World's 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/21/world-26-richest-people-own-as-much-as-poorest-50-per-cent-oxfam-report <comment><USER2> A reminder: it's usually not a good idea to sum up the net worth of the poor, as many people who are net-negative (have debt) will bring down a couple thousand of actually poor people.

The poorest person in the world by net worth is Jérôme Kerviel [0], the Paris banker, who is worth about -5 billion euros. You can add the entire net worth of all the population of a couple of African countries to get to total net worth of 0.

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

Edit: Rebuttal for their previous report: [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix- salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix- salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding-up-the-wealth-of-the-poor/)

<comment><USER3> > In March 2014, a French high court upheld Kerviel's prison sentence but > ruled he would not have to repay €4.9bn.[36]

I was hoping he was actually billions in the hole, but no, he's out of prison and working and not responsible for repaying any amount of the debt.

<comment><USER4> It would actually be impossible for him to do this. Nobody will let him anywhere near a job that would let him earn any sum of money that could make a difference on a 4th or 5th digit of that sum even if he worked for the rest of his life for this.

<comment><USER5> You could really argue in all directions here. If he remained in prison all that he would do is to accumulate even more cost. But if not, he might become a welfare case (is he?) unless he lowers himself to do some honest work.

<comment><USER4> Actually, you could not argue. I'm Polish, so I may not know local law very well, but at least here the theory is that a punishment must, amongst others, allow the person to have a hope to come back to society, to remake themselves. This of course unless it is decided the person is unredeemable. So no, you can't argue in both directions. The judge has to pass a judgement that will take this into the account. Having a person be left with billions of dollars in debt that he has no hope to repay in a hundred lifetimes is not acceptable judgement, at least here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "World's 8 richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%" \- Oxfam, 2017 "World's 26 richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%" \- Oxfam, 2019

Not exactly the most convincing proof of "the widening gap". I'm not saying that the inequality hasn't increased, just that you need a different metric for showing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Poorest 50% probably have close to zero networth. Maybe some may have some sort of "house," or property, but that's about it.

Another good point they make: VAT (sales tax in USA) is over 20% in a lot of countries. That's in addition to income tax, pension (SS) contributions etc etc. Basically, you pay at least 20% tax virtually on everything. The governments usually collect that at the customs point of entry, and then it is passed down to the ultimate buyers.

<comment><USER7> > Basically, you pay at least 20% tax virtually on everything.

This is misleading. Firstly, in most countries with VAT, goods considered basic necessities, like food, tends to be zero rated or have lower VAT rates. Secondly, VAT is only paid on goods and often services you buy, not on e.g. mortgage payments or other debt, or rent (most places).

As an example, though at an income well above average, last time I checked VAT raised my effective tax rate by ~4 percentage points, despite the 20% UK headline VAT rate.

Very low earners also tends to pay relatively little VAT, as a much larger proportion of their income tends to go to rent or things that are exempt. As a result most poor people pay those 20% (or whatever local rate) at only a small proportion of their overall income.

VAT is still a problematic tax, as it has a disproportionately negative effect for poor people once they do earn a bit extra and want to spend it on something not considered a basic necessity (and the categories that are exempt do tend to be quite narrow). It can certainly drive their effective tax rate up well above the headline income tax rate for their income level even with very small proportions of income spent on full rated things. It also causes a "bulge" effect, where low to middle earners sees the largest effect (as high earners tends to invest and save a large proportion of their income; and in the UK and many other places are also more likely to afford to take advantage of a lot of other tax breaks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this is the same methodology as they've used in the past, I personally own as much as the poorest 30% of the world. (And so do you.)

Aggregating wealth gets weird when you look at debt and measure _net_ wealth.

<comment><USER9> I think the point is also about access to a certain degree of privilege. Merely being born in what is considered currently the _western civilization or hemisphere_ \- Basically Europe, US, Canada and Australia- Gives you access to a lot of economic and social opportunity. Which includes things like free primary and secondary education, heath care, pensions, social security, food stamps/security, infrastructure, easy mobility etc etc.

Your average US citizen has more to their disposal(in terms of any metric you can possibly measure) than people in South Asia or Africa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really misleading, as most people have very small or negative net worths. A homeless guy with a few bucks in his pocket has a higher net worth than most young doctors or lawyers.

The statistic as presented could make one think that you could just rob these 26 people and solve world poverty with their money. That's just not true. What makes the world go round is not the stored up wealth of the ultra rich, but the much much greater sum of total output produced by the economy every year.

</comment><comment><USER11> Inequality is irrelevant, the trick is to make poverty non desirable but at the same time comfortable. It would give them basic decency to not be exploited. Education resources (books/online courses) should also be provided for free.

<comment><USER12> Comfort is exactly what people seek. You can't make something both comfortable and undesirable.

If you're prepared to countenance a world where all people live a comfortable life, then you're implicitly countenancing a world where all people have equal worth - monetarily and otherwise.

<comment><USER13> I think the baseline of comfort that we're aiming for is beyond what most of us in the West have. I think the late Hans Rosling's "level 3" probably isn't much less well off in terms of emotional well-being than level 4. And level 3 is significantly cheaper than level 4, so it's not unimaginable that eventually everyone gets at least there over a few hundred more years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty interesting. One thing that bothers me is "The way our economies are organised means wealth is increasingly and unfairly concentrated among a privileged few while millions of people are barely subsisting".

I don't fully understand "unfairly" in this context. According to the thefreedictionary this word means:

1\. Contrary to justice or a sense of fairness 2\. Contrary to laws or conventions, especially in commerce; unethical: unfair dealing. 3\. Not kind or considerate: It was unfair of me to laugh when he felt so sad.

I am not sure I understand which of those description of unfairness applies to, say, Jeff Bezof (mentioned in the article). I have only limited knowledge about him, but I haven't heard that he had done anything that could be described as "unfair". One might even argue the opposite - he enabled many people to but cheaper goods in an easier way and he also enabled many people to sell goods efficiently and earn good money in this way.

<comment><USER15> You're interpreting this incorrectly. It is not that any individual's accumulation of wealth is specifically unfair, it might not be, but rather the system itself that is perceived to be unfair.

Society has been structured so that increasingly few people accumulate most of the wealth. To many, it has reached a degree that is unethical, unjust, unkind, particularly because those who are not along the privileged are suffering as a result, therefore the scale of human suffering increases over time, while wealth concentration continues to increase. You may not agree that the degree of wealth disparity is worthy of such descriptions yet, but that is just a matter of where to draw the line, not whether it is an understandable thing to draw a line on. After all, if in say a few hundred years, unrealistically and strictly as a thought experiment, the current system has lead to a single individual accumulating as much wealth as every other individual in the world combined, and having done so in an above board way, while every other person in the world lives in abject poverty, would this be unfair to you? If so, then we only disagree about the degree of wealth inequity that informs our belief on the fairness of our economic and societal systems.

