Lessons from Argentina's Crazy Economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/doing-business-in-argentina.html

<comment><USER2> As an Argentinian, here are my two cents on this matter:

1) From reading this article, one could asume commercial and financial regulations change by the hour, while in fact is the opposite.

       We have a gargantuan commercial code of byzantine
       complexity that has not really been modified in the
       last 50 years.

       We also have a terribly regressive and unfair tax
       system that includes 21% VAT even for food products
       and wealth tax even for salaried employees with
       more than 1400 dollars of monthly income.

2) It is my sincere wish, from the bottom of my heart, that "entrepreneurs" (I doubt they deserve the honor if being called that) who operate "en negro" rot in jail. They are bringing all of us down with their disregard for the rule of law and they are increasing the costs of doing bussiness for those of us who pay taxes.

       Regardless of the recurrent crises, starting up a
       successful tech company here is possible, as proven
       by Globant, OfficeNet, MercadoLibre, et al.

</comment><comment><USER3> My in-laws left Argentina 30 years ago and still have much of their family there. I showed this article to them and their reply was simply, "the US is heading this way. We've seen this movie, and we don't like the way it ends."

<comment><USER4> > "the US is heading this way. We've seen this movie, and we don't like the > way it ends."

I grew up in post-communist Romania, and I've also seen this movie before. Immediately after 1990 (the fall of communism) money started losing their value. At the beginning money were losing their value by "only" 40-50% per year, to a maximum of ~150% inflation rate in the late '90s. It was only in the mid 2000s' that the inflation rate first dropped to single digits.

I can still remember reading Malthus in high-school, and about how he was saying that the middle-class people are always the worst affected by the economic crisis. What can I say? My parents went from a secure, middle-class position (apartment, car, country-house) to relying on subsistence-agriculture in the space of maximum 10 years. And they weren't the only ones.

<comment><USER5> You scare me. :-)

I moved to Cluj (Transylvania) this spring.

I am thinking about looking for another job, but would like to stay here. I am scared that telecommuting will make me unhappy.

Good food, wonderful nature, good weather (ok, most anywhere has better weather than Scandinavia), nice people, a hot girlfriend, etc.

<comment><USER4> > You scare me. :-)

Relax, things are a lot better now (even for me, I'm on HN, ain't I? :)). What I'm talking about happened 10-15 years ago.

And congratulations for choosing Cluj. I'm usually trapped in Bucharest but I'm happy that tomorrow I'll go to Sibiu for a 4-day vacation. It's only a 2-h drive from Cluj I think, I highly recommend it for when you have time to discover the rest of the country :).

<comment><USER5> Thanks.

I've been to Sigishoara, which was really nice. I really look forward to seeing more.

The first week here, I had this conversation...

My work friends said: "That is worth checking out, there is a nice lake over there." I yawned and told them that I've seen lakes before, but "the mountains around the city looks really cool". They looked confused and said "Uh, do you mean the hills?"

But frankly, I'm not that curious about Bucharest. :-)

I do wish there were more gypsy music bands around Cluj.

It is a bit embarrassing to like "muzika popular", which seems to be the most uncool thing around? (-: Otoh, it might help make me popular with the girlfriend's 70 year old mother... :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My 2 cents :) The article gets right both the inflation and the corruption problems in Argentina. However, it seems to be a bit biased, as it shows only one real case of success and several failures, and the fact that one of the interviewees is the son of a former Minister of Economy of Argentina (Domingo Cavallo), whose economical model was the main cause of the 2001 crisis, which the author seems to have forgotten to mention in the article. I've worked in both argentinean and US founded companies here in Argentina, and the reality, at least from my experience, is that the economic environment isn't as hostile as the article describes. I've been in companies that made millions (dollars, btw) and I've also seen some that lost everything (specially in the 2001 crisis), but the truth is Argentina is a cheap country for investment and with a lot of highly qualified man power. I have to agree, investing in Argentina is kind of a bet, and making your company work well involves a lot of work, but, specially if your objective is to export the product/service, it might provide an awesome ROI.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought this part was pretty funny:

> "...I wasn't going to put all of my risk in Latin America again in my life." > At the end of 2002, he left the company and moved his family to Miami.

I think Miami is a lot more Latin American than Buenos Aires.

<comment><USER8> In terms of culture and lifestyle, yeah. Many people call Miami "the Capital of Latin America." Buenos Aires is not particularly representative of Latin America, it's more like a hybrid between LatAm and Europe (you probably agree).

In terms of economic stability, Miami is still part of the US so it's less risky for running a business. Not the greatest place for a startup, but a good compromise for someone who wants to travel to South America frequently.

<comment><USER9> Again, stereotypical and prejudice.

Last I checked, Spain was in Europe.

<comment><USER10> Has the parent been edited, or is this remarkably non-sequiturial? I read the parent several times looking for a mention of Spain, couldn't find it.

<comment><USER9> Could it be you're (gasp!) not informed instead of it being "non-sequiturial"?

Saying Miami is more Latin American than Buenos Aires is stereotypical and prejudice because this statement suggests there is something intrinsically Latin American about Latin America. Latin America is a huge space (a population of 580,086,590 which the parent seeks to generalize), there are various cultures and subcultures, various languages and dialects. Whatever J. Lo has brainwashed people into thinking is "Latin American" is not all- encompassing and should not be representative of it.

Thus, Buenos Aires is just as very Latin American as La Paz or San Juan or Rio de Janeiro or Havana.

The fact that more Italians immigrated to Argentina does not make them more "European", since Spain, the country that colonized most of Latin America is European. Since its colonization, Latin America adopted a lot of traditions from Spain and the rest of Europe, thanks to many Latin American governments asking for more European immigrants to "fill the void" and work the land. However, not all countries adopted the same traditions to the same degree and some preferred other European traditions (that could also be shared with Spain, Portugal and the rest of Western Europe).

Thus, the statement "Buenos Aires is not particularly representative of Latin America, it's more like a hybrid between LatAm and Europe" is wrong because most of Latin America includes Europe in its transculturation, acculturation, syncretism, miscegenation and hybridity.

<comment><USER7> Most of Latin America has not just Latin influence but also a lot of American influence. The people are brown not just because they're Moorish or African by ancestry but also because they're American. Most of them speak Spanish, French, or Portuguese, but a substantial number speak American languages like Guaraní, Mapuzungun, Quichua, Aymará, Nahuatl, or Haitian Creole. Most of them practice Catholicism, but in a heavily syncretized form with Catholic saints corresponding to American gods, and a substantial number of them still practice American religions.

But all of those things are true only to a tiny extent in Buenos Aires, and a more noticeable but still small extent in the rest of Argentina. This is what genocide looks like.

So I wasn't saying that Argentina is more European than Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Cuba, or Miami because it's less Spanish. I was saying that Argentina is more European than Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, or Cuba because _it's less American_ , because none of the things I said in the previous paragraph are true here, and they're still true in those places. The most distinctively American thing about Buenos Aires is that everybody drinks yerba mate.

By the way, Diego grew up here in Buenos Aires, where I also live. So however much you may disagree with our conceptions of what "Latin America" means, you can't blame poor J. Lo for them.

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry, but you are only partly right.

Let me first say this confusion exists also amongst some Latin Americans because there is a lack of Latin American history (as South American and Central American continents) taught in Latin America. Each country focuses largely on their own because each country has such a rich and diverse history.

But let's take your argument apart.

BROWN:

The whole subject of "brown" and their diverse shades has been discussed before and is currently joked about in Peruvian politics, where Alan García said he was more Peruvian because of his "copper" skin color. Naturally, this is ridiculed by most because it is a joke to talk about skin color since mestizos can be all shades of brown (indigenous blood notwithstanding). And then there is tanning (even mentioning this sounds ridiculous); as in, there are people with lighter skin who just happen to be tanned, because they live in an area where it is mostly sunny (sometimes all year round). You'll find a higher percentage of "white"-looking people in capital cities in Latin America. And many mestizos can pass off as Spanish (from Spain, just in case it isn't clear). And there are also indigenous peoples who are white (see indigenous groups that live closer to the Andean Cordillera or similar places of higher altitudes, such as Huaraz where there is a mix of all skin colors and valleys such as Pasco where there is an Austro-German community that immigrated there from the late 1800s. Uruguay probably has a larger "white" population than Argentina, and Paraguay has a very high one, too. You'll find lots of white people in Southern Brazil. One last thing about "brown", Latin Americans generally accept, rightfully so, that being "brown" has very little to do with Moorish or African ancestry, and if you have any noticeable Moorish or African features, you are mostly considered to have "black" attributes, since blacks do not originate from Latin America.

