CBS censors a 'Good Fight' segment whose topic was Chinese censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/arts/television/cbs-good-fight-chinese-censorship.html <comment><USER2> It's a bit telling when a media giant like CBS can't strike a happy medium by you know - both not censoring it in the US and censoring it in china - instead, choosing to censor the whole thing outright on the entire platform. It's almost like all these American companies are moving en masse to do business in China with the sole purpose of increasing profits every single quarter, irrespective of (and arguably, now encouraging) the numerous, controversial human rights and ethics violations that China is known for.

<comment><USER3> It's also strange how quick people in this very thread are to brush it off and shift the blame. "An authoritarian communist regime is engaging in human rights violations? This is capitalism's fault :^)"

<comment><USER4> Um, no, this is about American censorship, not the actual issues in China.

<comment><USER5> This is a large American media company bowing to pressure from a totalitarian regime. Even Google bowed down after initially taking a stand. So many other's have as well.

Same with the silly apology tour multiple companies did over merely including Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries from China...in a dropdown menu on their websites: [https://www.businessinsider.com/zara-marriott-qantas- apologi...](https://www.businessinsider.com/zara-marriott-qantas-apologized- to-china-listing-taiwan-as-country-2018-1)

It's almost becoming a new-normal, which is concerning.

<comment><USER6> > Same with the silly apology tour multiple companies did over merely > including Taiwan and Hong Kong as a separate country from China...in a > dropdown menu on their websites

You say it's silly, but I imagine if we had the internet during the civil war and some European company listed the United States as two separate items for North and South, that could very easily end up being a political issue and politicians might threaten repercussions over it. I don't actually think it's silly, whether I agree with it or not. It is lamentable because I'm not sure there's a "right" way for a company to handle it other than going where the money dictates until it's mostly settled politically (which may never happen).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like free speech has never been under such attack. Culturally, we don't care about it, we find offensive content more offensive than censorship of offensive content.

Politically, they can censor you completely if they want to by hitting you with an NSL. EFF says that happens 60 times a day. The most hard hitting journalist in the west, Julian Assange, was just put in jail.

I'm scared about the future. It's not any particular point, it's just the movement overall.

<comment><USER8> Julian Assange is a journalist? Not sure I agree with that labeling.

<comment><USER9> Don't trust his motives or bias, but if folk at the Daily Mail and Fox News supposedly qualify as journalists, then Assange counts, and then isn't even one of the most biased. Personally I'd place him more in an editorial role than a journalist, but I suspect he may disagree.

<comment><USER10> I won't make any specific judgments to any outlets but at a certain point you're really just a propagandist rather than a journalist if your primary goal is to sway public opinion instead of informing people on the truth.

So I think relativism doesn't help here.

<comment><USER11> It's not Assange's fault if the truth caused opinions to sway.

<comment><USER12> >It's not Assange's fault if the _selectively-revealed_ truth caused opinions to sway _due to his editorial influence_.

<comment><USER13> It's a relativity thing.

He selectively revealed truths that were hidden from us by people who were either out-right lying, or were totally ignorant to the existence of what was revealed.

So, as a citizen, do I trust an individual who selectively introduces me to information, or do I trust the large conglomerate governments which I now know to wholeheartedly lie to me on a repeated basis?

In old Louisiana parlance : " if I gotta choose between bags of shit, i'll take the one that comes with the clothes pin for my nose. "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Vanity Fair says the show runners threatened to quit. They got CBS to put "CBS HAS CENSORED THIS CONTENT" on screen for 8.5 seconds.[1][2]

[1] [https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/the-good- fight-...](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/the-good-fight- censorship-cbs)

[2] [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cbs- censors-t...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cbs-censors-the- good-fight-for-a-musical-short-about-china)

<comment><USER15> Censoring a bit about censorship is so meta, it almost hurts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So US media censors US content, containing bits about China censors, due to financial and other unknown reasons, but when it comes to US happenings, good and bad, they want and have complete freedom of press and speech.

Oh, the irony.

<comment><USER17> Add to that the fact that the NYT won't let me read the story because my browser is in private mode, but regularly runs features about the Chinese surveillance state.

<comment><USER18> It won't let you read it because you're not signed in correct? I haven't had an issue with private browsing and reading the 5 or so free articles a month that they offer.

<comment><USER17> [http://tinypic.com/r/2u5dgyv/9](http://tinypic.com/r/2u5dgyv/9)

Ironically, I had to turn off ad block to view it. Does anyone know of a better service like this?

[edit: the screenshot is for a different article, but I get the same spy-wall on the one linked above]

<comment><USER19> Oh, so it was adblock that was the problem. I was confused, since I knew NYT works in incognito mode.

Can you really blame them for blocking Adblock users? They're a business, if you're both not logged in (ie, not a subscriber) and blocking ads, you're preventing them from capturing any revenue. How do you suggest the New York Times stays in business?

<comment><USER20> Native ads and subscriptions, the same thing that worked for 150 years.

<comment><USER19> If you're not logged in, you're not (verifiably) a subscriber, so I'm not sure how that's relevent.

I for one would much rather NYT block adblock users than increase their reliance on native ads. Also, native ads are relatively new, what do you mean "for 150 years"?

<comment><USER20> Native ads are what print newspapers have, and they don't require logins. They'd just charge Chevrolet $50,000 to run a skyscraper on sports articles for a week or whatever.

<comment><USER19> Print newspapers don't require logins because you can't read a print paper unless you already purchased it. To replicate that online, a login is necessary.

I was under the impression the New York Times didn't allow companies to pay for custom articles until recently, but I could be wrong. Do you know when this happened?

<comment><USER21> Apparently Native Ads means something else: having your own adtech on the website, rather than doubleclick or whatever.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, I was referring to "sponsored stories", or other paid content that is not immediately recognizable as an ad. This is often referred to as "Native Advertising" in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I watched the show last week and that censored bit showed up, I thought it was actually a gag and not for real.

The animated Jonathan Coulton bits on that show are my favorite part of the show, they're quite well done and funny. The show, however, is overly politicized. When compared to the Good Wife, it is much less about fighting interesting legal cases now than it is about US politics.

</comment><comment><USER23> If they're willing to censor news.

I wonder how long until China extends its social credit system (or a form of it) to people outside China... and what companies play along?

</comment><comment><USER24> Failure to walk away from the show over this has lost the writers any moral high ground they might have once held.

<comment><USER25> The same happened to South Park where the network ended up censoring a depiction of Muhammad - well, in the one episode, in an earlier one it was still up. And thankfully they didn't quit, they ran with it because it points out the hypocrisy, double standards, and weird morals that the US networks have.

<comment><USER26> The crazy thing with South Park was it wasn't just censoring Mohammed. There was a 5 minute monologue from one of the characters about the importance of not giving in to people who make threats of violence...which had a continuous tone censoring the whole speech. (A network decision, due to having received such threats.) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/201_(South_Park)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/201_\(South_Park\))

<comment><USER27> Why did they censor the closing speech though?

Kyle: That's because there is no goo, Mr. Cruise. You see, I learned something today. Throughout this whole ordeal, we've all wanted to show things that we weren't allowed to show, but it wasn't because of some magic goo. It was because of the magical power of threatening people with violence. That's obviously the only true power. If there's anything we've all learned, it's that terrorizing people works.

Jesus: That's right. Don't you see, gingers, if you don't want to be made fun of anymore, all you need are guns and bombs to get people to stop.

Santa: That's right, friends. All you need to do is instill fear and be willing to hurt people and you can get whatever you want. The only true power is violence.

Stan: Yeah.

— The closing speech, which was censored by Comedy Central[2]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I really am loving this show, and I thought the "censored by CBS" was some sort of joke. The animated shorts they mix into the show are great fun. The good wife had interesting takes on tech issues of the day and The Good Fight has really taken the format into some interesting political directions.

