Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304811904579586283430862854-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwNjEyNDYyWj <comment><USER2> One of the worst things about tech in Canada is that the salaries are ridiculously low compared to the US. I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York.

But really, I want to say this: as a Canadian, I find that image of poutine extremely offensive. What is that yellow stuff on top, Curry? Are those even proper cheese curds? They're not melted. Is that scallion?

How can this article be trusted when their choice of stock photo is so wrong I question if they've ever even had the dish?

<comment><USER3> _I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York._

I don't understand this. If the "average" engineer in SV makes 120Kish, then the same engineer is making 40K in Canada? And they can make 240K in NY (with no additional experience)?

Are those number correct?

If they are: I'd note that salaries in Australia are more closely aligned with SV salaries than Canadian. Just in case anyone is looking to move somewhere...

<comment><USER4> I think they talking about after tax numbers

<comment><USER5> Taxes in Canada are not particularly higher than in the U.S.

[http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html](http://www.cra- arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html)

[http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do- canadians...](http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadians- really-pay-more-taxes-than-americans.aspx)

<comment><USER6> You need to include sales tax, which ranges from 5% in Alberta to 15% in Quebec. Also, taxes on alcohol and gasoline are much higher than the US.

That being said, with the recent tax increases in the US and the lower of provincial income taxes in many Canadian provinces (I'm looking at you BC), the difference isn't as great as one would think.

<comment><USER7> You're paying sales taxes in pretty much all of the US, though, though not as much(ranges from ~3% to 10%).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of the talk is on SRED credits. SRED is a large part of the credit program for startups in Canada. Though it's not as simple as "Canada pays 80% of your salaries"

You can get up to (off the top of my head) 75% of salaries paid back on hours worked "advancing technology". That means it's only for true R&D. That means UI, business logic, API, App anything, expenses, costs, etc... don't count. It's only for when you embark on a project that truly advances the worlds state of technology where you can really reap the benefits of SRED.

Most startups, as sad as it may be, don't truly advance technology. A lot create value, yes, but advance technology? not really. Certainly not all year. So they'll only get 75% of salaries paid for the hours they worked on advancing technology.

You'll get that back at the end of the year as one lump sum. It's awesome. However, it goes to the company and the company has to have already funded the salaries -- it wont fund salaries, it will reimburse them.

On top of that the system is so hard to navigate that you'll end up requiring a consultant to navigate it. They'll take a cut, between 10-20%, of the return.

It's not as simple as the article states, and our poutine doesn't look like that.

<comment><USER9> As someone who has actually used the SR&ED program for many years, I have to say that you've got it a bit wrong...

SR&ED will cover a percentage of capital expenditures essential to the work and a percentage of $ paid to contractors so it's salary plus SOME eligible expenses. Salaries make up the biggest part though. I got about 65% back, using the proxy method - a simpler way of calculating SR&ED overhead on eligible salary expenses.

The R&D effort does not have to advance "the world's" state of technology, just your company's.

It can't be obvious or routine engineering BUT work that is required to complete the R&D work (but not directly R&D) IS eligible and you can claim it.

The 3 core requirements of SR&ED eligibility (for software anyway) are (1) there has to be technical uncertainty, (2) you must use a systematic approach and keep records a notes and (3) you must achieve a technological advancement.

The 3rd item catches people because it doesn't require a successful outcome. You can fail and still claim the project. If you knew in advance (or it was obvious to anyone in the field) that it would fail (or succeed) then there was no uncertainty and it would not qualify.

SR&ED is really not that difficult to navigate. Consultants can help, but they'll take a big chunk of your claim. Most of them work for a percentage that runs anywhere from 15% to 35%. That's big money for very little value. I wrote my own claims for many years and they were all successful.

When I started there was no limit on the write ups, now they put some severe character count limits on the writes ups. That makes them harder for us but less confusing for the reviewers. You really have to be able to distill things down to just the essentials.

Any Canadian software company that doesn't at least look at SR&ED is just throwing money out the window.

<comment><USER10> They've recently removed the ability to claim capital equipment. My experience, which is probably less than yours, is that the R&D requirement is real and omnipresent - anything that's spent on production or that will go into production can't be claimed. Furthermore I've been asked for lab notebooks and experiment designs to justify the materials I used that I claimed were for R&D purposes.

<comment><USER9> They used to have an "Account Executive" program where you could talk to a reviewer BEFORE you started work to explain what you were doing and get tips on what was eligible and what was not. I did that when I started and it was an eye opener!

The reviewer I spoke to was the one who handled all our claims, so it didn't hurt that he already knew about us. It made his job, and mine, a lot easier.

Wait... okay, found a link to the services they offer and Account Executive is still in there, plus a bunch of others...

[http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/srvcs-eng.html](http://www.cra- arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/srvcs-eng.html)

If you're at all uncertain about what you can/should be claiming then you should definitely talk to a SR&ED professional or use one of these services to get definitive answers from the source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm currently a beneficiary of SRED in a startup context in Canada.

The first thing to note is that it doesn't solve many major problems. The lack of development talent is the biggest one; trying to get someone to move from California to Canada isn't something that's solved as simply as offering more money. And in my experience (as a recent graduate), the talent that would have studied computer science or has an interest in programming moves onto "safer" education and career options (in the local context) - usually engineering or commerce/finance.

There's simply a lack of talent, or more realistically, a lack of talent with no better options.

The money here is being used to attempt to make up for the extreme economies of scale that places like Silicon Valley have. It's not enough to make Canada a competitive place to start a startup, really, but it may have some effect on the total amount of expatriation by talented individuals.

<comment><USER12> Lack of talent or lack of US-comparable salaries? A lot of U of Waterloo people get snatched by American companies, I bet if we paid them about the same many would stay here.

<comment><USER13> This is true. We have two recent Waterloo students on the payroll (in Vancouver), both of whom had options in SF (or anywhere they wanted really)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is light on facts (which is surprising to see in the wsj). This program is called Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Incentive Program. And, qualifying for a full SR&ED isn't as easy as they make it sound. To learn more, visit:

[http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html](http://www.cra- arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html)

<comment><USER15> The trick to SRED is to hire an outside expert who will work on contingency to get a percentage of the SRED rebate they generate. There are many companies providing this service. These folks are experts on writing the necessary reports/forms given your engineers have written detailed logs of their work. Don't try to do SRED yourself. It's just one of those things, like hiring a lawyer, where it's complete lunacy to do it yourself.

<comment><USER16> _The trick to SRED is to hire an outside expert who will work on contingency to get a percentage of the SRED rebate they generate._

This is the _scam_ of SRED. It is unfortunate that we are at this place.

There is absolutely nothing difficult about SRED (it is absolutely no more difficult than any other completely banal corporate submission), beyond understanding the magic terminology and phrasing that will get your submission accepted as is. That a whole business of vampire consultants exist around exploiting that, with agreement from Revenue Canada, is the real lunacy. It undermines the efficacy of the program.

<comment><USER17> \+ 100. I find it revolting and scammy that tech companies have to get outside "consultants" to help fill out the paperwork. I've heard stories where some consultants worked for the program itself in the past. How can Canada piss away so many tax dollars is beyond me.

<comment><USER18> I think this is an overreaction. Why? Let's be honest. If you're the stereotypical 150-IQ, borderline-Aspie tech co-founder, you're going to have to find a business co-founder with connections. He's going to take a huge cut, and you're going to do more work. That's just how the system's set up. Then you deal with venture capitalists, who can pretty much set terms unilaterally because of their inappropriate and collusive influence over what everyone else thinks of you and your company.

If I'm an entrepreneur in need of capital, I'd rather pay a 10% tribute to someone who knows the paperwork than the current 90+ percent tribute (to people who can make introductions, people with sales skill, makers of reputations) of Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER14> With all due respect, you should read more about the SR&ED before you call someone's legitimate criticism an overreaction. It is a program designed to pay back a portion of salaries that go into scientific research or development. This isn't new capital, it is a rebate program where you earn back a portion of salaries that you have already paid.

The challenge in SR&ED is convincing the bureaucrats in charge of the program that the salaries you're asking for a rebate on actually went into advancing the state of technology. One problem is that many of the bureaucrats who work in this program come from accounting backgrounds. Hence the statement that you need to make sure your application contains the magic words that will get an application through.

In practice, the odds of an inventor receiving a full shred if she fills out her own application are nearly zero. So, to take part in a program like this, tech companies need to allocate ~7.5% of their annual research salaries to a shred specialist.

I'm Canadian and I pay taxes, so I have a few problems with this program. It is yet another program where you need an expert to sit in between the relevant business and the government. And, it's a perfect example of a Canadian government program where bureaucracy overwhelms the purpose.

But, as someone who works in tech and has gone through a few shred processes, this program seems crazy. Who is better qualified to explain an invention than the inventors themselves? And, if you need a gatekeeper to explain your innovation, are the bureaucrats involved competent enough to administer a program like this?

Those are important questions for Canadian taxpayers and are most certainly not an overreaction. Your feelings about the VC industry are obvious, but in this case, they aren't very relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Canada was already doing this for the games industry, though not at 80%. It worked. Look at all the studios in Montreal. Perhaps it could work again for the startup culture. It's cold enough up there in the winter that going outside is horrible, so why not stay inside and code!

