Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint? - <AUTHOR>

I wrote my own unofficial API for a banking website[0] (check balance, send money, view transaction history) by essentially writing a crawler that would do whatever the a user would do if they were navigating the website themselves. I built it for fun to see if it was possible and then shelved it along with the rest of the half-completed projects littering my hard drive.
I was wondering how feasible it would be to use it as a basis for a service to facilitate e-commerce. It would require the user to give me, a 3rd party, their credentials which isn't something I'd recommend someone to do. But then again, Mint has done well for themselves doing just that so perhaps my opinion on the matter isn't entirely relevant.
PayPal, BrainTree, Stripe, etc. are not available in my corner of the world and I feel that's too bad cause a good payments solution could be a big deal to businesses and consumers alike if available. I'd be happy if the bank shuts down my service as long as they (or someone else) provide an alternative.
Have you provided your bank credentials to Mint or another similar 3rd party service? If so why? Did you ever stop to think if it was a bad idea? Do you think most people do?
[0] https://github.com/xtrumanx/zapi <comment><USER2> I use Mint, and of course I don't think providing your bank credentials to a 3rd party service is a good idea. That said the company backing Mint currently (Intuit) also does TurboTax, so at least they have some experience with handling sensitive customer data. Also in the event that they did get hacked, there are a ton of other people also using Mint which hopefully will give me time to change my passwords before any real damage is done. Overall it's something I'm not super comfortable about using, but I really enjoy the convenience of having all my accounts in one place, automatically updated, etc, that I'm willing to accept the hopefully small risk of getting hacked.

That said, I still have a hard time convincing others of using the service due to security concerns. I also personally wouldn't really trust a startup/smaller company with my data either since they don't have as much on the line as a larger established company does.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's a bad idea. Bugs me frequently. But...it's so dangblasted _useful_ ; throw some social/emotional motivations in there and a bunch of problems get solved well enough to tolerate the risk. Given Intuit bought Mint, and I've trusted my taxes to Intuit for decades, I'll grudgingly take that risk to solve other problems.

A core issue is the need for a next-level financial data aggregator, somebody to pull together one's info across multiple banks, cards, investments, etc. Much as Bank X wants to provide all those services to me, and much as I may even want them to, other companies get involved and there's a need for a one- screen view of all of it, preferably updated near-live, and working on whatever interface/device I choose to use (notebook, phone, tablet; app, web browser).

Trust is the main thing. I was mad at myself for signing up for Mint (in a fit of frustration attempting to solve some problem) when it was new & independent; I'm still irritated but less so now that Intuit is taking responsibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My understanding is that they use [http://www.yodlee.com](http://www.yodlee.com) for getting information from your accounts. That's pretty much what everybody does.

I turned it off and deleted my data because the bank or brokerage would change something and break the automatic downloads and things would get out of date.

I believe banks and brokerages should have two levels of access: one where you can move money and one where you can look but not touch. I'd be much happier using the second type of password with Mint, with the bank's own apps, etc. I'm not thrilled at all about the idea of losing my phone and having someone get "write" access to my bank account.

<comment><USER5> My bank, Capital One 360, has something like this. You can give a read-only access token to an external service and change/disable it at will.

<comment><USER6> Bank of America has it. They call it Account Management, but AFAIK they charge for using it at least if you're a business account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, I've been a mint user since well before they were bought by Intuit.

I didn't think it was a bad idea, because it is clearly explained that Mint can't make changes to your accounts. It is only used for query. I am under the impression that the banks only allow Mint query capabilities. They've lately released a new service called "Mint Bills"\-- which does make changes but that is separate from their main "Mint" service.

I've recommended Mint to friends and those who've tried it like it.

Things are changing lately, however. Banks are providing more and more "Mint- like" analytic services for their customers. These days, if you have your stuff at one bank there's little need for something like Mint.

I think there will always be room for a service that can work with multiple financial services/banks/accounts at the same time and with a uniform interface. Unfortunately, this is an exceedingly hard business for start-ups to crack (my opinion). To do it right (without asking users to literally surrender control of their accounts), services like Mint need to negotiate with multiple financial institutions-- not fun at all, just to get to the starting-point where one can compete with Mint.

<comment><USER8> > I didn't think it was a bad idea, because it is clearly explained that Mint > can't make changes to your accounts.

Mint can do anything that you could do with the same credentials. Unless you have read-only credentials, they can technically make changes using your details.

<comment><USER9> i wouldn't expect people from this site falling for this marketing shenanigans...

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call it "shenanigans" unless there were ever a case of Mint making any change to a user's account. So far none. They're clearly not trying to trick people into giving up credentials for nefarious purposes.

<comment><USER10> I sort of agree, but to say that they _can 't_ do anything besides query if certainly false if they have the credentials that I, myself, use to log in and perform transactions.

It's kinda like when Dropbox said they couldn't access user's files even though they technically _could_.

<comment><USER7> The fact that I didn't need to provide answers to security questions for Mint to use means (I think) that Mint has worked out some agreement with the banks which allow "query-only" interactions.

Also, many banks have a way to alert users to logins from new machines and many have things like 2-factor authentication and security questions which would make it hard for a criminal to use my credentials if they were somehow swiped from Mint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Mint for several years. But there actually was a point two years ago where I got concerned about them having all my credentials. I deleted my account and changed all my passwords.

Fast-forward a few months later and I'm using them again. Whatever concerns I had about data security did not outweigh having immediate information to all my accounts and reports that would take me too long to generate myself. I don't worry so much about Mint abusing my data as someone hacking their services. I wouldn't have the same trust level with a startup or smaller company though.

<comment><USER12> That's a huge tell: the convenience and value of having all your accounts aggregated far outweighs the security concerns, and frankly even the myriad and difficult and frankly frightening methods of connecting your accounts.

That's why people do it, and there's clearly an opportunity for a better experience...

<comment><USER10> Absolutely there is. I only log in to Mint perhaps once every few weeks, but I would much rather _not_ use it at all -- or, more correctly, I would rather them not have my credentials.

But... I have personal checking and savings accounts at the local credit union, personal checking and savings accounts at one of the large, major banks, business checking and savings accounts at the (same previously mentioned) credit union, as well as several store and major credit cards issued by various financial institutions. (I tracked my vehicle loan within Mint as well, until I decided to just go ahead and pay it off.)

The convenience of being able to see all of them, quickly, within the same "single pane of glass" apparently outweighs the fears that I have or I wouldn't use it. An attacker acquiring the credentials for most of those accounts wouldn't be too much of an issue, honestly. The one account I _would_ worry about would be my (primary) personal checking account but, luckily, the credit union's web site/software is pretty limited with regard to what kind of transactions could be performed... and, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can initiate _any_ transactions via their web site. The one thing I know I can do is the "online bill pay" but I would have to physically go into one of their branches to sign up for that before it was even available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> SOFORT(.com) has built a strong market presence in Germany and is expanding throughout Europe. They basically do the same thing you are talking about: provide an easy "check-out" experience using customers' banking credentials and custom crawlers.

The solution is well-liked by merchants. Banks generally don't like it (for obvious security/privacy reasons), but are cautious in actually preventing it. SOFORT actually used to be the only payment method to buy german train tickets online without a surcharge. In a recent ruling, a court deemed this to be an inacceptable intrusion to privacy, forcing the train operator to offer another free means of payment.

Pending EU legislation (PSD II) will force banks to offer some sort of limited API access that'll allow users to sensibly share access with services like Mint or SOFORT.

<comment><USER14> SOFORTÜBERWEISUNG looked sketchy as hell the first time I tried it. Imagine IMMEDIATEWIRETRANSFER.COM (in capital letters) asking you to enter not only your bank account number, but also your password, and then a PIN from your secret list. The latter is something that the bank tells you to never, under no circumstances, give out, because you can use it to transfer money.

I find it really hard to believe that SOFORT does this without support or even consent of the banks. Scraping bank websites seems like something that could get you ruined or even jailed (I don't know, for dealing with bank customer's data in an improper way or something - at least I'd assume the banks could sue you for violation of their TOS). I only started using Sofortüberweisung at all when some trustworthy looking sites adopted it, and when it appeared to me as if it was a joint venture between SOFORT and the banks.

I guess if you want to build a successful business today, you can't ask nicely and wait for permission to do things (see also Uber et al).

<comment><USER15> The federal antitrust commission intervened after banks filed a lawsuit to stop Sofort from using their websites. The passages of their TOS that forbid using such services are most likely void as they obstruct a free market of payment providers (as seen by the federal antitrust commission).

Personally, I avoid that service but it has the blessing of government agencies from operating that way.

