A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/free-money-for-surfers-a-genealogy-of-the-idea-of-universal-basic-income/ <comment><USER2> < the Netherlands ... experienced a wave of "basic grant" militancy in the 1980s and '90s

Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but a wave of basic grant militancy?

> Pilot programs have been set up in several cities and countries — Utrecht

There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of welfare, which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs.

Doesn't bode well for the article.

<comment><USER3> >Did it really? I remember strikes against "austerity" measures and such, but a wave of basic grant militancy

I know nothing about these events, but it's not hard to believe a large number of people came to support UBI during a period of frequent strikes. With huge groups working together for a common goal, you'd expect some of them would start supporting more radical ideas

>There is no such thing. They relaxed the rules for the bottom rung of welfare, which basically scraps the obligation to apply for jobs.

The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program, also here

[https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income- expe...](https://capx.co/keeping-an-eye-on-utrechts-basic-income-experiment/)

<comment><USER2> > The word "Utrecht" that you quoted links to the ongoing pilot program

That's what I commented on. The link is nearly 5 years old, and the policy is nowhere near UBI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad to see Thomas Paine referenced in this article. So many Americans don't realize that one of America's founding fathers championed the idea of universal basic income back when the USA was just being created.

This was something that Andrew Yang pointed out, but was largely ignored.

<comment><USER5> I hear this a lot but in reading Paine's writings, I can only find ideas somewhat similar to Social Security payments for elderly people. I have not been able to find anything in Paine's writings that is synonymous with the concept of UBI. I'm not saying it isn't in there somewhere, just that I haven't found it.

Would you mind citing specifically where you found this information?

<comment><USER6> In Agrarian Justice he proposes to " create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property"

He also makes it very clear that this isn't some form of charity to help people. But rather about justice

<comment><USER4> Wait -- so did I misunderstand? Is this more like reparations to native americans or slaves? I'm confused.

<comment><USER6> You can read it in full here [https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice)

But no he argues that "Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What always seems to happen with UBI studies is the proponents point to results that say "the people we gave free money to are happier" but never try to quantify whether that money would have done more good used in a different way.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that's the right question to ask. It should be "Would they be happier if the tax to fund UBI was not levied"

<comment><USER9> This question is insufficient, because, in most large economies, taxation is insufficient to fund a UBI have any reasonable size. Therefore, new money creation (a.k.a. inflation) is the means, and the timeframe for its ruinous effects are too long to study within a single generation.

<comment><USER10> That's a false premise. One of the intended effects of UBI is to universalize the kind of stability of cash flow that the wealthy tend to benefit from under Capitalism. This effectively shifts the balance of both economic and political leverage. In the same way that universal healthcare is less expensive than a balkanized insurance system because the people who want lower prices suddenly have a larger say in the marketplace, UBI would lower the amount of capital wealthy individuals and entities have to put towards assets, and raise the amount that, collectively, a much larger number of UBI recipients have.

Under these conditions, it makes a lot less sense to, say, build luxury housing units that are bid up and up by the demand of wealthy investors, compared to seeing that that demand has now been broken up and distributed among lower income would-be buyers and renters and realizing that a lot of money could be made expanding the housing base.

It's all about who has the money. Asset prices will fall as wealth is diffused among people who don't stockpile capital, making the amount of income necessary to survive lower.

Taxation is a cornerstone of making UBI work. Of course it has a higher chance of failure if it's predicated on grabbing money out of thin air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No mention of the UBI initiatives in Canada [https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income- pilot](https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-basic-income-pilot) (scrapped by the new Conservative government) and the older [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome) (also "free money for surfers"? wtf)

<comment><USER12> > (also "free money for surfers"? wtf)

I was curious about the surfers as well. It's a reference to something John Rawls wrote in 1988:

"[...] those who surf all day off Malibu must find a way to support themselves and would not be entitled to public funds." [1] provides context.

In 1991, Philippe van Parijs wrote "Why surfers should be fed: The liberal case for an Unconditional Basic Income", which instead supports Rawls's surfers. [2]

[1] [https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter- tw...](https://rawlsbasicincome.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/chapter-two/) [2] [https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Su...](https://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/1991l.Surfers.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Spaniard here since this article[1] about Spain was prominently noted in the linked article, there isn't a basic income plan here and nothing like that has happened, please stop with making up this kind of stuff about other countries.

There is regular unemployment insurance and an unemployment plan targeted to temporary job freezes (ERTE) that has always existed, nothing to do with basic income. I would also like to see BI even if it's just a test, but what we have here has nothing to do with it.

The government has just made the rules for these pre-existing unemployment plans a bit more flexible (or arguably not). Also the rent situation has become a lot better.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic- income-...](https://www.businessinsider.nl/spain-universal-basic-income- coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4?international=true&r=US)

Edit: removed references to the future since I cannot predict it and moved those to the present.

Edit 2: it's also interesting to see the original headline was "Spain is moving to" (already false, there's no specific plan now) but in this article the mention was "Spain decided to institute the program" (ridiculous).

<comment><USER14> Seen similar misinformation about Nordic countries and their UBI testing/experiments.

There is definitely a component to how much someone wants to believe something to clickbait/fakenews.

<comment><USER15> I'm about as "red as they get" and there's something really grating about US citizens talking about "UBI", and pointing to a variety of social policies in various European countries.

These policies are hard-fought and need to be well balanced to be effective in the long term. You can't just implement them without thinking about repercussions and side-effects.

I'd say, if you're a US citizen, forget about "UBI" as a simple answer to the various social wrongs within your country, and focus on your healthcare; that's where various European models _could_ be used as a partial model, and it's a very good and achievable first step towards a fairer and healthier society.

<comment><USER16> We never hear about the downsides of other countries models either. It's always a cherry-picking of the best policies and pretending there's never any trade offs. That kind of disingenuous promotion doesn't do any favors when it comes to convincing people.

<comment><USER13> Interestingly enough, 5-10 years ago in Spain you could hear some proponents of private healthcare to compare it with the US. Now I think there's enough understanding that the US model doesn't work that the proponents instead talk about Singapore or other private models, no one compares them to the US anymore.

Some arguments against universal health care I have heard in Spain: • Not enough choice, since you cannot e.g. pay more to get better treatment. • It's more expensive, since there's no free market to move prices down. • It's more efficient, since people are not paid to do nothing and impossible to fire (common complain about gvmt jobs here).

No beef here, just relaying what I've commonly heard

<comment><USER17> My impression is, if you compare health care costs across various wealthy countries, it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than privatised health care. Netherland has universal but privatised healthcare, and has one of the most expensive health care systems in Europe, costing more than half that of the American health care system. And it's not particularly better than the more socialised healthcare systems of the surrounding countries, as far as I can tell.

And the only place in health care where you can have a free market at all, is in elective treatments. Treatments that you can choose not to use when they are too expensive. For everything else, it's your health and possibly your life at stake; you can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it takes, and that's a situation that's easily abused by profit-seeking companies.

<comment><USER18> > it's pretty clear that socialised health care is cheaper than privatised > health care

Causation goes the other way. If your healthcare is cheap, you might as well socialize it, and it will _mostly_ be OKish; if it's too expensive (as in the U.S.) you have no chance of running a satisfactory socialized system. Switzerland has largely private healthcare and mandatory ("universal") health insurance, but its costs are not too high despite it being a comparatively small country with inherently higher costs of providing such services.

> For everything else, it's your health and possibly your life at stake; you > can't really say no to treatment, so you pay whatever it takes

This is not really true. There is such a thing as pointless overtreatment, and the right balance of benefits vs. costs can only be reached with increased price transparency on the part of providers.

<comment><USER19> The mistake we all make is thinking the market includes us, the patients. If there is anything resembling a 'normal' (price discovery) market, it's between hospitals and other care providers and the government. The entity with the funds can foster healthy competition between the entities with the product/service. If you need medical attention, you need medical attention. A treated patient is not the customer, they are the output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> UBI works well in developed countries, whose currency others desire. Developing countries who spend more on imports, can't afford that.

<comment><USER6> Given the results in developing countries I'm not sure you can say that. It could very well be that the increase in GDP more then makes up for any costs of such policies.

[https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers- changin...](https://www.poverty-action.org/impact/cash-transfers-changing- debate-giving-cash-poor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think there is any sort of unanimity regarding UBI. Being compensated for staying home is not UBI, because it is not ongoing.

I'm against UBI for reasons that became apparent while playing MMORPGs. Stay with me here and I'll explain.

Players of an RPG want a fun game. But they also want to succeed/win. These goals partially conflict. If they prioritize winning too highly, and pester customer support to make the game easier (nerf), the game loses it's fun. Even (in my estimation) to the people who pestered customer support. Because some people aren't self aware enough (kids) to realize that the challenge is what makes it fun.

In life, we want to be lazy. I certainly do. And that desire makes me think a UBI would be quite nice. But I also realize that I most certainly would be lazy. I'm already working less than 20 hours per week (pre-COVID) because my mortgage is paid and I don't really need the money anymore. With a UBI I might stop work completely. But as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off more, the real economy will suffer. Less hours will be worked, prices will go up, and the economy will be more depressed and sluggish.

