Making the new silicon - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/gallium-nitride-electronics-silicon-cut-energy-0729

<comment><USER2> "CEI's GaN transistors have at least one-tenth the resistance of such silicon- based transistors"

To be pedantic, silicon-based transistors also have at least one-tenth the resistance of silicon-based transistors.

</comment><comment><USER3> What happened to Gallium-Arsenide? Wasn't that going to replace silicon? Did it not pan out? Is it used in some cases?

I really know nothing about the state of semiconductor materials, obviously!

<comment><USER4> Most of the microwave amplifiers modules (MMICs), mixers, etc. the company I work for are built on GaAs, and we're starting to use GaN (Gallium Nitride) on one of our Ka band units (28-31GHz). The GaN parts are quite a bit more power efficient.

Not exactly sure why the tech is not more widely used though. Funnily enough, most of the GaN and GaAs devices in general use are LEDs!

<comment><USER5> In late 1980s, it was expected that by 2000, you'd have a GaAs computer on every desktop (powered by Occam or Prolog, of course ;-)). In the end, it turned out that silicon had more life in it than was expected, while being much cheaper and easier to manufacture.

<comment><USER6> There was also the fact that silicon was already heavily entrenched in the industry by the time people started to tinker with the possibilities of GaAs seriously. At least that's what I understood to be the main factor after listening to Seymour Cray's talk which was posted here some time ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW7j2ipE2Ck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW7j2ipE2Ck) He talks about how difficult it was to convince large suppliers to work with GaAs at about 30 minutes into the talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the difference between silicon and gallium nitride that makes silicon default to off when the circuit is broken and the standard GaN transistors default to on?

<comment><USER8> It's mostly a function of how the transistors are made. If a transistor is on by default, they're called "depletion-mode" transistors--this means that the channel between the two sides of the transistors normally conducts, and via the control voltage, you deplete that channel of carriers. This is set up by the "doping" of the channel, which is one of the first steps in the fab process.

Transistors that are off by default are called "enhancement-mode". GaN transistors also come in enhancement-mode flavor, so I'm a little surprised by the article. You can buy them, even as a hobbyist, from EPC. [0]

[0] [http://epc-co.com/epc/Products/eGaNFETs/EPC2023.aspx](http://epc- co.com/epc/Products/eGaNFETs/EPC2023.aspx)

[1] [http://www.digikey.com/product- search/en?WT.z_cid=sp_917_011...](http://www.digikey.com/product- search/en?WT.z_cid=sp_917_0110_buynow&site=us&lang=en&mpart=EPC2023ENG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once it becomes economical, with GaN processes pick up where silicon nodes are right now, or will the whole drive have to start at a less dense node?

</comment><comment> max-a Great news, but they didn't say anything about selling transistors to the public. When do you think we can expect to buy those like we do with mosfets?

<comment><USER10> You can already buy GaN FETs (although not the exact type being researched by MIT, as mentioned in the article):

\- [http://epc-co.com/epc/Products/eGaNFETs.aspx](http://epc- co.com/epc/Products/eGaNFETs.aspx)

\- [http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/power-management/gan- overview.page](http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/power-management/gan-overview.page)

You could have a pile of GaN FETs on your desk tomorrow morning, if you really wanted: [http://www.digikey.com/product- search/en?pv606=18&FV=fff4001...](http://www.digikey.com/product- search/en?pv606=18&FV=fff40015%2Cfff8007d&mnonly=0&newproducts=0&ColumnSort=100001&page=1&k=&stock=1&filterAlwaysExpand=1&quantity=1&ptm=0&fid=0&pageSize=100&akamai- feo=off)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would this also significantly reduce the heat produced by data centers as less of the current going through the transistor is converted to heat?