Some banks (e.g. DKB) now started to cooperate with Sofort instead and the German banks will start a similar service themselves this year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a bad idea, but if you want automated access it's the best we've got. Ideally banks would provide a nice API, but without a good enough reason they're just not interested.

<comment><USER17> Hell, I wish _everyone_ would provide a nice API.

<comment><USER16> We can only dream :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm actually curious about this. How do popular web apps store your id/pw for other sites? I know personally that Mint (Yodlee), Zenefits, TriNet Expense, and BoA all log into other sites but I'm curious how/where they store the passwords? If they create a scraper then it means they have to store the password (encrypted) and then decrypt it so the scraper can use it? What happens if a master app (let's use Zenefits as an example) get's hacked? Are my other passwords compromised then?

<comment><USER19> You've kind of answered your own question there - if they're able to log into other sites without using some kind of OAuth-type mechanism that doesn't require them to store your password, then a hack will compromise those passwords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> To get insight into their budgets.

I have tried one or two services similar to mint in an effort to get more control on budgeting. The typical bank provided online banking interface is like something from 10-15 years years ago with a painful interface and no real facilities to either analyse your income/spending on the site or to easily export data.

The promise of these other services is to scrape at your data, gather it into an easily viewable/filterable format and allow you to group it semantically (i.e. this payment every month is for rent, food, socializing) The idea being that it can automatically analyze the accounts give you more control over your budget.

My experience was that for personal accounts the analysis was no better than I was doing myself and they cannot account correctly for cash withdrawls which kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise. Finally, my bank recently updated their online banking site so that it's just as good as that offered by these external services.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is why some people use the "offline" applications like GnuCash[1] or cli- ledger[2]. These programs can be used in such a way that they don't even know the financial institutions you do business with, never mind usernames/passwords.

However, as others have stated, they view the convenience gained to be worthwhile enough to sacrifice the security of their accounts. Plus, I'm sure they asses the probability of Mint (and their employees, contractors, etc) using this information in any way other than "read-only" (at least intentionally) to be very close to zero.

[1] [http://www.gnucash.org/](http://www.gnucash.org/) [2] [http://ledger- cli.org/](http://ledger-cli.org/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Because they use OFX for read-only transactions and an HSM to store the passwords:

[http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/15392/are-there- any...](http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/15392/are-there-any-risks- from-using-mint-com)

<comment><USER23> The bank should provide oauth, with 'see your transactions' as a permission you can revoke later.

Unfortunately, banks are technically backward and don't realise they're dumb vaults yet, much in the same way phone carriers are dumb pipes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If I remember correctly, a number of banks specify that providing credentials to a third party isn't allowed. If your credentials actually got stolen, the banks could deny assistance.

I use Mint though and I find it really helpful for monitoring my finances.

</comment><comment><USER25> I use USAA, and it aggregates my accounts from multiple other sources all by itself. I log in to USAA and see my vanguard retirement investments, my joint checking account that I share with my wife, and my daughter's college savings account from another bank. I also see my mastercard bill and my insurance bills.

I also get an incredibly powerful mobile app, free checking, and ATM fee reimbursement.

The interesting part is that I was able to hook up those external bank accounts without providing username and passwords to USAA.

Note, their banking services are available to anybody, even non-military.

<comment> ryan-c NetBank was able to pull in information from my credit cards long long ago when it existed. I remember using this feature at least 10 years ago. I can't remember if it was transactions or balance only though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I already use TurboTax, so it's not like Mint is really giving Intuit a whole lot more data than I'm already giving them. Aside from debt-consolidation loans and credit card offers, there's isn't really any advertising that I see there, and I'm less worried about them selling off information about my transactions the way Google probably would to targeted advertisers.

Really, I would think that this data would in some sense be the holy grail for targeted marketing, short of the databases that Amazon has on its customers.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't use Mint, but to me, the main question is whether I perceive the company to have more to lose by abusing the power I grant them than they would gain from doing so. A small fly-by-night company might make a quick buck by embezzling people and then disappearing, but a bigger company has much more value tied up in its brand and customer base, so they would have too much to lose. It's not a bulletproof approach (as some high profile Ponzi schemes have shown) but it's managed to keep me out of trouble so far.

<comment><USER28> I think the main issue with this philosophy is Mint is a very juicy target for hackers and it only takes one person on the inside to "turn bad". The company itself can have the best of intentions.

That being said I use them too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Get some kind of insurance. Show me that if you get hacked and I lose money (and for some reason the fraudulent transactions aren't just rolled back when I call my bank), I can take it out of you.

Also, post some info about your experience writing other secure apps. Social proof is about all we have to go on here, so play it up.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm currently doing the same thing for my own personal use. My bank has recently redone their mobile app and it's actually very nice, but I still don't have the insight I'd like without breaking out my calculator.

Where I'm from the banks run on ancient software (we're talking COBOL in most cases) and when an ATM breaks, you see it briefly boot through Windows 98.

Web scrapers could be feasible for an e-commerce service (that's mostly what Yodlee is, the service that powers Mint) the hard part is the regulatory issues surrounding banking web scrapers. It's a very very grey area.

In my opinion with this stuff, if there's demand, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission and third party banking apps could/can provide endless functionality and insight.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wouldn't this is why I chose a non connected financial app on my Android phone. It took me a week of try and miss to find a good one but there's no way I'm going to trust a third party with my banking info. Heck I don't even trust my bank (but admittedly I don't have a choice in the matter).

This is also why I don't seriously use Evernote. Yeah I'd love to have all my documents and bills there, but at one point you have to stop and think about the implications of a private company (in fact 2, since they're probably using AWS) knowing everything about you.

<comment><USER32> I agree completely.

I'm using "Cha-Ching 2 beta" which was abandoned some 6 years ago when Intuit bought out the company working on it but the beta still works (I owned a copy of Cha-Ching 1 from some software bundle I picked up). The downside is (1) manual entry of every transaction, and (2) no analytics at all. The plus side is I wrote my own scripts to extract data from its Sqlite database so I can do analytics in a spreadsheet.

I definitely don't trust any one company. I don't want my bank or my credit card company to have 100% of my financial data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> People's willingness to give their information depends on how much they trust the company. Mint is owned by Intuit which is the same company most all of us trust providing all our financial data to for tax purposes each year.

For customers to trust your company you will have to have a lot of financial backing and support of big names in the industry. And when Mint first launched people were a little less concerned about giving up data. Now a days people are much more aware of the implications so you would be fighting an uphill battle.

</comment><comment><USER34> Mint provides value and it's a trusted brand, so people feel okay about giving them access.

I could potentially trust Mint but anything smaller and not based in the US definitely not.

</comment><comment> ryan-c FWIW, I would really like to be able to do scripted management of my finances. Stuff like automatically paying my credit cards as much as possible while maintaining some minimum balance in my checking account (moving money from savings if necessary), or if my checking account is over some value, use the excess to fill savings account to $X, or put it in an investment account.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've wondered about this for a long time. It also appears to be in direct contravention of the terms of service for my bank (which mint doesn't support anyway so that's moot), which state that my access information is _strictly personal_. I wonder if mint ever got hacked and this led to damage for their customers what the liability situation would be.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there a self-hosted or client-side version of Mint that's also open-source? If not, I think there's an opportunity here.

If we have to resort to scraping for banking data, I'd personally prefer to do the scraping by myself and for myself rather than trusting any third parties with my credentials.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think some banks provide a view only access so you can give it to sites like mint.

Giving full access would be really crazy at least to me.

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER38> Not all trust them. Some do, some don't. But services like Mint exist because there are enough who trust out there to keep the service going. 100% trust is impossible for any service. There are people who don't even trust themselves.

</comment><comment><USER39> There are a couple of banking startups (at least here in the UK) that want to give you API-like access to key stats (transactions, totals) without full access. Very excited for that to pan out.

</comment><comment><USER40> y, I think providing your credentials is a bad idea and haven't done it. This came up in a thread a few weeks ago. I can't believe banks aren't required to provide a read-only access and/or API to your account. That would be a great solution for rolling your own budget tracker and allowing access for services like mint. Does anyone know if any banks have read-only passwords or an api?

<comment><USER41> ING Direct had this feature, and it's been carried over when that changed to Capital One 360.

[https://mint.lc.intuit.com/questions/1057341-known-issue- cap...](https://mint.lc.intuit.com/questions/1057341-known-issue-capital- one-360-login-issue)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Endorsement by TechCrunch and I think specifically by michael arrington told me I could use and adopt Mint.

And I did give them all of my passwords for everything.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm actually looking for a bank feed/API service for banks in Australia. Does anyone know of one?

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure if they have API access, but ANZ Money Manager [1] is basically the AU equivalent to Mint - consolidated reports/expense analysis/budgeting/etc across all your accounts (including non-ANZ accounts and cards).

