Other Examples of Craigslist Spam Tactics [NSFW] - <AUTHOR> http://ezliu.com/craigslist/

<comment><USER4> So I treaded on the dark side at one point, and was hired to write a Craigslist spam application. It was pretty simple and would automatically post to all the Erotic Services sections in all the U.S. localities with randomized (a huge set of varying titles, descriptions and photos - that could all be localized specifically to where it was posting) postings, randomized emails, obfuscating the text further by using shades of black for each letter - <USER2> solving the captcha and auto-responding to the email to publish the posting. It would do this every 20 minutes, 24/7.

The results for spamming adult dating affiliate links was pretty interesting. On average it would earn $1k a day, with most holidays jumping up to $2k a day. One very religious holiday in particular (won't mention which one to single any group out) brought in $3k. In one single day.

As long as spamming people with affiliate links will work, and makes them money - someone will do it.

<comment><USER5> Ever think about swapping out your own affiliate link for a small percentage of the posts?

<comment><USER4> Well - part of the deal of me writing the app for the guy was that I would use it too. So the numbers I am reporting were my personal profits off of it - <USER3> I had a much lower posting frequency as not to compete directly with the guy who hired me to write the app. He ended up abusing the system and changed the configuration to go like every 5 minutes which caused Craigslist to make various changes like removing the ability to add links in the postings, then they changed the captcha system (which was still easy to bypass) and then finally they moved to recaptcha (I believe). I don't know how much more the other guy ended up making but I know he was easily pulling in more than me.

<comment><USER5> It's fascinating how much money there is in things that are at best ethically unsound and legally questionable, and at worst completely illegal (no real shocker in the latter, though).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My company is creating a mobile classifieds platform. On the company blog, I've spent some time analyzing Craigslist scams ("Five Craigslist rental scams" <http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist-rental-scam-crisis/> ) as well as spam ("Craigslist 'by dealer' categories and dealer spam", [http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist-by-dealer- categories...](http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist-by-dealer-categories- and-dealer-spam/) ).

Craigslist puts in a lot of effort to warn people about common scams, yet the problem persists in the high-value categories. This is especially true of rentals -- I get a Google Alert every week of Craigslist-related crime appearing in news reports, and half or more are rental scams. How can people miss the warnings and get conned? Part of the reason relates to smart social engineering, as the OP suggested -- girls, convincing sob stories (active duty military deploying overseas is a common hook), well-written emails, great prices that are almost too good to be true. The scammers are constantly running tests to see what works best and then applying them to multiple areas. But the other thing is the nature of buyers, who may only come to Craigslist once every few years and may assume that because their last experience turned out good, their next one will, too.

On the spam front, "flagging" is one of the main weapons CL uses to fight things like overposting, top-posting, miscategorized posts, etc. Unfortunately the system has broken down in many markets. Check out some of the cities in Western Canada, which are overrun by spam (see "Craigslist Canada: Ticket spam, giant markets and dead areas" <http://invantory.com/2012/04/craigslist- canada/> ). Dealers and spammers using manual or automated means simply overwhelm the categories, and there aren't enough active flaggers to mark the violators -- or people have simply given up.

Classified marketplaces really interested me, and if anyone wants to talk about Craigslist or mobile classifieds, I can be reached via the websites listed on my HN profile.

<comment><USER7> Flagging can be unrewarding to the flagger as well. If I'm hunting an apartment deal, email 100 ads, determine 70 are fake, flagging the fakes to remove the ads I already know are bad is just going to bring in more competition for the places I want. A lot of fakes reuse something, like pictures or contact information, etc. so you can identify their future posts as well.

The real world rewards are huge. I know people who have sublet a place worth $5k USD/month from someone for $2.5k USD/month because they hunted for a deal and found someone who had to go move and take care of their parents ASAP and that person didn't have any other immediate takers pop up so quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's very important to distinguish "spam" from "scam".

What AirBnB did was a little spammy (and probably violated CL's ToS). Same goes for ODesk and other freelance boards (I got one from HireTheWorld just the other day).

When someone wants all your personal information or help moving (i.e. "laundering") money overseas, that's an entirely different animal.

<comment><USER9> If I understand correctly, AirBnB directly posted to Craigslist, where most of the spam emails (such as the roommate or oDesk emails) look to be the work of third-party affiliates. I'm not condoning AirBnB's methods, but there is a subtlety here that makes affiliate spam even harder to battle.

Lots of companies use affiliates to do the dirty work for them, then ban affiliates that get caught. New affiliates pop up, or the banned affiliates create new accounts and start over. That leaves sites like Craigslist in the unenviable position of playing whack-a-mole to try and ban spammers.

Other variations on these include fake profiles of women on (insert social networking site her) who inexplicably "friend" men and entice them to sign up for dating/adult sites where the target can see more photos, and gambling instruction guides/beat the casino secrets uploaded to torrent sites for free. Naturally affiliate links to lots of online gambling sites are embedded in the guides.

I guess the takeaways are:

1\. Never trust user generated content.

2\. Whenever there's a way for people to produce content (effectively) for free, the affiliates/scammers will be there. I built a rental-listing site a few years back. Not long after I stared getting real listings, I started getting rental scams. I had almost zero traffic, but the tiny blip on the radar screen my site produced drew scammers like flies.

4\. It's often better to ask forgiveness than permission. What repercussions did AirBnB suffer for their posts? What real repercussions do any of the spammers face?

5\. Just writing about affiliate marketing, well, at least this side of it, makes me feel icky.

<comment><USER7> > I had almost zero traffic, but the tiny blip on the radar screen my site > produced drew scammers like flies.

It's worth pointing out, that if you used some sort of standard back end like Wordpress or some other user content system, there are bots built to search the web for those and post to them automatically. I wouldn't put it past someone to throw in a check for if it is real estate related and handle slightly more advanced back ends like Drupal.

<comment><USER9> The rental site was home-grown, but scammers still managed to find it. I noticed an ocean-view apartment in Miami for about $300 a month, which seemed odd. After some investigation I learned about scams and began checking for ultra-low rents, etc.

I did have a Pligg site I put up as a quick project and that was a victim of the automated searches for the "submit" page of a Pligg site. Even adding a CAPTCHA didn't help, so I assume offshore workers were adding links manually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Spam is absolutely not a grey area. "it is NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE for a _single_ post that is from a _person_ talking to other _people_ to be deleted, to be dropped on the uncaring floor to make room for machine generated spew."

—<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html> (actually about Usenet, which was wrecked by the same sort of predatory scum)

<comment><USER11> That quote could equally be applied against whole categories of anti-spam products.

<comment><USER12> and anti-viruses...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ezl does not seem to have gone all the way down the rabbit hole with the oDesk tracking link. (I work at oDesk, but not on this, so I was really curious.) After about 3 HTTP redirects, the www.dpbolvw.net link seems to turn into some sort of affiliate link. So my guess is that a (possibly errant, but presumably very data-driven) affiliate was the one sending him e-mail about oDesk, rather than oDesk itself.

That seems to raise a broader question, which is: to what extent should companies be blamed (and thus try to control) for the actions of the people in their affiliate programs? Would you be unhappy about a blog purporting to be by a cute ice cream eating girl filled with recommended books with Amazon affiliate links? What are the standards in this area, exactly? (On reload, see _dabent_ 's comment below as well.)

</comment><comment><USER14> craigslist could probably eliminate a ton of spam by simply editting out the urls that go thru it's email system.

i.e. if someone includes <a href> inside the email body, simply unscramble it and show the full link.

And on the bottom of the email spell out a warning about affiliates.

This will eliminate most of the spam that goes out to people who list stuff on craigslist.

To fight spammers that list fake listings to gather email addresses...simply implement a private message system for craigslist. Then you can analyze all emails that get sent to users and do the same trick as #1.

You can also limit exposure by blocking messages based on user IPs. Chances are someone from China listing in New York craigslist is a fake.

<comment><USER15> > You can also limit exposure by blocking messages based on user IPs.