Robots could save us but we are not there yet, not by a long shot. Maybe we are there in very specific manufacturing industries, but no robot is going to install a new roof on my house (for example).

So I think we should wait until after all the jobs are taken by robots (rather than thinking it's imminent when it's most certainly not) to institute UBI. Eventually. But not any time soon.

OTOH I'm perfectly okay with a means-tested payout to people who really need it.

<comment><USER22> > In life, we want to be lazy.

Therea plenty of evidence that this isn't really all that true, and that if there is even a modicum of apparent reward for extra labor, people will continue to put extra labor in for that reward, often even past the point where that extra nominal reward seems to provide any additional real utility for them.

> . I'm already working less than 20 hours per week (pre-COVID) because my > mortgage is paid and I don't really need the money anymore

Very few people, even well into the income range where research shows no additional subjective utility to additional earnings, ever reach the point where they recognize that they don't need any more money. So, you aren't typical and your entire argument seems to rest on assuming your atypical attitude holds generally.

> But as a society, if a lot of people like me slack off more, the real > economy will suffer.

Anthropomorphizing the economy here obscures rather than aids understanding; what would happen if abstention from additional effort were excessively common is inflation, bringing down the real value of the UBI and reducing the number of people who found it sufficient to not exert additional effort, pushing people back into the workforce. It's a self-controlling negative feedback system.

<comment><USER23> >> In life, we want to be lazy.

> Therea plenty of evidence that this isn't really all that true

"All that true" doesn't mean anything and is ostensibly misleading, ie false. There are segments of the population (pareto) that try to excel, but they generally do not do it sustainably (burnout). Common terminology...scams, shortcuts, work smarter not harder, are all colloquialisms centered around basic human behavior. Even working in ANY industry, people do everything in their power to either accrue wealth simply and/or make their work easier, without taking on additional work and asking for more compensation for doing more with their time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Below is an article arguing that New Zealand has been testing a UBI for decades with its pension scheme which is available to everyone aged over 65. Be warned - Gareth Morgan has some interesting politics. [http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz- super/](http://morganfoundation.org.nz/already-ubi-nz-super/)

<comment><USER21> UBI to people outside of the workforce is entirely different. My argument against UBI is that it erodes the desire to work, and we still need nearly everybody of working age to work... until the robots catch up (they still have a lot of catching up to do).

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure how much it erodes the desire to work: Having a minimum wage job that that keeps you at the the poverty level doesn't really dissuade people from _wanting more_ and trying to get it. The entire culture of having a "career path" with an upward trajectory runs counter to the idea that people, given something like UBI, will suddenly stop wanting & being willing to work for more.

<comment><USER26> "I'm not sure how much it erodes the desire to work"

Probably about to the amount of working time and thus income it replaces? That could be an hour a day, a day a week, or a week per month depending again on how much UBI we're talking?

"Having a minimum wage job that that keeps you at the the poverty level doesn't really dissuade people from wanting more and trying to get it."

That's because the job isn't keeping someone at the poverty level, they are keeping themselves at the poverty level by choice. Sometimes, some people choose to change that because they realize they are the only thing holding themselves back, not the other way around.

"The entire culture of having a "career path" with an upward trajectory runs counter to the idea that people, given something like UBI, will suddenly stop wanting & being willing to work for more."

Agreed...although many in America are already choosing to reject the notion of a "career path" and have relinquished their desires for "upward trajectory" \- and that's before UBI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Quick conceptual question from a noob in the subject: does the UBI entirely replace social security for elderly individuals or is it added on top of it?

<comment><USER25> That seems more like an implementation detail. It certainly could replace social security, but then again in the US social security payouts are tied to how much you've paid into it over the years. Then again, UBI would be paid for, albeit less directly, but tax payments as well so it might not be an important distinction.

And of course it would be important to peg the UBI to different costs of living for different regions.

<comment><USER18> I'd do the opposite. Peg UBI to the _lowest_ cost of living, and have separate short-term insurance-only programs (on top of UBI) for folks living in higher- cost areas. That way, those who are unwilling or unable to work in the longer term will be incented to move to low-cost areas and relieve pressure elsewhere.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure I agree... literally not sure. It's an interesting idea though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am a free market advocate, libertarian-lite, that believes that UBI is the correct social safety net. I am clearly not unique in this regard, as this actually seems to be the most common type of UBI advocate I've encountered.

That being said, the one lingering question I have comes down to a variant of inflation. I think most people think of inflation as something that only happens as a result of monetary policy, but that's not entirely true. Let's say that UBI could be entirely funded through taxation, no new money is introduced into the system. There is still a form of inflation on certain goods. For example, let's take an extreme example of redistribution: we take all of the money from a billionaire and redistribute it. One billionaire doesn't buy 100,000,000 TVs for their house, but 1,000,000 people with $1,000 might each buy a TV. 1,000,000 people with an extra $1,000 has a much larger impact on demand for typical consumer goods than having that wealth be more concentrated. Of course stricter taxation of the uber-wealthy would have impacts lessening demand for large investments, so it's not a blanket inflation in the same way that just printing money would be, but it still has all of the same characteristics of inflation within certain consumer markets.

It's all very complicated, and I would like to see it modeled. If I'm a landlord, and I know that my tenants now have an extra $12,000 a year, do I raise rents? I think the natural argument is that because the scarcity or value of my real estate didn't actually change, I open myself to being undercut by competition if I try to arbitrarily raise the value of my property to reflect increased demand. But the problem is that it might not be entirely true that the value of my real estate didn't change. When I have to call a plumber, or gardener, or construction worker for a remodel, are their rates going to be the same? Are rates going to go up or down? It's very hard for me to know for sure.

It reminds me a bit of debt. Debt shouldn't necessarily produce inflation, but it definitely does. Do you think houses would cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars if the average person didn't have access to debt? Would it cost 50k+ in order to attend college? No. Access to debt dramatically increases the prices on the things purchased by the available debt, regardless of whether or not this theoretically is meant to produce inflation. My concern is that, as with access to debt, the increase in wealth will be met with an increase in cost across the board, and not due to exploitation, but because the effects are that most consumer products and services actually just end up costing as a natural reflection of increased demand.

<comment><USER29> In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely finite supply like land.

TVs keep getting cheaper because economies of scale keep growing and the industrialization of billions of people in the last 40 years has produced enough supply to more than meet rising demand combined with technological innovation and automation efficiencies dropping the resource and labor requirements substantively. There are probably orders of magnitude more TVs made and sold today than in 2000, but the cost per unit has fallen in that time (or you get a radically more complex / better product for comparative prices).

Insulin, college, rent, etc prices rise uncontrollably because they are supply constrained by monopolists. But dealing with those anti-competitive markets and industries needs to happen for the health and wellbeing of society regardless of the institution of a UBI or not.

<comment><USER30> > In modern globalized economics the only things that really inflate > uncontrollably are things those supply is constrained by forces beyond > production scalability. IE patents, copyrights, or things of extremely > finite supply like land.

It's felt to me like we've gone from

Pre 1800: A world where material inputs were very expensive. Complex manufactured goods ditto. And labor cheap.

1800-1980: Where where materials were cheap but complex manufactured goods were still expensive and labor not cheap.

Post 2000: Where materials are moderately expensive but complex manufacturing is dirt dirt cheap. AKA this is a micro controller with a million transistors. And this is a power transistor. The latter costs more because it requires more metal, silicon and packaging.

<comment><USER29> While we keep pipe dreaming about full AI or home automation the number of people required to extract a ton of lumber, iron, oil, etc has dropped an order of magnitude in the span of decades. Likewise the number of people required to participate in the refinement of materials into, say, TVs has fallen by a similar order. And it _keeps_ falling. More industrialized automation begets more as the pipelines scale up and justify the investments in maximal "dumb" automation.

One thing people miss out on is transport - the cost to transport goods has also dropped astronomically thanks to computerized and networked navigation systems for rail and naval lines. You would never reliably insure the traffic volume of many docks, shipping lanes, and rail lines globally without computers controlling and often operating them. Thats how you get ludicrous quantities of goods crossing oceans for a few percent of its overall cost to consumers.

<comment><USER30> Over my career I've noted that the 'knee' on the mass production curve gets lower and lower. The NRE for design, molds and tooling keeps dropping. Out of my keester 30 years ago you needed 100,000 units to justify a set of injection molds. Every ten years after cut that number by 10.

Now if you want a 1000 plastic parts, not too complex, NRE is a couple bucks each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system we have now.

Let's say we pass a truly universal basic income bill -- every person gets the same amount of money from the government, every month. It wouldn't take long before politicians propose giving more money to teachers and single mothers, or taking benefits away from convicted felons and sex offenders.

Over time, bit by bit, we will entitle certain groups of people to more or less money than others. That will happen for the same reason our existing welfare system is the way it is - the voters believe that some people are more deserving of help than others. UBI would not remain universal, or basic, for very long.

