The New China Syndrome: American business meets its new master - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/archive/2015/11/the-new-china-syndrome/?single=1 <comment><USER2> > When the United States wielded power over corporations in the postwar era, > our overarching goal was — with some notable exceptions — stability, peace, > and prosperity. When China wields its power over foreign corporations, the > ultimate goal is — always — command and control.

That's some narrow-minded thinking. Two different words for the same thing. I'm sure the south american governments who were dismantled in the cold war era by the CIA would see the actions as "command and control" as opposed to peace and stability. Likewise, the chinese government is going to serve the interests of itself.

<comment><USER3> South America has a long tradition of interchangeable strongman governments, none of whom had any real interest in advancing the needs of citizens. Plenty of populist autocrats that paid lip service to social advancement, very little actual public service. It's understandable that the US would get a little jaded regarding which regimes to back.

I can easily see how a CIA official, tasked with determining how to best advance US interests in the region, but otherwise having a good bit of autonomy, would come to the conclusion that whichever regime was most amenable to the American way of doing things would also be the best steward of the public interest.

It's not like they had a bunch of upstanding, self-sacrificing public servants to choose from, and they deliberately chose the wannabe gangbangers to support. And Latin Americans themselves weren't much help either, often eagerly buying into the cults of personality that the strongmen built up. Hence the public fascination with thugs like Che and Escobar.

I think you'd find that there's a real, discernible difference between Chinese strong-arming and American interventionism, on both ideological and practical levels.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure you can find an equally great excuse for the reasons the CIA taught Pinochet's cronies how to torture people by putting one electrode to their gums and attaching another electrode to their genitals and passing several amperes through their bodies.

Or maybe you have a great justification for why they taught others how to hook up metal spring beds to the electric grid with the aim of getting sincere confessions and apologies out of people.

I'm equally sure the tens of thousands people that were "disappeared" by the regimes your glorious and righteous CIA sponsored really look forward to your justifications.

<comment><USER5> The CIA doesn't run nations and they didn't put Pinochet into power. You're drastically inflating their power over the world. The CIA are opportunists. You might start by applying responsibility to the countries in question for the actions of their own governments, and their own citizens who did the torturing and disappearing - while _simultaneously_ not ignoring any terrible things the CIA has done. Trying to proclaim the CIA is responsible for everything is just silly, they're a bit player.

<comment><USER4> Really?

Allende must be very impressed at how wise, educated and enlightened you are.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile)

[http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20000919/](http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20000919/)

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

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

I'd say the CIA is the prime reason we got Al Quaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and all the other shitty orgs that the Great and Glorious United states of America is so scared of these days.

Keep building bro.

<comment><USER6> I think you're proving his point though.

If they were _that_ powerful, they'd just hit the "Turn off Daesh and Al Qaeda" switches at the controls, wouldn't you think?

It isn't as simple as you're making it. The CIA has been successful and _very not successful_ in its history.

<comment><USER4> Hurricanes (to put it in US terms) are powerful. But they don't have either off switches or controls. The CIA's influence in the world is just as strong or to put it in a way that your child-minds would better understand, reckless.

Are you a child, living in a constructed reality, unwilling to look past the set of beliefs that were erected by politicians, right-wing imperialist media and corporate empires? Or are you willing to find out, not only for yourself but also for future generations, how deep those rabbit holes go and how your democracies are in fact, Banana republics?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions)

<comment><USER3> You need to think a little more critically about the actual mechanics of regime change and pulling off a coup d'etat.

Also it wouldn't hurt to lose the arrogance.

Running a country is not easy. You need to command loyalty from a group of people that can safeguard your place in the nation. Not just an army, but also groups of people who can fund and support that army. It's as true for a tiny island nation as it is for the USA. European colonialism had outsized effects on the Caribbean for that reason, way easier to keep a nation of 10,000 under your thumb than to control millions.

The CIA has resources comparable to a small army, but it must project these resources thinly across all the countries the US wishes to influence. It can buy guns and train limited numbers of rebels, but it cannot create a ruling party where before there was none. It can alter the course of politics in a nation, but that influence can't come close to actual control unless the nation is very small.

Once in awhile they got lucky, and their group of trigger-happy idiots overwhelmed the other group of trigger-happy idiots. It's arguable as to exactly how much damage this does. Obviously it has a negative effect, political chaos is generally worse for a people than stability. Try to measure the effects in aggregate though, and comparing them to what would have happened otherwise, and it's hard to really tell.

Political upheaval can destroy individual lives, but generally the industries underneath are left alone, it makes no sense, say, for a rebel group to destroy farmland, or a factory. Your efforts are much better directed at military targets, you're going to want that factory to keep making things once you're in power, being needlessly destructive hurts your interests too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The turning point came with the triumph of modern libertarianism, with its sophisticated, Orwellian method of hiding corporate power behind the rhetoric of individual liberty"

Had me until the part about the "triumph of libertarianism," a system which has never been tried anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Libertarianism was tried in the US during the Gilded Age[1], and failed spectacularly. Power quickly consolidated in the hands of the (unelected) very few, and in a form of modern feudalism, much of the population came to live under the boot of the robber barons and called on the government to save them. That's how the strong American federal government came to be. The US is one of the few places where government regulation actually came about to free people from libertarianism.

Somewhat ironically, Ayn Rand came to the US in the aftermath of the backlash, not knowing that all of her ideas had been tried and the mess they caused cleaned up not long prior to her arrival.

[1]: Of course, some would say that the US in the Gilded Age wasn't _really_ libertarian, but it was closer to true libertarianism than anyone has ever gotten to true communism. So anyone who says libertarianism hasn't failed because it hasn't been tried must admit the same about communism.

<comment> vezzy-fnord _Libertarianism was tried in the US during the Gilded Age_

It's very popular among some people to quote the Gilded Age as an alleged failure of libertarianism, but they can never seem to pinpoint just exactly _how_ it was libertarian. Certainly, the climate was economically liberal... and that was about it. The Gilded Age was about industrialization, not any political order. There was no one there to "try" anything. I assume China and Singapore are libertarian, too?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is similarly popular among some to paint libertarianism as some lofty ideal distant from any actual human history so that _post facto_ it can never _have_ been tried so it always holds its promise.

China and Singapore are most certainly not libertarian as they impose very strong central government regulations, whereas gilded-age America had a small and weak government, and was almost devoid of regulation (at least de facto; any de jure regulation could be skirted with bribes). The result was neo- feudalism, which came as a surprise to no one as feudalism has grown organically in almost every society with a weak government in human history, and with similar results -- a handful of people enjoying the product of the miserable masses.

<comment> vezzy-fnord There's the whole elephant in the room of _de jure_ segregation and disenfranchisement that significantly weakened the demand side's ability to engage in voluntary contracts. That's not some incidental thing to gloss over, but a clear case of crippling binary intervention.

There were plenty of land grant programs at the time, such as the Homestead Act. The state, through common law, retained eminent domain and condemnation of private land for nominally "public" purposes. There were several immigration restriction acts passed that served as a free trade barrier.

Let's not forget that the railroads which characterized the Gilded Age were kickstarted by government initiative in the form of the Pacific Railroad Acts, which ensured land and bond grants.

There were at least a dozen tariff acts passed by the time the Gilded Age was emerging, and indeed U.S. trade policy was quite protectionist back then. The U.S. have also been involved in plentiful military interventions, some overseas, others covered by the Monroe Doctrine, since the earliest days for economic and hegemonic reasons.