<comment><USER5> No, it wouldn't (most likely): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)</comment></comment>


How many "github is down" postings will there be? - <AUTHOR>

So github appears to have gone down (as jgrahamc says - if only there were a way to continue working offline) and HN explodes with postings telling us so.<p>How many will there be?  Any guesses?  I've listed some in the comments. <comment><AUTHOR> This one has the most comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505907>

These less so:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505931>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505932>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505934>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505960>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505977>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506010>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506011>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506135>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506149>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506169>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506230>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506318>

</comment><comment><USER2> What's the over-under?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's almost like you're taking this seriously 8-)</comment></comment>


Nobody will win the storage war - <AUTHOR> http://blog.filepicker.io/post/28994860495/nobody-will-win-the-storage-war

<comment><USER3> _> as Steve Jobs has proven, tight integration between components results in better user experience._

A note to the younger readers out there. Talking about "tight integration" like this is fine, but some people who have heard the term "tightly coupled" apply it to the same thing. It's not the same thing. Apple's APIs and SDK are very good because they are generally NOT "tightly coupled." "Tightly coupled" generally means that it's not so great about respecting encapsulation. (Sometimes the letter of the law is upheld, but the spirit is violated.)

(I like the term "tight integration" as it's the same general meaning of "tight" when people talk about bands.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Also,this does not seem to be a market where small players are trying to unseat a large incumbent. Strategically, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dropbox and Box are all in incredibly strong positions. Thus the market is unlikely to consolidate into one or two platforms for a long time. It may very well be that we see a similar pattern as we saw in evolution of PC platforms where it took decades before Mac, Windows and Linux emerged as the dominant standards. Even then, developers have had to work on cross platform compatibility for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER5> i've always thought dropbox should play more on its strengths as a technology layer. When I think of a successful dropbox I think of all my critical applications having a logo in their startup banner saying "powered by dropbox" proudly displaying the dropbox logo. But thats where it could end. Why do I need to have a dropbox account? Why do I care about a quota? Can't the application just take care of all of that behind the scenes? All of things that make dropbox great could be built within the context of that application (sharing with other users of that application, live syncing with collaborators of that application). You could optionally sign up for a dropbox account which would just allow binding an app's dropbox-powered datastore to your global id (with permission from the app).

<comment><USER6> Except dropbox's technology layer isn't infrastructure. They do sync, but that's pseudoinfrastructure compared to what s3 really provides them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fragmentation of providers in markets can indicate that consumers see the product as a commodity.

Storage is becoming more and more of a commodity. It's not a good or bad thing, it just means that storage providers might benefit by adopting strategies that work in other commodity businesses.

<comment><USER8> I agree with both your premise and conclusion regarding the on going commoditization of storage. The OP lays out application integration and software integration as routes for storage providers to follow, which I tend to agree with, but the ideas can be better generalized as problems of horizontal and vertical integration (respectively). Different forms of commodity businesses exists in both the horizontal and vertical markets here, so as you point out, storage providers are likely to begin searching for customers with problems that they can build/grow into the function of their platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Consumers will.

<comment><USER10> Agree

Increased competition for a commodity will decrease prices for the consumer.

<comment><USER11> Or, we could end up with many different services with similar-yet-ultimately- disparate feature sets that people just give up. The consumer wins when she can use competing products together without jumping through hoops - <USER2> mails a word document, she saves it to Dropbox, and opens it with Pages on her iPad.

We need open standards and competing implementations. It's an absolute mess right now.

<comment><USER10> <http://xkcd.com/927/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just want open standards!

</comment><comment><USER12> People often tend to forget that storage as offered by the likes of dropbox is not a product, its just a feature that makes a product better. With deep app platform integration that iOS, Windows have brought in, there will be less and less need for people to use an external store thus making these guys irrelevant...

<comment><USER4> Would respectfully disagree. Dropbox and Box are building an awesome app platform as well and as long as users want neutral solutions (non iOS or Windows), they should be OK. In fact Box and Dropbox will start specializing as the author noted.

<comment><USER13> I definitely benefit primarily from Dropbox's neutrality. Much as I benefit from the neutrality of lastpass and xmarks. I can use them at home on the latest Mac and Linux, I can use them on personal VPS instances, I can use them at work, even in a fairly locked down network environment.

iCloud is useless at work, and my officemate has switched from SkyDrive to Dropbox for the same reasons. We now both doubly benefit from the wide-ranging accessability and sharability of Dropbox.

<comment><USER12> are you confusing neutrality with it being a web app? What part of the above things you could not do with say skydrive?

Basically I don't see a difference between dropbox and skydrive (or gdrive or....) as a developer, if I had to choose, I'd probably choose a platform from a company that has a long history of building platforms (Microsoft or Google or any other big co) as opposed to dropbox which is a tiny startup somewhere with no viable long term life expectancy.