Given that we can't actually end up with a universal or basic income system, and that we will end up largely re-creating the same kinds of entitlements that characterize our current welfare systems, we might as well just improve and extend our current systems.

<comment><USER32> > The problem with UBI is that we would turn it back into the welfare system > we have now.

That's not a problem with UBI.

IMO that scenario is not likely, let alone guaranteed.

I appreciate a pessimistic outlook as much as the next guy, but I don't think we should abandon UBI because you think it may change in the future.

<comment><USER31> It is actually a problem with UBI: UBI does not line up with most people's beliefs about who deserves help, those beliefs are so powerful that they resulted in the creation of our existing welfare systems, and they aren't going to go away overnight.

<comment><USER32> Even if your claim is true, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem with UBI -- it could be a problem with 'most people's beliefs'.

Consider that 'most people', in the west at least, consider it normal to work ~8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with 1-4 weeks holiday per year, and do this for ~45 years.

Where did all those numbers come from, and how long have we (as either a culture, or better yet as a species) thought this is normal?

I don't think anyone's suggesting that most people are inclined or capable of changing their beliefs, or rather habits, overnight -- but that's also not a reason to abandon the consideration of UBI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Once we implement UBI, what's the argument against doubling it?

<comment><USER34> The fact that UBI should not be about giving an amount of money, but rather about giving essentials like housing and food or the equivalent in money, and "doubling" essentials doesn't make as much sense, since you don't have much use for two beds or twice the food.

<comment><USER35> What constitutes 'basic necessity' changes every year.

Is a car a basic necessity? What about a mobile? Broadband? Netflix/Cable wouldn't be an obvious choice but many will argue it is. Washing machine? What about food delivery for those over 55?

You know those 3-wheel motorized chairs, between scooters and wheelchairs for the elderly ... they are definitely a 'necessity' for some but really quite 'in between' for others.

Once UBI is initiated, the arguments to increase UBI will be unyielding.

The next generations' youth will make arguments about the 'inhumanity' of such and such. They may have a point, but we will be the 'old timers' thinking they are mostly ridiculous and actually voting.

<comment><USER36> If we could afford to live in a world where everyone was given $5000/mth, would we want such a world? (where work was optional) I think yes.

...can we afford that? At this point, probably not. But is it something to strive for?

I think it is eventually possible to get the costs of providing basic needs to everyone (say, through automation) to the point where they can be easily covered by taxes on those who choose to work.

I fear though, that housing is an obstacle to this vision, because in many countries, people rely on housing to be an investment (ex. my parents house is the majority of their retirement), and so the politicians protect it as such, and developers have weird incentives... and so the prices don't go down.

<comment><USER37> I do not think such a world is desirable. It would just distort markets. Everyone will charge more for everything, starting with rent.

If you cover the basic needs of "everyone", the number of everyone will just go up and up and up until you can't cover the basic needs anymore. Do you think earth can sustain infinite people? There has to be a mechanism preventing people to increase their number to unsustainable levels. The current world already does a really bad job at that, I don't think we have to make this worse.

I think the most desirable world is one with a build-in pruning process, where only the most adapted people survive, thus preventing the number of humans to reach unsustainable levels, while still progressing to greater heights. After all, if you just put a cap on the number of children people are allowed to have you're just going to stagnate. It's better to have a large pool to select the fittest and prune the rest, resulting in the same number at the end, only with much better quality. Historically, war was such a pruning process. But I don't think it was an especially good one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This article might have been more informative if it had placed these ideas in context - the rise Marxism and Communism, which tie the state's mandate to preserving the interests of labour rather than those of capital, provoking in the west the rise of social democracy, which proposes that a balance can be achieved between workers and capital while still preserving capitalism.

<comment><USER39> Mark Blyth is an economist who focuses quite a bit on this topic (labor vs capital).

Also Thomas Frank (journalist and).

Both have good videos on YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Most countries already have programs to prevent people from starving or freezing to death and those countries also tend to have elaborate health care programs, and provisions for those not able to work. Even the US has programs like this in most states though you could argue that compared to other countries they are a combination of expensive, inefficient, and ineffective.

Basic income is formalizing the status quo that there's a minimum standard for all that basically translates into everybody receiving those same guarantees but simply with less bureaucracy & moralistic BS around it. Basically it gets rid off or vastly simplifies the business of collecting and handing out social security insurances and different types of benefits. The cost for this in some countries actually rivals the benefits handed out. E.g. unemployment benefit programs have amazing amounts of bureaucracy associated in many countries.

For those who work, what changes is that part of their income now comes from basic income and they pay taxes over the rest. For their employers, they pay less salary and have less bureaucracy around things like insurance programs and social security (all taken care off). Also things like minimum incomes go away: they pay market prices for what somebody does for them. State pensions, unemployment benefits, sick leave compensation, etc. all basically fold into this basic income. If you want more, you work and pay for extra insurances yourself. If you don't, basic income is there for you.

For those that are not part of the labor market, i.e. approaching (or already over) 50% of the population in many countries, what changes is that their life becomes a lot simpler. Either they are happy enough to get by on basic income or they secure some additional source of income. Either way, we're already paying for their health care, housing, and food as as society. It's a much less radical change than people think.

IMHO this could actually unlock the labor market in lots of countries. There are a lot of weird rules around unemployment that actually make it unattractive or hard for people to work. E.g. people close to their retirement age are expensive to fire and therefore unattractive to hire in lots of countries. People on benefits are actually would risk losing their benefits if they take some job on the side. So, they don't work until they find something "proper", which for some never happens.

Of course this kind of debate always raises the question "who pays for this?". The people that ask this never look at the other side of the debate: how much do we save by eliminating and dismantling the byzantine bureaucracy responsible for the current system. Nobody has actually run that experiment.

Also, we have plenty of taxes left and plenty of wiggle room with things like VAT, fuel tax, profit tax and income tax. It boils down to a quite simple formula: total cost = X*#people. If you have say 17M+ people (NL, my home country) and assume 500 EURO per person, the total cost would be about 100 billion/year for absolutely everyone. Sounds like a lot but as part of the GDP (around 900 billion) it's not that bad and the that's completely ignoring the fact that this would make hiring people lower risk and lower cost for all companies; which tends to do wonders for their profitability (and thus profit taxes). The cumulative budget for existing programs in NL is actually similar to this.

Sadly, doing this is not feasible not for economical reasons but for political/moralistic reasons and ingrained (wrong/naieve) assumptions that many people have about how economies work (e.g. that they are balanced and circular). It's simply too radical for a majority. Even socialist/communist countries never went there and in fact had a lot of moralism and ideals around the notion of labor with the state actively trying to control who was allowed to do what and for how much.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't know what's wrong with that website, but visiting it heats up my phone to the point of being uncomfortable to hold.

<comment><USER16> Based on the load time, they must be proxying all requests through your phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm in favor of UBI, but let's draw it from each congressman's personal bank accounts. It's easy to be generous with someone else's money.

<comment><USER43> Most reasonable UBI proposals draw the funding primarily from a VAT and a reduction of benefits that it replaces (like food stamps and welfare).

The beauty of a VAT is that while normally regressive, by redistributing the funds as a UBI, you essentially make it a tax on only upper-middle-class/rich people.

For example if the VAT is 10% and you give people $1,000 a month, they would have to spend over $10,000 a month on VAT taxed items (ie. not rent and probably not a lot of food) before they were paying more than they were getting back.

Generally people who can afford to spend $10,000 a month on non rent items are usually making over $180,000 a year.

<comment><USER44> VAT+UBI is still regressive, you're just subtracting a constant factor. So instead of hitting the poor the hardest, you're hitting the middle class the hardest and creating a valley around where the break-even point is.

In addition, since VAT taxes don't apply to capital transactions (as there's nothing added when you buy or sell a stock), the vast majority of transactions conducted by the upper class won't be hit by this.

<comment><USER45> Which is add it should be. VAT is a tax on consumption which is how resources get used up. Capital transactions just move money around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There are two questions to answer first.

1\. Do you think people can best decide what's best for themselves?

2\. Do you care about other people?

The Democratic Party answers no and yes.

The Republican Party answers no and no.

The Libertarian Party answers yes and no.

A UBI is the solution to yes and yes.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Universal basic income" of any reasonable size in, e.g., the US, requires the creation of new money, because taxation is insufficient for its funding.

New money derives its value, subtractively, from the value of existing money ("WEALTH"), which is held by individuals who earned that money ("WORKERS").

Some individuals decide not to work because of reasons OTHER THAN retirement, inheritance, disability, and child bearing; these individuals do not contribute directly to production (for convenience, we'll call this group "LAZYS").

Therefore, giving UBI to LAZYS intrinsically takes WEALTH from WORKERS, regardless of whether not WORKERS also get UBI.

In other words, universal basic income can be correctly defined as "transfer payments from WORKERS to LAZYS".

<comment><USER47> Sounds about right. Like everything in the US, some group is trying to figure out a way to siphon money from those to earn to those who "need it more". I don't care to support this, I want all the money I make, thank you very much. I'll decide who to help with it. Or, I'll help no one at all with the money I worked for, which according to college students and other people who have no skills and have paid no taxes, makes me "greedy".