<comment><USER20> The article is really light on details, but I'm pretty sure it's not describing anything new. It's just SR&ED (lovingly called shred colloquially) and related provincial programs, which have been around for a long time (in their modern form since at least 1994). In fact, it's probably fair to say that almost every tech employee (and many non-tech employees) in Canada has been under an SR&ED grant whether they knew it or not.

There's actually quite a bit of overhead in reporting on how your work qualifies as research, and it's gotten more strict in recent years. Apparently there have been cases in the past of things like restaurants claiming their chefs were doing research and such.

<comment><USER21> I believe the company also needs to be majority owned by _resident_ Canadian citizens. There are a number of accounting firms that specialize in SRED claims, but most take a cut of your return in exchange for their services.

<comment><USER22> Canadian Controlled Private Corporation: [http://www.cra- arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/crprtns/typs/ccpc-eng...](http://www.cra- arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/crprtns/typs/ccpc-eng.html)

I believe that permanent residents would also qualify under the requirements, citizenship is not strictly necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "The downside is a more European attitude toward work— less intense, less ambitious, more likely to have wine with lunch, Mr. Adelman says"

As a Montrealer and a Sotware Engineer having worked at various size companies in this city, I can say I've NEVER seen my collegues have wine at lunch. Working in video game industry and sleeping at the office at crunch time (back in the days) I couldn't say my collegues or I 'lacked' the famed Silicon Valley work ethos ... This article is fraught with stereotypes and coated with a few fragment of facts ...

<comment><USER24> As a European (ish), ditto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm moving to Vancouver, BC soon to found a startup, so it's good to hear this. But from comments here, i'm hearing a lot of comments pertaining to Toronto and Waterloo region, but not much about Vancouver or BC in general. Why is that? Is Vancouver/BC not a good place for startups? Am I heading in the wrong direction? I'm still in a position to switch back to Toronto if necessary, so if someone can enlighten me that would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER26> I didn't have a startup in Vancouver, but a prominent angel investor in Vancouver put some money into my NYC-based startup, and I flew out there for a couple of 'portfolio summits', with companies largely-based in Vancouver. I liked the group I saw and people I met, but a) that was years ago, and b) I don't know if they were representative.

Hey, if you want to talk to someone in Vancouver about the local start-up scene, why not shoot me an email? (It's in my profile.) I can ask my old investor if he's willing to hop on the phone and answer a few questions.

<comment><USER25> hey, i will definitely shoot you an email. i would be curious to find out more about the vancouver startup scene!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 1\. Is it this? [http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu- eng.html](http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html)

2\. If I were to start a new company, can I use this rebate when paying myself?

<comment><USER28> 1\. Yes 2\. Yes, but only for the portion of your time that was SR&ED activities, which if you're the only employee couldn't conceivably be anywhere near 100%.

<comment><USER9> If you are an owner in the company you only can claim a maximum of 75% of your salary. So if 100% of your time was eligible work and you made $100K you could only claim $75K of that and you'd get a percentage of that $75K back, not the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The kill or be killed attitude they mention in this article is interesting because I almost immediately noticed the difference when moving from Canada to California. It's a different animal, that's for sure.

<comment><USER30> Is the work atmosphere more relaxed in Canada? For that matter, do the East Coast/West Coast culture stereotypes hold true for Canada?

<comment><USER31> It's more relaxed in Vancouver and Halifax. Less so in Toronto.

<comment><USER32> Super relaxed here in Canmore :-)

<comment><USER33> You don't happen to be working at that Sport Fitness Accessory company in Canmore eh?

<comment><USER32> Nope, I run [http://skitrails.info/](http://skitrails.info/)

What sports fitness accessory company? It's a pretty small town, I probably know them....

<comment><USER34> Nice site. I'll keep this for next year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We're talking about a program that dates back to 1944 as if it's some new idea...

</comment><comment><USER36> So... what's the catch? Sounds too good to be true. Can anyone think why they would do that?

Can I just move there and get the benefit?

<comment><USER37> You have to live in Canada.

<comment><USER38> Why the downvotes? Seriously that's why the incentive exists. Not enough skilled people wanting to live in Canada.

<comment><USER18> Many immigrants prefer the US over Canada because (a) there are major benefits to the US passport, and (b) there are unexpected prestige factors. In some parts of Asia, Canada still has the stigma of being "for people who couldn't get in to the US" even though, for the past 20 years or so, it's been as hard to get into Canada as the US (if not harder).

If you take away New York and Silicon Valley and the unique opportunities those places offer, the appeal isn't _living in_ the U.S. It's having an American passport.

All that said, I think there are plenty of skilled people who'd live in Canada. You see the same thing in the U.S. Midwest. There are a lot of smart people who'd love to stay in, or move to, Chicago and Minneapolis. But the job markets aren't nearly as strong there, so they move to the coasts, settle down, and never return.

Properly deployed, programs like this can change that (although it tends to take a long time).

<comment><USER38> I'm not aware of any single real benefit of a US passport over a Canadian passport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> My co-founder was one of the first 3 people accepted to Canada from the US via the Startup Visa program (I'm Canadian, made him move) - We're fully realizing the benefits of operating in Canada as a CCPC. This article doesn't even touch on how much is actually going on here. Not only was the cover photo offensive, I question if they even researched the topic because they barely touched on IRAP which is just as beneficial as SRED.

Talk to any founder from Canada and you'll likely get more reliable info then was in this article. The compelling reasons to start a company here are many and they are no secret.

</comment><comment><USER40> It'll be interesting to see how well this works. Silicon Valley did not pop into existence from nowhere.

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

<comment><USER41> Wow. Really cool. The Silicon Valley essentially started as a defence supplier network during the cold war centered on Stanford.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> A caution if you're considering Quebec. You might be caught off guard by the draconian French language laws, and restrictions on where you can send your children to school. (Ex-Quebecer here)

<comment><USER43> _sigh_ (Current Quebecer here)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Although I worked for several startups that benefited from SRED credits, I always found the system appalling and prefer the way it works in US with VCs. No government should take hard working folks's money and give them to white middle-upper class, well educated founders that will possibly just get wealthy even more and the class division cycle will continue. I would bet if you pay this money directly to the engineers themselves they will create much more value.

Anyways I found that writing everyday what I did in a way it looks more as a research just so SRED accountants don't question the company, as extremely annoying to my day flow.

<comment><USER45> A while ago, I daydreamed the possibility that some government could, by way of international competitive advantage, establish by law a favorable tax situation for corporations that had a "Gov Class" stock. This would represent no less than 10% of the total ownership interest, and would be proxyless and nonvoting, but would have preferred treatment for dividends. Any distributions to Gov Class shareholder would be deductable from any taxes otherwise owed to it, but would not be refundable.

That would allow the government, or anyone in its federation or confederation or otherwise under it in the hierarchy, to invest in startup businesses in such a way that favors local development and limits tax jurisdiction shopping.

If Chicago bought 15% of a new local company as Gov Class shares, it retains 15% of the value of the company and 15% of the profits, at the expense of tax revenues, even if the company moves to San Francisco. In that case, taxes would ordinarily drop to nothing, but as a stockholder, the municipal government retains its investment. But perhaps the State of California buys out City of Chicago to sweeten the deal. Chicago now has that money back to reinvest, instead of pissing away tax dollars to develop companies that just leave when they get big enough.

Of course, that assumes governments could be responsible investors, which is a proposition very difficult to prove. As it is, straight subsidies seem like a far stupider and more bureaucratic way to just waste tax money and enrich business owners without producing the intended effects. If the government is enriching the business owners anyway, wouldn't it be more cost effective to actually _be_ one of the owners?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Do I get it right? I set up a startup. Declare my own salary to be $100. Canadian gov pays me $80. I take $20 of that amount and pay it to myself as the remainder. Sounds like basic income.

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't understand why all countries require startups to have investment. For one, most tech start ups don't need significant investment and can be boostrap. The average 30 year old has enough saving to get by for a year or two without any investment. I feel require investment is really a cruft of the past and shouldn't be a necessity for visas.

<comment><USER48> 26\. $3k in the bank.

<comment><USER45> I had more at that age, but now have less. I probably would have been better off marrying a startup instead of a spouse. Either one alone can drain away all the time and money you have, and then some, but only one is likely to make your bank account any larger later on.

Now they say that money can't buy happiness, but not having enough of it is a great way to get miserable. Think about that before you choose.</comment></comment></comment>


50/50 Cofounders - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/5050-cofounders.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AVc+%28A+VC%29&utm_content=Netvibes <comment><USER3> All of this seems to assume that 50/50 ownership is 50/50 power. That really doesn't have to be the case (and usually shouldn't).

I think it was Joel Spolsky who explained that point of view best some time ago.