<comment><USER16> > if in say a few hundred years, unrealistically and strictly as a thought > experiment, the current system has lead to a single individual accumulating > as much wealth as every other individual in the world combined, and having > done so in an above board way, while every other person in the world lives > in abject poverty

How likely do you think that is, and why do you think it's getting more and more likely? If anything, the wealth and power these days is way _more_ dispersed than a couple hunderd years ago when a few royalty held most of wealth/power/property. Like there's untold numbers of billionaires in China/Africa/Saudi Arabia/UAE/Europe/USA etc, and there's more on their way. In addition, the "turnover" of wealth seems to be faster and faster, and self- made billionaires dominate most rich-people lists (which however ignore most Arab dictators). Sure, it's possible that technology fundamentally changes that dynamic (e.g. by making 100% surveillance and oppression possible) in the future but that's not where the world is at right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's a great temptation to point the finger at 'those filthy rich people over there' but to someone else you and I are those filthy rich people. Let's all have an attitude of gratitude, and not forget that wealth isn't a zero sum game. Make the most of what you've been given, and leave the world a better place.

<comment><USER18> Explain to me how certain relevant aspects of wealth such as food, housing, energy or not wrecking the planet are not a zero sum game.

<comment><USER19> Well, this game can be played cooperatively or adversarially. For the latter approach, everything is a zero sum game.

Getting back to your points:

> food

We already (can) produce way more food than we consume. The main problem is distributing it and the lack of economic incentives to make this distribution global and fair.

> housing

We have the tech and resources to provide everyone adequate non-slum housing. It's again a problem of global and fair distribution. More than that, more people need to accept that we need more high density urban environments. This point will come back later :)

> energy

From an energy point of view, we're kind of at the "food" point. The real challenge is converting energy production to renewables. Which brings us to...

> not wrecking the planet

We absolutely have all the tech and know-how to not wreck the planet. But it's a tragedy of the commons.

Not wrecking the planet is the final end game, the ultimate cooperative move. Heck, it's the final anti-zero sum game move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wealth inquality (up to a point, of course) is, in general, actually a good thing. The more concentrated wealth is, the more easily and more cheaply it can leveraged to affect change. A good example might be the Gates Foundation. Through Bill Gates' concentration of wealth, he can allocate money to help the world with very little friction and overhead

Other examples include VC or hedge funds. While they don't own the money themselves (they merely aggregate and invest it on the behalf of others), the reason this happens is because it's much more profitable and efficient to invest one large pot of cash vs many small pots of cash.

PS: If someone wants to bring up that index funds are better, it's still the same principle at work. The expense ratio of a S&P 500 index fund are much smaller than what most individuals could manage themselves.

<comment><USER21> It's an interesting point seldom discussed: governments use money in boring safe ways, eccentric rich people "waste" money in unique and unpredictable ways. Both seem essential to the equation of production, just maybe not in the current proportions.

<comment><USER22> > governments use money in boring safe ways, eccentric rich people "waste" > money in unique and unpredictable ways.

I think many would dispute this point, at least in a general sense; although personally I might agree that current governments seem a bit paralysed in the face of some of global society's larger problems.

It does seem like we are living in an almost Victorian era age of high profile philanthropy/industrial barons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> ~34% of world population are children and teenagers. Of course they own nothing. Then there are young adults who just entered labor market and they don't have anything as well. So, it's roughly 40% of the world population. Plus debts mentioned by others.

</comment><comment><USER24> 26 (left most) = 3'500'000'000 (right most)

That is one staggering statistic.

If I were one of those 26 people, I'd consider myself a superhero. Wake up every morning knowing that I am capable of saving and improving lives of an entire (small) country!

<comment><USER25> But please tell me how. Providing them all with clothing, housing, food and healthcare wouldn't solve anything. As a matter of fact, it would only make matters worse. It'll lead to a increase in birth rates without actually addressing the problem at the core. They have to be taught trade, not provided for.

A healthy capitalist economy must be created in those places. It's giving the man a fish vs teaching the man how to fish.

<comment><USER26> Increasing peoples' standing in life _decreases_ the birth rate.

And no, there is no such thing as a "healthy capitalist economy", capitalism is by definition based on exploitation of the less fortunate. Saying such things is obviously heresy to the Silicon Valley set and capitalists in general, but it's the uncomfortable truth.

<comment><USER25> Capitalism by definition is private property rights and voluntary exchanges between individuals/businesses. It's the very antithesis to exploitation.

You might say that it's immoral to pay $1 an hour to people Africa to produce Nike shoes for the US market, except it isn't. It's simply the market rate. Could they afford to pay more? Yes. But it's in no means exploitation. That $1 an hour they make boosts the local economy, driving the quality of life up. Make it $10/h, and nobody would work for local companies there anymore.

And do you have any metric that proves that peoples' standing in life decreases the birth rate?

For example, there hasn't been a noticable decrease in Nigeria. [https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria- popul...](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-population/) [https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/gdp- growth](https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/gdp-growth)

<comment><USER7> > It's the very antithesis to exploitation.

Only if you believe in the fantasy of an equal exchange between people with vastly different economic positions. This is such a fantasy that hardly a country in the world does not confer additional legal protections to the worker to try to at least to some extent level the playing-field.

Historically, it took people dying to secure even basic protections, Like example stopping employers from _locking people in_ , like what caused 146 deaths at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. It took nearly a century, and dozens of people killed in demonstrations and strikes to get reasonably widespread application of the 8 hour working day. When people worldwide march on May 1st, they do so in part in memory of the Haymarket Massacre [2] and the AFL's subsequent move to resume the fight for the 8 hour day.

Nothing in the history of the labor movement suggests there is anything like an equal exchange for most people. Some of us are privileged enough to be in positions where we have something resembling an equal exchange that is truly voluntary in am meaningful way, but for most their economic position is weak enough that the employer always has more power.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Isn't there a law about networks or something that explains these kinds of things? Basically, "money goes to money"?

Is so, does the discrepancy described in this article fit within this theoretical framework?

</comment><comment><USER28> When you're very poor almost all of your assets are your earning capacity which isn't counted. So a top notch MIT graduate who participated with say 5$ in the cost of his education and can now earn a lot (which can be seen as a yielding asset) is now counted as 5$ poorer. Human capital isn't counted.

</comment><comment><USER29> Imagine there was another planet in another galaxy that had 100x the wealth as earth. Would it even matter?

Sometimes I think these global comparisons are like comparing different planets. Who really cares? It's our immediate surroundings that matter.

<comment><USER30> Less wealth at the top, means more wealth all around.

Your analogy is flawed, unless you think things like progressive taxation, social support / transfer payments, and closing rich's tax havens and loopholed are equivalent to a galaxy far far away.

<comment><USER31> Wealth is not zero sum.

<comment><USER30> The distribution of finite resources on this planet is a near zero sum question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Capital accrues capital faster than income ever can. This gap is one of the reasons why we have right wing populists. They offer easy answers to a complex problem - namely low income growth, jobs and immigration.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is a bad comparison not only because of debt, but because that is a valuation of productive capital they own. Nobody can eat shares. The only thing that would happen after a 'fair redistribution' is that party's bureucrats would replace current managers in their former companies.

The fate of PDVSA shows the ultimate result.

What the ultra-rich actually consume is a tiny fraction of their net worth.

<comment><USER34> The same goes the other way too though. Nobody can consume 1,000,000,000 loafs of bread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The inequality of assets and income is an unfixable problem, but that is not the problem.