Craigslist already does this to an extent in their high volume categories. For example, one cannot post Job Listings in highly populated areas (like New York or San Francisco) unless the posting IP address comes from a place near there, and the account is verified via a phone call. Anyone not fitting this description must pay a certain amount of money.

The other side of the coin is the blackmarket selling of Phone Verified Craigslist accounts along with proxy lists in those same markets which can effectively bypass any IP filtering put in place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Would appreciate a NSFW disclosure, thanks!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Modified the titled to reflect possible NSFW image

</comment><comment><USER17> The freecreditreport spam is amusingly clever.

Wish the final pic had a NSFW warning though.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd say the others usually constitute fraud, so I wouldn't really give them a free pass... Also, the african missionary apartment scams are also looking for wire transfers of prepayment of rent.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Respond to ads where people are seeking roomates. If they respond back, game on." I've seen most posts ask for not non-solicitation.

<comment><USER20> Yes, and that's great. To AirBnB, non-solicitation means less competition, because they are going to solicit anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hehe, and didn't even tried the car section.

I now avoid any car with steering wheel covers in the picture as all the wreck scams I've seen had them.

Safer to miss the few false positives.

<comment><USER22> Can you elaborate on these "wreck scams"? How does that work?

<comment><USER21> Buy car at charity action. Most are <2000 with engine problems. $2000 in Cali. Tops.

Clean it incredibly well.

Put a steering wheel cover.

Sell at Glendale for 6k to 10k as if it's a private sale.

<comment><USER22> well, that's not really a scam. That's just arbitrage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-28/how-utah-keeps-the-american-dream-alive <comment><USER2> I'm from Utah. I moved to Seattle, then San Francisco. When I had a kid, I moved back to Utah.

One thing I noticed is that Utah is almost all middle class. Some have more money, some have less, but most of them are middle class.

It's relatively easy to go from poor to rich if you're really middle class. I mean that if your parents are well educated but a high school teacher and a stay-at-home-mom in a middle class neighborhood, you're poor but you can become a medical doctor almost as easily as a rich kid.

It's not so easy to become a doctor if you're raised by your high school drop out grandma because your mom's working and your dad's missing and the adults around you are unemployed, going to prison, or working at fast food restaurants. If you can lift up people in situations like that, I'd be much more impressed.

I think the Mormon welfare system is very impressive (and I do recommend that progressives take a look at it) and Utah government is vastly better than California's. But I think the lack of a real lower and upper class would make mobility look artificially better.

<comment><USER3> > If you can lift up people in situations like that, I'd be much more > impressed.

> But I think the lack of a real lower and upper class would make mobility > look artificially better.

I'm a bit confused. Aren't these contradictory? By not having poverty haven't they achieved the raising people out of poverty bit already?

<comment><USER4> The thing is, Utah has never had a truly poor population. They aren't raising people out of poverty, but it's growing fast and most of the people who move there are relatively rich compared to the general population.

But also, Utah has the fifth richest bottom quartile of any state, about 40% higher than North Carolina's. So yes, it's much much easier to move from that to the top quartile than in most states.

<comment><USER5> > The thing is, Utah has never had a truly poor population.

What about when the first destitute pioneers arrived and found a desert?

<comment><USER6> It's not really meaningful to describe people as "rich" or "poor" in the absence of an economy.

<comment><USER7> Where people are involved there is no such thing as an absence of economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was first about to move to Utah, few years ago, lot of people asked me "why?" and told me a lot about a lot of things. Of course, I didn't even know who the Mormons were (I am not from USA originally). Most of what I heard was wrong. I've met Mormons who have asked me where I am from and not only know where that country is but spoke to me in my NATIVE tougue. I was very impressed.

The key word in the article is the Mormon Church and its not an exaggeration. They do a lot in a lot of different areas (as if helping is ingrained in their blood). I am not sure why Utah has such an odd reputation outside of the state. But I am sure its something to do with the history that I haven' cared to look too deeply into.

The downside of SLC is the smog though. You can feel the burn in your eyes some days. Also, the housing market seems to be booming here. I have seen so many housing complex start and finish and sell all the new houses in the last few years its amazing. I am not convinced it's planned out as best as it can be, though. SLC could do with more parks and trees inserted in some places.

<comment><USER9> I grew up Mormon in Utah and I love the Mormons in my life. Every leader in local congregations is an unpaid volunteer. Everyone in the congregation has a responsibility to carry out in the community (sunday school teacher, youth mentor, clerk to track finances, etc). As a Mormon kid, I was taught to work hard my whole life for the good of others. I served a Mormon mission in Europe, which was an extremely difficult experience, but I learned the value of persistence and diligent hard work.

There are definitely some interesting positive cultural influences from the Mormon church. There are some negative influences however. A few years ago, I decided no longer to participate in the Mormon church because of its harsh policies/teachings about LGBT people and because I found myself agreeing with agnostic atheism. I told my family and friends that I'd always respect them and their beliefs when I decided to leave the church. I was surprised by the harsh reaction: my Mormon loved ones told me that they were concerned about the future of my children, that I was depriving my family of happiness in heaven, and, as one of my own parents told me, they didn't know who I was anymore.

I think Mormons are extremely kind to non-members of the church and to the church's current members. But if you are a member and you want to leave, sometimes they can be extremely harsh. I also think Mormons are some of the most kind people in the world on the person-to-person scale, but on the group- to-group scale, they can be pretty brutal sometimes. Blacks were denied access to the most sacred temple rituals until 1978, and today LGBT people in long- term relationships or marriages are considered apostates and their children are not allowed to be baptized. Weird mix of super kind and super harsh.

<comment><USER10> I always wonder about the Mormon missionaries.

Did you actually convert anyone? Or is that not even the point?

<comment><USER11> I was a Mormon missionary.

Each missionary memorizes this to drill in their purpose: "My purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end." [https://www.lds.org/manual/preach-my-gospel-a-guide-to- missi...](https://www.lds.org/manual/preach-my-gospel-a-guide-to-missionary- service/what-is-my-purpose-as-a-missionary?lang=eng)

Most of our activities were finding people interested in the LDS church and teaching those people about the LDS church.

I would have 20-30 45 minute in house meetings a week with people that were interested. We spent most of our time knocking on doors and meeting new people to fill up those teaching slots.

For service, probably 5-10 hours a week. Usually set up by the local LDS congregation or people we met on the street (ex. "I'm not interested but I could use help power spraying my roof).

I had an awesome mission experience. It was a lot of fun. I met a lot of interesting people, with tough backgrounds, looking for something new in their lives. Made me really grateful for my middle class upbringing and want to help people less fortunate than me.

<comment> angry-hacker Just wanted to thank you guys, met a lot of Mormons all over the world. Great people, can always talk snd discuss things, always recognize you by the n cell clothes you wear and the fact you always speak the local language :)

<comment><USER11> Hey thank you very much! Very kind of you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Utah is more like what the US used to be like. Demographically, it's like early 60s America. Whiter, higher social trust, more Christian, neighborly, higher work ethic, higher rates of marriage, more kids, fewer illegitimate kids, no grievance industry etc. Many of these factors are looked down on by people of a certain political outlook. Seen as regressive. And yet they're happier in Utah.

The Mormons try harder to keep on the straight and narrow because their religion is less authentic - it's made up by a couple of PT Barnum types, rather than centuries of tradition. You don't need to try hard if you're resting on a thousand years of tradition.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=371&v=7q6brMrFw0E](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=371&v=7q6brMrFw0E)

Perhaps the lesson is that you should join the most absurd religion (or invent your own) and then make up for its absurdity strive to live a good life in order to prove the effectiveness of the religion.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand Utah has one of the higher suicide rates in the country[1], and leads the country in use of antidepressants[2].

Despite being tongue-in-cheek I think the lesson is not so cut and dry. In my personal, anecdotal experience, a lot of the behavior in Utah is forced to keep up the image of a particular life style.

1: [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm) 2: [http://articles.latimes.com/2002/feb/20/news/mn-28924](http://articles.latimes.com/2002/feb/20/news/mn-28924)

<comment><USER2> My personal experience is consistent with your second point.