[1] [http://www.anz.com/ANZ-MoneyManager/](http://www.anz.com/ANZ- MoneyManager/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I didn't connect my high value accounts to mint (like brokerages), just my spending accounts mostly.</comment>


IPCC Concludes Climate Change is Irreversible, Effective Responses Needed - <AUTHOR> http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2014/03/31/324799.htm Third (and last) try to see if the HN crowd gives a shit <comment><USER2> I just know a segment of the media will take this to mean we now don't have to do anything to try and stop _further_ climate change, because change is now inevitable.

<comment><USER3> Be happy you've got a segment like that. Here, media is quite one-sided.

<comment><USER2> That doesn't make sense... I should be _happy_ that the media will switch from 'climate change isn't happening, so we don't have to do anything' to 'climate change is hapenning, but isn't bad, so we don't have to do anything', and now to 'climate change is bad, but inevitable, so we don't have to do anything'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Irreversible? So even if we built a machine to liquify and store the entire atmosphere in a giant gas bottle, we'd still get greenhouse effects?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a climate scientist myself but the consensus seems to be that we're past a lot of tipping points already. Some even go as far as write us off altogether.

In any case the story is huge but the real weird part turned out to be the indifference of people in here. Weird -at least to me- because I thought that HN readers are mainly people that have a wider and deeper understanding of how the world works and thus (I assumed) a greater sensitivity on setting the priorities right. Meaning that probable extinction should rank higher than this or that new framework.

All in all I submitted the story three times (that's the third). This time I got most attention - 7 votes.

I rest my case.

</comment><comment><USER5> What if people stopped having so many kids?

<comment><USER6> They are already doing that, the fertility rate is approaching 1 in many countries, especially developed ones.

Problem isn't kids, it is all the people already born becoming richer and starting to live a western middle class lifestyle.

We just need to make the desirable western middle class lifestyle a low carbon one.

For this it means changing how we produce energy, our agricultural and food system (huge carbon impact) and reducing our overconsuming behaviour. We need to make it desirable to have things that last.

Read "How bad are bananas" for perspective on the relative impacts and most important problems to solve.

We can also incentivise energy and business moving in the right direction by setting a price on carbon (emissions), ideally globally agreed though we can start setting examples nationslly.

Huge reforestation will also go a long way.

We have the solutions we just need to implement them.

If you want to join the Geeklist Corps of Developers in making this low carbon future a reality join #hack4good in September, we'll be hacking against climate change in 30+ cities around the world in the run up to the UN Climate Summit in September.

Let's hack a better world!

Join at [http://hack4good.io](http://hack4good.io) and share your ideas and thoughts below.</comment></comment>


Browser benchmarks: even Wine beats Linux Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuxradar.com/content/browser-benchmarks-2-even-wine-beats-linux-firefox

<comment><USER2> I've been using Firefox 2 and 3 on Linux (OpenSuse and Ubuntu) for over a year now on different machines with different video adapters, and I can confirm it is definitely the slowest browser I've ever used. I disabled all the unnecessary addons, but still it takes a long time to start FF, it eats memory and works slow with js.

I can't switch, because it would be more inconvenient to use Opera than getting used to slowness of FF. So I hope this is going to be fixed in future.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a heads up: Wine is not an emulator, so software running under Wine is infact "native" software. There is no reason why it should be slow, so saying "Wine beats Linux Firefox" should not necessarily imply that Linux Firefox is particularly sluggish.

<comment><USER4> But it shows that windows firefox is still much faster than linux firefox.

I'm very grateful for this article because this has been a pet peeve of mine for years, too. I sometimes run a win32 firefox inside a vmware window side- by-side to the native linux fox - even the vmware fox wins hands down, talk about humiliation.

The situation has improved a lot with Firefox 3 and the latest Minefields but it's still a night and day difference to windows or OSX. While the UI performance has become nearly bearable (at least it doesn't freeze rock solid for multiple seconds anymore) the javascript performance is still ridiculous. Usability tanks with only a few addons loaded and Firebug has become nearly useless to me recently because it has grown a habit to halt on any pages containing non-trivial javascript with the dreaded "A script on this page made me pee, Abort or Freeze?"-dialog.

Opera is proof that it doesn't have to be that way. It's zippy on every platform, including linux. Just compare the two on anything involving alpha- transparency, e.g. <http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/>.

Well, perhaps this article will finally draw some attention to the problem. Linux shouldn't to be treated like a third-class citizen on the single most important app. After all many (if not most) developers, the people who actually build the visible portion of our internet, are doing it on linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ubuntu 8.10 here with Firefox 3.06, got 238 on that benchmark:

Score: 238 Richards: 211 DeltaBlue: 309 Crypto: 246 RayTrace: 203 EarleyBoyer: 309 RegExp: 180

My Firefox is not custom-compiled. However, I am running the profile in a temp filesystem that runs in main memory (nothing gets written to disk till logout or reboot).

On Windows, where setting up a RAM filesystem isn't as practical, I get far worse performance.

I have no idea if this is the difference, but my score is 100 points lower on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this has been reliably chalked up to the fact that windows firefox is built using PGO, linux currently is not. If setting up wine becomes a hassle, you might want to just try grabbing the source and building with PGO on (or grabbing a bin of 3.1)

<comment><USER7> I'm a bit of a compiler neophyte but if profile guided optimizations yield such a drastic improvement, why doesn't Mozilla (or my distribution via their package manager) put out binaries that were compiled with PGO?

<comment><USER8> PGO is pretty new, and it's turned on for the current builds of Firefox 3.1.

I'm guessing it wasn't enabled by Mozilla initially for the usual reasons of complex packaging problems and low manpower for the Linux version.

Distribution packagers generally aren't that knowledgeable about what they package, but that probably isn't what's wrong in the specific case of Firefox, which gets a lot of attention. For Firefox, it's probably the fact that Mozilla has very specific software requirements, and distributors have been burned (<http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=368>) in the past by ignoring them. So... distributions generally don't do much to change what they distribute as Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried this and got similar results on my 64-bit Debian system. Conqueror (xulrunner-based) gets 190, Iceweasel scores 181, and the Windows Firefox under Wine gets 198. (These were the best of five runs for each. The standard deviation was pretty high for the Wine Firefox.)

Could be a compiler issue. It will be interesting to see how it does with the JIT compiler enabled, since that should mostly take the system compiler out of the equation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Firefox appeared at a great time in the browser wars, but it has shown its age. Its UI paradigm (cross-platform XUL) gives it a disadvantage in speed and size for individual platforms, which is unfortunate. It seems like FF 3.1 will show marked improvement, though.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm going to try running firefox under wine tonight. Firefox under linux has been noticeably slower than its windows counterpart for awhile now.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe the answer is in Microsoft optimizing compiler? MS compiler may optimize the same C++ code much better than gcc.

</comment><comment><USER13> why no Konqueror or webkit based browser comparison?

<comment><USER14> Because it would expose the oddness of the language micro-benchmark: current Safari with Tracemonkey scores 5x what Firefox 3 does.</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Can you start a HN crowd-funding venture? - <AUTHOR> Just thinking how much fun it would be to have a Kickstarter-like fund but with real equity. Maybe the HN community could pick its own YC applicant each season that gets into YC if the HN community funds it. We could see how valuable the wisdom of the crowd is when it comes to real investing. :) <comment><USER2> I don't think crowdfunding is good for startups. For startups, having large numbers of investors is bad, and having inexperienced investors is bad. So having a very large number of inexperienced investors is the worst scenario possible.

The right way to get money from large numbers of people is to sell them your product, like Inpulse did, not to sell them your stock.

<comment><USER3> "For startups, having large numbers of investors is bad"

But isn't investment about spreading risk? The more risk you spread, the less founders would have to a) give up in ownership and b) answer to anyone but their own vision.

I think the reason why kiva (and even prosper) works is that risk is spread widely to individuals with common vested interest and enough skin in the game to make it sting but not be completely in-shambles devastating; as opposed to rich people trusting a richer VC to make them foo% return and putting it all in Color.

"The right way to get money from large numbers of people is to sell them your product, like Inpulse did, not to sell them your stock."

What if the product isn't one? What if it's a service like Facebook or (gasp!) Instagram? If you believe in a vision, and you want to contribute to it monetarily -- perhaps even see a _return_ on that money -- why is that bad?

<comment><USER4> It seems to me that giving up less ownership and having more freedom to answer to their own vision and no one else is not some automagical formula for success.

I have had the freedom to do that with my own websites. In spite of audience interest which led to their creation, they have dismal traffic, are not profitable, and have helped only a paltry few people. Having that kind of "fuck you" decision making autonomy was critical to my ability to get well when doctors claim it cannot be done but it has not been a good basis for a business model. I am currently working on getting feedback to change that. It is clear to me I need more connection, not less, to make a viable business model. Yes, I am leery of the type of connection which can be strangulating but I am also leery of being so autonomous as to be isolated.