LANGUAGE:

No, most people do not speak French as their native language in Latin America and the Caribbeans. Haiti is the obvious one that has French and Creole as their official language, but only about 10% speak it fluently, and this is in a population of 9 million. French Guiana obviously has French as their official language, but they're a population of 217,000 with many people speaking other dialects and languages. Suriname has Dutch as their official language, with Guyana and Belize having English as theirs and a minority speak other Cariban languages, with tiny Belize having 40% Spanish speakers, I believe. These countries are minorities, though. That's about it for French. Portuguese is only spoken in Brazil, a country with a population of 203 million. All this out of a population of 580 million in Latin America. As for Guaraní, yes, it is an official language of Paraguay, with 4,650,000 speakers; a majority since the country's population is 6 million, but still a minority within the total Latin American population. If you want to count a language that is spoken by 200,000 people (Mapuzugun), go ahead, but then we start getting into the smaller languages and dialects, too, which are many, all throughout Latin America. Peru and Bolivia are interesting in that they sought to preserve indigenous culture. Peru's official languages are Spanish, Quechua and Aymara, in order of amount of speakers. Aymara is actually spoken by very few Peruvians, though, and Quechua by 13% of the population--another minority language. Quechua is spoken by 20% of Bolivia's population, and Aymara 14%, with Spanish being the majority.

I mention all of this so you can have a perspective for what I am about to say about language in Argentina. When colonizers arrived in modern day Argentina, there were about 35 languages spoken there. Now there are only 12. A variant of Quechua (called Quichua, most likely different from the "Incan" Quechua) is spoken in Santiago de Estero by 100,000 people, a city founded by Spanish settlers. Four Guaraní variants are spoken in Argentina: Chiriguano (known in Argentina as Ñandeva) spoken in Jujuy and Salta by about 15,000 people; the Guaraní Correntino is the official language of Corrientes; Mbyá is spoken by 3,000 people in Misiones; and lastly, the Paraguayan Guaraní spoken at various parts of the borders. Chaco has "co-official" languages: Qom, Moqoít, and Wichí (spoken by 45,000) from the Mataco language family. In Rosario, there are about 10,000 Wichi speakers/peoples. There are other dialects and subdialects such as Mivaclé, Chorote, and in Patagonia (Santa Cruz, specifically), Tehuelche (Aonikenk or Aonek'o 'ajen), with all these also being minority languages/dialects and the last spoken by just a few; there used to be more in the south, but the Conquest of the Desert nearly wiped them all out.

My point is there is a wealth of variety in each country, and many minority languages and minority peoples. Argentina is not an exception. All of them mixed with some type of European, whether it was a Western, Central or Eastern European.

And just to be clear, very few Catholics believe in Catholic saints that correspond to "American gods". And if by "American religions" you mean "indigenous religions", then, no. Most of Latin America is Roman Catholic, with an increasing number of Protestants, namely in Brazil.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for the interesting and informative reply.

The reason brown-skinned mestizos can pass as Spanish is because many Spanish people have a fair bit of Moorish blood, so they're brown-skinned themselves. "Moorish" can mean lots of different ethnic groups, some but not all of whom look "black".

I didn't know about these pink-skinned American indigenous people. Where can I learn more?

Uruguay definitely has a larger "white" population than Argentina.

It is certainly true that most people don't speak French as their native language in Latin America. But I didn't say they did. I said that most people in Latin America do speak one of French, Spanish, or Portuguese. I included French to avoid the debate about whether Haiti and French Guiana are part of Latin America. Adding more Romance languages to the list (Romansch! Ladino!) wouldn't make the statement less true. That's simple logic.

Suriname, Belize, and Guyana aren't part of Latin America, so they're irrelevant.

The numbers you quote for Bolivia are for _primary_ language: 20% of Bolivians _primarily_ speak Quechua. A much larger number speak primarily Spanish but also Quechua. I suspect the same thing is true of the other statistics you cite.

Your statistics for Argentina are a good demonstration of how Argentina is much less American (and more European) than the rest of the continent. In Peru, 20% of the people primarily speak Quechua; the Quechua-speaking community you mention in Santiago del Estero, by contrast, is 0.25% of the Argentine population, proportionally 80 times smaller.

There is indeed a wealth of variety in each country, even in Argentina, but Argentina's American heritage, in terms of language, genes, and religion, is extremely marginal here in the capital, and marginal even in the rest of the country.

> And just to be clear, very few Catholics believe in Catholic saints that > correspond to "American gods". And if by "American religions" you mean > "indigenous religions", then, no.

There are lots of examples of syncretic saint/American-god combinations. Here is one you might find interesting:

<http://www.uv.mx/popularte/esp/scriptphp.php?sid=387>

Of course the Catholic people who worship, excuse me, venerate these saints do not believe that they are worshipping Aztec or Maya or Mapuche gods or celebrating Aztec religious festivals; that would be heretical. Nevertheless, there are identifiable collections of attributes that have been transferred from pagan deities to Catholic saints, and from pagan festivals to Catholic holidays.

Not around here, though. We just have Gauchito Gil.

<comment><USER9> kragen, chromosomes passed on from Spanish people from their own ancestries are not something that people distinguish/highlight--at least not in South America. You are right, however, in stating that, colloquially/conversationally, "Moorish" can mean lots of different ethnic groups, but in my field of study, this interpretation is usually seen as pejorative. So, I was specifically talking about the immigrants in the Iberian Peninsula from the time of Al Andalus.

Regarding "pink-skinned" American indigenous peoples, the thing you have to understand is that there are many patches of Latin American territory that are not visited or studied (you can say they remain "undiscovered"), so there is no nomenclature or taxonomy for a specific tribe. So, there are dozens of indigenous tribes with no names and many that haven't been discovered yet. I mentioned the areas where they are from so you can get an idea and Google the places (Huaraz, Pozuzo, etc.), but, as you know, there was an incredible amount of mixing from Europeans (from all over Western and Central Europe) and the indigenous peoples, in this case from Peru.

The study of non-Spanish European immigrants in other South American countries that are not Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, and I assume Southern Brazil, is still in its infancy, and, as an example (because I wrote on this and know more about it), German immigrants in many parts of the continent were never documented, and families of German descent (myself included) are only now formalizing everything and documenting where their ancestors came from and giving a rough estimate of a year of arrival based on memory and oral traditions. It's very difficult, though, because of the way Latin America functions, both politically, bureaucratically and socially. The take away point is that Latin America is a lot more diverse than books or numbers state, but the issue is that we can only guide ourselves by the numbers and facts (creating a dichotomy). This is why in Latin America we talk a lot about the "other history", the history that is not written or formalized, the history of oral tradition and information handed down through other means. Even in Argentina, there is a movie called "La historia oficial". It is one of Latin America's major themes in history.

Despite all this, here I go citing numbers again (because, unfortunately, that is what we have to work with): there are only 48 million indigenous peoples (discovered) in all of the Americas. Usually, only people who consider themselves "indigenous" (there is a social aspect to it, too, not just biological) speak an indigenous language. This means indigenous peoples are a minority and, in fact, are in danger of becoming extinct.

The reason why I brought up Peru and Bolivia is because they have the highest population of aborigines, and because they understand that they need to be protected. Peru and Cuba have a long history of sociopolitical discourse protecting minorities and different ethnicities.

