"Goodbye GoDaddy" promotion - <AUTHOR> https://dnsimple.com/goodbye-godaddy

<comment><USER2> First thanks to everyone who has provided or will provide feedback, comments, etc, even if they're negative towards DNSimple. I'm one of the two guys behind DNSimple and I just want to take a moment to explain what you get and why I think that DNSimple is worth considering for domain registration and management.

First of all, the price of the domain varies from TLD to TLD. For a full price list of the supported TLDs you can take a look here: <https://dnsimple.com/tld-pricing> \- the price list includes prices for registrations, renewals and transfers.

Second, our core business is really hosted DNS. You can use DNSimple without registering a domain through us. Some of you may say that either a.) I can use my current registrar's DNS service and it doesn't cost me anything extra (which is true) and b.) I can host my own DNS (which is also true). If price is your primary motivating factor then by all means go for the lowest cost provider for registration and DNS services. If, on the other hand, you want good, no-hassle service with a REST API and developers who actually give a damn about you working to solve DNS and domain problems you have, then I would hope you would consider DNSimple.

Finally, I just want to say that while I would love to be able to give out free domains, that simply isn't a realistic way to do business. For domains transferred out of GoDaddy right now I'm offering the domains at cost with the understanding that I'll be making some profit from the hosted DNS services. I won't apologize for wanting to stay in business and help people with their DNS, which is really what I want do.

Thanks again for the feedback, and please keep it coming. Feel free to tell me I suck or just walk away, it's all good. In the end I am confident that DNSimple customers will be thrilled with what they get and will know that they are getting something that is well worth the small amount they'll pay each year.

<comment><USER3> I guess you're not a direct accredited registrar? Who are you reselling for? (I'm sorry if this is mentioned on your website. I didn't have the time to look for it.)

<comment><USER2> DNSimple uses Enom as it's accredited registrar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty confused about this. Are you guys trying to compete against GoDaddy's domain name registration service, or something more like EasyDNS's managed hosting?

If you're doing the latter, then perhaps you should focus on explaining what the benefits are.

What does "Easy Billing" mean? Other DNS or web hosting services are really easy to pay for. Is this even easier some how? Why are you even emphasizing this?

And again, why is domain registration emphasized on the home page, if this isn't your core business?

Take a look at the homepages of Slicehost, linode, prgmr.com, Amazon S3, DNS.com. They all have different designs, but one thing in common -- they have way more information density than your site, and I only need to scroll up and down that one page to get a great idea of what it is that they do.

Edit: I read the other comments, and have a better idea of what you're doing. It looks cool, and the developer API is a great idea. If you're targeting developers, then you could definitely do with de-dumbing-down your site a bit.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback, you make some good points. I'll reconsider some of the selling points that I am currently making and see if I can improve it for my target audience.

Also, I like the term "de-dumbing-down". :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You'll definitely be getting 3$/mo from me. I've assumed there was such a service but hadn't found it yet. I probably have domains registered in 5 different places and definitely need a single way to manage them.

2 bits of advice:

Put the "Get Started" button on the homepage. Probably help converstion alot to have a call-to-action there.

Let people register without a credit card, give them their 30 days, and then tell them the account will be shut down in 2 weeks if they don't activate it. Moving/setting up DNS is not something people want to do often so if they like your product they'll gladly activate it. Is there a reason why/how people could abuse the service that is driving the credit card requirement?

<comment><USER2> I take it that you mean put the "Get Started" button from the home page on the promotional page? Agreed and done.

On the second one, it's a good point. Originally we required a credit card even before trying the service, which obviously turned some people off from it immediately. We then moved the credit card requirement to the point where DNS services are activated. I'd like to be able to move a step down, however there is potential for abuse if we start serving DNS records with no payment (it would require a small amount of work on the part of the abuser, but it can definitely be done).

We also can't really allow people to register and transfer domains without some sort of payment on file since there is a cost associated with those actions that are essentially irreversible.

Thanks for the suggestions, we'll keep thinking about how to improve the sign up and payment flow to encourage people to try and eventually register for DNSimple.

<comment><USER5> I don't see a "Get Started" button on <https://dnsimple.com/>. There is one on <https://dnsimple.com/plans>. If the homepage read "Manage All Your DNS, From Any Registrar, In One Place -- Get Started" you'd get alot of converstions off of your homepage. Maybe I'm missing something.

I understand you can't transfer domains free of charge--but what is your per- user incremental cost to set up DNS for a few domains? I guess your major expense is bandwidth? You can probably do a little math and figure out if it would be worth it.

I'd scratch the domain registration altogether unless it is a major source of revenue. To me it's a distraction from the core service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just got a call this morning from a client asking about a charge from "AETRION LLC." for $3 on their company credit card. I was about to tell them I had no idea until I saw this post and remembered I started this DNSimple last month as a test for them. Note to DNSimple: Don't make me guess about credit card statements!

<comment><USER2> Sorry about that. I'll see if I can get the information on the charges changed to include DNSIMPLE.COM. I hope it didn't cause you too much trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The point of this isn't the price - it's that GoDaddy frankly has a lot of distasteful and often quite raunchy advertising, which turns people off to them.

I haven't used dnsimple - any current users care to comment on their admin interface and service quality?

Personally, I use joker.com. The fact that it's not located in the US adds an additional legal impediment to others in case there's an issue with the any domains I own.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a user yet, although I will definitely use it for my next domain transfer. I am interested for these reasons:

\- it has an API (<https://dnsimple.com/documentation/api>) while my current registrar doesn't provide an API and I'm tired of manually configuring this (I want to write reusable recipes) \- it apparently has templates for Google Apps configuration (from the /plans page)

Icing on the cake: there's an iphone app to manage the DNS, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's so funny. I just transferred 2 domains over to Godaddy from Tucows. The transfer cost + 1 year hosting was $7.67 per domain. On your site you offer the same deal for $10.50. Thanks - I'll pass!

<comment><USER2> No worries, if you're aiming for lowest price then DNSimple is not for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Domain registrations for $16 a year? Perhaps they should change their promotion title to "Hello GoDaddy".

<comment><USER10> No no, you're wrong. It's $10 with the promo, but with an additional $3/month for the DNS service that's free in GoDaddy. A grand total of $46/year, hands up!

<comment><USER11> At least it is for 10 domains, but that doesn't make it worth moving to them. Give me 10 domains for free and you may have a deal.

I am thinking about switching to Hover. TWiT has been pimping them lately. I don't see that hidden expense that this place has.

<comment><USER2> While you will see any and all expenses before you are able to transfer (since you have to select a hosted DNS plan _before_ you can transfer) I agree that I should make it a bit more obvious. I've added a note to the promotional page indicating that you will need to subscribe as well, with plans starting at $3 per month.

Regarding free domains, if I ever get to the point where I can sell domains as a loss-leader then I'd consider it, but almost every domain has a base cost, including ICANN fees and then markup from accredited registrars who offer reselling, and giving away something for nothing just doesn't make much sense to me unless there is a massive upside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 2 DNS servers does not a DNS service make.

<comment><USER2> We'll be adding more before this year is done. I think it's reasonable to expect additional redundancy for hosted DNS. I've run many, many services just fine on two name servers but I can appreciate the comfort of having more.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the killer 'internet of things' app? - <AUTHOR>

Internet of Things is gaining traction, but I don't see any killer apps beyond phone-controlled washing machines, refrigerators etc. - these are not fundamentally different 'apps'. I would love to get some perspective and understand from YOU - what do you think can be the 'game-changer' or 'killer app' for internet of things. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. <comment><USER2> I have primary responsiblity for, among other things, networking for an electric utility company. I'm sure everyone has heard of the "smart meters" that similar companies are deploying. I don't know I'd go as far as to call it a/the "killer app" but these "smart meters" have completely changed how this company operates day-to-day.

In addition, I live in the midwest and we've had some pretty good winter storms in the last month or two. One of the biggest things, I think, is that the MTTR electric service to their customers (during/after such a storm and widespread outage) has dropped to a level that they had never before experienced.

<comment><USER3> I work for a smart metering company and I can confirm that there are a lot of interesting developments in this space. In addition to the meter itself and the functions the meter can do (automatic reporting, disconnects, connects, etc) I think the possibility for incentivized home automation will be a big driver in the internet of things.

Some consumers may be interested in throttling their power when load is high on the grid for environmental or cost saving reasons. When the utility provides a monetary incentive for the customer to throttle their AC or turn off their pool pump during periods of high load a lot more people suddenly get interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Blinds open at dawn to naturally awaken, close when you leave for work or at dusk. Windows open when it is nice out but close most or all of the way when it's about to rain. Lights only on when needed. Automatic toilets. (like at some stores) Music and videos pause when you leave room.

