Estonia is running its country like a tech company - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1535549/living-on-the-blockchain-is-a-game-changer-for-estonian-citizens/ <comment><USER3> I had a pretty intense honeymoon with Estonia, even had a relatively popular blog on e-residency, have visited Estonia twice (great experience btw)..

And, after four years, I have reopened my company in UK and trying to liquidate my Estonian one (today I have received a denial letter which says that only Estonian citizen can close my company)..

In short: Vague frequently changing rules, introduction of strange complex regulations over time (e.g. contact person, management board member tax which is kinda avoidable or not at the same time - "Schrodinger tax").. Expensive business services and accountants (yes, US and UK are cheaper!), volatile tax rules interpretations.. Lack of googlable good information overall, and local accountants are not that hi level pros in nomadic IT matters at all. Also totally non-cooperative Estonian banks.

Upon all of that, UK manages doing everything without fragile e-card, which, honestly, adds more anxiety over access loss instead of benefits. Has TONS AND TONS of proper official information with tutorials. Generations of good accountants and stable business and tax regulations.

<comment><USER4> As an Estonian I thought the e-residency system was pretty much a scam from the start. I didn't think anybody would fall for it, because the moment you ask "So what can I do as an e-resident that I couldn't before?" you realize that the answer is essentially "Nothing". But try saying this to other Estonians, they'll raise a fuss.

Edit: perhaps calling it a scam is inappropriate. It just doesn't seem like the program offers anything new over what other countries offer. I guess the nice thing is that it tries to be a package deal that's easier to market and find information about.

<comment><USER3> Well, I wouldn't certainly call it a scam from the start, still at some point e-residency PR team have indeed started to disseminate lies, deliberately telling only some better parts of the story or manipulating the narrative etc (which of course some will call marketing, I call BS).

Like with those nasty surprises when in reality you need to "know" some Estonian to start and stop a company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've run and invested in businesses in multiple countries (Spain, Germany, US, UAE, Sri Lanka). One of them (Mobile Jazz - a fully remote company) we've moved to Estonia in 2016. One of the best business decisions we've made admin- wise. While there are for sure better alternatives when it comes to "saving on taxes" (I'd say Estonia is in the European average with 20% corporate tax and an interesting taxation model on capital distribution), it is definitely a huge improvement when it comes to dealing with authorities compared to virtually elsewhere in the world, based on what I've experienced myself of heard from others. Estonian people speak really good English. Typically things just work as they should and it something doesn't, they're super fast in responding and very eager to solve the problem for you. While I don't have visibility on everything that happens in the country, in terms of how they handle their bureaucracy, they're certainly a role model for other countries.

<comment><USER6> Important to note that this 20% corporate tax is applied to the taxable payment (e.g. dividend payouts).

There are no taxes to pay for the yearly profit, which makes it much easier for companies that do plan to reinvest the income over the years or just hold it.

Also, one should probably have employees or customers physically in Estonia, otherwise the company tax residency might change into other jurisdictions.. IANAL.

I'm curious if there are any other EU countries with a similar flexibility (corporate income tax not applied until the "payout event")?

<comment><USER7> > Also, one should probably have employees or customers physically in Estonia, > otherwise the company tax residency might change into other jurisdictions.. > IANAL.

You no longer need physical presence with their e-Residency program.

[1] [https://e-resident.gov.ee](https://e-resident.gov.ee)

<comment><USER8> You no longer need physical presence to register your company and do business through the programme but you should still be very careful about taxation, tax residency whether personal or corporate gets very complex very fast and I highly recommend talking to a tax expert

<comment><USER9> Yes, the country/countries where your physical office(s) is/are located (or rather, where people - founders or employees - are doing the work that is the basis of the revenue on which you're generating a profit) will likely want a piece of the pie.

Certainly, a decade or so ago, it was popular to register a limited company in the UK whose physical presence was on the continent. Invariably, this meant dealing with both tax authorities.

It seems to have lost its attractiveness after laws for GmbH and similar were relaxed in various countries. Brexit has pretty much killed any remaining demand, at least for real companies. (As opposed to shell companies for tax evasion or money laundering purposes, for which the UK remains as popular as ever - and which are a major reason for big money backing Brexit, as the EU has been looking to crack down on the practice.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a Norwegian I can relate to many things written here. Estonia is clearly ahead of us but this thing of not being the innovator but still using off the shelf technology was something I was forced to reflect upon while living in the US 15 years ago.

It was surprising how the country behind so much technology innovation was so bad at using it. It was noticeable both in the private and public sector.

It was something that I was later reminded of when reading guns, germs and steel. The author Jared Diamond remarked that the technological progress of any society is not primarily decided by your ability to innovate but by your ability to adopt and use the inventions of others. As he remarks, most innovation happens outside your own country, so it is the ability to learn from others which matters most.

A thing I think people should be aware of when obsessing about having the most cutting edge researchers rather than a technology literate population.

<comment><USER11> America is very backwards in tech for daily life. About 2 years ago I was blown away when I arrived at the San Francisco airport and had to buy a train card with a Visa card; the customer service guy got flustered and pulled an old carbon paper swiper thing out from under the desk, and asked for my signature. In Australia it's all wireless payWave or PayPass. My Chinese GF uses her phone to pay for things and considers me old fashioned for using a card.

<comment><USER12> > America is very backwards in tech for daily life. About 2 years ago I was > blown away when I arrived at the San Francisco airport and had to buy a > train card with a Visa card; the customer service guy got flustered and > pulled an old carbon paper swiper thing out from under the desk, and asked > for my signature.

America is very backwards because of one thing that happened to you that has literally never happened to me in the 21+ years I have been an adult here?

How did you even find a human to pay? I have always used a ticket vending machine at SFO.

<comment><USER13> Cheques haven't even existed for 15+ years here in Ireland. America is quite slow on the uptake of tech considering they are arguably the most disruptive innovators in the world as a country.

<comment><USER14> I haven't used checks routinely for the last 20 years in the states. I'm always really annoyed when some random niche activity requires it and can't accept an online transfer. Then I have to go to the bank and get a temporary one.

<comment><USER15> Checks still have lower transaction fees for large amounts than most electronic forms do payment (cost: a postage stamp).

I was looking for electronic ways to send a substantial wad of money domestically once and almost all electronic transfer providers wanted a percentage.

Would be interested to know if there are any online services that can match the transaction fee of a check.

<comment><USER16> Cryptocurrencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a chance to work for the Estonian government for a brief while (headed up business development for e-Residency). While a few things may be overblown about their e-gov initiatives (I'm thinking some of the blockchain hype that foreign journalists didn't really fact check) they really have done an incredible job making their business environment accessible for foreigners. There really is a strong mentality of delivering government services with the end user as the customer mentality rather than the usual bureaucratic nonsense I was used to running businesses in the U.S. and Germany.

<comment><USER17> Germany and Estonia have two completely opposing views when it comes to personal information, and the Estonian way is the way to success.

OTOH, the issue with USA is the conflict of interest between the public and private sector. Turbotax is a prime example.

<comment><USER18> As a German, I don't think the issue is with our handling of personal data. The real issue is Kleinstaaterei, a not-quite-translatable word that describes every small administrative entity insisting on doing its own thing and failing to see the bigger picture.

What today is Germany used to be about 100 separate nations until 1871, and a still somewhat loose federation until 1918. I think the mentality from that time is still pervasive today in many areas, particularly in bureaucracy.

Add to that that Germany is large enough to make the other EU countries play by its rules most of the time. That removes incentive to overcome nonsensical idiosyncrasies. Estonia is under a lot more pressure here because they cannot win by weight alone.

<comment><USER19> I've heard that Germans are very skeptical about sharing data and have lots of fears about privacy.

Here in Estonia our government systems work efficiently because our data is shared between government departments and ministries in a safe way. There is only one place that stores the addresses of people, there is only one place that has knows about the cars or properties I own and so on. There is a law against asking people who interact with the state for data that it already has.

<comment><USER20> >There is a law against asking people who interact with the state for data that it already has.

