Apple selling unlocked iPhones in Canada - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/06/15/apple-unlocked-iphone-canada.html

<comment><USER2> They have been doing this in the UK for a while ([http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...](http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone) £499-599). Is this a particularly revolutionary thing?

 _Apple's move, however, will force the carriers to compete for the business of customers with unlocked iPhones, possibly even on a monthly basis._

I don't buy that somehow. They are pretty expensive (at least here anyway) compared to the currently subsidized prices. Currently I see no real benefit of not getting a contract device for 18 months then getting the free upgrade.

 _Customers will only need to buy a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) or micro- SIM, which typically sell for about $10, to switch to a different carrier._

What about data costs? I know you couldn't do that here because internet access costs would crucify you quickly.

<comment><USER3> Flexibility and cheap calls from abroad.

I don't know much about the price structure in the US but in Germany there are cheaper options if you buy just the SIM. That phone must be payed somehow, that's why you pay more every month when you have a subsidized phone.

Now, that in itself wouldn't be so bad, but your choices are seriously limited with a iPhone. What if I don't need hundreds of minutes but want a real data flat rate? That's not possible with an iPhone.

And you can't just pop in some cheapo prepaid SIM when traveling, you are forced to shoulder the roaming costs. That's maybe not so important in the US but seriously sucks in Europe.

Since the costs are the same – either higher monthly costs and a subsidized phone or lower monthly costs and a unsubsidized phone – I would always rather buy the unsubsidized phone.

<comment><USER2> _What if I don't need hundreds of minutes but want a real data flat rate? That's not possible with an iPhone._

Wow, yeh. I just checked into this and it seems in the UK, on O2, we get a great deal - basically "free internet" data for a 18 months (then you can get a free upgrade).

 _Since the costs are the same_

Not sure that's true, depending on your needs. The unsubsidized phone + lower monthly cost + phone bill would be much larger for me than the current contract I have.

Agreed, though, it would be nice to be able to pop in a foreign SIM when abroad (I actually have a SIM free bog standard phone for this exact reason)

<comment><USER4> If you've had your iPhone more than 12 months then 02 will unlock it for you if you fill in the form on their website, then you'll be able to use local sims while abroad and shift to month-to-month sim-only deals on any network once your fixed term contract runs out.

You keep mentioning "free" upgrades. Do you just mean that you don't need to pay for the phone up front and instead (re)-sign an 18 or 24 month contract with minimum monthly payments? It's not really free, it's just like paying off your phone in installments. I saved money by paying more than the minimum necessary for my iPhone and paying a lower price each month than the minimum I'd pay to get the phone for "free". Even if it worked out cheaper in theory, you're locked into that price for 18 months. Now I'm out my contract my monthly cost is halved but the number of free minutes I got for that money quadrupled. I could get an even better deal if I switched carriers, but I can't be bothered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. Here in eastern europe, unlocked has always been the 'usual' way. Even now, telecos generally go for partnerships with established retailers rather than opening their own chains. Buying a subsidized phone is more of a "I'm already using operator X, might as well get the device cheaper" kind of deal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone ever tried to model the benefits of going with an unlocked, contract free phone over one tied to a specific carrier with a fixed contract?

I know that a lot of people, here in particularl, find the notion of locked down hardware repugnant, but from a cost/benefit perspective, I have just not seen that much of a problem, personally. I mean, are there usage scenarios with an assumption that you will have continuous approximate service (for the purposes of the iPhone, that would be a voice and data plan) that are common where carrier lock-in is very costly?

<comment><USER7> This is just wild massing guessing on my part, but without vendor/hardware lock-in, wouldn't competition (and therefore service) be much better? As of now, there's several prohibitive costs to switching services due to having contract cancellation fees, requiring a new phone, not necessarily being able to transfer your data, etc. With an unlocked phone, you'd still have those contract cancellation fees, but it would be a much smoother process to switch. If it was easy enough to change to another carrier, carriers would most likely focus more on being more attractive than their competitors to try to entice customers to them. As it stands, it seems to me like few people would actually bother switching unless they were grossly unhappy with their service.

However, I'll freely admit that I don't necessarily have data or experience to back this up. Am I on the right track here, or babbling aimlessly?

<comment><USER8> It seems that the elements are in place for some real competition in Canada:

       - all the major carriers support the iPhone
       - Apple is selling unlocked phones
       - you can get a voice/data plan without a contract if you have an unlocked phone
       - phone number portability works well

I think it's possible to get unlocked Blackberry and Android phones too, but not sure. It's too early to tell if this will lead to lower prices and better service, but I'm optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good stuff. I had my iPhone stolen a few months ago and I had to buy a replacement through my service provider (Rogers) as Apple wasn't selling them unlocked at the time. I think, if anything, this will help dispel the feeling I had at the time that I was getting screwed by my provider for the replacement phone cost even if it's actually not the case.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't really see a big plus for this, we have 4 big GSM providers Rogers, Telus, Bell, and Wind Mobile.

Wind Mobile works off a different spectrum so that doesn't help. Rogers, Telus, and Bell all have almost the exact same plans for the iPhone and if you don't buy the iPhone from them the monthly cost is usually higher not cheaper.

<comment><USER11> The state of wireless in Canada is depressing, although slowly improving. The instant that Wind goes live in Victoria, I'm switching!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> $549 for the 3GS. I absolutely shudder to think of what the iPhone 4 will sell for. I'm going to guess about $749.

<comment><USER13> AT&T's "commitment free" price for the 16GB 3GS is $549, with a $599 price for the 16GB iPhone 4.

Although I'm guessing there's still some carrier subsidy hidden in that price since commitment free != unlocked, and even if that phone is sold on eBay it's guaranteed to only generate revenue for AT&T and nobody else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although this is great for consumer choice, I shudder when I think of all the corporate heads at telecom companies thinking of how to screw customers on this. The phone becomes a sunk cost and companies can then screw us on a higher go-forward price for their service. This is especially true in Canada where the industry is practically a duopoly.

<comment><USER15> Things are actually starting to get better. There was some spectrum auctioned last year and recently a number of start-up carriers are starting to pop up. The government also lifted some foreign ownership limits on the carriers. Give it a few years for people's contracts to end and we should have a healthy telecom market.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so hard to find remote jobs in Europe? - <AUTHOR> I read a lot about remote work - either sourcing from Hacker News and other media. However, what I see in practice, at least in Benelux Area, is that companies are far more interest in on-site positions than remote positions.<p>Why is it so? If the advantages of remote working are so clear - why companies still hire only on-site positions? <comment><USER2> I am one of these managers in Amsterdam with an international team of 10 people from 8 different countries who still writes code. My desire is to have a team that gets the job done. The most effective way for them to do this IMO is to have them sit together so that they can discuss issues they have immediately.

We are seeing effects of less effective communication of teams sitting just a few desks apart.

Remote work has great benefits for the remote worker - and having been one I know them as well. The downside is that when you're building something complex the communication overhead is too big.

Another thing is that remote workers in vastly different timezones provide a time window for architectural discussions which can be too short. So they are never there when you need them and can only work alone.

I prefer to give my team members flexibility to run their personal errands and family issues but to have them on-site to have the shortest group communication paths possible.