<comment><USER14> Dropbox has a Linux version. It's not a web app. I've used it in Unity/Gnome/Nautilus. It feels exactly right. It also works perfectly on OS X, Windows, Android and iOS.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


List of Assigned IPv4 IP Address Blocks - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks

<comment><AUTHOR> I just found this super interesting that corporations (General Electric, Apple, Merck, etc...) own entire 16 million address blocks.

Seems like we could easily reallocate half of IPv4 by getting these corporations to sell/give up most of their blocks.

<comment><USER2> In the early days of the Internet, the idea was that you'd get one block of IP addresses _ever_ and it would last you forever, so companies were given class A blocks under the assumption that they would probably eventually need more than a class B.

I suspect these companies will sell off these addresses if there are ever enough buyers to take them. Right now I don't think there's anyone who needs ~$160M worth of addresses.

<comment><USER3> This is basically true. I can remember in the early '80s filling out the ARIN address block request for my then employer and thinking "I've got a couple of hundred end points now, so I'll just ask for a Class B so I won't have to worry about it again". They gave it to me. We never used more than 1000 IPs. At least part of that company eventually became some sort of low-rent hosting company, so maybe they're using more, but I doubt it.</comment></comment></comment>


Useful Programming Documents and Books - <AUTHOR> http://doc.cat-v.org/programming/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also check out the other categories on the left.

</comment><comment><USER2> Useful lists. I would like to see them fleshed out some more. Maybe more programming languages and longer descriptions.</comment>


Square files for IPO - <AUTHOR> https://squareup.com/news/sq <comment><USER2>
      We generated net losses of $85.2 million, $104.5 million, and $154.1 million
      in 2012, 2013, and 2014, respectively. As of December 31, 2014, we had an
      accumulated deficit of $395.6 million. For the six months ended June 30, 2015,
      we generated a net loss of $77.6 million. As of June 30, 2015, we had an
      accumulated deficit of $473.2 million.

Could someone explain the motive to go public while operating in the losses? Isn't the public market more averse to companies operating in the negative.

Also wouldn't the timing act more as a distraction for Jack?

<comment><USER3> Basically there are three reasons to IPO, one you are "forced" into it because the number of individual investors has crossed a predefined threshold of 499, second you are scaling the business and this gives you access to the public markets for capital, or third you are running low on cash on hand and nobody is willing to lead a new round with your current structure.

Given the wailing and gnashing of teeth this time last year [1] when Square raised $150M on a $6B valuation, it is entirely possible this is their last change to raise capital. If it doesn't work, and they can't cross the line into operationally cash flow positive they will become one of the larger unicorns to die this season. I really hope it isn't the case because I love their product and their service, but the S-1 doesn't paint a picture of hope. Doing some back of the envelope calculations I can't see any scale where they are profitable given their current fee structure.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/6/6918211/square-funding- sin...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/6/6918211/square-funding-singapore- struggle-valuation)

<comment><USER4> > Doing some back of the envelope calculations I can't see any scale where > they are profitable given their current fee structure.

"We lose money on every sale, but make it up on volume"

<comment><USER5> That's some funny math right there.

<comment><USER6> Welcome to Silicon Valley

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > All executive officers and directors as a group (13 persons) .... 61.5%

LOL 13 people in the company own more than half. The thousands of employees get to split what's left after investors.

13 people will become BILLIONAIRES and centi/multi-millionaires, while the rest of the company that toiled for years gets (maybe) a down payment on a 1800sqft house on the peninsula.

Meanwhile everyone rails against wall street inequity and the Walton family and whoever else...

<comment><USER8> How much of their own capital did the employees risk?

<comment><USER9> A few years of their lifes, an extremely limited and finite resource.

<comment><USER10> Since we're talking about specific sums of money, how much is that time worth? You have to put a number on it one way or another.

If we wanted to be arbitrary about it, we could pretend that a janitor's time is worth a trillion dollars per hour because said janitor's time is a finite resource that can never be recovered. However that doesn't do much for you when you have to actually decide how to pay a janitor.

<comment><USER11> The trick is he never mentioned what that time is worth. All he said was those few years of life was worth a few years, which were limited and finite.