I will mention that one big aspect of connected technology that is so attractive to me is the technology heing built into the home itself...simple things like speakers in each room.

In a home, especially a smart house, form is function...like in Biology. It's about being surrounded by stuff that adapts to change...each person's tastes/preferences and needs of the moment.

Maybe a digital bulletin board would be a killer feature. A traditional color LCD screen would be nice but expensive. Maybe an e-ink/e-paper display would work well for that. I read that they are less than 30X the price of an LCD which would be highly affordable. This would be very large and display a calendar, daily agenda, and various reminders/notes.

Nice question. It's difficult because most of the hardware really doesn't exist yet.

<comment><USER5> @ajcarpy2005 what pieces of hardware do U think are missing?

<comment><USER4> A hub for the IOT. Many companies in this space have their own base stations and the wireless router also acts as a 'hub' for many devices in this space. (Cloud printers, Nest thermostat, etc) A device with more computing capability could evolve into a sort of specialized home server for handling home automation.

If you are having guests over, this hub could schedule your Roomba vacuum to clean the floors before company arrives and not interrupt.

It almost seems like we will need an operating system for handling the complexity of all the 'peripherals,' interactions, and applications in the era of home automation.

Even though web connectivity is very popular, it may be best to have a layer of software that is a little more stable that can mediate all the applications that run on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey guybrushT....I work for relayr.de, we just launched the WunderBar on Dragon Innovation Crowdfunding, a starter-kit to enable IoT apps. We think the idea of a "killer app" is cool, but even cooler is lots of killer apps!! to enable the innovation and creative potential of all app developers. Lower the barriers and give them tools to start creating fun and useful apps that use smart devices combined with things they themselves make smart with sensor- enabled Beacons. I mean the app economy as we know it (the mulit-billion dollar one today) is only basically 5-6 years old. The key was an enabling platform for both creating and distributing these creations, across devices, across device manufacturers, where each user has more control over the device data they own. Does this makes sense?

<comment><USER6> oops, forgot the link: [http://www.dragoninnovation.com/projects/35-wunderbar- by-rel...](http://www.dragoninnovation.com/projects/35-wunderbar-by-relayr)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> oh and P.S. you can also see a an article I wrote about this topic here: [http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/01/16/app-developers- enabled-e...](http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/01/16/app-developers-enabled- enough-internet-things-era/#!tXsj6)</comment>


Show HN: Letter from You – Handwritten letter, mailed for you - <AUTHOR> https://letterfromyou.com/ <comment><USER2> Maybe some people with bad handwriting might find such service useful, or other reasons (what dugluak mentions is also a possibility; another possibility may be if you do not want to get all of the envelopes and stuff yourself). Sometimes people used to hire scribes to write stuff, so if that is what you want, then this service could do such thing, although it seem less being needing these days. Still, if anyone wants this service, now you have it; just because I don't like it doesn't mean that it is no good for anyone else either.

However, I think I do not need this; if I want a handwritten letter (for various reasons, including I am composing it while not at the computer, to include hand-written diagrams, or because I have the postal address to send it to, etc), I will do it by myself (I will still generally type the address on the envelope with a typewriter, though). If I wanted a copy of text from a computer I would probably use the printer (except that it seems to sometimes doesn't work on my computer, but sometimes it does work).

</comment><comment><USER3> What everyone is really waiting for is when the Microsoft research voice changer is finally production ready and there will be a service to call whoever you want(parents/significant other) and just pretend to be interested in what they tell you. If scheduling comes up pretend to need to sync the calendar and if anything really hard surfaces feign a work call/ cell phone trouble. People will feels much more loved and suddenly nobody will get enough of your favorite stories. As not to denigrate anyone I will provide examples of these calls made to myself. I can already picture how good it would work on me.

Yes nasmorn, Tell me more about how increasing your weekly running mileage has made you feel sluggish. So you are using soy yogurt in your shakes now, how interesting.

<comment><USER4> and then emails you a summary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminded of the movie "Her"(2013) where the actor worked at a company with a similar use case. The difference being they wrote the letter for you (by dictating it to the computer) and then mailed it to the person. Wish they could do that!!

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the movie "Her". Not sure I would use this but its a fun idea to experiment with.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand one thing. The customers know that companies are here just to make money. Then why do they think the letter is coming from the heart? Why don't they think it is some marketing guy's ploy to extract little more value/money?

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point, I think from a different angel— it depends on your use cases and how much time you want to save.

<comment><USER7> Mind elaborating some of those use cases?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't answer if the receiver should feel as if the letter should be written from the heart or not... but I think some businesses are interested in sending nice handwritten letters. I see people in jewelry and fashion industries interested in sending these crafted handwritten letters to their clients as a thank you note, etc. It seems like they value their packaging. I am still learning why some of my clients are interested in this product myself ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ . My conclusion is that they want to stand out.

<comment><USER7> I agree with the final conclusion. Thanks for answering

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of stories about "letter writers" sitting outside post offices in rural India. Only difference is that some customers couldn't write and some couldn't even read. One feature you guys can pull from that is allow users to provide a gist of what needs to be in the message and you guys come up with actual message. Some people like me lack the skill of coming up with beautiful words ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea! We can definitely implement that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is neat! I'm not sure I have a real use for it - but if it was cheaper I'd use it a few times just for fun.

I wonder if they would send me a letter of a long, encoded string? Imagine ~300 characters of hand written hex encoded bytes, framed on your wall. .. man, I kind of want that.

The question is, would they write that?

<comment><USER10> I am sure they'd do, if you ask nicely next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is ... so creepy. Humans as a Service, basically.

<comment><USER12> As opposed to monkeys as a service? All service businesses up until recently (and still most today) are literally selling the time of a human being to do something.

You want a toilet fixed, you call a plumbing service, which is a human as a service. Why is this creepier than the old-school scribes that would write what someone dictates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So is the custom handwriter an AxiDraw Pen Plotter?

</comment><comment><USER13> Could Amazon's mechanical turk be used for this?

</comment><comment><USER14> reminds me of violet evergrand</comment>


Twice a Century, India is Attacked by a Plague of Rats - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9198000/9198744.stm

<comment><USER2> _Burma's ruling junta offered a small cash reward for each rat tail delivered by the rat collection campaigns_

Great way to reward rat breeding!

<comment><USER3> Only if the reward is more than the cost of breeding the rat.

I grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada. While I missed out, my father always talked about turning in gopher tails for money. My recollection is that my older brother was able to do this, and he got $1 per tail. At that price, even in the 1970s, I doubt you could have made any real money raising gophers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title sounds a little bit misleading. :) It only happens in tiny Indian state of Mizoram. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_Mizoram_locator_map....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_Mizoram_locator_map.svg)

From the article - "more than 26,000 square kilometres throughout the north- eastern state of Mizoram, extending into the Chin Hills of Burma and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh"

</comment><comment><USER5> _The rats can produce a litter every three weeks and the baby rats reach sexual maturity in just 50-60 days._

Almost sounds like a star trek episode.

<comment><USER6> You mean "Trouble with Tribbles" ? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_With_Tribbles>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> India is a large country. This happens in a tiny part of Northeast India. The title is sensationalist.

It reminds me of the cicadas that come out once every couple of decades in the US. You don't hear "US is attacked by cicadas" when that happens!

<comment><USER8> People aren't afraid of cicadas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Australia has a mouse plague of epic proportions every four years. This video showing the mice is just incredible:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4EFgRB4bU></comment>


No Google Maps Plan for iPhone 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/25/us-google-iphone-idUSBRE88O0BY20120925

<comment><USER2> This article makes no sense. We know Google Maps won't be the built in mapping solution already, but it sounds to me like google did/will submit an app:

>[Eric Schmidt] said any decision on whether Google Maps would be accepted as an application in the Apple App Store would have to be made by Apple.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, what about <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550529> ?