The federal government was weaker, but not as much as often presented. They tried wholesale embargoes as early as 1807, enacted tariffs, controlled trade (Commerce Clause and other justifications), intervened militarily frequently, and remember that the Constitution in general greatly expanded federal power relative to the prior Articles of Confederation.

As such, I'd think it disingenuous to qualify the Gilded Age as "libertarian". There wasn't really so much as a _system_ back then, it was a country in an identity crisis trying to see what worked, and often coming to protectionist conclusions that would foreshadow what was to come (ironically, tariffs are much less of a problem in the present than back then). It was economically liberal... that was it. You can't really characterize it as anything beyond that, the circumstances were rather unique.

<comment><AUTHOR> > There's the whole elephant in the room of de jure segregation and > disenfranchisement that significantly weakened the demand side's ability to > engage in voluntary contracts. That's not some incidental thing to gloss > over, but a clear case of crippling binary intervention.

How is disenfranchisement relevant? And why would legal segregation matter when blacks were a small part of the population? You could say that the USSR being autocratic is also not something incidental to gloss over (and I'd argue a far greater deviation from the ideal). Feudalism has always had "demand- side" problems, with or without legal roadblocks.

> There were plenty of land grant programs at the time... The federal > government was weaker, but not as much as often presented...

Sure, but all of it amounted to very little regulation compared to any modern Western countries.

> You can't really characterize it as anything beyond that, the circumstances > were rather unique.

True, but again, it was still closer to the libertarian ideals than the USSR ever was to communism, and it would be at least as equally disingenuous to conclude that we can't draw any conclusions from that era to libertarianism. Bear in mind that the Gilded-Age America was only the latest such experiment in the West. All other (older) examples of weak governments gave rise to feudalism and similar results.

So while libertarianism later created a well-formed political theory behind free markets and low regulation, it is a stretch to claim that its practices have never been tried. If a valid experiment can be nothing short of full global libertarianism, then it will forever be a beautiful utopia in the minds of the precious few who still prescribe to that ideal.

<comment> vezzy-fnord When you have structural barriers around the right to contract, then yes, that's a practical issue with your libertarian narrative.

 _Sure, but all of it amounted to very little regulation compared to any modern Western countries._

We actually have an even better example of a contemporary Western nation achieving great results through economic liberalization: the United Kingdom repealing the Corn Laws and abandoning mercantilism circa the 1840s. Agrarians and formerly rural landowners did get shafted in the process of industrialization (as it tends to occur), but free trade policies were a boon for everything else.

But there's also the whole problem of just looking at macro-level "regulations" without taking into account the vastly different social and technological climate. See below.

 _True, but again, it was still closer to the libertarian ideals than the USSR ever was to communism_

Smells of a fallacy of composition.

 _it would be at least as equally disingenuous to conclude that we can 't draw any conclusions from that era to libertarianism_

You can, but it's _very_ limited. The Lucas critique demonstrates that analyzing historical macrotrends in of itself is useless because of a lack of policy-invariance. You need good microfoundations for proper modeling. Hence my assertion that calling the Gilded Age a "libertarian failure" is so simplifying as to be little but a political provocation.

You're echoing the old Methodenstreit debate all over again.

 _If a valid experiment can be nothing short of full global libertarianism, then it will forever be a beautiful utopia in the minds of the precious few who still prescribe to that ideal._

No, it doesn't have to be a "global libertarianism". The problem is again, you're extracting one component (relative economic liberalism, but still ignoring barriers to voluntary relations) in _specific_ complex time periods as a catch-all argument against "libertarianism" even though you clearly do not have the proper microfoundations of libertarian theory to even make such a judgment at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> > We actually have an even better example

Thing is that libertarianism, like communism, is an extreme ideology. A liberal economy is great and regulation is great, but they so far seem to work best when both are applied in moderation. So far, _all_ attempts to significantly increase one or the other have failed. It is, of course, possible that they weren't taken far enough, and something happens at a point more extreme from the ones tried -- a change of trend -- but there it is reasonable to believe that this is not the case.

> analyzing historical macrotrends in of itself is useless because of a lack > of policy-invariance

This applies to any ideology, especially the extreme ones. Like I said, it is in the clear interest of utopians to keep their dreams unrealized. What better way to do it than to disregard as invalid any form of approximation? This, too, is something we have seen over and over.

> You're echoing the old Methodenstreit debate all over again.

Historians are careful not to try to predict the future, but sometimes certain things can strike a familiar chord, especially when utopian ideologies are concerned.

But let me state my original point more clearly: _Libertarianism has been tried to a similar extent as any extreme ideology ever has._

Whether you want to take that as "libertarianism, just like most other extreme ideologies, has never been tried" or as "libertarianism, like other extreme ideologies, has been approximated and failed" is up to you. Whether you find this satisfying or not as an objection to the ideology is up to, and it was not my intention to claim that we can predict the exact outcome of a full realization of libertarianism based on history. Personally, I don't need to, because I find libertarianism to be the morally repugnant brainchild born of pure intentions[1].

> but still ignoring barriers to voluntary relations

Because I studied history in grad school I can tell you with a relatively high degree of certainty that the greatest barriers to voluntary relations -- or, rather, the most economically significant barriers -- have rarely been legal (in fact, the ability of the state to effectively enforce its laws is rather new, and is far, far more recent than feudalism), but economic. I don't know if you can extrapolate from that to the future or not (historians are careful about extrapolation), but so far that has been the case.

It is true that certain groups of people have suffered terribly due to legal restrictions, but they (naturally) were never a majority. It is the majority (who are mostly poor or poor-ish) whose freedoms are restricted via economic means.

[1]: it is an ideology that effectively lets the rich keep all their power, but takes it away from the poor, whose power is in their numbers and in coming together to regulate, and thus somehow balance, the power of the rich; I favor letting anyone use their power equally, like in an anarchy or a social- democracy; I can accept libertarianism as possibly working well in some imagined, fresh-born society, a society of spherical cows, if you will, but not in our real-life society, in our real world

<comment><USER8> > So far, all attempts to significantly increase one or the other have failed.

Actually, there is a very wide range of balances that work and have worked in the modern developed world, and countries in that group have made fairly big changes within that range without failing.

There _are_ things outside that proven range, though, and you would be correcet to say that what hardcore libertarian advocates seem to seek [0] seems to be among them.

[0] I say "seem to seek" because hardcore libertarians are often much clearer about what they don't want than what they do, and about dismissing every real world example that is raised to suggest problems with their approach with the claim that the problems pointed to are a result not of the relative libertarianess, but the fact that the government involvement in the example, however minimal, was still too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> > there is a very wide range of balances that work and have worked in the > modern developed world

Oh, absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For most of China's Imperial history they had a tributary system. Which I think ended in 1912. It is not really surprising to see it come back in a some form.

<comment><USER10> A lot of China's tributary system was money / resources flowing from the center to the outlying areas, to keep them favorable / quell unrest / keep the center stable. China is very geographically islanded (depending on the dynasty, the fee to keep disarray at bay depending on the territory occupied; the many 'great walls' over the centuries basically land-grabs coupled with payments for compliance).

But this article is about Ford. Ford is an extremely low-key brand in China. GM is the biggest US brand, but there are far more VWs, Audis and BMWs than GM. Also more BYDs, who despite a reputation for poor material quality are making big pushes in buses, conventional hybrid and electric, and other public transport. BYD will be the name to look out for over the next 15 years.

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I did see a lot of Geely and Great Wall Motors autos in Ecuador last time I was there. Thanks for introducing me to BYD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> China is no more the new master today, than Japan was in 1992. The exact same things were claimed about Japan back then. Comically, the timing was exactly wrong, just as it is now: this is the end of China's boom, not the beginning.