 _If we wanted to be arbitrary about it, we could pretend that a janitor 's time is worth a trillion dollars per hour because said janitor's time is a finite resource that can never be recovered. However that doesn't do much for you when you have to actually decide how to pay a janitor._

It sounds like as a serial entrepreneur you like to decide how to pay janitors, because you can buy a few years of their time for a relatively low cost that you can turn into wealth for yourself.

When a janitor is working, he isn't working for $4 an hour or whatever it is you pay him. He's working for the rent & the food that will keep him alive, so that he will have time to continue to living, and that time is valuable to him. That's what he's getting paid, and that's why he's willing to work for you for $4. Just because it costs you nearly nothing to hire some people for an hour doesn't their time is worth only $4. It's worth a lot more than that. $4 can buy enough calories to last for days, and that time will be spent with his friends, family and his children(? possible if in India), and that's called "intrinsic goods", something money alone can never buy, because money only buys you time to acquire those goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > In the third quarter of 2012, we signed an agreement to process credit and > debit card payment transactions for all Starbucks-owned stores in the United > States. The agreement was amended in August 2015 to eliminate the > exclusivity provision in order to permit Starbucks to begin transitioning to > another payment processor starting October 1, 2015. Under the amendment, > Starbucks also agreed to pay increased processing rates to us for as long as > they continue to process transactions with us. We anticipate that Starbucks > will transition to another payment processor and will cease using our > payment processing services prior to the scheduled expiration of the > agreement in the third quarter of 2016, and, in any event, we do not intend > to renew it when it expires.

In addition to the $150 million loss in 2014, looks like the revenue side doesn't look too good either. From their operating data,

Total revenue = $707.8 million

Starbucks revenue = $123 million

So they would likely lose > 17% revenue very soon.

<comment><USER13> > So they would likely lose > 17% revenue very soon.

It looks like they loose money on every single Starbucks transaction. Sounds like a good thing.

<comment><USER14> At this stage it's not about profit...it's about volume. They need to become so big that their scale takes care of profit problems. So it's terrible that they're losing such a huge customer.

<comment><USER15> At which stage? They're going public, they're not a startup anymore. If they're still high growth they'd be going after another funding round instead of an IPO.

<comment><USER14> At the stage of still being unprofitable. Just like Twitter and Amazon, which are also both public companies.

Filing for an IPO does not mean you're slowing growth...it's just an alternate form of fundraising that allows a different mix of investors to join in on the fun.

<comment><USER15> Twitter is pretty much a counter example. They have a terrible time being profitable despite their size and their stock is getting hammered for it.

Amazon is a different beast because they live at the razor's edge of profitability and have for years. Square is not close not to mention they're competing with entrenched competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "I believe so much in the potential of this company to drive positive impact in my lifetime that over the past two years I have given over 15 million shares, or 20% of my own equity, back to both Square and the Start Small Foundation, a new organization I created to meaningfully invest in the folks who inspire us: artists, musicians, and local businesses, with a special focus on underserved communities around the world. The shares being made available for the directed share program in this offering are being sold by the Start Small Foundation, giving Square customers the ability to buy equity to support the Foundation. I have also committed to give 40 million more of my shares, an additional 10% of the company, to invest in this cause. I'd rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small.

We intend to make this big! Thank you for your support and potential investment in Square.

Jack"

<comment><USER17> These were probably given as options and at the current market price rather than Jack's super low strike price.

How do you make something valuable? Convince others it has value, and do it with only 20% of your stake.

<comment><USER18> Come on..

Jack already gave 15 million shares which represented 20% of his own equity back to the option pool and to a foundation to help underserved communities, and he's committed to giving an additional 40 million shares to the foundation..

He's going to give away ~75% of his ownership in the company he founded to employees and entrepreneurs in underserved communities. Whatever the price is on IPO day, this will surely amount to him giving away at least a billion dollars.

I can't fathom why people are so cynical, this is amazing.

