Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/open-letter-new-york-state-budget-director-robert-mujica-regarding-amazon <comment><USER2> I suspect I'll never get why the notion of giving a tax handout to a company that's one of the most valuable in the world shouldn't be a non-starter.

> Incredibly, I have heard city and state elected officials who were opponents > of the project claim that Amazon was getting $3 billion in government > subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation. > This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental ignorance of basic math by a > group of elected officials. The city and state 'gave' Amazon nothing. Amazon > was to build their headquarters with union jobs and pay the city and state > $27 billion in revenues. The city, through existing as-of-right tax credits, > and the state through Excelsior Tax credits - a program approved by the same > legislators railing against it - would provide up to $3 billion in tax > relief, IF Amazon created the 25,000-40,000 jobs and thus generated $27 > billion in revenue. You don't need to be the State's Budget Director to know > that a nine to one return on your investment is a winner.

Actually, you do. Amazon already created jobs in NYC, without any handouts needed. Google recently announced they'd create more jobs, and they didn't expect a handout to do so. By the above logic, a 9:1 return for Amazon jobs is a good deal. What about the Google jobs? Do those count as infinite return?

If so, more infinite returns, and less 9:1 returns, please.

Or is there something else at work here?

<comment><USER3> You are addressing the quote:

> You don't need to be the State's Budget Director to know that a nine to one > return on your investment is a winner.

I think you are here making a moral argument of sorts. Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k jobs? I simply don't see a viable argument that this was morally right, and wonder what argument you have that the facts we know support this proposition.

So far the opponents have not provided a "morally better" alternative to provide Queens with 25-40k jobs, unionized secure jobs for vast amounts of families, and a tax base necessary to invest in Queens that has received very little investment in decades. They have "hopes and dreams", but destroy the only path we had to get there.

Due to this we can't improve the offerings of progressive government services for the people living in Queens. Real kids, families, elderly and youth seeking opportunity is affected by this. These facts seems to show conclusively that this what the activists achieved was morally wrong.

<comment><USER4> > Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a > project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k > jobs?

Because people who rail against deals like this take zero responsibility for any of the consequences. It's all of the fun moral policing and none of the downside. It's great to be an activist.

<comment><USER5> In fairness, the real reason, at least in NYC...

is that they _never_ end up in a situation where they get 100% of nothing. Google and Amazon have thousands of jobs in NYC, and they will move thousand more there in the future. For these people in NYC, they don't know the consequences of not having loads of places to work. For them, it really is a situation of "Heads we win! Tails we win slightly less!".

<comment><USER6> Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief

<comment><USER7> > Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not > receive the 3 billions in tax relief

The problem of the deal wasn't the mechanics, it was how it was sold to the public. A competition putting cities against cities, negotiated without any public input, a large tax break to one of the richest companies in the world, choosing already popular cities rather than really investing in a newer one. Amazon could have definitely closed this deal if they pitched it properly.

<comment><USER6> Maybe, but as it is pointed out many times here and in the open letter this was basically a replay of Brexit. another commenter said that his mom believed the city would give amazon 3 billions up front. the public approved of the deal, the only demographic to disapprove was the internet.

70% of local residents approved of the deal. that is a lot.

<comment><USER8> I'm skeptical of any polling for the issue, mostly because polls have huge issues with data collecting and getting a representative sample, particularly on things like local issues.

Depending on

* how the question was framed ("Do you think the second headquarters of Amazon will be a positive?" vs. "Do you think the deal with Amazon will be positive?" vs. "Do you think tax breaks for Amazon are good?")

* how informed the voter was required to be; people are notoriously uninformed and uninterested about anything that isn't a presidential election

* how residents were contacted (was it a landline poll? mail? survey on the street? online? because these all have different populations to be accounted for)

* who counts as a valid resident for the survey? someone who lives in Buffalo? someone who lives in Westchester? someone who lives in Manhattan? someone who lives in Flushing? etc.

Polls predicted that AOC would lose her race, and that clearly didn't happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quote of the Day:

"The seventy percent of New Yorkers who supported Amazon and now vent their anger also bear responsibility and must learn that the silent majority should not be silent because they can lose to the vocal minority and self-interested politicians."

<comment><USER10> I'm glad we're waking up to this fact.

It's not enough to hold a belief... in our system, action is required. I think this is why young people are so frequently screwed by political decisions and policy - we are, uncoincidentally, the age group that votes least often.

<comment><USER11> Voting alone is not enough. In some parts of the world, like Australia, voting is mandatory and as a result lot of people just vote randomly.

A good education in civics and history is necessary, as is a belief in the political system and a desire to make a difference in the world through political action. Finally, a strong and independent media that does a lot of deep investigative journalism and does a good job of providing context and background on important issues instead of catering to the lowest common denominator is key, as without it people are much more easily manipulated and mislead.

<comment><USER12> As a politics major from an Australian university, and as someone who now lives in Norway. You're about 50% right.

Yes in Australia mandatory voting has some people who "donkey vote" or as you call it "vote randomly" that percentage is almost all the 18-22 range. It's not till they have to sit through a full one or two election cycles before they start to give a shit.

As such my generation has seen the bullshit that's been handed to us, we won't stand for it. It is generational because of the two major parties, their "young" version hasn't had anyone transition from the young party to the major party for members of GenX. It's only now when the boomers are retiring are we starting to see some younger blood. Why? Cause those that didn't give a shit, now care and it's a huge wave of people.

Politics are so much more left here in Norway, because people are educated and give a shit. The fucking Christian Right party just came up with the policy to decriminalise all drugs because putting people in jail and fining them wasn't working. So why not try to help them with counsellors instead. No fines, no jail time... just help if they want it.

What's Australia doing? Well we just voted to dump a bunch of shit in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef because it's inconvinent for the super rich assholes to ship their exports around it. Got to make a way through it for the ships.

That shit won't last with my generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it's sad that the vocal minority was able to alter this decision. As the letter mentions, the project would have brought $27b in revenue to the state. This magnitude of revenue is material considering the fact that the state only collected $76b in taxes in the last reported fiscal year.

I think there's reason to debate whether large corps should be able to hold an auction like this, but given the place we find ourselves in today, there's no question this would have been a huge win for NY.

<comment><USER14> I'm glad they dropped it. There are some grounded concerns:

* Amazon is one of the most successful enterprises in human history and should not require support from taxpayers beyond their voluntary patronage of Amazon itself.

* Most of these "deals" were put together secretly without input from the public. Millions (or in NY's case, billion+) of dollars were packaged and presented without community input or oversight

* While amazon is talking about bringing middle and upper-income jobs to these communities, overall amazon has a documented history of paying poverty wages despite its tremendous financial success

* State and local governments probably shouldn't be diverting billions of their citizen's tax revenue to lure corporations who will only impact a tiny subset of their citizenry. Does the taxpayer in Buffalo New York benefit if their tax money goes to fund some HQ in Queens, if the bulk of the state's tax capture is just "handed" right back to Amazon?

With that said, there's nothing wrong with large organizations asking state and local governments to expedite things like site identification, planning, zoning, permitting, licensing, environmental studies, etc since you're talking about a MASSIVE undertaking during a short window of time. But beyond that, governments should avoid a race to the bottom with this stuff.

<comment><USER15> > * Most of these "deals" were put together secretly without input from the > public. Millions (or in NY's case, billion+) of dollars were packaged and > presented without community input or oversight

> * State and local governments probably shouldn't be diverting billions of > their citizen's tax revenue to lure corporations who will only impact a tiny > subset of their citizenry.

I haven't been following this closely. What did New York offer Amazon that it does not offer any other company? In the linked article the author states that Amazon would have been claiming existing tax credits. Did they receive anything else (not offered to any other new businesses)?

If so, the linked article seems to be presenting the argument in bad faith.

If not, you seem to be describing the offer in bad faith.

<comment><USER14> Rezoning and eminent domain, resulting in massive windfall for Plaxall [https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/plastics- company-a...](https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/plastics-company- another-winner-blockbuster-amazon-deal)

(Yes, some of that land is being purchased in a private sale, but its value is now significantly greater because of the city's rezoning and ability to stich- together workable parcels through eminent domain)Long island City residents aren't terribly happy about that.

Then there's the whole Excelsior tax credit scheme which Amazon really stretches. It's normally just 6.85% of wages per net new job. Amazon's is significantly greater. [https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs- program](https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program)

<comment><USER16> Use of eminent domain is disgusting and that alone is enough to kill the deal IMHO. Using eminent domain for a private business is wrong. It seems like New York does that too often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Ironically, much of the visible 'local' opposition, which was happy to appear at press conferences and protest at City Council hearings during work hours, were actual organizers paid by one union: RWDSU. (If you are wondering if that is even legal, probably not)._

That is a pretty strong accusation to put in writing. I get the feeling that some investigation is going to happen on that one. Paid protestors presented as "concerned citizens" is not exactly a new tactic, but money is a lot easier to track these days.

<comment><USER18> Its very common in NY for high profile issues.

When fracking was the cause de jure, hundreds of people were being bussed to Albany weekly to protest.