</comment><comment><USER29> By tolerating China's censorship, The West too starts censoring.

</comment><comment><USER30> This isn't "ironic" or a "creative solution", this is straight up censorship. Wow.

China has basically made it known they will go after a company's employees. I'm sure that CBS is very concerned about general access to the Chinese market and don't want their shows banned for purely economic reasons, but the subtle threat of their Chinese employees disappearing because of a cartoon is a _real thing_.

Let's say this was my decision, pretend I'm a director or VP at CBS and I need to make the call about this cartoon, and whether the threat against my subordinates in country - or myself on my next business trip - is real. After Fan Bingbing's disappearance last year, I would take this very seriously and I'm not sure I would make a different call.

That's censorship, full stop.

I'm not sure what CBS alone can do about this - they're a single company against a sovereign nation. Not to let them off the hook, but I really feel the U.S. government has to step up here.

<comment><USER31> I'm going to call BS on CBS' excuse that the Chinese government would actually harm CBS employees in China over the companies production of content that isn't available in China.

<comment><USER32> China did make Hongkong Bookstore owners disappear(some of them disappeared while visiting China), because they were selling books(banned in mainland china) in Hongkong.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/magazine/the-case-of- hong...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/magazine/the-case-of-hong-kongs- missing-booksellers.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A segment about Chinese censorship gets censored on a US network...the irony

</comment><comment><USER34> 'Ms. King said that she and her husband initially told CBS that they would quit the show if the song was pulled but that they eventually agreed on inserting a message saying that the company had censored it.'

AKA they want to keep their paycheck.

<comment><USER35> Lots of people saying they would leave US if Trump be voted, but none of them actually doing that. So, that's the reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Are there any Chinese people on hacker news who have opinions about Chinese censorship?

</comment><comment><USER20> Next they should do an episode on Mohammed bin Salman and see what happens. Red-team US censorship standards.

</comment><comment><USER37> Man, if only the nytimes and the media was more concerned about censorship here in the US. But then again, it's the nytimes and the media championing censorship at home.

</comment><comment><USER38> Let's not forget that there are humans making these decisions, and their names are...?

</comment><comment><USER39> This a is about money being more important than morals

</comment><comment><USER40> What are the odds this will teach the American left that censorship is not a good thing and lead them to stop demanding Google, Twitter, and Facebook ban every user who wants to reduce immigration? 1%? 0%?

<comment><USER41> I don't think this is a good comparison. The bans you are talking about (ignoring the hyperbole) are for hate speech. This is censhorship of critisicm of an authoritarian government. I don't think the two are remotely comparable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't get why you are acting so surprised. In Capitalism the only point is to make money, that's all there is.

If siding with human rights helps make money they will side with human rights, if genocide helps make even more money they will side with genocide.

As long as Capitalism is the main economic system this will always be only about the profits.

<comment><USER43> Capitalism doesn't work without choice of consumption. If you have a bad or misleading product, eventually people won't use it.

I'm less worried about typical profit-mongering than I am about the corporate owned media however - media has a powerful ability to skew and censor truthful news.

<comment><USER42> That's a myth of Capitalism, a lot of crappy products are used every day because of marketing, market flooding, patenting, copyright, corruption and so on and so forth.

<comment><USER44> Not a myth at all; what you just described is generally a result of crony capitalism, in bed with the government.

When a true free market is allowed to operate (which happens all the time in many aspects of our economy), it is the most democratic meritocratic and fair way to exchange goods and services, and accumulate wealth. Pure capitalism has brought more people out of poverty than any other system or system of government in the history of mankind.

<comment><USER45> How is a completely free market insulated from the influence of marketing/advertising? They are very effective techniques for convincing buyers to choose non-optimal products, and work exceedingly well in that regard.

I also think you would find it very hard to point at an example of a working free market that has not devolved into an oligopoly, with no govrnment support at all; nevermind one that has produced large-scale wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Before damming CBS you might want to hear their motive. According to them the 90 second segment was removed because _" such a sequence would endanger CBS executives on the ground in China"_. If that is the true motive, I personally give them a pass. If this is about preserving safety of employees and not about profit, can anyone condemn them?

This article written by a friend of one of the performers in the 90 second animated short that was cut out has what I think is the best coverage. It includes a good amount of detail including a play by play of the cut content:

[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cbs- censors-t...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cbs-censors-the- good-fight-for-a-musical-short-about-china)

<comment><USER47> If they're concerned about the safety of employees in China over the content they produce, perhaps they should not station employees in China.

Unfortunately it's such a big market it's apparent that companies are willing to forego ethics to do business with China, despite the numerous human rights violations.

<comment><USER25> CBS is an American based company; given its blatant human rights violations, perhaps they should not station employees in their home country?

<comment><USER47> I didn't claim the United States is perfect, but it certainly isn't mass incarcerating members of a peaceful religious group and harvesting their organs, so I won't agree to your false equivalence.

<comment><USER48> > In September 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America > was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. > While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's > population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners.

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

<comment><USER47> Correct, the USA has some pretty stupid laws and a malformed justice system.

It is not mass-incarcerating people arbitrarily for their membership of a peaceful religion, and then harvesting their organs.

Again, I reject your false equivalence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Exclusive Photos: Apple's new campus in Cupertino - <AUTHOR> http://photos.mercurynews.com/2013/10/11/exclusive-photos-apples-new-campus-in-cupertino/

<comment><USER2> what is this - a campus for ants?</comment>


Another Day, Another 50M ICO Exit Scam - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/18/another-day-another-50-million-ico-exit-scam/amp/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how long before he is in prison or killed.

It wouldn't have gotten all this publicity if he hadnt exited in a taunting manner. How many other ICOs out there have done the same thing and not blown up?</comment>


Nine of the World's Biggest Banks Form Blockchain Partnership - <AUTHOR> https://recode.net/2015/09/15/nine-of-the-worlds-biggest-banks-form-blockchain-partnership/ <comment><USER2> Here's the press release (pdf): [http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55f73743e4b051cfcc0b02...](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55f73743e4b051cfcc0b02cf/t/55f8119ce4b0550fcc16d156/1442320796627/PRESS+RELEASE+Global+banks+form+partnership+with+R3+-+FINAL.pdf)

This sounds exciting. My gut reaction was that the banks aren't going to use it for actually transferring money, but as a way to notarize transactions that will be acknowledged by the whole group. It does sound like a cool way to verify everything going on among a network of players.

And there's a lot of weird hate towards bank on HN. I know they're not great, but it's really not helping the conversation to just say things like "woooo banks are scary!"

//edit: A key quote from the press release:

> _The group will collaborate on research, experimentation, design, and > engineering to help advance state-of-the-art enterprise-scale shared ledger > solutions to meet banking requirements for security, reliability, > performance, scalability, and audit._

It's a shared ledger system! So, really no need to have it be bitcoin. It does make sense. It'll be great to see the confused looks on lawyer's faces when they try to lobby to change the blockchain history.

<comment><USER3> Banks aren't scary, they're a-hole dinosaurs. Banks epitomize centralized authority and regulation. Banks borrow money for less than they lend it effectively guaranteeing a profit if properly and concervatively managed, and yet they have recently and repeatedly failed. In the process they have inflicted enormous harm to our economy and lives, but they have not shared a proportionate share of the costs. The costs they impose hardly justify the veritable monopolies banks are afforded by the laws and regulations which are very effective at preventing competitors from entering the market.

Now consider where the tyical HN reader comes down on these issues. So yeah. Not a lot of love for banks.

<comment><USER4> >Banks borrow money for less than they lend it effectively guaranteeing a profit if properly and concervatively managed

Sure, in a magical world where 100% of people pay back their loans. 2008 happened for a reason

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what you're point is here. There is no magical world 2008 or not, never do you see 100% of people paying back their loans.

