A casino magnate is spending millions to fight legal marijuana in three states - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/26/a-casino-magnate-is-spending-millions-to-fight-legal-marijuana-in-three-states/ <comment><USER2> "If you like drinking alcohol and playing blackjack at the casino, Mr. Adelson wants you to be his guest," Tvert said in an email. "If you prefer to consume marijuana while playing video games in the privacy of your home, Mr. Adelson wants you to be in jail."

Ending the 'war on drugs' would be an instant improvement in the lives of large numbers of Americans.

<comment><USER3> It would. Also, it would make a huge improvement in the quality and _quantity_ of human lives in Mexico, and the rest of Latin America. Extremely conservative estimates for Mexico alone put the death toll above 164,000+ in the past 10 years, and the number of displaced above 1.2 million, >1% of the country's population. By total number of deaths in 2016, the Mexican portion of the drug war by itself is the fourth bloodiest armed conflict on Earth[1] (after Syria, Iraq and Afganistan, above Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and the Boko Haram multinational insurgency).

Having grown up in Mexico, reading Mexican press and seeing the endless amount of mass graves people are now finding through the country (e.g. [2]), I am fairly sure there are plenty of cases not counted in the official estimates.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts) . Note: If this makes you scared about planning to visit Mexico, please also remember it is a very large country, and different areas have different levels of violence. Fourth largest conflict in terms of total yearly deaths doesn't mean "it feels like Syria" on account of the population being 100 million. But that doesn't change the vastness of the cost in human lives...

[2] [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin- america-33671636](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33671636)

<comment><USER4> I'm hopeful but a bit pessimistic that legalizing marijuana will have much of an impact on the cartel violence in Mexico. There's so much money at stake and it's easy enough for them to switch to trafficking cocaine / heroin / meth. Any reason to think it won't just continue on pace?

<comment><USER3> Sure, and even legalizing all drugs in the U.S. and the Americas won't fix the problem, since cartels have other sources of income we will likely never legalize: human trafficking, extortion, etc. The full solution will involve painful long term reforms to the political and economical institutions of the countries involved (at least I know it will for Mexico), solving centuries long issues with structural income inequality[1], access to opportunities, race and class divisions, etc, etc.

But we are talking about closing a big revenue stream for the cartels, almost certainly one of the two or three biggest they have, maybe even the largest, just by lifting the prohibition on marijuana. That's not only a step in the right direction, it is a rather big one. In the long term, treating drug addiction as a medical / consumer protection issue in the US rather than primarily a law enforcement one, will be a huge boon towards the future of both nations (and, again, other nations in the Americas that I am not excluding but for which I feel less qualified to speak about).

In short: it won't magically fix the problem, but I do believe it will likely reduce the number of deaths and put us in a path towards a solution.

[1] For the HN libertarian crowd, I don't mean solving income inequality in the sense that everybody should make the same regardless of economic output (although I do believe on a safety net), I mean changing a centuries long setup in which class mobility is near zero and strongly correlated with race, and where most large scale "entrepreneurship" in the country is based of political connections (see telecommunications and media industries in Mexico for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Weed makes people far more cautious, analytical and contemplative, which is not good for businesses that depend on poor impulse control.

Edit: Folks are reading my comment as "weed makes you too smart to gamble" instead of "weed changes your personality in ways that aren't conducive to gambling (relative to alcohol)."

<comment><USER6> I doubt that weed makes you 'far more cautious' and 'analytical'. Weed severely impairs judgement, motor control and short-term memory for the duration of the high.

Look, Marijuana is okay, but let us not fantasise about positive effects.

<comment><USER7> You're both right - MJ makes you far more cautious and analytical, but not necessarily more correct. AKA paranoid

Either way, the "impulse buy" reflex is significantly stronger with alcohol than MJ, according to myself and the anecdotes of most everyone I've talked to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I take it he loses money if gamblers also smoke marijuana?

I live in Puerto Rico. Ostensibly the case is that we are Catholic and religious. If you read a little more, you get that lots of people __possess __or __buy __or __sell __, but nobody wants to admit it. Then why is the government sustaining such a policy?

The truth is, there must be some people who are obliquely or directly benefiting the sale, distribution and consumption of illegal marijuana. That these same people lose money once marijuana (even medical marijuana) becomes legalized.

Smoking, sugar, alcohol, firearms, ... all these guys have lobbyists in DC or otherwise in order to get their way.

<comment><USER9> I'd venture to bet its more likely that people are more likely to go to the casino and have a few beers than go to the casino and have a few joints. Marijuana generally makes people more relaxed and content to stay at home rather than venture out.

Furthermore, someone who is drunk and gambling, will likely make many dumb decisions that are profitable for the casino. It's a lot easier to get a gambler to continue gambling (and losing money) by feeding him more booze. Give him more weed and he'll just fall asleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "wealthy individual donors and small businesses, along with drug policy advocacy groups, have funneled far more dollars to the opposition than casinos..." That seems a bit disingenuous when it goes on to say in the next sentence "Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is singlehandedly responsible for roughly one-third of all anti-legalization spending this year, a total of $3.5 million in three states so far." I understand that at a basic level, these are private individual donations, instead of donations from some lobbying group, but when that individual is designated a "casino magnate", does it even matter?

</comment><comment><USER11> Why isn't he spending money in Maine? Come on dude, throw away some of your money here too. I love this state - a whopping 79k has been spent in opposition so far. A guy like him could really make a difference. Come November, we'd have legal weed and some extra money in our economy.

<comment><USER12> Has anyone proposed legalization ballot initiatives just to suck in out-of- state ad spending?

<comment><USER11> That's a good question. Probably not in Maine. We like to do things our own way. I'm a transplant and if I learned anything, it's that Mainers really resent outside interests telling us how we should do things. I'm surprised they allow me to vote :)

I think there's some out of state money coming in on our Question 3 (background checks for person to person firearm transfers), in support of Yes. I don't think it has much of a chance of passing, most people I've talked to are sitting here thinking we have the 3rd lowest crime rate in the US, and we have bigger problems that actually need solving (opioid crisis, lack of white collar jobs, etc). Others are skeptical that it's a broadly drafted (some say poorly drafted) measure to pretext more searches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sheldon Adelson is an all around horrible person, in addition to his fight against marijuana he is also a huge part of the fight against internet gambling.

Please refuse to use any of his properties for your vacations or conferences. Avoid using the Venetian, Palazzo, and Sands Expo.

<comment><USER14> > he is also a huge part of the fight against internet gambling.

Going on the amount of internet gambling that seems incapable of paying out to winners that doesn't seem a bad starting position.

It's only a couple of days since the UK Gov announced a wide reaching investigation of the systematic cheating of customers.

<comment><USER9> If online casinos were allowed to be run from the US, it would be much easier to hold them to a legal standard.

Given that the US is willing to arrest any executive from an online casino, they end up being based in places like Gibraltar. Now that its nearly impossible for sometime to take legal recourse against them, it makes it much more enticing to cheat, steal, etc.

Allows those casinos to be run in the US, and regulate and tax them, and suddenly, you have a lot of legitimate business vying for customers. You will also gain a lot in taxes, along with a bunch of the religious right claiming "you're ruining society".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Adelson is on the wrong side of of quite a few issues if you look into his many activities. He is almost comically villainous.

<comment><USER16> "the wrong side"? Is that really how you see people who disagree with you?

<comment><USER17> Some issues have a clearly wrong side. Marijuana legalization seems pretty clearly a public good. Laws restricting marriage and whites and blacks, pretty clear. People still resist, but laws restricting gay people from marrying are also similarly obvious right. KKK views about blacks, legal restrictions aimed at black people voting, extremely clear what the right answer is.

<comment><USER16> >Some issues have a clearly wrong side.

Very, very few, and pot legalization isn't one of them. Whether or not it makes sense depends entirely on what you value and what you think the result will be a decade or two from now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Imagine what thousands of really stoned customers at a casino buffet would do. It would bankrupt him!

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy How effective are these ad dollars when competing against presidential and congressional ad campaigns?

</comment><comment><USER19> Probably cutting into his revenue stream.

<comment><USER20> Good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretentious old men playing at running the world. But the world left them a long time ago.

