Ask HN: Location-independent entrepreneurs, where do you live and why? - <AUTHOR> If you're a location-independent entrepreneur, please share where you choose to live and why. <comment><USER2> Amsterdam. As an American (or Japanese) citizen you can get a residency card easily here if you start a business under the DAFT. You can also get a 30% tax break for up to 8 years as a highly skilled migrant, which is good because the highest effective tax rate here is 52%. Aside from those things, the city is very clean, extremely safe, cheap groceries, tons of green space, and extremely easy to navigate by bike or public transport. My wife and I came from LA where none of those things are true. Going out to eat is also about half as much as LA, and there is a lot of restaurant variety due to the multicultural nature of the city. Cheap insurance for individuals with a highly rated health care system. Downsides are the weather can be unpredictable, and definitely cold and gloomy in the winter. Also high rents in some popular areas, but that's probably true for most places. Overall though, we're extremely happy with our choice and considering staying long term. Also speaking only English is no problem.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for pointing out DAFT, that is pretty interesting. One question about starting a foreign corporation, Do the penalties and fees of the IRS regulations relating to US citizens owning a foreign corp. concern or worry you? For example, a $10,000 a month penalty for failing to report ownership interest in a foreign corporation. (Form 5471) This is the one thing that really stops me from considering owning a foreign corp.

<comment><USER2> I'm not a tax expert nor purport to be one, but I have a good US CPA and Dutch tax person and leave it in their hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vancouver, WA just across the bridge from Portland. Native Oregonian but mortgage on a condo downtown was less than $400/month, no state income tax & my profit-making side project is better protected by WA state IP laws (basically a copy of California's own time laws).

Worked for Google for many years, quit when I got a WFH job where I was guaranteed an "office" in Washington state.

Nowadays, just hang out with the friends I grew up with when I'm not working, saving money & hanging out with the wife (who also works from home).

Travel used to matter a lot but then I moved back home and realized I just hated living in San Francisco and people are way more important to me nowadays.

Basically the best thing ever and every morning I step out to get coffee & feel legit thankful I got escape the Bay Area and get back to my native biome.

<comment><USER5> What sucks about the Bay

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you didn't check already, see NomadList[0] for summarized information on a lot of cities. It provides a "score" in basic categories that would/could be important for people working remotely.

[0] [https://nomadlist.com/](https://nomadlist.com/)

<comment><USER7> I've checked scores of few cities I've lived in and they look like they were based on stereotypes, not on real experience.

<comment><USER8> Santiago scored 1 on "Gay friendly" despite same-sex unions are legal in Chile and most people don't care (there are transgender and gay politicians).

2 on Weather (Mediterranean climate), 2 on Fun (huge developed city with all sorts of entertainment).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Spain, in the mountains. I do coding and management which require only 'ok' internet and I for sure am more productive here working on my mountain view terras than in some office with other office views. When needed I fly to clients or partners or meetings for a few days and a few times a year I fly to partners and hang around for a month. I try to avoid offices so we usually meet in nature hotel lobbies, hotel lobbies in general or bars and restaurants to work or talk. Location does not matter a lot because if I have a phone or skype for meetings and something to write code and docs on, I am fine. Have been for 20+ years now.

<comment> angry-hacker I'm also in Spain. In the mountains do you mean as a more or less hermit or just somewhere really high altitude?

<comment><USER9> Compared to most I guess it is both: highest village in this region and I live in a part from the village which has 40 people living in it: in winter less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just South of Paris, near Fontainebleau. Where they keep all the good bouldering.

It's all about:

      - Choose the thing you like to do most

      - Find the absolute best place in the world to do that thing

      - Find a house there

It doesn't always work out though. I spent _years_ trying to find a place to live that was walking distance from a good surf break in the sun. Can't be done unless you're happy spending five million dollars on the house or are willing to live on a dusty scrap of land in Central America where you need to hire a guy with a gun to sit at the gate all night every night. Or want to strand yourself on a little sand and mosquito island a day's boat ride from Sumatra.

Fortunately, my (and my wife's) first love is climbing. We were worried we'd quickly "climb out" any crag we moved to, but Fontainebleau has just over 20,000 problems so it'll be a few years before we can get to them all. And they have proper French wine and baguettes and Paris 40 minutes away on the train. Sorted.

But yeah, if you can pull this whole location independence thing off, I'd highly recommend it.

<comment><USER11> >I spent years trying to find a place to live that was walking distance from a good surf break in the sun.

My wife and I just moved to Yamba, NSW which fits this pretty well. We're ~500m walk from 2 different beaches one of them a surf beach and about a km from another surf beach. I don't surf(yet) myself but my friends that do are all very excited to be in the area so apparently its pretty good here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Peshawar, Pakistan.

It's one of the highest terrorist-hit cities of the world but my parents love this place and are unwilling to move anywhere else. Due to their age (and lack of better retirement facilities) I live with them.

<comment><USER13> Kudos to you. I'm in a similar situation where while working remotely I have decided to stay in my home town with family, so they don't age alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Riga, Latvia right now.

Our rent is about 200 EUR but we're thinking of finding something even cheaper... and considering living for free in a kind of legal squat that will be a culture house where we could stay and do a few hours of helping out every week.

I'm here because my girlfriend is here, it's cheap, and it's pretty close to my family and friends in Sweden.

Riga is also small and cozy in a way that I seem to like.

In the future I have a hunch that I'd like to stay in Estonia. It seems like a very forward-thinking country tech-wise and a great place to do something like a blockchain business.

Or Romania... or Holland... or Barcelona...

<comment><USER15> Vilnius, Lithuania

Same reasons mostly, except the city is having a big push to make the city a regional tech hub. There are already quite a few startups here such as Wix, Trafi, Vinted, TransferGo and bigger companies like Barclays employ over 1,500 IT staff in the city.

The city is small but has enough going on. It has a young vibe, as there are lots of students around. Plenty of cafes you can sit in all day and use the wifi. Public transport is good and taxis are cheap (phone or use an app to book them though: ETaksi, Taxify or Uber), or if you'd rather drive there are two car sharing schemes CityBee and Spark.

Oh and internet speeds... I have 100/100 fiber at home for €10/month (there is also a 600/600 option). Ping times to London are 40ms. [http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5458602528](http://www.speedtest.net/my- result/5458602528)

Only negative would be winter. If you like sub-zero (C and F) it's fine. As a digital nomad just escape to somewhere else then. Summers are nice though, around 25c - 30c and there are lots of lakes for swimming if it gets too hot.

<comment><USER14> Cool, I'd love to visit Vilnius and Lithuania, and probably will in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bangkok, because it offers all the amenities of a major city at less than half the cost. It has world class restaurants, nightlife that never stops, good public transport, and endless beaches an hour away. I traveled extensively and lived in the US and Australia before settling down here but I like big cities and there aren't a lot of nice ones like this where you can get a luxury condo with maid service for $1,000/mo.

<comment><USER17> Are you a US citizen, or Aus?

How do you deal with the visa?

I want to move to thailand for an unknown amount of time but the visa seems like more than I would care to deal with. Don't want to have to do visa runs and all of that.

<comment><USER18> It's easy enough to take Thai language classes and get a student visa in Thailand, though they appear to be getting more strict with their checks to validate that you are actually learning Thai. I say that, because some people just get the student visa and never actually take the classes.

You can also get a student visa (in Chiang Mai at least) for hand-to-hand combat training with the military police. You just take two lessons a week on Saturday and Sunday afternoons for two hours. [http://chiangmaibuddy.com/services/chiang-mai-visa- services/...](http://chiangmaibuddy.com/services/chiang-mai-visa- services/12-month-hand-to-hand-combat-education-visa/).

You're spot on though - doing visa runs all the time gets old fast.

<comment><USER16> I believe that in Bangkok the Thai language schools currently require 8 hours of study a week to qualify for a student visa, which is more than it used to be but is still incredibly lenient. In the provinces I hear the requirements are even lower. Anyone who intends to stay here for more than a year without learning at least basic Thai is shooting themselves in the foot anyway IMHO.

<comment><USER18> If I remember correctly, I think it was 6hr/week in Chiang Mai. About 40% confident about that number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sofia, Bulgaria (my wife is Bulgarian). Working remotely as a sysadmin, I push code to GitHub and do server maintenance from coffee shops and my couch. Fantastic internet in Bulgaria. Very cheap, awesome food, beautiful mountains here. Language a bit of an issue with older people and outside the capital.

<comment><USER20> Are you learning Bulgarian, though? It's not a terribly hard language and it's generally a positive things to the locals if you speak it, even if you have a terrible accent.

<comment><USER19> Да, аз уча български език. Сега мога да говоря малко. (Yes, I'm studying Bulgarian language. Now I'm able to speak a bit). Learning to read/write Cyrillic has opened many doors, and even though I only speak like a five-year- old child, I can understand much more contextually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I moved to Amsterdam with my wife and kid eight months ago.

(I'm American, from Chicago, and I run Soundslice, soundslice.com.)

We chose Amsterdam because:

* The DAFT program makes it easy for American business owners to get a Dutch visa.

* Everybody speaks English (which is a double-edged sword, because it's tough to learn/practice Dutch!).

