Achtung: Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2018/03/24/Decentralize-decentralize-decentralize.html <comment><USER2> The post repeats the myth "There is no promise that a company can make to its users that outweighs the fiduciary duty that obligates them to maximize profits by any means. The only defense of this is legislation and consumer choice."

As a counterpoint, see, for example, [1], that quotes the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision[2]: "Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not."

The argument in the OP article stands without this — it is nearly as bad that companies have _incentives_ to misbehave, as if they were _legally obligated_ to — but there is also room for improvement at the margin, if employees and customers understand that corporate actions are management's choice; their hands are not tied.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are- co...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations- obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)

[2] [https://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&v...](https://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=13-354)

<comment><USER3> It might not be strictly true in a legal sense, but it hits close to the mark in the case of facebook et al. Their business is the elimination of privacy and selling off the data and attention of their users. It simply would not be a billion dollar business otherwise.

Hobby Lobby or a car manufacturer might find a way to combine civic duties with corporate profits, social media will never be able to. Their entire business model is based on squeezing as much value as possible out of the limited attention span of consumers.

<comment><USER2> A company gets to decide what business it's in (Facebook and Google have each explored several), what its ethics are, and how these ethics apply. For example, Google is in a substantially similar business, but it is interesting to contrast Facebook's pattern of behavior with Google's.

Google isn't a paragon, and it's alarming (to me) that Google is building a universal panopticon too. But these two companies, despite the similarity in their business models, appear very different with respect not just to how they collect data, what they collect, how much they sell, and what breaches or not- breach breaches have occurred, but also how forthcoming they are about all this, and whether they act like they've got something to hide. Facebook used tricks[1] to run their iPhone app in the background when requested not to, and only backed this out when the new iOS "battery shaming" feature outed them; they uploaded Android call history with text that mislead the user into thinking they were just uploading contacts. Google has made mis-steps and knows a scary amount about us, but I don't recall this kind of systematic boundary-pushing and post-discovery obfuscation and denial.

Or contrast Lyft and Uber.

These differences in behavior aren't from a difference in business models. They are from differences in "corporate DNA", or culture. Zuckerberg was a teen when he wrote these messages[2], but most people I know don't speak or act like that even at that age. Some people advance to a different moral stage even at the end of, or after, their teen years; it looks from a longer pattern of evidence, only some of it recent, like Zuckerberg and his company may not have done so. Yes, business incentives are a factor, but explanations don't begin and end with "money made me do it".

[1] [http://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-background- data/](http://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-background-data/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs- se...](http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-secret-ims- from-college-2012-5)

<comment><USER3> That sounds to me like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. Corporate culture is the direct result of the business model of the company. You won't see facebook promote decentralised privacy, it's not going to happen just like you won't find anti-oil protests within the management of Exxon-Mobile, or a push for rail based public transport within the headquarters of Uber.

Corporate culture is a structure build on-top of their business, nobody has ever changed their business to adapt to their culture, they just get a rebranding and hire a PR team if the two happen to run into conflict.

<comment><USER4> > Corporate culture is the direct result of the business model of the company.

That's clearly incorrect. Both Walmart and Costco are in the same retail business, but their corporate cultures are quite distinct.

<comment><USER5> Those are pretty different though, Costco is a "membership-only warehouse club" who sells through wholesale.

<comment><USER6> So is Sam's Club and that's owned by Walmart?

<comment><USER5> So is their corporate culture different from Walmart's?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would like to decentralize, but projects like Masterdon are not the way forward.

If you want to decentralize the servers then you MUST also decouple user accounts from the server they signed up with. Today, if you switch to Masterdon (or perhaps someone you know is running a diaspora node), everything appears to go well until a year from now when the volunteer who was providing the server loses interest or moves on, and your account/photos/journal/social network vanishes. So you start over by creating a new account with another server... tick tick tick, gone. Rinse repeat.

Centralized services don't have this problem - even myspace is still up today, meaning this killer problem isn't on our radar when we evaluate things like Masterdon, or promote it. We don't realize this is a temporary arrangement with a clock ticking down to complete account destruction.

Hubzilla is the only decentralized social media project I've encountered that tackled this problem and sort of solved it (they call it "nomadic identity"). I hear that needing an architecture able to solve this problem was why when Friendica was gaining popularity, the guy behind it realized the whole concept was a lost cause and subsequently started again with what would later be called Hubzilla.

Regardless of whether Hubzilla itself is your cup of tea, separating user accounts from volunteer run servers is necessary before centralized social networks can be challenged, otherwise you just inoculate people against ever leaving the central networks again.

(not to suggest this is the only necessary thing, or only hard nut to crack)

<comment><USER8> Btw, it's spelled "Mastodon".

> _If you want to decentralize the servers then you MUST also decouple user > accounts from the server they signed up with._

I somewhat disagree. Email is a decentralized service that works well and its accounts are coupled to the server you signed up with. It merely requires you to do some research when picking a node² or running your own.

Ideally there would be some provision in the protocol that allows you to transfer your content and notify your friends whenever there is an address change. You could do this with a digital signature. You could also bolt on a decentralized identity that's on the blockchain, e.g. register a domain with namecoin (which is completely decentralized) and point it to your current social identity. Problem solved¹.

\--

¹ to be fair, registering a domain with namecoin is not trivial at the moment.

² perhaps pick one that requires payment, that creates an obligation to provide the service

<comment><USER9> I didn't do much research when picking a node and now I'm locked in to Gmail way more than I am to Facebook. If I stop using Facebook, I lose access to a few people I'm not actually talking to anyway. If I stop using Gmail, not only do people lose the ability to contact me, it also breaks my account on most other services I use online.

<comment><USER8> Yes. It's convenient but it's bad for privacy and locks you in. I'm not using any SSO for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see this form of argument a lot:

 _Companies have an {obligation, fiduciary duty} to maximize value for shareholders, therefore they have no choice but to do horrible things to {users, customers, the environment, civic institutions}_

Presumably, decentralization, federation and open source will eliminate the profit-maximizing corporation, thereby stopping all the horrible things.

The problem with this reasoning is that it only addresses one side of a two- sided transaction. The corporation doesn't transact with itself. The other side of the transaction is the user.

What if every user was willing to pay $5 per month for a "clean Facebook" without ads, without surveillance, without psychological profiling, without selling private data to malevolent third parties?

If every user paid $5 a month, Facebook could continue their current business with the best computer science talent and a global network of data centers.

If every user paid $5 a month, Facebook's shareholders would do fabulously well.

But of course, that's a ridiculous proposition. Only an infinitesimal number of Facebook's 2.2 billion users are willing to pay for the service.

Since a social network only has value to a user when all the user's friends and family are also on the network, a Facebook that only has a few people willing to pay won't be very useful.

Advocates of decentralized social networks need to explain (1) who will pay, and (2) how to get enough users to make the network valuable to a typical user.

Until we figure that out, we're stuck with social networks that are free for users, monetized with advertising, and regulated by the state.

<comment><USER11> We already have decentralization in three primary forms of communication: phone, mail, and e-mail. They worked great in 1998. Why can't they work great in 2018?

<comment><USER12> There are now phone plans that are paid for by selling your data and sending you spam SMS. There are e-mail providers that operate similarly, and most e-mail addresses are registered with one of them. Those things don't really work for snail mail, but few people use it anymore, because sending a letter costs more and they have come to expect communication not to cost money.

The formerly decentralized services are no longer so decentralized since "free of charge, paid for by data and ads" has shown itself to be a viable business model that users love. (Until they understand what's happening, at least.)

<comment><USER11> Your point is valid, but we still live in a world where we can call Verizon phones with AT&T phones; send e-mails to Gmail users with Yahoo; and send mail with UPS instead of USPS. With those means of communication, we still have control over our providers.

There is no control within Facebook's ecosystem. Similar with AOL, if you don't use Facebook, you're necessarily out of the loop, and I don't feel comfortable with that.

<comment> jake-low > and send mail with UPS instead of USPS

Not to detract from your point, just thought you might be interested to know that USPS actually has a legally-protected partial monopoly on the right to carry letters (18 U.S. Code § 1696).

An exemption was added in 1979 allowing private carriers to deliver "extremely urgent" mail. This is why UPS and FedEx express mail envelopes bear that text on their front.

Apart from this exemption, USPS, FedEx and the like are only allowed to deliver 'parcels', not 'letters', though I'm not sure where the distinction is legally defined.

More info: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes)

<comment><USER11> Interesting, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that these points have to click before people move from FB:

 _Simple_ -> Start the app and commicate (on all devices)

 _Minimum features_ -> Feed, Chat, Groups, Events, Friends

 _Fast_ -> No one will use a slow App

 _Ownership_ -> All self-owned data can be removed from everywhere

 _Decentralized_ -> And no one else can remove your data

 _Privacy_ -> With simple sharing control

So far, I've not seen anything that has all of these.