But I'd be careful about making conclusions from the suicide/antidepressant statistics. It's shown to be highly correlated to altitude. I've included a couple links from google search to demonstrate the point.

That being said, the Mormon/LDS church does cause some psychological hardships for certain groups such as LGBT and ex-mormons... at least in my anecdotal experience.

suicide rate map: [http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2015/03/higher-suicide- rates-o...](http://akinokure.blogspot.com/2015/03/higher-suicide-rates-out- west-due-to.html)

altitude map: [http://weather.unisys.com/usgs/](http://weather.unisys.com/usgs/)

<comment><USER14> How do you account for the uptick in the suicide rate since the introduction of the Mormon policy of excommunicating gays and disallowing their children from baptism? The altitude certainly didn't increase...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few observations as a resident of Utah for the past 6 years

(1) Fantastic for outdoor activities: skiing, mountain biking, hiking, camping. Has some of the most popular national parks in the United States (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Zion). 2/3 of the state is federally preserved.

(2) Software industry is huge. Both historically (Novell, WordPerfect) and nowadays. If I had to find a SE job right now, it would take a week, because I'm picky.

(3) Geographically, most of the population lives in a 60 mile stretch along the Salt Lake Valley in the north. South Utah is warmer, more rural, and attracts retirees.

(4) Cost of living is relatively low. Two years ago I bought an older 5 bed, 3 bath, 2000 sq ft, 2 car garage, 0.19 acre house 10 minutes from downtown Salt Lake for less than $200k. Utah is growing fast, so that is changing a little. Still, my income is 33% less than what I could get in SV, and housing is a fifth the cost.

(5) The culture is hugely influenced by Mormonism (similar to say, South America and Catholicism or the South and Baptists). This means industrious people, larger traditional families, more sobriety, and conservative government.

I've seen people come here and hate it, and others come here and love it. The gist of the article is correct: it depends how much you like the traditional "American dream."

<comment><USER16> 1) Distance of the SE Utah playground is just as far to SLC as Denver. So it's a moot point.

I can also confidently say the drive from Denver to SE Utah trumps the drive from SLC to SE Utah

<comment><USER15> Don't disagree, but SLC is insanely close to the Wasatch mountains. Colorado has mountains too, though they're a ways away from Denver, Colorado Springs, Bolder.

I have co-workers that go skiing in the morning, and come in around 10:00am.

<comment><USER16> Reason for those close mountains, the active wasatch fault line!

Yes if you are bigely into the ski resorts. Denver's overcrowding is a downside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > For a girl raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Salt Lake City is a > very weird place. I went to Utah precisely because it's weird. More > specifically, because economic data suggest that modest Salt Lake City, > population 192,672, does something that the rest of us seem to be struggling > with: It helps people move upward from poverty.

By this criterion, should Salt Lake City be so weird to a New Yorker?

Upward Mobility in the 50 Biggest Cities:

1\. San Jose 12.9%

2\. San Francisco 12.2%

3\. Washington DC 11.0%

4\. Seattle 10.9%

5\. Salt Lake City 10.8%

6\. New York 10.5% ...

50\. Charlotte 4.4%

Source: Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez [http://www.equality-of- opportunity.org/documents/](http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/documents/)

<comment><USER18> Conjecture: the number one driver of a city's upward mobility is fraction of foreign-born population. Poor foreigners move to US with few skills, and then their children do fine. Note that this mechanism has nothing to do with the differences between social services in different cities.

Let's check: Out of the 50 largest cities, here are where those high-mobility cities rank by percentage foreign-born.

       3. San Jose 38.1%
       4. New York 37.7%
       5. San Francisco 34.1%
       21. Seattle 17.1%
       30. Washington DC 12.0%

and Charlotte is #25 with 13.7% foreign born.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_foreign- born_population)

So I'd say this conjecture looks pretty good for explaining cities that have the very highest mobility.

(I could not get foreign-born data on Salt Lake City because it's population is less than 200k. I don't understand why your source would list it as part of the "50 Biggest Cities in the US," since the US' 50th city is Arlington, TX with ~380k.)

<comment><USER19> The Spearman rank correlation of your two sets is 61% (after dropping cities that are not common to both).

[https://gist.github.com/hughdbrown/94016d0f477b855a893514131...](https://gist.github.com/hughdbrown/94016d0f477b855a893514131fc91f99)

Sadly, Salt Lake City is dropped from the set because of the missing foreign- born data.

<comment><USER18> Cool, thanks!

If we were to dramatically over-simplify by assuming a city's economic mobility is a simple sum of independent Gaussian variables, is the following correct?

(1) Pearson and Spearman rank correlation are the same.

(2) Percentage foreign born is more important than all other variables combined (since they would contribute 39% of the total variance)

<comment><USER19> > Pearson and Spearman rank correlation are the same

I don't know what this means -- like you'd get the same value if you calculated the correlation by Pearson correlation and Spearman rank correlation?

Or are you saying there is something called the Pearson rank correlation and asking how it relates to Spearman rank correlation? I have no knowledge of a Pearson rank correlation.

I used Spearman rank correlation because it is applicable to this situation: it "assesses how well the relationship between two variables can be described using a monotonic function." [1] Pearson's correlation would be appropriate if I was looking for a linear relationship between two numerical values, which I don't have here.

> Percentage foreign born is more important than all other variables combined > (since they would contribute 39% of the total variance)

Hmmm. I think that it is the r-squared that is the proportion of variance in Y that is accounted for by X. Accordingly, the Spearman correlation of 0.61105258893120507 means that 37.3% of the variance in Y is accounted for by X, so really there is 62.7% of the variance still to be accounted for by other variables. There could well be another variable that explains the relationship better. [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearman%27s_rank_correlation_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearman%27s_rank_correlation_coefficient)

[2] I am assuming here that the relationship of correlation to variance for Pearson correlation works the same as for Spearman. I think they should, since Spearman rank correlation is just Pearson correlation applied to pairs of ranks.

<comment><USER18> > I don't know what this means...

I mean: under the stated assumption that the data is given by a sum of independent Gaussian variables, would the Pearson correlation of the Gaussian data be equal to the Spearman rank correlation of the corresponding ranked data.

One can check from the definition that the answer is "yes".

> Hmmm. I think that it is the r-squared that is the proportion of variance in > Y that is accounted for by X.

Yes, you're right, I needed to square this number. So, assuming Gaussian independent variables, 37% of the variance in mobility is explained by percentage foreign born. It would be pretty surprising if there were even an larger effect independent than this, so I'll self-grade my conjecture as "plausible".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a Utahn, the most disappointing thing about this article is the racial homogeny. It's true - nearly everyone is white. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some diversity. When my father was a Mormon bishop, he would dole out orders for the Bishop's Storehouse to everyone just the same, whether they were white, black, Latino, or Asian - Made no difference to him. They got the same food, but also had to live by the same requirements - coming to church and serving in the community.

I recall one day after my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Out of the blue one of those families my dad had prepared an order for brought over a casserole for our family out of gratitude for what he did - not only for the food, but for helping him get back in their feet. And this was one of the latinix families.

My point is that I wish there were data on what this experiment would be like with the racial diversity of NYC, DC, or elsewhere. While there are Mormon congregations in these places, with the same bishops storehouses, they aren't nearly as pervasive in their communities as In Utah, so it's hard to see the effects of their efforts.

<comment><USER21> Iirc Matz (of Ruby) is Mormon. I've always wondered what the Mormon roots are like outside of the continental US and how they took hold and continue to be.

<comment><USER22> There are more Mormons outside of the United States than there are in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These sorts of comparisons inevitably don't mean much because there's just too many factors that are different between Utah and the states the author compares them to. It helps upward mobility if you start out better off, and Utah has the the fifth richest bottom quintile in the nation (See [http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/sta...](http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/state- income-quintiles-acs)) in a place where household expenses and housing costs are probably lower than three or four of the states with a higher bar for being "bottom quintile". It also helps if you don't have entrenched poor communities, and are extremely culturally homogenous (meaning that those with power and money are far more likely to identify with and support the bottom quartile of people since they mostly share the same cultural and religious identity). In other words, Utah is so different than the counterexample states that making facile comparisons of "education spending per pupil" and concluding that "big government is not the solution" is a ridiculous argument to make.

