Colorffy – Resources and tools for designers and developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.colorffy.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News! Here are some features from Colorffy:

1\. It's a design website, where you can search for color gradients and palettes, get color codes like hex, rgb, hsl and cmyk

2\. Preview UI elements (buttons, badges, navbars, cards), with differents gradients, css codes and images downloads

3\. We have some cool generators like for color gradients, random colors and get colors from images

I'd like to monetize this by selling a pro version with additional features like color blindness filter for colors, icon previews with differents palettes, saving of unlimited gradients from the generators and liking of color gradients and palettes that we post.</comment>


This app found all of my personal information that I thought was private - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/findr-2 <comment><USER2> This title reeks of clickbait. Not to mention that it is posted by the creator...</comment>


IOS 4.01, iPad 3.2.1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/node/19701

<comment><USER2> Any word on a fix to the "accidentally hang up with your cheek while talking on the phone" issue?

<comment><USER3> The release notes themselves don't have any mention of a fix to the proximity sensor, but I see conflicting reports of "its fixed!" and "its still there" on blogs all around. I guess it will be at least a day before people start to notice any difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any word on how this functions on older 3g and 3gs hardware? I've been waiting to upgrade my 3g due to reports of severe slowness on 3g+ios4.

<comment><USER5> I upgraded my 3g to iOS4 and its barely functioning, constant hangups - do not recommend upgrade. Very highly recommend the iPhone 4 though.

<comment><USER6> I have also experienced extreme slowness with ios 4 on 3G. Clearing the safari cache and restarting made things quite a bit faster - but still slower than ios 3.

<comment><USER7> I remember some reports on Twitter saying a backup-and-restore helped with 3G slowness on iOS4. Worth a shot?

<comment><USER8> Didn't work for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hallelujah. The iPad update has dramatically improved my iPad's Wi-Fi reception. Thank Zeus.

<comment><USER10> Was about to ask. Even if I'm a couple of metres from my router, my iPad can't reliably hold a connection for longer than a couple of pages while browsing. Then I have to exit to the settings, switch wifi off and on and try again - happens x0 times a night and drives me nuts!

<comment><USER10> Updated my iPad and the wi-fi problems persist. Very frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 579.3 MB download to make a small software fix to:

 _Improves the formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display_

Really? Seems like a bit of a waste. I can only hope there is more to this update.

<comment><USER12> I don't think iPhone's updates work like Android's updates. Each update is the full firmware, so it's going to be large regardless of what they actually changed. I believe that Android only downloads things that changed and need to be updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This update failed and left my phone unusable. Had to restore and resync from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's also an emerging BlueTooth issue with the iPhone 4 - suprised this hasn't been picked up more.

I know from my own personal experience (I've owned every iPhone, this is the only one wiht issues) and the growing complaints:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+4+bluetooth+issue&...](http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone+4+bluetooth+issue&rls=com.microsoft:en- us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1)

<comment><USER15> My iPhone 4 also has two additional issues:

1) The compass points about 90 degrees the wrong way

2) When I plug my phone into my car's auxiliary input and use the phone to make calls, it broadcasts my voice over the speakers, as if it were a microphone. My iPhone 3G didn't do this.

Anybody else have these issues?

<comment><USER16> Does your compass consistently point 90 degrees the wrong way? I just realized I haven't tested the compass on my 4, but on my 3GS, the compass worked fine _except_ when I was in the car; then, it consistently pointed 90 degrees the wrong way. And 99% of the instances in which I want to know my direction is in the car. Grrrrr.

<comment><USER15> It seems to consistently point the wrong way, but not always 90 degrees. Sometimes it's 180 (talk about confusing). Right now it's off by 180 degrees while sitting in my office.

Also, when I open the compass application it prompts me with a "Compass Interference" message.

As a side note, I haven't had any of the reception problems.

<comment><USER17> I had issues with the compass in my 3GS. At some point I tried to use it to navigate my way back from some convoluted hiking trails. I realized the compass was off just as the battery died in the phone. And the sun began to set.

<comment><USER18> At least then you knew which way was West.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Repeating 'XP with Vista' story? ^_^

</comment><comment><USER20> STOP THE PRESSES</comment>


Japan's Shinkansen bullet trains changed the world of rail travel - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/shinkansen-bullet-trains-japan/index.html <comment><USER2> To a Japanese, "Shinkansen bullet trains" sounds very odd because "Shinkansen" literally means "bullet trains". :-)

One thing that I find most impressive about Shinkansen is not mentioned in the article. It is its extraordinary safety record. There has not been a single fatality due to train accidents in the last 50 years!</comment>


Two paths, one peak: a view on high-performance language implementations - <AUTHOR> https://wingolog.org/archives/2015/11/03/two-paths-one-peak-a-view-from-below-on-high-performance-language-implementations <comment><USER2> AoT, JIT, bytecode, none of this matters if you can't control your data layout and access patterns. All this talk of performance and still not a mention of cache misses anywhere.

There seems to be a desire for this magic inliner and compiler that fixes all your performance problems when it just doesn't work like that.

Until you understand your data and have complete control over it none of this other stuff matters.

<comment><USER3> You have it backwards; cache effects only start to matter once you have the other things right. For example, being able to transform boxed to unboxed arithmetic, or to optimize out function calls from tight loops, will, at least in most cases, give you a bigger performance boost than rearranging data for cache-friendliness will.

<comment><USER2> I dunno, depending on your architecture you're looking at 200-400 cycles per cache miss, that's a lot of function calls.

<comment><USER4> Many function calls are a cache miss.

That doesn't matter much if each function call accesses thousands of memory locations, but if you have many small functions such as calls to (un)box objects or property accessors, or small closures you pass to a function, getting rid of the function calls by inlining code makes a huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If "template JIT" means what I think it does, this is basically what you get from Cython[1] or, later, Nuitka[2], only they're "template AOT"s.

Sadly, it buys you sorely little. CPython's bytecodes are "big", so very little time is spent between them relative to that spent inside them. The motivation to do anything smarter here is lacking.

[1] [http://cython.org/](http://cython.org/)

[2] [http://nuitka.net/](http://nuitka.net/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The Leroy paper in the bottom of the comments was worth it.</comment>


For Years WallStreet Spent More on Buybacks Than It Earned-Now They Want Bailout - <AUTHOR> https://thesoundingline.com/for-years-wall-street-spent-more-on-buybacks-and-dividends-than-it-actually-earned-now-they-want-a-taxpayer-bailout/ <comment><USER3> People seem to forget that when a business goes under, there's still something left.

If an airline goes down, the planes are not immediately turned to dust. The pilots and ground crew do not forget how to fly and maintain aircraft.

What happens at bankruptcy is that the claims on various assets are reassigned. The planes will get sold to someone who reckons they know how to run an airline, and the staff are likewise hired by new businesses.

This is worth keeping in mind when considering bailouts, because they tend to keep things in the hands of the same people, sometimes even on not much worse terms. And that's despite having steered the firm into the ground.

Don't forget there's value in this sort of reassignment. Assets and labor get moved around in new configurations that might be better.

<comment><USER4> > "bailouts ... tend to keep things in the hands of the same people"

yes, this is the crux, a gross unfairness. common folks get harsh punishments, while financiers and corporate executives get away with major thefts and get to keep the fruits of their transgressions.

i'm all for harsher punishments for actions that lead to greater damages to more lives (in this case, taking a little bit from lots of people). with greater power must come even greater responsibility. tear up the corporate veil.

and let's be vigorous in reassigning assets so as to support a functioning market for better management.

<comment><USER5> There is a middle path, where creditors are converted to shareholders and shareholders are massively diluted.

Effective control of the company will be placed in the hands of people who re- capitalize the company, and they will _definitely_ not let the old management stick around.

Relative to bankruptcy, this has the benefit of allowing the company to continue operating. It also deters future recklessness. Probably should have happened in 2009, but didn't.

<comment><USER6> It did happen in the UK. Banks that took bailouts traded shares for cash with the Treasury (this is a layman's understanding at least). RBS notably became 84% publicly owned.

The real scandal is the government selling back the shares for less than they paid for them (when RBS was on the brink of collapse).