<comment><USER14> Also :

\- Handle DMCA notices and law enforcement requests for taking down illegal content.

\- Hackers compromising accounts.

\- Private data being compromised because of Wordpress like security bugs.

\- Spam / Bots spreading junk and fake news.

\- Permanently deleting content.

\- Concerns around terrorism, grooming, child pornography etc

These problems will become major headaches at scale.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure many people require those to move from FB.

<comment><USER16> No, but some of these may be legally required in order to operate as a competitor to Facebook.

<comment><USER17> I don't think anyone is saying the alternative should operate as a business competitor to facebook. I think the idea would be for the service to be fully decentralized, where no one has the power to remove anything

<comment><USER18> The advantage of Mastodon is that people _do_ have the power to moderate and take things down.

But only on instances they are administrators off.

So while I can take down illegal content on my instance I can't go to the japanese instance and ask them to stop posting all those anime girls. They follow their own rules and if I don't like them I can just not allow their content on my server.

If you want to follow both my server and the japanese server you'll have to find an instance that doesn't ban either of us or run your own.

(Though I trust that there are a good number of lightly administrated instances that it'll be easy to find one before you're forced to run your own)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Decentralization is mostly about power distribution, it doesn't imply privacy. There are a couple of decentralized projects that are worse for privacy (for the sake of decentralization) and ended up being used for OSINT.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't imply it's about privacy. I talk entirely about power distribution in this article.

<comment><USER20> Do people who run the centralised, private Signal app have more power over the user than people who run decentralised, non-private Mastodon instances?

Or do Mastodon people say it's strictly for broadcasting and encourage people to use proper end-to-end encrypted messaging apps for private communication?

<comment><USER21> The latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article like so many others perpetuates this idea that Facebook and others are selling your data. You can more or less disprove they are doing this with a little critical thought.

Facebook has a disincentive to sell data: if they sold user data, they no longer have exclusive control over it and somebody else can profit off their efforts in its collection. The value of Facebook is they have lots of eyeballs and they have lots of data on what those eyeballs like to see. If they simply sold this to an advertiser, why would the advertiser want to come back and pay them in the future? What they actually do is let advertisers target on this data, but the advertisers never actually have direct access - they can only assume that the users they target are ones that have the attributes they requested.

So what is Facebook selling? The same thing any other media platform, from newspapers to TV, is selling: your attention. Are you the product? Kind of. But just like any other marketplace, Facebook knows that if their platform doesn't provide value you're not going to come back and then neither will the advertisers.

Personally I think Google has played this balance far worse, by comparison: their interaction time with their users is so small that they have gotten more and more spammy to wedge into the little bit of your attention they get. Facebook gets a lot of user time and thus can be far more judicious on when and how they show you advertisements.

<comment><USER23> Except you're exactly wrong in that Facebook has been directly selling data while Google has not. Cambridge Analytica was crunching specific user data, not just buying aggregate targeted ads.

That's what this whole uproar is about: _they 're allowing wholesale data access, not aggregated targets_ through their API.

Google, whom you criticize, is the one actually only selling aggregates.

<comment><USER24> Are you sure they are not? We only knew for sure Facebook was once there was a whistle blower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _Companies like Facebook, publicly traded, have a legal obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. Private companies with investors are similarly obligated._

 _There is no promise that a company can make to its users that outweighs the fiduciary duty that obligates them to maximize profits by any means._

Not true. [1]

[1] [https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s- co...](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies- legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders)

<comment><USER26> Even if it were true, couldn't a company argue that they want to put users before shareholders to prevent a public fallout like we are seeing with Facebook? Which could be seen as risk management.

<comment><USER25> If it were true, then there would have to exist at least some framework to judge what counts as maximizing profits. Maximizing the profit this quarter may require a vastly different course of actions than maximizing the profit over the next ten years. So depending on exactly what would fall under maximizing profits, this may or may not be a valid argument

But fortunately we don't have to worry about that, the people writing laws are not all idiots and it would be a pretty stupid idea to put requirements into laws that are essentially impossible to fulfill due to a lack of psychic powers and time machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lots of people are working on this problem. I too am even trying to spin up something simple on top of Tor v3 hidden services.

I think too many implementations are focused on the wrong things. Too many implementations are hung up on the distributed storage part. These can be plugged into abstractions as new ones come about. In the meantime, just because it says "decentralized" doesn't mean that pieces can't be centralized on some people's computers. I think when most people say that they mean off the cloud and into the home. Also, too few implementations care enough about anonymity.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's a good resource for setting up self-hosted alternatives: [https://github.com/Kickball/awesome- selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted)

<comment><USER28> There are also projects like [https://yunohost.org/](https://yunohost.org/) and [https://cloudron.io/](https://cloudron.io/) which aim to lower the technical requirements to get started with selfhosting as well as lower the ongoing maintenance burden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Grep'd the articles _and_ the comments (thus far) and I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned matrix,

Check it out - matrix.org

PS: Even more importantly, the Host Identity Protocol. The US army has been using it for over 10 years. If that doesnt speak volumes ...

<comment><USER18> Matrix still has too many problems. Synapse takes a buttload of memory to run (there is even warning in the README.md), all the clients are a joke and E2E encryption isn't part of the protocol, worse, it's an optional setting, not even default for private chats. Last I checked E2E isn't even available for group chats.

Plus, the author talks about Mastodon, which solves an entirely different problem than matrix to begin with.

Matrix doesn't even support ActivityPub, which is basically the W3C approved standard for federated social activity, it should be easy for Matrix to integrate into the fediverse.

Until then I won't consider matrix as a serious solution to anything.

<comment><USER30> To be fair, matrix's synapse server was always only supposed to be the reference server...reference servers aren't always built for top-notch performance, just for admins/implementors to get understanding of protocol, etc. To address performance, the team is busy building a matrix server in Go; see [https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite](https://github.com/matrix- org/dendrite)

I do agree that mastodon and matrix - of which I'm a fan of both - solve for different scenarios. Mastodon replaces twitter; sort of short social media bursts/broadcasts. While matrix replaces slack (and other chat platforms like xmpp). I've always seen matrix as a modern-day irc; also allowing expansion and enhancement via plugins, and programmability like good ol' irc is/was.

ActivityPub was only recently approved, so can't expect every project to instantly support it; though to be fair it has been on many projects' radar well before its approval by w3c. I truthfully haven't followed the latest matrix news, so not sure if support for activitypub is coming soon. I do feel that supporting activityPub really make it that much more powerful of a protocol AND platform...but i'm sure that's not a trivial matter.

If you haven't played around with clients for matrix (such as the Riot clients), i suggest you give it a try. Riot keeps getting better and better with each new release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mastodon does everything signed and unencrypted. This includes followers-only and private messages.

I can't in good faith recommend Mastodon.

<comment><USER15> Pardon my naivete towards Mastodon, but unencrypted at rest (i.e. an implementation thing) or in transit (i.e. TLS not supported in the protocol)?

<comment><USER32> Not end-to-end encrypted. TLS is recommended (or even required, not sure), but the instances involved can see the contents of private messages.

<comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, if the messages themselves were encrypted externally, would this solve most people's concerns? Or is the metadata that is leaked (I assume to/from, timestamp, size) also unacceptable? Also curious for those that have this beef with Mastodon, would transit anonymity help alleviate some of the concerns w/ data transparency?

<comment><USER31> Note metadata includes where someone is posting from.

Connect to post something without encryption means your location is revealed to anybody observing the network.

This is indeed dangerous.

<comment><USER33> >Connect to post something without encryption means your location is revealed to anybody observing the network.

Where are you taking this from? You think connecting to your Mastodon server you have an account on somehow broadcasts to the whole network?

<comment><USER31> If a message is sent through an unencrypted connection, anybody sniffing the network gets:

\- Your message

\- Your account name

\- Your ip address (thus location)

\- The time at which this happens

If the message is sent through an encrypted connection, but the federation connection between the servers is unencrypted, a powerful enough observer could still deduce the above.

<comment><USER18> A powerful enough observer will be able to observe two of the three properties no matter if TLS is used or not.

Most Mastodon servers have TLS, exceptions usually included instances deployed to localhost.

Mastodon doesn't technically require it but all clients I've seen do and the web interface relies on some features that are only available in a trusted context (HTTPS and localhost)

I don't really see the problem though, which instance you sign up to is up to you. You _can_ sign up to a HTTP-only instance if you want.

The privacy of your data is in the hands of your local administrator more than any powerful observer (and servers you send messages too, like with email, for which all your complains are valid too since it functions similarly).

<comment><USER31> >Mastodon doesn't technically require it

That's a serious issue. If plaintext is allowed, then expect getting people to downgrade to plaintext will be trivial, because "it just works".

It's a serious mistake, but a well understood one by today. Mastodon is relatively new, and they should have known better than to do this.