<comment><USER3> I have been doing remote work for 10 years now. Github and Gitlab (if you want to host privately) are the answers for me. Concerning communication and sitting together, my question remains: What exactly is it that you are able to say but incapable of writing? Over the years, I have become suspicious of someone who cannot write something but insists that he wants to say it, because when he is finally sitting there, guess what, he can still not say it. The more complex the project, the less you want to collaborate with that person, if only because his claims that he can say the things that he is incapable of writing, are not true.

<comment><USER4> But then you can help him put in words what is worrying him, even if he is incapable of saying. That's communication, dialogue. It is interaction in different levels, not just exchange of sequential, defined messages.

When you limit the dimensions of a face-to-face communication to the dimenions of a written communication, it is tautological to say the are the same. But the advantage of face-to-face is exactly having more communication dimensions.

<comment><USER5> I doubt there are many things in the area of software development that a competent professional can legitimately be incapable of putting in words.

It is obvious that face-to-face communication can be richer. But it does not follow that internet or just written communication is significantly deficient in an overwhelming majority of situations in our field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am entrepreneur (also studied engineering) in Europe. I have only worked remotely most of my life.

Main problem is bureaucracy. The US is a big place and it is United from West to East Coast.

In Europe, once you start making lots of money, every country you touch wants your money. So if you hire a French guy the French gobertment will love to tax YOUR ENTIRE business based on their socialistic views of the world, even when you are located in other country. Rinse and repeat with any country you touch.

Instead of focusing on the tech side of things you have to make an incredible effort with bureaucracy alone.

The advantages of remote working are very clear, but so are the disadvantages: People can goof all day or do the laundry, take care of the kids at the employer expense. The employer could also abuse taking extra hours of the employee for free.

For neither the employer or the employee to abuse each other or just being productive when nobody is watching you(directly, of course I know what my people are doing even when I am not in front of them)a series of techniques has been developed . It takes practice, effort and time for people to get used to it.

But yes, once you try it you will never want to go back. You can never eliminate the need to meet your coworkers from time to time(once a week or month) though.

Most business in Europe are old and big, they do what has been proved to work(in a pre Internet world) for decades. They move slowly, but they move.

Big companies operate over the principle of "nobody ever got fired for doing what used to work". When they see success examples of other big companies doing remote working, they will follow. But today only a few jobs, like programming or personal assistants could be completely done remotely.

My advice is to create your own company and to take advantage of this problem, you know in the business world we call them "opportunities". As remote communications improve this is going to explode.

<comment><USER7> Always-on audiovisual communication tools can fix the problem of employees not being on the job during work hours.

And the multiple taxation is not an issue anymore - your company and you are taxed by location within the EU (assuming you're a citizen of the EU). Hell, you can even take advantage of it by establishing a residence in a cheap country but actually living elsewhere. Your company is taxed where it's founded, but there are some issues with _legally_ operating in other EU countries.

<comment><USER8> Not really true. Most countries have a residency rule (for personal income) that if you live more than 165 days (or something to that effect) you will be taxed as a resident of that country. Even if you register a company in another country within the EU, you may still be liable to pay corporate tax on your residence country as some countries also have conditions on that (if you own more than X (usually around 70%) of a company, and the company country is considered a low tax jurisdiction (this can depend for some countries where some have lists, others have a corporate threshold and others have countries corporate tax < owner resident country corporate tax - 10% is also a tax haven) they will want to tax that company as a resident.

As others mentioned, while more common, intra-community workers are a bureaucracy nightmare if you don't register a subsidiary in the employee's country, which if you do, then you have tax/social security+other stuff you need to take care in the employee's country.

Best way to do it is for employee to setup it's own company in country of residence and play by the rules, and then just be paid for services rendered and be responsible for all taxes/other.

<comment><USER9> But be aware that many European countries know laws against quasi-self- employment ("Scheinselbständigkeit" in German) to avoid people becoming self- employed to avoid social security taxes. So, even if you set-up your own company but this company only serves one client (your de-facto "employer"), you and/or your employer might be liable for social security payments neither of you did expect. So even such a set-up might be too risky for some companies to consider.

<comment><USER3> In Germany itself, that would indeed be a major issue. Imagine, however, a company from Canada employing a German in France? Which country would manage to get in a position that they could collect social security payments? Germany would not see any part of that situation under its eyes. Canada just sees invoices coming in from abroad. France has no clue as to what that German does or with whom. This situation could last for decades and no government would be able to even ask relevant questions. You see, that German is not a resident of Germany. I cannot imagine the German administration sending questionnaires overseas. The French may want to collect local taxes, but they would have no serious basis, or even information, for collecting income tax or social security contributions. Where exactly would they be verifying anything? In other words, if you confuse the situation sufficiently, not one of those slow and bureaucratic government administrations could ever deal with it. Not in our lifetime.

<comment><USER8> Portugal has the same issue, if 70%+ of your company income is from a single entity, the company is taxed as a self employed person and not a company. So technically, the paying company doesn't have to pay nothing, but the receiving company will be responsible for those contributions. But there are ways around it and limitations, for example, in PT doesn't apply if you have employees or if the volume of business if over a certain amount or if ownership is divided by two (or more) people (if you are married, you can name your partner as a shareholder when you create the company and get around it easily)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have asked myself the same question some time ago. I believe it comes down to (as some commenters below have already mentioned) the following, ordered by decreasing importance:

1\. Legal issues: Hiring people across borders is a nightmare for both the employer and the employee when it comes to social deductions, taxes, health insurance, applicable labor laws, etc. And if you hire people _within_ borders, many European countries are small enough that they could just as well commute to your office (maybe that's also the reason why more remote work is available in Germany and the UK, being larger countries, as has been stated below).

2\. No Silicon Valley: Let's face it - most American companies will expect you to show up at the office every day just as they do in Europe. The exception are primarily the tech startups, and in the United States there simply are a lot more of them than in Europe.

3\. Worker protection: I think hiring remote workers is inherently more risky than hiring on-site staff. You will have less control over your employees, you might even have less control over the hiring process (no on-site meeting), etc. In the United States, you can just try it - hire someone to work remotely, see if he or she can deliver and if not, just terminate the employment and go back to hiring on-site staff. In many European countries, getting rid of employees once you have hired them can be quite challenging and requires solid proof that they are not delivering what they should - and to make matters worse, getting that proof will also be much more difficult if they are working remote with less oversight.

4\. Language issues: Yes, many people in Europe speak English (more or less fluently). Nevertheless, following conference calls in a language that is not your native language will be more challenging than following a face-to-face meeting, so language barriers become more pronounced when interacting remotely (at least in my experience).

</comment><comment><USER10> My opinion based on my experience in France is that the workplace is more about appearing to be working than to actually do something useful.

So if nobody can see you working because you're not in the building you're not contributing to this illusion of work being done.

Where I 'work' I have a manager that has to invent some crazy projects just to keep me occupied. If he didn't do that I could work half a day every week and be done with it.

In my Visual Studio projects folder I have a bit less than 100 projects. Maybe 3 or 4 are actually needed by the company, 20 are test or toy projects and the rest nobody has ever used these programs past their presentation (not because they're not good but just because they're not needed).

I find it hard to stay motivated (and this is quite an understatement !)

<comment><USER11> Well, sounds like you either have to switch jobs or you have to work 14 times slower.

<comment><USER12> Neither option is really optimal for either party though.

The correct solution would be for him to work half days and continue with job rewards to be identical: he gets more free time and a better life, while the company gets a more loyal employee who is more relaxed and would be more willing to go that extra mile on projects which actually are important.

