Thorium nuclear reactors: a possible solution of the energy crisis? (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeM-Dyuk6g <comment><USER2> I've studied this for years and haven't found any credible reason why we couldn't do this today.

But there are a lot of forces allied against Thorium in both the government, energy companies and the current nuclear industry.

Senator Hatch (R) Utah with support from Harry Reid (D) Nevada has introduced a bill annually for five years to fund $200 million to research to commercialize Thorium power. Yet every year the bill never even gets voted on.

[http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=releases&Cont...](http://hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=releases&ContentRecord_id=25d9273f-1b78-be3e-e03d-75506902df40&ContentType_id=7e038728-1b18-46f4-bfa9-f4148be94d19)

What is stopping Google itself from funding this I don't know? Our country should make this a major initiative similar to the race to the moon and get us off coal, oil and gas.

<comment><USER3> Another data point:

Even in India (which has 25% of world's Thorium reserves), it is a mystery to many, as to why the Govt. chose not to invest more heavily in Thorium based research, rather than going for traditional ones.

Edit: grammar.

<comment><USER4> India seems to only go for technologies that foreign companies have developed. Guess why? Kick backs are a nice way of living the good life. This, even as recent hikes in fuel prices across the country are putting paid to the dreams of a growing economy.

<comment><USER5> You guys must be kidding: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5DiTPw3dk>

<comment><USER4> I would love to see this being scaled up and put into production. I've been hearing about thorium reactors for the last 20 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is project pursued by many[1]. The main hurdles are:

1\. political [2], which Kirk mentions (it is no coincidence, that the pellets that the rods contain are as standard as the NATO bullet) -- the industry and power has a very different interest

2\. technical: Kirk always mentions, that the fuel is not solid. It is liquid. The latter means, that you do have higher concerns about corrosiveness, hence (useful) reactor lifetime...

Also, the issue of scale, which tends to lie between 1. and 2. Uranium "won", because you got the real stuff with it (weapons as in actual projection of power, or the capability of threat to project power) and because you could make it work on a massive scale (current reactors are an order of magnitude larger than any LFTR design, and capitalism is based on the leverage of and concentration of power).

[1] <http://energyfromthorium.com/>

<http://www.thorenergy.no/>

<http://thoriumenergy.com.au/>

... besides China, India, France and (even) Czechs.

[2] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom....](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/03/a_is_for_atom.html) -> see Seaborg interview part

<comment><USER7> Corrosion is one of the main objections people bring up, given that the fuel is a liquid salt. Sorenson says there's an alloy that solves the problem.

<comment><USER6> I do not think that corrosion is the showstopper.

It rather seems to be the lack of irresponsible megalomania, which actually fuelled the GE/Westinghouse frenzy. And I can hardly blame anybody for the lack of it, because for all the better... Our planet has became smaller in the last 50 years, and running (tea)pot operations would be a tough sell, even on Fox. But obviously (offshore) oils rigs and gas are no better either, though people are still happy with oil running their cars and data-centres.

But useful lifetime/economics of scale/TCO does matter, because ROI in the strict and sole monetary sense is the only metric of success. Note, that most reactors have been rubber-stamped to operate beyond their design lifetime.

<comment><USER6> Watch Seaborg and some engineers from ex-USSR above before downvoting without reasoning.

And imagine the powerlines in a play, where Seaborg himself feels he can only act as a puppet -- randian rationalism doesn't work in society. (I do not agree/disagree with all of the comments above, just note)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your argument. Case closed.

you see now too -- the alloy is not the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hear a lot about the LFTR, and I wonder what the problem is. Is there a major technical hurdle that prevents this from seeing widespread use?

Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes a really good idea never gets used because... well... because nobody really picks it up and runs with it. It's that simple sometimes.

But sometimes there's some hidden gotcha.

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that building the reactors are significantly more expensive. So until the price of Uranium increases enough to justify the total cost of the Thorium reactors, we won't see many of them outside research settings.

The other issue is building a new reactor of any type right now is a giant pain in the ass, which doesn't help either.

<comment><USER7> Thorium reactors should be quite a bit cheaper. Light-water reactors operate at 160 atmospheres of pressure. They need a very strong reactor vessel, which currently can only be forged by a single facility in Japan. They need a large containment dome because if a pipe breaks, that high-pressure water will flash into steam with a thousand times the volume. They use lots of redundant emergency active cooling mechanisms. Some of them have giant slabs of ice inside the containment dome, which reduce the volume of steam if it's released but have to be constantly refrigerated, to keep them frozen in close proximity to a nuclear reactor core.

LWRs are resupplied every year with expensive fabricated fuel rods, which are non-standard and can only be purchased from the company that sold the reactor. The fuel rods are complicated because they have to withstand a thousand-degree temperature gradient, and the fuel pellets are prone to cracking from the production of xenon gas. Xenon and other reaction products prevent the use of more than one percent or so of the energy potential of the nuclear fuel, another reason the rods are frequently replaced, and the reason we have so much nasty nuclear waste.

The nuclear industry makes most of its revenue from selling those fuel rods.

LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure. No super-strong steel, no containment dome, no ice. It's a liquid fuel, so no proprietary fuel rods. Xenon just bubbles out of it.

The fuel has a strong "negative coefficient," meaning the reaction slows down as it gets hotter. If it nevertheless gets too hot, a salt plug melts and all the fuel drains into a passive cooling tank. No need for all those active cooling systems.

On top of that, LFTRs operate at higher temperature, so the turbine is more efficient, and the waste heat can be used to desalinate seawater. They don't require water cooling. As a bonus, marketable reaction products can be separated from the liquid fuel (<http://flibe-energy.com/products/>).

Misguided government regulation is the main problem, but Sorenson's company plans to get around that by selling to the military first.

<comment><USER10> "Misguided government regulation is the main problem, but Sorenson's company plans to get around that by selling to the military first."

Sorry but is this subtle irony? My apologies if it's not, I don't know anything about this field. It just seems weird that the military wouldn't be subject to the same regulations that the govt. sets? Or in the US are the military able to ignore some of the regulations around this?

<comment><USER7> The NRC has no authority over nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines. The military's stuff is classified, and it does its own regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I go to school at Boston University and took an Energy class with a Nobel Laureate in physics, Sheldon Glashow, last semester. He spoke in great depth about Thorium reactors, and is very supportive of the technology.

One of the main hurdles is that we have poured money into our modern-day reactors, and have constructed hundreds of plants. If we were to switch to thorium, we would have to essentially start from scratch - new research, new plant designs, new training, etc. It is very difficult to justify a complete switch from uranium, as it would be incredibly costly.

In other countries, however, thorium reactors could be very beneficial. Countries using thorium would not be able to produce nuclear weapons, which would give the world great peace of mind. This could minimize risks in unstable countries - we wouldn't worry if Iran was building a thorium reactor, for example.

There are also other types of reactor designs that use nuclear waste to create power. I believe our nuclear future lies with these types of reactors, rather than with uranium or thorium.

<comment><USER7> Don't switch from uranium. Switch from coal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since India has a lot of Thorium, they are actively pursuing it. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5DiTPw3dk&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5DiTPw3dk&feature=related)

</comment><comment><USER13> Just use CANDU reactors, it will burn raw uranium, and can use the waste product from PWR reactors, just leave the thorium in the raw uranium. It's been working for years, no Yucca mountain, Yucca mountain is a purely US phenomena, it doesn't exist in Canada or France. It's not a new technology, it's 60 years old. All you need is a little heavy water, and in event of a meltdown you just flood the tank with regular water and voila no reactions.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor>

Here's the fuel cycle for a CANDU reactor which will support the thorium cycle as well. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CANDU_fuel_cycles.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER7> For anyone who wants to delve into this more deeply, Sorenson's videos ([http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/06/04/adventures-with- gord...](http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/06/04/adventures-with-gordon/)) are really great. I recently watched the two-hour one, which was edited from a longer talk to cut out the pauses. It's a rapid-fire, passionate technical introduction that I found very compelling.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any plans to build a reactor somewhere?

I fear that mere engineering heavy talking has no chance solving nuclear's PR problem.

Actually building a reactor might help. Maybe. Maybe not.

<comment><USER15> Maybie with the generational shift things will change. For USA's sakes, let's hope it won't be too late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the world was serious about nuclear non-proliferation, we would have thorium reactors everywhere already. They said a few times in the video that thorium reactors can't be used for weapons, and so they are not built. Governments have decided that we need nukes, so thorium reactors do not get funding.

But if we are serious about non-proliferation, then switching to thorium reactors and controlling which new reactors get built is a much more effective strategy then the current weapon-counting efforts. Once a reactor is built and starts creating fissile material, then it is difficult to keep track of and control. But it is much harder to hide a reactor while you are building it - Iran tried and failed.

So it seems to me that thorium reactors, in addition to their efficiency, low cost and low amount of radioactive waste, could also be a useful tool in enforcing nuclear non-proliferation. We've got these reactors that cannot be used to make bombs - why don't we sign treaties saying that they are the only reactors that can be built?