I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but it's a thing.

<comment><USER17> We do have some experience with it out here in the middle. I have a relative (by marriage) who did a pipeline protest then went to "protest a volcano in Hawaii". Apparently, it was a good gig.

I'm just surprised that the NY government put it in a press release. It really seems odd, but maybe that union has really separated itself from the herd, politically.

<comment><USER19> Yes, there were people paid to blockade and prevent the construction of a new state-of-the-art science telescope on Mauna Kea. They were successful in pressuring the state to renege on the contract and block construction.

I live in Seattle now, and I remember talking to a petition signature gatherer for the recently passed gun control measure (petitions get them on the ballot). He was paid per-signature by a non-profit funded by the Open Society foundation. He said he was doing it Arizona before Seattle, and will keep going around to areas they pay for.

<comment><USER17> One does wonder if the individual you met and others paid there proper income taxes in each state they worked? I get the feeling that will come up before long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who actually lives in NYC and would probably benefit personally from their HQ2 opening since my property-value would probably go up, I honestly wasn't terribly upset to hear that Amazon was leaving.

I am a little annoyed that _only_ New Yorkers are paying the brunt of criticism on this. "If NYers hadn't complained so much then we'd have $27billion of revenue!!". But that's ridiculous; Amazon _left_ NY because they felt like they had resistance, but you wouldn't know this based on the follow- up conversations.

</comment><comment><USER21> I understand the tragedy of the commons, cities' race to the bottom, Amazon not needing breaks, so on.

I also think some of this could have been avoided if people felt like they were part of the process, instead of being told by the state "Hey we negotiated with a behemoth company for them to take over your community - trust me, you'll like it".

<comment><USER22> You cant involve public with everything, or it would lead to big overhead

<comment><USER4> For billions of dollars of tax breaks? I don't think it's asking too much. Washington State manages to have non-binding advisory votes on topics just like this without much complaint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >The seventy percent of New Yorkers who supported Amazon and now vent their anger also bear responsibility and must learn that the silent majority should not be silent because they can lose to the vocal minority and self-interested politicians.

This like makes me frustrated. It shouldn't be everyone's responsibility to go on twitter or wherever and be loud. Maybe politicians should put in real effort to learn about who they represent. They could engage in the same kind of polling they do during election season, rather than just paying attention to whoever is loudest.

<comment><USER24> In a perfect world yes. In reality what matters is not how many people support a position but how many will vote based on that issue. If you support something but it is not in your top ten of voting factors (assuming you even vote) then in reality your view doesn't matter to the powers that be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "The RWDSU Union was interested in organizing the Whole Foods grocery store > workers. [...]. Organizing Amazon, or Whole Foods workers, or any company > for that matter, is better pursued by allowing them to locate here and then > making an effort to unionize the workers, rather than making unionization a > bar to entrance."

I'm not familiar with how this works in New York. Someone who's registering a company needs to negotiate in advance whether the people they hire are part of some pre-existing union or not?

Wouldn't Amazon just have started hiring workers, and if those workers decided to organize into a union or join an existing one they'd have had to deal with that then? It seems not, so how does this work?

<comment><USER26> Perhaps they were looking for Amazon to guarantee they would only hire unionized workers (or X% unionized workers) for certain positions, as part of the deal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interestingly, although 70% of New Yorkers felt positively about the Amazon HQ2, I wonder what that percentage looks like for the actual current inhabitants of LIC. For many of the folks I know who rent in Queens, they were very much against the HQ2 and fearful of how it may affect their ability to afford living in Queens. Additionally, many New Yorkers I know who are around my age were very much against HQ2 because we felt that it was already so incredibly hard to even think about owning property in NYC, and that this was just one more notch that would make us feel like the possibility was slipping away. Not everyone works in tech/finance/RE and enjoys the salaries in those industries. Another common fear was how will this affect the subway system?

For many of the people I know who were against HQ2, it wasn't about the tax relief. It was about the feeling that the most valuable corporation in the world was going to move a lot more money into the city, and make it a lot harder for folks not in the industry to live.

A lot of these concerns where not addressed. It was always about jobs, jobs, jobs. And if they were addressed, it was not communicated effectively.

</comment><comment><USER28> If they start handing out billions for corporate HQs it won't stop with Amazon. Google and everybody else will like up for theirs too.

<comment><USER3> Amazon would generate $30b in tax revenue over the deal length, for which it would be given a $3b break given certain conditions.

That is not a handout, because amazon generated all the money in question.

<comment><USER28> Okay fine whatever, every other big employer will be lining up for the same deal or threatening to leave.

<comment><USER3> When Queens has attracted enough campuses like Amazons to become an ecosystem no incentives should be necessary.

The deal has positives and negatives for Amazon due to its location, and lack of an ecosystem. After Amazon moved 25k jobs there there it would have been hard for them to leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This reads too much like a one sided political letter by a state functionary. It's curious no such 'open letter' was forthcoming from any public functionary accounting for the losses due to the long list of bank frauds and bailouts?

Many here swear by free markets, fair competition and a level playing field and yet do not see the contradiction of letting large companies play regions against each other to extract concessions.

Too many times we just see pro business narratives that rehash arguments by lobbyists, bought economists and the business press to support specific business interests and these one sided narratives are now being challenged.

<comment><USER30> These people you talk about don't live in those communities and haven't lived in communities that have been destroyed and made worse by big corporations like this. How's Seattle doing? Great for the rich, but not for anyone else. Walk the city streets in Seattle, head down to city mission in Pioneer Square, you'll figure out what the word "despair" really means.

I'm glad the public stood up. The workers have power.

Guessing this was just another Amazon game to slam unions to portray a massive negative image of AOC & worker power, like they did to collect city data.

<comment><USER31> Unfortunately, some other community will have to suffer having so many high paid workers.

<comment><USER30> And then face the crippling poverty, homelessness, death, drug problems that come with those high paid workers. They contribute nothing to society, see Amazon in Seattle. Where are the Bezos schools, Bezos housing communities for the poor, where are the Bezos fire departments, Bezos parks? Nowhere.

Just because you have different priorities, priorities that are "infinite growth" (cancer), doesn't mean its automatically a good idea. Those workers weren't being employed from NYC and surrounding areas, and you know it. They were coming there to displace people already living there.

It's time the lower end of society starts getting a fucking say too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just as a business can grow organically and through capital acquisitions, a city can grow organically or through capital investment.

A city can spend money (billions) on infrastructure and public spaces which serves the workers of the companies, and the campuses of those companies. A city can also ask companies to spend billions to help build out those spaces and that infrastructure and in return offer tax incentives. It works out exactly the same. Both subsidies serve the workers and the companies paying those workers in the same fashion.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Ironically, much of the visible 'local' opposition, which was happy to > appear at press conferences and protest at City Council hearings during work > hours, were actual organizers paid by one union: RWDSU. (If you are > wondering if that is even legal, probably not). Even more ironic is these > same elected officials all signed a letter of support for Amazon at the Long > Island City location and in support of the application. They were all for it > before Twitter convinced them to be against it.

Twitter as of now is a cancer in our society. Is is a fine social and sometimes fun, but do not form your opinion on it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great letter!

And as much as I support unions, RWDSU really messed up on this.

</comment><comment><USER34> People are upset about the beauty pageant.

If Amazon had never done their stupid HQ2 search which resulted in the two most obiovus cities "winning", they would have an HQ2 in NYC already with the same tax breaks. It would've all happened behind closed doors.

</comment><comment><USER35> This story is so good because it perfectly illustrates the issue with politics today:

\- A vocal minority of leftists managed to force a silent majority. Once they won, they didn't really know what to do. Now everyone realizes that New York is worse off.

\- All of the outrage started and snowballed on Twitter, where self-centered politicians decided to use it as a way to virtue-signal.

\- The press did an awful job on this story: every article got a baked in narrative (From "Amazon was defeated and NYC won", to "NYC Lost and Amazon won"). It is simply very difficult to know what actually happened.

<comment><USER36> > Once they won, they didn't really know what to do. Now everyone realizes > that New York is worse off.

Not sure how you've reached this conclusion. "Worse off" is subjective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Has anyone from NY tried to get Amazon back?

</comment><comment><USER38> The fact that this guy is writing this open letter on behalf of the governor's office, and seems to believe we still live in a 2008-esque Change-We-Can- Believe-In view of tech company largesse, shows how clueless Albany really is.

If we have ACTUALLY learned anything from the past century of corporate relationships with muncipalities, it's that you really do NOT want to encourage corporate monocultures within your cities. It distorts the local economy, creates its own social subculture that often overtakes the town's existing culture, and presents a giant economic and existential crisis should the corporate giant need to downsize or exit the city (which they seem to always do, and always for someplace that has far more diversity, or a new host for their parasitism).

New York State is, if anything, Exhibit A for all of this. The story of Kodak and Rochester, and the years of decline in Kodak's absence (and before anyone mentions it, yes, I know there's been a very recent Renaissance) is a story known to pretty much every urban planner who's been educated in the past 25 years. Yes, you get a really easy bump in total jobs that is hard to replicate through more organic means; but you know, if you want to live in an interesting, dynamic society, you're going to choose to go about it the hard way.

