Ask HN: How many of you are truly considering moving to Canada? - <AUTHOR> With so many people saying that they'll move to Canada if Trump wins, I'm wondering who is really considering (or already decided) doing it; and the conclusions they have come to. What are your reasons? What are the trade-offs? Why are they worth it / not worth it? <comment><USER2> Already moved back, though not for this particular reason - it was more out of a desire to escape the insane work-life imbalance, endemic tech bro-ism, and skyrocketing cost of living in the Bay Area. (I'm a Canadian citizen by birth, so this makes the move _much_ easier.)

Now in Toronto. Couldn't be happier: yes, you earn less and pay higher taxes, but those taxes go a long way - functioning public transit (i.e. "I can get just about anywhere inside the city core 24/7"); rapidly improving cycling infrastructure; nationalized health care; several months parental leave _paid for by provincial and federal governments_ ; fantastic grant and tax credit programs for young founders (under age 35), digital media / tech companies, and a slew of other relevant categories; and so on.

People are polite and reasonable; staff at government offices are understanding and helpful (which goes a long way when you're moving, believe me); the tech scene here has a vibrant community feel to it, and is fed by several nearby universities. If you're moving from the US right now, the current exchange rate is an added bonus.

Don't get me wrong: the beautiful scenery of the Bay Area is nearly unparalleled, and there is an optimistic / entrepreneurial attitude parts of which I admire - but SF is fast losing its monopoly on the latter to other tech hubs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have always been interested in somewhere like Copenhagen for the sane transportation policy - I'm tired of violent drivers in NYC running people on the sidewalks and crosswalks down with "no criminality suspected", tired of the government being completely unable to create a proper bus lane (to say nothing of a tram), tired of no one seeming to know that bollards are a thing you can install. I'm also tired of American-standard 50+ hour weeks with 2 weeks of vacation. I would be fine with a pay cut, money isn't that important.

Canada seems _easier_ since they speak English and I speak okay French, but I'm not sure it would be the place I would want to stay (really only considering Vancouver strongly).

So this is just another trigger to look closer at moving.

Also, I'm told that everyone wears black in Scandinavia. Bonus.

</comment><comment><USER4> What I told my kids: regardless of who wins - you have more influence over your personal future than the president in DC.

Your education, effort and day-to-day actions will affect you more than who lives in the white house

<comment><USER5> Spot on. Regardless of who sits in the White House, the world will spin on. We will do exactly today, what we did yesterday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought about it over a few hours last night and decided against it.

In the worst scenarios, it won't matter what country I'm in as long as it's still on this planet.

In the merely really-bad scenarios, people that look like me won't be the ones in trouble and I feel obliged to stay and help those that are.

<comment><USER7> Well, we could see a cultural revolution style event where elites are persecuted. I don't think that's likely with trump, given that his rhetoric focuses on immigrants, but if there is another trump after him, it could happen. The problems for the white working class aren't going away. Trump is going to make them worse, and they will be even angrier at the next go around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If he fulfills his campaign rhetoric on protectionism and trade wars, the effect will be global.

If he fires all the generals, and only keeps the yes men we're probably all screwed again.

Pulls out of Paris Climate agreement and rolls back climate change that's more of a world problem too.

</comment><comment><USER9> I did when bush was in office. Not regretting that move today.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you live in California or NY, considered the tech hubs of U.S., there's not much worry. Those states are so liberal, a conservative House+Senate+Prez isn't going to make a difference. Republicans are usually for leaving laws to the state as well.

So if you dislike the outcomes of the election, move to a very blue state.

<comment><USER11> > isn't going to make a difference

Maybe if you're white and male and doing ok financially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most things would not make me seriously consider leaving the US. The one thing that could do it would be if the GOP totally screwed up healthcare.

Unfortunately, it looks like that may be the direction they are going. Both the plan that the House put forward a few months ago and Trump say that pre- existing conditions should not stop people from being covered, nor should those people pay more. Both seem to want it to stay insurance based.

...and both do not seem to have any way to get people who are healthy to actually get insurance.

That does not work. It was tried, unintentionally, in the state of Washington in the '90s. In 1993, the state passed a healthcare law that required insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions, capped premiums, made premiums similar for young and the old, and had a phase in over time of mandates for individuals and employers to purchase insurance.

Then the control of the legislature changed hands, and much of it was repealed. However, the requirement to cover pre-existing was kept because the legislature knew that repealing that would be quick political suicide.

Of course, people quickly figured out that they could cut way back on insurance until they actually needed it. For example, a woman might go without any insurance that covers pregnancy and related costs until she actually got pregnant, and then she would get that insurance.

The result? Within a few years, not a single major insurance provider offered individual health insurance in Washington. For most residents, if you wanted health insurance you needed to find an employer that provided it as a benefit.

Later they made more changes that allowed for higher rates, and while still requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions allowed insurance companies to impose a nine month wait before coverage starts. That got insurers to come back, but individual insurance was no longer very affordable.

<comment><USER13> Isn't this the reason that the new plans all have a continuous coverage requirement?

Old: guaranteed issue, individual mandate

New: guaranteed issue conditional on continuous coverage, high risk pools for people without continuous coverage.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of other stuff not to like about proposed replacements --- the elimination of annual coverage caps, for instance, or the "buy across state lines" requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is Canada even the place to go? I would ask: Where would you go if you are having such thoughts.

<comment><USER15> Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal?

<comment><USER14> Right. It's the "obvious" choice. I was asking for other ideas. Here's mine: Sight unseen so with a grain of salt, Portugal.

<comment><USER15> ah, I misread your statement. I thought you meant where in Canada would you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm an Australian seriously considering moving to America, does that count?

</comment><comment><USER17> I moved to Canada when Bush was in Office, and would consider doing it again. Albeit, I'm a bit older than I was then

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not, although it's sorely tempting. But I don't want to uproot my family. And luckily, we live close enough (20 minutes to the border) that if there was ever an emergency, we should be able to get across quickly.

</comment><comment><USER19> I already have a canadian dual citizenship so I'll just get a move on up to Canada if things downswing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Please move, I'll even pay for your ticket.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's just a meme. Nobody is really considering that option.

</comment><comment><USER22> If anyone's seriously considering moving out of the US due to the results of an election: do it. Get the fuck out so real patriots can focus on fixing things without all the bitching.</comment>


Show HN: Fictionhub, a place to share fiction - <AUTHOR> http://fictionhub.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> My goal is to make fictionhub a perfect place for writers to post and discuss fiction.

It is like a blogging platform with discovery system and community features of reddit.

It is also open source:

[https://github.com/raymestalez/fictionhub](https://github.com/raymestalez/fictionhub)

You are welcome to join, and to ask me any questions =)</comment>


Komodo X released – new version of Komodo IDE - <AUTHOR> http://komodoide.com/blog/komodo-x-released/ <comment><USER2> I haven't used Komodo for years, though for a long time I think it was the only real choice in Python IDEs. I don't know why I stopped using Komodo, but these days if I want a Python IDE I use PyCharm, which I bought a license for.

So I'll ask the obvious question: Who out there is using Komodo, and why do you like it?

<comment><USER3> I bought Komodo 9 fairly recently, soon enough that they gave me a free license to 10. My situation is a little unique though:

\- 99% of my development is done through a remote connection, almost always SFTP, as opposed to local

\- Most of it is PHP, with some Node and other general web dev

\- I had previously been using Gedit and felt like trying an IDE as I do every so often

Komodo got a number of things right:

\- It works on Linux with no problems that I've noticed

\- It's not Java-based, so there's no massive memory usage or random slowdown due to garbage collection

\- Excellent PHP and JavaScript support with parameter autocorrelation

\- Good enough remote development support (many other IDEs are lacking here)

\- Xdebug support (and supports other languages for step through debugging)

\- Fairly cheap as IDEs go, at $147 for a personal license

Might be worth the trial if you're looking for something new.

<comment><USER4> Have you considered using SSHFS? I too do most of my development on remote systems. Once I discovered SSHFS it was great because I was able to use any IDE of my choice and I wasn't just stuck with those that offered remote development support. Since it sounds like you run linux it should be no problem to get running. I haven't tried it on Windows but from what I understand it works there too.

<comment><USER3> I've tried it a couple of times... it introduced a fair bit of lag that I didn't see with other solutions. Not sure why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is also the reduced feature free version called Komodo Edit: [http://komodoide.com/komodo-edit/](http://komodoide.com/komodo-edit/)

<comment><USER5> Pleasantly surprised to see they provide msi-based installers for Windows, and not exe-based ones like all too many projects still do.

I'd think companies that provide software like this would have an interest in a) making the free version (and maybe the trial version) available in the windows store? And b) (ok, I'm somewhat biased, I just think it's soo delightful to use) a scoop.sh-package for easy install to those few that have discovered the joy that is scoop.sh. Shouldn't be too hard, could probably model on the scoop.sh package for visual studio: [https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop- extras/blob/master/visu...](https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop- extras/blob/master/visualc.json) (which should probably be updated to vs2015)).