<comment><USER11> Aren't you forgetting the small detail that China is literally ten times the size of Japan?

Even if your claim is true, and you don't present any evidence to that effect, the order of magnitude size difference makes it rather a different ball game.

<comment><USER5> No, I take that into account. China is ten times larger in population, but that doesn't mean they can grow ten times larger economically. There are limits to both sheer consumption / production within N amount of years in terms of how fast the global economy can grow, and limits in terms of how many resources a nation can realistically consume. For China to be ten times larger, they'd have to figure out how to produce the world's GDP almost twice over. It's impossible, the global economy in real terms is growing at a few points per year, China's growth must inherently move _toward_ that line as it gets larger, just as the US has.

It's not hard to find evidence for China's boom being completely over. The best estimates on their actual GDP growth, already have them closer to 2-4% growth, if any growth at all if you go by trade volume / trains / baltic index / copper / construction / concrete etc.

Ten years ago they began to shift to massively taking on debt to continue to fake growth. Countries only do that when their organic growth is completely exhausted. It's exactly what Japan did when their bubbles began to unravel, and their money expansion began to implode. When the great recession hit, that was the end of the temporary consumption binge that drove most of China's 2000-2008 growth. Now they're arguably the most indebted nation in world history on a GDP ratio basis, and it's still getting worse, while companies are being artificially floated so banks don't have to own the vast bad loans outstanding, perfectly repeating what Japan did with zombie corporations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would like to address the theme of "the U.S. is no better than China!" when it comes to trade.

It is true that both have countries have manipulated and are currently manipulating levers in greedy self-interests. It is also true that the U.S. is not perfect. Far from it: I'm sure many Russian commenters have some words about the western-bred neoliberal experts who preached "Shock Therapy" to Yeltsin (Spoiler alert: oligarchs).

The difference between China and the US, in my opinion, lies in their motivations and how it translates into economic action. The West, like other "enlightened" spheres before it, has had some element of "for the greater good" guiding its vision. One historical example is that instead of colonizing Europe after WW2 (like the Soviets did), the US instituted the Marshall Plan. You can argue that this aid was given in exchange for a degree of suzerainty ( don't bomb NATO! ). Fundamentally, however, those states regained their status as independent actors and were not seen as extensions of the US.

Security is very much the heart of the matter here, it's the age-old question of "how much control does the government need over its spheres to feel secure and therefore strong?". Although not always spoken, a country normally ought to be as protectionist over its trade as it is weak in that area of trade. In the U.S., it happened with Japan and Cars as the article points out, and Great Britain and textiles if one goes back even further.

With this rationale in mind, Xi Jingping insists that China is still "developing"[1], that China can be excused for so-and-so action to maintain its economy, even though it wields more power than almost all other "developing nations" in the same space put together.

What's often overlooked is that it's not just economic (in)securities at play here. China demands the submission of foreign companies because China is _politically_ insecure. Consider a related section from the "X Article":

> Easily persuaded of their own doctrinaire "rightness," they insisted on the > submission or destruction of all competing power. Outside of the Communist > Party, Russian society was to have no rigidity. There were to be no forms of > collective human activity or association which would not be dominated by the > Party. No other force in Russian society was to be permitted to achieve > vitality or integrity. Only the Party was to have structure. All else was to > be an amorphous mass. [2]

Although China hasn't been at this totalitarian stage for a long while, the concept of "amorphousness", that the only "true" political form is the central power and all else exists in service to it, is one of China's current most debilitating problems. If you don't have multiple organizations each with their own sphere of power, how can you express the multifaceted will of your citizenry (the definition of a functional civil society)? While the Chinese people have to date built many forms [3], the central government is certain to come down hard on any actual power of the forms as fast as they develop. [4].

To summarize: China acts with greater force internally because China's leaders are afraid. Very afraid. First, they don't have the same political mechanisms for dealing with foreign political influences that the U.S. has. In more concrete terms: the last time they allowed for other forms, in the same way the U.S. did and does, came just before their tanks crushed students underfoot in their nice, government square. History in mind, China's leaders have continually resorted to harsh action in all spheres to maintain their form, which they cannot bear to be without.

[1] [http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/25/is-china-still-a- develop...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/25/is-china-still-a-developing- country/)

[2] [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian- federation/1...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian- federation/1947-07-01/sources-soviet-conduct)

[3] [http://www.economist.com/news/china/21600747-spite- political...](http://www.economist.com/news/china/21600747-spite-political- clampdown-flourishing-civil-society-taking-hold-beneath-glacier)

[4] [https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/08/dispatches-china- tighten...](https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/08/dispatches-china-tightens- screws-civil-society)

</comment><comment><USER13> The anecdotes on corporate and cultural acquiescence to the Chinese state are not all that convincing. Overall, industrial interdependence and trade is employing way more people than otherwise, in a strictly macroeconomic sense. Normatively, it might result in executives in jail, but fewer people everywhere are starving. Americans aren't killing people all over the world at the same magnitude that they used to—especially not killing Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese people, whom they're now trading with. Surely that's a good thing.

But let's examine this accusation that culture has acquiesced. Gravity's trading the real Chinese antagonist for the fake Russian one is pretty damning, but has the author ever watched an episode of South Park? Trey and Matt do not trade in the most friendly opinions. The best point you can make from an example like Gravity is that mainstream cultural products are cowardly. But that isn't really all that surprising. I don't see the author writing a big cautionary tale about how Disney stars don't write enough songs about climate change and cuts to food stamp programs. That self-censorship started long ago, way before there was a Chinese market for American media. Self-censorship and the dumbing down of mainstream media—i.e., endogenous U.S. state and corporate propaganda—is a way bigger threat to our way of life than the organization of Chinese markets ever will be.

What about the other corporations, like Walmart, Apple, GM and Rio Tinto, who got their executives jailed for not accommodating Chinese state demands? I can also say: so what? These companies make a bunch of physical junk, they don't make political statements or cultural products. And they make this junk primarily for the benefit of shareholders.

Asceticism (in its many forms, like lower demand) is a bigger threat to junk makers than Chinese market controls. Ask Paul Krugman: A slump in global demand put way more American workers on the street than a free trade deal ever has. Germany's savers and domination of the currency union puts way more people on the street than reckless borrowing in a small country like Greece ever has. One man's income is another man's expense. The system by which that exchange happens is sort of irrelevant, depending on where you normatively value people like shareholders in the grand scheme of things.

The Chinese state, through blunders, and Western regulators, through austerity, magnified unemployment—they're both equally stupid. You can't blame trade—demand has to come from somewhere, and it seems totally reasonable that demand comes from people outside your national borders. It's something that the Soviet Union never figured out but the Chinese government did. Demand is a more fundamental economy property than the author admits, and it's not obvious how to increase demand while reducing global trade.

But the few billions of dollars shareholders miss out on out when the Chinese state strongarms executives? Who gives a shit. The author's blaming the very industrial interdependence that in a macroeconomic sense is keeping millions of people employed, while at the same time kvetching about some bad deals some companies got sometimes.

I think he gives Google too much credit for not having business in China. Besides funding the author's think tank, whom exactly are they employing? Which millions of factory workers? At least the junk makers are directly putting money into the pockets of many millions of Walmart and Apple/Foxconn employees.

Google's search engine facilities an absolutely colossal amount of commerce that must employ millions of people indirectly. But so does Baidu. It's a Pyrrhic victory for free speech. At the end of the day, Chinese people don't need Google. They need rice on a plate.