I remember someone posting here with an anonymous account who expressed similar concerns because he had $400,000 in savings and was thus free to pursue his vision to his heart's content. He worried he would go broke before he got his act together and created a solid business model simply because he didn't _have_ to before that. "Duke Nukem Forever" comes to mind as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious as to how people think Ycombinator would benefit from such a move. To me, it looks like a distraction at best and has a huge potential for the appearance of conflicts of interest.

I will speculate that crowd source funding is more likely to generate headlines for dissatisfied investors from the middle class than for successful ones. The economics of startup investing require a sufficient pool of capital to:

1\. Have access to quality opportunities. 2\. Sufficiently capitalize each opportunity. 3\. Invest in a large number of opportunities so as to increase the odds of hitting a homerun.

Few people have that much money. And crowdsourcing will attract both people with little inhibition toward spending other people's money and investors without the knowledge or resources or inclination to conduct due diligence.

To put it another way, real investors have a track record already. They don't need crowdsourcing.

<comment><AUTHOR> But real investors also need capital, or it helps to have more capital. Crowd funding is a way to lower your risk. The big investor organizes the venture and finds opportunities. They put less money in but still get the same payout. The tiny investor gets less of a return on their money, but gets an opportunity to invest at a stage they are normally shut out of. They're paying for the opportunity essentially.

<comment><USER5> > _"Crowd funding is a way to lower your risk."_

A large number of naive investors as partners increases the risk of an investment.

It's the reason that professional investors tend to put together deals with other investors they have previously worked with. It's the reason they form groups.

As I've said, crowdsourcing will attract dumb money. Smart money will tend to prefer not to become legally entangled with it. People with lower inhibitions will enjoy a feeding frenzy.

Don't misunderstand me. There will be widely trumpeted crowd source success stories.

It just won't change the fact that most people will lose their investments - heck that's even the rule for smart money investing in startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For background, the JOBS Act that was recently signed removes a ton of regulation from the funding of small companies and specifically allows the creation of "funding portals" that allow non-accredited investors (ie. regular people) to invest up to $10k/year in startups.

Seems like a "curated fund" where organizations like YC pick the companies and crowdsource funds would be one of the better applications of the new legal permissions (the potential "worse applications" being boiler rooms pushing hot new photo sharing startups to midwestern pensioners).

However, it's not like YC and other funds are hurting for cash so what's the incentive for PG to need to crowdsource funds in tiny amounts like this when they have plenty of institutional funding? The limits are 2,000 investors and $10k/investor for a max of $20m of crowdsourced funding per company (assuming every investor makes $100k+ and maxes out on one company which would be stupid).

It'd be like Scrooge McDuck stepping outside his money bin to pick up pennies off the street.

I'm _very_ interested to see how established VC firms react to JOBS Act. It's not like startups are finding it difficult to get funding right now, so doesn't this just create a subprime market for companies that the big players have no interest in? Coupled with the lifting of advertising restrictions and the appeal to amateur investors, this seems like the potential makings of the next big bubble...

<comment><USER7> > It'd be like Scrooge McDuck stepping outside his money bin to pick up > pennies off the street.

OT, but that's a pretty bad example, because he does do exactly that. A lot.

<comment><USER6> Hah, sorry, not watched Duck Tales for a while. It's still an irrational act ;)

<comment><USER4> My recollection: He will go so far as to put bubble gum on a stick to retrieve coins through a grate because it nets him $400/year _tax free_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > We could see how valuable the wisdom of the crowd is when it comes to real > investing.

Dot-com bubble, real-estate flipping, tulip mania...

<comment><USER9> I don't think it can be a bubble when up until very recently it was illegal for 'crowds' to invest in private equity deals at all. How can there be over investment from small investors when there is currently zero investment from small investors?

<comment><USER6> The act removes restrictions on advertising of securities. It's specifically designed to get amateur investors to put money into small startup companies.

Hence, there will be large amounts of advertising aimed at encouraging the mass population to put money into risky investments that the mass population (seeing Instagram/Facebook/etc) think will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Historically, this does not end well.

<comment><USER10> > Historically, this does not end well.

Could you expand?

<comment><USER11> "Dot-com bubble, real-estate flipping, tulip mania..."

Add the 1930s crash to that.

<comment><USER9> ...CD ladders, reinvesting dividend portfolios, index investing, life insurance, health insurance...

advertising securities to the general population isn't guaranteed disaster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Crowdfunding a startup feels really "gimmicky" for YC -- just because someone raises a lot of money doesn't mean the product is great -- I believe there was a very bad RPGMaker game recently that received $20k worth of funding with barely anything done and stolen assets.

I'd like to think that VC's and the judges at YC have quite a lot of experience knowing who to pick, what characteristics to focus on, among other things. I also think money is one of the least important factors into joining YC, as what's more important is the mentoring, along with the network you become a part of. Finally, PG and the other mentors have put their name behind YC, but when you start to allow in companies that win popularity contests, you diminish the brand.

I do like the idea, and it's why I've helped people build websites that can do this (although I need to wait for the JOBS act to finish its evaluation by the SEC), and I've also signed up for Wefunder, a site dedicated for stuff like this. I just don't think this is a good fit for an incubator with the prestige of YCombinator.

<comment><AUTHOR> The important part is not the money, its the opportunity for people like me to invest in growing companies. The money is just the way the risk is transferred.

Obviously, I would want the crowd sourced company to be a part of YC. The mentoring and the contacts are what make their companies successful.

But all that work takes energy and costs money, so we (the HN community) has to assume the risk. PG could structure it so that YC gets a stake in the company we fund. YC puts in the energy and the mentoring, and in exchange gets a stake. We put in the money and assume most of the risk.

Its a low-risk way to fund another applicant. I say low risk because there still are risks, namely that having more investors spells trouble and there are legal costs associated with us. But that's not a hurdle, merely part of the equation into how the profit would be distributed.

<comment><USER13> I would assume that YC's resources are more limited at the energy level than the money level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The law that allows this to actually happen has been signed last week I believe. The barriers to investment have been greatly reduced, and with HN's collective wisdom, a PG-backed crowd-investing venture would steer clear of scammers and actually thrive.

Voted up.

<comment><USER15> The SEC is still reviewing the crowd funding portion before anyone can utilize it. Crowdfunding equity in startups has major governance problems that will be very difficult to solve.

I'm genuinely confused how people think it is a good idea to open up a class of investment with no controls. Why not just buy stocks where the companies have transparency and solid corporate governance?

<comment><USER14> And the SEC is right to do so. One of the provisions of this new law is that companies seeking unqualified investor funding (i.e. crowdfunding) are not required to disclose their finances for up to five years after going public.

As to simply buying stocks, IANAFinance Guy, but I believe there is an upper limit on the amount you can invest before having to be certified as an investor. Could anyone contribute a proper explanation of that?

<comment><USER15> As a non-accredited investor you can invest as much cash as you want in public companies. The crowd funding portion of the bill restricts non accredited investors to (I believe) 10% of income or 10,000 per year for risky start up investing. Further it requires investments are made through a platform.

Personally I am worried that 10000 is way too much for an asset class this risky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The JOBS act makes this technically possible, but there are a number of roadblocks that would need to be surmounted before this could happen. First of all, any crowdfunding platform that plans to do this would need to register with the SEC. In addition, the crowdfunding site needs to do pretty thorough diligence on the companies listing equity and any major shareholders of those companies. Both of these provisions are mandated by the law.

Overall, it will happen, and there are people trying to make it so right now, but it's going to take a little while to sort everything out fully.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think this would make HN a very boring place - if the community has a vested interest in whatever batch or whatever startups the bias is going to shift from mostly interesting content to mostly YC content.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, I don't know if this is the way to do it, but there have been times where my mind has been blown by projects submitted to HN where I wanted to communicate my utter amazement at what they had accomplished. I remember the time where a guy was offered a job by _joshu_ in the comments for his submission.

Maybe we could start it out as a crowd-pledging venture where the community can pledge a commitment to contribute to the success of a product without the need for the creators' consent. If the creators accept the commitment, they can hash over the details with the committers subsequently.

One way to go about it would be to create a separate "pledge" economy from karma that still utilizes HN's default interface (for, say, karma>1000). Very flattr-like, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER19> Problem: Crowdsourcing-for-equity quickly will result in >500 investors. This requires a C-corportation (not an S or an LLC), and requires full SEC filings and regulation. This means the company will be going public with no product, customers, or otherwise.