<comment><USER6> Out of curiosity, what benefit does an .msi installer provide over for example, nullsoft's or installshield?

<comment><USER7> Exe installers in general, and nullsoft and inno in particular create windows installers that are non standard. Please do not use them. Please only make .msi installers. I have to deploy 1000's of apps across our network, and .exe installers cause so much pain. If you are going to have have some sort of .exe installer, please ensure that you document how to run the installer in a quiet way, and how to customise the installation from the commandline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never heard of this IDE until today but they get to version 10 which mean they've been around for quite a long time.

Can someone share their experience using this? Versus others IDE.

<comment><USER9> Im a former Komodo Edit (the free version of Komodo IDE) user before finally switching to JetBrain products. 3 things that come to mind:

* Komodo is built on top of Mozilla app framework. Its lighter in terms of startup time and memory footprint than java based IDE.

* Its search feature is so good that I sometimes use it to find files in my computer.

* Komodo IDE is rather expensive which stopped me from upgrading. Though I think they lowered their prices lately.

<comment><USER10> I don't think they lowered their prices but Jetbrains did raise their prices recently so there is a little bit of price competition now. Before, Pycharm was $100 where Komodo was $250 and PyCharm worked better. Now PyCharm is $200/yr. so the $50 difference might be enough if Komodo is significantly faster than PyCharm (which is pretty slow sometimes).

<comment><USER11> Individual PyCharm is $90/73/51 for the first three years, $51/yr after. Corporate-purchased licenses are $200/159/119 with a $119 tail.

Doesn't change your point much, but it is cheaper than you indicated (even for corporate, if the subscription is continuously renewed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FYI this is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715286)

</comment><comment><USER13> after using komodo for few years, I decided to switch to sublime, and I did not like it; sublime has no clean way to remote edit files

I switched back to komodo 10 Beta, and it's been amazing so far.

</comment><comment><USER14> From what I can see, Komodo's feature set is close to that of PyCharm for python development, but I have to say, I don't see remote debugging in the featurelist, or has it been there for a while? Also, can anyone tell me how komodo's python debugger stacks up to pycharm/pydev?

<comment><USER15> Last time I used them, which was about 3 or 4 years ago, PyCharm had okish Python code completion (i.e. amazing compared to the competition), whereas Komodo didn't really have any code completion.

Not sure about the debugger.

<comment><USER16> Komodo has always had completions for Python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> \- Looks to be a mix of Python 2.7 and I see some Java processes running.

\- Can't see any native Puppet integration / support.

<comment><USER18> Komodo does not use any Java what so ever. The only traces of Java you could find is syntax highlighting support and in the name of JavaScript. We're not a Java IDE.

It does not have native Puppet integration at the moment. You could add your vote here: [https://github.com/Komodo/KomodoEdit/issues/803](https://github.com/Komodo/KomodoEdit/issues/803)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup School – Any Other San Mateo Founders? - <AUTHOR> Let's start a study group. We can meet up at Philz on B St. <comment><USER2> i am in PA. could join if there is critical mass.

<comment><AUTHOR> sweet, what are you working on? We're capturing carbon from the atmosphere.</comment></comment>


My Crypto Name Opportunities and Feedback - <AUTHOR> My Crypto Name opportunities and looking for feedback on an aliasing solution to crypto public keys. Any constructive feedback, negative or positive is welcome. Be aware I will engage in conversation regarding feedback, but I welcome that as you should too. I'd also like to encourage crypto wallet and exchange developers in the community to reach out regarding opportunities and meaningful partnerships. Thank you Hacker News, I appreciate the platform.
https://www.mycryptoname.com <comment><AUTHOR> A Typical Wallet Address looks like this: 0x54baae98985573858f14b8faedcbe647bf0d28ed

A typical Crypto Name looks like this: $RandySmith or $MyMiningGroup

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Did I post this in the wrong place or is nobody interested in the topic?</comment>


Worker who sent false missile alert 'had a history' of thinking drills were real - <AUTHOR> http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/37384196/fcc-employee-who-sent-false-missile-alert-believed-threat-was-real <comment><USER2> Igniterroremophobia</comment>


Ask HN: How do we change things? - <AUTHOR>

Members of this community are pretty good at changing the way we interact with the world on a daily basis. Some really cool things have come out of asking "How can this be better?". You already have changed the world for the better.
As I read the recent post about net neutrality I got to thinking about our roles and interactions with government. I realized that not much has changed despite the surge of Internet users over the last decade. Our candidates are still spoon fed to us. Decisions are not made with the best interest of constituents in mind. And despite services like Facebook and Twitter many of us feel like we don't have a voice. This observation applies both to national and local politics. There has to be a better way.
So my question to the smartest people in the room is, how can this be better? Do we make a Groupon for causes (Groupon's original business) and showcase one injustice a day? Do we create a Facebook for aspiring politicians and level the playing field for those who want to get into public service? We did that for business, why not extend that to politics?
How can we change things?
Please keep the comments free of party biases. Only the Sith deal in absolutes =) <comment><USER2> 1) There is no _We_.

If you want to change something, then it's up to _you_ to do it. It's hard work, but it can be done. Plus, _we_ will never agree with you (because there is too big a range of views to ever be put under a name like _we_ ).

2) You are very wrong about the change that has happened.

In the 2004 election Howard Dean was the early favorite for the Democratic primaries because of his huge internet following. In the 2008 election Barak Obama won the democratic nomination and the presidency on a campaign mostly financed by individual donations over the internet. In the 2010 mid-term elections Tea-Party backed Republicans won a huge number of seats based on the Tea Party organizing support on the internet.

3) Change happens in the small. If you want to change everything, find one, small, specific thing and work at it every day until you change it. You'd be surprised at how much else you'd change along the way.

</comment><comment><USER3> "our roles and interactions with government. I realized that not much has changed despite the surge of Internet users over the last decade." \--> a variety of inefficiencies that will be corrected one of these days...maybe by a number of us?

" Decisions are not made with the best interest of constituents in mind. " think about the polling systems that are still in place. they call up landlines -- LANDLINES! the only people that are being sampled are our grandparents...

"And despite services like Facebook and Twitter many of us feel like we don't have a voice. " government hasn't exactly integrated social software/services. one of these days...

"So my question to the smartest people in the room is, how can this be better? " i think one of the biggest issues is the epidemic of groupthink/influence that is plastered all over politics. if opinions were submitted behind an anonymous software, i think a lot of the problems would be mitigated.

we've actually got the chief of staff for the majority WHIP in GA approaching his government friends about leveraging our ranking software to address many of the issues you mentioned. happy to speak more about it with you outside of HN as we're just beginning to explore the space & the potential impact.

-adam

</comment><comment><USER4> _How can we change things?_

You cannot change anything until you understand the cause of your problems.

The structure of political systems determines the range of possible outcomes. We have a political system that structurally has an unusually large number of veto points (compared to similar western nations). The result is that change is slow and the system is resistant to external forces. In addition, we have a system that systematically overrepresents the interests of rural counties.

There is a relatively "easy" way to fix the second problem: states with large populations should start splitting into multiple states. But due to status quo bias such "simple" changes are unlikely to ever happen. Fixing the veto points problem is harder still: it is wired into the fabric of American governance.

</comment><comment><USER5> Technocracy. I'm not convinced that politicians, bankers, and lawyers can solve the problems our society will face in the coming years. The problem is, things haven't gotten _bad enough_ for true change to be possible. They just keep kicking the can down the road.

</comment><comment><USER6> Things won't change until everything collapses. The system has accumulated far too much cruft, and needs rebooting.

I may be a bit overly cynical. <http://i.imgur.com/zP5fa.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER7> Open source and decentralize two of civilization's greatest responsibilities: governance and economy.</comment>


Depression? Recession? No, It's the Great Restructuring - <AUTHOR> http://seekingalpha.com/article/124943-depression-recession-no-it-s-the-great-restructuring

<comment><USER2> The FT called it the Great Unwinding, on the basis that the unsustainable debt/trade/current account imbalances would start to reverse their direction.

It seems the only thing anyone can agree on is that we're experiencing something really 'Great'.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you been in a company with transparent salaries? Good? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I've done exactly that, and very deliberately, with GrantTree. All salary and bonus information is available (anyone in the company can log in to the accounting system and check it, along with all the other company financials).

It does mean that there's some people you won't be able to hire, if they demand a higher salary than their peers and won't budge on it - but then again, I'm of the view that I'm better off not hiring those anyway. I think the benefits of having an open, trusting, transparent culture far outweigh any benefits a single individual can bring to the company. Someone who's willing to damage the culture of the company for their individual benefit is probably not someone I want in this company.