<comment><USER22> I understand how that's an emotionally appealing sentiment, but I'd be disappointed to learn you actually believe it, since it's so wrong as to be useless in deal with the real world.

<comment><USER21> It's gonna get legalized. And then his efforts will be seen as laughable.

<comment><USER22> Then I suppose your sentiment was expressed as a plural because you don't like to bother being precise with your thoughts?

Edit: now I see you were just dropping a reference. That makes your post even less tasteful in my eyes.

<comment><USER21> I'm not here to make friends

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's obvious to me that drug lords are paying him to do this. Casinos are notorious money laundering enterprises. The people who stand to lose the most are propping him up to say this, the drug gangs. Funneling money through a casino operator to support your cause make absolute sense.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know I am in minority here, but I believe cannabis is not good for society and for individuals using it. I've seen in my own family how chronic cannabis use stupefied and lowered once smart, energetic and bright individuals, who now have short term memory issues, constant cough, and reek like skunks.

<comment><USER25> The problem is that it is an on-balance thing.

I don't see how we can make all drugs legal and just say "Hey, if you want to ruin your life with heroin then go for it" because then we have people being violent, robbing, etc. That is, the cost of enforcing is worth it, in a big way.

But with pot, the cost of enforcement is very high, particularly in people's lives disrupted, for a societal cost that is small. It seems to me, even as a non-user, that there are a great number of people who use at least occasionally, and attempting enforcement is sweeping back the tide.

Basically, when everybody does it, then we have effectively decided that it is a societal norm.

<comment><USER26> > "Hey, if you want to ruin your life with heroin then go for it"

The problem is with the "ruin your life" part, not the "heroin" part. If we really want government to get involved, they should get involved when people's lives are being ruined, not when someone is merely making, distributing, or using a substance.</comment></comment></comment>


A preview of the U.S. without pensions - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit-working-in-a-few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without-pensions/ <comment><USER3> This is horrible. A few years ago I realized my parents were way behind on savings and just incessantly nagged them until they got on a good plan. They kicked and screamed the whole time ("You're our son. You can't tell us what to do."), but it's turned out to be one of the best decision I ever made. Next year they are actually going to retire. I dunno what I'd do if they had to work at Wal-Mart just to make ends meet.

Recently, I made this visualization of how US social security benefits are calculated:

[https://lewis500.github.io/socialsecurity](https://lewis500.github.io/socialsecurity)

Before I made it I actually had no idea. I think I might have worked a little harder to earn money when I was younger if I'd understood.

<comment><USER4> Would be nice if the birth year were adjustable.

<comment><USER3> I thought about that but it makes the visualization much more complicated and, moreover, would require forecasting wages way out into the future to be relevant to a millennial. If you had tried to do some wage forecast in 1970 you would've gotten things very wrong, so maybe the same is true today. One day I will add this feature but not soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The average life expectancy in 1950 was 68, meaning that a pension had to > pay out only three years past the typical retirement age of 65. Today, > average life expectancy is about 79, meaning that the same plan would have > to pay out 13 years past typical retirement age.

That's the wrong statistic to use and completely wrong conclusion.

Life expectancy _for a 65 year old_ person in 1950 was another 13.9 years. That rose only to 19.1 years in 2010 (newest number I found at a glance).

All the babies and people dying before age 65 reduce the average life expectancy drastically, but have no bearing on pension payment length.

<comment><USER6> All the people dying before 65 absolutely do have a bearing on pension payment length: If an employer promises someone a pension at 35 and they don't live long enough to collect then the employer doesn't have to fund that commitment. Using life expectancy at 65 would only be valid if the pensions were being promised only to those who had already lived to 65 and at the time they were 65.

<comment><USER5> This is totally an important factor for the pension provider, your are right about that. They will factor in how many people will never reach the payout age, the distribution of payout age, maybe if the spouse is covered too how long they might live, how may people switch their jobs and forfeit the pension etc.

I'd argue this has an impact on the "savings rate" per employee, but not on the average payout length.

<comment><USER6> > I'd argue this has an impact on the "savings rate" per employee, but not on > the average payout length.

Your argument is only correct if we define the average payout length to only factor in those employees who receive at least one check. However the original quote that you claimed was wrong is referring how much the pension has to pay out on average, which is not limited to those who live long enough to collect a payout. Their average payout length of 3 years factors in a whole bunch of $0 payouts, whereas your average ignores all of the zeros.

<comment><USER5> I follow your argument, but I think that's certainly not what the author of the article was intending.

And that's a very hard number to come by, because as I've argued you would have to factor in all other reasons why a pension might have to be paid out longer or not at all.

Certainly "3 years of average payout" must be completely and utterly wrong because this number includes infants etc which were never employed. Infant and child mortality has an enormous impact on average life expectancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Then corporate America changed: Union membership waned. Executive boards, under pressure from financial raiders, focused more intently on maximizing stock prices. ...

Exactly what led corporate America away from pensions is a matter of debate among scholars, but there is little question that they seem destined for extinction, at least in the private sector.

Oh, please. Nobody seriously debates this, the answer is right there. The policy of the federal government, since Reagan, has been to bust the power of unions every chance they get. Just look at the decisions of the NLRB before and after Reagan.

Labor lost power, corporations gained it. First pensions were reduced, then deliberately underfunded, then raided, then eliminated. The government went along with all of that.

<comment><USER8> I second this. We have access to vastly more powerful technology than in 1980 and the GDP of most developed countries is many times what it used to be. We should all be earning at least twice what we did, and we should be working fewer hours, with more benefits. The retirement age should be 60 or even 55 today, maybe younger, and social security should have kept up with inflation to pay more.

All of this would have happened with unions and deciding in favor of labor whenever possible. Instead we did the opposite, and here we are in an unsustainable class war with the ugliest aspects of our past coming back to haunt us.

I am all for ending labor as we know it and letting machines do most of the work. But humans must still be in charge, not capital/corporations/sociopaths/liars/lobbyists and so on.

<comment><USER9> I'm going to keep beating this drum: organize and vote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> World Economic Forum estimates retirement shortfalls in public pension/private pension/individual savings in 2015 at 70 trillion$, and projects nearly half a quadrillion (400 tril) shortfall in 2050, with the lion's share belonging to the US. [1, page 7] Interest rates stuck at the 0 bound (and negative real) for nearly a decade haven't helped. I foresee a bumpy ride figuring out who gets stuck with the bill.

[1] [http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_White_Paper_We_Will_Live_to...](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_White_Paper_We_Will_Live_to_100.pdf) [PDF]

<comment><USER11> Why will the world be so much worse off at 400 trillion instead of 70 trillion?

Presumably "the world" will have many many more folks making more money by then given the rates of economic growth in third world countries. 10B people can cover 400T in 10 years paying just $10 a day.

<comment><USER12> Western world has stopped having as many children, hence why governmemts are dead keen on immigration even though their constituents aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These "company managed" pension schemes have always fascinated me and would seem ripe for corruption / raiding by the company if they're short a few $$$.

Seems like in Australia we're in a pretty good position with "superannuation" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia) being compulsory since 1992 and is typically managed by completely unrelated parties to your employer.

The payments are generally made directly by your employer into the fund of your own choosing.

The biggest thing is once you've had this contributed to YOUR account, it is YOURS (drawable from age 65) and doesn't matter what happens to the fortunes of your employer(s) in the future.

<comment><USER14> That's why independently run 401(k)'s are the best. I'm a trustee of the one for our company, and there's no way I could raid it.

<comment><USER15> Lots of people "raid" it by going to cash in the down-turns in the market and buying in the hyped peaks losing over 50% in the cycle.

<comment><USER14> I think your usage of "raid" is not what is being discussed here. The meaning here is when companies get in trouble, they use loopholes (or downright evil language) in their retirement plans to essentially take the money from employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> IMO a major issue is the expectance of someone else to take care of "me". I know that I'm retired for ~30 out of 80 years of my life and thus have to save ~3/8ths of my income, else starve. (Yes, some modifiers for tax brackets, compounding blah blah...)

In the past people's children were the "investment" that paid the dividends into old age. Now we no longer have children to bear the burden. Yet we spend the normally sacrificed dollars on lattes, world travel, iphones (and whatever icon of excess you choose).