<comment><USER18> There is no downgrade. Mastodon will in it's default configuration not allow non-HTTPS connections. The protocol doesn't require it, so Mastodon technically doesn't. With a few code changes you can do that.

So yes, Mastodon _did know better_ but it's not an inherent property of ActivityPub to use HTTPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > _We don't want to have our people's opinions radicalized_

Why not? Not a fan of the 60s?

</comment><comment><USER35> Weird... I always thought Google was inescapable, but I cannot get a single data point to display on that tracking map. I should note I am currently (and frequently) signed into Google and Google maps normally seems to know where home is.

<comment><USER36> Same. At /maps/timeline it says "Location history is off", so I guess that's something that needs to be enabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Facebook should split into Facebook the aggregator and Facebook the content hoster. You could talk about a third piece that is Facebook the content provider, which is for providing things like gifs, templates, memes, emoji, games, and other stuff like that. Because Facebook hasn't completely broken from open web standards those types of content providers already exist today.

Aggregators would be where you go to set up your friend list and see your feed. It could look and feel like Facebook does now. It would have an open standard protocol that content hosters would use if they wanted to be aggregated. This could still be an add driven business, but subscription, self hosted, and DIY solutions could exist too.

Content hosters could either charge a monthly hosting fee, or they could serve up their own adds. Self hosted and DIY solutions could also exist.

The big benefit to this would of course be the competition. Since it's an open standard anyone could be a content host, and anyone could be an aggregator.

To make extra sure there is competition, and this could come in a phase two after the initial splitting up of Facebook, there should be open standards for exporting and importing friends, follows, likes, etc. to and from aggregators, and open standards for importing and exporting content from the hosters.

Speaking of follows and likes, there could also be aggregator aggregators (AAs). People could opt in to publicly and anonymously share their likes and follows and the AAs would consume those and report on trends that cross aggregator boundaries. Anonymity could be much more protected this way while still giving us that interesting information about what is trending.

One tricky part of this is how do I as a content author only allow my friends to see certain posts of mine? It would have to be with encryption. My content provider could keep public keys of my friends and only my friends (well, their aggregators) would be able to decrypt my posts using my friends' private keys. I can see some challenges and holes in this, but it doesn't seem any worse overall than how Facebook protects privacy now. Open implementations and peer review could get us to better-than-Facebook privacy quickly.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tangential, but what is it with people using German words, randomly? "Achtung" here, I saw some (US, afaict) people on Twitter try to establish "#forwärts" yesterday..

Is there a connection between any recent event and German(y) that I missed?

<comment><USER39> Pourquoi-Pas?

Some words, phrases and symbols from foreign languages can become internationally-famous so almost everybody can understand them and also gain meme-like semantic self-emphasize.

¡No pasarán!

ॐ

PS: I have also heard it's quite popular among French metal bands to use German in their names to sound scarier (e.g. Blut Aus Nord).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Or just build a dapp on eos and solve all the issues at once : decentralize, data ownership, users can make money by choosing what they want to share with advertisers, everyone is essentially an owner.

<comment><USER40> Let users generate tokens based on how much data they choose to share. Advertisers purchase tokens and proceeds are split between token holders based on their share of total tokens. Everyone wins - users are in full control, advertisers reach an audience, everyone gets paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is nice, but also naive. The current battle against data grabs is not about getting rid of data grabs, it's about giving the government control over data grabs, so they can compete with China and Russia when it comes to knowing their citizen. Facebooks problem is that they don't want to give the government this kind of access. So now they get negative PR, regulatory probes, etc.

Yes, decentralization would be the right solution. But this will always be discouraged by governments and corps alike, basically by everybody who has already lots of power and wants to have more power over your life.

As always you as a single person can choose to either be part of the ant swarm, giving someone else all power over you, but by that sharing in the ant swarms gains and luxuries as long as you are loyal, or by being self reliable but therefore also really be required to build everything by yourself that you really need and want to have.

If you decide for the first part there is really no reason not to give the person who has power over you also access to all your data. It's part of how a group works. And if the people at the top don't like you anymore then they will find ways to kick you out no matter what you do or keep secret. On the other hand its also part of the deal that the people above you don't use their power to peek into your life as long as you stay loyal and support their goals.

So FB either needs to accept to only live on the fringe instead of being the market dominator, or they need to accept that the government has bigger power and yield to them.

The only thing I feel one needs to be wary about is parasites who wants to keep the whole cake without sharing even a little bit with people below them. Trump is one such example. With these people you can't do either of the two paths, there's only the battle for who's stronger. And if you are like most people you don't really enjoy being in a constant struggle for survival.

It might very well be that Zuck is fighting against Trump here, and then that's the parasite situation and all Zuck could do is move out of the US, give up that market until Trump is gone again.

</comment><comment><USER42> But how is federation going to protect my privacy? E.g. will my friends list not end up on different servers of unknown origin?

<comment><USER8> Only your server needs to know your friends list. Unless you decide to publish this information to your friends. You are right that you are putting a certain amount of trust your friends' server choices. That's why having several trusted, non-commercial entities that run these nodes is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yeah, Mastodon and others are Federated which means the same thing that happened to email (gmail, which everybody uses) will happen there.

Instead, we should make the developer tools EASY to create P2P (not federated) decentralized apps. This is what we are working on:

[http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter- wit...](http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter- with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8)

Also, d.tube is a pretty good decentralized YouTube clone, worth a mention.

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be more convincing if the author had their Mastodon account info at the bottom, not their Github / Twitter account.

Also I'd like to hear the author's thoughts on GPG's viability, as discussed below:

[https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/](https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/)

 _Eventually I realized that when I receive a GPG encrypted email, it simply means that the email was written by someone who would voluntarily use GPG. I don't mean someone who cares about privacy, because I think we all care about privacy. There just seems to be something particular about people who try GPG and conclude that it's a realistic path to introducing private communication in their lives for casual correspondence with strangers._

<comment><USER44> The link next to the bird icon is sircmpwn's Mastodon profile, not his Twitter account.

<comment><USER20> > not his Twitter account

I stand corrected. I'll have a look at Mastodon.</comment></comment></comment>


Global Passport Power Rank 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php <comment><USER2> The "mobility score" is just a number of countries you can visit without visa. But that's a poor indication of what passport you'd like to own.

For example, Singapore is 4th on the list, 166 countries. But in order to live in any of these countries, you need a visa. On the other hand, Romania is 9th on the list, but Romania belongs to EU so its citizens can move to any of other 26 EU countries without visa. Doesn't it make their passport more powerful?

Hong Kong citizens can move to China, so while they can go without visa "only" to 154 countries, they can decide to move to China and freely move around the area of 10 million square meters, which is twice bigger than EU. Doesn't it impact the power of their passport?

I guess what I'm saying is: this list is too simple to take it seriously.

<comment><USER3> SoverignMan's passport index is different, it uses 'area' \+ access to certain countries (so it comes pretty close to what you are asking for):

[https://www.sovereignman.com/passport- ranking/](https://www.sovereignman.com/passport-ranking/)

<comment><USER4> Hmm, maybe then use 3 axes? 1 for the number of countries you can enter, one for the area of the country you can enter, and 1 for length of visa (maybe not just length though). Take the line of best fit, see which passport is furthest above that line?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This site has been submitted to HN a dozen times but the only time it got much discussion was in 2015:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9481026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9481026)

Here's a couple related links submitted in the last year with significant discussion:

"Traveling the World on a Third World Passport":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778108)

"Show HN: Compare benefits of a second passport based on the one you have":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17577386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17577386)

<comment><USER6> I think one of the most interesting and actionable takeaways from the previous discussions is that holders of weak passports with a US, Canada, or EU tourist visa gives tourist access to an increasing list of developing countries. The thinking seems to be, "If the US/UK/EU/Canada vetted the person, it's good enough for us, and that person would probably prefer to overstay in those places, not here." With visa validity periods trending upwards of 5-10 years, it's a good way to temporarily increase passport power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Comparing passport power by total number of countries you can enter is a bad metric.

The UK has a much higher rating than Chile because Britons can enter countries like Lesotho or Namibia visa-free. On the other hand, Chilean citizens can enter both Russia and Iran without a visa, which I think makes it more powerful.

<comment><USER8> IMO, the countries passport holders can travel should be weighted by: 1) their size and economic strength 2) attractiveness as a tourist destination.

For example, right now, Estonian and Polish passports have the same score. However, Estonians do not need visa to travel to the USA, while the Polish need it. This is arguably a significant difference.

How exactly countries should be weighted is a separate debate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the country welcoming list,[0] Greenland is coloured black like North Korea and Afghanistan. But surely as part of the Kingdom of Denmark, it should fall under the same rules as Denmark? Or since it is not in the EU, maybe not?