What are those cultural benefits? Well, for example, because we are transparent all the way through, this is also reflected in the very open and relaxed culture, and it then is reflected onto our clients - after all, your employees will treat your clients in the same way you treat them. Most companies are "open" in quotes, but then when you get to sensitive information they closed up, which sets up an uneasy tension. We don't have any uneasy tensions at GrantTree. That's a huge benefit to me. I don't like dealing with uneasy tensions and lying to people and hiding stuff.

It's important to combine transparent salaries with transparent ways for people to increase those salaries, in my opinion. If you don't, people will feel stuck (transparently so). But if you do, people will feel that there is a known path for them to increase their pay and they'll work on that path rather than try to ingratiate themselves to get a pay raise in private.

Any further questions about this - feel free to ask. I'll do my best to respond.

PS: If you're in London and looking for a client management, sales or office manager/admin/support role, or if you know someone who is, we're hiring!

Client Manager (x2): [http://blog.granttree.co.uk/post/45842335082/join-us-at- gran...](http://blog.granttree.co.uk/post/45842335082/join-us-at-granttree)

Office Manager/Admin/Support (I really don't know what to call that role): [http://blog.granttree.co.uk/post/43396425717/come-work- with-...](http://blog.granttree.co.uk/post/43396425717/come-work-with- granttree)

Sales: [http://blog.granttree.co.uk/post/38246842231/join- granttrees...](http://blog.granttree.co.uk/post/38246842231/join-granttrees- sales-team)

<comment><USER3> >It does mean that there's some people you won't be able to hire, if they demand a higher salary than their peers and won't budge on it - but then again, I'm of the view that I'm better off not hiring those anyway.

So what you are saying is that you are perfectly happy hiring average people and you won't hire people who are better than those already in your employ?

<comment><USER2> Not at all. You're assuming there's a correlation between demanding a high starting salary and being "better". That's a load of crap.

There are a lot of benefits to working in a company like GrantTree that are worth more than the money - and you can get the money eventually, anyway, you just have to earn it. At this stage, though, if your main concern is getting a high initial base salary, don't work with us. In my experience, concern about initial base pay is entirely uncorrelated to how good you are.

Edit: another way to look at it, is that what you're describing is someone who is both exceptional and an asshole. My view is, if you interview someone who is like that, don't hire them. Hire only people who are exceptional but not assholes.

<comment><USER4> Wanting to maintain a salary consistent with what you've been earning before you join a company does not make you an asshole. This "asshole" label comes off as a strong-arm negotiation tactic on your part. (I may be wrong, but that's how it appears. If I am wrong, please enlighten me).

And there is at least decent correlation between ability and the compensation you've received over the past several years.

<comment><USER2> _Wanting to maintain a salary consistent with what you've been earning before you join a company does not make you an asshole._

Agreed. But we're talking about desires, not actions, then.

 _This "asshole" label comes off as a strong-arm negotiation tactic on your part. (I may be wrong, but that's how it appears. If I am wrong, please enlighten me)._

Not at all... However, if/when on the end of a conversation with someone we're hiring, they say "But I need more money", then I explain the system to them. If they then say "I really like your company, but I'm afraid I won't be able to take the offer because it's too low" that's fine. That's not being an asshole, that's just being realistic about what kind of role is a good fit for you. After all, if you have a massive mortgage and 3 kids, getting a massive pay cut - however short-term it may be - is simply not an option, no matter how much you want the role.

If, on the other hand, having all the stuff in this discussion basically explained to them, including why I can't give them extra pay initially because it will damage the company culture, they then proceed to insist that they want to get some extra money somehow "because they're worth it", and start explaining to me why they're worth the extra money, and so on, then either they just don't get it (and then they're a bit stupid), or they just don't care about the company they're thinking of joining, and in that case I would be happy to declare them an asshole.

 _And there is at least decent correlation between ability and the compensation you've received over the past several years._

Agreed, but I didn't talk about "earning a higher salary", I talked about demanding a higher starting salary in a context where it has been explained that that's not possible.

<comment><USER4> The crux of it is that you have designed a system which you feel can objectively quantify each individual's level of contribution, and then you are willing to directly reward people based on that contribution.

And I agree -- if you pull that off, and if you follow through with the reward, then it allows someone to take a lower starting salary, knowing that it is just a matter of time until things get back on the right track.

But for many kinds of work, including software development, I've never seen anyone figure out how to quantify individual contributions directly (as Paul Graham talks about [1]). Maybe your company has fewer of those kinds of jobs.

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

<comment><USER2> _> But for many kinds of work, including software development, I've never seen anyone figure out how to quantify individual contributions directly (as Paul Graham talks about [1]). Maybe your company has fewer of those kinds of jobs._

That is true and a fair criticism. I'm only talking about the example of my company, not declaring universal rules. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work for the California State University system. Using FOIA requests, various media outlets have built up a database where we can see everyone's salary. For example: <http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/>

Overall, I would say this has not been a bad thing for us employees. 1\. Transparent government is a good thing. 2\. I am very sympathetic to a number of people who receive less base compensation then they would in the private sector with similar responsibilities. 3\. It shows the importance of career path as there are bands per department (e.g. engineers in one range, computer people in a separate range).

Still, there are down sides. 1\. The upper management has found ways to hide salary and compensation. 2\. It does lead to some discontent when people are told their is no money for a raise, but person X manages to get one.

<comment><USER6> I can't figure out why so many public university employees reply to this thinking their situation is relevant. Governments and 501(c)3's are very different beasts than for-profit companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked for SUNY, State University of New York, for a while. Salaries, bonuses, raises were all public. Never really noticed anything bad come from it.

<comment><USER8> I used to work at SUNY too. Every January, when this list came out, my boss (a professor) would send his secretary to the library as soon as possible to get this information. Then he would use it to pester the dean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fog Creek has transparent salaries. Or at least they did when Joel posted this. It doesn't seem evil to me when it's all out in the open and it's obvious to individual contributors what to do to climb the salary ladders.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> The company I work at have a completely opaque approach to salaries, I don't get to now anyone elses salary and no one else gets to know mine - the only people who would be privy would be my employer and the external company accountant, but my last job had a pretty open attitude, so I know both sides of the coin:

This is both a positive and a negative in a few ways:

 _A couple of positives_ :

Nobody else knows how much I earn, there isn't any envy for the people junior to me and it doesn't make them feel undervalued - as someone who used to work for less than minimum wage, I know how demoralizing it can be to know how much less _valuable_ to your employer you are than other people.

I don't get jealous of the people above me, I know they have nice cars and bigger houses, but I'm not constantly thinking about this figure and trying to work out why in the hell they are £30,000 per year better than me.

 _A few negtives:_

Negotiating a higher wage is much more difficult, I don't know that A co- worker of equal level gets £2,500 more than me per year just because he negotiated, so I'm more likely to stick with the status quo.

It becomes taboo to speak openly about wages, the boss hides it from us, so we hide it from each other. Any questions to each other are effectively met with "none of _your_ business."

Feeling uncomfortable talking to my employer about wages and increases in salary makes me more likely to leave a company - it's far easier to go to an interview and negotiate with a stranger you don't care about than potentially having hard feelings towards someone you have to work with daily if they refuse you a raise.

<comment><USER11> But, wouldn't it be just as awkward if you went to you boss and yo said your co-worker that makes 2.5k more than you per year and your boss goes, "yeah, (s)he is smarter and more valuable than you".

Seems to me that rejection is rejection either way (compared to another employee, another company or just in absolute terms).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked for a public university and the salaries were public by mandate. I found it harmless for a while, but it ultimately led to me to search for other jobs when I discovered a new co-worked who I considered lazy made $15,000 more than me.

I think a better idea than going completely transparent is to calculate the group or division averages and publish that number. It offers some of the benefits of transparency while depersonalizing the controversial data. But of course that would only work in mid- to large-sized companies.

</comment><comment><USER13> As great as it sounds, transparent salaries are harmful.

I was in an awkward situation where I was paid much more than other people who joined at the same time as me. One day one of my coworkers found out (due to some accident in distributing stubs) and the relationship became really tense -- he thought he deserved more pay (even though he did half the work I did, he saw it as a measure of the value of his time)

<comment><USER14> That's the opposite of transparent salaries - you just described a leaking of a small bit of information in a closed salary system.

<comment><USER13> There's a certain type of person, prevalent in many circles including finance and technology, who cares strongly about relative salaries and would never be happy if he wasn't the highest paid person in the company. I have met quite a few of those people

<comment><USER2> I've met some of those too. The solution to deal with those people is ruthlessly simple: don't hire them.

<comment><USER4> I definitely agree with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Transparent salary only works if you start off the company with transparent salary and make financials transparent too, along with linking salary to real product performance to remove a lot of harmful politics.

So transparent salary can be good if everything else is transparent also - otherwise it is very bad and leads to terrible politics.