I assume that if a maps app is compatible with iOS6 it would also be compatible with the iPhone 5, no?</comment>


Ask HN: How to advertise your rest API? - <AUTHOR>

So I built this RESTful JSON API (free to consume) through Mashape and wanted to know ways to market it to developers and other startups.
How do I go on about this other than posting it to /r/startups?
If it helps, here's some background info about the API: it returns data from top vacation rental websites such as Airbnb, HomeAway, etc.)
Link: https://www.mashape.com/zilyo/zilyo/overview <comment><USER2> It's not marketing as such but adding it to ProgrammableWeb would be a good start - it's the first place I go when I'm looking for APIs. Here: [http://www.programmableweb.com/add/api](http://www.programmableweb.com/add/api)

</comment><comment><USER3> Have a look at [http://apis.io/](http://apis.io/)

<comment><USER4> If you have troubles adding your own API to the search engine on APIs.io . Feel free to reach us :)</comment></comment>


How to Hack a Tesla Model S - <AUTHOR> https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-23/dc-23-speakers.html#Rogers <comment><AUTHOR> Better coverage: [http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/06/429...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/06/429907506/tesla- model-s-can-be-hacked-and-fixed-which-is-the-real-news)

Tesla's releasing a patch: [http://www.wired.com/2015/08/researchers-hacked- model-s-tesl...](http://www.wired.com/2015/08/researchers-hacked-model-s- teslas-already/)</comment>


The Fed Wants to Test How Banks Would Handle Negative Rates - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/rates-less-than-zero-is-bank-stress-fed-wants-to-test-in-2016 <comment><USER2> My jaded view would be that the banks would just borrow free money, but not pass anything onto the consumers, instead using it for more high risk trading. Seems to me that the government has a much better way to stimulate the economy: lower rates on existing student loans. If the Fed can afford to give negative rates to the banks, shouldn't it follow that the DoE can afford to give negative rates to students?

<comment><USER3> I think you are onto something but lowering student loan rates would probably just cause even higher tuition.

How about incentives for companies to pay their employees better? I know it's sacrilegious to even think such a thing...

<comment><USER4> The only incentive that will effectively cause companies to pay their employees better is more demand for labor, which is most likely to be caused by increased economic growth. Most other programs end up being more complicated and costly than earned income tax credits and other methods of redistribution.

<comment><USER3> I am not an economist but I am pretty sure you could design tax policies that make it more attractive to pay higher salaries for the average worker or maybe give them shares in the company.

Can you imagine how much demand there would be if average wage growth would have kept up with productivity? People who make 30000/year would spend much more if they had 40000/year. I don't think a CEO's behavior will change much if he has 30 million or 40 million.

Obviously this won't happen but it's a thought that should be brought up from time to time.

<comment><USER4> > _" Can you imagine how much demand there would be if average wage growth > would have kept up with productivity? People who make 30000/year would spend > much more if they had 40000/year. I don't think a CEO's behavior will change > much if he has 30 million or 40 million."_

There might be more demand for the consumer goods popular for low-middle income citizens, but then again, this could reduce capital investments and reduce productivity in the long term, thus reducing wage growth in the future. I suppose my answer is that I can't imagine how much 'demand' there would be if average wage growth kept up with productivity, largely because the economy is a complicated beast, and 'demand' is not a simple thing.

<comment><USER3> How would more demand reduce capital investment? If anything it should make it more attractive to invest. Supply and demand?

<comment><USER4> I am assuming that we hold M2 velocity of money constant for the purpose of this analysis; which is to say that I assume richer people and poorer people hold on to money for the same amount of time before re-allocating it (to stocks, bonds, consumables, durable goods, etc.). If this assumption is true, both will create the same total 'demand', but for different goods. Richer people tend to spend much less (as a proportion of their income) on consumables and personal items than poorer people; the rich also tend to invest the vast majority of their money, and that money often goes to capital investments.

Supply and demand works the same for industrial buildings, robots, software, and trains as it does for homes, couches, and cars. The primary (economic) difference between these goods is their impact on long-term productivity.

<comment><USER5> >I am assuming that we hold M2 velocity of money constant for the purpose of this analysis

Poor people have to spend money on essentials as soon as it comes in. Rich people don't. That's pretty much the simplest possible definition of being poor. So that is not a valid assumption.

>If this assumption is true, both will create the same total 'demand', but for different goods.

This can't possibly be true either. Rich people spend money on essentials _and_ on luxury goods _and_ on investments _and_ keep some spare cash on hand, because why not?

Poor people spend money on essentials, and perhaps a little distraction and entertainment.

Why would the total demand from both somehow be the same?

> The primary (economic) difference between these goods is their impact on > long-term productivity.

Which is the crux of the problem - speculative casino "investment", which is based on gaming markets, isn't economically productive. Neither is an economy that leans heavily on usury.

Productive investment in R&D, small business development, and wage growth stimulates economic capacity and increases confidence.

Speculative investment - including speculative gambling, systems of forced debt like student loans and payday lending, and asset inflation which drives up rents and property prices - destroys demand and economic capacity.

The fact that we're even discussing negative interest rates while in the middle of severe commodity deflation proves the core problem hasn't been addressed.

<comment><USER4> > _" Poor people have to spend money on essentials as soon as it comes in. > Rich people don't. That's pretty much the simplest possible definition of > being poor. So that is not a valid assumption."_

Rich people invest money in capital goods as soon as it comes in, either through a direct purchase, or because the investment bank where they hold the money gives it to someone who spends it.

> _" This can't possibly be true either. Rich people spend money on essentials > and on luxury goods and on investments and keep some spare cash on hand, > because why not?"_

I said 'as a proportion of income'; rich people spend far less on living expenses than the poor do as a proportion of income. They might have a car that is 10x as expensive, but with 100x the income to pay for it.

> _" Poor people spend money on essentials, and perhaps a little distraction > and entertainment."_

This agrees with my previous statement.

>> _" If this assumption is true, both will create the same total 'demand', but for different goods."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a good read on why this Keynesian push toward consumption is misguided, check out this 2005 article[1]. The counterargument against consumption as the driver of the economy states that saving and investment actually leads to growth. The thesis of the linked article is that a huge amount of business investment is hidden from GDP numbers since it falls under "net investment," with two very large sums (business income & business investment) netting out to a small number. When we ignore the huge amount of business investment and focus only on the net, we miss its importance.

Negative interest rates are simply the latest contortion of the Keynesians that will fail to produce the desired results yet again.

[1] [https://mises.org/library/standing-keynesian-gdp-its-head- sa...](https://mises.org/library/standing-keynesian-gdp-its-head-saving-not- consumption-main-source-spending)

<comment><USER7> I know I'm just a lowly programmer and engineer who shouldn't opine about economics very much, but I observe simply this: The "stimulus" didn't work. I find arguments about how it wasn't big enough to be null, because it isn't clear that we could have afforded much more and if the only way this stimulus works is to spend more than is possible, that is just a way of saying "it doesn't work" that saves some face but doesn't change anything about the practicality.

It's been 8 years now we've been on this policy. Nobody 8 years ago would have predicted what happened. From a scientific perspective, what you do with theories that fail to correctly predict future occurrences is simple.

But our elites _really like_ what quasi-Keynesianism tells them, so the rest of us can continue to live impoverished lives for their benefit.

<comment><USER8> Stimulus worked.

What Debate? Economists Agree the Stimulus Lifted the Economy [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/upshot/what-debate- economi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/upshot/what-debate-economists- agree-the-stimulus-lifted-the-economy.html?_r=0)

Once again: Yes, the stimulus worked. [http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-stimulus- wo...](http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-stimulus- worked-20140228-story.html)

"Internet economics" and the discussion is full of fringe theories that refer to mises.org. For them every mainstream economist is Keynesian. Even if they belong to Chicago school.

<comment><USER9> A couple trillion dollars was used to buy up securities that are realistically worth $0 in pretty much every timeframe for 100 cents on the dollar, cleaning up bank balance sheets. This allowed them to continue to speculate on all sorts of things, like housing, commodities, etc, looking for returns (some of it probably saw its way to silicon valley too). It was passed on as easy money to corporations, who mostly used it to do stock buy backs that pretty much do nothing for "the economy" while lifting the stock market.

As for employment, if you actually look at the numbers, its people over 55 who can't afford to retire doing service jobs. The participation rate is trash and young people are fucked.

#recovery

<comment><USER10> > A couple trillion dollars was used to buy up securities that are > realistically worth $0 in pretty much every timeframe for 100 cents on the > dollar, cleaning up bank balance sheets.

I have no idea what you're referring to, but if it's TARP then that's totally false. The government made a profit on the bailout.

The vast majority of the securities which the government bought up had intrinsic values higher than what the fear-driven market was pricing them at.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bailout- high...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bailout-highly- profitable-for-taxpayers-when-you-look-at-the-right- numbers/2015/01/01/dc2a05a6-8fa5-11e4-a412-4b735edc7175_story.html)

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#US_QE1.2C_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#US_QE1.2C_QE2.2C_and_QE3)

<comment><USER10> I don't think anyone thinks the assets bought in QE were worth $0. The Fed's impact was entirely at the margin (increasing the supply of investable dollars).