<comment><USER23> It might be ridiculous but not for the reasons you state. All those differences are the result of culture and governance.

<comment><USER24> Two points:

1\. You're wrong about it being just culture and governance -- history and geography play a big role in why we see things developed as they are.

2\. Even if it were, your comment is useless. You claim it's culture _and_ governance, not just governance. With part of it being cultural homogeneity (as the GP said...), which is itself a quirk of history and geography, it doesn't follow that changing governance to match would lead to the same outcomes, since cultures wouldn't match (and likely be less homogeneous).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I live in a racially homogeneous (Euro-American), neoliberal, resolutely secular, generally well-off small city in Massachusetts. I think it's fair to call the city's culture a post-Calvinist post-Christian monoculture of striving upper middle class white people. Most of our kiddos have two married parents. The majority can expect middle class economic success in their lives.

I volunteer in a drop-in center for kiddos in the public housing project for families, where our Euro upper middle class monoculture isn't visible. People come from other parts of MA to live in our public housing project for all kinds of reasons. Many households contain just one parent. Many are disfunctional. Many kids don't have enough structure in their home lives to get their schoolwork done. Lots of the poverty is multigenerational.

The purpose of our drop-in center is to try to give these kiddos a vision of what it would be like to get out of housing -- to be socially mobile. Statistically, I suppose the phrase "get out of housing" means "move from the bottom quintile to some other stratum." But "get out of housing" is more tangible. And it's very difficult in my city. Why? Because we antipoverty activists get a lot of positive liberal lip-service but not much tangible support from the majority. Most of the kids in town are insanely busy -- music, dance, rock-climbing gym, sports. But, the kids in housing have very little to do; they don't feel like they fit in.

It would be GREAT to have a bishop or two cracking the whip and saying, "Look, suck it up. Welcome these neighbors into your lives, and treat them like neighbors." "You're going to Cambridge to check out Harvard and MIT? Take a friend along." etc.

We have some small victories: a few families a year stabilize, get jobs, and move out. But we have some defeats too. It's all about keeping at it. But to me the metaphorical grass in SLC sounds pretty green from this article.

</comment><comment><USER26> I can't see how 20% is a 'perfectly just world'. It is not a perfectly just - it is a perfectly random world. If it was 20%, it means that person from every family (wrt. parent's incomes) has equal chance to end up rich or poor, meaning that there is nothing that parents could do to help their child. It means nothing but a totalitarian, concentration camp society, because even if education, healthcare etc. are perfectly equal and free for everyone, there is still a personal example and values taught to the person by his parents that define a lot of his future. If i could not do anything at all to help my children succeed, i'd call it anything but fair.

Of course, reverse - 0% chance - is called a caste system. It is also completely unjust.

Middle ground - 10% - sounds about right.

<comment><USER27> You could have equal chance to end up in the top quintile when measuring income, and still do things to help your kids succeed. It would just mean that those things wouldn't depend on the family income.

E.g. people whose family is more educated than the average would have better chances to end up in the top quintile by income, regardless of how much money they make.

<comment><USER26> What's the point of being more educated if you don't make more? Fancy way to waste time?

<comment><USER28> That's what it is for me. I spent five and a half years slowly doing a masters in mathematics in my own time, evenings and weekends, for the pure thrill of it.

Now I'm learning Japanese just for the sake of being able to read, write and speak Japanese. Wnet all the way to Tokyo in December for five mornings' worth of Japanese lessons (and some tourism stuff around it); just for the pleasure of learning something of interest.

As you say, a fancy way to waste time. I understand some people do other things to the same ends; movies, television, music, socialising, drugs and alcohol, dancing, art, reading, writing, building things, making things, running, climbing, swimming, on and on and on. Oh, the range of things we humans do as fancy wastes of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Utah is a deep red state, but its conservatism is notably compassionate"

Or maybe conservatives are not ruthless towards the poor ?

<comment><USER30> In general, conservatives tend to regard poverty as a self-inflicted state, or at least that remaining in poverty is a failing of the individual by not escaping it, and thus addressing poverty should be left to that individual.

Liberals think of poverty more as a systematic social condition that individuals bear little responsibility for, either getting there or remaining there, and thus addressing poverty should be undertaken by formal social support systems.

It's not ruthless as much as different views of why poverty exists and how to address it, and like many issues, not all conservatives hold 100% conservative views. It's common to refer to conservatives who have a more liberal view of poverty as "compassionate", but it's just a word, not a judgement.

<comment><USER15> That is the usual narrative, but conservatives contribute more to charity than liberals.

<comment><USER31> I don't think that is given. My home country Norway is mainly liberal but we give a lot to charity.

But as a liberal myself, I don't really favor charity. I favor government solutions. I'd rather pay more taxes than pay to a charity directly.

The problem I see with charity is that (1) they can't provide comprehensive solutions, (2) vulnerable to the free rider problem, (3) inefficient as much resources needs to be spent collecting donations.

By comprehensive solution I mean that a lot of poverty is caused by complex set of factors. E.g. the person might lack job skills and have a mental health problem. Thus they need mental health care and a job training program. Putting together something like that is something a modern welfare state is quite capable of doing, while charity doesn't really have a solution. Charity is for giving you food when you are hungry or giving your emergency care.

Charity is poorly suited for having a long term medical follow up e.g. of high risk groups. E.g. Norway has one of the worlds best statistics for infant mortality. A lot of that is because there are extensive checkups through the pregnancy. Everything related to a pregnancy is completely free. For other health care there is usually a minimum fee. The US in the contrast has terrible infant mortality rate and that is mainly due to poor checkups. Charity in the US has been unable to solve that problem. All they can do is give hungry people food or patch them up.

Charity can't solve systematic problems.

<comment><USER32> > The problem I see with charity is that (1) they can't provide comprehensive > solutions, (2) vulnerable to the free rider problem, (3) inefficient as much > resources needs to be spent collecting donations.

The problem I see with _government solutions_ is that (1) they can't provide comprehensive solutions, (2) vulnerable to the free rider problem, (3) inefficient as many resources need to be spent collecting _and distributing taxes_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the american dream means sucking down some of the worst polluted air in the country, then yes SLC is that realized.

[http://www.sltrib.com/home/4762483-155/utah-will- welcome-201...](http://www.sltrib.com/home/4762483-155/utah-will- welcome-2017-with-bad)

<comment><USER15> You are not wrong, but to bring some context to this: this is not because Utah doesn't care. Since moving to Utah from Florida I've often grumbled at the strict yearly emissions checks. Utah has emissions checks, has very functional public transit, and pushes for reductions.

The primary reason is geographic. SLC is an urban area in a valley, which traps the smog.

<comment><USER16> the geography is a huge enabler of this, but the government is also complacent in not doing anything to ensure this issue doesn't bubble up to the extend it currently is.

With the recent disastrous handling of the OR show. It is clear how the the Utah government prioritizes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It seems that a big factor is empathy, something that many politicians don't have. Meanwhile in a few Places in Florida you get arrested if you try to feed the homeless.

<comment><USER34> > Meanwhile in a few Places in Florida you get arrested if you try to feed the > homeless.

Can you please provide some source for that? Not that I doubt you, but that is very surprising (and I wonder what could possibly be their reasoning)

<comment><USER35> It made a lot of headlines in the last few years:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post- nation/wp/2014/12/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post- nation/wp/2014/12/03/after-90-year-old-is-arrested-florida-judge-halts-law- that-restricts-feeding-the-homeless/)

[http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation- world/national/article1253...](http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation- world/national/article125306029.html)

[http://www.naturalnews.com/047802_feeding_homeless_illegal_c...](http://www.naturalnews.com/047802_feeding_homeless_illegal_charity_hunger.html)

And

"In More Than 70 Cities, It's Illegal to Feed the Homeless"

[http://blog.lowincome.org/2016/08/more-than-70-cities- illega...](http://blog.lowincome.org/2016/08/more-than-70-cities-illegal-feed- homeless.html#.WOFACGf_pkg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The $20K per year per pupil that NYC (and other large cities) spends is skewed because of the enormous costs of special education. I don't know the numbers for NYC, but from an article I saw about Philly: cost to educate non-special need child: $10K, moderately special need: (7% of students) $20K, severe special need: (another 7% of students) $40K.