Conservatively managing loans means minimising lending to people likely to default, and leveraging enough to cover those who do. You do not need 100% of people to pay back their loans to turn a profit, charging interest is what makes this manageable and guarantees a profit.

<comment><USER6> While I agree that bankers hold too much influence in politics, this line of thinking is obviously incorrect. First, bankers have margins and compete like any other entity. If they are too conservative they will not get enough borrowers to cover the cost of their staff and facilities. Furthermore, to just earn a profit is not enough, a banker needs to earn a profit consummate with its market capitalization. Most banks are publicly traded, after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Banks don't require pseudonymity. If you remove pseudonymity from the list of requirements you no longer need mining, you can just run any consensus protocol to agree on and cryptographically link pieces of information.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but Bitcoin is a full system already designed for this exact purpose. The only real issue is the waste of proof-of-work, but that's proportional to the hashing power given to it; if the chain is private, a single server per bank would suffice.

<comment><USER9> None of what you said makes any sense. No bitcoin isn't designed for private ledgers, it's the exact opposite, an innovation to make global, public, decentralised/distributed (you can argue the semantics a bit here), trustless system without a dependency on any particular set of gate keepers, while keeping alive some semblance of privacy/pseudonymity. This private banking database requires none of that and is the opposite of what bitcoin was designed for. And the gigantic waste of proof-of-work is completely unnecessary, and forcing the use of it regardless by keeping a 'single server per bank' is insane, it's literally a waste of money. Not only that but it doesn't even achieve anything you want as it creates a false sense of security, after all what stops a bank from simply having more than 1 server and blowing all the proof of work from anyone else out of the water and dictating the entire database? Well guess what, the exact same thing that obviates the need for a proof of work system in the first place.

Bitcoin is the dumbest possible technology outside of the context for which it was designed, in which it appears to be the only viable technology and works incredibly well. Running a private blockchain with a set bunch of gate keepers is simply ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> I agree.

My point is: Bitcoin is a well-tested shared ledger, with plenty of eyeballs trying to exploit and secure it.

Does it make technical sense to run Bitcoin for a private ledger? No, it does not, you're absolutely right.

But does it make business sense to waste a few CPU cycles mining, compared to wasting probably hundreds of thousands of dollars developing custom software for this purpose, which will still be less tested and probably more insecure? I'd say it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. Another way to read this is that trust between banks has deteriorated to the point where they feel that they need a blockchain -- a decentralized shared ledger -- to verify certain transactions _with each other_. Because otherwise a nice centralized, shared ledger is much easier to build, analyze, maintain, and secure.

<comment><USER11> Banks don't operate on trust -- they operate on checks and balances and intermediaries. For example, when you spend your money using a Visa or MasterCard, the payment processor (intermediary between your bank and the merchant's bank) takes a cut for helping remove the need for trust from the transaction.

<comment><USER12> > Banks don't operate on trust

Can you spell LIBOR? Banks do operate on trust, which is what allowed the LIBOR conspiracy to take place.

Unless you can list here the "checks and balances and intermediaries" that failed during all that fake setting of LIBOR rates.

<comment><USER13> LIBOR doesn't demonstrate that banks rely on trust. None of the involved banks or brokers trusted that anyone else was actually being honest about LIBOR submissions or predictions.

Even if there were any system safeguarding LIBOR whatsoever, a blockchain wouldn't have helped. The reason it was so easy to falsify your bank's LIBOR submission was because they were essentially made up. Submitters produced the number by talking to brokers and then making a decision. A blockchain wouldn't have made any difference. You'd put your submission on the blockchain, and you wouldn't be able to change it later if things didn't turn out how you liked, but you had made up the submission anyway. Nobody would ever be able to point to some number on the blockchain and say definitively that your reported LIBOR figure for today should have been X but in fact it was Y and therefore you're a crook, because the figures were never verified. They'd only be able to say "There's no record, so you could easily have just made up the number," and you'd say "I did make it up, that's how you do it, everyone else made theirs up too," and that would pretty much be it. The only way to catch someone being dishonest was to find records of employees talking about it; the Hayes case and others like it are based on the fact that bankers incriminated themselves by discussing the manipulation with each other.

By contrast, when banks transfer specific quantities of money, they absolutely are not relying on a trust-based system. I owed you X, I sent you X, and I swear to God if you come to me later and say I only sent Y and I owe you more dosh there will be a fight. If you produce internal records kept by your accountants that say I totally only sent Y, no bank would take your word for it under any circumstances. Similarly, if there was a mixup and some of my assets ended up with you by accident, my chances of convincing you that I should get them back are nonexistent if I don't have some outside system demonstrating that I'm not lying. In real life, financial institutions rely on third-party businesses to be that "outside system." A blockchain would help solve our problem without those businesses. I wouldn't need to trust you, the transaction would be recorded on our blockchain, and if either of us thought the other could falsify the blockchain we wouldn't have agreed to use it. If the blockchain says I really didn't send enough money, I'll probably say something about a technical glitch and give you the cash while I grumble about how much I hate technology. Neither of us have to trust each other any more than we already don't, and we don't have to involve some kind of trust or clearing business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Banks working together is a scary idea. This was the notion atop which the recently disbanded Payments Council (UK) was based - an organisation that failed to deprecate BACS/CHAPS, had to be told to implement Faster Payments, came up with the 'innovative' pay-by-mobile-number scheme, and replaced swipe & sign card payments with a JavaCard that knows it's own 4-digit PIN.

Feast your eyes, ladies and gents. What you are witnessing is the formation of a cartel.

<comment><USER15> How would you prefer technical standards be established?

<comment><USER14> It's not just technical though. BACS/CHAPS (payment systems that take days to move money and cost about £30 a go) would never die while banks had control of common technical standards. They're absurd. These standards mandate that each network hop include a holding delay measured in tens of hours. From light speed to days and why? Because it's a cash cow they'd be insane to mess with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I suspect that this could be an effort to do something like the Financial Services Roundtable.

1) Form an organization

2) get dinosaur market peers to join

3) establish a standard

4) collude on how things get done

5) lobby for regulation around how things get done

6) make it impossible for new entrants to disrupt the new system with technology and alternative business models.

7) profit.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very related. For those who don't know Szabo is as close to the anonymous founder of Bitcoin as it is possible to get.

Nick Szabo: If banks want benefits of blockchains they must go permissionless

[https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nick-szabo-banks-want- benefits-085...](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nick-szabo-banks-want- benefits-085631141.html#Sgnss1N)

"So they keep trying to re-inject points of control, and thus points of vulnerability, into blockchains, e.g. through 'permissioning'; but this nullifies their main benefits, which come from removing points of vulnerability."

<comment><USER18> It makes sense what Sa.... (cough) Szabo says in that article... If the big guys really want to build a true "Internet of Money/Assets" two basic things will be required:

1\. A common standard

2\. Global openness

Surely they can build their own walled garden, but I think they're missing the point with this. With a walled garden you're just taking 1/100000 of the HUGE pie, improving current financial processes but not coming up with new radical innovations. A simple payment/monetisation standard embedded in objects (IoT) would be an example of a bigger piece of pie.

IMO they should just push for an open standard and use private ledger contracts on top of Ethereum, but I doubt they'll go this way. Most likely they'll just fork and run with it.

<comment><USER19> What's the iot reference for? How does putting Bitcoin implementations into random pieces of plastic (like a "smart cup") figure into your analysis at all?

<comment><USER18> If you've been following the crypto 2.0 space you'll know that a lot of ideas have popped up for IoT and embedded smart contracts. For instance, washing machines or fridges that detect that are running low on X and automatically place an order for delivery. IBM and Samsung have been exploring this kind of IoT applications with Ethereum's blockchain [0].

