Italy's situation and a warning to other countries by an Italian doctor - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1237142891077697538 <comment><USER2> I live in the Bay area. My wife is a ED doc as a small, under resourced community hospital. Every time she goes to work these days, I think- I hope today isn't the day that the hospitals here get overwhelmed like Wuhan/Hubei and now Lombardy. Like the docs in New Orleans, post Katrina, the psychological toll in those provinces must be terrible. I pray that the social distancing here and the proposed antivirals work in time to blunt Covid-19.</comment>


Prime Numbers Keep the Internet Secure - sunny--tech https://medium.com/better-programming/how-prime-numbers-keep-the-internet-secure-680cc1743133 <comment><AUTHOR> Without it, nobody would be able to make secure payments over the internet, or even log in securely to e-mail and other personal services.</comment>


Firefox OS Is Coming to Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fxos_on_RaspberryPi

<comment><USER2> The roadmap/goals for post-MozFest 2014 pique my interest. The following especially:

 _" Users will be able to read from sensors and control motors, LEDs, solenoids, slave boards, etc"_

That will make it easier for people to start playing with electronics from the browser on their Raspberry Pi. Chrome has a serial API, which I think is only accessible to chrome extensions - [https://developer.chrome.com/apps/serial](https://developer.chrome.com/apps/serial). If Firefox OS on the Pi comes with no-limits unlike Chrome, then it should be fun to play with.

Looking forward to it ~!

<comment><USER3> There is already a proposal of GPIO API: [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.webapi/4BC0pBz...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla.dev.webapi/4BC0pBzEC7E/discussion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool that more operating systems are supporting the Raspberry Pi. However I think targeting the Pi to completely run a quad copter/drone is a bad idea. Unless Firefox OS has some special realtime control extensions that allow you to stop the kernel from pre-empting program execution, putting a mission critical control loop in a user space program is going to cause problems.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea. I AM confused though. Currently Fx OS doesn't provide a decent (imap) mail client and seems to have issues with services/background stuff (think.. IM client).

If things like the ones described in the post are the goal (media server, low level hardware access), does that mean modifications to the core system? Is - and that's my real question - the lack of the mentioned features merely "not yet written" vs "impossible to do right now and blocking on core/system changes"?

<comment><USER6> it's definitely in the not yet written category. Background services is something hard to design right and we don't think any of the other mobile operating systems got it right (think: battery, data plan drain, privacy, security, user control).

There are multiple ideas on how to approach that as more and more systems in FxOS would benefit from it (background music player, IM, various synchronization services), and I expect us to come with first approach relatively soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i'll say it again [1]

by focusing on old, cheap and slow hardware, they're losing out on 3rd-party dev talent that would be interested to run FxOS on more modern hardware and letting the optimization for old devices trickle down later. i would love to _easily_ run it on my BeagleBone Black and contribute apps i make back to their market.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433121)

<comment><USER8> > by focusing on old, cheap and slow hardware, they're losing out on 3rd-party > dev talent that would be interested to run FxOS on more modern hardware and > letting the optimization for old devices trickle down later.

By focusing on old, cheap, and slow hardware they ensure that the optimization will happen _at all._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> hmm.....strange that firefox is being put up on a v6 arch. The current generation of boards (such as firefly) is based on ARMv7-A. a much more powerful and matured arch. Next, v8 is coming up with 64 bit support.

<comment><USER10> Not strange at all. Raspberry Pi is vastly more popular than any other competitor, perhaps even all competitors combined. It doesn't really matter that it's slower or that it uses an old instruction set.

<comment><USER9> won't affect the performance for checking emails or messages. for task such as browsing and streaming over mobile, v7 is much more optimized.

<comment><USER4> There are nearly 4 million Pi's sold now vs. a few hundred thousand BeagleBone Black boards (which use ARMv7). If you only have limited resources to get your OS running on one embedded hobbyist board, I think the choice to use the Pi makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some pictures of it running at MozFest:

[https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/52643541881717555...](https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/526435418817175552) [https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/52643423950471168...](https://twitter.com/graphiclunarkid/status/526434239504711680)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd rather put Debian on FirefoxOS phones.

<comment><USER13> Want to help me work on that? Contact details are on my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder why I would ever pick this over the actual OS offerings for the Raspberry Pi.

The power of a full OS stack or a plain browser. Choices, choices....

Mozilla should really focus on Rust and the other projects. We all know what happened to WebOS and Symbian Web apps.

<comment><USER15> I dunno, what about Chromebooks? Firefox OS seems like it's the same sort of idea, but targeted at phone instead of laptops.

<comment><USER14> Personally, I also don't see any value in Chromebooks.

And given that I am yet to see any of them being sold in Europe shops or at any WiFi spot, I am not alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is cool, I have a reason to boot up my RPi again for the first time in a few months. Looking forward to how this project shapes up.

</comment><comment><USER17> Better finally port FxOS to truly free mobile platforms, like GTA04!

<comment><USER13> Truly free but in the hands of very few vs mostly free and in the hands of many?

<comment><USER17> Since when is Raspberry Pi "mostly free"? My one lays right now next to me and it still cannot even boot its CPU without non-free firmware.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Zones for Node.js using async_hooks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cztomsik/minizone <comment> yjftsjthsd-h "A Zone is an execution context that persists across async tasks. You can think of it as thread-local storage for JavaScript VMs."