I find that very interesting. Could you provide a link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No opinion on Estonia and its e-government, but running a country like a tech company sounds like a plot of a comedy set in a dystopia. I certainly hope that Estonia is ran better than most tech company

Tech companies have many problems that I don't want see in a Government:

\- Security breaches (and just like every other tech company Bulgaria recently had a dump of the personal data of 5 million citizens)

\- Privacy issues, like contractors listening in on sounds recorded by their devices

\- tons of intrusive ads

\- discrinatory pricing

\- products people rely on being killed off for no reason

\- hype-, and resume-driven development

\- general lack of accountability, masked with trendy but misunderstood methodologies like Agile, Scrum

\- move fast and break things works for Facebook, but not for health insurance software

Tech companies fail all the time, but the pieces are picked up by investors, yet governments cannot afford to fail in the same way.

<comment><USER22> Most countries are ran far worse than a company. If citizens had the option to freely jump between countries, most of them would go bankrupt, that's why they rely on coercion. Very few countries are ran efficiently and they re typically very small like Singapore.

<comment><USER23> Usually only the country one would move _to_ is restricting movement. So what the hell are you talking about?

<comment><USER24> Obviously, lots of countries people would move _from_ would restrict movement as well. See countries from the former communist block.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you're thinking about starting a company in Estonia under the "e-residency" program, you should know that Estonian banks have recently become very skeptical about opening bank accounts for foreigners. It's not enough that you have an Estonian corporation, you'll probably be expected to demonstrate that your business has actual ties to Estonia.

Finnish entrepreneurs are being denied bank accounts despite the close ties of the two countries: [https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000006279056.html](https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000006279056.html) (Article in Finnish only, sorry)

The background for this change is a huge money laundering scandal where Estonian banks took in Russian money over decades with very few questions asked... It sucks that "little guy" startup founders are the ones getting excluded, but that's how it goes.

<comment><USER26> How recently? I opened an account for my Estonian company as an e-resident (from the EU) in Q1 2019 and it took a grand total of ~40 minutes at the bank to get everything working. I had to visit the bank HQ in person but the whole process was really really smooth sailing.

<comment><USER27> It doesn't really matter how smooth it is, the entire point of e-residency is lost if you have to personally go there once in a while.

The fact that the meeting only takes 40 minutes is just extra injury if you had to travel 6000km to get there.

<comment><USER26> To be clear, I did that because I wanted the convenience of having Leapin to also have access to my accounts so they'd handle my invoicing and expenses without any significant trouble for me (ie. sending them the account movements periodically). Originally I had an electronic payments account in a Finnish bank and for that I didn't have to travel anywhere but I needed a full bank account so I'd be able to pay dividends into it so I went there. If I just wanted to pay myself via salary I wouldn't have needed to travel there at all but I'd rather my income be via dividends than via a salary because of tax purposes in my country of residence.

That said, I could've used a business account opened in other banks (including outside of Estonia) to do that but I'd be missing out on the convenience that is them having access to the account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've heard so much about Estonia's digital economy, but I struggle to see the effect it has on it's own economy. Now, my data might be bad, but a cursory look at Estonia's GDP growth rate shows perfectly normal growth alongside Lithuania and Latvia [0]. Using Latvia and Lithuania to control for a digital economy, Estonia should see greater growth, but it doesn't. If going head- first into a digital economy had a significant pay-off, it should show up in the data. Until it does, I'm still sceptical.

0: [https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:EST:LVA:LTU&ifdim=region&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false)

<comment><USER29> Lithuania itself is pretty good at digital economy and has pretty strong fintech scene for the country that size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I found this podcast about estonia's digital economy very informative

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

It's interesting how the East of europe seems to have similar aspirations. Growing, poor or former poor countries (Estonia, latvia, Romania, bulgaria, cyprus, malta) are bullish on using the EU status to attract foreign investors and enable entrepreneurship, including lowering their taxes, while the west of EU seems to be doing the exact opposite, sending their entrepreneurs abroad.

<comment> shaki-dora Eastern Europe may have advantages in terms of bureaucracy. It's far easier to experiment with the rules when you don't have a huge number of existing businesses/processes that need to be changed, very similar to how it's easier to change an API in a newish products vs, say, _Windows_.

BUT: Eastern Europe also has huge drawbacks. In countries like Poland, Hungary, or Bulgaria, your risk of abrupt changes in the law (see above) or simply ignorance of the rule of law, is somewhat elevated compared to France, the US, or Germany.

And while these countries want to attract foreign investors, if you actually want to spend significant time in the country, or hire foreigners to work there, you better make sure your neither dark-skinned nor jewish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> We have recently registered a company in Estonia. The process was very smooth and easy. All hail Estonia, the small county that could!

(Opening a business bank account is a lot of pain, so there is still room for improvement)

<comment><USER5> We have a business bank account with LHV. For us it was as easy as making an appointment, quickly flying there and walking into their main office in Tallinn. After ~30 minutes everything was set up.

That was 3 years ago, though. Maybe things have changed?

<comment><USER30> Thing is, we are from Russia. And LHV requires some "proof of our company connection with Estonia economy, like existing contract or utility bills". What proof can there be if the company is just started and not fully operational without bank account (hence, no contracts) and is not physically present in Estonia (hence, no utility bills)?

It sucks being Russian these days because of our warmongering dictator. :-/

<comment><USER31> I've heard a borderless account with TransferWise can be a quick, painless route

<comment><USER30> That's what we ended up with. So far the experience itself was good, but unfortunately it does not solve all our banking needs: for example, to receive payouts from Google Play you need your bank to be in the same country that a company is incorporated in. Since TransferWise is in Germany, it just doesn't work for Estonian companies.

We didn't yet publish our software in Apple App Store, but I've heard that it could be a problem there, too.

<comment><USER32> TransferWise is an Estonian startup btw and works great here.

<comment><USER30> Probably, but it provides a German IBAN number, and that makes it impossible to use for Google Play payouts

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rememeber: We're talking about a country that had to be bootstrapped after the fall of Soviet Union. They have had very little legacy (as in "old but not old enough to warrant a replacement") tech and legislation to deal with.

My personal favorite is their wireless PSTN: Take existing NMT technology and give people tabletop terminals that will accommodate ordinary analog phones.

<comment><USER33> I had a friend working in Indonesia in the 90s, on Sumbawa. He mentioned how the locals had DVD players, but they had skipped ever having VCRs. I wonder what it looks for them now. Are they all on streaming services, or do they still use 90s era DVD players. I wonder what Estonia will look like in 20 years.

<comment><USER34> Indonesia has incredible mobile penetration rates (133% this year), so odds are they're streaming.

[https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2019-indones...](https://www.slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2019-indonesia- january-2019-v01)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I find more intriguing/interesting than the whole actual Estonian e-id/whatever technological achievements, that the President of a country writes an article (of course not very critical on the way the governement administration is managed) on qz.com.

<comment><USER36> See also, Erdogan on WSJ: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-is-stepping-up- where-oth...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-is-stepping-up-where-others- fail-to-act-11571093850)

<comment><USER35> Yep, though I wouldn't personally put the Wall Street Journal on the same level as qz.

That they (WSJ) published Erdogan's piece is (to me) perplexing, but for completely different reasons.

This one on qz.com seems, at least to me, nothing different from the several "puff" articles we have read in the last few years about the digital "revolution" in Estonia (and e-residency, etc.), but till now they were all or almost all by either enthusiasts/futurists/thintankers or by people directly or indirectly involved in the program at a much lower level than the President.

Personally I always had the feeling that these pieces are not entirely unlike the good ol' gnome business plan:

1) get digital in Estonia (id, residency, etc.)

2) ?

3) profit

No doubts that there may be a number of non-Estonians that may benefit from the one or the other provisions of the program, but all in all they should be a niche of "digital nomads" and/or "digital only" very small firms.

<comment><USER8> Love the gnome business plan, I'm a huge South Park fan.

But I do think there is real value in it for some people (especially digital nomads) but things like e-Residency running a company remotely definitely aren't going to benefit everyone, building a solution that solves every person's problem is a crazy undertaking

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Taking the govt. services online is generally a good idea, but there are a lot of minefields along the way and is inherently tied to the country in question.

I can only speak from the context of India where many things have indeed moved online, but are not exactly accessible. For one thing, they are essentially restricted to a small class of English speakers - which is expected since the English-speaking elite have a monopoly on education and thus technological literacy. This has meant that all the small shops which are now forced to file GST invoices (3 times a month ?) need to hire touts of some kind to get their work done. There are touts for everything, since very few people have computers or the necessary skills to use them - touts for filling in passport applications, for filling in DL forms etc.... and frankly it's all very frustrating, since you'll have to take a printout of the online application and visit some Indian Babu anyway.