* The biking is second-to-none. I'm spoiled for life.

* It's safe. I feel much safer than the U.S.

* It's beautiful.

* Great scene for Django music (gypsy jazz), which I play.

* Easy travel to other parts of Europe.

* It's very international -- in day-to-day life I meet people from all over Europe and the world. A very cool experience (especially for an American).

* Liberal policies make for a culture that we personally agree with more, even compared to liberal Chicago.

As for weather, people complain about it -- but it's better than Chicago. So it's a net win. :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> Libourne, France

You can rent a 110m2 house for around 800 euros a month in a small town 30 minutes away from Bordeaux by car or train. The town is nice and getting better with new projects coming to make it more attractive for wine tourists (Saint Emilion is 10 minutes drive from it). There is a train station where you can get 5 trains per day to get to Paris in 3 hours. There is High school and hospital and all what you need for basic stuff, and if you can't find something you can still go to Bordeaux to get what you want.

I live there with my wife and kids mainly because it's cheap and not too far from our families and friends and because we wanted to get a not too small house (by french measure) with a nice garden for our kids in a nice area. As I see more and more people from Paris coming here so I think we made the right choice.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can you define what a "location-independent entrepreneur" is? Does it mean running a business where everyone is a telecommuter? Perhaps running a business that depends heavily on outsourcing, or even a one-man (no employees) business?

I do know someone who ran a business where he subcontracted all work to people overseas and basically functioned as a technical manager. He lived in the mountains outside of Silicon Valley. When I saw how he interacted with his friends, and the things he did, "why he lived where he lived" was obvious: He had lots of friends in the area, and was an active participant in the local culture.

It helps that he's close enough to a tech hub that he can drive in any time he needs; although a daily commute would be prohibitive.

I've also signed up for online source control and bug tracking (before Github really "won,") and found that it was a one-man business run by a friend-of-a- friend in Hawaii. The reasons for the owner living in Hawaii, or any area where there's a lot of recreation, are probably obvious.

As far as why people choose to live where they live; the usual reasons apply: Close to friends and family, lots of recreation, culture, and reasonable cost of living. Choosing a place within a large radius around a tech hub might also be important. For example, a ski bum could live in Tahoe or New Hampshire, but still get to Silicon Valley or Boston when needed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nelson, New Zealand. Beautiful nature all around me, the town is just big enough and it's a really awesome place to have a small kid. My folks are a short trip away so we see them every month, and the pace of life here is totally relaxed.

Downsides: basically zero tech scene, and it's getting pretty expensive these days.

<comment><USER25> Nelson's lovely, but I can't get over Wanaka as the place to be in NZ. I've only visited there a few times, but I always leave thinking 'this would be a great place to settle down'.

<comment><USER26> Wanaka is really beautiful; for people who haven't been there you can get a reasonable idea of what it is like by watching almost any of the outdoor scenes from Lord of the Rings / Hobbit movies. I first went to Wanaka in '94 long before the rest of the world discovered it. Warbirds over Wanaka is great too if you're into WWII aircraft (and others besides). The skiing is great there too (Cardrona, Treble Cone). And Hilary's first major ascent was Mount Aspiring which is about 1.5 hours drive by 4x4 from Wanaka.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Valdivia, Chile

It's a cute small city with all the necessary services (shopping, restaurants, healthcare, optical fiber with 10-15mbps to California) and a vibrant community created by hundreds of students from local universities.

There're a coworking space, small tech meetups, and game jams. You can also take a one hour flight to Santiago for bigger tech events and meetups.

Renting a good house is $600-700 a month, the climate is mild (only rains in winter). Average lunch is $6-8, we spend about $350 for food and $150 for health insurance for 2 persons. Chile is quite safe in general but here we can walk in night without any worries. The city is trying to be bike-friendly, it just got some bike lanes.

Startup and business visas are too complicated here but you can get a "rentista" visa for any kind of passive foreign income or work visa for a contract with a foreign employer. There're many expats coming, we know a team from the US building a tech village near the city.

Downsides: you will need to learn Chilean Spanish (though many young people know English, especially developers), there's smoke pollution in winter in the evenings since wood stoves are used for heating.

</comment><comment><USER27> Taipei, Taiwan.

* Clean and modern.

* Very safe.

* Nice people.

* Excellent public transportation.

* Good housing (relatively inexpensive).

* Great restaurants (extremely inexpensive).

* Low sales tax.

* Mandarin is a fun language to learn.

Also, $150-200 buys you a round-trip ticket to almost any other major city in Asia, so experiencing a new culture is just another way to spend a weekend. Taiwan's Eva Air and China Airlines are also excellent.

<comment><USER28> Living in Taipei also and I approve everything mentioned above :) Plus:

\- Taipei is a green city \- easy to meet interesting people \- Very foreigner friendly \- Good and cheap healthcare

<comment><USER29> I agree, Taipei is a nice place to live and Taiwan is an amazing island. But do you work completely remotely (for a US company)? Do you have any experience with local businesses or starting something in Taiwan? I've lived in Hong Kong and I'm interested in your insights. My email is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Assuming that by "location-independent entrepreneur" you mean that I _could_ run my business from anywhere (as opposed to "digital nomad", referring to someone who _does_ run their business from all over the world): Vancouver, Canada. Because it's my home; it's where most of my friends live; and... well, if you've ever lived in Vancouver you'll understand why I don't want to live anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER31> Singapore.

Aside from the obvious ease of doing business bit, I like the rule of law, weather, food, infrastructure, people and values (both Singaporean, and the expat community), low COL (for a developed country), international outlook, English as first and main language, ease of flying to cool places including the PRC and Japan, and the jungle in the middle that you can trek in any time also has a place in my heart. It's a great "home".

<comment><USER32> > low COL

It's been a few years since I've been there but is that really the case? I've heard the rent is close to SF level and buying a car is supposed to cost a small fortune in taxes alone.

Just from walking around and eating out there, it seemed more expensive than any European city I've been to.

<comment><USER33> Rent: It's coming down at the moment. Depending on how far you're willing to commute it can be very reasonable.

Car: You can live here without a car. The public transport is exceptional and for times when you must go quickly/directly taxis are dirt cheap.

I can eat a decent quality filling lunch of Hainanese Chicken Rice for $2.50SGD (about €1.70 or $1.90USD) in my local hawker, prices I have never found in Europe unless you are willing to eat potentially hazardous materials.

It's true you can easily spend hundreds of dollars eating out if you like however there are plenty of options to keep expenses down. In CBD I can get lunch for less than $5 but usually spend around $8.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Australia.

Foremost because it's always been 'home'. I grew up here and it's where my family and friends are.

There's plenty of space to explore and enjoy outside. I love having so many great beaches, places to mountain bike and go bush walking.

There's clean drinking water, unpolluted air, have a pretty decent healthcare system and healthy work culture. Speaking of culture, I'm yet to come across another culture that's as laid back and easy going.

At the same time, I take advantage of being 'location-independent' and travel frequently. In the past year I've explored Vietnam by motorbike, been surfing in central Australia, gone skiing in New Zealand, road tripped around California, Nevada & Arizona as well as spending some time just soaking up the culture in Japan.

<comment><USER34> Surfing in central Australia?

<comment><USER25> Central on the east coast (north of Sydney) :)

There's not much going on in the middle of the country.

<comment><USER35> > Central on the east coast (north of Sydney)

I don't think anyone ever in the history of the planet has described that location as "Central Australia", before you.

<comment><USER25> My bad, was referring to the Central Coast :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Coast_(New_South_Wales...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Coast_\(New_South_Wales\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Oxfordshire countryside in England. I tried working from a small flat in London and I got totally burnt out. I like being able to look out the window and see trees, fields and a river - I've been working full-time for myself for 7 years now, I'm personally finding it's hugely important to be able to keep stress under control and get some perspective... and for me, being able to get outside really helps.

Ideally I'd move to Wales where it's cheaper and prettier, but realistically I need to be able to get to London and airports relatively quickly, as well as to not be too far from friends and family.

</comment><comment><USER37> Vermont, because if you've ever been here you'd know there's no place like it. I like living in the middle of no where and having access to great outdoor activities, great food, and great place to raise a family. Not to expensive, but not cheap, and the extreme winters keeps the riff raff away...

<comment><USER23> I'm trying to talk my wife into Vermont. What kind of business do you run?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I live in the backest of backwaters in England, rural Lincolnshire. We're a company of 10 but most of our customers are in SV and we work in $.

The why: My wife's from here and I've grown to like the culture and how much further money stretches. Luxury outside of London versus living in a shoebox is no real contest for me (but is a legitimate one for others).

<comment><USER39> Must be pretty handy to be paid in $ around now :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If the wife didn't have a job and didn't like being close to family I would not mind living in Nice France. I was just there recently (luckily before the attack) and loved it. It is like San Diego but with French+Italian cuisine and warmer water. That being said San Diego, Miami, Vermont, and Colorado are some solid choices.

</comment><comment><USER41> I live in Atlanta. The cost of living is low, quality of life is great, and there are tons of local companies to sell to. The culture here is to prioritize work-life balance[1], and it honestly seems to make everyone happier and more productive.