It's really just one of those cases where human nature and the desire for him not to get 'paid for doing nothing' is actually hurting everyone involved. Humorous and very sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> First of all not everyone is suited for remote work. Remote work often means working from home (co-working space maybe) which makes it rather difficult to engage in social activities. While co-working spaces might make it easier it's still more difficult. Also not everyone has the self-discipline and while you might argue that people also go to the office and browse HN all day others feel more motivated working in an office. Additionally the communication is way different. Emotions get lost in Chats and Skype calls. Last also due to bad audio quality.

Yes remote work can be good and advantageous for some, but it can also be bad.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think any answer to this question will be speculative and opinionated. People have their experience and they have their preferences. The interpretation of one is based on the other. It's like the open plan vs offices debate that springs up on HN every so often. Mostly what we have is personal preferences justified with "facts." In reality I don't think we have that kind of understanding of what makes people work well. Reality is complicated with short term and long term effects, feedback effects and adaption.

Those qualifications aside, I think (A) coding is uniquely well suited to remote work and (B) transitioning to remote work as a major way of working is a long cultural transition that companies will need to grow around. They'll only do that if it's advantageous enough and the process could take a generation.

Coding is well suited to remote work because it can be parceled effectively with clear responsibilities and deliverables. It's like journalism in that sense. If you need to produce 2 articles a week and the articles are the output of your work, then it's easy for everyone to understand that you did in fact contribute two articles and form an opinion of their quality.

The parts that are hard about remote working is structuring a culture that is able to cooperate without physical presence. Physical presence is a key feature of how we interact. Online discussions are different to face-t-face discussions. People travel international at great expense and inconvenience in order to do business face to face. It's subtle buts adds up to a lot.

Maybe we are getting better at remote communication and collaboration. Maybe the ways we work can adapt to the environment of remote working. But, it's a cultural shift.

Remote work is strange in the same way that remote parenting, remote dating or remote friendship is. At the end of the day, the relationship that will come out of a remote marriage will not be the same as a regular marriage. That may be OK for remote working. I am sure that some companies are making it their advantage, but it's not a simple matter.

TLDR: If a company that exists in a building today decided to transition over two years to a company where people work from home, the company would probably fail. The transition is hard.

<comment><USER15> "Remote work is strange in the same way that"

Don't forget non-strange remote business relationships like remote retail (buy from amazon), remote entertainment (Hollywood movie not a stage show or play, or recorded music not a live band), or remote manufacturing (imported from China not the now abandoned factory down the road), or remote software (believe it or not, companies used to write their own OS 50 years ago instead of buying a microsoft/apple product) or remote senior management (for a long time, its pretty unusual for most megacorporation employees to work at the same office as their CEO, even if they work at the same office as their boss). With increased specialization on a very long term all business has trended toward ever more remote "business interaction"... the only part that's new, is the very long term trend is starting to finally impact the lowest organizational levels of white collar general office labor.

Another hidden assumption is that physical presence or um, excessive face to face communication is necessarily a productive useful activity, combined with a heavy dose of "its popular and/or traditional therefore that means its inherently better" and/or "cultural shift is bad or unnecessary". I'm unconvinced that "mind work" is best done with enormous amounts of interpersonal coordination. That means the architecture is a poor match. By analogy its possible for a very bad general contractor to try to make the painter, plumber, electrican, and carpenter all work at the same time in the same corner of a little closet, and maybe, by heroic levels of effort and incredible professionalism and cooperation it can somehow be accomplished, but its a kind of dumb non-profitable goal. Also if you design for scalability you've just lost the game when you tightly coupled, what do you intend to do next year when "it" goes viral and the database is a department of 50 people on the other side of the country, not one dude at a conference table with the other one dude departments?

<comment><USER14> I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that remote work is impossible, or undesrable. I'm saying that it is a big change. Big changes take time. Time for the culture to change and time for the structure of organizations to change. If the advantages are big enough, that change can happen forcefully and quickly.

Online commerce is not a bad analogy. Barnes & Noble didn't become Amazon, Amazon did. IE, the advantages of online commerce where big enough to invent a new kind of company to do it. Remote working might be a bigger challenge than that on the kind of scale proponents seem to hope for.

Maybe we _will_ see large companies go all, part or mostly remote. I don't really know. It's clear that remote collaboration can work (plenty of examples), but whether or not it works with existing structures is hard to know.

Face to face interaction between people is different from remote interaction in ways that are fairly fundamental to how we worked. Communication & collaboration is really our speciality as a species, and we have a lot of inbuilt faculties to help. Some need physical presence. I think the internet is full of examples of remote communication failing in ways it wouldn't have in person. We may even be demonstrating this now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't the point of having a remote job to not care where the company is registered? Assuming you are in Benelux Area, what's the point of looking for remote company from Benelux Area?

<comment><USER17> My guess would be time zone and language.

<comment><USER18> There's quite a few more countries that are in the exact same time zone. Language should not be a problem for most in the Benelux either as pretty much everyone under 50 has intermediate to good English language skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You're most likely looking in the wrong place. The usual customary recruiting channels are setup to be usual and customary.

You need to find the remote job boards. Oh, and networking, networking, networking.

<comment><USER20> [https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

[http://jobs.remotive.io/](http://jobs.remotive.io/)

Please add others.

<comment><USER21> This repo maintains curated list of all resources - [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That would be a great opportunity to question your premises.

If nobody does what you have identified as the clearly superior way, either everyone is an idiot. Or you may be wrong.

<comment><USER23> Or he works in a technologically conservative area that is slow to adopt new trends, even useful ones.

Take a look at the HN Who is Hiring threads over the past 2 years, and count up the total remote jobs. It's increasing at an impressive rate. Companies are discovering that they can still hire talented developers for average salaries (particularly those devs living in economically depressed areas).

There are thousands of devs who don't have the option to up and move to N. California or NYC. Some of them are very talented. It's not hard to figure out, and I'm sure the same dynamics are at work in Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'll give some reasons from personal experience (and I think it's a global thing, not just European).

I pitched a partially remote team to a previous employer in Singapore and they were reluctant to try it initially.

First, they didn't know what remote meant (except for that time they outsourced something to a cheap country and it was a costly disaster). So, had to spend some time explaining that. Not rocking the boat is quite valuable when you're busy and worried - just keep doing what you know.

Second, a contractor is not an employee - contractors are services you buy piece by piece, whilst you "own" an employee (not pretty terminology but unfortunately often true) and you can milk that employee with a potentially infinite return on your finite investment. Is this a stupid thing to think, yes, but nevertheless I encountered it.

Third, it's about control. It's possible, but harder to micro-manage remotely (and in practice no sane contractor will accept it without extreme compensation).

Fourth, it's also a hell of a lot easier for a "consultant" to "end the contract" when he's fed up with bad management, than for an employee to move his entire life yet again (metaphorically if not physically). A consultant benefits from having had many "clients", an employee is hurt by too many moves. These "traps" make an employee more pliable and invested emotionally (at least in managers' eyes) so the managers prefer employees.

Fifth, IP. Employee contracts usually sign over everything. Remote contracts, being for services, have more opaque IP agreements. This also applies to a lesser extent to security - that remote dude is working on a foreign network, foreign machine, etc.

I'm not saying these are desirable things, but these were my conclusions from experience. YMMV, different businesses have different cultures, etc. If you want to change your internal culture, I think these are the issues/fears to address.