If the assets bought under QE were sold for 50 cents on the dollar (for example), even the most bearish investors would be lining up to buy in droves. Of course, that applies to investors with actual money behind their beliefs rather than random internet commentators who can pull valuations out of nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's assume rates reach a point such that personal savings accounts have an interest rate of 0% or negative. How is this any more an incentive to spend than it is an incentive to have a box with thousands of dollars in cash under your bed?

<comment><USER12> It's an incentive for the bank to have as little money as possible. The banks will do everything to get rid of cash, which, in theory, should devalue the currency.

Bottom line: negative rates are all about devaluing the currency against other currencies in the world so that the exports become cheaper.

<comment><USER13> I wonder what it would do to commodity prices?

<comment><USER14> Commodity prices have already crashed through the floor, seeing them crash further may actually start freaking people out.

Frankly I think we need to stimulate the demand side of things -- give people free money, and don't let the banks screw it up like the subprime mortgage crisis.

<comment><USER15> > Frankly I think we need to stimulate the demand side of things

That's a fiscal policy choice that would take action by Congress, and doesn't seem likely with the Congress we have.

OTOH, if people get to care enough about it, well, it _is_ an election year, so in principal that could change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish the Fed would research sending checks to tax payers as a stimulus strategy. Because it appears the low interest rate (and QE) strategy isn't as effective as it once was - in part due to uncooperative banks.

If/when the time comes to put the breaks on the economy, the money could be removed from circulation with a slight uptick in taxes of some sort (income, gas, tariffs, whatever) -- but unlike a normal tax, we would apply it against the Fed's balance sheet and not place it in government coffers.

Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke have called this idea helicopter money.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/11/reviving-e...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/11/reviving- economy)

<comment><USER17> Bush did this in 2008, sending rebate checks of $600 to individuals, and $1200 to joint filers.

[http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/13/bush.stimulus/](http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/13/bush.stimulus/)

Results were mixed - The dollars amounts weren't really a windfall to most people, so _some_ additional spending went on. But most people realized they would need to repay that money at tax time, and held onto it.

<comment><USER16> The difference is the source of the funds.

I'm suggesting the Federal Reserve do this -- not the federal government. The federal government can't create money, so the stimulus effect is lessened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a classic failure of aggregate demand, and it cannot be fixed with monetary policy alone. I'm struck by the continued relevance of the lessons of the Great Depression.

For example, see these lines from FDR's First Inaugural Address:

 _Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition.

>>Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.

They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish._

</comment><comment><USER19> > New York Fed President William Dudley said last month that policy makers > were "not thinking at all seriously of moving to negative interest rates.

> "But I suppose if the economy were to unexpectedly weaken dramatically, and > we decided that we needed to use a full array of monetary policy tools to > provide stimulus, it's something that we would contemplate as a potential > action," he said on Jan. 15.

The Fed continues to fritter away whatever credibility it has left by waffling back and forth on interest rates.

It raised interest rates and committed to 2.0% core inflation by 2018 just two months ago. By including this long-term negative interest rate scenario in its 2016 stress tests, it is basically admitting that there is some non-negligible probability that it will be unable to follow through on this commitment, and that banks should be prepared to weather the storm if and when it completely loses control of its grip over the direction of the short term interest rate.

The article does not actually speculate on what might happen if the Fed were to reverse its rate hike and instead lower the FFR into negative territory. I'd imagine that basically nothing would change, and that the banks would simply take a 0.25% haircut on their holdings of 3-month treasury bonds as they have been doing in Europe for the past 1.5 years. They will not pass this negative interest rate onto regular customers as this would either (a) drive them to another bank which would benefit from the new deposits or (b) force consumers to withdraw deposits and hold cash instead. Banks need these deposits to loan against, and a 0.25% "holding tax" on a relatively small portion of their holdings would not justify the loss in deposits. Banks will just eat the hit to their profit margins and life will go on as normal in the supply side of money world.

</comment><comment><USER20> What I read from the article: Relax, it is just a stress test. We aren't going to actually do this. We would only do this in the case of an emergency. We would totally do this, but only if we have to. We have to do this.

</comment><comment><USER21> I want to know how bankers would handle negative salaries.

Edit: Sorry if that sounded snarky, it was my attempt at a witty way of saying, "it doesn't make sense for there to be a negative price for provision of a scarce good, imagine if we did that to labor, like yours".

<comment><USER22> Sour Crude in some areas of the US hit negative values a few weeks ago. It means that supply has grossly outstripped demand, and that storage of the good has become the primary cost.

In the case of banking, it means that liquid cash has become so worthless (ie: too many people are saving money) such that the Banks are now charging you for the privilege of keeping the money safe.

<comment><USER21> Even so, something is fundamentally wrong if markets are signaling, "no, we'd rather you not lend us money to work with", even if the fix lies somewhere else. We should never be at a state where "forgoing the use of money so that others can invest it" is a non-scarce good.

(A charge _merely_ for having physical banknotes on demand can make sense, of course.)

In contrast, there are sane worldstates that correspond to "sour crude provides economic value less than its upkeep cost".

<comment><USER22> Yes. Which is why this is a stress test. Will the banks survive a financial crisis if the entire world switched over to negative rates?

Well, the Fed wants to know, which is why they're running this doomsday test scenario. The Fed currently expects to raise rates about 2 or 3 more times this year btw... so the scenario probably won't happen, but that doesn't change the fact that lead bankers are preparing for the worst.

In other words, the article is simply stating the following fact: big banks in America are thinking about various financial doomsday scenarios. I don't think that's a bad thing at all.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough, I assumed the angle was less "hey let's kick the tires" and more "the Fed wants to make interest rates negative", since a lot of economists have been recommending the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Skimmed the article, did a Ctrl+F, didn't see mention of essentially channeling free money into depressed bond interest rates leading to even more aggressive corporate stock buybacks which predominately benefit the top 1% investor class in the United States, without any discrenable benefit to wage- level workers or the drastic income inequality, was not surprised.

</comment><comment><USER24> So bad fiscal policy and regulatory policies have us finally at the end of the road? Going negative? Since people won't spend and are so intent on saving they will force their hand or punish them so they become good little Keynesians ?

Well the only upside is that it won't encourage people to want a digital currency based system. Those little bank notes under the bed cannot be hacked, cannot be forbidden to be spent on specific goods or people, and cannot be confiscated out of bank.

So I guess this just really comes down to a case that over the top government borrowing is pulling so much money out of the markets that they need to force private investors to put money in

<comment><USER25> An attack on cash will surely follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Congress should have never given up it's constitutional power to control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve (which is neither) should be audited and the backlash from the revelations should be used to push a revocation of the Federal Reserve Act which was passed under dubious circumstances by shady men connected to the European banking oligarchy, along with various other bad legislation pushed through by the same groups (that also pushed us into the world wars.)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Bankers are more the enemy of the people than terrorists, and just because Dimon and Blankfein need an extra 300mil bonus doesn't mean we should allow them to gut our economy. Unlike some of the placating bullshit I've seen people posting in this thread, the 07-08 crash was because of abuse, fraud, and lack of oversight, and we need to start sending the top people to jail. If not, then we are just going to have another recession, and another, and maybe a depression.

Adjusted for inflation rates are basically negative already anyway! Negative rates punish the middle class, the workers, the pensioners, and retirees, while funneling even more money to the already grotesquely wealthy uber-elite.

</comment><comment><USER27> Central banks exist to cram more credit into an economy than it would otherwise support. If the people refuse to borrow & spend, they'll just take the money right out of their bank accounts.

Even hinting at this level of meddlesome social engineering by the managers of our currency ought to elicit reactions of disgust and outrage.

</comment><comment><USER28> The way I understand it, the banks do not simply get money from the Fed. Combined with negative interest rates that would be "money for free".

It is similar to how you a credit from a bank when you buy a house. Yes, the bank gives you money but you give (the rights to) the house to the bank until you fully paid your credit back.

The banks then goes to the Fed and says: "Here, thake this house as security and print me some real money."

The Fed says: "Great house you have there; here is the money and here is some more."

In the end this leads to the creation of things that are accepted by the Fed as securities, for example houses. With negative interest rates, the Fed basically pays for the creation of such securities.

<comment><USER29> > The way I understand it, the banks do not simply get money from the Fed. > Combined with negative interest rates that would be "money for free".