As far as startup culture, people really admire and encourage lean bootstrapping, which results in far more B2B companies than B2C. We do have an incubator[2] working to change that, but I actually prefer it this way. The SV culture of equating raising money with success is completely opposite of my own beliefs.

1\. [http://www.fastcompany.com/1840856/how-southern-tech- workers...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1840856/how-southern-tech-workers- build-booming-businesses-and-still-go-home-5)

2\. [http://www.switchyards.com](http://www.switchyards.com)

</comment><comment><USER42> Anyone in Cascais Lisbon? I'm fortunate to have location independent income, following the Brexit result which disgusted me, I will definitly leave within the UK in the next 6 months. Portuguese tax looks v good for entrepreneurs, only €500k investment (includes house) required to get EU passport, great climate, cheap living, great food, large city close by with access to Tech Talent, international private schools for young daughters. Thought about Malaga aswell but wealth tax puts me off and Spaniards seem less freindly towards Brits. Also thought of Berlin or Munich but they are more expensive and have more immigration pressures, France Italy too anti- business, so Lisbon seems best option to me. Any comments or critiques of my logic would be appreciated, it's a very big decision after all!

<comment><USER43> I'm in Cascais, ive been navigating the NHR program since I arrived last year, its a loverly place, lisbon has a cool scene, they hosting websimmit this year which will put it on the map totally. You can get me at this address support / linkaudit.co.uk

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> No one has mentioned it yet, so if I could ask, what about Hong Kong?

I'm an American living state-side but I have done some research on relocating to Hong Kong. I work from home with a salary that would be at least semi- respectable anywhere in the US (though of course not luxurious in high CoL cities), but it doesn't seem like it would be enough to furnish a home or lifestyle in HK that is anything like what we have now.

Immigration seems like it will be a problem without employer sponsorship, and employment opportunities for programmers look terrible (though, to be fair, I don't know much Cantonese yet so I can't search in the native language).

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the only realistic way to get there would be a career shift into finance and specifically targeting the type of jobs that often end up being exported to HK (along with luxurious compensation and relocation packages).

Anyone here run a biz from HK and want to share some details? I see several of its neighbors have been mentioned: Singapore, Taipei, Bangkok, but no HK. Is that just luck of the draw or is there a reason that entrepreneurs avoid HK?

I have an indirect acquaintance, someone I just barely know enough to follow on Facebook, who opened an office in HK. He's been there for 3 or 4 years now, but just announced he and his family are relocating over the border into Shenzen to open another office there (as I understand it, his HK office is still operating, and, for the record, his company primarily does Wordpress sites). I thought this was interesting. I don't know the guy well enough to ask him directly about what motivated him, but is this something people are seeing a lot of? From my reading, it sounds like the only benefits of Shenzen are cheaper rent and more protections from hostile Western governments (HK more likely to extradite and/or honor civil judgments issued by Western countries than mainline China), and there appear to be many additional limitations despite Shenzen's status as a Special Economic Zone.

<comment><USER45> I do. I think the most important question is: If your business is truly location independent and you don't have other reasons to be in HK, why choose to locate it in the city with the world's most expensive real estate?

There are many things I love about HK, but the control of the property market by a cartel of local families permeates every aspect of life.

There's zero sales tax in HK and goods are manufactured nearby, and yet a nice TV from a retail electronics store will cost you double what you'd pay in the US, because they need to cover the rent.

Even something simple like finding a cafe to sit down, enjoy a coffee and read the paper becomes a nearly impossible challenge at times given the inability of a cafe to support its exorbitant rent from customers spending an hour sitting around.

To put some numbers on it, the average rental per per square foot at the high end is $0.55/hour [1]. Assuming you're serving customers 12 hours a day, and you have nothing but customer seating, with one square meter per person, that's $12/hour in rent alone for every seat.

Without zoning, the highest bidder wins. So food and beverage have been pushed up into the high floors of office buildings where rents are cheaper, and the pedestrian areas are instead lined with jewelry and watch shops.

Although HK has a lot of nice forest (as only 25% of the land is developed), within the developed areas, this is what passes for a park:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,114.171373,3a,37.5y,...](https://email@example.com,114.171373,3a,37.5y,34.71h,82.87t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6cBywtl7PMmCt1ZrbOlaOQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en)

There are many great things about HK, but it's important to be aware of the space issue.

[1] [http://www.mingtiandi.com/real-estate/china-retail-real- esta...](http://www.mingtiandi.com/real-estate/china-retail-real-estate- news/hks-causeway-bay-still-ranks-2nd-worldwide-for-retail-rents-despite- downturn/)

<comment><USER44> Thanks for your answer. Can you elaborate on your general experiences in HK? Are you a native or a foreigner? Are you running a business or working for someone? What are conditions like generally?

I'll admit that legal troubles are what initially got me interested in HK. A corporation with a lot of influence in the U.S. threatened to sue my startup for violations of the CFAA, thereby shutting us down. I started to look for other places in the world where the law was less ambiguous and from where I may be able to operate my business.

The telecommunications law in HK seems to make it somewhat-explicitly more legal there, though it's still probably not a slam dunk. We have to personally relocate, can't just re-incorporate in HK, because this company will sue me in the U.S. if I resume operations. Relocating a) provides an additional layer of indirection between American court systems and my personal assets and freedom, and HK specifically makes further retreat from Western influence more feasible, should it become necessary, given its proximity to PRC and other countries that are not US lapdogs; and b) makes it more difficult for an American court to establish personal jurisdiction over my activity, though I have no doubt that BigCo's lawyers would get it easily.

HK is a modern, high-tech city with fast internet and easy access to everything, including a lot of the brands that we're used to in America (I understand the HK versions may be substantially different). It's reported to be very safe and very clean. English is an official language (though I read that only about 5% of locals have more than the most basic proficiency in it), which would make it easier to operate than other areas of Asia as signage in English is available, official business can be conducted in English, etc. It's a great base for further exploration of the region. There is a large and apparently vibrant community of American and English expats. There's a culture of hard work and there are very low taxes. The weather is not necessarily ideal, but reasonable. I also believe that there would be developmental benefits for my children, including but not limited to the opportunity to fully immerse in Cantonese.

In the course of my research, I learned that Snowden's first preference for refuge was Hong Kong, and it's easy to see why. Singapore is probably the only other comparable candidate. Europe is out of the question in general due to their social and political stances, but it has even worse computer access laws than America if you can believe it.

Realistically I understand that HK is not a practical refuge with regard to my specific legal issues. There's nowhere in the world I could go and be safe from the wrath of one of the world's largest and most recognizable companies. In any modern country, they'll easily outlawyer me, and the laws on these matters are not completely unambiguous; it'd take me millions of dollars to mount a defense, and even then, there's a substantial likelihood that they would prevail.

In any developing country, the officials will be far too easy to buy off, and most likely all this company would have to do is ask, because the officials would much rather have their goodwill than mine. Look at the Pirate Bay guys; even though what they were doing was completely legal under Swedish law, the US State Dept pushed for their prosecution at the behest of a cartel of large companies, Sweden held a kangaroo court and convicted them, they fled to Cambodia/Laos/Thailand (basically the only countries with computer access that don't extradite on command from Western nations) and still eventually got caught at border crossings and sent back home to serve their time. Moral of the story appears to be that if BigCo wants your life screwed up badly enough, they will relentlessly pursue until it's done, and petty things like the laws of the nation-state are not relevant. Ultimately, money talks, no matter where you live.

I also don't really want to become an effective exile from my own home country, which is what would happen even if there was a country that would shelter a little person like myself. Criminal charges are possible under the CFAA and there would be an arrest warrant issued if a criminal case was brought, probably meaning I'd get arrested at the first American border stop. There would certainly be a standing civil judgment against any assets I own within American boundaries, which means I would never be able to have a bank account or own a home without resorting to identity theft. Not good stuff, and my little business is absolutely not worth all of that.

Even though I understand that there is nowhere on Earth that would allow my business to resume operations, after the research I've done, I still believe it'd be good for my family to spend a few years in Hong Kong for the reasons enumerated above. I continue to be interested in learning as much as I can from people who have experience there, especially experience with the entrepreneurial scene and/or raising a large family as an expat.

<comment><USER45> _HK is a modern, high-tech city with fast internet and easy access to everything, including a lot of the brands that we 're used to in America (I understand the HK versions may be substantially different). It's reported to be very safe and very clean. English is an official language (though I read that only about 5% of locals have more than the most basic proficiency in it), which would make it easier to operate than other areas of Asia as signage in English is available, official business can be conducted in English, etc. It's a great base for further exploration of the region. There is a large and apparently vibrant community of American and English expats. There's a culture of hard work and there are very low taxes. The weather is not necessarily ideal, but reasonable. I also believe that there would be developmental benefits for my children, including but not limited to the opportunity to fully immerse in Cantonese_

I have no input on your legal woes, but your points above are pretty accurate. It's a very easy, safe (excluding the air pollution) and convenient place to live. The only point I'd disagree with is in raising a family there, but I imagine that's a personal preference. I'd also suggest that Mandarin would be immensely more useful for your children than Cantonese.