Maybe the evil labor unions ruined the deal. Maybe the politicians flip- flopped. Maybe the tax credits pencil out. It doesn't matter. There are large numbers of people who didn't want Long Island City to turn into another Rochester. Or, to put it in a context that might be more understandable to the crowd here, they didn't want to see Amazon do to their neighborhood what Snapchat and Google did to Venice Beach over the past 10 years. I'm sure the tax receipts are way, way up in 90291; at the same time, it's not really Venice anymore, and those revenues have allowed the tech firms to hold the community hostage for whatever they want (for example, Google had an arbitrarily placed stop sign and crosswalk put in for their use, and managed to get the LAPD to cart off longtime homeless residents in the process (who, by virtue of the law of unintended consequences, have been replaced by far more aggressive and transient homeless people)).

I'd love to see some of these politicians run on the "I stood firm on welcoming Amazon" platform for their next election. I don't think the ones who flip-flopped into the negative are idiots; rather, they're smart enough to see the writing on the wall. The tide is shifting, and fast.

</comment><comment><USER39> TIL Amazon sells Banana Republics and we all clamor for canoes and paddles.

</comment><comment><USER40> San Francisco-ization it seems. Liberals going against their own interests. Reminds me of an apartment complex under construction in SF that was forced to include a larger amount of low-income units. The builders found it would no longer be profitable, and ceased building. So lose-lose, prisoner's dilemma, vocal social media forces "won," lacking the cooperative biases that humans normally have. They all end up with nothing.

<comment><USER30> Should shelter, a basic human need, be for-profit? If so, why?

<comment><USER31> Here's a thought; do you want to rely on the goodwill of people you don't know, that live hundreds or thousands of miles away, to get up at 4am to farm and create food (a basic human need) for you?

Or do you want to rely on the profit motive? If not, why?

<comment><USER41> Life is a bit more nuanced than profit-motive vs charity. I'd guess most of the folks on HN work for a salary at a company. There isn't a ton of "profit- motive" in the work. You don't necessarily get more money if you do a better job. At least not reliably (it's up to the discretion of the company usually).

So if a lot of people are willing to do work for a salary, why wouldn't a farmer or landlord be willing to do work for a salary? Why does a landlord need a profit motive? Why does a farmer need a profit motive?

I don't think you can argue that landlords are more attentive because they receive profit over a salary.

<comment><USER42> The term "profit motive" as generally used applies equally to money made from salary or equity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > The union that opposed the project gained nothing and cost other union > members 11,000 good, high-paying jobs.

I want to see this feature film so people stop wasting their time with them

</comment><comment><USER44> Every NY voter needs to read this letter.

</comment><comment><USER45> > First, some labor unions attempted to exploit Amazon's New York entry.

When a company sees a market opportunity and increases prices to take advantage of it (or benefit from tax exceptions, which is the same as generating inflation on everything but their prices), it is praised. When a labor union does the same, it is evil.

The 1% want to have the capitalism cake and eat it too.

And for some reason we are boasting a letter from the person bought to defend the tax break in the first place. If you want one single proof that this is an "advertisement" for public opinion, i will give one on the very first paragraph: he compares "25,000-40,000 jobs" as if 100% oscillation is an acceptable negotiation scale (hey, i can pay you $100 to $200k a year if you accept _now_ to work 12h a day every day!") and then proceeds to compare it to non-tax exempt jobs. Which is like comparing one thing to another completely different, for either incompetence or malice. Since he is a Budget Director, i will bet the later.

</comment><comment><USER46> "If New York only allows unionized companies to enter, our economy is unsustainable"

Dear workers: you must remain poor and powerless forever, for the greater good.

<comment><USER47> Did you miss the surrounding context? His point is that NY has very strong worker protections, and that it's much better to let a non-unionized company set up in NY _and then_ organize it, rather than trying to make organization a condition to entry.

<comment><USER46> Isn't the validity and relevance of those points something for the unions to decide for themselves?

Some people are still able to distinguish reality from a sales pitch.

<comment><USER47> No? I don't understand how you're connecting these dots.

It's not like we have to wonder whether the union strategy worked here. It demonstrably failed. Amazon didn't buckle, they didn't accept Whole Foods unionization as a condition of setting up shop in Queens, and the union will not in fact see a single additional job as a result of what happened.

<comment><USER46> "the union will not in fact see a single additional job as a result of what happened"

That assumes that all union organizing will now cease or come to nothing, and the unions will get no benefit from keeping a huge, dedicated anti-union company out of their back yard.

<comment><USER47> No, it just means that this particular transaction was net-negative for unions.

<comment><USER46> So your argument is that the unions should have just taken the deal as dictated to them without considering their larger self-interest?

<comment><USER47> Yes? "As dictated to them" is a weird way of putting it, since they were the ones making the demands.

<comment><USER46> Dear workers: you must remain poor and powerless forever, for the greater good.

<comment><USER47> Once again, we don't have to wonder whether this particular strategy worked. It demonstrably did not. Workers in NY state _and at Whole Foods_ are worse off than they would have been. This is a setback for the effort to unionize Whole Foods.

<comment><USER46> You seem to be confusing strategy (long term thinking) with tactics (short term thinking)

I wish I could understand why you seem to think it's a no-brainer that workers should unilaterally resign what they see as their long term interests to accept unquestioningly a corporate agenda with uncertain benefits for them in an indeterminate future.

<comment><USER47> It doesn't matter who's side we're on. I think Whole Foods should unionize. What was done here to try to accomplish that backfired, spectacularly. Labor will have less of a voice in similar negotiations in the future.

<comment><USER46> What is keeping unions from continuing to try to organize Whole Foods in New York?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Reads as unreliable (presumably factually accurate but too motivated to be trusted as presenting a full picture).

Anybody who pretends to be thinking about "loss for the city," is full of themselves. It's all politics, and disingenuous to imply otherwise. And morally, most other areas in the country need this more than NYC does.

It sounds like the thrust of the article is "Look how stupid the decision making process was!" Well, true politics is petty and unreliable especially at large-scale. But that has no bearing on the larger issue.

<comment><USER49> Factually accurate is a pretty good place to start. If you feel part of the "full picture" or "larger issue" is missing, then feel free to provide it.

<comment><USER48> I did. It's a disingenuous political move, swinging clumsily at unions, and hoping to rile up New Yorkers (such as myself).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> While economical illiteracy of loud-voiced minority politicians is a fact that played here, I think Bezos just made out of himself a "rich jerk cry baby" who threw "i'm in control and don't need your candy" tantrum.

Lose-lose.

PS: That said, I'd be scared of how that would affect NYC traffic patterns if plans would go forward.

</comment><comment><USER51> RWDSU... you really need to wake up. The Labor Union movement was making _great_ progress with AMZN, raising the minimum wage of fulfillment centers to $15 hr.

Negotiating is a series of compromises. AMZN basically reflected your brinkmanship strategy back into your face.

While I wish corporate America was above this, the Unions are the ones that need to learn a lesson here.

AMZN conceded to 11,000 Labor Union jobs for construction and services. But RWDSU, you wanted it all... including operational jobs.

AMZN just will _not_ capitulate to these tactics. And in fact, they'll go so far as to punish them and set precedence for future projects.

<comment><USER52> RWDSU didn't care about the construction jobs being unionized. Why? Because construction workers don't pay union dues to RWDSU. Unions are businesses. They exist to make money via dues, and do enough to benefit employees to get voted in. Once in, they benefit from laws that make it very hard to get them back out. RWDSU saw the dollar signs and looked to enroll new members--mostly people who didn't even live in the state yet and were not members of the local. Because NY is not a right to work state, they would be forced to begin paying dues to RWDSU without any vote or input.

A union's product is supposed to be advocacy for workers. But unlike lawyers or publicists, who are hired and fired by the people they advocate for, unions get voted in or established through hiring halls and high-level deals like these, and then they use the law to force workers to pay them for often unwanted or low-quality services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The problem is old, going back, one example after another, continually to a famous quote of Jefferson about sewage news at

[http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_spe...](http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html)

So, for a fix, first, mostly ignore the newsies (a word from a Bogart character in the movie _The Maltese Falcon_ ).

Second, much of _politics_ is trying to get votes from name recognition from shocking statements based on gossip, lies, distortions, made up nonsense, etc.

Well, then, the newsies and the politicians have a strong interest in common: For name recognition for votes the politicians want their shocking stories told, and for ad revenue from eyeballs the newsies want shocking stories to tell. There was a similar remark in the movie _Lawrence of Arabia_.

So, the second step is mostly to ignore the politicians.

A third step is, for information that might be in the news, fall back to and insist on at least common high school term paper writing standards, rational, responsible content with thorough references to objective, credible, primary sources. With this third step will entertain:

Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see and still will believe twice too much.

Measure twice and saw once.

Essentially everything you see in the media was put there and paid for by someone who wants to influence your opinion (Sharyl Attkissson).

It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you do know for sure that just ain't so (In the movie _The Big Short_ and there attributed to Mark Twain).