I don't understand this. Under a negative interest rate scenario, wouldn't the banks be paying the Fed for the privileged of keeping their money there? Where is the "free money" coming from?

<comment><USER28> OK, we have a misunderstanding here.

I was talking about the scenario where the Fed gives out a credit in exchange for securities. This usually is accompanied with postive interest rates such that the banks have to pay back more.

Are you talking about the scenario where the banks deposit money to the Fed?

<comment><USER29> > Are you talking about the scenario where the banks deposit money to the Fed?

Yes, I thought that was what negative interest rates refer to.

> I was talking about the scenario where the Fed gives out a credit in > exchange for securities.

Are you describing quantitative easing? Because my understanding that was just the Fed buying securities (usually government ones) on the open market at market prices like any other buyer. I think the big difference in the negative interest rate scenario is the selling bank would have less incentive to then take the cash and park it in the Fed afterward.

If it's a straight bailout, my guess is the Fed would be in a strong position to set the terms so it wouldn't have to pay the bank to take the money.

<comment><USER28> I don't think that's quantitative easing.

To my understanding banks go to the Fed when they need money as in dollar notes instead of money as in credit balance. The Fed does not buy the house, it just takes it as security. Meaning it takes the right to physically get the house if the terms of the credit are not fulfilled but it won't actually do anything physical as long as the terms are ok.

This makes an interesting situation for the banks. When you have a house (or the rights to one) to use as security, you can give it to the Fed and get free money for it. Now you have more money and can do stuff.

If you don't have the house, you might actually want to get one in order to get the free money. This makes the money not so free because with a great house come great responsibilites.

If the Fed bought those houses outright it would have many houses but the Fed does not need many houses, so that wouldn't make much sense. It would work financially to some extend and increase the money supply and give incentive to build houses but it wouldn't actually directly create anything beneficial to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think we already have that... It's called "bank fees", i.e., depositors pay the bank to keep their money instead of the bank paying interest.

<comment><USER11> To what fees specifically are you referring? If you mean things like low balance fees or overdraft fees I think they're both appropriate when they're not implemented or marketed in a predatory manner.

I'm not aware of any fees that are instituted "instead of the bank paying interest" unless you're talking about something like a low balance fee on a non-interest bearing checking account.

<comment><USER2> Most big banks in the US have monthly fees for keeping your money in an interest-free checking account. This ends up costing you something like $5-25/month unless you (a) also set up direct deposit with them or (b) maintain a minimum balance that is typically relatively large. This is why I keep my money with a credit union instead: better customer service, better rates, no stupid fees.

Edit: for example, [https://www.bankofamerica.com/deposits/checking/personal- che...](https://www.bankofamerica.com/deposits/checking/personal-checking- account.go)

<comment><USER31> You can find free chequing accounts though and if you're careful enough to not get caught by overdraft fees, they're the way to go. I'm Canadian and I know 2 banks here that do it, but I'd imagine similar exists in the US?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> WTF!. Why doesn't the Fed just send money to consumers? You can't budge CPI by making Ray Dalio and Jamie Dimon richer (which is the main effect of ZIRP). There's only so much eggs and butter they can consume.

<comment><USER15> > Why doesn't the Fed just send money to consumers?

Because the Fed isn't the government, just a quasi-independent agency within the government with limited scope of operations, and "just send money to consumers" isn't within that scope.

If you think _the government_ ought to do this, then that should probably inform your votes for Congress and the President, this being an election year and those being the actors that would need to be involved in that.

<comment><USER32> I guess so, but 2008 the Fed has done a number of things it doesn't clearly have the legal mandate to do so.

<comment><USER15> There is at least one word (most likely "since" before "2008"), as well as examples and argument on the lack of legal mandate, missing from your argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Rates will never be negative when banks lend FROM the fed.

Interest rates could become negative when the banks lend TO the fed (IE parking the money overnight).

</comment><comment><USER34> First of all, there's a misconception on this discussion here. The Fed is _PAYING_ banks the Fed Fund Rate (currently sitting at 0.5%) for parking their excess reserves with the Federal Reserve overnight. So a negative interest rate means that the banks have to pay the Fed money to hold their money. You can think of this as if your bank charges you to hold your money for you.

Why would the Fed want to do this?

Banks make money by lending out deposits and charging a higher interest rate than what they pay out. To support their lending operations, banks need to hold a percentage of the asset as reserves. In recent years, banks have been holding $2.3T [1][2] more than the minimum reserve that is required. This means that the banks are sitting on the deposit and not lending it out. The excess reserve are then deposit with the Federal Reserve earning 0.5% interest. What the Fed wants to do is encourage banks to lend out the money rather than sit on it so that it stimulates the economy. (More lending->increase asset prices->people feel richers->people buy more stuff->companies hire more people->stimulates economy)

Why aren't banks lending?

There are a number of reasons why banks are not lending as much as they used to. After 2008, banks have become much more risk adverse. In addition, regulations have forced tighter lending standards on the banks reducing the amount of loans issued[3]. In addition, Dodd-Frank credit risk retention regulation now forces banks to have "skin in the game" when they issue and securitize loans and mortgages [4]. Because of this and the collapse of 2008 is still fresh in the bank's minds, they have increased lending standards and reduced their risk profile.

So, the result is that they sit a huge pile of excess reserves that they can't lend out.

In normal environments, the market resolves this problem itself. Banks that are lending will offer higher rates to attract deposits from the banks that are not lending and offering lower rates.

However, in recent decades, there's been a major consolidation of banks. Between 1990-present, 37 regional banks have combined into or acquired by the 4 large banks (Citi, JPMorgan Chase, BoA, Wells Fargo)[5]. These top 4 banks alone hold 6.46T of the $10.6T in consumer deposits. These four banks have pay an interest rate of 0.01%. The national average interest rate is 0.06%.

On the other hand, commercial lending banks, like CIT, Sallie Mae, and Synchrony, are trying to attract deposits paying over 15x the national average interest rate. These traditionally lending banks have had to set up high yield online banking operations to attract deposits to support their lending operations.

The issue is that most consumers don't shop around for high yield accounts. Many don't realize that there is such a drastic difference between the high yield accounts and their local banks.

This leads to a significant amount of assets being locked up at the large banks that aren't lending. Lenders, like Sallie Mae, end up paying higher rates on deposits and need to charge higher rates for their student loans.

What happens to consumer deposits when Fed Fund Rate goes negative?

For the past couple of years, these large banks have been trying to shed excess deposits. They have lowered their interest rate to practically 0%. The large banks have even charged large institutional depositors to hold their money [7]. If the Fed Fun Rates go negative, banks will try to charge greater fees for banking services and/or encourage consumers to move their funds to other banks. The difficulty here is that the banks want to maintain the relationship with the consumer to generate future revenue while not holding the deposits.

This misallocation and inefficiency in the deposit marketplace is what we are trying to solve with smart technology.

[1] [http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/current/](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/current/)

[2] [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EXCSRESNS](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EXCSRESNS)

[3] [http://www.urban.org/research/publication/impact-tight- credi...](http://www.urban.org/research/publication/impact-tight-credit- standards-2009-13-lending)

[4] [https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2014/11/16/a-closer-look- at-...](https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2014/11/16/a-closer-look-at-us-credit- risk-retention-rules/)

[5][http://www.upworthy.com/how-37-banks-became-4-in-just-a- few-...](http://www.upworthy.com/how-37-banks-became-4-in-just-a-few-decades- all-in-one-astonishing-chart)

[6] [http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/lbr/current/](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/lbr/current/)

[7] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-banks-to-americas- companies-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-banks-to-americas-companies-we- dont-want-your-cash-1445161083)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is hugely disappointing. Its been 8 years since the economic crash and the Fed has been trying to inflate this economy using monetary policy and we have yet to eclipse 3% real GDP growth for a whole year. They FED has been trying to create inflation and they have failed. Where is the critical thinking at the policy making/ decision making level ? At some point we have to reach the obvious conclusion that current economic policy models are broken, don't work, and we need new leadership and a fresh approach.

Obama is largely to blame for this. He chose to listen to establishment/wall street economic advisers rather than more progressive ( say Keynesian) thinkers. This is why you are seeing Bernie/Elizabeth Warren gaining in popularity. Quite sadly, the Gap between the middle class and extremely wealthy in this country have never increased more so than under Obama, a Democrat.

<comment><USER36> [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for- hig...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher- inflation/)

"When you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis."

Shorter Krugman: Cheat poor people out of their wages to make the government look like it's doing something about unemployment.