I don't want to turn this into a discussion, so i wont reply here again, but I'd direct you to the following popular forum for expat families here, which should contain a lot of relevant information and where you can ask questions of other HK expats:

[https://geoexpat.com/](https://geoexpat.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Greece, Dodecanneso.

Why? maybe the best sailing area in the med (we live aboard a 11mt old/cheap sailing boat), cheap, easy, great weather, great & cheap internet (mobile) everywhere. Winter not aboard anymore (electricity is getting too expensive), so maybe will join some of you in wintertime

</comment><comment><USER47> Andorra, small country in the middle of Pyrenees. Beautiful mountains with decent skiing in winter, all year around nice sunny weather, great food, almost all homes have fibre to home, close proximity to Barcelona. Cost-wise very affordable + only 10% income tax.

On the flip side there is no tech ecosystem or it can sometimes be a bit boring, you need to travel to BCN to get your culture fix :) It can also be a bit hard to get out since closest airport is BCN.

<comment> angry-hacker Do you manage to live there speaking only Castellano or is Catalán necessary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Tokushima, Japan.

Not a particularly inspiring environment, besides the good beaches and view of the mountains. Non-existent developer community. Sufficiently sized city (200k) to have everything you need. Fun festivals.

For our family of two adults and a baby, our living cost is very roughly $3000 / month. Biggest cost is my health insurance, second highest expense is rent, our place is $720 / month. You need a car to survive.

At first it seemed that taxes would be much cheaper than Finland, but actually there are many varieties of fees and when you add them all up Japan is about the same. Putting a child through the schooling system would tip that in favor of Finland, where they actually pay you to study.

I wrote this ages ago, been meaning to update it: [http://www.bemmu.com/what- it-costs-to-live-in-japan](http://www.bemmu.com/what-it-costs-to-live-in- japan)

<comment><USER49> Hey Bemmu! A couple questions after reading your blog post:

1\. Any noticeable societal differences between living in Tokushima and Tokyo?

2\. Assuming you are still renting, do you eventually plan to purchase your own property in Japan?

It seems property costs outside of Tokyo are really cheap. I've been contemplating moving near Kamakura as it has a beach and it's still reasonably close to Tokyo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Bucharest, Romania

Being Romanian, it wasn't really a tough choice, having family and friends here. Quite happy with the quality of life, cost of living and income taxes. The city has been changing for the better in the past 10 years, feeling very cosmopolitan these days and open to foreigners.

</comment><comment><USER51> Lisbon

\- Sunny most of the year

\- Small EU capital but lots to do, beautiful cities countrywide

\- Walkable

\- Almost all young people speak fluent English

\- Cheap (though this is slowly changing)

\- Very multicultural (if you know where to look)

\- I rent a big room w/ an amazing view of the city and my total monthly bills are under $600 (includes going out several times per week).

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been popping around quite a bit recently. Some recent destinations in no particular order: Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, USA, Australia, India, Kenya, South Africa, Germany, Norway, New Zealand. I stay for a few months (usually 2-6 months) at a time and move on.

Currently in Bali because it's cheap, the weather is nice, I'm right on the beach, there are solid coworking + cafe options, and the Balinese people + culture + architecture are absolutely splendid.

<comment><USER52> You mind emailing me (in profile)? I'm looking for some Bali specific info - just want to work and surf basically :)

<comment><USER18> Check your inbox

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Berlin, because it's where my social life is, with a week/month working somewhere else (Barcelona, Rome, Istanbul ...) when it gets too cold or boring.

</comment><comment><USER54> Can you clarify what you mean by "location-independent"? Do you imply that the person is traveling, or does it mean that the team is all remote?

<comment><AUTHOR> By "location-independent" I mean a person doesn't have to be in a certain location to run their business. Meaning, they can run their business from anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My wife's work requires her to work abroad, and this is the post that made sense for our family and her career. It's a nice enough place to live and work, very cheap, all modern conveniences are available, great expat community. We'll stay for a couple more years, then move somewhere else (she gets re-posted every 2-3 years).

<comment><USER56> Do you mind sharing what your wife does? I was recently in Phnom Penh and really liked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Paris

It's important that the time I _don 't_ spend working be fulfilling -- a value that Parisians all seem to share.

Cheap (if not free) museums, cultural events, and small gatherings in which people talk about life are what keep me here.

</comment><comment><USER58> I am in California for health reasons. The dry climate and low levels of ragweed are good for me.

I like California for a lot of reasons, but the deciding factor is my health.

</comment><comment><USER59> Austria and San Francisco, as we have office locations there. I'm splitting my time every month between the two locations.

</comment><comment><USER60> Krakow, Poland. Because Poland is one of the very few EU countries with low enough business requirements to get a residence.

</comment><comment><USER61> Thessaloniki , Greece . Because no other place can match the beaches of Chalkidiki [inside joke for Greek readers :)].

</comment><comment><USER62> Marbella: beach. :)

</comment><comment><USER63> Tokyo

</comment><comment><USER64> Home. In Lyon, France, because my friends are the most important asset.

I've also chosen my coworking space ("Ecoworking") based on the awesomeness of the community and the variety of entrepreneurs (NGOs, architects, book writers, motion designers, etc). I'm a software editor.

If it were only for the quality of living, I'd be in the south of France (Nice), but the coworking space I met there wasn't friendly. Besides, the cost of living is much lower in Lyon, notably because the car isn't necessary.

<comment><USER65> As an American who hadn't been out of North America until 10th grade, my student exchange to Lyon was very enjoyable and showed me how absurd life can be in America sometimes.

The beautiful old architecture paired with modern public transit made it an excellent city for adventures. We could be anywhere we wanted via bike, scooter, skateboard, and metro in almost no time, and there was so much to see. Coming from living in a car-centric US suburb, it was extremely liberating.

One of my fondest memories was when my exchange student was here in the states, and we were eating at an Applebees. The waitress took his 3/4 empty soda glass away, and he swore at her in french. She just shrugged and returned with a free refill. His jaw just dropped since drinking that much soda, and free refills, was totally foreign to him.</comment></comment>


Look out for No. 1 - <AUTHOR> http://timharford.com/2011/09/look-out-for-no-1/

<comment><USER2> "Nobody seems sure why so much data has the Benford distribution. " : Have a look at [http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law- zipfs-...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law-zipfs-law- and-the-pareto-distribution/) (cited in the previous discussion on HN) for an excellent exposition of the theory, and an explanation of the 'power' of the Benford Law.

<comment><USER3> That Terry Tao article is excellent, as usual (well, at least for math dorks - what's unusual about this one is that you don't need a very high level of dorkery to grok it 100%) and the "executive summary" reason that Benford's law applies so broadly is easy to find:

"More generally, it is not hard to show that if X obeys the continuous Benford's law, and one multiplies X by some positive multiplier Y which is independent of the first digit of X (and, a fortiori, is independent of the fractional part of log_10(X)), one obtains another quantity X' = XY which also obeys the continuous Benford's law."

In other words, multiplicative combinations of (independent) quantities will inherit Benford's law as long as any one of the quantities obeys it on its own, so it just takes one sub-factor that grows exponentially in order for an entire distribution to follow the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good to be aware of this if you plan to falsify your tax returns, according to a '98 NYT article (from which this post takes its neat title)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/04/science/following- benford-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/04/science/following-benford-s- law-or-looking-out-for-no-1.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

</comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion of Benford's Law on HN

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701342>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm impressed that Madoff was smart enough to mimic Benford distribution in his monthly returns (that's what the article led me to infer).

I actually made an r/math post about Benford's Law that I thought was pretty interesting, although it didn't get much attention or many comments (admittedly bad signs). Any peer review (or su-peer-ior review) is appreciated.

Here's a snippet: "...generation of the geometric layout for Benford first digits is a similar process to creating a Sierpinski Triangle by drawing a triangle, and randomly plotting midpoint dots between vertices and sides recursively. In the Benford case the plotted dots are instead individual numbers, which share a geometric connection (e.g. two galaxies colliding will on average be a doubling, so galaxy size should possess Benford distribution)."

[http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gkj2i/benfords_law_exp...](http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gkj2i/benfords_law_explained_through_a_tree_of_first/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Last month Khan and Vi Hart made some very interesting videos on Benford's Law:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KmeGpjeLZ0>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZUDoEdjTzg>

</comment><comment><USER8> No link in the article so here is the report cited:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0475.2011....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0475.2011.00542.x/full)

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think the issue at hand is that fraud detections are unsophisticated. The issue at hand is that the fraud detections are in cahoot with the fraud themselves. For example: Enron, Worldcom and Accenture (past) Greece, Italy, Spain and Goldman Sachs, Fitch, Moody, S&P (present) Chinese local banks, Chinese companies and SEC (future)

The problem with hackers is that they always try to find mathematical solutions to moral problems. What the world needs right now is a moral solution. A beheading for those that have fouled.

Unfortunately, the hackers, the workers - ones that actually have the power to demand changes - are willingly allowing themselves to be exploited by those that lie, and not demanding any moral judgements. They're not interested in changing the politics, they claim. They just want to keep producing interesting things, they exclaim. They don't realize they're the ones keeping the lie going. They're the ones propping up this decrepit shell of a society.