Speaking as a Dane, I get unsure. But it is a vast part of the map that looks completely uninviting.

Edit: According to Wikipedia, Greenland follows the same policy as the EU, and thus Denmark.[1] Additionally, it seems there is also a Greenlandic and a Faroese passport, although abroad they count as a Danish passport.[2]

[0] [https://www.passportindex.org/byWelcomingRank.php](https://www.passportindex.org/byWelcomingRank.php) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_Schengen_Ar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_Schengen_Area#Visa_exemptions) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_passport#Physical_appea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_passport#Physical_appearance)

<comment><USER10> The country corresponding to the selected passport is always shown as black.

<comment><USER9> I did not select Greenland (nor Denmark for that matter, but Denmark was not black), since it's not possible to select Greenland.

<comment><USER10> Ah I misunderstood. Maybe it corresponds to "no data"?

EDIT: probably a bug with their data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Add passport(s) to your current one, and see your score improve.

Interesting, but it's not so easy to "add" a passport to you.

<comment><USER12> I know some people (freelancers mostly) who seem to be collecting passports as some kind of expensive complicated beurocratic sport.

Would also be good to see a relative rating on how difficult/lengthy/costly the process is to get each of these passports. I'm sure there's a known combination of passports that gets you optimal country coverage with minimal effort/cost.

<comment><USER13> 1) Malta - 1.3 million euros. Half of it is in investments so reedeemable. 1 year. No physical residency required. European Union, Schengen Area

2) Portugal - 350k euros OR 500k euros. All in property so reedemable. 6 year. No physical residency required, but property counts as residence and gives EU visa for all 6 years until citizenship and passport is possible. European Union, Schengen Area.

Can also employ 10 Portugal citizens for work. Likely as low as 90k euros per year. Obtains EU visa and by year 6 you an get passport.

3) Cyprus - similar to Malta and is EU but not Schengen Area. Might take a little longer too.

4) Austria - informal kickback process, but follows due process. 10 million euro+

5 - 10) Caribbean countries that are not EU so I don't care. Low 6 figures. Known to revoke purchased passports when indicted of a crime somewhere else in the world. Long after having a clean background check and being approved and not being accused of any crime.

<comment><USER14> If I'm not mistaken, Maltese citizenship would allow one to live in Britain even if Brexit happens. So I would call its passport the most valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, what good is this list? To make the people on top feel smug, and the people on bottom foment revolution to change their country?

It's not like you can easily choose your passport like choosing a sports team or college or something.

<comment><USER16> If you look at the source (arton Capital) their business is "high net worth investors" \- so this list is for their high net worth clients to choose which country they want to invest in.

<comment><USER17> Or get citizenship in.

<comment><USER16> Sorry my "invest in" was supposed to be in air quotes - too late to edit. This is exactly what they want. However they're less concerned about actusl citizenship and more with the benefits (tax status, access to countries/properties)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting.

#1 (UAE) beats the #2 ones (Finland etc.) in the following countries: Burundi, Chad, China, Congo, Congo (DR), Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nauru, Niger, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen. Mostly a handful of African countries and a handful of countries known for human-rights abuses. As for the latter, not necessarily something to be proud of.

But measuring "power" by number of countries treats countries equally. More interesting would be to calculate by the number of _people in the world_ you can visit without a visa... or number of people multiplied by GDP per capita -- to reflect the fact that a passport which allows you access to richer countries could arguably reflect more "power".

</comment><comment><USER19> Looking forward to seeing the reranking after Brexit

<comment><USER20> So, never, then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The ability to enter another country as a tourist without a visa (or with some electronic visa) is cool. Obviously problematic for a citizen of a country with few such agreements.

What I find far more interesting personally is the ability to reside or do business meaningfully in another country in virtue of the bilateral agreements between the two countries.

Some examples of which I have read here or elsewhere. \- US citizens can establish their own business in NL \- US citizens can overstay Schengen limits in PL due to anterior bilateral agreements \- reduced time to permanent residency in CH for CA or US citizens.

</comment><comment> yoz-y Why is electronic travel authorization (such as ESTA) ranked worse than eVisa or Visa on Arrival?

I always feared (maybe for no reason) that with visa on arrival one can still get refused, but now you are already in the country.

<comment><USER19> You can still get refused entry with an ESTA

<comment><USER22> Doesn't that hold for a e-VISA too ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A required visa in itself does not have to be problematic? I have been to (for me) required visa countries like Russia and China without any problem. Cannot even remember I applied for visa (but it shows required here, so I guess I did - both were some years ago). At worst its just a bureaucratic process.

But I guess its difficult for some countries. So adding some indication of the difficulty to get visa for the 'missing' countries would certainly add value.

</comment><comment><USER24> A bit off-topic but the great majority are center-aligned with a few exceptions:

Switzerland

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Peru (two columns aligned left)

Sweden

Brazil

and a couple others have some left aligned layout.

But the great majority regardless of script do center-alignment.

</comment><comment><USER25> Having a Mercosur passport (Argentina) and EU passport (Spanish) I think I have a pretty sweet deal - Spanish passport gets me visa free to most of the countries in the world, and the Argentinian passport gets me to Russia visa- free (hi Putin!). And then on top of that I can live in any EU country and also live and work in any (or most I think) Mercosur countries without having to worry too much about work visas, etc.

When I see the kind of hoops that some of my fellow countrypeople need to go through just to find work abroad (i.e. come to the EU) I really really appreciate that my mam was intelligent enough to tell my 15 year old self to go get the citizenship when we could.

<comment><USER26> I've got US and German passports, vehemently opposed to Brexit for purely selfish reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Neat! I always find myself trying to get a better look at the designs of different passports whenever I'm at the airport.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, passports are up there alongside currencies in that countries are increasingly putting a lot of effort into the designs to show off their culture, history, art, etc. Too bad the fear of forgeries prevents the artwork from being more commonly shared...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28>
      Global Passport Power Rank

      Passports of the world are sorted by their total Mobility
      Score, which includes visa-free and visa on arrival
      privileges. The higher the MS score, the better global
      mobility its passport bearer enjoys.

      Mobility Score (MS) – includes visa-free (VF),
      visa on arrival (VOA), eTA and eVisa

</comment><comment><USER29> The rank it gives is purely one dimensional yet comparing passport power is multidimensional. For example I compared Canada, Australia and UK. Canada got 166 just above the others but looking at the compare list some countries give visa free for fewer days than the others. Is that more or less "power"?

</comment><comment><USER30> "UNITED ARAB EMIRATES" 1st yeah that's some bs, just take the example of a EU passport where you can live and work indefinitely in any EU country without visa.

<comment><USER31> EU benefits have nothing to do with the passport

<comment><USER30> To hold a passport you must be citizen. If you're let say American and German, you have a EU passport which is very powerful since you can live and work in any EU country.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passports_of_the_European_Unio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passports_of_the_European_Union#/media/File:Visa_requirements_for_the_European_Union_citizens.png)

My point is it's better to hold a EU passport than a UAE one.

<comment><USER32> It's a power ranking. The score is based on _travel_ ability. Living and Working isn't factored into travel, because that's not the point.

<comment><USER6> There's value (and power?) to the length of stay though. It's a good starting measure to see which countries can you just hop on a plane to without a visa, but after getting off that plane, what if you want to stay for a while? The UAE passport allows 30 days in Korea or Japan, while many other visa-exempt passport holders have 90 days. The Schengen zone is a special case where the entire group of countries together allow at most 90 days every 180 days. As a tourist traveling between those countries, it would be useful to not need to leave the EU every 3 months, and go back after another 3 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So basically, economic power translate into geopolitical power. Or vice versa. Is there a highly developed nation that isn't ranked highly on the visa-free list?

</comment><comment><USER34> Why is Greenland dark grey? Greenlanders are Danish citizens and get (optionally) a variant of the Danish passport with the same privileges and restrictions.

<comment><USER35> The creators of the site just don't seem to take overseas territories into account, except for the US ones. French Guiana or Réunion are grey as well for example while Hawaii and Alaska light up at the same time of the rest of the US.

<comment><USER34> That appears to be right. At a minimum a neutral color should be applied if the rank has not been assessed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wow, Emiratis made major gains in 2018.

</comment><comment><USER37> Not coincidentally the bottom six positions on that list are also the countries the US and NATO decided to invade during the previous two decades.

Can't have those people you want to kill leaving the country now can you?

<comment><USER38> Not so much about leaving the country, as about knowing who from there is in _your_ country. Most of the point of requiring a visa for entry (at this point in globalization when very few countries are ever actively at war) isn't stopping people from entering, but rather knowing exactly who's entering, and then _being able to_ track them from the time they enter until the time they leave, if you feel the need to.