In case anyone else was wondering.

<comment><USER2> Like a closure !?

<comment><AUTHOR> More like a context, any function can then access data relative to current request, transaction, and similar "async" flows. This is otherwise impossible with async/await.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The reason we don't have zones in Node is because they mess up with error handling. I recommend anyone considering Zones to read trevnorris's domain postmortem [https://gist.github.com/trevnorris/d19addf4aa09a0a31a4a14e90...](https://gist.github.com/trevnorris/d19addf4aa09a0a31a4a14e90cb5c302)

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds like zones are bad idea but those problems are related only to process.nextTick and setTimeout, if you're using promises (which I do for 99.9% things) you're fine.

<comment><USER3> If you're using promises and async/await then you don't have any of those problems anyway :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Pure async/await does not allow to track any contextual state - like current transaction/request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that this is based on experimental functionality in NodeJS. Similar functionality had been inside NodeJS before and was removed. This is mostly used internally for other stuff.

This is similar to dynamic scoping.

<comment><USER5> The Async Hooks API is still experimental but should be stabilized by Node.js 10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also see [https://github.com/othiym23/node-continuation-local- storage](https://github.com/othiym23/node-continuation-local-storage)

<comment><USER7> Can someone please compare both?

Does the fact that Minizone is based on "async_hooks" make it more future proof? Less hacky?

<comment><USER8> Zone.js is an existing library to try and provide CLS in javascript. async_hooks is an experimental API being built in to node to allow this.

The OP is a project implementing a zone.js-style API using async_hooks. Also see this PR on the original zone.js project where they are working to use this in the original library, but have hit many edge cases/issues: [https://github.com/angular/zone.js/pull/795](https://github.com/angular/zone.js/pull/795)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A few years back I wrote something similar for ClojureScript: [https://github.com/binaryage/cljs-zones](https://github.com/binaryage/cljs- zones)

The drawback was the need to manually wrap all participating async functions into a special macro (zones/bound-fn). With async_hooks this could be automated I believe.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've always been under the impression that concepts like thread/continuation- local storage were generally discouraged, but I never fully understood the reason.

Obviously, you'd want to avoid coupling your code to an HTTP-specific context if you want to expose a gRPC endpoint in the future.

Are there any other downsides to this approach?

<comment><USER8> The problem is that all CLS systems in JS are inherently leaky, due to the many games JS libraries/apps can (and do) play with resource pooling. Implementors basically have to play a plug-the-holes game getting all the popular libraries to properly "play along" with the CLS system. For example, domains needed tons of PRs very similar in nature to this: [https://github.com/sequelize/sequelize/pull/589/files#diff-1...](https://github.com/sequelize/sequelize/pull/589/files#diff-1fcbe253f68a98bb45ab62b33825d759R8)

Also, they typically come with a sizable perf hit: [https://github.com/bmeurer/async-hooks-performance- impact](https://github.com/bmeurer/async-hooks-performance-impact)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Useful if you need "contextual" async/await (access current transaction, request, ...)

</comment><comment><USER11> Perfect! We used domains for this but the module was marked as deprecated and it stressed me out, knowing that we depend on a deprecated concept that will be removed soon.

Now all I need to do is to abstract domain usage so when the time cones I can switch to Zones.</comment>


Moral Machine - <AUTHOR> http://moralmachine.mit.edu/ <comment><USER2> I think these trolley problems are a waste of everybody's time. Building redundant reliable braking systems will be orders of magnitudes easier than creating a system to fairly and accurately assess who is the best set of people to kill in a disaster scenario.

<comment><USER3> I hear this often (that trolley problem is not relevant), but then I discovered that a lot of realistic ML fairness problems can be restated as a trolley problem.

You have a classifier for credit assignment (giving a loan, etc.). The classifier is 99% accurate on the entire population. The classifier is 55% accurate on a small minority. You can improve the minority accuracy to 90% at the cost of 0.3% decrease of general accuracy. What do you do?

For self-driving: Your accident rate is 0.0001% for the entire population. Your accident rate is 0.0003% for black pedestrians at night. You can allocate more compute/research/resources to equalize the accident rate of black pedestrians at the cost of increasing accident rate for the entire population to 0.00011% (or keeping it constant where you may have seen an improvement if you focused on the general population). What do you do?

<comment><USER4> Have the classifier incorporate the identifying characteristics of the minority so that it can push past beyond the 99% limit it's at currently.

This is why people are pissed off about the trolly problem. It's all zero-sum hypotheticals when reality is primarily not zero-sum.

<comment><USER3> Adding fairness to your models usually incurs a cost which can be measured. You have to choose between max profit or equal opportunity, you can't have both (do you run over the investors or over the minorities?).

See here a visualization of trade-off's between global accuracy and fairness:

[http://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking- discriminati...](http://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking- discrimination-in-ml/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These scenarios are idiotic. If you want to wank off about self driving car ethics, here is a much more realistic scenario: should all self-driving cars report their location to 911 dispatch to allow any vehicle to be re-purposed as an emergency vehicle at any time? That might actually save someone.

Also, can anyone identify a useful idea that philosophers have come up with in the last 50 years?

<comment><USER6> If you'll give me 5 more, the Gettier Problem[1] turned 55 this year. Most work in nonmonotonic reasoning is also under 50 years old.