Until one day the shell collapses on their kids, anyways.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that revolutions tend to be more harmful than their predecessors: see China in the 60s, for example.

<comment><USER11> That's definitely not a given. Revolutions are a time of instability and the outcome can be worse or better. It mostly depends on what precipitated the revolution in the first place, how educated the people in the country where the revolution takes place are and how involved they plan on being once the violence dies down. A revolution is a time of transition and instability without any guarantees towards the outcome.</comment></comment></comment>


How Not to Become a Rockstar Programmer - <AUTHOR> https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-not-to-become-a-rockstar-programmer/ <comment><USER2> You don't become a better writer by writing either.

At any rate, where programming is concerned I knew a programmer once who was a very decent tech writer but as a programmer overly verbose. The fact that he would write 5-6 pages of gibberish to do what I did in half a page did not improve his programming, and no matter how much he wrote he never became less verbose.

on edit: removed extra 'is'</comment>


Ever notice Chrome has no "Set image as wallpaper"? - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1019

<comment><USER2> I'm the 'Glen' from the Chromium UI team referred to in the bug report; we actually do torture ourselves over questions like this - it comes down to painful decisions about keeping Chrome lightweight.

Sure, a single small context menu item might not make a lot of difference, but there are thousands of features like this, each servicing a different small set of people. In addition to the interface overhead of having all of those features, the engineering (don't forget cross platform, keeping it up to date, translation into 40 languages, and support) is never as small as you think it is.

It's painful because taken individually, we know we could fix an issue and make a set of people happy, but there are never ending piles of these issues, and we none of us want to let Chrome become a never-ending pile of menu items and buttons and extra leading to cruft and bugs.

Now I have made myself sad.

<comment><USER3> I was doing my pre-sleep reading of HN on my iPad and got out of bed and on my computer to thank you and tell you that I'm very happy you guys have the balls to say no and choose what's best over the public opinion.

You guys have made caught up and surpassed in many ways every other web browser out there in a staggering pace -- seriously, congrats to that. Chromium is my default browser and I love and look forward to what you guys are doing! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who says it's a bug? Maybe they've omitted it on purpose to de-emphasise the desktop/OS as part of their Chrome OS play. Still a pain if you use it though.

As an aside, it's interesting that the reporter says it's their favourite feature. Either they're emphasising for effect or they don't think of most of Chrome's core features as features.

<comment><USER5> I agree, they gradually push the user towards a browser-only environment. When you have no wallpaper, you do not like to look at your desktop that much. But when they are ready to make Chrome OS more mainstream, the Chrome users may go easier in the transition.

<comment><USER6>
      >  When you have no wallpaper, you do not like to look at your desktop that much

Because the browser is the only/best way to set your wallpaper? :-\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That thread was hilarious.

"Definitely thinking of going back to firefox over this"

"Stupid Google; I set new backgrounds more often than I download pictures by far. This is not bloat. Breathtaking arrogance and disrespectful attitude toward users."

:-) are we sure this isn't some kinda 4chan joke?

<comment><USER8> Five comments in, I was absolutely certain this was a joke thread. O_o

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never noticed the lack of this feature in Chrome, and I don't think I've ever used it in a browser that had it.

Maybe this is a feature an extension could handle, assuming Chrome's security model allows it.

The security model is one area in which Chrome could, perhaps do with a bit more complexity. The fact that I can't use mouse gestures on local directory listings or the new tab page annoys me. I want to mark the mouse gestures extension as trusted and therefore allowed to run on any page Chrome can display.

</comment><comment><USER10> I didn't notice it was lacking this option until this reading. Like most other people here when I see my desktop background it means I'm shutting down the computer.

Funnily though, the Google folks are silly enough to give people the ability to add a background image feature to their that-many hits/day search page, but not the user's own desktop..

</comment><comment><USER11> People get so worked up about the little things.

</comment><comment><USER12> This already works on KDE, just drag the picture from chrome to the desktop and you'll be asked to set it as wallpaper.

<comment><USER13> The chances of anyone requesting this feature being a linux user are slim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a feature I'm glad Chrome lacks. This is also an excellent reason why you need a deep understanding of your product and its uses so that you know when to ignore user suggestions. Users will beg and plead for you to ruin your product if you're not careful. Remember the importance of listening to your users, but also remember that your product is not a pot-luck.

</comment><comment><USER15> After reading this, I've just noticed that my FF _has_ the option. I've never felt the urge to use it - probably because I have a (127,127,127) background so that I can actually see my icons and text.

I think Glen justifies it well - it's not a tiny little feature, it's a load of unnecessary overhead. Good on him and the team for standing their ground.

Reading some of the comments on the tracker, I'm amazed at how much of a _must have_ they consider it.

</comment><comment><USER16> It occurs to me that I take my background a lot more seriously than most people. I can't imagine using that feature to set my background. I would want to have a good view of the background while I do it, and I would want to make sure I like it more than my current background, or any other options at the moment.

Also, I change backgrounds ... Well, almost never.

And finally: I have multiple monitors and they can have different backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hey Glen, its Mohamed (Chromium contributor/committer), I decided to create an extension for this feature and it works great. Hopefully those people who are left out will be happy again, and continue to use Chromium. It is uploaded to the Gallery as of 30 minutes ago! [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ddkmiidlgnkhnfhi...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ddkmiidlgnkhnfhigdpadkaamogngkin)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (I didn't notice, I just somehow landed on it via the bug tracker.) The tracker has quite a few of these amusing threads. You'll frequently notice: 1) it's only one line of code! 2) this bug has been open for a year - outrageous!

Edit: the WontFix reason from a Googler is at [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1019#c16...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1019#c165)

</comment><comment><USER18> The thing that struck me was the level of passion that the users who wanted the feature had.

Also the range of argument quality: "i think ya'll should be able to have your thing mothafucka" vs "Lengthening the context menu? Finally a REASON as to the WontFix. A seriously flawed one, since you could easily allow your users to customize things such as what's displayed in the context menu."

</comment><comment><USER19> I haven't seen my actual desktop for _ages_. I always have applications, editors and viewers running.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it possible for a Chrome extension to access desktop settings, such as the background?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Theoretically you could make an extension for this using the Context Menus API ([http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/contextMenus.ht...](http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/contextMenus.html)) and an NPAPI plugin... "

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1019#c45...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1019#c455)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Obligatory Userfriendly-link: <http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20000229>

Perhaps that's why.

</comment><comment><USER22> Talk about building a bike shed :D

Personally I think I've used that feature in other browsers more as an accident than on purpose, so I see why they don't have it.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Comment 32 by orphenshadow, Jan 24, 2009 I love chrome, but this is one of the main reasons it is 2nd behind firefox."

Clearly.

</comment><comment><USER24> This thread made me realize how disciplined a team must be to resist feature creep.

</comment><comment><USER25> Chrome's philosophy is self-consistent, and that's probably the only objective metric, even though this means that they produce (to me) a useless browser. (I use set image as wallpaper all the time.)

</comment><comment><USER26> maybe that's why I use Chrome and dread IE ;-)

</comment><comment><USER27> Hmm: "direct from our Browser, like we have since the dawn of the internet". I'm young, and the internet existed when I was born, but I don't think there was a web in the internet's "dawn", let alone graphical web browsers. Still, aren't applications made for their users? The use case would be commoner among the less computer savvy people I suppose (i.e. not the three Google people).

<comment><USER13> People who wouldn't use that feature and aren't tech-savvy won't bother making the argument against it, so it falls to the tech-savvy ones to make the point already made in these HN comments, that if they catered to every small request the browser would end up too bloated.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Whats your least pressed key? - <AUTHOR> I want to know the least pressed key on your keyboard. Mine is the pause[break] key. whats yours? <comment><USER2> On my Thinkpad tablet, the lil blue Fn key next to the left-hand Ctrl. It's not actually necessary for F# keys...I have those. It seems to turn the F keys into other things...basing on the icons, I'm guessing sleep, alternate display toggle, brightness controls, eject (eject what? this computer has no optical drive).

Actually...no. I hit that key on accident sometimes aiming for Ctrl. Not sure if it counts as being on the keyboard, but the least pressed button on this computer is the 'Access IBM' button. I don't even have the tools or whatever it's supposed to launch installed, this laptop's been completely wiped and replaced with win7.

Scroll lock and Pause are definite runners up.

</comment><comment><USER3> My five-year old Acer laptop inexplicably has a Euro key to one side of the "Up" arrow, and a superfluous "$" key to the other side. I've certainly pressed each of those keys numerous times unintentionally, and cursed the keyboard designer ... but I can't remember a single time in five years that I've pressed one intentionally.

</comment><comment><USER4> My MacBook Pro 17" non-chiclet keyboard has a small 'enter' key on the bottom row between the right command key and the cursor keys. I don't think I've ever touched it. Newer models have an 'option' key there, so it must not have been popular.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have the small version of the happy hacker keyboard, and I almost never press either of the Alt keys because it has a Meta key. I also seem to only use the left side Meta and Fn keys, so the right side keys are pretty underused.