Now if you want to fix the screwed up healthcare system, I'm all ears.

<comment><USER25> So you'd pay for your own private guards, private fire department, pave the roads you use to drive to work out of your own pocket, and countless other things that are currently tax-payer funded resources? You'd need to be exceptionally wealthy indeed. Or maybe you still think there's some basic things the government should do, and therefore needs to collect taxes for them. In which case we're not arguing over whether or not money gets siphoned, we're just arguing over where you draw the line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think UBI as a single monolithic program for providing minimum resources to provide the basics of food/shelter etc can be much improved on by other means:

[0]Instead, I think a constellation of smaller, targeted programs (think best- of-breed) might be more effective and provide a more robust effect: If a society provides universal healthcare, comprehensive unemployment benefits that don't have absurdly low caps, housing & food subsidies for those close to the poverty level, comprehensive disability benefits, and probably a few other things I'm missing, then the need for a "universal" UBI is diminished: That too can be targeted towards people not otherwise covered by the above. The advantage is that each program can be highly tailored to the specific needs & nuances of those seeking that specific benefit, rather than just throwing a larger block of money at people.

[0]Note: I'm not particularly attached to this idea. I think is has merit, but my goal is to start a conversation about the idea, sort of pressure-test it, not proclaim it as _the_ way to do things.

<comment><USER18> A patchwork of "targeted" programs is unsatisfactory for many reasons. It lets people fall through the cracks, and it results in unintended effects as the programs are not designed or managed in a consistent way. The need for some sort of minimal income floor is universal, and it should be addressed in a universally-applicable way.

<comment><USER46> Exactly.. my personal genealogy for discovering UBI was:

The government should provide for a base level of food, medicine, housing, and education.

But let private industry compete for it, so just provide vouchers for each of those things.

But, how to efficiently allocate the amounts for each individual? How much health care voucher vs. food voucher vs. housing voucher vs. education voucher?

Ah, just have a universal "health or food or housing or education" voucher!

Oh, but what about transportation!

Okay, a universal "housing, food, medicine, transportation, and education" voucher.

Oh wait, we have one of those already! The dollar.

<comment><USER48> Yes. And the "universal" part makes it UNCONDITIONAL on receive, which is the important part. It removes the necessity for a government institution to decide per individual how much they are eligible for. Much money is saved. Since the government already has an institution for checking taxes, the conditionality is merely moved to the end - they check not whether you get UBI, but just how much taxes you owe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


[pdf] PostgreSQL 10 New Features with Examples - <AUTHOR> http://h50146.www5.hpe.com/products/software/oe/linux/mainstream/support/lcc/pdf/PostgreSQL_10_New_Features_en_20170522-1.pdf <comment><USER2> Thanks.

I found pg internals guide [0] very useful by the same author.

[0] [http://h50146.www5.hpe.com/products/software/oe/linux/mainst...](http://h50146.www5.hpe.com/products/software/oe/linux/mainstream/support/lcc/pdf/PostgreSQL_Internals_1_for_PostgreSQL96_en_20170211-1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice detailed description and examples.</comment>


Do I need to go to a big-name university? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35208/do-i-need-to-go-to-a-big-name-university

<comment><USER2> This is purely anecdotal, but is probably less biased than most responses for I've experienced both sides of the table. It also reflects my perception at the time which may be skewed.

In April of my Junior year of High School, I decided to graduate a year early and attend college. This was way after admissions deadlines, but the University of Pittsburgh let me in, so I decided to spend my "senior" year there.

I then transferred to Carnegie Mellon to complete my degree.

There were many major differences between the two. Namely, at Pitt, the professors were much better at explaining course material. However, the course material was also much easier and much simpler to understand. Where at Pitt, the professor would teach you combinatorics, at Carnegie Mellon, the professor would ATTEMPT to teach you combinatorics, then force you to do a problem set filled with Putnam level combinatorics problems. The result was you learned much more at CMU because much more material was covered. In addition, you were forced to learn on your own or else you would fail.

At Pitt, few people drop out of their degree program because they can't handle the course load. There are a large number of people who drop out because they spend too much time partying, but if you put in the effort, you will receive a degree. Carnegie Mellon is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. In high school, I was top of my class, 1500's on my SATs, 5's on 6 AP exam's, made it to the USAMO. At Carnegie Mellon, I was just another above average student. Being well rounded meant absolutely nothing. The kid who failed English in high school but completely upset the curve in the class made you scramble the rest of the semester. Sure, I did well. But I was by far not the most intelligent student that professors fawn over. That person is a friend of mine. He placed in the top few at ICPC World Finals and can solve Putnam problems easily. He also doesn't know the definition of entertainment and, according to his housemate, hasn't been back to his room in 2 weeks for he's been sleeping in the library. When he was my TA, he gave me a word of advice. Go on amazon and buy yourself a shipment of the largest packet of Red Bull and Jolt you can find (he preferred Jolt). He was not wrong. The famously difficult 15-251 (that he TAed) forced you to spend 30-40 hours a week on the homework. I felt the absolute dumbest I have ever felt in my entire life. This was the first (and only) class I have ever taken where I've seen multiple students break down and cry during an exam. As a side note, the mathematics of CS was always much harder than programming. IMO programming is easy.

This all paid off when I went to apply for internships. At the Pitt career fair, there were many large companies. Google and Microsoft showed up, but besides these two, no scrappy startups or hot valley companies were present. CS students were expected to work for the tech departments of Alcoa, or Union Railroad. Google or Microsoft was a big deal.

At Carnegie Mellon, Google and Microsoft was the standard. Recruiters literally mob you to try to get your attention. A friend once joked after seeing the Spacex booth and their recruiters that Spacex was implementing the next level of recruiting for top level nerds: booth babes. If you had put any effort into your classes and actually had some coding ability, you were bound to land an internship. As I said, Google and Microsoft were prestigious but expected for those that were in the top 20% of their class. The most prestigious internships always came from Facebook and Palantir. Coincidentally, Palantir quickly gained fame throughout Carnegie Mellon for having the cockiest employees and the most killer interviews. They expected you to eat algorithms for breakfast and solve ACM ICPC World finals level problems in their interviews.

At my internship at Microsoft after my second year of college, I also noticed some very telling signs of benefits of a top tier University. The best developers and most intelligent students all came from MIT, CMU, and Waterloo (I met no Stanford people). Even those that came from good schools such as Georgia Tech or Cornell had a marked difference in ability. Every student from the top tier CS institutions could out-code, out-theory, and out-problem solve all their peers. Was this due to intelligence? Maybe. But I highly suspect that this was also due to schooling. People from other universities had just never been exposed to the same kick-ass curriculum that we had been. They learned Dijkstra's, Union-Find, and Red Black Trees in their senior year. We learned it our freshman year. They knew hash table's were and how they worked. We implemented hash tables with 3 different hashing scheme's and learned about the bleeding edge algorithms in hashing such as Cuckoo hashing. They were taught splay trees. We were taught splay trees then had to rederive them on our final because our professor had invented them. They learned lisp. We had SML beaten into our heads by the best programming languages department in the country. They learned about Operating Systems, "wrote" one in python or java, and did so by filling in the blanks like parts of the scheduler and maybe some parts of vm. We wrote one in C and asm, from scratch starting with a blank file. We implemented a pre-emptive kernel with the ability to load programs and run on bare hardware. There was literally no way the other students from other universities could compete. We'd just had hundreds of times more practice than they had. As a side note, I'm not sure who has the better deal because they partied/slept 8 hours a night on average. For us, sleep was a luxury.

What's the moral of this story? I don't really know. Top tier universities are hard--really hard. I've heard CMU and MIT are the two most difficult CS universities, so my opinion may be skewed. The most relaxing time of these 4 years has been during my internships. I got full nights of sleep and only worked up to 12 hours a day. I honestly feel that I've learned much more than my peers at other schools, but this is probably due to the fact that the material has been forcefully whipped into my brain, and I've spent many hundreds of hours more than my peers practicing and studying the material. The professors at CMU are more brilliant, but there appears to be an inverse correlation between brilliance and teaching ability.

<comment><USER3> I agree with the two main points of your post regarding the importance of:

\- being forced to learn difficult problems

\- being surrounded by very smart people

In the long run it really helps to be forced to learn difficult ideas. If you aren't forced to learn them then you are unlikely to put forth the effort necessary. This is why it is a nice benefit to be in a class where they expect you to do hard problems and you have the pride to not want to let them down. As you stated, big state universities cater to a lower common denominator so the focus on difficulty is not as extreme.

Anyone that is reasonably intelligent and very self-motivated can conquer the hard problems students go through in top Computer Science programs. They can also network in a similar, although not as easy, fashion as done at top-tier universities by doing open-source. So, while a top-tier university does make things easier, it isn't a requirement. This is doubly true for Computer Science.