As well, when you don't trust a foreign government to ensure that people only get passports for their own identity, you can't be sure that a random person coming in with a passport from said country isn't _actually_ a Person of Interest. So, you require they fill out a passport-like form in your own country, and then try as best as you can to figure out if they are who their passport says they are. That's a visa.</comment></comment>


First Paper to Link CO2 and Global Warming (1856) - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/first-paper-to-link-co2-and-global-warming-by-eunice-foote-1856/ <comment><USER2> The idea of a link between CO2 and a greenhouse effect was expressed before that, by Claude Pouillet in 1838 (but maybe not published in a paper).

sources: [https://jancovici.com/changement-climatique/croire-les- scien...](https://jancovici.com/changement-climatique/croire-les- scientifiques/depuis-combien-de-temps-sait-on-que-lhomme-agit-ou-agira-sur-le- climat/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect)

"1838: Claude Pouillet, a French physicist, attributes the natural greenhouse effect to water vapor and carbon dioxide. He concludes that any change in the amount of water vapor, such as CO2, is expected to result in climate change." (google translate).

edit: I think it was this paper [https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k95017r/f1.image.r=Pou...](https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k95017r/f1.image.r=Pouillet,+Claude- Servais-Matthias.langFR) but I have not checked (cannot Ctrl-F).

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always found climate scepticism strange, because of its emphasis on refusing to accept the connection between rising temperatures and CO2. This really seems to be the least defensible position which could be chosen. The "scepticism" is disputing really basic science which has been well understood for a long time, and it's in that sense that calling it denial is accurate. It would be much more defensible to accept a lower level of climate sensitivity, but dispute the mechanisms which cause higher sensitivity, or possible future positive feedback effects.

<comment><USER4> > I've always found climate scepticism strange, because of its emphasis on > refusing to accept the connection between rising temperatures and CO2.

The connection isn't disputed, the causality is. Look at this graph:

[https://totheleftofcentre.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/400000...](https://totheleftofcentre.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/400000yearslarge.gif?w=1000)

You can see that most of the time, temperature rises _lead_ increases in CO2. This implies that rising temperature increases CO2 levels, but not necessarily the other way around.

If you zoom out even further, the correlation isn't clear anymore at all:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cx5-osJUkAAPkF8.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cx5-osJUkAAPkF8.jpg)

Lastly, what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures? Even without humans, this planet would go in and out of ice ages on semi-regular intervals. We can't really control that. Life adapts. In the interest of our descendants, we had better develop technology to deal with a tougher climate, rather than cut down on emissions so that maybe ten or twenty generations can live with a somewhat smaller fallout of manmade climate change.

<comment><USER5> > Lastly, what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures? Even > without humans, this planet would go in and out of ice ages on semi-regular > intervals. We can't really control that. Life adapts.

The issue is the rate of change, which is unprecedented. The path we're currently on will devastate ecosystems and cause a huge drop in crop production.

<comment><USER6> If I may add to your sentence, specifically the last claim in your quote is what puts their train of thought on a collision course with reality.

Life adapts, when it can. The rate of change you mentioned ensures that a majority of life will not be able to adapt and it's not impossible that another K-T level extinction event is already taking place.

Geologically speaking, the speed at which the Earth is changing from human- induced climate change could just as well be a meteorite impact. Looking at global conflict resolution ability I fear that we have no hope to stop it.

<comment><USER4> > Life adapts, when it can. The rate of change you mentioned ensures that a > majority of life will not be able to adapt and it's not impossible that > another K-T level extinction event is already taking place.

It's also "not impossible" that a meteorite wipes us all out tomorrow. Which serious scientist is predicting a K-T level extinction event?

Serious predictions are talking about a couple of degrees over thousands of years. That's not out of the ordinary in terms of variance for life on earth right now. Sure, some species may have to migrate, some will go extinct one way or another, but not a K-T level event.

<comment><USER7> > Serious predictions are talking about a couple of degrees over thousands of > years.

Serious predictions are talking about a couple of degrees over _the next century_. That's very different. It may be hard to separate the climate change extinctions from the regular habitat destructions that are already ongoing, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's some old German food/nutrition researcher I read who mentioned in passing that co2 acted as a blanket in the atmosphere warming the planet. I can't remember the author or title of the book, it was something from the 1800s I was skimming from archive.org.

I remember being dumbfounded at the time and pasting the excerpt to some friends on IRC. People have known atmospheric co2 warms the planet for a _very_ long time.

This book wasn't even about climate, it was about diet and evolution. It turns out if you want to talk about the history of evolution, you have to talk about the atmosphere and how it varied going through oxygen and carbon-rich periods.

<comment><USER9> From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#History)

«The existence of the greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824. The argument and the evidence were further strengthened by Claude Pouillet in 1827 and 1838 and reasoned from experimental observations by Eunice Newton Foote in 1856. John Tyndall expanded her work in 1859 by measuring radiative properties of a wider spectrum of greenhouse gases. The effect was more fully quantified by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, who made the first quantitative prediction of global warming due to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, the term "greenhouse" was not used to refer to this effect by any of these scientists; the term was first used in this way by Nils Gustaf Ekholm in 1901.»

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how intelligence agencies and the military are preparing for climate change.

<comment><USER11> The last article I saw on that wasn't exactly encouraging:

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth- insight/2013/j...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth- insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I want to learn to write like this:

 _" An atmosphere of [carbon dioxide] would give to our earth a high temperature; and if as some suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature…must have necessarily resulted."_

<comment><USER13> Read a few Jules Verne books and give it your best shot.

<comment><USER14> One may suppose, too, that a healthy smattering of works by the great Edgar Allen Poe might come in handy, disregarding, of course, their largely unscientific nature; furthermore, if one wishes to write in such a fashion, one must devote oneself to the cause of attractive semicolon usage... a largely forgotten art in these modern times.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that is neat, but it doesn't have the nice punch of _must have necessarily resulted._ from above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the Norwegian engineer paper (TU) from 1960 the main discussions of their time was that they had to get away from burning trees as energy source and use oil/coal or water fall to get the energy to supply the industry.

Lot of talks about deforestation with examples that we have not recovered from today (example Røros).

<comment><USER3> One of the tragedies of our failure to tackle GHG emissions is that now reasonable pathways to stay under 2C of warming require massive negative carbon sequestration after 2040, and at the moment the only way to do that is burning wood and capturing the CO2 emissions. The volume of wood which will have to be burnt each year is more than the volume of all international shipping. That is going to mean covering huge areas of land in industrial plantations which will probably damage wildlife further. Because we've delayed action, we're entering into the teeth of a dilemma which will drive further mass extinctions whatever we do, either remove habitat for wood production for negative carbon, or accept high levels of warming.

<comment><USER16> Why does sequestration involve burning wood? Isn't it easier to leave the carbon in wood form and build e.g furniture, buildings, structures out of wood, and leave the carbon there?

<comment><USER17> do you need a thousand chairs? skyscrapers can't be built out of wood, too.

the easiest way would be to just bury the wood (we dug it out in the first place, right?) but we need to make sure that it doesn't rot and thus reenter the atmosphere. that's where burning makes sense.

<comment><USER18> >skyscrapers can't be built out of wood, too.

Skyscrapers can't be built out of concrete either. It's the rebar that is the structural component that makes it possible to build skyscrapers. We can build skyscrapers with mass timber and steel reinforcement nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Babbage wrote about using tree rings to study the ancient climate in 1838: [https://blog.jgc.org/2010/10/charles-babbage-and-climate- cha...](https://blog.jgc.org/2010/10/charles-babbage-and-climate-change.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> My (12 minute long) KubeCon + CloudNativeCon keynote in Barcelona this year used Foote's discovery of global warming as an example of simultaneous invention, and compared it to the creation of over a dozen container orchestrators other than Kubernetes.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmGFgZ889kY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmGFgZ889kY) [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YkvOgnnbTqWIzQnyaUUp...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YkvOgnnbTqWIzQnyaUUp3S5AMbZHNPMUMlTF2aGQgk0/)

</comment><comment> sid-kap The paper refers to CO2 as "carbonic acid gas". At this time, did they know that CO2 was also produced by burning fossil fuels? Or by respirating living things?

<comment><USER21> I think other commenters have answered your question, but I thought I'd talk a little on carbonic acid.

Carbon dioxide partitions into water as carbonic acid. This is the key mechanism in ocean acidification. Of course the rate is affected by pH of the oceans, there's a buffering action going on between carbonate, bicarbonate, and carbonic acid depending on how many protons are available. It's also why pure water sitting open to the air will have a slightly acidic pH.