Despite this "other history" and "undiscovered tribes", I do believe it is better to err on the side of caution. There is still much to be done and studied in Latin America. Because each group of people lives a different "reality" and each region is so isolated from one another, I'd rather think there is more to be found out and looked at, because not everything is as homogenized and connected as the United States (but even there, Americans aren't aware of customs and differences between other regions, and how many parts of the country look like a "developing nation").

Anyway, I need to cut this short, but on the subject of syncretism, the major indigenous gods were transferred over to Catholicism because Europeans needed a way to explain to indigenous peoples about Christianity, and as masters of proselytism, they understood that they had to get on their good side and gain their trust ("tame" them, in colonial speak) in order to facilitate a conquest. So, there is some overlap, but not much, because the God of Rain or God of Thunder had no real equivalent in Christianity, and Europeans taught indigenous peoples that these gods were inferior and these characteristics were held by an all-mightier god. So, most indigenous creation gods became the equivalent of the Christian God. As such Tonantzin, the female counter part of an All Mighty God, became Virgen de Guadalupe in Nueva España, just as the First Council of Constantinople made the Virgin Mary "official". Both of these female counterparts were created for similar reasons and both were derived from pagan gods/concepts.

Anyway, yes, of course, Suriname, Belize and Guyana aren't Latin American countries, but they are territorially in Latin America, and I mentioned them since you mentioned Haiti, which isn't really considered a Latin American country (there is a whole debate on what we should call "Latin America" or Spanish-speaking countries and what countries should be included, along with Brazil and Spain). So, I mentioned these other countries just in case.

Anyway, good chat!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank god Uruguay's not Argentina. This article is why i've refused to open up an office on the other side of the river. Argentina's an amazing country where just about every institution in society is in some sort chaotic collapse.

</comment><comment><USER12> "A crisis is an opportunity, what's _my_ opportunity?"

</comment><comment><USER13> A big problem is the lack of regulation, IMO. That owner who is doing things "en negro" hurts the rest of the country and should be fined accordingly. Since no one takes a big step forward to stop it, people see their colleges do it and the trend continues.

Inflation is also pretty bad, but I don't think it falls completely on the shoulder of the Government. Some items are simply overpriced. I'm not talking between a big store and a simple corner store, I mean between two big chains you can see price differences of 50% or more sometimes. Again, taking advantage of the lack of regulation.

And we don't all see the U.S. as THE economic model, far from it.

<comment><USER14> "That owner who is doing things "en negro" hurts the rest of the country and should be fined accordingly". This is a chicken/egg issue. People try to avoid taxes also because past governments confiscated their savings.

Speaking from the entrepreneurship perspective, there is a big issue having employees, if you fire them you need to pay a salary for each worked year. So a employee with 10 years of work receives 10 salaries if he's fired.

<comment><USER13> This is a very good point, entrepreneurs have a lot to loose and history has taught them to be wary of the Argentinian government. Can't say I blame them. I suppose it's up to the government to "show" them that they can be "trusted" again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone think that something like bitcoin could help these people out? It seems like the government there is not doing its job and providing infrastructure to conduct business. Why not use a distributed payment system?

<comment><USER7> The problem is not that it's too hard and expensive to transfer _money_ here. It _is_ hard and expensive if you do it legitimately (like we do), but a huge fraction of the economy is underground. Like a third.

The problem, if I had to sum it up in a soundbite, is that _you can't trust anybody_. And so nobody trusts you. Unless you're family. You can imagine the effect that has on the competence of officials and executives.

The crazy laws are a big problem, but not as big as the endemic non-government corruption. Bank _financing_? We had to get a personal recommendation from our accountant to open a _corporate bank account_.

Bitcoin isn't going to help with that. If anything, it will make it worse.

The funny thing is, living here is pretty good, if you can afford the bare minimum needed to survive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's surprising that business owners are complaining about inflation. I always thought its the fixed salaried employees who usually complain (because their salaries don't scale as fast as the inflation).

<comment><USER17> High inflation means you can't get loans and have to spend money immediately.

Also, those salaried workers have rights. If you can't pay them, the government shuts you down.

<comment><USER16> aah.. sort of like the credit crunch then.. it kind of feels counter intuitive because the usual cycle would be: a) credit crunch with loss of demand leading to deflation b) governments pump money c) money loses value pushing inflation higher.. d) Governments try hiking rates and pull back money..

But some how in this case it seems the order is all jumbled up..

<comment><USER17> Yup. Problems materialize faster.

Deflation is different -- basically everyone gets scared and stops spending money. As a result, the "velocity" of money slows down and prices drop in a race to the bottom. (The best example of this was the car market in 2009. If you had cash, you could get unbelievable deals on cars.)

With inflation, there is plenty of money out there, but evaluating risk gets difficult. High inflation tends to have a snowball effect, so you don't want people owing you money -- think of it as compounding interest in reverse. So you end up with informal contracts... "Give me a car today, and you get 15 goats or hunks of aluminum in July."

A creditor wants informal contracts, because like in the US, paper money is "Legal Tender for All Debts, Public and Private." But to have informal contracts, you need a personal/trust connection... and that encourages corruption and nepotism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Surprisingly accurate

</comment><comment><USER19> Buy a couple of acres of land somewhere, at least you might not starve.

But EU is going to go down first.</comment>


Princeton bans academics from handing copyright to journal publishers - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.edu.au/princeton-bans-academics-from-handing-copyright-to-journal-publishers-3596 <comment><USER2> This is an interesting case where you can improve your negotiating leverage by giving up freedom. Consider a researcher who wants their research to be open access. They can attempt to negotiate this every time they send a paper to a journal, but most researchers are not in a very strong negotiating position relative to the journal. Or they can accept a postdoc position at Princeton, which now means that every time they submit a paper, they must inform the journal that unfortunately they cannot assign copyright.

There are many journals who would be willing to decline to publish the papers of an individual intransigent researcher. There are not many journals who would be willing to ban papers from Princeton entirely.

As an example, Dan Bernstein, who is certainly a well-respected researcher in his field, has individually adopted a policy of dedicating his papers to the public domain so that, like researchers employed by the US Government, he cannot assign copyright in them. The IEEE has consequently decided to reject his papers even when its referees accept them, even though they accept papers from US Government researchers: <http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html>

This kind of phenomenon, where giving up freedom improves your negotiating position, was extensively studied by Schelling in his theory of negotiation.

It's also very relevant to the debate over Treacherous (or "Trusted") Computing, signed bootloaders, and the like. You might prefer not to have the option of cryptographically certifying to Warner Music that your machine is running an approved operating system on approved hardware. That's because if you have that option, they might not sell you music unless you exercise it, probably giving up many of the rights you have under copyright law; while if you don't have that option, they are faced with a less tempting choice of only selling you a CD.

Advocates of these systems sometimes design systems where you have full freedom to run either signed or unsigned software, claiming that this makes their systems safe from abuse. This overlooks this phenomenon, where having a freedom makes you subject to pressure to exercise it.

<comment><USER3> This is much more like collective bargaining than giving up freedom. If a researcher _individually_ says I will never assign copyright, then they will never get published. If a _group of researchers_ (let's call it a union) bands together, then they get a lot more negotiating power.

<comment><USER4> > This is much more like collective bargaining than giving up freedom.

Well, it _is_ giving up freedom, regardless of what it is _like_.

Keep in mind that there is a strong tradition in political discourse (in the U.S. at least) that using the word "freedom" is a signal that we are in favor of something, and thus, that "giving up freedom" is a negative thing. However, "freedom" is a word with a clear definition, and we can use it without intending the above signal.

So, it seems to me that this policy of Princeton's is a fine idea. It is nonetheless a reduction in the freedom of Princeton's faculty.

In contrast, at my own university the faculty contract explicitly assigns rights in their research to the researcher. The university gets a royalty-free license, but that's it. I have never had occasion to consider this contractual clause in a negative light, but here it is: my university could not enact a policy like Princeton's without violating the contract. (OTOH, my university is not nearly as big of a player as Princeton; at present such a policy would probably not be helpful.)

<comment><USER5> Then there's irony afoot - because by 'giving up freedom', they're gaining more freedom to do what they want to do.