We ended up getting remote jobs because the test we put up for the job ended up not getting a single application locally, but dozens from all over the world. About half the folks who passed relocated, the rest stayed on remotely.

I'm now running my company completely remotely. We have a mailing address in London and Hong Kong and work from home. I see almost no reason to get an office. Unfortunately we're also not hiring because we have a long waitlist of nice candidates that we will hire (remotely) as soon as we clear enough revenue. Maybe that's the case for the other remote businesses.

</comment><comment><USER25> I couldn't agree more with jmnicolas - the situation is pretty similar in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Austria. There is some "hope" in UK and Germany, where they really expect to have something done.

There was a guy (can't remember his name) who said that US is the only place where you can put US guys, Mexican, Chinese and ... (whoever) and make them work together. In Europe this is not the case, probably because of historical reasons and as a result of the last 30 years of immigration policy (especially the french-speaking countries).

My other theory is that Europe is left behind US in the technical area. If something is top-notch in USA, it will "come" in mainland Europe in 10 or more years. For e.g. now the MBA is hot trend.

Disclaimer: I've been working remotely for the last 4 years.

<comment><USER26> >There was a guy (can't remember his name) who said that US is the only place where you can put US guys, Mexican, Chinese and ... (whoever) and make them work together.

As someone working in a company in London with about 25 engineers from 15 different countries I have to disagree with this statement.

<comment><USER27> Same here; second company in the UK (not exactly London though) and did work with people from several different countries in my team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Based on working in the Benelux this is what I see:

\- Requirements are often given on a very high level, you will need to be aligning with business owners and other teams on a daily basis, communication is easier with all these people in the same building. (i.e. you won't be given a clear package to go off and work on on your own).

\- If there is an existing team that you will be joining then the other team members will start asking why they are not allowed to work from home. (The reason for that is that in any large org they are needed for communications with other teams on a daily basis)

\- If you are a contractor what is to say you are not working for another client? Much easier to keep an eye on you in-house.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've had the discussion several times in the past with different managers, and it keeps coming back to "person in chair" as a metric for whether work is being done or not. It's always a matter of trust, or lack of it, that an out of sight employee is getting work done. I don't think that argument has any validity. If you don't trust your staff to actually do their job you have bigger issues, and if you can't measure them any better way than whether they're sitting in a chair in an office, you can't measure them at all (person-in-chair time does not correlate with productivity in my experience).

</comment><comment><USER30> True. Although I have a mediocre GitHub profile, I receive about ~ 1 job offer (well some are interview offers) from recruiters every 1.5 - 2 months. Every single one of them was about relocation (UK or DE).

I'm not interested in relocation. If I could find a team that work with technologies that I like, I would accept a 'lower salary' just to work part- time (~15 - 20 hrs/week) remotely, then I would seriously consider joining, but that's not the case in Europe, apparently.

<comment><USER3> Being located in Cambodia, I get even fewer job offers. However, that is probably because they can see beforehand that I would not relocate to UK or DE. For 10 years, I made less than what I used to make in Europe, but with the much lower cost of living here, it probably boiled down to somewhat the same. Since this year, however, I make substantially more. So, as you can see, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I disagree with many of the assessments.

From what I see around me, there is a problem where internal communication channels and communication culture is not mature enough to support remote work.

</comment><comment><USER32> Depends on the job of course. If instant communication is useful for the job, remote working is often inferior, as there is friction. For example training up a new employee is a great deal harder to do remotely, it's much easier to shadow someone in person than via a screen share.

Also if the role requires some kind of client facing element, that rules out remote work.

</comment><comment><USER33> I currently work partly remote: I go to the office for one day a week (8hr) and work the other 12 hours from home.

I like this arrangement as the day in the office also gives me insight into what else is going on, besides my immediate tasks. For example I may pick up on something that my coworker is spending a lot of time on that could easily be automated or a client request that may influence my schedule.

On the other hand the time remote gives me a chance to focus on harder issues.

What I like about the part-time aspect is that I can choose to just work when I'm focussed. If things are not moving as I like, I just stop working. This is also the disadvantage, because that way work spreads out over more days than it would if I would sit in the office.

In general I think the jobs are there, but you will probably have to know someone at the company that is already aware of your skills. Maybe first starting out as a contractor on a smaller project. (Assuming you would prefer a long-term job over contracting)

</comment><comment><USER34> I used to love the idea of working remotely, but not anymore. I like working in a team, having the ability to bounce ideas off each other, make use of other people's knowledge, ideas and skills. When you're working remotely, you're working much more on your own. It's easier to get stuck, there's a bigger hurdle to getting someone to look over your shoulder, and a bigger likelihood to just figure it out on your own, which may be educational, but can also take weeks when someone else might be able to help you out in minutes.

I was actually hired once to help out the lone Java programmer at the company who had been stuck for weeks. I sat next to him, asked the right questions, and within 2 hours, the problem had been solved. Just having someone there and ask questions or discuss options with; having someone to spar with, can save a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER18> You might want to start with filling out your Hacker News profile if you actually are searching for remote work.

Part of finding that kind of work is to do with marketing ;)

</comment><comment><USER35> The theory that remote working is advantageous has the unstated premise that the thing being optimized for is wealth. In that theory, it makes sense to use methods that let people get their jobs done with minimum cost and distraction.

In reality, money is a weaker motive than power. When workers are on site, particularly in an open plan office, the boss's brain receives reminders every hour of every day that he is wielding power over underlings. That's not what everyone cares about most - but it's the people who do care about that, who become bosses in the first place.

(In the West, it's customary to maintain the fiction that it's about money. Apparently in places like Japan and South Korea, they don't bother with that fiction; you can spend your time in the office browsing Hacker News if you like, but if your boss is in the office seventy hours a week, you've got to be there eighty hours a week.)

As for what to do about it, as I see it the main strategies, in increasing order of difficulty and potential value, are:

1\. Remember that remote work is not sensitive to location, and search the whole world for remote working jobs.

2\. Become a contractor and look for clients who want goods and services rather than bosses who want underlings.

3\. Start your own company and try to fix the problem for other people as well as yourself.

<comment><USER36> My very first employer didn't have a consistent quantity of work for me to do and often made me sit in the office with just a chair and not even a desk.

I proposed to the manager that I would rather be on call (even unpaid) in the library next-door than sit in the office paid with nothing to do.

The manager agreed that there was nothing for me to do and agreed that there was nothing wrong with what I was proposing in principle, but it was necessary for me to sit in the office during working hours. There were exactly zero occasions when I was urgently required to be there.

This comment, about power being a stronger motivation for money, reminded me of that situation and put it into perspective: thanks.

<comment><USER37> My Dad worked for Marconi in Liverpool fixing radar and radios for ships late fifties and early 60s before they became a large multi-national. Certain kinds of staff were not always needed in the workshop e.g. radio officers signing off on repairs.

They hung out in a Dock Road pub. The techies wired up a loudspeaker to the pub (not radio, I suspect they hacked the Reddifusion cable radio) and called the staff when needed. I was quite impressed as a small boy (and, no, we as a country were not big on efficiency in those days).

<comment><USER38> There a few classics like this from the 70's when the unions had immense power in the UK and there was lots of over employment in what was then public companies. Examples I remember were a false wall in the back of a British Steel factory which was setup with rows of bunk beds on the quiet so that only 1 in 3 had to do any work. The rest were paid to sleep. Also had employees on the books with the rather blatant names of D. Duck and M. Mouse.

