Warren Buffett has me Confused - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/08/warren-buffett.php

<comment><USER4> I think the author is making a small fallacy regarding investments. He assumes that as the capital gains tax rises, investment will fall because the investor will make less money. This seems true for small investors, who might decide to "not invest" their money, and instead find starting their own business will have a higher return than buying GOOG stock.

But if I have $1 billion to invest, then I don't have the option of "not investing" that money. It _has_ to sit in stocks, bonds, or some other financial instrument. A higher capital gains tax may change which instruments I choose to invest in, but that money will all still be invested.

A legitimate argument against higher capital gains taxes is that really great investors (i.e. the kind you _want_ selecting investments, such as Buffet) will have less money to invest. This would hurt the economy, unless the corresponding good caused by government spending is greater.

I think everyone would agree there is a happy equilibrium _somewhere_. Most rich people think it lies on the side of less taxation. Buffet, in contrast, seems to think that quality investors don't add as much value as they want to believe.

<comment><USER5> > _If I have $1 billion to invest, then I don't have the option of "not > investing" that money. It has to sit in stocks, bonds, or some other > financial instrument._

No it doesn't. I could buy an extensive auto collection. Or a yacht or some paintings. Something that is pretty much guaranteed to depreciate, but at least I'll get some use value out of it in the meantime. (This is why when Britain had top tax rates close to 100%, people bought Bentleys and Rolls- Royces.) When investment is taxed at punitive rates, consumption becomes more attractive.

<comment><USER4> I've three gripes:

First, I suspect most mega-rich find investing in all conditions far more enjoyable than anything that money might be able to buy.

Second, even if they wanted to buy, it takes time to spend billions of dollars. In the mean time, that money will be put to work in some form of financial instrument. Even if it's only sitting in a bank, the bank will make a more lucrative investment with it.

Third, it's not like buying an expensive auto collection is wasted money. That money will be used to build the infrastructure of those companies. This has the same shocking benefits of "pure" investment, although it is probably mildly less efficient.

<comment><USER5> > First, I suspect most mega-rich find investing in all conditions far more > enjoyable than anything that money might be able to buy.

Um, why would you suspect that? Do _you_ find investing just to be investing more enjoyable than anything money could buy? Why would the mega-rich be any different?

> Third, it's not like buying an expensive auto collection is wasted money. > That money will be used to build the infrastructure of those companies.

What I had in mind was an _antique_ auto collection of the sort featured in reddit a few days ago. Buying a warehouse full of deusenbergs, corvairs, the taxi from seinfeld and a batmobile doesn't really "build the infrastructure of those companies" Anyway, by that logic wouldn't _all_ consumption be beneficial? Going on a round-the-world cruise _builds the infrastucture of the cruise company_ , right? Heck, pay a prostitute enough and she might buy a house with the income - that also "builds infrastructure"...

<comment><USER4> _Um, why would you suspect that? Do you find investing just to be investing more enjoyable than anything money could buy? Why would the mega-rich be any different?_

I picked my job because it is very enjoyable to me. I would do it for free if I had too. The job of the mega-rich is to invest. They are under no financial pressure (like say a Mexican immigrant) that forces them to take that job.

 _Anyway, by that logic..._

I totally agree that it's not the best use of the money, and would definitely rather see it invested wisely. At the same time, it's not like the money's just being burned. It adds a small inefficiency into the investment cycle, but apparently Buffet thinks this inefficiency is not as big as most other people do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The primary point of Buffett's article isn't even addressed here: most people pay a much higher percent of their income to the federal government than do the "mega-rich" (I do have to say that don't really like Buffett's term there) and, furthermore, that the economy didn't suffer one drop when the rates were more reasonable (and in fact, did much better than under the historically low capital gains rates of the last decade).

In fact, if you read this article closely, it really doesn't present an argument, it just says "I don't wanna."

<comment><USER7> Buffett pays a lower percentage of income _by choice_. Meaning, he derives his income from investments that get taxed at the capital gains rate. Everyone else is free to make the same decision, but they don't. They "invest" in houses, cars and other lifestyle purchases and then rely on their daily job to provide their income...hence their tax rate being so high.

Rather than punishing the rich for making smart decisions, let's instead educate the other people so they can make the same good decisions.

<comment><USER8> What?

Tell me how people should choose to not to get born into poverty or a family that can't afford college.

You seem to think people should make their money from investment rather than production, which has little value for a society. We should encourage people to make money from actual productive work, rather than shuffling paper around. Having higher taxes on wages (actual work) rather than capital (shuffling paper) doesn't do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When the blog author argues that "Warren Buffet should write a check" he is not oblivious to the fact that asking everyone in your tax bracket to pay more taxes generates more revenue than making a voluntary contribution. Rather, he is arguing that Warren Buffet feeling guilty about not paying enough taxes is not a good basis for rasiing taxes on everyone in that category.

Rather, taxes should be placed where they will do the least harm to the economy. Check out <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_tax>. Ideally, taxes should be placed where they will not distort people's behavior. So, the relevant question is whether increasing taxes on capital gains will have a change investors behavior making the economy less efficient. Buffet says "My rich friends will invest no matter what!" But, he provides no evidence to support this. On the margin, some investments will not be worth it with a higher tax (as described by lionhearted). How big of a problem this is up for debate. But we shouldn't make tax decisions based on Buffet's anecdotal experience with rich friends.

<comment><USER10> > So, the relevant question is whether increasing taxes on capital gains will > have a change investors behavior making the economy less efficient.

This presumes that we currently have an optimally efficient economy. You're not allowing for the possibility that increasing the capital gains tax will make the economy more efficient, seeing as how, in your own view, the system is plenty distorted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this post may understate the economic impact of low taxes on high incomes. While I agree that in the short term, the deficit actually isn't the biggest threat to the US economy, I do think we need to close it long term, and the main options are 1) spending less and 2) raising revenues. If you can get the second through growth, that's much better, but you have to be realistic about how much growth you're going to get.

If you agree that some revenues are an inevitable part of good governance, then taxes become inevitable. So while I'd agree that taxes (usually) deter desirable behavior such as work, investing, saving, spending, and so forth, it doesn't really make sense to talk about how taxes are innately bad. You need to think about what level of taxation you can get away with, and where taxation will do the least damage.

This is where I tend to part ways with most fiscal conservatives (though I like to think of myself as one).

My take on it is: estate tax? No, I don't like it. I'd much rather allow a person who has created great wealth to decide who to give it to.

Payroll taxes? No, don't like them. I'd much rather not deter work and put an immediate regressive tax burden on people who get off their asses and work poorly paid jobs.

So which is worse. A 10% tax on estates above $5 million, or a 13% tax on the lowest income workers in America?

Which tax cut provides more benefit to the economy? A decrease in capital gains from 15% to 10%, or a decrease in marginal tax rates for the middle class? Which one would lead to more spending if you need to jump start the economy?

You can tell which way I lean, I'm sure, but I consider these good questions for reasonable debate. But I do think that a higher tax rate on very wealthy individuals that enables a lower tax rate on low income individuals (through, say, a reduction in the payroll tax) could bring a lot of tax relief where it is needed most, and might be a better jump start to the economy than "trickle down" economics.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Investing is the science and art of placing money where it does the most > good

Err, no it isn't. It's the science and art of placing money where it will grow the most. That is neither equivalent nor synonymous with "does the most good".

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's where the author gets lost:

       Either Buffett is making a point so fine I have missed it,
       or he's just blowing smoke up my ass. He doesn't know people
       who don't invest when you decrease their return by a
       significant percentage? What? If he's not fighting for
       each percentage point here and there, just what the
       heck kind of investing is he doing? Can I get in on
       some of this action?

This is in response to this statement of Buffet's:

       I didn't refuse, nor did others. I have worked with
       investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone
       -- not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent
       in 1976-77 -- shy away from a sensible investment
       because of the tax rate on the potential gain.
       People invest to make money, and potential taxes have
       never scared them off...

What the author has overlooked is that taxes lower the effective return on all investments. If capital gains generating investment X is better than capital gains generating investment Y when capital gains is taxed at 15%, X will still be better than Y if capital gains is raise to 20% or even to the 39.9% it was in 1976, and so in choosing between X and Y, the rational investor will still choose X.

<comment><AUTHOR> _What the author has overlooked is that taxes lower the effective return on all investments. If capital gains generating investment X is better than capital gains generating investment Y when capital gains is taxed at 15%, X will still be better than Y if capital gains is raise to 20% or even to the 39.9% it was in 1976, and so in choosing between X and Y, the rational investor will still choose X._

This certainly might be a true statement, or not, depending on the specific tax policy. Can you tell me exactly what policy Buffett was advocating? Because I couldn't find it.

There are 3 possible arguments here.

Argument 1: I, being rich, should pay more money. I don't think Buffett is saying that, because if he felt that way he would just pay more.

Argument 2: The government needs money. We have it. They should come and take it. I couldn't find any mention of government need. He's not saying that the super rich should pay more because it's needed. He's saying they should pay because it's the right thing to do.

Argument 3: The rules should change so that things are "fairer". If this is his argument, which I think it is, then what, exactly does he want to change? Without knowing that, you can't make heads or tails of whether or not tax policy would effect everybody the same or not. Note that if he's arguing for specific policy, it might be that he personally ends up paying no more, or even less. If this is his thesis, then how much he or his buddies actually end up paying has nothing to do with it. He should describe what exactly would be "fair".