I realize many people say its "hard" to save these days. But I also think there is some spectrum involved with doing what pays vs what one "wants" and ensuring one's lifestyle matches their actual ranked income in a society. (ie, if you earn on the 10th percentile, then you probably should be spending on the 10th percentile on dinners out or whatever icon of excess you want to pick on.)

<comment><USER17> I hear a lot about the nickel and dime stuff on how to save, but most people get eaten up by interest on home and education loans and medical costs. The other issue is interest rates being so low it amounts to a war on savings that neither party seems to willing to do anything about.

<comment><USER18> > The other issue is interest rates being so low it amounts to a war on > savings

I used to think this; then I discovered index funds, and stopped keeping money in a savings account.

<comment><USER15> How did you feel in the 2008 crash? No snark, just wondering how that was versus a savings account.

<comment><USER16> VTI is up ~200% since the bottom. If he bought (dollar cost averaging) and held. Probably feels great.

<comment><USER15> He would feel great now. Just wondering his attitude when his "savings" dropped ~50% 2008-2009. Most people can't handle saving a million dollars over 25 years and have it drop in half over 6 months. The pain is too much. Avoiding this situation (and other reasons) is why pensions are better for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Defined benefit plans are unaffordable, whether for a company or a government. But while defined contribution actually generate great returns, they have the problem that urgent expenses always crowd out saving, particularly for lower income groups (same as it would if income taxes were collected annually, or less frequently). Seems like the optimal solution is to combine the compulsory contribution part of the current social security system with a defined contribution system that can actually generate the income that will be needed. As far as I can tell, the pension system in Chile in the 80's and 90's was like this, and had the additional benefit of generating large amounts of investment capital during its operation which helped economic growth.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile)

<comment><USER11> Why are defined benefit plans _always_ unaffordable?

You don't want people's retirements to be affected by the value of their investment at the moment of withdrawal. Instead you want the benefit to incorporate the expected value at retirement of the investment over the long run.

The problem with many pensions is that the businesses themselves supporting them essentially went belly up as competition, technology and investors took their toll.

<comment><USER20> For company plans, you said the answer. It's silly to assume that your employer will be alive when you are 80 year sold, and also seems like a stupid idea for a company in a completely unrelated business to get into the retirement fund mgmt business.

For states, the reason is population. If your pop doubles every 50 years, then you only need 2 young people to pay for one retiree. If it's the opposite (Japan now, US in a few decades), then you are screwed.

<comment><USER21> So it's a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER22> More like a loan from current workers to be repaid when those workers retire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm missing a detail of the US system ...

> _Years ago, Coomer and his co-workers at the Tulsa plant of McDonnell- > Douglas, the famed airplane maker, were enrolled in the company pension, but > in 1994, with an eye toward cutting retirement costs, the company closed the > plant._

Did the McDonnell-Douglas company not pay into a separate pension fund, or did they raid the fund somehow?

<comment><USER24> It sounds like by closing the plant and stopping the employees reaching retirement age, they massively reduced the amount the employees were eligible to receive. Even if the pension fund was separate, by reducing eligibility this way they company had to pay less into it over the following years.

<comment><USER25> To add to that, this pension (and many others) was structured such that payouts are non-linear based on number of years worked, so for example, you might get:

0-5 years worked: no pension

5-10 years worked: 5% pension

10-20 years worked: 20% pension

30+ years worked: full pension

By preventing workers from being able to work the full 30+ years, they never had to pay the full pension. One of the workers in the story mentions receiving 1/5 of full pension after being laid off due to the closure.

<comment><USER26> The popular marketing reason why the pension disappeared is the factory closed.

The real reason the pension disappeared is the proposed vesting duration was ridiculous. I am older so current jobs have no pension of course, but when I worked jobs with pensions, the vesting duration was typically something like 3 to 5 years for 100% vesting, sometimes only 2 years for 50% vesting. In fact I have a pension from a previous employer projected to be worth $800/month which by then will be about the price of one cup of starbucks coffee...

To make it crystal clear, the pension was eliminated when the vesting duration was moved from perhaps 4 years to 30+ years.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for replying. I found an article about "vesting duration" for US pensions, and if I'm understanding correctly this means that after you leave the job for <N> years, the pension you are entitled to drops to half and (after more years) completely disappears. This seems incredible to me! Surely this would mean that younger workers who work for a company even for a long time but then leave would never collect a pension from that company?

<comment><USER26> The investopedia probably explains it better than I can

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vesting.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vesting.asp)

[https://www.investopedia.com/partner/investopedia/articles/r...](https://www.investopedia.com/partner/investopedia/articles/retirement/112916/pension- vesting-everything-you-need-know.asp)

More like if you work somewhere for enough years, you'll the golden handcuffs of extra bonus, or the flip side if you quit each job after two years you get nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Terrible spot to be in, hoping I will avoid it with a traveling retirement plan (401k). How do other 1st world countries manage elderly workers/people that should no longer work? SS is an option and I don't believe it will go bankrupt, wages of about 125K contribute to SS, anything larger does not. Just have to adjust that limit to keep it where it needs to be. So that helps a little bit.

<comment><USER28> I think most European countries have more generous/realistic state provided, financial retirement support.

<comment><USER29> It varies vastly by country. In France, the state calculates a percent of your income during the 4X years you were working and gives you that as a pension. The estimation can be pretty complicated, but that's fair enough for a one line explanation.

The system will collapse eventually. More and more elderly to support by less and less active workers. The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment (25%) and they will never achieve 40 years of continuous work in their lifetime.

<comment><USER30> > More and more elderly to support

> The younger population is suffering from vast unemployment

It appears there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of idle workers to do it. The fact that both can exist in tandem seems like an indictment of how horribly inefficient our economic systems currently are.

<comment><USER29> Not sure what you mean. Retirees don't create jobs. They just get money handed to them monthly as promised by the pension formula decided decades ago. (that money is supposed to come from taxes on active workers's salaries)

The whole system collapse when taxes are not enough to cover the pensions that were promised. It's a ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER31> That's a problem of demographics and unemployment, not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes are scams, but they do effectively take money from people and give it to other people, which doesn't happen if there's no funds to transfer.

I don't think any country can sustain a 25% unemployment rate for any length of time without it having catastrophic second- and third-order effects. That's the problem, not the concept of taxpayer-funded pensions. All sorts of things are going to be underfunded or otherwise hosed if you're struggling with 25% unemployment for any length of time. Nations have imploded over far less.

<comment><USER29> It's not the percentage for the whole population. It's 25% unemployment for young people. 50% unemployment for young people without higher education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why would I want to be at a company for 30 years with a ridiculous vesting schedule in hopes of getting a pension?

On an unrelated note, the article mentioned in passing that some of these people are in debt paying for their children's college. Why does anyone feel like it's their responsibility to get in debt to put their children through college? Let their children go to a more affordable college, or let them take out debt on their own.

Every financial planner tells you to take care of your own retirement before you worry about your children's college.

I've made a lot of mistakes and made some intentionally choices that in my mid 40s, I don't see a comfortable retirement in my future even at 65. I'm not complaining about it, I like what I do, it's not physically demanding, and as a developer, my job is my hobby. I can't see myself not at least working part time in technology in some form.

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't this the result of diminishing return on the military spending in the US and the now absent pressure form Soviet Union to maintain the paritiy on social benefits?

</comment><comment><USER34> This is the most jarring thing to me when I land in the US. Already at the airport you see security staff, cleaning staff that look like they should have been enjoying retirement for several years.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's nice to know someone can express a dissenting opinion, and still be reasoned with, and not downvoted into oblivion.

Oh. Wait. That's par for the course on HN.

God forbid you think anything different from the hive mind. If you do, you're not welcome here.

<comment><USER36> Huh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Whats with the scrolling on that website...?

</comment><comment><USER38> And the best part is that the next generation will have it even worse. They'll have 75% Social security payments, little chance of building net worth through home purchases and a lifetime of $10/hr jobs.

<comment><USER39> Perversely, it may not be the worst thing if an entire generation decides that building wealth through your primary residence is not the best idea, and forgoes this in their lives and pushes their representatives to repeal the slew of incentives currently written into the tax code.