The oceans at the bottom have a decent layer of carbonate material accumulated from shells, which are also at equilibrium with the ocean, but the other direction (accepting protons). But since the oceans are so big, to increase the pH of the oceans you'd have to send the surface water to the bottom. Mixing the oceans is kind of a slow process -- around 500 years. But in theory we'll get some long term climate help from the ocean floor (well, if the methane clathrates don't get us first).</comment></comment>


Kim Dotcom gets NZ assets back - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11239397

<comment><USER2> Before people get too excited, this decision is subject to appeal by the Crown.</comment>


Why Talking to Yourself Might be The Highest Form of Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://justseventhings.com/2009/01/25/why-talking-to-yourself-might-be-the-highest-form-of-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> Talking is one of many forms of processing. I've had similar experiences while drafting an e-mail outlining the problem and everything I've tried to fix it. Hundreds of such e-mails have never been sent because in the process of writing things out, I realize a new attempt.

I have a coworker who processes everything externally. He even reads e-mail out loud to himself. He doesn't gain the same...clarity...that people are talking about in this thread.

So I really think it's a question of walking yourself through everything you know about the problem and everything you've tried. Regardless of whether it's verbal or not.

<comment><USER3> I have an agreement with my thesis advisor in which I will send him many emails as I think through an issue, and he doesn't have to read them carefully (or at all). I will clearly mark the parts that he needs to answer (like the time of the next meeting or other silly things), and if I do need an answer to a question I might send an email just with it.

Then, when it is time for us to meet, all that writing has helped the ideas solidify in my head enough for it to be very easy to explain to him what I'm trying to doand how, and then his comments can be very useful. Before we arranged this I'd block for days without managing to think some detail through, but now I just start writing him an email about the issue and by the end of the email I usually have an idea as to how can I solve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubberDucking>

</comment><comment><USER5> On a related note, hand gestures are usually for the benefit of the speaker, not the audience, for a very similar reason. I tried holding hands with a girl during a classroom discussion once, and I couldn't even begin to speak without bringing my hands out.

I talk to myself a lot. I was an only child, so I never really got socialized against it, and often didn't have anyone else present to talk to. However, this usually happens when I'm idly woolgathering, not when I'm working on a problem. Problems require writing!

<comment><USER6> I'm also an only child that regularly talks to myself. I would bet that the percentage of only children who talk to themselves is pretty high.

<comment><USER7> Another autoconversing only child here. In my consistent experience, the best thing I can do to understand something more fully is to explain it to someone else - even if that 'someone else' is actually myself. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good article until it mentioned Jill Bolte, who gave one of the worst psuedo- scientific TED Talks I can recall. It relied on erroneous analogies such as 'the left brain is a serial processor, the right brain is a parallel processor' (the whole brain is massively parallel, everywhere) and ignores facts such as the right brain is capable of learning and taking over language processing in children who have had portions of their left brain removed (to treat epilepsy). If you talk about integration of sensory information and awareness, you want to talk about specific brain systems and cortical columns, NOT make monolithic statements about left brain vs. right brain that get overgeneralized into the silly notion of inaccurately labelling people 'left brain' or 'right brain'.

</comment><comment><USER9> I talk to myself all the time when working through programming problems. (And even some other types of problems.) I remember being told at a very young age that this was some kind of sign of insanity and should be avoided. I ignored that advice and have been reaping the rewards ever since.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it's the only sure way to talk to someone as intelligent as I am.

</comment><comment><USER11> The real trick here is to try and process things in as many ways as you need to to work through the problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> I write problems down and draw pictures. That also can help frame it, making a solution easier to see.

<comment><USER13> This is true but I find actually having to speak the words out loud forces me to reveal implicit assumptions I was making behind my own back. Drawing pictures doesn't always tease this out.

Often the eureka moment occurs when I realise that my hidden assumption just makes no sense at all and I feel stupid but elated at the same time.

Personally I do need someone to be there otherwise my mind carries on hiding things behind my back.

I don't think my mind and me are on the same team sometimes :)

<comment><USER14> An AI researcher (Patrick Henry Winston) once mentioned that psychologists and AI researchers kept finding that intelligence was buried in two places: our visual and linguistics systems.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXQtoAyCGA&feature=PlayL...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXQtoAyCGA&feature=PlayList&p=9F536001A3C605FC&playnext_from=PL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A bit unrelated, but this reminded me of a Blackadder quote:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUazM5lm1rk>

</comment><comment><USER16> Talking to yourself is okay as long as no one talks back.

<comment><USER17> And definitely don't start losing the arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just like Turing did: <http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/talking-to-porgy.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> This article closely describes how it works with me many times..after being stuck in some problem for a certain amount of time I feel the need to get another perspective on tackling it..and then just midway while explaining or after explaining to someone else the answer seems so obvious that I feel dumb for not being able to get it sooner. Now I know its not just me.

<comment><USER20> Yes, that has happened to be me a lot of times since I do a lot of support work. The high-level, low-level symptoms, the trigger of the problem, the root cause of the issue and the facts/opinion of the support problem all get jumbled up. I have tried in the past to articulate the issue at hand and seperate the facts, symptoms, opinions, end-user experience, but nothing helps better then to try to find the answer from someone else..and then realzing what you should/could have done extra before they even utter a word...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recently read an article in which they say one can solve problems in their dreams [1]. I could swear it has happened to me at least a couple times.

[1] <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37926551/ns/health-behavior/>

</comment><comment><USER22> Another reason why I have to work alone, from home. I really just have to pace around and talk out loud to myself sometimes. Sometimes I conduct all-hands meetings this way - which is easy because I'm the only person in my company.

</comment><comment><USER23> the picture reminds me World of Goo game. Are we filled with that?!?!?!

</comment><comment><USER24> How about talking to cats?

<comment><USER25> My cats will probably never think I'm intelligent no matter what I do

<comment><USER26> Mine don't even seem to be good listeners. They just leave the room or jump off my lap in the middle of our conversations...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Relation to praying?

</comment><comment><USER28> I can get a bit foul mouthed at times, when talking to recalcitrant equipment... err, myself. I have to watch that, a bit, as other people can come to think I have "attitude", particularly in today's HR-dominated "three monkeys" culture. But it works for me -- vents a bit of frustration and gets me motivated to make useful changes when I might otherwise hesitate and get lost in an overcomplexity of "what-if's".</comment>


EightBit.me for Happy Users in Their 30's - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/eightbitme_is_going_to_see_a_flood_of_happy_users.php <comment><USER2> Playing audio at full volume for every user that hits your site is a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sidebar: I love the way they did the screencast. Smart and it made me laugh a bit. But mostly I'm a sucker for "weirdness" in any medium. (This is why i like the yayquery podcast, too.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice, I like how the characters bounce a bit. Gave me an idea for a game.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do not get it.</comment>


ARM Chips Designed For 480-Core Servers - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/379549/calxeda_arm_chips_designed_480-core_servers/

<comment><AUTHOR> given the fact that each A9-cortex core needs 250mW at 1Gz, for a 240-core/2U machine, we are looking at 60W. which is pretty impressive.</comment>


Installing Swift for Tensorflow and Jupyter Notebook on Ubuntu 18.04 - <AUTHOR> https://vibhuthasak.github.io/posts/swift-tensorflow-guide/ <comment><USER2> Nice! Looking forward to trying it out this weekend.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on Business Cards - <AUTHOR> Do the freelancers on here use business cards? What information do you include/not include? Are they plain or fancy or clever? Can you post links to images of examples? Any advice on creating business cards would be helpful. <comment><USER2> I had some personal cards made up last year.

Prominent: Name and a one-liner describing what I do.

Below: Email, google voice number specific to the cards, link for people who want to know more.

I kept the card quite plain.

I've seen thousands of cards over the years. I'm sure some of them used novel materials or designs, but I'd be hard pressed to remember any of them, much less the people they represent.

I don't think a nice design hurts _unless_ it makes the card harder to read/scan or less usable in some way.

That said, I think a "designed" card should be professionally done. Do it yourself if you have the skills, contract someone if not.

Also:

* I think the back should be left blank and white or something approaching that (it's for notes).

* I'd stay away from cute titles. I've seen them make a negative impression more often than not.

* Half height or unusually shaped cards are a pain in the ass and destined for the trash.

* If your info changes, make new cards. A card covered in corrections looks incredibly unprofessional.

* Professional printing please. Using perforated or hand cut homemade cards is surely one of the worst a businessperson could hope to save money.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have a business. You should have a professionally designed and printed business card. If you don't have time for a custom designed card just go old school. White or offwhite linen with raised black lettering with your basic contact information. It may not look fancy but at least it will FEEL like a quality piece. At a recent conference an SEO contractor (solo) handed me his business card. It had multiple primary colored areas and looked like it was from an 80's pop band. I did not call or email him for a quote...

Things to include: Business Name Your Name Title if needed, if solo just leave it off or say "Owner", don't use corp titles like CEO, President, ect.. when you have one or two employees (self included). Business Address (if its your home get a po box) Email Cell or Business Phone If you have a set schedule include that like M-F 9-5 or "anytime via email". The MOST important thing for a freelancer is an online portfolio of previous work or design/code examples.