There's no argument here, really. It's just Buffett saying he should pay more of his fair share and some friendly poking at the Republicans. His piece seeks to convey feeling, not make a case and support it (Note the folksy telling of how much experience he has and how rates don't matter.) That't great -- it could still be an awesome article. But it doesn't hold together well to try to take the ideas and go somewhere with them.

<comment><USER14> "But for those making more than $1 million -- there were 236,883 such households in 2009 -- I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more -- there were 8,274 in 2009 -- I would suggest an additional increase in rate."

That is his recommendation. Is it not specific enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> By how much? 1 Percent? 20 Percent? Does "taxable income" include muni bonds? Ex-pat VCs? Enterprise zones? Minority-owned businesses? Sales of primary residences? And so on.

I'm not trying to be pedantic. The tax code is a mess. Simply saying you'd raise taxes on folks making more than a million of taxable income a year doesn't really say very much.

Something like an elimination of capital gains for startup investors and an increase to 35% of gains made over $5 Million per year would at least have some meat to it. Heck, just come up with a number. 20% rates good enough?

How can I evaluate "fair" based on that statement? Could you? I could make assumptions -- such as the definition of "taxable income" staying the same or perhaps the capital gains tax matching the income tax rate, but then I'm arguing with myself, because I'm adding detail that wasn't present.

Nobody needs a 30-page whitepaper. A couple of paragraphs with specifics isn't too much to ask. After all, it's the core of his argument.

<comment><USER14> He posits that people making over a certain amount should be ponying up more in taxes. A reasonable assumption to make is that taxes would be raised in such a way that those people would be taxed more, and people who make less, wouldn't be. The specifics are irrelevant to the general argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> You asked me a specific question: was that detailed enough?

The answer was no. Simply because it's detailed enough for you doesn't enter into it.

Unless you're prepared to say that those folks paying one dollar more is fair, then we have to have a number.

And note: Buffett didn't say they should pay more. He said the rates should be raised. These are two completely different concepts. You could raise the rates and have people move their money in such a way as to not pay any more at all. From Buffett's position, simply talking about rates, this would be an acceptable outcome.

I think we're at a spot where we can agree to disagree. Whether or not rich folks owe their fair share or not is a meaningless conversation unless and until you can actually start describing what you mean by "fair share." Without those details, it's just political feel-good bullshit, sadly. I expected more from Buffett.

<comment><USER14> Let's say I have a buddy, Bill, and we go out for dinner every so often. He doesn't make as much as me, but he fights me for the bill every time. I end up paying less than he does most of the time.

I tell my wife, "You know what, it's not fair that Bill pays so much all the time. I should pay more."

My wife then says, "Your argument is confusing, and what's more, it's feel- good bullshit. You didn't give me a specific number on how many dollars you'd want to pay. Would you pay with a credit card? Traveler's Cheque? Based on total after tip or before?"

The supposition between reasonable people _should_ be that I pay some reasonable amount more than I have been paying, but I don't go over the top and foot the entire bill. Is it fair to _ask_ how much more I'd be paying? Of course, and the final justification of just how fair the arrangement is would depend on that number, as you've said. However, it's perfectly reasonable to say someone should be paying more, and have a discussion on that topic, without having to go deep into the specifics of how much more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If there is more demand for government bonds (due to higher capital gains taxes, for example), I imagine the yields on government bonds will decrease. That would probably help the economy more than hurt it.

Taxes (in general) apply to _gains_, inflation applies to _principal_. If 30-year Treasuries start paying 2%, capital gains could be taxed at 50% and people would still invest in equities just to have a shot of not having the real value of their wealth cut in half over the next 20 years.

The apocalyptic vision expressed in the article (nobody will invest in bonds! and nobody will invest in stocks!) is overblown. The market will adjust to demand, and the fear of inflation will grow as bond interest rates decrease.

</comment><comment><USER16> Buffet says the mega rich aren't being taxed enough. Daniel assumes this means "raise the capital gains tax" and argues that it'd hurt a lot more than the mega rich.

If there's anything government can do well, it's the ability to tax creatively. A simple solution (and I'm not saying it's the best solution) would be to expand the income tax to cover all forms of income (lowering it in the process) and eliminate the capital gains tax.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't want to get into the discussion here on HN -- seems like everybody wants to fight the battle of taxes 2012.

But I did want to point out that the purpose of my article was to demonstrate my confusion and ask you guys for help, not necessarily to state that policy would hurt more than the mega rich. I understand the reasons pro and con for tax reform -- it's a great topic. What I didn't understand is what the hell Buffett was trying to argue: fairness, social efficiency, marxist philosophy, what?

As part of that, I felt that I had to come clean and show my position -- I think the entire debate is phony and just a way to control the masses. But I really, really didn't want to get into the politics. My interest as a writer and outhouse philosopher was the clarity of his piece, not the validity of the argument. (Commenter Ron came by the blog and made a great defense of Buffett's position. You should read it if you're interested.) Once we state our case clearly, then productive discussion has a chance to begin.

And it beats the living shit out of me how asking questions can somehow be taken as challenging Buffett or talking outside my expertise. The whole idea of asking questions is to demonstrate you don't have knowledge and to ask for help. People act as if I somehow called Buffett out. Geesh.

<comment><USER14> You said "I understand that people want higher taxes on the rich. I think it's stupid, but I'm not going to argue about it." This is not a question, it's a statement, and a provocative one at that. Saying you're not going to argue about it is not going to stop discussion on exactly that point.

You also said "His real argument is probably too snooty of an argument to make in print, but something tells me that's what he's really getting at. I wished he'd have just come out with it, though. It would have been a lot more honest."

This strongly implies that the author (Buffett) is dishonest in his arguments. I'd say that's calling him out.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Honest" as in "straightforward," "direct" As opposed to convoluted or hard- to-interpret. Not honest as in telling the truth. If I tell you that it was about time to make an honest offer on a house, that doesn't mean that somehow you have been lying all along. The social utility argument was, in my mind, his best one. He should have been more direct about making it.

The first part was simply an expression of my bias. I owed that to the reader.

Good grief.

<comment><USER14> I'd posit that your real point is exactly that which you say you don't want to argue. It's a strong statement and worthy of discussion.

Much more interesting to discuss that than how clear Buffett's argument is. (Which is quite clear, in my opinion.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Last comment: this has long ago passed the point of diminishing returns.

I originally wrote "intellectually dishonest" mostly out of habit. It's a phrase I like. But then I looked at it and realized that was way too harsh of a statement. Buffett is not lying here. He's just a nice old man (probably a little on the cranky side) who wants to play at politics a bit.

I don't think there was any subterfuge or lying at all going on. What I think is that he could have used a good editor, but probably when you are worth 3 kazillion dollars it's tough to get somebody to take you out to the woodshed and tell you to tighten up your piece, make a thesis, and then support it. I have structural problems with the article, not concerns about the honesty of the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Note bene: since the effective tax rate on the wealthiest Americans is lower than that of almost everyone else because of how tax law treats investment income, Buffett's argument is for the time being indifferent between progressive and flat taxation.

</comment><comment><USER18> For people saying "It won't make a difference on capital investment" I point you to the Windfall Profits Tax in Mongolia. It was a 68% tax on any mining deposits found.

Well, so what? If you're profitable, who cares if some is taken off the top?

But if you thought that, you'd be mistaken. Simplified example:

You're thinking of building a mine. It's going to cost you $100M. There's a 50% chance the mine contains $220M in deposits and a 50% chance it's a total dud.

With no windfall profit tax, your average return is:

.5 _(-$100M) + .5_ ($220M-$100M) = +$65M profit, for a 65% return.

Of course, you'll never get $65M. You'll either wind up -$100M or +$120M.

Buuuut, if the government taxes that at 50%, your new EV is:

.5 _(-$100M) + .5_ [($220M-100M)/2] = -$40M average return, for -40%.

Those aren't funny numbers. A 50% tax on profits drives capital out of risky- but-lucrative industries, since you're holding the bill if it fails but you're writing a fat check if it succeeds.

It's a simplification. In theory, you could maybe create a conglomerate that averages all sorts of bets like that together. But in reality, there will be some companies that have a 50% chance of losing everything, and a 50% chance of more than doubling your money... that work out mathematically with low-ish taxes, but aren't endeavored with higher taxes.

Mongolia repealed the windfall profits tax a few years ago, by the way, and billions of investment capital went in almost immediately into mining.

<comment><USER13> That doesn't seem correct. For the second case, where the mine contains $220M in deposits, shouldn't it be:

        -$100M cost to build mine
        +$220M revenue from sale of deposits
        </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
         $110M profit

That leaves you with $220M from the sale of deposits less $55 million for the 50% tax on the $110M profit, so you end up with $165 million.

So, starting with $100M to invest, half the time you end up with $0, half the time you end up with $165M, giving an average outcome of $82.5M, for an average return of -17.5%.

Without a tax, half the time you end up with $0, and half the time you end up with $220M, so the average outcome is $110M, for an average return of 10%.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow,

 _I think my group should pay its fair share_ (paraphrasing)

OK, lets do little example.

Suppose a large group of your friends a pizza and half the people just hadn't paid. Would you say "hey, I'll pay for all these people" or "hey, we all need to pay our fair share".