Beyond his explanations, though, the non-tech world has lots of "silent partners," people who may own half or more of the company but give up the actual power of running it. Ideally, you give up some ego, power, and responsibility without giving up freedom and financials.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't believe in the one-size-fits-all idea. My thoughts: <http://swombat.com/2011/5/10/founder-equity>

<comment><USER5> I think you're onto something there. Maybe your thoughts could be generalized like this: _Equity split should reflect the relationship of the co-founders._ (EDIT: I just saw you already wrote almost the same)

Friendship based on fairness typically consists of mutual respect and confidence in each others capabilities and shortcomings. Such friends have most certainly learned to appreciate their diversity and face another on an equal footing. In this case, a uniform split would be a natural fit - <USER2> else would question the fairness of the relationship.

The problem I see is that even in long-time friendships it is not always clear what type of relationship it is. I would claim that in every relationship, all aspects (fairness, personal benefit and more) are present to some amount. And as you say yourself, each member could understand the character of their friendship differently.

The implication is: Before deciding how to split, find out in what kind of relationship you are. A russian proverb comes to mind: _If you want to get to know someone, go on a mountain hike with him._ My russian-speaking friend told me that one, and in fact, we went to the mountains together. Almost died several times. We know each other very well now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For partnerships where the contribution is at all close (i.e. +/- 10%), I think a 50/50 split has the huge upside of getting both partners completely focused on making the pie bigger. I'd much rather avoid quibbling over a few % of share and get entirely focused on building a better business and also feeling the personal pressure to be contributing my best.

If the contribution was wildly different, I think that's certainly a different case.

<comment><USER7> Apart from a monetary contribution by a single co-founder I don't like to odds of uneven ownerships working well. Too much opportunity for bad feelings to develop on either side of the equation.</comment></comment>


They Know What Boys Want - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/news/features/70977/

<comment><USER2> I realise the horror that some might get from reading this - but I don't entirely understand it.

What I see reported there appear to be smart teen girls with much more worldly knowledge/thinking than you'd imagine. These are not girls doing silly dangerous things online, they are girls lighting a few matches and dropping them before being burned.

We all did it, maybe not on the internet (and, yes, that introduces a new element of risk we need to take care of), but we did it.

Their analysis of the guys they know is absolutely spot on and very mature. They _understand_ ; give credit for that :)

The second half of the article is of more concern; and the real problem is simply part of a wider problem in society. It has been exacerbated recently by the internet - but it is not a new issue, and no one has really successfully addressed it yet. Just let the whole mess to get slowly worse.

The article also mentions _Skins_ ; almost as if it is part of the problem. I have no idea if they show the UK version of Skins in the US (or if it is a remake) but the original is, IMO, one of the better attempts to make these issues of sexuality accessible to teens. A lot of people watch a bit and see sexual largess and drugs, but if you really watch there is an important message there about taking experiments too far :)

</comment><comment><USER3> The whole environment of high school has been broken for many years. We are seeing technology collide with societies gradual raising of the age of adulthood combined with a school system designed to create factory workers for Ford.

I'm not that old, when I was in high school ND allowed people to get a driver's license at 14. Now we have calls to raise the age to 16 or even 18. I have heard the argument "Well, 14 isn't as mature as it used to be". That is crap, and I can see the day when 21 isn't even old enough to be out on your own.

It isn't the technology, bullying, or sexting that is the core problem. It is the environment when society is trying very hard to repress biology and thousand of years of development. It isn't working and is causing serious problems.

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems like NYMag knows what men want too, was there any need for them to have a picture of a model pretending to be youger than she really is on each page?

Was there going to be anyone reading the content thinking "so you've described this pose, but without seeing the 14 year old in question I can't really judge how bad it was"?

Or... was it just a nice excuse to give readers the snapshots they so badly desire.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A disturbing piece for HN parents about the coming of age for children.

Even though you know the Internet and technology has all progressed since we were kids, it is still disturbing nonetheless.

The hacking solution to help our youth is unlikely to come from 0's and 1's, but a hacker that could figure out how to address this--with 0's and 1's or otherwise--would be rewarded with more than gold and silver, they would be a hero.

It would be too much for a single person to figure out or a team for that matter. We could easily say that the solution is parenting, but I believe in many cases that isn't enough.

Our current social dynamic because of the Internet and technology combined is changing everything from bullying to coming of age to social skills and the problems have been coming to a head for years but only recently receiving so much of the spotlight, leaving it anyones guess what the future repercussions could be.

<comment><USER5> I don't consider this a problem.

The internet has changed our social dynamic, sure. It's given people anonymity, it's enabled them to be either exceptionally private or to effectively broadcast themselves (and sometimes they lose control over this, if they are not careful: a problem definitely heightened by the internet). It's removed entry barriers to conversation and enabled people to connect to others a lot easier. In my mind this has just meant that the value of (online) communication has decreased.

This might have a few effects. I know it makes people feel safer about exploring their sexuality (instead of having to find somebody they trust, they can instead experiment relatively safely with nobody watching them and just cut off the other person if they've had enough.) I guess this makes people act more cloak and dagger about the people they talk to, but that's surely just how life is when you're young and at school? Maybe people will trust each other less now. This isn't bad; it'll just make those real trust-based relationships that you find so much more meaningful. And, of course, pornography can make us a little more sexually violent but assuming we're not raping people is that really such a bad thing...

I think as long as it doesn't all become a game and people learn to love each other it'll all be okay.

<comment><USER6> How is the fact that our children (ok, my young siblings) are coming up in a world where bullying happens in a field vastly different from the playground not a problem?

I certainly can't pass on my experience of how to deal with cyber bullies, I don't have any(oh, but flamewars I understand), and I suspect that the entire newest generation is going to have to invent those protocols themselves. That's horribly unfortunate. When children kill themselves because of it, that's horrifying.

<comment><USER5> Bullying isn't solved on the playground. At least online the perpetrators document their aggression. Not that I believe that will solve anything, thought it might be fun to name-and-shame them.

Also, on the playground a bully will enjoy power by oppressing others in full view of their classmates. Authority and fear go hand in hand. Anonymity and the internet might make it easier to bully others but it also removes the pay- off. Somebody that bullies others online is wasting their time. If you do it, it's not a stretch for somebody else to point out that you're a bit of a 'loser'.

It's sad if children kill themselves because of this though. I've heard awful stories of people pretending to be a girlfriend/boyfriend, gaining trust and then humiliating the other person. You would have to be a little naive to fall for that but I don't think that's a lesson anybody should ever have to learn. However, I think that's an exception, kids will learn to not trust so easily in the virtual environment and to carefully control their virtual image.

<comment><USER6> This is something of a case in point for my argument that we really don't know how to deal with it..its brand new, and works on different dynamics than playground bullying.

The methods of cyber-bullying I've encountered doesn't involve a lone 'loser' barraging someone, but entire groups of quickly organized cliques continually harassing people.

And to be clear, they're not limited to terminal based Internet connections anymore, or even the Internet. A phone number is just as good as a chat account, and much less secure.

<comment><USER7> Cliques of children harassing other children! What a new and amazing discovery! This is unprecedented! </sarcasm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never been more thankful for the 2-3kb/s upstream bandwidth of my childhood. No way we were swapping naked photos of each other.

<comment><USER9> I guess digital cameras or webcams were not that available either. I am sure than having to take the picture, having it developed at the camera store and then scanning gave more time to think twice. Plus had a much less "private" feel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps I shouldn't be reading HN at work, but that was way more NSFW than I thought it would be.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm 24, and my wife is pregnant with our first.

Reading this article blew my mind. I grew up with AIM, ICQ, MSN Chat, whatever. I had a cameraphone when I was 17. I didn't see any of this, though.

I'm not sure whether I'm more scared to have a girl that has to live in a world like this, or to have a boy who may be like the guys in that story. I hate both outcomes.

I know many will argue that pornography isn't a big deal, or that the internet hasn't changed much. But as a parent who doesn't want to raise a daughter in that kind of environment, or a son who encourages it, what can I do? What would you do?

Is homeschooling the answer? I don't think so. I am very interested in seeing my kids develop socially in ways that they just can't do at home. Living in a small town? I think that's worse, because there's nothing else to do besides sex, get drunk, and do drugs. Shutting off the internet in the home? Seems unrealistic, but it is necessary?

I know, what I'm saying probably makes me look insane to many of you. But for those who are dealing with this with their kids now, what are you seeing? What should a future-parent strive to do?

</comment><comment><USER12> Please edit this post and mark it as NSFW.

</comment><comment><USER13> The printer-friendly link looks almost exactly like a default Readability view: <http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/70977/>

I wonder if Arc90 is working with them or if they just took the good idea and reused it?

</comment><comment><USER14> I never know what to say about stuff like this. My kids are 21 and 23 and have been online for years. They have never had issues with nude photos, bullying, and so on. It does not have to be some huge issue. It can be, but it doesn't have to be.

I will note that my kids were homeschooled and the bullying described in the article apparently revolved around this girl's real life social circle from school -- someone she went on an actual date with who spread rumors as a form of vengeance when she didn't put out. On homeschooling lists, there is fairly often discussion about how schools have a "lord of the flies" social dynamic. From my perspective, the incident in question is rooted in that issue, not in the internet per se.