A private blockchain (like the one the banking industry _presumably_ would deploy) can do 1 of 1000000 possible applications for the technology, but a global and open blockchain could channel all under the same protocol (something like TCP/IP), maximising interoperation among player in several industries.

I'm just trying to reflect that these 9 big guys could be making a short- termed shortsightedness mistake trying to protect their business placing a fence. As Szabo said, it's the moment to be more open.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1XOPIqyP7A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1XOPIqyP7A)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't some of the blockchains security come from having a large number of players maintaining the chain? Isn't there a vulnerability that depends on someone taking over a large enough percentage of the infrastructure? Wouldn't having a handful of entities doing the majority of the transactions allow them to commit fraud, or alter the ledger?

<comment><USER21> If only trustworthy entities are part of the network, this isn't much of a problem. No large financial institution will launch an attack against their own network.

<comment><USER22> > If only trustworthy entities are part of the network

Then you don't need a blockchain at all, just use a centralized ledger.

<comment><USER23> Or even decentralized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _Rutter said the initial focus would be to agree on an underlying architecture, but it had not yet been decided whether that would be underpinned by bitcoin's blockchain or another one, such as one being built by Ethereum, which offers more features than the original bitcoin technology.

Once that has been agreed on, Rutter said, the first use of the technology might be the issuance of commercial paper on the blockchain._

Can anyone speculate on why they would begin to issue commercial paper?

<comment><USER25> Probably because they're very short term forms of debt, so if the system has issues it doesn't exist in for 10 years or however long the instrument lasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Banks don't always act in citizen's best interest. Don't forget about the cartel money laundering: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/15/hsbc- ha...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/15/hsbc-has-form- mexico-laundered-drug-money)

<comment><USER2> The Drug War doesn't have a sound moral basis, so I'm okay that the banks were undermining western governments in the interest of free trade.

<comment><USER27> > so I'm okay that the banks were undermining western governments in the > interest of free trade.

I say this as someone who used to work in drug policy reform and strongly opposes the drug war: Providing money to cartels isn't exactly a noble proposition either. Banks that do that really do have blood on their hands. Between 2006-2012, over 100,000 people died incredibly gruesome deaths in Mexico alone since 2010 at the hands of these cartels[0].

I'm not going to defend the drug war, but I'm not going to defend banks that willingly funnel money to them either. And I'm not going to claim that providing money to cartels actually undermines the drug war, in any meaningful sense. The cartels are, ironically, the largest profiteers of the drug war, right alongside the LEOs and correctional facilities that enforce drug laws. Pumping money into the pockets of the drug cartels only further entrenches the current system; it does not provide pressure to dismantle it.

There are plenty of great ways to work actively to end the drug war. Funding drug cartels (or enabling their business operations) is not one of them.

[0] The number of deaths in Mexico have dropped slightly since then, but only because the violence has moved further south in Central America

<comment><USER22> > Pumping money into the pockets of the drug cartels only further entrenches > the current system; it does not provide pressure to dismantle it.

I would disagree with this sentiment. There is plenty of pressure in Mexico to decriminalize/legalize drugs as a result of cartel violence.

<comment><USER27> > There is plenty of pressure in Mexico to decriminalize/legalize drugs as a > result of cartel violence.

First, what Mexico wants has (unfortunately) very little connection to what the US will actually do, and it's the US's drug policy that matters here.

Second, this is like saying that the arrests and drug-related violence in the US creates pressure for legalization. It may in a way, because it raises the stakes, but that's not necessary to create pressure for change. And it's a rather horrible way to do so, because it involves putting people's lives at (even more) risk in the meantime. On top of that, it also further empowers the people who profit off of the status quo, providing them with even more money (and therefore power and influence) to maintain the status quo.

For comparison, it's a good thing that police violence has gotten attention recently, which may ultimately lead to substantial reform. But that's not to say that facilitating (and profiting off of!) police violence in the US is a noble act.

We can argue about whether the connection is nonexistent or simply 'very weak', but my point remains that it's hard to defend a profit-hungry bank funneling money into the hands of violent murders so they can profit off of more murders, all on the grounds that it will eventually translate into fewer murders later on. Especially when there are much more compelling ways of addressing the issue directly and _immediately_.

<comment><USER28> The assumption of the decriminalization/legalization stance is the drug market has a demand that currently is only supplied by murderous drug syndicates which is for the most part created by the effects of prohibition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I read this as "we, the banks, want our own blockchain which we control and you should trust". Only you shouldn't trust it because the whole idea of a blockchain is that it cannot be influenced/controlled.

<comment><USER30> No. It is unlikely private citizens will even have access to mine on the banking blockchain. Banks are looking at using it for intra-banking ledgers and commercial transactions. Longer term, it may replace the outdated ACH clearing house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Barclays and UBS have been both recently giving the eye to Ethereum. My bet is that they are going to go for Ethereum, maybe with a fork a la IBM, and put it _behind a firewall_.

</comment><comment><USER31> I guess this basically made fsociety's approach meaningless ;-)

<comment><USER32> and right when we were finally awake...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So is this actually a blockchain in the Bitcoin sense, or just a cryptographically-verifiable ledger, e.g. something based on a Merkle tree? They're not running competitive proof-of-work or anything.

Or is it "blockchain" only in the buzzword sense of the term?

</comment><comment><USER34> [https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/641807034292260864](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/641807034292260864)

</comment><comment><USER35> One very interesting difficulty for these guys is going to be deciding on mining, weighing costs and benefits and threat models..

Ethereum's current mining rates look like they would take a few thousand GPUs to fork the chain. Bitcoin's costs would be in the $hundred million+ range for a secret attack.

Edit: Most alt-mining proposals for enterprises do away with any ability to cost out mining attack vectors at all with some sort of trusted server, keys, etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> While I am actually ignorant on the mechanics and architecture of blockchain, for the most part... I'm wary of anything a conglomerate of banks are doing...

Just look at the LIBOR debacle as one datapoint.

I have zero trust in big banks colluding on things that have the potential to affect finances for centuries to come.

Change my view?

Edit: anyone who down voted me hasn't been paying attention to the financial history of banks. Just because YC is tied to finance as an investment POV - you'd be deluded to think that banks aren't corrupt to the core. Do I really need to provide you with evidence, how about look at the last fifteen years for simplicity. Then look into BCCI which I doubt many HNers are even aware of...

HSBC? Wachovia? Jesus, do any of you know how fucking corrupt banks are??

<comment><USER15> The article leaves me with the impression that this is more like a standards body than anything else.

Who would you prefer to have designing and selecting standards for exchanging financial information?

<comment><USER36> That's not quite what I mean... Sure, banks ___ideally should_ __do such things... I 'm just saying given they centuries long track records... I still don't trust any of them.

"Secure" to banks means, only secure enough for them... I just believe that the future (think 25 years, minimum) is that every single activity of every single person will be tracked in detail to a level which we can't even understand now.

Wait until all your activity is then predicted and compared to actual to refine the tracking. And banks will be doing HFT based on the actual and projected minute-by-minute actions of billions of people...

What if a stock will fluctuate based on lunch time buying surges and after work happy hour, and birthday ties to kids having a birthday on Saturday and their social networks socioeconomic propensity to buy stuff for them last minute at stores r us?

<comment><USER37> > What if a stock will fluctuate based on lunch time buying surges and after > work happy hour, and birthday ties to kids having a birthday on Saturday and > their social networks socioeconomic propensity to buy stuff for them last > minute at stores r us?

What's wrong with this?

<comment><USER36> Nothing aside from the fact that you have literally eliminated the "common man" from even remotely participating in the market...

The entire momentum of the stock HFT market is skewed against everyone except the HFT masters...

how about, perhaps, build an engine that can do this and allow for people to buy into slices of it??

I just think that we are literally on the precipice where we will shrink from a perceived "1%" in power to a ".000001%" in power...