How hard is that to understand?

<comment><USER20> If I'm out with my friends, you're damn right I'd want to pay for the ones struggling with a minimum-wage job and consider that to be my fair share.

<comment><USER4> You missed the point. That's exactly what Buffet wants. In the pizza example, the people who are not paying their fair share are not the minimum-wagers, but rather the mega-rich who pay only 15% capital gains.

<comment><USER20> The post I'm replying to placed "pay my fair share" in opposition to paying for the pizza eaten by the people who didn't pay for themselves. I'm pretty sure that the point you're making is not the point he was making, which to me sounded like the standard argument against progressive taxation.

<comment><USER19> No, you're misinterpreting my original post.

jackpirate is correct.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for clearing that up. Sorry I got it wrong. At least we all agree!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Let's start with the first argument: "His message seems to be 'I'm rich, and I want the super-rich like me to pay more in taxes.'

That's great. Write a check."

But him writing a check isn't the point. If Warren writes a check, we get that check's worth of new government income. If taxes are raised, for Warren's contribution of the same check, we get much larger pool of spending. Put more simply: plan (a) warren donates $10 and we get $10 of government income; plan (b) warren is taxed +$10 and we get $10K of new government income.

The rest of the blog is well characterized as Dunning Kruger in action.

<comment><USER18> You picked the least interesting point of Markham's to disagree with.

These two were more interesting:

> Ok, I'm calling bullshit. What does "sensible investment" mean? Does it mean > the amount invested, the risk, and the amount expected in return? Because > last I checked, you'd take the amount you're getting in return and decrease > it by your tax rate.

He then goes on to note tax-deferred and tax-advantaged investments will see capital move to them if tax rates are changed.

Which is a good point. And yes, every serious investor calculates their after- tax return and makes it one of their decisionmaking criteria. That's a crucial point that's obvious when written out, but many people miss it.

> The rest of the blog is well characterized as Dunning Kruger in action.

This should be Godwin's Law II: Whoever accuses someone else of Dunning Kruger loses the argument. There were interesting points in there. You apparently disagree, but that's not a good reason to be flippant. Just address the points you disagree with. Changing tax laws changes the suitability of investments and changes the allocation of investments made and legal structures used. Those are good points and seem correct on a glance.

<comment><USER22> Anyone who has the imprudence to argue with Warren Buffett, the savviest investor of all-time, is most likely a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you can't understand why, then you also may be a victim of the same effect.

<comment><USER23> How about this? [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2008/05/the-dumbest- thin...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2008/05/the-dumbest-thing-ive- heard-warren-buffet-say.html)

<comment><USER4> It's so dumb, I'm 403 forbidden to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Force is unethical. The government's fundamental tool--which distinguishes it from most other organizations--is that it forces people to do stuff under the threat of violence (and it often actually employs violence to demonstrate that it is serious). The government is therefore unethical. Taxes shouldn't exist at all, because it just a protection racket from a scaled up version of the mafia. The answer is not to scale the taxes on the rich up, but to scale the taxes on everyone down to zero. Exchanges between people should be voluntary only. This is the only ethical solution. This will require a cultural change where everyone realizes how unethical it is to employ force to get things done.

/controversial view

<comment><USER25> _This is not initiation of force. It is enforcement of contract, in this case an explicit social contract. Many libertarians make a big deal of "men with guns" enforcing laws, yet try to overlook the fact that "men with guns" are the basis of enforcement of any complete social system. Even if libertarians reduced all law to "don't commit fraud or initiate force", they would still enforce with guns._

<comment><USER5> > in this case an explicit social contract

It's _explicit_? Great! Can you tell me exactly what this explicit contract says, who signed it, and how it is that whoever signed it managed to get my power of attorney?

<comment><USER25> _The constitution and the laws are our written contracts with the government.

There are several explicit means by which people make the social contract with government. The commonest is when your parents choose your residency and/or citizenship after your birth. In that case, your parents or guardians are contracting for you, exercising their power of custody. No further explicit action is required on your part to continue the agreement, and you may end it at any time by departing and renouncing your citizenship.

Immigrants, residents, and visitors contract through the oath of citizenship (swearing to uphold the laws and constitution), residency permits, and visas. Citizens reaffirm it in whole or part when they take political office, join the armed forces, etc. This contract has a fairly common form: once entered into, it is implicitly continued until explicitly revoked. Many other contracts have this form: some leases, most utility services (such as phone and electricity), etc._

<comment><USER5> That argument is fundamentally silly for all the reasons identified long ago by Lysander Spooner (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner> ) in _No Treason: the Constitution of No Authority_ ( <http://lysanderspooner.org/node/44> ).

wikipedia quote: " _Spooner bolstered his argument by noting that the federal government, as established by a legal contract, could not legally bind all persons living in the nation since none had ever signed their names or given their consent to it - that consent had always been assumed, which fails one of the most basic burdens of proof for a valid contract in the courtroom._ "

Adding "and the laws" is problematic because "the laws" are vague, unknowable, constantly changing and in fair part contradictory with one another and with the constitution.

The argument that the government contract even _could_ work this way pretty much assumes what needs proving: that the government "owns" the country and all the land and people in it. If the government _doesn't_ automatically own your land and your kids, it can't be assumed that you've contracted with the government by virtue of buying a house or being born. But if the government _does_ own your land and your kids, no social contract is needed - <USER2> allegiance is already mandated without it.

<comment><USER25> Actually read my post this time. The argument clearly addresses Spooner's argument that there is no signing of names or giving consent. Your parents explicitly give consent by making you a citizen of the United States when you are born or, if you immigrated, by explicitly pledging allegiance.

Also,

 _"No Treason" is a lengthy rant that doesn't take longer than the first paragraph to begin its egregious errors.

For example, in the first paragraph: "It [The Constitution] purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago." Thus he focuses his attention on the Preamble, and evidently ignores Article VII, which says EXACTLY who contracted for the Constitution:

"The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same. Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the twelfth. In Witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names." [signatories FOR STATES omitted.]

He's wrong on this simple matter of fact: the constitution says who contracted with whom. But then he goes on to make a big deal about the people of that era being dead, as if contracts between organizations lapse when their office holders depart.

The rest of his "analysis" is equally shoddy, and consists largely of calling government a collection of thieves and murderers at least 75 times. David Friedman, in "The Machinery of Freedom", says Spooner "attacks the contract theory of government like a lawyer arguing a case": but REAL presentations of cases have to cope with counterarguments, and can't depend so heavily on invalid presumptions which are easily shot full of holes._

As for the argument that the laws are vague, unknowable and constantly changing -- part of the law is that the law will be interpreted by the courts. Yes this does mean that you can be in unknowing violation of the law. However, it was part of the contract that you agreed to. By staying in the US as a US citizen you are continuing to re-up your contract. If you don't like this contract then you are free to emigrate.

<comment><USER5> Look, if I wanted to read Huben's "non-libertarian FAQ", I'd do that. I don't need you quoting random snippets at me (without linking to it) as if they contained actual information.

But tell you what, two can play at that game. I wrote a counter-FAQ a decade ago. I'll quote from that. :-)

> He's wrong on this simple matter of fact: the constitution says who > contracted with whom.

(from <http://www.impel.com/liblib/NNLFAQ.html#9> )

 _What the constitution says regarding its own ratification procedure is essentially irrelevant to the argument that Spooner is making. Spooner's comments speak to the question of who this contract should be considered binding upon. Article VII is not overlooked, it is simply irrelevant to this question.

To illustrate: Suppose I wrote a document which I called the "NNL Constitution" that included the line, "Glen Raphael hereby has the legal right to seize Mike Huben's television and automobile."

In Article VII of this document I would write this: "The ratification of the conventions of three Fiefdoms shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the Fiefdoms so ratifying the same. Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the Fiefdoms present, the nineteenth day of January, in the year one thousand nine hundred and ninety-six. In Witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names." [signatories FOR FIEFDOMS omitted.]

"I'd sign this as a representative of my fiefdom. I'd get a couple other libertarians to sign for the other two fiefdoms, one of which is defined to include Huben and his property. The head of the fiefdom having jurisdiction over Huben would have been duly chosen for that role in a "popular vote" that didn't happen to include Huben . Now, is the NNL a valid document with respect to Huben? The answer is clearly no. No matter what the document says, the people who signed that document didn't have his power of attorney so they have no ability to contract on his behalf. They can make binding contracts with each other but not with him, without his consent._

Googling up and regurgitating talking points made by people "on your side" is no substitute for thinking about what the person you're talking to is saying. If you want to see where Spooner is right or wrong, there's no substitute for reading Spooner. Reading Huben's dismissive take on Spooner is not going to make you more informed.

Just as one can't use what it says in the bible as evidence that we are bound by what the bible says, you can't use what it says in the constitution as evidence that we are bound by what the constitution says. It's a document. Anybody can write a document and make claims about it. The question is: are those claims reasonable and legally binding? Spooner had interesting things to say about this. Huben...not so much.

>By staying in the US as a US citizen you are continuing to re-up your contract. If you don't like this contract then you are free to emigrate.