<comment><USER11> Even in that situation I would think hard to evaluate/define/explain roles would be nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first startup I worked at, the founder wanted to make salaries not only transparent, but made known as a fraction of the CEO (e.g. 1/3*CEO_pay). The board, made mostly of VCs, did not like this idea at all and convinced the founder it would bring down the morale of the engineering team if they saw what the sales guys were making (the sales guys were compensated mostly by commissions, of course). I still think it would be a great thing to establish if done when the organization is small enough (and before any investors were involved).

<comment><USER16> At first glance, making the CEO pay a baseline seems really self centered. What was the thought behind that? From my eyes looking at:

      CEO: $100k
      Me: $33k

makes me think, "well, I'm a junior guy. That will change over time."

      Me: 1/3 CEO

makes me think "why does he think he's worth three of me?

It's an emotional distinction, so it could just be me.

<comment><USER17> This is a form of price anchoring.[0] By representing salaries as a fraction of CEO income, it makes all employees evaluate their worth relative to the CEO.

On the other hand, representing the CEO's income as a multiplier of the company's average income is standardized and represents a company-oriented view.[1][2]

[0]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring>

[1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_pay#United_States>

[2]: [http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/compensation/articles/page...](http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/compensation/articles/pages/payratios.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've not but I'd make the counterargument for working at a business where I'm not sure I care.

I occasionally get curious for curiosities sake, but I've never really been bothered. So long as I make enough to support the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed the fact thtat I probably won't be buying a yacht any time soon doesn't really bother me.

</comment><comment><USER19> The FEC mandates many political groups detail all transactions in publicly available databases. If the relevant laws cover you, you can use that to see what other people in your organization make.

I never found it too upsetting, except as additional evidence for why people I thought were incompetent should go.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes, the last company I worked (www.tractis.com) we knew the salaries of everyone in the team. At start it is something cool to know they company aims to be transparent, but then it is something you let it pass and forget.

</comment><comment><USER21> Government has transparent pay and it's never an issue, but it also selects for people who are not financially ambitious. There are plenty of hard- working, very driven people in the public sector, but no one's there to get rich.

The issue with what we do in private-sector technology is that performance itself is opaque. If we're insistent on matching compensation to performance on a year-by-year basis, then we're going to struggle with transparent salaries, because it means that performance evaluations are public (and can be questioned) and, to be quite frank, that means we (as leaders) make high- stakes, not-easily-reversed decisions on imperfect information, and that's bound to piss people off.

I like transparent compensation, but there are issues to be addressed.

Fully opaque salaries "work" in a way, but it's goddamn unstable. People talk, and in fact policies that prevent them from disclosing salary are can't legally be enforced (anti-unionbusting provision). Soon, people discover all the things that happened because they were expedient, but are unfair-- the guy earning $185k for $120k work because he was plucked from Goldman Sachs. As soon as one person starts talking, the whole edifice comes down.

To make it more interesting, companies that try to enforce a pay meritocracy get hit in a different way. Most technology companies have such a rubric, where each level and job-description has a tight band, but have an informal and semi-secret "High Compensation Program" for people they take out of Wall Street, in order to get their pay back to a comfortable level within 1-2 years. I'll admit that I've exploited such programs, but they are actually _more_ unfair, because they mean that not only does your Wall Street leverage get you a higher salary, but _it also gets you faster career progress_. Instead of paying you more than your performance merits, they _make you into a high performer_ with fast promotions and plum projects. Great work if you can get it.

There's no easy way to solve this problem. However, I do think that transparency is a fundamentally good thing.

Now, here's a radical idea. Readers of my blog have noticed that I've been delving into the problems of organizations and concluded that there are 4 organizational cultures. The bad ones are the rank (lawful evil / authoritarian) and tough (chaotic evil / kill-or-be-eaten) cultures that comprise most corporate hellholes. The good ones are the guild (lawful good / superior-as-mentor) and self-executive (chaotic good / open-allocation) cultures. The deep issue is that neither the guild or self-executive culture is very stable, especially amid growth; some stronger alloy of the two is needed.

So, here's a radical idea I'd like to try. Compensation _is_ fully transparent. Salary and every bonus is visible. Exceptional individual performance (especially if sacrificial but important) gets a bonus, with heavy input from the group that the achievement merits it. It's not the 20% year-end bonus that everyone gets. This is possibly 50-500+ percent of salary. Classic self-executive reward structure. That should not be expected by anyone. It should be rare and it's not a ding if you never get one.

 _Salary_ , on the other hand, is generous but doesn't come from individual achievement. You're assumed to be a good performer, working hard to do great things. Salary (above market) accounts for that already. You get a better salary by taking a _mentorship_ role. (I'm bringing in what the guild culture has.) If you _teach_ people, you're sacrificing individual achievement for the good of the group, and that deserves recognition. In other words, it's the silent multiplier contributions that often go unnoticed (they're not macroscopic achievements, but they make the organization symbiotic and great) that get you a salary-level bump.

That's the model I'd try if I were in charge.

<comment><USER22> Rewards-for-mentoring seems kind-of like the academic model, or at least what the academic model at its best is trying to be. I'd agree that it has its good points if implemented well, but isn't the worry that it'll push ill-suited people into the mentoring roles because it's the only way to get ahead?

There's also the age-old question of how you assess, or even define, quality of mentorship.

<comment><USER21> Academia actually shot itself in the foot when most of its luminaries decided that teaching was commodity grunt work, with research being the real stuff that determined a person's career.

Research is important, but if you don't go out and teach people how to use what you discovered, they'll write it off as irrelevant, abstract wankery.

This led (among other things) to society's reduced investment in academia/R&D, and MOOCs are throwing their "teaching is just a commodity" ideology right back in their collective face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> not possible, at least not in the IT industry.

<comment><USER24> Valve has exactly this, clearly it's not only possible - but possible within the IT industry.</comment></comment>


GigaDevice Intros General-Purpose RISC-V MCUs - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1335066 <comment><USER2> Available on TMall now, but I'll wait until Aliexpress offers it.</comment>


Show HN: Recreation of RuneScape Classic login screen in HTML5 canvas - <AUTHOR> https://codepen.io/zerratar/full/xXYePY/ <comment><AUTHOR> This weekend I had some real nostalgia feeling and wanted to recreate the login screen of the good ol' RuneScape Classic. But it was a bit too much fun so I ended up adding a (not complete) character creation and even some of the ingame menus.

If you're an old RuneScape player you will probably find this pretty cool. If not, then I understand if you don't.

What are your thoughts? Anything missing that should be in it?

And finally... I hope you're not going to copy/paste this to phish for real account credentials. That would be unethical.</comment>


Ask HN: I will work for free ... - <AUTHOR>

I am willing to work for free on interesting project until you find me useful and decide to pay for my work (hope this will occur within few months).
My current location is bangalore and I'm a senior developer (10+ yrs exp.) working for Top notch software consulting company.
Very interested in mobile technologies. Love to work on
iPhone or Android applications
Profile:
    * C#, Java, Ruby, Rails
    * Silverlight, AJAX
    * Windows, Mac, HPUX
    * Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, SQL, database schema design.
    * Subversion, Git, ClearCase
    * Knowledge of object oriented design concepts and design patterns.
    * Proficiency with n/jUnit, n/jmock, ASP.NET framework, and CruiseControl.NET.
    * XP, TDD, Continuous Integration <comment><USER2> I don't think this is a good approach.

As an employer, I wouldn't want to invest the time in getting someone up to speed with my systems if they have no "lock-in" that means they'll stay with me until they've paid off for that initial ramp-up period (which would cost me time). I particularly wouldn't want to do so for someone who already has a job at a software company - I'd clearly be a distant second (if not third or fourth) priority in that person's life.

Next, about the profile - I suggest you pick a narrow specialty that you really want to work on (e.g. Ruby on Rails), and focus on that. I don't think many people, particularly start-ups, are interested in hiring a "C#, Java, RoR, Silverlight, Ajax" guy. That long list makes you look unfocused and implies that you probably suck at a lot of technologies rather than being very good at a few.

My suggestion to you would be: pick one technology with a thriving OS community (e.g. RoR), and contribute open-source software. That's one way to work for free that will greatly enhance your value to potential employers. Start a blog, talk about your experiences with Rails, promote your open-source projects, etc. You'll soon find paid work coming your way.

<comment><USER3> He lives in India. A programmer there makes 350,000 Rs a year. All these responses are so discouraging.

"That long list makes you look unfocused and implies that you probably suck at a lot of technologies rather than being very good at a few."

In my startup, we have everyone doing everything. If all someone knows is java, they are useless to us. Each of us had to learn 3 different new languages each just to get our product to launch. We do not have the luxury of having someone with 10 years experience who only knows Java. If something needed to be done, someone had to do it. If we did not have the skills in the group, we had to learn them.