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I read an American company is trying to make one in the north of Chile. It's because they really need energy (they're currently using coal and _diesel_ to keep the lights on in the north) and there's not a whole lot of bio-anything to protect there. I think it's a great idea, but a lot of people don't.

</comment><comment><USER17> This cutted version feels like none of these persons said anything that is in the video, because the statements (or even words) are "out of context". I just can _assume_ the author of the video has good intentions and did not change the context.

<comment><USER18> Here are the original videos:

The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor: What Fusion Wanted To Be <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8>

Aim High: Using Thorium Energy to Address Environmental Problems <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgKfS74hVvQ>

Lessons for the Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (from history) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thus video just gave me something to research for the next few days.

</comment><comment><USER20> You can still make bombs from the thorium cycle, with U233.

<comment><USER21> Many people claim you can't, due to fact it's generally a mixture of U232 as well, which will decay rapidly and cook your detonator/firing mechanism, but a couple of interesting comments I found suggest a liquid fuel would be amenable to continuous separation:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2011/03/question...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2011/03/question.html#comment-80043)

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2011/03/question...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2011/03/question.html#comment-80243)

The MET test of Operation Teapot being the first example of a successful U233 firing: <http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Teapot.html>

<comment><USER22> The MET test was not a pure U-233 design, it was a mixture of Pu-239 and U-233, it also had 1/3 lower yield than the equivalent design using U-235.

<comment><USER21> Ah, thanks, I didn't notice the 'mixed U/Pu' bit originally.

On the second point, not only was it 1/3 of the equivalent (and specified) 235 design, it was also 1/3 less than predicted for itself, if I'm reading it correctly. I wonder if that was an error in the prediction, or a fault of the weapon/design.

I've forgotten most of the nuclear chemistry involved in producing Pu, but iirc it can be done with natural uranium and a neutron source. But then again, if you have those, and can produce plutonium, why not just use that? Maybe it'd be helpful as a filler if you've got some, and only limited Pu resources, or to simplify weapon design (Any idea if the MET was gun-type or implosion- type, sources being unsurprisingly hard to find)?

<comment><USER22> The MET test was odd, the military wanted a highly dialed in yield to test effects of nuclear weapons but somehow there was a miscommunication and they ended up using U-233 as a replacement for U-235 as an experiment. We really don't have enough information about how well U-233 might work in a nuclear weapon to make a judgment on the subject.

Anywho, in regards to the larger point, I discussed the issue in another comment, here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723675>

Basically, proliferation concerns transition entirely to the honor system once someone is operating any sort of fission based reactor, even one powered by Thorium. Since it is quite easy to breed Plutonium merely by placing natural (and readily available) U-238 in a high neutron flux environment. Simply remove your Uranium samples every 90 days or so and chemically separate out the Plutonium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Kirk Sorenson on Dr kiki's Science Hour: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEpnpyd-jbw>

</comment><comment><USER24> the UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) undertook a recent independent assessment, in which it assessed a number of claims made by proponents of thorium fuel. The report can be found at: <http://www.nnl.co.uk/positionpapers>

<comment><USER25> I would be deeply skeptical about position papers from the UK, British Nuclear Fuel are a massive, partly government owned company that makes a lot of money from reprocessing. The government started dismantling BFNL into private companies one of which is is the NNL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Slightly off topic, but could thorium be used for vehicle propulsion? as in nuclear submarines or even better: space craft? if the payload is efficient enough, it could solve the issues we have with getting rockets into space (fuel is heavy, and costly to transport).

</comment><comment><USER27> Tailor made idea for the "reverse VC pitch"

VC >> find engineers >> provide $$ >> GO.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can I look forward to a Google thorium salt reactor in the near future?

</comment><comment><USER29> text > video

<comment> texas-saluki I think the video is really interesting but it seems strange that it is highly edited and sliced together? Whenever I see something so hacked together I question the context that some of the message was cut out to benefit someones agenda

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have a whole lot of related links here making the case for thorium: [http://webwanderings.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/thorium- based-...](http://webwanderings.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/thorium-based-energy- is-the-answer/)</comment>


Creating Your Resume Using LaTeX - <AUTHOR> http://maxburstein.com/blog/creating-resume-using-latex/

<comment><USER2> great article.</comment>


Reinventing the Inbox (features Xobni) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/117050

<comment><USER2> I don't want to sound too whiney, but I told them about my Mbox tool (which merges Mboxes into one single DB file) and they said 'Send a resume', then said I didn't have enough experience, even though the tool was the basis of the job offer.

It seems mean to me, to offer someone a job and then withdraw it because I'm not a 9-to-5'er with a job. In fact, it sounds pretty IBM-ish.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm very happy about the extensive coverage of our "ex-girlfriend finder".</comment>


The Best Music for Productivity? Silence - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/the-best-music-for-productivity-silence/509948/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> > So (...) if listening to music while working is so bad, why do so many of us > do it? Simple: We like it, and we can't tell it's messing us up.

More or less. Sometimes, as the minutes tick, musing that I was enjoying become a distraction and then a source of irritation, and I urge to turn it off.

That's why I think the ideal solution is just to work from a quiet ambient, including your house. Everybody sitting near to each other and making noise is just good when you need to exchange ideas, discuss something. But being inside your own silent bubble is better.

</comment><comment><USER3> It really depends on what work you're doing. Source: I forgot my headphones today, and here I am posting on HN rather than focusing on real work.

I found out a long time ago that listening to any music at all impedes my writing ability; whatever module of the brain is responsible for evaluating what I'm saying is jammed by the positive evaluations of what I'm listening to, and without aesthetic feedback one's output is lackluster at best. Code requires a different kind of aesthetic judgement, so this doesn't necessarily apply for programming- but there again, I concur with at least one point in the article; music with _lyrics_ messes with my ability to code. Again, it seems as if there's some brain module that can't handle the two demands at once very well.

You know what music works best (IMHO) for distraction-dampening while retaining all necessary brain functions? House. No lyrics (usually), an energetic beat, and it constantly skirts the edge of unacceptable repetitiveness while at the same time having a texture sufficiently complex to (in the article's interesting phrasing) "keep you psychologically aroused."

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you sure that it's not sitting in a bullpen next to the sales guys? I know that ducking footballs and ignoring constant shouting really make me and the other 20 devs here more productive.</comment>


Venezuela's Internet Crackdown Escalates into Regional Blackout - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/venezuelas-net-crackdown-escalates <comment><USER2> I think the internet is back up in most parts of the country, I have some friends in Tachira and it seems that things are back to normal, for now. The govt keeps running small tests like last week when they blocked twitter images for a couple of hours and last night in Tachira.

Meanwhile, there is a complete media blackout. Local TV channels are being censored and are not informing what is going on in the country. Our only means of information is the internet, mostly twitter. This causes a lot of misinformation unfortunately.

Last night , while there were protests everywhere in Caracas and the rest of the country the president went on TV live to talk (all the channels have to stop regular programming and have to transmit whatever he is saying), the National Guard with armed government supporters went out and cracked down hard on all the protestors:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmzfwqczZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmzfwqczZw)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbdzBYjAug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxbdzBYjAug)

I have friends in other areas in Caracas that had to sleep on the floor because of constant shooting from the streets up to the apartments.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lets help them be able to read free information with modem dial uplinks, satellite uplinks and mesh wireless networks.

[http://www.meshnetworking.org/further-reading/current- projec...](http://www.meshnetworking.org/further-reading/current-projects) [http://tidepools.co/](http://tidepools.co/) [http://servalproject.org/](http://servalproject.org/)

Mesh Firmware for Ubiquity network [http://commotionwireless.net/download/routers](http://commotionwireless.net/download/routers)

OpenBTS is a Unix application that uses a software radio to present a GSM Um interface to handsets and uses a SIP softswitch or PBX to connect calls [http://openbts.org/](http://openbts.org/)

<comment><USER4> Elias Levy (Aleph One) is originally from Venezuela. I don't know if he is involved in politics there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You'd think that after 10 or so such major protests in the past few years, the dictators would learn not to repeat the same mistakes everyone else did before them. Someone should write a "10 commandments" of sort for how dictators should react in case of major protest.

Maybe do what American presidents do: promise major changes and _tell them everything they want to hear_ , and then do cosmetic changes at best over a long period of time, until people forget about it. That strategy seems to work pretty well in US, and it seems to pacify almost everyone.

It should certainly be much better than doing drastic stuff like shooting at protesters and cutting off their communications "to make them stop". That always makes the situation worse and forces the protest to escalate and even become violent.

<comment><USER6> Maduro isn't a dictator, he's the democratically elected head of a weak government. The government had been run as a cult of personality, that personality died, and the professional class smelled blood.

These protesters are ultimately demanding that the police shoot more people, not fewer. They feel their country is spinning out of control, and needs a strongman to save it. Paging Dr. Pinochet?

<comment><USER7> I know nothing of the issue, so please educate me, but isn't Maduro the one who currently controls all media and just shut down his people's acces to the internet? Sounds pretty dictator-y to me.