<comment><USER10> Envy, greed, and or the general dislike of seeing other people succeed is almost always the explanation. That's why the same reaction happens over and over again, regardless of who it is that is getting rich. It's common believed that to get rich, you must take that wealth away from someone else (or otherwise do something dastardly); the limited pie of wealth fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Square is _incredibly_ common these days at farmers markets and coffeeshops. This class of products has a lot of win going for it; I don't know if Square is going to own that market, but they have a huge advantage right now. I look forward to reading their financials.

edit: a roundup from the WSJ, Fortune, and other random news places suggests strong concern over the CEO situation. That seems fair. I would definitely discount the value of a non-profitable company with a part-time CEO. :-/

That said, having a "stupid simple and ubiquitous payment platform" should be a really easy way to print money. Why hasn't it? I think that story is the interesting one.

<comment><USER20> This is anecdotal, but I feel like I see Square's competitors just as much as Square at coffee shops and other small businesses these days. I wonder if there are some easy-to-find numbers for how many businesses use Square vs. Flint or others?

<comment><USER21> Furthermore Stripe is highly visible in places like the Bay Area, where I believe many HN members are located. I wonder what the numbers are for Stripe adoption outside of major tech hubs.

<comment><USER22> Stripe doesn't do POS systems. You're not likely to see a lot of Stripe POS systems in the Bay Area or elsewhere. Their prominence in the Bay Area is because they cater to developers who build stuff that uses credit cards.

Square primarily does POS systems. I don't believe the two companies really compete in any real way yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Jack Dorsey still owns close to 25% of Square, pretty incredible:

[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1512673/0001193125153...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1512673/000119312515343733/d937622ds1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> Fuck. Seriously. Fuck.

This could be the IPO that ends the party. One of the top candidates for first Unicorpse (see also Evernote).

<comment><USER25> _This could be the IPO that ends the party._

What is your rationale?

<comment><USER26> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Look at those numbers! And for those to say that Square is innovative...their reader was basically all they had back in the day. Now that everyone has created a Square clone, payment processing is a race to the bottom and all about brokering deals with large merchants and hope that the banks and processing networks don't eat your lunch.

Throw in all the regulatory hassle of dealing with money and its transfer, as well as liability for fraud, and competing in an industry as exciting as refrigerators...

<comment><USER28> I have to agree, even Intuit is in the game. Unless Square has a unique payment processing system that is some how oh so better than the rest of the processing world, there is nothing much here.

<comment><USER29> Actually, Intuit came up with the idea for using mobile phones to accept card payments in 2007 - long before Square.

They ran trials in the Bay Area in summer 2008, launched GoPayment properly in early 2009 (with a Bluetooth reader supporting various feature phones), and launched an iPhone app in August 2009.

Square announced their card reader in December 2009 and didn't actually launch until the following May.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Quick link to Square's full S-1 filing: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1512673/000119312515...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1512673/000119312515343733/d937622ds1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER31> So apparently Square and Box have both raised about the same amount of money, roughly $550-600MM [1][2], but somehow Jack Dorsey still holds 25% and Aaron Levie wound up with ~ 4% - Does anyone else find that surprising?

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/box#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/box#/entity)

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/square#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/square#/entity)

<comment><USER32> No. Jack was a co-founder of Twitter, so it was a completely different game for him. Levie was a nobody with an idea, and had to raise at almost egregious terms at times to stay alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Their pace of losses are increasing at about 50% more per year. Most companies that file to go public are at least losing less money over time with a path to profitability. I don't see how this bodes well for a strong IPO.

<comment><USER34> because the future looks worse, and they want to make some money while they still can?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How many people have simultaneously been CEO of two separate public companies? The list has to be pretty small. No wonder Twitter waited so long to make Jack the official CEO.

<comment><USER35> It must mean he committed to stepping down there. Maybe he just agreed to see it through the IPO then walk away? As another user said here, how many people have been the CEO of two public companies at once? (Would actually really like to know.)

<comment><USER16> The Two-Company CEO, Exotic but Not Extinct

By Marc Hogan

[http://thirdcreekadvisors.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/...](http://thirdcreekadvisors.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/TCA-Agenda-10.14.13.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anybody else get the feeling that the primary goal of large scale venture capital these days is to pump-and-dump IPOs, regardless of the actual stability/validity of the underlying business?

<comment><USER37> Choosing between public stock with certain price at the end of any given day, and private stock with a dubious price that has not been "marked to market", LPs prefer the former. Who can blame them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It is really disheartening that a company with such horrible numbers thinks they can go public. It's one thing to lose money before going public, and it's entirely another thing to lose money at increasing rates of speed and think you can find an audience for those shares.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yow, from their filing: "Transaction and advance losses for the six months ended June 30, 2015, increased by $13.9 million. We incurred a charge of approximately $5.7 million related to a fraud loss from a single seller in March 2015."