Since "Indians" have been decided by the rulers to be essentially corrupt, it has also meant that there is no escape from the inflexibility of the straightjacket that is the Indian bureaucracy. Classic case of extremely poor people employed as manual labour being denied food rations because their fingerprints don't match that on record, or simply because the cellular data is patchy has quickly been covered by the UIDAI and their cronies in the government.

The language issue also shows up often because, after 70 years of so-called independence, the country has yet to create a unified transliteration scheme to go along with its "destroy all Indian languages" policy... and different transliterations of brahmi (for instance "sri" and "sree" are both the same श्री) often require absurd name-change announcements and numerous "letters" to random officers (and the usual palm greasing) in order to get access to services.

For much of India's "independence" a extractive state run for a handful of elites generally kept away from governance while its elites enjoyed vacations abroad and went to hospitals in Vienna (other than passing insane, unenforceable laws). I'm generally afraid what the deeply rooted colonial mindset will give rise to, now that it has also has access to technology. UIDAI and its sister schemes was and remains a rather scary venture with what appears to be a view of replicating China's draconian policies.

<comment><USER38> You are forgetting that Estonia comes nowhere close to India in terms of population and literacy. India is now estimated to have 125 million(and increasing) English speakers. Not sure if all of them are part of "elite" that you're talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Anybody got experience in UK vs Estonia? I have lived and run companies in the UK and USA. The UK is light years ahead of the US in terms of all online interactions with the government. It's also been a long time since I have done any paper-based interaction with the government in the UK, the online systems have been really good for years.

Curious how it compares to Estonia.

<comment><USER8> I don't have a UK/Estonia company but saw the comparisons a lot when I was working for e-Residency. My understanding is that it's pretty comparable in terms of being all online, solid tax structure, etc. For me the two biggest factors would be - where are my clients and how much do I care about having a company in the EU. If most of your clients/employees/ops are in the UK, I would probably keep it there, if they're in the EU or being part of the EU is important to you, I would consider Estonia (plus the instability of Brexit throws a bit of a wrench into the equation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "For some weird and unexplainable reason, people normally expect better services from private companies than from their own governments."

Right or wrong, it's not that unexplainable. People leave their cell phone carrier over bad customer service. They buy their things from a different website because of poor service, or go to a different store. It's cheap to change your allegiance to a different brand. It's a lot more expensive to change your allegiance to a different government. Governments in most places in the world have little incentive to improve.

Governments and private companies are both institutions, they just face different incentive structures. Governments aren't somehow magically protected from the people that run them having incentives.

<comment><USER41> Surely democracy is an incentive to improve.

<comment><USER40> I would partially agree with that. An elected official has incentive to remain popular, or a challenger will win the next election. But in the US, much (most?) of the "government" is non-elected bureaucracy that doesn't even change with a change in the party in control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> When EKRE rules over, it will change dramatically to opposite direction.

</comment><comment><USER43> Creating a bank account as a foreigner has become increasingly difficult since a subsidiary of Danske [1], a prior Fortune Global 500, was caught in a major money laundering case which has brought the scrutiny of EU and US regulators into their banking sector.

For those interested in opening an e-business in Estonia, please be mindful that due to the 'Tech Company' way in which the government looks to operate, that there is an increasing rate of change in regulations which can impact your business decisions, although major generic areas such as Corporate and Personal tax rate has trended downwards (around 25% in 2004 and 20% now).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank#Danske_Bank_(Finla...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank#Danske_Bank_\(Finland\))

</comment><comment><USER44> Choosing markets brings prosperity. Like the "German Miracle" after WW2 (not the Marshall Plan), when you abandon bureaucratic regulations and allow the market to take over, vast and quick advancement comes, and everyone does much better. [https://fee.org/articles/how-estonia-yes-estonia-became- one-...](https://fee.org/articles/how-estonia-yes-estonia-became-one-of-the- wealthiest-countries-in-eastern-europe/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Interesting! to see how to run money laundry like a tech company. [https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2019/10/17/a...](https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2019/10/17/a-massive-money-laundering-scandal-stains-the-image-of- nordic-banks)

</comment><comment><USER46> Let's hope that the model doesn't include a hostile takeover by a big incumbent.

</comment><comment><USER47> My understanding is that Estonia's tech push has some "great PR" but very little substance, and some of my friends' experiences, as well as some other HN commenters on this thread, seem to agree.

</comment><comment><USER48> A lot is said about Estonia but Lithuania is better positioned and grows faster than Estonia.

It's interesting but to me Estonia cant quite compete with its neighbors to the point of becoming wealthier than they are now.

<comment><USER49> I think this competitevness is stupid and Baltic countries should stand together because of so much history.

<comment><USER8> I agree, mostly because I think it's just practical for small markets (like ~1 million person countries) to band together but I remember in Estonia everyone always thought of themselves more as a Nordic country rather than a Baltic one

<comment><USER49> They have similar language to nordic ones, Yes. But the place itself feels and looks totally as Baltic country and there is absolutly nothing wrong with it. (I've been in all 3)

I think the reason is that Estonia and Latvia used to be same country - Livonia but I might be wrong.

<comment><USER50> > They have similar language to nordic ones, Yes.

No :)

Estonian an Livonian are Finno-Ugric. They have a relation to Finnish (but in no way to Scandinavian languages) and Hungarian. This group ist vastly different from any other language in Europe including the Slavic languages. Moreover, Livonian is not to be considered as equivalent to Latvia - <USER2> being the official language there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'd imagine in most developed countries you can do everything online. In New Zealand over the last year I've renewed my passport, setup a company, renewed my drivers license, re-registered my car, opened a business bank account, renewed my mortgage, handled my taxes, etc. All online. The only thing that you can do online in Estonia which I can't do here that I can think of is vote.

Of course NZ is usually ranked as either 1 or 2 on the "ease of doing business" rankings and has low levels of bureaucracy so that might not be typical but I'm also a UK citizen and I renewed my passport from NZ online with no fuss.

</comment><comment> vincent-toups So with the expectation that it will either succeed wildly and they'll sell it to google or it will flame the fuck out and take years off of its employee's lives?

</comment><comment><USER51> I have some questions, if I want to make a free-speech protected project, is Estonia a country that will protect my business over silly demands or anything close like that?

<comment><USER52> There aren't any hate speech laws, but inciting uprest, and libel are both forbidden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does anyone here any experience running an Estonian company from India? Any links to good tax lawyers?

<comment><USER8> Not directly but I would recommend checking out the e-Residency marketplace where they have vetted service providers (1Office is good) and asking in the E-Residents FB group

[https://e-resident.gov.ee/marketplace/service- providers/](https://e-resident.gov.ee/marketplace/service-providers/) [https://www.facebook.com/groups/eResidents/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/eResidents/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Hopefully, many countries will follow.

<comment><USER55> I doubt it...doing things the old fashion way by paper makes it too easy to get away with things.

<comment><USER56> But at the same time having everything digital gives much more control on everyone to a State (if the laws permit it to do so... or maybe even if they don't)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> A country that relies on tech-company-style management. What can go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER58> It begs the question, which tech company ? - WeWork, Uber, Facebook ?

</comment><comment><USER59> Skype came out of Estonia; Microsoft destroyed it. `nuff said there.

</comment><comment><USER60> Income inequality is very large there. [https://borgenproject.org/top-10-facts-about-living- conditio...](https://borgenproject.org/top-10-facts-about-living-conditions- in-estonia/)

<comment><USER61> also, the per capita income is no higher than in Lithuania which one wouldn't guess given the barrage of articles about Estonia's 'innovative' government.

Relatively sound advice is that whenever someone advertises to run the government 'like a business', the outcome is going to be 90% disappointing and hot air.

This is essentially just a huge PR campaign, the electronic voting is a security disaster, and if you see a government official talk about putting things 'on the blockchain' just run.

<comment><USER62> The government has been running "on the blockchain" for a while, with projects like the X-road, which are also used by other countries (the other two Balitc countries and Finland).

It is a blockchain in the only way that makes sense: a cryptographically secure ledger run by a central authority (government).