<comment><USER8> As far as I understand it, he is democratically elected, but the government doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances. The stuff about the protesters wanting a military strongman sounds like biased propaganda.

<comment><USER6> What exactly do the protesters want, then? Other than Lopez to be president.

As far as I can tell, they want law and order because of the rising (and terrifying) levels of violence, and they don't want their Bolivars to lose all of their value.

Pretty traditional stuff. Foreign investors can't wait for Maduro to be toppled, because that means the shop is open again. The protesters are going to have an unlimited source of monetary support and friendly foreign press.

>the government doesn't have much in the way of checks and balances

Citation needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I saw this post yesterday

[http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180977](http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180977)

It shows how leaders of opposition are using images from protests from Egypt, Bulgaria and other places as if they were from Venezuela

<comment><USER4> What are you trying to say? You can check more than one...

i) Maduro's government is right and the opposition wrong?

ii) The opposition is [even partially] right but they are using the wrong methods?

iii) Maduro's government is not using propaganda as a way to gain the favor of the people?

iv) Other. Please elaborate.

<comment><USER10> OP provides an interesting fact. There is no need to extrapolate more meaning than what's given: that there is media manipulation going on. To answer to your points more data points would be needed.

<comment> guard-of-terra The fact is either irrelevant to discussion (in which case it is off-topic) or it isn't (in this case we have to extrapolate more meaning to link those two).

<comment><USER6> Or the listener can decide how relevant it is, because this thread is about Venezuela, the protests, and the internet, and the fact is about Venezuela, the protests, and the internet.

Every fact shared isn't required to be an explicit part of a marketing campaign, is it?

edit: it's depressing that this whine is floating above video of police actually kicking unarmed people in the head and (possibly) shooting at cameramen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> if anyone is still reading this thread, i found this link had a pretty good description of what i happening (i don't live in venezuela, but i do live in chile and the link below sounds reasonably consistent with the kind of thing i have heard about the unrest here - it sounds believable to me).

[http://feministing.com/2014/02/20/toward-a-nuanced- feminist-...](http://feministing.com/2014/02/20/toward-a-nuanced-feminist- discussion-on-venezuela/)

ps despite the title it doesn't have much to do with feminism - it's a pretty general article.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly my girlfriend has been using What's App to communicate with her family in Venezuela cheaply throughout the last week since they've been unable to get any news. It's really sad to see the government act this way and hopefully the realize that they're causing a lot of unrest in their citizens. It's always inspiring to see citizens standing up to the government in all these other countries. you see some protests in the States but it never feels near the scale.

<comment><USER13> When you're under full assault from the US intelligence agencies, sometimes you overreact.

<comment><USER14> I doubt the US is involved. What would be the point? It's been obvious for years eventually the government would run out of other peoples' money and fail to deliver basic services. Once you start in with price controls the end is near.

<comment><USER13> They've been involved for years… they're going to sit this one out?

<comment><USER14> What evidence do you have the US intelligence agencies are involved in Venezuela?

<comment><USER13> Are or were? Were, there's plenty. Are -- well we're talking about a covert agency, no?

<comment><USER14> What is the _latest_ incident you can document involving US intelligence agencies and Venezuela?

<comment><USER13> Document? Going by Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pliers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pliers). Venezuela.info has quite a bit of info going back a decade or so.

The point of the comment is not to definitively state anything, merely conjecture. If you'd like to debunk said conjecture, feel free; but asking for documentation seems beside the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> But Venezuela is a democracy and Hugo Chavez was a democrat and man of peace!

<comment><USER16> I can't tell if you are being ironic or not, but just to remind the people who can take your post seriously, that Chavez and his group commanded two unsuccessful coup d'etat attempts, that is hardly something that a "man of peace" would do.

<comment><USER15> I am being ironic. He was lionised in the left-wing press in the UK when he died, and was a friend of our ex-London Mayor Ken Livingstone. In reality, he is no better than Castro.

<comment> at-fates-hands You can also toss in Michael Moore and Hollywood:

[http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130308/hollywood...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130308/hollywood- liberals-hail-chavez-defiant-tradition)

"Sean Penn sat grim-faced at Hugo Chavez's funeral Friday -- one of a clutch of Hollywood stars who lionized the late Venezuelan leader, in defiance of America's fierce antipathy to his regime.

Following a long tradition of Hollywood liberals, Penn was joined by Oliver Stone, Danny Glover and documentary maker Michael Moore in lauding the charismatic Venezuelan president after his death this week."

<comment><USER15> This is the Sean Penn that tied his then wife (Madonna) to a chair and beat her. What a prince.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If your government shuts down the internet

Keep calm

And shutdown your government

<comment><USER18> Remove the keep calm bit and you're there.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, there's probably no calm way to stage a coup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Syria, Sudan, google bus stop, Ukraine, Venezuela, ... who's next?

<comment><USER21> Brazil is a bet

<comment><USER22> You dream. There are elections this year and current president Dilma is a strong favorite.

The protests in Brazil are fizzling. The poor never took part on them and the middle class left them because radicals (black-blocs) turned it too violent.

<comment><USER23> Protests on that scale only happen when the economy goes downhill like it did in Venezuela, because the igniter of those kind of protests is, usually, the middle class.

Last year's protests didn't escalated into impeachment because despite blatant corruption and bad government spending, the current government represents the left and that means any movement against it doesn't have the support from the intellectual elite or the media. In fact, the protests started largely as a left movement, asking for _more_ government (lower/free bus fares means more taxation elsewhere), and gathered _more support_ after the clashes with the military police (which is still seen as a product of the authoritarian conservative right of the 60's).

Unless the economy in Brazil tanks and the insatisfaction increases _massively_ , protests against the government will be limited to anarcho- extremists. Until then this incompetent bolivarian left will keep brainwashing the population, invoking the shadow of the authoritarian right to stay in power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Based on the last ten years of coverage of Venezuela in the US media, I no longer believe the hype.

</comment><comment><USER25> i am baffled by the faith most people here have about electronic elections.

this being hacker news and all there is too many people claiming "democratically elected"</comment>


Best email, calendar, contact server/software? - <AUTHOR>

What would you suggest for something I can use to sync my e-mail, contacts, calendar, etc. with my computers and phones? Exchange does everything I want, and it's something I'm experienced running; but it's expensive, has reasonably high overhead, and in some ways is far more than needed.
Please don't make a suggestion for something in the cloud. That's not an option.
I'd even settle for multiple items to serve each purpose. For example; standard IMAP mail would suffice just fine, but to use for the Contact & Calendar sync?
The only thing I seem to find is Zimbra. Is that the only/best option? <comment><USER2> Why wouldn't something in the cloud work for you?

I personally have a Google Apps account that I connected to my iPhone as an Exchange account, and it syncs my Contacts and Calendars plenty well, and gives me my mail at the same time.

I presume a regular Gmail account will serve the same purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Primarily because I don't see a reason I should trust someone else with my data. We've seen Google accounts suspended, cloud Email/Exchange companies go out of business, or they get raided by three-letter agencies. Sometimes for unlawful reasons.

None of those things inspire trust.</comment></comment>


Why Hasn't OpenID Caught On?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/01/08/why-hasnt-openid-caught-on/ <comment><USER2> Because the intersection of the sets of people who (a) sign up for more than two websites a year; (b) know and care enough about security to avoid just using the same password on every site; (c) think it's much easier to use OpenID than to just use the "email forgotten password" link; and (d) aren't just using 1passwd or some other password-caching program is apparently really small.

Of course, that's just one of the reasons.

</comment><comment><USER3> One reason is that there's a very small distance between "I don't care if someone gets in here" (reddit, blog, etc) and "If someone got in here I'd be hosed" (bank, administration stuff, etc). OpenID can handle the former, but since people are using the same insecure password for all those sites anyway, typically, it doesn't matter. OpenID can't handle the latter, because (last I checked) making phishing easy is inherent in how OpenID works.

</comment><comment><USER4> "It seems to be one of those great ideas that sounds good but never catches on - a lot like BlueTooth."

wtf? I think it's safe to say Bluetooth caught on.

</comment><comment><USER5> Because most that do catch on take a while, and some good things never do.

Mostly, people don't have a problem with using a username/insecure password. They want stuff and don't care much about security. Although I agree that if Google, Yahoo, MySpace, or one of the other humongous sites accepted it, that would spread the word much faster outside of the geek echo chamber.

<comment><USER6> No established site is going to want to use that for its authentication system. They don't want to make it easy for you to log into sites other than their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Because it brings no benefit to anyone. Not to the one who runs the site and not to the one who signs up to it.</comment>


Physicists discover an infinite number of quantum speed limits - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-06-physicists-infinite-quantum-limits.html <comment><USER2> They've developed a nice proof on the "bounds" of how quickly a quantum system can evolve.

I think the quote by the coauthor summarizes it best: "'How fast can a quantum system evolve in time?' Establishing general and tight quantum speed limits is crucial to assess how fast quantum technologies can ultimately be, and can accordingly guide in the design of more efficient protocols operating at or close to the ultimate bounds."