<comment><USER40> Not if in lieu of homes they invest in nothing at all. If you don't own a home you're paying rent. Rent prices have also increased dramatically so it's not like there's money going into savings.

Personally, I pay more in student loans than every one of my parents, aunts, and uncles pay on ybeir mortgage. I pay 2-3 times more in rent than their mortgage. I might be ok but only because of a high paying tech job. Those at the lower end the scale are absolutely fucked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Here's a fun game for everyone. If you don't save, and your company doesn't save, and your government doesn't save then how the hell do you figure you're going to retire?

<comment><USER42> You can have a "contract of the generations", where the younger generation finances the pensions of the older generation through social security payments.

Many countries do it like that.

<comment><USER29> That's a ponzi scheme. That's what many countries in Europe do and that is currently collapsing.

It takes something like 4 active workers to pay the pension of 1 current retiree. The proportion was fine after the baby boom, it's not anymore and it's getting worse.

<comment><USER43> It's not a ponzi scheme, it's a numbers game. Basically the formula is: X * Y = A * B, where X is the number of retirees, Y the number of years they live past retirement on average, A the number of people who work, and B the number of years an average career lasts.

What is happening in europe is that the right-hand side of the equation is producing a lower number (due to later career starts and less actively working population), which requires reducing the left-hand side accordingly (by increasing retirement age or cutting pensions). The system cannot collapse (there's always a right-hand side), but it can require severe adjustments.

<comment><USER29> The base is a ponzi scheme. Promise to pay people over 65 a guaranteed sum per month and hope that the taxes on working people can fund it.

You're right that it doesn't have to be a ponzi scheme. The government could increase the age of retirement and/or lower the pensions. However that's not possible in practice, it doesn't get you elected and it'd provoke massive strikes for months.

The government would rather accumulate debt for 20 years than cut any pension. Then the next generation has to deal with unfunded pensions and trillions of debt. It's actually possible to go beyond recoverable and collapse because of the non elasticity, this has happened before historically.

<comment><USER44> >"Then the next generation has to deal with unfunded pensions and trillions of debt"

That doesn't make any sense. The next generation could have enough real resources or not. If they have they will be OK, if they don't they will have a problem. Real resources in the future come from investment now, not from "saving money".

Saving money makes sense in a personal perspective, but not as a nation.

<comment><USER29> You can't save money personally. The nation takes 20% of your gross salary to pay retirees. You don't have a choice.

In exchange, the nation promises to give you 80% of your last average salaries as a monthly income after you retire (in half a century) until the end of your life.

These numbers are not linked to real resources and are not adjusted periodically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I got blocked by the paywall, but the same article is here: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit- wor...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/23/i-hope-i-can-quit-working-in-a- few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without-pensions/)

<comment><USER46> OK, we've changed to that from [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/i-hope-i- can...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/i-hope-i-can-quit- working-in-a-few-years-a-preview-of-the-us-without- pensions/2017/12/22/5cc9fdf6-cf09-11e7-81bc-c55a220c8cbe_story.html). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> _Today, Social Security provides only enough for a bare-bones budget, about $14,000 a year on average._

Republicans: This is too much money, we can't afford it, it's take from the rich, give to the poor, these social programs need to end. Grandma deserves to die under a bridge by herself, it's her own fault she didn't work harder or save more.

Me: A bullet to the head of the aging is more ethical than the Republican prescription. Yes, absolutely take the money from the wealthy and keep grandma off the street. Jesus...

<comment><USER35> I'm not saying I have a better answer, but wealth redistribution is theft.

That's every bit as immoral as leaving grandma on the street.

<comment><USER48> When the 8 richest men have as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the planet one might conclude that wealth has _already_ been redistributed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Yet these old folks all voted for trump/GOP. Good luck trying to make a living when they cut social security next year.

<comment><USER50> They voted for Trump because he was saying he is going to bring back jobs while Clinton was not exactly sure what her platform was.

If I am a 50 year man who lost his job, I am going to vote for Trump.

It is just amazing that lot of people including you and Clinton don't understand this simple point.

<comment><USER51> Oh we do. It's just saying you're going to do something vs actually doing it is much different.

It surprises me that Trump supporters can't see beyond words. Hopefully after these four years you will understand that jobs are going to be going away. There is essentially no way to move time backwards to when technology was at its infancy and there were hundreds of jobs.

Instead of supporting candidates who give people a false hope of steel jobs think about different systems to support everyone in the upcoming job armageddon.

<comment><USER50> I am not a Trump supporter, I am not even American, I am just a neutral observer so I can see things without the tribe mentality.

> It surprises me that Trump supporters can't see beyond words.

What was the alternative, Clinton was not sure what her platform was and I agree with you, some of her words were very clear, calling the Trump voter a deplorable. That is not how you win elections.

If you are a 50 year old guy who worked hard all his life and then lost his job because the factory went to China are you going to vote for a guy who says he will bring back jobs or are you going to vote for a lady who could not figure out what exactly was her message (yet was in the news for her controversies) and calling you a deplorable. The choice is simple you will vote for the guy who says he will bring back jobs.

Saying Trump is all words is not the argument you can make when the general public have been hearing empty words from establishment politics for many years and yet making deals to ship their jobs overseas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The fundamental problem with pensions, however you arrange them, is that no one has a crystal ball.

If you were FDR, how could you possibly know that average person will live 10 years longer, or that we're going to end up with birth control and a consequent demographic cliff?

<comment><USER53> > _how could you possibly know that average person will live 10 years longer_

This is not really what happened though, people who made it to working age generally did not live that much longer.

<comment><USER52> So you're saying that they were offering a pension with the expectation that most people would die before they could claim it?

Not so much a dispute as a clarification...

<comment><USER53> I'm saying that life expectancy at birth is a misleading statistic when it comes to gauging the ratio of inputs to outputs on pension programs of any sort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Defined benefit plans, i.e. pensions, are a total disaster. They are premised on a fantasy: that the pension fund will make enough money on the market to to pay its liabilities, or that the backing entity will bail it out if not. Those are bad assumptions. The result is pension funds going broke across the country, and it's just getting started.

Defined contribution plans, 401k's and such, are much more sensible. You set aside a percentage of your income, your employer throws some in for you as well, and you decide how to invest it. You decide what level of risk you want to take with your future wealth, and you reap the gains and losses.

<comment><USER52> I'm not sure 401ks are so great. Many charge ridiculous management fees for funds that track mundane things like the S&P 500, but if you want that employer match, no way around it.

Mostly a case of perfectly intelligent people throwing wads of money into the market on autopilot because that's all the 401k lets you do. Lambs to the slaughter!

edit: Example: Back when I was on 401k, was into a S&P500 fund that had an expense ratio over 1.5%. It may not sound like much, but that's compounded year-after-year. All of the other funds the 401k allowed had equally scandalous expense ratios.

After starting a business, I rolled over into an IRA. Switched to a different S&P500 fund with expense ratio of 0.09%. Same curve, but I keep more of my money.

It would be nice if people had more latitude in what they could put their retirement into--especially when it comes to tangible things, like buildings or equipment--that you can get some value out of even if the market happens to be down when you retire.

<comment><USER55> Yeah the only time it makes sense to have a 401k is if your company matches your contributions.

<comment><USER52> Don't they all have a match?

It would be nice if people could keep the match _and_ have more control over their portfolios. Buy & sell stocks, bonds, commodities, etc. whenever instead of a _very_ small basket of mutual funds that can only be juggled a few times a year.

<comment><USER56> My wife's doesn't have a match per se. Instead the company contributes a lump sum annually that amounts to about 5% of her income. She wouldn't have to contribute anything to get this money and it doesn't count against her annual cap. It is accounted for separately from her contributions, so might technically not be a part of her 401k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Is retirement planning (Live "below your means" and put in 20-30% or more of your salary towards long term investments), and family support (you fund your kids education and parents post retirement needs, and your kids fund your post retirement needs and your grandkids education) such an alien concept for Americans? When you manage it internally, instead of paying interest to a bank, you just have lost opportunity costs of investment within the family.