There are people who are really good at starting and growing businesses, investing, taking risks, and thus accumulating wealth. Then there are people, some of who are really bad at that but mostly some of who aren't just that much interested and driven by that. Then there are people who are really good at effectively getting rid of any wealth they manage to obtain. Let's call this being good at money.

There is nothing wrong with that. Programmers are like that. There are some who are really, really good at it. Then many who are pretty decent, then a lot who are mediocre but still not negative, and then there are programmers whose output is outright negative.

Education helps a little: it can help with the constant factor but those who are good they really are good regardless or despite the education. So similarly to as you can't expect to train the whole humankind to become decent programmers I'm pessimistic about being able to educate the whole humankind out of poverty.

If we redistributed the world's wealth equally to all people on the planet the distribution would revert back to what the shape it has now in a matter of years or decades. Surely, there would be previously poor people with a knack for money who would be wealthy and there would be previously wealthy people who could not recreate the wealth they obtained by luck or by inheritance. But we would eventually recreate the situation where few people hold most of the assets. The peak of the distribution would just amplify over time as having wealth makes it easier to make more wealth, so the rich get richer and the poor get only fractional improvements.

There is a problem if the poor people can't make a living even if they are willing to put in the effort on their part. The systemic inefficiencies to lock a person's position in permanent poverty, the high fixed costs of living that prevent accumulating savings, lack of food, roof or medical support rendering people incapable to restart or begin a financially sustainable life, or money being able to buy justice or privileges that trump other people's rights. _These are the problems_ and not the fact that one person has a billion times more assets than some other person.

There are solutions we've tried and mostly failed. We can try to transfer wealth back from the rich to subsidise the poor. But poverty is often also about the mindset, and it is well known you can't refill a well merely by carrying water into it. The water just flows back to where it came from. We can try to make living not so dependent on one's income and assets but that means disrupting the natural markets for both jobs and goods, which not only accumulates inefficiencies due the diminished effect of businesses' healthy deaths but generates a reflecting black market that has no regulation. We can try to create more jobs as historically work has been a good medium to redistribute wealth but it seems that jobs are becoming less like that. There are very high-paying jobs for a small group of people and very poorly paid work or no work for lots of people.

Trying to fix the inequality of wealth distribution in order to combat poverty is, in my opinion, fixing the symptom and not the cause.

<comment><USER22> > We can try to transfer wealth back from the rich to subsidise the poor. But > poverty is often also about the mindset, and it is well known you can't > refill a well merely by carrying water into it

Are you saying that poor people are poor because of their own ignorance or poor behaviours? And therefore if you give them money they'll just piss it away?

<comment><USER35> Nope but because they're subjected to an environment that only operates in terms of poverty.

Living in poverty is likely to develop a mindset, in order to survive, that won't scale pulling you back out of poverty. That is, where you never start making smart financial decisions or plan ahead because, you know, the life is a mess enough because of various factors due to having little or no money or peers telling you to act otherwise.

There have been a number of discussions and even anecdotal comments on HN to probe into this. For example, feeling lucky at Google gave me this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461773)

<comment><USER22> In your original comment you said "If we redistributed the world's wealth equally to all people on the planet the distribution would revert back to what the shape it has now in a matter of years or decades" \- so it sounded to me as though you were against this, on the basis that it would not solve the problem.

> Nope but because they're subjected to an environment that only operates in > terms of poverty.

So let's say you have now identified a root cause, and assuming we're looking for a solution - how do we fix this without a redistribution of wealth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Who cares?

This focus on rich people is a distraction from eliminating poverty. It's a stupid and simplistic solution just to take money from rich people. I wish Oxfam would stop stoking these silly socialist fires.

<comment><USER12> How do you propose that poverty be eliminated without some people holding proportionally less of the world's money?

<comment><USER13> The don't need to hold proportionally less. It's a red herring.

The focus rather should be on health/nutrition outcomes, education outcomes, physical safety, quality of housing.

And this question is... is it getting better?

Factfulness says yes. Slowly, but surely, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Also the world's richest 50% own more than the poorest 50%.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder why so many of these people are choosing to spend time in their office 'cubicles' rather than travel the world and do good things. Like seriously, what is the barrier/problem here? Even if I had only a million dollars to freely spend, I would still choose to travel and make an impact where it counts.

We in the West love to complain about our 'problems' but a lot of us honestly don't have a clue what's happening elsewhere on the planet. And, of course, I am not talking just about the helping aspect of it, but also the opportunity to be exposed to some of the planets hidden beauty, places that only a handful of people will ever get to see.

Maybe it's because I am so free-spirited, and don't really value my own life as above anyone else's. Although 7.5B people sounds a lot, this Earth is nothing more than a planetarium. The grip that the Human Ego has on materialistic identity so absolutely bizarre.

I'm not saying every giga-rich person is like this, certainly, some are contributing to philanthropy and other projects, and perhaps I am myself mixing together two issues here, but this kind of philosophy interests me a lot.

<comment><USER39> > _Even if I had only a million dollars to freely spend, I would still choose > to travel and make an impact where it counts_

Travelling to remote places and doing things that feel impactful is generally an inefficient way to do good. I'm not criticising it _per se_. For edge-case problems, it's the only solution. But if you want to enact change at scale, you'll be doing it from the same places other human institutions enacting change at scale are.</comment></comment>


Security Could Be the Proverbial Straw That Break the Open Source Community Back - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/the-security-straw-that-could-break-the-open-source-communitys-back-atj930eg <comment><USER2> So far it's not security, but Code of Conducts</comment>


Show HN: Rlite – A serverless Redis-compatible database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seppo0010/rlite

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, author here.

I see this mainly as a database that might work well in mobile, giving persistence for free with an API similar to the NS{Dictionary,Array,String,Data,Number} classes, and without using as much memory.

Feedback is welcome.</comment>


Hello, Lenin? Berlin, 1997 - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2017/02/02/ostalgie-berlin-1997/ <comment><USER2> I was born in 1980 in East Berlin, seeing the photo and reading the first paragraphs gave me goosebumps.

"Gibt's doch gar nicht" is usually meant ironically. If you loose your coat- check ticket, you're supposed to describe where your stuff is and maybe what's in one of the pockets, so they are sure you don't steal it. But to be fair, even little kids in Germany learn they have to store there stuff at a place where it should be impossible to loose. Even more when it is important like your passport.

There is also a system in place where you can throw stuff you found (like wallets, id cards, etc) in the yellow Post boxes and it will be sorted in Bonn and mailed to the right people.

<comment><USER3> A German co-worker was in Paris recently. Her wallet was stolen while she was in a train station. One or two days later she was informed by the Police that the wallet had been found. The money was gone, but she got back all the rest (credit cards, id card, ...).

<comment><USER4> Happened to me in Germany as well. I always wonder about the incentive to the bad guy, but it is really great considering the hassel of getting all the new documents is far worse than the loss of the money I usually carry with me. The police even adviced me to wait some days before starting to apply for new documents, because this happens in most cases.

