Extreme poverty in America: read the UN special monitor's report - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/15/extreme-poverty-america-un-special-monitor-report <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15939995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15939995)

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of a series, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Direct link to full report: [http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?Ne...](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533&LangID=E)

<comment><USER4> > I have spent the past two weeks visiting the United States, at the > invitation of the federal government, to look at whether the persistence of > extreme poverty in America

I'm confused. This statement makes it sound like Philip Alston is a third party investigating the US on behalf of the UN, however the top results on Google indicate he's an employee and beneficiary of US-based federally-funded institutions.

<comment><USER5> Well, yes - but where is the confusion ?

<comment><USER4> I guess its my fault for being ignorant of how the UN chooses who does these reports, but I didn't expect someone with such close ties to the US to be writing reports about the US. For instance if this was "extreme poverty in Russia" I would be surprised to find Moscow State University faculty as the author. Although now that I know better I probably won't be as surprised in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having read the full report, this is an extremely damning and bleak view on how USA treats its poor on every level: employment, disability, law enforcement, healthcare, race, gender, and media depiction. I believe if there is one thing to take away from this is the following: This is not purely about what we can see (housing, dilapidation, "single mom" stereotypes) but also what we cannot see (poverty on full-time employment, incarceration rates, healthcare).

</comment><comment><USER7> Whether you agree or disagree with it on a moral level, eventually the tides are going to turn where the government is going to tax the rich and give to the poor just because the poor are going to so vastly outnumber "the rich" that they are going to vote a true populist into power.

Red state representatives will only be able to appease the masses by blaming people who don't look like them and quoting scripture for so long.

Once they toughen illegal immigration and can't use the boogeyman of "Mexicans taking their jobs" or the evil Muslim non American former President trying to implement Sharia law" something is going to give.

<comment><USER8> Let's hope so. There has to be a reckoning... Income inequality HAS to be a bubble... the rich getting richer at everyone else's expense has to end someday right?

Let's hope it's amicably via someone like Bernie Sanders as President rather than through a war that the poorest have no chance of winning. Numbers don't matter when it's pitchforks verses tanks.

<comment><USER7> Don't get too excited. It only takes around $140,000 household income to be in the top 15%. When "they" start voting to redistribute wealth they will come after software engineers, doctors, lawyers and a lot of two income earners who don't think of themselves as "the rich".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In ever increasing ways the US is more comparable to Developing countries than to Developed countries.

I wonder when it will officially be downgraded and recognized as such.

Remember, the first step to fixing a problem is admitting there is one.

</comment><comment><USER10>
      About 55.7% of the U.S. voting-age population cast ballots
      in the 2016 presidential election. In the OECD, the U.S.
      placed 28th in voter turnout, compared with an OECD
      average of 75%.  Registered voters represent a much
      smaller share of potential voters in the U.S. than just
      about any other OECD country. Only about 64% of the U.S.
      voting-age population (and 70% of voting-age citizens) was
      registered in 2016, compared with 91% in Canada (2015) and
      the UK (2016), 96% in Sweden (2014), and nearly 99% in
      Japan (2014).

This is a comment from the report itself. This comment was probably the one that stood out to me the most. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the case that disenfranchisement of the poor would always or almost always lead to a society that doesn't properly care for its less well off.

<comment><USER11> The poor and minorities have been systematically disenfranchised recently in many states, since they tend to vote against the party currently in power (especially minorities in red states).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The reason why there are homeless in SF and other US cities is because of rent-seeking: a market failure which creates artificial scarcity in housing through zoning density restrictions, overuse of historic landmark status, and overregulation.

It is emotionally convenient (esp. for main-stream media) to blame President Trump for everything, but it is typically local city councils, usually Democratic and not Republican, that is responsible for the rent-seeking. The results are housing scarcity, the high costs of housing, renters paying much more they would in an efficient market, and landlords getting far more money than they would get in an efficient market.

Japan fixed this problem by having federal laws that overrode local laws that supported rent-seeking to disallow zoning density restrictions. The results: in 2014, 140,000 housing units built in Tokyo vs 20,000 in NYC and less than 90,000 in all of California.

The lesson: don't blame President Trump. Seek out and destroy rent-seeking market inefficiencies. Let the market do its thing and you'll see far more affordable housing. Japan has already demonstrated this fact.

<comment><USER13> I think solving the poverty crisis in the U.S. requires a few insights to become broadly accepted:

\- There are many causes of this systemic poverty and no specific regulation or deregulation can fix it. Only broad systemic change can lead to genuine improvement.

\- The causes and fixes of the poverty crisis are not partisan. Placing either blame or solution with one political party is uninformed and counterproductive.

\- America must fix its income inequality to fix its poverty. Tax hikes for the rich are unavoidable. There are no free lunches or quick fixes. Everything has been tried before somewhere in the world and the only proven anti-poverty strategy is wealth redistribution.

\- Things can always get worse, passively waiting until they do is actively contributing to the problem.

<comment><USER14> I'm curious how you can reconcile your second and third bullet points. If tax hikes on the rich are an unavoidable part of the solution, one party just rammed through a huge tax cut for the rich and the other party did everything they could to stop it. It can be argued that the Democrats don't really care about fixing income inequality and that they like to use it as a talking point more so than they like to actually make progress, but to pretend that the Republicans are anything less than a roadblock to fixing this issue seems disingenuous if you believe what you said in the third bullet point.</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo CEO Mayer Is Delusional and Must Go - <AUTHOR> http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/10/21/2015/yahoo-ceo-mayer-delusional-and-must-go <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I don't think Yahoo is doing well and I think Marissa is not the leader people were hoping she would be.

From the few company announcements I listen to, it seems common for the CEO of the company to be emphasize the good, and de-emphasize (or omit) the bad. Anything less than great confidence is perceived as weakness, and the last thing a CEO wants to do is imply to shareholders that they don't know what they're doing.

Of course, I don't believe her words excuses her poor performance. Rather, it's important to recognize that her words are rhetoric: not necessarily things she believes but things she must say in light of the various pressures acting on Yahoo.

<comment><USER3> I agree. But, as a potential shareholder, let's point out the elephant in the room: Yahoo is not doing good. What is being done about that? If all you do is emphasize the positives, I have to wonder if you're taking the bad seriously.

<comment><USER2> I agree as well: although, from what I've read, it seems she's taking the bad seriously. Seriously enough that some screws are getting loose:

      She began to read.

     "Bobbie had a nickel all his very own. Should he buy some candy or an ice cream cone?"

      Mayer held the book up, to show the employees the illustrations.

      "Should he buy a bubble pipe? Or a boat of wood?"

      Another illustration.

      "Maybe, though, a little truck would be the best of all!"

      Employees in URLs exchanged looks. At their desks, employees in remote offices grew confused.

      What was Mayer doing?

Source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer- yahoo-](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-yahoo-) nicholas-carlson- book-excerpt-2014-12

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yahoo is a content provider, unlike Facebook, which is merely a host. When you both host and produce content, you obviously need more people employed.

But then again, the author does not consider yahoo one of the most visited webpages online. or at least he seems to think it's a joke when Marisa says that yahoo is a top destination for millions of people.</comment>


How to delete Facebook and not lose your friends and photos - <AUTHOR> https://ronaldlangeveld.com/deleting-facebook/ <comment><USER3> I just wanted to say that I walked away from Facebook about a year and a half ago now. I didn't delete it, I just logged out and uninstalled the mobile app. It's all been totally fine. The most social social media I use now is reddit, where I'm more just talking to people. I don't post status updates anywhere, and often amazing things happen to me that I never tell anyone about. I eat great meals and don't share. I became vegetarian and am going vegan and almost all of the people I would have told before have no idea, but it doesn't matter at all. I'm just living my life, and when cool things happen I share them with the people I'm around.

With the continued leaks and breaches on Facebook, I'd like to do what the author does here. I do want to download the information, but then I'd like to delete my account.

I still wish there was some kind of social media platform like Facebook from 2008, but it's not that big of a deal. I'm glad I don't get stressed by some app on my phone all the time. People who want to talk to me email or text now.

I think social media could work. But until then, consider letting go of the existing platforms are stressing you out. We do just fine without sharing our day with the internet, as long as we have good people in our lives.

<comment><USER4> >when cool things happen I share them with the people I'm around

I really expect the next generation (I guess, kids born in the last 8 years) to launch a major backlash against over-sharing and pretty go back to the roots of relationships: exactly how you said it.

<comment><USER5> That that would also be a generation who had their baby and childhood pictures unwittingly shared and now owned by social media companies. This is something I find really strange and unsettling.

<comment><USER6> I really admire what a family friend did after she had a baby. She isn't posting any photos of him on social media, and says it's because he can't consent to have his photos shared publicly. Lots of her friends keep pestering her saying "I want to see the baby!" and she says they're welcome to come over, and suddenly they don't want to see him _that_ much. They just want something they can click like on.

<comment><USER7> This logic is bizarre to me. He can't consent to being fed, clothed or having his diaper changed either. I imagine she likely still does all three.

For a parent, making choices on your child's behalf is kinda part of the deal.

<comment><USER5> >"For a parent, making choices on your child's behalf is kinda part of the deal"

And this person has made the decision for their child that whatever social media company is not going to own their child's image. What is is "bizarre" about that.