AFAIK, most Asian countries do work this way. Given American salaries, this should be very easy to manage in US

<comment><USER28> There is lots of Americans who barely get by. I recommend taking a look at "Nickeled and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. So many people simply cannot afford to put that much money aside. To the point of family support: Many Americans move across state lines a few times during their lifetime. That very much weakens family bonds. On top of that it's much harder to take care of your parents alone while your siblings live in different states. It in fact also makes having children harder.

<comment><USER58> ++1 for "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America". A fascinating read, it's the narrative of writer Barbara Ehrenreich as she goes undercover and participates in the minimum-wage economy in the US. It recounts not just her time on the clock, but equally the trials and trade-offs of simply surviving on such incomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > federal judge agreed that McDonnell-Douglas had illegally considered the > pensions in its decision to close the plant. The employees case, presented > by attorneys Joe Farris and Mike Mulder, showed that the company had tracked > pension savings in its plant closure decisions

WTF! So a company is not allowed to consider costs in a cost cutting decision? Was this not a conscious risk an employee took by accepting a job on the chance of pension received if they were not fired before retirement? How is it different from buying a ton of stocks of failing companies and then suing if the price crashes further?

<comment><USER59> It's more like the risk assumed by taking a job and expecting a salary - <USER2> company has to pay you for your work, even if they would rather not.

<comment><USER60> > _It 's more like the risk assumed by taking a job and expecting a salary_

Not really. The case doesn't seem to involve the company trying to default on existing obligations. It involves them projecting future costs and deciding whether to carry them. This is akin to laying off an employee, something most states freely permit, more than defaulting on pay for work already done.

<comment><USER61> I just see it as making promises (pensions) the company was not committed to keep. I'm sure the judge didn't use the word "mendacity " lightly or unadvisedly.

<comment><USER60> The case [1] is an interesting skim. Section 510 of ERISA says "[i]t shall be unlawful for any person to discharge ... or discriminate against a participant or beneficiary for ... the purpose of interfering with the attainment of any right to which such participant may become entitled under the plan (or ERISA)" (¶ 219).

Closing a plant to save money isn't _per se_ illegal (¶ 222). The employer just had to show they had a legitimate reason for closing the plant (¶ 223).

Instead, they kept talking about how the pension plan had _nothing_ to do with the plant's closure (¶ 226). That was not credible (¶ 263). (The plant's employees had helped lobby for a new F-15 contract (¶ 15). There may have been political reasons the company couldn't say "pension costs factored into our decision, though other reasons were prominent, too".)

Since the "Defendant was in the best position to put forth the actual reasons for its decision, if in fact such reasons were legitimate" and it "repeatedly failed to do so, engaging in a pattern of discovery abuse and refusal to respond to proper inquiries by both Plaintiffs and the Court" (¶ 257) the plaintiffs won (§ 4).

It is unclear how cleanly this unusual case generalises to the claim made in the original article.

[1] [https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/FSupp2/...](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/FSupp2/162/1262/2319718/)

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice._</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scott Forstall sells 95% of his vested AAPL shares - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/02/an-apple-ceo-in-waiting-sells-95-of-his-company-shares/ <comment><USER2> The title is link-bait at its worst. An honest title would read:

Scott Forstall sells 95% of his _vested_ AAPL shares

With a subtitle:

... because he's in line to get 5x more shares in the future

He sold 64,151 shares but by 2016 he will have 250,000 restricted stock units that are vested.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great, valid point... Still interesting to me that he unloaded almost all his vested shares. The media was sure to pick up on it and executives often buy back shares to signal confidence.

Maybe he was simply trying to balance his asset allocation. He's definitely not living off $40m, right? It always seems that Apple is sure to outperform, but maybe we'll look back on this as a genius move in a few years.

EDIT: Updated the title to richardburton's suggestion.

<comment><USER2> Frankie, apologies, I didn't mean to suggest that you were responsible for the link-baited titles. Your title correctly reflects the sentiment of the reporting across the board:

"An Apple CEO-in-waiting sells 95% of his company shares"

I am heavily invested in Apple and so I follow them very closely. Data from Asymco gives me even greater confidence in their performance:

[http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen- Shot...](http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen- Shot-2012-05-03-at-5-3-10.33.31-AM.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> if I had as many shares in the pipeline as he does, I think I'd be cashing out $40m to keep me going until my hundreds of millions kick in ;)

<comment><USER4> Everyone should have some FU money -- or an FU portfolio (diversified) -- even if FU does not appear to be in the cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While insider _buying_ is a very strong and clear signal, insider selling happens regularly even at the most successful of companies. Just for reasons of diversification, it's reasonable even for extremely bullish founders or upper management to sell their shares. Buffet was an outlier in his multi- decade practice of keeping over 99% of his wealth in his company's stock.

</comment><comment><USER6> Uh oh. Does Scott know something about the price of the new Apple TV screen that we don't?

<comment><USER7> I would hope that he does, but that likely didn't have anything to do with this sell. He has far more unvested shares waiting in the wings.</comment></comment>


Save time: Why  Clever (YC S12) adds yet another timestamp to our analytics data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/always-a-student/save-sanity-and-time-why-clever-adds-yet-another-timestamp-to-our-analytics-data-ae1c6399e38d <comment><AUTHOR> Calculation for 24 copies of the Library of Alexandria (LOA):

100,000 (moderate number) scrolls * 10,000 words per scroll * 6 bytes per word = 6 GB

Cost of a GB today = ~ 7 cents (again using Matthew Komorowski's data)

Cost of a sandwich: ~ $10

Number of LOAs / sandwich = 10 / (6 * 0.07) ~ 24

Source for LOA: [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gre...](http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/paganism/library.html)</comment>


Don't Forget to Upgrade from iOS7 Beta (instructions) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.braidapp.com/upgrading-from-ios7-beta-to-official-release

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this mistake on iOS6, and swore I wouldn't let it happen again with 7 -- simple instructions, yet so easy to forget you need to move from beta -> release.</comment>


Apple Races to Keep Ahead of Rivals - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/technology/companies/05apple.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> I know this is going to make me sound like a fanboy, but I find the article title amusing. The idea that Apple is "racing" to keep ahead of rivals and feeling the heat is a bit silly. Only recently, a full _two_ years after the original iPhone, are we seeing devices that anyone could really consider competitive with it. Anyone familiar with Apple's culture knows that they have not all been sitting on the beach drinking their Corona's this whole time. If the past is any guide, they've been ruthlessly executing their R&D and product development strategies.

<comment><USER3> "If the past is any guide, they've been ruthlessly executing their R&D and product development strategies."

I read that as "they've been ruthlessly executing their R&D and product developers". But now that Steve Jobs is back at Apple either could be true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If they start making products people don't want, and start losing users, then Apple's strategy will run into problems."

s/Apple's strategy/any company anywhere/

<comment><USER5> I was also going to jump on that line. besides its lack of insight, what I dislike about such lines is that they cast doubt on the company without any basis whatsoever. I'm always reading these kinds of things: _If Microsoft can find the right combination of features, price, design, distribution, marketing, and coolness, Zune may supplant iPod as the it-gift this Christmas and Apple will be in trouble._ WTF!?

<comment><USER6> I think the comment was trying to say "If Apple fails to live up to its incredible standard".

That is a point, since Apple earn its money from unique usability values -- and it isn't obvious it will manage to continue doing that.

You really expect better from NY Times than from e.g. _me_ , but it was a quote from some economist...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> AAPL was on their 70s in january, they're closing today at 145.

Almost doubled!</comment>


History of Computing at Bell Labs (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://research.swtch.com/bell-labs <comment><USER2> > And of course that machine required interesting optimization, because it was > a nice thing if the next program step were stored somewhere -- each program > step had the address of the following step in it, and you would try to > locate them around the drum so to minimize latency

Sounds like the RPC-4000 in the famous "Story of Mel:" [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of- mel.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636134)

A paper covering the earlier period is A History of Computing Research at Bell Laboratories (1937-1975): [http://cm.bell- labs.com/cm/cs/cstr/99.pdf](http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr/99.pdf)

relevant article : [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation- and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html?pagewanted=all)</comment>


Microsoft Band is dead - <AUTHOR> http://betanews.com/2016/10/03/microsoft-band-dead-windows-10-mobile/ <comment><USER2> This is a typical BetaNews "Microsoft thing is dead" post. They put out a Windows Phone is dead post monthly like clockwork.