Honestly, I think there's a role for a Kickstarter-like fund for startups (as opposed to Kickstarter's focus on creative projects). Still no equity--the "prizes" generally would be promises of receipt of future products. But without equity, there's none of the legal wrangling associated with going public.

For new companies, such an entity would give: 1) market validation based on the number of financial contributors, 2) market research based upon feedback of pre-sale customers, and 3) relatively strings-free funding. In fact, I thought heavily about announcing my current project on Kickstarter until I read their terms and conditions. I'd definitely be using it to fund a new company, and funding one that would be difficult to call "creative".

<comment><USER20> I wanted to point out that depending on how rulemaking goes in the SEC this is not necessarily true: the SEC is considering allowing all crowdfunding investors (people who have invested under the crowdfunding exemption in the JOBS act) to be bundled together into a single entity, thus easing the transition from crowdfunding to a Regulation D deal and possibly eliminating the need for a company to incorporate as a C corporation.

In addition full SEC filings are not required under the new crowdfunding exemption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I doubt YC would be interested in this, and there's no reason to tie such a venture to one news site, like HN. However, the JOBS act will allow for many crowd-funding ventures to get started, and SecondMarket, WeFunder and maybe Kickstarter will join in.

Any company that does this will need to take various safeguards to prevent fraud or unqualified people from raising money. KickStarter and LendingClub seem to have been doing OK managing related issues, but it will be harder with actual investments.

It will also be interesting if crowd-funding expands to crowd-companies, so people also contribute to a startup like they contribute now to open-source software. You will probably still need a core team of people committed full- time to the venture.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure what benefit this would have to the YC partners, unless they have an unwanted barrier to funding more applicants because of lack of money, which I doubt. While it may be fun (and profitable) to crowdsource-fund at the seed level, why would YC give its services to a company they have no stake in for the sake of making the HN community money?

I'd see more value if the HN community itself were to pool together money and invest in the various classes, though this benefit may be completely negated by what the Start Fund does.

<comment><AUTHOR> The benefit would be the return on investment, just like any other start-up they fund. In this case, their investment would be the time and effort they put into mentoring their companies and the legal fees they put into launching the crowd-funding. The return would be whatever they wanted it to be. The HN community would mostly have the capital at risk, not YC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would rather see crowdscreening of YC applications. Letting people apply for HN screening about 2-4 weeks before YC deadline, discussing application's strong/weak points, etc here on HN. You can do it here adhoc, but more formal approach with voting, might help to narrow down 3000 applications to 1000 or so.

<comment><USER23> We had a similar idea that we executed on during Mega Startup Weekend recently that was a lot of fun. It is similar to crowd screening in a sense, but really is more of a crowd sourced business idea validation engine. Imagine if there was a community / website where you could pitch your idea, have people vote on it and refine it. You could release your idea to as small or large a group or circle that you felt comfortable with. The goal would be to build a "tribe" around your idea that helps you refine it and validate it. We wanted to bake in the whole lean startup methodology into it. For example we had a step in the process called "assumption junction" where the tribe would list all the assumptions in the business idea and rank them by risk/importance. The community would then be tapped for building/refining surveys as well as for distributing the surveys or taking them themselves. Imagine if ideas where refined and validated by hundreds if not thousands of people before a single line of code was written. We called the idea "The Darwin Project", where only the strongest ideas survive.

This really jibed with coders we surveyed as they would love to be approached with ideas that are validated before they wrote any code. This could be a tool that finally empowers the non-technical business guys to vet their idea, get a critical mass behind it, and finally build enough value in the idea itself to build a team around. If anybody is interested in pursuing this I can put you in touch with the team that is running with this concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm hoping that with the passage of the crowdfunding act that will take effect in early 2013, we can all do what Yuri Milner and SV Angel are doing, and invest in all of the YC startups (or selectively invest in particular ones).

<comment><USER25> That law doesn't mean you can invest in any privately held company. True, there is a lower bar to entry, but the startups need a reason to want you to invest in them.

<comment><USER26> This is sentence alone means that there is going to be another full blown tech bubble. Lower bar for entry to invests in startups. just like lower bar to get a home loan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like the idea but don't see why YC will want to start it. Perhaps that could be done by someone else.

Add: there are already equity based crowdfunding sites - for example Symbid.com

</comment><comment><USER28> Today is a bad day to ask PG. YC interviews just started.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have searched for a PG answer but haven't found it. So PG hasn't answered this question yet</comment>


Show HN: Lazyday - Find something to watch - <AUTHOR> https://lazyday.tv <comment><AUTHOR> This project makes extensive use of Algolia. Lazyday is our minimalist approach for finding a movie or show to watch with 0 ads.

</comment><comment><USER2> Bookmarked for lazy day

<comment><AUTHOR> sweet! thanks for checking it out.</comment></comment>


They created the Uber of flower delivery. Then disaster struck - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/they-created-the-uber-of-flower-delivery-then-disaster-struck-could-they-find-redemption/2018/04/04/1f5c8dda-28be-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d47b93b9aa5d <comment><USER2> "Kori and Sheely set out to disrupt the middleman-laden industry by buying their own stems from farms in South and Central America, designing their own bouquets, and hiring delivery couriers as salaried employees. "

That sounds fairly un-Uber-like. The whole point of Uber is economic rent- seeking--getting others to do the work and skimming a fee for it. This sounds like actual work.</comment>


Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/business/stockton-basic-income.html <comment><USER2> I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.

<comment><USER3> That's always been what I wondered as well. UBI solves everything, except for the part where an actor who knows explicitly that all of his tenants will be getting a flat amount per month, then why not raise prices to capture some of that as well? Why wouldn't everything just increase in price slightly, everyone can afford a little bit more now.

<comment><USER4> These are really excellent points I hadn't considered.

On the other hand, let's run the experiment the other way. We currently have significant numbers of people working with no hope of financial stability in their future. Will taxing them to fill the coffers of the rich improve their situation? Given the current situation of increasing wealth inequality seemingly exacerbating existing problems, I can't imagine that this is a promising approach.

Since UBI is essentially the most generalized form of a benefits program, I really have to hope that it works. If it doesn't, that seems damning to other benefits programs which are inefficiently (and IMO ineffectively, due to perverse incentives) means-tested. If it doesn't, and if anti-UBI is virtually axiomatically a bad idea, then I'm not sure what's left.

<comment><USER5> Public Works, using the post office as a model.

We really do need to be building a lot of stuff, and or fixing stuff we have already done. That work is a direct stimulus, can pay pretty well, and benefits everyone public and private alike. Additionally, the returns from it can pay down all of the expensive bombs and non returned items that we currently spend or have spent on. An example is the interstate highway project. Our current president once the toll that, which is really stupid, but similar kinds of projects will deliver similar kinds of returns. The interstate highway project is still paying us great dividends years and years after it was created. Last figure I knew was 6/8 maybe 10 times the dollar spent.

The post office still getting a lot of bad press right now, is actually exemplary and its performance in return to the public. It is entirely self- funded, doesn't take any tax dollars at all, pays good wages, has a lot of value to the public, and the benefits are worth working there.

Other self-funded public works could work the very same way. Those that use it pay for it, and we all will benefit from the economic development. An example might beat networks, another example might be first line Healthcare, there are many to choose from.

One that I've been thinking about lately is energy. Well distributed public investments in energy of all forms, managed on a higher level through something like a post office, might really pay us off, and deliver a lot of options making energy competitive and well distributed.

The key thing to understanding all of this is government has agency, it's for us, by us, and we need to employ it to our mutual good. Yes, this will compete with Private Industry, but they should be competed with, otherwise they'll accumulate wealth stuff in the bank, and complain about the lack of opportunities to invest and make returns. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but it's a stalemate. One we don't need.

I knocked this out really quick on Google Voice. I apologize in advance if this is a bit of a mess. Hopefully the gist comes through.

<comment><USER2> Are you saying that every $1 spent on UBI is expected to return $X > 1 and that $X > $Y (where $Y is the return on current social service programs)? If so, I would say [citation needed], but, if proven, that would be a great argument for UBI.

<comment><USER5> I don't think UBI delivers much of a return at all, when compared to public works and more direct investment in the people.

I do not mean the current social service programs. I mean new, improved ones, along with Public Works people building things of real value that will deliver real returns for very long periods of time.

A very large UBI could. But there's no way that's ever going to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly asking - would it be a good thing or a bad thing if the major high cost of living areas like cities in the CA such San Francisco, Orange County, etc., were actually significantly funding UBI to people with a permanent address in a lower cost of living Central California city long term?