<comment><USER37> The chaps in the pub could be sailing with a ship as relief radio officer at a moment's notice so not quite the bunk bed thing.

Iain Sinclair has written about Trueman's Brewery round that time as well.

You won't agree with this but: is paying people to sleep in bunks any worse than subsidising low paid jobs using the benefit system as we do now? Typical commercial rents £600 to £750 a month and minimum wage £6.50 per hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think remote working works best when doing maintenance work on software. I can understand why companies don't like remote workers when building new products from scratch.

I would like to emigrate in the next few years and work remotely for European companies and this is my intended strategy. Perhaps this is something you should try and maybe tell HN how that would work out for you.

</comment><comment><USER40> Stop looking in a local area. Remote work is on remote work websites like wfh.io and remoteok. And upwork.

Also, this is a slow cultural transition as people learn about remote tools for collaboration and start to accept it. So within a few more years it will be different.

<comment><USER41> Companies in the US still prefer hire remote workers in the states over europeans, I guess mostly due to the timezone, and because of the legal issues, it's always easier for them. You need to be an exceptional developer to overcome this disadvantage and make them they to consider to hire you.

Besides that, most of the positions posted in job boards are for Full-Stack or Front-End developers, not many Back-End or Data Science, which is what I am looking for.

If companies in Europe were more open to telecommuting, we would have much more chances to get a remote job and companies would have more chances to hire better developers. I guess this will change in the next years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I know quite a few friend in Poland doing remote work... for US. Especially given higher IT salaries in the US than in Western Europe, it't not that bad.

I do as well, but mostly freelancing contracts. The only thing that sucks is the timezone difference.

<comment><USER43> May I ask what is the relationship between remote workers and the employer's company? Are the remote workers hired directly by the US company, are they hired by a Polish subsidiary of the US company, or are they self-employed working as a contractors?

<comment><USER19> This varies.

Big companies that are incorporated in many countries will just employ you in the most relevant country (including your own).

Smaller companies can't do this (overhead, financial burden, regulation, blah blah blah), so they just hire you as an independent contractor. You get paid by whatever arrangement, and file your taxes accordingly. They pay an invoice file their taxes accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Anyone looking for a remote modern Perl job in Europe, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Using /proc to get a process' current stack trace - <AUTHOR> https://ops.tips/blog/using-procfs-to-get-process-stack-trace/ <comment><USER2> FWIW, the equivalent in FreeBSD is 'procstat -kk $PID' Eg:

      % procstat -kk 5592

      PID    TID COMM                TDNAME              KSTACK
     5592 103222 less                -

mi_switch+0xe1 sleepq_catch_signals+0x405 sleepq_wait_sig+0xf _cv_wait_sig+0x154 tty_wait+0x1c ttydisc_read+0x1f2 ttydev_read+0x64 devfs_read_f+0xdc dofileread+0x95 sys_read+0xc3 amd64_syscall+0x369 fast_syscall_common+0x101

procstat can also do interesting things, like show current rusage state:

      % procstat -r 5592
      PID COMM             RESOURCE                          VALUE
     5592 less             user time                    00:00:00.010805
     5592 less             system time                  00:00:00.002444
     5592 less             maximum RSS                             3172 KB
     5592 less             integral shared memory                   192 KB
     5592 less             integral unshared data                    80 KB
     5592 less             integral unshared stack                  256 KB
     5592 less             page reclaims                            199
     5592 less             page faults                                0
     5592 less             swaps                                      0
     5592 less             block reads                                4
     5592 less             block writes                               0
     5592 less             messages sent                              0
     5592 less             messages received                          0
     5592 less             signals received                           0
     5592 less             voluntary context switches                59
     5592 less             involuntary context switches               0

<comment><USER2> BTW, I totally suck at formatting stuff in various forums. Is there a way to post pre-formatted text here? Eg, like triple back-ticks will do in slack? ``` stuff... ```

<comment><USER3> Prepend with four(?) spaces.

<comment><USER4> Two spaces is enough:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I cleaned up the above based on this..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are running java instead of a c program the proc stacktrace shows you just the virtual machine state. You can still get a stacktrace of your java threads[1].

How about other languages? Python, ruby?

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4876274/kill-3-to-get- ja...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4876274/kill-3-to-get-java-thread- dump)

<comment><USER6> This is about the kernel's stack trace during a system call, not the user space stack trace.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and if you want to know the user space stack, you may be able to attach gdb to the process: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2308653/can-i-use- gdb-to...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2308653/can-i-use-gdb-to-debug- a-running-process)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nicely formatted site. Anyone know if/what static site generator/theme is being used? Couldn't find anything on the footer, site tags, or his GitHub that would reveal that...

<comment><USER9> Agreed! It looks like Hugo and possibly this theme: [https://themes.gohugo.io//theme/cocoa-eh-hugo- theme/blog/exa...](https://themes.gohugo.io//theme/cocoa-eh-hugo- theme/blog/example-article/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note, the GNU debugger (gdb) can attach to running processes. This should give you a stack trace with readable addresses, cf. [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2308653/can-i-use-gdb- to...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2308653/can-i-use-gdb-to-debug-a- running-process)

<comment><USER2> The /proc interface tells you what the process is doing in the kernel (eg, after a system call), which is orthogonal to getting a user-space stack trace. Both are helpful. The userspace trace is arguably more helpful. The nice thing about the kernel trace is that you're likely to have symbols (or be able to download them); that is unlikely to be true for userspace if you're running a commercial binary, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite proc hack: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061499)

<comment><USER12> check out progress: [https://github.com/Xfennec/progress](https://github.com/Xfennec/progress)

<comment><USER13> That's a cool tool.. I did that manually many times and always thought I should write a tool. Glad to see it exists already :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I want this capability for embedded ARM systems. I should be able to call a function to have the current stack trace printed:

[https://communities.mentor.com/thread/16468](https://communities.mentor.com/thread/16468)

<comment><USER15> The most widely distributed embedded ARM system software in the world, Android, offers this. They use mini debug info (normal debug info sections compressed, IIRC) and then you can signal a daemon in the background to do a stacktrace on your application.

Not on production images, though.

<comment><USER6> > The most widely distributed embedded ARM system software in the world, > Android

[citation needed]

Also, when talking about embedded systems, people aren't normally talking about full Linux distros.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a very well written and formatted article... I found it easy to read!

</comment><comment><USER17> Instead of teaching people how to do this portably across all UNIX-like systems, by sending SIGABRT to the process, the article is steeping them in GNU/Linux only way of doing things. This feels exactly like the '90's of the past century, where a lot of people with computer-related careers had no idea that there were other operating systems and other ways of doing things (better): an intel-based PC tin bucket with Windows was the one and only truth for them. Now it's exactly the same except Windows has been replaced with GNU/Linux. 28 years later and the only advancement some people have made is running the proverbial sed 's/Windows/Linux/g'.

<comment><USER18> Umm, what is the alternative O/S that has complete hardware support?

<comment><USER19> What is the non alternative O/S that has complete hardware support? fwiw openbsd / freebsd have been painless to install on every machine I have tried in the last 5 years.

<comment><USER20> How's the support for bluetooth on openbsd these days?

<comment><USER18> Also, how many of the aforementioned bsds use drivers that were ported from the Linux kernel tree?