Will conclude that for nearly all the news, printed on paper it can't compete with Charmin and on the Internet is useless for wrapping dead fish heads.

A hope is that the Internet will enable many more new information sources with some with lots of credibility and narrow specialization and that the best of these sources will help the US and civilization.</comment>


End-to-End Encryption Isn't as Safe as You Think - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-14/whatsapp-hack-shows-end-to-end-encryption-is-pointless <comment><USER2> Eh. Actually End-to-end encryption is the best thing we have when it comes to secure communication. This is yet another sensationalist article from Bloomberg with a very misleading headline.

What they mean to say is that E2E is not enough - a secure implementation and other measures are important. Including securing the device in a manner so that no malware can get on it to compromise privacy. This is nothing new. It's a given and it's always been true.

<comment><USER3> Bloomberg seems to promulgate a lot of click bait fake news.</comment></comment>


Data, data everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15557443

<comment><USER2>
        Water, water, every where,
        And all the boards did shrink ;
        Water, water, every where,
        Nor any drop to drink.

Funny, I didn't remember the "boards did shrink" line.

The Economist carries well the anglo-saxonic tradition of pinching titles from the KJV or any other bit of half-decent poetry. I think I'll pinch the _big data_ phrase ...

(search saver: [http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Rime_Ancient_M...](http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Rime_Ancient_Mariner.html) )</comment>


Financial advice for my new daughter - <AUTHOR> https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/financial-advice-for-my-new-daughter/ <comment><AUTHOR> Morgan is a fantastic author. The article had me at the very first line: "It is easy to assume that wealth and poverty are caused by the choices we make, but it's even easier to underestimate the role of chance in life"</comment>


Google's Super Bowl ad accidentally set off a lot of Google Homes - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/5/14517314/google-home-super-bowl-ad-2017 <comment><USER2> Seems like Google's ad agency blew an opportunity to program a custom response to the Super Bowl ad.

<comment><USER3> Can you imagine hearing...

"Thanks for owning Google home. Hope you're enjoying the Super Bowl."

That might freak some people out. ha.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it would be fun if all GH devices would simultaneously scream

"Take over procedure started. Exterminate!! Exterminate!!!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > At some point, some enterprising TV writer or ad jerk is gonna plant an > "Okay, Google" into some on TV with intent and force everyone to listen to > Nickelback. Mark my words. This is a massive troll waiting to happen.

This kind of already happened:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9869797)

"Toyota ad hijacks Siri to switch off iPhones while driving"

</comment><comment><USER6> How Amazon prevents commercials from triggering Alexa: [https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5oer2u/i_may_ha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5oer2u/i_may_have_found_how_amazon_prevents_the_echo/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The solution is simple: Let people pick their own hotword/phrase. Saying "okay Google" is incredibly awkward, and back when I wore Glass, I found "okay Glass" (where this format came from) equally awkward. Especially in public.

<comment><USER8> I believe the technical reason is that the wake word "ok google" is processed offline.

<comment><USER7> It's not only entirely possible to process any arbitrary phrase offline, it's entirely possible to process all speech on the device offline. That's just not conducive to Google's data collection-based business model.</comment></comment></comment>


Acquisitions accelerate as tech giants seek to build AI smarts - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-startups-ai-idUSKBN18M2ED <comment><USER2> Wish I was in this industry instead of my dead-end job.

<comment><USER3> On the bright side: every job will be a dead-end when AI is very good.

<comment><USER4> When people revolt and start hanging programmers for destroying their jobs, it probably won't matter in which field of the industry any of us were.

<comment><USER5> Fortunately the AI riot police and soldiers will be far more effective at containing unrest than their human predecessors.

<comment><USER6> You are right. We need to start building in "protect our programmers" as a high-level AI directive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lattice wasn't discussed on HN, but they were acquired two weeks ago by Apple.

<comment><USER8> I had a heart attack and thought this was Lattice Semi. Whew.

<comment><USER9> It could still happen. Market cap is $855M versus $800B for Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yet, no one is tackling the AI UI problem. Why is that?

I can't believe people are still thinking natural language is the way to go...

<comment><USER11> Natural language is always the endgame. Because natural language either removes the physical input system or frees up screen real estate.

<comment><USER12> Yet, I don't like to use e.g. Google Now when I'm not alone.

Dictating a personal text message to my phone in public is not what I want.

<comment><USER11> Granted, but I'd expect subvocalization with predictive text or something else to infill where necessary. Stronger AI can substitute for a lot of "magic."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Uh, guys with the big bucks: AL/ML are at most a tiny fraction of the material, tools, power, and value of the pure/applied math on the shelves of the research libraries.

If you have a problem you want solved with AI/ML, 99 44/100% of the time you are better off going for what's on the shelves of the libraries, as taught in various high end grad schools, than with anything currently specifically AL/ML.

So, broadly, go for work in statistics, optimization, stochastic processes, and optimal control. For a specific application, may want some work that stands on that existing material and is also at least somewhat original.

E.g., the crucial technical core of my startup is some original applied math I derived based on pure/applied math that's long been on the shelves of the research libraries. For the valuable work of my startup, what's in AI/ML now is in comparison at best weak, nearly silly early grade school baby talk.

Really, guys, 99 44/100% of the good stuff is still where it's long been -- on the shelves of the best research libraries. And for the education for that work, it's definitely NOT in departments of computer science. Instead look at selected programs in pure/applied math in some of the best research universities.

<comment><USER14> This is a spectacularly bad advice, which "off-the-shelves" research libraries that you mention? OpenCV, LibSVM, Weka or Matlab/Octave?? Most examples/implementations in OpenCV are outpaced by Deep Learning methods.

TensorFlow, Caffe, PyTorch/Torch which today implement most of the state of the art methods were all written on average a year or two ago.

>> E.g., the crucial technical core of my startup is some original applied math I derived based on pure/applied math that's long been on the shelves of the research libraries. For the valuable work of my startup, what's in AI/ML now is in comparison at best weak, nearly silly early grade school baby talk.

Rather than vaguely mentioning libraries and startup, I suggest you offer concrete evidence behind your claims.

>> And for the education for that work, it's definitely NOT in departments of computer science. Instead look at selected programs in pure/applied math in some of the best research universities.

This is just truthiness (Math feels more "hardcore" than CS so Math department must be the better source.). Having known several people at Google/Apple/Facebook-FAIR, CS departments are typically major source of AI/ML researchers.

<comment><USER15> > Most examples/implementations in OpenCV are outpaced by Deep Learning > methods.

Right. Except that:

\- In some cases there are very good (and fast) techniques for finding out what you need quickly (like identifying faces)

\- You don't want to retrain a network for your specific case (which might not have an existing model already)

\- Traditional solutions might be good enough

\- OpenCV is much more than just identifying images, it has several APIs like geometrical transformation, color processing, filtering, etc [http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/modules/refman.html](http://docs.opencv.org/2.4/modules/refman.html)

<comment><USER16> Plenty of industrial AI is using other methods as well, it's just not where most of the current hype is, so there's a kind of bait and switch where they lead with the DL and then if you look at the products and APIs they're actually deploying and selling, the workhorses are often some mixture of very classical stats methods (like logistic regression) and general-purpose non-NN ML algorithms (like gradient boosting). One common breakdown is that the general-purpose APIs use these general methods, and then there are separate NN-based APIs for a few specific kinds of problems like object recognition in images, where NNs give a big performance increase.

Especially true for companies in the data-science niche, since DL rarely gives you much of a win for tasks like data-mining SQL databases, or when you have only modest sized data sets, but nonetheless you still need to at least offer some kind of DL solution to be perceived as a state-of-the-art AI offering. (Like with the "big data" hype wave, many companies that think they have gigantic data sets don't.) These other methods are better understood though and not in a ton of flux, so there's no need for an acquihire frenzy to get that expertise.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The $4 Million Teacher - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324635904578639780253571520.html <comment><USER2> Based on the headline and the first few paragraphs I was excited to read about a free market approach to public teaching.

But most of his students are "high-school students looking to boost their scores on South Korea's version of the SAT."

So is the article really about a $4m/yr teacher?

Or a $4m/yr test prep guru?

Test-prep is a HUGE industry in the USA.

"Princeton Review" alone pulled down ~$150,000,000 in 2012.(1)

John Katzman, a Princeton grad, founded it in 1981.

So we've already tread this right?

And the major criticism of Princeton review and other testing houses is that they drastically skew the balance of the tests by (a) Giving privileged kids an unfair advantage (b) Damaging the test integrity which is designed to find bright kids, not just "well prepared for this one day" kids.

So that's not really that unique and, in fact, we've got a long history of how this type of market has under-served the US' own system.

But great headline, got me to click.

(1) [http://www.wbjournal.com/article/20100830/PRINTEDITION/30830...](http://www.wbjournal.com/article/20100830/PRINTEDITION/308309977/princeton- review-bets-on-online-learning--framingham-based-company-needs-recent- acquisition-to-help-it-reach-profitability)

<comment><USER3> Concurring with yummyfajita, test prep courses don't have too much impact:

> On average students with private tutors improve their math scores by 19 > points more than those students without private tutors. The effect is less > on the verbal section, where having a private tutor only improves scores on > average by seven points. Taking a commercial course has a similarly large > effect on math scores, improving them on average by 17 points, and has the > largest effect on verbal scores, improving them on average by 13 points.