The critical factor for success in a startup is not 10 year of experience in one narrowly defined technical specialty. Specialization is for insects. The most important characteristics for effectiveness in a startup is the ability to learn and the capacity for getting things done. This is one of the key differences between working in a startup and working in a larger company. In a startup you have to do your own marketing, sales, programming, interface design... Everything needs to be done and it is an expensive luxury to have a person specialized in each area that is required.

" That long list makes you look unfocused and implies that you probably suck at a lot of technologies rather than being very good at a few."

"That's one way to work for free that will greatly enhance your value to potential employers. Start a blog, talk about your experiences with Rails, promote your open-source projects, etc. You'll soon find paid work coming your way."

If you want to be poor for the rest of your life and at the mercy of an employer, this is probably a good strategy. Instead of attempting to make yourself more appealing for sale to your bourgeoisie overloads you would achieve greater success and freedom by focusing your efforts on creating something that has value and which people are willing to pay for.

<comment><USER2> _In my startup, we have everyone doing everything. If all someone knows is java, they are useless to us. Each of us had to learn 3 different new languages each just to get our product to launch. We do not have the luxury of having someone with 10 years experience who only knows Java. If something needed to be done, someone had to do it. If we did not have the skills in the group, we had to learn them._

Specialising in something doesn't mean you can't do other stuff. I have done, in my time, Java, PHP, C, ActionScript, Ajax, Ruby/Rails.. hell even Basic and Pascal while I'm at it (and that's just the ones I actually built functioning software with...). But I wouldn't list those on my CV. At this point in my life, I'm primarily focused on the Rails + Flex stack, and I would be lying if I claimed that I'm proficient at all the technologies that I once was proficient at. You NEED to be able to pick up any technology required along the way, of course, but you can't be proficient in all those technologies at the same time.

I do not believe for one minute that this guy is proficient at _all_ those technologies. It's a full time job just to keep up to date on Rails, let alone on Java and C# as well! The obvious conclusion from that list is that they're just technologies he's familiar with, rather than technologies he's _good_ at. Therefore, the obvious conclusion from this "CV" is that he's not good at any of those technologies (or at least there's no hint as to which he might be good at), and just listed them all in a shotgun approach. That is NOT a good hiring signal.

 _If you want to be poor for the rest of your life and at the mercy of an employer, this is probably a good strategy. Instead of attempting to make yourself more appealing for sale to your bourgeoisie overloads you would achieve greater success and freedom by focusing your efforts on creating something that has value and which people are willing to pay for._

Bullshit. That strategy (blogging/being active in the community + copious open source contributions) will soon have you connected with more freelance work than you know what to do with. Beyond starting a start-up (which this guy is clearly not ready for yet), it's pretty much as close to freedom as you're gonna get as a programmer.

Working for YOUR start-up? That's not HIS freedom, dude, that's just slavery in service of YOUR freedom.

<comment><USER3> If I was a programmer today, I would want to be working in the mobile space. I would do anything that was necessary to associate with people in that area and to gain expertise.

He said that he is willing to work for free for a couple of months and hopes to be paid eventually. I am assuming that he wants to learn some new technologies and find opportunities. An employer is taking on a large risk by having someone with no commitment on a project when it will take them several months to get up to speed and learn the required languages.

If he spends a few months in his spare time learning a project's technology and become effective at contributing and is eventually paid for his continued work on the project, I think that it is a good position to be in.

It reduces the risk to the employer and gives him some opportunity to learn a new technology platform. If he contributes significantly to a project, any employer would be more than happy to pay him at least twice what he is earning now. Even at $25,000 a year, he would cost less than a 1/3rd of the cost of a very competent American programmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [Hope this doesn't sound too harsh.]

I few months back, we were hiring and Put up an ad on Monster. One of my reject criteria was "having more than 3 unconnected technologies". Even with >10 yrs exp, listing all the technologies you might be connected with doesnt look nice at all.

Also no matter how desparate I am I would never,

"I am willing to work for free on interesting projects", as that just leads to wrong people and wrong expectations, who dont value your work or time.

Also if you want this ad to be effective, a newly created account with no credentials like a Github account, a blog or your site doesnt help.

<comment><USER5> " One of my reject criteria was "having more than 3 unconnected technologies". Even with >10 yrs exp, listing all the technologies you might be connected with doesnt look nice at all."

WHile it is your privilege to use whatever criteria to reject people, this is complete nonsense.

I know many excellent developers from my days at ThoughtWorks who are experts in and move seamlessly between the java/j2ee, dotNet and RoR stacks. If you understand the fundamentals behind one web stack you can shift trivially into another. Many have contributed code to both j2ee and RoR (say).

If you really understand http (and associated bits like sessions, caching etc), sql (and associated bits like database scaling/sharding etc) , an ORM, Javscript (maybe a framework like JQuery) and have worked on some large web apps for a few years, switching to "unconnected" stacks is the least of your worries. Web dev doesn't change all _that_ much over the years.

The only significant change I see is the rise of NoSQL/"BigData" and really how much time does it take for a talented developer to come up to speed on these things _especially_ if he is working with people experienced on the "new stuff" (for whatever values of "new stuff")? Web Dev is hardly rocket science stuff taking decades ot master.

The rest of your post though , this bit

""I am willing to work for free on interesting projects", as that just leads to wrong people and wrong expectations, who dont value your work or time.

Also if you want this ad to be effective, a newly created account with no credentials like a Github account, a blog or your site doesnt help."

is very much on the dot. Let me add to the chorus of voices here advising you to actually build something/write some open source sw so people can judge how good you are. "Free" is hardly the criterion one use when bringing on a new dev onto a critical project (All startup projects are critical projects)

<comment><USER6> Well those three technology that you mentioned are actually connected, and you mentioned a very strong link between them: they're all web stacks. You actually cited that part of the original post: "...having more than 3 unconnected technologies..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com

I have a friend who is working on some awesome iphone games and could use someone with experience with OOP design patterns. He would be willing to split revenue generated by the applications. Right now he is doing Objective-C development for the iphone (easy to pick up).

The android platform is going to be a huge opportunity in a few years, but the iphone is still the largest app store market, so that is what he has been concentrating on. Mobile development is an awesome opportunity and a very good area to develop experience in.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think you should knock the guy for having experience with a lot of technologies and mentioning them. Like he mentions 3 languages, c#, Java, Ruby. (My resume has a lot more and I'm hiring, not job seeking.)

What might help you a bit more in marketing yourself, swdev, is to mention a bit about some projects and/or accomplishments. hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER8> I do not see a way to contact you.. My email id is in my profile. Ping me and we can check it out.

</comment><comment><USER9> What about PHP? I have something you will like, but initially, the project is PHP based.

<comment><USER10> what about PHP?

<comment><USER11> I believe he wants to know if the poster knows php as he didn't list it on the post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am looking for someone to port our Skype recording plugin to MAC. Can definitely pay later on.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not just throw yourself into an open source project? Many pay down the road if you're successful enough, and you get to keep your dignity. More importantly, you'll know you aren't being exploited.

<comment><USER6> Getting into an open source project with the objective of at sometime getting a paid is a very bad reason to join an open source project. Besides the fact that there are absolutely no guarantees of that happening the attitude you'd probably bring to the project wouldn't be beneficial for the community there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> LOL no thanks

</comment><comment><USER10> Your 10 years is a waste of career, if you agree to work free of time, also its a waste, if you offering for the price of a soda</comment>


Ask HN: 2 jobs, two environments, one laptop.  Any tips? - <AUTHOR> I use my laptop at work and work on my startup at home.  It's a MacBook Pro.  At work I need to have Mail and iCal open, as well as a few stat tracking webpages.  At home I usually have plenty of documentation open (8-10 tabs in Chrome).  At work I'm on a 30 inch monitor.  At home I'm usually sitting on the couch.
I'm getting a little frustrated with this setup.  To keep my tab limit down, I close the documentation for my startup when I'm at work.  When I'm at home I close Mail and iCal and the pages specific to work.  If I don't things just get sluggish.
Has anyone found an easy way to "switch" environments on a mac?  I could use spaces, but that won't help with performance, it will just get it out of my way.  Any good extensions for Chrome that will let me save a session and let me restore it later?  Has anyone else had this issue? <comment><USER2> Fast user switching, perhaps?

You could probably create the new account, note the user/group of the new account, then copy the contents of your main account home directory into the new user's home directory. Then chown -R as appropriate so that the copied files belong to the new account.

That ought to give you a second user account, that has an identical environment to the one you've been using. You might want to use different desktop images so you quickly know which account is active.

</comment><comment><USER3> The obvious one is dual-boot.

Really, what kind of MacBook Pro can't handle email, iCal and 10 tabs? What else is it doing? Can you upgrade the RAM any more? SSD?

