policy in general developed as a counter to avoidance. More and more frequently, legislation is drafted to combat the lack of enforcement of existing statutes. And that same legislation is similarly unenforced like its predecessors. Most watch this history repeat and cheer it on with incredulity towards disagreement. Some believe this time will be different, others believe the same institutions that are failing at their obligations shouldn't be given a mandate to fail using the same approaches. It adds more codified word and less substantive meaning. Replace tax structures (only if you must), enforce, move on. Don't pile on, leave unenforced, and keep giving pitchforks to the citizenry while ignoring the responsibility of the collectors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can we change the title to "Denmark, Ireland and Sweden block Tax on tech giants" ?

</comment><comment><USER27> I didn't follow this particular solution to taxing tech companies as much as I probably should have, but I feel like it's not addressing the root problem. Wouldn't it make more sense to tax the revenue where it was earned (as oppose to the physical location of the european HQ)?

</comment><comment><USER28> Denmark is a taxhaven in its own sense for holding companies which might be surprising to many. The country primarily tax income not companies and have a high (deductible for companies) sales tax.

<comment><USER29> The Danish corporate tax rate is within the EU average.

<comment><USER28> Yes but it's not where Denmark make their money. I am talking about holdning companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 1\. I knew Ireland was on the list without reading the article

2\. Sweden is lobbied by Spotify

3\. Denmark tries to attract Google.

Cui bono.

<comment><USER31> Sweden has a successful tech economy and doesn't want to be held back by lumbering continental countries and their fears.

<comment><USER30> Yes, every other country would do the same, but it does explain Sweden on list which was my intention.

This tone

"lumbering continental countries"

wasn't called for though. Could we be civilized here without insults and hate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if the placement of data centres has much to do with it?

There's a bunch being built or in the pipeline at least in Denmark.

<comment><USER33> There are 2 Apple data centers being built in Denmark, and rumors of Google and Facebook ones as well.

As for the rejection of the tax, i honestly think it has more to do with avoiding double taxation.

Company taxes are at 22% in Denmark.

Denmark already collects 25% VAT on everything sold. If a 3% tax was to be imposed on "tech giants", it would ultimately end up being passed on to the consumer, effectively increasing retail price by 3% or more (depending if it's calculated as cost+28% or cost+3%+25%)

In the end it fails to accomplish the goal of forcing companies to pay local taxes instead of transferring them to wherever they can pay the least taxes, and instead drives up sale price and ultimately inflation.

<comment><USER34> Its a revenue tax not a sales tax - easier to enforce and less problematic legally than forcing profits to be booked locally.

and its not clear how paying taxes on local profit would have any more effect on consumers than taxing revenue

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> You're never gonna implement an income based tax system which would be fair to both corporations and employees. Corporations are currently taxed on profit, while employees on 'revenues'. So to make it fair you would:

1\. tax corporations on revenue too. Which this thread is about 2\. tax employees on profit. Food, gas, utilities, ... - these are basically cost of operation of a human being, aren't they?

Income taxes will never work. Monopoly taxes are a solution though. Monopolies behave as money sinks in economy. Their prices are not competed down, so you can't talk about monopolized system as capitalistic. The more monopolies and wealth concentration you get the more you approach something like feudalism. Which is where we are heading as a civilization right now.

Monopolies are usually created and maintained by heavy regulation, because you don't allow small projects to challenge them. Also monopolies influence regulation in such a way to make it so.

So why not embrace monopolies, but tax them for the service of letting them be monopolies? You can then even not call it tax, but a pay-per-use license granting certain social privileges. Perfectly progressive tax. The more you use, the more you pay.

<comment><USER36> If any given org is a monopoly, I'd fully expect that org to pass any new costs on directly to their captive consumers. Monopolies ought to be actively broken, not worked around.

<comment><USER35> Good point, but it is wrong. That applies to sales taxes. Not to monopoly taxes.

In well functioning market with many competitors, the price of good would be determined as costs + margin. Over time given enough competition the price should converge to that sustainable minimum basically. If you introduce sales taxes into the equation, then obviously you hike up the cost, therefore you shift this minimum.

Monopoly goods prices are not determined by cost, because there is no competition which would make it go lower over time. Monopoly prices on the other hand have opposite tendency - ie. to maximize to the point where almost all disposable income of its customers gets eaten up.