I will also note that the photos in the article, which are described as re- creations of actual photos found online, all show what look to me like very upscale bedrooms that are a cluttered disaster. The settings suggest to me a home where the parents value material things overly much and try to "dote" on their kids by showering them with money and things in place of time and attention. I never had the kind of matching decor and such shown in the photos. But I did grow up with a garden out back, home-cooked meals, and parents helping me with my homework. And my bedroom never looked like the cluttered disaster depicted consistently throughout the photos. My room got cleaned and picked up.

My sons and I laugh at the idea of them being able to get away with some of the stunts we hear about or get into trouble without me knowing. First of all, I was there so much that I would have known what they were up to -- they couldn't have disappeared for hours on end without an explanation and no one noticing. And second of all, I didn't have rebellious teens because there was nothing to rebel against. I think that's an important detail.

<comment><USER7>
      > I didn't have rebellious teens because there was nothing to rebel against.

I'm curious about this statement. Does that mean that when your child become a teen you placed no restrictions on them, and let them have a free reign?

<comment><USER15> It's not "free reign" but "free rein": <http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/reign.html>

<comment><USER7> Hmmm. I always thought that 'free reign' made sense in that it was like self- governance with no restrictions.

<comment><USER14> I always kind of felt like the two were interchangeable. :-D But then I pronounced "facade" as "fake-aid" for years and years. My mind seems to like to blend and overlap two concepts like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does the press have an ethical duty to out powerful gays in tech? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/08/does-the-press-have-an-ethical-duty-to-out-powerful-gays.ars

<comment><USER2> Christ no! Do they have an obligation to out heterosexuals who engage in adult consensual kinky sex? Same answer. I think even Republican politicians deserve a little privacy. :-)

How about outing corruption, influence pedaling, and questionable campaign contributions?

EDIT: I finally read the article. The whole thing is a perversion of ethics. The idea that a journalist should out someone who is gay to celebrate gayness is wrong. If the person wants it known, let him do it himself. I suppose an exception is a gay bashing politician/activist who is in the closet, but that is just exposing hypocrisy. Same would be true of an anti-drug evangelist who is a secret drug dealer.

<comment><USER3> _The idea that a journalist should out someone who is gay to celebrate gayness is wrong._

In fact, the idea that someone should be outed for the benefit of gays is the exact origin of the concept of "outing."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outing#History>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ars Technica should be ashamed of themselves for 1) considering to write a piece like this 2) actually editing it for publishing 3) actually publishing it.

The end result may be that many people will start to believe that Tim Cook is gay.

How many people here even thought about Cook's personal life before reading the article?

Does anybody think his (or anybody elses) sexuality matters? If so, I'd like to hear why.

The press needs to start taking responsibility for what they are publishing. When a publication openly discusses things like 'and a recent tasteless photograph that I will not link ', or 'Whether or not you agree with what Gawker published in January', providing a link or not, the reader is likely inclined to search for said article or photo. It is as bad as writing the initial article yourself.

Though I don't see a way out of this, I think that in this situation, Ars took the wrong route, and I hope their editors pull the article.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article is pretty heavy on speculation, but even leaving that aside, I don't think the underlying question is one that's likely to be resolved by debate on this specific point. It's essentially an instance of the broader question of how ethics should balance individual versus collective benefit (when, if ever, is it ethically permitted, or perhaps even required, to do something "unethical" seeming to one person if it benefits many more people?), which ties into debates over things like utilitarianism.

</comment><comment><USER6> You (sadly) have to read this crap to believe it, it's just incredible.

\- Unless they report Tim Cook's gay they're saying he's straight

\- What can be written about his sexuality when he doesn't tell them, 'nothing' obviously isn't an option because of the previous point

\- Therefore they ask is Cook is being unethical by not telling them about his sex life</comment>


Huawei's claim of 100% employee ownership false, may be state-owned: paper - <AUTHOR> https://technode.com/2019/04/19/who-owns-huawei-clearly-not-its-employees-paper/ <comment><USER2> For my entire tenure of owning a smartphone before I got my Pixel 2 I was using and would swear by mid range phones from these eastern companies. ZTE, Huawei, LeEco, Alcatel. It was some combination of tendency to break phones, not wanting to support Apple due to their draconian policies, and just being straight up too broke to drop 700 dollars on a phone. These phones would ship without a ton of bloatware (with the exception of LeEco) for around 200 dollars and have decent hardware and alright cameras (outside of low light). For a very long time American phone manufacturers' offerings in this price range would be pretty lacking when compared. These days that's not the case, but in my opinion the inroads they were allowed to make onto the western markets (and subsequently the data they may or may not be collecting and sending to the Chinese Government) is entirely due to the refusal of western companies to ship quality phones at the mid range price.

<comment><USER3> LG is pretty good too, not expensive, and it is from South Korea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huawei says, "Huawei is a private company wholly owned by its employees. Through the Union of Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd., we implement an Employee Shareholding Scheme that involves 96,768 employee shareholders. This scheme is limited to employees. No government agency or outside organization holds shares in Huawei."

How can that be true? When a shareholding employee leaves, including when they are fired for cause, does the former employee get to keep the stock and continue receiving dividends until the they choose to sell the stock to someone else, who may or may not be an employee? If not, then the employees are not actually shareholders, it's just a bonus system.

<comment><USER5> It's in the article:

> Huawei's employee ownership claim is untrue because its employees have no > control over the trade union's decisions, the paper says citing China's > Trade Union Law. The employees actually hold "virtual stock" which allows > for participation in a profit-sharing scheme, which are canceled when an > employee leaves the company and allow no voting rights over the company, it > said.

<comment><USER6> So it's not state owned but might be state controlled, and ownership could easily be changed without the employees having a say?

(I am neither for nor against the company and have no skin in the game)

<comment><USER7> You've got it. Similar to Facebook's shareholders, except with more Xi and less Zuckerberg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If all employees are members of the state... transitive property hehe.

</comment><comment><USER9> The union in this case might as well be the state.

</comment><comment><USER10> So obvious.

Btw, check out 7 things not to speak about in china.</comment>


Ask HN: Have there been any serious studies on how to increase intelligence? - <AUTHOR> Intelligence as measured by IQ. <comment><USER2> Arguably studies leading to the discovery that lead is damaging to intelligence is indeed one of those studies.

In fact, there is a whole ton of research also on google scholar:

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=how...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=how+to+increase+iq&btnG=)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks for the link I will sift through some of these. If you have any that particularly stand out please post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, practice IQ tests. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-2389.00...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-2389.00182)

</comment><comment><USER4> There have been many attempts for interventions that increase IQ with little to no evidence that it's at all possible.

<comment><USER5> Yes this is what I have read also.

However, it seems that willpower can be trained and in some regards this is more useful. After all, if you're super smart but can't complete a project then that's a bit of a waste really.

Anecdotally, I would say most of the successful people I know exhibit extremely good self-discipline but are perhaps only a little bit smarter than average.

The theory is that if you are able to train yourself to be disciplined in some ways you can become disciplined in others as well, much like building strength in the gym. I think this might be the basis of the "tidy your room and keep it tidy" advice meme that seems to be repeated a lot at the moment (I should probably do that myself really)

A few years ago, I read the book "Willpower", which is quite a nice overview of this topic: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willpower-Why-Self-Control- Secret-S...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willpower-Why-Self-Control-Secret- Success/dp/0141049480)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome I'll check it out! Have you read The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal?

<comment><USER5> I haven't actually but I'll check that out when there's space on my reading queue. Currently I'm working my way through "What to say when you talk to yourself" which is so far interesting but not sure if I'd recommend it yet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn open-sources tools for managing website outages - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/29/linkedin-open-sources-tools-for-managing-website-outages/ <comment><AUTHOR> When [https://oncall.tools/](https://oncall.tools/) is tied into [https://iris.claims/](https://iris.claims/), it ends up being a pretty nice system.</comment>


Book Review: Impro by Keith Johnstone - <AUTHOR> http://theoryengine.org/mental-health/book-review-impro-by-keith-johnstone/ <comment><USER2> It's kind of funny and weird to think of everyday life as an improv. Some corollaries:

1\. We all have a responsibility to keep it flowing, responsive, and fun.

2\. We need to stay coherent and not totally insane but without sticking rigidly to boring cliched habitual scripts.

3\. There's always opportunities to do or say something unexpected, refreshing, lively.

4\. Sometimes you ought to play the straight character to let someone else do their thing.

I wonder if there's also some compelling arguments against thinking of life as an improv theater. Maybe Alasdair MacIntyre's virtue ethics would be an example because it emphasizes continuity within a life of community, like your character is much deeper than an act.

<comment><USER3> On the topic of everyday life and improv, you might be interested a TEDx talk called, appropriately, _The Way of Improvisation_.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUO- pWJ0riQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUO-pWJ0riQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're doing Impro, I can recommend reading the book by Spolin - Improvisation for the theater. The first (theoretical) part was the most interesting as it showed to me something I hadn't figured out myself, doing impro as a beginner.

In an impro game or play, you get a role and have a goal to fulfill. Your task is to fulfill that goal, and not to bother with the goals other people have. It's not to make things more "interesting" by making life for the others more difficult. As a beginner I thought that creating conflicts would result in more interesting plays, but it doesn't. It makes things messy, but not good messy. The different goals create enough conflict. And you can actually help eachother and make the play better by working together towards the goal of ending the game. Understanding that was an eye opener.