</comment><comment><USER6> On my Macbook: The eject key. (At least the function keys get some usage due to their secondary functions, although I never use the keyboard lighting controls either)

On my Model M: Scroll Lock

</comment><comment><USER7> On my Mac Mini - the volume keys on my wireless keyboard (My Mac Mini is plugged into my home theatre setup via an optical link).

On my laptop, probably the right alt gr key.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ins key.

Even pause[break] has a function, at least on Windows, try Win+pause. I map scrolllock to scroll-lock function in emacs.

</comment><comment><USER9> scroll lock. I actually stuck a big red panic button[1] over the light on my old keyboard.

[1] <http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/panic-button/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> The right click alternative on Keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Windows key

</comment><comment><USER12> \</comment>


Conceal, a fast Android crypto lib for SD storage. - <AUTHOR> http://facebook.github.io/conceal/

<comment><USER2> Can this be used to hide API keys? It's fairly trivial to decompile an APK file. As another poster pointed out the key for Conceal would need to be stored somewhere also.

Any ideas or best practises of hiding API keys? Google has not turned up much. This Stackoverflow suggests storing keys remotely, but surely that too would be trivial to hack:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10203910/anti-hack- soluti...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10203910/anti-hack-solution-for- a-secret-key-in-android-app)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey guys I worked on Conceal, AMA

<comment><USER4> This looks nice, but ISTM it would be most useful when used in concert with other facilities. For example, does FB have any preferred tool/method for managing keys in this environment? I've never done any Android coding, but I hear that lots of people screw up this part...

EDIT: whoops, I didn't see jffry's question before; apparently this occurs to many people.

<comment><USER3> Conceal ships with a default Keychain implementation which stores the key in SharedPreferences in the internal storage. You can totally customize this if you want to store this in a DB or somewhere else.

We realize that most apps already have their own implementation of caches and we'd rather look at this as a library that helps extend the app specific storage into external storage without letting other apps read this data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're encrypting the data, you're encrypting it with some sort of key, which itself has to be stored on the device. Is that code sample using an Android library to get some secret key that is only accessible to the app in which it was generated, and no other app?

<comment><USER3> Conceal ships with a default Keychain implementation which stores the key in SharedPreferences in the internal storage. You can totally customize this.</comment></comment>


US IT Wages set to Stagnate.  Thank the Senate  - <AUTHOR> http://markgamache.blogspot.com/2013/02/senators-marco-rubio-orrin-hatch-amy.html

<comment><USER2> The actual title: "Senators Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch, Amy Klobuchar hate America". Lovely.

My political views are somewhat out of the norm for this site (even on immigration), so I'll restrain myself and just point out: if the amount the average IT worker was payed went up, that would increase the income disparity, not decrease it. The average IT wage is already higher than the average wage. So the real issue here isn't "income disparity will increase" - the real issue is "dey terk er jerbs!" A message that meshes quite nicely with the title.

<comment><USER3> I have to point out that this is incorrect. The simplified version is that if the workers are paid more a smaller piece of the megacorp's pie goes to the big whigs whether they are the shareholders or executives. In essence you have more distributed income amongst more people rather than it going to one or a few people. A situation where 1 person makes $20 and 9 make $1 has more income disparity than a situation where 1 person makes $15, 2 make $4 and 6 make $1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even if we multiplied the H1B count by 10, we still wouldn't have enough developers and other professionals to meet demand. If you look at the security industry, for instance, _everyone_ is hiring. And hiring. And hiring. There's more work than anyone can possibly hope to meet while keeping up quality; there simply aren't enough bodies to fill chairs.

Yes, increasing the talent pool might drop the salaries of certain positions (competition does that), but it's not even a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things.

</comment><comment><USER5> Speaking as a still-H1B techie, there are of course several shades in this issue, it's not black-and-white and definitely not pitch-black like this blog. In the bright side, I can assure you that my compensation at Google is above market average; also the company immediately sponsored my GC process so very soon I expect to be free from "H1B indenturing". Except there's no indenturing, because my stock grant is plenty motivation to not leave the company any time soon (not to mention amazing work etc.). I cannot speak for every Google hire on H1B, even less for other companies like MS; just giving my personal experience FWIW.

On the other hand, in a previous gig in the US (I first came through another H1B sponsor), I've suffered myself the consequences of low-grade H1B/tech hires; spent a few months in one of those Wall Street companies, sweating to salvage some horrendous code written by Wipro people who filled whole teams of said company. The problem of course is not their origin--I've also worked some great engineers from India--the problem is the H1B rules and GC backlogs, many Indians have to wait 10+ years for their GC, so they are easily victimized by abusive sponsors. (Some of what I say here apply to Chinese too, but let's avoid "India/China" repetition.)

To be fair, these extreme GC processing times are for EB3 (the lowest-skilled people); it could be argued that simply denying H1B for any Indian who wouldn't later qualify as EB1 or EB2 would make things better both for the American job market, and for the Indian engineers who are actually high- skilled. This solution can look unfair to others, but then again, it's hard to find a solution that's fair to everyone. For one thing, India/China's massive population is a problem; in a system without any per-country restrictions or backlogs, but with global restrictions like total H1B/year quotas, these two countries could swamp the immigration system (even more) in detriment to people from other countries who also don't have the benefit of large companies specialized in bringing people from your country to the US, or the network effect of a big, existing immigrant community. But even the EB2 backlog for Indians is long enough to often run into the 6-year H1B limit.

Another suggestion I have can sound like socialist heresy to many American ears, but... hell, just regulate the job market a little better. Or at least do that for people on H1B. Overtime work should be paid, with a premium rate of 50% minimum. Certain benefits such as decent healthcare coverage should be also mandatory. "Prevailing wage" should include average income from bonus and equity, in jobs where these benefits are prevailing. H1B workers should be allowed to easily transfer to another employer, with the only requirement that the new job pays equal or better in both salary and benefits. Companies that sponsor H1B's visa/relocation costs should be required to consider such costs fully paid in 12 months (that's typically enough to amortize those costs, as they typically put people to work in consulting jobs but take a fat markup on their salaries). Rules like these mean that H1B's would be even in some _dis_ advantage competing with natives, but that's a good thing, would make the arguments in favor of H1B true which is good for Americans. And for us immigrants, the process wouldn't be any worse; I'll rather face the challenge of higher requirements of qualification before moving to another country, than the problem of moving easily just to be exploited for years and even suffer prejudice from native workers who blame immigrants for their low wages.

</comment><comment><USER6> It all depends on whether they hire for quality or quantity. I've worked alongside some H1B workers who were top notch. But, I've seen the other side too. Finding good talent is incredibly hard. We probably won't have to worry about stagnant wages. Just don't get too attached to any employer, keep your skills marketable, and you'll be okay.

<comment><USER7> Spend less time writing blog posts about how wages are going to stagnate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Surely having a concentration of world wide IT talent in the US is a good thing? Even aside from that, I would have thought protectionism is not something that will help the IT industry in any shape or form.

</comment><comment><USER9> So he thinks that income inequality is bad, and his solution is fewer H1Bs which will cause greater income inequality...

</comment><comment><USER10> Why does everyone assume that every immigrant wants to be an employee?Some also want to be founders,you know

</comment><comment><USER11> So I know a guy at Microsoft on h1b who makes ~100k, is that underpaid or what?

<comment><USER5> This doesn't look much, but that's from my perspective of a senior professional with a family and living in the greater NY region. Redmond may be cheaper, and surely for someone who is young, lives alone and doesn't yet have an exceptional resume, $100k is a ton of cash. BTW, we should all be happy to work in a profession where $100k can be even argued as "underpaid", remarkably in these difficult times... only 6.6% of individual Americans make that much ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)). And most of these have jobs that ain't any fun, such as lawyers or doctors. ;-)

Also you have to consider other items from his compensation. For one thing, it's well known that Microsoft's health benefit is awesome (they are self- insured so it's zero cost for employers IIRC), this alone can be worth >15K/year. And I guess he'll have 401(k) matching, some bonus, possibly a stock grant, maybe other perks like free food etc. You put all this together and this guy is certainly making better than $150k/year, possibly more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No Apple</comment>


Ask HN: Book recommendations - <AUTHOR> Hey HN community, I've slacked off on reading in the past month or so because I have run out of material. Are there any books you wanted to share? Can be any genre/subject but please leave a title/author and why you recommend it! <comment><USER2> If I may recommend my own: Right to Left: The digital leader's guide to Lean and Agile, Mike Burrows (2019, audiobook 2020).

I completely get why we have Agile doubters and haters here and I present something outcome-oriented, neither backlog-driven nor imposed solution (both "left to right" by the book's central metaphor). Also – and under the lightest of disguises – a leadership book.

Edit: That and my previous book both have extensive reading lists [1, 2]. There are more references in the patterns pages at [3].