<comment><AUTHOR> RAM upgrade on the way. That may make spaces easier to manage. Right now I've only got 2GB and its full with 8 tabs, Cal, Preview, and 6 terminals. Usually I have a dozen or so more disposable tabs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you checked out the tab sugar extension for Chrome yet? I think you can save your tabs as groups and quickly pull them back up. I messed with it some; it didn't really do what I was looking for but might be more in line with what you're describing.

<http://tabsugar.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be more worried of your employer seizing your startup, since you've been working on it with their equipment. Either that, or you've been bringing their information out into the world on your personal laptop, which probably isn't a good idea either.

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been a discussion. The laptop is mine. Everything I work on is on network storage, so I work on our cluster over SSH. The laptop is mostly just a client, with nothing stored locally. (Email is the only thing I can think of, and that's IMAP.) Also, we're a 5 man department, so there isn't much bureaucracy getting in the way of things.</comment></comment>


Why Workday Is Different by Design, and Why It Matters - <AUTHOR> https://blog.workday.com/en-us/2012/why-workday-is-different-by-design-and-why-it-matters.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious if someone worked with the stuff described in the article. Maybe describe it in more specific terms?</comment>


Poor Kids Need Summer Jobs. Rich Kids Get Them - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/poor-kids-need-summer-jobs-rich-kids-get-them/ <comment><USER2> From a white, middle class background. I am one of six children, and while my parents made a decent living, six children meant that money was always tight. Still, my Mom taught us the importance of good manners and being able to speak properly. She did this because she thought it was the right thing to do, and because she knew we didn't have the same financial advantages as other people.

I learned an important lesson about this in my very early twenties when I applied for a summer internship at a local firm. There were only two interviews: one with engineering and one with the owner. The owner gave me the internship on the spot not because of my qualifications, but because he liked the way I dressed and spoke. His words to me were something along the lines of "I feel comfortable putting you in front of our clients."

One of the reasons poverty is so disabling is because it changes the way a lot of people ( but not all people ) carry themselves. People from wealthier backgrounds often _present_ better and get first crack at opportunities as a result. Note that when I say "present", I am talking about mostly superficial qualities, not level of education, skill, or other deeper qualities.

Anyone can learn to present themselves the right way, with respect to speaking, dressing, and credentials - although it's extra work and extra cost for those who have already fought very hard for their chance to climb the ladder.

<comment><USER3> "And they may face discrimination based on race, class or other factors."

In urban areas, where access to transportation and availability of jobs is better, this is really the crux of the issue. Employers (often unfairly) view middle class kids as more reliable. So even if they think working class kids will work harder (another common view in my experience), they see the middle class teenagers as less of a risk.

<comment><USER4> Isn't middle class also a working class? I was brought up as middle class, not especially wealthy would even classify it towards the lower end, but highly educated as both parents were academics.

I worked every summer since I was 13, and 16ish to 18 also during the school year now and then (17/18 was fairly lucky early it was really early 2000's and I mastered PHP rather well so made actually decent money building websites when web2.0, CMS and dynamic content were still meaningful buzzwords).

<comment><USER3> In the academic, Marxist sense, yes. But I was using the term "working class" rather as a synonym for minimum wage, blue collar workers, or in this case teenagers whose parents have those jobs. The point really is that middle class kids (like you were) can get jobs (like you did), whereas poor kids often can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No mention of the J1 visa, which employs hundreds of thousands of immigrant students in US summer jobs:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/americas- sweatshop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/americas-sweatshop- diplomacy.html)

<comment><USER6> Yup, total f###ing scam.

The local employers in the tourist area I grew up in load up on Irish and eastern European college students every summer. They give them barely enough hours to make ends meet if they live two and three to a room, ride a bike ~10mi or more to work and pick up another part time job on the side. Standard practice was/is to hire too many people so that everybody would be fighting for hours and firing people at the drop of a hat wasn't inconvenient.

The main benefit is getting a bunch of employees who are totally clueless about their workplace rights in the US and is dependent on remaining employed by the company that sponsored their visa in order to keep their visa. The supermarkets and hotels were businesses who would usually sponsor J1s so they were the ones who treated them like crap. The actual tourism parts of the tourism industry only hires the foreign workers secondarily (since all the foreign workers had at least two jobs) and treated them like anyone else.

This kind of behavior is particularly scummy since it would cost very little, if any) additional money to pick up the phone and call a temp agency since managing a primarily foreign workforce is inefficient. It's not about money, it's about having employees you can treat like sh#t.

(Source: worked summer jobs with J1 students as coworkers)</comment></comment>


How Nintendo DRM trapped $400 of downloaded games on my failing Wii - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/how-nintendo-drm-trapped-400-of-downloaded-games-on-my-failing-wii/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29 <comment><USER2> Transferring via SD should be an optional optimization/convenience for folks with large collections. Otherwise, it should be as simple as activating+downloading your account on the new device, with the old device deactivating next time it connects.

Is Nintendo really worried folks are going to go around downloading onto devices and never connect them to the Internet again? If folks are willing to put up with workarounds like that, they'll probably also be willing to flat- out pirate things.

This moronic DRM implementation ignores that he could take money and put it towards a tiny cube PC running an emulator. Then he'd get better graphics and an overall better experience (play whatever he wants, however, wherever).

Nintendo had a great chance to create an enjoyable system that encourages people to freely spend and use their accounts all over the place. Instead they lock it down and annoy folks, which will most definitely cost them more in lost sales than the handful of people who'd download a game twice.

<comment><USER3> Especially seeing the price people paid for these 15+ year old games. For Nintendo it is like a mine of Gold: zero work needed to make them run, and full profits for almost no bandwidth cost. The simple fact that people are even willing to buy such old games at that price is baffling to me.

<comment><USER4> Zero work isn't quite a fair assessment. There's NRE associated with implementing the emulator, and probably a fair amount of play testing. Games might have specific quirks that depend on the hardware implementation. As anyone who's ever done emulation on a PC knows, it's can be very good, but rarely perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should pirate all of your software you previously purchased. If you've already paid for it, there's no reason you shouldn't have access to it. Laws be damned, that's my opinion.

<comment><USER6> This is a legal question:

If I go buy X content (DVD, music cd, random playstation game), and the medium is destroyed, what happens to my license under Copyright law? In what instrument is my license under Copyright law located?

Do I still retain the right of a copy and to procure a copy elsewhere? If not, why not?

<comment><USER7> This always reminded me of the dualistic nature of light. The entertainment industries seem to want the product to behave both as a physical item or a license depending on what benefits them most in any given situation.

Lost it? Its a particle. Buy it again, full price.

Want to sell it used to your bud? Its a wave. License doesn't transfer.

There's my thought of the day: DRM is like a Huygen's slit: the weird interference pattern makes your "purchase" cease to exist in some places.

<comment><USER8> What a beautiful insight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nintendo's handling of purchased digital goods is a disaster. I just wish I had the will power to stop throwing money at them.

I'm hoping I don't have similar issues transferring my (relatively meager) Virtual Console library to the Wii U - though it seems I'll have this same problem if a new Nintendo comes out in the future.

<comment><USER10> I also initially purchased a lot of games on the Virtual Console before I realized how behind the times they are on digital goods. Since then I've been able to restrain myself from buying any more digital content from them. I really like the company in general, and would love to keep purchasing their products, but they are going to have to prove to me that I won't need to repurchase digital goods in the case of hardware failures or upgrades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Due diligence.

If you buy ANYTHING poisoned with DRM, expect dragons like this. There is nothing than can come from DRM other than eventually losing what you paid for through device death, key loss, service shutdown. It's not about will but when.

<comment><USER3> I have been wondering the same thing about Steam, actually. Do you think we will be seeing a Steam "scandal" like that in the future, where a game suddenly becomes unavailable and you lose access to it for one reason or another? So far Valve has been able to keep things straight with everyone to make it almost feel like you owned the games, but it's just a licence to play them in the end.

<comment><USER12> It is because of this licensing arrangement with Steam that I have not purchased a single game from them where I did not get at least a 75% discount off the normal sales price. I don't care if I have to wait, like I did when I finally purchased a game last week for 75% off after waiting a year for a sale, but since I don't own a copy (physical, transferable & with DRM) of the game, I don't see the point of paying full price to Steam or any other games provider.

<comment><USER3> Funny, I have the exact same behavior towards Steam. And on the other hand, I fully embrace the Humble Bundle and GOG as they provide you with executables without DRMs - I just wish they would expand in more recent games (GOG especially).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Take them to small claims court. They will respond almost instantly with a generous settlement and a NDA to protect their corrupt DRM house of cards.

<comment><USER14> With a Wii U at least, there's a clause in the license agreement that you waive your right to sue unless you send written notice.

<comment><USER13> The agreement found at [http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wiiu/en_na/account_...](http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wiiu/en_na/account_your_account.jsp) excludes two cases:

1) protection of intellectual property rights (by either party)

2) small claims court

So if you just want your money back for your games it shouldn't be a problem to get it.