The alternative world, where American "relies" on "itself" for everything, is not one we want to live in. Billions of people—Chinese people, Indian people, the world's people—stuck in a much worse poverty because they can't make something Americans can buy. The subsequent wars due to poverty. The nationalism and jingoism a closed-trade policy breeds, and the consequences like institutionalized racism, colonization and vindictive foreign policy. That was reality up until the 1970s, just when global economic liberalization started to reach billions of people. If you weren't born among a lucky few prior to that time, you wouldn't want that system. This "Chinese master" worldview is ridiculous.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps you have missed the point of the article? It is not arguing that there haven't been great benefits to trade, nor is it arguing for strong protectionism.

Instead it is arguing that the strategy of easing up trade rules so US corps could go into China, which it was thought would ultimately tame China into becoming a more free and open society, has backfired both figuratively and literally (as was shown with US entertainment). China is now exerting political and cultural control over the US via its corporations, which at least from the perspective of the US, is not a desirable outcome.

You can argue that lots of jobs and economic prosperity has been created and this is a fair trade for some independence lost, but most of the benefits have gone to China rather than the US.

<comment><USER15> It seems like a simple case of Newton's third law. You can push a small economy around, but it would be naive to believe that you can push against a larger economy without experiencing a reaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unlike in USA, Capex and Opex is low in China;

</comment><comment><USER17> > When the United States wielded power over corporations in the postwar era, > our overarching goal was — with some notable exceptions — stability, peace, > and prosperity. When China wields its power over foreign corporations, the > ultimate goal is — always — command and control.

What a load of propagandistic garbage. Stability, peace, and prosperity for everyone the US government liked at the terrible, terrible expense of everyone else. It's insulting to my sensibilities. I honestly cannot figure out where to start in dismantling this pile of garbage.

How about all of the coups sponsored by the United States to remove threats to the hegemony of U.S. corporations? It's a fun exercise to count them.

<comment><USER5> > How about all of the coups sponsored by the United States to remove threats > to the hegemony of U.S. corporations? It's a fun exercise to count them.

Ok, count them for me. Are you going to say Vietnam? That was France asking the US to get involved to save its colonial possession. Are you going to say Iran? That was the UK asking the US to get involved.

Turns out it's an extraordinarily short list.

<comment><USER18> You are correct that global political manoeuvring is rarely a straight forward case of just one country involved. Countries come together when it suits them and oppose each other just as readily.

The US does sometimes come under unfair criticism for being the cause of all evil, when the reality is a lot more nuanced, but when you are sitting on top the pile, everyone is gunning for you.

However, as the parent comment pointed out, the US has been "involved" in many coups / destabilising existing governments. Do you think the US would help out in French / British coups if it wasn't in their interest?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Backup plan(s) for a CS major? - <AUTHOR>

I'm an undergrad at UC Berkeley, and the reason I chose it was for it's outstanding EECS program (electrical engineering and computer science). However, there are lot of people back home and in other places who view the current demand for programmers as a "tech bubble" and they don't expect  the "dreams" of Silicon Valley to last. I know programming itself will always exist, but how do I adapt as/if the bubble collapses? Any suggestions on other career paths that would find my CS experience valuable?<p>I love programming in itself, but I don't want to regret my major choice because I blindly followed the crowd with no backup plan. <comment><USER2> This deserves a longer response but it is quite early in the morning, so I'll write the short version:

1) The career of programming (specifically) has MANY options which are not concentrated in the tech bubble. I know that is not obvious being so close to the epicenter of it, but 90%+ of professional programmers work, in Silicon Valley parlance, boring companies doing boring things. Banks gotta bank, insurances companies gotta insure, logistics companies have to do something without any convenient verbs to describe it, and all of the above hire (or beneficially hire, via staff arrangements with companies that are uninteresting to the Valley) vast numbers of programmers.

2) The ability to program doesn't hurt your suitability for virtually any type of knowledge work (when compared to a BA/BS in an unspecified field from Berkeley). Most of the time, it will help you, since it gives you superpowers with regards to many tasks you might be expected to do. In my (brief and unlamented) stint as a translator, I shaved months of mind-killing drudgery off my schedule because I have superior options for getting Japanese from Word documents into HTML than copy/pasting one line at a time into Dreamweaver. You may find yourself working in a job which involves analysis or acting upon data, a task at which worksmanlike command of a single scripting language makes you a hero worthy of legend. You will find, for example, that many companies _still_ generate e.g. monthly reports by having people manually collate/screen-scrape-with-their-eyeballs six different data sources into an Excel file which is version controlled by copying with creative filenames onto a shared directory. You might think that somebody capable of programming their way out of a paper bag could do a better job in two day's of work. Some times, you're not wrong.

3) Even if you don't do programming on a day to day basis, knowing how to get what you want out of computer systems and computer people is valuable. Smart people often suck at this. You being a bridge between those smart people and their captive techies can make you indispensable. (For example, I bet Obama would currently kill for one person in his inner circle who can tell the difference between frontend and backend at the moment. That sort of opportunity exists in a lot of places.)

4) Your major matters much much less to your career path than you have been socialized to think, because you have probably not talked career paths with many people outside of academia, who have very skewed views on the matter. Three years from now nobody will care what you studied in undergrad.

<comment><USER3> This is an excellent answer. Let me add another data point for item 2. I know of several companies which have passed their ISO certifications or audits in no small part because of certain formulas in certain Excel workbooks.

If you are not familiar with ISO Certifications, this is a Big Deal. If you _are_ familiar with Excel, this is mind-blowing.

<comment><USER4> can you explain this a little deeper?

<comment><USER3> Not sure which part you mean, but the important bit for this thread is that even basic Excel formulas are black magic to non-techies, and that basic hacking skills can drive real business value. There are things you can do rather trivially, such as "Add 3 calendar months to this date, and if it's later than this other cell, color the cell red," which would be a) extremely helpful, and b) otherwise a task they'd have to hire an intern to calculate each week, for many companies in the $1-20 million a year range.

And this is just Excel formulas, let alone the ability to write some VBA that does calculations and draws a chart, or a script with a regex that cleans data files, or a basic app for data entry...

If it was the ISO certification you were interested in, there are many certifications related to manufacturing, food & drug, etc. These certify that your company meets various standards, regulations, quality procedures, documentation policies, tolerance assurances, etc. These can result in a ton of additional business, since many customers desire or require them, and losing them is also a big deal. The certifiers audit companies regularly, and having some pretty spreadsheets that show how you are continuously improving and ensuring your adherence to the regs can be very valuable!

<comment><USER4> thank. I found few post where you mention ISO certification. Just curious, are you in that space?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The ups and downs of the economic cycle especially in the valley where they are somewhat amplified do not directly correspond to your employment prospects as a Software Engineer. Here are just a couple things that will likely happen over the course of your career as software engineer:

\- Most consumer and commercial vehicles to be driven completely by machines

\- Machines will become better than doctors at diagnosing patients

\- Telepresence software will allow you to travel to any country in the world within minutes

\- Everyone will be able to print almost any object they would want in their home

\- Virtual reality will become indistinguishable from reality

\- Humans will travel to mars

The development of new software will obviously be required for all of the above and this list doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the ways in which software algorithms will change the world. I can't think of many majors that you could study that will give you the skill-set that you need to create more value over your career than computer science.

PS. Don't call yourself a programmer [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a- pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/) (By patio11)

</comment><comment><USER6> Combining CS and Business can work well.

1\. You would be able to translate between higher levels and the execution team, so if you ever get bored of coding you can have an escape trajectory. HR staff who pigeonhole techies won't have an excuse to stop you from getting into decision-making roles.