<comment><USER5> > I always wonder about the incentive to the bad guy

People who are desperate, e.g. drug addicts, but feel bad about it? Might also just be that the theif threw the wallet away after emptying it for money, and someone else found it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While there's a certain truth to the statement that Neo-Nazis are somewhat more common in East Germany, that's not really the whole story.

West Germany also has its fair share of Neo-Nazis and closet racists, the biggest difference being that West Germans had a couple of decades more time to "tone it down" compared to East Germans.

In West Germany many people, to this day, have very negative sentiments towards Eastern Europeans, Eastern Germans included. They are just more careful about how and when they voice them, something the East Germans haven't quite mastered to the same level yet.

Mostly due to an element of curiosity because "darker skinned people" simply had not been that common in the Soviet states, so they are rather blunt on such topics in comparison to West Germans who have learned to "hide" it a little bit better.

</comment><comment><USER7> The article title is a play on the film name "Goodbye Lenin", a comedy about the fall of the East German state and reunification.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301357/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301357/)

</comment><comment><USER8> _" The Metropol club literally did not have a protocol for lost coat-check tickets, because literally nobody had ever done it before in the history of the Metropol club."_

I ran into similar things living in Germany. I went to the Allkauf store just to look around, only to discover there was no way to leave other than the checkout lines, which were very long.

So, I (discreetly, I thought) jumped the turnstyle that lets people in so I could exit. There was immediate pandemonium, with security people coming my way, disapproving looks from shoppers, and so on.

I'm curious where the German propensity for strict organization, rule following, etc, comes from, and how far back it goes. The posted story seems to suggest it comes directly from WWII, since the East Germans don't seem to have the same attitude.

<comment> the-dude I wonder in which country this would have ended well.

edit: what do you think is the intended function of the turnstile?

<comment><USER8> There was no path to exit other than waiting in line behind shoppers waiting to pay for their items.

<comment><USER3> Then you have to ask these people to let you pass. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes. Usually one would enter such shop only if you actually knew what to buy. But if you don't find what you were looking for, then one would leave it without buying anything. Happened to me too. Some people are too shy to ask people to let them pass, others not.

<comment><USER9> > _Then you have to ask these people to let you pass._

Which is not obvious. And is not the case in most other places in the world I've known.

<comment><USER3> Haha, what would you do in a room with only one exit, where people are standing in the exit?

I would ask those people.

Obviously.

Trying to find some other exit in a shop will mean trouble. I would expect that in most places of the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Employee as a partner - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm considering of making one of my employee at my startup as my partner. He's very talented and I would like to keep him in the company for as long as possible.
My startup is 1 week old and I had already considered in making this employee my partner at the beginning.
My question is how much of the company should I share with him? Considering that he is a paid employee who did not contribute any funding into the company, should I still pay him the wage I am paying him now (several dollars above min. wage at this point with 1% profit-sharing) while asking for some cash investment into the company? He is asking for 25% of the equity...
Thanks a bunch. <comment><USER2> I'd say if he wants 25% of the equity, he should be paid no more than 25% of what you are being paid. Less if you invested cash up front and he didn't.

What you don't want is to let people have it both ways, collecting a salary as if it were BigCo and getting massive chunks of equity as well.

<comment><USER3> I'd say that if he's very talented and you really want to keep him, you should give him the 25% equity. Chances are, you can't do it on your own, and you're not going to get founder-level effort without a founder-level stake.

There was a story in Founders at Work about the Hotmail founders. The way they worked it was that the guy with the family quit his job, and the other guy gave him half his salary.

In particular, give up the illusion that startups are fair. You're going to get screwed over in your startup, and someone will inevitably end up doing more work or putting up more of the cash. The trick is to get screwed over by the right people, so that it all works out in the end. If he really is good enough that he'll make the difference between success and failure, give him the 25%. If not, why are you working with him?

This all assumes that you trust him, i.e. have a good working relationship with a decently long history. But if you don't trust him, why are you starting a company with him?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not being paid as of yet since there is no income. We are still working on demo products to show prospective clients.

Should he not be paid then?

<comment><USER4> not having any experience to say. I would say no. If you make him a partner he doesn't require a wage like an employee would, since his potential benefit would be higher, as would his risk. When the cash flows then everyone gets it.

However, you must handle that tactfully, giving him the chance to remain employee if he wants. Of course you may have to explain the reason why an employee would get payed where a partner making the risks wouldn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can say right now that it would be difficult for him to accept 25% equity while giving up his salary.

The guy wants it both...</comment></comment></comment>


History of Public-Key Cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ics54/doc/security/pkhistory.html

<comment><USER2> A little over the top in parts...

"The science of secret codes is proving to be essential technology for securing the Internet, and the techniques developed by Diffie and Hellman are some of the most useful .... and parents use them to protect their children against pedophiles and pornographers trolling the Internet."

</comment><comment><USER3> Non-PGP users should try [https://encrypt.to/](https://encrypt.to/) to send encrypted pgp messages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Insert NewEgg joke here.</comment>


Design review of Hillary and Trump's websites - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@FlowcastHQ/is-trumps-website-better-than-hillary-s-59c3a83e8886 <comment><USER2> Only one of these website features a prominent page attacking a stupid internet frog meme.</comment>


Settle: Decentralized trust graph for value exchange without a blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://settle.network/ <comment><USER2> ?? your description is too poor. there is no deep technical discussion you are just arguing using centralized trust ?? which is not true in the case of blockchain based currencies. your system is more centralized than you thought.</comment>


Japanese researchers created a human cerebral cortex tissue from stem cells - <AUTHOR> http://myfuturedesign.blogspot.com/2008/12/scientists-make-brain-tissue-from-stem.html <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the original article:

[http://www.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/fulltext/S1934-5909%2808%...](http://www.cell.com/cell-stem- cell/fulltext/S1934-5909%2808%2900455-4)</comment>


Ask HN: What does your grandparents remember from WWII? - <AUTHOR> Two years ago I've been to Germany. I was just before leaving the army after an extended service (5 years) and joining an IT startup in Tel Aviv, So I thought I should travel just a bit before doing that, with a friend.
The most memorable day of the trip was our last one. We've rented a bicycle to ride to Teuflesberg, and on the way back we took the train (with the bike). Little did we know - one must pay an extra fee to get bikes unto the train, so we were fined. The whole encounter consumed too much precious time, and we were about to be late to return the bike. A hasty apologetic call to the bike owner, and 30 minutes of intense bike riding forward - and we were there.
While we were about to leave the store, the daughter of the owner (~50 years, or so) asked us where we were from. After we've told her we were Israelis, she offered us a ride to our motel.
During the ride, we've got to talk about everything - politics, history, and whatnot. And somewhere around the Jewish graveyard, she has told us about her father.
She told us about her father, as she remembered him - a kind, gentle, and loving man.
And that he also served in the Wehrmacht. That reading about the war, and remembering the man her father was to her was almost oxymoronic. And that he had never talked about the war. The two of us read and hear testimonies by the survivors, and talked with them. But that was our first time hearing something close to a testimony of someone from "the other side".
That story resonated with me. The Israeli holocaust memorial day was held yesterday, and that story came back to me. If anyone of you, German readers, would be able to share his grandparents' story from the war, It'd mean a lot to me.
(If you're not German, but would still like to share your grandparents' story - I'd also like to hear that!) <comment><USER2> The German side of my family were all radical Protestants who hated Hitler because he was 'too Catholic', so engaged in what we would call terrorism today blowing up and attacking local nazi party campaign buildings until exiled to Canada. Some others remained and continued terrorism, somehow not getting caught. They described their area of rural Germany as lawless since the majority were anti Hitler and police didn't enter those areas the entire war, and all refused military duty. Somebody should do a history doc on the crazy violent religious radicals in rural Germany during the war.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! that's really interesting and I've had no idea these it happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My grandfather served as a medic in Burma during WW11.