This is a theoretical quantum physics paper... even experimental quantum physicists struggle to understand what they mean most of the time. So don't expect to much clarity from the paper, but if you want to look here it is: [http://journals.aps.org/prx/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.021031](http://journals.aps.org/prx/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.021031)

</comment><comment><USER3> does quantum mechanics operate so far outside regular physics that even rule 34 doesn't apply?

<comment><USER4> What exactly do you mean by "regular physics"?

Do you mean classical physics, optionally including classical field theory (ie, General Relativity)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is beginning to seem like they make this sh*t up as they go along!

<comment><USER6> Some Quantum Physics research has started yielding results that I think would show up if you were using wholly wrong abstractions/tools/techniques to understand something.

<comment><USER7> And yet we keep measuring what our models predict to extremely high levels of precision. We know there is something missing (gravity not playing nicely with quantum theory being the most obvious example), but it has worked remarkably well whether you like it or not.

<comment><USER8> And with the proper insight, we could make our current models look like as crufty as alchemy does today.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why don't Americans save more money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/why-dont-americans-save-money/478929/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Interest rates are too low and with talk of the possibility of negative interest rates there are no incentives to save money. When was the last time you heard of a certificate of deposit (CD) offering by a bank?

<comment><USER3> Your point may stand in the event of negative interest rates, but generally, it seems like you're assuming that what Americans are doing is finding investing avenues that offer greater returns than prevailing interest rates, which does not appear to be the case. Saving money will, by definition, leave you with more money than spending (not investing) it, even if the ROI is near 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Rather than put $200 per year away in a low-risk, low-reward savings > account, some put $200 into high-risk, high-reward lottery tickets.

>It is crude yet important to point out that if America's middle-class and poor were cheaper with their money, they would be richer. One fine policy would be to ban state lotteries

oh yeah, that whole $200 dollars a year is really going to help.

This article is complete shit. ugh.</comment>


Bypassing the VC: Funding Your Business with Deferred Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://markenomics.com/2009/05/entrepreneurship-deferred-revenue/

<comment><USER2> This may seem like an obvious point, but encouraging prepayment is often overlooked by typical struggling startups when designing billing options. It's definitely something to consider if you haven't already.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used this for financing a new landscaping company. 15% of my customers prepaid their maintenance fees for the year at a 10% discount. Purchased tools, equipment and paid lease downpayment on a truck with the money and still had some leftover for hiring two helpers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this just taking the risk from the venture capitalist (who is in the business of taking risks) and giving it to the customer (who isn't)?

<comment><USER5> Who better to bet on you than your customers?

This is _exactly_ the method taught to me by my mentor, who affectionately referred to our first customer in any business as our "sugar daddy".

<comment><USER4> Not saying they aren't, just that the article glosses over the fact that the customers are taking on the risk that a VC normally would and not getting the reward. If the customer needs your product enough that they are willing to take that risk, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

(I worked for a company that got started this way. Although they went on to take VC money, they were in a good position by the time they needed it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of it is because of the cost of capital. It's very high for startups and much lower for others, particularly busines customers, although the concept also applies to consumers who buy things like magazines. Clever startups can capitalize on this difference in capital cost by discounting the price enough to incentivize the customer to take the prepay, but not so much that it's not worth the boost in liquidity.

But yes, it means the customer takes the risk and doesn't get paid for it the same way a VC would, which in my book is a good thing for the startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The important word here is : liability.

Once you take the customers money up front you better deliver them the service. If you take 12 months worth of money, you need to be around for 12 months at least. If you stop delivering the service 6 months in, the customer may pursue the unused money.

This is an interesting specific example but the broader message is to concentrate on your cashflow conversion. Bad businesses are ones where you hold a lot of inventory for a long time, either paid up front or using borrowed money, and then try to sell at a profit. Good businesses are ones where you take the cash, then deliver the product. Dell was so successful principally because they built on demand, using the customers money to purchase the parts, and needed little working capital.

</comment><comment><USER7> This works great for B2B consulting or custom products. That's actually how my previous startup managed to survive for more than a year without raising VC funding, and we were able to develop a hardware product on our spare time (and dime).

It won't work for consumer/web applications, unless you have some Pro version that you can sell to businesses first, but that's unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER8> We are using this model of financing at our business. Up until reading this, I didn't know there was a name for it. This method will probably only work for certain types of businesses though, especially one's that can't get customers to prepay for service, or are not subscription based.

</comment><comment><USER9> Even large corporations do this, when developing a large project for a "lead customer".

</comment><comment><USER10> The actual sale itself takes time... drafting proposals, speaking to the right people, etc. I think the author down played that a little bit.</comment>


How Hard Would It Be to Keep the Moon from Floating Away? - <AUTHOR> http://www.askamathematician.com/2018/02/q-how-hard-would-it-be-to-keep-the-moon-from-drifting-away/ <comment><USER2> Heh, not particularly accurate. The moon won't "eventually escape entirely". It's orbit will keep increasing till the solar day = lunar month. At which points the tides stop and there's no more energy to increase the moon's orbit.

The fun part is because vacuum is not perfect and the incredibly small effects of gravitational waves the orbit will start decreasing.... till it hits the Roche limit and becomes a ring!

All that ignores the sun expanding and consuming the inner planets.

<comment><USER3> Which object's tidal forces would cause the moon's disintegration? I'm guessing either the Earth's, or the Sun's. I've only become aware of Roche limits from your comment, and glanced at the Wikipedia page, but don't really understand them.

<comment><USER4> Tidal forces result from the difference in the strength of gravity at different sides of a body. Because we are so far away from the Sun, it does not exert any (significant) tidal force on us or the Moon. Moreover, the amount of tidal force exerting by the Sun is not affected by the distance the Moon orbits at [0]. In contrast, the moon is close enough to the Earth that those tidal forces are significant, and would drive the Roche disintegration. (They are also what drive the tides, the moons current orbital changes, and why many moons are tidally locked).

[0] Technically, a smaller orbit will make the tidal force exerted by the Sun slightly more constant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It might be marginally more feasible to build an enormous space tether ([https://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html](https://www- istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html)). By dragging it through Earth's magnetic field (which extends out past the moon on the "downstream" side of the solar wind), you could: 1) generate large quantities of electricity, which would be extracted by orbital energy 2) use that electricity in some useful way to further slow momentum (like powering some of the ion engines they talk about in the article).

Anyone with a stronger physics background want to do the math and tell me why this won't work (or at least be marginally better than the proposal in the article?)

<comment><USER6> The opposite would happen. Because the Earth rotates once a day, and the moon once a month, the tether would have the effect of _speeding up_ the moon!

Which will cause its orbit to move farther away.

That's what the tides are: They consume the energy difference between the two speeds, and they are what is causing the moon to move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sci-fi has covered pretty much "everything", so it's not a surprise that there was a TV series in the 1970's that had this exact premise:

 _In the opening episode, set in the year 1999, nuclear waste stored on the Moon 's far side explodes, knocking the Moon out of orbit and sending it, as well as the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, hurtling uncontrollably into space._

I never could bring myself to watch it, because the premise was just too absurd.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999)

<comment><USER8> Space:1999 is Great! It's a perfect piece of 1970s _silly_ Sci-Fi. None of the stories hold up in a science/physics sort of way, but they ARE fun to watch.

If you can't bring yourself to watch it properly, at least hunt down a good copy of the opening episode (It's been released on Blu-ray I think) and watch that. I promise you'll fall in love with the 'Eagle' spaceships.

Also, it's a Gerry Anderson production, so if you liked any of his puppetry shows (Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, Captain Scarlet etc.) you'll probably enjoy Space:1999.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Until I saw this title, this wasn't really something I was worried about.

But now I'm worried.

On a more serious note the moon will stop drifting away once it's orbital period matches the length of an earth day.

It's like a kind of "friction" where the daily rotation of the Earth tries to speed up the monthly rotation of the moon.

</comment><comment><USER9> can someone explain:

>They're also the most efficient type of space propulsion, maxing out around 80% efficiency. The most powerful use about 100 kW of power and are capable of generating about 5N of force (about 1 pound).

How can 80% efficiency get you just 1 pound of force if you put in 100 kW of power? This seems many orders of magnitude off!

<comment><USER10> Depends how fast you're going. 100kW input power at 80% efficiency = 80kW output power.

P = F * V

80,000W = 5N * V m/s

V = 16,000m/s

<comment><USER9> What is 16,000 m/s in this example? (For what we're discussing.) I don't recognize that constant...

<comment><USER11> 16,000 m/s is the speed of the argon as it exits the ion thruster.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who pays when startup employees keep their equity? - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/jdmaturen/5830b83c1425c4767f7e1bd4c9561718 <comment><USER2> There was a PE firm that came around about 4-5 years ago trying to raise money on this very premise.

Their thesis was that

\- startups would remain private longer.

\- employee's lost their options when they leave

\- longer periods to go public means more employees return options to the pool which means employee option pools can be smaller

\- longer private periods leads to more rounds raised which benefits investors over employees as the former can participate on each round to keep from being diluted

\- exits would come eventually and the investors would always have superior terms, I believe that they were working under the assumption that investors would never have mandatory black out periods after IPO so they could essentially participate in the opening day IPO pop.