<comment><USER61> well, that's weird because according to the institute that runs the entire thing ([https://www.niis.org/blog/2018/4/26/there-is-no- blockchain-t...](https://www.niis.org/blog/2018/4/26/there-is-no-blockchain- technology-in-the-x-road)), there is no blockchain technology involved, it merely uses some hashes to link data together, as do plenty of age-old protocols.

This is a good example of why these PR campaigns are silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Without Cashless it's not possible

</comment><comment><USER64> This piece is shocking in that nobody was interviewed. Not one single source anonymous nor named. This fails journalism 101 for me.

<comment><USER65> The author is the president of the country! Who would you expect her to interview?

<comment><USER64> Ordinary citizens: Even in a US presidential state of the union, the Presidents (Trump included) will quote ordinary citizens about how the country is doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> does that mean every year they layoff 5% of their weakest citizens

</comment><comment><USER67> Before people start praising Estonia for its e-voting system, which inevitably happens on such stories, let me remind you that the system was indeed open to compromise:

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/estonias-id-card-scrisis- how-e...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/estonias-id-card-scrisis-how-e-states- poster-child-got-into-and-out-of-trouble/)

The timeline may also match the hack the GCHQ and NSA did against the Estonian e-ID provider, Gemalto:

[https://theintercept.com/2015/02/19/great-sim- heist/](https://theintercept.com/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist/)

So remember that even with hardware tokens used in electronic voting, which are supposed to be much more secure than using other forms of authentication, you still run the risk of having the election compromised, especially since an election is something important enough that more than one major country could be interested in manipulating at any given time.

It's not like the "well, I'm nobody, so why would the NSA/other spy agency target me?!" situation at all. We're talking about the decision of who gets to run a whole country, and sophisticated adversaries will be very interested in influencing that if it can serve their interests.

We know China hacks tons of countries, we know Russia has been meddling with all sorts of elections lately, and we also know that for the past 70 years the USA has interfered in about one election per year, on average. This is not just theoretical stuff that would never happen. And I'm sure there are many Middle-Eastern and other Asian countries interested in influencing their rivals' elections, too.

[https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/americas-long- histor...](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/americas-long-history-of- meddling-in-other-countries-elections)

<comment><USER68> Voting is flawed in general. It'd be way harder to attack Estonia's e-voting system than those touch-screen voting machines in the US.

I have faith in the Estonian system once they make e-voting completely transparent (which is something they're working on, but it's not there yet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> The title says nothing, we need KPIs, average life span, mortality rates, unemployment rates, health indices, education indices, overall quality of life indices. Fancy titles are meaningless.

<comment><USER70> [https://tradingeconomics.com/estonia/indicators](https://tradingeconomics.com/estonia/indicators)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we seriously seek an alternative if we're unhappy with Google? - <AUTHOR> I've been seeing at least 2-3 negative posts make it to the HN front page for the past few weeks. There are very obvious problems that have started to really grow, and it seems Google isn't able to or doesn't want to address any.<p>My broad question is, why don't we still have a very competitive search engine that can actually rival Google unlike Bing, duckduckgo or qwant. <comment><USER2> Google is not just a search engine. When articles/commenters critique Google, they are usually criticizing the entity that oversees not just Google Search, but Maps, GMail, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Google Cloud. Google/Alphabet's strength in each of these subsidiaries and services has a synergy that perpetuates its lead across those same subsidiaries and services. In other words, not only do most people find Google Search to be great, or at least very satisfactory, they like the convenience of it being mixed with Google Maps/Youtube (video search/Chrome, etc.

The other thing to consider is that "2-3 negative posts" on HN per day may not be indicative of anything, because it's not surprising that a company as massive as Google/Alphabet has a large share of discussion and controversy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alphabet has many successful products like Google, I'm aware of that. I'm specifically talking about Google as a search engine.

The company didn't start off making 500 different products when they first launched. Everything started with a search engine and all the other products came afterwards.

People need an alternative to search the web efficiently without using Google.

<comment><USER3> It would be great if a superior alternative existed but other search engines don't come close. I love Google Search and imagine every internet user in the English speaking world does.

What are the issues with Google search (other than privacy concerns) that are talked about at length?

<comment><USER4> I hear that a lot; that other search engines are somehow inferior in quality. Having used DDG as default search for many years now, I have never felt like google offers me better results (Quite the opposite, actually). What exactly is it that makes google "better"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a really tricky question.

Everyone searches in a different way and for different things. While I might easily find what I'm looking for on ddg, someone else might not.

I think the main reason why most search engines fail against google is because they haven't yet figured out in depth how and what people search for and what they find.

Google just has a better algorithm finding things. Peiple are happier using Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fact that duckduckgo shows the favicons of the page next to the URL alone is a reason why I can't use google anymore. I got so used to it that I just feel lost and disoriented in front of a google results page. The easy customization is also a neat feature google lacks, mostly because of the dark background option.

Some people say google just has the better search results, but whenever I don't find what I want with DDG, I can just add !G to the search and it makes a google search out of it. In most cases though, google will be just as clueless.

And I could go on and on about why DDG > Google. The only reason people use google is that they're used to it. They say "to google something", not "to search the web for something". Google has become an integral piece of internet culture and that fact alone keeps it in use.

</comment><comment><USER5> I made a site to let people find alternatives to Google this week called [https://nomoregoogle.com](https://nomoregoogle.com)

<comment><USER6> Nice job Pieter. By the way, isn't there a way people can email you?

I have tried to find an email of yours and couldn't find anything.

Yeah, I know about tweeting you, but I don't have an account, so...there you have it.

<comment><USER5> I don't use email because it's a time suck for me. I spend most my time building things and the time I have left I want to spend with people I love, not answering emails. Most emails I'd get would be about people wanting something from me (like doing partnerships) but I'm not interested. I'm content with my current state working solo. My revenue is OK, users OK too, so why would I need to answer emails?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We have been. Why haven't you?

I think the lot of us that are already exiting see no point in publicly- scolding Google. They aren't going to change their ways. It's just easier to move away from them. At some point, their critical mass will crumble and the stragglers will bail, too.

I think the only Google property I still willfully use is Gmail, and I've minimized my use of it until I find something to jump ship to (not looking for Fastmail or other recommendations).

</comment><comment><USER8> Because change is hard, and most people have set their default search to google and won't take the action needed to change it.

I changed to DDG a few weeks ago, and though it isn't as good as Google for geo-search and a few other things, but for the most part it suits my needs.

But as YC always says, you need to be 10x better in order to get people to switch, and privacy isn't a big enough pain point at the moment for the general population to switch.

It may happen in the future, remember, we made the switch from AltaVista to Google because Google search results were so much better. It is VERY difficult to get better at search than google, but that is what it's going to take, or a VERY painful reason for people to switch.

</comment><comment><USER9> Personally, the time and effort needed to make a total switch off of Google products and onto alternatives outweighs the concerns I have with Google.

Despite the numerous issues that are brought up, I still find value in their products. But then again, I'm not nearly as security sensitive as the majority of HN readers. If Google offered a yearly paid subscription in exchange for complete privacy and data ownership, I'd immediately do that - but in the meantime I think the amount of value I've squeezed out of their products is equal to the value they get from me as a user.

</comment><comment><USER10> Back in 2009 when Bing was new, it was laughed at by the average user, and initiatives to build a user base with Bing cashback deals were seen as an admission of failure from the people that brought you IE.

Since then, Bing has grown significantly in search volume and ad revenue. While DDG likely can't reach Microsoft's market share as quickly, I see no reason why we it can't keep growing and help develop a competitive market for search options.

I do think DDG needs to approximate some of Google's knowledge graph features, like displaying weather and sports scores in an easy-to-read mini dashboard. I think that'd be one way for people (like me) to add it as a bookmark and create the habit of entering search queries into DDG as opposed to Google.

<comment><USER11> I think DDG invented showing results in mini dashboard! they have it for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Ask HN: Why don't we seriously seek an alternative if we're unhappy with > Google?

The people that are unhappy with Google do, with varying degrees of satisfaction.

The people that aren't, don't need to.

> My broad question is, why don't we still have a very competitive search > engine that can actually rival Google unlike Bing, duckduckgo or qwant.