<comment><USER7> Interesting. It would be similar to this concept in American sports, where a team like the New York Yankees (the San Francisco housing market of baseball) can keep their economic advantage but has to pay a tax on it, the proceeds going to less-profligate teams so they can remain somewhat competitive:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax_(sports)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax_\(sports\))

I guess the real difficulty would be measuring how high San Francisco's housing-supply border wall is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think removing red tape and allowing people to pay for things they need right now is an excellent way to speed people's recovery from poverty, but it needs nudges, and those nudges need to be informed by data and empirical evidence. We need to know what people are spending the money on so we know how to target the biggest problems as well as the corner cases.

If you know what the actual problems are and where the money _needs_ to be spent, you don't need to give everyone $10,000. You may only need to give this person $2,000 for this thing, and this person $7,000 for that thing. Giving them all a lump sum is just inefficient, and does not address the myriad edge cases. Collecting data on spending could help provide efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER9> I feel like UBI is just a band-aid fix for all the real issues (in the US at least) that already have proven solutions in other parts of the world. Rather than giving people money, I'd prefer a higher tax rate for a single payer healthcare system. Reign in healthcare, pharma, and insurance companies. Put a cap on tuition increases, and fund education again. Slash the military budget. Cut down the red tape permitting insane zoning laws, and allow higher density housing where it is needed. Placing the onus of how to spend all this money on individuals might seem like a good idea, but if we instead invested that money in real, lasting, scalable solutions we'll be a lot better in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another interesting theory was to create a resource based economy. One iteration of this idea was The Venus Project created by Jacque Fresco [0] whereby society would remove the need for a monetary system, as everything can be engineered in abundance.

Have any countries attempted such a big fundamental change?

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

</comment><comment><USER11> > "The trolls I've been dealing with on social media and in real life have > very racialized views of how this is going to work," Mr. Tubbs said. "As the > first black mayor of this city, it would be very dangerous if the only > people to get this were black."

> He wants to select participants who are most likely to spend their money > wisely, generating stories of working poor people lifted by extra cash.

Well, that's pretty worthless.

<comment><USER12> It wouldn't really be UBI, but still worthwhile data for programs with work requirements.

I'm rather fond of the idea of work based programs. For example, for every $1 of W2 income you earn you receive $1 bonus, up to a cap of say $7,500.

This boosts wages on the low end and strongly encourages employment. Funding this through income taxes and you won't have to kill off risky / low profit small business with local living wage requirements.

<comment><USER13> How would you structure that bonus if you get a promotion that takes you to 7,501? You would get an impressive pay cut. If you structure it like taxes where only the first 7.5k get doubled then a bunch of people that don't need it will also get free money making the program cost more.

<comment><USER14> You're right! That would be a _major_ concern and an incredibly serious flaw in such a program.

Maybe the description could be parsed slightly differently? Some might read parent's description to be proposing a bonus on W2 income the a limit on _the bonus only_ of $7,500. Thus an income greater than that receives the full bonus. The structural problem you have correctly identified thus does not arise!

<comment><USER15> So everyone is getting an extra $7,500, assuming they make at least that much? How isn't that just a tax credit on W2 taxes?

It would make sense to assume there is some cut off, and given how government cut offs work in the past, it would be reasonable to assume the cut off will be implemented in a fashion that creates a graph where sometimes raises will result in less pay, at least when combined with existing government aid programs.

<comment><USER14> > So everyone is getting an extra $7,500, assuming they make at least that > much? How isn't that just a tax credit on W2 taxes?

Depends how it's implemented, probably. People react differently to larger paychecks and tax refunds, for example. And certainly people react differently if you call it a bonus, even if it is just a negative income tax that would please Friedman.

> It would make sense to assume there is some cut off, and given how > government cut offs work in the past, it would be reasonable to assume the > cut off will be implemented in a fashion that creates a graph where > sometimes raises will result in less pay, at least when combined with > existing government aid programs.

That's a completely, fully, absolutely 100% reasonable comment on how poorly implemented current government aid programs are far too often implemented.

It might be a slightly less reasonable comment on the details as written of the proposition above.

<comment><USER15> >It might be a slightly less reasonable comment on the details as written of the proposition above.

The more I think about it, the harder I think it is to create a program which doesn't result in this once combined with other programs. Any cutback, no matter how small, will be combined with all other cutbacks of all other programs, existing and future. As long as these benefits are independent, there is a that the sum of all the cutbacks will outweigh the raise that caused the cutbacks. Even if the max cutback was 10%, meaning it would take a 75k raise to remove all benefits, when combined with 9 other equally generous benefit programs and income tax you still end up with a loss.

When adjusting for the phase out being for optics limiting how the phase out works (as all phase outs for optics would tend to look similar to meet similar expectations), the risk of a raise resulting in lost total income isn't easily dismissed.

<comment><USER14> You're right! That's a very real risk that should not be readily dismissed.

This is why a program that at no point has any way, shape, form, or manner of phase-out is desirable. It fully and completely avoids any kind of problem stemming from colliding cutbacks. This is such a good idea and so wise, that it was baked in to the approach proposed above!

<comment><USER15> In a sibling comment chain the one who purposed the idea mentioned that a phase out might be needed for optics.

But if it doesn't ever phase out, it is really just a tax cut, and to be exact a tax cut. I'll take having to pay 7.5k less taxes (or getting an untaxed check for 7.5k from the same people I have to write my tax check to).

<comment><USER14> You're absolutely right. It really is just a tax cut.

However, what you call something and how you structure impacts how people react to it. Call it wages and spread it over time and people react one way. Call it a bonus and hand it out once a year and people behave differently. So while it may be more correct to call it a negative income tax, this may work against the intended economic effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a data point, Finland is ending their basic income program: [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700](http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-43866700)

I wish they'd release as much data as possible regarding the experiment so other cities and countries could have actual data to look at instead of hypotheses.

</comment><comment><USER17> NPR did a good piece about the non-profit mentioned in the article: [https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how- to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-money)

</comment><comment><USER18> I thought it is talking "California City" but Stockton. [https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32](https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32)

</comment><comment><USER19> My inclination is that money without work is a bad idea, but I'm happy to admit I might be wrong.

I hope the results are described fairly and often, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

</comment><comment><USER20> As related material that folks here might appreciate: Andrew Yang's (founder of Venture for America) recent book "The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future" lays out a compelling argument for UBI, given the rise of automation and AI, as well as current economic and cultural shifts.

Yang is also running for president 2020 on a UBI platform, dubbed the freedom dividend.

<comment><USER21> He also did a Reddit AMA where he only answered the softball questions about UBI instead of how he would actually make it work. IMO, the guy is only running so he can sell more of his books.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/87aa2z/iama_andrew_ya...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/87aa2z/iama_andrew_yang_candidate_for_president_of_the/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is first-order thinking. The problem with the poor is not that they have no money, it's that they have no _ability_ to make money. So giving out money isn't going to fix things, you need to fix the lack of ability. In fact, giving out money is harmful, because it enslaves both the recipients and the givers. If everyone gets $100, prices will simply rise (as mentioned in other threads). But now you can't stop giving them the money, because they need it worse than before.

The people doing this justify it that they will get "valid scientific data," but they won't get any valid scientific data on how UBI performs, because they aren't doing UBI. There's a big difference between giving 100 poor people money and giving all the poor people (or even everyone) money.

A bit unrelated, but the article mentions that these ideas have been around a long time, citing Thomas More's "Utopia." However, they fail to follow up with the modern connation of the word, that utopia is unachievable. We've tried these ideas again and again, in American utopian societies of the 1800s, in communes, in Communism, and it doesn't work. Maybe it's time we stopped trying to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results the next time.

<comment><USER8> "The problem with the poor" is definitely multifaceted. You need to fix transportation, health care, availability of jobs, cost of housing, availability of essentials such as groceries/laundry, cost of utilities, availability and quality of public services such as schools and job training programs, and stem systemic incarceration of minorities, in addition to providing special services such as child care/day care, family planning, counseling, and so on.

Imagining that $10k is going to solve these things is insane. Even if you took all the money you gave to each of the people in an area and added it all up, it still couldn't even pay for a fraction of the services mentioned above.

This isn't to say UBI wouldn't be helpful. But let's face it, UBI is just some academic's moon-shot that they _hope_ will magically improve everything, without thinking through all the complex logistical issues that require more than a bigger paycheck to solve. Sure, give people money, but don't imagine for a second that it will end poverty. It may make poverty more tolerable, possibly extending it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure this is "universal" basic income if it's only for 100 people...

<comment><USER24> I'm more concerned that the elected mayor, who has an obvious vested interest in the project being a success, wants to target "those most likely to make good decisions" \- how is that universal?