This is one of the coolest and most maddening things about finance. Every time you think you've come to a big realization, usually you find out that someone else came to the same conclusion many years ago and has been making money "arbing" it out ever since.

<comment><USER3> Where are all these secondary market companies "arbing" it out on employee stock option liquidity? The market should be HUGE, both for locked-in employees, and for buyers who want a small discount on hot startups.

This would totally solve the 90-day exercise period problem for the employees, without requiring company goodwill.

Some companies like ESOFund, 137 Ventures, EquityZen can do deals without company involvement, with a non-recourse loan with limited upside/downside, or a forward contract with cash delivered today, and the certificate held as collateral until IPO, when it is transferred.

There are increasingly share restrictions (which some consider unenforceable) on sales/transfers, loans, etc. First-hand knowledge online is scarce and lawyers give unclear answers due to the novelty of these deals. Can the company find out? Intervene? Sue? Are they likely to? Do we need a public case and TechCrunch headline in order to find out what the outcome is? How different is self-financing vs. a rich relative vs. angel vs. a marketplace investor?

Ask HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12034716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12034716)

Edit: It seems like I misunderstood, and the investors are investing in the company itself, not buying employee shares on the secondary market. The major point still stands though.

<comment><USER4> Usually the major problem with buying employee shares on the secondary market is information asymmetry - the company is not going to provide the buyer with any information, therefore unless the buyer is intimately familiar with the inner workings of the company (I.e. An investor, or incredibly well plugged in) they really have no idea how the company is doing (despite being a "hot" company) which in turn makes it incredibly difficult to come up with market clearing prices

<comment><USER3> That's definitely true - so basically, the buyer is more averse to buying especially considering they are essentially investing in the dark, going off of public news or hearsay? For some of the most-fundraised private companies e.g. Uber, Airbnb, Stripe etc. I figure many would be satisfied with the last private round valuation or a small discount, and the loss/market inefficiency here (5-10%) would still allow most deals to work. However, as a seller, your pitch, especially for less-well-known companies, would be much more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see the popular response to this thread being one where people think employees are better off with salary over options.

This seems crazy to me as I have watched many close friends cash out options from companies including Google, Yelp, Apple and Pandora and buy houses (some with cash), start companies, become investors and/or take long sabbaticals with the proceeds from their options. With salary there is a clear upper bound and the tax on W2 income is simply the worst. I would say that at least in the Bay Area, options are a good bet and much better bet based on what I've seen.

Startups are always a gamble for everyone involved. But outside of the financial industry, where 6 and 7 figure cash bonuses are common, I think options are superior to other forms of compensation if you're trying to optimize for gaining a "life changing amount of money" in less than say 10 years. High salary could only compare if you are very good at minimizing tax and maximizing the money making potential of your salary though investments (requiring additional work). But if you're going to have to invest anyway, why not work for a company you believe in and have a chance at influencing the company's success as well as your own?

<comment><USER6> A single person making 100k+ has a ~90% chance of saving enough in 10 years to retire in a cheap location. That _is_ a life changing amount of money.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure why you think single is a _positive_ if you're trying to save. It's far more cost effective to be married to another high-income earner.

Living in a cheap location is also not everyone's dream. It would be life changing for me to retire to Costa Rica, but it would not be a positive change. I live in a pretty expensive city (Seattle) because I like it here.

<comment><USER6> If X, says nothing about if not X. Dual income no kids @ 200+k can be a great way to save a lot of money. But, you have far less control over your spouses spending and willingness to relocate.

Also, even if you don't move having 500+k / person in the bank is life changing. The median bay area house is 635,000$ which becomes affordable while saving money. Dual income with a 1+ Million down payment and you can actually buy a nice place.

<comment><USER7> In general conversation, "if X" often says a lot about "if not X". "If you're a white male on America, you have entrenched institutional benefits" actually does imply something about non-white/non-males. It implies that non-white/non- males do not have the same entrenched institutional benefits. General conversations do not follow the rules of prepositional logic.

When you repeatedly refer to being single, you imply that it's the better way to save, whether you intend that or not. And when someone asks about it, brushing off the question by pretending they should have applied rigorous logic to the statement is somewhat... let's say silly. Ability to control a spouse's spending and willingness to relocate are legitimate answers that you make weaker with the attempted logical refutation.

Having 500k in the bank also isn't really life changing if your plan is to spend it on a house. With a high income, you could theoretically save for 10ish years and buy a pretty nice home outright. You could also just take a loan out immediately and live in the same home for those ten years, acquiring equity and tax benefits along the way.

Saving to buy outright or mostly outright only makes sense if you are either extremely risk averse or you believe that non-real assets will appreciate much faster than real assets over the medium term. Right now you can get a super jumbo loan at less than 4%. If you want buy a million dollar home and have a million dollars in cash, it's really not a given that you should buy the house in cash. That implies that you believe the stock market will do worse than, say, 3% (reduced due to tax advantages of mortgages and disadvantages of capital gains) for many years.

<comment><USER6> The glaring exception for dual incomes as I said was you can't control your partners behavior. That's a major caveat and derails the conversation. You go from stuff you can do, to some sort of theoretically ideal couple. In most areas the major savings is being socially acceptable to share a bedroom with someone and being a 1 car family. But, in SF you may already be sharing a bedroom limiting the savings.

Further a 100k income simply can't afford to buy a 900k place. 900k * .06 = 54k/year + taxes + repairs + insurance + utilities. Put a 500k down payment on that and suddenly it's a 400k place and much higher taxes. Now you might be able to swing 900k that with a roommates, but again not having them is a major life change.

<comment><USER7> > _in SF you may already be sharing a bedroom limiting the savings._

I mentioned that in another fork of this thread but was being facetious. Adults do not generally share a bedroom unless they're in a sexual relationship. Sharing a bedroom platonically is not a reasonable thing to expect people to do to save money. Sharing an apartment, yes. A bedroom, no.

> _Further a 100k income simply can 't afford to buy a 900k place. 900k _ .06 > = 54k/year + taxes + repairs + insurance + utilities. Put a 500k down > payment on that and suddenly it's a 400k place and much higher taxes. Now > you might be able to swing 900k that with a roommates, but again not having > them is a major life change.*

Your numbers don't make sense. First, if you're paying 6% on your mortgage, you're overpaying by a ton. Assuming you even try to get a decent rate, you're looking closer to 3% once you factor in the tax advantages. Second, if you can save 500k in 10 years, you're saving close to 50k/year _plus_ paying for housing. So it's a lie to claim you cannot afford 54k/year in house payments.

<comment><USER6> Interest is only part of the cost of a loan you also need to pay principle if you don't have a large down payment your interest rate increases. Feel free to calculate a 900k home w/ 0.8% property taxes and insurance. [http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage- payme...](http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage-payment- calculator.aspx)

You do get to deduct interest, but you lose out on the standard deduction you can also play a lot of games with savings. Things like not taking a car loan because use can pay with after tax money saving on the loan _and paying less for the car._ Financing your own credit card saves money where if your house poor debt is just a fact of life etc. You can also more safely have a high deductible health insurance.

Also, you get interest on savings so your not saving 50k per year to get 500k in 10 years.

<comment><USER7> I'm quite painfully aware of what a $1MM mortgage costs with taxes and insurance. The point is that if you can save enough to put down half of that in 10 years, you could swing the cost of the mortgage today. When you talk about saving, you have to remember that 1) you still have to live somewhere, and that's definitely not free, and 2) home prices are generally increasing over time so you probably need to save more than you think. On the subject of the standard deduction, you're right that you'd lose that, but with a jumbo mortgage, you'll still come out ahead for many years.

Interest on savings is negligible. If you take the highest money market rates, you'll get just north of 1%. If you stick the money in a 5-year CD, you'll get 2% and lower liquidity. Meanwhile the housing market is rising faster (how long that's sustainable is unknown).

I'm not sure what you're talking about with the car loan. If you think it's worth having a cushion of cash in the bank (I certainly think so) so that you can do things like buy your cars in cash, then saving for 10 years so that you can dump all the money into the house is a _terrible_ idea because you've just lost your cash cushion. (Your best bet for saving on cars is to just buy fewer of them anyway.) For the high-deductible insurance, you only need a few thousand in the bank to take the risk out of that. You need enough cash on hand to cover your deductible. After that it basically looks like any other insurance plan. And certainly, a larger cash cushion makes copay/coinsurance easier to handle, but that's not specific to high-deductible insurance.

If you think you should live far beneath your means as a general rule, I can't argue with that. There's no compelling argument for why you should spend all your money if you have the option to save. It insulates you from risk and allows you to retire sooner if that's your goal. But if you are living far beneath your means so that you can just dump all your savings into a house in 10 years that you could afford today with the same income, I think you're wasting your time, especially in a market like SF where home prices are increasing so rapidly.