I do think that your experience at Microsoft was purely anecdotal as you stated. The part where those from top-tier schools were always better than those from a lower-tier is very far from a universal truth. Following that train of logic in the real world will get you burned.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that they were ALWAYS better. It was just very rare (I think 1 person) for someone not CMU/MIT/Waterloo to be on the same tier. Again, I think this is likely due to the fact that we were all in school, and we had learned things they had never even heard of. It was like comparing a college senior to a freshman. Over time after leaving universities I'm sure things will balance out. Those that continue learning will keep ahead. Those that don't will fall behind.

<comment><USER4> It does even out after a few years. When I think of the half a dozen or so people I know at the Googleplex who I would most want on my team for a startup, they graduated from: Virginia Tech, UT Austin, UMich Ann Arbor, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and perhaps Brown.

I've noticed that the MIT _interns_ are noticeably ahead of interns from other schools, and that fresh grads from top tier schools tend to be ahead of other fresh grads (actually, fresh grads from state schools tend not to end up at Google - nearly everyone above except the Brown & Stanford grads came to Google after work experience elsewhere). But that advantage fades after a year or two, and the long-term top performers are often folks who blew off college or went on tour with their punk-rock band.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to a major US research institution and double degreed in CS and East Asian Studies (Japanese, basically). The quality of the Japanese program was life-changing for me. The quality of the CS program -- meh, I'm not unhappy with it, but neither the instruction nor the brand name was worth substantially more than the equivalent degree from a less prestigious institution.

Sevenish-years later I can guarantee you that no one who I do business with cares a lick about the name of my university. They don't ask, I don't tell. (Same with GPA, major, and specific wording of the degree, by the way. My professors and advisors carried on as if these were really important when I was in school. I actually _cried_ when some minor academic rule looked like it was going to knock my degree from $ARBITRARY_LETTERS to $EQUALLY_ARBITRARY_LETTERS. I strongly suggest college kids have a professional mentor _outside_ of academia in whatever industry/culture/etc they want to seek employment in, so you can figure out whether the things academia are so obsessed with actually matter at all.)

This is, obviously, influenced by my career choices. If I had done what many kids at my university did and gone into investment banking, management consulting, or the like, I would have a 4x scale replica of my diploma made so that one could not help reading the name when one entered my office.

<comment><USER6> The problem with CS is nobody really knows how to select students that are good at it or teach it. So there is little real difference between graduates of a top school and an average school with a few good instructors. As to networking, there are plenty of ways to network that don't cost 100,000$.

PS: Some schools still attract talent, but plenty of terrible programmers graduated from ex: MIT.

<comment><USER7> I do not attend MIT but I am a big fan of OCW videos and I still regret being rejected (probably will for life). I would love to be taught by Demaine, Leiserson et al.

I am not sure you can survive that rigorous a coursework and graduate with less-than-average skills in at least theory, systems, compilers / prog. languages (dunno if everyone there does other stuff like ML, Advanced theory courses etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Random thoughts from my experience:

1) Doing a fifth year Masters at the same University is a waste. It is better to go to a different school. You get to meet new people, get exposed to different perspectives, and perhaps even live in a different part of the country.

2) If you are not rich and do not get into a top-10 school, taking on a 100K in debt for college is a bad idea.

3) Getting into a top-10 school is hard. If someone suggests the "transfer after 2-years" option, ask them for stats. Be aware of "self-selection" in that people who bother applying will likely have solid stats to begin with.

4) The key benefits of a top-10 school are networking/peers and the school's selectivity. When it comes to knowledge, classes are useless IMHO. You can get more complete information in books. If you are truly stuck with a concept, you can hop on a bus to the local elite school and convince a grad student or professor to explain something to you. Oh .. and don't forget about all those lectures online :-)

5) Not having a lot of school-related debt makes it less stressful to become a young entrepreneur.

6) If you did a solid but cheap undergrad program, doing a course-based Masters at a top school might be worth it.

7) If you want to go into academia, school matters. Top-20 is okay for undergrad. Top-10 (general or field specific) for grad is a must.

<comment><USER9> "You can hop on a bus to the local elite school and convince a grad student or professor to explain something to you."

Really. You've tried this? Because grad students and professors aren't busy at all...

<comment><USER10> I haven't tried it. But I've seen it done, and more.

When I was a grad student at Berkeley, there was a computational biology class where another student (I'll call him SG) and I hung around afterwards to talk to the professor. I assumed that he, like me, was looking for an advisor. The reality was a bit different.

SG wasn't a student at all. He worked from home as a programmer doing boring stuff and lived an hour away. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he drove to Berkeley, snuck into the CS department by coasting behind someone else who left the door open, and went to the graduate classes he thought were interesting.

On day 1, SG asked the professor if he could sit in without formally registering for class. Sure, why not, the profs don't care about the administrivia. Halfway through the semester, SG explained his whole situation to the prof (and me, because I was waiting around too). How he was extremely motivated, hard working, and wanted to learn, and would work half-time for free indefinitely if someday there might be a job there for him. How could the prof say no?

Over the next few months, SG gets a lot done. A lot more than your average Berkeley grad student with no real-world software engineering experience. So when the prof next gets some grant money, it's a no-brainer to hire him full time. Suddenly SG has an interesting job and a great resume.

You can do a lot just with persistence....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing that's frequently overlooked are the relationships you'll build at school. I went to a very solidly ranked state school (umd.edu), and most of the people I know got jobs at government contractors. I have friends I've met through jobs that went to Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, and they have a bunch of connections at Google, Facebook, and other hot startups. Getting jobs through personal connections is way more effective than combing Internet ads or dealing with recruiters, and the jobs you'll be exposed to through friends seem to be way better at a top-tier school.

<comment><USER12> This.

I was in a really good CS program at a top engineering school. I had great teachers, peers and courses. I had 2 years of real client experience when I walked out the door.

That's all well and good. What I _learned_ at school was far more on the social side. I learned how to be a leader. I learned how to be more outgoing. I learned how to be comfortable with a large group of people. I did stupid things. I made life long friends. I made connections that continue to help me.

You have to learn this stuff in a trial by fire. College is good because it a) forces you into those trials by nature of the beast and b) is expected that you screw up a few times in your college years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think more than a "big-name" university, it is important to go to a university with a great course structure (which most "big-name" universities do have). I've often looked at courses at MIT, Stanford, CMU etc and said "I wish this course was offered at my school" or "I wish this course was structured like this at my school".

<comment><USER14> Even better: go somewhere there is a prof you really click with and who would make for a great mentor.

Difficult to imagine a practical way to do this? Congrats, you've stumbled on what's wrong with higher education in the US today!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The one way an education at a "big name" university has helped me is that people trust me more. I moved from academia (astronomy) to software engineering and I have no formal qualifications (or training) in what I do for a living. But once people hear where I went they assume the best. I have noticed this several times.

In retrospect I find the way that class and education are linked to be terrible (you could pretty much divide the place up into rich people and smart people, with only a small intersection), but it wasn't a bad experience.

</comment><comment><USER16> Like most things, it depends.

If you want to program in the industry, the name on your degree doesn't help you much. I couldn't justify paying for the big-name private university that accepted me, so I got a BS in CS from The College of New Jersey, and have since been fortunate enough to work at Google. I also paid off my student loans within 10 months of graduation. If you go this route, and do extra work on the side, you _might_ get the same education you could at a top university. But you will have no help. A difference I didn't appreciate when I was 17 is the support structure a big-name university provides. They already have contacts everywhere, plus you're more likely to be surrounded with self- starters and high-energy workers. If you need help, you might get it.

But if you want to work at a top research university, you might want to get the biggest name on your degree you can. I know a few PhDs who complain that degrees flow downhill - they feel they must get jobs in the industry, since they have degrees from second-tier schools. When they came to the USA, they viewed an economically-priced degree as the better deal. But there is a glut of people with degrees from top universities who are looking for research positions, so they believe theirs don't come up for consideration.

<comment><USER17> I agree with this. It largely depends on where you want to take your career. I don't have a CS degree from $BIG_NAME, never had to take out a loan, and am very happy with my career thus far.

If you want a top research position, yes, $BIG_NAME CS degree is almost required. If you want to work for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc... It helps, but certainly isn't required. If you want to work for a startup or any other company, it doesn't matter at all.

What matters is that you know your shit. $BIG_COMPANY isn't going to turn you down because you don't have a CS degree from Stanford even though you wowed them with your knowledge. All they care about is that you are you smart and gets shit done. That doesn't come from a degree, that comes from you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would argue: it depends.

I live and work in London ; the only places where I've seen recruiters or job ads specifically ask for a 'red brick' or 'top ten' university degrees is the financial domain. They specifically ask and check for a top ten university in order to hire you for most jobs, be it analyst or IT consultant. I would also argue that the pay scales you get there reflect this.

Most startups I've seen, again in London, dont really care where you are coming from. I used to work with one which basically said 'we dont care how you look or where you finished uni or even if you did, we just want you to be a) hard working b) smart working c) eager to learn'. Worked very good for them as they are now a successful business and most people have stuck around for years. I now work in a "top 3" uni in central London and we also dont care where yo u got your degree from. Our job ads are, by law, neutral - we are not able to distinct between candidates based on university alone. Again, works fine for us. It doesn't matter where you went, it only matters what you are. At the end of the day, I myself did not finish a 'big name' university,far from it, and its worked out well for me.