<comment><USER7> Did the Treasury improve the bank operations for the better? It's difficult to imagine that they'd do the same jobs as private creditors, considering 1\. The Treasury decision makers stake in the longer term performance of the banks is low 2\. The Treasury has money as an institution of government, even in a downturn, and has come to possess through political means. Private creditors have some come to possess, and more importantly keep/remain solvent during a downturn, the money they have to lend through means and methods more closely related to the effective operations of the banks. Not that every private creditor who ended up in control would do a better job, but on the whole firms would be more effectively run in the long term. Especially when it comes to avoiding risky leveraging situation as we're in now. Not a britbong, so my understanding of how everything works over there might be wrong

<comment><USER8> I respectfully disagree with point 1 - our Treasury, at least, which I imagine works along similar lines to the HM Treasury, realises the important social role healthy, and well-capitalised banks play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The least we can demand for these bailouts is that executive bonus of last years will be returned. These companies don't deserve bailouts and should all go into chapter 11.

We got all severely fucked last time. Boeing bought for $52 billion shares back and now they want $60?

I hope Donald Trump is going to push his Tough guy act now. If he says no to all the bailouts he is going to be remembered as the best president ever.

<comment><USER10> Boeing unfortunately has to be bailed out, if we as a world want airplane as a method of transportation. It's only Boeing and Airbus, there are no others.

Management should be punished excessively as a warning to others, though I do not expect them to be punished at all.

<comment><USER11> > Boeing unfortunately has to be bailed out, if we as a world want airplane as > a method of transportation. It's only Boeing and Airbus, there are no > others.

Somehow I suspect that if the earth swallowed every employee of Boeing and Airbus, and every plane ever produced by either, there would be more airplanes and more airplane manufacturers soon enough.

<comment><USER12> Soon enough will still be around a decade - the development/tooling development for your average sedan is already 5+ years, and that's building off of previous experience and technology. I can't imagine what it would be for creating a vehicle bigger than a doublewide that has to be hefted in the air by 100k lbf engines from scratch

<comment><USER13> That's just silly. Bankrupting Boeing does not destroy 140 years of aviation technology or make aeronautic engineers forget their training. Neither does it erase the thousands of aircraft flying today. All those assets that Boeing has inefficiently hoarded now becomes available for other, more competent organisations and businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The generic reference of "Wall Street" in the title, but then not referring to financial firms but transportation, manufacturing and other firms located across the country seems to be a misuse of the term. Like many other things the meaning drifts into "things I don't like".

<comment><USER15> I've always took "Wall Street" to mean all parties involved in the U.S. financial market, publicly traded companies in particular.

<comment><USER16> I thought "Wall Street" meant financial firms and exchanges.

<comment><USER17> Those two words have an extremely fluid definition depending on who you talk to.

<comment><USER18> Having worked on Wall Street, it essentially boils down to public/private businesses and financial institutions/firms/banks/exchanges are considered "Wall Street"...

Everyone one else is considered "Main Street"...

They have their own language and culture that exhorts greed and profit above humanity and peace. ie. "Wolf of WallStreet"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't it make the most sense then for the Bailout to be mostly for equity at the current price? They have stock, they want cash, they sell the stock. American Taxpayer holds onto the stock for a while, fixes the company, and then sells for profit.

That of course is if the American Taxpayer wants to save that business.

<comment><USER20> I think this is the answer. If they want additional runway, they should dilute. It's fine for the government to act as a buyer of last resort in the event that it believes the market is responding irrationally. But it should still get a steep discount. The government can sell the assets back into the market when it believes the situation has stabilized.

<comment><USER21> Maybe don't sell it but put the holdings into a big sovereign wealth fund? The wealth fund can rebalance its holdings later, and can work as an infrastructure bank or similar in future to support the country's ongoing development.

<comment><USER20> I don't know. Maybe. In general I'd prefer the government to hold debts than assets, especially when debt is so cheap as it is today. I don't want to see long-term crowding out of private investment. I think the investment system generally works pretty OK, except for in extreme circumstances like this.

<comment><USER19> If the government is going to play kingmaker and choose which business succeed and fail, the profit for those moves should go back to the government, not just the old shareholders.

>I don't want to see long-term crowding out of private investment.

This really wouldnt be that different than Blackrock and Vanguard and State Street controlling like 10% of the market, except the government wouldnt be a passive investor, they would exert some form of control over controlled companies.

It almost seems like cheat mode, for the government to say "we wont let this undervalued stock collapse, watch us save it. now its worth more (naturally because we saved it.) profit."

<comment><USER20> > the profit for those moves should go back to the government, not just the > old shareholders

If the government buys the assets at distressed prices and sells them at ordinary prices, it would?

<comment><USER19> Why sell if you fixed the company? Reap your reward? If youre confident their value will continue to increase after your bailout.

<comment><USER20> If you wouldn't buy it you should probably sell it is my motto. The gov't wouldn't pay retail for one of these companies, so they should probably sell it at that price. But if they believe the long term fundamentals are good, they might buy at a distressed price. That's my working theory anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As usual Matt Levine has a pretty good take on this: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-17/the- go...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-17/the-good-times- for-airlines-are-over)

<comment><USER23> This gets to one of the fundamental limits of for profit operation of businesses, different scales of firm have different incentives. For American Airlines it made logical sense to do stock buybacks, but if the whole of society was in control of American Airlines they would've prioritized service and just paid to keep the operation on life support during the downturn.

<comment><USER24> Given the way that public transit is run, I think service would be the lowest priority of an airline if it were run by society instead of capitalists.

<comment><USER23> Try public transit in literally any country besides the US, the US is currently terrible at public utilities for ideological reasons. Basically the line of thinking is the government doesn't work, so let us in power to prove it to you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> " _Prior to 1982, stock buybacks were considered market manipulation and were illegal under SEC rules. Whether buybacks should be outright illegal or not, they are a sign that a company thinks so little of its own products, services, and market potential that its capital should be diverted from growth and towards financial engineering._ "

That's very well put.

<comment><USER26> Performance based compensation, were share value is the key measure/indicator for performance, leads to this kind of culture.

There are legitimate reasons for stock buybacks, but when they're being used for nothing more than short-term increases (in share prices), then that says something about the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If an individual is expected to have a 3-6 month 'emergency fund', would it be reasonable to expect the same of a corporation?

<comment><USER28> That 3-6 month projection of operating expenses goes out the window once an emergency happens. Business require many more things to sustain itself. The recommendation is good for every day people because the actual cost to keep a healthy human sustained is actually pretty cheap (food, water, shelter). A business does not have human needs, it might need oil, metal, ores, chemicals, etc. to do its job. If the prices of those things spike dramatically, your 3-6 month emergency fund could quickly turn into 1-3 months.

<comment><USER29> Have prices spiked dramatically? The only variable costs to an airline that I can think of are fuel and parts. With worldwide travel demand evaporating, it seems unlikely to me that either of those things are in short supply.

<comment><USER30> You could take all of the profit (including buybacks) American made in the last 6 years and that would still be only enough to fund 4 months of operations. I'm against the bailouts because I think we shouldn't make some investments riskless and subsidized , but to blame airlines for not having 6 months of reserve is just weird.

Buybacks are just a scapegoat when in reality an airline parking 14b$ in case of a black swan event would have made absolutely no financial sense especially since shareholders expect some reward for their risks. Imagine if they did that and ended up with just 4 more months of operation at incredible losses. Stocks would probably have plummeted to similar levels anyways and the shareholders would've ended up with no returns at all.

The reality of the industry is that they had to keep prices super low to satisfy consumers expecting always cheaper flight _and_ at the same time satisfy shareholders who are aware of how cyclical the industry is and require a big RoI to justify their risk. That requires a lot of leverage, high efficiency and a low margin of error in their cashflow predictions.

<comment><USER31> >Buybacks are just a scapegoat when in reality an airline parking 14b$ in case of a black swan event would have made absolutely no financial sense especially since shareholders expect some reward for their risks. Imagine if they did that and ended up with just 4 more months of operation at incredible losses. Stocks would probably have plummeted to similar levels anyways and the shareholders would've ended up with no returns at all.

If they are the only airliner left standing after four months I think the outlook would be quite different. That only works if the government doesn't bail out their competitors leaving them at a disadvantage.