I suspect Salt Lake City has a much lower amount of special needs students.

Still, we spend an enormous amount of money on K-12 education in NYC and other large cities.

<comment><USER37> Special education is a self perpetuating bureaucracy everywhere. Not to say the programs don't offer super valuable services to those in need, but my experience is it's really hard to get your kids out of special ed when they are ready to mainstream.

In my daughters case they fought us for two years, we eventually moved her to a charter school that mainstreamed her immediately. 2 years later she's made the honor roll twice.

<comment><USER36> > "2 years later she's made the honor roll twice."

:-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The article makes many good points about how upward mobility works. These points generally fit with what I understand: That stable marriage is one of the best ways to become and stay upper middle class; that poor neighborhoods with too few middle class people have much more serious problems than poor neighborhoods with X percentage of middle class residents; that spending on education is not the most critical metric for education effectiveness. etc.

It's a really good piece. The conversation here, not so much.

I am not hugely familiar with Mormonism myself, but I grew up in the Deep South, a place full of hellfire-and-brimstone Christians. That does not mean all Christians are like that. I am not personally fond of Christianity, but there is a line in the bible somewhere where someone tells Jesus "People will do terrible things in your name someday" (or words to that effect) and he replies "I will say I did not know them." (or words to that effect). Christians behaving in a way that gives Christianity a bad name is not definitive proof that Christianity is an inherently evil organization. Ditto Mormonism.

I am somewhat disappointed that so much of this discussion is about Mormonism and so little about upward mobility. I am deeply disappointed that the topmost comment here is one that outright mocks Mormonism. Bad enough it was said, but then multiple people apparently upvoted it. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER39> Go ahead and visit Salt Lake (I am comparing to Colorado). I think they either don't have the money or out of principle do not maintain their roads.

That's the economy. The geography is not favorable either. Salt Lake sits in a bowl surrounded by dark hills with little vegetation. The hills are all dug by mines and open pits. They have the whole range ("on the other side") that is essentially one big mine. The winter is cold and the temperature inversion traps cold air in the bowl and the air quality becomes worst in the nation (you can't even run outside). There's no chinook winds in winter, so it's colder than the other side of the Rockies.

The political landscape is very bleak. This is the most conservative state in the nation. Utah hates their environment so much, that they are working on shrinking or destroying several National Monuments (Escalante and Bears Ears). Their congressmen are loathsome Trump toads like Chaffetz (who investigated Park Service for making a folder with maps for a new monument, but refused to investigate anything about Trump).

The anti-environment stance in Utah has become so bad, that the Outdoor Retailer Show (the prime event for multi-billion outdoor industry) has left Salt Lake. Patagonia, Arcteryx and many others initiated it.

The only redeeming quality in Utah is the ski areas nearby. 15 miles vs 40-60-70 in Colorado. And the snow is better.

BTW, the Salt Lake is empty in winter, in prime ski season. Never seen motels and hotels so empty and so cheap. Good for skiing, not good for the economy.

Mormons are nice people for the most part.

<comment><USER40> > The political landscape is very bleak. This is the most conservative state > in the nation. Utah hates their environment so much, that they are working > on shrinking or destroying several National Monuments (Escalante and Bears > Ears). Their congressmen are loathsome Trump toads like Chaffetz (who > investigated Park Service for making a folder with maps for a new monument, > but refused to investigate anything about Trump).

Utah is also home to some of Congress' most anti-Trump members. Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Mia Love, among others.

At the 2016 GOP convention, the Utah delegation was one of the groups trying to overthrow Trump's nomination (along with Colorado's delegation). They failed, of course, but Sen. Lee was instrumental in getting those efforts off the ground.

Almost as if a broad generalization isn't an accurate picture...

<comment><USER41> It's interesting the situation was so bad McMullen ran and had a shot at winning the state, IIRC.

<comment><USER32> I count any third party candidate getting 20% of the vote as a good situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> SLC suffers from inversion, and this article fails to address it... Would never live there. Worst air quality in the nation during the winter.

<comment><USER43> Maybe because it doesn't have anything to do with the topic of the article? And SF can be cold and foggy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I live in Utah, and there are many reasons as to why breaking out of poverty is easier here than other parts of the country. I just want to mention one though: The Mormon church is a huge power in welfare in this state, and while they do focus on feeding, clothing, and housing the poor, their welfare program really pushes self-reliance, education, and breaking the cycle of poverty in people's lives. They spend a lot of money to train people with marketable skills, and they give interest-free education loans to their members, in poverty-stricken countries, in an effort to help elevate the conditions and opportunities in those countries. As part of the help they give, they encourage people to donate and volunteer themselves, to help others in need, as they break out of poverty themselves.

A lot of people complain about the Mormon church, over a variety of issues, but this is one thing they do incredibly well, I think.

</comment><comment><USER45> Most Utahans are of Northern European descent. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah#Demographics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah#Demographics). Northern European culture stayed with them with Mormon religion.

<comment><USER46> My stock joke about it is that when you land at SLC and are waiting at the baggage area it's like you're surrounded by cheerleaders--and that's just the moms. Seriously, I'm not Mormon but I feel that they've got a ton to teach most of the rest of us. Bloomberg article quantified it effectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> All the California transplants should take not before they become politically active and turn it into the kind of place they left.

</comment><comment><USER48> Would love to see how much Utah residents end up spending on poverty efforts, including donations and taxes and volunteer time. I believe there are inefficiencies in the current system, but by and large poverty reduction costs money. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative may not be feasible when you do the math

<comment><USER49> It seems to be feasible in Salt Lake City, though. If the community picks up where the government is lacking, the work still gets done and the poorest of our society get the help they need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a Mormon (grew up in Utah, served a mission in eastern Ukraine, speak Russian fluently, now live in the Bay Area).

I often think of the way the Mormon church works as a distributed system, and the way it operates is not unlike most open source software. It works because everyone knows their role, is dedicated, and willing to sacrifice.

In the ward (congregation) I'm in now I teach the fourteen-year-olds on Sunday. My wife teaches the 16-year-old girls in the third hour of church. In our last ward I was the eleven-year-old boy scout leader, and would take one night a week to teach them self sufficiently, how to camp and fish and hunt, knot tying, etc. We'd also go camping four times per year.

Both my wife and I fast (don't eat) one day/month and donate what we would have spent on food (in reality a lot more) to the poor. We also donate 10% of our income to the church, a lot of which goes to the poor. We feed the Mormon missionaries once a month (we did so last night; one grew up as a refugee in Kenya, the other grew up in the Philippines). My wife and I each served a mission (me - Ukraine for two years, her - Lima, Peru for 18 months).

The organization is what makes it work, and is really top notch. If there's an emergency we know exactly what our role is. When we come across someone who is struggling we know exactly what to do. There are volunteers assigned to be employment specialists, to help with food, over shelter, educational resources, funds earmarked, etc. (For both members and non-members). Every once in a while calls for extra funds or materials come out during a natural disaster or refugee influx, though most of the time those are stockpiled and ready to ship long in advance.

There are weekly leadership meetings where needs of the people in our area (mostly concerned with members, but we'll discuss on-members as well), and each member is supposed to have an in-person visit each month to make sure they're not doing OK. I'm assigned three families, and if anything is wrong we report back and it's taken care of. In my teens I volunteered once a month teaching in a prison and once a quarter helping out in a nursing home.

Growing up we served on the church farm, my parents frequently volunteered at the canning facility, and we took people into our home that were struggling to get by.