The whole pretext of these plans is that there is no qualifying conditions or criteria for participation. If you only give money to a group filtered for a target outcome it's (a) just another social assistance program and (b) not an experiment</comment></comment>


Google App Engine Roadmap posted - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/roadmap.html

<comment><USER2> This was a little disappointing. I don't see any mention of background jobs, which they've been promising for a while. And, second, the date to launch billing looks like it might not happen before the end of the year. But, overall, my experience so far has been positive with four apps running there, so I'm going to continue using it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The have previously promoised to start giving more resources (and charginr) at the end of this year. Now it's a part of roadmap though Q1 2009.

Until then the biggest app they run is under 500 Mb.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Support for a new runtime language"... would that be perl perchance? <http://groups.google.com/group/perl-appengine>

<comment><USER5> I must say I find it rather unhelpful, almost Appelesque, not to disclose which language they are working on. That has nothing to do with release schedules.

<comment><USER6> Latest rumour was Java: [http://www.controlenter.in/2008/10/java-support-to- appengine...](http://www.controlenter.in/2008/10/java-support-to-appengine-to- counter-microsofts-cloud-initiatives-microsoft-strata/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something important isn't on the list: some way to use sub-domains.

And also Installing custom apps/packages. That would be better if its going to be with the billing intro. And also some way/sandbox to SSH('sandbox' becoz its cloud).

</comment><comment><USER6> The dates on the page threw me totally... The individual items are mm/dd/yy and the headlines were mm/yy...</comment>


Ask HN: I want to do exceptional work, but I'm in a rut - <AUTHOR>

I started programming when I was young and learned a lot in a very short time (qbasic -> client side web -> perl -> php) within a year. As I've continued learning my pace has slowed. I'm sure it's a function of age as well, but going from intermediate to advanced is a much longer journey than the initial part of the learning.
After losing my last job, my internal motivation train jumped off the tracks and now that I've secured employment elsewhere I can't seem to get back on the rails. There's a mental fog that is making it tough to connect my day to day actions to the long term plan. Maybe I'm just out of practice.
But whatever the case may be, I'm sure others have gotten into a similar spot before. I'd love to hear any stories and accompnyning advice. <comment><USER2> I know the feeling well. I was jobless for a while simply due to being in a rut. When my at-the-time job dissolved, I began applying for places and interviewing. I found one company that I really wanted to work for and interviewed there. Their business was based on open source software that I had a pretty big part in creating. I understood how both their front end and backend systems worked. It would be fun!

My phone interview went exceptionally well. I was sick before the in person interview and then flew out for the meeting. I had a terrible flight and didn't sleep well the night before (3 hour time zone difference.)

I showed up for the interview and did pretty well until it came time for some whiteboard coding. I knocked out the first problem pretty easily. The second one wasn't too bad. I completely choked on the third one. It was something that I had done at various other interviews -- I should know this! Unfortunately, I began panicing about the fact that it was taking me too long to get my brain moving and I did not even begin to complete the problem.

A week or so later I got the call that I didn't get the gig. A gig that was perfect for me -- I already knew a chunk of the code base! My self esteem bottomed out and I pretty much lost my sense of self worth. I don't know why I let it hit me as badly as I did.

After that, I spent two years not really looking for a job. I just floated around -- kind of depressed and in a fog. I did a few small consulting gigs when I could. I mostly just... existed.

At some point, I realized that I wasn't going to get anywhere if I just let my life go like that. Something finally shifted and I got my motivation back.

I picked up my consulting work to get myself to a sustainable point and then hopped from there to a pretty nice gig doing something that I feel is beneficial to society (developing software to bringe accessible educational materials to blind, deaf, hard of hearing, and visually impaired individuals.)

That's done a lot for my sense of self. I still wonder where I would be had I not let that failed interview get to me the way it did. I can't even explain why it hit me like that.

Now I'm mostly hopeful and wondering what path my life will take next. There's still that little nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me that I really screwed myself for those two years, but, that's pretty easy to drown out.

Now if I can just get the ADD under control.

I realize that I kind of got off topic. As I began responding to you I started to realize that this was feeling rather cathartic, so I decided to ramble on a bit.

As for my advice -- These ruts and fogs are natural and happen from time to time. What's your passion? What would make you feel good about yourself if you were able to do it as a job? It's okay if you don't know right now. In the meantime, think of some problem areas that you would like solved. Use some free time to solve those. The 'creative juices' will begin to flow again.

One more addition - I typically do web apps or various internal tools for companies. For a change of pace, I started working on a game in my spare time. I find that it causes me to think in different ways and has awoken my rabid desire for more knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would highly advise you to take a really long break (if its financially viable). Just decide that you will not do something until you really really can't help not doing it.

I think this whole process goes very similar to something else :).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm in a similar rut; I just don't feel like doing anything most of the time. When I do...it seems like there are so many barriers. Upon reflection, I know these setbacks are day-to-day things that everyone deals with, but they seem much more substantial to me at the time.

What seems to be working for me: Ramit Sethi's material. He always seemed scammy to me in the past, but when patio11 started mentioning him I had to take a look. He's quite motivational -- I haven't really made a lot of progress out of "meh" and into the zone yet, but I at least feel like I can.

(unaffiliated; throwaway account so people don't know about the rut :))

</comment><comment><USER5> From a Lincoln biography:

 _"Speed (Lincoln's friend) recorded the dramatic exchange that began when he came to Lincoln and told him he would die unless he rallied. Lincoln replied that he could kill himself, that he was not afraid to die. Yet, he said, he had an 'irrepressible desire' to accomplish something while he lived. He wanted to connect his name with the great events of his generation, and 'so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man.'This was no mere wish, Lincoln said, but what he 'desired to live for.'"_

</comment><comment><USER6> Sometimes we just need to power through our struggles. Its OK to feel like you do. And you shouldnt feel bad about it. Maybe try something new? Or even try something old? I get my coding going by reading the code Ive written in the past and fixing it. Or visit github and read code and make annotations.

You are right that going from intermediate to advanced is a much longer journey. Its a tough ride if you are not in it for the long haul. Maybe you are judging yourself too hard? Realize that anything worth doing takes time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't overthink it. Scratch your own itch and create something. Since you have some perl background, create a useful utility and get it up on github. Do it again tomorrow, and keep going.

No utility is too small. You want to get into the ecosystem of reusable code and just getting out there. At some point (soon), your learning will go exponential.

</comment><comment><USER8> Learn another language and program for another platform. Why not order a Raspberry Pi or a similar device and get GAMBAS running on it? You could be developing cool Linux software in no time.

<http://www.linuxbasic.net/news/gambas-runs-on-raspberry-pi/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Take a look at how Feynman did it: <http://www.physics.ohio- state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html>

<comment><USER10> Exactly! If it's not worth playing, it's not worth doing on your free time. When you learned Perl and Php, wasn't that kind of play also? Maybe it's the Php rotting your brain.

Now, learn some new programming language (see some options at <http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Language_Comparison_Table>) and start playing again!

Also, write down ideas for projects that you would like to do. It might wind up longer than you excepted very fast... and as bonus, you'll get to learn new algorithms, programming paradigms and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah. PHP brain rot. But alas, I do know many other languages. I'm a professional programmer. I was just using that as an example I felt meaningful at introducing myself to other programmers. Your suggestion is a good one though-I do need to start playing more with my coding time.</comment></comment></comment>


Petraeus case shows FBI's authority to read email - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PETRAEUS_RESIGNS_EMAIL_PRIVACY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-11-12-17-33-37 <comment><USER3> The most disturbing bit from the article:

"Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor - not a judge - <USER2> obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older."

<comment><USER4> It's only disturbing because people think of e-mail as equivalent to the letters in their desk rather than what it is: putting private information into the hands of private third parties in cleartext. The ECPA actually gives you an extra layer of protection--requiring a warrant for messages less than six months old. Under the principles of the 4th amendment, you wouldn't even have this much protection. In general, you have no privacy interest in information you entrust to third parties. If your ISP turns over your e-mail just because the FBI asked nicely, without the ECPA that'd just be between you and your ISP.

I don't know why this surprises anyone. Prosecutors have broad powers to subpoena information in the hands of third parties. 4th amendment doesn't even apply.

<comment><USER5> That's only if you accept the current "third party doctrine" interpretation of the limits of the fourth amendment. There is nothing in the amendment itself to limit its protections in the way that they have been, and, in fact, these limits have not been enforced uniformly.

For instance, even though you make (or made) telephone calls in the clear over a third party network, the government cannot tap your phone calls without a warrant (and, in fact, protections were even expanded to tapping of public pay phones to target specific people in Katz v. United States).

The third party doctrine must be dropped by the courts or protections for things like email need to be made explicit by congress. However, the current interpretations favored by courts _are not_ inherent to the fourth amendment.