Plenty of people think one or more of those can rival Google as a search engine. But, that aside, earnest customer interest may support the kind of investment that can build something to rival the cute offering of one of the most successful corporations on the planet, but it doesn't produce it on its own and it doesn't happen overnight.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have de-googled my life completely (Chrome->Firefox, Gmail->ProtonMail, Search->DuckDuckGo, Keep->Simplenote, Passwords->Bitwarden), other than checking in on my old gmail-address every once in a while, which is a minor thing, but the big things are Android and the Google Calendar.

If the Librem 5 turns out to be amazing I'm going to get one, but until then I will just have to use Android for better or worse.

As for the calendar there is just nothing that compares to Google's. A cloud calendar that synchronizes fast and with other apps like Mindbody for example. To my knowledge, there is just no alternative that even comes close.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why do you say that ddg can't rival Google? I've been using ddg almost exclusively in the past several weeks. It was very difficult to switch, and I still don't exclusively trust ddg (sometimes I'll check Google to see if ddg is giving me good results), but the more I use ddg the less apparent is to me that I'm no longer using Google.

</comment><comment><USER15> I want to focus on tracing back the problems to Larry/Sergey.</comment>


414M pieces of plastic found on remote island group in Indian Ocean - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/16/414-million-pieces-of-plastic-found-on-remote-island-group-in-indian-ocean <comment><USER2> They found 23,227. They estimated a total of 414m. Big difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> did anyone expected them to count one by one 414,000,000 pieces of plastic? I think they established that there's an insane amount of plastic in the oceans and its coming from far away

<comment><USER3> Mostly likely it's coming from nearby in Southeast Asia and China.</comment></comment></comment>


What model might help for people at the quarantined cruise ship? - <AUTHOR> https://www.pscp.tv/WHO/1jMKgQbpRPMJL?t=21m49s <comment><AUTHOR> There is a quarantined cruise ship with 60 of 3700 people infected with nCoV in Japan.

What might be the right model to evacuate the healthy ones from the ship without extending the quarantine period?

<comment><USER2> I would think that keeping the 3700 people confined to a cruise ship is just asking for the nCoV to spread more.

Best would be to take everyone off cruise ship, assume everyone is infected and keep them in quarantine on land for observation before being released.

I think it is more known now about how long it takes to show symptoms so I would say if someone exceeds that period by 35-50% they should be free to go from quarantine.

I have no experience at all in the medical field or know anything other than what is being regurgitated in the media so take my opinion less than a grain of salt.</comment></comment>


Keep Saturdays Sacred - <AUTHOR> https://words.steveklabnik.com/keep-saturdays-sacred <comment><USER2> Setting aside a consistent amount of time on a regular schedule to learn is a great way to grow your skills. I do wonder how much of a magnifying effect the author's peers had on the whole learning process.</comment>


Create mixed reality models in PowerShell - <AUTHOR> http://www.cosmosdarwin.com/2018/01/12/create-mixed-reality-models-in-powershell.html <comment><USER2> Cool tech. If anything, it shows that windows MR tools are mature enough to be used in most languages... on Windows.

I know one can work on projects that target Hololens using only Unity3D, but it doesn't help much since the SDK needed to build them are only available on Windows.

Given the "recent" interest for Linux at Microsoft and their mea culpa regarding Internet Explorer, I would have hoped they made their Hololens SDK crossplatform. Platform lock-in worked well for iOS, but then again, I wonder if Android would have had so much success if it hadn't the only crossplatform mobile SDK (I wonder if I'm not mistaken, here: did Blackberry have a crossplatform SDK?).

Anyway, it's cool to see them going forward. Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty impressive. Powershell has been pretty slow for a lot of my uses lately. The author said this took ~30 secs. How long would a similar script take in Python? They're both slow on the language performance spectrum, but I bet Python would be significantly faster if anyone is less lazy than me to actually write some code.

<comment><USER4> PowerShell is slow, but writing to files the way he is doing is just a bad pattern. He uses Add-Content not just in loops, but in _nested_ loops. The problem with that is that each time Add-Content is called the system opens the file, adds the content, flushes to disk, and then closes the file. That's a _lot_ of overhead.

In his wine glass script he also uses the PowerShell patten of creating an array ($x = @()) and then appending to it (foreach ($i in $set) { $x += $value * $i }). The problem here is that PowerShell arrays are fixed in size. To append a value to an array, the system creates a new array, copies all the values over with the new one, and then disposes of the old array. It works fine up to about 100 items, but it gets noticeably slow after that. Since it's done with a loop it makes it somewhere between O(n log n) and O(n^2). It's better to just output all the values as a single array ($x = $set | ForEach { $value * $_ }) or to create an ArrayList or List<String> or _some_ C# collection that supports an O(1) append.

He also assigns a lot of variables in his loops and then uses them only once to format a string. He could eliminate those variables and just embed the expressions in the strings.

I got a ~25% performance improvement (210 ms to under 140 ms) with just the script embedded in the article when I switched to StringBuilder instead of Add-Content, and that script doesn't have the poor array pattern. StreamWriter would work, too, with less memory pressure than a StringBuilder. I suspect that with better code you could easily get this down below 3 seconds.

<comment><USER5> I got a lot more than a 25% improvement.. you seem to have a much quicker machine or perhaps you were running one of the earlier scripts? For the wine glass script it went from >2 minutes to 1.5 seconds when output buffered. [https://github.com/cosmosdarwin/obj-in- powershell/pull/1](https://github.com/cosmosdarwin/obj-in-powershell/pull/1)

Also for those that haven't come across it [https://github.com/dlwyatt/PowershellProfiler](https://github.com/dlwyatt/PowershellProfiler) is pretty useful.. despite add-content being the obvious offender here..

<comment><USER4> I have a 10 year old PC. The 210ms to 140 ms time was with the single cylinder script, which is much shorter, and the < 3 second prediction was for the wine glass script. I just guessed by looking that it wouldn't be hard to improve by an order of magnitude. Sorry if I wasn't clear!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I never knew mixed reality viewer was so awesome!

</comment><comment><USER7> Who's Jeffrey and why should he be proud?

<comment><USER8> Jeffrey Snover, creator of PowerShell, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The real lesson here is to make sure you have a real programming language development environment on any laptop you bring with you.

I'm only kidding, of course.

This post is actually quite cool.

<comment><USER10> > make sure you have a real programming language development environment on > any laptop you bring with you

Or just write Javascript and execute it on your browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > What apps do I have? Aha! PowerShell.

Yep. And a browser that will execute any javascript at breakneck speed.

</comment><comment><USER11> This should be unflagged, IMO.

<comment><USER12> I agree.

There's a vouch link for bad comments. Is there something similar for stories? Can a number of people "unflag" this?

<comment><USER11> If there is, I don't see it :(

<comment><USER13> Me neither, despite >6k points... @dang, is there a way "vouch" can be implemented for ordinary users?

<comment><USER14> well, how to define "ordinary user" is a huge problem for the system administrator — access control is at the root of all security issues...

<comment><USER13> In HN speak, another karma threshold (downvoting ~500 points, flagging ~1k points if I'm not mistaken). ;)

<comment><USER14> it is all about different labels...and different labels have different visibility, in terms of effort to get to that information...so I guess by narrowing unflagging privilege to a very small group of users, the mod hopes to make it significantly more difficult for people to advocate a certain post here through purposeful manipulation...thus perhaps "unflagging" capability, as one of the last lines of defense, is only given to a very small group of ultimately verified users, through manual assignment or some thrshold based on percentage rather than an absolute karma value...

that's my guess...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTTP/2 time - <AUTHOR> http://andreapaiola.name/2015-09-http-2-time/ <comment><USER2> > Previous attempts to change dramatically HTTP, like QUIC and SPDY, partially > failed.

Eh. Is that really the case? Isn't HTTP2 like 95% SPDY? It's like Daala becoming IETF's NETVC and then saying the Daala attempt failed.

Also, QUIC as far as I know is still in R&D mode and I think it's meant to be more complementary to HTTP2 no? So I don't know about it "failing" yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, you are right. I mean SPDY is/was by design an experimental tech. By a adoption point of view is a failure by design.

But is good as it is: innovation break things and we need experimental protocols.