I hardly think caring for a child and letting a corporation own their image are even remotely the same thing.

<comment><USER7> I don't disagree with anything you've said, it's perfectly fair, but what you've said is not the logic she is using.

If she had said this I see no logical discrepancy, but to couch your logic in terms of a child's lack of consent is the point that makes little sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I successfully tricked my mind to not use Facebook by destroying / making my feed non-personal.

How?

I became member of all sorts of group: Buy-N-Sell in my local area, technology groups, 10+ DevOps groups and so on. The quality of posts on these is poor and is irrelevant for me for the most part. So every time I used to open the app out of habit, I would see all non-personal crappy posts and I would close the app in under 10 seconds. Over time my mind hated using FB and clicking on that app went away from my muscle memory without me trying to force any habit changes.

Why not just delete the account? FB is still great to find old friends, ex- colleagues who I might have lost contact with. I also use it as my public mic to post stuff that I want to share as widely as I can.

It's fun to take on the PMs who design addictive products that influence us at psychological level and beat them at their own game. Bring it on!

<comment><USER9> I found just deleting the app on my phone was a great way to cut the habit of opening it every time I looked at my phone. I thought I was about ready to delete it after a few days but then suddenly realised that without it I would lose touch with a heap of businesses around town, food trucks, nice takeaways etc, that I wouldn't otherwise know about. Deleting the app has easily cut 90% of the time I was spending on facebook, but my hungry belly still has there :D

<comment><USER10> I made myself only use FB via mbasic.facebook.com, it's an awkward enough interface that it helps me minimize using it.

<comment><USER11> they broke my main use of Facebook for it, which also helps a lot

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just have a single strike policy for most of my friends. I unfollow anyone as soon as they post something I don't want to see. I don't tell them, obviously. It works quite well.

Scrolled down just now and saw one post of someone running a 10k, a complaint about not having a holiday on Monday (haha), an ad from Triplebyte, a photo of the SpaceX rocket launch visible from the city, pictures from Yosemite, a birthday, an ad for Fairy, and a friend cosplaying.

Not so bad. I'm fine with that.

<comment><USER13> FB has become way more enjoyable for me after adopting a similar strategy. Now it's down to my close friends, family, and old HS friends who are up to cool things I'm interested in.

The hardest part for me was unfollowing close friends who post a lot of garbage and videos. Before I complained about FB being shit content, but it was really some friends posting shit content.

I think in combination unfriending and unfollowing lots of people, and facebook's algorithm updates, it has become more useful and fun to use again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Anything from Upworthy"

Good for a laugh, but it's pretty easy to get rid of that stuff in particular. Anytime anyone reshares something, I go to the 3-dot menu and select "Hide all from xxxxx".

It makes most of the crap go away... except for the one "friend" who somehow manages to reshare everything under the sun. Somehow that guy keeps finding new sources for me to "Hide all" from. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It is by no means a solution, but the signal-to-noise ratio is increased.

<comment><USER15> That reminds me of the old joke that Facebook helps you deal with the problems you wouldn't have without it...

<comment><USER16> Just like beer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Accepting 1500 friends and then complaining they're too many. Who's to blame here?

Facebook is what you make of it. It offers relatively granular control over who you want to see so if even you must be friends with someone, you can still unfollow them.

Surely the default is a bit annoying, especially when joining groups, but those can be unfollowed too.

The only thing I can complain about is "your friend reacted to or commented on some post" I don't care about. That's Facebook's fault but your friends are your fault. Most of the time I add friends and promptly unfollow them because they share memes.

<comment><USER18> > Facebook is what you make of it. It offers relatively granular control over > who you want to see so if even you must be friends with someone, you can > still unfollow them.

Recent events have demonstrated that the privacy controls are not what people think they are. Cambridge Analytica was able to access data belonging to the friends of people who granted certain permissions, and there was a recent data breach caused by a bug in an impersonation feature. Advertisers are able to see quite a lot of information too.

<comment><USER19> I don't think this is related to what bfred_it is saying.

To me, he's saying "if you have 1500 friends, use Facebook's follow/unfollow feature to improve your S/N ratio while still being friends with those people." That is, rather than privacy (controlling outgoing information), he's discussing the ability to filter incoming information.

<comment><USER17> That's correct. I'm not talking about what happens to your data but about what you see on your feed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wrote about this a while ago: [http://heinrichhartmann.com/blog/2017/12/31/Quitting- Faceboo...](http://heinrichhartmann.com/blog/2017/12/31/Quitting- Facebook.html)

""" Problem with the facebook exporter are:

\- All comments are missing. Even the ones you wrote yourself!

\- There are no images in the timeline.

\- The number of likes and shares is missing on the posts.

Before I delete my account, I wanted to have a more decent backup of my timeline. I looked into printing out the timeline, exporting it as pdf, full- page screenshots, massaging the DOM/HTML. I could get none of this working, with acceptable effort.

Eventually I went throught the whole timeline (100s of posts!) and screenshotted each one individually. To make this process a little less tedious I changed the OSX keyboard shortcut for full page scrrenshot to F1, so I could use the following combo:

[...] """

<comment><USER21> Screenshotting is one method that is surprisingly popular in the wild - <USER2> makes me a bit sad that so much state/metadata is lost when screenshotting, but it may prove the most efficient method going forward. I wonder if it'll be easier with DOM screenshot tools now available in major browers, so you can easily screenshot "just a post"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you lose contact with someone after deleting Facebook, they were not your friend in the first place. My conclusion after deleting my account four years ago. Getting rid of Facebook was one of the best decisions of my life.

<comment><USER23> I don't think I agree with that idea. People have different ways of communicating, not to mention I don't think people who do use Facebook as a main communication method should be punished because you think you're above it.

<comment><USER24> People choosing to use a walled garden are being punished by those who would rather not? You may have that reversed - this isn't about thinking you're "above" a communication method, but it is worth noting that Facebook _requires_ using their specific service while many other methods (phone, email, etc.) can be used from a variety of providers.

So, saying "I only use Facebook to communicate" and expecting others to conform is a bit more naturally presumptuous than choosing to leave Facebook - and it's a fair point that if a relationship can't survive _not_ using a specific proprietary tool, then maybe it wasn't that strong of a relationship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I quit Facebook for about 2 years back in 2015. It was a good time to self reflect and focus on myself. However I realised I was missing out on birthday/wedding/social invites.

I reactivated it and have a policy of only checking it 2-3 times a week. I dont have either apps on my phone.

My profile is tidied up and has contact information that my friends can use to reach out to me (hardly anyone has).

Reddit is the next thing I am contemplating my usage. It sucks up way too much time for the reward of fake internet points.

<comment><USER26> The "problem" with Reddit is that (depending on your selections) most information there is actually relevant.

After Google killed Reader, i found myself using Reddit and HN far more than i had previously, as these are good aggregators of stuff i find interesting.

<comment><USER27> Reddit has the problem of highly relevant information with terrible search. Google is the preferred way to search for content on Reddit, but there's no advanced filtering by time, popularity, or any of the other metrics that Reddit useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This thread seems a good place to re-pimp my Facebook profile cleaner (for those that missed it first time):

[http://www.jaruzel.com/blog/how-i-erased-5000-facebook- comme...](http://www.jaruzel.com/blog/how-i-erased-5000-facebook-comments-and- likes)

<comment><USER21> Going through the mbasic interface of facebook for this is brilliant. Good job !

<comment><USER28> Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Maybe I'm just not very social, I have 834 "friends" on facebook but I don't feel any need to delete it nor do I feel any fear of being left out or stuff like that nor do I spend too much time on or any of the myriad of other things so many HNers report with their experience on FB.

I don't really want to delete it as it's how I stay in touch with friends and family. It's how most of my friends organize events. Messenger (not the FB app) is the #1 way friends communicate with me and each other as well.

I did do a few things though. I aggressively unfollowed people. Anyone I only met a few times. Friends I haven't seen in years or don't expect to see. Anyone who posts too much (except my sister who I feel I can't unfollow). Friends who post too much political stuff. I click "this ad offends me on every ad". I use FB Purity on the desktop web site with about 10 filters to filter out a bunch of crap like "was mentioned in a post" or "replied to a comment", "shared her post", "shared his post", "is with" and other attention spam.

Not that much shows up but I'm still able to keep up with a few really close friends and family and still participate in event organizing etc and not feel I'm being spammed too much. I don;'t have FB Purity on my phone but I guess I don't use the app all that much on the phone. I mostly use Messenger for messages and the FB app to look at profiles (linked from Messenger) and to read/post in shared event pages.

Of course maybe you want to delete FB because of leaks or you just don't want to be tracked which are really good reasons to get off. All I'm trying to say is I don't recognize many of the other complaints in my own experiences with FB so maybe others might find those solutions useful?

</comment><comment><USER30> FB is really great about making you feel guilty if you delete the app, don't use the app. You miss your friends, they miss you, you don't get all the news, you feel out of the loop, you are lonely again.

Deactivated (not deleted) my account a couple weeks ago. Guess what? Life goes on. Nothing happened. I am still in the loop and I spare a couple minutes per day. Gained a bit more freedom, at least it does feel like it.