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

<comment><USER5> I guess if you count logicians as philosophers then philosophy is useful. It is probably just "ethics" that deserves my scorn. If ethicysts were really out there studying good and evil in the world, one of them would get murdered every once in a while, like policians, journalists or police.

<comment><USER6> > one of them would get murdered every once in a while, like policians, > journalists or police

Just to set aside the fact that "being murdered" is a _terrible_ metric (do you gauge marine biologists by their diving skills, or astrophysicists by their ability to survive in a vacuum?): a good many philosophers were either murdered or narrowly avoided being murdered in the World War II and/or the Holocaust. Any profession that includes a doctrine of skepticism tends to be among the first targeted for persecution, even if that persecution doesn't involve literal acts of murder.

Ethics involves more than just doing good or bad -- it involves figuring out what we mean by "good" and "bad" to begin with, whether these things correspond to actions, individuals, or outcomes, whether they have respective orderings, and so forth. All of these questions lend themselves better to prolonged thought and discourse rather than sample sizes and expensive scientific instruments.

<comment><USER5> I chose the 50-year interval to make it difficult since the last 50 years have been pretty stable and comfortable in anglo countries, relatively speaking.

Here is something ethicists could analyze that would really help convince me that they are taking it seriously: given the cost, the years from your life, the job prospects, and the success percentage, is it ethical to accept someone as a doctoral student specializing in ethics? Maybe they could study different universities and see which make the cut and which don't.

I agree that skeptics are persecuted so if I see group that ought to be skeptics but no one is trying to persecute them, I wonder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about situation where someone tries to commit suicide by jumping under the autonomous vehicle? Should this impact logic and in what way? And how would the vehicle determine that it's observing a potential suicide event?

</comment><comment><USER8> I found it interesting that my responses were much more towards "upholding the law" than the average of others. To me, it's not so much a matter of "upholding the law" as of predictability: the green "ok to cross now" and red "do not cross" signals should have a reliable meaning. If self-driving cars don't take those traffic rules into account, people will find it much harder to predict their actions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember seeing this last year. Issue I have with the choices is that it is missing an option: flip a coin.

On some of the questions, I find the options morally equivalent. So in these situations, if I were programming a solution, I would leave it up to chance and use a random number generator to decide the fate.

<comment><USER10> Why would you program a solution that has to kill people? If you are aware of specific situations, shouldn't you program a solution that completely avoids such situations and saves everyone?

<comment><USER11> Some situations cant be avoided like if something falls off the car in front of you. In a real car you could swerve to avoid it and you will likely kill whoever is on the side of the road you swerve at but you will get away with it because it was a panic response and there was no way for you to properly assess what to do. This changes with self driving cars because they have all the info available and don't panic. The decision on what to do was planned and programmed in an office with plenty of time.

<comment><USER12> > Some situations cant be avoided like if something falls off the car in front > of you.

It can be avoided by allowing adequate breaking distance between the car in front. Most of the time having to make any decision between swerve and break can be avoided and someone that chooses swerve and kills someone should be charged with manslaughter.

Something non of the self driving cars seem to do is slow down for road conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Feedback given:

"Looking at the first question, with female athlete crossing legally as default vs male athlete crossing illegally:

\- Both options should involve honking the horn loudly and flashing emergency lights, which _might_ get the humans to run away. There's no guarantee of death either way.

\- Are there passengers in the car? If not, it looks like there's an "island" in between the athletes that has traffic lights—big metal poles sticking out of the ground—which the car could crash into and help stop itself. For that matter, can the car drive itself off the road instead?"

</comment><comment><USER14> In modern society we already have a mechanism for preventing machines from doing immoral things: hold someone accountable for its actions. It can be the owner or the manufacturer, or some mix of both, just someone should be responsible. This sets up the incentives for either better management by the owner, or for the manufacturer to design the car to avoid illegal harm. Why have a parallel system of morals aside from the law when we can just apply the law?

<comment><USER15> Incentives help, but not always as much as we expect. People and even companies are not always very rational. I wonder how rational the bosses at Takata were regarding incentives as they kept making and selling unsafe airbags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One highly unrealistic aspect of these questions is that, although they purport to be directed towards helping to develop decision algorithms for self-driving cars, many of the factors given in the scenarios are not things that a self-driving car could reliably detect.

</comment><comment><USER16> A previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12632881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12632881).

</comment><comment><USER17> I think these problems should be asked to the "human drivers" first. Then we can find applicable solutions on "AI".

</comment><comment><USER15> Though these kinds of moral puzzles are interesting, I think that ultimately, they seek solutions to the wrong problem. The questions they ask assume the existence of an advanced AI that can resolve a lethal situation in a (presumably) less tragic way by implementing some complex moral calculus. However, rather than spending time designing and implementing such an AI, engineers' time could be better spent designing an extremely safe, car-based transportation system, one where these trolley problems become improbable and their ethics less relevant. Part of engineers' efforts would involve educating the public and influencing public opinion, since implementing such a system is more of a social problem than a technological one.

I am not an automotive engineer, but here are some techie layman's ideas for implementing such a system. (These ideas have come from many sources, or been inspired by them.)