<comment><USER30> Maybe that will give you better chances of survival but think about it from an airlines perspective. Is it rational to basically ignore shareholders to hold reserves in case of a black swan that would cut your entire cashflow in the hope of surviving a few months at best?

You're basically giving no return on investment to your shareholders, which could have made use of the money in a more productive way than just parking it in cash/equivalents, so that they get the privilege of seeing that money burnt down at a phenomenal rate if that improbable worst case scenario happens? And all of that while investing in a riskier industry?

Again, the investors took a risk and should not be bailed out. But the buybacks and the lack of reserves make sense. You can't take a risk without expectation of return only to get an extremely risky solution (that may or may not save half of your equity value) to an improbable event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> We need a way to include "black swan readiness" in corporate finance / valuation. Historically, it's not something investors have cared about, so corporations haven't done it.

<comment><USER33> It is 2 black swans this time, coronavirus and gas prices, but yeah, you are right

<comment><USER34> Low gas prices would be good for airlines normally, because gas prices are a large portion of their operating costs.

<comment><USER35> +1 to this. I think it was 4 years back, the oil prices dropped hard and the airlines bought futures quantities in large supply to hedge for future needs. It was a smart strategy

<comment><USER36> ...then they sold the futures when prices went back up to make a quick, tidy profit.

Except Southwest -- which had the other airlines whining because they had an "unfair advantage" with their locked-in lower prices.

<comment><USER37> Wow, do you have a source for that last part?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't see a problem with the loans. They get paid back with interest. I see no problem loaning the airlines money.

Grants, however, is something else entirely. If they are in so much trouble they need a literal bailout then they should be nationalized. They can be re- privatized later, after a decade of drama and red tape, but nationalization should be the consequence that's faced until bad actors can become responsible.

<comment><USER39> _> I see no problem loaning the airlines money._

A cynic would say if the airlines want market-rate loans, they can get them from the market.

If the airlines want _subsidised_ loans, that's just a grant with a stick-on moustache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This can be listed among the moral hazards of bailouts. These companies know that when a downturn occurs, the government or the Fed will bail them out.

</comment><comment><USER41> Instead of a bailout, lets do a stock offering, with the government as the purchaser. This way, the government can sell it's shares later on and get the public's money back.

<comment><USER42> This is close to how the TARP bailout (2008) worked and the government did get the public's money back. From the banks, the Treasury got about a 21% profit ([https://www.thebalance.com/tarp-bailout- program-3305895](https://www.thebalance.com/tarp-bailout-program-3305895))

One thing to remember is that the current share price of companies is based on the value that buyers and sellers are agreeing to. There are many more people who own shares and are unwilling to sell at the current price. When someone talks about Boeing costing $51B, that doesn't take into consideration that many people holding Boeing shares wouldn't sell at that price. That's the price you can buy at if you're looking to buy 1 share. If you're looking to buy all the shares (or a substantial portion), there probably aren't enough sellers at that price.

The point of that is to note that companies will reject money that comes with terms or pricing that is too bad. If you offered to give Boeing $60B in exchange for 100% of the company, shareholders would reject it. Might as well take your chances that the company will survive. Fire all employees, eliminate all payroll for a year, and then try and re-start in 2021. If you ask too much, investors have other options.

For the government, these other options are really bad for the economy - <USER2> ultimately for government revenue. We don't want a situation like that if there's a way to avoid it. If the government lends $10B to a company at 0% interest and it means that the company keeps paying $5B per year in taxes instead of filing for bankruptcy and paying $0 in taxes, that's still important even though the government is getting no interest. One thing that people don't realize is that the government basically already owns parts of companies - the government gets a percentage of the profits. If those profits go down, so does government revenue.

The TARP bailout was smart. Dividends to the government were between 5% and 9% interest along with warrants for shares. Usually banks bought the warrants back from the government rather than the government converting them into shares and selling the shares, but it's essentially the same as what you're talking about (without throwing the market into chaos as the government tries to find buyers for hundreds of billions in shares).

Could the government have gotten more? Maybe. Berkshire Hathaway got a couple deals at a slightly higher interest rate before the government started stepping in. However, some banks wanted to reject the government's help because it was expensive - they thought they had enough reserves to weather the storm without help.

It's bad that the public thinks of these "bailouts" as free money. They aren't free money. It makes a lot of sense for the government to be a lender in a time of crisis since they're the only lender that can print money. If the government lends with an appropriate eye to risk and sets reasonable interest rates and secures those loans against the companies, it's a really good thing for the economy.

Personally, I think that the government should also be working on the individual side as well. In some ways, they are. Unemployment usually covers instances where you're temporarily unemployed for things like this. I'd go even further and say that the government should save money for rainy days and give people grants (rather than loans) to keep everything normal. Bailout loans wouldn't help a lot of people who wouldn't be able to pay back an 8% loan easily. However, grants would go a long way to making sure that people were taken care of.

If people start spending less money, it has cascading effect. Businesses employ X number of people assuming a certain number of customers. If their customers go down by 10%, they probably need 10% fewer employees. Then those laid off employees start spending less causing other businesses to lay off unneeded employees. Then those new laid off employees spend less causing... and so on.

We want the country to go through this crisis as smoothly as possible. The government should lend money to companies on terms that are good for the government and good enough for companies that they'll take it. We don't want companies thinking that they should take their chances or shut down for extended periods of time beyond what is necessary for public health. We don't want a huge drop off in government revenue if companies shut down more than is necessary for public health.

<comment><USER43> I largely agree with your thesis here, but I wanted to point out that the taxpayer has a right to be cranky when executives receive large compensation packages during bailouts.

These compensation packages are a small part of the bailout money, and it's unfortunate that the people with the most knowledge of the company's position and needs are the ones who put it there. They're not fungible and there's no good way to say, "Fix this for zero salary before we fire you and start looking to claw back some of your prior bonuses."

Most taxpayers do have little idea what's going on, but they're at least on point about the injustice of that. Preventing that involves rather substantial changes, and doing them after the last crisis and before the next one -- exactly when politicians, some voters, and business all start to get cranky about burdensome regulation. Voters who said "I told you so" have some justification and a right to be pissed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This was a compelling read on the buyback issue from earlier this year: [https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous- for...](https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous-for-the- economy)

</comment><comment><USER15> > The appropriate course of action for distressed companies that have engaged > in share buybacks is that they should issue new shares to raise capital. If > they can't raise enough capital through share issuance, they should enter > Chapter 11 bankruptcy and be restructured. If they cannot pull through a > restructuring, they should go out of business. That's how capitalism works.

If Uncle Sam stopped bailing out corporations, I wonder how differently they would do business.

<comment><USER45> It's telling that Spirit Airlines (among the least likely airlines to be bailed out) has 3x the cash on hand as American Airlines.

<comment><USER46> Calls on Spirit, Puts on American ftw

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Through this unprecedented money printing, the Fed is devaluing not only the dollar and all pegged fiat currencies but also all institutions which are centered around it. It's not surprising then to see cryptocurrencies outperforming stocks over the past couple of days.

The Fed's QE program back in 2008 was one of the main incentives which drove the creation of Bitcoin and its subsequent adoption.

The Fed has a real problem now. People are beginning to realize that not everyone has to work as hard to get the same amount of money, but the truth is even worse than that; not everyone has to deliver the same amount of value to society in order to get the same amount of money... The root of the problem is the Fed and the mechanism by which this newly printed money enters the economy. It's not a fair process.

The real intrinsic value behind fiat money is based solely on its ability to:

\- Deceive people into thinking that it has value backed by real economic contributions.

\- Forcibly coherse people into accepting its nominal value even if some of those people doubt it.

In other words, the intrinsic value of fiat is rooted in lies and manipulation. Smoke and mirrors. Then it follows logically that every institution which derive their value from it is also rooted in those same lies and manipulations.

</comment><comment><USER48> People want to get all pissy about this, and come up with all kinds of contrived punishments for the offenders. I'll grant that this is an awful looking situation, but the most cost effective thing we could do is just learn the damn lesson finally. Don't give companies money in boom times, keep it around for when a true unexpected disaster strikes. It literally requires no work, no new bills, just a memory that lasts a little bit and some introspection.

<comment><USER49> The problem as I understand it is that those large companies hire thousands of skilled workers, and are often the only source of employment in some regions. If they go under, they bring a significant segment of the population with them.