Suppose I live in a bad neighborhood where my car regularly gets broken into or my apartment burgled. You could say that by staying in that neighborhood, I agree to a "social contract" that includes these sort of infrigements. And if I don't like it, I could move. That _is_ the "contract" we have with the US - essentially the same one might have with a local mafiosa. The organization lets you keep your livelihood as long as you stay in line, under threat of force if you step out of line. Don't try to pretty it up.

It's not an _explicit_ contract, it's an _implicit_ one and it is coerced. The idea of a "social contract" is a theory about how consent _could_ have been acquired in some society, but it's not relevant to any actual society - <USER3> governments we've got generally got in through terror and force and the populace tacitly putting-up-with-it. We "consent" because we don't want to go to jail, because we want to go along with the crowd, or because we don't see any other options. Not because our parents made some grand gesture they didn't even realize they were making. The random assortment of actions you say constitute signing a contract all have in common that they don't involve actually, you know, _signing a contract_.

<comment><USER25> It's a sad fact that I can quote from a Usenet piece years ago and you're still making the tired points he refuted.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference between "refuted" and "dubiously asserted, ignoring all arguments to the contrary". :-)

Looking back on this exchange, the core of our disagreement is the word "explicit". A contract is an agreement. If I sign a piece of paper saying I agree to something, that is an "explicit" contract. But if you merely _infer based on my actions in some context_ that I've agreed to something, you are arguing for the existence of an _implied_ contract.

Huben's text confuses _the agreement_ with _the terms being agreed to_. The legal codes might be written down explicitly but my consent to them is _not_ written down - it is at best _implied_. There is no explicit social contract. If you claim there is, what's the basis for your claim? When you say agreement is established by doing X or Y, how do you know that? Just because Huben said so? What is the _source_ of your knowledge that these ten acts establish a contract and some other set of acts don't? Could I not with equal justification claim that, say, picking your nose makes you a citizen of Hackerstan and subject to some random set of laws I've written down?

<comment><USER25> Your citizenship is the explicit signature on the contract. As long as you are a citizen you are a signatory. You can remove your name at any time.

<comment><USER5> > _Your citizenship is the explicit signature on the contract._

A "citizenship" is not a tangible thing. I didn't do anything specific to get a "citizenship", so how can my allegedly "having" one constitute an _explicit_ anything?

Do you not see how circular the argument is? Is your claim _really_ that (a) I'm bound to the US legal code because I "have a citizenship", and (b) I "have a citizenship" because the US legal code says I do? Are you sure you've thought this through?

> _As long as you are a citizen you are a signatory._

I'm sorry, but to me the word "signatory" implies _having signed something_. Your claim makes about as much sense as saying "as long as you have red hair you are a signatory".

> _You can remove your name at any time._

That is not actually true; you can't renounce citizenship without the government's consent which it only grants in limited circumstances. You can't do it while residing in the US and if you have significant assets or income in many cases you need to either keep paying income tax for TEN YEARS after you leave or are required to pay a huge one-time lump sum. The practicality of the situation is a bit like being born a slave and having the (limited) right to purchase your freedom later in life.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to teach programming to children? - <AUTHOR> I have one 13-year old child in my family who is really interested in programming but doesn't know a thing about it. One afternoon I decided I would teach him some but I didn't have a clue where to start from. Also he had quite strong opinions how programming works and how easy it is to create games without any knowledge of the area. I decided to start of with some basic HTML and CSS but he wanted to go straight to game programming which I don't have a clue at all (I have done mostly low level C programming and some web programming).<p>Do you guys have any good tips how to teach programming to this kind of child so that it will keep him motivated? <comment><USER2> Game modding is an easier way to get your toes wet in this area. Find an open source game, a supportive community and generally try to supply resources to the kid.

Learning is something that comes far more naturally than teaching. If you aren't qualified to teach it, then don't try. Instead, facilitate their self study process. It will be far more effective and a better experience for both of you.

<comment><USER3> This. Helping child re-create an Open Source game he/she plays is great idea. Especially availability of game resources and learning materials will be tremendous help early on. For eg. Tux Racer for Linux/Win or Frozen Bubble for Android are great resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey drodil

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1076825)

has an old (but still relevant) discussion of this.

I got interested at 11, wanting to make games, but my expectations (and those of my friends, particularly) were far too high. It wasn't until I was 15 or so and got interested in the function of computers and mathematical logic that I really learned anything.

[https://projecteuler.net/](https://projecteuler.net/) fed my hunger for challenge, knowledge and quick(ish) reward.

Edit: I started in Python and Pygame at 11, continued Python at 15 and then got into Clisp.

</comment><comment><USER5> >so that it will keep him motivated?

You says he is interested. Then he won't lose motivation. Even if it does, it will keep coming back to him. With the help of the Internet, he will figure things out on his on.

As a starter, maybe give him something like this [https://processing.org/download/](https://processing.org/download/)

He can start making 2d and simple 3d stuff with it quite easily.

</comment><comment><USER6> It sounds they want something tangible. See a result.

What's your child's aim? Impress they friends "I know game design!" Because that's impossible in a few weeks, or years, with expectations like beautiful visual effects.

Android/iOS also have a pain of structured languages.

Perhaps something like 100 Javascript steps per day. I did search, and perhaps another HNer could follow, but there was link 3-4 years ago about a person that gave herself a javascript challenge per day, starting from really basic HTML/CSS, to some quite interesting creations, in the space of a few weeks/months.

Then given some grounding in JS, extend that with something Node and React- based later (but don't announce that yet? Sounds too scriptured?). With a low- level understanding, you could certainly explain problems novices encounter with things like string inspections and data types.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would try starting with Scratch first, to see if he likes it and because it's very easy to get started, with very little friction. If he seems to enjoy it and seems to understand the way of thinking, I would move to Python with Pygame next.

A friend of my created a Udemy course where he teaches how to build games such as Flappy Bird or Pacman in Scratch. It could be a good start. Let me know if you'd like a coupon (would cost $10).

[https://www.udemy.com/programming-for- kids/](https://www.udemy.com/programming-for-kids/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Can she/he do non-twitch games like Sokoban, Bloxorz, Incredible Machine? Not just the beginning levels, but the more advanced levels. If so, advance to one of the thousands of programming enviroments that've been developed for kids. Unfortunately, there's currenly no clear winner. My favs are Racket, Alice, Logo, TouchDevelop, and soon, [http://code.world](http://code.world) (but not yet).

</comment><comment><USER9> Bit pricey at $180 retail, but I can recommend Anki's Cozmo learning robot. Seeing a robot "grow" is the kind of magic that can unlock a lifetime interest in AI. App is intuitive, and with the right supervision even the Python SDK can be grokked by tech loving 13-year-olds!

[https://anki.com/en-us/cozmo](https://anki.com/en-us/cozmo)

</comment><comment><USER10> I would suggest trying a simple game framework such as Löve or pyGame (or pyglet). The former use the lua language and the latter python. I guess Scratch could also be interesting, but I think some 13 year olds may not be attracted by it's "childish" appearance.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why not start with designing the world's for existing games.</comment>


Hugo vs. Jekyll: Benchmarked - <AUTHOR> https://forestry.io/blog/hugo-vs-jekyll-benchmark/ <comment><USER2> I think the build time is the least factor to take in consideration. I choose Jekyll some time ago because: \- it was supported by github \- the plain website generated was much FASTER than anything with a database (WP I'm talking at you) \- as a developer I could mess with HTML and JS wasily

Build time is important at development time, when I'm programming some new feature, and I have to wait 1-2 seconds before refreshing the page. If those changes take 20 seconds, well, that's a horrible development experience.

So, for now, I'll definitely give Hugo a try (didn't even know) but we do websites for people and we should only care that the website is fast, nice and easy for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I 100% agree that there are many factors to take into account. Liquid templating is a huge benefit of Jekyll, for example. This article was just looking at build times and we'll put another one out soon looking at other factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm testing out hugo + netlify for blog posts, and tried to use forestry.io as the dashboard + editor, and it looks great, EXCEPT that it messed with the MathJax (math notation within double-dollar signs) in my markdown posts. Why doesn't it just leave it as raw text that I can edit?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you run a Jekyll or Hugo site (or other), we would love to know what your build times are. For example:

Static Site Generator: Jekyll

Approximate number of pages: 200

Build time: 3.4 seconds

<comment><USER4> Your comment caught my curiosity, and looking at the hugo command line I just found out it had a `benchmark` command. Cool!

For our main website (www.processout.com, ~100 pages) and blog, hugo takes about 39ms (on a Macbook Pro, late 2016)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate my Project- 1pix.me - <AUTHOR>

# We give you a Unique 1 Pixel Image # Insert into your Web site or HTML Email # Recieve a Push Notification on your iPhone every time it's viewed
Free, requires a Notifo ID. I built this on PHPFog. Let me know what you think!
http://1pix.me <comment><USER2> Can you list some of the potential practical uses of this app please?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://1pix.me></comment>


A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/#q=A+long+time+ago+in+a+galaxy+far,+far+away <comment><USER2> I guess this is supposed to be an Easter Egg, but all it does on my browser is return search results.

Any suggestions as to what it might be supposed to do, and how I can share in the experience?

<comment><USER3> It shows the Google search result of the beginning of the Star Wars title crawl as a title crawl.

Very meta.