I bet March 2015 was not a fun month at Square.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like Square's product but the growing net losses concern me.

</comment><comment><USER41> Isn't this good for startups in general?

Every time a startup IPOs the investors now have a chance to exit and re- invest in other startups with the fresh capital.

<comment><USER42> It's a little more complicated. This will likely mean a good return for the VC funds that invested early. But VC funds to my knowledge don't reinvest returns directly. Rather they raise another fund, often from the same LPs. And note that this usually happens multiple times before the return on the first fund is known.

So it will likely take some time for VCs to liquidate their position, return the capital to LPs, and then have the LPs reinvest in the same or other future VC funds.

All that said, a good return on a single investment will be seen positively by LPs and will make it easier for a VC to raise future funds, which is generally good for startups.

My only real point is that the money made directly from the Square IPO will likely not be deployed for quite awhile, and other events can turn momentum against startups in the meantime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> doesn't the roadshow require an enormous amount of time for the CEO? Can you really do this _and_ anything else?

<comment><USER44> Yes, it's morning to evening every second booked during the roadshow. You can get it done in a single (7 day) week if you really want to take that risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Would it make more sense for a larger company to buy Square before it goes public? I thought I'd heard people saying Apple or Google should but I'm not sure how much benefit there would be since they have payment systems now.

<comment><USER46> I don't think there would be any benefit. Square was revolutionary when they were the only one with mobile card reader technology. Now everyone has it. The only thing they have going for them is their _brand_. Apple historically hasn't bought anything that they can easily do on their own. Google much the same.

<comment><USER47> Counterpoint: Beats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know, off hand, if Square has any important patents? I did a little searching, but couldn't find much.

I do like the company. Just curious if they have any patents that will prevent competition?

<comment><USER49> Patents are far from the only thing that prevents competition. Brand is arguably more important, and Square's brand is decent. I'd argue their biggest risk is that many merchants get frustrated with the swipe reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The money in credit card processing is in high interest loans fronted to the merchant that are paid back as a percent of the transaction. SquareUp for instance.

</comment><comment><USER25> Jack, the Roger Bannister of his field.

</comment><comment><USER51> What on earth did Lawrence Summers do for his +1M shares? HT Felix Salmon.

</comment><comment><USER52> does this come actually faster than expected? will jack actually leave?

</comment><comment><USER53> November 2016: Square files for Bankruptcy. Do the simple math, they lose money year after year in bigger amounts.

This will buy Square some time while it shops around for a buyer but that's assuming the capital market is still liquid and happy and there's no market downturn.

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't know how he does it. [http://imgur.com/QfNiUz3](http://imgur.com/QfNiUz3)</comment>


iPadkneesup.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipadkneesup.com/

<comment><USER2> I realize this site is more of a commentary than a complaint, but I'd like to point out that the original pad, the one made of a hundred sheets of paper, is also somewhat awkward to hold and write on, and works best while you're hunched over one on a table in front of you. Millions of people still use them.

In fact, writing at all while standing or sitting without a stable surface in front of you is pretty awkward, and with a normal notebook/laptop, it's damn near impossible because of the bulk of the thing.

<comment><USER3> If you want to be mobile with your laptop, there are options. At $39, a Connect-A-Desk is 12X cheaper than an iPad.

<http://amzn.com/B001G713NO>

Unfortunately, it's about 100X dorkier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just brought this up on the iPad. I realized that I'm in bed with my knees up. It's unconscious! Whatever you find yourself doing with a book or a magazine, you unconsciously do the same with an iPad. To me, this is a sign they got the form factor right.

Update: lie in bed and browse one handed, but roll to sit on the edge with crossed leg to post. Again unconscious and noticed after the fact.

First annoyance: Have to go back to my laptop to copy-paste and quote another HN post for a reply. Can't double-tap to copy!

Solved by one second of tinkering: doubletap-drag to use copy-paste!

<comment><USER3> Annoyance again: doesn't work on a page with a text entry box!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My iPad comes today. I'm excited about it.