The exception for intellectual property claims is perhaps more interesting. Nintendo insists on stacking the deck and forcing anyone they've screwed to individually go through their rigged kangaroo court(1), except when enforcing their own intellectual property rights. I wonder how effective they would be pursuing pirates with mandatory binding arbitration, which the pirates haven't agreed to in any case, rather than filing DMCA complaints.

Perhaps though, if you've purchased licenses to their games and now you can't play them, that could be considered to be an intellectual property related dispute: interference with your right to use your legal licenses of their intellectual property.

(1)Not hyperbole, mandatory arbitration clauses are patently unfair and should be illegal, or legally made to have the effect of optional arbitration clauses.

<comment><USER15> As others have said, this is probably easily solved by calling and just explaining the problem. It was mentioned multiple times in the article that this case was a fringe scenario (he had old software, first gen, etc). It doesn't even sound like Nintendo is trying to employ DRM to do anything dirty, it sounds like there were simply issues with early Wiis that weren't addressed.

If you decide to skip all that crazy talking-it-out nonsense and take Nintendo to small claims court, you pretty much deserve to lose your filing fee and time screwing around with the courts.

<comment><USER13> Aside from the fact that all DRM is dirty and should be fought wherever it is found, I never suggested that the author should not attempt a diplomatic solution first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd post a reply there but there's really no point with the volume of comments already. Most likely he simply has a corrupt binary on one of his games. The "quick" way to resolve this is actually go through and launch all of the games and see if any fail. Delete the ones that fail and then try the transfer. I would bet 99% that that's the problem.

</comment><comment><USER17> What is it about Japanese companies and their inability to create good online services. 3ds, ps3, psp, wiiU, etc.. so much potential.. xbox live is already a good example of how it's done. A simple copy of that would be 1000x better than what's there now.

<comment><USER18> Although the attitude is starting to show a chance of waning, the truth is that software is simply not valued over hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why can't downloaded Wii apps work like iPhone apps? I've never had an issue transferring those to a new device.

<comment><USER20> How many times have you done that? I recall iDevices had a limit of 5 or so.

<comment><USER21> As long as you unregister each device before it breaks you can stay under the limit indefinitely.

<comment><USER22> You can unregister devices even without the devices present, i.e. if they break, like in this situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are interested in Virtual Console games, instead check out different emulators:

NES: Nestopia, FCEUX SNES: bSnes, Zsnes, Snes9x Game Boy: VisualBoyAdvance N64: 1964, NEMU64

Roms (file archives copied from cartridges) are easy to find. Some systems, you will need a bootrom, which is also easy to find.

Just post if you have questions how to set this up.</comment>


On-Site AC Dielectric Test for 220kV Long XLPE Cable - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/on-site-ac-dielectric-test-220kv-long-xlpe-cable-candy-zeng?trk=prof-post <comment><USER2> this reminds me of using Lissajous figures to calculate the capacitance of power lines.. ah memories!</comment>


Why Bitcoin lives in a "legal gray area" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/why-bitcoin-lives-in-a-legal-gray-area/ <comment><USER2> Actually its not legal in the US, as part of the original Federation of states and later under 31 U.S.C Sec 5103 the United States has held that it is not legal to conduct business within the United States with any currency other than US Dollars. When pressed, the rationale generally relies on protecting consumers from fraud, and preventing money laundering and other financial crimes. Back in the mid 70's, growing up in Las Vegas, I got to experience this first hand when the Treasury Department swooped in and put a stop to people using Casino chips [1] as a casual currency.

However, given the way that Bitcoin works, I really wonder if governments do want to shut it down. This may be controversial but it seems with the blockchains the psuedo anonymity of bit coin that the transaction history (if its used primarily for crime) is creating something of a map of nodes as to who the 'big' guys are and who the 'little' guys are. This isn't an 'id' based strategy more along the lines of 'where has this bitcoin been' and then tracing all of them to see how they flow. If all you do is download transaction blocks once a day and note which coins have transacted, then compare that with the coins you find in the wallet of the guy you just arrested, it might leak more data than you would hope. Pure speculation though, based on how current law enforcement identifies criminals by watching bank balances change.

[1] They had great properties, you could take them into any casino and get their face value in dollars.

<comment><USER3> ChuckMcM: what about using Bitcoin as a store of value or investment asset, in the same way people use commodities like gold and silver?

Just as it's perfectly legal to have any portion of your wealth invested in gold or silver, which you can freely buy and sell at any time, shouldn't it be legal to have any portion of your wealth invested in bitcoins, which you should be able to buy and sell at any time like any other commodity?

Edit: Note that the same argument can be made for bartering. According to the IRS, in the US, it's perfectly legal to barter any product, commodity, or service for another product, commodity, or service, so long as any taxes due are paid as required by tax law.[1]

\--

[1] [http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=188095,00....](http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=188095,00.html)

<comment><USER2> As a value store, sure. Just like baseball trading cards. Where it gets dicey is where person A uses currency to get a proxy item (BitCoin, Casino Chip, Baseball Trading Card) takes that proxy item to Person B and uses it to purchase a good or service of some value, then Person B takes the proxy item and uses it to purchase a good or service from Person C who then converts it back to currency. In those situations the transaction between A and B has become 'lost' (or laundered) because its not possible to connect the transaction C made to the transaction A and B made beyond a reasonable doubt. And that is the stuff that gets the enforcement types all agitated.

The IRS would like like to know if you bought some proxy thing, it appreciated in value, and then you sold it for a gain (or loss). BitCoin exchanges should send a 1099 of all transactions to the IRS (I don't know if they do that or not).

<comment><USER4> Also a "Proxy Item" is always subject to capital gains tax and sales tax. Otherwise it would be money. This is the only thing really preventing competing currencies. In fact, Ron Paul has worked on getting this restriction repealed in the case of gold and silver: <http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul434.html>

"The final step to ensuring competing currencies is to eliminate capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coins. Under current federal law, coins are considered collectibles, and are liable for capital gains taxes. Short-term capital gains rates are at income tax levels, up to 35 percent, while long- term capital gains taxes are assessed at the collectibles rate of 28 percent. Furthermore, these taxes actually tax monetary debasement. As the dollar weakens, the nominal dollar value of gold increases. The purchasing power of gold may remain relatively constant, but as the nominal dollar value increases, the federal government considers this an increase in wealth, and taxes accordingly. Thus, the more the dollar is debased, the more capital gains taxes must be paid on holdings of gold and other precious metals.

Just as pernicious are the sales and use taxes which are assessed on gold and silver at the state level in many states. Imagine having to pay sales tax at the bank every time you change a $10 bill for a roll of quarters to do laundry. Inflation is a pernicious tax on the value of money, but even the official numbers, which are massaged downwards, are only on the order of 4% per year. Sales taxes in many states can take away 8% or more on every single transaction in which consumers wish to convert their Federal Reserve Notes into gold or silver."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like a well written bitcoin story. As soon as this story opened with the red herring of Silk Road, I sighed in disappointment.

To my knowledge, bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by my country (or any other country), therefore it has no special properties. I'm an individual citizen buying something for one value and selling it for another. This is well established in civil law and tax taw.

When I see a story about bitcoin I read it once, then read it again substituting the words pet rocks for the word bitcoin. I ask 'is there anything specific to bitcoin about the concerns being raised?' and the answer is almost always no.

If I buy some pet rocks at a garage sale in August and sell them at my garage sale in September for more money, I record the profit or loss, report it on my tax return and pay the appropriate income tax on it. This is not advice, but its what I'm going with until I learn otherwise.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure supporters of Bitcoin would (at least in the US) like to argue for Bitcoin being a currency in this case, as it would allow users to record capital gains and losses rather than standard P/L like you'd get from selling rocks. The tax benefits on capital gains are much greater.

edit: This statement is false. Thanks for the clarification, nullc.

<comment><USER7> Er. Something doesn't have to be a _currency_ to report capital gains on them!

[http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2011_pu...](http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2011_publink100010476)

"For the most part, everything you own and use for personal purposes, pleasure, or investment is a capital asset. Some examples are: [...] Any property you own is a capital asset, except the following noncapital assets."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The main legal weakness of the network is the possibility to launder money while mining. You exchange electricity for anonymous Bitcoins.

Freshly minted coins are obviously anonymous, and so are the ones awarded for transaction fees (they come from whatever transaction your mining rig managed to solve).

It is expected that mining fees will rise to match the cost of mining once the free supply has dried up.

As long as you can find an electricity supplier that looks the other way, mining can be used for laundering.

<comment><USER9> Not only that you can use Bitcoin scramblers to launder your bitcoins.

Because nobody mentioned them yet: They forward money for a fee. With enough users one can then not trace the transaction anymore.