<comment><USER31> I got kinda lucky and can now avoid all this. When I first signed up, I used an email address I had in 2007. I now no longer have that one, so can't check it there. The only other email address I ever used with it was my university one, which I needed to join their network. Never added any of the other ones I have, and that one is now deleted. So I never see their endless emails or anything of the such; it's great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd love to make a dumb social network which could import friends/photos/videos from a Facebook export.

Which just shows photos videos and comments/posts.

Ditched the shares, likes, and all the other crap. And was just a place where we can keep in touch with people. And leave it at that.

<comment><USER33> A lot of people like this idea, but it seems that no one really wants to implement it.

<comment><USER32> I would love to build it. Open source. But I suck at design so I donno.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When I downloaded my Facebook data few years ago, my notes were missing. I had to reactivate my account, save them as HTML pages, and queue account for deletion again. One should not think of profiles on these sites as reliable archive of ones data. There is no alternative to local backup for this. With deletion one loses so many little memorable things, for example comments.

<comment><USER21> can I ask how did you save your notes ? Just view source and save the html as files ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why do people care about the photos? There's a Lewis Black joke where he opines on this exact same thing: "I didn't even like looking at my family photo album". Why not close the account and never look back without regard to the photos?

There seems to be a belief that holding someone in your list of contacts is equivalent to being their friend. You're not. You're an entry in a really small Rolodex. If you haven't actually personally spoken with them in a few months, you are dusty card in that Rolodex. Burn the pile and let those relationships that matter emerge from the ash.

</comment><comment><USER36> I quit Facebook before GDPR came into effect, so it's heartening to see FB now has better export tools. At the beginning of the year I had to write my own: [https://github.com/danburzo/fb-export](https://github.com/danburzo/fb-export)

<comment><USER37> Facebook had this a year ago as well. I quit and exported my data at the beginning of 2017. I actually only just looked at the export after reading this hn post. Up until now I just kept it zipped as a backup "just in case". Looking back at all the things I used to share and participate in on social media just reconfirms my decision to ditch it.

<comment><USER36> I may be wrong, but I think up to GDPR compliance, you'd only get a meager HTML file that was not machine-readable, and some (but not all) of the images?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I un-fallowed everyone, including pages/groups. No feed, no ads. When I open fb, i see blank screen after few seconds of load. Now I'm now too lazy to fallow them again.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've only deactivated Facebook, not deleted. I'm worried that if I completely delete I have no way left to access the data Facebook has on me. Is anyone aware of how their shadow profiles work? If I deactivate, are they still able to attribute things like someone uploading my number from their contacts back to my profile?

It's this reason that I haven't nuked it entirely yet. I also use Messenger on occasion to communicate with those I haven't spoken to in a long time. I'm ready to make that leap soon. And no, not all of those folks whose numbers or email addresses I lack are not 'friends' necessarily - I have a few former colleagues and bosses on there as well I like to chat with on occasion.

</comment><comment><USER40> Chiming in to say I'm similarly semi-disconnected from Facebook at this point. My account is still active and I still post occasional updates from a third- party platform (mostly articles I've read), but I rarely browse the site anymore.

The only thing I find useful on Facebook that I can't find reliably anywhere else is a comprehensive listing of local events and concerts (as well as invites to things my friends host). If there were a separate site that could aggregate and organize events content as nicely and completely as FB does I would have deleted my account outright a while ago.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sadly deleting Facebook isn't an option for me, as it has become _the_ place to get notified about social events around here. Twitter/Reddit/whatever doesn't have as strong a presence here, and the traditional websites have all be replaced by facebook pages.

I've cut out all the services from my life that siphons my "metadata", and while my daily Facebook usage was around 15 minutes/day, i still can't completely delete it. Instead i've banned the Facebook app from my phone/tablet and only check facebook when i'm at home during the evenings, and even then i use Firefox with Facebook Container.

As for (Facebook) messenger, i'm trying hard to teach people that i don't use it, or telegram, and instead they can reach me on Signal, or just plain old iMessages/SMS. It takes a few weeks, but usually people "get it" when i don't reply to their messages.

<comment><USER41> Is deleting your account and creating an anonymous one to just check local events a viable option?

<comment><USER42> Not really. Facebook will put your account in a cycle of verification hell. They really don't seem to like accounts of users trying to be anonymous. Granted, maybe someone else will have better luck with that than I did. For me, they essentially disabled my account and re-enabled it on a weekly basis. I got too annoyed and stopped using it as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I left my Facebook account idle for about 6 years now, and didn't miss it at all.

Now I'm trying to delete it and I can't find the link to "Your Facebook Information" no matter where I look. This is where the delete option is according to Facebook's help section.

Anyone having the same problem or is Facebook deliberately burying that link?

</comment><comment><USER21> Very timely post. Full disclosure : my current project [1] deals with archiving content from social network, and we're considering adding more things to import from facebook. The friends list example from the article is a good one :

      As for my friend list.. well.. It's all in Json format..
      So now you can essentially use the power of your brain to think how your friend looked.
      If you can't, well then you probably weren't friends anyway. Sorry.

I'd be interested in your experiences either in leaving facebook, or about things you'd which you could have saved

[1]([https://www.getkumbu.com/](https://www.getkumbu.com/))

</comment><comment><USER44> This doesn't actually answer the issue posed in the title, "How not to lose your friends". I was expecting at least a little discussion on how to replace Facebook friends, how to stay connected, alternatives etc.

<comment><USER35> Text message. Just text them. You can send funny pictures. You can have group chats. You get all of this as part of your unlimited texting plan that's probably laying fallow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Walking away from social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram was one best things I could do to reduce the negativity in my life.

</comment><comment><USER46> I want to delete my account but a lot of my friends use fb messenger (groups ect.). Is there a way to delete profile and keep only messenger ?

<comment><USER47> If I could keep Messenger + Events and get rid of the rest, I'd do so immediately.

<comment><USER48> You can use Messenger with just a phone number, like whatsapp

There is/was a Facebook Group app, where its just the groups

<comment><USER47> The former, yes. But afaik the Facebook Groups or Local (Events) apps require a full account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've been using the chrome plugin "Kill News Feed" for several years and took the app off my phone. I feel like a have a healthy relationship with FB now. If someone wants to send me a message, I'm still there. If I need/want to look someone up or tag my family/friends in a photos I can. But the feed is gone, and I won't get sucked in.

</comment><comment><USER50> Facebook fixer [https://socialfixer.com/](https://socialfixer.com/)

</comment><comment><USER51> Good for him. Although I don't really understand his stance: did he want to be on a social platform because it was `cool`? It might be only me, but I never wanted to be there because it's cool. I joined it because I wanted to keep contact with some of my friends be it cool or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> I first joined it in 2007, meaning I was 13 or 14 years old :). Being South African, the adoption rate for internet here was quite slow compared to first world countries. So back then it literally was like the cool thing to be on, just like being the kid on the block with latest and greatest Playstation or motorbike.

From a socio economic point of view. It's actually terribly when I think of it today. But that's just how it were growing up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://socialfixer.com/](https://socialfixer.com/)

</comment><comment><USER52> In 2013 I left Facebook. I decided who I wanted to stay in contact with and sent a message to each one explaining that I was leaving. I asked them to email me if they wanted to stay in contact. I am still in contact with every person I wanted to stay in contact with.

</comment><comment><USER53> We posted this a while back, just a simple tool to make the photo exports a bit better, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16682940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16682940)

</comment><comment><USER54> No one lost friends from deleting Facebook. I haven't.

</comment><comment><USER55> Unfortunately, deleting facebook means losing captions on your photos. Most of my college memories are captioned, so I can't just delete my account :(

</comment><comment><USER56> I have a account just for some niche buy and sell groups. No Pic no posts, nothing. I can even use it as a SSO. The only info fb has is when and where.

</comment><comment><USER57> So, he downloaded his data from Facebook... and uploaded it to Google. I don't know -- doesn't seem like anything has changed.

</comment><comment><USER58> Put on google to keep photos secure??

</comment><comment><USER59> I stopped using Facebook by deleting the app and only using the messenger app and messenger.com

<comment><USER60> There a GDPR notification pending every time I login to Facebook. I don't really care to deal with it, so now I can't use Facebook or Messenger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Problem is if you leave Facebook you're not going to be invited for school reunions.

<comment><USER62> I disagree, to me that sounds like another reason to leave Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Deleted mine about 5 years ago, don't have any social media and I survived.

</comment><comment><USER64> as a side note, keep in mind that with the option of downloading your entire messaging history, it will be sent as an unencrypted zip file to your email address. a surveillance dragnet dream come true.

</comment><comment><USER65> Realistically, what are the odds that deleting a Facebook profile actually removes one's data from Facebook's servers? It's far too easy to secretly retain such data, and Zuckerberg has repeatedly demonstrated the requisite malciousness.

<comment><USER21> Technically, if you're EU based, you could ask for proof of deletion and/or sue - not sure it's worth the effort though, especially since FB is keeping shadow profiles of you anyway (so you may have deleted your profile, but because your friends have your phone number, email, etc facebook doesn't actually need you to have a profile to track you now...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "GOOD MORNING!

Want to see someone getting killed by police and watch your friends quickly get baited by Russians to form to actual American protests related to their preconceived notions?

No? Well its already playing enjoy! but be careful where you tap because IF YOU LIKE ANYTHING you'll lose half of your friends in real life but thats okay because we were only going to show you more of this exact thing regardless"

<comment><USER66> > watch your friends quickly get baited

Yeah, that's a good sign that you need smarter friends.