</comment><comment><USER5> I highly recommend this book, even if you have nothing to do with theatre. I've given numerous copies to other people over the years. The observations on creativity, spontaneity and how we block ourselves are excellent, and it's written in a highly readable way.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. It's high on the list of books that changed the way I think. Between his analysis of status transactions and reading de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" so much of human behavior suddenly became explicable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an outstanding book, can be a life impacting work for introvert tech types.

</comment><comment><USER8> I did improv in college and I remember this book and the impact its "status" philosophy had on me. Its a wonderful way of bringing awareness to status dynamics in everyday life, particularly in narcissistic families or other status-conscious settings, where people respect "top" and disrespect "bottom." But thinking that all human dynamics involve this seems very lonely and sad. Loving relationships should be between equals, there should not —- and need not —- be constant dynamics of dominance and submission. Theres give and take, sure, but to play that out through dominance and submission seems really bleak and lonely, and doesnt reflect my experience of life among people who are not obsessed with status. It would be a mistake for socially anxious people to see it as a prescription, but its a wonderful tool for understanding those toxic and competitive environments we were traumatized in, as well as much of human interaction outside a loving and cooperative context.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tangentially related: Towards a Poor Theatre by Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba. I disagree with a lot of it but one cannot deny it is an eye-opening book.

</comment><comment><USER10> Impro greatly improved my public speaking by making me more aware of "status" (Johnstone's conception of it) and the dynamic relationships in the room. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER11> Yes I was going to comment on this, the idea that acting doesn't appear real unless one actor is playing a different status to another is quite insightful. I suppose this is something to think about for interactions in the real world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I read this book more than 10 years ago as a teenager. My big takeaway: try to defer responsibility to something other than yourself or other people and you suddenly have a lot of room to say things that you otherwise could not say.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's so nice to see a thorough, thoughtful review rather than the typical HN submit of a ripped summary and affiliate links.</comment>


1/5 still use old Symantec certs (Certificate Transparency scan) - <AUTHOR> https://openstate.eu/en/2018/10/scan-symantec-certificaat/ <comment><AUTHOR> We (OpenStateFoundation) scanned 15070 Dutch (.nl) Symantec certificates that are in the Certificate Transparency via crt.sh, which are valid for 45822 different domain names (including wildcard certificates), which of 26971 are below the .nl-tld (and of which 19648 unique names, if www/non-www and * are normalized to the plain domain), which resulted in 3801 that still needing replacement (the scan in the article is based on a CN scan, later I also did a scan based on the valid DNS names in the cert).

On average 1 in 5, probably other TLDs have a similar score.</comment>


Heroku equivalent for django? - <AUTHOR>

I'm sure this has been discussed many times so sorry for the repeat. Can anyone point me in the right direction? <comment><USER2> There was some good discussion on hosted Django services on the Django subreddit a few days ago: [http://www.reddit.com/r/django/comments/f1h7g/share_your_exp...](http://www.reddit.com/r/django/comments/f1h7g/share_your_experiences_using_hosted_django_cloud/)

</comment><comment><USER3> GAE: <http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/django.html></comment>


Twitter parody account holder sought in police raid - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/twitter-parody-account-holder-sought-in-police-raid/

<comment><USER2> Parodying an elected official is protected by the first amendment. It seems quite unlikely that anybody will be charged with anything. Pretty much all this accomplishes is making the mayor look ridiculous + creating a bunch of new parody twitter accounts.</comment>


The Man Who Invented Information Theory (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/tom-rutledge-man-who-invented-information-theory <comment><USER2> Claude Shannon's Masters Thesis was on the application of Boolean Algebra to circuits, effectively founding digital circuit design. That should have been enough for anyone, but not for Shannon. His later work on Information theory has proven important in everything from evolution to quantum mechanics (particularly, relative quantum entropy) and perhaps even to future physics ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td1fz5NLjQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td1fz5NLjQs)).

He also did early work in cryptanalysis, AI (minimax chess algorithm and a learning robotic mouse). His student was Ivan Sutherland. More or less, whether its networking, signal processing, compression, crypto, machine learning, circuit design, basically anything to do with the digital age, you'll find Shannon did important foundational work there.

<comment><USER3> It is a shame shannon doesn't get the recognition he deserves. Computer science has many fathers and as amazing as Turing was, nobody contributed more and nobody has a better claim to call himself the father of computer science than Shannon. Not Turing. Not Church. He outstrips them all but nobody outside of the computer science world has heard of him.

<comment><USER4> Just two nights ago, on Amazon Prime streaming, I watched the very good show "BBC Order And Disorder Episode 2 - Information" hosted by the excellent Jim Al-Khalili. He profiles Alan Turing and says that Turing was only half the story and then introduces Claude Shannon—a name with which I was unfamiliar—and Bell Labs. Great stuff.

<comment><USER5> Great documentary. I can heartily recommend all of Al-Khalili's documentaries: "Atom", "The End of the Universe", "Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity" and "Chemistry: A Volatile History" are all excellent. The last two are my favorites; while his documentaries on physics and quantum mechanics are good, they describe scientific phenomena that are pretty difficult to understand, let alone visualize, and it ends up having to be a little over-simplified, or explained with unsatisfying visual analogies. The ones on chemistry and electricity are a lot more (no pun intended) grounded, and include some fun demonstrations.

<comment><USER4> Wow, thank you. I will seek out those shows.

<comment><USER6> I did some googling and it looks like you can see at least some of this stuff online: [http://www.documentarytube.com/videos/chemistry-a- volatile-h...](http://www.documentarytube.com/videos/chemistry-a-volatile- history)

<comment><USER4> Thank you. I discovered last night that some of the shows you mention are not on amazon Prime. Only the more astronomical and physics-related ones are (Gravity; Order/Disorder; Everything/Nothing; Beginning/End of the Universe).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is a beautiful read. You easily find the PDF but once the latex source was available as well - in case you want to reformat for e-book reader: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130129025547/http://cm.bell- la...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130129025547/http://cm.bell- labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html)

<comment><USER8> I cannot overstate this point and upvote it enough.

The reason Claude Shannon is a _legend_ has a lot to do with the fact that his ideas are not just _correct_ and draw from his multidisciplinary knowledge, but also _expertly communicated_. It is an incredibly readable paper and only absolutely requires a little bit of mathematics when he is describing how to convert a state machine for Morse code to a matrix which would allow someone to calculate how many bits per time unit can actually be transmitted in Morse code -- and this is not absolutely essential, it is calculated in a different way and also it is communicated that you can easily take his word for it that it is whatever numerical value it was. A lot of the arguments about fitting a stream of symbols into an encoding for noisy channels have these lovely diagrams that help to elucidate exactly what he's talking about.

If you want to make that same sort of impact, it is not just important to be a great mind, but to spend a bunch of time practicing how you communicate that information.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. Effective communication is what made Feynman a legend.

Sadly, many extremely smart and profound scientists are quite incapable of (or not interested in) conveying clearly their thoughts to general audiences.

<comment><USER10> I guess it's fitting that a man who created a theory of communicating information was effective at communicating information.

<comment><USER11> It's actually not that common and a common fallacy. We even have a phrase "the tailors kids have the worst shoes" indicating that experts and geniuses don't necessarily apply their own logic because application is different from theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The ingenuity and brilliance coming from Bell Labs during that era is absolutely astonishing. Transistors, information theory, satellite communication, UNIX/C, the list goes on. These ideas unquestionably laid the foundation for modern high-tech society.

If anyone is interested in learning more about Bell Labs and the folks who worked there, "The Idea Factory" by Jon Gertner is a fantastic book written on the subject. It's not comprehensive but it's a very inspiring read.

There has always been something very vexing about Bell Labs' legacy though. They had everything they needed to start the personal computing revolution: engineers, scientists, equipment, a nationwide telephone network for god's sake. What happened?

<comment><USER13> I heartily second the recommendation for "The Idea Factory"! I'm currently reading this book and aside from the seriously impressive run of successes, the characters are really quite amusing at times too. E.g., Shannon built a desktop calculator that operated using Roman numerals only ("THROBAC") in order to amuse himself. And some of the whimsical creations were pretty impressive in their own right. E.g., his maze-solving mouse "Theseus" learned the maze layout on progressive runs through the maze by using relay-based logic.

<comment><USER14> I'll happily "third" the recommendation for _The Idea Factory_. It really is an inspiring read, and I expect many firms could find some actionable takeaways to apply within their own organizations, even today. Yes, Bell Labs had some specific circumstances that allowed them some luxuries that other firms may not have, but their success is not as simple as "they had a monopoly, herp derp".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _A new Shannon biography, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, may help reverse this legacy. Authors Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman make a strong bid to expose Shannon's work to a popular audience, balancing a chronological narrative, the "Eureka!" moments that sprang from his disciplined approach to solving puzzles, and his propensity for playfulness._

Another book with a lengthy section on Claude Shannon is James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood [1.]. A shorter but still nice explanation in on Brain Pickings [2.].