Ten years tops...

<comment><USER15> > Nothing aside from the fact that you have literally eliminated the "common > man" from even remotely participating in the market...

Even today, in the world of HFTs, this isn't the case. Long-term positions are still valid.

The common man was eliminated from regular trading a very long time ago. I don't see what's to complain about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Part of the interesting thing about Bitcoin specifically is that the incentive to participate and contribute to verification is itself baked into the protocol. This also enables distributedness. Is there some idea of how this will work in a more limited setting? What incentive will Charlie's bank have to validate a transaction between Alice's bank and Bob's bank?

</comment><comment><USER39> I think this is great.

For Bitcoin to really be a useful currency, it needs 1) full faith and credit of something; 2) mostly not proof-of-work; 3) sub-chains. Right now it is what I might call an "ur-currency". Paying for everything with the equivalent of a wheelbarrow of pennies.

Right now Bitcoin only has the backing of Bitcoin enthusiasts, which is a terrible way to start a currency. No sane person would invest their money in something that could become worthless if people decide that instead of Dogecoin, they want Kittycoin. Until there is some way beyond "it's Bitcoin" to know that Bitcoin will stay valuable (and "9 banks say it will have value" IS a bona fide reason here), I don't think it will ever have mass appeal.

Also, right now any actual economic value Bitcoin creates will be burned by mining CPUs. I think it's obvious that the steady state is that Bitcoin miners make zero economic profit, and all the transaction fees and blockchain rewards are simply turned into electricity bills (and thus, more indirectly, turned into needlessly lighting coal on fire).

Finally, from a more technical point of view, all this talk about "the size of the blockchain" is absurd. There's no reason that there needs to be a limit on the transactions. But when every transaction needs to be in a single chain, that's the only way. If we have some smart way of doing sub-chains, this becomes less of a problem. (I know some altcoins use this now, but the popular concept of Bitcoin is of a single definitive chain).

</comment><comment><USER40> Is this really something all banks want? Well I don't want a blockchain for my private transactions where people can see what I pay for. I'm ok for it with larger interbanking transactions but not every company or bank wants to reveal every granular transaction. Or do I understand it wrong?

<comment><USER41> Banks don't even process those large transactions directly – they just use the Giro system, meaning each bank tracks how much money they have in debt to every other bank, and every month, they actually send that money over. So these inter-bank transactions won't actually contain stuff like personal transfers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> But with some engineering, do you need Banks at all?

Can you do crypto currency loans and payments p2p without the intermediary?

<comment><USER43> Sadly, not right now. We need accountability, liability, network of trust, security to decentralize capital - full distribution is really hard.

We need deregulation in the sector to build future banks to reduce "too big to fail" factor.

<comment><USER42> Thanks for answering.

Here is article on the network of global corporate control [http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf](http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> That could be interesting.

Won't the blockchain get very large very fast on that scale though? (If I remember my BC theory right the chain remembers all past transactions, correct?).

Also - I'm assuming they'll essentially start a new system independent of BC. How will the initial blocks be divided?

<comment><USER19> [http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/716b955c130e6c703fac336ea17b1...](http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/716b955c130e6c703fac336ea17b1670/duplex- micropayment-channels.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The CTO of R3 CEV is the same guy that wrote the article mentioned previously on HN here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351277)

Seems like they have the right people on board.

</comment><comment><USER46> Although the article doesn't really specify, it sounds like these banks plan on making their own blockchain instead of using the Bitcoin blockchain.

I'm curious to see how the blockchain will preform without the Bitcoin network backing it.

<comment><USER47> From the article: _"I think that these technologies will probably be post- trade," he said. "I think savings are in the settlement side, in post-trade, in issuance, but not in exchange trading or OTC trading any time in the near future." He added that R3 will soon announce a few more banks joining the project. "_

That makes sense. This replaces the need for a single trusted clearinghouse with a redundant, shared ledger. Confirmation occurs when a majority of the banks have put a new transaction into a block. Because the parties are not anonymous and new ones can only be added by mutual agreement, it's like a "proof of stake" system. There's no need for "mining".

Bitcoin has done a good job of validating a blockchain system as being secure against attack. No one has broken it yet. None of this, of course, does anything for Bitcoin as a currency/investment.

<comment><USER48> I don't think a large government has tried yet; this would create an interesting incentive for one to do so. See Operation Bernhard [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard) with "on the internet" appended to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This could make it a lot easier to implement/audit a Tobin Tax. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Mining is only needed to prevent sybil attacks, so could be dispensed with if they code it from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER51> As long as they start their own blockchain I think it would be interesting. Otherwise it's a bit of a hassle to use the current blockchain, I would use the same codebase and not start from scratch though since the code's been tried and tested, and as they said you can send messages through bitcoin as well already.

<comment><USER52> Could you expound a bit on why you think it makes more sense to use their own blockchain?

<comment><USER53> Means they can run a closed pool on a secure network - reduces/eliminates (depending on implementation) risk of forking due to Chinese ASIC farms etc.

My understanding is that the first usage of blockchain would just be an inter- bank shared ledger.

<comment><USER52> So what's the incentivization scheme for banks to run their own mining operations? And is there any real threat of a fork?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> World's Biggest Banks Form [______] Partnership

What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER55> Think of the carbon footprint these banks will have if they invest into mining.

<comment><USER56> Think of their _current_ carbon footprint, which requires reams of paper to be printed and shipped offsite every single day. How many forests per day are consumed internationally?

Now, switch that to hydroelectrically powered mining datacentres. Net win? I suspect so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Thus, with great fanfare, did they begin their own obsolescence...

</comment><comment><USER58> Did they have any choice?</comment>


Mad Map: Python Road - <AUTHOR> http://kalnitsky.org/2015/06/14/mad-map/ <comment><USER2> [https://docs.python.org/2/howto/functional.html#built-in- fun...](https://docs.python.org/2/howto/functional.html#built-in-functions)

The documentation here actually mentions that map() and filter () are somewhat obsolete in python.

</comment><comment><USER3> To perhaps shed a little light on the None thing and why it would be useful, consider the following:

        def munge(data, convert=None):
            data = map(convert, data)
            ...

ie. treating None as identity gives you sane default behaviour in the case that you want to optionally provide a mapping functionality. Granted, you can easily do an "if convert is not None" but I think this is slightly nicer.

Welp, add it to the list of things I think are better in py2 than py3.

<comment><USER4> Or you could do

       def munge(data, convert=lambda x: x)

<comment> ah- This is C++ style thinking, but that way it has to copy the array and run that function on every element. If it supports none it can just return the original data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> map() isn't all that useful in Python.

If you want a list it's more straightforward to write:

        [f(x) for x in my_iterable]

If you don't want a list it's more straightforward to write:

        for x in my_iterable:
            y = f(x)

<comment><USER3> I tend to use map if my mapping function is already available to me as a callable. If I would use a lambda, I tend to use a list or generator expression instead.

Probably my single most common usage of map is:

        s = sep.join(map(str, parts))

because join() refuses to join anything that isn't a str, and map is a nice way to stringify all elements of a list.

<comment><USER6> The alternative would be:

        s = sep.join([str(part) for part in parts])

I agree this is one of the cases where map looks nicer than list comprehensions or generator expressions.

<comment><USER5> You can also use a generator expression so you don't have to create a list:

        s = sep.join(str(part) for part in parts)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've written a follow-up blog post here, hopefully providing another perspective:

[http://nvie.com/posts/beautiful-map/](http://nvie.com/posts/beautiful-map/)

</comment><comment><USER8> No comments yet about why in Python 3 the map behavior changed when the iterables are of different lengths? That seems like a gratuitous change. How is that better (not just different) than what Python 2 did?