There are a lot of problems within the Church, and things we need to work on and fix. But, I think, as an efficient caregiving and charitable institution, there are few in the world that rival it.

<comment><USER50> I would love to contribute to a system like the one you describe that was not based on fealty to any particular system of belief. That being said, I'd argue that the belief (especially the affinity of shared belief) is totally fundamental to the system at any sort of scale.

My own beliefs [0] are unfortunately not easily evangelized.

[0] [https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2013/06/apprecianity.html](https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2013/06/apprecianity.html)

<comment><USER22> I think you're right.Not sure how to replicate that outside of a shared system of belief.

Candidly I think there are many who aren't believing but are there for the social impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I am not convinced that people in the bottom or top have the same dream as the rest; and I am not convinced the article title is the best one for the content.

Her comment: "Salt Lake City is a very weird place." made me think more. Having experience in nearly all the states, SLC is truly unique. It is easy to imagine myself in almost all of the US, but SLC is hard for me, and thus I would agree with her statement.

HOwever - UTAH is probably the best state for national parks and state parks. If you had to choose just one, I would choose Utah.

</comment><comment><USER52> In other words, the left and the right are both wrong.

The left is wrong because it focuses too much on money and entitlements rather than real help. It also uses big government only, which crowds out local solutions, churches, and NGOs. Beyond that, many on the left are actively hostile towards religion.

The right is wrong because they scale back government without doing the hard work to build alternative solutions, and leave people stranded.

(Obviously these are caricatures and not to be taken personally.)

Sounds like the people in Utah have somethibg figured out.

<comment><USER53> You can think of the Mormon Church as a second government in Utah that levies a 10% gross income tax on nearly everyone in the state and spends a portion on welfare programs.

<comment><USER52> A church is not a government. Governments have special powers that churches do not.

Because it has those powers, government has an incredible burden to be fair. That doesn't sound so bad, but really limits how effective it can be at many things.

<comment><USER54> > A church is not a government.

A church can be nothing like a government, very much like a government, a _de facto_ government, or a _de jure_ government.

In practice, relevant to the specific situation at hand, a religion which is both dominant in a region and possessed of a strong centralizee heirarchy often acts a lot like a government, though it's direct sanctions are generally social (though potentially very powerful in effect, including economically) and often also has substantial influence with the formal government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Simply a kinder, gentler power structure. Not anything the US government hasn't pretended to be working toward for years. All it is is treating citizens as "one of your own" instead of as one of the "them". No great mystery, when power doesn't act quite as much as monstrous assholes people have a better time. People need to stop pretending like a little concern for your fellow man is some difficult, complicated, magical system design based on some secret power. When governments let people help those around them they will. Just get out of the way and give up a little control. All its ever taken for people to build a better system here is just for the Government to get out of the way.That's how the west was won, and built.

</comment><comment><USER31> As a Norwegian who has spent a lot of time in Utah visiting distant relatives and having them visit Norway, I made a lot of thoughts about Utah in relation to the Scandinavian society model.

This article is a nice addition to my own experiences. I admit I felt at first somewhat envious and impressed by the community sense, they have in Utah. Family and neighbors seem quite close. People are very smiling and positive. As a diehard atheist, meeting mormons made me really have to contemplate the role of religion. It seemed to make many mormons happy and create a tight knight society. And despite being anti-religion and atheist I actually wanted to live there for some years just for the experience. I loved my time there despite it being so much at odds with values in many respect.

Mormons deserve a lot of praise for what they have accomplished. Yet after staying longer I think it became clear to me that there was a dark side to what looked like paradise at first glance.

Too me it is a bit funny to see Americans praise the Utah model, when it is a far more extreme case of homogeneity than any Scandinavian country typically dismissed as a viable model for America for just that reason. To me people in Utah live a complete bubble world, with little idea of what the real world is like or what other people think about stuff. They seemed very confused when speaking to a non-mormon or non-religious person like myself about particular subjects. And if you didn't fit the narrow path designated by the mormon church, you were pretty much screwed.

I honestly think the Scandinavian model scales a lot better when it comes to tackling societies problems than the Utah model. It allows for a lot more individualism and ethnic mix. It doesn't rely on the majority being strongly religious and doing huge amounts of volunteer work. In a way Utah is really just doing the same as Scandinavian welfare states are doing. Citizens are contributing a lot of resources towards helping the less fortunate. The difference is that in Utah it happens through volunteering through the church, and a strong social pressure to do so. In Scandinavia it happens through high taxes. I realize that in the US the Utah approach is more palatable as it is strictly speaking not required to contribute, while you can't skip taxes in Scandinavia. However in practice there is a a strong social pressure that means it isn't really an option not to.

It is interesting though that creating social mobility and reducing poverty follows very similar receipts in Utah and Scandinavia. E.g. avoiding that welfare becomes a way of life has a pretty strong tradition in Scandinavia as well. The Norwegian labour party's old slogan was "Do your duty and demand your right!" The welfare system has always been generous but also quite a lot more pushy on getting people back into work than what has been the case in many other countries. But the ability for the system to work has also rested on a lot of trust between people as in Utah. I believe in Norway 68% say you can trust your fellow man, while in the US in general would around 30%, while in e.g. Brazil it would be 2%. That is one of my strongest believes about society. One of the most important things for society to succeed is trust.

</comment><comment><USER56> I have a couple of girlfriends who moved to/from Utah from/to a costal city. They think it's backwards as hell.

<comment><USER7> I used to be a Mormon, my family converted when I was young. At no point did I believe their teachings. Like many cults being required to believe something obviously wrong keeps the normies out and clearly defines who is in the 'in group' and who is in the 'out group'. Just by saying you believe it signals to others that you are willing to lie in order to belong.

I really enjoyed my time in the church. There is huge pressure to conform in one area but this means your free to be yourself in others. I was a nerd and constantly tormented for it outside the church. (The US is much nicer to nerds than those in my country where it considered a civil duty by other children to beat it out of you). Inside the church I was treated like a normal person. Similarly, Dijkstra had to leave Europe to escape a 'religious' academia and found refuge in 'backwards' religious Texas.

There is a natural human tendency, an emergent behavior, to self organize into 'religious' groups. I see the same behavioral patterns in environmentalism, veganism, feminism etc. By keeping 'religion' to religion there is less of for it in others areas.

I left the Church quite young because I didn't need it anymore and thought the church was stupid. I still liked the people in it.

Obviously if I was gay I would have a different story.

<comment><USER57> "Like many cults being required to believe something obviously wrong keeps the normies out and clearly defines who is in the 'in group' and who is in the 'out group'."

Its the same game played with politics instead of religion in academia, "coastal tech", soft sciences, mass media... Under static ruleset conditions, I donno, mid 60s to 2010 "boomer generation" lets say, its sort of an intelligence test to see if you're smart enough to observe others then play along, and whats more important than action is the social signalling to show you can be a trustable follower. If the players are willing intelligent players the game works really well and results will naturally be good. When people grow tired of the game or are too dumb to play or actively dislike the entrenched ruleset, you get periods of political turmoil, "populism" etc. People get very angry that their hard fought position in the game is wiped away with a new ruleset. "Polarization" especially politically is just the future being here but unevenly distributed, and the legacy ruleset isn't going to be deprecated or sunset quietly especially while those about to be obsolete still have a legacy voice.

"Obviously if I was gay I would have a different story."

The analogy with the above is white people starting to abandon the Democratic party, resulting in Trump, etc.

<comment><USER56> lol, this is comical. White people are not persecuted by a major US political party run by and composed of mostly whites. Sure, some people perceive it so because they have a narrow...argh...different understanding of the world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1951

<comment><USER2> Objectively?

I'd say probably. Maybe even likely, eventually.

If we built one how would we know for sure, though?

I'm not always entirely sure of that with some people.</comment>


Book by ex-Apple engineer explores first iPhone software keyboard design - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/08/excerpt-iphone-software-keyboard-design/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's not often that the public gets to look behind the curtain into Apple's design process. I find it fascinating to see how many different and seemingly crazy things were explored for this.