<comment><USER50> And how is that different from thousands of small businesses who went under with nary a peep? Of all of the others who put their eggs in one flimsy rotten basket?

The way I see it too big to fail is always just special pleading furiously rationalizing from being spoiled by status. There is no logical reason to give them special treatment in spite of all of the stupid human hierarchy tricks. I see it no different than demanding that a rich kid who killed someone driving drunk be treated as "making a mistake" and anyone else as "proven an irredemable waste of human life".

The only sane and just thing is equal treatment. Either everyone can get bailouts or nobody can. The favor for a few approach doesn't work morally or practically - just producing more spoiled nitwits who can and should be replaced. There are no redeeming circumstances or grand sacrifices on their part to justify special treatment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's remarkable that the same parties who denounce any government participation in markets will be using that government to decide which companies to prop up. No doubt with lobbyist's advice.

The irony is there is a way to do this _and_ use a little market force: dump the money on to consumers and let them rather than lobbyists decide what is worth keeping afloat. I imagine in that case, cruise lines would be lower priority.

</comment><comment><USER52> If they hadn't used stock buybacks, they would have issued dividends, and we would be in the same situation.

<comment><USER53> Buybacks are worse because so much of it has not been financed with cash, but cheap debt from issuing corporate bonds which are now at risk of default.

<comment><USER54> It's weird that paying out dividends from borrowed money is not ok but doing buybacks is.

<comment><USER52> So then the real problem is the debt, most likely that US corporate debt is given special tax treatment.

<comment><USER32> Borrowing for tax purposes is sort of a perpetuated myth. Firms in zero tax nations have debt, and firms in the US prior to corporate taxes had debt. Debt is first a foremost a way of financing corporate activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Our leaders, both business and government, find themselves entrapped in thinking about economics in terms of money. Soon we will be thinking about it in terms of productivity: how do we make sure enough food is made and distributed? How do we make sure we have enough medical supplies? We got away without thinking about productive capacity, instead focusing on money.

We will lose more people to this disease than any war since WW2, based on the statistics presented by people I trust. If we don't learn about wartime economics and fast, then the number will be higher than it needs to be.

Unfortunately, like I said, the people in charge are trapped in a box, believing that the systems that awarded them with great wealth must be the best possible system. The side-effect of this will be more death than necessary.

<comment><USER50> There is a reason why money was used for eons - planned economies failed horribly and the logistics of it likewise would utterly break. I accept that it is theoretically possible for a better system to be come up with but in practice we have been kept waiting. Even when there was a nominal alternative in the USSR their "economics" were nonsense backed by ideology even by the standards of questionable economics.

I would be interested in seeing theoretical and hypothetical alternative system models but sadly what I have come across is more like "alternative" in the alternative medicine sense. Sellinf questionable cures and railing against "big pharma" rhetoric and attacks and little to none on rigorous models or experimentalism to actually build anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Surely they can just start selling those shares? that's where their current investments are.

Of course they likely wont get as much as they paid for them, but that's just a poor investment decision on their part, not something the government should bail out

</comment><comment><USER57> This crisis is exposing that our modern economy has a very thin layer of resilience. I can't help but think of Climate Change as the next obvious thing that we should have seen coming, but have not adequately taken seriously.

</comment><comment><USER58> When companies do these buybacks, they deprive themselves of the liquidity that might help them cope when sales and profits decline in an economic downturn.

<comment><USER32> That's why banks have regulatory capital requirements, which have gone up since '08. There are no such regs for non financial firms sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Buybacks signify that the company's management can't find any better use for their money.

It signifies that the company sees no value in investing that money in developing more business for the company in the future, but wants to spend that important money on ephemeral share prices instead.

Companies that only plan for today instead of planning for their own greater futures deserve to go under.

</comment><comment><USER60> In my opinion, we need to support them with a bailout because we can't not have functioning airlines or banks.

But we should do by taking a stake in the company by having them issue stock. This would punish shareholders (through dilution) while at the same time not bankrupting the companies.

The stakes in the company would be tied to a timeframe and then sold by the government within a time window.

<comment><USER61> If they want money they can always issue stock. Just like how they bought it up to artificially inflate it in the first place.

<comment><USER60> Good point - although I wonder - can they do that in the timeframe they need the money on (I have no idea on how long it takes to issue stock)?

<comment><USER61> I'm fairly certain they can do it immediately if they want, the reason they don't is it will cause their stock price to fall. Why spend your own money when you can just wait for the government to bail you out?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who want to understand buybacks, please read the first 7 pages of [1].

This is the leverage ratchet effect in action.

[1] [https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working- papers...](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working- papers/leverage-ratchet-effect)

</comment><comment><USER62> The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

</comment><comment><USER63> I want to say just let them fail, but that would make competition even lower in already low-competition industries. If there are bailouts, it should be in a form that spreads out the losses over time, so these companies can still operate short-term but still get punished for the mis-management.

<comment><USER29> Failing doesn't mean that the airline disappears. All of the planes and personnel don't just evaporate. Failing should mean replacing the current equity holders with the current bondholders and continuing to operate.

<comment><USER64> Honest question here.

How would they continue to operate post-bankruptcy if they cannot pay their employees? Or why would they?

<comment><USER29> To start with, they don't pay a lot of their (former) employees. Global travel demand is going to take a long time to recover and a lot of furloughs are going to happen across the industry in any case. Second, the new company probably takes on some amount of new debt. If they can't find it in the private market then there's nothing wrong with the government stepping in. The two keys are that the government steps in _after_ the current equity holders are wiped out _completely_ , and that the government support comes in the form of loans, not grants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I found a book which very well explains the ideology behind what has been happening over the last 11 years. It is called Capitalism 4.0 by Anatole Kaletsky.

If Capitalism 4.0 is really capitalism I would leave to everyone's discretion. It is about to end in an really really ugly way though.

P.S. The book distinguishes between american 'democratic capitalism' and chinese state-run capitalism, but I personally don't see how the democratic one based on money printing[1; the stock market growing 20% a year with GDP only 2%] is any different or capitalism in any way.

1\. [https://www.businessinsider.com/qe-correlations-between- stoc...](https://www.businessinsider.com/qe-correlations-between-stocks-and- bonds-2013-11)

</comment><comment><USER66> Trust me, I am the LAST person to advocate corporate socialism. But I think this deserves an honest conversation. I really wonder what would happen if we didn't save the airlines. What would happen if we let an entire industry collapse under the weight of a natural disaster? (That's not a rhetorical question, I'm honestly asking). Wouldn't that cause a domino effect crashing through the whole system?

Don't get me wrong - I agree that it's terrible to have to continue bailing out greedy corporations. But is this the time to rebuild the system? I'm not so sure we can handle that on top of everything else going on.

We should attach all kinds of strings to this bailout, and then hold our representatives responsible for fixing this mess. But I'm not sure letting the whole thing collapse is the reasonable thing to do.

<comment><USER67> > But is this the time to rebuild the system?

Thing is, though, whenever this conversation is relevant (ie when the airlines need a bailout because of recession, whatever), you can always dodge the issue by saying "but we have too much going on right now for this".

> We should attach all kinds of strings to this bailout

Definitely. But normally what happens is that corporate lawyers are much smarter and more devious than government lawyers with the benefit of huge leverage and these strings get waived, ignored, litigated for years, etc.

<comment><USER66> >you can always dodge the issue by saying "but we have too much going on right now for this".

I agree with this, which is why I'm looking for an honest conversation. Maybe THIS IS THE TIME to push back. I fully support direct political action in response to the bail outs, if "we the people" decide enough is enough. I just think we should do so thoughtfully, not emotionally.

>these strings get waived, ignored, litigated for years, etc.

Unfortunately we also allow that by being swept up by the next big emotional moment, and once we've been redirected to something else, the strings magically disappear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Boeing LOL.

</comment><comment><USER69> This behavior is being systematically reinforced more and more with every recession. Is there anyone outside of the mainstream of the two US parties who thinks that modern capitalism is desirable or sustainable?

<comment><USER70> government bailouts are not capitalism

<comment><USER71> True, but now you are in the No True Scotsman weeds.