Also, there was one other change in Python 3 that should have been left alone. I'm stealing the meme from a previous poster on HN:

       Python 3 broke "Hello, World!"

Why? Why couldn't that "wart" have been left the way it was? Sometimes it's smarter to _not_ change something, especially if that change breaks nearly 100% of existing programs.

<comment><USER9> IIRC the change is related to the change in `iter` which in python2 returns `None` after exhausting a list but in python3 will raise `StopIteration`.

Very annoying TBH. I had some really nice list chunking functions using `map` on python2 that no longer work on python3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        map(lambda x: x, ['a', 'b', 'c'], [1, 2])

This should be

         map(lambda x, y: (x, y), ['a', 'b', 'c'], [1, 2])

If you want the same behavior as passing None as the first argument.

</comment><comment><USER11> > but I hope none of pythonistas will use it and one day it will be removed > from the language.

This behaviour for map with None is no longer present in python3 and raises a TypeError.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am surprised nobody mentioned this yet.

         filter(None, [0 1, 2, 3, False, None, 5, 6, 7])

Here None is the same as bool()</comment>


Ask HN: Best beach to work for a week? - <AUTHOR>

I'm leaving my job in August and have been working night and weekends on a prototype for a few months now. I know I'm going to be busy starting a company after I quit, so I'd like to take a week to sit on a beach and code, swim, repeat.<p>So I'm looking for suggestions on where to go. Anywhere in the world is fine. I just need wifi, sand, and water.<p>(Or, if you want to tell me what else I should be doing instead, I'm open to that...) <comment><USER2> I'm in Hawaii, and can give you some recommendations for out here.

Your best bet for a little bungalow is <http://www.vrbo.com>

On Oahu (main metropolitan island):

North Shore - Historic surf breaks, but summer is the off-season, so you might find a good deal on a house. Not sure about grabbing WiFi from the beach, but a hotspot would surely work.

Kailua - Quintessential beach town. Good food, a bit expensive and not necessarily "authentic Hawaii". No waves, but lots of opportunity for kayaking and swimming. You should probably be able to find a spot close to some wifi depending on where you go. A computer on the beach would be pretty typical here.

Waimanalo - This will give you a bit more of a secluded feel, but areas of it can be fairly low income. You would be very out of place working on a computer on the beach here. Hotspot will be necessary here.

Maui (more resorty, less metropolitan)

Paia - Awesome small town off the beaten path. Not sure what kind of wifi you'll get from the beach. Really great small cafes and coffee shops all over maui.

<comment><USER3> Good food in Kailua? Where? Buzz's, sure. Where else?

(There is free WiFi at Starbucks and Morning Brew in Kailua town, but that's a 3 mile walk from the beach.)

Waimanalo: there are sections of the beach where they'll steal your computer. (Though Ewa is worse.)

No mention of 'da Big Island', or Kauai, eh?

<comment><USER2> Breakfast in Kailua is awesome. I'm a Cinnamon's fan myself, but I know a lot of people are Boots and Kimos guys.

I really love Kalapawai (both locations) and the morrocan place is a pretty nice spot. Kailuans (?) seem to have a soft spot for Pizza Bob's too.

I've sadly (and shamefully) never been to the big island so I couldn't speak to that. I've also only been to Kauai briefly to hike the Na Pali coast.

Are you talking about Ewa or just Ewa side? Ewa to me is just a bunch of suburbs and military familys. Heading out to Maile/Nanakuli/Waianae is more similar to some Waimanalo areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1st place:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Beach%2C_San_Diego>

2nd place:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahaina,_Hawaii>

3rd place:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice>

<comment><AUTHOR> Why Mission Beach over Hawaii?

<comment><USER5> I will second Mission Beach.

We rented a beach house there and it had great high speed via Comcast and a nice flat screen TV. Great coffee shops nearby if you want a change of scene.

One thing though, you will need a car to get around and parking is a total bitch! Beyond that, I would go back anytime for a week of coding. My wife and I were even contemplating getting a vacation home there if we ever strike it rich.

<comment><USER4> Take a bus or cab to the Old Town Transit center. From there light rail, trolley, and Amtrak are available. But the buses are not very nice.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Transit_Center_%28MTS...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Transit_Center_%28MTS_Transit_Center%29#Service)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like South Beach in Miami as the beach is actually really great for just chilling, there are a lot of attractive people there, the hotels are nice, you can get pretty good food easily, there are usually inexpensive deals, etc.

Waikiki is similar but more a Japanese/Pacific Islander vibe instead of latin/south american. I'm sure more savvy Hawaii promoters will LOL at me for suggesting Waikiki, but I actually think it's nice to be able to go do something else if you get bored of lounging at the beach.

Outside of the USA I've only been to beaches in Mexico, France and Australia. I recommend Australian beaches but it's a long way to go and expensive to get there and stay there. Mexico I'm not so sure about anymore as there's been a lot of serious crime reported recently in the beach areas I'm familiar with. Nice is great but I thought the available accommodation was either super expensive or cheap, but disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm stuck at WiFi,

I think it might be better to just get a portable hotspot or tether your phone as most places offer cheap top up unlimited plans nowadays (Although they don't usually offer tethering)

<comment><AUTHOR> Domestically, that's true. Globally, wifi is the deal-killer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua is spectacular. For something a little more remote, Cahuita, Costa Rica is great too and is not far from the surfing mecca of Puerto Viejo. I bet you can find wifi in either spot, at least in San Juan del Sur and Puerto Viejo. There's some beautiful spots in the Philippines as well. Try El Nido or Dumaguete (great diving and both definitely have wifi).

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome suggestions, thanks.

<comment><USER8> Np. Would love to hear about your travels. Feel free to ping me for more ideas/details. I've traveled pretty extensively in Central America and Southeast Asia, and a bit in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Thailand is an option I would go for The Library at Koh Samui. [http://www.thelibrary.co.th/](http://www.thelibrary.co.th/)

Just out of the way enough to avoid the drunk losers passed out on the beach at patong etc

</comment><comment><USER10> I would have suggested some quiet beaches in the west coast of India, but Internet connectivity can be a bit of an issue.</comment>


Life expectancy in India goes up by 5 years in a decade - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/29528135.cms

<comment><USER3> This is good news. The worldwide trend for more than a century is that the countries that are now developed countries have been gaining about 2.5 years of life expectancy each decade (sometimes expressed as "six hours each day").[0]

Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing"[1] by James Vaupel, originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here's why,"[2] gives background on the incremental changes that have increased life expectancy. ("Period life expectancy" is what is usually reported for a whole country. But cohort life expectancy provides a better estimate of future lifespans of young people today,[3] and is still steadily on the rise around the world.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.[4] It's great to hear that India is enjoying this kind of development too.

[0] [http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....](http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

[1] [http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...](http://www.demographic- challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2860ef54d218ce5ce19abe6a59/dc_biodemography_of_human_ageing_nature_2010_vaupel.pdf)

[2] [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html)

[3] [http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1963392_1963367,00.html)

[4] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity- why-we-die-global-life-expectancy)

<comment><USER4> Are longer lifespans better by definition? I realize fully I'm in the minority on this, and y'all can feel free to live forever, for all I care, but I wish that my personal life expectancy was about 40 years shorter than it is. That would have felt about right to me. Complete, and without too much decline. I mean, is everybody's desired lifespan just "as long as possible?"

<comment><USER5> You don't want to live half your life as an over-60 geriatric, with daily pains, vocational ostracisation, inadequate income, and decreasing social relevance?

Mind you, some would bin that in with the douchey "I wouldn't want to live if I became paraplegic/deaf/blind," but I do fear that, given how crappy it is to be 75 today, it's not going to be senior Disneyland by the time I'm old. Older.

Put my brain in a jar and I might have a different perspective, but I've seen enough family members admit they're just _tired_ and want to go when their time comes.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure most over 60s aren't in pain and friendless.