[1] [https://www.agendashift.com/books/right-to- left/recommended-...](https://www.agendashift.com/books/right-to- left/recommended-reading)

[2] [https://www.agendashift.com/books/agendashift/recommended- re...](https://www.agendashift.com/books/agendashift/recommended-reading)

[3] [https://www.agendashift.com/framework/patterns](https://www.agendashift.com/framework/patterns)

</comment><comment><USER3> A Spy Among Friends by Ben McIntyre--eye-opening account of Britain's most famous double-agent Kim Philby--and why we should be very concerned about Russian meddling in U.S. politics The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone--about David Fairchild, the man who changed what we eat in the U.S. over 100 years ago Regeneration by Pat Barker, a novel based on real facts about WWI The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum--the origin of modern forensic medicine</comment>


Emails: Clinton sought secure smartphone, rebuffed by NSA - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/260d4ff55af34d969a2e27ae8d8f1c7b <comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be the relevant email exchange (pdf) [http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/JW-v...](http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/JW-v-State-Hillary-BB-NSA-IAD-00646.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> In 2009, the government couldn't even provide the Secretary of State with a secure handheld. It would be great to hear some background on it from someone with actual direct knowledge of such things (i.e., not more speculation from the rest of us).</comment>


Show HN: Rust Implementation of Conway's Game of Life - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brundonsmith/life <comment><USER2> I wish I could find the original article I read about hashlife[1]. So many dirty tricks to just reach as deep as possible into the evolution of the system. The hash approach is a good trick. you can abuse it quite a bit more than just row/col. Anyway, you might poke around for a hashlife writeup if you're into that kinda thing.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife)

<comment><USER3> Hashlife is also incredibly good at being able to accelerate large-scale computational structures, such as Unit Life cells, which simulate the game of life (or arbitrary other cellular automata) within the game of life: [https://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Unit_cell](https://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Unit_cell)

The current state of the art is Golly: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golly_(program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golly_\(program\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are interested in compiling down to wasm.

[https://rustwasm.github.io/docs/book/game-of- life/introducti...](https://rustwasm.github.io/docs/book/game-of- life/introduction.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> For even more memory efficiency there's Transpose Jagged Diagonal Storage format (TJDS) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00200...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0020019004000249)

</comment><comment><USER6> There is an intriguing variety of Conway's Life I want to find some time to work on:

\- At any given time each alive cell has a probability to go into the dead state, at 0.01 or lower per iteration - equivalent of "entropy")

\- There are localized sources of "energy" (areas where a dead cell will spontanously come alive with high probability, 0.1-0.9 or so)

\- some interesting results are immediately noticeable. Like blinkers will die quickly, but blocks can regenerate from entropy damage.

My hypothesis is that large enough simulation of this kind might yield a true A-life pattern.

P.S. I also want to learn Rust a bit more, so this looks like a good project to fork.

<comment><USER7> Let's think about more simple properties that could be added to create a more interesting dynamical system. Some ideas are: each cell could be a small neural network that learn properties of its surrounding environment; each generation could produce variation of neural network parameters so it could use evolutionary algorithm to evolve; the cells (or group of cells) could be able to move (e g. the evolutionary algorithm will select the ones that move towards the energy source); the cells could have sensors (e.g. sensing proximity of the energy source); cells or group of cells could compete for resources.

<comment><USER8> I went fairly far with this, creating a simulation of creatures I called worms using an unholy marriage of neural networks, cellular automata, and classifier systems (a pattern matching approach based on genetic algorithms). I wanted to see whether a population of "worms" with neural network brains would outcompete a population with classifier system brains.

Rust makes this both fun and a challenge - immutable variables and trait objects make simulation programming a bit trickier. In the end the project fell off a cliff when I got grumpy that I couldn't create a single templatized breeding function that could apply to both types of brains - because of those trait objects. It started to look like I'd have to unwind a lot of my design to rework it (a common experience in Rust!) and then I got a new job, and you know the story.

In every other respect Rust made this project a real pleasure - the tooling is great, particularly the compiler. It's been a couple of years, perhaps I'll dust it off again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's John Scholes coding up the Game of Life in an APL one liner: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4)

</comment><comment><USER10> A must-read for fans of Conway's Game of Life and laypersons looking for an approachable read. It covers both the history of GoL, and its implications for understanding the nature of Life itself:

"The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge" [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809252023/ref=as_li_ss_il...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809252023/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=raganwald001-20)

(Strip the affiliate code off if you like!)

</comment><comment><USER7> There are JavaScript implementations of Conway's Game of Life in just 140 characters, here are some of them: [https://www.dwitter.net/h/gameoflife](https://www.dwitter.net/h/gameoflife) Some have changed the rules to produce other population dynamics.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm interested as well in implementing Conway's Game of Life but I wonder, what are the applications of this system in computation? Can a Turing Machine be constructed with this system?

<comment><USER10> Not only is the answer "Yes, a Turing machine can be constructed out of GoL, demonstrating that GoF is universal," but given that GoL is itself a computation, the reverse is true: You can build GoL out of a Turing machine.

I took a stab at it a few years ago. My strategy was to start with a very basic Turing Machine, and then write a compiler that compiled a more sophisticated Turing Machine out of a simpler Turing Machine.

For example, when I wanted cells to have a value and a tag, I wrote a compiler that translated every possible combination of symbol and tag into a single flat space of symbols.

I stacked compiler on top of compiler until I had a Langdon's Ant with various programming conveniences, and I wrote a 9-cell GoL using my Langdon's Ant.

The whole thing compiled to a very simple TM with millions of states, but it worked. I did not make it practical enough to ever manage a GoL big enough to emulate a Turing machine, but I feel that I did enough to get some practical experience with something that is straightforward in theory.

\---

Turing Machine in GoL: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My8AsV7bA94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My8AsV7bA94)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> funny how rust doesn't seem to let you easily work with dynamically sized array. Why pick a hashmap to represent the world instead of a vec ?

<comment><USER13> From the readme:

> Ideally the board is "infinite"; the "creatures" can progress infinitely in > any direction, so it's best if they don't hit a wall

> The most obvious data structure for Life is a 2D array. But that will have > walls, and while it could be re-allocated as necessary to grow indefinitely, > this would get extremely memory-inefficient for, say, a glider that shoots > off in one direction and leaves nothing behind.

> What I landed on was using a HashMap whose keys are locations (row/column) > and whose values are booleans, indicating aliveness state. This allows the > structure to be incredibly "sparse"; i.e., memory usage is tied to how many > cells are alive, not where they are or where they've been before. It only > needs to actually record the ones that are alive right now, and the ones > that might become alive next cycle (direct neighbors of the currently- > alive). These keys of the current HashMap are then iterated over as the only > candidates for being "possibly alive" in the next cycle.

<comment><USER14> > What I landed on was using a HashMap whose keys are locations (row/column) > and whose values are booleans, indicating aliveness state.

Given that they later state that they maintain two "worlds" ("today" and "tomorrow" \- current and next), shouldn't it be enough to record coordinates/location of live cells?

I suppose that'd require a pass to lookup candidates from live cells (complicating the work of creating "tomorrow" from "today" a little). But it seems the boolean/list of neighbors is redundant?

<comment><AUTHOR> > shouldn't it be enough to record coordinates/location of live cells?

It sounds like you're recommending a list (or Vec) of Locs instead of a HashMap from Locs to booleans. Yes, this would also work, but it would be quite a bit slower because whenever it needed to check the liveness state of a given Loc (which it does very frequently), that would be a O(N) search instead of a O(1) lookup.

Edit: it did just occur to me that a HashSet could be used, which would save a small amount of memory without introducing the performance issue. Though it would also prevent (or at least complicate) the strategy below where I pre- mark the dead neighbors of alive cells.

> But it seems the boolean/list of neighbors is redundant?

Technically including the dead neighbors in the HashMap is also redundant, but it's also a (less important) optimization. By recording the dead neighbors while setting the live cells, a little bit of work is saved on the next phase because otherwise I would have to iterate over all 8 neighbors for each live cell, when determining their next state. This would mean many cells would get iterated over several times, as they might have several alive neighbors. Doing it the way I did also just simplifies the logic a bit.

<comment><USER14> > it did just occur to me that a HashSet could be used, which would save a > small amount of memory without introducing the performance issue.

I was indeed thinking of keeping the "occupied" coordinates in a set-like structure. Not sure how a boolean is stored - is it 8 bits, or a single bit? Either way, just storing two (eg) 64 bit coordinates should trivially align (ish)?

The trick would be to quickly be able to go over all occupied cells and their neighbors in order to build "tomorrow's" board. I suppose the new board might serve as a cache/state helper of sorts, but I think the logic would have to be a bit more complicated.

Maybe it's possible to go from a 1d algorithm to a 2d one by making sure there's a list of occupied cells sorted by their place on a Hilbert curve?

My intuition tells me it's simpler to go center out, than row-by-row (if we store only occupied cells, we need to deal with the empty row "above" our first occurrence somehow - it might be easier to "push" out).

I'd probably have to try and sketch this out on paper though :)

At any rate, I just immediately though storing sn extra dead/alive bit seemed a bit redundant and possibly alignment unfriendly if only "really" needed a list/set of occupied cells.

But perhaps the most pragmatic way of changing just the data structure (and more or less keep the algorithm (with the caveat that I haven't actually looked at the code!))- would be to split each generation in two - a list of live and list of dead cells - each accessible via their coordinates in a quick manner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, though my goal with this particular project was to strike a balance between performance and readability, not squeeze out the absolute maximum performance. I.e., I didn't bother with any optimizations that entered the territory of "tricks", where they started to make the code less intelligible. For my use-cases (the configurations included in the repo), the current implementation is not limited by speed (and I didn't even turn on compiler optimizations, which in my experience can give a 20x speed improvement).