1\. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the- information](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information) 2\. [https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/06/james-gleick-the- in...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/06/james-gleick-the-information- claude-shannon/)

<comment><USER16> Is he really unknown? I know most of us don't do much signal processing these days but you can't get far in studying compression without hearing about Shannon.

<comment><USER17> Shannon may be well known in the HN community, but definitely not outside of here.

<comment><USER18> Surprising plot twist: I first heard of Claude Shannon from a music magazine which I read instead of doing my CS homework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Shannon was a speaker at my commencement at CMU. He struck me as kind of a self-effacing, amusing sort of character. Maybe like a much quieter, less ego- driven version of Feynman.

Also: as much as people talk about information theory in various contexts, I doubt that many take the trouble to understand it better. Like thermodynamics, people want to take away an overly broad, folksy interpretation and apply it everywhere without stopping to think if it really applies in the way they claim.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure what you mean here, so it may be worth elaborating. I think a lot of people understand how theory, and certainly in communication theory everyone understands the famous equation. I don't see anyone claiming it applies in places it doesn't.

<comment><USER19> Shannon himself talked about it in "The Bandwagon": [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774)

>I don't see anyone claiming it applies in places it doesn't.

It applies in a lot of places, but probably in a more narrow way than people think. You can say "information theory applies here" and probably be right, but to be specific about what that means requires some work. Shannon says that himself in that piece.

Thermodynamics is an easier one to see, because people always make claims about something "because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics", something about everything always becoming more disordered. But that's too simplistic a view, and fails to consider what is a closed system and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another great book (about Shannon and others) is "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation"

[https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Idea_Factory.html?i...](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Idea_Factory.html?id=uOMt_XCo81QC)

</comment><comment><USER22> Ok his fundamental theorems aren't strictly binary. He wrote of discerning possible 'symbols' from noisy measurement where a symbol could have N possible values. The optimum discernment was at 2 values (1 and 0) but his math handled any base.

If I remember right after 20 years.

<comment><USER23> Actually, if I recall correctly after only 5 years, your first sentence is correct. It doesn't matter how many symbols your alphabet has (i.e. base system used in application) because they can all be represented using binary. I don't recall anything about "optimum discernment" just that it is convenient to standardize proofs using a binary alphabet. For example, Huffman coding is proved using binary but it easily applies to ternary systems as well.

<comment><USER22> Yeah it had to do with Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) being best at 2 symbols I think.

<comment><USER24> >The optimum discernment was at 2 values (1 and 0)

I think this "optimum discernment" at base 2 you remember is nonsense? could you provide a pointer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> an-allen "Anything can be communicated over a noisy channel without error" \- Was something my Elec 201 professor would confidently proclaim before he would go into a lengthy aside about how amazing Claude Shannon is.

That was nearly 20 years ago.

Everyday I appreciate that statement, and Claude Shannon, a little bit more.

</comment><comment><USER25> He also showed the limits of the efficient market hypothesis in economics. Add in Einstein (information cannot travel faster than the speed of light), and Kolmogorov (random information cannot be compressed) to get 90% of why markets cannot be fully efficient.

</comment><comment><USER26> There's a fantastic book on Shannon called "Grammatical Man", by Jeremy Campbell - [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000KHFL0W](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000KHFL0W)

<comment><USER27> While this book was originally published in 1973, it contains a lot of great information that is relevant today. I should re-read it...

<comment><USER28> FYI, 1982, not '73.

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man- information-e...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/grammatical-man-information- entropy-language-and- life/oclc/856698430/editions?start_edition=31&sd=desc&referer=br&se=yr&editionsView=true&fq=)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's been forever since I read it, but Fortune's Formula [1] is an entertaining read that goes into Shannon's investment methodology, alongside Edward Thorp [2].

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Formula-Scientific- Betting-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Formula-Scientific-Betting- Casinos/dp/0809045990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548815625&sr=8-1&keywords=fortune%27s+formula) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp)

</comment><comment><USER30> One of my heroes. I have his picture as my phone background so that I'm constantly reminded of the minds that built the device I use everyday.

When I saw that masters thesis. I literally hyperventilated.

</comment><comment><USER31> There's a kind of paradox of shannon entropy found in communications with double-entendre I think, in that they appear to increase both redundancy and entropy. I touched on that in this essay proposing what i call subtractive adversarial networks.

[https://medium.com/@_NicT_/subtractive-adversarial- networks-...](https://medium.com/@_NicT_/subtractive-adversarial- networks-7465c3e161e5)

</comment><comment><USER32> The biography they reference, "A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age", is on sale in the Kindle store right now: [https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented- Informatio...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Play-Shannon-Invented-Information- ebook/dp/B01M5IJN1P/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

<comment><USER33> Not just at the Kindle store. The eBook is also on sale at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, BAM!, Google Play, and Kobo. They are all $3.99, same as the Kindle sale price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Claude Shannon had an interest in AI and had a hobby of making electronic game machines, most of which survive to this day in the MIT Museum. A list with descriptions and photos is available here:

[https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude- shannon...](https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man- games-and-machines)

</comment><comment><USER35> The odd thing about Shannon information is a coin flip can have just as much information as text, yet the former would intuitively seem devoid of information and the latter information rich. It is unclear what exactly is the relationship between Shannon information and what we intuitively consider information. Any ideas?

<comment><USER36> Shannon information deliberately only concerns syntactic information (information content). Other, more recent work, focuses on semantic information (information with meaning for a receiver).

> Shannon information theory provides various measures of so-called "syntactic > information", which reflect the amount of statistical correlation between > systems. In contrast, the concept of "semantic information" refers to those > correlations which carry significance or "meaning" for a given system. > Semantic information plays an important role in many fields, including > biology, cognitive science, and philosophy, and there has been a long- > standing interest in formulating a broadly applicable and formal theory of > semantic information. In this paper we introduce such a theory. We define > semantic information as the syntactic information that a physical system has > about its environment which is causally necessary for the system to maintain > its own existence. "Causal necessity" is defined in terms of counter-factual > interventions which scramble correlations between the system and its > environment, while "maintaining existence" is defined in terms of the > system's ability to keep itself in a low entropy state.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.08053](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.08053)

Roughly speaking: The amount of computation or energy needed to perfectly reproduce a random source, such as a coin flip, is high, while the significance or meaning, for the average receiver, is low. Natural language text requires less computation to reproduce [1], but, for the average receiver, the significance is higher.

[1] [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shannon1950.pdf](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shannon1950.pdf)

<comment><USER35> Hmm, but you could compress text to an equally random sequence. I.e. all minimal programs are by definition Kolmogorov random.

Also, what about crystalline forms, which are very orderly and require minimal computation to reproduce, but are equally insignificant for the average receiver?

<comment><USER36> > you could compress text to an equally random sequence

More or less correct. The key difference is that you could not compress a random coin flip sequence (and that a compressed text is meaningless until decompressed to original).

> all minimal programs are by definition Kolmogorov random

Compression provides an upper bound to K. Kolmogorov Randomness itself is not computable. AKA: You can't ever know if you have a minimal program.

> Crystalline forms

It is possible to both have low significance and low information content. Crystalline forms were very significant to Turing though: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_Basis_of_Morphoge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_Basis_of_Morphogenesis)

<comment><USER35> The best approach that I've seen is a combination of Shannon information and Kolmogorov complexity. If an object has high Shannon information, then it is not crystalline. If it also has low Kolmogorov complexity then it is not random. This seems to characterize the sweet spot where meaningful information occurs. Kolmogorov called this quantity "randomness deficiency".

<comment><USER36> Really cool concept. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is a controversial opinion but: Claude Shannon is more noteworthy than Einstein. It's simply the case engineering science is not taken seriously by the scientific community despite its overwhelming contributions to human development, namely digital signal processing and computer engineering.

</comment><comment><USER38> Information Theory was one of my favorite subjects @ uni. Wish I had more time to dig in now!

<comment><USER39> What did you cover?

At my uni they only had communications theory, which covered stuff like software defined radios. Information theory was a significant part of it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I would argue Shannon's case is far from unique. For my money, Gauss was the greatest mathematical mind of all time but does the general public know of him.

</comment><comment><USER41> Dover's excellent 'An Introduction to Information Theory' by John Pierce is dedicated to Claude and Betty Shannon.

</comment><comment><USER42> I read The Mathematical Theory of Communication every few years and find something new every time.</comment>


Why Do North Koreans Hate Us? One Reason - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/ <comment><USER2> Years ago I remember watching was was supposedly leaked anti-west propaganda from the DPRK. Weather it's really made/displayed in North Korea is a subject of debate, but you can find such videos around the Internet.

What was interesting is that a lot of what they describe is the video are valid criticisms of the west: our obsession with celebrity, our materialism, et cetera.

Of course the DPRK is still a slave state, with terrible suppression of any deviating political beliefs and labour camps producing the minimum resources for the nation to survive.

It's interesting though, that a little bit of the truth mixed in with a lot of lies, can keep so much control. And What we don't realise in the west is that the same system is in place. Before it was "fake news," it was just called "news," and the majority of our networks sprinkle in blatant falsehoods with many truths.

It's like Final Fantasy 7 where Rufus says his father tried to control the world with money, but that took too much effort so he was just going to use fear.