Couching this in terms of freedom is the wrong way to think about the issue, methinks - it detracts from the real issue. Freedom in the US is a _very_ politically charged word - as an outsider visiting the US, I could hear a capital F in the word almost every time I heard it in public.

<comment><USER6> It's politically charged but has little meaning. "They hate us for our Freedom" and "They hate us for being American" are virtually synonymous.

As such I welcome someone using the word correctly for once.

<comment><USER5> In real terms, in the modern day, Americans are no freer than their contemporaries. They're a bit freer here and a bit less free there, but there's a lot of equivalence in the limitations of what you can do, both legally and culturally.

I certainly found when I visited the US for a while that there was nothing I felt I was freer to do legally (tourists don't really get to 'bear arms'), but plenty I couldn't do _culturally_ \- ironically mostly about speaking freely in public. I imagine an American visiting Australia would feel similar cultural restrictions, but again, no particular activity they're used to would be forbidden them legally.

I guess it just irritates when you run into those particular folks who define themselves as 'free' and making you out to be 'not free' by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A little known fact: the vast majority of grants (by volume of cash) are technically awarded to the professor's university rather than to the professor him/herself, giving the university broad control over the product of the professor's research. At least, this is the case in the life sciences.

From time to time, this yields something good. Props to the grad school I dropped out of :)

<comment><USER8> And don't forget about the 40% the university skims off the top (aka "indirect costs").

<comment><USER9> Overhead on grants is > 50%. The exact rate is negotiated between your university and its major funding agency (NSF or NIH), depending on which provides more grant money in total to your institution. That rate is then used uniformly across all grants.

<comment><USER10> Yes, Universities have become fiscalized to an extent. They increasingly behave more like businesses whose purpose is to extract grant money from the government than institutions committed to learning and research.

"The Heart of Research is Sick" [http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt02/lt_2011_...](http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2011/lt02/lt_2011_02_24_31.pdf)

      Essentially, it's the publication process.  It has become a system of
      collecting counters for particular purposes – to get grants, to get
      tenure, etc. – rather than to communicate and illuminate findings to
      other people.  The literature is, by and large, unreadable.  It's all
      written in a kind of code, with inappropriate data in large amounts,
      and the storyline is becoming increasingly orchestrated by this need
      to publish. We all know it. We all suffer from it. I think the changes
      to the scientific enterprise have been inexorable and progressive. The
      deterioration has been so steady that people don't really realise how
      much things have changed.

<comment><USER11> A problem for many universities is that they don't even really succeed at it. This grant-sucking infrastructure isn't free, and apart from the direct costs of grantwriting / paperwork / etc., universities sometimes even undertake major expenditures with a view towards making themselves more attractive to grants, e.g. tailoring construction or hiring towards grant opportunities, flying people around and hosting events to oil the gears of potential partnerships, etc., etc.

The top research universities pull in enough grants to make that all worth it, but many smaller universities don't ever come out ahead, though they like to pretend they do. There are small schools where they consider it a huge success that they land a $1m NSF grant now and then, but they are almost certainly spending more than $1m every few years to do so. In addition, even when you _do_ land grants, co-financing is becoming more popular, so the university ends up having to kick in even more money in the successful case.

A bit more on that from Georgia Tech's former CS dean: [http://innovate- wwc.com/2011/05/18/if-you-have-to-ask-ten-su...](http://innovate- wwc.com/2011/05/18/if-you-have-to-ask-ten-sure-fire-ways-to-lose-money-on- research/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clicking through to the response from Wiley and Elsevier is interesting.

Wiley: "Naturally, we are concerned that posting the final versions of published articles in Open Access and institutional repositories lacking viable business models may have an adverse impact on the business of scholarly communication."

TL;DR: Universities should continue to pay us, because otherwise we won't make any money.

</comment><comment><USER12> From a student point of view, this is great news. If you don't have a personal subscription to the digital libraries of IEEE/ACM, the amount of hoops that one has to go through to access a research paper, is apalling. I believe that a peer review system used by journals is beneficial, but putting the papers behind a paywall is obstructing access to knowledge.

If anyone has a reference which justifies the paywall charges, please share it.

<comment><USER13> I think "appalling" is a bit of hyperbole. I'm for open access, but students at almost every major university can get all the journal articles they want for free at their library. In addition, many/most school have a proxy system so the student can access these resources from home.

The situation is a lot worse for the general public, although even then many public libraries have subscriptions to the largest journals.

<comment><USER14> _students at almost every major university can get all the journal articles they want for free at their library._

Some of us have finished school and left the academy, but would still like to read an journal article from time to time.

<comment><USER13> movingahead's comment started with "From a student point of view...", and that was the area I was discussing.

<comment><USER14> From context, he appears to mean "one who studies", rather than "one who's in school."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't say how much I like this ban. For so many times since I left school and wanted to read an article or so, and be greeted with "summary" of that article. I don't really need to pay $25, for the fact that the journal may have obtained the copyright and sold it to some journal sites.

We could use some open-source concepts for paper publishing.

<comment><USER16> arxiv.org has >700,000 open access articles in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics. It's a great resource.

The major cost of a journal is the peer review process, editing, and printing. This can really take a substantial portion of someones time. I don't think it justifies a $25 (sometimes over $40) fee to see an article printed 8 years ago though.

<comment><USER4> > The major cost of a journal is the peer review process, editing, and > printing.

Nope, just printing.

Peer review is unpaid. In technical fields, at least, editing these days is done by the author (and/or whoever assists at the author's institution) and sometimes by peer reviewers. With LaTeX being standard, the author even does the great majority of the typesetting work. None of these people are funded by the journal. So you are certainly right about the time required; but the people who spend all this time never see that money.

Now forget the paper version and just put it all on the web, and we see that an academic journal can be run very cheaply indeed.

<comment><USER16> I phrased that poorly. You are absolutely right, peer reviewers are unpaid.

I also have a big problem with the fact that journals receive a perpetual copyright to the work instead of it becoming an open license 6-months to a year after publication.

Returning to the cost issue. The cost I am referring to comes from paying for the software to manage the peer review process and the time it takes to build the relationships to have enough reviewers available to deal with the first submission and the revision that will almost likely occur.

To put out a single issue with 20 articles can easily involve 50 reviewers and at least 40 authors.

It is the social science and humanities journals that have real problems with getting papers ready for print. It's easy to only think about scientific journals but the reality is a great deal of researchers only have sufficient computer skills. They will write a professional paper and do the best they can to format it but it isn't anywhere near ready to send to the printers.

Large journals can easily cover these costs. Small journals are really struggling to get by. I hear small journal editors talking about how long they will be able to survive. They want to make it work but just don't know how.

It's not an easy problem to solve.

<comment><USER15> Having articles edited and organized for peer review would then make users of those materials pay for a large sum is still unjustified, given that the cost of producing the material is largely not paid by the publisher.

You may say that the cost of getting an article for $25 is fair given the amount of work done by the publisher is fair, but the author, to my knowledge (since I am not an author of any sorts) they don't receive any payment due to these transactions. I am noy paying for the editing and publishing, I am only paying for the content (more true to CS / science fields, where TeX stuff are pretty common)

What really need to change is the journal oriented way of publishing papers, we don't need to have stuff printed these days, as far as my university life went, I have only read one or two articles in printed form because I happened to be inside the library.

As much as computerized content goes, layout and stuff are much more automatic, and by providing writers with better and simplier tools, we may be able to save more trees by going digital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem with this approach is that smaller universities can't afford to do this.

I think this problem needs to be adressed at funding agency level, with funding agencies requiring that all publication be made available on the agency's website.

<comment><USER8> +1 to you, but somebody needed to make the first move, and I think most professors at smaller universities would be happy to publish wherever professors at Princeton are publishing.

<comment><USER18> In some fields, I think this may have huge impact. No math or CS journal would want to be unable to accept Princeton publications.

Even if publishers make exemptions rather than change their policies, it sets a precedent that exemptions can be made for institutional requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From Springer's "copyright transer statement": An author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website. He/she may also deposit this version on his/her institution's and funder's repository at the funder request or as a result of a legal obligation...