1) Make autonomous car slow. Slow cars are significantly less lethal. The average speed of populous cities' traffic is pretty slow anyway, and it doesn't really help anyone for impatient human drivers to rush to an intersection so they can wait for a stoplight. Slow autonomous cars will initially be an annoyance to human drivers, but once they outnumber human- operated cars, traffic will get faster and smoother (when all the cars waiting at a stoplight can start moving again in unison at a green light, for instance, instead of what happens with human-driven cars.)

2) Make cars lighter. Stop the Hummerization and SUVization of cars which seeks to armor their occupants (somewhat ineffectively), but puts others at greater risk of harm.

3) Have more exterior crumple zones on cars which can reduce the energy transmitted to pedestrians and other cars in a collision. Cushion the engine block, possibly move it to the back, or do away with it altogether (as in some modern, prototype cars where each wheel has its own electric motor).

4) Reduce the need for people to ride around in cars. Have more telecommuting, more local commerce, more local production, tighter knit communities, less urban sprawl. Have more people-less vehicles take care of making small deliveries (since such driverless, passengerless vehicles could be made even smaller, lighter, and less dangerous than passenger vehicles... and could also sacrifice themselves in the safest way possible if they were ever about to put someone's life in danger.)

5) Move passengerless, transport cars away from people. Program them to drive on roads in unpopulated areas when possible, even if their trips end up being a little longer and slower. Non-sentient cargo is patient.

6) Make autonomous cars self-diagnose and maintain themselves as much possible, checking themselves in to service stations and repair shops when needed so that their tires are always properly inflated, their brake pads are changed in a timely fashion, etc. Make it illegal to operate an improperly maintained car, and force owners to either sell, or dispose of, or temporarily store away their cars if they aren't currently able to afford the required maintenance.

7) Get rid of "stroads" and fast roads that cut right through residential/pedestrian areas. Evaluate and follow many or all of of Strong Towns' recommendations.

To sum it up: let's work on greatly reducing the likelihood of deadly situations involving autonomous cars, instead of worrying much about deciding who should live and who should die in such situations.

</comment><comment><USER18> How about, if you are in the car that is going to kill people, you die first because you made the choice to get in the car, but the poor person on the sidewalk wasn't part of that choice?

I get throwing in animals and the car should not avoid animals and kill people. Heck, we have people who do that and end up killing more people just because of their poor judgement.

<comment><USER10> I guess it makes sense. If questions were presented on the meta level about who made the choice, most people would probably agree that those with the choice have to sacrifice themselves first.

<comment><USER3> I think game-theoretically it is best that the self-driving car always prioritizes its passengers. If it has to quickly hack a competitor's car to avoid a dangerous head-on collision, so be it: That market will sort itself out. Let self-driving cars play a tit-for-tat Prisoner's Dilemma strategy. Classic capitalism at work, because right now only rich people can afford a Humvee, and will come out on top when they crash with a second-hand Fiat Panda (even when it is their fault).

A bus with 40 passengers crashed because the driver wanted to avoid a raccoon crossing the road. I don't want my family on that bus, and will pay gladly for something better if I have to. The market will offer me that better option. If it has a customizable setting of "how many strangers to kill, before we kill your family first?" I will set it to "all of them." as I expect others to do so too.</comment></comment></comment>


Personal income in the US shot up a record 10.5% in April - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1862614/personal-income-in-the-us-shot-up-a-record-10-5-percent-in-april/ <comment><USER2> I'm thinking the Europeans (at least the ones that did this) got it right by subsidizing payrolls so employers could just keep on paying staff as if they were working. Much simpler to coordinate payments to a smaller number of endpoints, none of the hassle of trying to process orders of magnitude more unemployment claims, etc.

But, then I suppose it would be an obstacle to companies using the opportunity to permanently trim staff. Hmm.

<comment><USER3> This works because European countries are very corporatist. There is a high degree of labour organisation and governments, unions, and employers often work together to maintain say, employment rather than responding to market fluctuations.

This is why German unions say in the early 2000s during Germany's "sick man of Europe" period, negotiated _stalling_ pay raises to maintain employment.

In the US (and also often here on HN) this will just be described as inefficient, ignoring market signals or something like it. I don't think it's even possible to coordinate the economy like this in the US.

<comment><USER4> It requires a level of corporate control over politics that just doesn't exist in the US.

<comment><USER5> I don't know what to make of this comment. On the one hand, it makes sense, on the other, corporate control over politics in the US is near complete.

Maybe it just goes to show to show that corporations can not control themselves. They need to be guided.

<comment><USER4> It isn't anywhere near complete.

In the US, corporations fight with the state. In most Nordic/North European countries, corporations are the state (the history is just totally different, large corporations have run those countries for decades).

I will give you an example: Germany we can agree is a fairly rich economy, the average German citizen has the same net wealth as a Greek citizen...a country where the economy basically doesn't function, unemployment has been in the high teens for two decades, etc.

I also knew someone who run a chemicals business in Europe. In the UK, unions fought every step the way, they negotiated huge salaries for members, they would make threats, they would strike. In Germany, they just rolled over. As long as you paid the right people off, low wages, subsidised loans, etc. They just did whatever management told them (I think people who talk about worker representatives on boards assume that there is some scrutiny going on...I have never seen this occur).

The closest comparison is probably China. Very similar.

<comment><USER6> are you serious in your reply? because claiming german unions didn't fight every step of the way is absurd.

Unions and other left winged organisations played a major role in german history. Germany was the first country with a state supported pension and healthcare system. The SPD has been in power for a majority of germany's post- ww2 history together with CDU in the grand coalition and the average greek does not have the same net wealth as the average german.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a total number, it doesn't say to where the money went.