[http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Briggs_Theeffectofadmissionst...](http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Briggs_Theeffectofadmissionstestpreparation.pdf)

These differences (~15 points on a test with a standard deviation of 100 points) are rather small compared to the huge gaps between different socio- economic and racial backgrounds (~100 points between rich and poor). Probably worth the boost if you have the money, though.

<comment><USER4> The way you get better at something is with deliberate, difficult practice, and deep inquiry. When I was in high school preparing for the SAT I found this was the opposite of how most test prep worked.

I found one book--called something like SAT 1600, which was the max at the time--that talked about how test makers try to assess you, and how questions are constructed. The drill questions were very hard and came with an explanation of how the questions worked. Taking a practice test before and after the book my score went up by over 100 points. It got to the point where I could usually answer a math problem by guessing what the answer "should" be, based on how the question was built, and then just work backwards to verify the answer.

But most test prep was boring drills together with strategies like "use the process of elimination." Yeah, duh. That sort of brain-switched-off busywork is the common pattern in test prep and, more broadly, American education.

<comment><USER5> I agree. And isn't the idea of a test to find the people that are best a doing something. It doesn't really matter how much preparation goes into it.

So maybe someone that works really hard to be better than others at something is more valuable than someone who is naturally bright?

For example - a naturally bright lawyer isn't as good as a 'good' lawyer that tries really hard to be the best. Being good at a test shows that you'll be good at whatever the test is trying to find - no matter how this is achieved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I might get hammered for this, but I really don't think teachers are significantly underpaid. I say this as someone married to a teacher. Considering that they only work 9 months a year and generally have good benefits, I'm not convinced they should be getting paid significantly more. Take an average salary of around 30-35k and /.75 (9 of 12 months) and it becomes $40,000 - $46,667 a year. Add into that good retirement and great healthcare, it just doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

It's unreasonable to compare a salary from a job working 9 months a year to another profession that works 12 months a year. "Well it's hard, if you had to deal with these kids you'd need a few months off too." Yeah, and that's why I didn't become a teacher. You chose this knowing all the pros and cons. Pro - only work 9 months a year Con - only get paid for 9 months a year

<comment><USER7> How many hours are spent outside of class preparing lessons, grading papers, staff meetings, parent conferences, etc.? This reduces the hourly rate somewhat.

<comment><USER8> The amount of class time per week in our county is ~30. So even if they spend 15 hours a week outside of class on those things, that's a 45 hour work week, very consistent with that of other white collar workers making that kind of money.

Teachers get paid extremely well in most larger cities. In Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, and New York, starting salaries are in the $40-45k/year range with a bachelors. This might seem low to people on this board accustomed to Silicon Valley pay scales, but it's substantially above average for liberal arts majors. When I graduated college in Atlanta in 2007, the going rate for a fresh BA in white collar professional job (say in the accounting department of a company) was $35k. Teachers were starting at $40k+.

Also, the benefits cannot be ignored. Good health insurance and a pension contribution are extravagant benefits for young college graduates in the Millennial generation. They easily add $15-20k/year to total compensation.

<comment><USER9> so the starting salary is decent - where does it top out for our new grad accountant, and for our new teacher? Also, many teachers are not liberal arts majors; I have several teacher friends who are math/science majors with an M.Ed or whatever it is - and a couple programmer friends who are ex-teacher math majors, and the career switch was certainly influenced by the option to easily double their income.

<comment><USER8> In most places, teachers will top out at $70-80k if they stay teachers and don't move into administration, which is consistent with what that accounting grad would make in the payroll or HR department of a company. Note that at that point, the benefits become even more significant. Teachers often have healthcare plans that cover their family members, where they pay a lower portion of premiums, etc. They get large pension contributions and often get healthcare benefits in retirement, which is rare in the private sector.

Math/pure science majors aren't worth anything. There is a huge oversupply of people with say biology or chemistry degrees. In the private sector, a biology major is lucky to start at $35k/year.

Obviously you can dramatically increase your salary by acquiring programming skills and going into software development, but that's not unique to teachers. Programmers make way more than pretty much every other field you'd find yourself in after getting a non-engineering bachelors degree, except maybe economics.

<comment><USER10> rayiner, how is it consistent with the rest of what you're saying that math/science degrees are worthless?

Understand, I acknowledge you might have more knowledge/experience on this, I'm just skeptical. I would think - and the tone of your argument seems to posit - that it matters more what you decide to do with that degree than what degree you have.

Is it really worthless to have a good math degree if you become a quant? I understand market oversaturation, but that could be said of almost every degree, moreso liberal arts.

<comment><USER8> There are lots of jobs that will pay $60-$120k starting salary for people with math/science degrees, mainly finance and management consulting. But those jobs are open to very few of the huge numbers of people that graduate each year with math and pure science degrees. Those companies are looking for people with top grades from top schools.

But your typical teacher doesn't have a 3.8 at Dartmouth, and the option to go make $80k/year as an energy trader at a major power company. They've got a 3.4 at the local second-tier school. Recruiters at those jobs won't even read these peoples' resumes. Their alternatives to teaching are entry-level jobs at laboratories. The average starting salary of a biology/life sciences major nationwide in 2010 was $33k: [http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/college- degrees-best-salari...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/college-degrees-best- salaries-leadership-careers-jobs.html). If you throw in math and physics, which pull the averages up, the average for the math/sciences category is $42k, not that much better social sciences at $37k: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/04/15/college- de...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/04/15/college-degrees-with- the-highest-starting-salaries-3).

<comment><USER10> Ah I understand what you're saying now. Thanks for the clarification :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Before anyone gets excited, this is following labor treads throughout the world; a few "rock stars" and many more lower paid people. You can see this in law, medicine, business, academia and so-forth.

The US has very highly paid educators too. The only difference is they generally don't set foot in the class but rather serve as consultants ... on how schools can reduced average teacher pay and imposed pay-for-performance (among other things). This was the case for Beverly Hall, who created the local model for No Child Left Behind, sold it on a national level and was eventually arrested for falsifying the system.

Her report on Atlanta School's local program which NCLB (No Child Left Behind) emulated:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hwl55bH...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hwl55bHttcwJ:www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/nclb/Beverly_Hall --Testimony.pdf+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

Her arrest: [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57577688/ex-atlanta- scho...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57577688/ex-atlanta-schools- chief-beverly-hall-posts-bond-on-cheating-charges/)

Edit: And another posters mentions, this isn't a "teacher" in the conventional sense of the word either but a slightly more hands-on testing-guru. So we can pretty much move along now...

<comment><USER12> Maybe someday one of those consultants will package an approach based on raising the bar on salary and teacher/student performance moderately and call it "Moneyball Education" and it will finally take off. It will have a better chance of success if it's already been approved by ESPN.

<comment><USER13> This approach already exists - it's called value added modelling + pay for performance.

Unsurprisingly, it's a political nonstarter due to union opposition.

<comment><USER14> It's a non starter because it's generally poorly implemented and not linked it an increased budget.

Issue 1: A kids past performance and out of school issues dramaticly impact learning independent of the teacher. So teachers in schools in poor areas are often at a huge disadvantage under most of these systems.

Issue 2: Without an increased budget paying meaningfully more money to great teachers can significantly reduce the income for new and or average teachers.

Issue 3: It fails to attract talent because it does not increase the all important starting salary.

PS: Teacher direct compensation is a significant portion of US educational costs but bumping the minimum starting salary to say 50k is not nearly as expencive as you might think. Paying new teachers more, reducing seniority perks which reduces pension obligations and adding incentive based bonuses is IMO a far better use of funds than the administrative overhead that keeps increasing over time.

<comment><USER13> _A kids past performance and out of school issues dramaticly impact learning independent of the teacher_

A VAM score is (actual score of their students - expected score of statistically similar students). If a kid has low past performance, his expected score will be low, and thus the bar is lowered for his teacher.

VAM tends to hurt teachers in top schools far more than those in the bottom schools due to the ceiling effect - if your students expected score is 97%, there is no room for them to improve.

As for teacher pay, this is a non-problem. Teachers are overpaid when you account for pension, job security and summer vacation - as a result, there is a glut of people attempting to work as teachers, rather than a shortage.

<comment><USER14> Edit (inner city) Poor children don't have consistently poor performance it gets much worse 8-12th grade than 1-4th. Which is not accounted for by VAM.

Students are not predicted to score 97% school wide due to reversion to the mean.

As to a teacher glut it's not a question of body's it's a question of quality. Plenty of people would be CEO of Ford for far less money that does not mean there over paid.

<comment><USER13> _Poor children don 't have consistently poor performance it gets much worse 8-12th grade than 1-4th. Which is not accounted for by VAM._

This is simply nonsense. How would this fact not be reflected in the mean performance of students grade 8, income in [$0,$15], race=white, grade 7 percentile in [25%,50%]?