Many publishers have a similar clause. My institution (a french research institute) also requires me to put my publications on their public repository and it does not create problems for journals in CS.

Non-false title may be "Princeton bans publishers from handling copyright to journal publishers who ban authors from publishing their articles on their website."

<comment><USER20> The key word here is "author-created version". After publication you are allowed to put a preprint version of your manuscript on your website but you can't upload the PDF of your final paper. Most people do that anyway but it's technically not allowed.

Princeton wants to stop this.

<comment><USER21> Again, it varies by publisher. For instance, CUP (at least for the type of journals that I read) allows the author to put up a preprint (before peer review) or a postprint (after review but before editing) on a personal page or the institutional repository immediately on acceptance; once the final version is available on their website (I think), you can also put it up on your own page; and once a year has passed after publication, you can also upload it to the repository. It's not optimal, but it's much better than nothing.

<comment><USER22> It does vary widely from publisher to publisher. Here is a database of publisher policies on this issue: <http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's my understanding that research done at government labs comes with a similar restriction, and that it's been standard practice for years for these researchers to reserve copyright on their publications. If that's true, then this will give Princeton researchers the leverage they need to retain copyright to their publications. Even though there's theoretically a waiver process, I'm going to bet that most authors won't want to go through that process, since the work is more valuable to them if they retain the ability to distribute it themselves.

<comment><USER7> Government employees' work by law is in the public domain:

"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise." (17 U.S.C. § 105)

"A 'work of the United States Government' is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties." (17 U.S.C. § 101)

...although I disagree that the pressure to give away copyright is weak. At least in the life sciences, the prestige you get from a publication in, say, Nature or Science is far more valuable than the work alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _...The policy authors acknowledged that this may make the rule toothless in practice..._

Er, hello? If the policy is just a paper tiger, perhaps that fact should go in the title?

I think this is a great step, but if it's largely symbolic, that's a pretty important part of the story and doesn't deserve to be in paragraph 10

I'm left questioning how much is real and how much is spin, which is not where I want to be as a reader.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sometimes I think the academic publishing mechanisms are broken. It takes so much time for your idea and research to be visible... you write the paper, it get reviewed, presented on a conference, published in journals and then months/years later someone actually sees it.

Compare that to the web, where an elaborate blog post and a project on GitHub is enough to become visible to the entire world within hours.

Percentage wise, how much influence did academic papers have on your day to day work in the last year compared to new stuff you found on the web?

<comment><USER26> Is there any reason why publications can't be publicly available before they are reviewed? The journals could still play the same role, highlighting the most significant publications. I'm not an academic so I'm not familiar with the feedback process between a journal and a paper's author. Is there any reason that any refinements couldn't take place in public. A version of github focused on academic papers would seem like a good model.

<comment><USER27> When a paper fits into one of the categories arXiv accepts, that's more or less what happens (modulo the cranks who claim to prove Riemann's hypothesis every now and then, but that's a whole different topic :)

The difficulty is that some publishers don't allow you to make pdfs of the final versions of papers freely available. Of course, you can always publish draft versions, which is not entirely a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds good, but a truck-sized loophole?

 _In cases where the journal refuses to publish their article without the academic handing all copyright to the publisher, the academic can seek a waiver from the open access policy from the University.

The policy authors acknowledged that this may make the rule toothless in practice but said open access policies can be used "to lean on the journals to adjust their standard contracts so that waivers are not required, or with a limited waiver that simply delays open access for a few months."_

<comment><USER29> Make the application procedure time and effort consuming (Although I can't imagine how university policies could be anything but) and hope to induce researchers to submit to publications that don't require the waiver.

It's a bit unfair to the actual researchers, but if they start putting pressure on the journal publishers -- "Sorry, you've got a high impact factor and I'd love to publish with you, but I can't justify the 2 weeks of fighting with the bureaucracy about a waiver" -- and you might see some progress.

Or their grad students will get another shitty task piled on their list. Hmmmmm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's not as good as the title says. The journal publishers will still own the copyright, they will just have to license some rights to the university.

<comment><USER31> From the article: "academic staff will grant to The Trustees of Princeton University "a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorise others to do the same.""

That means unless a waiver is given, it doesn't matter what the journal does or thinks, the university can publish the material anyway it likes. A compromise of sorts, but the effect is that more people potentially have access.

<comment><USER15> If more universities support this kind of policies, the momentum could break the current problem of priced access to results of research that are not in any way, paid by the journal publishers. As indicated by the article, peer reviewers are not paid for that, and so merely the editors are paid in due course. However, charging for the price of what an article needs, is far from what the cost could really justify itself with.

Just have a thought, do we really need journal publishers these days? It was once a time we don't have any means than print publishing to exchange views, now we have the series of tubes to do so.

<comment><USER32> The main thing the journals produce is prestige.

<comment><USER33> That, and reliability. You're assured that some kind of peer-review happened, at some point, and that some standards were met. What standards, and what kind of peer review, will differ per journal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think there still definitely needs to be some sort of filter for academic research. Probably not the journal system anymore but something has to replace it, as most don't have time to trawl through things of questionable quality in the hope of finding something useful.

<comment><USER35> What I think might be good would be something like this. It's based on the notion that being a good researcher and being good at reading and reviewing research papers are not necessarily the same skill.

1\. Have a place for open publication, like arxiv.org, but with a system of non-anonymous commenting and rating. So if someone puts a paper there, others can comment on it and rate it. Ratings could include several categories, such as clarity, importance, rigor, and so on.

2\. There should be a system to rate the reviewers.

3\. Out of this would emerge a growing collection of reviewers who are recognized as being very good at reviewing papers.

4\. Reviewers would start publishing lists of papers they have recently reviewed, broken down by field.

5\. Scientists would subscribe to these lists from the top reviewers in their field.

6\. Reviewing could become a profession. A researcher who wants to make sure his paper gets attention could pay one or more high rated reviewers to review it. Note that for reviewers it is important to maintain a reputation as an accurate and honest reviewer, which I think would be enough of a safe guard against authors being able to buy good reviews for bad papers.

<comment><USER8> This is a good idea, but I think even something much simpler along these lines would work.

If arXiv allowed for signed comments, then famous people could say as little as "This is an interesting paper, and everyone interested in X should read it", and that would do a lot for the reputations of unknown people who are doing good work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> With much the same effect, MIT and Harvard have demand the right to make available their researcher's publications, with a similar opt-out clause.

The experience is that the opt-out does get used a fair bit in biomed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Princeton is not the first institution to do this, and many publishers have been flexible if you don't want to handle copyright for your work. I think this won't change much because academics are still required to publish in the same journals, and references are made to journal publications instead of web sites. Even today one can easily post papers in their personal website without problems.

<comment><USER2> What other institutions do this?

<comment><USER37> I know about AT&T Labs. There are others with similar requirements, and publishers know this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> LIKE ITS HARVARD MODEL, PRINCETON'S OPEN ACCESS POLICY NEEDS TO ADD AN IMMEDIATE-DEPOSIT REQUIREMENT, WITH NO WAIVER OPTION

[http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/844-guid.h...](http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/844-guid.html)

1\. First, congratulations to Princeton University (my graduate alma mater!) for adopting an open access mandate: a copyright-reservation policy, adopted by unanimous faculty vote.

2\. Princeton is following in the footsteps of Harvard in adopting the copyright-reservation policy pioneered by Stuart Shieber and Peter Suber.

4\. I hope that Princeton will now also follow in the footsteps of Harvard by adding an immediate-deposit requirement with no waiver option to its copyright-reservation mandate, as Harvard has done.

5\. The Princeton copyright-reservation policy, like the Harvard copyright- reservation policy, can be waived if the author wishes: This is to allow authors to retain the freedom to choose where to publish, even if the journal does not agree to the copyright-reservation.

6\. Adding an immediate-deposit clause, with no opt-out waiver option, retains all the properties and benefits of the copyright-reservation policy while ensuring that all articles are nevertheless deposited in the institutional repository upon publication, with no exceptions: Access to the deposited article can be embargoed, but deposit itself cannot; access is a copyright matter, deposit is not.