<comment><USER19> Not true, it's perfectly legal to distinguish candidates by university. It's not a protected category.

(I'm not a lawyer; but I have had training in the legal aspects of hiring and I run a job board)

<comment><USER18> Are you 100% sure? Doesn't the whole 'equal opportunities' scheme dictate that you cant ?

<comment><USER19> Yes I used to work for one of the largest employer of graduates in the UK and we looked at this.

Equal opportunities is about not discriminating on the basis of gender, race or disability. Also various bits of legislation also prohibit discrimination on the basis of financial status, nationality, religious or political beliefs and sexual orientation (although these don't normally come under the "equal opportunities" banner).

You can legally use performance correlation in hiring (people who went to X tend to do well, so we'll prefer to hire people who went to X), as long as it doesn't violate one of the legislated areas. In the legislated areas you can only discriminate on where there's evidence for a link. So for example you can favour Computer Science students for Developer jobs over non-CS students even though that contains an implicit gender bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a graduate from a "big name" university I would say I am a little biased but honestly it depends on a few things but ultimately comes down to one principle: You will get out of school what you want.

In that I mean, there are people who go to "big name" schools and make ZERO connections and take off after 4 years wondering why they took on 100k in debt. Then there are people who go to small schools (like my wife) who meet lots of great people in their field who eventually will be a great resource for them (eg, my wife now works at Google). She has zero debt and works beside graduates of top schools from around the country.

Now personally, I think that she is the exception and not the rule. The biggest advantage of going to a big name school is that it lets you get your foot in the door. You never have to "hide" the fact that you went to a small school, and there will inevitably be times that you fill out an application and wish that you could put down Stanford/MIT/Univ. of Michigan

Good luck in your decision. Remember that you will probably adjust your career path during college and that a school that offers an overall brilliant student body and faculty will only help you down the road.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think it really depends on you. More specifically, it depends on your learning style, how self-motivated you are, and how outgoing you are. There are big pros and big cons on both sides.

I have a high school education. I've also been an extremely motivated self- learner and voracious reader since early childhood. I'm one of those who learned programming on my own, from books, at age 12, and then spent most of my waking life over the next 8 years writing code and reading about software development. And yes, for me it is something I truly love from the core of my being, and will never, ever be just a job. Although somewhat introverted, I tend to be very enthusiastic and aggressive while job-hunting.

I started my software career at 20 and advanced very quickly during the dot- com boom. I just finished a 5-year stint at Microsoft. I don't think I could have landed a job at Google 5 years ago, but I've been contacted by their recruiters since leaving MS, and I believe I'd have a shot if I really poured myself into reviewing/studying the right subject matter.

As I see it, the main advantage of my route is that I've never had any significant debt, but I still made the senior dev salary and the bonuses. More importantly, this has made it very easy for me to take time off between jobs to work on the side-projects that keep my love of programming strong. I'm on my second full-blown sabbatical in 10 years, working happily on my own dime, bootstrapping a one-man game development 'studio'.

The main disadvantage is that I usually feel like I have to work to initially convince people that I'm good, and I do actively wonder whether I can get hired at certain companies.

Conversely, I've worked with lots of people with Ivy League degrees. All those I've met are still paying off the loans, even in their late 20's - even at 30 (but as loans go, the interest is pretty low and the payments are small compared to their income). But on the office grapevine, when someone mentions that X went to Yale or Y went to Princeton, it's obvious that this sets up a positive expectation. Colleagues and managers start off expecting that they're good. I find I have to build a good reputation over time _first_, before people start talking about me that way. Also, these people always know lots of people working at other top employers, where I generally have to go out and meet people cold to find new opportunities (which I don't mind).

So I'd say it depends on which of those trade-offs sounds more appealing to you, based on your personality and inclinations.

</comment><comment><USER22> In Canada, at least, the quality of education is monitored closely by the accreditation board. A degree from one university, for all intents and purposes, is equal to another.

I go to a fairly good school for Software Engineering with a good reputation, but definitely not the best (by some standards). A lot of people consider Waterloo to be the "best" CS/Software Eng. school in Canada, but I end up getting the exact same degree. I've done the same courses, with some brilliant minds behind the podium.

Mind you, my choice was also on the environment surrounding the program. The impression I had when I visited Waterloo was fairly bad. The campus is a huge sprawl, and not too many people on campus looked like they were having a good time. My tour guide, a software engineer, told us that Waterloo was the only place to go if I wanted to get a good job when I graduated. As well, beyond residences on campus, there wasn't a whole lot of housing surrounding the campus. Students are sprawled out around, leading to (in my opinion) not the true university experience.

I'm currently a tour guide for my program, and I usually get the question: "Why would I go here when I can go to Waterloo?". First of all, I know this guy/girl is probably being forced to look at other schools as a backup plan, and I also know that I have about 60 seconds to state my case before he/she loses interest.

My university was one of the first in Canada to have a Software Eng. program, and had several interesting "sub"-degrees with Software Eng & Game Design and Software Eng & Embedded Systems. The campus is beautiful and fairly compact-- you can get from the furthest point in the campus to the other side in less than 10 minutes. People are socializing outside. In the spring, the field in the middle of campus is full of people having picnics and playing pick-up soccer, football, and cricket.

I tell the student that it's not so much about where you'll be in 4-5 years, but how you get there that's important. University was my first taste of the world, and I'd much rather have a good experience transitioning to the working world than asking myself about what I actually did in the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER23> It gets your foot in the door for your 1st and, maybe, 2nd job. If your first job is Google or Apple or Facebook, then you have an advantage going into your 2nd job or startup. This advantage compounds over your career. I went to a giant mid-western school with no recruiters from hot SV companies. Instead only large corporations came to hire drones. This is a significant disadvantage. It's not insurmountable, but it does suck.

There is an assumption that a degree from Fancy School means you're smart. Also, I've noticed that many people from Fancy School have more self- confidence that allows them to take bigger risks. I was awed by MIT until I worked with someone with straight A's in CS there. He wasn't any smarter than me, but he did work 10X harder than me. I'm lazy.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know about the US but in the UK it does matter. If you have a university which takes students with A* average grades and a university with D average grades, they don't teach the same syllabus. It just doesn't make sense, universities have to teach a syllabus that matches the ability of it's student body.

There's also significant difference in employability by university (statistically speaking).

<comment><USER24> My impression as an american is that grades mean more in UK schools than they do in the US where grade inflation has reached almost comical levels.

<comment><USER25> The grades probably mean more, but that doesn't mean that the students in more elite universities in the US don't learn more than their counterparts at other schools.

At Cornell, all the classes were curved, and the curve was set (in most intro classes, somewhere between a C+ and a B). That meant if you wanted to get a B you had to beat at least half the people in the course. If those people got 1600 on their SATs and had gotten a 5 on their AP comp sci exam they're a bit more of a challenge than kids of lesser qualifications.

<comment><USER26> If I'm understanding correctly the parent is referring to high school, where to a large extent I can't help but agree. The situation at the university level is much different, as illustrated by your example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> To me as a someone hiring, the "big name" part doesn't matter, but the school itself does. The curriculums are just not the same everywhere. I worked in a computer lab of an "online university" at the same time I was getting my Comp Sci degree at a large state school, and was shocked to see that Juniors in the online university had projects where they had to write a Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion app in Java (this was more basic then my freshman level comp sci!).

That said, you shouldn't just limit to Harvard, CMU etc... There is a very small four year school near us that I've seen crank out extremely smart Comp sci people, who have learned better fundamentals then people I know from CMU.

<comment><USER27> I should also say school only matters for people with < 3 years of work experience. After that I find the experience itself much more important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I interview most of the job candidates that we get at Justin.tv for technical positions. Once you get to the point that I see you, what degree you have doesn't matter at all. For most candidates, I never look or ask about their education.

I used to, but the correlation between education history and hirability is weak enough to be useless to someone in my position. I think that most of the employees that are evaluating resumes feel about the same, as well.

What's important to us is whether or not you can actually write code and reason about computer science problems; what path you've taken to get there doesn't really matter.

</comment><comment><USER29> My impression is that at 'big name' schools you don't really have much interaction with your professors, until you are at least at graduate level (and even then the doctoral students who get the attention, not the lowly masters students).

In my opinion, what you are paying for at college is one on one time with intelligent people. Your peers and your professors. If the classes at the school consist of sitting through gigantic lectures, I feel like you are kind of missing out.

There is currently a glut of talent competing for teaching jobs at universities, even at a slightly below top-tier school, you are likely to find capable, intelligent professors (as well as students). And at a smaller school you will get one on one time with those professors much more readily.

You do, however, also want to make sure that the caliber of other students around you is high. It is hard to be motivated in an environment where you can simply breeze through everything that your classmate struggle with.