That's why you get the phenomenon of rents being ever so higher. They just catch up to increases in wages and eat it all away. There is no sufficient competition to compete the price away, simply because there is not enough land to house the people, especially in cities.

House rents are the biggest of the monopolies, because everyone has to pay it and often it is significant portion of a paycheck.

Back to the point. Introducing monopoly taxes has the exact opposite effect - it lowers the prices for consumers.

Explained further here [http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2011/08/why-land-tax-cant-be- shifted...](http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2011/08/why-land-tax-cant-be-shifted- onto.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think people forget this cuts both ways there is trade imbalance between US and France in France's favor so if both sides apply similar measures it will be net loss for France. I am sure this is something politicians forget to mention.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is one of the reasons EU is never gonna fly. Countries like Ireland are allowed to offer lower corporate taxation but still benefiting of the EU common market. No wonder why most companies have/move their tax domicile in these countries (like Nederland). This is unfair competition and EU should stop this s*t show. Businesses should be taxed based on where the revenue is generated and not where their tax domicile is placed.

<comment><USER39> > This is one of the reasons EU is never gonna fly.

You mean a single market???

> Businesses should be taxed based on where the revenue is generated and not > where their tax domicile is placed.

How would that make sense? If a product is built & sold in country X to a person in country Y, then only sales tax is paid to country Y. Revenue goes back to country Y to cover the costs and then tax is paid on what remains. That's like one of the fundamental things tying EU together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The EU was strongly against any trade tariffs.

What differentiates this 'tax' from a tariff?

<comment><USER41> Everybody pays tax. The issue is that some companies avoid paying it in the EU, basically stealing from the EU citizens.

The difference between the taxes and tariffs is that the tariffs target a specific country while the tax is same for everyone (working in a specific industry).

Tech companies seems to be the most notorious tax evaders so this was just a push to make them pay a fair share of tax in the EU.

>> Traditional tax systems have so far failed to capture revenue from companies with global reach but limited physical presence

<comment><USER40> I agree that tech companies do not pay their fair share of tax.

But this is an EU tariff against US companies. Will any EU company be affected?

<comment><USER42> If they are making similar use of tax evasion techniques then, yes [0].

Too many people here act like this is something specifically aimed at US companies, when in reality it's not. US companies just happen to be affected the most by it due to their dominance in this particular business sector.

But this is something that has been long overdue and was bound to happen regardless of who was dominating that sector.

[0] [https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/p...](https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/proposal_significant_digital_presence_21032018_en.pdf)

<comment><USER43> It's aimed at companies incorporated in the EU. If a US company decided to incorporate a subsidiary in the EU to get tax breaks and other benefits, then it makes little sense (to me, at least) to complain about US companies being targeted. Some US companies specifically decided to structure themselves to be EU companies in name (and tax status) -- so from a practical perspective they are EU companies. You can't have it both ways.

(Not to mention this will affect companies like SAP and Spotify, which are real EU companies.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wonder what are the reasons opposing countries gave.

</comment><comment><USER45> A smart move would be a corporate tax at the European Union level

</comment><comment><USER46> A company that leverages the favourable infrastructure and institutions of a country without paying its fair share is quite simply siphoning money from the taxpayers of that country into the pockets of its shareholders, the money that maintains that infra and those institutions. Politicians need to take a step back and realize that whatever jobs these companies bring, they are still a net loss to the country as a whole, the country would literally be better off if those people were unemployed!

<comment><USER47> > whatever jobs these companies bring, they are still a net loss to the > country as a whole, the country would literally be better off if those > people were unemployed!

That's quite the claim. Got _anything_ to back it up?

<comment><USER46> _That's quite the claim. Got anything to back it up?_

Pretty easy really. Multiply the cost of unemployment benefits * number of company employees in that country. Then look at the tax evaded by the company. "You do the math".

JSA in the UK is £73/week, or £3796/year. Let's say a company dodges £1Bn/year in taxes. How many people would they need to employ before the country breaks even?

<comment><USER47> Uh, what? Stop being vague and describe exactly what you mean.

Response to edit: Please describe the _full_ calculation (with _factual_ numbers) of "national wealth", and then we'll talk.

<comment><USER46> LOL if you wish to disprove me do your own research! But I'll give you a hint, if tax evasion was good for a country, why would that country have taxes at all...?