He and many other young people were forcibly conscripted and herded from their villages to training camps in northern Nigeria,and after a short period were shipped overseas."They made us work hard and served a lot of meat at the camp" he said.

He told of the terror among illiterate young men who had never been anyplace outside their village suddenly being transported to war and distant lands. One of the young conscripts tried to resist the train leg of the journey, and when the NCO (a British Officer) was alerted, he hit him so hard on the back of the head with his baton that his _left eye fell out._ Some conscripts on the sea voyage jumped overboard into the waters of the Atlantic. Apparently, a rumor was going around that the British meant to _feed them_ to an ogre named 'Hitler'. Despite this, he retained a deep admiration for the British colonial masters and their ways of doing things. My mother recalls that he would tell them as children "always wash and starch your clothes. Walk erect like a DO!"[1]

In Burma he was assigned to a medical post to the rear of the fighting. He never said much about the actual fighting except to mention that "many died",I recall he would say also "there were snakes and mosquitoes". His recollection of the Japanese enemy was that they were regular soldiers out to do their job just like the chaps on his side.

Grandpa had a photographic memory and was a compulsive note-taker. He recited from memory the name of the ship that conveyed him from Nigeria to the war, its captain and the date of departure. He knew the names of his colleagues and officers 6 decades after. Sadly, a younger me never took notes and I regret it now.

When he returned from the war, he got a job with the local authorities at a rural hospital (Nigeria was still under colonial rule). He got a high school diploma by correspondence at 52(54?) as he was an orphan and had never had the chance to go to school as a child. When he retired, he became a full-time farmer and later a clan chief.

He died aged 91 two years ago.

[1] DO- District officer was a British government functionary in colonial Nigeria roughly equivalent to a mayor today.

</comment><comment><USER4> My family is from Warsaw Poland. There are so many ways in which the war affected my family.

On one side of my mom's family, I had a great grandmother who was a covert operative for the Polish underground resistance. She carried information and communications during the war. She told us stories of being ambushed by german soldiers, once they learned of their communication routes. She hid in a secret hiding spot in a well to escape. Had friends die in her arms. She had to marry another operative in order to fake documents for a mission. She ended up falling in love with him, but was separated during part of the war and couldn't find him. She ended up re-marrying, and then later on in life when she was much older, spotted the man on a trolley but decided not to say anything since so much time had passed.

I have really fond memories of sitting in her living room when visiting Poland when I was younger. She was telling us stories of the war as we ate ice cream on a hot summer day. She was an incredible woman. She passed away a few years ago.

On the other side of my mom's family, my grandmother's dad and brother went missing during the war. They went out one night and never came back. Another time when we visited Poland, we went to the Auschwitz memorial. They have a massive book there with all of the names of people who were in the nazi records for having been prisoners at the camp. No one in my family knew what happened to the two brothers, but my mother, decided to look up their names. And their names were in the book. Since then, we contacted the international red cross tracing service. They mailed us copies of hand written documentation from the nazi. Both brothers were participating in an uprising, and were captured as political prisoners. One died in Auschwitz and the other was transffered to Birkenau where he died of Tuberculosis.

</comment><comment><USER5> My American father fought in both WW2 and in Vietnam. He told humorous stories about Vietnam. He died a few years ago. Only after his death did it occur to me that he did not really tell stories about WW2.

My German mother has talked at times about her parents moving the family to the country and using ration cards for things like cigarettes to hire 3 men to guard the house. They hid their food supplies in large wooden barrels, then topped them with potato peels (with a layer of material in between) to make it look like trash.

</comment><comment><USER6> My grandfather was a kid during WWII, he told me about air raid warnings and blackouts happening in Long Beach, CA, which sounds really unusual because you never hear about that.</comment>


Giving Up Darwin by Yale University Professor David Gelernter - sahin-boydas https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/ <comment><AUTHOR> This article is just repeating the old arguments in favor of Intelligent Design Creationism.

This is dangerous pseudoscience that should never be taken seriously.</comment>


Show HN: deemon, run a process in the background and attach to it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joaomoreno/deemon <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, author here!

We use deemon in VS Code to improve development and minimize downtime. As developers we like to run our build from within VS Code in order to get tasks support and get semantic errors in the Problems view. But since we often need to reload VS Code, this would kill the build task and we would need to start the build all over again which takes roughly 2-3 minutes to warm up. With deemon we are able to run the build from inside VS Code as a build task and later reattach to the same `yarn watch` process, even if we quit VS Code or reload it.

Deemon works similarly to running your build tasks inside tmux, detaching from it and later reattaching, but with a simpler interface. Instead of `yarn watch`, one runs instead `deemon yarn watch`.

Adopting it to the VS Code repo was as simple as adding a dev dependency to `deemon` and adding a new `watchd` script: [https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/4e8408d4c4dafae88f7...](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/4e8408d4c4dafae88f771691920bb54d7ab57c81/package.json#L18).

You can try it out right now using `npx`: simply run `npx deemon BUILD COMMAND` (eg. `npx deemon yarn watch`). `Ctrl-C` will detach from the background process. Run the exact same command to reattach. `Ctrl-D` will terminate the background process.

Glad to answer any questions!</comment>


Looking for Lurkers: Co-Orbiters as SETI Observables - <AUTHOR> https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ab3e35 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1903/1903.09582.pdf](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1903/1903.09582.pdf)

 _Abstract: A recently discovered group of nearby co-orbital objects is an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) to locate a probe to observe Earth while not being easily seen. These near-Earth objects provide an ideal way to watch our world from a secure natural object. That provides resources an ETI might need: materials, a firm anchor, and concealment. These have been little studied by astronomy and not at all by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) or planetary radar observations. I describe the objects found thus far and propose both passive and active observations of them as possible sites for extraterrestrial (ET) probes._

Published in The Astronomical Journal, September 2019.

 _The Astronomical Journal (often abbreviated AJ in scientific papers and references) is a peer-reviewed monthly scientific journal owned by the American Astronomical Society and currently published by IOP Publishing. It is one of the premier journals for astronomy in the world._ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronomical_Journal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronomical_Journal))

See also:

[https://phys.org/news/2019-09-lurkers- seti.html](https://phys.org/news/2019-09-lurkers-seti.html)

[http://astrobiology.com/2019/09/looking-for-lurkers-a-new- wa...](http://astrobiology.com/2019/09/looking-for-lurkers-a-new-way-to-do- seti.html)

[https://earthsky.org/space/alien-lurker-probes-co-orbital- as...](https://earthsky.org/space/alien-lurker-probes-co-orbital-asteroids- earth)</comment>


The Implementation of the Icon Programming Language (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://www2.cs.arizona.edu/icon/ibsale.htm <comment><USER3> Another book in this genre is "Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation". "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" had a lot of discussion about language implementation too.