7\. Depositing all articles upon publication, without exception, is crucial to reaching 100% open access with certainty, and as soon as possible; hence it is the right example to set for the many other universities worldwide that are now contemplating emulating Harvard and Princeton by adopting open access policies of their own; copyright reservation alone, with opt-out, is not.

8\. The reason it is imperative that the deposit clause must be immediate and without a waiver option is that, without that, both when and whether articles are deposited at all is indeterminate: With the added deposit requirement the policy is a mandate; without it, it is just a gentleman/scholar's agreement.

[Footnote: Princeton's open access policy is also unusual in having been adopted before Princeton has created an open access repository for its authors to deposit in: It might be a good idea to create the repository as soon as possible so Princeton authors can get into the habit of practising what they pledge from the outset...]

Stevan Harnad EnablingOpenScholarship</comment>


Ask HN: Why do websites ignore my use desktop version preference - <AUTHOR>

When using my mobile, a WP7 HTC Trophy, I set my browser to as default load websites in their desktop version. This usually works 9 times out of 10 but I sometimes find the site will display a mobile version anyway. Why does this happen? Is it done on purpose or by sloppy coding?<p>Is there some kind of special header for requesting a mobile version of a website or do they just use the user-agent? <comment><USER2> I haven't looked to deeply into how they would figure it out, but (for example) porn sites often do this because they let you stream for free on the desktop but want to charge you on their mobile version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's more purposeful then.

I know Youtube does it, but I think they do it on purpose because the desktop version wouldn't work at all on my phone because it doesn't support flash.

Surprisingly Google sends me to their mobile site by default. I don't really see what they have to gain from doing that? My phone handles the desktop version really well and I have access to all the other extras that come with it. I don't think Google would have been so sloppy to have done it by accident.

<comment><USER2> Google may give different results for their mobile browser and have longer term plans for SPFY type enhancements that take into account that you're using a mobile device.

I also think the mobile version would use fewer resources per search than the full featured, desktop search with Google Instant.

Advertisers may also want to be able to target mobile users vs. desktop users separately.</comment></comment></comment>


Americans Are Moving at the Lowest Rate on Record - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/american-workers-moving-states-.html <comment><USER2> I'm kind of surprised the article didn't mention the role of dual-income households. For generations, a single income was the norm and generally able to provide a better quality of life (by standards like home size, discretionary spending, etc...) than your parents' generation.

Over time, two incomes went from providing far more than a family needed to being a practical necessity in many markets. I can't imagine buying the type of home I'd like to live in on even my relatively high (by national standards) Bay Area salary alone, and yet many families still choose to live here.

Once a family relies on two incomes just to pay the rent, it becomes harder to pick up and move to a different part of the country unless both partners can do it at the same time. Even intra-county moves are more difficult when two partners are working full-time and don't want to deal with the stresses of moving on top of their regular jobs.

Maybe the pendulum will swing back as a result of changing expectations (about where to live, how much home to buy, what kind of job you need to have), or maybe remote work will save us all and let us move out of the expensive areas where our jobs are. But for now, I think the rise of the dual-income household is among the biggest factors keeping us in place.

<comment><USER3> > I'm kind of surprised the article didn't mention the role of dual-income > households

The number of single/no earner households has actually increased since 1980.

If you look at Table H-12. Household by Number of Earners by Median and Mean Income [0], you'll see in 1980 the percentage of households that have 2+ earners was ~44%, and now its ~40% and has steadily decreased over that time.

I made it into a google sheet:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Vm8d-XTuGu_ilbK0xn_r...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Vm8d-XTuGu_ilbK0xn_rlyCN151cMmv9YKzp9dHK8s8/edit?usp=sharing)

[0] [https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time- series/demo/income-p...](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time- series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html)

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting point and worth looking in to more. Thanks for making it a Google sheet (I don't have Excel.)

I'm no demographer, but my intuition is that the shift from 44% to 40% is not likely due to an increase in single-income households that are also buying homes. I think over the last 30 years that number would get squeezed a bit on both ends:

* Boomers are retiring causing some dual-income households to become 0-income households. Indeed, the proportion of 0-income households has gone up about 4% over the same period.

* Millenials are marrying later, causing them to be reported as "single income households" far later in life than in previous generations. For instance, I'm still single at an age when my father owned a home and had 3 kids (on a single income). As mentioned previously, I'm in no position to buy a home right now.

While I constitute a "household" under the census designation, my original comment was more referring to a traditional marriage or domestic partnership that would be in the market to buy a home. If we could normalize the data to such couples (say working-age partners in a relationship) I think we'd see the trend of dual-income households that matches my anecdotal observations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Real estate is so overpriced now, and so difficult to purchase that it's no wonder that people want to stay where they are once they find a place that they can actually afford. It almost feels like the choices are stay or be homeless.

I recently decided to move to a new state on the other side of the country, purely because of the low cost of real estate there. It feels like the tipping point was recently reached, and having zero opportunity to have the place I wanted in Utah or California, pushed me to look elsewhere. Elsewhere being Arkansas.

<comment><USER5> Everyone is talking about healthcare, but I think affordable housing needs to be the next big public issue to tackle. It seems like this is acting as a lever in wealth inequality, since less and less young people are even able to imagine owning a home in their lifetime, and many in the position to buy treat it as an investment instrument, and thus have the incentive to drive the price up rapidly, putting it farther out of reach of everyone else.

I'm not against profit, but with something like housing which is a fundamental need, it seems like some effort must be made to build a system which makes it attainable for average people.

<comment><USER6> The country is made up mainly of affordable housing. It's certain areas that are so expensive because you're competing with many high earning professionals. In many cases a pair of them.

Not everyone can live in NYC or SF.

Saying that, people need to consider the low interest world we live in. When their parents bought their home years ago, the interest rate was very likely 10% or higher. Today it's 3.5% and even lower. This drives prices up. The biggest issue is getting a down payment.

I believe a combination of lower standard down payments and new mortgage terms of 40-50 years would make housing more attainable for a lot of people. I also agree, more development is needed.

<comment><USER7> > not everyone can live in NYC or SF

Reads more like "naturally the poor should be displaced from wherever the rich choose to live" considering that both cities have been heavily gentrified. There's a lot more than just higher income couples putting pressure on the market, there is a lot of distortion coming from developers seeking to squeeze every penny of margin from the jump in prices

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Vienna, for example, has tons of public housing which is affordable and is also a nice place to live. You can achieve that, even in a capital, if you have the political will to make it a reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In California you have Prop 13 causing people to stay put. If you bought a house anywhere close to the coast more than 6 years ago you've likely seen 50-100% in value increase. Therefore if you move you'd pay that same increase proportionally in property tax.

In addition you have 6% Realtors fees to sell plus staging and being out of the house for open houses etc. the math just doesn't add up.

<comment><USER9> > 6% realtors fee

I have a feeling that will get automated away in the next 5-10 years something fierce. More than it already is being by Redfin, etc.

Realtors don't deserve more than $25-40/hr in most cases, let alone 6% of my home value.

<comment><USER10> On avg they make $24.18/hr, so $25-40 would actually be a pay bump.

[https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/real-estate-brokers-and- sales-...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/real-estate-brokers-and-sales- agents.htm)

<comment><USER11> That's because most of those hours are inefficient A lot of time spent coordinating meetings and walking with people showing the things they could see/read themselves. In most cases you only really need realtor at the very end, after you spend lots of hours seeing or showing homes, and now it's time to make the deal. It's not 1980s anymore, you can use internet to search for places yourself or to advertise your property yourself. If you remove those inefficient hours, there should be 5x less realtors but they might earn more and do better job.

<comment><USER12> And those 5x less realtors will pay far higher taxes to pay for UBI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone once said, "A one-way trip to Mars would actually be okay if it had smoking-hot Wi-Fi." Do you think that the Internet has made people feel more content, wherever they are?