After 10 years of use (actually, after the first week) it seems like what Apple shipped was the 'natural and obvious' keyboard, but it's cool to see how much got thrown out developing it.</comment>


Windows 10 Store Refunds 'Call of Duty' Player Because Nobody's Playing It - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/windows-10-store-refunds-call-of-duty-player-because-nobodys-playing-it <comment><USER2> _> For unknown reasons, Windows 10 Store customers are segregated from customers who bought the game from Steam, which is by far the most popular platform on PC._

 _> Gamers are used to the separation of console and PC multiplayer communities. But PC players aren't used to companies gating them off based on where they purchased their game. It's a ludicrous policy that doesn't serve anyone's interest and it's another black eye for a digital storefront that PC gamers already avoid like the plague._

I think that Steam might actually be to blame here. Steam provide the SteamWorks API [1] which handles all the low level networking 'boilerplate' stuff for you so you don't have to, and that actually adds up to quite a lot of functionality: setting up lobbies, player connecting/disconnecting, player authorisation via Steam IDs, voice chat, sending/recieving packets for PvP play, setting up dedicated servers, NAT punching, matchmaking search with filters and so on. There is also the integration with Steam achievements and the Steam Workshop.

For a developer, the API is a no-brainer to use when targeting Steam as a distribution platform. It is problematic though when you want to distribute elsewhere as games using SteamWorks actually require the Steam client to be running in the background in order to work. So I imagine the Windows Store version of the game must use a completely different networking API under the hood, and therefore is incompatible with the Steam version of the game sadly.

[1] [https://partner.steamgames.com/](https://partner.steamgames.com/)

<comment><USER3> Steam works on all major platforms (aka Windows, OS X, Linux). Windows Store is a insane and stupid idea to centralize the applications for the most common OS right now.

Even if the reason for 'cannot work together' would be Steam, I'd say that's great. Let the Windows Store die, sooner the better.

But I don't think that I can follow your thoughts here. If you have to rewrite parts of your code for a non-Steam version (fine, makes sense, sounds plausible) then .. I still don't see why that version is unable to talk to the versions on Steam. In the end these games are talking UDP I assume. If you use Steam for a lot of boiler plate code or implement that stuff differently/yourself: The inability of these two "ports" of the game to talk to one another is not a technological problem, I think. It's a problem of policy/politics.

<comment><USER2> You are right I think, at the end of the day they could just handle the packet sending/receiving themselves to support distribution outside of Steam. But if there is a barrier in the SteamWorks API to prevent that somehow (which is unlikely I guess though my memory of the API is hazy), then Steam would be to blame.

Assuming there isn't a barrier, then really it is Activision's fault for not integrating the network code properly so Steam and non-Steam players can play together. in either case, I fail to see how this is the Windows Store's fault.

<comment><USER4> > But if there is a barrier in the SteamWorks API

Unlikely. There are Steam games that play cross-platform with PS4/XBONE; Rocket League comes to mind.

I'm sure it's possible to program yourself into a corner in regards to this, but I don't think Steam is forcing you to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learned about this multiplayer segregation recently, and It puzzles me. Is this a business decision? Or do they just not bother tp build their multiplayer protocols to be platform-agnostic?

<comment><USER6> In the past they've justified segregating console players from the PC Master Race(tm) using better controllers, but Steam vs Windows Store seems pointless.

<comment><USER3> It's not. One is a 3rd party store that heavily invests into cross-platform support. The other one is a collection of useless gadgets with a crappy UI bolted on top of a generic OS.

If the Windows Store dies (or stays irrelevant for games, forever and ever) than that's a good thing. I agree with your sibling comment: This is good for Valve and as long as Microsoft DOES refund people that use the Windows Store I'd say there's no harm done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ten years ago you could just buy a game, install it and join whatever server you'd like regardless of where you bought it. How come things got so complicated?</comment>


Nessie – Lightweight Web Browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.radsix.com/ <comment><USER3> Seems to be blocked by Windows Defender as a Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA).

I guess it's not wrong.

[https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ec9ad4a4d6d1ddcb406d96ff...](https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ec9ad4a4d6d1ddcb406d96ff0efb8c212cd91ef9fa821478d12cd06ac293c52a/detection)

<comment><USER4> I can confirm that: PUA:Win32/Hypnamer.A!ml detected by Windows Security

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Its codebase is very small (about 2500 LoC currently) and could be open sourced in the next few months if the project gains enough traction and support.

Why not open source it from the start?

<comment><USER6> This isn't a particularly noteworthy project -- I know a few people who made the same thing to try out the IE webview.

I'd be more impressed if the webview was introduced by not using a OS component.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 277KB is still a bit large for something that just embeds the IE webview... it reminds me of this one (original site is now gone, had to look in the archive) which is only 2.7KB(!):

[http://web.archive.org/web/20081226192818/http://www.kakeewa...](http://web.archive.org/web/20081226192818/http://www.kakeeware.com/i_kb.php)

<comment><USER8> This is impressive. It launches and runs in Windows 10 - can not not figure out how to use it thought :O

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can we add "for Windows" to the title?

<comment><USER10> Indeed. I didn't stop reading when I hit "Trident layout engine". I stopped reading at "Requirements: Windows 7 or later."

Though I should have assumed as much given "trident layout engine", but here I was hoping this had been open sourced or something along those lines.

I absolutely do not want to speak ill of anyone's project. But let's judge it for what it is... it's a windows only, MSHTML based, proprietary software.

At that point, it honestly doesn't matter what it can do, or how it does it. It's already off to the worst possible start for any hope of adoption. And it will likely never see the light of day on either Linux or MacOS. Porting it would tantamount to writing it again from scratch.

That said, if it works for windows users. It's not like it is a bad contribution. So kudos for that.

On a less polite opinion: I honestly think a core component such as a web rendering engine that is locked to a OS (pretty much exclusively Trident/EdgeHTML) does the world way more harm than good. Any project with some kind of future prospects of not being windows-only, does themselves disservice for picking Edge. Valve did this with steam. I don't know how painless the transition was when moving to WebKit and then to Chromium, but I'm sure it wasn't free.

<comment><USER11> Same. If I care about a browser being

> ● Privacy-oriented: zero behavior tracking, zero telemetry > ● Lightning- > fast startup time > ● Tiny binary size > ● Low RAM usage

why would I use an OS that's the opposite of all of these? In particular, why would I trust a proprietary application to be "privacy-oriented"?

<comment><USER6> The prosumer market is huge and mostly Windows. Most dev work is still mostly Windows (I think). HN is an anomaly.

<comment><USER12> HN is pretty average. Windows is less than half for devs (but is still the largest OS share).

However, as is expected, those chosing to go out of their way to change their machines would naturally be more vocal than those that are indifferent to what it runs.

<comment><USER6> Well, someone in this comment tree linked stats, but I think those stats and the stats most people that visit this site come up with via observation understate how many boring jobs there are in e.g. fortune 5000 companies doing Windows-centric work.

<comment><USER12> There will always be bias in stats, but the numbers are from SO surveys - <USER2> don't think SO is going to have "boring" Windows-centric development underrepresented. I'd assume the contrary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So this is just internet explorer with no back button?

<comment><USER14> Also without the slowness!

[Alt]+ [<-] or [->] works for going Back / Fwd

Interestingly Alt + N for new window and then Ctrl+Tab cycles the windows.

I like this old school workflow for some browsing tasks rather than tabs (but not all the time obviously)

<comment><USER15> That means the slowness comes uniquely from IE, not from the engine? I find that surprising, for some reason. I would have imagined the browser UI would be easier to optimize.

<comment> john-aj No, because Internet Explorer is (was) _not_ slow. That's just a meme, and it's incorrect.

<comment><USER12> IE _was_ slow. The meme is from when this was accurate information. IE 10 and 11 made it _mostly_ competitive.

The Edge browser was pretty decent, awful tracking aside. Arguably better than Chrome in many aspects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't IE on track to be phased out? I guess that also means the Trident engine component will also likely not be available on future versions of Windows?