<comment><USER2> Not for me. I wonder why not.</comment></comment></comment>


VCs should seek out patent-rich startups despite assertion anxieties - <AUTHOR> http://www.iam-magazine.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=96900bb5-2d0b-4c87-b46f-85f8b0472f1c

<comment><USER2> Another study from 2007 finding similar correlation between patent ownership and higher chance of successful exits for software and biotech startups:

[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=802806](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=802806)

Another 2010 study (paywalled, unfortunately) showing startups with "stronger than typical" IP more likely to succeed: [http://m.iam- magazine.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=ae1d78db-9c5e-4...](http://m.iam- magazine.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=ae1d78db-9c5e-41aa-a4f9-161c7de6c9fb)

(Note that the study was done by MIT Sloan and IPVision, an IP consulting firm, so something to keep in mind.)

There are other studies (that I cannot find offhand, unfortunately) that found similar results in a wider range of industries.

Of course, there is no solid explanation of what causes this correlation. It may be that startups with patents truly are more innovative or more immune to competition, which gives them an edge. Alternatively, it may just be that startup teams that file for a patent also tend to be those that prepare for all contingencies, and are thus intrinsically more suited to succeed. Nobody really knows.</comment>


Roadlike – An app to record your personal memories anytime, anywhere - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.roadlike.app

<comment><AUTHOR> Roadlike allows you to record your personal memories at spots and places (along with few photos) you feel are worth remembering in the future so that you can relish these records looking back at them. Your memories could cover your various vacation trips, travels or your entire life's journey. Roadlike is a personal application. All records created by you are private.

When you are traveling, on our iPhone app & Android app you can create records of your spots even if you have no internet and are in offline mode.

Roadlike app allows you to create records / check-in to places even when you do not have Internet and are in an offline mode.</comment>


Facebook Doesn't Adhere to Its Stated 'Principles' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/05/facebook-doesnt-adhere-to-its-stated-principles/57174/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this could be the basis for a class action suit.</comment>


Suckless Philosophy and Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://suckless.org/philosophy <comment><USER2> More code often translates to more features on the ground, though. While I prefer to run software that is running on amazing, concise and well designed code - ultimately, none of these criteria come into my software selection.

If I have a choice of two pieces of software: (1) having a lot of features, not-too-bad start-up time, usable UI, and good compatibility with other software I need to use. (2) missing some important feature, fast start up, pretty UI, poor compatibility. Then I (and nearly everyone else) is going to choose option 1. Best example of this is, obviously, Microsoft Windows.

Comes down to something simple: the only people who care about the quality of the code are those who have to look at the code. Everyone else is only interested in the surface layer, and sometimes even bad code doesn't show up on the surface if it's been battle-hardened with enough bug fixes.

<comment><USER3> More features can be handle by more pieces of software, each doing one and only one thing ("cat -v Considered Harmful").

<comment><USER4> Up to a point. But then, interesting work will need to be done with a large graph of small pieces of software, which starts to look a lot like a large piece of software. Delaying complexity is not the same thing as avoiding it; the former can be a reasonable approach, the latter is whistling past the graveyard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like their philosophy, and I like the C language (its a beautiful minimal thing, although there is definite room for improvement). But making software that sucks less in C is still a hard sell.

<comment><USER6> I like suckless too, and use some of their tools (surf is a godsend for my dying laptop) but I find it interesting they linked to the "Duct Tape Programmer" essay at the bottom. I mean, aren't they doing another kind of opposite to duct tape programming?

"Write beautifully clean and minimal C code" seems to me just as detached from "just ship the damn thing!" as doing massively multi-inheritanced templated C++ architecture, albeit in the opposite direction.

<comment><USER7> I was wondering exactly the same thing, especially after reading "Most hackers actually don't care much about code quality. Thus, if they get something working which seems to solve a problem, they stick with it.".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me, a "suck less" philosophy means that my environment should:

* Mount flash drives automatically when I plug them in.

* Let users configure the wireless network connection, and set it to automatically reconnect with the same settings to different APs on the same network, and let users override certificate settings for the same, and remember the overridden settings.

* Let users configure printer settings.

Sure, dwm is great if you spend all of your time in xterm and emacs/vim. But I spend at least 0.02% of my time doing the above tasks, and I don't want to inflate that number.

Some people believe that the fewer lines of code they write, the more elegant their software becomes. Bull. Just like writing more lines doesn't make your code better, writing fewer lines doesn't make it better.

<comment><USER9> I think you're confusing Window Managers (WMs) with Desktop Environments (DEs)

<comment><USER8> I'm not really confused, just not very fond of cobbling together a usable system out of several dozen different applications, which I must individually install and configure. Gnome fixes that problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have used dwm as a window manager, along with dmenu for application selection. I tend to mix and match their stuff as I find the convenience of a desktop manager (gdm/slim) and a graphical file manager (thunar) useful. I'm glad they are around as an alternative!

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra "Many (open source) hackers are proud if they achieve large amounts of code, because they believe the more lines of code they've written, the more progress they have made"

Citation needed.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's a bit flaky; but it's more like a conflation of two different cultures by the term "hacker" than a malicious slam.

<comment> guard-of-terra I've never seen an open source developer that cared about line count except in a negative sense.

Can't imagine one. People like that don't do open source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nobody sets out to write bad code. It is easier not to suck if you can control / choose the scope of your project. But more often than not, the scope is dictated by a real-world set of complex needs and circumstances that evolve throughout the whole live of the project.

In the end, good UI, proper testing and responsive customer support play a bigger role in customer satisfaction than the quality of code.

<comment><USER12> _Nobody sets out to write bad code._

No, but a lot of people (especially managers trying to get promoted via over- ambitious IT projects) set out to write Big Code, which goes that way almost always.

 _In the end, good UI, proper testing and responsive customer support play a bigger role in customer satisfaction than the quality of code._

If you've been in the enterprise long enough, you've learned that some systems are so far gone in code quality that keeping the UI and customer support up to date becomes impossible. Fixing one bug creates two more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use dwm and sometimes st if I want a really quick terminal or need a really minimal one.</comment>


Piranha: An Open Source Tool to Automatically Delete Stale Code - <AUTHOR> https://eng.uber.com/piranha/ <comment><USER2> One of our internal experimentation systems handles this by capping rollouts to 95%. So the author is forced to clean up their code if they want a full rollout.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry, but I don't entirely get this. Does it mean that after I've finished something I want to merge, I have to remove 5% of that? Or of the entire code base? Or something completely different?

<comment><USER4> I think they're saying that any new feature controlled by a flag is only rolled out to a maximum of 95% of the user base. To make sure it gets rolled out to 100% you have to remove the flag controlling it (and therefore the old version of the code).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the link to the Piranha repo since I didn't see it mentioned in the article: [https://github.com/uber/piranha](https://github.com/uber/piranha)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't "nibblefish" be a more apt name for this?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_garra#Relationship_with_hu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_garra#Relationship_with_humans)

</comment><comment><USER7> A while ago I deleted my Uber/UberEats account (they didn't make it easy btw) because of how utterly unusable their apps were compared to competition. After me and my girlfriend spent 30 minutes trying to order food on 3 different platforms, which has been a repeated experience with them for years, I decided it's time to give up. Same obvious UI/UX bugs as over a year ago - I'm actually dumbfounded at how this is possible, _do they even use their own app_? To sum up, I tend to look at tech coming from Uber through a somewhat sarcastic lens these days.

<comment><USER8> Try rooting your phone and installing a CPU monitor like [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.eolwral.osmonitor/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.eolwral.osmonitor/) . Then watch for apps burning CPU in the background. Uber might show up _wink_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone point to a good write-up on how to introduce and start using feature flags in a repo? Seems like I just can't find any good resources on this topic!

<comment><USER10> If you're looking to try it out in a simple way, you could probably dynamically load different functionality or modules with environment variables. But I'm also looking for a good resource

<comment><USER11> Hi - we're developing a 100% open source feature flagging platform that can achieve this - [https://bullet-train.io/](https://bullet-train.io/) \- would love feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It sounds pretty fancy. I'd want a very thorough set of unit tests before trusting code to delete code, though.

<comment><USER13> Piranha co-author here. I'd say you trust it a bit more than we do, then ;) As the paper and blog post mention, we use Piranha to create diffs/PRs against the original author of the code. Developers are expected to code-review the changes before they are ever landed. As used within Uber, Piranha won't ever auto-land code deletions.

That still saves the time of: a) remembering that the flag is stale and must be removed, b) actually removing the code and putting the diff up. Piranha diffs for a single flag are also generally small enough to fully read them during code review.

We do have comprehensive unit tests for both the Piranha tool and the target codebase(s), and the majority (65%) of diffs generated by Piranha are landed without changes (and the most common change in those that are changed is to delete extra lines that Piranha couldn't prove as stale). Thus far we haven't had an outage caused by a Piranha deletion, but certainly there have been incorrect diffs generated and caught either by CI or manual reviewers, requiring us to update the tool. We would not recommend landing diffs generated by Piranha - or other stale code removal tools - to master without any reviews right now :)

<comment><USER14> Follow up question: In general, when a diff is generated, is the standard process to just do a manual code-review and CI, or do you also test it manually to check for unexpected side-effects?

<comment> mkr-plse Manual code review and CI only. In our experience of deleting more than 2.5K flags, testing would have helped in one case but then the code was not tested well when the flag was introduced.