Autoplay is cancer, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I've always felt that if deleting facebook caused me to loose contact with someone entirely, we probably weren't really friends in the first place

<comment><USER68> Acquaintances who happened to have made great point-in-time connections should be viewed as potential "real" friends. I've met amazing people around the world who I would hate to sever connections with, but, by realities of living busy lives on opposite sides of the world, we don't communicate regularly.

We've reconnected through work/vacation travels and been ecstatic about having local tour guides. For these connections, facebook has been my only lifeline as the commonality between us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> There is a IPCC report out today about climate change and how it would destroy the world as we know it.

Yet, people are more worried about Facebook! Amazing!!!

<comment><USER70> Can't we be worried about both?

<comment><USER69> Well, considering that the IPCC story is nowhere to be seen on the front page and this being at the top, shows how much general HN crowd worries about Climate change as compared to Facebook. Such Myopia is what has landed us in this crisis in the first place.

But you should not bother. Go worry about the useless photos that you first upload to facebook and then wonder what a for profit company is going to do with all that data.

<comment><USER10> The IPCC report is currently # 29.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mac OS X Lion accepts any password when authenticating via LDAP - <AUTHOR> http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1197379

<comment><USER2> News.YC community is being much kinder towards Apple than it acted towards Dropbox for identical security bugs. Dropbox even had the issue resolved in hours.

I don't see anyone threatening to switch away from Apple or demanding an immediate personal response from Steve Jobs or ranting how this lapse is unforgivable.

And you can't say it's because this bug only affects a small portion of Lion users as the Dropbox bug also only affected 100 accounts.

<comment><USER3> This is how bullying works.

If the victim is small and accessible, with their reputation on the line, you can put them in their place.

When DropBox broke, the community pounced.

Apple can't be bullied.

With DropBox I can just cancel my membership and sign-up somewhere else.

I'm not going to throw out my $1000+ Mac with $1000+ in software on it out the Window, right along with my livelihood of creating software for iOS. I'm not going to cancel my iPhone contract and pay hundreds in penalties too, and throw out all my apps and games and switch to Android. Not happening.

They've got us by the balls here, we just have to let them fix this and move on.

<comment><USER4> It's not bullying to tell people to fix security bugs.

It's not bullying to use your own resources to entice (or force) them to do so in a timely manner.

You're right that no one can threaten Apple and get action, but you're wrong in characterizing the threat as bullying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tells you something about Apple's testing methodology. QA team at Apple must be playing real fast and loose.

Being affected by 3 serious regressions in Lion (all filed as bugs and Apple closed them as duplicates, btw) - I get the feeling that Apple could do better at software engineering. (Alarms on iOS if you are still not convinced :) Just the fact that they release software that allows authentication without correct password means that they lack any kind of automated test case verification even for basic functionality - and this _is_ basic functionality we are talking about, not some obscure thing that happens only when dozen different factors are combined or a thing that only happens once in billion tries.

Say what you will about Microsoft but in my several years of using Windows I rarely had these type of glaring issues even with the awful amount of hardware it supports. It might just be that Microsoft was forced to adopt better Engineering practices due to their situation - lot of complexity, huge impact potential, and lot of money at stake - 50% server market and the Server OS shares a whole lot with consumer version etc.

Not trying to troll - just my thoughts on something that I have always wondered - how Engineering culture varies between different successful software companies and to what effect.

<comment><USER6> _Tells you something about Apple's testing methodology. QA team at Apple must be playing real fast and loose._

Yep, I agree. I've been very disappointed with Lion, even taking into account the common "Don't buy an x.0 Apple product", there were some terrible bugs (I was personally bitten by the inability to look up DNS servers after waking from sleep, which I can't believe was missed in testing).

Apple's software quality has been markedly going down. iTunes is a UI mess, and I used to really like it. Safari continues to lag behind the competition (no omnibar/awesome bar? Really?), iWork has stagnated. I suspect the reason is that Apple is growing, and the Eye of Jobs is focused entirely on iOS products, so the quality is being diluted in other areas.

I strongly feel like Apple's leadership is looking f, orward to the day when they can kill off the Mac completely. The line of "we'll always need something for developers to develop on" doesn't make a lot of sense. With Apple on x86, I can see a future where Xcode lives on Ubuntu/Windows.

<comment><USER7> _Apple's software quality has been markedly going down_

People have said the same thing about nearly every OS X release (with the possible exception of 10.1). At least Lion doesn't erase your firewire hard drives [1], or delete your entire home folder [2] etc etc. The comparative severity of these really bad bugs can be debated, but I think in terms of general quality OS X 10.0 − 10.2 really were quite a lot worse than the more recent releases.

I don't disagree with your general point though, the Mac is obviously not their priority anymore, and hasn't been for a while.

[1] <http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2003/10/61031>

[2] [http://macs.about.com/b/2009/10/13/snow-leopard-may- delete-u...](http://macs.about.com/b/2009/10/13/snow-leopard-may-delete-user- accounts-are-you-at-risk.htm)

<comment><USER8> Possible, but having gone from 8.6->Linux->10.4 myself, I think it's worth noting that 10.6, their previous release, was without question one of the most solid, stable, usable desktop OSes ever released by anyone. 10.7's instability and rough edges seem extraordinarily out of place by comparison.

<comment><USER9> Did you look at the linked articles? The second one is titled: "Snow Leopard May Delete User Accounts: Are You At Risk?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks both real and a pretty serious issue (I wonder how it went by almost a month without getting picked up by the security community). There's an discussion about it on Apple's own forums, linked below, but the gist of it is that users can authenticate over LDAP using any password using the login screen, and can't authenticate at all using su:

<https://discussions.apple.com/message/15887083>

<comment><USER11> Not many people in the security community use Mac servers in such a way that they need LDAP, and of those people, very few are running Lion on their servers.

<comment><USER12> It wasn't your bug to find, it was _Apple's_ , and they should have found it far sooner.

<comment><USER11> Who are you talking to? Me? Did you read the comment thread? I'm not sure who you're arguing with, or why you picked me for this reply.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, you're right, I misposted. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone give a quick lowdown on what's really happening here? I am assuming the Lion client is connecting to an LDAP server using the provided password, and regardless of the response from LDAP, Lion proceeds with the login?

<comment><USER14> No-if you try to submit a blank password it is (rightly) rejected. If you submit a non-blank password, the login succeeds. This (to me) points to the LDAP server responding with a login success message and the OS allowing the user in. This bug appears to only effect Lion clients talking to OpenLDAP (not the LDAP server shipped with Lion Server) or Active Directory.

<comment><USER15> I played with a Lion client bound to OpenLDAP running on a Linux server. I could login with my username and _any_ password (empty or not). I used a packet sniffer and it appeared to me, that the Lion client is not even sending the password to the server, but simply logging the user in. At least in my case, the server didn't send any login success message, and the Lion still let the user in. It clearly seems to be an issue on the side of the Mac OS X client, not the server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is only an issue when binding to an OpenLDAP server. There may be additional issues with LDAP on Lion server, but this problem as reported is an issue with Lion clients bound to servers running OpenLDAP without Kerberos or SSL.

<comment><USER16> Your use of the word "only" here is misplaced. This is a very serious security issue that affects clients connecting to OpenLDAP.

<comment><USER14> Indeed-for users that are bound to OpenLDAP its a massive issue. Without knowing those users exact setup its hard to know exactly what the issue is-the fact that its ONLY OpenLDAP servers is odd. The client must be receiving some sort of authentication succeeded message (you will note that it won't accept a blank password-so in that case OpenLDAP is responding with a failure). It may be a bug in Lion that triggers a bug in OpenLDAP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> First, this is a terrible bug. Shame on Apple for not rushing a fix, but...

Enterprises should not be doing immediate upgrades to any operating system, no matter how sparkly. I'm still waiting to upgrade my MacBook, and it's just me. No OS release goes off without a hitch (though there are some pretty impressive Linux releases!).

<comment><USER18> In all fairness, someone has to be an early adopter, otherwise issues like this would go unnoticed.

I've no idea how complex a problem it is to fix, but it is worrying that it seems to be taking a while for Apple to fix it.

<comment><USER19> I think you are missing the point that the gp is making; any enterprise that this would affect should not be provisioning it to the servers/clients until they test it on a smaller scale. This issue would be found during the normal testing channels of enterprise adoption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There have long been issues with LDAP in Mac OS X. They don't use a standard version. It doesn't work with PHP's LDAP module. And there have long been security issues, too: PHP was often out of date with security vulnerabilities. So much so that our campus ended up blocking all Mac web servers.

Here are several other issues I wrote up a couple of years ago, the last time I was forced to use Mac OS X server: [http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/dont-use-mac- os-x-...](http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/dont-use-mac-os-x-as-a- server/)

<comment><USER21> If you're hosting PHP on a Mac, I'd hope you're using a package manager so that you're not depedent on Apple to update third party software. Perhaps they _should_ be providing timely updates to third party items that they include, but _depending_ on those updates is foolhardy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone confirm or deny that this is only an issue when authenticating to an OpenLDAP server (i.e. does it also affect authentication against Active Directory?) I will check it when I get to the office and update here. This could potentially be very serious.