<comment><USER4> Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice is one of my favorite books on language implementation. It's dated (the machines targeted were things like 8Mhz 68000 boxes) but details and pragmatics of bootstrapping your way into a working system from a tape dump are a fun read.

<comment><USER5> Especially the cartoon captioned something like "2+2=3.9erstėsdgdfg - <USER2> system is 99% working" \- both funny and accurate, after a fashion :-) Too bad all we got for the MVC book was "The black art of MVC programming" :-(

<comment><USER4> "2+3=(massive system crash)"

[Examines core dump] "Hmmm, might have been okay..."

The cartoons are funny and have never gone out of style. I still refer cow- orkers to them and get laughs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux There is a successor to the Icon language called Unicon. Like Icon, its strength lies in text processing. It incorporates all of Icon's features while adding object-oriented capabilities. It's in active development but completely off the radar of the main programming scene.

The main website could do with a facelift.

[https://unicon.sourceforge.io/](https://unicon.sourceforge.io/)

It's a shame these languages aren't studied more because they have some unique ideas that we could all learn from.

</comment><comment><USER6> Icon is a great little language. The old Icon compiler used CPS and generated C w/ no C extensions.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have this book. I read it while working on my senior project, which was adding the Actor concurrency model to Icon. A pretty easy read. The Icon language was so innovative. It was my secret weapon in college.

</comment><comment><USER8> Fascinating language, very interesting to see the nice way that it progresses as long as it "succeeds" e.g. via Wikipedia:

"In addition, the < operator returns its second argument if it succeeds, allowing things like if a < b < c, a common type of comparison that in most languages must be written as a conjunction of two inequalities like if a < b && b < c"

<comment><USER9> What would a < b < c look like in snobol/spitbol, precursor to Icon.

Maybe something like

        lt(a,b) lt(b,c) ...
       end

where ... is optional rest of statement that only gets executed if a < b < c.

Or ... might be a statement on a new line

        lt(a,b) lt(b,c) :s(d)f(end)
       d ...
       end</comment></comment>


What Drove Sigmund Freud to Write a Scandalous Biography of Woodrow Wilson? - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-drove-sigmund-freud-write-scandalous-biography-woodrow-wilson-180970042/?no-ist <comment><USER2> At least one red flag, regarding the "first chapter by Freud — preserved in the Bullitt Papers in 24 pages of his German Gothic script". – Freud used latin italics when writing in English.[1] Another one, the notion of an agreement on not publishing as of spring 1932 and the remarks on the non sequitur on Bullitt's side as made by Freud to Marie Bonaparte in Dec. 1933 do not add up.

I find it exceedingly difficult to align this portrayal, especially regarding the additions with anything we do know about and by Freud. (As we're speaking here about a time frame of 1930-32, senility on Freud's side is out of consideration.) Also, the author seems to be a bit on the Freud-is-dead wagon, the promotors of which usually tend to convey a crude caricature. ("And Freud's ideas took hit after hit, including multiple revelations that he had fudged or misrepresented his findings." – However, I've not seen yet any of this which would stand the scrutiny of a comparison with source material or the claims actually made by Freud.)

[1] Compare [https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/06/hands-on-sigmund- fr...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/06/hands-on-sigmund-freud- typeface-making-fonts/)

<comment><USER3> > Also, the author seems to be a bit on the Freud-is-dead wagon

There is very good reason from that. The contemporary dominant paradigms covering the theoretical ground once dominated by e.g. Freud and Jung can be found under the heading of Cognitive Science[0], where Freud and his legacy of ideas are completely absent to my knowledge. Modern clinical psychology, which I don't know as well, seems to have branches which still employ Freudian ideas—but my understanding is that they are outliers at this point, and that more typically modern clinical psychology is rooted in theoretical results from Cognitive Science.

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

<comment><USER2> Hm – As you pointed out, this is rather a matter of a paradigmatic shift. Cognitivist Science represents a rather unrelated branch of thinking. (Arguably it is also ignoring most of the early 20th century, e.g., the whole body of constructivist theory formed in the 1920s.)

Freud was essentially an answer to shortcomings in clinical psychology in the late 19th century, and, while there have been huge advances in clinical psychology, there will be always differences. However, Freud's hints at a general theory, his 'metapsychology' may be still of broader interest today. This is neither a contest nor a zero-sum game. – What I was addressing, are those who promote the notion of Freud being falsified just to be entitled to ignore him, to not read any, who rather prefer to convey a distorted idea, which is based one hearsay only, but still feel qualified to assess the value of his thinking. (The same is probably true for some notions of Kant. Also, arguably Freud and Jung represent rather opposing, incompatible concepts than the same.)

[Edit:]

*) the whole body of constructivist theory

This is meant to refer to authors like Edmund Husserl, Ernst Cassirer and what is still found in remanences under the title of sociology of knowledge (Alfred Schütz, etc).

<comment><USER3> Just to ensure we're talking about the same thing, I'm referring to 'Cognitive Science' not 'Cognitivist Science,' which sounds more like a branch of philosophy.

I think that's the main disconnect in what we're talking about here: mainstream _scientists_ in psychology left Freud behind quite a while ago. There are certainly other corners of academia who continue to use his ideas, but not scientists. Nowadays the two main branches covering similar theoretical subjects are various branches of Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology (both of these are often grouped together under the heading 'Cognitive Science').

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's sad that people who have done great things are given such flack for later projects that didn't meet expectations. Feynmnan talked about "Nobel prize disease", and how he was determined to avoid it by working on unimportant things if he felt like it. Probably everyone who's gotten some recognition has felt the constraint at some level.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you x 100 for posting this fascinating article.

</comment><comment><USER6> I gather that Freud hated Wilson. He blamed him for destroying the Austro- Hungarian Empire after WWII. I suspect that he also blamed him for the the Nazis.

Edit: I meant WWI, damn it.

<comment><USER2> It seems, Wilson's attitude towards the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg empire was in actuality at times ambivalent and changing. Compare [http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.deskli...](http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-c221d5ba-b11e-4d67-a522-a6b66c956363/c/vaclav_horcicka_57-92.pdf)

That said, it's plausible that Freud shared the common notion, especially bitterly so, since Jews had also lost that bit of imperial protection they had enjoyed previously (but this had been ambivalent and changing over time, as well).

<comment><USER7> Yes, but I think that ambivalence and the Bullitt quote about an advisor manipulating Wilson's opinion probably get at the nature of Freud's hatred for Wilson.

A leader who had the power to decide over significant things to Freud who did so without showing enough serious thought to have strong convictions in either direction. No doubt his real priorities were some kind of excessive self obsession..

<comment><USER6> Yes, there was commentary about how easily Wilson could be manipulated, through simple psychological ploys. Stuff about his passive aggressiveness. Plus lots of homophobic and religious slurs, which I didn't expect from Freud. But then, I've always been more partial to Jung, so hey.