<comment><USER21> BSD user here. Of course there is porting occurring, but this is the nature of open source, is it not? Oftentimes, the BSD devs will take whatever hardware specs they can get and code something from that. OpenBSD frequently writes drivers that are orders of magnitude smaller than comparable Linux drivers, while getting the same functionality. NVIDIA drivers are but one example. Some hardware vendors are generous with hardware specs for OSS, most are not. OpenBSD, as an example, will not have any GPL'd code in the base OS, as it's not truly free. Ports are another issue.

<comment><USER22> > will not have any GPL'd code in the base OS, as it's not truly free

That's a disingenuous way to put it. The GPL is a free software license. It is "free" as in libre by all common definitions of "free" in regards to software.

The GPL is not compatible with the BSD dev's preferred license, which is much more likely the reason they avoid using such code.

By all conventional definitions, the BSD and GPL licenses are "truly free [software licenses]."

You're welcome to argue that the BSD license is better (because, for example, it lets sony create derivative playstation OSs without providing that source code to their users, ensuring their users have less freedom than if it were linux) or that the GPL is better (because it would prevent the previous), but they're both free licenses.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kernel Bug 196683 – Random Soft Lockup on New Ryzen Build - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683 <comment><AUTHOR> My computer is affected by this issue. Upon researching it, I discovered this is one of those bizzare issues where a major long standing issue with a product is seemingly ignored. I'm running the custom kernel and I replaced my CPU, and yet my Ryzen system still freezes. I'd heard great things all around for this CPU and I'm surprised it would have such a glaring unfixed error. My hope in sharing this is to give the issue more visibility. Many people are affected by the system instability this bug creates.</comment>


Why I'm Answering "No" to Your Request to "Pick My Brain" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aubynbethcasady/why-im-answering-no-to-your-request-to-pick-my-brain-296621d1a3ab <comment><USER2> I appreciated the snarky language, but a few things made me wish I hadn't read this. Leaving aside the humble brag about their engagement on LinkedIn, I am not a fan of marketing in general, product or otherwise. Furthermore the use of images in this article I found cringeworthy, and I did not need to see a cute picture of the author's children, which seemed ... gratuitous and manipulative?

The title is clickbait, and I feel bad for being duped into reading something I had zero interest in. "Why I'm Starting a Blog about Product Marketing" would not have been a link that I would have clicked on.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post itself is sass with no substance, but the 'follow-up' (if you can call it that) is not bad, though it's also mostly a lead-in to her eventual advice (which hasn't been written yet): [https://medium.com/@aubynbethcasady/product-marketing-the- be...](https://medium.com/@aubynbethcasady/product-marketing-the-best-job- youll-ever-have-part-i-8dd680a08238)

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems to be a post about this person launching a blog. It does not feel like the type of substantive post we need</comment>


Ask HN: Where is the safest place to buy/hold/sell Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR>

Coinbase seems to be the major player, but is their tech really safe? The fact that they are so large concerns me -- they are more likely to be attacked.<p>What is the consensus nowadays? <comment><USER2> Coinbase is legitimate. The vast majority of the company's Bitcoin stockpile is stored on hardware encrypted offline hard drives.

I think Coinbase could thwart off a targeted attack, with the worst case being an interruption in service due to DDoS. It is far more likely that an individual account is compromised by an attacker who learns the user's password. Coinbase mitigates the impact of this scenario by:

1\. Forcing all accounts to use two-factor authentication

2\. Providing users with a vault that provides additional security options. It's meant to hold the bulk of a user's BTC, similar to a savings account at a traditional bank. Withdrawals are subject to a 48 hour delay and can be configured to require multiple co-signers.

The time delay accomplishes two things. One, it prevents an attacker from instantly draining a compromised account. Two, it provides Coinbase with ample time to retrieve the BTC from its offline storage (it's a sign that they're telling the truth about their massive offline storage strategy).

More info on vault can be found here: [https://coinbase.com/vault](https://coinbase.com/vault)

</comment><comment><USER3> Buy @ coinbase (if you a US resident)

Hold on your own machines. Don't trust any service to hold your coins for you.</comment>


Emails Show Barclays Traders Conspired To Set Interest Rates - <AUTHOR> http://m.npr.org/story/156333479?url=/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/05/156333479/emails-show-barclays-traders-conspired-to-set-interest-rates

<comment><USER2> Interestingly out of date information in the piece given that it was written yesterday.

Marcus Agius resigned on the 2nd and was reinstated on the 3rd following the resignation of CEO Bob Diamond (a far more significant resignation as you'd expect the CEO to be closer to this sort of thing).

Diamond was (rather ineffectually) questioned by MPs earlier this week about it but little of any real interest came out other than that he still seems to be intent on pursuing a financial settlement for his leaving Barclays, however the whole matter is going to be the subject of a parliamentary enquiry (though given that that will be being led by an MP rather than a judge it's not clear how useful it will be as it's already taken a political twist).

But as the piece says, it looks likely that other banks may have been doing the same which is still to come out.

(Far) more here: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/libor>

</comment><comment><USER3> It may be a good idea to step back and try to understand what happened here more carefully before starting to bash Barclays as the politicians would have us.

First, remember it would be very easy to design a system for libor rate setting that was very hard to manipulate. You could require trading to happen via an electronic exchange and volume weighted average price would be libor. The reason we don't have a system like that is because the politicians and regulators prefer it that way, banks have lobbied for an electronic system many times.

Second, note that Barclays was consistently filing reports with rates at the upper end of the LIBOR range if not the very highest. Barclays was getting repeated messages through the British old boys network asking it to lower it's filings but was not heeding those calls, which given the pressure put on it was actually commendable behavior. Instead Barclays was publicly pointing out to all who would hear that submissions by other banks were not credible. There is now way for example that Citigroup or RBS was borrowing at lower rates than Barclays, yet they were consistently filing lower reports. Note that during this time the regulatory playbook was all about trying to hide the symptoms of the crisis so that confidence would be restored. Remember the genius move by the SEC to ban shorting of US financial stocks which was followed up by European regulators banning shorting of all stocks.

Finally, the assistant treasury secretary tells Bob Diamond that Barclays rates need not be at the upper end of the range consistently. Now the only reason for a call like this is to give Diamond an order to lower rates with plausible deniability.

Note also that this whole "scandal" happened because senior Barclays management themselves found issues, hired an outside law firm to investigate and turned over all evidence to the FSA. In light of this the UK serious fraud office wanted to investigate other banks but their funding was cut to prevent this so they abandoned the investigation. The funding was only restored today after the funding cut threatened to become a bigger scandal.

Maybe we need to pay more attention to what the politicians are doing and less to what the bankers are doing?</comment>


Stanford's Robot Car Tries for Peak Performance - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/01/20/stanfords-robot-car-tries-for-peak-performance/

<comment><USER2> It's been a science fiction like dream of mine that at some point public transportation will consist of a fleet of autonomous taxis. Each of them being aware of the others' movements, working as an intelligent swarm to transport people more efficiently.</comment>


Bubble, Bubble, Fraud and Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/opinion/bitcoin-bubble-fraud.html <comment><USER2> Some of the worse points of this article:

1) "Bitcoin turns out to be a clunky, slow, costly means of payment". This is missing the phrase "right now". There is nothing inherent/unfixable in Bitcoin or competing cryptocurrencies that make them bad for payments in a technical sense (maybe in a exchange rate risk sense but that's not the claim being made). Yes Scaling, Speed, Security, and UX are issues, no those aren't insurmountable. One could easily say "dial up internet is a clunky way to watch videos"; yes and the technology will evolve.