I don't know about what to do in terms of landing a job. It seems to me that landing a first job is one thing (aided by a 'big-name' school, but having the appropriate skills to develop an entire career is entirely different (no one care where you got your degree once they hire you).

My preference would be with the career developing skills, rather than the job- acquiring piece of paper.

Others probably have different experiences. The important thing is to really consider your options and decide what is best for you. (You might not even like CS by the time you graduate).

</comment><comment><USER30> It's interesting (if not disturbing) to see just how big of a gamble Americans are forced to make with their college decision. I'm lucky to live in a country (Switzerland) where college is practically free, making the whole thing a non- issue.

<comment><USER31> Yes, it's a surreal thought really. When I was in my late teens, I was certainly not capable of dealing with that kind of decisions. Must be very hard.

<comment><USER32> Yup. I'm really happy with the university decision I made when I was 17, because I now realize I didn't know shit and it was mostly through luck that I ended up making a decent one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I went to CMU and dropped out after two years when I decided I was learning a lot more at a summer internship than I was at school. (this back in '96 BTW)

Things that have surprised me: \- the name does open the door more than you'd think, even to this day, it gets respect, even when I always disclaim it with dropping out \- I don't think the quality of the education was particularly better, but the quality of the students was. Being surrounded by people that make you feel like a moron is a good life experience. \- It won't automatically get you hired, but it will make people spend a bit more time on you.

So I don't know, my advice? Drop out or transfer after a couple years, because jesus christ that shit is expensive these days.

<comment><USER34> Dropping out of a top ranked CS program b/c you can learn/do/achieve/earn more on your own = the new MS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It depends, I've worked in industry and startups for about 15 years. Time and again I've found that people I work with from $BIG_NAME tend to _not_ be the best performers.

Often they operate with presumption that they should be in top positions, but rarely do the kinds of crap work that would actually earn them that slot. This can cause tons of friction in a team and I've personally found it better to try and not have people from $BIG_NAME on the team if I can help it.

I've also found that they are rarely innovators or out-of-the-box thinkers. They tend to be conformists and try to execute within the given rule set to the best of their ability.

However, I think perhaps my anecdotal experience runs contrary to the fact of how many SV types come from $BIG_NAME.

Perhaps it's the circles I tend to work in, selecting less from $BIG_NAME and more from $LOCAL_STATE_SCHOOL...perhaps all the folks from $BIG_NAME are people I'm seeing who have slid quite down the ladder with respect to their peers and aren't star performers no matter what.

Back in my college days at $LOCAL_STATE_SCHOOL I did notice that there were very few SV companies recruiting there and many more of the huge defense contractor type. It was alarmingly easy to get an internship at one of those huge companies and disappear into a long, but often reasonably rewarding career in the government. Some of the problems the government works on are impressively hard (see SV darling Palantir for an example) and there's no shortage of incredible people I've met who decidedly didn't go to $BIG_NAME and do fantastic, mind-blowing stuff.

I think early in your career it can mean something. And except for a few holdouts that care about some largely irrelevant piece of paper you bought a decade before (see Google), most places won't care after 5 years in the field and I've found most people end up more or less even in term of pay, responsibility, position, etc. If you are starting your own company? It doesn't matter at all.

</comment><comment><USER36> Here is my general take on this: Going to a top school can probably be a great experience, have you learn things from top professors/researchers in the field, get exposure to great companies recruiting at the university, be part of a pool of highly competitive high achieving students, etc. All this is probably worth a lot and might lead to one being better prepared, having connection or access to a network of people who might have more influence, connections, means, etc.

However, there is not sure path to success and the things mentioned above might give one a higher chance at success, but no guarantee. I would say that ones personality, ambition, and hard work play a huge factor in ones success, perhaps even a bigger factor, so I believe someone can be successful irrespective of the school they attended.

Taking on $100K+ debt at such young age is a huge risk as well. There are many problems with debt, but the major one I consider is how it ties you down and prevents you from taking risks and being able to take risks at a young age is really important. If one graduates with lots of debt, one has to have a steady job (and hopefully one that pays very well) to meet the financial obligations. That might hinder one's ability to take a job at an early stage startup or other opportunities that might enable one to learn and grow faster than working at a more stable company.

I personally like experiencing freedom from debt (as much as possible), so I would (and did) pursue the best educational option that would only cost an amount that I feel would still grant me a certain degree of freedom/risk- taking ability.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wouldn't trade the experience of watching Big 8 football from the student section for all the ivy in the world.

I've said it before - too many young people are being pushed through life. It's a tragic waste of enthusiasm.

</comment><comment><USER38> In one of the stackoverflow podcasts Joel did touch on this.

I believe this comment was that a "big-name" school won't get you hired. Conversely not going to a "big-name" school won't get you excluded from hiring.

To paraphrase what I remember him saying...

The only thing a that going to a top school gets you is your resume move to the top of the pile when doing interviews.

Meaning if they are hiring 2 people and the people who have the big name school on their resume do well then the person with out the big name school won't get a crack at the interview.

</comment><comment><USER39> I go to a 'meh' school, but it was by choice for me. I'm a math major for the theoretical background, and then a computer science major for the practical background. I do what I love, and I take misc. classes enough that my parents are legitimately worried about me becoming a 'professional student'.

I didn't apply to any other schools than the one I'm at now. I believed that the campus was beautiful, and so I applied here. I could have gotten into any school I'd like to think, but life is too short to be worried about future financial gains or something like that. I'd rather go somewhere with a beautiful campus than be a person that's worried about some potential future monetary gains. Money is just money after all. After you have enough to buy a plane ticket to get to Google IO, what more could you really want?

It's worked out for me fairly well though. I met a professor, and he's become a mentor in my life. We worked on a research project together last summer, and he has the connections to get my resume in at almost anywhere I'd want to go. He worked at Motorola in their research labs for 16 years, and he knows people that have been at Google, Microsoft, etc. from their very beginnings.

Don't worry about what school you go to. Go to the school you want despite things such as academic standing or something equally silly. Things have a way of working themselves out if you give it a bit of effort. Just remember that life is about more than just your grades.

</comment><comment><USER40> I went to MIT and could not have been happier with my decision. Highest concentration of amazing people in the world IMHO (and I am proud to call a quite a few of them friends) and a huge density of inspiration. As for $100k, I went for free (c.f. financial aid) but would happily have taken out loans.

A big name school is not necessary for everyone by any means, and in fact if I had my current skills and network when I was 18 I wouldn't choose to go again (well I'd skip university altogether) but for me it was invaluable.

</comment><comment><USER41> I often wish I had attended a big-name university.

When I chose a college, I didn't give it much thought. I didn't get much advice or guidance on what a big decision choosing a college was. Plus, I would have been too scared to move very far away from Nebraska, where I was born and raised. I wasn't surrounded by people who encouraged - or even considered - this sort of behavior.

Through a crazy turn of events, I eventually ended up living and working in Silicon Valley. I met many people who went to Stanford, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, and found that I got along with them very well. It was the first time I was surrounded by people I understood, and I was 25 years old.

With my upbringing, I expected them to be God-like, but it seemed like most of them were coastal people with backgrounds through which it seemed natural for them to go to schools like that.

I made some great connections in the valley, but I still think I could have done better if I had college friends there from one of these universities. There was nobody in my social and professional circles that was from my school. Meanwhile, college friends from these schools were starting successful startups.

Everything has turned out pretty well so far, but I often wonder what my life would be like if I had been encouraged to try to go to a better school.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think most people are saying the same thing, but the general idea is this:

-Get good grades. Grades definitely matter. I worked at a local startup during college and I thought it mattered more than my grades. I now regret not putting that effort towards my academic performance.

-Choose the best school you can afford and keep in mind that graduate school is becoming very common. If you have too much undergrad debt you may be forced to make a grad school decision based on finances.

</comment><comment><USER43> I went to a small state college (www.cofc.edu). I feel that I received a very good education in CS mainly because the classes were small and the teachers were focused on teaching. I just wanted to point this out because I'm sure it reflects my opinions on big-name universities.

IMHO, if you can get into a Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc... then yes you should go. If you can't get into the absolute top, then the school does not matter as much as long as it's an accredited institution.

</comment><comment><USER44> It depends on what you want to do, I think. I found my undergrad university's reputation useful for a few years; it wasn't very "big-name", but it was well- respected in its area (hmc.edu). I wanted to do sort of media/humanities oriented AI, artificial-creativity/etc. kind of stuff, and the fact that I came from a school with a solid technical reputation made people take me more seriously, and kept me out of the "guy who wants to do AI and read too many sci-fi books but doesn't have the technical chops" category.

But either way it only matters for a few years. Once you've done something for 3-5 years since college, it's unusual for anyone to care greatly where you went to college.

The other main factor is whether a university has strong recruiting relationships, which isn't identical to big-nameness, but can correlate with it. If lots of companies come to the school's career fair every year expecting to hire N graduates, it can make it easier to get in the door.