In the west, we're not in slave states and many countries have high standards of living and a relative high freedom of protest and expression. It gives people the illusion they are free when their governments will simply support their richest demographic and go to wear despite the will of the people.

<comment><USER3> +1 for FF VII reference

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found the following interview with two north koreans who escaped very insightful and touching: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqUw0WYwoc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqUw0WYwoc)

</comment><comment><USER5> Truman wouldn't let MacArthur win the war, and so we've had this shit sandwich in our laps for the last sixty years.

<comment><USER6> MacArthur was batshit insane and wanted to use nukes:

        "Of all the campaigns of my life, 20 major ones to be exact, [Korea was]
        the one I felt most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging. I
        could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days.... I would
        have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on his air bases and other
        depots strung across the neck of Manchuria.... It was my plan as our
        amphibious forces moved south to spread behind us—from the Sea of Japan
        to the Yellow Sea—a belt of radioactive cobalt.

        It could have been spread from wagons, carts, trucks and planes....
        For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of
        Korea from the north. The enemy could not have marched across that
        radiated belt.[0]"

The only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in warfare then normalizing their use would have created a far worse fate for the US than not winning the war in Korea decisively.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Truman%27s_relief_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_Truman%27s_relief_of_General_Douglas_MacArthur#Nuclear_weapons)

<comment><USER7> There is a reasonable argument that the use of nukes would haven saved millions of lives, like it did in Japan.

Ulysses S Grant was criticized for the heavy losses his armies took and inflicted, but he ended a stalemated war that was killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.

<comment><USER6> There is also a reasonable argument that the use of nukes would have demonstrated the US, being the only power to ever use nuclear weapons in combat until that point and having thus proven willing to continue doing so indiscriminately, to be a much greater threat to the world than the Axis powers were, or the Communist powers at the time.

<comment><USER7> That some might not understand is a poor reason to sentence half the world to slavery and death. Many of the peaceniks of the 50s grew to regret their positions when they found out what was really going on behind the iron curtain.

Remember when Bertrand Russell was advocating a pre-emptive nuclear war to ensure it would be the last nuclear war?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Summary: War is still heck and water is still wet. Author would have preferred millions to die in re-education camps instead of combat.

</comment><comment><USER8> So that's where we are. And the US did terrible things. It shameful and it should never do those type of things again.

But the conflict should have been finished rather than being left to fester for decades. The society could have been rebuild and almost certainly would have prospered.

So now we have a problem. I don't think Kim can be left alone, he simply is too dangerous. Talks and negotiations and sanctions haven't worked. I doubt they are likely to in the future. I believe he will simply continue to acquire destructive technology affecting the balance of power in the region and possibly the world and at one point may well use it as he continually threatens to do.

I am pretty anti war. Extremely anti-colonialism. But in the case of NK I think the situation needs solving and soon. I believe they should be disarmed, by force if necessary and I'd support this even though I support almost no other US military adventures. It's a shame we let it get to this point but we did somehow. I say this as an American with American and allies interest in mind. I suppose there are other perspectives.

<comment><USER6> >I'd support this even though I support almost no other US military adventures.

Two problems - China and Russia, both allies of North Korea, and both nuclear powers.

Neither particularly _likes_ North Korea, but they like American military power in Asia much less.

<comment><USER8> Ya well, like I say, it is a mess. But Kim can't be left to continue. Regardless of how Russia and China feel about the situation.

And I'm pretty sure neither will embrace the final solution and cause their own demise in defense of Kim.

Sooner is better than later in this case. The ideal time was 60 years ago.</comment></comment></comment>


Epistemology and A/B Testing - <AUTHOR> http://www.untyped.com/untyping/2010/07/22/epistemology-and-ab-testing/

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to be really a blog-post, as much as a preface to a blog- post yet to come. The second, future one I want to read; this one just seemed pointless.</comment>


How Technology Enables Disruption Through Transparency - <AUTHOR> http://dennybritz.com/blog/2013/12/18/transparency/

<comment><USER2> Almost any regulatory agency probably has it's roots in some kind of transparancy issue.

FDA - did the food company/employee cut corners EPA - did somebody dump or release toxins into the environment Legal system - what happened on x date/time. if virtually all human intraction was recorded we could elimate half effort of the court system.</comment>


Show HN: Lightning Network Search and Analysis Engine - <AUTHOR> https://1ml.com/#search <comment><USER2> Does anyone know how Lightening Network code actually routes nodes?

The LN claim is basically decentralized BGP but much more complex and prone to race condition errors.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug8NH67_EfE&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug8NH67_EfE&feature=youtu.be&t=10m24s)

The white paper doesn't even mention how LN routing works!

      8.4 Payment Routing

      It is theoretically possible to build a route map
      implicitly from observing 2-of-2 multisigs on the
      blockchain to build a routing table. Note, however,
      this is not feasible with pay-to-script-hash transaction
      outputs, which can be resolved out-of-band from the
      bitcoin protocol via a third party routing service.
      Building a routing table will become necessary for
      large operators (e.g. BGP, Cjdns). Eventually, with
      optimizations, the network will look a lot like the
      correspondent banking network, or Tier-1 ISPs.

It seems impossible to implement true decentralized routing, so it's likely they're using some sort of hack to prioritize "masternodes" as the backbone routers instead of actual peer to peer routing.

<comment><USER3> The whole thing is fishy. The lightning network is pushed by Blockstream, a company which has a large number of devs working on bitcoin core. They were responsible for all the propaganda and talking points against bumping the block size leading to the BCH fork, because they wanted the "correct" solution of their lightning network. The fact that it is so complex and ill defined is dangerous and an antithesis of decentralized system design and ethos, as it's not clear how trustless transactions are protected. How do we know that there isn't an easy backdoor that allows this network to be controlled for Blockstream's purposes?

<comment><USER4> This is pure FUD.

Satoshi himself proposed the first version of payment channels [1]. The Lightning Network paper has zero authors from Blockstream [2]. At least two other entirely independent companies are working on Lightning Network implementations [3][4]. It's well understood how trustless LN transactions work [5]. The spec [6] and code are open source, feel free to look for a "backdoor".

1\. [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Nakamoto_high- fr...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Nakamoto_high- frequency_transactions)

2\. [https://lightning.network/lightning-network- paper.pdf](https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf)

3\. [https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd)

4\. [https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair](https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair)

5\. [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hashed_Timelock_Contracts](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hashed_Timelock_Contracts)

6\. [https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning- rfc](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc)

<comment> cup-of-tea Whenever I see the term "FUD" nowadays I think "ah, someone who is invested in a cryptocurrency, this will definitely be an unbiased view".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While everyone else argues about wether LN is evil or great, I'll just comment on your product.

It's a nice tool, akin to the block explorers out there. One minor thing I noticed, where you define the node colour in the sidebar, sometimes if it is dark the hexcode cannot be seen.

There's a way to fix this by dynamically determining the color in javascript for example, and changing the text atop of it to white.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Fixed it with CSS text-shadow

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are the regulatory hurdles to operating a lightning node in the US? It makes you a money transmitter, right?

<comment><USER7> Here is something from Andreas Antonopoulos on this topic: [https://youtu.be/c4TjfaLgzj4?t=14m35s](https://youtu.be/c4TjfaLgzj4?t=14m35s)

I think the most important aspect is that Lightning Nodes are just sending bitcoin transactions, the whole system is trustless, the node relying your transaction to destination can't steal your money any more then bitcoin full node relying your transaction to miners can.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. That was very unsatisfying, though. He's right that there are usually thresholds where money-transmitter laws kick in, but having to track that and refrain once you hit the limit would be onerous and limiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does "capacity" mean in this context?

<comment><USER9> Lightning Network seems very confusing. It's unclear to a casual user what "capacity" is and what it means to them. Or what any of this means, really.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the end user needs to know anything about capacities or other technical details the same way a user doesn't need to know their internet speed.

The end user experience will be having a hot wallet in your computer/phone or online service like coinbase that will handle all the routing, channel setup, etc for you. Like when you use bittorrent you don't need to manually connect to peers, the bittorrent client handles that for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have watched couple of introductions on LN and had some questions, if someone can help:

a. What effect does this have on transaction sizing?

b. Does the the node owner charge fees for each transaction?

c. How are the channel amounts calculated? Do they include mining and node fees?

<comment><USER12> a. LN transactions and Bitcoin transactions are different things, i will assume you mean "how does LN affect Bitcoin's chain capacity?" \- to use LN you have to make at least one Bitcoin transaction - so called "funding" transaction which opens or refills a channel, afterwards you can make millions of LN micropayments - none of them will affect Bitcoin tx capacity.

b. Yes, it's part of node configuration, you can set whatever fee you like, but most probably at this point everybody will just route around you.

c. When creating the funding transaction you decide the amount of satoshi to be locked up in a channel for use in LN. Funding transaction is subject to normal Bitcoin transaction fees (x sat/byte, the higher you pay the faster it's committed and your channel becomes usable).