In reality, the rumors are that they wanted to get the Band running Windows 10 (like everything else Microsoft puts out) rather than the custom firmware it presently has. They had a lot of difficulties getting it to work. If their existing team wasn't proficient at working with Windows 10 so much as the Band-specific software, they may have wanted to change out the team. And obviously, all the delays mean they definitely have nothing to show for 2016 release.

Whether or not they'll still work on a Band 3, of course, is up for debate, but if they intend for their next model to use a completely different software setup, them retiring the existing Band SDK doesn't tell us much.</comment>


CloudKit meets CoreData - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CloudKitSpace/CKSIncrementalStore

<comment><AUTHOR> CloudKit meets CoreData. CKSIncrementalStore is a subclass of NSIncrementalStore which automatically maintains a SQLite local cache (using CoreData) of user's private data on CloudKit Servers and keeps it in sync.</comment>


Show HN: Parenting needs some sanity, so we quit our jobs and built WeSprout - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/02/part-health-tracker-part-qa-community-wesprout-looks-to-bring-sanity-to-parenting/

<comment><USER2> Not sure if a Q&A format is the right format if you want to build a loyal community. It's not that conducive to forming connections and socializing with other parents, which is why most people join sites like these.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's Q&A as well as notes, which are basically blog posts. We think that both will provide a nice structure for increasing relevance over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a parent, but the site looks great and I can definitely see the appeal of this kind of community/service.

Has the WeSprout team spent much time reaching out to parenting bloggers?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not super connected to that community, but we'll be doing our best over the weekend and into next week to make those connections and see where we get. It's definitely on our radar.

<comment><USER3> Good to hear. The TC coverage is a great way to kick things off, but in the long-run, I think investing time in developing a presence in that community is what can really bring you a significant number of signups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, TC is good for us to get a reasonably-sized audience that knows how to handle a young product, in case we run into glitches or interaction friction. As we feel better about its broad applicability, we'll do our best to do exactly what you just described.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Color Film of London From 1902 Now Fully Restored - <AUTHOR> http://exp.lore.com/post/31664092832/researchers-at-the-uks-national-media-museum <comment><USER2> I wish someone like the creator of Curiosity Descent footage ( <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esj5juUzhpU> ) could get their hands on the three separate RGB channels and combine them manually. The frames did not seem to be overlaid properly and combining 1R + 2B + 3G as 1F, 2B + 3G + 4R as 2F etc. caused offsets in every frame.

<comment><USER3> That Curiosity descent video was amazing. Here's an even better side-by-side with "director's cut" captions explaining what's being done: <http://youtu.be/pjeHZ9poew4>

Thanks for sharing. But in answer to your question - the RGB channels are there - you can download the h264 vid and decompose (sure, you'll some quality, but that's not the real blocker). The real issue is the time - if you believe him, the Mars Curiosity guy says it took him a month to pull that off: _"It took 29 days from start to finish, working full-time on it for the last week. This was the most laborious media project that I've ever done. But I don't regret a minute of it. "_ , so you'd have to convince him to do it..

But you can probably PM him on Reddit if you're serious enough ;)

<http://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=bard_canning>

<comment><USER4> Thanks - someone just did which is how I found this post.

<comment><USER5> Great job! really amazing what you could extract from that footage!. There is only one thing that I find could be improved a bit ( I am no expert by the way, just a video aficionado): at 1´50" when the jet from the rockets hits the floor, you can clearly see that in the original footage but you can not in your version till 4 or 5 seconds later, but the impressive first burst is lost(I imagine that is a trade off of the morphing). Any way really impressive work! Nasa must hire you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Direct link: [http://nationalmediamuseumblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/edwa...](http://nationalmediamuseumblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/edward- raymond-turner-discovery-re-writes-history-of-early-film/)

Also previously submitted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4513662>

</comment><comment><USER7> Amazingly, not that different from the first color TV prototyps and modern-ish DLP tvs in how they render the image.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_television#All- mechanical...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_television#All- mechanical_color)

[http://www.amazon.com/Color-Wheel-Samsung-DLP-H- Series/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Color-Wheel-Samsung-DLP-H- Series/dp/B001CTNRX0)

</comment><comment><USER8> Funny: while the Macaw and the director's children were in brilliant color, the panorama of London was black-and-white. Why? Because London was black-and- white. Black cars, black clothes, grey stone buildings. Not the best subject for a color film, but interesting historically.

Also: not only first color film, but first color-film director, actors.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am I misunderstanding something or is the animation in the video clip at around 3:00 wrong? There it looks as if a single frame is exposed to all three colors sequentially, while really the color disk should be rotating in a way that ensures that a frame always represents the same color while moving?

<comment><USER10> The animation is incorrect: The color wheel has the colors "moving" up and the film moving down. When a red frame enters from the top, it should be projected as red for all three of its appearances on the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> After looking at the film, I suspect that some more restoration work could get rid of the color smearing.

<comment><USER12> If you watch the explanatory video, you see that successive frames were subject to different filters. A spinning color filter (blue, green, red) ran in front of the film, and within each set of three frames, you had successive shots filtered for blue, green, and red. In any scene in which there was motion of either the subject or the camera, you'll then see a slight mis- registration of each of the three component colors. It's an artifact of the process.

Modern film works by combining all three colors on a single spool of film and bringing out the color through the development process. An alternate method would be to shoot with three separate lenses onto three separate frames, though you'd then get parallax color artifacts (as with the Prokudin-Gorskii process, posted to HN recently).

<comment><USER11> I understand why the color mismatch exists. I just think that can be corrected for, even if it is done by hand frame by frame.

Since the information _is_ on the film, I don't think this would be false restoration.

I see it as akin to projects that try to remove scratches and damage by merging in undamaged sections from previous and following frames.

<comment><USER8> Progressive-scan DVDs do precisely this kind of correction.

<comment><USER10> This film is very different from interlaced video. Interlaced video fields (the two parts of a single frame) are captured at different points in time. This film has frames captured at different points in time. The similarity ends here.

With interlaced video, the two fields make a single frame. With this film, every frame is displayed three times: First, with the two frames that precede it; next, with the one that precedes it and the one that follows; lastly, with the two that follow. Every frame (with the exception of the beginning and the end) would be displayed three times.

Now, we can certainly create our own "full color" frames by successively combining every three frames (1-2-3; 2-3-4; 3-4-5; 5-6-7; e-t-c) but now, I believe, we either have to have some intelligence in software to find parts from other frames that can be moved and morphed to align with preceding frames; or we need a human to manually move and morph these bits of each of our new "frame."

Not precisely the same as converting interlaced to progressive scan.

<comment><USER8> Ok, the frame construction is different. But the video processing issue is the same. Captures from different points in time need to be integrated to avoid the edges blurring (or feathering with interlacing). Signal processing algorithms attempt to do feature and edge detection and realign them in the composite frame.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Taksim Solidarity Press Release 5 June 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/2013/06/taksim-solidarity.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> "Her is some first hand report that came in on another list, source should be trusted, as the sender cooperates with EDRi "

<http://cryptome.org/2013/06/turkey-situation.htm>

"Soon, I know, religious reactionaries (not all religious people are reactionary) will attack demonstrators."</comment>


Google Cloud charging for Kubernetes Clusters beginning June 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/pricing <comment><USER2> This looks like a repost.

Comments are being made in: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22485625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22485625)

<comment><USER3> This submission has a more canonical source.

<comment><USER4> We'll set the URL on that one to the canonical source. I think it's fairer to credit the original submission.

Edit: the original text of that submission is now here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22486551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22486551).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey everyone. Seth from Google here. There's another parallel thread at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22485625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22485625) and I've responded to items there. I'll try to respond to items here as well.

<comment><USER6> Why did you change your profile from "Developer Advocate" to "Engineer" ?</comment></comment>


AT&T Must Pay $100M for Supposedly Slowing "Unlimited" Data - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/at-t-must-pay-100-million-for-supposedly-slowing-unli-1711980185

<comment><USER2> What do they mean by "Supposedly"? AT&T admitted that they did it and said that the FCC knew about it and said it was OK.