For QUIC instead I don't think there is a future.</comment></comment>


Indoor Mapping Data Format - <AUTHOR> https://register.apple.com/resources/imdf/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some more context and background here:

[https://blog.safe.com/2018/10/indoor-mapping-ios- imdf/](https://blog.safe.com/2018/10/indoor-mapping-ios-imdf/)</comment>


Google Clips – Now available - <AUTHOR> https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips?hl=en-US <comment><USER2> I recently saw a video from a family member where she had taken the time to shoot a short video for every day of 2017. They struck me as different than the selfies that we have all come to know. She was sometimes the subject of the video but often she appeared to take care to do it when she was with friends and family.

To me this sort of video journaling is appealing. There is almost zero effort to get started and you can capture so much of an experience in just a short clip. Honestly surprised it's not more popular.

As for the Google Clips I would love if the device was on a rolling 30 second video capture so that you could click a button and capture the last 30 seconds of footage. I have heard of devices existing for audio but never video.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google getting in the standalone camera game in 2018... wow.</comment>


Changing San Francisco is foreseen as a haven for wealthy and childless (1981) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/09/us/changing-san-francisco-is-foreseen-as-a-haven-for-wealthy-and-childless.html?l=0 <comment><USER2> San Francisco has 50% more land area than Manhattan, 15% more area than Paris.

It has half the population of Manhattan, and roughly 1/3 of Paris. SF is mostly low-density houses, with a small mid-density area in the east 1/3\. It could be easily converted to a mid-density city with widespread public transportation by opening west of Van Ness for development, while charging development fees to fund expansion of public transportation.

But there are way too many entrenched interests preventing that. Guess that the only way out is to wait for the next big one.

<comment><USER3> The market always corrects itself. San Francisco's high prices will continue to create an exodus of young talent which should help support a second Silicon Valley type nexus, whether that be in Seattle, Austin, New York, or elsewhere. It was interesting to hear Yelp call out high developer salaries on their last earnings call. Companies are starting to invest in satellite offices and this will have long term consequences.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> The market always corrects itself._

"In the long run, we're all dead." -Keynes

It took generations for a second Motor City to emerge outside of Detroit. New York is still the unchallenged capital of the finance and fashion worlds. There's no "Second Hollywood" in the United States. There's a Reno and an Atlantic City, but neither holds a candle to Las Vegas.

What makes you so certain tech will have an exodus from San Francisco between now and the year of your retirement?

<comment><USER4> > There's no "Second Hollywood" in the United States.

Look into what's been going on in Georgia for the past few years. Not a replacement for Hollywood yet, but it's a good example of how quickly alternatives can take off due almost entirely to geographic differences in the cost of doing business.

<comment><USER5> Where by "geographic differences in the cost of doing business" you mean "desperate politicians in a race to the bottom competing over who can waive the most taxes". [http://www.georgia.org/industries/entertainment/production-i...](http://www.georgia.org/industries/entertainment/production- incentives/)

<comment><USER6> My rent for a two bedroom apartment in Inman Park is $700.

The costs of doing business in Atlanta are significantly less than other regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was curious and looked up the current rents for apartments that I used to live in.

Pasadena, CA: $500 in 1988, $1100 now (1 bedroom, 1 bath) (2.96% increase per year)

Cupertino, CA: $765 in 1988, $2600 now (1 bedroom, 1 bath, 750 sq ft) (4.64% increase per year) Seattle, WA: $515 in 1992, $1180 now (1 bedroom, 1 bath, 600 sq ft) (3.67% increase pr year)

Silverdale, WA: $705 in 2007, $1200-$1500 now (1 bedroom, 1 bath, 600 sq ft) (4.95%-7.10% per year)

(And now house, Kitsap County WA, 1400 sq ft on 1/5 acre lot, $1300/month mortgage, taxes, insurance)

While looking this up, I noticed that Los Angeles and surrounding cities have a lot of 1 bed/1 bath apartments in OK places for under $800/month. I don't know why more tech companies aren't heading to Southern California. Good weather, good rental rates, plenty of first class schools pumping out STEM people to hire (Caltech, UCLA, Harvey Mudd, USC for instance), diverse art/cultural attractions, good food city. Commuting isn't bad by car if you have some flexibility in hours so you can avoid rush hours.

</comment><comment><USER8> This whole meme is tired. The whole south, southwest and west 3/4 of the city are family friendly, less expensive and devoid of dot commers. And for the most part, very livable.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true; the more-affordable housing corresponds with the empty areas of this map: [http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/105/2/4/San_Francisco...](http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/105/2/4/San_Francisco_subway_map_by_qweqwe321.png)

I think techies just have a stronger desire to live near transit than the previous generation of San Franciscans did.

<comment><USER9> Proximity to transit options raises prices, which when you need "at least two" bedrooms is a sizable increase. Like pbreit said above, there are much less expensive parts of the city, but people mostly decide to leave once they feel they "must" have a 3 bedroom place or a private yard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's more that they _must_ have proximity to transit, and the ones who can't afford that figure that if they're going to be forced to live a car- centric lifestyle, they might as well move out to the suburbs where the prices are somewhat cheaper than SF's transit-poor neighborhoods.

<comment><USER10> That's a good observation. For me it's an either/or thing: Either I'm going to live in an area with good public transit, or I'm going to live in an area where I can drive a car to work in less than half an hour with convenient, free parking on both ends.

Transit-poor SF neighborhoods are the worst of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems apropos:

"The Uberfication of everything is turning San Francisco into an assisted living community for the young."

[https://twitter.com/startupljackson/status/40813723253330329...](https://twitter.com/startupljackson/status/408137232533303296)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why just the young? I don't remember there being an age limit to sign up for Uber.

<comment><USER11> Probably because the majority of people who can afford to use all those services all the time are young techies. But then, it's not my tweet.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not really true, though.

<comment><USER11> What do you base that on? Who do you think uses these "gig economy" services? First, people with high disposable income - i.e. not the poor or those with families. Second, people who are so comfortable with their smartphone apps that they'll use them to replace _very small_ amounts of time doing the same things in more traditional ways - i.e. not a lot of old people. Sure, there are _some_ outliers, but "young techie" pretty well captures the core demographic here.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're backpedaling. Earlier you said only young people _can afford_ to use these services. Now you're saying only young people _choose_ to use these services.

The latter may be true; the former certainly isn't.

When the horseless carriage came out, or electric light, or the radio, traditonal-minded folk chose not to buy them. But I don't think anyone would say those inventions made the world into an assisted-living facility for the young.

<comment><USER11> I'm not backpedaling; you're moving the goalposts. I said _all of those services_ _all the time_. In other words, not occasional but habitual use, and that demographic is dominated by the young Google/Facebook/VC techno-elite. You don't like where that thought leads, or how the conclusion reflects on you? Too bad. The facts are the facts.

<comment><AUTHOR> You haven't established any facts about young San Franciscans supposedly having more money than older ones. The evidence suggests the opposite: [http://www.sfrealtors.com/US/Neighborhood/CA/San- Francisco-D...](http://www.sfrealtors.com/US/Neighborhood/CA/San-Francisco- Demographics.html)

And anecdotally, I've noticed that my neighbors who happen to own two or three cars tend to be older, and the ones with one or none tend to be younger. The San Franciscans I know with a second home somewhere tend to be older; the ones who can barely _dream_ of ever owning a home tend to be younger. Go to the opera or look at the nice seats at AT&T Park, and see who's sitting there. By and large, you're not going to see many young people.

Anyway, you didn't answer my other question: when things like dishwashers and refrigerators were invented, would you characterize their impact on the world to be turning it into an assisted-living facility for the young?

<comment><USER11> Seriously, do you not know the difference between total income and disposable income? Figures for one don't refute a point about the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=936&t=Software%20...](http://www.jobdensity.com/QueryGrid.aspx?q=936&t=Software%20Engineer&qt=6/29/2015%208:51:25%20PM)

</comment><comment><USER13> Same as it ever was. Boom, bust, boom, bust.

Booming now, when's the bust?

<comment><AUTHOR> There have been short-term booms and busts, but the long-term trend looks like this: [http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/54aadb0df92ea1558800c86...](http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs/54aadb0df92ea1558800c86a/Case- Shiller_Simpl-Percentages.jpg)

Imagine a version of yourself in 1987 waiting for the bubble to burst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are y'all finished with denying your role in destroying the city yet or are you still in denial?