And that makes Bitcoins a anonymous method to pay. Readily availble to launder money. Governments will not look away if this becomes widespread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The underlying publication

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115203>

reported on in the Ars Technica article kindly submitted here is a student law review article, specifically a "note," a classic form of first publication for innovative legal reasoning on a novel issue. I can report, as a one-time law student who was a member of my law school's law review, that every law student's dream (if the law student has a scholarly bent) is to publish a law review article that in turn is taken up by an appellate court and then cited as the basis for the court's opinion. That happened to one of my classmates-- his comment on a case in the Minnesota Law Review was cited by the United States Supreme Court in a decision that agreed with his reasoning.

So the author here interviewed by Ars Technica is young, early in his career, and speculating on what COULD happen or opinionating about what OUGHT TO happen. He hopes to persuade a court that his reasoning is correct. But the article is not a sure-fire prediction of how any court or any law enforcement agency will respond to Bitcoins. The Bitcoin experiment has some novel features, and litigation related to it will probably produce new court case holdings (at a minimum) and possibly new statutes as well. "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881), page 1.

As I have written before, perhaps the greatest contribution the Bitcoin experiment will make to humankind is to teach you and me and our neighbors more about the realities of economics. Here we see that the Bitcoin experiment will also teach us more about the reality of the law (in several different countries of the world, and how law from one country can be applied to transactions that involve another country.) Where there is legal uncertainty, there is transaction risk, and persons using Bitcoins to engage in commercial transactions will have to figure out how to price that risk.

AFTER EDIT: There is an interesting idea in another comment submitted before mine.

 _I would really like to see a full-frontal assault by a first-world government on Bitcoin, just to test how resilient it is to such an attack_

I hazard the guess that significant resources have already been devoted by the National Security Agency in the United States and by comparable government agencies in other countries to figure out multiple attacks surfaces in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It may be that those attacks will not be publicized by any government, but held in reserve for a time of need. Perhaps operatives of this or that government can better conduct covert operations with the help of Bitcoins, in one case, while perhaps they can disrupt the activities of a hostile government by disrupting Bitcoins, in another case. I'm sure there are plenty of interested onlookers analyzing the Bitcoin experiment.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Miners participate in Bitcoin's distributed transaction-clearing process, competing for the free bitcoins that are awarded at random to one miner every 10 minutes."

Is this even remotely true? I thought they were all basically trying to brute force a valid hash, with no time-based guarantees at all.

<comment><USER5> Its true and actually the best concise summary of bitcoin mining I have read. All miners are in a race to find the valid hash for the block they are working on. The first miner to find the hash wins the block and gets 50 coins. The system as a whole notes how long its taking miners to find the hash and adjusts the difficulty of the winning hash based on this speed. So in actually blocks are won in a little less or a little more than 10 minutes and the system adjust to keep the time as close as possible to 10 minutes.

<comment><USER7> Er. Describing it as a race inspires some of the most common misconceptions about mining. If it were a race and Alice ran 10x faster than Bob, Bob would probably never win.

Bitcoin mining is stochastic, and for a given current difficult each calculation performed by anyone has an equal very small probability of being a solution. Like throwing dice and trying to get a 1. If Alice mines 10x faster than Bob then Alice will find, on average, 10x more solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bitcoin is not an official currency in any country, but as in any monetary system it has value. It is real no matter how hard you deny.

The problem with Bitcoin is politics. Every country controls how much _new_ money comes into market, lowering the overall value of the currency. With Bitcoin they just can't do that.

It is quite lame to argue that Bitcoin is used to support crimes and so on, since its overall value is by far less than the amount needed to produce every drug USA caught. Let's try not to mix things up. :)

Bitcoin is cool and IMHO, one of the very few viable solution to a unified currency system.

</comment><comment><USER12> The article seems to imply that BitCoin would be money under current law and that it is subject to all sorts of transmitter and exchange limitations. That makes me wonder.. why are miles and points programs exempt?

What they deal with seems to have all of the qualities of currency. Ditto: Second Life's Lindens.

<comment><USER13> _That makes me wonder.. why are miles and points programs exempt?_

Because the miles and points are non-transferable and not exchangeable for cash.

<comment><USER12> How about Linden?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is a crime to run your own currency in all countries members of the WTO (for good reasons). You are not allowed to use bitcoins to buy or sell any product in any of those countries.

Also, I'm not a believer in bytes carrying out value. You see, a dollar bill is just a paper that represents a value that's not that paper. Having a serial number of a bill "could" be the same as having a bill itself. That makes bitcoins completely impossible to regulate, it will have life by itself. Lack of regulation is not freedom, is stupidity.

Economies with distinct realities cannot share the same currency or indexed currency. See Greece and Germany. Argentina and US.

Currencies will cease to exist. I'll not be alive to see that, but in the future there will be only XP points (just like diablo!) and maybe commodities. Currencies will slowly die out. You will be only capable of producing XP points by working, products itself will never generate XP points.

Maybe I'm just childish, but that's how I see it right now. It's friday, have a great day!!!

<comment><USER15> Citation needed.

<comment><USER14> High school?!?! That's part of the Marrakesh Agreement!!! It makes clear that trading of goods can only happen by using it's signatories official currencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would really like to see a full-frontal assault by a first-world government on Bitcoin, just to test how resilient it is to such an attack, and also so that the lessons learned from it can be applied in improving both the technology and its utilization. I wonder to what extent the very prospect of failure discourages that.

Same goes with Tor. Both of these technologies are things that most governments would very much like to see rubbed out before they gain widespread adoption (and, you know, fuck them for that). It's a shame, because even the Internet could probably do with a little bit of regulation, and the monetary system certainly needs it, and yet both of these technologies are in part a reaction to the complete failure of most governments to have any sort of competence with either. In fact in many cases it's just outright malicious. Now in Japan they will begin jailing people for something as harmless as viewing a copyrighted work on fucking _Youtube_. Time to get a Tor router.

<comment><USER7> It's not resilient to such a thing. If you think _anything_ widely used can be, you are woefully underestimating the power of a modern major state.

This isn't a question about technology; as much as the geeks love to obsess over it. Technology is just one part. Non-technology attacks are simply much more powerful. E.g. "Anyone caught using Bitcoin will be executed on the spot by large caliber fire from attack helicopters flying far enough away that you can't see or hear them targeting you", and suddenly Bitcoin is only some obscure and irrelevant thing— even outlaws have no use for outlaw 'money'. There is no question of _ability_ to suppress it, only a question of sufficient motivation.

And motivation is where it comes up short. Bitcoin is just another thing people can barter. Not different from beanie babies or lumps of coal, and it shouldn't be legally or politically different. This whole weird concept of something being unlawful until proven otherwise must be some kind of crazy fallout from the drug and copyright wars, and I fear that thinking will greatly harm society in the long run.

If Bitcoin turns out to be an efficient 'money' then sane and efficient governments should support it: because a more efficient money will make everyone more prosperous. Some people love to feel all counter-culture and subversive with their hobbies, but as disruptive a technology Bitcoin is it's just not politically disruptive. Most of the few establishment risks that go along with Bitcoin apply doubly to cash, the others apply to other valuable commodities that goverments can't just create out of thin air. The motivation to attack just isn't there.

<comment><USER17> > Non-technology attacks are simply much more powerful. E.g. "Anyone caught > using Bitcoin will be executed on the spot by large caliber fire from attack > helicopters flying far enough away that you can't see or hear them targeting > you", and suddenly Bitcoin is only some obscure and irrelevant thing

That's still a technology problem. Make the use of it undetectable. A sufficiently technology savvy Bitcoiner would just wrap his stuff with some encryption and with minimal hassle, you would need to be much faster and harsher to stop them.

Besides, if we're assuming civilian execution without trial, then we're not talking about the modern major states. Not a single of the major states could even remotely do such a thing without consequences. The harshest punishments for comparable offences would be for the distribution and possession of child pornography and that is not stopping the offenders, on the contrary.

<comment><USER7> The widespread use of a money like thing _can't_ be undetectable by its very nature. If you have to keep it between trusted parties it's not money, it's hawala. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not a question of law but simply one of power. The USG is sovereign and not subject to any controlling legal authority. And its power, especially in financial matters, is global.

Therefore it can be analyzed as if it were a criminal actor. Does the USG have motive, propensity and opportunity to murder Bitcoin? Sadly, the answers are yes, yes and yes.

Motive and propensity - obvious. Opportunity - USG can't shut down Bitcoin trading, but it can smash the BTC price by destroying the exchangers. If it misses one, everyone who owns BTC and sees it as an investment will rush for that exit. Once it is closed, the price is zero by definition.

In retrospect, BTC will look like a very foolish bubble. In fact it is perfectly sound from an economic perspective, but not from a political perspective - it assumes a basically fair, just and sensible global legal order. Or at least a multipolar one. Closing our eyes and believing these illusions exist is not an effective way to make them exist.

BTC is flourishing. It continues to flourish because DOJ hasn't finished its paperwork yet. If you have some - sell it while you can. A big lump of gold feels nice in the hand.</comment>