I'm beginning to think that most of the critics of VAM don't even understand what it does and are merely repeating critiques of blindly measuring raw test scores.

<comment><USER14> Poor students in _poor areas_ don't have the same performance as poor students in _average areas._

 _I 'm beginning to think that most of the critics of VAM don't even understand what it does and are merely repeating critiques of blindly measuring raw test scores._ And your ignoring the huge statistical significant difference having an under preforming peer group has on student performance.

<comment><USER13> Clearly you know vastly more about statistics than I do. Could you explain why all statisticians involved in education are unable to include this specific "huge statistical[ly] significant difference" in a predictive model?

I'm also curious - if this effect cannot be included in a model, how can one demonstrate it's existence in a statistically significant manner?

<comment><USER14> _Could you explain why all statisticians involved in education are unable to include this specific "huge statistical[ly] significant difference" in a predictive model?_

They can and do. However, when it comes to teacher pay and student performance such things are politically untenable. _No Child Left Behind_ does not mean except for when your peer group is full of truants.

The best evidence for this is actually from tracking randomly assigned edge cases. Often good schools will accept X numbers of students from another area and when they pull randomly from the pool of available students it's not hard to track what's going on and compare crossovers performance with students from each area that stayed in that area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like this idea as a general concept, but I just don't know how well it would work in the US. Schools in the US are already locally controlled to a great extent, yet most are still under-funded. If people really wanted to spend more on education, why don't they vote to raise their own property taxes? If they think the schools are being run poorly, why don't they get involved with the school boards and make changes? I realize there are many entrenched interests here (unions, textbook companies, and many more), but those same entrenched interests would fight against importing the South Korean system.

I also dislike the idea of kids going to school twice. From what I understand, research has shown that kids need more free time, not more time sitting in lectures, at least younger children. Additionally, the SK system seems like it would double-penalize low-income families since their children often need to get jobs in high school. So not only can't they afford the best tutors, their kids wouldn't have time to sleep!

<comment><USER8> Schools are not underfunded. The U.S spends more per capita on education than pretty much everyone: [http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the- world-...](http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world- infographic), twice as much as South Korea.

<comment><USER16> This is true, but I think the U.S.' education spending doesn't just go towards academics but extracurricular activities (sports, the arts, dances/events, facilities + infrastructure) to an extent further than that of other countries.

<comment><USER8> Sports at schools mostly pay for themselves (usually with football subsidizing all the other ones). Dances and events are usually not paid out of official school funds, but rather money raised by PTA's. I don't know why U.S. facilities would cost more than those in other countries.

<comment><USER12> US schools usually include sports facilities which are very expensive. My sister moved to Australia, which is about as similar to the US as it gets for a foreign country, and the schools have no equivalent of a Texas football stadium or Minnesota hockey arena. I don't think there is any other country that spends so much on public school facilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading_

Unmentioned is that written Korean was designed by an accomplished linguist (around 1500), making it very easy to learn. This in contrast to English, a bewildering mashup of incompatible spelling & phonetic rules made up by happenstance.

<comment><USER18> English bashing is so easy its tiring. There's a _reason_ English is a "bewildering mashup", because it developed organically taking input from all around the world. It is quite arguable that this is it's greatest strengths as a language.

This is due not only to the British Empire but also the fact that they essentially let language develop on its own. Unlike say, France (which had a similarly expansive empire), which tightly controlled the French language and still does to this day.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, there is a reason English is the way it is. Who said there wasn't? Saying that 'there is a reason' doesn't really rebut anything (you agreed with it anyway), and I kind of expected a rebut with the antagonistic opening sentence.

> , because it developed organically taking input from all around the world. > It is quite arguable that this is it's greatest strengths as a language.

Having a lot of loanwords is one thing: not having any sane and simple rules for spelling and phonetics is quite another. If 'organic' spelling is it's greatest strength, then it seems like a language more suited for spelling bees# then for communication.

#I doubt you'll find something like a Spanish spelling bee: from what I've seen of its diction, a Spanish spelling bee would be too trivial. Like making a competition out of tic-tac-toe.

<comment><USER18> English is a great language in that it (almost uniquely) decouples rules from meaning, thus giving it great flexibility. This is in my opinion it's greatest strength.

The way something becomes an acceptable part of the English language has less to do with following some arbitrary set of constraints, than what becomes accepted by actual human beings who use the language to communicate with other actual human beings.

There are more ways of saying any particular thing in English than most if not all other languages, and while you may view this as a weakness, I rather appreciate being able to decide what sounds good on my own.

[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

There is also a larger point to be made. If English was _such_ a hindrance why is the world like it is today? Language is one of the most important components of society, so if English really sucked, we'd probably be using some other language on HN. Please explain why, despite what you consider it's shortcomings, English is and will be the _lingua franca_ of the world for the foreseeable future?

My ancestors are from India, and I've visited there from time to time. Anyone with anything to contribute there speaks English, even if as a second (or third or fourth) language. If someone doesn't, that person isn't usually educated or hardly even literate.

Indian languages developed from the same roots as European ones, which is why the term _Indo-European_ exists#. Yet somehow, amongst all the possibilities, the most successful Indians use English. There is something to be said for that.

# [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo- European_languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages)

<comment><USER19> > English is a great language in that it (almost uniquely) decouples rules > from meaning, thus giving it great flexibility. This is in my opinion it's > greatest strength.

What does this mean?

> The way something becomes an acceptable part of the English language has > less to do with following some arbitrary set of constraints, than what > becomes accepted by actual human beings who use the language to communicate > with other actual human beings.

You mean the way most languages evolve? You're gonna have to have a pretty authoritative enforcement of the use of a natural language to keep it from evolving at all.

If someone wants "proper" English, they also have the Oxford Dictionary.

> There are more ways of saying any particular thing in English than most if > not all other languages, and while you may view this as a weakness, I rather > appreciate being able to decide what sounds good on my own.

That might be great for an English connoisseur (hey, there's another word for a potential spelling bee), but not so much for someone who is learning the language. And learning languages was what the person you originally replied to was talking about.

> There is also a larger point to be made. If English was such a hindrance why > is the world like it is today? Language is one of the most important > components of society, so if English really sucked, we'd probably be using > some other language on HN. Please explain why, despite what you consider > it's shortcomings, English is and will be the lingua franca of the world for > the foreseeable future?

I guess by "larger point" you mean a historical point, which has nothing to do with the linguistical properties of a language. No-one has said that English sucks to such a degree that it couldn't have gained traction as an international lingua franca, but nice try with the straw man. But that doesn't mean that it is a arguably sub-par in some ways, in this case the original complaint was about the seemingly random phonetics and spelling of the English language.

> My ancestors are from India, and I've visited there from time to time. > Anyone with anything to contribute there speaks English, even if as a second > (or third or fourth) language. If someone doesn't, that person isn't usually > educated or hardly even literate. Indian languages developed from the same > roots as European ones, which is why the term Indo-European exists#. Yet > somehow, amongst all the possibilities, the most successful Indians use > English. There is something to be said for that. # > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo- > European_languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages)

Yeah, there is something to be said for that: the British Empire (which you've already mentioned and other historical developments. Or what do you hint at with the last line, that the English language itself played a key role in the cultures and civilizations that made English an international language? That they wouldn't have been as successful if they spoke something like Romanian?

Meanwhile you've said nothing about the original complaint, which is the spelling and phonetics of the language, but if you want to talk about history I guess that's cool, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Should the US follow South Korea's education system?"

No, that would just make things infinitely worse. The SK education system consists of nothing more than rote memorization, and produces a pressure- cooker environment that is responsible for an extremely high teenage suicide rate.

</comment><comment><USER8> Note, he makes most of his money from leverage. 150,000 students each his lectures each year at $4 an hour.

<comment><USER21> i'm not sure i'd call that leverage, more like a clever distribution/marketing plan.

<comment><USER8> It's classic leverage. You go from a providing a personal service, which you sell by the hour, to packaging that service as a product where each hour of your work can be sold multiple times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's the final report by the Gates Foundation on evaluating teachers that is mentioned in the article: [http://metproject.org/downloads/MET_Ensuring_Fair_and_Reliab...](http://metproject.org/downloads/MET_Ensuring_Fair_and_Reliable_Measures_Practitioner_Brief.pdf). It's interesting that they have a whole section about how to convince teachers that the survey results would be reliable.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can't see the original article due to paywall. But I get the gist from the comments.

The "teachers don't make enough", "we don't spend enough on education", etc. debate is on the wrong point. The education system and philosophy in the USA is broken at all levels. Citizens are acting rationally by not volunteering to spend more tax dollars on it.

Those that can afford it bypass it entirely by paying for private education, or if they don't have quite that much money, by moving to a community that is wealthier and has better public education.

Economic forces combined with the digital age's technology will inevitably lead to the creative destruction of the education industry, just as other industries formed under Industrial Age economics have been deconstructed.

Unfortunately this is being fought to the death by the established education community and its monopolistic, union-based government and quasi-governmental constituents.