<comment><AUTHOR> By "y'all" are you referring to the people who moved to San Francisco in 1981 and "destroyed" the city by making all the changes this article describes?

Or are you referring to the gays and hippies who did the same a decade earlier?

Or do you mean all the civilians who destroyed what used to be a nice military town?

Or do you mean the soldiers who ruined a nice Gold Rush town?

Or do you mean the 49ers who destroyed a Mexican ranching and missionary outpost?

Or the Mexicans who spoiled a charming Ohlone village?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Realtime app ideas for side project? - <AUTHOR> What are some ideas for apps that could be built to become more conversant with near-realtime technologies à la Storm, Kafka, Spark Streaming and the like?<p>Let's define realtime not as financial index realtime but as responding very quickly to a potentially large number of input events which will be coming in over a network. <comment><USER2> Analyze how a Trump tweet affects stock prices, twitter sentiment, major news outlets in real time

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very cool! Perhaps the "Trump bump" could be quantified.

<comment><USER2> Yes. Sounds like you'll have to deal with getting the data from different sources (either by crawling or APIs) hopefully in a distributed manner (storm, for example) and then analyze the inputs using something like spark or hadoop. If you like, let me know if you end up building it. Email in profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> An app that collects app ideas for the best realtime app idea and shows the aggregation of ideas on a webpage

<comment><USER4> And it does it all -- get this -- in realtime.

<comment><USER5> Which, even funnier, are all very, very removed from the actual technical meaning of realtime to the point where they make a mockery of the concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're just looking for ideas, I would look at what people have done for conference talks, sometimes they have good project ideas - [https://www.findlectures.com/?q=%20realtime&p=2&class1=Techn...](https://www.findlectures.com/?q=%20realtime&p=2&class1=Technology)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Gary. I hadn't seen this site, very cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A social network for people drinking the same beverage right now.

You could have rooms for particular regional coffees or more simple like hot chocolate or commercialized like one for Budweiser.

There could be content you unlock by proving you're drinking a certain drink.

<comment><USER8> Listening to the same music right now.

Playing the same YT video right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's best to learn what real-time actually means in the context of technology. None of the above technologies are real-time. Near-real time might be more accurate but it depends on your tolerance.

<comment><USER10> It's best to understand that language evolves over time and despite the fact that "real-time" has had a specific meaning in the context of software for quite some time, it now has another meaning, under which all of the above technologies are real-time. Enjoy.

<comment><USER9> I don't think the term real-time has changed. Some people misuse it but it's still a very well-defined and strict term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I got this idea of using my twitter follower graph and extracting out entities like movies, restaurants, books and people they talk about.

I have noticed that I end up eating at places, go to coffee shops, read book and watch movies/shows people I follow talk about. If there was a simpler way to browse that, it might be useful.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wad amazed by the youtube videos with the new capabilities of drones and hardware configurations.They also plan to deliver internet by drones if networking is what you are into.

</comment><comment><USER13> Real-time anomaly detection ([http://numenta.org](http://numenta.org)) for airplane flight routes, wearable sensor data (heart rate), energy smart meter readings, seismometers for early earthquake warnings, ...

</comment><comment><USER14> Realtime new stuff on Netflix for series junkies.

</comment><comment><USER15> Social networking are best way for side project</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any smart phones not made in Asia? - <AUTHOR> I just looked at a few articles about phones not made in China, and most of them list Tiawan or another Chinese controlled territory. With the ban on zte and similar companies for federal positions, this seems like an issue of national security. <comment><USER2> You're going to _very_ hard pressed to build a phone outside of Asia, and even more so without Asian components.

Fabrication of the case and battery are doable outside of Asia, although to get a phone shaped battery, you might need to roll your own. I know of no major manufacturer outside of Asia. Case can be cnc'd just about anywhere.

Board is going to be difficult, but easier. AllPCB can probably take care of the high layer count board, but it's not going to be cheap.

Screens are going to be a bigger issue than battery. I know of no modern phone sized screen manufacturers outside of asia that could make a 1080P screen in bulk. That's not something that would be easy to roll yourself either.

Chips are going to be, by far, the most difficult part. If you're willing to call the Philippines part of Oceania, it's a bit easier, but not much. Even if you can get a CPU, ram and flash storage chips made outside Asia (big if), all your small passives are made in China and basically nowhere else.

This is ignoring assembly, cameras, coatings, etc.

Basically, any phone you buy is going to be majority Asian manufactured. Even if you wanted to make a phone domestically, I doubt you could make anything that competes with Chinese products. I'm not sure what the wording on the ban is, so this might not be as drastic as I think.

<comment><USER3> > You're going to very hard pressed to build a phone outside of Asia, and even > more so without Asian components.

Interestingly, this has only been true since 2012, after Nokia closed its factories in Finland, Hungary, and Mexico[1].

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/8/2784183/nokia-device- assem...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/8/2784183/nokia-device-assembly- asia-european-job-cuts)

<comment><USER2> Even still, that was (looks like) assembly work -- they moved explicitly to be closer to the part suppliers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Supply chain security is a known problem with mitigations. Don't think all these billion dollar companies haven't thought about the issue of having a third party implement their designs. Just like with software security, there's no perfect solution but it's highly unlikely China can easily bug devices sold in America without being detected. With software, you have cryptography to protect you. With hardware, you can buy chips not designed in China (which afaik is most chips). Even if the chip is manufactured in China, it's not trivial to add in backdoor logic and have the design still work and not detectable by the designers (fabs are handed the equalivant of object code, not the source code).

All that aside I find issue with the thesis of your question. Assuming the Taiwan, South Korea, Japan are the same as China is naive at best and racist at worst. So asking about "phones not made in Asia" is meaningless (not to mention Asia also includes India, etc). Even if read by the spirit of the question and not the word of it, it feels very anti-globalist and protectionalistic which itself is not an issue but instead of repeating arguments against it, I'll just refer you to the body of literature about the whole debate.

<comment><USER5> I think that you are being a little naive.

I've encountered counterfeit parts several times with OEM equipment. Storage, memory and NICs in particular. If you care about this issue, I think it's reasonable to be cautious about the provenance parts in general, as sub- components may be ultimately sourced by China or on the general market, depending on the product.

Calling that racist is a little much -- understanding your supply chain is meaningful in many scenarios. There are vendors who audit samples of products for supply chain integrity, and they do find issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Both made in Germany

[https://www.shiftphones.com](https://www.shiftphones.com)

[https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset- gs185/](https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset-gs185/) (used to belong to Siemens I think)

<comment><USER7> Shiftphone is German but they use Asian components. For example the CPU of their phone on the homepage is made by Mediatek, from Taiwan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At the risk of stating the obvious, Taiwan is not Chinese-controlled territory.

Still in Asia, but I know at least some Samsung devices are made in Korea.

<comment><USER9> OP might have consulted a Chinese issued map :)

Supposedly, about a third of Samsung phones are produced in Vietnam [https://e27.co/1-3-samsung-phones-made- vietnam-20150513/](https://e27.co/1-3-samsung-phones-made-vietnam-20150513/).

Some googling shows me that Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and India have significant share of smartphones produced (one example [https://www.androidauthority.com/where-smartphones-are- made-...](https://www.androidauthority.com/where-smartphones-are- made-707989/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the industrial rugged smartphone/tablet segment (eg. Symbol/Motorola/Zebra, Honeywell, Panasonic) you can probably find android-powered devices that are assembled in Europe, US or Japan.

</comment><comment><USER11> This question sounds so silly I wonder if it's a strawman argument.

Can you have any advanced device that doesn't contain anything made by 50% of humanity? no.

This comment is sent to you from Asia and 7000km away from Beijing.

<comment><USER12> _Can you have any advanced device that doesn 't contain anything made by 50% of humanity? no._

Maybe for small consumer goods. Would be interesting to know the component sources for a Tesla car, or a military jet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Chinese phone manufacturer Transsion sells the most phones in Africa and has started or is starting to build factories in Africa.

[https://qz.com/africa/1374404/chinas-transsion-dominates- afr...](https://qz.com/africa/1374404/chinas-transsion-dominates-africas- phone-market-with-tecno-itel/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Gigaset has non-negligible amounts of assembly in Germany, though obviously most parts are far-east. E.g. Gigaset GS185.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's whole ecosystem, not just phone companies. Like colleges have specialised courses, constant new talent pool, government incentives, rawmaterial etc. Know any other country that can invest trillion+ dollars over couple of decade outside Asia to beat this ?