2\. Most conveniently, if you ever decide to be your own boss, or jump into another field (from making bikes to delivering flowers) you can always do that by starting a business. The degree won't help you much in the beginning, but it will give you a lingo for talking with investors, a network of classmates with money, and the basic skills for keeping your cash in order (you can learn that later too, but having that confidence in your earlier years is helpful).

On the down side, don't get yourself recruited into a warm-body role that gives you a lot of money, teaches you nothing useful, and takes away the best years of your life.

<comment><USER7> How about an MBA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you love programming - you should be fine. Occasional programming bubble bursts are inevitable, but they only wash away unskilled unmotivated programmers who do programming purely for money.

There is no reason why long term demand for programmers would decrease.

</comment><comment><USER9> My plan B has always been Truck Driving. Easy to to get trained up and going.</comment>


Announcing Photo Check Deposit - <AUTHOR> https://www.simple.com/blog/Simple/announcing-photo-check-deposit/

<comment><USER2> I currently use Simple for my discretionary spending account. I really love the interface. However, if they are serious about converting people to use it as their main bank then their entire focus should be on allowing multiple people on one account. I can't add my wife to my account means this can't be my primary bank. It's that Simple!

...oh and after that, please create a mobile site that allows me to login from any device. I despise having to use my wife's iPhone to check my balance!

</comment><comment><USER3> I've worked in the banking industry for five years. I've watched dozens of focus groups and seen countless quantitative research projects that mostly all indicate how extremely difficult it is to get people to leave their current bank. Even cash incentives ($100 to open a new Chase checking account, etc) don't seem to move the needle very much in terms of attracting people to switch. The reason features like Bill Pay are free to users--and actually cost banks $1+ per user/mo--is because it will make your relationship with a bank that much stickier and difficult to change. Photo check deposit only brings Simple to feature parity with other banks, almost all of which are using the same provider (Mitek or similar). This isn't to say Simple can't do really well attracting new customers; I just don't think they will be effective even in the medium term at convincing people with an existing banking relationship to completely leave their bank for Simple.

<comment><USER4> I currently bank with Wells Fargo, and am gradually making the switch over to Simple. Couple reasons why:

– like most banks, WF have a ludicrously outdated web interface that makes doing the simplest thing inordinately painful.

– like most banks, WF suck at providing a complete historical transaction history and search. Case in point – a couple weeks ago I wanted to query a transaction on an older account, after checking online and being transferred between at least four different customer service agents in different divisions, I was none the wiser. The best they could do was offer to send me printed statements, at a $100 cost.

\- like most banks, WF make obscene profits while engaging in shady practices - e.g., trying to upsell me every single time I call them, mailing me an offer for a "free" credit score service (that, if you read the small print, is actually a subscription) and not least discriminatory lending practices (c.f., recent settlement with Justice Dept)

Bottom line, they don't deserve my business.

<comment><USER3> All of your reasons are common complaints, and I share them (with the exception of USAA). I work at such a bank, and can tell you from painful firsthand experience how difficult it is to do good UX design work inside of a traditional banking environment. I think Simple had the right idea to essentially decouple the "backend banking" stuff from the UX by partnering with a bank and somewhat removing many of the constraints a full-on bank has to wrangle with.

What's interesting though is that despite these complaints, consumers generally are averse to switching their banks.

<comment><USER4> I've worked at a bank for several years, and agree 100%. It's basically impossible for them to pull off something like Simple.

So the question is – how valid is that research given consumers haven't had a real alternative?

Now that we're (finally) moving away from paper payments, seems to me that it's a bad idea to bank on consumer complacency. Either way, I'm just happy that there's a decent alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A bit off topic, but the one thing that is stopping me from using Simple is the lack of paper checks. I know you can send checks directly to recipients, but there are too many instances where I need to write a check and hand it to the recipient directly.

<comment><USER6> > I know you can send checks directly to recipients,

I wonder if these are "real" checks against your account, or just checks against some single account that Simple owns. Because if they are real checks, it would be simple enough to get your own checks printed up with the routing info.

<comment><USER7> Real, and yes, you have a real ABA and routing number and can print your own.

<comment><USER8> Just in case someone was thinking of doing this, Josh from Simple said: _if someone produced checks with one of our customer's account numbers, our systems are set up to reject them._

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4844641>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a Simple account but haven't moved any money to it yet. I'm not really sure why I'm hesitant. At first I was definitely going to do it if they came out with the electronic check deposit before Bank of America (which took BOA FOREVER to do).

But I use Mint and BOA and am having a hard time seeing any other major benefits except for a nice UI and better customer service. However, I've probably only contacted BOA's customer service maybe 2 times in the last 5 years.

No paper checks seem to be another pain point to get over

<comment><USER10> I also have a Simple account and have yet to really use it. I use ING for my main account and love it (waiting to see what the shift to Capital One does). Before this, they were at a serious detriment to every other bank I have used.

I love the ideas, but it seems to me like this is a classic example of needing to be 10x better to convince even folks like HN readers that this is a useful change to make.

All this being said, after a few weeks of not using the card and not setting up direct deposit, I got a FANTASTIC email asking me to come back and use it - great job engaging inactive users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The reason why I hate features like this is because it now puts the onus on customers to detect fraud, not the banks. If my understanding is correct, you have 60 days to reverse any fraudulent checks on your account. If you're someone like me that doesn't look into their bank account too closely (because you don't spend a lot), then you could be the victim of fraud very easily. And in the age of Photoshop, you can make a very convincing check image very easily.

<comment><USER12> (Josh from Simple here)

Not sure if I quite follow.

We don't let our customers write checks directly. They can send checks from our apps, but they don't get a checkbook. Even if someone produced checks with one of our customer's account numbers, our systems are set up to reject them.

We are working on a way to let our customers write their own checks, but we're taking our time on this feature as we want to shut down that fraud path with a special type of check. More details to come in the future.

The feature we released today is for check deposit. Yes, you could suffer if someone gave you a fraudulent check, but the risk is no different than depositing that same check at a teller.

<comment><USER7> As a customer it's interesting to learn that you would reject "custom" checks since your app shows me the routing number and I can use that (and have used that) to do EFT which asks for the number off the bottom of a check. You make it look like a check, and it works like the number off a check, but a third party printed check using that same number wouldn't work? Good to know.

<comment><USER6> They are probably just whitelisting the check numbers that they write, and then rejecting any other check numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> B-Con I wonder how much longer until the established banks adopt similar ideas.

From looking at (but not using) Simple, it doesn't seem like they have any technical advantages, they were just able to start fresh without the bureaucracy bloat that current banks have and focus on modern convenience.

<comment><USER13> A number already have. Citibank and USAA have offered this for a while, in fact.

<comment><USER14> Chase as well. I've been using Citibank and Chase deposit by picture from their mobile apps for a long time.

This is pretty trivial from a technology point of view. The only real difference I've noticed in implementations is the size of the check they allow you to deposit. With Chase I can put in a $1k check I get often, Citibank doesn't allow that, although it has come in handy for the occasional $20 or $50 checks that pop up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had signed up some time ago and forgot that my invite showed up this past July. Upon going through the process of creating an account, the final step was to deposit $200-$500 into the account.

I understand the need to get funds, but with the time energy and passion devoted towards the ease of use of the form and the comprehensive FAQ I could not find the answer as to why this minimum was required.

All the comments here are interesting, and I understand that switching costs are high, but the $200 barrier without explanation made be bounce from the form.

I really want to give this a shot, but I want to understand the required funds first.