<comment><USER23> Active directory works as you'd expect.

<comment><USER24> We just got some Lion iMacs and have not been able to keep them connected to the AD. It doesn't work as expect unfortunately.

<comment><USER25> Are you talking about the "Network accounts unavailable" red light? If you wait ~20secs, it generally resolves itself. Definitely a bug, but just an annoying one.

<comment><USER24> Yep, that's the one. We've tried waiting and even increased the timeout from 2 seconds to something higher and it's still not working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Says this is a solution: <https://discussions.apple.com/message/15700245>

</comment><comment><USER27> What alarms me is that on both of my computers with Lion, about half of the time just clicking on a name on the login screen works without entering the password. Happens on my friend's Lion install as well.

<comment><USER28> I have authentication on after every screensaver and I've _never_ been able to bypass the password. Weird.

<comment><USER11> Likewise. We're an all-Mac shop, we do semiregular audits of everyone's machines, and I've never seen this happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've seen this story in 4 or 5 places today and I _still_ can't seem to find the details of the issue. Anyone have any links or info?

</comment><comment><USER29> Snow Leopard is the Windows 2000 of the NeXTSTEP operating systems, the best example of the series before the inevitable decline.

</comment><comment><USER30> Oh yikes. This deserves an update... yesterday. How can it be discovered and discussed only a month later?

<comment><USER31> Only happens if OpenLDAP is not secured by Kerberos or SSL... I don't see this as very common in the first place (ie, cleartext over the wire for auth?!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> OpenLDAP is... kind of a piece of junk. I'm not surprised there are issues here. But again, who binds in cleartext?

</comment><comment><USER33> Why are they not using Kerberos and SSL though? Does this affect those users who actually do take security seriously or just the bare bones implementations that aren't safe anyways?

<comment><USER34> I don't know about Macs specifically (Apple makes servers?) or why they aren't using Kerb, but LDAP is commonly used over SSL/TLS. "LDAPS" some call it.

LDAP wasn't originally designed to be an authentication protocol. If Mac clients are using it to make authentication decisions, they had better be requiring SSL/TLS on that connection (and validating the server cert perfectly, too).

<comment><USER34> Apparently, the forum poster says he's not using SSL/TLS with LDAP for the login authentication.

Sounds to me like impersonating an LDAP server would grant login to Macs configured thusly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> <snark>Well, it is intended to be a _lightweight_ protocol after all.</snark>

<comment><USER36> Not sure why you are in gray. That's a really good joke.</comment></comment>


Internet Explorer 10 Drops Vista Support - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383640,00.asp

<comment><USER2> Interesting how Microsoft's browser drops support for MS's legacy OS, while third-party browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.) don't.

<comment><USER3> It's no different than Safari 5 supporting XP (2001) but no longer supporting Mac OS 10.4 (2007).

<comment><USER2> My first guess would be that both companies stack incentives via artificial barriers like that.

In the real world, I suspect/fear businesses just sit on legacy systems until something critical breaks.

I imagine it's easier to get a business to upgrade to a new browser version than it is to get them to migrate to a new browser entirely. (Blame changes in shortcuts, UI differences, integration support, etc.)

That said, these policies hold back the web. Cute marketing tricks[0] don't fix it. Sure, it says to upgrade. The newest version is unavailable for your OS: now what?

[0] <http://ie6countdown.com/></comment></comment></comment>


Now is the time to stand up and defend net neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/05/14/now-is-the-time-to-stand-up-and-defend-net-neutrality/

<comment><USER2> This was great, and exactly the kind of thing I'd want sites to implement in protest of FCC's net neutrality rules:

[http://www.feld.com/wp/](http://www.feld.com/wp/)

But the code he links to in the article isn't what I'm seeing on his site. Where is it?</comment>


Human enhancement: does nature know best? - <AUTHOR> http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/deane20130627 <comment><USER2> I'm convinced nothing can stop genetic engineering in humans in the long run. The question is what goal the genetic engineering will have, what ideal will take the place of natural selection? This article suggests we will engineer away negative, selfish and competitive traits, but my guess is it will go the opposite direction. There will be an arms race where people improve themselves and their children to learn faster, excel in school and at work, be competitive and selfish. Parents already do whatever they can to give their kids a competitive advantage, pay tens of thousands of dollars for private school (even kindergarten), pay for expensive tutors so they excel at all the standardized tests etc. Globalization has created an environment where winner takes all, so few parents with a choice would deny their kids the advantages that some of their peers get.

Unless we're all in on it, we can't engineer towards happiness because there will always be some group of people that will take advantage of the situation.

<comment> loup-vaillant > I'm convinced nothing can stop genetic engineering in humans in the long > run.

Note: the article talked about human enhancement _in general_ , and mentioned cyborg-esque options like titanium bones. It didn't mentioned the most radical option of all, mind uploading, but I guess that was to avoid scaring readers away. (Mind uploading also have this minor "will it be really _me_?" problem.)

> This article suggests we _will_ engineer away negative, selfish and > competitive traits

(Emphasis mine.)

Err, I didn't read that. From what I read, the article said that we probably _should_ engineer away such traits. And again, if a parent can enhance her child's school results by buying her the best arithmetic implant from Texas Neuro-Instruments, she will not limit herself to mere DNA modifications. Many of us already wear glasses, for instance.

I do agree with your main point though: technology-aided evolution will probably take a sharp and nasty turn, if ran unchecked.

<comment><USER3> Nasty turn how? It's only a problem when combined with allowing other, existent problems to go unchecked - i.e. the stratification of wealth.

Presuming the problem is that it's being done at all is fundamentally asking the wrong questions, not to mention strays far into violating rights like habeas corpus which creates a much bigger problem.

<comment> loup-vaillant Technology can create new problems by itself. The most obvious ones are Risks of Blowing Ourselves Up (or existential risks). Drexlerian Nanotechnology? Gray goo accident. Strong AI? Skynet, only it'll kill us all before we even realise it. Biological research? Pandemic disease from the lab. And of course the more mundane World War III and environmental collapse, from which it is unclear our civilization can ever recover. The difference with the last two is that it can run on _current_ technology.

We could also create a universe that we wouldn't like at all, like Robin Hanson's vision of the future after mind uploading.

We could also modify ourselves for the sake of competitivity alone, or pleasure alone, or anything that doesn't encompass _all_ that we want to do and be.

Sure, technology is only a catalyst. But it's one _hell_ of a catalyst. Aim a knife in the wrong direction, and you might hurt someone. Aim a nuclear warhead in the wrong direction, and you might obliterate a whole city. In both cases, the root of the problem is that you aimed in the wrong direction. But technology makes quite a difference in terms of consequences. By the way, we're already aware of that to some extent: nuclear warheads tend to have more security around them than knives.

<comment><USER3> Catalyst yes, but there's degrees of problems. Within this scope, the question is "should people be allowed to improve themselves" \- denying that because it would exacerbate an underlying social problem still exacerbates that problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When having these discussions (and the inevitable anthropomorphisms of nature and evolution), it's important to view Past Evolution and Present Evolution as distinct.

Past Evolution is a billion-year-old algorithm from which emerged deep and subtle intelligence through trillions of trillions of iterations of trial and error. Though far from perfect, its legacy is the Terran Ecosystem, aka Mother Nature + Humans, a force to be reckoned with.

Present Evolution, however, is lazy, cruel and sloppy. On the scale of mere decades, it does effectively nothing to advance the interests of human life.

(Future Evolution is of course significant, though not on a timescale relevant to our lifetimes, at least if we're referring to the "untampered" variety.)

I view genetic augmentation as inevitable, leading to an accelerated evolutionary process; however, I can see valid cases for either throwing on the brakes and going as slowly as possible, or putting on the gas to maximize progress, with all its benefits and costs.

<comment><USER5> what do you mean by present evolution?

<comment><USER6> For any small window of time evolution is the hum-drum existence of daily live - being born, being eaten, etc. Only over significant periods are the patterns of change discernable. There are good examples of evolution at work over periods that humans can easily understand, bacterial resistance or peppered moths, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution), for example. But these are not nearly numerous enough for widespread understanding of the process. On a side note: hence the reason why Creationism is not extinct.

<comment><USER3> It's also important to remember evolution is not a process of general improvement, it's a process of adaptation for survival.

There is absolutely no reason for natural evolution to select for being smarter or stronger if it's not a good survival tactic - i.e. if it doesn't select for traits which allow proficient reproduction.

On a large scale "more evolved" is a meaningless term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't think of a single secular concern regarding human enhancement that isn't prudential at best.

<comment><USER8> Here's one: the large number of unwilling human test subjects we will need in order to really tell exactly what genes need to be changed, and why. (Modifying the genes of someone with a simple mutation like downs syndrome is a lot simpler, though.)

<comment><USER9> You're right regarding the correction of monogenic diseases, but you chose your example poorly.

Down's syndrome is the result of having an extra chromosome, which induces the overexpression of genes, some of which are related to embryogenesis and development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Humans are a force of nature themselves.

</comment><comment><USER11> Genetic manipulation and other enhancements should be accepted as at least a by-product of evolution. After all, it was evolution that gave us the brains capable of it.