Government bailouts have been happening regularly for most of our lifetimes. We are incessantly told the US is a Capitalist country. So in the minds of the average citizen, either bailouts are part of the capitalist system, or the US has never been capitalist.

We're going to see "Modern Capitalism" and "Late Stage Capitalism" thrown around with a lot more frequency as corporations exert their power and we struggle to define what we are seeing.

If we had more consciousness and weren't so confused by 50 years of Cold War brain rot we would just call our age Late Stage Plutocracy or something.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone tired of Bay Area? What's your perspective? - <AUTHOR> Our family has been really frustrated with some aspects of life in Bay Area:
1. Bad air due to forest fires getting worse every year; it doesn't help that the kids are more severely affected by this. Can't leave the house most days. With climate change that's likely to get even worse.
2. Heat waves. This supplements #1. Too hot outside during the day, too hot inside at night; can't even open the windows.
3. With #1 and #2 in mind, why pay such an obscene amount of money for housing, especially with COVID and WFH becoming a norm.
We can't be the only ones having these thoughts. Please share your take; are you planning to move, and if so then where to? <comment><USER2> I'm leaving for these reasons. Probably will move to the Pacific Northwest.</comment>


Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain - <AUTHOR> http://www.proofofexistence.com/ <comment><USER2> This idea is generally called "trusted timestamping": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping)

One example would be to take a photo of a rental car showing damage at the time you rented it and be able to prove it was taken at that time. Then the rental company cannot later claim you caused the damage.

This is a pretty clever use of the blockchain as a publicly-visible and authenticated timestamp. This way, the site's owners do not have to establish themselves as a legal authority on timekeeping in order for this to be a trusted service.

<comment><USER3> I was developing a similar online notary. My idea is to timestamp open code, docs etc create a prior case database against patent trolls and goliaths.

<comment><USER4> Are there any documented cases where that would help?

It seems to me that the real problem is convincing a jury that a prior piece of work is related to a patented piece of work.

<comment><USER3> yes you might be right, NIST standardized timestamping methods are themselves full of patents. And I believe Jury would accept only those + a certified authority which would want to be testify in front of Jury.

<comment><USER4> _NIST standardized timestamping methods are themselves full of patents_

hu?

 _And I believe Jury would accept only those + a certified authority which would want to be testify in front of Jury._

I think you've missed my point. I'm saying that the problem isn't the _TIME_ of the prior art, it is proving to a civilian jury that prior art relates to a patent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is definitely a cool idea, but there could be potential issues if it is to be relied upon for long periods of time. If at any point in the future the hash algorithm used (SHA256 right now it seems) is found to be vulnerable then it could invalidate all past certifications. You don't really even need a full collision attack, a chosen prefix collision attack is enough to completely destroy the system's validity. MD5 is already vulnerable to chosen prefix attacks, maybe in 5 or 10 years SHA256 will be too...

Perhaps using a combination of different hash algorithms that we know are secure today to certify a file together would be a potential solution to the problem. It's not perfect, but at least this way all the algorithms used need to be compromised for the certification to break.

<comment><USER6> Collisions are a problem if you want to corrupt data, not if you specifically want a human validate it in a single document.

E.g.:

I claim that I authored the string "foo bar" with hash "1f2ec52b7743687..".

Now you find a collision and go to court arguing:

>> Your honor, but "3HSSHog*8FF9 z!!!!ady94765&$^#" also has the same hash!

I think the court will still assume that "foo bar" is the correct original, not the garbled collision data you produce. And you still can't deny that the original produces the correct hash.

<comment><USER7> That's not why it would be a problem.

The problem is that I can author "foo bar" and "moo bar" constructed to hash the same, and then assert retroactively which one I meant. While collisions are likely to have random binary garbage in them, it may not matter - I am on phone now, but IIRC I have two PDFs on my desktop that have the same MD5, one of which viewed is an airbus pamphlet, the other being a Boeing one. (created by Dan Kaminski, IIRC)

<comment><USER8> Can we see them?

<comment><USER7> I guess they are on a backup or misremembered - but examples are really easy to find on the net if you want them:

[http://th.informatik.uni- mannheim.de/people/lucks/HashCollis...](http://th.informatik.uni- mannheim.de/people/lucks/HashCollisions/)

[http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/ChosenPrefixCollisions/](http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/ChosenPrefixCollisions/) has a multicollision: 12 PDF files with different content and the same MD5 hash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I also developed a similar project:

[https://www.btproof.com/](https://www.btproof.com/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790382)

Recent changes to Bitcoin made the method I'm using to timestamp the data on the blockchain somewhat problematic [1], but I'll be working on an update once I release another Bitcoin-related project I'm currently working on (hopefully in the coming days).

[1] [https://github.com/shesek/btproof/issues/1](https://github.com/shesek/btproof/issues/1)

</comment><comment><USER10> The idea is cool but it might be too early for people to use the blockchain like this as right now BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second.

Once that hard limit is lifted, and things like this can scale and support demand, applications like this could be very interesting.

One thing though, it says the BTC involved in the transaction is unspendable, isn't that a bad thing? I imagine an idea like this that didn't render any amount of BTC unspendable would be ideal.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Current_bottlenecks](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Current_bottlenecks)

<comment><USER11> Wow, didn't realize that! That's bad news, since the current daily transaction rate (~100k) is within an order of magnitude of the daily limit (~600k = 7 x 3600 x 24).

Fortunately, the doubling time is, from eyeballing the chart below, about 6 months, so that allows ~1-2 years for a fix.

[https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30day...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=1&address=)

<comment><USER10> Well I was expecting there would be a significant jump in transaction volume as news spreads, prices rise, more services were offered in BTC and more countries get local exchanges. You also seem to miss that its not the total number of transactions per day you need to worry about, its the transactions per second.

There are surely periods of frenzy in the day where we cannot support 7 transactions per second as more economic activity takes place, even if the total transactions for the day is well under 600000. Its not like the transactions are neatly distributed on a flat line throughout the day.

There must also be some consideration that each time this is done, the BTC in the transaction is rendered unspendable and so it is taken out of the market. So I guess its not good if something like this could scale on top of BitCoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A couple of great developers from HackTX a couple of weeks back created something similar during the hackathon there in just 24 hours.

[https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hacktx/hacks/proveme](https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hacktx/hacks/proveme) with a demo copy @ [http://126.96.36.199/](http://220.127.116.11/)

<comment><USER13> I'm one of the two developers.

I got the proof server working again so you can play with it.

Try proving data and typing in "testing" (lowercase). It will tell you when we put it in the blockchain. This file should also work: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRX...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRXKptjOPo_kitten.jpg)

It's a little patchy, but it does work! Payments are fake, and don't do anything! So don't pay! I don't know how much our Bitcoin wallet has left in it. I'll try to remember what we've uploaded so you can try it out.

Bitcoin/crypto code here: [https://github.com/wyager/hacktx- proveme](https://github.com/wyager/hacktx-proveme)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My friend and I did this as well for a hackathon (HackTX) a few days ago!

184.108.40.206

Try proving data and typing in "testing" (lowercase). It will tell you when we put it in the blockchain. This file should also work: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRX...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRXKptjOPo_kitten.jpg)

Here is our bitcoin/crypto stuff. [https://github.com/wyager/hacktx- proveme](https://github.com/wyager/hacktx-proveme)

It's not up to my usual quality because we did it in 24 hours with a sleep break! Please don't judge me on this :p

</comment><comment><USER14> Couple questions.

1) AFAIK, bitcoin has "comments" within transactions. Why not embed the checksum as a comment in a transaction between wallets you control?

2) In the approach described here, no coins are being sent with the transaction (right?). Are blockchain participants really accepting NOP transactions involving 0 BTC transfers. Maybe I missed something.

3) As others pointed out, requiring the whole file to be uploaded is a non- starter for anybody savvy enough to be using this service. Users should be able to directly specify the checksum.

<comment><USER15> 1) Comments are enabled as a service by blockchain.info. For details on how the Genesis Block (and comment by Satoshi) was formed, look at the Bitcoin Wiki[1]

2) Coins are being sent. The Developer page says you must send at least 0.00000001 BTC. _Edit: actually 500000 Satoshi._

3) Agree. So does the service. See the Developer Page[2]

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block)

[2] [http://www.proofofexistence.com/developers](http://www.proofofexistence.com/developers)

<comment><USER16> 5460 satoshis is the current default minimum that Bitcoin itself allows (other transactions are valid, but won't be forwarded, thus you need to hand it over to a miner yourself for inclusion in a block).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can anyone eli5 exactly what this accomplishes. What sort of scenario would this work for. I'm assuming some sort of legal purposes.