My dad is over 70 and is completely fit, healthy, independent and pain free. Sure, not all old people have it so good, but with increased live expectancy comes increased quality of life at older ages

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "If your child was born in the last couple of years, he or she is likely to live five years more than children born a decade ago."

Isn't this a huge misrepresentation of the statistics behind this article?

<comment><USER8> Yes, the author needs to take Statistics 101..

<comment><USER9> Thats the Times of India group. They need to take 101 in everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Usually, large increases in life expectancy are from reductions in infant mortality.

Medical technology has increased the maximum age of humans surprisingly little; for example Ramesses II died at the age of 90 or 91 [1].

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Any demographers on HN? 'Life expectancy' is itself like GDP of health, a complicated scorecard that includes a lot of things. I would be real interested in an accessible breakdown of demographic ideas

 _' Infant mortality ratio has come down to 42 in 2012 from 58 per 1,000 live births in the 2005.'_

My back-of-the-envelope has this contributing 1 year to life expectancy at birth. Additional (surviving babies _average lifetime) /1000 = (58-42)_65/1000

 _" Maternal mortality ratio has declined from 301 per 100,000 live births in 2001-03 to 212 in 2007-09," the health ministry said._ \- I think this contributes another 4-5 months.

I'd also be interested in some related questions & gratuitous scifi-like speculations. When are we likely to see 60 year old sports stars. Bernard Hopkins seems to be intent on becoming a 50 year old undisputed boxing champion. When are we likely to see 100 year olds working productively, enjoying physical hobbies, sexually active, sexually attractive…

:)

</comment><comment><USER12> India's demographics is extremely skewed. There are some states that have had higher life expectancy and sex ratio than countries like the US. The higher overall numbers can be attributed to the poorer states doing better over time.

</comment><comment><USER13> Halfway there; now we just need it to go up by a decade every decade, retroactively.

<comment><USER14> Escape velocity here we come! I hope we hit this before I'm 80. I'm ok with 50 as my terminal age. Maybe even 60. I don't want to be terminal when I need a new hip every few years.

<comment><USER15> This is a story of controlling disease and decreasing childhood and infant mortality. It is not a story of life extension.

<comment><USER14> Of course - I'm just running with the singularity dream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now they just need more women (or less men?)

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the people are also happier.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is obviously good news, but I guess the fight with overpopulation is over.

<comment><USER19> We're winning that fight, though it's not yet over: [http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=myth- three](http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=myth-three)

A quick summary is that lowering child mortality actually reduces the fertility rate, causing population growth to slow. Longer lifespans mean fewer people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love India!

<comment><USER21> Hey, welcome to Hacker News!

When I first came here, I was surprised that people downvoted my comments, so here's just a heads-up in case you wonder about the same: people didn't downvote your comment because they don't love India, or because they don't love that you do - they downvoted your comment because it does not meaningfully contribute to the discussion.

Additionally, some may wonder, do you completely, absolutely, love India? That seems like a rather black-and-white attitude for a forum like HN. Or are there things about India that you hate, too? Things that don't make you love it less but still could be better? Maybe some that relate to the subject of this post? That would be a place to start.

<comment><USER22> Actually - he posted something snarky about how this is no big deal considering the poverty, rape, sanitation etc issues that India has - and got majorly downvoted for that - and then seems to have edited it to something else.. While a message like "I love X" wouldnt contribute to the discussion - it's usually likely to just be ignored - but not so severely downvoted. Lastly - for the sake of the argument - "love" is anyways not black and white - <USER2> someone saying they love something doesn't mean they are making a blanket statement!

<comment><USER20> Patriotism is not something which needs to be proved on blogs or twitter.If you think poverty or rape has nothing to do with sex ratio of a country then the joke is on you.A valid argument(fact)was made,it was rubbished by "patriotic" people and I showed my patriotism.Sarcasm?

PS- the HN account is just new but I've been long time visitor and referring India as "it" respectful?

<comment><USER22> no one is saying that there are no other issues in India. However - none of what you're bringing up has to do with increased life expectancy. I'd accept this argument if it was 70 year olds going out and raping. That said - I do wish that rapists weren't born or suffered infant mortality- but then again - I'm sure there were things that went wrong in their lives that made them be as screwed up as they turned out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do entrepreneurs have high inherent risk tolerance? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rafaelcorrales.com/2010/03/inherent-risk-tolerance.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops I forgot to mention but there's some pretty cool wipeout videos that go along with this post.</comment>


Ask HN: Just left college, unsure of what to do - <AUTHOR> Hey I just finished up my comp sci degree, I got a job straight out of uni at a tech consultancy company (no more than 37 hours a week, free food, amazing pay, chill culture), but I was bored at that job, so bored that I quit after 3 months.
I started coding when I was 11-12, I really love coding, I've implemented some really complicated software in my spare time, 2d physics engine, regex engine in haskell, web server in C from scratch, freebsd kernel modules(yeah I am a giant nerd).
It seems like most of the dev jobs are really repetitive, boring CRUD work and honestly its a little depressing. I don't really want to do this kind of work for the rest of my life. It seems my comp sci degree was basically worthless, the work I did was just essentially gluing JS code and libraries together.
I am now doing a Masters specializing in distributed computing.
I am thinking about going into research after. I am also thinking about leaving comp sci as just a hobby and getting into mechatronics engineering or something like this. I am 21, I have plenty of time.
Any advice on how to avoid this CRUD work, which seems to be basically 99% of jobs on the market at the moment? Any advice on what I should do?
Thank you so much, I really do appreciate the time everyone takes to read this post and reply. :) <comment><USER2> So...you want a fun exciting job that pays well and challenges you? Get in line. No one cares that you have a degree. It means nothing right now because you have NO EXPERIENCE (on paper). You have to go through the grind just like everyone else so that you can learn, build on it, increase in your position and area of expertise, and then down the line begin teaching someone who is then in the CRUD job you were once in.

Nothing will ever replace starting at the bottom and working your way up. This takes time, sweat, and sometimes tears. I started at 18 and am now 36.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Having a portfolio and connections can land you a job in your field of interest right away. Source: personal experience, starting from a similar place as the OP.

My advice to the OP: you already have a good portfolio. Network with professors with whom you are on good terms, friends who have already entered the work force, public-ish open source figures in your areas of interest. Ask around if they have openings for even intern work (which does _not_ imply CRUD!). Once employed, as your co-workers and managers recognize your talent you'll bubble your way up to a well-matched position, from which point "normal" career advice takes over.

As someone who has worked in the distributed/embedded space for a few years now, the biggest complaint I hear from management about hiring is that _finding_ talent, even "green" talent, is hard. There's not enough interest in the space. Managers love recommendations, and someone like a university professor who has seen your work and interacted with you is perfectly positioned and glad to recommend someone promising to their industry friends.

Granted, location probably plays a big part in this. My experience is limited to the Boston area.

Side note, I've never seen frontend/CRUD → backend/embedded/distributed/what- have-you treated as a promotion path, not even across employers. The teams doing CRUD work for a product are usually organizationally or geographically separated, or even an entirely different company, from those doing the type of work you're interested in. Frontend/CRUD isn't "drudge work" to get to the position you really want, it's just a different job description entirely.

<comment><USER4> There are a lot of different jobs. Some of them are easier to get when you are starting. Some jobs take some background to get you in the door. But there are a vast number of companies and different jobs. Figure out what you are interested in, look at job boards and apply. The monthly hacker news job thread lets you look for jobs in certain locations, easily in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hello! Sometime back I was in similar position so i started working partime from home. I take the boring and high paying work which most other refuse to accept.