<comment><USER35> How about increase demand for labor via increasing overall aggregate demand via stronger fiscal policy ( lower taxes or high spending depending on your polics)

Keynesians criticizing Krugmeister. [http://stephaniekelton.libsyn.com/randy- wray-on-krugman-and-...](http://stephaniekelton.libsyn.com/randy-wray-on- krugman-and-the-frustration-of-the- heterodox?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StephanieKeltonPodcasts+%28Stephanie+Kelton+%C2%BB+Podcasts%29)</comment></comment></comment>


~80% of Americans Underestimate The Scientific Consensus of Global Warming - <AUTHOR> http://motherjones.com/transition/inter.php?dest=http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/views-differ-shape-earth-climate-edition

<comment><USER2> Are you suggesting consensus proves anything?

<comment><USER3> I see two points to this:

1) It's a battle about what 'Climategate' meant.

2) The muddiness of the whole debate is a demonstration of the difficulty of applying science to public policy. As such it runs along the same lines as the problems with the idea of 'evidence-based policy'. Science is a pretty humble tool when it comes to saying how things are - compared to both its power of discovery, and to how science is used as a badge to exercise power. This is so not least because understanding what science says is a very unequally distributed privilege.</comment></comment>


The perfect mouseless FreeBSD desktop - <AUTHOR> http://mapleoin.bluepink.ro/perma/ultimate-freebsd-desktop

<comment><USER2> I have a similar setup. Xmonad as the window manager, conkeror for the web browser (why would an emacs user use vimperator?), and emacs for everything else. (I also use rxvt-unicode, since it is scriptable in Perl and handles Unicode correctly.)

Some other things I use:

* bitlbee for non-IRC chat networks. I keep irssi running under screen on my remote server, and this means I am always on IRC and AIM (which I use instead of email, mostly). I get IRC/AIM/Jabber in emacs via ERC and irssi-proxy from the remote server.

* xmms2. It manages my music library like Amarok or iTunes does, but is very easy to control from external scripts. Back when I used amarok, I would always have to switch from emacs to my amarok desktop to change to a song by name. Now, with the help of a small perl script, I can hit C-c a a in emacs to change to any song I want. It's great.

The only major issue I have being mouseless is that there is always the occasional website that doesn't work right in Conkeror (hello, Stack Overflow), and I haven't found a good PDF reader yet. #xmonad didn't have much to say, so I use emacs for now. It is definitely non-optimal, though.

Anyway, I agree with the sentiment expressed in this article. Pretty desktops are nearly worthless for productivity. They may help inexperienced users achieve some minimal productivity, but once you are comfortable using your computer, they really get in the way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mouseless and WIMPless desktops are great. I've been using ratpoison for the last 6 months or so and I love it, previously I was using ION3 for about a year but I ended up not using the tabs at all, just having everything in fullscreen and using the hotkeys to switch between them. Of course it wouldn't work for everyone but when 99% of your computing time is spent in Emacs and Firefox it really does make sense.

<comment><USER2> Hopefully you are using a Firefox variant, like Conkeror or Vimperator.

Plain Firefox has an extremely unfriendly keyboard UI.

<comment><USER3> I've tried Conkeror and while I like the concept and can't really find any problem with the execution I just don't get on with it very well. Being an Emacs user I feel compelled to ignore Vimperator ;)

The ' key in Firefox (search for links) is great for navigating around without the mouse. Not that I'm religious about non-mousing of course, sometimes (especially during idle web surfing) it makes sense for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been looking for a decent mouseless wm for XP. The choices seem _extremely_ limited.

</comment><comment><USER5> I haven't quite gone the way of mouseless, but I am using vimperator. When using Firefox I was already trying to navigate using vim keybindings, being that I am in my editor for most of the day. Switching to vimperator was pretty natural.

</comment><comment><USER6> dwm, dmenu, mrxvt, w3m, xzgf, vifm, mpg123, mplayer, vim, curl

<comment><USER7> awesome, mrxvt, zsh, vim, finch, irssi

Awesome and XMonad are the only tiling window managers that handle multiple monitors in a sane fashion, and I happen to like Awesome's a little better than XMonad's. ( 9 virtual desktops per screen vs 9 virtual desktops shared between all screens )

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of suffering is for people who haven't yet figured out that "the red nipple" is the best pointing device bar none.

</comment><comment><USER9> This: <http://moc.daper.net/>

Is a great console music player.

<comment><USER3> Until you have friends over and you're trying to explain how the he'll you're meant to find and play a track ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can live with my mouse as long as I have Quicksilver.</comment>


One of Darwin's evolution theories finally proved by Cambridge researcher - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-03-darwin-evolution-theories-cambridge.html <comment><USER2> One problem when discussing species and subspecies is that there is no clear- cut definition between species, subspecies and "just some genetic diversity".

The best hint is the genetic distance between any two individuals. In general, that distance is bigger between species than between subspecies. But no clear thresholds can be applied to the whole tree of life.

Taxonomy is still mostly defined through differences a researcher can see with his own eyes (or a microscope). Much of taxonomy is in the process of being redefined through molecular methods, though.

<comment><USER3> > _there is no clear-cut definition between species_

It's not clear-cut in all cases. But it's clear cut bilaterally. Two organisms are in the same species if they can successfully reproduce, _i.e._ produce an offspring that can itself produce offspring. If they can't, they're in different species. (Multilateral fuzziness arises if A can reproduce with B, and B with C, but A not with C.)

<comment><USER4> So why are different ethnicities of humans not considered sub-species?

They developed in different geographic regions with barriers, the can interbreed successfully, and they have different appearances, not just in skin color, but in things like facial features. And yet the article specifically states that humans don't have subspecies.

<comment><USER5> Because subspecies are a particularly arbitrary taxonomical division. Some of the pragmatic reasons are that human "ethnicities" are very fuzzy because people travel around, that they are only an average of arbitrary large groups of related people, and that people tend to look meaningfully similar only to their closest relatives, and only partially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what adopting the idea of subspecies to evolutionary algorithms would look like, and if any benefits would be encountered.

<comment><USER7> It's been done before. Check out "cooperative coevolution"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My key take-away - humans have no sub-species but it can be beneficial to the species as a whole. Let's get to work people!

(or perhaps we just haven't formed divisions in the human population yet?)

<comment><USER9> I found an interesting genetic distance matrix on Wikipedia

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AGenetic_similarities_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AGenetic_similarities_between_51_worldwide_human_populations_%28Euclidean_genetic_distance_using_289%2C160_SNPs%29.png)

<comment><USER10> It generally divides along continental lines, which is mostly as expected. It's harder for genes to cross continents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems like everyone commenting on this article lost their gosh-darn minds.

Can I helpfully remind folks to try to have productive discussions instead of quibbling about the definition of "proven", and outright vitriol?

<comment><USER12> Vitriol is never justifiable for this sort of thing, I agree. I do think calling out the unscientific use of the word "proven" or "proved" is reasonable on a forum where so many people have at least some scientific training.

I studied and taught biology and chemistry in grad school in the south. Lots of people don't "believe" in evolution and will base some of that on the fact that the theory isn't "proven", without understanding the rigor that proof implies in a scientific context.

Usage like we see in the article is problematic. What if this finding were disproven later? What does that teach people who don't know any better about the nature of proof?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This may be the appropriate thread to remind people that Darwin was far from the be-all and end-all of evolutionary biology and much of what he said turned out to be actually mistaken. This isn't so much of an attack on him as a celebration that we've come a long way since the 19th century. Also, you should be suspicious of any argument involving non-geneticists invoking Darwin to justify such and such social outcome - actual modern-day geneticists don't invoke Darwin for much of the same reason actual modern-day physicists don't invoke Democritus.

<comment><USER14> I think Darwin was closer to Newton than Democritus in terms of knowing what the Hell he was talking about.

But, yes, your point stands: Evolutionary biology has moved on, and people who try to poke holes in a 19th Century version in order to discredit the whole field are misinformed and, likely, doing it with a partisan, rather than an academic, intent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Scientific theories are not "proven", that is not how science works. All theories are always and forever open to falsification. The scientific attitude is one of eternal doubt. "Proof" is something that only exists in the realm of pure math.

<comment><USER16> I think the reality is more subtle than this. Is, for example, the discovery of DNA going to be falsified? I don't think so. Is the notion that living organisms evolve going to be falsified? Again, I doubt it. The case of Newton and Einstein is relevant here. Einstein didn't "falsify" Newton but rather enriched our understanding of physics. A better model seems to be that scientific theories fit into a spectrum of certainty: a very few that are certain up to the highly speculative. That scientists need to be open-minded and maintain a level of skepticism is necessary, however, the extreme skepticism you appear to be suggesting is not warranted.