<comment><USER18> It's a way to use the bitcoin blockchain as a non-centralised way to record the fact that you were in possession of a particular file at a particular time, without exposing what that file is, or who you are.

The problem has been around for a long time, especially when dealing with semi-intangibles like Priority for scientific discoveries, or proof of first invention for patents[1]

One solution is to present proof to a trusted but private notary, who can copy or stamp or otherwise indicate that he has seen your documents and so they must have existed at least since the date indicated.

But counterfeiting, forgery, untrustworthy notaries, etc, all make this a less than ideal solution. So we add computers & crypto.

The document in question is condensed down to a single cryptographic hash, which (should[2]) to all intents and purposes be unique for a given document, despite being only a few tens of characters long, regardless of the size of the original input.

This hash then serves as proof[3] that you have the source document, without anyone being able to turn it back into the original document. This is a very one-way process.

Then, you need to find someone to vouch for your hash and indicate when they first saw it. You can do this with lawyers/notaries again as before[4], which partly solves the forgery problem, but not the trust one.

The solution proposed here is to store that hash in the bitcoin block-chain, which is a distributed log of all transactions on the bitcoin network, which has 3 nice properties:

1\. It's append-only. Once your hash is encoded in there, it's staying there as long as bitcoin exists[5].

2\. It's peer-to-peer/distributed. There's no single controlling organisation you need to trust for answers.

3\. It's updated regularly enough that timestamps can be relatively fine- grained.

So you stuff it in there using this tool or whatever, and then X years hence when you need to prove you'd actually created that file in 2013, you should be able to prove that to most people's satisfaction.

This is a loose take on the matter and glosses over whole swathes of other complexities involved, but is probably close enough for [non]government work :)

[1] That is, who discovered/did something first. You may want to be able to claim you did in future, but without making it public at the time, because you might tip your rivals off to the idea before you've fully developed it. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_priority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_priority)

[2] Breaking (or "colliding") hashes is a whole subfield of cryptography research, and some pretty impressive things have been done there. It's why you probably shouldn't use MD5 for anything nowadays, for example. But again, we'll handwave "Done Properly = unique identifier".

[3] Well, in the same way that a password proves that you're the/a person who knows that password - if you did it right and never told anyone, it should be exclusively you. But if it leaks somehow, others could represent the hash as belonging to something they own. But if they only have the hash and not the original source document, there are relatively easy tests that could distinguish them. That's not very important here though.

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping)

[5] well, mostly. But it's _really_ hard, and the same capabilities let you defraud the rest of the bitcoin network with double-spending and whatnot, so unless your timestamp priority is super-important, you're probably ok.

<comment><USER19> One question. I know that its nearly impossible to reverse a good hash or to create a doc that will knowingly return the same hash. So PREDICTING a collision (finding a doc that will collide with a given doc) is very very very difficult. But Due to the size of the output and input space we know for a fact that collisions do exist (right?) So if a very large number of documents are timestamped using this, their hashes WILL collide right? I mean there is a POSSIBILITY that you may find proof for a doc that wasn't actually stored here, right?

(Just wondering. Not throwing criticism. I actually LOVE this idea!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if these concepts could be used to change the way land records are maintained and eliminate the need for title insurance [1] in the U.S. I am no expert but the current system doesn't seemed to have changed much in the past century or so. This results in a lucrative business (title insurance) that effectively insures against book keeping mistakes.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_insurance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_insurance)

<comment><USER21> If some claim to title is omitted from the public record, how exactly would this guard against it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Two thoughts.

1) Will this have legal weight? I know that the whole "prove paternity of an invention by sending a certified letter containing the design through the mail, and not opening it until you need it" thing doesn't very much work, if it goes to court you tend to be told "OK, what you say is true in the physical universe, but you did not go through our blessed channels, so nyah nyah nyah".

2) Anything that makes bitcoins more legitimate / part of the world's infrastructure decreases the chance of bitcoin going away as a system. I think the idea for the bitcoin community is to make the system as a whole "too big to fail" before governments decide that they want to get rid of it.

<comment><USER23> > _Will this have legal weight?_

I doubt it. If I have to fax something for it to be a legal document, such an antiquated system will ignore any advances made around it.

<comment><USER24> The law doesn't pretend that signatures and fax machines are magic. Contracts written on bar napkins can be enforced.

Any time you introduce evidence, you have to establish its credibility. The first time a signing system like this is used it's likely to take the court some time to understand, but there's no legal doctrine forbidding it.

Source: I am a (not practicing anymore) lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I believe you could implement it in such a way that the coins involved are spendable, relying on "Pay to script hash": [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016)

</comment><comment><USER26> "Your document will not be uploaded. The cryptographic digest is calculated client-side."

That's great, but I have to trust you there. For a document that really matters, I don't think I would.

How about a box that allows me to specify my own SHA256 instead?

<comment><USER27> There is a developer API that allows you to do this:

        http://www.proofofexistence.com/developers

<comment><USER26> That's not the same as making it available for users though, is it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How about miner's fee, is that added to the transaction?

In the About, they say that they make 2 undependable dust transactions.

Would there be any incentive for miners to confirm these transactions and store them in the blockchain? If there's no incentive to confirm the transactions, then the miners might find a way to filter these out of the blockchain.

See also dust transactions:

[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10986/what-is- mea...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10986/what-is-meant-by- bitcoin-dust)

[http://bitcoinfees.com/](http://bitcoinfees.com/)

</comment><comment><USER29> nice concept ! apparently sha-1 is vulnerable to collisions ([http://eprint.iacr.org/2008/469.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2008/469.pdf)) how are they handled ?

<comment><USER30> It uses SHA-256, not SHA-1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So, if I could automate this, could I use this to prove in court that logs were created, and not tampered with?

Just trying to think of practical uses of this cool project, and it's the first thing that came to mind.

<comment><USER32> Yes. Or that a contract was not created before a certain date. Or, as another poster suggested, that a photo of a damaged rental car was taken before you took possession of the car.

<comment><USER33> _Or that a contract was not created before a certain date._

I think you have that one backwards. You can demonstrate a contract _did_ exist at a certain date. There is no proof of non-existence before that date.

<comment><USER34> you're right, it can be used to prove that a contract with both signatures existed before a date, not after. So if Alice makes an agreement with Bob, Alice can't turn around and say that the contract was only ratified after Alice failed to meet certain obligations.

Then again, digital signatures come with a timestamp, Alice could lie about that timestamp, but it would be obvious to Bob that she did.

Fun to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool! I worked on something similar before: [https://github.com/Miserlou/CitizenMediaNotary](https://github.com/Miserlou/CitizenMediaNotary)

I've also got an idea related to this which involves a global array of satellites in order to add a geo component to this kind of verification..

</comment><comment><USER36> This would help to certify that a contract was signed at a particular time by both sides, and then included in the blockchain.

It would also help certify that a particular person created a document, once again because it was signed by their personal key and included in the blockchain.

It basically functions as a certain timestamp.

</comment><comment><USER37> well... you can save actual files to namecoin blockchain if you try a little.

my script that does exactly that (not updated, maybe won't work now)

[https://github.com/runn1ng/namecoin- files](https://github.com/runn1ng/namecoin-files)

</comment><comment><USER38> It would be nice if you included some UI for just pasting in a bunch of hashes myself.

</comment><comment><USER39> Article about this topic: [http://erratasec.blogspot.de/2013/05/bitcoin-is- public-ledge...](http://erratasec.blogspot.de/2013/05/bitcoin-is-public- ledger.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> Now this is fricken awesome. I can imagine all sorts of instances where this is applicable. What about as a replacement for a notary public in some cases? Very nice work, and a genius idea.

</comment><comment><USER41> Would this have any legal standing? Legally valid but insecure will trump secure but inadmissable in nearly. situation where having a certified timestamp is useful.