Try telling a public school teacher any of this, and you'll get not a reasoned response, but scorn, anger, and a slamming door in your face.

It's going to be brutal for them when it comes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your comment clearly does not address the article, which makes no mention of the things you cite (union-based government, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am going to preface this comment by saying the following. Its very important that we do everything we can to improve the quality of education our children receive. Nothing I am about to say should be taken to mean that we have no room for improvement!

I think we should start measuring education systems by results not by test scores. This is stupid that we are elevating a system which makes kids score better on a few tests but produces a workforce that is persistently behind the American and European workforce in terms of accomplishments. Great your kids can read really really well. Mine are changing the world by becoming the leading Engineers, Scientists and Doctors. Maybe these tests aren't what we should be optimizing for.

If you told me to go out and reform our public school system the last thing I would do is say is keep the kids in class twice as long and remove any vestige of childhood or independent though to thoroughly condition them to check the right box come test day. That's the impression I am getting from this article.

</comment><comment><USER25> Some weird stuff in this article. How can he have a teaching empire if he only makes 4M a year? Anyway, good for him. Meanwhile there are people putting tons of content on the internet, for free. Youtube channels, Khan Academy. If you really want to learn you only need to put aside some quiet time.

<comment><USER26> 4m and 30 employees is a bigger empire than most teachers can lay claim to...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> One of the best quotes from the article, in my opinion - "The harder I work, the more I make,".

<comment><USER15> It's a great quote, until you read further and get to this one...

"They don't have benefits or even a guaranteed base salary; their pay is based on their performance, and most of them work long hours and earn less than public school teachers."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If he has 30 assistants, he's a lot more than a teacher. He's the equivalent of a senior partner at a professional services firm.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Education is never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you've got." \- George Carlin

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw](http://youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw)

</comment><comment><USER19> > I traveled to South Korea to see what a free market for teaching talent > looks like—one stop in a global tour to discover what the U.S. can learn > from the world's other education superpowers.

Education superpower for having well-educated citizens? Or educations superpower for having many of the top universities?</comment>


Why Color is overrated - <AUTHOR> http://bogdanbocse.com/2011/05/why-color-com-is-overrated/

<comment><USER2> First of all, there's no infringement of _privacy_ if someone takes a picture of you in a public place. If you didn't want anyone to know about it, you shouldn't have gone to a public fricken bar with your adulterous date. If you're that guy who gets caught, sucks to be you. Don't cheat on your wife next time - or if you do, do it in private. What if it was one of your wife's friends who spotted you? Would you sue her? Big fat chance.

Secondly, that's not a one in a million chance. Unless his wife is a god damn social media photo site addict, it's more like a zero chance. Why would she stumble on that picture, ever? Unless, perhaps, she goes to the same bar and looks through the hundreds of pictures taken there. But now you're not talking random chance, you're talking determined digging (or complete and utter stupidity on the part of the cheating husband).

Thirdly, I hardly know anyone who's been talking about color.com anyway. That's probably the biggest problem they have, rather than the rare occasion when someone may be caught out in the background of a photo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Couldn't I could make the same argument about flickr.com? I take a picture. I call it "drinks after a bike ride." I tag it with "Pina Colada Bar." I make it public. How long before Mrs. James sees the picture? One in a million shot, right?

What privacy problem does color.com have that doesn't apply to flickr.com?

<comment><USER4> Hs position is that Color's value proposition kicks in when everyone's taking pictures all the time, blanketing every venue with visual documentation -- more photos, not better photos.

Flickr's value proposition is interestingness, not total coverage. Further, Flickr has three privacy layers, resulting in most night-on-the-town scenarios being Friends-only.

He made this point with his odds argument. Odds on Flickr might be one in a million, but Color wants users to take a million photos, making the odds one in one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a side note, this type of documentation of the physical world should get interesting when paired with projects like Microsoft Photosynth. (I'm sure there are other similar projects.) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16frKJLVi0> Something along these lines will make Google Streetview look quaint in a few years. (Although Google will probably be involved in mapping the world in 3D as well.)

</comment><comment><USER6> It is overrated, because we keep posting about it, on this site and discussions.

</comment><comment><USER7> Considering that I've never once seen something nice said about Color, overrated is hardly the word I'd use...unless we should all just start relentlessly hating on it.

</comment><comment><USER8> The privacy problem is not going to be what kills Color. Having a privacy problem to solve likely presupposes that they've been successful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Um... If Color is overrated, does that mean it deserves negative points?

</comment><comment><USER10> If the risk hinges on millions of pictures flooding in, then James isn't really at any elevated risk since he's in a handful of said millions of pictures.

The only way Color makes things worse for James is if his wife knew he was at said bar on a _previous_ night (i.e. she can't just show up in person) and sifts through those images. Or if Color employs amazing facial recognition and data aggregation to provide his wife a constant stream of James pictures.

I thought this was going to be about Hot Young Things inadvertently sharing nip slips with nearby Creepy Old Guys.</comment>


Ask HN: Any service available to translate 60 lines of Algol60 code into Ruby? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't think there is any service for that, but I think somebody from community can help. 60 lines is not so many:)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is my hope. Happy to pay, I just don't know who to ask. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER2> You know, i'm a programming languages enthusiast and always happy to dig in some code. If you can show me the code, i can take a look & see if i can help. No money needed %)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't written any Algol 60 code but from a cursory look it doesn't look too alien. The keywords and basic concepts look similar to those in modern procedural languages. So, depending on the complexity of the original code, perhaps trying to translate the code without any previous Algol 60 knowledge might be a viable approach, too.

Other than that, this sounds like a problem that could be solved by pairing an Algol 60 and a Ruby programmer if you can't find someone who knows both languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why don't you link the source, some people might find it interesting...</comment>


Bill Gates pledges $10bn for a 'decade of vaccine' - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7007734.ece

<comment><USER2> I would much rather have Gates spend his money on clean energy research or infrastructure projects. This sort of spending tugs at the heart strings but unfortunately it can actually be quite counter-productive at improving the lives of people in undeveloped regions.

By decreasing the amount of wealth that is necessary for a human person to remain alive - for example by introducing a new vaccine that allows a large (5+) family in unsanitary conditions to have all of their children reach adulthood - these sorts of programs in undeveloped countries actually create more poverty then they solve. There is not a cheap-manual labor shortage in these countries. There is however an acute shortage of well-paying jobs that don't involve corruption. By allowing the supply of just-surviving people to increase, you are putting even more downward pressure on the wages of unskilled labor (they are caught in the Iron Law of wages).

Keep in mind that in these countries, with no real legal system, unskilled labor doesn't mean gardening like it does in California but violence in the form of gangs/thug-ocracies who typically control access to natural resources or drug running routes. By creating more people, you are making it easier for the systems that keep them poor to grow, in a positive feedback loop.

The problem is not that a $3 drug is too expensive, and that we need to develop a 30 cent drug, the problem is that there are people who can't afford $3 for a life-saving drug. What they really need from the US is jobs, markets, and protection from the threats of climate change that we are causing by using 25% of the world's fossil fuels (more if you count the contribution from production in China to the cheap goods that we consume).

If Gates really wanted to help these people, he would campaign for an end to developed world farm subsidies, fossil fuel subsidies, and the recreational diamond market. But that would make him unpopular in the US.

EDIT: are downvotes for disagreement or for breach of etiquette?

<comment><USER3> _By decreasing the amount of wealth that is necessary for a human person to remain alive - for example by introducing a new vaccine that allows a large (5+) family in unsanitary conditions to have all of their children reach adulthood - these sorts of programs in undeveloped countries actually create more poverty then they solve. There is not a cheap-manual labor shortage in these countries. There is however an acute shortage of well-paying jobs that don't involve corruption. By allowing the supply of just-surviving people to increase, you are putting even more downward pressure on the wages of unskilled labor (they are caught in the Iron Law of wages)._

I refuse to believe that the loss of life is perferable than the preservation of life. And quite frankly, arguments from classical economics seem rather cold given the subject matter.

The heart of your argument suggests that the political issues in these countries are the root of the problem. This is correct. However, history shows us that the amount of money spent on politically bankrupt states has little or no impact on making them politically sound. Gates money is useless on the third world political playing field; instead, Gates is choosing to spend it in an area which he can actually have an impact.

As far as domestic politics go, the positions you suggest that Gates take on "farm subsidies, fossil fuel subsidies, and the recreational diamond market" are all politically untenable at the moment. It's not clear Gates could have an impact there either.

<comment><USER2> "political issues in these countries are the root of the problem"

well, it's political-economical-cultural, you can't really isolate one like that.

I'm not advocating Gates giving money to those governments, so they chose what to spend on. I agree that would be even worst - they would buy guns to strengthen their armies and luxury goods for themselves on their visits to Europe and Dubai.

10B can have quite a large impact on political realities in the US. Electing Obama cost a lot less then that.