 _" We will vigorously dispute the FCC's assertions. The FCC has specifically identified this practice as a legitimate_ and reasonable way to manage network resources for the benefit of all customers, _and has known for years that all of the major carriers use it. "_

</comment><comment><USER3> This was posted yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9733841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9733841)</comment>


"Phone" Is Just an App; Why Regulate It? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/bretswanson/2012/12/12/phone-is-just-an-app-why-regulate-it/

<comment><USER2> Phone is not just an app and that's a baffling stance to take.

I have no idea what the author wants when they talk about reducing regulation.

Regulation of telephone industry controls what they (and others) can do with the traffic. That's a good thing.

There's a bunch of wireless regulation.

There's a bunch of anti-monopoly regulation.

Since telephone companies have demonstrated a willingness to break the spirit of anti-competition laws (mobile bandwidth sell off collaboration) and currently engage in anti-competitive practices (baffling pricing plans preventing any kind of comparison) I'm pleased that they're regulated.

I guess there should be room for rapid change of outmoded regs - or that companies should be allowed to substitute better for existing (eg, when replacing cable have the choice to fit fibre rather than replacing with copper).</comment>


An unsolved Renaissance murder mystery - <AUTHOR> http://www.historytoday.com/catherine-fletcher/murder-vatican <comment><USER2> 3 upvotes over three hours and it makes the front page? A murder story from the renaissance?

What did dang mean by this?

<comment><USER3> The person who submitted this has 7066 karma. I would be surprised if it has nothing to do with that.

<comment><USER2> I had an account previously with karma in that range and never saw anything like that. Looking back at previous submissions, they appear to be historically oriented. Maybe the account got flagged as interesting on that account.

On the other hand, three votes over three hours is a pretty insanely low bar, especially for a non-technical article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ezio Auditore did that, problem solved. LOL</comment>


China announces 25% tariffs on $16B worth US goods - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/08/china-announces-25percent-tariffs-on-16-billion-worth-of-us-goods-including.html <comment><USER2> China's economy needs Western imports far, far more than the West needs Chinese imports, they're likely to break first. The short-term impact could be quite painful on both sides, but things will turn out fine for the US if they stay the course. And someone needs to, China has played protectionist games unchecked for far too long.

<comment><USER3> _China 's economy needs Western imports far, far more than the West needs Chinese imports, they're likely to break first._

I don't think so. China has a huge amount of power over the US economy[1].

 _What Happens If China Called in Its Debt Holdings_

 _China would not call in its debt all at once. If it did, the demand for the dollar would plummet. This dollar collapse would disrupt international markets even more than the 2008 financial crisis. China 's economy would suffer along with everyone else's._

China could crash the American economy any time they want. It'd hurt them, but it'd hurt America a lot more. Especially because oil exporters would immediately switch to doing oil trade in Euros, which would make it _exceptionally_ hard for the dollar to recover.

[1] [https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-to-china-how-much- does-i...](https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-to-china-how-much-does-it- own-3306355)

<comment><USER4> If you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you.

If you owe the bank a billion dollars, you own the bank.

<comment><USER5> That's not how that saying goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honest question: If some Chinese goods become "too expensive" because of the tariff, wouldn't some other country's goods become the new more affordable one?

If so, does anyone here know who's next in line after China?

ps: i'm already looking for a potential alternative to AliExpress to buy integrated circuits :)

<comment><USER7> This sounds awful, we have technology in china that costs millions to replace.

My company is seriously hurting, where last year we have our best profits in decades, this last quarter was survival.

I hate money in politics, but I'm starting to think that big companies will be supporting politicians that will end these tariffs.

<comment><USER8> Your company was on its way to export your job to China next, you know, to reach another profit record.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of all the nutty, anxiety-inducing and self-destructive things administration is doing right now, this trade war with China leaves me least concerned. In fact I'm curious to see where it leads. Change my mind?

<comment><USER10> This was an interesting read: [https://piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy- watch/we-know...](https://piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/we- know-what-causes-trade-deficits).

<comment><USER9> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good on China. I'm glad China is reacting to the ridiculous actions of the US. Is everyone in these comments shortsighted in thinking that this is good for the long term? The US does not benefit from these huge trade tariffs on China. Protectionism is not a good idea. It'll only slow job growth in the US.

<comment><USER12> Why wouldn't be good for the long term? If we correct our trade deficit with China(it's 5:1 right now) how is that against our interests?

China has been playing by their own set of rules from the rest of the world and it's time to end it.

<comment><USER13> > If we correct our trade deficit with China(it's 5:1 right now) how is that > against our interests?

Why is a trade deficit bad? Is there some reason the capital account surplus needs to flow out instead of in? What negative effect do you perceive the trade deficit as having in the economy?

Trade deficits are basically neutral. They fund the foreign investment in the US and purchases of US bonds by foreign governments.

<comment><USER14> There are pros and cons to any complicated issue.

The biggest worry over a trade deficit that I'd have are National Security implications due to the dependance on trade with that county. To explain why that would matter, consider the following:

\- Because of the much lower wages and regulatory costs, manufacturing here in the U.S. seems to have been strangled in the last few decades and mostly moved over to China.

\- This has caused a shift in the way the U.S. economy works, with cheap parts / goods from China being considered a given and a transition to businesses that depend on those cheap imports.

\- Once our economy wholly depends on that overseas manufacturing in China, that gives China large leverage over us because we don't have the factories here in the U.S. anymore to pick up the slack if China stopped trading with us and instead found another buyer for their goods.

\- MUCH more importantly though, is the affect this dependance on a foreign nation would have on us if China decided to do things that we find reprehensible in the world. Think about what Russia did with Crimea. Now imagine China doing something similar. With Russia we were able to slap strong economic sanctions on them... but if our economy is strongly intertwined that makes taking any strong stance against that nation extremely difficult. I don't think anyone wants their future and safety dependent on strangers from a different society that have different cultural values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Chinese market is down. US market is up. I don't think this is going to end well for China.

<comment><USER16> Luckily for their leaders, they don't need to worry about elections.

<comment><USER17> Elections? The least violent outlet for social unrest?

Yeah, China doesn't have to worry about elections.

<comment><USER16> The Tienanmen Square protests weren't very violent for the party leaders, same can't be said for the protesters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Makes sense, a very rational response really.

<comment><USER2> Not sure why you're being downvoted here, it's absolutely true. They'd be mad not to enact their own tariffs in response. How long it can carry on before one side backs down is the real question here.

<comment><USER19> I heard a claim in a podcast the other day that I'm not able to put my hands on (it may have been EconTalk or Vox's Weeds) where someone claimed that trade is generally so beneficial to the recipient that even if your partner puts tariffs on your goods that retaliation is just shooting yourself in the foot purely for appearances. I wish I could provide a link or more details but there does seem to be an economic case for non-retaliation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone (or a link) explain how these tariffs actually work in practice? As in, what does "25% tariffs on $16B" mean, exactly?

<comment><USER21> It means that if your product is affected, upon entering China a 25% levy must be paid, effectively making it's price 25% more expensive.

<comment><USER22> $16B is an estimation of the value of the imported goods in recent years that will be affected by that tariff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good. Cargo ships are absolutely terrible for the environment: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/18/dirty- diesel...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/18/dirty-diesel-ships- worst-offenders-pollutionwatch)

</comment><comment><USER24> Note, it is "only" $16B. I think, China by can do by far a more painful bite with embargoes, and export tariff, than the other way around

</comment><comment><USER25> What is the net outcome of a trade war? Is it just money shifting around?

I'm not squeamish about putting some pain on China, but who's to say they won't resume the same tactics later on?

<comment><USER26> One consequence is the reduction of trust and perceived-value in the global economy, which reduces our capacity for investment and growth*

As far as I can tell, as long as the economy runs super well and everybody trusts that it'll continue to do so, we are all able to collectively defer debt among ourselves to invest in augmenting our production capacity right now. In practice this means people trust that the work (or product) that they are doing (or delivering) now can be payed later, so they can wait to be paid. Meanwhile that work (or product) can be put to use _right now_ to increase production as a whole.

I'm certain someone with a more formal grasp of macroeconomics can explain this better.(Maybe even yourself, if that was a rhetorical question)

* many caps apply, and IMO foremost the accelerated consumption of natural resources is the most critical one. Eternally growing economies mean eternally accelerating change of the natural environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This isn't a "trade war." It's a national security negotiation. But you know? I think maybe trade wars _are_ "easy to win," as Trump said.