</comment><comment><USER4> We have nice looking business cards (ours have a hex ASCII chart on the back) but I haven't used one in at least 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why have just one?

I have three business cards presently; one for my web project, one for my overall business, and one hawking just tech support (don't knock it, it pays the bills).

It's easier to hand out a card focused on what you want to project to the potential client than a generic card where you have to explain what it's all about (which they promptly forget).

If you want to go for all in one - Here's one of the ultimate business cards: [http://larrymade.tumblr.com/post/53856373481](http://larrymade.tumblr.com/post/53856373481)

</comment><comment><USER6> Definitely get cards printed. You'll need them more as you do more networking.

Mine are:

Simple front with company logo and contact info on corners, i.e. phone number, e-mail, Skype address and website. Blank on the back for notes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a stupid little tip that would have saved me some frustration: don't use a graphic that bleeds off the page, or that is aligned with the edge of the card.

Many printers won't do cards with bleed, or won't do them well, or will charge more. And any error in the printing will be very obvious to the eye.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Mine have:

      1.) My name
      2.) My email and xmpp address
      3.) A link to my website
      4.) Fingerprints for my public PGP and XMPP OTR keys
      5.) A small cheesy photo of my face

I don't care how "professional" it looks. I only care how useful it will be to the recipient.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y)

I can't think of a single time where I closed or did not close a deal on the basis of business cards, as a freelancer. Whether they were nice or I forgot them at home.</comment>


I am not a fanboy. - <AUTHOR> I own an iPhone, an iPad, and a Macbook. I read Daring Fireball, TUAW and Macrumors. I believe that Apple's hardware is superior to all others in the market. People like to call out how I'm always "tuned in" to Apple news.
But I am not a fanboy.
I don't think the Operating system is the best. It is fraught with inconsistencies underneath its friendly veneer. There is a reason why Windows is popular and it may have something to do with usability. I use OS X because it is simply the best Unix desktop out there.
The iTunes application is a beacon of monolithic programming. It reeks of legacy-oriented design, completely contradictory to Apple's touted design mantra. Yet it exists unaltered, version after version solely because of the revenue it generates. Design and Engineering be damned, we're making money here. I use it because they threatened and killed every other music player for the Mac. I have never bought an iTunes song.
I unlocked my iPhone within the first 2 hours of owning it. I paid for my hardware, not the AT&T tithing. I am completely happy with my 50$ a month, fully functional smartphone.
I run a jailbroken phone despite the security risks. The app store is a breeding ground of corporate adware and get-rich-quick wannabes. The only thing it doesn't contain is what Mac developers were renowned for -- small, independent and creative paid software. Some innovations found in Cydia deserve more attention that they get today.
I bought an iPad because it was the cheapest and best way to acquire a manifestation of things Xerox invented 20+ years ago, and what Microsoft has been researching for 10+ years. And I am impressed with what I see.
Overall, you're still the best products money can buy for what I want to do.
I respect Apple because it has the best engineering in the world. It takes a spectrum of well understood technology, and creates the best possible device in that category. Every other part of Apple: its lawyers, its strategists, its leaders and its marketing do not matter.
I am aware that the new Apple, Inc. caters to exactly two kinds of people. The busy soccer mom with a 6 figure family income, and the rabid nerd who chants Objective-C while worshipping at his local Steve Jobs altar.
This is not a rant. It is simply a statement that Apple has more these 2 kinds of customers. The third kind is me -- the tinkerer, the hacker, the fan of good technology. The kind that rejects rules, limitations and playgrounds of corporate malfeasance.
I am the one who Thinks Different. <comment><USER2> I don't think you'll be their customer much longer.

You could have been describing me. I got on the Mac bandwagon 10 years ago, when Mac OS X didn't work properly yet, and just recently got off.

Ubuntu is a better Unix desktop now. I laugh at the Ubuntu community arguing about their sleek new icons in the top bar. They're not quite consistent, use slightly different shades, some legacy ones are a different height from the rest. I remember reading the exact same arguments about the Mac OS X ones yet even the Linux guys assume the Mac is infallible in this regard. Any reader of Gruber should know otherwise.

There's pros and cons and everyone has their own use case but Ubuntu is gaining them, and the Mac is losing them as far as I can see (e.g. it seems like Ubunutu works better with iPods these days, crazy as that sounds, just by not implementing anti-features that stop you doing things like copying your music off). You know Ubuntu is going ship three upgrades in the next 18 months, whereas news has just come out that Apple has reduced the 10.7 team to a skeleton crew (which has happened repeatedly to other interesting projects within Apple) which means even its optimistic release date of 18 months is in doubt, as is how much they'll charge you for the upgrade.

I bought iPods because they were perfect for me and Apple were years ahead of the curve. They're not any more. I nearly bought an Apple TV, but if your life doesn't revolve around iTunes it doesn't make sense. I bought the iPhone, a bit more reluctantly, if I was going to carry a phone anyway, I might as well have one with a great browser, and they were a couple of years ahead of the competition. They're not anymore. I'm not going to bother with the iPad (or anything else Apple again) because they're not that far ahead of the competition and they won't be for long.

I don't need a pad, I want the same low-power ARM hardware plus a keyboard in a standard netbook form factor running Linux. If it's not got access to the "Apt" store, then I'm not interested.

<comment><USER3> Ubuntu will never get traction on desktop until video drivers at least show image on monitors. I've spent 3 days trying to install correct drivers for my graphic card, until I've finally gave up.

<comment><USER2> I was talking about myself, the poster, and geeks in general rather than "the desktop" market. You'll notice I was using Mac OS X when it wasn't ready for the desktop either (and you could argue it never was if you look at global marketshare numbers). Drivers for hardware was their big issue too, something Linux still beats them for today if you compare the difficulty of building a hackintosh to building a Linux box.

However, if you can't even get an image to show with Ubuntu then you're doing something very wrong. Not taking advantage of all the features of the card without installing proprietary drivers (offered, but not forced on you, with a single click in Ubuntu), yes that's common. Not being able to view anything with a recent Ubuntu on a desktop machine is a _very_ unusual situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fair play. Though you are financially supporting the anti-tinkering apple, you're telling apple (with your dollars) that closed is the way to go. Be careful how that turns out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, you are doing nothing to dissuade the apple haters that stereotype mac people as smug, conceited hipsters.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're entitled to your opinion, but how is this smug or conceited? I'd like to disagree. My viewpoint is very humble; I am not judging anybody or making snide comments.

The first half of what I wrote explains how I am a customer despite acknowledging its flaws, because in the end, it is superior engineering. How is this smug?

I am only critical of Apple's rare but poor engineering decisions. Everything else, as I say in my text, does not matter. And I think I am fairly objective about this. How is this conceited?

If the last few lines of what I wrote seemed out of place, here is the context: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USn5t5nQWU8&NR=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USn5t5nQWU8&NR=1) . This ad, along with other Apple ads, clearly paints the picture of Apple Computer's target demographic. This is the Apple I identify with -- a motley crew of "hipsters", in your words. Yet, this is the Apple that doesn't exist anymore. Which is what I am sad about. It is frustrating sometimes to feel abandoned like this, yet I know there are others like me. Hence I wrote this.

If this piece came across as smug, conceited or hipster-like , I apologize for the clarity in my writing.</comment></comment>


Church numerals, recursion, and Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.07/07.06/ChurchNumerals/

<comment><USER2> Here is a more flexible functional representation of numerals, courtesy Steensgaard-Madsen [1989], but written in Fexl:

      \zero = (\zero\succ zero)
      \succ = (\n \zero\succ succ n)

This delays the binding of the handler functions (zero and succ) until each step instead of deciding once way up at the top.

Addition is easy:

      \add = (\x\y x y \p succ (add p y))

As is multiplication:

      \mul = (\x\y x 0 \p add y (mul p y))

Now unary notation is fine for some things, but when I'm using arbitrarily large numbers in Fexl I use a binary notation (lists of bits), with representations as follows:

      []    = 0
      [F|N] = 2*N   (where N != 0)
      [T|N] = 2*N+1

In that notation addition is a little harder but not too bad:

      \add = (\x\y x y \xb\xn y x \yb\yn
          \z=(add xn yn)
          xb
              (yb [F,T|z] [T|z])
              (yb [T|z] [F|z]))

Multiplication is:

      \twice = (\x x [] \_\_ [F|x])

      \mul = (\x\y x y \xb\xn y x \yb\yn
          \z=(twice; mul xn yn)
          xb
              (yb [T|add xn; add yn z] [F|add yn z])
              (yb [F|add xn z] [F|z]))

[The ';' you see there is the Fexl "right-pivot" operator, a syntactic device for avoiding right-nesting. For example, (add 1; add 2; add 3; 0) is a shorthand for (add 1 (add 2 (add 3 0))). Also the notation [x|y] is a shorthand for (cons x y), where cons = (\head\tail \null\cons cons head tail).]