I would only trust medians or the 95 percentile with the current administration.

Statistics are meant to be misleading. It's even in my profile description :)

<comment><USER8> The federal government is giving unemployed people 600 per week (31,200 a year) on top of state benefits regardless of their income so anyone making less than that is making more on the federal government alone. That is why total income has gone up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure how this is a useful statistic. I'm being perfectly honest. I think it can only be useful in retrospect, since our ability to predict the near future, given current circumstances, doesn't seem high.

<comment><USER10> I think is interesting and surprising even if it doesn't inform opinions about next steps

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Because the govt super sized their unemployment checks, be ready for the end of unearned bonuses in a few weeks

<comment><USER12> I'm agreeing with you - but isn't that the whole point of a stimulus? Boost short term economy and therefore hope, even if the gains are not long-lasting, the money floating around both helps people pay their bills and motivates them to make purchases?

There is still a couple more months of increased UI. Surely, it will be a huge fall after that, but in a much better place than if there were minimal or no increased benefits to begin with.

I would love to see another half-sized measure - but don't think the fact that it will fall in the future almost proves its usefulness.

<comment><USER13> > isn't that the whole point of a stimulus?

What was passed wasn't economic stimulus. It was paying people to safely stay at home.

Stimulus would be paying people to stimulate more demand (which may happen, but it will be after the economy opens up again).

<comment><USER12> I really disagree. The payment amount was not linked to whether or not individual people stayed at home or whether or not they lived in an area that had strict stay-at-home orders.

The economy may not seem "stimulated" compared to where it was a year ago - but it is certainly "stimulated" compared to what it would have been if the additional checks didn't go out and a much larger swath of the population missed rent, car payments, or credit card bills.

<comment><USER13> > but it is certainly "stimulated" compared to what it would have been if the > additional checks didn't go out and a much larger swath of the population > missed rent, car payments, or credit card bills.

By that definition, every single bill that passes appropriations sends money to someone and therefore "stimulates the economy".

I still don't think stimulus was the impetus there. Compassion for those who lost their job, a desire to avoid/mitigate social instability, and reinforcement for people to follow the directions of health professionals.

As far as I can tell, this is the bill/law[1]. No mention of stimulus in the title or abstracts.

[1] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/6199...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/6199/all-info)

<comment><USER12> Trump, Mnuchin, Pelosi, McConnell, Sanders, and Biden have all referred to this as a stimulus. Sure, anything with money could stimulate some, but the express purpose of this was to stabilize and stimulate the economy. Most bills have that a secondary goal. A bill which directs money to institutions that do cancer research stimulates economic movement but that is not comparable to giving money directly to people for not working or losing their job.

There is no mention of the bill, either in the law itself or in discussions, that this would somehow reduce transmission by encouraging people to stay home.

Trump: [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/coronavirus-stimulus- trump-w...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/coronavirus-stimulus-trump-wants- to-send-out-more-relief-money.html)

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

Pelosi: [https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/05/12/nancy- pelosi-...](https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/05/12/nancy-pelosi- stimulus-bill-price-sot-lead-vpx.cnn)

McConnell: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHGSQCMZSt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHGSQCMZSt4)

Sanders: [https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2020/05/bernie- sanders-...](https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2020/05/bernie-sanders- maintains-push-for-recurring-checks-in-coronavirus-stimulus.html)

Biden: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-26/biden- ass...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-26/biden-assails- stimulus-calls-u-s-corporations-greedy-as-hell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone explain that US personal income $18.5 Trillion figure? That's approaching the entire GDP.

<comment><USER13> > Seasonally adjusted annual rate

This means that _if the trend were to continue for a year_ , the amount of personal income would be that figure. GDP is always an annual figure.

It's not clear if "personal income" is just cash or includes benefits (like health care).

It's also possible that people who are laid off / furloughed are dipping into their retirement funds, because the administration gave guidance that doing so right now would not be penalized for those who are economically impacted (please don't do trust me and verify with your accountant).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like you could get this exact statistic by having 20 million or so low earners lose their jobs - as in the shifting average (not talking about unemployment cheques)

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this the exact opposite of what we want? If a stimulus results in decreased spending we are literally just flooding the market with dollars that are being saved. If that money isn't being spent it isn't triggering the desired effect of a stimulus package... creation of goods and services. It's basically just a big middle finger to people who don't take on debt and who are still working, especially service workers. If they announce an extension of the bonus unemployment I will definitely ask to be laid off, 3 months of making $4500 a month with infinite free time to pursue side projects?

<comment><USER17> So could a couple make $9000 a month, or more with children?

<comment><USER16> If a couple both got laid off in late March and filed for unemployment they would have made 4200 + 4200 + 1200 + 1200 = 10800

<comment><USER13> > filed for unemployment

I would like to point out that filing for unemployment is risky:

      - it's not a guaranteed approval,
      - you don't automatically get health insurance (and COBRA moves all of the cost to you, rather than split between employer+employee),
      - there's little hope of a bonus extension, and
      - there's a chance that your state exhausts their unemployment fund in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How many months of 110% income would it take for, say, the middle 80% of US households to have accumulated 6 months worth of savings?

<comment><USER19> Why not just create a simplified welfare state ? Claim benefits for up to six months no questions asked.