</comment><comment><USER28> So dropshipping GGWP?</comment>


How to Learn Pandas - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/how-to-learn-pandas-108905ab4955 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all,

I am the author of the article and have spent the last 18 months teaching data exploration with pandas. I put together a step-by-step guide on how to learn and eventually master it. This is the same advice I give to my students.</comment>


After ban on 59 Chinese apps, Indian government blocks 47 more - <AUTHOR> https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/after-ban-on-59-chinese-apps-government-blocks-47-more/articleshow/77192075.cms <comment><USER2> India's apparently just lost building a new railway between Chabahar, Iran and Afghanistan following a huge security and development deal between Iran and China.

May be related...

<comment><USER3> Iran officials said it was fake news

<comment><USER2> Well, we'll see when it's done. Iran obviously does not want to do anything against India, including make them lose face, and they probably don't want to become too reliant on China either, however it is obvious that China is much better positioned to develop a strong partnership with Iran.</comment></comment></comment>


How Vulkan maps to mobile tile-based GPUs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/tiling-positive-or-how-vulkan-maps-to-powervr-gpus <comment><USER2> For $50 in the US, you can buy a Nexus Player and experiment with Vulkan 1.0.0 on PowerVR on Android (with an Atom quad-core 64-bit CPU).

<comment><USER3> Can you provide more details, which model ?

<comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/nexus/player/](http://www.google.com/nexus/player/)

Although it looks like it's mostly out of stock everywhere now. _sigh_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone aware of Vulcan support for desktop gpus from nvidia or amd?

<comment><USER5> NVIDIA recently updated their mainline driver to support it on Windows and Linux. AMD's support is in beta driver and only for Windows.

<comment><USER6> I don't know how NVIDIA's linux driver is structured but I'm curious if they use a separate Vulkan .so file like NVIDIA's OpenGL library which one has to make sure is used instead of Mesa.

<comment><USER7> The good news is that Vulkan was designed with a multi-GPU (vendor) use case in mind so there is a generic "loader" that you use to load vendor-specific Vulkan implementations for each GPU your application renders with.

<comment><USER6> So the loader knows what hardware is going to process it and therefore uses the right driver. Is that correct? Trying to imagine how it might work.

<comment><USER7> When you create a Vulkan context you first need to enumerate the rendering devices on the system and select the one you want to use. You can actually explicitly use multiple contexts for different devices in your application, e.g. using the IGP for compute tasks while doing the main rendering on a dedicated GPU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this mean Vulkan API support on the new MIPS Creator Ci40 dev boards?

<comment><USER9> The Ci40 boards are headless, so they have no graphics support at all.</comment></comment>


84-year-old alligator rumored to have been Hitler's dies in Moscow - <AUTHOR> https://www.dawn.com/news/1559345/84-year-old-alligator-rumored-to-have-been-hitlers-dies-in-moscow <comment><USER2> As an aside, Dawn is an interesting organization. It's one of the oldest and largest circulation English language newspapers in Pakistan. If you ever have reason to visit Pakistan, I recommend picking up a paper copy of it and reading through it. It provides a fascinating perspective on what's going on economically and politically that you might not find on the Internet.

In terms of its role as an old and well respected newspaper in Pakistan, it's sort of like the New York Times or Washington Post.

</comment><comment><USER3> > he escaped when the zoo was bombed in 1943. His whereabouts were unknown > until 1946, when British soldiers found him

Extraordinary that an alligator could survive for over two years in wartime Berlin. Where did it live, what did it eat?

<comment><USER4> There are several rivers, small lakes and many nature in and around the Berlin Zoo. Probably wasn't that hard to find a living ground at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are alligators known to become that old?

<comment><USER6> Most of them die as hatchlings, but if they reach adulthood, they tend to live 35-50 years in the wild.

The oldest living alligator in captivity has been in a zoo for 84 years, but was an adult when they got him so he's at least 3 or 4 years older than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> See you later.....alligator

</comment><comment><USER8> hitlergator... half squamate, half furrier.

There is a film here waiting to be created. Velocipastor has set the bar too high in any case.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for "VelociPastor", 5.2 on IMDb, got to be worth a punt ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So based on the alligator entry in Wikipedia, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator), alligators are native only to US in China. Given the geographic distance, how is it possible that: a. they are the same species, or b. somehow they migrated through the Bering Sea.

<comment><USER11> There are only six sentences in the article, of which two are:

"Saturn was born in the United States and later sent to the Berlin Zoo, from which he escaped when the zoo was bombed in 1943. His whereabouts were unknown until 1946, when British soldiers found him and gave him to the Soviet Union".

RIP Saturn.</comment></comment>


Exxon Mobil announces company's proven reserves increased by 133% - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/exxon-found-way-more-oil-than-it-produced-in-2009-and-has-been-doing-it-for-16-years-2010-2

<comment><USER2> " _[...] Exxon, who has been accused in the past of being too conservative in terms of exploration and development, has been finding more oil than it produces for each of the last 16 years, to the dismay of peak oil proponents._ "

Will the Limit to Growth crowd _ever_ give up?</comment>


Good User Experience Means More Than A Good Product - <AUTHOR> http://blog.statuspage.io/user-experience-means-more-than-a-good-product

<comment><USER2> I didn't get any skittles. :) But seriously, statuspage.io is amazing. It solves a problem that startups don't have time to execute on correctly, but having a status page is a must. Well done Scott and Danny.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Justin. Looks like we weren't able to find your address the first time around. Email me and we'll get some skittles + swag sent your way :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the Olark, trick. We actually have it fire a notification to us whenever a rails exception is thrown. (which might make you able to reach out even quicker)

</comment><comment><USER5> At the end of it all, any business should be about creating a great connection between the end user and their solution. By humanizing the solution, and making it so much more approachable, you make yourself distinct, in a way that a rival can never beat, especially if they have tons more scale. Agree with this article entirely.

</comment><comment><USER6> Love, love love this post. Your wrap up is the kicker - on the other side of the screen is a human being. Recognize it, respect it and do the kinds of things you'd do for someone you met in person who was giving your business the time of day. This is an inspirational post, thanks so much for sharing it :)

</comment><comment><USER7> A great and inspiring article; who wouldn't like to feel special by getting some attention from the companies you do business with... it's a great and relatively inexpensive way to make a big impact.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some part reminded me excerpt of "Do things that don't scale" from Paul Graham in the way to create this "real" relation with the user

</comment><comment><USER9> Love this post! Really don't think it's about what / how you communicate but the thought that is behind it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great user experience often is / should be the product.</comment>


Mozilla Port Blocking - <AUTHOR> https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/PortBanning.html#portlist <comment><AUTHOR> Didn't know until now there is a list of ports restricted in all major browsers blocked by default... [https://www- archive.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/PortBanning....](https://www- archive.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/PortBanning.html#portlist) [https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/ne...](https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/net_util.cc?view=markup)</comment>


Ask HN: Which is a good iPad app for Hacker News - <AUTHOR>

I have seen a few; even paid for one. But they crash, are slow and I end up back to the browser. I miss all the gesture UX. <comment><USER2> There is no perfect HN iPad app. I bought all of them but there is only 1 good designed from usability perspective, it's called Hacker News HD for iPad but it crashes after using it non-stop more than 1 hour or so without restarting app. Sometimes you need to delete and reinstall. So I tired of it, now I made a Homescreen bookmark for the website, it's the best way to browse HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like news:yc on iOS. I've only used it on an iPhone, so I can't speak as to how it works on an iPad. Even if it was just scaled up, though, I think it's still a great app.</comment>


Just your typical New Mexico deep-learning startup spun off from a national lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3045076/tech-forecast/just-your-typical-new-mexico-image-recognition-startup-spun-off-from-a-governm

<comment><USER2> Great article, is there any place where I can read more about the technology behind the company?

<comment><USER3> This is Mark Johnson, the CEO. Check out: [https://medium.com/@DescartesLabs/hello- world-f2215d4dec90](https://medium.com/@DescartesLabs/hello- world-f2215d4dec90)

<comment><USER2> Great, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>