<comment><USER6> The car comment is people see 0% interest loans for a car and think they are not paying interest. However, if you have cash for the car out of pocket you can pay a lower purchase price. Because it's money saved you don't pay taxes on your 'earnings'. Which means it can be a very high ROI investment vs. that loan. Not that you should be buying a car but sometime over 10 years a new / used car is reasonable.

Also, I am basically assuming your going to get raises over time. So your initial 100k salary might be 150k in 10 years. Thus ~35k savings in your first year + 4% net interest (inducing things like that car loan) and cost dollar averaging etc and 4% more savings next year = 500k at the end.

As to housing prices, they might go up or stall. But, because your not in the market you can time things to buy when the market dips. Further, rent control means renting is divorced from increasing housing price changes so you gain a lot of the upside with fixed payments even if prices increase without the downside. Further, if prices fall you can rent somewhere else.

The truth is people are rarely going to do this, but people are also rarely going to hit big money from a startup.

<comment><USER7> > _The car comment is people see 0% interest loans for a car and think they > are not paying interest. However, if you have cash for the car out of pocket > you can pay a lower purchase price._

This is all hypothetical and a really bad plan for increasing your overall wealth. Car manufacturers are the ones who subsidize the loans. If you see a 0% loan, it's not the dealer who's giving you that, so it's entirely likely that paying in cash will save you nothing. Those 0% loans are also for new cars (I've never seen them for used cars) and if you need to save a few dollars, buying used will do far more for you anyway.

> _Thus ~35k savings in your first year + 4% net interest (inducing things > like that car loan)_

You can't just assert 4% interest and hand-wave it away with "things like that car loan". That's double the interest you'd get on the best 5-year CDs. So somewhere you need to account for that extra 2% interest and how it's going to compound for 10 years. You aren't buying a car every year even if that somehow would double your effective interest. Also, if you buy a car outright, it's presumably coming out of that 35k anyway. So no, your numbers still do not work.

> _As to housing prices, they might go up or stall. But, because your not in > the market you can time things to buy when the market dips._

Good luck with that. Timing the market is a really bad bet. There's no guarantee that the market will dip during the next 10 years. It could maintain growth for 15 years, or plateau after 5, or crash in 1 year (while you're still saving) but rebound and keep growing for another two decades after that. There's also no guarantee that it won't dip 20% as soon as you decide you're buying at the bottom.

> _Further, rent control means renting is divorced from increasing housing > price changes so you gain a lot of the upside with fixed payments even if > prices increase without the downside. Further, if prices fall you can rent > somewhere else._

Lots of places don't have rent control. Also, rent control might help your rent stay "low" (it's definitely not actually low in the bay) but it won't make buying more attainable. Again, if you want to rent because you think it's a better strategy than buying, go ahead. But renting while you try to save a half million in cash to buy a house seems like a really bad strategy. Saving aggressively is generally a good idea. If your goal is homeownership, though, saving to buy in cash has not looked like a good strategy since the government started incentivizing mortgage loans.

<comment><USER6> Nothing says you need to buy in exactly 10 years. If your in a rent controlled apartment you get to ratchet down if things get cheaper or stay out. Get a great offer somewhere else, move without the overhead of selling at a huge loss. It's effectivly a hedge.

As to ROI the car thing saves you around 6% meaning you need less than 4% from everything else to average out. Other options including dividend stocks are very likely to provide 4+% over 10 years ex Coca Cola. Is that 100% well no, but you can also make well over 4%. 450k or 650k is not a major issue vs. being yet another person who pasts on HN 10 years in startups and nothing to show for it.

Much like risking buying a house for the market to drop 40% in 10 years.

<comment><USER7> I think the core problem causing disagreement here is that you are not consistent or clear with what your goal is. Do you want flexibility? Low risk? Then rent. Do you want to own a home? Then buy. But decide what you want and then figure out how best to get there. You're starting with the assertion that the goal should be 500k in the bank but then abandoning that goal at some arbitrary point in the future when you'll suddenly dump that into a house. What do you actually want? Half a million in the bank as a safety cushion? Then you should not put that into a house at any time. Do you want a house? Then you probably shouldn't wait until you've saved an arbitrary half million dollars.

I don't know where you're getting the 6% number for buying a car in cash. That's definitely not going to happen. You could get a car loan at a better rate than that from a bank and pay the dealer in cash. Bankrate.com is showing me a rate below 3% for financing a new car over 5 years.

Your belief that you can do better than 4% in the market is exactly why it does not make sense to save and buy a house in cash. If you have 500k in cash and have the option to dump it into a house or dump it into the stock market, and you believe the stock market will perform significantly better than real estate, then you are wasting money by dumping it into the house. If you believe you can get, say, 6% in the stock market, then taking out a mortgage at 4% lets you earn 2% extra each year.

<comment><USER6> Reading though this thread I have been justifying my statements and backing into an odd corner.

Buying a house was an example of a life changing thing you could do with 500k even with a six figure job. And no you can't buy a house at 100k with zero savings in the bay.

Sure, that's true long before you randomly hit ~500k, but that was chosen as a 'good' return from joining a startup that does not become Google as a non founder.

PS: As to returns, if you can't get 4+% retirement get's a lot harder. 1.04 ^ 40 = 4.8x So, 10% is not even close to cutting it. At 2% forget about it. Best of luck.

<comment><USER7> You're right that you cannot buy a house with $0 in the bank, pretty much regardless of what you make. No one is likely to give you a mortgage with $0 down, and if they do, it's going to be a bad deal for you.

Back on topic, we did go down an odd path specifically about the house. My initial point really boils down to _what_ you want to do with the money. It could be very life-changing to save $500k in ten years and retire somewhere cheap. If you're just going to buy a house, it's really not that life- changing, both because you can do that without 500k in cash, and because owning a house is really not that different day-to-day from renting.

I'm not clear what you mean when you say "10% is not even close to cutting it". If your retirement goals depend on a >10% return, you're likely to be disappointed. The S&P 500 has only been ~5%/year for the past 10 years, and that's before accounting for inflation. It wasn't doing so hot before that, either, with ~4%/year over the last 20.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a downside to RSUs. Say you work for a private company with a high valuation, e.g. AirBnB at $25B, and you are granted 0.01% equity over 4 years. That means you are vesting $2.5m of RSUs over 4 years, and these RSUs are taxable at that amount. Typically for folks earning over $150k/year in base salary, particularly if married, even half as much will put you into AMT territory, and you will end up paying a significant chunk of cash each year in taxes (even if RSUs are withheld for taxes, because the withholding cannot account for things like AMT).

Options with extremely long exercise windows helps obviate this tax burden and allows the employee to decide when/if to improve their tax position by exercising ahead of a liquidity event.

<comment><USER9> You know the simple solution to this is that companies withhold the amount of RSUs from you that would be taxed, when they vest.

Its almost like so simple of a solution that reporters won't touch it.

edit: nevermind. even the company cant pay the tax with their illiquid RSUs so its still a problem, and a bigger problem if the share valuation increases, pre-IPO

<comment><USER8> In this case they are still withholding, but the withholding doesn't cover enough because of AMT and other reasons.

<comment><USER10> I am curious what is the purpose of this withholding strategy then? I am not familiar with this. Doesn't sound great to me, at least with a quarterly vesting schedule you can generally go and sell them on the secondary market.

<comment><USER8> Because it's impossible to know each employee's tax situation, and better to withhold too little than too much. In most cases it works out, but early employees and executives can easily be affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is very interesting. Options are really an unappealing mechanism to incentivize employees. I feel like they prey on people who really don't know any better, and don't understand the tax implications or the possibilities around future dilution.

As a rule of thumb I discount face value of options by as much as 70%, that generally doesn't go over very well with people trying to convince you to accept them in lieu of cash.

The single trigger RSU is a very hard sell though, as we can see from this example it hurts both Investor and Founder equity stakes, unless people start balking at options (which they should) it won't fly.

<comment><USER12> Quick question. Do you work for a startup now with options? Or, have you in the past? I'm trying to work out if people who object to options would ever join startups. Or, if they're appetite for risk is too small to be a potential candidate.

<comment><USER11> I have started multiple startups, and joined others at various times. I've also professionally traded options. I have a huge appetite for risk, but the risk/reward isn't there for most early employees who are getting paid less cash in exchange for options. You just can't take them at face value. I would say many early stage employees aren't taking appreciably less risk than the founders themselves, but at a fraction of the upside.

<comment><USER13> How successful have you been in negotiating your options? Have you negotiated significantly more options/money or different terms?

<comment><USER11> I've been fairly successful at it. Most companies are willing to put up with some negotiation. I've gotten a lawyer to go over the options agreements on more than one occasion, usually money well spent if you don't understand all of the contract intricacies. I think how much people are willing to put up with is directly proportional to how valuable you would be to the company, your skill set, experience etc. If you are easily fungible or at least the perception is that you are than your ability to negotiate some of the finer points will suffer.