<comment><USER16> Don't all banks require a minimum deposit when opening an account?

<comment><USER15> Most do (some do not) but it was the lack of explanation and the fact that its $200 that stopped me in my tracks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I didn't realize cheques (checks) were still widely being used. I haven't written a cheque in almost ten years, either personal or business. We've received a few cheques from large companies, but very rarely.

<comment><USER4> I assume from the spelling of cheque that you're located outside the US. :) The banking system is ridiculously archaic, compared at least to Europe. For example, there's no simple way for me to directly transfer funds to a friends bank account (we would have to use PayPal, or I would have to pay a "wire transfer" fee). It's also quite common for the payroll department to ask you to bring a "voided check" on your first day at work so they can get your account details.

<comment><USER6> There's also a big generation gap between those who think checks are ridiculous archaic and those who think they are a heck of a lot simpler than doing it online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish checks would just die. It's amazing that I'd never used a check before moving to the US from Sweden in 1996 and I _still_ have to use them today here!

</comment><comment><USER19> My bank (Charles Schwab Bank, U.S.) has had this for a while now. Also other cool stuff like two-factor authentication.

<comment><USER20> I have Charles Schwab Bank as well. The thing that they offer that Simple doesn't is unlimited ATM fee refunds. The ability to go up to any ATM anywhere in the world and pull out cash with no fees is too big of a benefit to give up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a small business owner, what I would find to be more useful would be if someone is sending me a check, they could scan it themselves and then email me the scan. I could then process the check with an app on my side.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand what is this thing for and there's no clear explanation anywhere on the homepage. Can someone enlighten me please? Is it another PayPal killer or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Simple is an online-only bank (in essence) that's trying to do a lot of things "right." There's more to it (they call themselves a "bank replacement"), but that's the basic idea.

<comment><USER22> "bank replacement" - oh, ok. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> (Hey Simple guys...I know you're watching!)

Is there any video of the interface working? I'm very interested in Simple's approach to the design of theirs.

</comment><comment><USER6> >To clear, checks must be endorsed and have your account number designated on the back.

What does endorsing a check really do?

<comment><USER24> [http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/3667/what-is-the- pu...](http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/3667/what-is-the-purpose-of- endorsing-a-check)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Talked with one of the Simple guys earlier this fall. Really great guy, he described an amazing company. Congrats, Simple. :-)

</comment><comment><USER26> the lack of joint accounts continues to be a barrier for anyone that isn't legally single.

</comment><comment><USER27> If only they supported Android, I could find myself being interested in this news.

<comment><USER28> That's coming in early 2013.

<comment><USER29> Link to source?

<comment><USER30> <https://twitter.com/gagepac/status/273891431817547777>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> i love simple! been using it for months. i find it to be super simple to send people money, etc.. yes you have to adjust the lack of actual paper checks, but once you're used to it, its def better.</comment>


Ask HN: What was your favourite interview? - <AUTHOR> We hear tons of horror stories about bad interviews in our industry, but I'd be interested to hear whether there were any interviews people actually liked and still felt that it fairly tested their aptitude, regardless of whether it resulted in an offer or not. <comment><USER2> I asked for an early interview in 1998 as I had a month's consultancy lined up overseas. The interview went very well, there seemed to be some strange interaction between two of the interviewers. One kept asking me about my weaknesses and the other backing me up on my answers. It turned out later the senior intervieweress only hired women, the person I was going to work for wanted my deep industry experience and an outsider. He won out.

I made certain the interviweress never regretted hiring me.</comment>


Gmail can now tell your co-workers you're on vacation BEFORE they email you - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/30/gmail-can-now-tell-your-coworkers-youre-on-vacation-before-they-email-you/ <comment><USER2> This already exists in outlook/exchange...

It even shows up as a yellow banner in the same way</comment>


Behold WordPress, Destroyer of CPUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001105.html <comment><USER2> I confess to deeply mixed feelings about this post. I guess I don't like his tone. And there's a problem, I can't really criticize the post without descending into ad hominems of a sort.

I guess I would rather read an essay about how much caching improves product X than an essay saying that the developer of product X is an idiot for writing a product that needs caching. Both essays have the same factual content, but I admit to bias towards the former, especially from one programmer to another.

<comment><USER3> Well, remember that Coding Horror is more of a classical personal blog or online diary style work, rather than a medium for delivering essays. Jeff freely admits he tends to shoot from the hip, in contrast to guys like PG or Joel Spolsky (Jeff talked about this briefly in the first stackoverflow.com podcast). As a result from time to time you get posts that more emotionally driven by Jeff's issue du jour.

For me I just tend to take Jeff's tone with a grain of salt rather than expecting each post to be dispassionate analysis. Jeff simply doesn't vet his material the same way as PG, but we end up with more of it from which occasionally really good observations and discussions result.

<comment><AUTHOR> Atwood gets a lot of crap from the HN crowd, so it's great to hear a reasoned, dispassionate argument about the pros and cons of Coding Horror.

The "shoot from the hip" comment was that while Spolsky might go over one of his showcase pieces 30-40 times, Atwood would look at it maybe once or twice while he was writing it and the hit "Publish".

<comment><USER4> And as a result, Joel's writings are a lot more valuable.

I have a personality like Atwood -- if I'm mad about something, I immediately feel the urge to write a scathing and negative blog entry. Every time I do this, though, I get a lot of negative feedback. So, I try to tone down my personality and stick to instructional entires now, and amazingly I get positive feedback every time. Nobody cares what I think... but if they learn something, then my blog is worth reading.

"Show, don't tell." is what they teach in elementary school. It is a very valuable piece of advice. (In this case, I mean "show why foo is good", not "tell the reader that bar is bad". Criticism and snarkiness breads criticism and snarkiness.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad someone finally spoke out against WordPress like this. This has bothered me for ages, but whenever I bring it up to people the argument is always, "cpus are cheap." But, I don't want to buy a new high end server just to run a blog. I want it to be speedy fast on shared hosting without fussing, by default.

<comment><USER4> If you want a feature in an open source project, the logical idea is to send them a patch.

<comment><USER6> I think most people who read HN would have thought of that; from Jeff Atwood's article, it sounds as though the primary problem is a political one, not a technical one. A plugin already exists that can be that "patch," but the project leaders are dismissive of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Makes me feel not-so-bad for using the tired, aging, not-as-popular Blogger platform for my blog. It's hard to have overwhelming CPU loads serving static pages.

</comment><comment><USER8> Caching needs to be built into WordPress? Hrm, I guess great minds think alike - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=168268> ;)

And to say that WordPress is not sloppily programmed is to say that you have never actually looked at the source code. I dare you, I double dare you. Wake up and smell the ashes.

</comment><comment><USER9> About a year ago i looked at the WordPress code. My PHP knowledge is limited, but it was easy to see that the code was not very good. Perhaps it has improved, but i personally wouldn't use it, especially on a server that runs important services.

<comment><USER5> Even worse is chyrp. For reasons unbeknownst to me, they designed it in such a way that it ends up making 55 queries to render <http://chyrp.net/blog/>. This only increases when more content is added (so my assumption is that the authors don't know what a join is). Also, the last time I looked, it took your password, md5'd it (without a salt) and put it in a cookie for authentication to the admin. WordPress looks amazing compared to that.

<comment><USER10> Disclaimer: I'm the dumbass developer of Chyrp. I was pointed here by a follower. :P

55 queries? I see 18, and 20 when logged in. Something's weird there. Admittedly, it used to be quite high (116, _nervous chuckle_ ), but nowadays it hovers below WordPress' query count.