<comment><USER13> Just as an extra note: there are manual testing steps (and automated end-to- end test, and internal alpha test, etc), independent of whether the diff was Piranha- or developer-authored, but all those happen for the continuous delivery internal version of the app, which is after the diff has been landed to master, but before a release is sent to app stores. We would count an issue discovered there as an outage having made past "our tests", even though it could well be caught before it gets to any external users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Neat! I experimented with something similar and found the state of java AST transformers to be in a kind of painful state. I'll have to look though the code base to see what y'all used.

<comment><USER13> We used Google's Error Prone framework. Pros: you get full compiler symbol/type information, in addition to the AST. Cons: you need to build the code to process it (Error Prone runs as a javac plugin), and if you want to do things efficiently then you are restricted to basically a single AST traversal. It's very use-case dependent whether you are better off just using e.g. javaparser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If I am not mistaken this tool requires technical debt to begin with. I think more important part is what caused this debt to begin with.

In my opinion it lies in the implementation of feature flags.

<comment> another-dave Can you expand a bit on what you mean here?

How would you introduce feature flags in a way that doesn't leave any debt behind in contrast to their approach?

Or are you saying that feature flags themselves are inheritly debt-generating (which I think they acknowledge, but are taking it on prudently & deliberately) — in which case, what would you do instead?

<comment><USER16> Actually what I meant was this tool is kind of a after thought of bad feature flag life cycle. When you set a feature flag, normally you should put a deadline on it, after this deadline, you should either choose to keep it, or remove it or you can extend the deadline.

But seems like they accumulated a lot of flags, which stayed stale over time, and went unchecked and lack of feedback created the debt.

Also unrelated but I prefer 2 stages for retirement of flags, from production and from code. From the example in the article. Instead of using direct access to:

experiments.isTreated(RIDES_NEW_FEATURE)

I think it is better to indirectly refer this from a function like (considering we are in context of RIDES module/class):

function isNewFeatureEnabled(){ return experiments.isTreated(RIDES_NEW_FEATURE) }

So when you want to retire this flag to disable new feature but want to keep code for some time (for few versions), but don't want to bloat your binary you can simply do:

function isNewFeatureEnabled(){ return FALSE }

<comment><USER13> > When you set a feature flag, normally you should put a deadline on it, after > this deadline, you should either choose to keep it, or remove it or you can > extend the deadline.

This is actually a feature we did identify as important to have in order to increase Piranha's effectiveness, and it is being added to our internal flag tracking, but it doesn't negate the need for the tool. An expiration date makes it easier for the tool to know when to run on a given feature (rather than using heuristics based on % rollout and days without changing the experiment), it still means that Piranha: a) reduces manual effort by auto- generating the (candidate) removal patch, and b) acts as the reminder portion for the expiration, so it's more actionable than just adding a task.

The thing to note is that, even on a steady state where flags are removed as soon as they go stale, enough new experiments are being created every day that reducing the time spent cleaning them up is valuable.

Also, you definitely don't want to block someone from fixing a crash because they have pending expired flags, so all you can really do with any expiration policy is to remind them. With Piranha, you are reminding them _and_ reducing the friction to solve the issue. After all, the diff is right there for them to review and click 'land' on.

As for the hardcoded flag value in your example above? What does that accomplish? It looks to me like you'd only be shipping dead code, since there is no runtime way of re-enabling the `RIDES_NEW_FEATURE` behavior (which is the main difference between "rolled 100%" vs "Piranha-removed"). It also makes harder to remove the related code later, since the semantic information about it being part of the feature is lost. If it's just about having the old code available, then version control does that already, no? What am I missing?

<comment><USER16> I am in favor of all automation and I totally agree that the tool is valuable. I am sorry if my comments seemed on other direction.

What I was trying to say was basically, without tooling also you can manage the debt from feature flags.

Answer to the RIDES_NEW_FEATURE question is about "you definitely don't want to block someone from fixing a crash because they have pending expired flags" mainly.

When I am disabling a flag, if I set isNewFeatureEnabled to False, basically, I am removing bloat instantly. Then when I have time to review the code I can also remove the dead code. Actually this is fixing the concerns in your blog post about "accidental activation" and "bloat" without waiting developers to fix the code. Piranha can set flag to stale value, then later can send the developer task to fix the dead code.

My flow is little bit more complicated then I replied actually, I have also assets etc related to feature flags. CI pipeline also removing non-used assets for that flag when it is stale. So basically I have more like: function isNewFeatureEnabled { return isFlagEnabled(flag) && getFlagValue("RIDES_NEW_FEATURE") }

What I am curious on this topic, do you have any kind of conflict detection for your feature flags?

<comment> mkr-plse BTW, we also have a tech publication at [https://github.com/uber/piranha/blob/master/report.pdf](https://github.com/uber/piranha/blob/master/report.pdf) where we discuss some of the design tradeoffs pertaining to the stale flag cleanup problem.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by conflict detection? Are you trying to understand how flags are dependent on each other?

<comment><USER16> Thanks a lot, I will read it asap.

Basically sometimes I have some conflicting flags that can introduce bugs. Especially some rarely used flag and a new feature. Basic example, 2 different flags, setting same property to different values on an UI object.

Although more testing coverage probably can help, but I am curious, if you have some automation to detect those cases.

<comment> mkr-plse Interesting. We don't have tooling for this yet but extending the Piranha static analysis may help detect the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It relies heavily on feature flags. Makes sense for big systems with lots of feature flags.

However it works for now only with Java, Swift, or Objective-C Code.

Check it out if your projects fit those two conditions

</comment><comment><USER18> > Currently implemented for Objective-C, Swift, and Java programs

Are Uber's Android apps written in Java? I would have thought they would be Kotlin.

<comment><USER13> Most of the existing Android codebase is Java. There is some Kotlin code, and PiranhaKotlin is certainly in the roadmap somewhere but, especially when the goal is removing older features, Java makes the lion share of the use case for such a tool right now.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py this seems to work by comparing feature flag configs

I've always been a buyer of tools to make runtime stats available in the IDE

would be awesome to overlay trace / route timing _into the codebase_ on whatever part of the call graph is on the screen

</comment><comment><USER19> So it's like Gilfoyle's anton but it only deletes stale code</comment>


MAYKE – Build a side-project this May - <AUTHOR> https://www.maykeithappen.com <comment><USER2> Who is this by/for? It says "We're a community of people trying to build our side projects over the month of May." but there is no talk about who we is. I'm not suspicious or anything, just curious!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! It's meant to be more of a collective "everyone who wants to participate"! I came up with the concept as myself and some friends are trying to get a project off the ground this month ourselves!

Sorry if it isn't SUPER clear! I designed/built/launched this site in less than a week (with no room for testing since May is tomorrow, haha)!

Thanks!</comment></comment>


Spina bifida: Keyhole surgery repairs baby spine in womb - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-48253477 <comment><USER2> This is amazing news, it really is.

Slightly off topic but I would like to address the people in this thread saying things along the lines of "with a medical condition is serious as this, it's better to abort"

Yeah, fuck no.

I was born in 1978 in the UK with spina bifida and Chiari malformation of the back of my brain which basically means a couple of the ventricles are being pulled by my spine out of my skull.[1] (Very basically)

If you look at any sort of scan of my brain and ask a Neurologist what they are looking at and they will tell you very forthrightly that the person whose scan they are looking at will definitely be uncommunicative, will have cognitive impairment, will probably be on a ventilator and will definitely have a foreshortened life. (This is not from some hypothetical thought experiment, I've done this over the years)

So, speaking as a 41-year-old quadriplegic hacker with spina bifida who's not on a ventilator; let me say that life finds a way. I was written off so many times it's unreal, medicine is not a science but rather a series of very very very good guesses. We need doctors, but we need lots of opinions and you don't have to do what they say. They gave Stephen Hawking three or four years to live when he got his MND diagnosis, he lived another 30 years or so.

My life is great, yes I'm quadriplegic but once you get past that little speed bump I have a job, friends, a wonderful partner, family everywhere, a very serious addiction to Raspberry Pi's and exploiting networks and I feel incredibly lucky. I am so glad I was not aborted.

Okay, because this is the Internet it's time for the caveats

Yes I am aware I am slightly unusual and not all quadriplegics with spina bifida dodged a bullet in quite the same way I did.

Also, I think that the woman who is going to be carrying the baby to term has the right to decide whether to abort or not. Regardless of my opinion because I did not have to have a baby.

[1]: I know, eww right? :-)

<comment><USER3> Your story is amazing thanks for sharing. Hypothetically, if spina bifida could be detected by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, meaning that an embryo that was destined to be a person with spina bifida could simply not be implanted, would you also oppose pre implantation genetic diagnosis?

<comment><USER2> That is a pretty wild hypothesis, but I would have to say that when we are at the point of editing genes to get rid of debilitating diseases then sign me up.

I am very happy the way I am right now, but given the choice then of course I would choose to be able-bodied. It would be asinine for me to think otherwise.

So yes, if we could get to the point where we are editing the genes of something in a test tube could not survive outside of that test tube that then might potentially go on to be a human then it is incumbent upon us to make sure they are healthy as much as we can.

If that makes any sense!