<comment><USER17> Dna could be falsified. It's incredibly low chance but it could. Just like the discovery of the bacteria that causes influenza was falsified once it became clear it's a virus. Just like the so called central dogma of DNA->RNA->protein turned out to be not so central or not so dogmatic.

And Einstein definitely falsified Newton with the famous experiment with the eclipse and with more correctly showing Mercury's orbit, both of which contradicted fundamentally with Newton. Newton is an extraordinary breakthrough, and still useful as a model, but our understanding is no longer Newtonian. And, finding a way to enrich our understanding of physics even further means finding ways to falsify parts of einstein and quantum mechanics to provide the foundation for an even deeper understanding.

<comment><USER18> I think he's trying to make a point similar to the one made by Asimov: [https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...](https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm)

<comment><USER19> Completely agree. I think people are too hung up on the "falsifiability" term and don't look at the bigger picture

As your link puts nicely: "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

<comment><USER17> We're not saying they're equally falsifiable though. We have p values and sigmas and statistics to deal with different levels of wrongness and likeliness of being wrong. Nobody's saying that DNA and a bacteria causing influenza are equally likely to be wrong or equally wrong or something. The problem is saying that dna's existence is not falsifiable. That is an incorrect statement. That's all that's being pointed out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Shut up. This is on the intellectual level of a middle schooler. This is not an interesting conversation. You are only hurting your own side. Shut up.

If I were Laura Van Holstein, I would be embarrassed of this article, especially with that headline.

Anyone who claims to have "proven" something of this nature, or to have "settled" the discussion, needs to not be taken seriously.</comment>


The Birth, Death and Resurrection of American Beer: 1873-2014 - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/377458/the-birth-death-and-resurrection-of-american-beer-1873-2014/

<comment><USER2> How they manage to deliver such low SNR ... the article has barely any content at all.</comment>


Very cool UI for a desktop - <AUTHOR> http://www.bumptop.com/ <comment><USER2> This type of thing only works if you discern from a quick preview, of what the document is. Photos work well for something like this, but documents without titles...I'm guessing not so much.

Besides "feeling compulsively clean", The only reason why we sort or organize anything is so that we can find it later. I think this has better potential if a search box was tacked on to it. That way, if you search for something, all the relevant documents rank themselves in front of you.

I can't imagine using something like this to organize code. But animating compilation there would be a neat visual (and waste CPU cycles)

However, if it's coupled with augmented reality, it would probably make an interesting way to browse.

</comment><comment><USER3> People tried this approach many times: mimicking the real world, even in 3D, while trying to organize information better on the computer.

The problem is that in real world things get messy. That is why we started using computers to begin with! :-)

<comment><USER4> I have 23 years of experience with the world surrounding us (and by "world" I mean: everything minus computers). In fact, I have hundred thousands years of experience wired in my brain.

Now, I only have a dozen years of experience with operating systems, programming languages, etc. I'm quite a technical user; I think I fit the definition of a computer geek, or power user. I have a talent to debug very nasty bugs in embedded, real-time software written in (unintentionally) obfuscated C. I can install and use OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc. I can write small Scheme programs. And still, I feel I'm trapped in a jungle I can't escape when I'm using Mac OS X or Windows for everyday tasks. Our computing world is a live nightmare. It's a terrible, ugly mess. There really is a huge impedance mismatch between our brains and our computers.

Technology is designed (mostly) by people who think they live in a perfect, mathematically pure world. I can't really blame them; because by "them" I mean "us". But the real world is not binary; it's fuzzy. As you said, it's messy. It's imperfect. It changes as our mood changes. Computers should reflect this. They don't.

I think that user interfaces that tried to mimic the real world failed because the people behind them still kept thinking as computer scientists, university professors or ubergeeks (they were lying to themselves). Some user interfaces were designed to treat the user like a five-year-old kid (hello Microsoft Clippy). Others were replicating real-world stuff that was badly designed in the first place (VCR control panels are a good example). And most of them focus on being cool demos with great eye candy (look at where desktop environments are heading; who fucking cares about translucent stuff, rotozooming windows animations, 3D?) Hollywood film-makers should take the blame here :)

At first, when I saw this project, I thought: "yet another boring, eye-candy environment with cool tricks but no real innovation." But I should try it; maybe the user experience really is improved. It's worth trying.

[Sorry about the whole rant tone of this post; itÂs not really a reply to your post either; consider it a draft of a work-in-progress essay I'll try to complete and improve over time.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very disorganized. I'll stick to `ls` thanks :P</comment>


Ask HN: What would you like to see as open source software? - <AUTHOR> What proprietary software/library/tool are you using that you'd like to see released under a open source license? <comment><USER2> Airtable</comment>


Best resources to learn Rust - <AUTHOR>

I've been hearing about Rust lately and from what I can tell it's pretty great. I am having trouble  finding good resources to begin developing with Rust. Cheers! <comment><USER2> First try this: [http://rustbyexample.com/](http://rustbyexample.com/)

Maybe: [http://doc.rust-lang.org/book/](http://doc.rust-lang.org/book/)</comment>


Computational Knowledge and the Future of Pure Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2014/08/computational-knowledge-and-the-future-of-pure-mathematics/ <comment><USER2> This is very similar to Doug Lenat's work on Automated Mathematician & later on Eurisko, and later Ken Haase's follow up work on representation languages.

[http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=ht...](http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA155378)

There were severe sticking points around the cultivation of an idea of "interesting" properties and the performance issues around evaluating a combinatoric space of possible manipulations. There hasn't been serious work along those lines since the early 90s or so.

It's annoying because especially Haase's work has some very practical insights, but Wolfram seems to be loathe to ever admit he's building off of someone else's work.

<comment><USER3> Yes! I wish there was more work in that line. Very interesting work, but also hit some major problems. This 1984 postmortem paper by Lenat and a collaborator is also thought-provoking: [http://eksl.isi.edu/files/library/Lenat_Brown-1984-why-AM- an...](http://eksl.isi.edu/files/library/Lenat_Brown-1984-why-AM-and-EURISKO- work.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can some bored billionaire please throw $100M at this project?

Talk about revolutionary, true automated pure math would be a human milestone on par with very few developments in history.

<comment><USER5> > Talk about revolutionary, true automated pure math would be a human > milestone on par with very few developments in history.

Hilbert thought so too, but it is proveably not to be ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem)), no matter how much money is thrown at it by how many bored billionaires.

(EDIT: To be clear, I am not claiming that there is no room for automated _assistance_ of pure math, only that it can never be _wholly_ automated.)

(Second, important EDIT: As Khaki points out ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170062)), I should make it clearer that many objections about what computers can't do apply equally well to show what humans also can't do.)

<comment><USER6> Wolfram's essay addresses this point...

<comment><USER5> Life's too short to read Wolfram when he gets going, so I only skimmed it; but: where? I see:

> In a sense an axiom system is a way of giving constraints too: it doesn't > say that such-and-such an operator "is Nand"; it just says that the operator > must satisfy certain constraints. And even for something like standard Peano > arithmetic, we know from Gödel's Theorem that we can never ultimately > resolve the constraints–we can never nail down that the thing we denote by > "+" in the axioms is the particular operation of ordinary integer addition. > Of course, we can still prove plenty of theorems about "+", and those are > what we choose from for our report.

and:

> But there will inevitably be some limitations—resulting in fact from > features of mathematics itself. For example, it won't necessarily be easy to > tell what theorem might apply to what, or even what theorems might be > equivalent. Ultimately these are classic theoretically undecidable > problems—and I suspect that they will often actually be difficult in > practical cases too. And at the very least, all of them involve the same > kind of basic process as automated theorem proving.

Are these what you mean? Both of these seem to amount to, "Sure, mathematicians _say_ you can't do it, but I hold out hope", an argument which is no more persuasive than one would expect to find from various circle- squarers. Less subjectively, they both seem to miss the point; the incompleteness results, for example, do not just say that certain theorems aren't clearly specified, or are equivalent to unknown other theorems, or vague things like that, but specifically that there are _true_ but _unproveable_ theorems—putting paid to any attempt at _complete_ automation.

I emphasise again that this is only a knock if you dream grandiosely of capturing _all_ of mathematics in an automated (or, as Khaki pointed out above ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170062)) that I should really be saying, even formal but human-constructed) framework; it says nothing about the feasibility of automated theorem-proving for _some_ results, and, indeed, we have a success story for one such result on the front page even now: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169686) .