I don't know where you're getting that whole admin authentication thing from. Nowhere in the code does it do anything _remotely_ similar to what you said. The cookies simply hold the browsing user's ID and md5ed password (the md5 is the only information on the password that is stored), which is then authenticated. It's not a username and password for the admin area. It's just the information of the user who's logged in. Nothing new.

There's no single "is_admin" check or anything of the sort. There's no "authentication to the admin". It's not an all-powerful section that checks for a single thing before giving you access to every function. The group that the browsing user is associated with must have the proper privileges to perform the various functionality that is checked throughout the administration section.

As for using salts on the md5 encryptions, I don't see anywhere in WordPress's code does that either (I just downloaded the latest copy). I might add it in to 2.0, though. Should be a fairly easy change.

If you want the software to improve (which doesn't exactly seem to be the case), I just think you should either file tickets or confront the developer (me, and a couple contributors in the IRC channel) instead of spouting off misinformation on other sites.

<comment><USER2> "If you want the software to improve (which doesn't exactly seem to be the case), I just think you should either file tickets or confront the developer"

Consider removing the parenthetical remark and adding a period after a statement like this and leaving it there. Simple, powerful, and makes your point:

"If you want the software to improve, I just think you should either file tickets or confront the developer."

<comment><USER11> "If you want the software to improve, I just think you should either file tickets or confront the developer."

You could remove a few more words and make it

"If you want the software to improve, file tickets or confront the developer."

;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was interesting because I have WP on a shared host. It sure is slow sometime but I didn't know if it was the host or WP. I guess the answer is probably ... both :) Makes me wonder if part of WP's success is that most people don't have it on their own server so they don't have to care as much about performance.

Now I'm resolved to install WP-Cache!

<comment><USER12> I'd advise using WP Super Cache instead. It's based on WP-Cache, but allows you to generate static HTML files as well. I've found it vastly improves WP's performance on shared hosting.

<http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be interesting if he could provide similar usage graphs for Movable Type and do some real data-backed comparison instead of ranting.

<comment><USER14> ...because serving static HTML pages uses _lots_ of database queries...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wordpress or Windows (that he is using)?

<comment><USER16> I read this Jeff's blog as some is interesting, but I always laugh at how he is so pro-windows.

When I read he was going to do some web stuff I was wondering if he would use a windows server. I admit I don't keep up on what MS offers in the server side but it seems linux + apache is still a better choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless you're already extremely proficient on [your tools] but would take a lot of time and tweaking to learn the ins and outs of [other supposedly better tools].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Better solution: Build caching into the DB. Then _every_ program using the DB gets free data caching and there is more general code reuse. Interesting how RDBMS's like Postgres and Oracle already have it.

<comment><USER18> I don't see how caching in the DB would improve performance much. The best you could do would probably be to cache the most expensive queries. The main advantage of having caching in your application is that you can cache your data in a more high-level way, i.e. taking into account the way the data is going to be used. So you can pre-process your data as much as possible and store the result of this. Compared to that a cache in the DB would be rather dumb. This isn't to say that a database cache is useless but just not a replacement for having caching directly in your app.</comment></comment>


Is highschool worth it? No, and here's why - <AUTHOR> https://joshternyak.com/is-highschool-worth-it/index.html <comment><USER2> As a 9th grader, please consider the idea that there is more to education and life than just making money. Like, good luck with your project, it sounds like you could definitely pull it off....but that's like saying you see no point in staying in school because you're already shaping up to be great at competitive sports or dancing or whatever you're interested in. It's just an activity, not an end in itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Self-control at any age is hard for most people but for a 15yro is even harder so I think you should continue with school but define your curriculum. Talk to a counselor and define a plan. I thought high school was a complete waste of time but that was mainly due to the curriculum that was being pushed on me. I went to the process of defining my schooling then I was able to make the best of it. Your teen years are the best time to learn new stuff so don't waste the opportunity.

Alternatively, you can get your high school equivalent and start school at a local junior college. There you can better define what you want to learn.

If you really want to start a business you can do it as part of your training. There is no need to stop school. 15 is way too young to just stop school and hope for the best.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you can build something that makes 5 figures in a summer, then that's awesome. But if you can't, don't drop out.</comment>


A New R6RS Scheme Compiler - <AUTHOR> https://weinholt.se/articles/new-r6rs-compiler/ <comment><USER2> There is definitely room for a scheme compiler. But the scheme ecosystem felt extremely fractured the last time I took a look. Chicken had a decent but aging repo. Chez had a great compiler (I prefer not compiling to C) but it's package ecosystem was not something well advertised if it did have one. Racket has too many dialects which might appeal to some but found the number of sub languages overwhelming for a casual schemer.

<comment><USER3> Making languages is the thing that Racket does better than any other language, so they do tend proliferate. However, for getting stuff done the majority of work is done in just Racket. You don't need to know the other languages unless you're interested in some specialist task they target.

Back when I was a regular Scheme user Racket had by far the biggest ecosystem and community, so it would be my suggestion if you're interested in exploring Scheme.

<comment><USER4> >Making languages is the thing that Racket does better than any other language

Have you tried Rebol/Red?

<comment><USER5> I did and even though I'm forever in love with both Rebol and Red, Racket does languages in a more fun way and powerful way for my own personal taste. Don't know if you have checked this book out but [https://beautifulracket.com/](https://beautifulracket.com/) is a wonderful introduction for building languages with Racket.

<comment><USER6> For me, the power of the Redbol approach lies in the rich set of datatypes, so you can create dialects at the block/value level, leveraging the syntax without having to tokenize at the string level. It's no small thing to be able to create languages that natively understand values like email addresses, URLs, IP addresses, files as distinct from strings, and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The related article about using CPU alignment checking for "type checking" tagged pointers is quite interesting. I wonder if this technique has been used before (in lisp machines or something?). I'd be interested in hearing about practical matters like performance and CPU support too.

[https://weinholt.se/articles/alignment- check/](https://weinholt.se/articles/alignment-check/)

<comment><USER8> The SPARC CPU was designed to make use of this. Alignment checking was enabled by default, the tagged add/sub instructions required that the tag in the lower two bits for an integer was 0, tags for pointers were expected to be 3.

Lisp Machines were word addressed so the technique wouldn't work for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like impressive progress towards a Scheme implementation for systems programming. I'll be interested to see how GC, interrupt-handling, etc. work.

With an aarch64 backend, and some graphics&GUI work, it might also make sense atop PostmarketOS Linux kernel, for handhelds.[1] If one needs to heavily rework Linux userland anyway, and especially if motivated by enthusiasm, it's an opportunity to rethink, rather than automatically inherit decades of desktop stack.

[1] Notes on approaching this incrementally at [https://www.neilvandyke.org/postmarketos/](https://www.neilvandyke.org/postmarketos/) , though you could alternatively start by building up atop bare kernel&drivers, and Loko Scheme looks like a promising candidate for that.

</comment><comment><USER10> > It is written in R6RS Scheme and a wafer thin amount of assembly. Once it > has been bootstrapped it can self-compile. There is no C code in the > compiler or the runtime.

> ...multiboot binaries for bare hardware

Multiple brownie points combo!

Congratulations on the work achieved.

<comment><USER11> PicoLisp also has a tiny assembler layer. (And two parallel implementations, one in Java, one in C.)

<comment><USER10> I am aware of it, thanks for bringing it up.

The more the merrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> About the AGPL license, does it extend to programs compiled with Loko? The author seems to not want it to with the comment about the license not extending to user space. My understanding, however, is that would iff the programs used a library provided by the AGPL compiler. Hence why gcc has the linking exception.