Meanwhile, I find validation and fullfilment through hobbies like metal fabrication/machining and creating electronics/mechanical projects. I've workshop full of tools like mills, lathe, laser/plasma cutter, 3d printers and several website where I use my tools to deliver the item designed by my customer their door - it's lot of fun!

Recently, so am I always looking for ways to expand my workshop and make money on side.

Lately I've been creating filament from waste plastic

[https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at- ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for- cheap-6c908bb09922)

Here's what research has to say about it: [https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/greek-researchers- determ...](https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/greek-researchers-determine- the-effect-of-recycling-on-abs-filament-171938/)

Often what you like doing doesn't pay well or isn't very dependable. So I suggest trying to convert your hobbies into side businesses and see if they can prove to be worthwhile while still taking partime jobs in the skill that pays well but you don't like.

</comment><comment><USER6> My life experience has taught me that if you want a challenging and rewarding career in tech you have to make some tough choices:

* Sacrifice high pay for rewarding work. There are lots of places that offer tough challenges for developers interested in doing original work but they, counter intuitively, tend to pay less. Such places are academic research, government (military, alphabet soup), NGOs, charities and so forth. Cutting edge games can be challenging development work but that industry tends to pay less there are so many young people eager to make games.

* You could step away from the day to day technical work to focus on strategy and emerging technologies. In the corporate world these people are called principles or senior principles. Your job is to advise management and communicate strategy. This is harder than it sounds because you be spending a lot of time outside of work performing continuing education and aggressively learning new skills that may not materialize into anything useful.

* You could look for a job at an early stage startup. The work is likely also challenging and original but expect to sacrifice pay for a tiny slice of equity that may not pan out. This is still technical and higher paying but you will be building anything.

* If you really want a rewarding career get into public education as a technology teacher. Be prepared for real world challenges earning less than an entry level developer.

> Any advice on how to avoid this CRUD work, which seems to be basically 99% > of jobs on the market at the moment?

This is largely why I maintain my part time military job. When the corporate world has ground my soul into ashes I can recharge for a year in a foreign nation with more interesting people.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would think you would do well at small companies or startups. You have more freedom to design the system there. Many big companies have overbearing policies or "cookie cutter" template architectures you have to follow.

In a smaller company you can also have more of an impact on solving whatever the business problem is. Selecting a company with interesting business problems could be good for you too (maybe fintech).

I know I am fed up with the big company politics/policies and boring business problems. I can't quit since I have a family to support. So I guess another piece of advice is to stay single so you have more freedom and options to change and move.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try to learn more about industries that sound interesting to you, and meet people from those industries to learn what they do. Speaking with lots of different people and learning about what they do will probably help you figure out what excites you. Totally agree that you shouldn't work at a job that seems depressing, and we don't live in an age where you need to "pay your dues" and "work your way up" as a smart, confident young person anymore-- unless you want to. It's up to you to find the right opportunities to go after, though, and that requires a lot of scouting.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some options:

\- Join a company that does something that challenges you

\- Join a company with technology that doesn't challenge you, and increase its value by solving harder, _and_ more valuable, problems, than they're doing. You can't do that if you quit after 3 months.

\- Create your own company and work on hard problems

\- Go into academia and work on hard paper problems

Not all hard things are useful, important, or valuable, and I wish you to find a place that does all. There's a difference between science and engineering.

</comment><comment><USER10> Take some time off to learn yourself and your privilege</comment>


Build a self-tuning portable RF Jammer - <AUTHOR> http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/index.html

<comment><USER2> No, Hacker News is not for _that_ kind of hacker.

We are the original hackers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically, the earliest modern hackers were radio enthusiasts (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28computing%29#History>).

So, that kind of hacking is far closer to the 'original hackers' than software hacking.

<comment><USER3> If we define the term "hacking" more broadly even Wikipedia's history is wrong/limited. Hacking to me has always been the process of dissecting _something_ and figuring out how it works. I would imagine there were lots of hackers even before radio came around.</comment></comment></comment>


FPGA Support – Building an AGC - <AUTHOR> http://mikestewart.hcoop.net/2016/03/06/fpga-support/ <comment><AUTHOR> The author discusses implementation challenges when building an asynchronous AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) on a typically synchronous FPGA. More articles on the topic of building an AGC are available on the website. [0]

[0] [http://mikestewart.hcoop.net](http://mikestewart.hcoop.net)

<comment><USER2> Great! I was getting crazy searching what is "AGC"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Mike Stewart is part of the team working to restore an actual Apollo Guidance Computer to full functionality -- check out CuriousMarc on YouTube for the full story: [https://www.youtube.com/user/mverdiell/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/mverdiell/videos)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a typo in the URL or does the host block certain IPs? It seems to be offline for me...

</comment><comment><USER5> The article needs to explain what AGC is. Most EEs associate it with Automatic Gain Control... which makes no sense in the context of FPGA.

<comment><USER6> Apollo Guidance Computer. The submitter mentions it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20411683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20411683).</comment></comment>


My history with Forth and stack machines (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack-machines.html <comment><USER2> Btw there is an interesting resource about the concatenative languages [http://concatenative.org/](http://concatenative.org/)

I personally wonder why there is no modern popular language from this family.

<comment><USER3> If the Forth paradigm was to be popular, it had its chance recently: [http://factorcode.org](http://factorcode.org)

Factor is modern, has a single implementation, with an optimizing compiler, high quality libraries, a great interactive environment.

Factor got so much love from Slava Pestov and a tight community (that I believe still mantains it) for a few a years - it was beautiful thing to see.

Its just that most programmers don't want to code in it.

<comment><USER4> > Its just that most programmers don't want to code in it.

Most programmers don't want to code in APL, Prolog, Haskell or Scheme either. Most programmers don't want to even consider writing Smalltalk or Clojure or F#; and they _won 't_ _ever_ touch Idris, even if they somehow knew it existed.

I get a feeling that most programmers just plainly don't want to program at all, that they'd be happier doing something better-specified, more solid, like painting walls or something.

I don't believe that getting "most programmers" to use some language or other should be the goal. Creating better tools for people who want to use them should take priority over trying to simplify the tools to make them more accessible to those who don't want them. If the tool is really good then someone will make it "user friendly" sooner or later, and "later" really isn't a problem here and in most cases means about 20 years.

I'm not involved with Factor community, but I was under an impression that its users are people who understand that. It would be a shame if they got discouraged by the lack of "mainstream adoption" and stopped working on it after a mere "few years". That's not even enough to tell if the idea is really good or bad.

<comment><USER5> _If the tool is really good then someone will make it "user friendly" sooner or later_

I disagree. User-friendliness is like security: it's not something you can paint onto the system afterwards, it's a more fundamental property. There's certainly value in building experimental systems and tools to explore ideas, but at some point you have to consider the question of getting the ideas out to the wider community. And the key to that is pragmatism.

People clearly aren't as stuck as you think; tools like Ruby or node.js or the cambrian explosion of javascript frameworks show that. But those have traction because you can show people your own rapid success with them.

If someone's rapidly delivering high quality publicly usable applications with a novel technique, people _will_ notice.

<comment><USER4> > tools like Ruby or node.js or the cambrian explosion of javascript > frameworks show that

Ruby appeared in 1990, JS in 1994 (iirc?). Saying they got "widely" (that's a relative term) adopted 15-20 years later is not going to convince me that "people aren't as stuck as I think".

Meanwhile we're still waiting for ideas from '60 and '70 to get to the mainstream. No, I _really_ think people are a bit conservative when it comes to tools they use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time this article crops up I stop and read the whole thing, word for word. Not only does he nail the beauty of and fundamental trouble with Forth, but it's a deep ramble through a world in the way that the best New Yorker pieces are.

<comment><USER4> I do the same, but only today I read the whole discussion below the article. I don't know how I could miss it before - it's as good as the article, even if a little less structured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> what's his problem with semicolons and the en dash?</comment>