<comment><USER11> a. I meant bitcoin transaction sizing. Bitcoin fees are driven by transaction sizes and my understanding (edited) is for a LN channel to be opened and closed, the transaction needs to committed to the blockchain. What are the expected size of these transactions? And how does Segwit work for these transactions?

b. Thanks for the answer. (Edited): So, it seems the current argument there will be too much competition for nodes hence people will automatically set low or no fees.

c. This is unclear to me. Normally, when I am paying for stuff in bitcoin sellers tend to attach an estimated fee for the transaction. Lets take an example, I need to pay 0.1 BTC they will charge 0.101 BTC. The 0.001 BTC is the transaction fee.

With LN nodes charging fees on top of it, businesses now will have two fees to account for?

Additionally, my understanding now is that there are three fees now:

a. Channel Opening fees to miners

b. Node fees which might be zero

c. Channel Closing fees to miners

<comment><USER12> > What are the expected size of these transactions?

LN deposit/close transactions don't carry any information about LN payments made on the channel, so their size doesn't grow with usage. They are simply 2-2 multisig transactions, so somewhat larger than the minimal 1-in-1-out tx, but probably (didn't check this) not larger than median bitcoin transaction.

> And how does Segwit work for these transactions

those are always pay-to-witness-script-hash transactions, so they don't even work without segwit: [https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning- rfc/blob/maste...](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning- rfc/blob/master/03-transactions.md#funding-transaction-output)

> current argument there will be too much competition for nodes hence people > will automatically set low or no fees

it's not as easy, there are multiple incentives and discentives working here. lowering fees will bring more volume but increase cpu/io load. higher volume also means you need to have more capacity on your channels, which essentially means lots of funds in a hot wallet - a target for hackers. high volume also means you might become target for authorities wanting to track payments in LN. et cetera.

> With LN nodes charging fees on top of it, businesses now will have two fees > to account for?

technically yes, but the fee for deposit transaction is paid only once per channel and merchants (usually) won't be involved with it. it's reasonable to assume that users will mostly fund channels with larger nodes because that brings better connectivity (you don't want to have a channel with starbucks, mcdonalds and burger king, you want single channel with a node that invested in having a lots of channels).

as for the three fees you listed - yes (but not necessarily to miners?). the assumption is that you will rarely be opening and closing channels, just like you're rarely opening and closing a new debit card. you'll open with a reliable node that makes you routable, you'll once in a while deposit more funds and eventually you will close the channel. in between you can have bajillion transactions for which you will pay close to zero fees.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the other clarifications but this part leaves me confused.

> mostly fund channels with larger nodes because that brings better > connectivity (you don't want to have a channel with starbucks, mcdonalds and > burger king, you want single channel with a node that invested in having a > lots of channels).

Lets take an example. Bob wants to pay Starbucks for his coffee. Alice is running a node which has a channel open to Starbucks. Now he can open a channel to Starbucks directly and pay for his coffee. But that is time/fees consuming so he will pay Alice, who will then pay to Starbucks on his behalf?

If that is true, doesn't that put too much power in Alice's hand? And if there are some nodes which have heavily invested in cpu/io and coins to their channels, wont they effectively control a large part of the transaction volume and hence make the network more decentralized?

> you will rarely be opening and closing channels, just like you're rarely > opening and closing a new debit card.

I get confused every time this analogy is brought up. Sure, I don't need to open/close debit cards but those cards are loaded automatically when I get my salary/income. And the money is not tied, I can move it around as much as I want.

On the other hand, again, as per my understanding LN requires me to commit an amount and I have to make do with it until the amount runs out. So, its more like a prepaid gift card with fixed commitments and a reload feature.

<comment><USER12> > If that is true, doesn't that put too much power in Alice's hand? And if > there are some nodes which have heavily invested in cpu/io and coins to > their channels, wont they effectively control a large part of the > transaction volume and hence make the network more decentralized?

what do you mean by "power"? yes, there will be nodes handling more transactions than other nodes, but that in no way prevents you from using other nodes or even investing into opening channels yourself and competing.

> those cards are loaded automatically when I get my salary/income. And the > money is not tied, I can move it around as much as I want.

not everybody carries a debit card connected to their main bank account. and those that do usually have daily limits on how much they can spend, so you can't really move it around as much as you want. similar to that, not every BTC holder stores their BTC in hot wallet. funding your debit card is similar to funding your hot wallet which is similar to funding your LN channels.

don't take the analogy too far though. point is that LN allows you to do is micropayments without flooding the blockchain. there are tradeoffs involved. that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have they solved the distributed routing problem? I watched many videos on the LN, and it's never addressed, it's always this hand-wavy explanation that a route is somehow found, on a network that changes, potentially, thousands of times per seconds, and has tens of millions of nodes.

<comment><USER14> They are explicitly postponing the sophisticated routing solution until a later iteration, when we have more experience with how the network will become arranged.

It's not an omission, it was done this way on purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> BCH, it should be noted, has nothing to do with Bitcoin other than appropriating the name...

<comment><USER16> And forking the BTC blockchain.

<comment><USER17> And the blockchain history.

<comment> dane-pgp And living up to Satoshi's original vision of a "purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash".

<comment><USER17> Not really. I think Monero has that mantle. Mining was supposed to be decentralised and the cash was supposed to be fungible.

<comment> dane-pgp Is Bitcoin Cash mining not decentralised?

[https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/thisweek](https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/thisweek)

Also I'm not sure what definition of fungible you are using that doesn't include Bitcoin Cash, but here's another spurious definition for you: A cryptocurrency isn't fungible if most wallets have balances that can't be spent because of fees.

[https://www.newsbtc.com/2017/11/17/bitpay-ceo-claims- current...](https://www.newsbtc.com/2017/11/17/bitpay-ceo-claims-current- average-bitcoin-fee-makes-57-26-wallet-balances-unspendable/)

<comment><USER18> The usual definition of fungible is that one coin (more precisely, one spend output) is as good as another (e.g., the same amount coming from a different UTXO) and they are not distinguishable from each other due to their provenance.

Put more simply, if the coins can be 'tainted' because they were transferred to you from a ransomware hoard then they're not fungible because a merchant could say: "I'm not taking those coins, I don't want to be associated with ransomware. You have to pay me with other coins."

Neither BTC nor BCH has this kind of fungibility, though Monero does.

<comment> dane-pgp I could see (some) merchants applying a blacklist to wallets that are known to be "evil" (as decided by some third party, somehow), but it's hard to imagine a non-negligible proportion of the bitcoin marketplace ever blacklisting all coins which have at any time in history been held by a ransomeware writer. The possibility of denying business to innocent customers is too great, and the benefits too small.

If some bizarre counter-productive legislation does come in requiring such a system for bitcoin, then yes, Monero might suddenly become more fungible in practice.

<comment><USER17> There is no "more fungible". It is either fungible or it isn't. Provenance can either be determined, or it can't. Sure there may be a degree of difficulty to determine provenance for some things, but if you cannot determine provenance at all, there is no degree.

<comment> dane-pgp "Fungible: being something (such as money or a commodity) of such a nature that one part or quantity may be replaced by another equal part or quantity in paying a debt or settling an account"

That definition doesn't mention provenance, even if I concede that something can't be "more (easily) determined" or "less (easily) determined".

My point is that if 99% of debts can, in practice, be paid (or transactions made) without either party paying any attention to the provenance of the coins, then the coins are fungible.

If there were reports of a significant number of a people being unable to transact because their bitcoins were blacklisted, then I would believe that bitcoin is significantly less fungible.

Whether that lack of fungibility is more significant than Monero's differing level of merchant adoption (for which I also don't have statistics) is then another question that a user has to weigh up.

<comment><USER17> It would be very unfortunate to be in that 1%, particularly if the implications were dire economically or for liberty. 1% is an enormous percentage. I personally wouldn't even settle for 0.1%.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Full Stack Entrepreneur – A Full Stack Guide To Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://fullstackentrepreneur.co/

<comment><USER2> Seems like a great concept for a book, however, perhaps just a little bit more detail on the landing page? I definitely know that this is the route you should be taking (per Nathan Barry, if you haven't read Authority, check it out), but I'd like to see just a little more detail.

<comment><USER3> Seems like they're leveraging the buzzword "full stack" to build an email list for a product that doesn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What are you showing, exactly? All I see is a sign up page for a book which may or may not be finished soon.

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be far better if there were a table of contents on this page.</comment>


Ask: Local Tech Scene in Hangzhou, China? - <AUTHOR> I'm going to Hangzhou, China for my wife's student exchange program. We'll be there for a month. I was hoping to have the opportunity to get acquainted with the Chinese tech scene and perhaps make local connections. Does anyone know of such a local tech scene? How can I learn more on what's going on there? <comment><USER2> Just try to go this cafe shop [贝塔咖啡馆 | BetaCafe Club]([http://www.cafebeta.com/](http://www.cafebeta.com/)) there are so many start up or IT company around there, and many it guys will have meet up in that, you will definitely love there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! Do you know any online communities I could join while I'm still abroad?

<comment><USER2> try this [https://www.meetup.com/cities/cn/hangzhou/?country=cn&zipsta...](https://www.meetup.com/cities/cn/hangzhou/?country=cn&zipstatecity=hangzhou&state=&radius=25)</comment></comment></comment>