</comment><comment><USER16> Apple manufacturers iPhone SE's sold in India, in India.

<comment><USER17> * assembles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Try [https://www.fairphone.com/en/](https://www.fairphone.com/en/)

<comment><USER19> Fairphone is assembled in China and most if not all its components are manufactured in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What difference does this actually make though?

"China" (you say Asia but presumably you don't mean that) is not a monolith.

</comment><comment><USER20> Soon, Apple.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe the question is because the person doesn't want to buy a phone made in a sweatshop, (foxcon,Shenzhen )or by a company abusing child labor. As is a common practice in Asia.

The P.C. judgmental attitude shows you have been brainwashed. Racist ? Anyone living in China knows about the abuse etc. It is common knowledge. Apple suppliers are among the most abusive. Whenever I hear an Apple spokesperson deny knowledge of this my immediate thought is a...delusional b..ignorant. The majority of major phone brands are also complicit. You don't need any (guanxi) to find the truth. Please stop judging comments as politically correct or not. Discard your p.c. brainwashing and come to Asia. You might be surprised at what you learn. BTW my company is in Hong Kong and mainland China. In case you were wondering.

<comment><USER22> On HN, you can't post personal attacks or otherwise be uncivil. If you'd please read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

<comment><USER23> I see. So the post calling the question Racist and demeaning was not an attack on the individual asking the question. Thanks for clearing that up.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure what you're referring to, but if another comment broke the rules, that doesn't make it ok for you to break them as well.

We don't come close to seeing all the comments on HN, so it's impossible to moderate perfectly, or even consistently. We do what we can. If you see a bad post escape moderation, the likeliest explanation is that we haven't seen it yet. You can help by flagging it or emailing firstname.lastname@example.com.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twilight Zone meets Escher meets Dali in the philosophical comic strip 'the bus' - <AUTHOR> http://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_philosophical_comic_strip_the_bus

<comment><USER2> I loved these, so I poked around on Amazon and bought a signed 2nd edition in English directly from the artist for $24.75 plus shipping.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/2848410221/ref=tmm_hr...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/2848410221/ref=tmm_hrd_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new)

<comment><USER3> I am buying one right now. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author has posted complete scans of his earlier, Sergio-Leone-Western-on- LSD comic, "Dope Rider", on a blog:

[http://thedoperider.blogspot.fr](http://thedoperider.blogspot.fr)

</comment><comment><USER5> I hadn't heard from him either, they are very nice. You have to read each comic two or three times before you get it. Thanks. Reminds me a bit of the Spanish photograper Chema Madoz [http://www.chemamadoz.com/a.html](http://www.chemamadoz.com/a.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Haha these are really great! Found a bunch of imgur [http://imgur.com/a/S3k3C#0](http://imgur.com/a/S3k3C#0)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hadn't heard of this artist. I generally don't like comics, but this is very good. Thanks!</comment>


Not Your Father's Python: Amazing Powerful Frameworks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.signifai.io/not-your-fathers-python-amazing-powerful-frameworks/ <comment><USER2> Cool, some random lib can serve 200 OKs 100k times per second... Not really.. How is that even remotely useful with real life uses and compared to full featured frameworks/uses.</comment>


One Billion Files: Scalability Limits in Linux File Systems (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://events.linuxfoundation.org/slides/2010/linuxcon2010_wheeler.pdf <comment><USER2> Mentioned in the presentation, but there are also much lower practical limitations with readdir(), stat(), etc, when you have lots of files in a single directory. If you want to be able to use ls, find, tar, etc without waiting eons:

A typical workaround is to to take a hash (md5 or similar) of the filename and then pick some number of nested directories to store it in.

Like: md5("data-file-one") == "0278c2451c1cd1dd98815260159c44e0"

Assuming you go with 4 levels, then:

mkdir -p "0/2/7/8/c" && mv data-file-one 0/2/7/8/c/data-file-one

I believe apache's mod_cache takes this approach.

<comment><USER3> > mkdir -p "0/2/7/8/c"

That's at most 16 entries per directory which seems unnecessarily low. Taking 2 chars/level gives 96 entries per directory which seems better, that's what Git uses (3 is 4096 which may be a tad high). Yields a flatter but not too broad hierarchy.

<comment><USER4> I must be stupid; with 2 hex chars (dir structure like 0a/7b/...) wouldn't we have 16*16 = 256 (edit: can't do math) entries per directory, not 96?

<comment><USER3> 256 actually, but I have no idea where that 96 comes from, it was probably the alcohol typing (or I was already thinking 4096 and I wrote part of that instead of the correct number)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The XFS metadata performance has improved a lot and is now faster than ext4. See for example [https://lwn.net/Articles/476263/](https://lwn.net/Articles/476263/)

Of course there are still a lot of issues with reading that many files.

<comment><USER6> One thing I've noticed lately is XFS deletion performance is still by far the worst of all the filesystems I've been benchmarking.

Aside from deletion, XFS does perform quite well though.

<comment><USER7> Deletion can and should be done super asynchronously, though - If you're doing a lot of deletes, rename your files into a garbage directory, and then clean that out in another thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> another thing to benchmark in bcachefs. the architecture ought to scale to a billion files quite nicely :)

<comment><USER8> ^ For other readers, Kent is the author of bcachefs and bcache. Unfortunately this slide deck is from 2010 and I don't believe bcachefs was around at the time. I, too, would be interested to see bcachefs's performance relative to the traditional Linux fs set (ext4 & XFS).</comment></comment>


Proposed simple REST (and OAuth) based standard for financial transactions - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.github.com/opentransact/opentransact/opentransact <comment><USER2> I had a similar idea to this a while back. But instead of mapping URLs to transactions, you would map URLs to a fixed denomination of currency.

So, for example, the URL <http://eepay.com/usd/10/agh38hj3> would represent a $10 USD note, payable by the entity that issued it.

Ownership of a particular currency "note" would be handled via a private key. In other words, the individual in possession of a private key for a given URL would be considered the "owner" of that note. With that private key, one could either redeem the currency in question or transfer ownership to someone else. Transfer of ownership would be handled via a secure handshake, in which the new owner of the note is given a new private key, which can then be verified.

Obviously this is all very low level, so actual transactions would abstract away most of this.

The advantage of this type of currency would be that it is anonymous and doesn't require a whole lot of verification information for every little purchase. This would make it ideal for microtransactions, or for transactions where you wouldn't want to reveal your identity.

The disadvantage is that it would be a challenge to keep private keys secure. Another obvious disadvantage is that such currency would only be successful if it was backed by a highly trusted institution. There are other challenges and disadvantages to be sure.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't get low latency and high throughput with HTTP overhead. The headers will be bigger than transactions for starters.

</comment><comment><USER4> Feels hopelessly naive. Conflates transactions and securities, for example.

<comment><USER5> Surely you can comprehend that people might want to make transactions related to securities, current accounts, and any other store of value/assets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is fascinating. But. How do you prevent a bad actor asset provider from creating money out of thin air?

If you can't solve that problem, your economy is going to have more liquidity than real assets. It's a hard problem.

Much respect for Pelle. But this won't fly until that problem is solved.

<comment><USER5> You deal with it the same way you do in real life. You don't do business with them. If I only trust dollars I can stick to dollars. But if I trust Brooklyn Greenbacks or the BACE, then I can use them. Not sure how this is related to the protocol as any paper currency has this issue also.

<comment><USER6> But part of the beauty of the current financial system is that most of the time if I use a trusted intermediary, I can confidently engage in financial transactions without having to build up a trust history.

<comment><USER5> Again, not sure how this matters as it seems like you are going down a path that is unrelated to the actual protocol. There has been discussion of Ripple on the agile banking list and other payment systems that rely on intermediaries, and OpenTransact could be used in those systems, but the issue is not inherent in the protocol alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just playing devils advocate here; This is another one of those standards that assumes the whole world speaks English.

<comment><USER8> How does this assume English any more than the other protocols, HTTP and OAuth, on which it is based?

And, isn't that level of assumption a good thing for comprehension and interoperability?</comment></comment>