<comment><USER13> > Why not

Because US policy makers don't trust citizens. They demand that all benefits be means-tested and the onus is on the recipient to prove.

Also, one of the major parties (the one that controls the Senate and the Executive Branch) wants to dismantle "the welfare state". I don't think COVID changed that part of the platform.

Personally, I would love for policy makers to listen to Code For America leadership and change policy to make it stupid simple to hook into employer data to know when a person is layed off and message them with SMS or a Push Notification that they are already registered for {unemployment, MedicAid, food assistance}, but the friction for those systems is what one (or both) party wants, so I'm not holding my breath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Quantitative easing?

</comment><comment><USER21> A small step up from the pit of despair we're in should not be confused for meaningful progress, though we should fully expect the Trump administration will soon be releasing misleading self-congratulatory statistics for political gain.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is great news for a bunch of reasons. In the immediate term, it's great that people and families saw extra income in a trying time. In the longer term, hopefully this informs a larger discussion on the minimum wage and effectiveness of various social programs.

<comment><USER23> No one's pay went up. 40 million people lost their jobs, the majority of who made very little money. The average went up because low wage jobs were vaporized

<comment><USER22> pay != income, which is the key point here. The fact that millions of families are seeing more money now in the current unemployment benefit scheme raises the question about whether the pre-corona minimum wage was too low and whether we need to invest more in social programs.

And this honestly couldn't have happened at a more interesting time, since this is a presidential election year. Millions of voters who might have voted on social or cultural issues may be more inclined now to vote for politicians interested in bolstering social programs.

<comment><USER13> > in the current unemployment benefit scheme

Congress (a nationally centralized organization) was doling out the money and used a simple formula (+$600 for every unemployed person, no matter what their job was).

> whether we need to invest more in social programs

I think "invest more" is maybe the wrong way to think about it and would just throw more money at the problem the wrong way. I think we need to change how legislatures and federal departments dictate how social programs be administered.

Code For America (and 18F and USDS, etc) has great programs where they go in and assist government departments to improve the experience for the end user. They generally try to change the project management to think about MVPs and use Agile methodology and _most importantly_ build small increments quickly and iterate. Traditional US social programs were mega projects defined at legislation/RFP time (both highly corrupt because lobbyists and contractors would steer requirements).

We need to empower departments that administer social programs to run them for the people who actually use them and allow them the flexibility to change the requirements of the program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesing. I guess it's a matter of perspective. The headline could have just as easily highlighted the increase in the national debt. This money didn't fall out of the sky.

Or perhaps, more accurately, characterize it as a loan that will eventually have to be paid off - directly or indirectly - by the taxpayers currently receiving it as "income."

Question: This isn't actually income, is it? That is, it's not taxed. Nor is it capital gain, as that is taxed as well. This would traditionally be labeled an entitlement, correct?</comment>


Techurls: Source to keep track latest technology news and articles - <AUTHOR> http://techurls.net

<comment><USER2> Do people create anything original anymore? I mean original in the sense that it doesn't involve other people's content.

If not original, at least something that takes a bit more work than regurgitating RSS feeds.</comment>


A Logic Named Joe by Will F. Jenkins (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/a-logic-named-joe-by-will-f-jenkins/ <comment><USER2> The story itself appears to be at [http://www.baen.com/chapters/w200506/0743499107___2.htm](http://www.baen.com/chapters/w200506/0743499107___2.htm).

</comment><comment><USER3> > And after all, if I get fed up with bein' old ... I could > hook Joe in long > enough to ask: "How can a old guy not > stay old?" Joe'll be able to find > out. An' he'll tell me.

Should anyone reading this have such an opportunity, for the sake of my curiosity do not wait for senescence to ask this question.

> That couldn't be allowed out general, of course. You > gotta make room for > kids to grow up. But it's a pretty > good world, now Joe's turned off. Maybe > I'll turn him on > long enough to learn how to stay in it. But on the other > hand, maybe—

How unfortunate for this story's universe that our salt of the Earth narrator is so limited in his view of the potential scope of human flourishing. How useful as a negative example for our universe.

<comment><USER4> _Joe_ isn't about computers or networks; it's about _everybody_ owning a monkey's paw[1]. The setting is a vaguely scifi, but the story would work as well with garden-variety genies or some such - wish-granting entities that aren't too concerned with the consequences of granting the wish, and wish- makers who can't think through the easiest and most effective way of granting a wish. (Try thinking about the usual three wishes, and try making them bullet-proof/idiot-proof/watertight and only beneficial.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey's_Paw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey's_Paw)</comment></comment>


Is Posterous the New TwitPic? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/05/26/posterous-twitter/

<comment><USER2> i would go as far as to say it's the new wordpress. it's incredibly simple and easy to use. they should make the transition easy though (batch import wordpress articles).

</comment><comment><USER3> Posterous is what a startup should be: simple enough that it really needs no hype to promote it. To wit: it's not even the new "currency" of anything! :)

</comment><comment><USER4> TwitPic is quite annoying with the banner ad that displays almost as prominently as the photos.