</comment><comment><USER12> The appendix is actually not evolutionarily useless; it apparently helps to foster beneficial bacteria within the intestines. Which, although I tend to agree with the author, is definitely not a point in his argument's favor.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are we going to pick random genes and insert them? I'd like the chimp form of myosin, please. I'd love to be that strong. (I hope it has no negative consequences.)

<comment><USER14> Comes with the 1.5" penis.</comment></comment>


Alibaba has a voice assistant better than Google's - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612511/alibaba-already-has-a-voice-assistant-way-better-than-googles/ <comment><USER2> So, wait, this conclusion was reached because of a single pre-recorded demo call, compared I guess, to Google I/O's prerecorded demo calls?

If it's servicing millions of live requests and is in production, why couldn't they review the live system?

The story's title kind of seems clickbaity because of this IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just hate that this web-site demands to exit incognito mode or log in in order to read the article.

<comment><USER4> I hate it, too. In any case, if the incognito mode can be detected, it's a bug in the browser. Way to go, Google.

<comment><USER5> Slightly surprising that Google Chrome is bringing up the back of the pack when it comes to incognito mode, Firefox and Safari can both view this site without the popup complaining about using incognito mode.

<comment><USER6> Not defending Chrome, but if websites are willingly blocking users carrying about their privacy, then maybe you shouldn't read those websites.

Paying with your wallet or your eyeballs works. Most of the time reading such articles is a time waste anyway.

<comment><USER4> One doesn't exclude the other. I'm going to let the website owner know, but at the same time I'd expect the browser vendors to take greater care about protecting the private mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's "servicing millions of customer requests a day" or some part of "50,000" (later in the article)?

The example doesn't seem compelling to me, it's not rearranged the delivery, it's not solving any substantial problem in the co-dialog. What does this prove?

<comment><USER8> It's possible that it's actually serving millions of requests, if most requests happen outside of customer service calls or if they count each individual utterance in a dialog as a separate request (it probably _is_ a separate request to the backend).

On the other hand, maybe someone wrote a description in Chinese that said "several tens of thousands" and someone else had it machine-translated into English. The problem being that "tens of thousands" can also be a symbolic "big number" (like "myriads") and modern English tends to use "millions" as that symbolic number instead.

The existence of symbolic numbers is a common source of translation mistakes. For example, I recently came across a Japanese text [45] where Google Translate will turn 一三 into 13 or a thousand, depending on whether you include 「quotation marks」 or not

[45] Footnote 45 of [https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001850/files/57353_57270.html](https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001850/files/57353_57270.html)

[https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=%E3%80%8C%E5%BD%BC%E7%AD%89%E3%81%AF%E4%B8%80%E4%B8%89%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E7%8E%8B%E3%81%A7%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B%E3%80%82%E2%80%95%E2%80%95%E5%90%8D%E3%81%AF%E7%A7%98%E3%81%99%E3%81%8C%E3%80%81%E7%9C%9F%E3%81%AB%E7%8E%8B%E3%81%A7%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B%E3%80%81%E7%8E%8B%E4%BB%A5%E4%B8%8A%E3%81%A7%E3%81%95%E3%81%88%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B%E2%80%95%E2%80%95%E5%88%A4%E6%96%AD%E3%81%97%E5%AE%9F%E8%A1%8C%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E3%80%82%E5%BD%BC%E7%AD%89%E3%81%AF%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%8A%E3%82%92%E9%AB%98%E3%81%8F%E9%A3%9B%E3%81%B6%E7%BF%BC%E3%82%92%E6%8C%81%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6%E3%80%81%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E3%81%AE%E5%BA%95%E6%B7%B1%E3%81%8F%E6%BD%9C%E3%82%8B%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%81%95%E3%81%88%E5%87%BA%E6%9D%A5%E3%82%8B%E3%80%82%E3%81%9D%E3%81%97%E3%81%A6%E5%BD%BC%E7%AD%89%E3%81%AF%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%AD%E3%81%AB%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B%E5%A0%B4%E6%89%80%E3%82%92%E5%8D%A0%E3%82%81%E3%82%8B%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%82%92%E8%BB%BD%E8%94%91%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E3%80%82%E4%BD%95%E6%95%85%E3%81%AA%E3%82%89%E3%80%81%E5%BD%BC%E7%AD%89%E3%81%AF%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E3%82%92%E4%B8%8A%E5%9B%9E%E3%82%8B%E7%84%A1%E9%99%90%E3%81%AE%E5%8A%9B%E3%82%92%E4%B8%8E%E3%81%88%E3%82%89%E3%82%8C%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%82%8B%E3%81%8B%E3%82%89%E3%81%A0%E3%80%8D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always wondered what the implications are for the "lack of privacy" in China, for the better or the worse. What I mean by this is something like WeChat. A lot of Americans do not understand the sheer size of data it collects. WeChat (by Tencent) is pretty much a conglomerate of all the top services we use here in the states (Google, Paypal, Facebook, Stripe, Venmo, Whatsapp, etc). Now imagine when the Chinese government starts dictating the development of AI through this data. I am not sure if there is another country that can collect and distribute data at this scale since there is not much public remorse for such actions.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is why China will beat any other countries including US on AI and ML hands-down, it has no privacy law and people don't care that much either so it collects such a huge volume of data for training and mining.

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't that be why it wouldn't. It can't export their models because they require to much information. In places like europe it would be a nightmare to use any of it. So in China it would be ok, but outside it's hard to implement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So which phone number can I call to try this out?

</comment><comment><USER13> Considering many Alibaba's P8+ comes from FLAANG and the whole company works like hell (9-9-6) to deliver, this is not surprising. Serving millions requests is laughable at Alibaba scale and might indicate this is not widely used yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> And, what so???? I can't understand the reason for such fascination.

<comment><USER15> Because Google is popularly assumed in the West to be more technologically advanced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not all languages are created equal. Chinese has very few sibilant consonants. It all about vowels with varying pitch. English is just hopeless. I myself for example just cannot use Google in English, because of 50% error rate.

<comment><USER17> Isn't phonetics already a solved problem in ASR? The hard part is NLU, including semantics and pragmatics, which this article mainly talks about.

<comment><USER5> Some languages are significantly easier to train against than English, for example 80hrs of Turkish got some decent results for this group using Mozilla Deepspeech: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.00868.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.00868.pdf)

For context, Baidu used a bit over 5000 hours of English to get a decent model.

Also, OP may have a pronunciation difference (regional, hyper-local or just from learning English as a second language) that isn't handled well by Google's models.

<comment><USER18> I suspect deep learning researchers have no real incentive to use the minimum amount of data sufficient to get their thing working. The worst case for them is if their model underperforms because of insufficient data instead of something truly DL-related, so they use as much data as they have/can handle. It could still be that you're right, but I wouldn't rely on those kinds of published numbers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DIA: North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear warheads - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_nkorea-1212p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5c4aa00690bd&tid=a_inl <comment><USER2> If anyone wonders why the North Korean are obsessed with nuclear weapons: it's our own fault (USA).

During the Korean war, when ceasefire negotiations were straggling, both the US and N. Koreans came to the table expecting the other to surrender. During this time, it was suggested to Truman that the US threaten the use of the atomic bomb to coerce them into a peace treaty. Already having nuked Japan in WW2, Truman did not want to issue that threat. It wasn't until his successor, Eisenhower, came to power that the US threatened the use of the atomic bomb, and the N. Koreans begrudgingly agreed to an armstice.

Thus, the nuclear weapon is their symbol of the ultimate power of the bully, and a way to guarantee their freedom and independence.

<comment><USER3> Oh please. North Korea invades their southern neighbor on a mission of subjugation; we come to help, do what needs to be done to bring the war to an end; and somehow NK's militarism and aggression is our fault?

Don't get me wrong, the US has done some horrible things. But when it comes to NK, we've been saintly.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you, but I think you are purposefully conflating their long- documented drive towards obtaining nuclear weapons (of which I am talking about) and... well, everything else that's been horrible about the regieme (which I am not talking about: starvation, kidnapping, torture, etc).

So I think you are accidentally trying to strawman my small historical point into something bigger and more sinister than I intended.

<comment><USER3> Ah, my apologies. Upon re-reading your message I think I misread it the first time around. I thought you were saying more than just "we showed NK that nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapon" \-- I thought you were somehow implicating us as responsible for NK's militaristic, aggressive nature. Which you were not doing. My bad!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a lot of trouble seeing how this tension could possibly be diffused peacefully.

<comment><USER5> The alternative is likely nuclear war.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, I feel like we are going to try to just wipe their nukes. If we succeed, I doubt the US or China will go nuclear. We would probably seek china's ok before trying that if we haven't already gotten it. If NK keeps escalating their arsenal eventual we won't ask China and just do it.

<comment><USER6> The problem is, any sort of strike against the North is unfathomably risky - they've basically got some 25 million South Koreans hostage, with their obscene number of conventional artillery pieces within spitting distance of the DMZ. If Kim decides the end is near, Seoul and anything near it is basically done for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't at all support how the NK government runs its country.

But why does the US get to dictate who and who doesn't have the right to nuclear weapons?

<comment><USER3> The US should act in the best interest of the people of the world as a whole. As should every other nation.

We have the most resources at our disposal, and as such it's often up to us to take the lead.

A nuclear armed NK is very, very bad for South Korea, Japan, and anyone else in range. They're a threat to their neighbors and likely soon a threat to the entire world.