</comment><comment><USER42> Couldn't I also publish the checksum on Twitter? Although it's not decentralized, it's probably equally trusted in the eyes of the legal system.

<comment><USER43> Yes you could, however, this isn't only about the trustworthiness of your claim. More importantly it's about the trustworthiness of the longevity of the data.

Twitter can remove a single post or turn off their servers and your prove is gone. That's not so easy for a BitCoin transaction. Once it's added to the blockchain it's there for as long as anyone is running a bitcoin node.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I was thinking along similar lines today, but geared more towards proof of title.

</comment><comment><USER45> brilliant.</comment>


America's Failure to Preserve Historic Slave Markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/02/americas-failure-to-preserve-historic-slave-markets/385367/

<comment><USER2> > ...that it is simply inappropriate to build an entertainment district on top > of a place where human beings were once bought and sold.

I appreciate the importance of remembering the fact that some of my ancestors were bought, sold, separated from their families, raped, beaten, and kept from reading. But to say that all sites where this was carried out must be historically preserved would mean claiming a huge amount of central urban real estate given how enmeshed the institution was throughout the economy of the American south.

Much like the French and Germans have a right to wind-surf on Omaha beach (which they do), black, white, and mixed-race folks in the south have a right to dance, work, run businesses, and live their lives amidst their history.</comment>


WP Stats on Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.kreci.net/software-by-kreci/wp-stats-on-android/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations! I have serious respect for anyone who dives into a new environment like that and sticks to it. Did you know Java already or learned it "on the fly" too?

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew very very basics. I have tried a few times to learn it but never had a real reason too. But now I really wanted to go into mobile software development and had to learn it better.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback welcome and very desired!

<comment><USER3> Whats with the spammy ads on the blog?

Do you get enough traffic for that to make money? I closed the site as soon as I saw that.

Edit: I understand it's adsense, I was questioning why put them on a blog, not what links the ad contains.

<comment><USER4> I think he have not much control over what adsense display to you...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool. Haven't tried the app yet, but I was looking for something like this. Browser interface is really cumbersome, so any alternative interface would be an improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Hope you will try and like it :) I am already addicted to my own app as i check stats a few times a day ;)</comment></comment>


Stopping people from disturbing radioactive waste for 10,000 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth101/wipp.html

<comment><USER2> Perhaps they should have included a nuclear engineer on the team, who could have told them to use a breeder reactor to process the 'waste' into useful energy so that the remainder would only be dangerous for a few hundred years instead of 10,000. That would make storing it safely a much easier problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I miss some discussion of human curiosity. Isn't a large part of contemporary culture structured around stories of going past ominuous warnings to find the arc of covenant/holy grail/amulet of yendor?

So what is the convincing argument that a _huge_ designed structure will not trigger exactly the behaviour it is supposed to discourage? And even if the political elites of a 10000AD culture believe the warnings they read in the accepted translations of the inscriptions, who is going to stop a well equipped fringe scientist of trying to prove these boring, timid bureaucrats wrong?

<comment><USER4> They note toward the end of the essay that the best deterrent may be the illness suffered by the first explorers of the site and that in fact, that may be a cheaper warning system than everything they've discussed building.

In any case, if we can make the arguably optimistic assumption that technology won't suffer any major setbacks in the next 10,000 years, cultures at the end of that time frame should have figured out how to safely explore a radioactive waste site. Even we know how to do it today, if you count sending in robots as exploration.

As the writers say, as long as the radioactivity stays contained, the damage it can/will cause is relatively self-limiting.

<comment><USER5> Read more closely. Early in the paper they discuss that strong warnings might go unheeded as the danger is far below ground. They then suggest that it might be most effective to actually contaminate the surface level of the site with low-levels of radioactive material so as to purposefully kill people that invade the site. They then suggest doing calculations to see whether the expected casualties over 10,000 years would be worth it. Icky but cold and calculated thinking about a cold topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm nowhere near as qualified as that team — but wouldn't it be better to not mark it, at all?

Whatever landmark you place, people will explore. Whatever warnings you place, people will ignore. At least with no markings, and the spot being remote like in the middle of a desert or something, you've got a chance that nobody will _ever_ find it.

And that's if future generations are somehow less smart than us, otherwise they'll most likely know the human history, and still be able to measure radioactivity anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> Three thoughts:

First, what really fascinated me about the article was how it highlighted a number of things so obvious about how we design things - with a focus on the center and craftsmanship, for instance - that I'd never thought of quite that way before. That was fantastic.

Second, I thought it was interesting that they were imagining apocalyptic-type scenarios where all knowledge of the inscribed written languages are lost. I suppose that's sensible if you're looking at a 10,000 year time horizon.

Third, while I learned a lot and was generally really impressed with this piece, this line turned me off a lot:

> We can never know if we indeed have successfully communicated with our > descendants 400 generations removed, but we can, in any case, perhaps convey > an important message to ourselves.

That line came after talking about how the project is six times larger in scale than the Pyramids were to build, and how to "to ensure the probability of success, the WIPP marker undertaking will have to be one of the greatest public works ventures in history."

And therein lies the problem - buried in a couple quick lines is a very powerful secondary motivation of the authors of the spec. The go on for pages with concrete details and supporting theory as if they're just trying to meet requirements, only barely acknowledging that, "and hey, it might not work, but we'll have done something impressive and made a statement in our own day and age." This seems like the stuff that boondoggles are made of - propose a seemingly functional process, while sneaking in, "...and regardless of if it meets its goals, it'll sure be impressive and send a message."

<comment><USER8> I think it's just a recognition that it might well be impossible to pull off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My attempted title was "Message to 12,000 A.D.: This place is not a place of honor."

Alternatively, see this breezier (but pretty good) summary: [http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place- of-...](http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor)

</comment><comment><USER10> Whatever catastrophe that would lead to the eradication of knowledge of English is going to kill a million times more people than the worst case scenario of a nuclear waste exposure.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but it could still be a pretty big number. And don't we owe it to our descendants to warn them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773137></comment>


Von Neumann-Landauer limit - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle <comment><USER2> The usual extropian retort to this limit has been "reversible computing," but as far as I can tell there has been little work on reversible computing hardware -- far less than quantum computing. It looks like the University of Florida made some hardware in the early 2000s. Can anyone offer insights about why hardware research is so scarce here? Are there reasons to think it's a dead end prior to fabricating anything?

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

EDIT: searching Google Scholar, it looks like only ~50 papers/books mention reversible computing in the past year, compared to 1000+ for quantum computing.

<comment><USER3> Oh it's worth noting that quantum computing research _is_ reversible computing research. Quantum operations are unitary operators which necessarily have inverses. Famous quantum computing results like the "no cloning" theorem are basically just consequences of the reversibility of QC.

<comment><USER4> I suspect any non-trivial reversible computer will be a quantum computer. Quantum gates can perform almost any reversible operation and losing information (by not being reversible) might be physically equivalent to decoherence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I picked up _The Information_ by James Gleick when I was visiting the Living Computers Museum + Labs in Seattle[1]. Really interesting book... talks about the development of language, the birth of computing, the concept of randomness, the physics of information, etc. A fascinating and comprehensive overview of the topic.

[1] This place is awesome and you should check it out if you're in the area: [http://www.livingcomputers.org](http://www.livingcomputers.org)

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember reading Feynman's thought experiment and him deciding that it doesn't require _any_ energy to flip a bit.[1]

How does that square with Landauer's limit?

[1] Apologies for the lack of reference. I'll try and find it.

<comment><USER7> Basically, it costs free energy to _forget_ a bit. If you flip a bit, that doesn't mean you forget it, as long as you remember you'll have to flip it back (or reinterpret it).

("Basically" because there are whole books on the subtleties of physics and information. I haven't mastered them.)

<comment><USER4> This is the correct answer. If you don't overwrite a bit, but instead move the old value to an auxiliary bit known to be zero, that can be theoretically done for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe there is some breakthrough yet to be found in the intersection of entropic gravity and computational limits.

<comment><USER9> I'd be curious to hear more about that idea but thank you for introducing me to this theory of entropic gravity.

<comment><USER10> Me too - any links or articles for the best material much appreciated

<comment><USER9> Having read some more about this entropic gravity theory it does have quite a few pretty strong criticisms, detailed on the the wiki page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As interesting as it is to think about the limit, it's so pointless from a practical point of view since the cost of computation is dwarfed by the cost of data movement in modern machines.