<comment><USER2> Regarding these slurs: This seems so absolutely not to match what we know of and by Freud, including letters to intimate friends, etc. It's really more like a caricature.

<comment><USER6> Maybe just a symptom of getting old. After barely escaping the Holocaust.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Pithos Guide - <AUTHOR> http://pithos.io/ <comment><USER2> Speaking of S3 compatible file storage, I had found LeoFS. I noticed it has a distributed architecture, erasure coding support, and most interestingly, NFS support, multi-dc replication, extensive monitoring, and looks like has been in production for a while.

[http://leo-project.net/leofs/](http://leo-project.net/leofs/)

NFS support could be a game changer, like say allowing researchers or some departments just access files in a directory and use whatever tools they find are easier (ipython, machine learning etc) not having to know about S3.

</comment><comment><USER3> The other pithos project that I thought of from the title: [https://pithos.github.io/](https://pithos.github.io/)

<comment><USER4> I thought the exact same thinng.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Been use Pithos in development (4 months) and production (2 months) as a replacement for S3, so far it's still stable.

</comment><comment><USER6> Too bad this hasn't had a release in 8 months nor a commit in 4 months.

<comment><USER7> You're a bit harsh, last one was 28 days ago :-). To be honest, except for the big chunk of work that signature v4 represents, the lack of commit/releases stems from the fact that it has been stable.

<comment><USER6> I actually use pithos and I've been waiting desperately for v4 signatures.</comment></comment></comment>


What's New in WSL in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/10/11/whats-new-in-wsl-in-windows-10-fall-creators-update/ <comment><USER2> > Linux runs really well on Windows/WSL

I know that some people don't realise/don't care that Linux is the kernel, the one thing that specifically _isn 't_ Linux in a WSL environment, but I find it weird that Microsoft are making the same mistake - their claim of a potential conversation doesn't even make sense when you consider the true meaning.</comment>


Test if any website is blocked in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.blockedinchina.net/?hn <comment><USER2> A page like this might be really useful, but it's very difficult for it to tell the whole story, and the story is always changing.

In my experience, China's government uses many methods to sabotage the Internet, and the methods used against specific services change very often. I believe change so often because it's more disruptive.

Some services seem "just plain" blocked, as in the connections are being sniped by RST or something. Others (e.g., Google services like Maps) are in what I believe to be a "degrade" mode, where perhaps half the page is allowed to load, but not enough to be functional, in order to make the service look broken and to be more annoying to the user. I met many people in China who hated Google services because they were so slow and/or defective--due entirely to the sabotage.

They also seem to mess up a lot of stuff via DNS. They also seem to disrupt VPN. They also inject ads into page content, e.g., ads in the lower right corner of espn.com or whitehouse.gov.

<comment><USER3> Also, each Chinese ISP is quite different in what is blocked: even if their are some popular givens (facebook, youtube, twitter), there is some flexibility with respect to imugr, wikimedia, and Google PLUS.

> I met many people in China who hated Google services because they were so > slow and/or defective--due entirely to the sabotage.

If you call up your ISP and tell them you can't get to Facebook, they'll tell you it must be Facebook's fault. The government won't admit to blocking or interfering with these websites...the GFW technically doesn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Countdown timer: [http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=blockedinchina.net](http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=blockedinchina.net)

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone who travels to China fairly frequently I can say I've found this site to be inconsistent.

That said, different locations within China have inconsistently differing levels of blockage (for instance, you can access many more places from within the greater Shanghai area than from within nearby Hangzhou and can find differences in what is available between Hangzhou and Beijing) so I think it is difficult to definitely state that this or that site is completely unavailable from anywhere within China.

<comment><USER6> This is because of the different service providers and the decentralization that is applied from within the government.

It leads to inconsistency but it stops some of the mistakes that result from an overly centralized government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china- test.html](http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html) seems to be a much better resource. The latency for successful requests is usually pretty high, and blockedinchina.net returns too quickly for me to think it's accurate.

<comment><USER8> you are right, this is because the website you mentioned makes use of more than one server based on different region in china.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One question: Is Tor now totally blocked in China? Tor does not work here for me, even with bridges. Any words of wisdom?

Otherwise: A lot of useful comments here already. \- what is blocked today, maybe blocked or not blocked tomorrow. E.g. I could not make my CC payment yesterday. After some hours, the site worked. I doubt it was the banks fault.

\- Different providers seem to block different sites

\- Many VPN are blocked, https often does not work (e.g. with wikipedia)

The blockedinchina.net seems a little bit like snake oil with very little reliability.

</comment><comment><USER10> I typed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/) and it removed the [https://](https://) from my query. http and https are not the same URL, and in particular may have different "blocked" statuses!

Also FYI: it gave an error when I entered this HN submission, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6666214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6666214)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I think the paths are blocked. One more reason to use the above options given. I tested a path out and it worked on [http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china- test.html](http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tried github several times and every time it fails to load at least for a couple of the places but it does load intermittently from all of the servers. I wonder what that means - is it being throttled so that it loads slowly? The same doesn't happen with other websites - for example, my website consistently shows ok from all servers.

</comment><comment><USER13> Lots of incorrect sites, and no way to differentiate http and https.

Lists that weibo is blocked! [http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=weibo.com](http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=weibo.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> I typed www.facebook.com.

Amazingly, it was the response page itself that got blocked(, TCP reset to be precise). Perhaps the Great Fire Wall read 'www.facebook.com' as a substring in url, and subsequently killed it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Right on time since I'm going there for Christmas holidays. I used to use HotspotShield as a VPN when I was in Beijing but that was 5 years ago, anyone knows a good VPN right now?

<comment><USER16> GoldenFrog's Vypr served me well abroad

<comment><USER8> If I were you, I would just set up an ec2 instance on Amazon and then tunnel my traffic through ssh. Why rely on some VPN??

<comment><USER17> Smartphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We'll have to see how this goes! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435993)

</comment><comment><USER19> It says google.com isn't blocked:

[http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=google.com](http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=google.com)

<comment><USER20> Google.cn is blocked though, oddly enough. [http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=google.cn](http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=google.cn)

<comment><USER21> Google.cn isn't blocked but it's only a page that basically redirects to Google.com.hk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> actually what blockedinchina.net does it, it takes the website URl from form and query it from a system whose internet is tunneled to a China based server. So the qurey reply is based on internet on that particular server(internet on a particular computer or ISP in China), hence this might not be reliable.

</comment><comment><USER22> Completely off topic - It drives me crazy when the enter key doesn't submit forms. Especially one liners.

</comment><comment><USER23> It says one of my sites isn't blocked when other tools I have tried says it is.

I actually want it to be blocked in China.

</comment><comment><USER24> I find it hard to believe that sites like whitehouse.gov and barackobama.com aren't blocked.

</comment><comment><USER25> wikipedia.org was unreachable in Shanghai one week ago whether blocked or not. Wikipedia is incredibly useful, I can understand blocking individual articles (as they do in Saudi Arabia, for example) but not the site as a whole.

<comment><USER21> They are only blocking the HTTPS version in Shenzhen (not sure if that's the case for other regions).