You can also harness the full power of the _computable numbers_ , which is how you do the so-called "real" numbers on a physical computing device. A computable number is a pair of lists of bits (T or F). One list is the integer part and the other is the fractional part. The fractional part can be infinite, allowing exact representation of numbers like pi and e. (Come to think of it you could have an infinite integer part as well, which might actually be useful somehow.)

If you're careful to avoid non-termination you can do useful work with lazily evaluated computable numbers. Something like (add pi e) will work just fine and give you an exact result to any number of places you desire. On the other hand (equal pi pi) will loop forever, searching futilely for two bits which disagree. But when you're looking for "close enough" you can just apply (clip 20) to the numbers and then compare them.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're interested in more Church, here's the blog post I wrote for my compilers students (with code) on Church encodings:

[http://matt.might.net/articles/church-encodings-demo-in- sche...](http://matt.might.net/articles/church-encodings-demo-in-scheme/)

When building a compiler, I have my students use Church encodings to eliminate many constructs at first. As we learn how to handle each construct, we steadily drop the Church encodings and performance improves.</comment>


Ask HN: Whats the oldest file you created still in regular use? - <AUTHOR> Bonus question, the oldest file you created still in regular use which gets updated from time to time? <comment><USER2> A bash file that does a backup of selected directories to an external disk. It's about 340 lines of shell that manages saving to dated target directories using rsync and using links to unchanged files Also performs a target filesystem sanity check and won't run if the wrong external disk is mounted. Been using it for many years on Linux and Mac.

</comment><comment><USER3> First question: probably some old MP3 from CDs I grabbed back in the good old Winamp days

Second: My CV I guess</comment>


Deploying Tornado in production  - <AUTHOR> http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2009/12/deploying-tornado-in-production.html

<comment><USER2> There is some sound information in this. I've been planning on writing about the the curve in using Tornado, as it is deceivingly simple. It does take diving into the code to really pump out a polished site.

I've been working on a stub project which serves as the foundation for the tornado sites I've built: <http://github.com/gmr/Tornado-Project-Stub>

The nice thing with it is that it makes going from 0 to a working site that covers all the basics very easy.

I've chosen some different methodologies for dealing with daemonizing and logging than Evite, but that's the nice thing about the Python standard libraries; many ways to skin that cat.

<comment><USER3> How do you do daemonize and log?

<comment><USER2> Daemonizing is done by process forking using the os module and logging is done via the standard logging module with an optional syslog handler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> are you taking advantage of the commit that implements pre-forking?

[http://github.com/facebook/tornado/commit/6fb90ae694190fcedc...](http://github.com/facebook/tornado/commit/6fb90ae694190fcedc48d9fb98b02325826d783e)

<comment><USER2> I gave this a try and couldn't get it to work as I'd expect based upon previous experience with Tornado. I'm waiting until they polish up a 0.3 release to adopt using it.</comment></comment>


Cadillac preps to take on Tesla, GM CEO says - <AUTHOR> http://www.autonews.com/article/20130923/OEM05/130929972/cadillac-preps-to-take-on-tesla-gm-ceo-says

<comment><USER2> This is nothing but great press for Tesla. GM feels threatened and is giving even more attention to you. Great job Musk!</comment>


Study: Stratospheric aerosol injection tactics and costs - <AUTHOR> http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d <comment><AUTHOR> This is the only viable short-term solution, and must be undertaken in parallel with hydrocarbon reduction.

Also note that this method has been practiced by volcanoes for millions of millennia :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Free Disposable Team Web Chat? - <AUTHOR>

Most of the times when I'm working on a university project, I find myself wanting to chat with the team members to share relevant links, resources and ideas.
Is there some easy to use chat web app where I can just make a chat room, share the url with friends have a chat and then dispose of it as soon as I'm done?
I do remember seeing something on HN long time back but I cant find it right now. Any suggestions? Thanks! <comment><USER2> try irc <http://webchat.freenode.net/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, try searching on <http://hnsearch.com> if you're trying to recall something from HN from a while ago ...</comment>


Brian Kernighan is trying to write a new book - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2011/03/01/27782/

<comment><USER2> ... and this column doesn't say anything about what it's going to be about. It's a nice piece about life at Harvard though, I guess. Free coffee, wow.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Do, or do not. There's no try" - Master Yoda</comment>


Google To Delete All Private Profiles By 31st July 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/07/06/google-private-profiles-delete/

<comment><USER2> This appears to contain no information that isn't covered by this post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2731695></comment>


Eight Years of College Lets Finns Hide from Labor Market - T-A http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-20/eight-years-of-college-lets-finns-hide-from-labor-market.html <comment><AUTHOR> If I recall from Linus Torvald's biography, he took advantage of his 8 years at university to write his first prototype of what would later become the Linux kernel. Sounds like the Finnish system liberated him to work to pursue important work without having to worry about basic economic concerns.

<comment><USER2> I think we can all agree that Torvalds is the exception, not the rule.

Plenty of people, especially those who are younger and don't have families, spend their evenings and weekends working on side projects after work. I don't really see a compelling argument in your point...

<comment><USER3> I don't currently hold this opinion but I'll argue it for the sake of discovery: But what if all we need is the exceptions? Torvald's contribution is many times greater than a single regular person working. Perhaps the total value generated goes up as long as we find and win the exceptional cases like him?

<comment><USER2> Likewise, I don't know that I believe this, you just triggered a half-formed thought:

The basis of this discussion was that everyone should be provided as much free education as they want with no qualifications. If we acknowledge that Torvalds' contribution is greater than that of a regular working person, aren't we shooting ourselves in the foot?

If that's the case, then what argument can we make for subsidizing, say, a History degree? I know several people who have them and none of them are doing anything remotely related to the field. In that case it would seem that the education was unimportant (given the vaguely quantifiable criteria we've established), so why should we have paid for it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The state also provides grants of as much as 500 euros ($670) a month plus meal support and loans of as much as 400 euros a month. While education is a safe haven for students, the economy suffers when they put off joining the job market and don't have skills the labor market needs, said Hannu Kaseva, an economist at ETLA research institute in Helsinki."

The first part sounds like classic labour market whining about having to compete for employees. Improve your working conditions and compensation and individuals will choose your organization instead of education. If organizations require a particular skill, why do they not develop it themselves, why should the individual take the risk for their benefit?

I too reside in a jurisdiction that fails to train a sufficient number of its own health care workers, a problem that the Finns have. I suspect the Finnish schools are full, as are ours, they and we just failed to create enough seats.

I consider not having to work to survive to be a pinnacle of humanity. Health care is already free of charge in most of the modern world without having to prove one's worth to anyone, why not extend that to food/water/shelter/tertiary education?

<comment><USER5> _> Health care is already free of charge in most of the modern world_

This is completely and utterly incorrect. It's not free. Doctors and nurses are getting paid. Equipment is purchased. Drugs are prescribed. Who is paying for it? Taxpayers. Therefore it's not free. What you meant to say is that now everyone has an _access_ to healthcare.

But when you think about it, is it truly a pinnacle of humanity if good things (treating people) are achieved by doing bad things (stealing from people by threatening them with jail time and confiscation if they refuse to pay taxes)? Is it truly a pinnacle of humanity that we treat people yet simultaneously we also kill thousands of people in wars using the same tax money? Is it really okay that I have to subsidize a treatment of a smoker who ignored health advice for a number of years? Or a fast food consumer who ate at McDonalds every day and now has diabetes? Why should I subsidize their treatment and not spend more money on my kids, for example? You have no moral right to claim I OWE these people money. You can kindly ask me to help them out, but if I refuse, you shall not be able to jail me and confiscate my property.

<comment><USER6> > But when you think about it, is it truly a pinnacle of humanity if good > things (treating people) are achieved by doing bad things (stealing from > people by threatening them with jail time and confiscation if they refuse to > pay taxes)?

Calling taxation "stealing" is an odd bit of cognitive dissonance. On one hand, you embrace the law's distinction between mere dispossession and "stealing" but reject the law's distinction between "stealing" and taxation. You embrace the right of the collective to create property rights but not their right to subject those property rights to taxation.

<comment><USER7> I believe the idea is that the "wrongness" of stealing is based on some moral principle, not on whether or not people and the legal system consider it wrong. Many people who believe firmly in property rights believe them to be moral rights, not rights in the sense of legislatively granted rights (rights created by the collective).

It's hence not necessarily moral dissonance. It's quite possible for someone to believe that property rights are 'natural rights', ergo stealing is wrong, but not believe people have any rights to things they didn't acquire by work or exchange, hence not view 'dispossession' as wrong.

<comment><USER8> You can only believe that if you believe you have a natural right not to be clubbed over the head and robbed blind. For that right to exist _practically_ , somebody else has must work to provide it for you. Now you see, it is the "taxation is theft" person making the claim on someone else's labor.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>