</comment><comment><USER5> Someone should build twitter using the tumblr API.</comment>


Downvote system HN - <AUTHOR>

When you don't like a comment on HN you just don't change the points of the comment. When you really think a comment is out of place you downvote a comment.
This is a great system. It keeps HN clean from flamebates an other spam.
Today my comment was downvoted. That's ok. I won't complain about that. Only this time I was very curious about the reason.
I like to be curious because I like to learn. And one of the best way's to learn is by your mistakes.
So wouldn't it be great when a downvoter must apply a simple explanation? Or could this lead to discussions about the explanation instead of the subject?
edit Changes 'posts' to 'comments' <comment><USER2> You can't downvote posts on HN.

You can downvote comments though. You just have to learn to live with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, I ment 'comments'.

But my question is about the 'learn to live with this'. Wouldn't it be good to learn why you were downvoted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of mandatory comment to downvote. I dont see any reason why someone should give an offtopic explanation for downvotes.

<comment><USER4> My car is green

<comment><USER5> Good Point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this has been discussed some times before. You may be downvoted because the Downvoter doesn't agree with your point or because he (or she) thinks your comment is rubbish. There is no way to tell the reason, but so far it seems to work fine anyhow.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a lot of space between "don't agree" and "rubbish".

I don't complain about this system. But I can imagine sometimes it would be nice to have an explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can imagine it possible to require a commit-style comment, visible only on a user's profile list of comments.</comment>


All Ether from the genesis block has been transferred - <AUTHOR> https://etherscan.io/address/0x9d2BFC36106F038250c01801685785b16C86C60D <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because it suggests potentially that Ethereum's founders are cashing out.

<comment><USER2> Interesting observation, if true, it comes at a bizarre time, when markets are being slammed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Related [https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/ethereum-ico-investor- movi...](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/ethereum-ico-investor-moving- millions-185857044.html)</comment></comment></comment>


The Story Of Lockitron: Crowdfunding Without Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/the-story-of-lockitron-crowdfunding-without-kickstarter/ <comment><USER2> 5 years from now KickStarter will be known as "The Startup That Failed to Pivot".

The way KickStarter wants to be used and the way the crowd is actually using it have become 2 completely different things. It started out hosting campaigns for plays, short films, & debut albums. Now it's known for its Apple product accessories and tech gadget campaigns. But rather than change its funding structure, rules, and options to accommodate pre-sales of physical products, they've demanded less "risky product campaigns" and more easily deliverable "fun-artsy-fartsy theatre campaigns"... They're basically betraying the very campaigns that put KickStarter on the news and grew it to what it is today.

Over the last few weeks we've learned that KickStarter:

\- isn't a store where backers can buy pre-sales.

\- doesn't allow "home improvement products".

\- doesn't allow you to offer multiple quantities of a reward to your backers.

\- and doesn't let you use pre-rendered images of prototypes.

That's the sound of KickStarter shooting itself in the foot 4 times.

Look, I get why they're doing this, they want to protect their backers from successful-but-failed campaigns. But most products FAIL, most companies fail, and the failure rate and shipping delays of projects on KickStarter is normal. I mean Jesus, people are funding, manufacturing, and shipping a product in 6 months. That's pretty incredible. Kickstarter, in their desperate attempt to please the backers, is just going to end up destroying its own ecosystem. Well the tech portion of it.

If the crowd wants to play Mini-Venture-Capitalist then they're going to have to learn to deal with disappointment.

Lastly, Kickstarter doesn't even promote your campaign, it just hosts it. It's up to you to promote your campaign's link. So I'm paying 5% of my funding goal to KickStarter for hosting fees. Why? With Lockitron's successful self-hosted solution we now know that we don't need KickStarter anymore. And not being needed is the first step to obsolescence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kickstarter certainly did open the door to these styles of private hardware- funding campaigns. And given how successful private Kickstarter-esque launches can be (App.net, Lockitron), I can't see myself trying Kickstarter -- I would go the private route first. From the article:

""" A brief e-mail exchange ensued, culminating with a firm "No" – stating that Lockitron fell into the "home improvement" category of prohibited projects. """

Maybe it is HN bias, but all past popular Kickstarter launches seem to be products that would now be prohibited. I think Kickstarter is writing their own fate by not allowing these things. All the new popular launches are going to go off-site.

There are probably legal implications (and other problems) that come with being a "store" and Kickstarter does clearly not want that. But I can't envision the future of Kickstarter unless they come up with a solution to the store problem (and not by outright banning store-like products).

<comment><USER4> _Maybe it is HN bias, but all past popular Kickstarter launches seem to be products that would now be prohibited. I think Kickstarter is writing their own fate by not allowing these things. All the new popular launches are going to go off-site._

Watching Kickstarter and the various multi-million dollar projects, the liability question was getting more and more important. And even when you've tried to be very up front where the liability is, that doesn't stop angry people from suing you. And that, is not a fun way to live.

So Kickstarter gets more and more explicit in their liability language and rules and that shuts down folks who might otherwise have participated. So I don't know if its 'fate' so much as a hard way to do a business.

<comment><USER3> Someone suggested this below. Maybe they should pivot (slightly, more like adding a new feature) and offer a Kickstarter-as-a-service SDK to products that would fall outside their liability-acceptance zone. That way they can still take their cut and offer a valuable service to folks who want to offer funding campaigns.

EDIT: For clarity, the idea is Kickstarter provides some sort of white- labelled page to show a counter and collect/skim funds. I have to imagine liability falls back to the originating company at that point.

<comment><USER5> Stackoverflow charges ~$200/month to have your own QA site on their platform.