<comment><USER3> The scenario I was describing is a little different: suppose we could detect spina bifida in an embryo before implantation. We could simply opt not to implant the embryo; it's not the same as abortion, but it does prevent a person with spina bifida from existing. Is that bad in your way of thinking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in the US. My seven month old daughter was born with Spina Bifida. It didn't show on the ultrasound, and it was a total shock to us. I can't be sure but it seemed to correlate to a flu my wife had during the period that spina bifida "develops" (rather the spinal cord fails to develop fully).

The worst complication has to do with Chiari malformation, which affects her unconscious breathing. She gets upset or angry, and freezes up, turns purple, passes out, then requires CPR to be resuscitated. Most spina bifida babies do not have this complication.

We were told children with this condition die.

My wife obsessively reviewed the same papers the doctors had, and some others. She carefully googled every term she didn't know. She discovered children prescribed clonidine had a MUCH improved prognosis. At her insistence and after some initial pushback and a very detailed email to the doctors, it was prescribed and my daughters condition improved substantially. She hasn't had a single breath holding spell that's required resuscitation since. It's made us wary of the doctors recommendations. We feel like we have to be the experts, because if we'd blindly followed the doctors our daughter would likely be gone.

She's so good natured and friendly, and she's happy. She's happy to be here and we're happy to have her. If we knew there was no hope, or that she'd be permanently mentally disabled, I can't honestly say that we'd have fought this hard for her.

It's also taught me who my real friends are, my wife's family has been so supportive while mine has retreated almost completely. People do NOT like being around tragedy if they can help it. They've given us "plenty of space". My wife's grandmother, who we weren't close to before, has given us amazing outpourings of support and her time, visiting our daughter in the hospital almost every day. In the months leading up to our daughters birth grandma had seemed to be deteriorating due to dementia, but she has a new lease on life. I can't say why this has happened, but it feels like a miracle.

One of the best things that happened to me during all this was a gray beard software engineer overheard me talking about my daughter. He took me aside and told me he had spina bifida, and we talked at length about it, and it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. It made me have hope when before I had none. I never would have known he had it. He's lived a long and fulfilling life, a life I want my daughter to have.

<comment><USER5> I'm thankful your wife had the wherewithal to persist in both her research and pestering of medical professionals. We recently faced a similar situation with our young daughter (was 20mo at the time), who was diagnosed with a rare intracardiac tumor last fall. The first prognosis we received (from the chief pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeon at Stanford) was that it was inoperable and we should take her home and enjoy her while she was healthy.

Thankfully my wife also persisted and three additional opinions later we found the right place with the right professionals and demonstrated experience and our daughter is doing great post-surgery.

We learned the same hard lesson you have, both regarding the healthcare community AND family/social support. I feel particularly bad for the huge population of folks who are unable -- for whatever reason, it could be lack of insurance or it could be lack of education, or lack of funds -- to ensure their family receive the best care possible.

<comment><USER6> Recognizing the medical industry as what it is can be really difficult. It's not just there is a bell curve of knowledge and ability, but something with more dimensions that accounts for a world as a big as ours.

Just like I'm sure there are software shops out there doing what I would call impossible, not all doctors know the full extent of the practice or where those particularly skilled practitioners might be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neurosurgeon here (long-term HN browser and my post).

If you're interested in prenatal surgery for spina bifida (more specifically: for myelomeningocele), check out the MOMS trial:

[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1014379](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1014379)

Essentially, this was a prospective randomized trial looking at prenatal surgery vs. standard management with mothers who knew they were going to have a child with spina bifida.

This work stems from pre-clinical experiments using sheep:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7585064](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7585064)

<comment><USER2> I almost certainly know the answer to this question and understand you're not my doctor et cetera et cetera et cetera and I won't try to do something Internet crazy when you tell me it's not possible.

(Deep breath)

That being said, Do you think hypothetically that this type of surgery could be used to help dashingly handsome 41-year-old Quadriplegic hackers with spina bifida like me?

(also, been interacting with neurologists my entire life and I think your understanding of the brain borders on the magical dark arts!)

<comment><USER7> When we talk about clinical trials, we are often interested in answering (1) a primary outcome, which is articulated as a specific yes/no questions based on a measurable clinical outcome, and then (2) a series secondary outcomes, which are answers to auxiliary answers. Clinical trials are usually designed to answer a specific question for a specific population.

Many (actually, most) children born with myelomeningoceles will develop hydrocephalus, which is a mismatch between spinal fluid production and resorption. This is usually treated using a ventriculoperitoneal shunt -- a shunt that diverts fluid from the brain to the abdominal cavity. Shunts can be life saving, but most eventually stop working and need to be surgically revised.

The MOMS trial compared the need for VP shunt and mortality between pre-natal surgery and the standard practice (i.e. post-natal surgery). So: unfortunately, the results of this trial do not generalize to your situation.

However, many academic medical institutions with neurosurgical and rehab departments have ongoing studies related to spinal cord injuries. There are a variety of surgeries that can help people with spinal cord dysfunction who have specific clinical problems (e.g. bladder control, contractures, etc.).

There are also clinical trials that have looked at restorative neurotechnologies for people with spinal cord dysfunction. For instance, check out:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30382196](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30382196)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30462658](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30462658)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PSA: If you can possibly get pregnant, please make sure you are taking a folate supplement. If you have a partner that can possibly get pregnant, make sure she is taking a folate supplement. Folate reduces the risk of this happening.

<comment><USER9> Old source:

[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5113a1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5113a1.htm)

Current source:

[https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/spina- bifida/...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/spina- bifida/symptoms-causes/syc-20377860)

tl;dr: folate deficiency is probably a main factor, but not the sole cause of NTD's.

<comment><USER7> This is absolutely true. Another way of saying this is: at a population based level, a very cheap and effective way to decrease the incidence of spina bifida is by providing folate supplementation. However, some mothers are genetically pre-disposed to having children with NTDs, and certain medications interfere with metabolism and can increase the risk of NTDs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So is it immediately clear that the surgery was a complete success? Or is that something that will only be know with time?

<comment><USER4> The primary symptoms of spina bifida are incontinence, bladder control, and limited leg movement.

Unfortunately, all three of those things are just characteristics of being a baby, so it's difficult to tell until the child is older. The best you can do is give them physical therapy on their legs and make sure their shunt keeps working, so they don't develop hydrocephalus.

My daughter is seven months old with spina bifida, and we get "hints" sometimes, like she grunts while pooping which is a good sign, as it indicates she might have bowel control. She kicks her legs but not often. She wears little leg braces an hour or two a day to straighten her little feet. She doesn't move her toes at all, and you can smack her feet (babies HATE that) without her reacting.

It all depends on the individual case though, and sometimes as someone grows the spinal cord can snag on the bones and someone who once walked can become wheelchair bound. As someone else stated, they're just much more delicate. It sounds like this surgery tries to put the cord back inside the bones, but I'm not sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's truly amazing that we can do this.

</comment><comment><USER12> My brother has Spina Bifida and it was a complete shock to whole the family when he was born as it hadn't shown up on the ultrasound. Seeing him whisked away for surgery so soon after being born was incredibly terrifying and stressful for the whole family, not to mention the stress he's experienced from various medical procedures over the years. Seeing medical advances like this make me really happy, I only wish they'd existed 25 years ago so they could help him.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a parent, I feel sad for the condition and happy for the result. Every time I read stories like this, I feel very blessed for everything being "normal".

Thanks for sharing this.

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought spina bifida was somewhat progressive. My Aunt has it, and could 'walk' with crutches when young, then needed leg braces, and is now in a wheelchair.

So I guess this is a quality of life thing, rather than a cure?

<comment><USER15> Long term mobility prognosis depends very heavily on the exact level of the spine where the myelomeningocele occurs. It's not really "progressive", though, in the sense that that term is used medically - it's more just "fragile."

A progressive disease is one in which the disease process itself continues to operate. In spina bifida the disease process is complete by birth, but the result can be a fragile anatomy prone to subsequent deterioration.

Saffron: I didn't kill him either. Mal: No, don't reckon there's many you killed. Just put him in a position to die easy.

<comment><USER14> Ok does it make it less fragile then?

Are we talking about someone who has 10 years longer without a wheelchair, or are they never expected to need a wheelchair?

<comment><USER15> It does make it less fragile, by putting the spinal nerves back into the protective bones of the spine. We have a shortage of long term data, but studies on kids out to ten years show higher rates of ambulation, and better quality of ambulation.

<comment><USER14> Ok thanks, so we're talking about someone who could walk with crutches at birth, _potentially_ being able to walk with crutches indefinitely then?

<comment><USER16> _Unlikely_ , but if they can at least avoid crutches in their childhood then... that isn't nothing. That's a lot, actually.

They'll probably need them eventually. Then again, technology does keep progressing. Maybe this will be like many other diseases in the past, and it'll turn out that we've reached escape velocity -- the repairs will outdo the damage.

There's no way to know yet. Even so, this article is very good news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Might be just me, but I think that if a serious medical condition like this is discovered in utero, the more humane approach is to abort the pregnancy.

<comment><USER18> Either choice is a bet. We choose to abort the pregnancy because we had first hand experience with spina bifida going very bad, and felt we protected our child from the unsufferable suffering many of them live through, but there are some amazing exceptions in this thread.