<comment><USER13> Yes, unless there is a specific exception, the program would be covered by AGPL. Even if you just use it on the server, you have to release your programs code under the AGPL.

<comment><USER14> Wow, really? So it's essentially impossible to use this for proprietary software? I knew about the server stuff, but I didn't think the AGPL bound compiled programs to the terms of the compiler.

If I use an AGPL text editor, does my written text also become APGL?

<comment><USER15> Impossible to use for proprietary software you _distribute_. So you can write internal software, and only need to share the source with yourself.

<comment><USER16> Probably more poignantly, it's not usable for open source projects that want to distribute their stuff under a license that's more permissive than the AGPL.

Which I'm guessing is intentional.

<comment><USER15> Well, it only prevents distributing _binaries_. You could still do source only distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All of my software that is not brief and trivial and so benefiting from it is licensed under the AGPLv3, although I don't use the _or any later versions_ clause, as I don't trust licenses that have yet to be written, and the recent events make me feel all the superior for not having done so. I'm glad to see more AGPLv3 software. My opinion on a batch compiler is different from my opinion on an interactive environment and I'll share a method on how to make money with the AGPLv3:

For a batch compiler, that is a language that doesn't need the compiler to run, write an AGPLv3 compiler without a linking exception and then demand sufficient funds be raised to release a version with the linking exception. This is then a way to write a Free Software compiler and still demand money for it, for many to actually want to use it. I wouldn't license something such as a Lisp compiler with the exception, however, as the implementation generally exists with the program and that removes some advantages of it being AGPLv3. Fortunately, it seems the author has used the AGPLv3 and any desired exception uses vague language not in the license, so it's legally irrelevant. I'd find it best if there were no exception for this program, but it's not my decision.

In closing, this has made me want again to write my own Scheme implementation, so perhaps I'll do that at some point soon.

<comment><USER18> I had a similar idea with it starting dual-licensed so I could straight-up sell it to companies. Optionally use a more permissive license if it hit a certain total. Each new version is done the same way so upgrades on the more- permissive version still get paid for. Plus, the "get what you pay for" companies might _only_ buy a proprietary version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like a very interesting project, but actually I belong to the crowd who would close the tab basically after reading the second paragraph. Which is a pity, because this sounds like an implementation which could be very nice.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your 2012 resolutions? - <AUTHOR>

If you ask me, I want to try what Matt Cutts is suggesting here.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html
Share yours! <comment><USER2> Ship - Market - Ship - then Repeat

Simple and to the point. People can like your idea but they can only be a fan when there is something they can actually use. Unfinished maybe but getting better all the time.

I started today.</comment>


UK Government invests £60m in Skylon plane - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-government-invests-60m-in-skylon-plane-that-can-fly-from-london-to-sydney-in-4-hours-a6718081.html <comment><USER2> Great news for the onepercentia.</comment>


Two Heads: A marriage devoted to the mind-body problem (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/12/two-heads <comment><USER2> > In the past, it seemed obvious that mind and matter were not the same stuff; > the only question was whether they were connected. Everyone was a dualist.

This is a very western view. Many eastern religions and philosophies have, for thousands of years, expressed the unity of matter and consciousness (non- duality). Not only have they expressed it, but they developed exercises/practices to experience it.

<comment><USER3> If we can ever move minds to different hardware, will dualism make a comeback?

<comment><USER4> Since the smallest particles of matter are indifferent, as far as we can tell (i.e. swapping one particle for another makes no difference in the physical state of the thing), then insofar as minds are individualized some kind of dualism is inescapable. This is because the mind must be at least an emergent phenomenon of some configuration, and the configuration is not affected by what particular particles make up the configuration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not an expert in the philosophy of mind, but I did just finish a class that spent a lot of time talking about the Churchlands. I figured I'd give my two cents in case someone might be curious as to weaknesses in their arguments.

The way the Churchlands' approach the mind is through reductive materialism. Basically they argue that the mind is identical to the brain given that brain process A causes mental/internal process B. With that reduction we should either eliminate language for mental experience or root it entirely in the corresponding physical process.

This sort of reduction is more or less a scientific reduction in that it serves an explanatory purpose. However, some philosophers reject the idea that scientific reduction is sufficient for a philosophical reduction which is something along the lines of brain process A completely explaining mental experience B. The problem that a philosophical reduction poses is that of internal experience.

Non-reductionists would argue that no amount of physical data could explain subjective experience. Brain scans can show what happens physiologically when you are happy, but not the 'what it's like to be happy'. Whether or not that's convincing to you is a matter of personal preference.

The bottom line seems to be that there is a major physical aspect to the mind, but also that we feel like we are more than chemical reactions. It is not clear that we can practically get rid of either dualism or materialism.

If you are curious, look at Thomas Nagel, and 'the hard problem of consciousness' by Chalmers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Strange that most are materialist when it comes to mind, but dualists in most other areas of life. E.g. capitalism is a dualist theory, that assumes humans have individual agency and thus property ownership. Our system of law is the same, assume people have agency so are responsible for their actions.

<comment><USER6> I thought quantam mechanics was enough doubt to refute the materialistic mind. A probabilistic system does not lead itself to a physical reduction of outcomes as follows from specific inputs.

If someone more knowledgeable about the subject would like to chime in, I would appreciate it.

<comment><USER7> I suspect that a key question is whether a probabilistic system is enough to bring agency into the picture. I can't be held (e.g. legally) responsible for my actions if they are the product of strict cause and effect processes. But it is also not clear if I can be held responsible for my actions if they arise from probabilistic mechanisms.

<comment><USER6> True. But agency is just how we rationalize responsibility being "fair", no?

The legal system is designed with "agency" in mind, but it's true purpose is to create law abiding citizens. We hold people responsible, because doing so alters behavior, mechanism of altered behavior is just window dressing.

<comment><USER7> > True. But agency is just how we rationalize responsibility being "fair", no?

I doubt this is a description many people would agree with - that agency doesn't exist but we just pretend it does so we feel better about locking people up to modify their behaviour. Aside from anything else, if we are probabilistic systems, we presumably can't actually do things like rationalise, or design things like legal systems. Similarly, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about the legal system as having a goal if it is a (presumably slightly more complex) probabilistic system.

Of course, just as with materialism we can bite the bullet and accept that our typical descriptions of human life are strictly false and the real story is just a scaled up version of billiard balls knocking each other around (mutatis mutandis for the probabilistic picture). But if we want a picture that lets us keep some of our current view of human life, it is not clear that bringing probabilistic systems into the picture helps any.

<comment><USER8> > if we are probabilistic systems, we presumably can't actually do things like > rationalise, or design things like legal systems.

Why not? Computers can reason and have constructed proofs. Probably a computer could construct legal arguments too. They might have some probability for errors (e.g. cosmic rays) that need to be accounted for and corrected, just like humans.

> But if we want a picture that lets us keep some of our current view of human > life, it is not clear that bringing probabilistic systems into the picture > helps any.

It might help people understand why people murder, or commit crime. Criminals might have errors that need to be corrected rather than focusing on a crime that needs to be punished.

<comment><USER7> Rationalising is a kind of ethical reasoning - constructing an account of something that shows it to be consistent with a wider body of ethical beliefs. So in your example, the idea of agency is a way of making the idea of responsibility mesh with our belief that things should be fair.

It is not clear to me that a computer can hold ethical beliefs, or that it would be troubled when some other beliefs are inconsistent with those beliefs and motivated to find a rationalisation that makes them compatible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>