<comment><USER14> I think that is a mixed bag. I think it is really easy to feel objectively worse about your surroundings because if you are poor, you more easily see how much your are missing. You are continually surrounded by images of folks who have enough space, who are lucky enough to own a place, whose place looks clean when they clean (you can't always clean the cockroaches away nor paint away the dingy walls).

But on the other hand, you are more likely to be able to keep in touch with people. You are more likely to have some entertainment without leaving the house. You are more likely to be able to fix the loose table leg with the basic, cheap tools that you have or mend your clothes if you need really need to. When I was poorer, I would eat cheaper food to be able to afford internet just because it could distract me from my life. If you are lucky enough to have some weed as well, it makes for a much more comfortable life, even if imperfect. (Weed/hash makes me more OK with what I have and I can generally afford it before I could afford a monthly, steady rise in general household bills).

In other words: Only if you have a certain life satisfaction in the beginning.

I think the quote about mars is more indicative of the entertainment and communication that the internet brings and its innate ability to help time pass more quickly.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure about that. A lot of friends from poor families that couldn't get out are turning to suicide or the drugs that will lead them to it eventually. This era is likely the worse one for the poor.

<comment><USER14> I did mention weed/hash, and explained the effects it has on life. Alcoholism is an option, but harder drugs generally are more expensive. A lot of poor folks don't do drugs simply because they can't afford them.

IIRC, poor folks do drugs at the same rate as better off folks, though. Sometimes you are more likely to get caught because of the situations you use them in... plus the businessman has more to lose so tends to be more secluded unless you are trusted.

As far as worse, I don't know, man. The depression was pretty bad. The 1800's were pretty bad. The US is worse than Norway, just because of the lack of safety net, and both of these places are better than anywhere facing near- famine or actual active war. And so on. It is really hard to say, "worse".

<comment><USER16> > Alcoholism is an option, but harder drugs generally are more expensive.

Are you sure? In my experience, a tab of acid costs $5-10, and the effects last about 5 hours. That's way cheaper than alcohol. [1] shows a breakdown of cost per hour for a bunch of drugs I've never touched, and most of them look to be pretty cheap under this metric. Compared to movies, sitting around in coffee shops, etc., they're remarkably cheaper than a lot of legal forms of entertainment.

[1] [https://www.addictionresource.net/blog/cost-of-illegal- drugs...](https://www.addictionresource.net/blog/cost-of-illegal-drugs/)

<comment><USER14> For occasional use, drugs give a lot of bang for the buck. I've met lots of folks doing them recreationally from time to time, but 1) it isn't just low- income folks and 2) Some personalities just pass completely, and lots of folks 'grow out' of some of them. I certainly have done more drugs, both illicit and legal, when I've had spending money compared to when I didn't. And then, it was generally a bottle of $5 wine. I can have a glass or two after work but certainly not drop acid after work and expect to go to work in the morning. You can quote that 5 hours, sure, but you probably need to have 8 hours free. (I have _lots_ of experience with acid: I have completely lost track at how many hits I've done over the years).

There is also difference between that sort of recreational use and addiction, though. Even if you do acid as much as possible for it to really be effective, you aren't doing it that much. Heroin? Sure. Alcohol? Definitely.

And it depends on, say, the type of alcohol you buy. When I lived in the states, I worked at a pharmacy for years. We regularly sold a half gallon of vodka (and whiskey, gin, etc) for $10 or less. now, I don't know about you, but I could get me and a few friends pretty drunk from that one bottle. Heck, we could get fairly drunk on less than that - a 750ml bottle would do pretty well with 2-4 of us. Plus, alcohol is readily available. Not everyone knows where to get illicit substances, nor is everyone willing to risk losing their children over it. Acid carries a fairly tough penalty and your price is per person. Per experience. Isn't always available, even to those that use lots, unless you are in the right part of the world in a large enough city. There is a liquor store in most towns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I want to move, so badly. It's been my singular goal for over a year now and I've cut back my spending nearly entirely except for rent+groceries to try to save up enough to do so, and I've sold most of my belongings to save more and make the eventual move easier. Moving is what I think about when I wake up and before I go to sleep.

I have severe seasonal affective disorder and pretty bad driving anxiety. I've seen mental health professionals for both of these and everyone's just said I should move. I have cognitive techniques for both of these that help a little, and been recommended medications to help, but really the solution is to move and be car-free. On days where I don't have to drive and it's above 65F outside, I genuinely feel like a totally different person.

The only place in the US where you can be a first-class citizen without a car and feel the sun every day is San Francisco. It's a nice bonus that SF is a fantastic place to be a hardware engineer too. I've been on a plan of sending out 10-15 applications every week for about a year and have at least 1 phone interview each week. I've been in the interview pipeline with around 60 companies over the past year, and so far received zero offers. Usually it's "we're looking for someone already local".

If it ever happens, getting a job in SF and moving there will have been the hardest thing I've ever done. My bank account is at $13k now, so once it hits $20k I'm just going to risk it and move without a job.

<comment><USER18> If you want sun and warmth you should do San Diego, not San Fran.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. I am also carless, but I wouldn't want to move to San Fran. as it's much too expensive.

You should for sure consider other places in Cali. like San Diego, which has perfectly good public transit, but I would also consider the DC area, Austin, Chapel Hill (free and frequent bus service), etc.

<comment><USER17> Thanks. I've thought about San Diego a lot, but I heard from a friend that it's incredibly car-centric there. Good to hear another perspective.

<comment><USER20> Same in Austin. Don't go there if you are looking for a walkable place. I can't even take my dog for a walk to a nice place.

<comment><USER21> There are very walkable parts of Austin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Moving isn't always a good thing. Maybe in the past it simply represented high search costs. The only way an Okie could find out if California was the right home for them was to pack up and actually move there. You get to Sacramento and decide that's not right for you, so a year later you move to Fresno.

Nowadays you go online and can research local economies, local hiring, local real estate, local churches, etc. You're more likely to move fewer times.

</comment><comment><USER23> Consider mergers, aside from the very small number of people working in coastal tech jobs, its not like an insurance guy working in Des Moines at an insurance company HQ can consider moving to, perhaps, Milwaukee Wisconsin, because due to endless mergers there is less competition meaning fewer jobs meaning fewer jobs to move to.

On the opposite side, if you've got a contractor / gig job, other than the weather during the commute, it doesn't really matter if you move to a new city. You might have to move inside a city for demographic socioeconomic change reasons. Outside very few fields temporarily, the job market is efficient and being a car salesman in kentucky isn't any better than being a car salesman in rhode island, other than very general stuff like weather and quality of life and affordability is somewhat better away from the coasts and similar things probably not worth moving for.

<comment><USER24> >being a car salesman in kentucky isn't any better than being a car salesman in rhode island

Have you worked as a car salesman in either of those places?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The US is an aging nation. Old people don't move. For millennial, they have a tough starting position and a long time to wait until the corporate hierarchies above them clear out from the surplus of boomer management. It makes sense that they must "wait their turn" for a longer time than in the past.

<comment><USER26> The boomer management you refer to were likely the elite of their time, as they could afford to get an advanced degree when it wasn't common. These days you need a Bachelor's for just about any entry-level office job.

There aren't enough jobs for all the degree-holders out there. That's why higher education gets hit with the "scam" allegations. They're selling a vision of higher lifetime incomes that was true 25 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oh man, I'm going through a real mental tug-of-war with myself right now about a potential move. In my late 30s, married, newborn. I have an incredible job right now in almost every way. But we live in an area that neither of us love, right at the time we are finally thinking about actually putting down roots (I've moved a lot in the last 15 years).

I have an opportunity to move "back home" where my family and my lifelong friends are. The job would be good enough, though certainly not as great as my current one. Wife works remotely so it doesn't matter for her. That's a major bonus as I make this consideration.

This is a tough one, moving for personal/family desires vs. a better work environment. I'd actually be downgrading my work life. And we're not unhappy where we live, just not thriving and it isn't long term for us.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you sell your house you have to move farther out from the city to afford something nice.

</comment><comment><USER29> Surely remote working has had at least some impact?

<comment><USER30> Probably not as much as needing to stay close to family for childcare. Childcare is hella expensive.