<comment><USER47> > LOL if you wish to disprove me do your own research!

That's not how burden of proof works. You made the claim that "the country would literally be better off if those people were unemployed!", so prove it.

> But I'll give you a hint, if tax evasion was good for a country, why would > that country have taxes at all...?

A "hint" is not what's required here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> When one country can hold up the progress of the entire 27 member bloc because of their own self-interests the project looks very weak.

<comment><USER49> Oh you mean the EU is not an authoritarian nightmare that just imposes their will on unsuspecting member states as some are lead to believe?

<comment><USER50> Ask the Greeks how it's working out for them</comment></comment></comment>


Telegram image search leak - <AUTHOR> http://mad-cad.blogspot.co.za/2015/09/telegram-image-search-results-leak.html <comment><USER2> This has nothing to do with Telegram from what I can tell. Looks like it's just the gallery making requests as normal. Once that 'intent' is launched I don't think Telegram could hide that communication even if it wanted to.

<comment><AUTHOR> The requests that Telegram makes should be over https not http. If the links that it passed to create the gallery were https, a mitm wouldn't even know they are requests for images. He'd only see a timestamp, destination, port and request size. There are ways to obscure these requests, the article gives some suggestions.</comment></comment>


Any london or EU startups hiring remote devs? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> There are monthly threads for this, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9471287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9471287)</comment>


Reminder: Eight (8) days left to submit your YC application. - <AUTHOR>

Just a friendly reminder that you have about a week to fill out your applications for Winter 2009.<p>http://ycombinator.com/w2009.html <comment><USER2> Good luck to all the new YC applicants. As it mentions on the YC site, you should definitely bounce your applications off YC alums. Email us-- it can only help.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean that Posterous is "a place to post everything. just email us" your YC application? (a joke)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I could give four words of advice (I was in YC08), outside the most common advice, it's this:

Make your application interesting.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Innovation is recession proof!!

Good luck to all those entering their product/business, wish you the best. Now go show wall-street who MAKES the market.

<comment><USER6> Innovation is most definitely not recession proof, quite the opposite in fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tomorrow it will be seven days, but the link will probably stay on the front page and you won't be able to change the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! Let's hope they read the "posted X hours ago" part. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've not got the stuff for Y Combinator. I've come to accept my own mediocrity. Just the same way I'm not going to go run a marathon against people who have trained for years.

Someday, you guys should try accepting that you are not extraordinarily clever. It's very liberating.

<comment><USER4> I agree that it shouldn't be a "life goal" or something equally ridiculous. But honestly, I applied on a whim. If I hadn't, I most likely would have been laid off from my job last week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To all the ex-ycombinator,

If I have a proper beta product, do I have higher chance to get in?

<comment><USER2> Of course -- a beta is infinitely better than a powerpoint slide. Lots of real users are infinitely better than a beta site. Etc.

We're in the business of turning ideas into reality. The farther you get, the better off you are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No time for no return.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know what that means, but it might be interesting to note that you're one of the first people to mention this phrase on the internet: <http://ri.ms/notime>

_(Edit: HN didn't like quotes in the URL, so used URL shrinker)_

<comment><USER11> Indeed, it's a decent line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this for the summer session?

<comment><USER13> Nope. Winter 09, which is January.

Applying for the summer I'd guess gets sent in around April, if it's exactly 6 months apart. Meaning people like you and me still have time to polish up the plans.</comment></comment>


Show HN: ButterflyNet – Fully async networking framework for Python 3.4 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SunDwarf/ButterflyNet <comment><USER2> Hehe, it would be very interesting to read a quick analysis about why you think that "Twisted is a clusterfuck".

<comment><USER3> yeah, that seems hyperbolic. Twisted can have a steep learning curve, but it is proven and pretty solid. Not sure why one would think it a clusterfuck.

<comment><USER4> I think that Twisted is too large and complex, and I don't approve of its "tutorials only" approach to documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a very thin wrapper around asyncio and ThreadPoolExecutor.

Also I'd recommend dropping the AGPL license.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a little barebones for a v1 release, but IMO I think it's better than working with the normal asyncio high-level functions.

What's wrong with the AGPL? I just thought it'd be the best fit for something like this.

<comment><USER6> The project you're working on is essentially a library - It's linked to by whatever software another developer might want to use.