I think most early stage employees, especially ones who are ultimately going to be injecting the IP of the company on which it's future value will be based should be very aggressive about options and salary packages. Having seen both the bad and the good, I definitely gravitate towards being cautious when getting startup offers. I also think we need to educate people more about this. I recently asked a potential employer about the strike price, and he said I was the first person to ask that question. I think that says a lot about how weak the understanding of early employees is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Equity is one area where I would encourage YC to get more involved. We need someone to step in and lobby the government for tax treatment of options that reflects their economic reality to early stage employees. We also need to encourage companies to use a 'standard' stock option agreement which is well known by everyone so that equity offers can be compared across companies.

If you take equity from an early stage company that has also raised a ton of money with a liquidation preference, what are your chances of getting paid out, even on a big exit? That question is basically impossible for most people out here to answer.

<comment><USER15> It wouldn't be very hard to collect existing data points and come up with a rough approximation, would it?

I would think enough data now exists to allow such an analysis to have some idea of those numbers.

<comment><USER14> I doubt it. The past 5 years have been somewhat unique in that companies were given lots of cash with liquidation preferences and 'fake' valuations.

A good example are T Rowe Price's 'unicorns': [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-airbnb-and-other- unico...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-airbnb-and-other-unicorns- have-valuations-cut-at-t-rowe-price-2016-04-15)

If UBER IPOs for any less than $12.5Bn, what will the early employees get? Probably not much compared with the value they helped create. Right now, that looks impossible, but who knows what will happen?

My point is that there is not a historic president for what has happened in the private markets and I would do anything I could to cash out of equity if I held it in a unicorn and I was liquid.

I would love to see YC step up and encourage founders to issue employee friendly stock options.

<comment><USER14> *precedent not president

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is the presumption that founders and investors are not trying to screw employees? I genuinely can't tell from the article. I thought it's just common knowledge that they will try to screw employees at every chance. With options it was different strike prices for management/ founders vs employees. With RSU's it is weird vesting schedules and forcing forfeiture situations.

<comment><USER17> This comment isn't very productive.

Some high-level valley participants are definitely bad actors but the bulk of them are just normal people in positions of power.

<comment><USER16> Normal people that like money. If this article is about how equity compensation can be improved, then that is a fairly messed up world view and kind of insulting. Employee equity compensation is always designed to explode or have no value. Workers are sick of the schemes. Just pay cash. Companies don't want to and never will improve equity compensation. A better solution would be a law that requires a cash value of granted options or RSU's to be reported to workers which would require a look at sale-ability, strike price, volality, expected employee turnover, etc.

<comment><USER18> Actually there's a big movement to making options exercisable well after employees leave. So, no.

Startups don't have enough cash to compete in terms of pure salary with the leverage that the Googles of the world have. And stock can turn out _very_ well for employees, I've seen it happen at a fairly good rate. You just need to make sure you're getting what you're worth, risk adjusted.

<comment><USER19> There's a "movement" in the sense that people are writing blog posts. Fewer than a handful of name-brand startups are putting any money where their mouth is. Any there's huge VCs trying to hold the line and keep anyone from changing the industry standard practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The barrier to entry of this stock option tweak: it requires an informed populace, ie, us.

If you are a founder with reasonable engineer cred and announce differentiated stock option terms, ie, Adam D' Angelo at Quora, there's a reasonable chance that engineers considering joining your company will be encouraged by your effort on this.

If you're someone else, and your company offers this, many experienced engineers, not unreasonably, will value their equity packages at zero regardless of what you do. Many others, such as new grads, will not know enough about stock options to understand the distinction you're drawing.

If you do decide to offer RSUs for the reasons the authors cited, you may want to follow the example of Henry Ward at eShares and put together some good presentation materials to explain the benefits of this course. Otherwise, you're making an expensive choice for little benefit.

<comment><USER21> >"If you are a founder with reasonable engineer cred"

Can you expand on this? Are you of the mind that engineers should only trust other engineers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have always thought that companies should work out the salary of a new employee in all cash then once the parties are happy allow the employee to trade in whatever percentage they liked for equity. If you value the equity at zero why should the company give it to you and if you value it very highly why should they give you cash?

<comment><USER23> Because startups are, effectively by definition, equity rich and cash poor. Trading $100k/yr in ISOs for $100k/yr in cash across 10 employees increases your cash burn by $1M/year, which is make-or-break for a lot of startups.

<comment><USER22> But this doesn't work if the employees doesn't value the ISOs. If I want to hire you to come and work at my startup and you will only come if I pay you $200K then I either have to give you $200K cash or cash and some number of ISOs that you value at 200K as a package. If you don't value the ISOs and I offer you 100K cash and ISOs that I consider are worth 100K then I have just offered you 100K. My value does not equal your value and me pretending is does not make it real.

The nice thing about cashing out equity like this is it signals your true valuation of the company, both to yourself and the company. Just giving options on top of cash tells nothing.

<comment><USER23> Of course, no one is saying that companies and employees have to value ISOs the same, but no one is saying employees who value ISOs at zero should be working at a startup either

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The assumption that every employee leaves after 3 years and keeps none of their equity is absurd. I don't see any value in that example at all.

<comment><USER25>
      > 3 year employee tenure
      > 100% loss of potential equity when employees leave the company ...
      ...
      > You can also see that only the employees hired in year 8, 9, 10
      > (the final 855) have any shares at the end of year 10. Quite bizarre!

Yes, quite the mystery indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like the basic idea and it's nicely presented however conceptually I'd favor a model where the employee gains come primarily from the losses of later stage investors and not early stage investors (and founders).

"""Within the investor class the earlier investors lose more. Year one investors go from 3.2% to 2.3% about a 25% loss, pretty much the same as founders. Year ten investors go from 9.0% to 8.7% about a 3.5% hit."""

So basically I'd like to work from sort of the reverse of this but I assume it's not very likely due to the investment horizons etc. Basically I suppose late stage investments should be a good chunk more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is clearly a shot at Kupor's infamous A16Z post where he claims employees who stay suffer a LOT more dilution (80%) when employees who leave keep 100%.[1] But this poster's model puts it at just 5%.

There's clearly wildly different assumptions at play here. Can someone smarter than me spell them out? One that jumps out is the assumption here that no employee stays past 3 years. Isn't that a pretty high attrition rate for a pre-IPO startup?

[1] [http://a16z.com/2016/06/23/options- timing/](http://a16z.com/2016/06/23/options-timing/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Wouldn't RSUs open employees to a different and more punitive tax regime (income tax) than options (which would fall under capital gains if you exercised early enough)?

<comment><USER29> I believe if you hold your RSU-granted stock for 1 year, you can pay capital gains tax on it instead.

I'm not a CPA.

<comment><USER30> But, you have to pay income tax on the value of the shares at the time when they vest, i.e. become non-restricted. You have zero control over that vesting schedule, and thus the tax bill, and you likely wouldn't have a liquid market for the shares before an IPO.

Any gain post-vest can indeed be long-term cap gains, if you hold the shares > 1 year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While the dialog around various equity-based incentive compensation mechanisms is good, this article is off base in SO many ways:

>>With an often high strike price,

Only an issue at the later stages of companies (note: this writeup argues RSUs "from the beginning").

>>a large tax burden on execution due to AMT,

Only if you are exercising later in the company stage, when the fair market value has (usually) gone up. If you are bullish on the company, it's generally best to exercise as you vest, for this very reason.

Also, exercising as you vest gets the timer going for (a) cap gains treatment (much better tax rates), AND, a possible Qualified Small Business Stock tax exclusion (5yr holding, significant tax break).

>>and a 90 day execution window after leaving the company many share options are left unexecuted.

This is MUCH less of an issue if you are exercising as you go along (see above).

If you you have just left a large unicorn private company, there are often secondary buyers for the stock. You could exercise and sell some stock to them to cover your exercise cost.

Regarding RSUs, you __HAVE TO PAY TAX AS YOU VEST __. For a private company, you 're just replacing one potential problem (AMT with option exercises) with a very specific actual problem (steady tax liability as without liquidity).

RSUs are a very useful compensation tool, but you can't declare them unilaterally better. ALL equity compensation forms require some "user sophistication", including options and RSUs.

If you don't understand how to optimize your situation, get advice from someone who does!

</comment><comment><USER32> I wish companies adopt the same "what have you done for me lately" mindset to investors as they do to employees.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hold up. This post proposes using "single trigger RSUs" instead of options, claiming that taxes are deferrable to a liquidity event. But according to this[1], FICA taxes are still due on vesting. So RSUs would still have immediate tax consequences, potentially very expensive for unicorns.

Are there actually any startups offering RSUs?

[1] [https://www.acc.com/chapters/wisc/upload/The-Rise-of- Restric...](https://www.acc.com/chapters/wisc/upload/The-Rise-of-Restricted- Stock-Units-1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> Taking equity instead of cash is like asking the company to denominate your salary in Bison Dollars. Worth a lot IF the plan for world domination goes off without a hitch but until then...

</comment><comment><USER34> The last startup I worked at went through a merger. In the process, they created a new company and gave all employees stock in the new company, on the same vesting schedule as the options had been on in the previous companies.

They organized things and provided help to ensure that all US employees were able to make a Section 83(b) election for our stock in the new company as soon as it was created. (This means we paid taxes early based on the current value (zero) instead of potentially paying much larger taxes in the future.)