These are the facts. It's not a matter of the United States saying that someone should or shouldn't have nuclear weapons. It's a matter of us living up to our responsibilities; it's a matter of us doing our part to ensure a prosperous future for the whole world.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need to find energy while checked out at work - <AUTHOR> I've been disrespected at work by my boss' boss a few times and last time I had enough and spoke my mind. He didn't take it well, proceeded to diminish me even further and, as I learned from my boss, told awful things about my work (basically calling me unprofessional). I know I have things to improve on but nothing nearly as being unprofessional.<p>Long story short, I'm looking for a new job but my days are filled with dread and looking at my monitor without know what to do next. I need to find energy to complete some tasks. Unless I get a new job, I'm not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Any advice? <comment><USER2> Tough love time. Whether you were unprofessional depends on how you spoke your mind. The way you phrased it, I suspect maybe so.

That said, there's hope. I have been in monotonous dev contracts before and how I approach it is to gamify. Find meaningful metrics about your job that you can calculate on a daily or weekly basis, ideally through automation. Then set percentage improvement goals for yourself.

Do the same thing for your outside of work personal growth: find a popular technology that's relatively new still that appeals you, figure out what it would take to get recognized as an expert in that technology, and map out mile markers on the road to that goal (e.g., become a committer on X and Y projects, port Z to technology Foo, submit and present 2 presentations on technology Foo at tech conferences). On top of that, network like crazy through local groups, online groups, LinkedIn, Twitter, and conferences. At first, volunteer to do stuff other community members don't want to do (minutes, documentation, writing more unit tests to improve coverage, etc.). Your contributions will be noticed, and job queries will start coming in. Do not say anything bad about your job or boss in those conversations, simply 'We've grown in different ways and I feel it's time for a new challenge.'

<comment><AUTHOR> The unprofessional thing was just the last iteration where I was reprimanded for communicating with other teams about a common problem we could all fix together but the idea wasn't vetted by the boss' boss and apparently I took too many liberties.

The other time I was tasked with solving problem X and researched solutions A, B and C. Boss' boss wanted A but boss told me to use B. I got reprimanded for that and thrown under the bus by boss.

And on and on... it's a shitty show, really. The same happens to other people routinely. I just didn't want to get into the dirty details in my post but I guess I should have.

Thanks for your advice, really appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Suck it up, force yourself to do your job, and put any extra energy into improving yourself and your resume, and find a new job. Try to really understand your part in the failure of your current job and work to improve on that.</comment>


Nameless: A Graph-based programming language - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WtgfUqN6SdOXQjE-tj_QyjyhB0Q9nR6jph3Pd1gnxw4/pub This has been a toy project of mine for a while.  You can play with the examples in the browser-based IDE here:
Factorial function: http://nickretallack.com/visual_language/#/ace0c51e4ee3f9d7483ec10780d1ed43 Move a box around: http://nickretallack.com/visual_language/#/f2983238d90bd3e0aede71aeec767ce1
What you see right now is an ugly prototype that doesn't allow you to share your code or work on a touch device yet, but I figure it will be pretty awesome when you can do those things.
Btw, this isn't a copycat of NoFloJS.  I started working on this in 2011, long before I'd heard of them.  I was surprised at their success on Kickstarter, which makes me think perhaps there is interest in this sort of programming after all.
Criticism is welcome. <comment><AUTHOR> This has been a toy project of mine for a while. You can play with the examples in the browser-based IDE here:

Factorial function: [http://nickretallack.com/visual_language/#/ace0c51e4ee3f9d74...](http://nickretallack.com/visual_language/#/ace0c51e4ee3f9d7483ec10780d1ed43) Move a box around: [http://nickretallack.com/visual_language/#/f2983238d90bd3e0a...](http://nickretallack.com/visual_language/#/f2983238d90bd3e0aede71aeec767ce1)

What you see right now is an ugly prototype that doesn't allow you to share your code or work on a touch device yet, but I figure it will be pretty awesome when you can do those things.

Btw, this isn't a copycat of NoFloJS. I started working on this in 2011, long before I'd heard of them. I was surprised at their success on Kickstarter, which makes me think perhaps there is interest in this sort of programming after all.

Criticism is welcome.

<comment><USER2> NoFloJS is by no mean original but how does your project compare to them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mine is isomorphic to a traditional programming language in terms of execution, whereas theirs seems to use an actor model.</comment></comment></comment>


Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/02/forget-philanthropy-super-rich-should-be-paying-proper-taxes <comment><USER3> At least everyone can agree that government taxing should be higher than government spending^.

This article is mainly baiting rich v poor division; on a close read it doesn't actually say much.

The real issue is that everything in general has become so complicated that nobody has a hope of understanding how it works. Unless we have accountants on deck today nobody really has a feel for how much the rich pay in taxes (including under the '70%' regime - I bet there was nobody actually paying anywhere near 70%) and nobody has a great feel for how those taxes are being spent. And _nobody_ has a feel for what happens to the money that rich people control and what it actually goes into doing. They aren't hiding it under the mattress, that money is out there causing real outcomes in the real world that go far beyond the rich having nice houses.

The rich could pay 0% taxes if we had confidence that they believed they should invest it all into ordinary people. We could tax at 100% if we had confidence that an enlightened government would spend it with prudence and intelligence. We will do neither because we know both those assumptions are stupid.

Quoting GK Chesterton and observing that politicians are treacherous is not a powerful contribution.

^ EDIT: Thanks neogodless - I mean specific policy for literally right now, to pay down debt.

<comment><USER4> The '70%' regime was then reinvesting all those profits right back into their businesses to avoid those taxes, which spurred job growth and R&D innovation.

The simple reality is that today's "regime" simply stockpiles that wealth for their own benefit and then gives out a few token amounts to charitable causes and thinks that will stave off the pitchforks when the uprising begin.

Giving money to charity doesn't cleanse your soul of it's moral responsibility to society. As abrasive as it sounds, it may very well be true that if someone is in the position to be giving out millions to charitable foundations that end up making a lot of people fat from managing them, maybe they took too much in the first place.

<comment><USER5> This argument makes no sense. The super rich aren't keeping their money under a mattress. They're investing in VC, public markets, etc. It's the exact same result, except instead of investing in the same company, profits can be invested in a different company.

<comment><USER6> ...whereupon they reap the profits. The new reality is, the money men own most everything, and skim the vast majority of benefit from every industry.

It's not about how much money is in the system. Its about who benefits from it.

<comment><USER7> They'd also reap the profits from businesses investing in themselves since they own those companies. The only difference would be encouraging conglomerates instead of new companies. Not sure why that benefits anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why the notion that gov't should be the provider & arbiter of all? Why do none of the "they don't pay enough taxes" crowd not realize the rich do so much of, and more efficiently, what the gov't purports to with massive overhead? Job creation, charity, arts funding, lowering costs of necessities, etc - and at levels & locations which gov't would never achieve.

The "tax/soak the rich" notion seems almost entirely punitive, not productive. Yeah Musk has $billions, he's also creating thousands of jobs (direct & indirect), making the expensive affordable, improving environment, etc - <USER2> able to _because_ he's very rich. Even the "mean" rich create jobs & markets etc that gov't can't.

<comment><USER9> > Why the notion that gov't should be the provider & arbiter of all?

Because the government is democratically elected. Billionaires are not.

> Why do none of the "they don't pay enough taxes" crowd not realize the rich > do so much of, and more efficiently, what the gov't purports to with massive > overhead?

[citation needed] In fact, there's an easy counter-example. Healthcare. More expensive than any public system, with worse outcomes for the general population.

<comment><USER10> I trust politicians as much as I trust billionaires: not at all. In fact as the OP points out at least the occasional billionaire will do something productive for society. The same can't be said for the government.

> _[citation needed] In fact, there 's an easy counter-example. Healthcare. > More expensive than any public system, with worse outcomes for the general > population._

The only reason health care is so expensive in the US is because of government regulations. From doctor accreditation, FDA approval, health insurance "marketplace" rules... The government is the single largest force pushing up the price of health care.

<comment><USER11> Assuming you live in the USA, the simple fact, that you can leave your house and have access to a (still) working transportation infrastructure and do not need (I hope) private security to protect your life and property is proof that the Government does something productive for society.

I am as ____off by a lot of recent Government actions and their seeming inability to fix _obvious_ issues. But to argue they to nothing productive for society? That is just plain wrong.

Also, I'd like to highlight that millions of citizens are only healthy/alive because of regulations. Are they perfect? Far from it, but can we live without them? No.

<comment><USER12> >Also, I'd like to highlight that millions of citizens are only healthy/alive because of regulations

Citation needed? There were practically no regulations a century ago compared to now, and while more people died then, it certainly wasn't millions (unless you're counting something like vaccines as "regulation").

<comment><USER13> There are a _lot_ of regulations you'd have to add up, but millions probably isn't an enormous stretch.

Crumple zones, seat belts, and air bags save tens of thousands a year ([https://www.nhtsa.gov/seat-belts/seat-belts-save- lives](https://www.nhtsa.gov/seat-belts/seat-belts-save-lives)).