2) No intrinsic values. I'm not sure that you need intrinsic value in a currency, only buy-in, and there are a lot of compelling reasons to buy-in.

3) It's a bubble. Provide your valuation model. I don't claim to know what the correct valuation is, but I'm not making a hard claim of bubble vs no bubble.

4) North Korea is potentially manipulating the market. Time to break out the boogymen! I don't doubt that NK is trying all measures of cyberscams / hacking / etc, but I really doubt that they have the capital or skill to meaningfully effect these high volume markets.

Don't get me wrong. There are massive problems and criticisms that can be leveled against Bitcoin et al, but this reads more as an "old man yells at clouds" kind of story.

<comment><USER3> > This is missing the phrase "right now". There is nothing inherent/unfixable > in Bitcoin or competing cryptocurrencies that make them bad for payments in > a technical sense

It's been a decade and Bitcoin has never delivered on that promise despite heavy marketing pushes and huge amounts of capital. At some point it's not reasonable to give the benefit of the doubt until something ships.

<comment><USER4> With less traffic on the network circa a year ago and before, it was plenty fast and cheap. I think it's in need of an upgrade so it can make bitcoin great again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Bitcoin, by contrast, has no intrinsic value at all.

The idea of intrinsic value should die. It's fundamentally a complete misunderstanding of what value is based on. FIAT currency and Bitcoin have value as long as people believe it has value.

Value isn't some objective criteria it's a highly subjective one, what one considers valuable another might not. depending on what we are talking about, you can then add some more solid criteria such as utility, scarcity, trust in the future and so on. Depending on what context value is to be understood in you get various fluctuations in price and then finally you have some exchange between two parties where the price is agreed.

<comment><USER6> > _FIAT currency and Bitcoin have value as long as people believe it has > value_

This argument precludes any rational discussion of the price of Bitcoin. Bitcoin at $50,000? Correctly priced, because people feel like it! Bitcoin at 50¢? Correctly priced, because people feel like it!

Contrast that to national currencies, where fundamental relationships between rates, real GDP and other factors relating to the economy can be measured, forecasted and compared. Two informed people can have a reasonable debate about the price at which one should trade a U.S. dollar for Japanese yen or Canadian dollars. Two informed people _cannot_ have a reasonable debate about the price at which one should trade a U.S. dollar for a Bitcoin.

In that sense, it's sort of like gold. Unlike gold, Bitcoin doesn't have millennia of heritage grandfathering in an informal consensus [1].

[1] [http://www.mining.com/what-a-roman-centurions-pay-says- about...](http://www.mining.com/what-a-roman-centurions-pay-says-about-gold/)

<comment><USER7> > In that sense, it's sort of like gold. Unlike gold, Bitcoin doesn't have > millennia of heritage grandfathering in an informal consensus [1].

Yep. Exactly. Bitcoin doesn't have the history of other currencies and assets, _by the simple fact that it has only existed for about ten years_. Something that can't be changed because we don't have time machines to go back thousands of years and tell everyone how to build computers and create cryptocurrencies.

So instead of people saying that Bitcoin is inherently worthless all the time, maybe we can just agree that it's going to take a lot longer than ten years and a lot of swings both up and down in the price before we start creating enough of a "heritage" to come to an informal consensus on how much they are worth.

A lot of people come across as "This is something new and I don't want to spend any effort trying to understand it. Worthless! Everyone putting money into it are nothing but tulip heads!" and it'd be more annoying if my paying attention to it and taking small risks with it didn't just help me turn a small amount of USD into a downpayment on a house in 12 months, something I most likely wouldn't have been able to do putting that money literally anywhere else.

<comment><USER6> > _So instead of people saying that Bitcoin is inherently worthless all the > time, maybe we can just agree that it 's going to take a lot longer than ten > years and a lot of swings both up and down in the price before we start > creating enough of a "heritage" to come to an informal consensus on how much > they are worth_

The history of non-fiat money (like gold) is that of candidates being knocked off, practically never added to, the list. Over time, new financial technologies ( _e.g._ better refining, bimetallism, paper money, central banks, deposit insurance, _et cetera_ ) were demonstrated to be superior to gold (and its subsequents) in the context of a growing modern economy. People debated--extensively--each shift. Rational arguments were put forward, tested (and rejected), refined and, when fruitful, propagated.

Each of gold --> bimetallism, commodity money --> redeemable paper money, redeemable money --> "backed" money and backed money --> fiat had a rational argument (and demonstration) for their transition. Those arguments are one way; they don't work going backwards.

Gold remains as a legacy, a memory of where we came from. It's here, and has been replaced. (Analogous to old programming languages which remain in light use because of legacy code. You wouldn't clone their obsolete elements, justifying said clone with the legacy language's use.) There is no argument for "neue gold" because the same arguments that worked, cumulatively, over the centuries as society progressed, against gold work against the new thing. The comparison to gold is one of false equivalence; hence the fallback to "whatever we feel it's worth."

<comment><USER5> There is only one bitcoin and that bitcoin has a unique history that no other can have. It doesent need to be neue gold it just need to be bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _> Bitcoin, by contrast, has no intrinsic value at all._

This comes right after a paragraph describing how the US dollar has no intrinsic value other than the fact that it is the required currency for paying US taxes and that the Federal Reserve stabilizes it through the money supply (Modern Monetary Theory would argue these two points are effectively the same, but I digress).

Does this mean fiat currencies have intrinsic value? If so, how is this value more 'intrinsic' than the value a network gives a cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin's overextended and struggling network certainly makes it overvalued compared to the well-oiled machine that is the USD. But that's hardly a reason to write off cryptocurrencies in general.

<comment><USER9> > Does this mean fiat currencies have intrinsic value? If so, how is this > value more 'intrinsic' than the value a network gives a cryptocurrency?

Because you are required to pay taxes.

> although Modern Monetary Theory would argue the two are effectively the same

Actually, if I understand correctly, MMT would argue that a central bank has very little control over money supply(other than in the rare case of acting as a "lender of last resort"). Instead, money is created through the act of deficit spending.

[http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=1623](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=1623)

A helpful illustriation by MMT'er Warren Mosler

> The question is, "How do you turn litter into money?"

> So, I take my business cards out here, and these are twenty dollars a piece, > if anybody wants to buy any. No? Any takers? No? Okay.

> All right, well if anybody wants to stay after and help clean up the carpet > and tidy up the room, I'm going to pay one per hour. Or five per hour, or > whatever, one per hour. Anybody want to stay and help? Okay, not a lot of > takers.

> Then I add one more thing: Look, there's only one way out of here and > there's a man at the door with a nine millimeter machine gun. Okay? And you > can't get out of here without five of my cards.

> Now things have changed. I've now turned litter into money. Now, you will > buy these, you will work for these things if you want to get out. The man at > the door is the tax man and that's the function of taxes.

<comment><USER10> > money is created through the act of deficit spending

A slight quibble:

All federal government spending is money creation. All federal government taxation or fees is money destruction.

If you ignore debt (not a very MMT thing to do), you could say that net money creation is deficit spending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "It's a nifty trick. But what is it good for?"

The last time Krugman said this it was about the internet.