</comment><comment><USER35> <http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

_Between the volume of people we judge and the rapid, unequivocal test that's applied to our choices, Y Combinator has been an unprecedented opportunity for learning how to pick winners. One of the most surprising things we've learned is how little it matters where people went to college._

</comment><comment><USER45> i went to a top-twenty liberal arts school in the US and frankly it wasn't worth the $. Further, top-tier private schools dumb you down when it comes to life skills because they coddle you.

If I was this kid I would go to SUNY Binghamton

A good school can help you but you really have to ask yourself if it worth $200,000 USD

Also, this 18 year old may change his mind in two years about his major and decide that he wants to teach high school science, in which case he will be screwed financially.

</comment><comment><USER17> Doug Crockford has a degree in Radio & TV from San Francisco State University.

/thread

</comment><comment><USER46> Yes, if you need a job after education.</comment>


Pyquery 0.2 : jQuery for Python - <AUTHOR> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyquery

<comment><USER2> Sounds a lot like ruby's hpricot.

Wish I saw this earler - I am already in the middle of a project (screen scraping of course) using hpricot.

Sounds weird, but the only reaason to pick ruby for me was hpricot and not RoR :)

<comment><USER3> Yes its like Ruby's Hpricot and also Perl's pQuery. This jQuery way of accessing XML/HTML is certainly catchy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whole point of jQuery is to serve as a substitute for the DOM, allowing scripts to efficiently interact with page elements. If you're running this via a Python script, you already control each and every bit of your page code. What's the point? I can only see this being useful in Python for screen scraping.

<comment><USER5> Scraping with BeautifulSoup works pretty well, but i've had a lot of problems with nested elements with no id since Xpath is not available on BeautifulSoup. Perhaps this would make it a little easier. I'll report back after trying it.

<comment><USER6> For the time being it doesn't use the BeautifulSoup parser so it may not work on very bad html, but I'll add an option an option to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this, but have no clue how I would use it beside for some BeautifulSoup page manipulation....

<comment><USER8> For parsing XML responses? lxml is better than BeautifulSoup in terms of performance and memory usage.</comment></comment>


Keith Block steps down from role as Co-CEO of Salesforce - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-keith-block-steps-down-marc-beniof-ceo-2020-2 <comment><USER2> Commence speculation on where he is going...</comment>


Removing Edge Magazine DRM - <AUTHOR> https://mijailovic.net/2017/01/22/removing-edge-magazine-drm/ <comment><USER2> This is an impressive achievement and a good read, but the shit people have to do to back up things that they bought is just sad.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article reminded me of Apple II software deprotection articles published in Computist magazine (available at [http://archive.org/details/computist](http://archive.org/details/computist) ).

The way the story is told, with victories that turn out to hide yet another layer of protection, the need to delve into raw hexadecimal, and finally the discovery of a poorly-hidden key, is very much how 8-bit software cracking used to be done in the eighties.

Plus ça change...

</comment><comment><USER4> Super good article/tutorial, but I think to get the app binary, he could just have downloaded it in iTunes in his computer and unpack the .ipa file (which is basically a signed .zip file, if I remember correctly). The binary should be in it.

<comment><USER5> Yep, that still works! Just copy the .ipa from the local ~/Library/iTunes/ subdirectory and decompress it. It would have saved him all the trouble with jailbreaking, finding an old enough device, finding the correct version of iTunes to run against, etc. But I imagine a jailbroken device is its own reward.

<comment><USER6> But those .ipa files only contain encrypted executables, I believe it's called Fairplay DRM. As far as I know there are no tools available to offline decrypt such binaries, so if you're looking to reverse engineer one, you still need a real jailbroken phone so you can piggy-back on iOS' just-in-time decryption and dump the cleartext binary.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can decompress every .ipa files and see bunch of resources and configuration files in plaintext, which can falsely lead you to believe that you have everything decrypted, but the main binary file is still encrypted, and the only way to decrypt is by running software like Clutch on the jailbroken device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent. Wish I could have read this article before I started learning about reverse engineering.

I think it's notable how he ended up with a better product: one simple DRM- free file viewable by applications and devices of his choosing. I don't really understand why the company even bothered with all these protection measures. Did they actually believe it would work?

<comment><USER8> They (righfuly so) count on that that there are not many Metalnems out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I appreciate that this won't be a popular comment, but doesn't this sort of thing fall under the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA (or later)?

This is not a comment about the rightness/wrongness of copyright law, but a question that seems like it's worth asking.

<comment><USER10> If the user were in the USA then 17 USC 1201 (which I think is at question) says this at Section C(1):

>"Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title." (17 USC 1201) //

So presumably personal format-shifting is still a fair-use defence that supersedes considerations under this section.

FWIW format-shifting was expressly removed from UK Fair Dealing after a challenge by BASCA, presumably no UK musicians rip songs to their MP3 player/phone or whatever.

Wish they'd sued Apple Computers for contributory infringement, what with the massive damage iPods have done to people wanting to buy music. /sarcasm

<comment><USER9> I'm thinking more that employing such circumvention for your own purposes would be hard to argue against, but publishing it publicly may not actually be defensible under U.S. law, even with the fair use exemption.

I think if I were thinking of publishing something like this I'd look at the outcome of lawsuits such as those surrounding the old DeCSS code ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Reimerdes)). I'm in the U.S. so for me something like this would be relevant.

For those elsewhere there may still be issues as DMCA is the U.S. implementation of the WIPO ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty)), so there may be issues elsewhere, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Haha, just a few days I made a Dark Horse download script for my own purposes as well (except mine converts to CBZ right in the browser instead of requiring a Go script): [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/26635-dark-horse- downloade...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/26635-dark-horse-downloader)

<comment><AUTHOR> So there are more people who read Dark Horse comics and think like me :) Converting into CBZ directly was my initial idea, but then I discovered that there is direct download link to tar archive that contains all the images (I did that by following the network traffic of the iOS app). I didn't want to bother with half-baked JavaScript libraries to extract the tar archive and recompress it into zip, so I just quickly wrote a Go application to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        "secure_download_url": "http:\/\/...

ugh.

</comment><comment><USER13> Almost off-topic: I bought the very first edition (detailing the as-yet-to-be- released 3DO console) in August 1992 and still have the first two years' worth in custom cases.

<comment><USER14> Likewise. I plan on hanging onto those. It was the first games magazine I took out a subscription to, and was still a subscriber up until 2010 or so, when I lost interest in games and couldn't justify the continued expense.

Having come from the Sinclair Spectrum only a few years ago, by way of the Master System and Super Nintendo, the whole thing was quite eye opening, especially prior to the internet being readily available.

I like to think of the years 1993-1995 being a period of irrational optimism, when the technology available just couldn't keep up with the dreams people had for it. This was kind of borne out by the slew of bizarre and not-quite capable consoles and multimedia systems released over these years.

The first few years of Edge are the most interesting to read in retrospect because they tell the story of an industry not yet quite sure what it wants to be when it grows up and fighting to get there, wherever "there" might be.

<comment><USER13> Quite inexplicably I wasn't a gamer (I was 11, didn't nor ever had consoles or PC games). I was still fascinated by the technology though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly, instead of a random password, it was leet-speak for "Ford the epic honky".

</comment><comment><USER16> Could most of the initial API reverse engineering be blocked by using https with certificate pinning?

I tried reverse engineering an Android app API and came up short because every MITM I tried failed, I assume due to certificate pinning. To continue I would have to statically reverse the binary, or root/jailbreak the device and nerf the pinning section of the code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, certificate pinning would have blocked my initial steps. But there is a tool for disabling certificate pinning validation on jailbroken iOS devices, called iOS SSL Kill Switch [https://github.com/iSECPartners/ios-ssl-kill- switch](https://github.com/iSECPartners/ios-ssl-kill-switch).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting and accessible read. But, won't this stop working as soon as they change the pdf password and update the app? Although that's probably a bad idea because all the older versions of the app will stop working.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting read. I have seen pdfs of Edge on piracy sites for years. I wonder if those are created through a similar method or if they are just screenshots of pages from the official app?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting question. There is one thing that is unique to the Edge Magazine app on iOS, though. Zip archives of the magazine do not contain just pdf files, but also bunch of high resolution game screenshots. Those screenshots can be seen in the app by clicking the gallery button in a several places. The gallery button link is in the form media://image.jpg, which probably means that the application registered custom protocol handler and handles it by displaying image on top of the magazine itself. That's the way to recognize iOS version, but I'm not sure if Google Play Newsstand has the same feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe a call through to Future Publishing could have been tried first. If you don't ask then you don't get!

Of course this would have meant not collecting 'FBI grade' skills along the way, however, picking up the phone, flattering some folks at Future Publishing and getting the goods could be considered 'social engineering' and as good a skill as getting the debugger out.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was quite surprised how difficult it was to get hold of the iOS binary and how this still relied on the application being available for old iOS version.

</comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for pointing out Dark Horse downloader.</comment>


Pie Clock for Android: Your To-Do List as a Pie Chart  - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abnormaltech.PieClock

<comment><USER2> This is a really neat UI concept. Are there any plans to introduce the ability to have it as a widget on the lockscreen?</comment>