Yet I'm pretty sure this isn't a quirk of their advertisement, though they do want to convey relaxation as much as possible. Apple is trying very far to avoid demonstrating/emphasizing the natural usability limitations of tablet computers.

On-screen typing for a tablet while at a desk is rather awkward since the natural tendency is to hunch over it to see beyond your hands and look down at the rest of the screen. That's not really comfortable and doesn't look very natural.

Even during casual use, any two-hand operation of the screen would need some sort of support behind it. Since setting it on a desk is awkward (per above), you'll need your lap to brace a tablet for those operations.

I assumed Apple is just trying to keep the attention focused on how awesome their product is rather than on the usability disadvantages that are inherent in such a product.

The fact that people noticed the "knees up" nature in their advertisement means Apple failed somewhat at making this posture and behavior appear natural. I bet the creation of a site like this is making at least one of their marketing guys sadder than he was before.

 _Edit:_ I just got my iPad. First comment: it's heavier than I expected after using a Kindle so much-- you'll want to brace it behind something for long- time use.

<comment><USER5> Like... your knees?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny. Also completely intentional. Nothing says "no worries, relaxed" as much as having your legs up.

<comment><USER7> Didn't we have threads just a couple of days ago about the cons of putting your feet on your desk? Yeah: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1235791>

<comment><USER8> Zed Shaw is about to have a bad week. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Someone should make an ipad holder that looks like a pair of knees.

</comment><comment><USER10> I suspect that this is the primary reason the iPad doesn't have the long- anticipated front facing camera. Video conferencing on it would turn us all into a bunch of nostril gazers.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember thinking about this after watching the iPad Guided Tour Videos. "Oh, it is also necessary to kick up your legs before using an iPad. I mean who computes with their feet on the ground." - <http://twitter.com/nirmalpatel/status/11266710288>

</comment><comment><USER12> Heh, I'm lying in bed reading Hacker News this morning, and where is my MacBook? Perilously balanced on my knee ;)</comment>


Designing For Jedi - <AUTHOR> http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1534590.html

<comment><USER3> Let's make a deal, you guys refrain from pop-psychoanalyzing those of us with libertarian leanings and I won't submit right-wing essays that diagnose socialists with megalomania and delusions of grandeur.

Impugning your opponent's motivations is the lowest form of rhetoric.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems the post has wounded your ego, and I guess that's fair enough given it makes such sweeping generalisations (and "pop-psychoanalysis", as it were.)

However, I'd be really interested to hear your comments on some of the other points he makes, or the other threads of his argument (particularly, comparisons to history.)

(FWIW, I didn't submit the article because I whole-heartedly agree with it, I just thought it was quite well-written and interesting, and I thought it might generate some enlightening responses.)

<comment><USER3> It hasn't wounded my ego, rather I find the article insulting. It caricatures people of my political beliefs as having nasty motivations and abundant personal failings. It reads like an op-ed in a high school Marxist newsletter and is about as balanced. I am fine with reading political articles on Hacker News but I would hope they have a little more respect for their audience.

Any Capitalist would make the rejoinder that society sucked so much in the Victorian era because society was so much poorer in aggregate. You could tax the rich at 90% and it wouldn't have stretched very far.

In the long run, the wages of labor are determined by labor productivity. Laws, unions, regulations, and other beloved institutions of the left can tinker with that ever so slightly at the margin but not by much. It is only through the accumulation of capital goods and the advancement of technology that a middle class arose. You can legislate all you want before that happens and you aren't going to do a ton of good. You can declare free unicorns for everyone but if you ain't got no unicorns then you'll leave people disappointed.

And after a capital stock is accumulated, labor becomes more productive, wages increase and life gets better of course ideologues of all stripes will claim credit for it.

<comment><USER4> Well, in the current political climate? Libertarians are a self-caricature. Not you personally, and sorry, but Carl Paladino's got signs up all over New York state that say "I'm mad too, Carl!". That's literally the guy's slogan, major party candidate for Governor of a large and important state, and his platform is a bunch of incoherent nonsense. And 99% of self-described libertarians are lining up behind these wackos all over the country.

Sorry that the crazies are ruining your rep.. but if you don't want it to happen, don't enable the crazies.

<comment><USER3> Why should I take credit for people I don't agree with? Do you think it fair if I lump you together with people you don't like because they are in roughly the same part of the political spectrum as yourself?