"The Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's….ten years from now, the phrase "information economy" will sound silly. (1997)"

<comment><USER12> To be fair, this isn't the first time this quote been dredged up from the past to be used against him as it pertains to Bitcoin.[1]

So while it's fun to pile onto Krugman once in a while, since cryptocurrencies are more closely related to monetary and economic concepts, he clearly feels more confident about this particular assertion.

Whether he's right remains to be seen.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to- inte...](http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet- quote-2013-12)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I realize this is an op-ed, but a good op-ed will still be based on well researched facts, otherwise the opinion is naive and useless. This reads like Krugman read a shitty blog from some 12 year old who doesn't know how to do independant research and simply copied some terribly uninformed social media arguments.

For example, the US Dollar is valuable not because that's the only accepted currency for paying taxes but because it's the only currency that nearly every retailer in the country accepts.

> much actual Bitcoin use seems to involve drugs, sex and other black-market > goods

There's a big difference between bitcoin use in general and bitcoin use on the dark web. You can't cite an article about bitcoin use on the dark web as a source for how all bitcoin is used. That's like saying hot dogs are only sold at baseball stadiums when your source is just about hot dog sales at baseball stadiums.

I could go on but I think it's fair to say there is no need -- Krugman has gone full retard.

<comment><USER14> > For example, the US Dollar is valuable not because that's the only accepted > currency for paying taxes but because it's the only currency that nearly > every retailer in the country accepts.

The former is a significant part of the reason for the latter.

> There's a big difference between bitcoin use in general and bitcoin use on > the dark web.

There's clearly a difference, but if a large share of the non-speculative trade is on the dark web, Krugman's statement you criticize remains correct.

> I could go on but I think it's fair to say there is no need -- Krugman has > gone full retard.

You have decidedly failed to make that case.

<comment><USER13> > The former is a significant part of the reason for the latter.

Obviously there's a feedback loop where people are paid in a currency and then people have that currency so retailers accept that currency and then they pay their employees with that currency, etc. But I don't think anyone has recently sat down to think about which currency they're going to use on a daily basis and selected that currency because it's the currency they have to pay their taxes in once a year. People use it because they have it, businesses accept it because that's what people have. Why? It's not because of taxes...

It's because nearly every modern country has a central bank or a "pseudo- central bank" (like the federal reserve) that issues the trade currency for that country. That central bank issues that currency because they want to control the economy (as Krugman mentions). It's not because they want to receive that currency to pay taxes -- accepting it as the payment method for taxes is a consequence of issuing that currency, not the reason for it.

> but if a large share of the non-speculative trade is on the dark web, > Krugman's statement you criticize remains correct.

Well sure, but there's no evidence of that and an article about usage of bitcoin on the dark web is not a useful source for such an argument -- in fact, using it in that manner discrets the author entirely.

<comment><USER14> > That central bank issues that currency because they want to control the > economy (as Krugman mentions).

No, they issue it because that's what the government charters them to do. They enact particular monetary policy to control the economy, which only works because the currency is dominant in trade, which it is because the government systematically favors it (it's true that taxation isn't the whole story here, though, there's also legal tender status, the government issuing public benefits in the currency, minimum wage laws and other laws that are keyed off official currency and which are much harder to comply with if you use some other currency that floats against it, etc., etc., etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't be an article about Bitcoins without "bubble" and "tulip." It's really getting old - you'd think 7 years in there'd be something new to write about.

<comment><USER3> You'd think that 9 years in there'd be plenty of examples of it solving problems for normal people, too. The bubble talk will go away as soon as that changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article can be summed up as "Bitcoin is analogous to Tulip Mania". How many years does bitcoin have to be around and used for that analogy to stop being the dominant?

</comment><comment><USER17> Serious question, how is Bitcoin fundamentally different from gold? Based on a "tether to reality", gold is massively overvalued if you consider its industrial or practical utility.

Furthermore, gold is heavy and thus impractical to use in day to day transactions, just like Bitcoin.

There are altcoins, but then there are also alt-metals (granted a lot fewer of them) such as silver, platinum, palladium, etc.

The way I see it, bitcoin is just like gold except you can also trade it online.

<comment><USER18> > Serious question, how is Bitcoin fundamentally different from gold?

So there are a handful of assets (gold, silver, jewels; generally stuff you'd expect to find in your average pulp fantasy treasure chest) that are essentially ancient speculation bubbles that never popped. They're valuable because there valuable. The optimist view of Bitcoin is that it's going to be the newest member of that august club.

The bad news is that most of the list predates money as we understand it. It's not entirely clear if new gold-class assets even can be created anymore.

The worse news is that the list is getting shorter. Aluminum used to be the stuff of kings, now we make candy bar wrappers out of it. Indigo, spices, pearls, turquoise. They all spent centuries as treasures until they weren't. Diamonds are starting to fall off, although it'll probably take a few decades.

All of these were once extremely scarce and became a lot more common for one reason or another. And Bitcoin itself is limited, but any idiot can fork off their own altcoin.

It's possible that in a few hundred years a Bitcoin will be just as much "treasure" as a bar of gold, but that's still far from a certain thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We've heard about Bitcoin being a bubble and having no intrinsic value the entire duration of its existence -- so much so that Paul making these his main arguments feel like traveling back to ~2013 when it was "bubbling" then.

If people use Bitcoin and believe it has value, it _gives_ it value and credibility, in the same way that diamonds have value, even though they are no longer "rare".

When people stop using Bitcoin, or stop believing it has value or is worthy of value, any "bubble" state it has will burst.

My main question when reading this article was: when a major technological change or shift happened in the past few decades, did people realize at the time the potential, or did they make articles like this saying that the technology was a bubble? All it makes me think of is this famous Newsweek article: [http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- nirva...](http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- nirvana-185306)

I'm not saying that Cryptocurrencies will be the next internet (maybe it will be the next big .com crash), but entrepreneurs who become rich will be the ones that at least took the risk to believe (for better or worse).

<comment><USER20> > If people use Bitcoin and believe it has value, it _gives_ it value and > credibility

Unless what is driving up the price is speculation.

I mean, do most of these new-to-bitcoin users actually "use" Bitcoin? Purchase with it? Or are they holding, waiting to dump?

<comment><USER21> The same can be said about diamonds and art, however. The only difference here is that it's a digital vs a physical asset.

<comment><USER20> You're right, but I don't think we've seen either of those skyrocket like Bitcoin. If one or the other was up 5800% perhaps we might call it a bubble....

<comment><USER21> I beg to differ: [http://www.dw.com/en/salvator-mundi-da-vinci-painting- that-s...](http://www.dw.com/en/salvator-mundi-da-vinci-painting-that-sold- for-450-million-headed-to-louvre-abu-dhabi/a-41685659)

Quantitative easing has inflated asset prices across the board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe I heard it on "Marketplace" recently — but the gist of it was (and I think it was focusing on young South Koreans) people were buying Bitcoin because all other options for getting rich quick seemed out of reach.

It was a sobering portrayal of Bitcoin as little better than a desperate lottery or roulette spin for a generation that feels left behind by the growing financial inequity (inequality).

</comment><comment><USER22> How many entities have recently stopped taking bitcoin, and how many have started? Are the growing transaction cost and latency going to kill usage?

<comment><USER16> Avg tx fee has fallen quite a bit, as well as median. It's still far too high IMO, but it's closer to 5 bucks than 20 like it was a couple months ago.</comment></comment>