</comment><comment><USER35> reminded how 10 years ago upper class was trying to initiate grass roots and steer protests against options expensing. They failed and as a result we have RSU pretty much everywhere instead of options. The startups are the last bastion, and i think with the modern "who needs an IPO with such great C round (and related caching out for chosen ones)" approach, people will start to get the picture and the RSU will come there too.

<comment><USER36> The problem with startup RSUs is that you are taxed when the RSUs vest. If there is no liquidity (which is the case for most startups) then you're paying taxes on RSUs which you can't sell and may never be worth anything.

<comment><USER37> This is not always the case. The grant may be structured such that you don't actually have the shares in your possession even after vesting, you just have a claim on them that will be honored at IPO or change of control. This though means you can't dump them on SharePost/SecondMarket etc. even after they vest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is where having a lobbying group would be helpful -- this really needs to be fixed through policy.

We need to get the tax law changed so that RSUs are taxed on liquidity instead of vesting. Then you'll still avoid the corruption the tax is supposed to protect against (paying an executives millions in what was previously untaxed compensation through RSUs in the 80s) but still allowing them to be given as startup equity compensation.

<comment><USER39> Can you go into a bit more detail on what counts as liquidity? Can I sell on a secondary market? Can a bank let me guarantee a loan based on my current units? Can non-liquid units be transferred to my next of kin tax free?

<comment><USER38> These are all details that would have to be worked out, but the gist of it would be that you shouldn't be taxed on it until you're able to sell it. But I'll give it a shot:

> Can I sell on a secondary market?

Sure, and then you get taxed on the money you made, where your basis is $0.

> Can a bank let me guarantee a loan based on my current units?

That's tricky because it would be a way for people to work around the law. What if we made you pay tax if you took out a loan with the stock as collateral?

> Can non-liquid units be transferred to my next of kin tax free?

Seems like it would be reasonable to allow that. The value would still be $0, but when it became liquid, your next of kin would have to pay taxes on the value with a basis of $0, which would make it not a good workaround for estate tax since you would save money if you transferred it under the $5M lifetime limit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I can imagine that there would be other consequences to the change. For example, I could see anyone on the edge around their 1 year vesting cliff would be fired to avoid parting with their equity. It would probably also push down the amount of equity offered because of the increase in value. Further, some companies are already doing this, vesting could be back loaded with the majority vesting in the later years.

<comment><USER41> There are companies that already let people go before their 1 year cliff (or do other types of restructuring that results in the vesting period to reset).

However, I think it would be appropriate to give fewer options as a consequence of this change, since the options would be a more realistic part of the compensation package when you have a longer-period of time to determine if you want to exercise them.

I could definitely see the 1 year cliff going away too, else you'd have people collecting 25% of their options at various places and moving on to other companies each year. Eventually one of those companies will do well and your "work" investment will pay off. You can do shotgun investing with your employee options.

But a lot of this misses the point that your company's growth is entirely reliant on a productive employee base. If you back load vesting or start firing people right before their cliff, or do any other practices such as this, why would anyone choose to work for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is a single trigger RSU somehow different in trigger than single trigger options? I've always been told that single trigger, at least for the majority of engineering, means your company won't be purchased.

Single trigger makes sense for legal, accounting, etc who are likely gone in an acquisition.

Double trigger makes sense overall.

<comment><USER43> If the premise is that employees can move the needle on the stock price through their contributions, then double trigger doesn't make sense either.

I recently went through an acquisition where all of our stock was converted into the acquiring company's stock. It was maddening to see our team continue to perform well but see the price of our equity tank along with the rest of the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> There was a HN discussion ten days ago [1], where several people including myself were suggesting 83b rule RSUs as a possible solution. Nice to see this method quantified.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11963551)

</comment><comment><USER45> I have really never understood the confusion over why this doesn't get implemented. It has always seemed clear to me that there's not enough demand for change, and investors and founders want things to stay the way they are. It's a really, really good deal for them.

</comment><comment><USER46> Who pays for this?

Is the following answer somehow too obvious to be true?

When you eventually sell the equity, the stock exchange will hook you up with counterparties who buy the stock. Those counterparties are who pays you.

</comment><comment><USER9> Its not "options" vs "RSUs"

There are a wide range of financial products used around the world that would better fix the tech sectors compensation incentives and nobody is talking about them.

Think different didn't mean argue about false dichotomies.

It is a total charade for the venture firms to propel the notion that they are doing employees a favor by even offering stock. "How gracious of us to dilute our investment at all!"

Dilute the preferred shares with 8% dividend and liquidity preferences!

Offer convertible bonds or other hybrid products!

You can incentivize people in 101 ways, and you guys are debating about two of them under the assumption that the crowd is right

</comment><comment><USER47> i really think Profit Interest Units are the best form of equity for both employees and employers

[https://www.nceo.org/articles/equity-incentives-limited- liab...](https://www.nceo.org/articles/equity-incentives-limited-liability- company-llc)

</comment><comment><USER48> Either way it's a losing game, consider a company like Google - how would they attract new employees on either scheme given that the company has been around for 15+ years? The only people who win are those who get in early, or invest big. Any IPO ultimately results in people earning money who don't "work" for that money - that means the actual workers lose out everytime.

<comment><USER49> So getting paid way above market and working at a place where software engineering talent is highly respected and valued is "losing out"?

I'm sorry but this entitled attitude just grates at me. If you are in SV getting paid 3-5 times the median household income you already are in the 1% and you already have all the advantages in terms of upward mobility. If you want to earn millions _go out and start your own company_ , it is ridiculous to demand a high salary and a high equity payout. You are not entitled to anything except what you can negotiate.

There is nothing inherent in software engineering that makes it worth $100k minimum per head, it is _only_ worth that much if it supports a business that can earn that much. The fact that SV is one of the bright spots in the economy of the last decade has really started to go to software engineers heads. If you believe you are worth more than what you are being offered, the only way to prove it is to go out and build a business yourself. You can't look at the 1% of the 1% who got a lucky windfall from being in the right place at the right time, and use that as your baseline for "fairness". Try facing the economic struggles that 50% of the country is dealing with, and then tell me how bad Google is screwing its employees.

<comment><USER48> 1\. Not all employees are paid above market value

2\. Working somewhere that software engineering talent is highly respected is no measure of fiscal compensation

3\. Those advantages of upward mobility are learnt, or acquired skills that people work at. There is no opportunity for them to be in the same position as a 1%er living off their parents money to invest and then continue to get rich(er)

4\. You imply that employees have the ability to negotiate on-par with any investor

5\. Your last point about $100k is odd, that's just supply and demand in a free market - and the sentiment is doubley-odd given that employee salaries have stagnated since the 70's, SV salaries have been proven to be (somewhat) rigged, also it is in any companies corporate interests to pay the lowest possible amount for any resource.

Lastly, your point about the 1% of the 1% is off-topic - and I agree that they're not necessarily to blame for the widening gap between rich and poor - but without proper incentives for the 99% to go to work, then that 1% of wealth could become worthless if society revolts because of the disproportionate distribution.

My point is simply that alternative vehicles for employee remuneration need to exist beyond the status-quo that's legally existed for decades.

<comment><USER50> You specifically called out Google in your comment. As a result your arguments feel odd, since Google has a reputation for high salaries and high quality of life. If you specifically mention Google as a problem, you must hate the vast majority of the industry that both doesn't compensate as well and doesn't offer comparable quality of life. In other words, if you aren't happy as a software engineer at Google, where would you be happier?

<comment><USER48> I did not say Google is a problem, I said that either the current mechanism or the proposed mechanism would present a problem for companies (such as Google) when hiring new staff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland Win Nobel Physics Prize - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/02/arthur-ashkin-gerard-mourou-and-donna-strickland-win-nobel-physics-prize <comment><USER2> During the presentation they showed a video of a person blowing a ping-pong ball with a hair-dryer, keeping it afloat. What's the relevance to lasers?

<comment><AUTHOR> An imaginative way to describe Optical Tweezers, for the real thing see

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers)</comment></comment>


Where to witness a full solar eclipse in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.visittheusa.com/experience/witness-solar-eclipse <comment><USER2> Gotta say that the total solar eclipse i witnessed in Hungary round 2000 or so, was one of the most memorable moments of my travels. The sensation of the terminator rushing at you was breathtaking. The unearthly silence as all the wildlife goes silent. Very worthwhile.</comment>


Map illustrates 'Russian GPS' failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26957569

<comment><USER2> I saw a presentation about "opportunistic radio SLAM" which uses naturally occurring radio signals: TV transmitters, mobile phone masts and even analogue music radio to passively provide relative location data. The demonstration was amazing, some cleaver processing and you can figure out pretty much where you are (even inside a building). If ships had DPSLAM then they would have better location data: [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rmf25/papers/Opportunistic%20radio%...](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rmf25/papers/Opportunistic%20radio%20SLAM%20for%20Indoor%20Navigation%20using%20Smartphone%20Sensors.pdf)</comment>