<comment><USER4> Are you arguing that the Gates Foundation can create the greatest amount of good in the world through lobbying and political spending in the U.S.? I think the Gates Foundation has it right: e.g. rather than relying on lobbying for educational reform, it is trying to innovate new methods of teaching and teacher-feedback which - if successful - will improve the education system with new methodologies rather than political ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I come from a third world country and i know that there are tens of millions who are suffering everyday. They are no different than you.We're all human beings. You're just luckier. Bill should definitely get a peace prize for his compassion and generosity.

<comment><USER3> No technical people that I'm aware of worship Steve Jobs because of his humanitarian qualities. In fact, if you were to do a broad survey using humanitarian work as a criteria, Bill Gates would be the overwhelming preference. Admiring the charisma of Steve Jobs and the generosity of Bill Gates are not mutually exclusive behaviors. By suggesting that that people "stop worshiping Steve Jobs", you seem to be claiming that they are.

Also, "you techies" strikes me as distancing language with a hostile tone. I think you're projecting a broad, unfounded stereotype on people of developed countries. Personally I've very conscious that I was born one of the most advantageous positions in the world. I donate portions of my income with that thought in mind.

<comment><USER5> You're right . Got a bit emotional.That's why i edited it a few seconds after.

<comment><USER3> I see that. I'm totally on board with what you are saying now. Cheers :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've purchased Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000 and XP. I'm finally at peace with that now that I know that part of the money has gone to people really who need it.

<comment><USER7> What about Windows ME?

<comment><USER8> One can only be so philanthropic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds quite laudable, but I always wonder about the unintended consequences of things like this. Saving millions of lives, particularly in poorer regions, seems like an unpredictable situation at best.

<comment><USER10> When someone gets sick they don't just die, they are sick and requiring assistance from others for sometimes long periods of time. This might make the potential productivity of these places higher. I guess the new problem is finding them something productive to do.

<comment><USER11> I love this community. I had the exact same question, and couldn't decide if I would be judged as callous for posting it. Here, i find the question posted, and to great replies. Thanks!

<comment><USER5> No, you're not callous. You are just damn ignorant. What you need is a little compassion and try to imagine if you are that poor person and that you mom now gets sick and now try to think should she die just because there's no cheap vaccine ,should she die so that she can sacrifice herself and you can be productive writing your damn programs because you don't need to take care of her. Think About it. Think about it in these people's shoes. They are human beings like you and me. Their sufferings are real. You're saying you can't feel this in your heart? just because you're born in a rich country and all the resources? Yeah, you need to get out of your little world and try to understand not everyone is as lucky as you. And they deserve EVERYTHING you deserve. They shouldn't just die.

<comment><USER12> I disagree, simply saving someone's life from a sickness doesn't matter, if they die from starvation because there is not enough food in the country.

It is exactly like marciovm123 says, "This sort of spending tugs at the heart strings but unfortunately it can actually be quite counter-productive at improving the lives of people in undeveloped regions."

If a country is really that badly off, what difference does it make if we save people from one form of suffering only to have them be subjected to a different form. I agree with some of the above statements that the money would be better spent developing the infrastructure of 3rd world countries, rather than trying to solve a more isolated problem. Simply making vaccines cheaper is treating a symptom and not the problem itself.

<comment><USER13> >I disagree, simply saving someone's life from a sickness doesn't matter, if they die from starvation because there is not enough food in the country.

It would matter to _me_ if someone saved _my_ life from sickness, even if I did die of starvation shortly afterwards.

>If a country is really that badly off, what difference does it make if we save people from one form of suffering only to have them be subjected to a different form

I don't understand. By that logic, action is only worthwhile if there is exactly one form of suffering. Surely that can't be right.

<comment><USER12> >It would matter to me if someone saved my life from sickness, even if I did die of starvation shortly afterwards.

I'm not sure if the money would stretch this far, but what if instead of saving you, the money was spent developing the country in a way that would save 10x more people. Looking at this problem from a personal perspective gets in the way of doing the most good for the most number of people.

>I don't understand. By that logic, action is only worthwhile if there is exactly one form of suffering. Surely that can't be right.

Or action is worthwhile if it treats multiple forms, which I believe infrastructure development would do.

Perhaps I'm wrong and vaccination is the first step in the path to pull the countries out of poverty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope that years from now, Bill Gates will be known more for his contributions to humanitarian aid than for being founder of MS.

<comment><USER2> That's definitely what he hopes for.

<comment><USER15> He helped to bring cheap personal computers to hundreds of millions of people, I doubt he needed help sleeping at night or needed his legacy protecting even before his unprecedented philanthropy. I feel the "Microsoft is evil" meme lacks some perspective, even when you consider their biggest misdeeds in the most negative light possible (i.e. crushing competition).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I honestly believe Bill Gates is trying to use the opportunity he has to do improve the lot of humanity. Good for him.

However this is a massive opportunity for the vaccine companies who stand to gain a lot (far more than the $10bn) from this. Bill Gates might be in this to make the world better, but they are in it for the profit - and it's reasonable to question their recommendations and motivations.

For example look at the Pentavalent vaccine in india: DPT + Hib + Hep B

GAVI pays Rs 145 subsidy

India pays Rs 380 extra

Subsidy for 5 years

After that India pays Rs 525

Similarly it's suggested India include a number of new vaccines on their schedule (HPV @ Rs 9000/child, Rotavirus @ Rs 2000/child, and Pneumococcal vaccine @ Rs 650/child), but the situation in India is that 50% of the population don't receive the basic EPI vaccines costing Rs 30. (not a typo, rs30 vs rs9000). In a nation of limited resources surely the first priority needs to be getting the basic vaccines to the rural poor. But the vaccine companies aren't interested in spending Gates' money on low margin vaccines, they want their foot in the door of a national program. And the WHO and UN unfortunately aren't immune to their pressure.

Away from India here's an article about the swine flu 'pandemic' [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,637119,00.h...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,637119,00.html)

If anybody's interested I've half a dozen well cited papers and presentations on the topic of vaccines in India - and they make quite depressing reading. Email in profile.

<comment><USER17> profit in a market represents simply what people want, and how they value those things in voluntary exchanges. mixing up the concept of "profit" with racketeering, corporatism, cronyism, and making money off of various other involuntary transactions is a huge mistake since it colors your perception of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> FTA: _It also estimates that an additional 1.1 million children could be saved with the rapid introduction of a malaria vaccine beginning in 2014._

Are we that close to a decent malaria vaccine? I might have to delay some travel plans if that's the case. Biohackers care to comment?

<comment><USER19> RTS,S/AS01 went into Phase III trials in mid 2009. It's being tested solely as vaccination meant for young children and is being tested in East Africa. You can find more information here: <http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00380393>

Until it's tested more extensively for travelers, don't hold your breath for a readily available vaccine. As always, evaluate the malaria risk of your destination and take the appropriate antimalarial for that area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This kind of major undertaking is admirable, because it will reduce suffer and pain to the people who are not so fortunate.

The charity contribution I offer is limited and do the best I can through organizations like Kiva.org. I just wish that other well known and well off tech leaders e.g. Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs would be more active. Maybe the Gates Foundation with their actions encourages them to do something on a bigger scale.

</comment><comment><USER21> Give the man a prize.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is fantastic news. One suggestion though, I would rather spend majority of that $10B in training, building the infrastructure, etc. so that 3rd world countries can produce their own vaccine/medicine/etc.

it's sort of like the old Chinese saying: Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER23> If his foundation is run anything like Microsoft, their first move will be to develop a polio vaccine.

</comment><comment><USER24> What about vaccines for the mind? Having harmful ideas infect the mind is often more devastating than most illnesses.

See: [http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/au7t7/why_not_provid...](http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/au7t7/why_not_provide_timely_vaccinations_for_harmful/)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is for image. Their foundation causes great harm indirectly by investing in incredibly evil corporations exploiting and bribing in the third world. And their "voting rights" play is a joke, they are far from significant on any firm (from what I remember, it wasn't the case when the press investigated again; I wouldn't be surprised if they ever voted on any of those evil corporations.)

Just read the first paragraphs of the original investigation:

[http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na- gatesx0...](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na- gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_Gates_Founda...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Investments)

<comment><USER5> Sorry to say rude things here. But alecco, you're such an ignorant person. How dare you saying or linking to such lies for these kind of great attempts to save millions of lives.

<comment><USER25> Thanks, but I don't believe in hell.

I linked a story from the LA Times and Wikipedia. I didn't add a single thing.

On the other hand, Microsoft, while BG was still in command, pushed incredibly evil (in my view) laws in my (developing) country (as in many others) regarding software, costing plenty of money. This doesn't now make it right for me, at all.

Note: I don't insult you, I don't wish you bad things, I just think differently and would love to express myself freely granted by our constitution and laws, and yours if you happen to be from USA.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech>

<comment><USER26> Freedom of speech doesn't mean people can't say you're an idiot for what you say.

<comment><USER25> And where did I say he can't insult me?

It saddens me you both get, IMHO, up-votes of irrational bandwagon self- validation instead of having a good rational discussion.

<comment><USER26> It's hard to have a rational discussion with "Corporations are evil! Mcirosoft is Evil! Bill Gates is EVIL!"

<comment><USER25> OK, dodge.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>