</comment><comment><USER12> As inspiring as thought provoking.

<comment><USER13> Yes. I imagine the last probe doing its last bit flip in the heat death of the universe. Then nothing can be computed anymore and all what will happen is the decay of the matter of the probe. So sad.

<comment><USER14> I get the feel that something like that was the plot of a short story i read ages ago.

<comment><USER15> The Last Question - [http://multivax.com/last_question.html](http://multivax.com/last_question.html) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002160)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14146677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14146677)

</comment><comment><USER17> Recently mentioned in Venkat Rao's Breaking Smart newsletter.

</comment><comment><USER18> So you're telling me ignorance can combat global warming?</comment>


JuliaDiff – Julia packages for automatic differentiation - <AUTHOR> http://www.juliadiff.org/

<comment><USER2> Quote: "One option is to explicitly write down a function which computes the exact derivatives by using the rules that we know from Calculus. However, this quickly becomes an error-prone and tedious exercise."

There's the alternative of algorithmic symbolic differentiation. For most well-behaved functions, symbolic differentiation produces useful results (not true for the reverse case of symbolic integration). Many readily available libraries now produce symbolic differentiation and other similar results. Users should not dismiss this approach out of hand.</comment>


Hostile architecture: an uncomfortable urban art – in pictures - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2018/aug/21/hostile-architecture-an-uncomfortable-urban-art-in-pictures <comment><AUTHOR> "Julius-Christian Schreiner's Silent Agents series, shot in London, Paris, Innsbruck and Hamburg, depicts examples of 'hostile architecture': subtle interventions in urban spaces designed to hinder people's use of them."

I found this series of images quite disturbing. It made me think of the people who design these 'interventions'. Are they proud of their work, or do they have trouble sleeping at night?</comment>


Teaching Naked, Part 2 | Tenure, She Wrote - <AUTHOR> http://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/teaching-naked-part-2/ <comment><USER2> Summary: It's the story of how a student writes "Teach naked" into the evaluation form for a feminism class. Reading this becomes a life-changing event for the evaluated lecturer. 2 stupid words are suddenly multiply by a factor >10,000 (blog posts, comments) + lectures about this event + ... .</comment>


Fuck You, Pay Me [video] - <AUTHOR> https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1 <comment><USER2> I'm CTO and co-founder of a company that is in the legaltech space and spend a lot of my time thinking about how to fix contract issues.

I've idolized and watched this video many times.

Here is the truth of most everything in business: Asymmetric power structures.

Walmart is offering you a deal, but they don't allow strikeouts in their contract. You must sign the boilerplate. You do it because a deal with Walmart will change your life and you accept the risks.

My point is that very infrequently do two sides of a contract have equal leverage. I ran my own consulting company for 10 years and even as we grew there was always a bigger fish that we really wanted and even needed to survive.

The other way of looking at it would be who has "fuck you money?" or the "willingness to walk away". Sometimes both sides do, but a lot of the time, only one side does.

While I find this video satisfying, I'm not sure how much it actually helped me because as soon as I have the leverage, definitely, I'll make the terms the way I like them, but the opportunities have not been as frequent as I would have hoped.

Somebody is always twisting my arm or I'm twisting their arm.

<comment><USER3> This shouldn't be the case, the entire point of negotiation is to try to get to a place of equal leverage.

Imagine this as a thought experiment: Walmart hands you a contract in which they have plenty of other suppliers they could go who would be eager to take your place if you reject the contract. In this case, Walmart is leaving money on the table and what they should have done is hand you a contract with lower prices that fewer companies are willing to compete for which gives you more leverage but gives them better terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This thread about what to charge is also interesting and enlightening (especially the concept of asshole rates):

[https://twitter.com/XCK3D/status/1093937747478233088](https://twitter.com/XCK3D/status/1093937747478233088)

      This is the basic formula for figuring out your day rate:

      [expenses] / (231) = day rate

      But this isn't the whole story, because you also need revision,
      hourly, rush job, per asset, and asshole rates.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a classic. I highly recommend for anyone that has to negotiate for pay, if not for that valid advice then for the pure pleasure of having someone tell you your overwhelming desire to be an asshole while sticking up for yourself might actually be beneficial sometimes.

It's funny that this is posted now. I hadn't thought of this talk for quite a while, but referenced it in a reddit comment just a week or two back.

</comment><comment><USER6> > "Starting work without a contract is like putting on a condom after taking a > home pregnancy test," says Mike.

Sure, contracts are a mechanism for people who don't trust each other to work together. But clear contracts only provide some leverage, if things go bad. And even with contracts that seem clear, there are still many ways to get screwed. As in, "I have no reachable assets, so fuck you."

Over many years, working as a consultant, I rarely had more than verbal contracts. Often, just telephone conversations, and then emails to create records.

And even so, I almost always got paid. Sometimes it took months, it's true. But really, my allies were typically the people I reported to. Although I never actually stated it clearly, clients that paid promptly (and paid at higher rates) got scheduling priority.

Maybe that could have been part of my standard contract. But I'm not sure how useful that would have been. I mean, suing my clients would have been rather awkward, no?

<comment><USER7> > Sure, contracts are a mechanism for people who don't trust each other to > work together.

"A contract is written in good times so that the bad times never come."

A written contract is the written summary of what you agreed upon so you can later return to it and say "This is what we did agree upon." I have a lot of written contracts with people that I trust.

Keep in mind that people that you trust and work with at a company sometimes go away. Promoted, fired, ill, dead. Companies get sold or go bankrupt, Management is replaced by some less amicable management. In all those cases your sympathetic sponsor may still be sympathetic, but no longer in a position to help you. A contract is.

A contract should be fair and balanced. If either side regards the contract as a tool to screw over the other side you've already lost.

A written contract necessarily is an imperfect tool, but it's much better than a verbal contract because our human memories are much worse on keeping track of what was actually discussed and agreed upon.

> I mean, suing my clients would have been rather awkward.

Suing is the last last resort when everything else has failed. There are a lot of steps that escalate towards that. A written contract can help that you never end up there just by virtue of having a written set of agreements that you put on the table and point to. But last resort: yes, sue your clients. When you've reached that point, they'll never be your clients again anyways. A lot of them will sue you too. And even there, a contract may be what saves your ass.

<comment><USER6> That's true.

I guess that I'm biased by the fact that, in the few cases where things really went to hell, a contract wouldn't have helped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where's the actual article, I can only see short summary

<comment><USER9> It's a video presentation.

<comment><USER8> Hmm it doesn't play for me

Edit: never mind, I found it (it's the green rectangle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "But I'll pay you in _exposure_..."

Fuck you pay me

</comment><comment><USER11> (2011)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's backwards.

Pay me, fuck you</comment>


A father tracks his child's first words - <AUTHOR> https://www.good.is/articles/first-words-spreadsheet?utm_content=inf_256_81_2&utm_source=TSE&utm_medium=FB&utm_campaign=pd&tse_id=INF_5fc07700074b11e79b1a07d5f3e08d7d <comment><USER2> I considered making an app for this when my first daughter was born. Especially after she had a few words, it was hard to remember which were new or which she had spoken before.

Enter a word, and a date, which defaults to current date. App will let you know if it's a dupe, and produce plots like the article.

Of course, the idea never progressed beyond my to-do list.

<comment><USER3> I just put these events on Google Calendar. Easy to do from mobile phone and searchable.</comment></comment>


Facebook stock is on track for its worst day ever - <AUTHOR> https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/26/technology/business/facebook-stock-drop/index.html <comment><USER2> What surprises me is the growth Facebook had even after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It seems that investors still poured a lot of money in, which now reverted.

<comment><USER3> I think it just followed tech on a strong upward pace. Perhaps ETFs pulled it along for the ride

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dupe ??</comment>


Ask HN: Idea for an open source library - <AUTHOR>

Is there an open-source library that you wanted but no one seems to have gotten around to doing it. I had some time, I thought might do some hacking. Suggestions welcome.<p>Target language is Python, Common Lisp, Clojure, Erlang or perhaps even Java. <comment><USER2> A decent and Pythonic library for llvm.</comment>