<comment><USER17> I cannot imagine Windows removing the trident engine, they have a strong focus on backward compatibility and it's guaranteed a lot of businesses depend on trident being available.

<comment><USER18> But they could make it available on demand: it would trigger a download if necessary instead of polluting disk space worldwide for niche usages

<comment><USER19> It's necessary for internal Windows functions to work.

<comment><USER20> The recent move to make Edge something you can't uninstall is a likely first step in changing that. You can't remove the old "can't remove" browser engine without first designating a replacement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> .no is not in the TLD.ini whitelist. Edit TLD.ini - Good times.

<comment><USER22> That's very unfortunate for the 0.00042 Norwegians who were going to use this web browser.

<comment><USER23> Not supporting websites from a fairly big country with a strong economy is a failure on their part, either way. I bet they support TLDs like TV (Tuvalu), or IO (Indian Ocean Territory).

<comment><USER24> No, they don't. This is the default setting file:

.com .net .org .co .io

Just add a TLD, restart and voila.

<comment><USER25> No .gov ? Maybe that's a _good_ thing /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How did you turn Internet Explorer 8 into a 130kb EXE file? Why are you anonymous? Where is the source code?

<comment><USER27> It's just using the MSHTML.DLL rendering engine built-in to Windows, sadly.

<comment><USER25> I don't know how the author of Nessie specifically did it, but generally on the .NET platform, you have access to the Trident rendering engine by adding the WebBrowser control to one of the forms of your new application. From there, you gain all the event based functions and callable methods you'd expect a browser to use. I've written several of these type of 'toy' browsers over the years, and they work just like IE does. The only caveat is that you have to patch the registry first to allow the control to report (and render as) a useragent above IE 8. You can set it to report/render as IE 11 as the maximum.

Via NuGet, you can download the WebBrowser2 control which is based on the new Edge Chromium based renderer. I haven't seen any new browsers using this properly yet (and I've not played with it either yet) - it will be good when people do, because although the renderer will still be Chromium, the browser UI can then be anything you want. I'm looking forward to people challenging the accepted browser UIs that we currently have.

Of course, if you want to avoid the WebBrowser2 control, there's webkit.NET and Embedded Chromium which also can be built to bind with .NET apps.

<comment><USER27> I thought I recognised your username!

In case Jaruzel's too shy to mention it, he wrote a Gopher browser for Windows. If you're reading this thread because you're interested in small web topics (Gopher, Gemini, Tilde.Town, NetSurf, alt browsers) then you might like his browser too. It was my gateway into Gopher.

[http://www.jaruzel.com/gopher/gopher-client-browser-for- wind...](http://www.jaruzel.com/gopher/gopher-client-browser-for-windows)

<comment><USER25> Aww Shucks. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just tried it out. Was surprised that youtube and google maps both worked. Only thing I missed was tabs.

<comment><USER7> It's just IE with a different UI, so any site that already works in IE will behave exactly the same in this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > lightweight skin for the deprecated Internet Explorer

Fix't it for ya.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think I would actually take dillo with an updated chrome over this: if I am to use two web browsers, I don't necessarily need javascript on both.

dillo lacks a good UI for bookmarks, a browsing history (by choice, but I like those), touch support (for postmarketos/mobile), wayland support, as well as some https quirks. Otherwise, I like it a lot.

</comment><comment><USER31> itd be neat if microsoft opened up their web engines now that they've moved to blink.

<comment><USER32> Obviously it would be of great historic interest, but as a living software, just no. Go read this: [https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/04/19/modernizing-d...](https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/04/19/modernizing- dom-tree-microsoft-edge/)

IE implemented DOM without using tree. No, really. Up to 2017. After reading the article, all my questions why IE was so buggy evaporated and replaced by how could IE work at all.

MSVC up to 2015 also didn't create AST. Unbelievable, I know. The question is not why MSVC's C++ support was so buggy; the real question is how could MSVC implement C++ at all. [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating- the-micr...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating-the- microsoft-cc-compiler/)

After learning about IE and MSVC, I gained respect for Microsoft developers and disdain for Microsoft. Tightrope walking is amazing display of skill. Letting your employees to commute by tightrope walking for years is amazing display of stupidity.

<comment><USER33> Excellent article on Microsoft's journey of refactoring IE's DOM model. I actually felt sympathy reading how it all started with a linear text-based data structure, which must have seemed reasonable at the time. (In hindsight, a tree should have been the natural shape, and they should have been aware of parsers and ASTs. But can we blame them?) And how the layers of complexity were added, using parallel data structures that needed to be synced on every DOM operation.

By the time the article reached "Modernizing the DOM tree", I could just imagine the years of devs suffering that the whole architecture must have caused.

> According to an internal investigation, from IE7 to IE11, approximately 28% > of all IE reliability bugs originated from code in core DOM components.

The second article is quite relevant too, how the C/C++ compiler used _token streams_ instead of a real AST, until 2015! There are parallels to the above issue with the DOM model, how the original design of the data structure was inadequate, so they had to keep adding more layers of complexity. It's understandable how it happened, but makes me wonder if they should have had more experts in parsers/compilers during the design phase.

To give credit where due, both articles describe major successful refactorings of core design. I'm with you, that after learning about their struggles, I have more respect for developers at Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The original Maxthon or TheWorld browsers worked exactly like this.

<comment><USER18> Maxthon switched dynamically from trident to webkit. The best browser performance wise is the one that switch it's engine on demand depending of a known list of websites being faster on engine X or Y

<comment><USER35> My needing to rely on one modern browser engine is already too much software complexity for my tastes.

In other words, I would have preferred to be able to live a typical day of my life without relying on any software as complicated (and consequently difficult for me to predict and control) as a modern browser engine.

So, arranging for that typical day to be reliant on two browser engines is something I will strenuously try to avoid.

<comment><USER36> How do you view operating systems and kernels? They're pretty complex as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> UX reminds me of WannaBe for the Mac, which was far ahead of its time on that front.

</comment><comment><USER38> And it perfectly runs on macOS by using Wine.

<comment><USER39> So you're just using the MSHTML.DLL emulation, or copied it from a Windows install? Either may not match the full Windows experience...

<comment><USER38> Okay, I didn't setup anything, so it's probably the emulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Editable start page HTML ? Yes please!

</comment><comment><USER41> Windows only!

</comment><comment><USER42> I would absolutely love to have a new web browser out there. The internet needs this. Is it Windows-only? That seems slightly odd.

<comment><USER27> It's Windows-only because it's using the IE rendering engine made by Microsoft that comes built-in to Windows itself.

The difference with a new lightweight browser like NetSurf is that they actually have their own rendering engine crammed into their 12MB EXE (and it's cross-platform).</comment></comment>


Review of Pinephone PostmarketOS CE - <AUTHOR> https://proxy.vulpes.one/gemini/tanelorn.city/~vidak/pinephone/pinephone-review.gemini <comment><AUTHOR> Hello! I purchased a Pinephone, which was delivered in early September. It is the postmarketOS Community Edition model.

Please find a link to a HTTP proxy to my gemini capsule where I have reviewed my experiences with the phone. I have now been able to make it my daily driver phone, after doing a little distro hopping of the different Linuxes available for the phone.

I hope you find this gemlog useful (:</comment>


An Antidote for the Lack of Diversity in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://blog.quire.com/an-antidote-for-the-lack-of-diversity-in-tech-407ba43400eb#.m29vta3oj <comment><AUTHOR> Results from the Quire + Mattermark 2015 Startup Investing Survey.

Super timely with the SEC's announcement this morning that they'll consider final Title III rules this Friday.

</comment><comment><USER2> interesting key findings: \- potential to address lack of diversity in tech \- investors are educated and capable of sound financial decisions \- motives to invest are altruistic, not purely financial</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else excited about Ethereum? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Of the products built on blockchain, I've heard about, it is the most interesting. It also appears to be exponentially harder to get right because it's a wrapper around executable code and that executable code will almost certainly contain bugs.

The fundamental difficulty I see is that cryptographic hashing makes bug fixes problematic to implement.</comment>