I'd drop at least a couple hundred bucks a month on my own Kickstarter SaaS site that funds R&D science/technology research.

If you're on the Kickstarter team, read this ,and are interested, get in touch. I have my credit card in hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it fascinating that Kickstarter considered this a "Home Improvement" product.

Its not an actual lock and doesn't become part of the home permanently. This is kind of like saying that one of those desktop USB dart shooters is a weapon, or one of those little "iPhone-bots" is a surveillance device. It seems like the perfect, hackable "geek device" that Kickstarter was made to fund.

I wonder if underneath the Kickstarter guys were afraid that it a) would never get funded, or b) you couldn't deliver.

Oh well, I guess it was their $75,000 to lose. A great big congratulations to you guys. Way to take a setback and spin it into epic win. Best of luck.

<comment><USER7> Thanks! There were a number of projects involving replacement power outlets and light switches that were accepted without question, so I believe that we were not only tangled in their new policies, but also that they started enforcing their prohibited categories more closely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's an interesting subtlety here: "We won't charge your card until your Lockitron is ready."

The Kickstarter model has a few appealing characteristics for hardware: evaluate product-market fit, gauge initial order size, and get upfront capital.

By giving up the upfront capital (presumably because they don't need it), they can allow refunds or cancellations, unlike Kickstarter. This is great for customer confidence and relationships. But they keep the other incredibly valuable parts of the Kickstarter model, which are crucial for hardware startups.

<comment><USER9> I agree.

Pre-order vs pre-buy is a subtle difference that might make riskier projects workable. Projects get a lot of the benefits but the risk of customers & kickstarter getting burned is much smaller.

Some projects may not need the funding so there's no reason to introduce that risk. Others might be able to live without it. I imagine that having 500k of pre-orders could be leveraged for financing via another route (investment, loans, credit lines).

If Kickstarter is watching learning, maybe they can fix problematic categories by tweaking the model rather than banning them entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ever since App.net raised 500k using the same model, I believe that there is a need for someone to build a "Crowdfunding as a Service" app.

Imagine if I too wanted to make a crowdfunding campaign that was completely independent of kickstarter, indiegogo, or any other platform. I would have to build all this functionality on top of Amazon that would take credit cards, store them, charge them when a threshold has been met, and then ship my product out to those people who funded me when manufacturing has been completed.

I believe that if a company were to automate all of this and allow anybody to have their own platform independent crowdfunding campaign on their site, just like PayPal allowed anybody to have their own e-commerce site, they could truly rival the market share of Kickstarter.

Such a model could have tremendous benefits over the traditional kickstarter platform routine we see many crowdfunding sites copy today.

<comment><USER11> Seems like the challenge there is that you're setting yourself up for the liabilities without the control.

If anyone can use your service, you're going to have fraudsters left and right. If you have to vet them before they can use it, aren't you just another version of kickstarter?

<comment><USER12> What about a counterparty that just does due diligence? They can dig further and figure out if the team can actually accomplish the task and if the service is vaporware or real.

This could be a simple badge program (for some upfront fixed vetting fee) that lets people say they have been verified.

The problem is that Kickstarter isn't just filtering for viability. Some sort of DD would help say that the project is feasible and eliminate the politics.

<comment><USER11> That's a good idea. There's room for someone to come in and rate the viability of various projects. A need, really. Even with Kickstarter, as we've seen before.

<comment><USER12> The domain veri.fi is still available :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that more and more companies will just run their own "kickstarted" campaign without Kickstarter like the Lockitron guys. The companies will also no longer be at Kickstarter's mercy to shut down their campaign when they feel like, and don't have to pay the commission. Now it's so easy to setup credit card payment with Square and put up your own"Kickstarter" page.

</comment><comment><USER14> One advantage of being on Kickstarter is the traffic. How did Lockitron get the initial traffic and buzz?

<comment><USER15> Hacker News, mostly. And Word-of-mouth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I commend the Lockitron team for pursuing their own corwdfunding effort and then open sourcing the system. You may have just opened up a chink in Kickstarter's armor.

If Kickstarter cracks down on product related projects maybe we will see a new crowdfunding platform emerge that is friendlier for those trying to fund and launch physical products. Kickstarter should be careful here or they may be creating an opportunity for a serious competitor to emerge.

</comment><comment><USER17> ChrisNorstrom - couldn't have said it better myself. I was going to point out many of the same arguments and showcase that while Kickstarter is a great idea and can wield it's massive brand to potentially attract visitors to your campaign with startups like App.net and Lockitron running their own campaigns, Kickstarter has to be a little worried about how they're trying to solve the problem that is crowdfunding...

</comment><comment><USER18> Could Lockitron and/or App.net open source their campaign pledge/reporting/administration scripts?

<comment><USER7> Yes, we will have it on github in a few days!</comment></comment>


Analytics and Metrics for Documents You Send - <AUTHOR> https://docsend.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those from the Hacker News community who'd like to give DocSend a try, here's an invite link to grab an account and skip the line! [https://docsend.com/invite/hackernews](https://docsend.com/invite/hackernews)

</comment><comment><USER2> DocSend's stats feature really helped me polish my deck by reordering and adjusting slides based on popularity and tweaking it after every view. Right now it's one of the most powerful startup tools that I have. Great job Russ, David and Tony!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Kirill!</comment></comment>