I'm certainly not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the AGPL an version of the GPL, with a clause that requires developers to share their code if they host the service, not just if they distribute the code.

Since the AGPL is based on the GPL, rather than LGPL, it would mean that any projects that used your library would count as Derived Works - They'd need to release their whole project if they used your code.

Typically, one might see the AGPL used for services, rather than component libraries. This has caused some companies, such as Google, to ban using any AGPL code.

See: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_sourc...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_source_licenses/)</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla driver stranded in the desert after smartphone app failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/01/16/tesla-driver-stranded-desert-smartphone-app-failure/ <comment><USER2> It's surprising that there is no Wifi Direct or BT between the car and the phone. Someone on the Tesla sw team dropped the ball. That's a must have feature.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The Tesla driver was stranded six miles from home"

I'm a little speechless why this is referred to as stranded. Six miles is nothing for a healthy adult.</comment>


A robot scientist that has already discovered a new catalyst - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-robot-scientist-catalyst.html <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract (and paid or institutional membership access to full paper):

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2442-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2442-2)</comment>


"Linux has a driver problem" is a myth - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/276973/

<comment><USER2> Linux has no problems with drivers, no, none at all. It's just that all those drivers seem to have a problem with Linux.

(Hmm... Could that be because they were compiled on Windows and use the Windows API? Nah, can't be.) </sarcastic rant>

Actually, the driver situation for Linux has improved drastically since before. I mean, my 3d-accelerated nVidia card still crashes the X server every so often, but at least I have drivers for most of my hardward. (Although I've had some problems with webcams...) Anyway, good luck to this project.</comment>


Yesterday's Phone Cancer Scare Scares Me a Little About the Future of Journalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2016/05/28/yesterdays-cell-phone-cancer-scare-scares-me-a-little-about-the-future-of-journalism/#60a3e71b4166 <comment><USER2> This is on a website that blocks adbocker users. He should be more worried about that.

<comment><USER3> Use a better adblocker. uBlock Origin has the Anti-Adblock Killer list you can enable.</comment></comment>


Mini-PCs gain customized I/O and a headless hack - <AUTHOR> http://linuxgizmos.com/mini-pcs-gain-customized-interfaces/

<comment><USER2> I always wanted someone to make a small, cheap networked box that had USB (for keyboard) and video/hdmi -- and essentially VNC server software. You could hook it up to any PC and VNC into it and have a headless unit and still full access, even to BIOS, etc.

Anyone make something like this?</comment>


4chan now has a read-only JSON API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/4chan/4chan-API

<comment><AUTHOR> And the newspost about it (WS): <http://www.4chan.org/news#108>

</comment><comment><USER2> Sample post# 9001

My sides</comment>


Why only 1% users used Google's "I'm feeling lucky"? - <AUTHOR> http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/25383/13689

<comment><USER2> Feeling lucky doesn't imply you are getting any search results. You will feel lucky after you get the results, but then there is no feeling lucky button</comment>


How to handle an aggressive interviewer - <AUTHOR> http://paralegalhell.com/2010/09/30/my-interview-or-sparring-with-a-bitch-from-hell/

<comment><USER2> I was hoping to see something more constructive than "I made the troll apologize and then marched out." I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing that -- on the contrary, more people should do it when warranted -- but it's also not something I (personally) find interesting enough to post about or read about.

<comment><USER3> If it helps give others the courage to do the same thing when appropriate it's worthwhile.

Plus this was above and beyond most any job interview nastiness I've ever read and otherwise somewhat interesting. And unfortunately I have to agree with the many of the commentators: too many women get abusive when they get into positions of authority (at least in software development in my experience).</comment></comment>


You Have 3 Choices in Every Situation – One of Them Is Always Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/you-have-3-choices-in-every-situation-one-of-them-is-always-wrong-b15746ce6e0a <comment><USER2> Resisting is a perfectly valid choice.

But the key is that before resisting you need to decide what you want to achieve, what will be the cost, and whether it is worth it.