<comment><USER9> Yes, it is. (Beijing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No, you should use Alibench or 17ce. They have many servers to test accessibility.

</comment><comment><USER27> How was this created?

</comment><comment><USER28> taiwan.gov.tw just causes an error message. Not sure if that means it's blocked, or the site doesn't like the address

</comment><comment><USER29> this is very unreliable, I tested it with 10 sites, 8 are incorrect.

</comment><comment><USER30> We're not blocked, according to this. Score one for the Chinese.</comment>


Girl finds cry for help in holiday card, allegedly from China foreign prisoner - <AUTHOR> https://globalnews.ca/news/6330130/china-prisoners-christmas-card/ <comment><USER2> Isn't it common for inmates in prisons to work menial jobs such as this? So is the issue that they are being illegally imprisoned? If that's the case wouldn't their own governments know about it and be working towards their release?</comment>


One impact of the dropping of Python 2 from Linux distributions - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/python/Python2DroppingImpact <comment><USER2> You can always fork and maintain the Python2 runtime yourself. Or pay somebody to do it. Or wait and see if a community fork of a maintained Python 2 emerges (or maybe it already has, I haven't really been paying attention to the issue).

But otherwise, I don't have a ton of sympathy here... Python 3 was announced in 2008... people have known that they needed to start moving away from Python 2 for around _12 years_. If you're panicking now because Python 2 is about to go away, it's hard not to ask "What were you waiting for?"

<comment><USER3> A big problem is that Python 2 and Python 3 are simply not the same language. They _look_ a lot alike, but they have substantial differences.

So, it's not just that Python 3 has arrived, but that a separate and widely used language is being killed, in a way that may very well stick.

That's really a rather bizarre turn, and hasn't happened that much in the history of programming languages. I'm having trouble thinking of a similar example. Perhaps Objective-C or VB, but those they were controlled by corporations.

In the open source world, has the stick ever been used before to kill off a language?

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you kill off an open source project? Anyone is free to continue to maintain and extend Python 2 (possibly under another name).

<comment><USER3> Kind of, but I do think it's accurate to say that a large contingent is trying to extinguish Python 2 as a language. They wouldn't even deny it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Weird iOS, a list of the weirdest, most artful or unexpected apps - <AUTHOR> http://weirdios.tumblr.com

<comment><USER2> Quite an interesting list! Some of them are so absurdly specific it just cracked me up. It's insane how obsessed we are with our phones and connecting them to our daily lives at every moment. Hell, there's even apps for when we sleep!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> App suggestions welcome! Would love to hear from app developers, too.

<comment><USER3> I think my crazy weekend hack qualifies (and might even be more weird). A game based on the unique adventure of peeing with no lights on :)

[https://itunes.apple.com/tc/app/peeindark/id711900905?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/tc/app/peeindark/id711900905?mt=8)

<comment><USER4> Jesus christ that's brilliant

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I think it could be an awesome game/concept if I spent a little more time on it. As it is... it's just an oddity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really loved upgrade soul! Haven't tried any others yet. Since you asked for suggestions, my shameless plug: the (gr)album app has some explorations of app-as-medium by musicians and visual artists [http://gralbumcollective.com/](http://gralbumcollective.com/) hit me up if you want a promo code for The Book of Sarth, the rest are free.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is also a great weird app: I made this app, which tells you where to find the seat with more shadow for your trip, when you are traveling by train, car or bus! [https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/sunny- boy/id587098423?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/sunny- boy/id587098423?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER7> Five a Day.

[http://killscreendaily.com/articles/reviews/bullish- stupidit...](http://killscreendaily.com/articles/reviews/bullish-stupidity/)

(Also, for something a little more serious in terms of gameplay but still zany: Grid Runner.)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great, I love that for every big budget weather app there's something like RapMushi just doing their own, weird thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anything by Quikding [http://quikding.com/games.htm](http://quikding.com/games.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> When the site has more content and good traffic: Kenny.sendMessage Apple app store has an affiliate program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Already in place. It's nice for the stats, but unfortunately most of the apps are free, so it's unlikely to be a big earner regardless of traffic.

<comment><USER11> You'll get a kickback on IAPs if the free app is downloaded against your affiliate ID.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks a bunch! This made my day.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yo</comment>


Amazon gets U.S. patent to use delivery drones for surveillance service - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-patent/amazon-gets-u-s-patent-to-use-delivery-drones-for-surveillance-service-idUSKCN1TM2OI <comment><USER2> I find this odd.

It almost seems a bit like patenting a Ponzi scheme.

While one can make the argument that surveillance via delivery has positive uses; this seems like it's getting close to stalker/PI territory, one which is downright illegal, the other tends to have at least some level of regulation/licensing around it. Also, any data collection capability by the drone swarms is going to be streaming all the time most likely, so I'd have significant concerns w.r.t. data storage/destruction.

Also, what level of due diligence is Amazon going to actually do to ensure someone requesting the service is actually a resident authorized to give permission for data collection at that location anyway? I can see this type of thing getting abused to case entire locale's under the right circumstances.

Frankly, big tech sentiment going the way it is, I sure hope these things stick to the streets; I can see the more trespassing conscious getting a bit more aggressive about unexpected drones over their property.

</comment><comment><USER3> What exactly is novel about this patent? I'm curious what this patent would actually protect, as it seems extremely general.

</comment><comment><USER4> The concept is really interesting, IMO.

Disclaimer: I'm own about $500K in my portfolio in Amazon.

As a shareholder - this is great. Not because I want to stifle competition but because if another company was granted the patent, Amazon would be locked out.

As a general citizen, Amazon is not the issue. To me this is not a concept that you can own a patent on. The patent system is broken. I don't know how to fix it other than voting.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think this really means much. Companies love to incentivize their employees for coming up with patent ideas. This could very well be one of those ideas

<comment><USER6> The incentives are quite soft. You get a "good job" email from your boss and maybe your boss's boss. But nothing else. (8 years at Amazon, and 5 granted parents — I'm embarrassed to admit!)

They were going to be useful for my immigration visa renewal though. My L1 renewal got stuck with a request for evidence, and the lawyers thought that patents are excellent evidence of outstanding ability to the eyes of the gov. Eventually I got my green card before my L1 evidence got processed, so I didn't get to see if that would have helped.

<comment><USER5> Didn't realize they incentivized it so little. I know that Cisco gives you a few thousand once the patent is approved.</comment></comment></comment>


Reverse Engineering Facebook API: Private Video Downloader - <AUTHOR> https://pythontips.com/2018/04/23/reverse-engineering-facebook-api-private-video-downloader/ <comment><USER2> Great work! Thanks for sharing.

When I ask users to input some secret strings like passwords, tokens, etc..., I use getpass ([https://docs.python.org/2/library/getpass.html](https://docs.python.org/2/library/getpass.html)). It's available for both Pyhton 2 and 3.

By this way, if a bad person look at the terminal history he won't find clear text credentials passed as scripts arguments :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know! I never really thought of that issue :) I will keep that in mind next time.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The rsync.net Warrant Canary - <AUTHOR> http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

<comment><AUTHOR> A "Warrant Canary" is explained a bit further, with some historical context, in the wikipedia article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary></comment>