The EPA estimates the Clean Air Act alone saved 100k/year. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171226105042.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171226105042.htm)

Lead paint, workplace safety, FDA approval, product recalls, aviation safety... Hell, fighting the tobacco industry is a big regulatory move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are two major problems with this line of reasoning:

1) The bit about the 70% tax rate is wrong. The 70% was on wage income, but other sorts of income was taxed lower, and a lot of income wasn't taxed at all. [https://taxfoundation.org/70-tax-rate-entrepreneurial- income](https://taxfoundation.org/70-tax-rate-entrepreneurial-income). Actual tax rates on the rich have been highly stable since the 1950s: [https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not- high/](https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/)

2) The amount of tax the super rich pay is way down on the list of issues to be worried about. The top 0.01% (household income above $7.5 million per year, so not even "super rich") make just 3.3% of all income. Tax them at 25% or 75%—it doesn't make much of a difference to the Treasury. Taking _all of their money_ would add maybe 3% to total government spending. That wouldn't pay for Medicare for All. It won't pay for the Green New Deal. It might just about pay for universal child care and pre-K.

<comment><USER14> This graph doesnt agree

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_Tax_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_Tax_Rate_for_Highest_and_Lowest_Income_Earners.jpg)

<comment><USER5> That's the top marginal rate on wage income. It doesn't actually look at the total tax people pay as a percentage of their total income. That changes not just based on the top marginal rate, but on where each bracket kicks in, the composition of income, and the tax base. For example, back in the day, things like corporate expense accounts were not treated as taxable income. And the highest brackets kicked in at the equivalent of $3.5 million today, which means even top 0.01%-ers had half their income taxed at a lower bracket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's probably different in the UK where The Guardian is, but in the USA the bottom 45% of wage earners pay $0 federal income tax while the top 20% pay 87% of it. I'm not sure how much more you should slap on the "evil" job-creating rich before it's "proper", but 87% already seems pretty high to me.

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no- fed...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal- income-tax-2016-02-24)

<comment><USER16> What would you propose, squeeze more water from the stone? The bottom 45% of wage earnes are broke as hell, they hardly have any income to tax. Meanwhile, the top 20% have so much more money that you can raise 87% of income tax revenue even with today's more flattened tax brackets.

<comment><USER17> But in the supposedly socialist Europe, even lower income people pay SOME amount in taxes.

For example, in Spain, you pay 19% on the first 12,450E, and the rate quickly goes up to 45% for anything over 60,000E (average income is ~30K)

There are some personal allowances and deductions, but most people pay at least _some_ tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Too many temporarily embarrassed billionaires in our population to push for this from the bottom, and too many billionaires using their version of lunch money on our politicians to get traction from the top.

Great concept, won't ever actually happen.

<comment><USER19> This is such a tired take. Is it not possible to just believe that a person shouldn't HAVE to pay more (percentage-wise) in taxes because they're successful - while at the same time, be fine with the credits / deductions available to the less fortunate? I can't be the unicorn here.

<comment><USER14> Why is it tired?

The wealthy benefit from the social infrastructure they live in. Should they not pay for it ?

Think of the wear and tear the roads get from the Amazon delivery service alone.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't amazon pay road taxes for their trucks (or whatever they're called over there)?

<comment><USER14> The US road taxes doesnt cover the damage done.

Not to mention the US is huge, the actual cost of fixing the infrastructure would be staggering. It needs fixing too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Philanthropy, at least in theory, directly benefits people; Taxes don't; We should keep both; The focus of every government must be the well-being of people, and most importantly, setting things so that the people have better opportunities to be the owners of their own lives and being able to care for themselves, returning value to the country and the World. Yes we need money for that, but when people focus on money instead of caring for others, corruption ensues. It is inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER22> > we must make them be good

Lash the sinners into virtue, eh?

Good luck with the whole killing satan with his own pitchfork thing. All this does is turn those who try into demons; if you can hurt class enemies for being insufficiently good, you can do the same to anyone. And nobody ever accused the proletariat of being excessively possessed of virtue...

This is just a thin veneer over the libido dominandi. "We can't wait to remake society in the image of the blood god, so sacrifices must be made. No, not my kids ha ha"

</comment><comment><USER23> Extremely wealthy people don't just donate to charity to cherry-pick the social programs they support. They also gain influence over organizations and communities. They promise support to gain favor and threaten withholding to gain influence. People this rich don't need more money, they want more power.

</comment><comment><USER24> I just read that Jeff Bezoz will pay a lower tax rate than someone earning $7.25/hr. Incredible.

<comment><USER8> He's also giving thousands of people jobs, making necessities available to millions at low prices, and paying enormous amounts in total taxes. Can gov't really do more with his money than he can? Do you really want to disincentivize what he does for humanity?

<comment><USER25> > He's also giving thousands of people jobs

Enterpreneurs don't "give" jobs to people. Refer to the "wage labour" definition:

> Wage labour is the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an > employer, where the worker sells their labour power under a formal or > informal employment contract.

precisely, they're purchasing labor. And actually, Bezos is puchasing it at a dirty cheap price.

<comment><USER8> Pedantic. He created a job opening, they accepted it. Ask NYC how terrible those 30,000 new Amazon jobs are ... oh right, they don't exist there because the "Bezos is a meanie" people drove them away.

A job is better than no job. Bezos hired them to do something productive.

<comment><USER26> Incorrect. Amazon says it was not about the politics[0]. Plus, Amazon is still coming to NYC anyway, because there was still demand for an office there[1]. But now NYC gets it for free rather than paying billions in subsidies.

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/amazon-reveals-the-truth- on-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/amazon-reveals-the-truth-on-why-it- nixed-ny-and-chose-virginia-for-hq2.html)

[1] [https://nypost.com/2019/05/27/amazon-is-reportedly-eyeing- of...](https://nypost.com/2019/05/27/amazon-is-reportedly-eyeing-office-space- on-manhattans-west-side/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Forget proper taxes: give us a simple, coherent, 21st-century system for taxation that reasonably links what I'm paying to an _actual_ budget, and maybe all of this class-warfare whinging on will sound less laughable.

Back to my fantasizing .

</comment><comment><USER28> Paying more than 70% of what you earn is not fair. It is slavery and confiscation.

And it always happens the same way, those in charge, in power, who control this 70% will manage to spend it on themselves one way or another.

In the soviet Union official markets will have stands selling just one potato, or one lemon or egg. Then in the black market the communist families could buy(or access, because with power and influence you don't need money)everything, from good meat, fish...

People that traveled abroad, with public money were the children of the communist... they had access to (imported)TVs, good houses and cars instantly while the rest of the population will wait for years or decades, only to get bullshit TVs, bullshit houses and bullshit cars.

In the UK,and the US with confiscation taxes rich people found ways to not pay taxes at all. It was only a barrier of entry to middle class.

<comment><USER26> It's only 70% of what you earn on dollars _after_ certain other nominal limits. For example, 70% of what you earn _after_ you've earned your first $1,000,000.00. Please do spare everyone these absurd tears for the "enslaved" rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why give more power to politicians? I really don't get that.

<comment><USER30> Because they are democratically elected?

<comment><USER31> So what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Er, the United States, an economist sitting next to him replied, where the > highest tax rate averaged about 70% from the 1930s to the 1970s, "and those > were actually pretty good years for growth". Rates are nowhere near that > now. The supposed populist Trump gave a $1.5tn tax cut mainly to the richest > corporations and individuals and the top rate now stands at 37%.

Go ahead and tax the likes of Bill Gates at 70%. You won't get much more than you do now, relatively speaking.

</comment><comment><USER33> Scott Alexander had a compelling argument against this: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against- billio...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire- philanthropy/)

<comment><USER34> If they are deterred from donating to charity by the negative press, was it philanthropy in the first place?

<comment><USER35> Why does it matter if their motives are pure? You don't need a moral justification to do a thing that helps other people and is entirely at your personal expense.

<comment><USER36> You're right, but unless a person is spending money for a social-cause that benefits us all, they absolutely do not deserve any special status, press coverage or a title such as "philanthropist." They're just spending money for themselves, and that's nothing special. Anyone can do that.

<comment><USER35> If everyone has to benefit, this seems to define philanthropy to be an impossible feat.

I suspect you're thinking of some celebrities or causes you agree with and assuming their motives must be pure because they agree with your interests. This isn't saying you have some devious intent, I'm just pointing out a potential unquestioned assumption you may hold.

Maybe the compromise is this: Wanting people to like you (or wanting good PR) may be an impure motive, but it's also the least concerning impure motive. After all, if a very powerful person wants to be liked by others, that motivation forces them to then listen to others and consider their interests.

<comment><USER36> I didn't try to define philanthropy at all. Call it what you will.

I'm not thinking of any celebrities, and it's really weird that you made that assumption.

It's simply unimpressive to me when people give away money through foundations or other organized means just cause they're rich. The bar should be much higher to earn anyone's praise. That's all I'm saying. And I don't have anything to add to what you've written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Comment threads like this always amaze me by the number of socialist/communist advocates on a site devoted to full-on capitalism.

<comment><USER37> I was surprised that a Marxist was quoted in the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> FUCK YES.</comment>


Calexit leader announces abandoning movement and settling permanently in Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/calexit-leader-louis-marinelli-russia-2017-4 <comment><USER2> Russia huh? Aren't they supposed to be the ones who put Trump in office in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone took calexit seriously before, that ship has surely sailed now.</comment>