The fact is that in some situations (but not all) it is pointless to resist because you won't be able to succeed and might get burnt in the process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting viewpoint. I suppose it depends on the context, but what I'm trying to get at here is resisting reality, as in what has already occurred. For me that is always pointless, for the simple fact, it already is, but I feel you're talking about resistance from something future-oriented, and yes, I get that. Thanks for the comments. Always love hearing other viewpoints.</comment></comment>


Email Intervention (by Google) - <AUTHOR> http://emailintervention.com

<comment><USER2> Much discussion from yesterday's submission:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813903>

<comment><AUTHOR> HN should strip www when checking for duplicates.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Screenshots from mail.google.com:

<http://cl.ly/1x2a3s0x303b2R432S1b>

<http://cl.ly/0K1m0c331X1N1Z440n2H></comment>


Looking for #7 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.news.me/post/12161580238/looking-for-7

<comment><USER2> Frankly,, I'm surprised that news.me still exists, never mind that they were hiring. Good news on both fronts. I'm someone who has no problem paying for content, but I think news.me made a huge mistake by launching with a pay wall before proving to users that it was any different from other Twitter aggregators. It definitely did not win in the polish department.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where were you 6 months ago? :)

Thanks for the comment. Following the spinout from bitly, we're assuming a more ambitious vision for the app. Stay tuned...

(ps we're big fans of pro publica. keep up the great work!)

<comment><USER2> I checked out news.me when it launched and you guys were very gracious to give me another free trial so I could try it again. However, I didn't get into it then...but I'm definitely not someone who uses his iPad for reading outside of the browser or kindle app, so take my ignorance with a grain of salt :)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook has deprecated access to people's "usernames" via API - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog

<comment><USER2> I think the following is the biggest news. I wonder how they're going to enforce it...

"You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app's Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike."

<comment><USER3> This is a great move. I've seen so many video players with a like-trigger on the play button.

<comment><USER2> Major retailers and manufacturers Like gate giveaways and contests. I'm really interested in seeing how Facebook plans to enforce this or what type of penalty they apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FYI depreciated is a typo, it should be deprecated

<comment><AUTHOR> whoops, fixed</comment></comment>


New Social Network for bloggers, writers, photographers and journalists - <AUTHOR> https://www.papeur.com/

<comment><USER2> Please don't take this the wrong way, but why do I need another social network?</comment>


20 Reasons Why Vapid BuzzFeed-Style List Posts Make You Look Like An Idiot - <AUTHOR> http://leland.me/buzzfeed-style-list-posts/

<comment><USER2> My hypothesis is that anybody who writes an article entitled "20 Hot Female Web Designers That Will Take Your Breath Away" is missing an intuitive sense of what does and doesn't belong in a professional publication, and that anybody who instantly cringed at the title fortunately doesn't need your advice. Which I guess means I think that your post is basically correct, but redundant.</comment>


As inequality grows, so does the political influence of the rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/07/21/as-inequality-grows-so-does-the-political-influence-of-the-rich <comment><USER2> How is this relevant to Hacker News? This is a political story, which would be better suited on Reddit politics.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not into politics. I've only managed to vote twice in my life. I thought the social analysis of how things happen was interesting, such as this fascinating nugget about how rich people operate:

 _Although their power may sometimes be used to influence the result of a particular vote, it is often deployed more subtly, to shape public narratives about which problems deserve attention._

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Considering representative politics, it could certainly be worse if influence increased as wealth decreased. People living in total poverty are probably not going to make the best macro-level decisions.

<comment><USER4> Poverty is a systematic problem. Poor families do not have the time or money to give their children opportunities to succeed. Everyone should have a voice in politics. Not just the the people who are born into wealth.</comment></comment>


News for the anti-sitting gurus: standing up all day is not good for you either - <AUTHOR> http://health.spectator.co.uk/news-for-the-anti-sitting-gurus-standing-up-all-day-is-not-good-for-you-either/

<comment><USER2> The fact that anti-fatigue matting and footwear is a well established thing, and the health and safety staff have videos about the risks of standing all day was a pretty big clue that standing all day is not a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, lying down all day is not good for you either.

To summarize: spending the entire day in one position is bad for you. Human beings are animals. Animals are meant to move about.

<comment><USER4> > Animals are meant to move about.

I should probably take another cue from animals--they aren't meant to read internet comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing is good for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> If only we had some way know knowing when we should sit, stand, or lay down. We need millions in government-provided funding to figure this out for us.</comment>


The Killing Machines: How to think about drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> David slew Goliath with a sling, not a slingshot. Slingshots are a fairly modern weapon, invented in the 19th century. That was when strong enough elastic materials became available.</comment>