<comment><USER7> Automation is doing automatically what humans manually. So your point misses the point.

<comment><USER5> > Automation is doing automatically what humans manually. So your point misses > the point.

Could you clarify what point I'm missing? It's true that I am, intentionally, conflating automation and formalisation of mathematics, activities which can be meaningfully distinguished. Is it to that that you object?

On the other hand, I think that it is also meaningful to point out that, although automation is just a version of human activity carried out by a computer, not all human activity is subject to automation—at least, not yet. The two bad examples that spring to mind are chess-playing and facial recognition (bad because both have recently come into the reach of computers).

In principle, any human activity _that we understand_ can be automated simply by giving a computer sufficiently precise instructions; but (1) if those instructions are too detailed and _ad hoc_ , then it may be just as hard to give them as to carry out the task, and (2) there are many human activities that we do _not_ understand.

<comment><USER8> > In principle

What principle is that? I've never heard of such a thing.

> any human activity that we understand can be automated simply by giving a > computer sufficiently precise instructions

Care to back up this clearly false statement? I've heard only the opposite regarding computers. Also, hard AI being nothing more than an impossibility and (political)fantasy of know-nothings is a very real option. The peak of automation will be reached within this century and it won't be ``great'' in its ability.

> (2) there are many human activities that we do not understand.

You're just being pseudo-intellectual and making up false principles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it odd that Wolfram talks about all the thousands of things that will need to be 'built in' to Mathematica for this project to work -- shouldn't you be able to implement these things in the language itself?

</comment><comment><USER10> Very cool - I'm working on a related project: [https://www.google- melange.com/gsoc/project/details/google/g...](https://www.google- melange.com/gsoc/project/details/google/gsoc2014/jaanaltosaar/5741031244955648)

I'll put up a blog post soon on this!

</comment><comment><USER6> some related and well-reasoned, well-written essays:

[http://monasandnomos.org/2012/12/05/the-idea-of-a- characteri...](http://monasandnomos.org/2012/12/05/the-idea-of-a- characteristica-universalis-between-leibniz-and-russell-and-its-relevancy- today/)

[http://vanemden.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/flowcharts-the- once...](http://vanemden.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/flowcharts-the-once-and- future-programming-language/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Absolutely fascinating. Stoked to see where this'll go!</comment>


Facebook/Twitter Cause Workforce Shortage at NNSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.novainfosecportal.com/2012/05/28/facebook-twitter-cause-workforce-shortage-at-nnsa/ <comment><USER2> This (short) article quotes the NNSA that they pay competitive salaries. If they have determined that the lack of social media may be one of the contributing factors to the extreme shortage of skilled and qualified U.S. citizens, perhaps they could increase the compensation until they figure out the limit.

I can't see how they would want to compromise on security given the sensitive nature of their work.

<comment><USER3> Another way to fix this is to fast-track immigration for the qualified foreigners.

<comment><USER4> That kind of defeats the purpose of the requirement I'd think.</comment></comment></comment>


Nokia 6 launch is perfect fly way, Nokia should thanks to Android - <AUTHOR> http://opensourceprojects.org/revival-of-nokia-nokia-6-launch-is-perfect-fly-way-nokia-should-thanks-android/ <comment><USER2> Don't see why Nokia should thank Android, when it is Nokia / HMD Global making an awesome product that could run any OS and still be a great device</comment>


Fail like you mean it - <AUTHOR> http://bigthink.com/deankamen/fail-like-you-mean-it

<comment><USER2> Video boils down to an old skiing saying: A skier says to another - "Hey, did you fall today?" the other skier responds - "No." Then the first skiers says "You didn't go fast enough or went down slopes that were way to easy."

If you aren't failing, you aren't challenging yourself enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> His intro (first few seconds of video) scared me shitless!

edit: I've basically been failing (with a couple hard-won successes) for the last 3 years and that's exactly what I needed to hear because sometimes I'm just asking myself: "Might I be DOING IT WRONG?" (maybe I am, but oh well ;P)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the warning!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary: 5 minute monologue by Dean Kamen on how and why idea -> success isn't the simple journey the media make it out to be.

Worth a watch, despite the lame title and unknown domain which led me to initially avoid it.</comment>


IBM unveils plans for Watson supercomputer - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/09/technology/enterprise/ibm-watson/index.html <comment><USER2> What about the new Watson 3U setup is more than a turn key Apache UIMA install? Seems like in all of this they gloss over how there is no free lunch and you still have to write a lot of services for your problem domain.

<comment><USER3> Apache UIMA can just do the data import & transformation.

Watson is much, much more. For one thing UIMA doesn't have any of the question analysis and answer confidence rating that the Watson DeepQA pipeline[1] does.

[1] [http://www.slideshare.net/jahendler/watson-summer- review8201...](http://www.slideshare.net/jahendler/watson-summer- review82013final)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fluff and I could really use some meat and potatoes.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just kidding. How much Khash/s this dude can?</comment>


No More 3rd Party iPhone App Frameworks? - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/gruber/status/11837642274 <comment><USER2> This is a huge blow to Adobe...</comment>


Mavericks as an iBeacon - <AUTHOR> http://www.blendedcocoa.com/blog/2013/11/02/mavericks-as-an-ibeacon/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know how you actually use this? I built the project and ran it then enabled Bluetooth on my Mac and iPhone somewhat expecting to receive a notification of the iBeacon but got nothing. Does it have to be coupled with an iOS app to work or can it send notifications even without an app installed?

EDIT: Figured it out - You need an iOS app as well. There's one that can locate and display iBeacon info here: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/locate- for-ibeacon/id7387090...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/locate-for- ibeacon/id738709014?mt=8)

I'm a little disappointed. The use case I had in mind was: Customer walks into a store with iBeacons and is given a notification that they tap which installs the app. I suppose this would have too much potential for abuse though.

<comment><USER3> Yes you have to couple it with an app. You can use the [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/locate-for- ibeacon/id7387090...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/locate-for- ibeacon/id738709014?mt=8) app. Just make sure you have the same UUID you gave to the mac app in your list of registered UUIDs on the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another free tool for iBeacon development – Beacon Scanner (OSX) [http://bits.hugeinc.com/?p=613](http://bits.hugeinc.com/?p=613)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was actually trying to figure out recently if this was possible. Could be very handy for certain app uses; I know lots of smaller stores use iMacs or other Macs for certain things.</comment>


How and When to Use ROC Curves and Precision-Recall Curves for Classification - <AUTHOR> https://machinelearningmastery.com/roc-curves-and-precision-recall-curves-for-classification-in-python/ <comment><USER2> He calls it a "relative operating characteristic curve", then links to a Wikipedia article for the properly named "receiver operating characteristic curve". Maybe I'm wrong but I've never heard the former term used.

<comment><USER3> It's receiver. I believe it came about from operators looking radar receivers and fiddling with the gain. Low gain, nothing is a target, high gain everything is a target.

<comment><USER4> I like your interpretation as filter/signal logic.

<comment><USER5> it's the first way we began thinking about ROC. My understanding agrees with the GP: this was a norbert wiener- era application of binary classifiers for "is there a submarine there, or not?" tasks.

ROC was next adopted by the psychophysics community. "Did you hear that tone, or not" is a pretty easy extension of the original task...and involved many of the same researchers after the war was over.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's New in the BCL in .NET 4 Beta 2 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/bclteam/archive/2009/10/21/what-s-new-in-the-bcl-in-net-4-beta-2-justin-van-patten.aspx

<comment><USER2> I'm glad that they took the time to go back and review some of the older parts of the library to add little helpful bits (like the new Path.Combine and Stopwatch.Restart methods). If you're not a .NET developer, this list probably doesn't look like much, but these are fixes for a bunch of small annoyances that have been around since .NET 1.1.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've written my own wrapper for Enum.Parse that has _exactly_ the same structure as their Enum.TryParse. Glad to see that they're bumping into the same problems internally that we do in the real world, and doing something about them.

<comment><USER4> Yep, I have too. More than once.

Once you have generics (C# 2.0 ) the way that enums are parsed in C# 1.0 just crying out for a simpler, type-safe wrapper. Once you have extension methods (C# 3.5) it's a good candidate for that.

<comment><USER3> Yup - I really wish that they'd had Generics from the beginning - there are numerous places where they would have made life better, which will never be changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also included are new Tuple types and Action, Func delegates that take up to 16 parameters now.

Source: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/dd942829.aspx#id040...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/dd942829.aspx#id0400063)

<comment><USER3> Ooooh, Tuples. And about time too!</comment></comment>