We'll never know if we made the right choice, and I wish with all my heart this kind of surgery was available eight years ago, holding her corpse broke me completly. At least she is not suffering.</comment></comment>


Verify email. Wtf? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.puncht.com/2009/07/14/verify-your-email-wtf/

<comment><USER2> The reasons are: 1. People who don't like you won't be able to subscribe you to (legitimate) stuff you don't want, therefore flooding your inbox with legitimate e-mails that won't be blocked by SPAM filters. 2. You are making sure you didn't make a typo in your e-mail in case you need to reset your password, so that somebody with similar address doesn't get your password. 3. Obvious marketing legal reasons (double opt-in, i.e. you did confirm that you want to receive marketing spam from us).

The "easy" signup isn't with username-password-email-submit, it's with OpenID.

<comment><USER3> This. If you are not doing confirmed (aka "double") opt-in, your list will be abused and you will definitely be regarded as a spammer.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention double opt-in is required by most certified email services before you can use them.

<comment><USER5> Yep. Then the fine upstanding email services _get your email into their inbox_ precisely because they're religious about who they let use them. Which is, of course, the whole point of the exercise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm as anti-hassle as it gets, but I think email validation actually makes sense. If a company NEEDS my email address for communication, go on and verify if it works and an overly eager spam filter inbetween does not eats everything up. Or if, god forbid, I accidentally put a comma instead of a period somewhere while typing.

If they don't care whether I can be reached by that email address, why even bother asking for one?

<comment><AUTHOR> For example to send forgotten password ;)

If user enters a real email - he will get a new password in that case. If not... well, it's his problem.

<comment><USER5> I have a funny feeling you do not charge money for stuff. When firstname.lastname@example.com can't log in after paying $30 for the privilege to do so, it is _my_ problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your root account should start receiving your newsletters shortly.

</comment><comment><USER8> The reason is simply that some sites value having a valid e-mail address over the percentage that they loose by having a validate e-mail step.

Like it or not, e-mail is pretty much the only way to get in contact with people who don't login all the time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes. I'm glad that the web is moving toward the easy signup: [username] [password] [email] (optional), and do everything else later. As a user more than a developer, it's so nice to move past the usability problems of last decade.

<comment><USER10> If you use Damien Katz's Negative Captcha, you can even skirt the captcha, if your users aren't malicious: just have an invisible honeypot field called "email" for the botspam to fill out, and call the visible email field something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I prefer verify, mostly because with a very common First-Initial-Plus-Common- Last-Name@gmail I get an insane number of idiots typing in my email address somewhere. (I really don't know if people _think_ it's theirs, or if they just don't want to enter an address.)

A verify gives me a chance to cut off the pseudo-spam before it gets started.

</comment><comment><USER12> w/o email verification it removes even the minor level of "trust" established by using an email.

I could sign up as firstname.lastname@example.com. It means you cant trust a word I say comes from who it appears to!

And if nothing else; not having email verification means yo have to build a "dispute email" system. Which is open to yet more abuse ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> On Woobius, we verify email addresses because those are people's work email addresses, typically, and so they are identified, to their colleagues, by those email addresses. It'd be terrible if someone was able to use our systems to pretend to be, say, email@example.com without even the simplest verification.

</comment><comment><USER14> Two things:

You have to verify their e-mail address before you subscribe them to stuff, otherwise you will get branded as a spammer. But also...

If a new user hasn't verified their e-mail address yet, is that reason enough to deny them further use of the site? I don't think so.

<comment> matt-kantor A good practice I use is to give users a "trial period" (usually 24 hours) before they must verify. Users can sign up for the site and immediately start using it, then next time they check their email just click the link. Many people will check their email at least once per day anyways.

Or, if they don't check it and try to log in after 24 hours, they get a message saying they need to verify their email address and the option to re- send the verification email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have had several cases where someone with a similar email address to mine signed up for Myspace, Bebo, and CareerBuilder with my email by mistake (I think it really was a mistake). The stupidest thing is, these websites gladly reset the password for his account by sending it to my email, giving me access to all the data he had put on all these websites: names of friends, home address, place of employment, some possibly embarrassing forums he frequented, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are already solutions to this.

The blogger uses Disqus for comment, which allows you to Sign in via Twitter and OpenID.

If you use OpenID w/ AX or SREG you can get the users email address, which is even nicer. Done and done.</comment>


The Tao of Gender: Feminism, feminishism, complementarity, sexism and love - <AUTHOR> http://expressiveegg.org/2017/03/29/the-tao-of-gender/ <comment><USER2> > _[...] there is no question that women cannot think as men do and vice > versa_

This is garbage. The tone of the article often implies that the way women think is superior to the way men think, but none-the-less, this is sexism. As a woman it is extremely frustrating to be continuously pigeon-holed because of my anatomy. I'm sure it is equally frustrating for men.

> _Rather than demand a return to her own domain (e.g. to be paid and > recognised for the 'uneconomic' shadow-work she had been doing), rather than > refuse entry into the nightmarish market-economy, [...] she instead accepted > the assumptions of the male world and began to fight for 'equality' and > 'recognition' within it._

I have absolutely no desire to be relegated to the realm of home-keeping, whether or not such work would be fairly compensated. No shade to those who prefer such a lifestyle, but the choice is what is key here. To have your experience limited is the true nightmare.</comment>


Oracle JDK8 Now Requires a Login - <AUTHOR> https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html <comment><USER2> Why bother? Move to newer JDK.. the 8 is a dead train now and Jigsaw is since more than a year out.

People had enough time to adapt and experiment

<comment><USER3> Ubuntu LTS users have had the option to install Java 11 for exactly 24 days today. The maintainers' choice to package Java 10 as "openjdk-11" and leave it that way for as long as they did was a mess, to be sure, but let's not pretend like this is the fault of people clinging to old software out of stubbornness. Staying on Java 8 has not been an uncommon position, especially after it became completely clear that while Oracle would no longer support it, plenty of large, reputable organizations would for at least a couple years to come.

<comment><USER4> For someone out of the loop what is the relation of OpenJDK 10 vs OpenJDK 11 being available in relation to Oracle JDK 8?

<comment><USER3> Java 9 and 10 were the first limited-support "intermediate" releases. 10 was released late March 2018 and received its last update mid-July 2018. Because those versions only had 6 months of support planned, very few people moved old projects to them, and few if any Linux distributions packaged them as part of their LTS releases.

This left Ubuntu in an awkward position with their 18.04 LTS release. Java 8 was at that point 4 years old and heading towards EOL, Java 10 had just been released but would only have 6 months of support, and Java 11 wasn't to be released until September. The compromise they came up with was to ship a package called "openjdk-11" which actually contained Java 10, with plans to update it to Java 11 when that was released, in the hopes that the two would be relatively similar. It ended up taking around 6 months to finish testing 11 after its release, so it ended up being March 2019, nearly a year after the release of 18.04, that they finally put Java 11 in their Java 11 package.

I'm not sure this answers your question, but that was the recent Java release timeline and how Ubuntu chose to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oracle JDK 8 is EOL (without support subscription, just like Windows XP) and has been for some time. If you need Java 8 (which you shouldn't, just like you shouldn't need Windows XP) grab an AdoptOpenJDK version of Java 8 which is still supported. But seriously...get off Java 8....

<comment><USER3> It's really nothing at all like the XP situation was in the Vista days. XP stuck around for years after its LTS replacement was being distributed. Java 11, on the other hand, only made it to Ubuntu 18.04 less than a month ago[1]. Java 8 is also still receiving support from a number of organizations, including Red Hat, AdoptOpenJDK (as you mention), and Canonical, I believe, until Ubuntu 20.04.

I'm all for staying current, within reason, but if I'm running Ubuntu in production, I'm gonna want to get my software as part of that distribution. As recently as March 25th, that meant my options were Java 8 or Java 10.

1: [http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/o/openjdk-...](http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/o/openjdk- lts/openjdk-lts_11.0.2+9-3ubuntu1~18.04.3/changelog)</comment></comment>


Shenzhen and Guangzhou seizing private property - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3050092/two-chinas-biggest-cities-given-power-seize-private-property <comment><USER2> Actual title: " _Two of China's biggest cities given power to seize private property to help stop spread of coronavirus_ "</comment>


Ask HN: What Are Your Conditions for Resuming Pre-Covid Lifestyle? - <AUTHOR> In trying to plan for the near future, I've instigated a heated debate about what conditions are necessary in order for people to return to their pre-COVID lifestyle.
Three examples:
- "When there are zero deaths in the county for 1 week, I'll feel comfortable going to movies, restaurants and bars."
- "When there are zero new cases in the state..."
- "I'll never stop wearing a mask and distancing..."
With such a wide range, I wonder how society will return to normal, and obviously, what will a 'new normal' look like. The question is: What do you need to see, and if you have a specific new normal in mind for yourself, what does that look like? <comment><USER2> I'm comfortable going back to normal right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are the COVID circumstances in your area?

<comment><USER2> About the same as everywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think a good first measure is weather you allowed to fly out of your country into other countries, preferably without a quarantine.

Second goal post will be if there been a large party/festival like gathering in the region without increased spread

As the lateral marker, what technologies have been tested and released for public use (and deployed at scale). Antiviral surface coatings, vaccines, treatment strategies, testing technologies

as a new normal, quality of life concerns will eventually lose out and I will probably start alternating 2-month long high and low risk lifestyles with a quarantine session in between. A compromise might be to just double down on outdoor activities</comment>