<comment><USER31> Or insufficient / unsatisfying. In Berlin, the day care is paid by the city for all children older than 1 year. But I still plan to move away (to the countryside) to be closer to family, regardless of financial benefits.

<comment><USER32> that may work for some people. I prefer to not pay for other people's childcare costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a remote worker, I would move to the cheapest area while still collecting big city money. Sadly I'm sitting on a future gold mine that I won't sell until it triples in value, which it's half way there in under 3 years of ownership.

<comment> blaser-waffle As a remote worker, I've done this. Mixed bag.

Rural Alberta is far cheaper than, say, Vancouver, but it also means I'm married to the remote gig. Freelancing is an option, but that's very hard remotely -- in-person networking is effective, as is word of mouth, and that's hard to get a timezone away -- and it leaves me beholden to my current job.</comment></comment>


Surface: Microsoft, What the Hell is Wrong With You? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/surface-microsoft-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you/20599

<comment><USER2> This article doesn't seem to have any meat that wasn't discussed by the HN community on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4129125></comment>


Install EMACS 16.1 on Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://www.admintome.com/blog/install-emacs-16-1-on-ubuntu/ <comment><USER2> I thought it was going to be some sort of archeology to show how systems have changed since 16.1, so that the normal configure/make/make install from the 1990s needs some tweaking.

Instead, it's a typo. It does a download, configure, make, install using the source for _26.1_ , not _16.1_. The typo of "16.1" instead of "26.1" occurs in the title and in the text.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i screwed up big time. no more posting in the middle of the night for me. i appologize. i have removed the post and corrected everything.</comment></comment>


China's hard power and hurt feelings – Nikkei Asian Review - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/China-s-hard-power-and-hurt-feelings <comment><USER2> For quite some time, popular media has been the West's strongest weapon, influencing people the world over with (mostly) American ideals through Hollywood and -later- Internet. Recently, this powerful machine has been turned against its makers, with Russia pouncing on click-bait happy news sites and social media, and China buying their influence in main stream media. But free media has become such a big part of Western identity, I wonder if there is an easy way out of this. Expecting the large corporations involved to police/defend themselves is definitely not the answer.

<comment><USER3> I don't see a problem with this. It helps weed out problems inherent to the current way of open media.</comment></comment>


MinaOTP Shell – TOTP authenticator implemented as a terminal tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MinaOTP/MinaOTP-Shell <comment><USER2> Isn't that just dangerous to keep all secrets unencrypted on your drive?...</comment>


Who are North Korea's 13 Twitter friends? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reviewmylife.co.uk/blog/2010/10/07/north-korea-13-twitter-friends/ Who are the 13 Twitter users that North Korea has chosen to follow using their official uriminzok Twitter account? <comment><USER2> If I recall correctly, authorizing TwitPic makes you automatically follow @TwitPic and @noaheverett.

<comment><USER3> This is interesting. How do people feel about this forced following?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that it's not a verified account.

<comment><AUTHOR> The account's authenticity is confirmed by the BBC - <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11007825>

<comment><USER5> Your linked article is not really a "confirmation": the BBC talked to a professor from Tufts University who says that the government is behind the account. Alternatively, Forbes talked to Alejandro Cao de Benos (a Spaniard who runs the "Korean Friendship Association": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Cao_de_Benos_de_Les_y...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Cao_de_Benos_de_Les_y_P%C3%A9rez) ), who claimed that the government has nothing to do with it: [http://blogs.forbes.com/taylorbuley/2010/08/23/north- korea-t...](http://blogs.forbes.com/taylorbuley/2010/08/23/north-korea-tells- forbes-that-its-not-using-twitter-facebook-or-youtube/)

I think the most that we can say is that the evidence is inconclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While is hasn't been verified, it has certainly fallen afoul of South Korean censors. I'm currently staying in Korea and I'm greeted with this <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/295167/warning.png> I'd say there is a decent chance that this is real.

</comment><comment><USER7> First CNN Turns twitter into national news, now we try and make Twitter international news?

This article says nothing useful about North Korea except that they like people with similar interests (surprise).

</comment><comment><USER8> The last North Korean Twitter account to get social media attention was fake, why wouldn't this one be?

They don't have the internet in North Korea.

</comment><comment><USER9> Would be funny to see all the world politicians befriend each other on social networks - world peace!?

<comment><USER10> All the museums are friends! <http://twitter.com/smithsonian>

<comment><USER11> And all the cats: <http://twitter.com/Mulder_Cat> (random cat from search results).

I found it really funny when I discovered those animal subsets of Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if Alec Baldwin and the other members of the Film Actors Guild feel slighted at being passed over?</comment>


Craftsmanship–The Alternative to the Four Hour Work Week Mindset - <AUTHOR> http://dantawfik.com/craftsmanship-the-alternative-to-the-four-hour-work-week-mindset <comment><AUTHOR> To be successful over the course of a career requires the application and accumulation of expertise. This assumes that for any given undertaking you either provide expertise or you are just a bystander. It's the experts that are the drivers—an expertise that is gained from a curiosity, and a mindset of treating one's craft very seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my favorite quotes

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> 'I didn't know how to do x, so I just had to figure it out.' This is what I regularly hear from successful founders, whereas 'I couldn't find someone to do X, so I had to reconsider whether to pursue it at all' is a common refrain from unsuccessful founders.</comment>


92,857 BTC (1,092,603,630 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1291395650421219330 <comment><USER2> I doubt businesses like it when others can see their financial transfers.

In other news: An unknown amount of Monero was transfered from an unknown wallet to an unknown wallet.

</comment><comment><USER3> >I'm not sure why we keep doing this.

>This is not a Xapo wallet anymore, this is a BitGo custodial wallet for Bitstamp's cold storage that was migrated October 2019 and you can trace the coins from there.

</comment><comment><USER4> A billion dollars controlled by a single private key. Makes me nervous to even think about. I wonder how it's sharded/backed up/secured.

It's worth it for an attacker to spend a million dollars for a 0.1% chance of stealing access.

<comment><USER5> A company I know of uses modified laptops across multiple locations and each one has a shard of the key.

Chipsets are removed. Disabling all USB / bluetooth / ethernet / sound / etc. I dont recall the exact details but apparently there is a market for devices like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the point in using a decentralized exchange medium if you're ultimately storing your money in a centralized exchange and giving them nearly the same level of power over your money as a bank?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it possible to securely transfer bitcoin offline?

Like if someone hands you a thumb drive and says "this contains a key for a $1m wallet", you don't know if they kept a copy of the key. But is there some mechanism whereby it could be guaranteed that you have the only copy?

<comment><USER8> No, if the transfer is offline, there can be no guarantees that the same person didn't try to double spend by transferring the same funds to someone else (unless you involve a trusted third party).

<comment><USER9> I assume the question is "can you do all the transaction signing offline" before actually posting it.

E.g.

1\. Pull current BTC hash/tree/whatever-is-needed-in-a-transaction copy onto usb stick

2\. Transfer that data to machine with account key via a usb stick or some other connection that has no external communication

3\. Use that information to generate the transaction

4\. Copy the transaction to the connected machine - a photo of the transaction text on screen even :)

5\. Push the transaction out

6\. Destroy the intermediate storage devices

Would that work?

<comment><USER10> That's basically what a hardware wallet like ledger or trezor is.

<comment><USER11> Unless the seed was used elsewhere / in another similar device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Probably exchange to exchange cold wallets etc

<comment><USER9> Yeah how much do the big exchanges manage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is the USD valuation really correct though? I doubt anyone could sell that amount, and not affect the exchange rate drastically.

</comment><comment><USER14> Time to cash in from the recent pump & dump?

</comment><comment><USER15> Trying to liquify that into dollars all at once would show the world how valuable BTC really is.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ok but what'd they do with rest of it?

</comment><comment><USER17> Putin?

<comment><USER18> It's deff some oligarch or major business entity.

<comment><USER19> Satoshi Nakamoto!

<comment><USER20> Definitiv not. We know what coins are Sakamotos and if they moved the news would be bigger.</comment></comment></comment></comment>