<comment><USER14> Oh, I don't mind that at all. All these ideas would need to be be benchmarked anyway :)

But ever since implementing a naive (backed by 2d array) game of life, I from time to time play with the idea of trying for something much higher performance. I'm not sure if this one scales to 30fps at 4k for example (maybe it surpasses that on modern hw!). That's the kind of target that'd be fun to aim for. Quite possibly using the frame buffer for state is more efficient anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Postage Cost Calculator (UK) - <AUTHOR> http://postagecost.co.uk/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

This is related to an Ask HN I posted ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8464118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8464118)) - to summarise, I'm a primarily C# dev working on extending/customising existing off-the-shelf CRM systems, but I want to expand myself and learn more diverse technologies.

I built this as I sell on eBay infrequently, and the Royal Mail price-finder ([http://www.royalmail.com/price-finder](http://www.royalmail.com/price- finder)) assumes you know off the top of your head whether what your sending is a small parcel, medium parcel, large letter etc. so this way you just enter the dimensions/weight and it works out what the different services would cost (and automatically excludes services which aren't available for the dimensions/weight of your package)

I put this together over about a day to start to learn AngularJS (it seemed to have the lowest barrier to entry and my JavaScript skills in general are novice level) - the next step for me now I have something that _actually_ works is to learn how I should re-factor it to make it more maintainable and implement testing of it, so that when the prices update I can be sure I've not broken something.

If anyone has any feedback as to how/where/what I should be looking at doing with it to refactor it to be more maintainable/testable that would be greatly appreciated.

Lastly, all the data it needs is currently stored in the controller (such as the points for different parcel sizes and postage costs) as I was hoping to make it available offline and potentially package it in something like PhoneGap and have it able to run even if there was no network available.

<comment><USER2> From where you have got this data?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, just manually typing it out from the official price-list</comment></comment></comment>


Reliable, fast UDP-based data transfer protocol that outperforms TCP - aux-k http://udt.sourceforge.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> TCP's slow-start and exponential backoff algorithms are absolute murder when your pipe has a large bandwidth-delay product. There are a whole slew of UDP- based implementations (and a couple TCP variants) targeted at large data transfers over such pipes.

The underlying problem is trying to achieve fairness not only between instances of the new protocol itself (which this implementation and many others claim), but also fairness with instances of the legacy TCP protocol (this protocol's claim seems to be a little weaker here).

<comment><USER2> Successful businesses have been built in this space. Netli worked this angle and got acquired by Akamai.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. FastTCP is a pretty elegant algorithm that happens to covered by all sorts of patents. Was a company behind it as well that seems to still be doing OK (FastSoft). Unfortunately won't be turning up in Linux et al due to those angles :-(.

<comment><USER3> There is also TCP/Vegas, which is based on the same idea, as good as FastTCP for all practical intents and purposes, comes with Linux 2.6 and unencumbered by the patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I played with this and its not faster than other TCP. In fact my implementation of NetBLT (<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc998.html>) blows this one out of water.

An enhanced TCP that we use internally stacked up as follows w.r.t Normal TCP and FastTCP (times are for retreival of a 180KB file)

RTT Normal TCP FastTCP InternalTCP 48 548 205 180

94 984 359 232

140 1546 593 334

188 1985 797 381

UDT,for different latencies clocked as follows

48 - 3.498s 94 - 3.262s 140 -3.640s 188- 3.987s

Hope that makes it clear

<comment><USER5> Crystal

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be cool if someone intergrates this into Google's libjingle ([http://code.google.com/intl/en- US/apis/talk/libjingle/index....](http://code.google.com/intl/en- US/apis/talk/libjingle/index.html)) to get efficient NAT-traversal.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this the same uDP that was in bittorrent mainline blog post recently?

<comment><USER8> no, that's μTP. UDP is a 30-year-old protocol: <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc768>

it's substantially faster than TCP because it doesn't provide any guarantees (e.g. error checking); consequently it's more difficult to work with. this protocol builds on top of UDP to provide all of the nice guarantees that TCP does.

<comment><USER9> Like most people, you've missed the point of TCP. Error-checking is trivial -- congestion control is _HARD_

<comment><USER8> This is true, but my understanding is TCP's congestion control mechanism is far from ideal and the root cause of its performance problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really cool, I had tried making something like this a few years ago when I was working in a lab. Mine worked, but I never really got the time to perfect it.</comment>


Where do types come from? - <AUTHOR> http://fexpr.blogspot.com/2011/11/where-do-types-come-from.html

<comment><USER2> Types define the encoding for some pure mathematical thing, and they define the set of things that can be done to objects in that encoding. Something is the same type as something else iff they share representation and a particular set of operations. There are ideal types, and there are practical types.

UTF-8 and Unicode are great examples of a practical type. Null-terminated UTF-8 is a type, but unicode is an alphabet of characters in the abstract. The type called "UTF-8 string" has certain permitted operations, and a particular representation in machines.

Another good example is the set of all integers modulo 2^x, and the type consisting of unsigned x-bit binary integers for x86-style processors. The x86 add operation is permitted only on the later, which makes it a distinct type from, say, the PPC integer type. (so does endianness, but that's encoding, not the op)

Ideal types are things like sets, trees, lists, and so on. Their encoding is such that all everything is possible. Look at any functional language. These things are in math, although often less formally defined. The only problem with ideal types is that bottom is a member, which is a problem for some operations permitted on said ideal type.

To put this all another way, types convey something terribly important: What is this thing, and what operations can I do with it. In math, we tend to hand- wave both of these things away, and instead rely on human intuition to determine what something is (set, integer, field, vector, etc.) and what we can do with it (intersect, add, integrate, rotate, etc.) But if you look hard, you'll see types in math. Vectors are bold, fields have arrows, integers have an initial assignment, sets are capital letters, and so on. A human must do type analysis to figure out of an operation or encoding is conforming.

<comment><USER3> Null-terminated UTF-8 _could_ be a type but in most languages that use such a construct it is not, and those languages where it could be a type, the designers are usually smart enough not to make such a type.

A null terminated UTF-8 string type gets into interesting territory when you want to add multibyte characters AND have a valid type at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of mathematics is based on sets, whereas sets and types are not formally the same thing.

Some mathematicians are trying to formulate a basis for mathematics in type theory. For example, there is the Univalent Foundations of mathematics proposed by Vladimir Veovodsky. This reduces logic, set theory, category theory (actually groupoids) and higher abstractions to homotopy theory (well, certain explicit constructions in such anyway) which is then modelled in Martin-Löf type theory.

By the Curry-Howard isomorphism there is a correspondence between types and proofs (specifically types in the simply typed lambda calculus and proofs in the intuitionistic logic or if you add dependent types, then also predicate logic).

The real difference is that functions in type theory are computable, whereas functions in mathematics (based on sets) need not be.

<comment><USER5> _"Some mathematicians are trying to formulate a basis for mathematics in type theory."_

Are there any papers you could point to that could provide more details on this project?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is very little content in this article.

A real discussion about Frege, Russel, Curry, etc and how that lead to what programmers use today would have been truly interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Types exist in mathematics it's just that when discussing mathematics the types are usually inferred. A lot of computer science concerns itself with algorithms rather than math.

eg. When multiplying integers and matrices respectively you'd use a different algorithm to compute the result of multiplying the respective types.

Types mostly disappear as well when using a language derived from the lambda calculus vs. the universal turing machine.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that math types are equivalent to dependent structural types. You can say, "let x be a set with a comutative binary operation". In languages with Hindley–Milner type inference you can do almost the same (you will miss the dependent part).

And the most famous languages with static typing (Java, C++, C#, Scala) do not have such power.

For more information, I'd urge you to see the amazing presentation[1] of Daniel Spiewak's, _Uncovering the Unknown: Principles of Type Inference_ , and James Iry's _Types à la Chart_ [2]

[1] [http://screencasts.chariotsolutions.com/uncovering-the- unkno...](http://screencasts.chariotsolutions.com/uncovering-the-unknown- principles-of-type-inference-)

[2] <http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2010/05/types-la-chart.html>

<comment><USER8> > In languages with Hindley Milley type inference ...

Small correction, it's actually "Hindley-Milner type inference".

<comment><USER4> Apparently it's Hindley-Milner type system or Damas-Milner type inference. I didn't know that myself until I watched the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No mention of Category Theory.

:(</comment>


Bitcoin Fell Off a Cliff and No One Knows How Far It Is to the Bottom - <AUTHOR> https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/02/bitcoin-fell-off-a-cliff-and-no-one-knows-how-far-it-is-to-the-bottom/ <comment><USER2> Like all other tokens, bitcoin (and also any of its lookalikes) has no intrinsic value at all. It is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay you for it.

I am very inclined to call it a Ponzi-style scam, however I have to recognize that as long as there is still currently 'belief in bitcoin', there will actually be somebody who is willing to pay.</comment>