Timothy B Lee does a great job blogging about this stuff on Ars Technica and elsewhere. Here's a good starting point if anyone wants one: <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080530/2014171272.shtml>

<comment><USER4> In the legal sense, the third party doctrine is as inherent to the 4th amendment as anything can be--it's the Supreme Court's binding interpretation of the contours of the phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy."

In the practical sense, I strain to see how someone can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in say their e-mail when Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc, data-mine those communications in order to show targeted advertisements...

<comment><USER6> Regarding your practical sense argument:

I don't see how its strange at all to have an expectation of privacy _even if_ they data mine it -- seems like just a term in a contract to me. For example, if you hire me to protect your valuable manuscripts in my more-secure safe, but grant me in this agreement the exclusive privilege to read these documents with an NDA attached -- would it then _obviously_ follow that I deserve no privacy for those documents AT ALL because I handed them to a third party? Of course not. Many people know and find acceptable that Amazon uses data about your purchases to build suggestions for others -- those same people would consider it _completely_ different to go around telling others what you purchased (government or otherwise). I'm sure even you agree that the expectation that GMail not publish all your emails in a blog post is reasonable -- so the belief in needing a warrant to see them isn't _that_ much of a stretch.

My point is not that this is the current legal interpretation -- I understand its not. I'm simply pointing out that it is perfectly logically consistent from the user's viewpoint to expect this. Furthermore, it seems like if I were to go out of my way in our contract to specify the privacy of your email the government would still think its fine to read it.

<comment><USER4> Right, but that's a contractual expectation between you and say Google. It's not a general expectation that something will remain private. E.g. I expect my shrink not to tell people stuff, but I don't have a 4th amendment claim of he tells the police that I said I'd kill someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Petraeus signed all kinds of paperwork that said it was okay for the government to go digging around in his personal life, including email. This is really a non-story.

<comment><USER8> _As they looked further, the FBI agents came across a private Gmail account that used an alias name. On further investigation, the account turned out to be Petraeus's._

The FBI broke into the gmail account (or at least subpoenaed identifying information from google) before they knew whose it was. So no, it's not a non- story.

<comment><USER9> Does Google actually require subpoenas?

<comment><USER10> Yes, and Google fights them, and often wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When you join the CIA you sign a piece of paper that says "You have the right to access all of my personal accounts of any kind."

Having gone through the process of accepting a job offer from the CIA (which I later declined due to the 2 year background check and a more fun job in the Bay Area) I can say this is an oversimplification. If you work for the CIA you explicitly agree to allow them to comb through any of your personal accounts at any time.

</comment><comment><USER12> So the head of the CIA can't think of a better way to securely communicate with his lover than draft emails. He's the head of the nation's spy agency and he's a terrible spy. Good riddance.

<comment><USER13> Come now, the President of the United States is head of the nation's military. He has no training as a soldier. Do you see where I'm going with this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is everyone missing the fact the investigator who started this was corrupt?

As an FBI agent he had full email access, as easy as could be.

Gmail has a backdoor and it's what countries like China use for an attack point.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thing is...do I really think that in using Google they won't read my mail?

<comment><USER10> You should, as Google has perhaps the best privacy record in the Internet industry among remotely similar organizations.

<comment><USER16> > You should, as Google has perhaps the best privacy record in the Internet > industry among remotely similar organizations.

This means very little when Google still has to comply with subpoenas. They don't really have much of a choice, pressed up against the law.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: An app that allows you to save your spare change to help you travel - <AUTHOR> Hello,
My name is Jason Gray and I am founder of Chrip. Chris is a mobile first app that allows you to save your spare change from everyday purchases to help you finance your next trip. I recently built and launched the prototype on my landing page. If you could be so kind to check it out and sign up for our emailing list as we will need beta testers very soon. I call it the Acorns of trip savings.
Landing Page: www.chrip.co Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
I am looking to build a team. If, after you looking at the video you are interested in joining the team -- please send me an email. My team is awesome and very fun to be around.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I've seen the whole video, checked the landing page and I still don't know how this would let me save up money for a trip.</comment>


Draw It Yourself: What Would a Fair Pennsylvania Congressional Map Look Like? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@BobbyBigWheel/draw-it-yourself-what-would-a-fair-pennsylvania-congressional-map-look-like-ebf67ea5a340 <comment><USER2> It seems that this "voting rights act" is a form of mandated gerrymandering, which ought to be done away with. I can't say exactly what the boundaries ought to be, but taking the colour of people's skin into account when drawing them is clearly wrong.

It shouldn't be hard to just write a damn algorithm to divide the state into maximally compact, equal-population regions.

If this results in very different sorts of people being binned into the same district, then... well, good, I guess?

<comment><USER3> > It shouldn't be hard to just write a damn algorithm to divide the state into > maximally compact, equal-population regions.

It's trivial. Getting people to agree that "maximally compact" is the right thing to optimize about districts is the hard part; of he many things which have been suggested should be maximized in districting are compactness, competitiveness, preservation of communities of common interest, and expected partisan proportionality of the resulting system. Each of these conflicts with then others, and has predictable partisan advantages and disadvantages compared to each of the others and the status quo; the first prevents any consensus algorithm among participants seeking an ideal without consideration of partisan advantage, the second guarantees that at least one of the major parties will oppose any algorithm because accepting it will lock in a permanent disadvantage. You might overcome the second if you overcome the first, but good luck with that.</comment></comment>


Study finds 'dark matter' DNA is vital for rice reproduction - <AUTHOR> https://globalplantcouncil.org/study-finds-dark-matter-dna-is-vital-for-rice-reproduction/ <comment><USER2> I've always wondered if Junk DNA is 'structural', i.e. its there just to hold the coding regions in the right spot for when the DNA is unwound and the proteins are expressed.

So if the junk DNA was deleted then things would go horribly wrong because the wrong bits of code would be exposed.</comment>


The Depth of eBay's Problems, Part 2: Angry Sellers - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/the-depth-of-ebays-problems-2-angry-sellers/

<comment><AUTHOR> Part 1 is also interesting: [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/the- depth-of-ebays-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/the-depth-of- ebays-problems-1-disappointed-buyers/)</comment>


Automating QA Pipelines for Heroku Review Apps - <AUTHOR> https://assertible.com/blog/automating-qa-pipelines-for-heroku-review-apps <comment><AUTHOR> I love how trivial it is to get unique disposable environments for each branch automatically w/ Heroku. This post enhances review apps with automated post- deploy QA testing. In short,

\- push commits to GitHub PR

\- CI builds the code

\- Heroku deploys code to a temporary environment

\- Assertible runs automated tests against unique Review App environment URL

\- Assertible flags GitHub status check as pass or fail, dependending on the results of the tests.

Interested to hear your thoughts, or your testing process.</comment>


How Much House You Can Buy, In 385 U.S. Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/24/323974597/how-much-house-you-can-buy-in-385-u-s-cities

<comment><USER2> tl;dr Let's consider price/income in addition to comparing historical prices or to contemporary cities. Houses generally cost 1-2 years salary. Nice places to live are expensive if they are hard to build on. There's an interactive graph with selectable cities, 1990-2014.</comment>


Principles of Wealth by Naval - <AUTHOR> https://principlesofwealth.net <comment><AUTHOR> "Reading is faster than listening, doing is faster than watching." \- @naval

"Hence this website." \- @flowen_nl

While listening to Naval Ravikant's tweets and podcasts about how to get rich (which really is about gathering wealth) I wrote my own summaries.

While I usually create websites for other content-creators, now I had my own content and used the opportunity to showcase my design/animation/frontend skills and share Naval's wisdom.

For other devs/designers I created a twitter log thread right here: [https://twitter.com/flowen_nl/status/1166747515246563329](https://twitter.com/flowen_nl/status/1166747515246563329)

Would love to hear your feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> Reading his tweetstorm reminded me of Baz Luhrmann's "Wear sunscreen" speech and this remix: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZmi7InKU0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZmi7InKU0I)

I think almost all points he makes are true in general, most of them are extremely generic though and sound like phrases you might as well find on a wall calender.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed it is a bit general, but principles usually are believe.

See chapter 25 of the podcast @ [https://nav.al/how-to-get- rich](https://nav.al/how-to-get-rich) Naval: The tweetstorm is very abstract. It's deliberately meant to be broadly applicable to all kinds of different domains and disciplines and time periods and places. But sometimes it's hard to work without a concrete example. So let's go concrete for a minute.</comment></comment>


Motion sickness in autonomous cars: Don't read and ride - <AUTHOR> http://www.umtri.umich.edu/what-were-doing/news/motion-sickness-autonomous-cars-dont-read-and-ride <comment><USER2> i think this is prevalent in non-autonomous cars as well. The motion/bumps move causes your eyes to constantly readjust and in some causes a nausea type feeling</comment>