Politics makes people rude and irrational.

<comment><USER4> If you don't agree with them (and I'm using the royal "you" here), then why are libertarians lining up across the country to support these loonies?

Maybe you're ok, but libertarians in general? Part and parcel of the tea party this year.

<comment><USER3> To the extent that the libertarian voting bloc goes Republican this year, it will probably have something to do with the $1.4 trillion deficit. During the Bush years, people that have roughly libertarian values went Democrat (you can look up old Cato articles for details) so it is not as if they are beholden to any one party.

Unfortunately our system forces people to choose between the lesser of two evils and right now many people are blanching at the deficit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "Jedi" idea is related to John Rawls "original position": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_.22orig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_.22original_position.22)

As for laissez faire, I think every government has already concluded that it doesn't work very well.

One might think that with modern labour-saving technology (and the consequential age of leisure) that this might change. One theoretical counter- argument is that people seem to love to have "inferiors" - it makes them feel better about themselves - which probably comes from our innate sense of pecking order/dominance hierarchy etc. Being a part of human nature, changing that is a hard one. Evidence in support of this is how some US citizens treat illegal immigrant workers who don't enjoy the protection of labour laws etc - it is laissez faire in action, right now. Another example is how US corporations treat labour in developing countries (such as China), and detainees from other countries. Whoa, that's getting political.

OTOH, we must remember that trade - like language, law and religion - <USER2> created spontaneously by human communities. Our current society didn't just create it; it appears to be innate. However, the specific ideas of trade and civic structures that we have today are informed by centuries of experience and thought, and constitute a tremendous cultural refinement of the innate concept of trade. Unlike the foregoing, it seems that civilization is not quite innate in humans - we have to work at it.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's odd to know Ferrett from the Magic community and then see his link on the tech related site.

While very well written and an enjoyable read, my problem with his opinion and the people who think Libertarians = Anarcho-capitalists is that they take it to the complete extreme. Democrats aren't Socialists, etc. My #1 desire with Libertarianism is for a smaller government, not a destroyed government.

<comment><USER7> I'm tired of the crazy libertarians spoiling it for the rest of us. I would like to have something to call myself that includes removing corn subsidies and capping medicare, but also retaining fiat currency and instituting a carbon tax.

<comment><USER4> I'd suggest "Democrat" :)

We might not agree with libertarians 100% of the time, but we're not lunatics, we're with you on social issues, not actually that far economically, and we approach problems with the intention of solving/ameliorating them, rather than using them as social dog whistles.

It beats hearing rhetoric about small gov't and then getting Medicare Part D (absolute budget disaster - and obamacare reduces the projected medicare deficit, for those keeping score at home)

<comment><USER7> I generally vote democrat in national elections, and whoever seems most competent in local elections. The democrats at the moment seem to have a monopoly on "believing in science." So I don't really have much of a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading the Hacker News guidelines, it seems terribly odd that "please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them" is only suggested for _comments_ , because many submissions have this problem as well. (And no, "life was miserable in the era of the robber barons, therefore libertarianism is wrong" isn't anything genuinely new to say, nor is "libertarians secretly imagine themselves to be the robber barons instead of the tenement-dwelling wage slaves".)

<comment><USER4> It's election season, and as far as propagandizing, the republicans* have probably had an edge in it on HN. Not that I'm suggesting anything organized on anyone's part, it's just topical right now. It'll drift off the front page soon enough, and all will settle down after Tuesday.

*during the fall of even numbered years, you're either a D or an R unless you actually vote third party

<comment><USER9> Even during the fall of even numbered years, I'm neither a D nor an R. That is because I am an Australian.

Edit: and its Spring now, anyway.

<comment><USER4> Well, if we had a parliamentary system in the US, maybe we could have libertarians here too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is wanting a social net because you think it will benefit you somehow more moral than not wanting one because you think it won't?</comment>


The truth about Android & iOS UI performance - <AUTHOR> http://blog.crazybob.org/2011/12/truth-about-android-ios-ui-performance.html <comment><USER2> The author briefly touches on iOS' true advantage: the "run loop".

 _In addition, when scrolling, iOS's main thread goes into a "tracking" mode where it filters out certain types of events that might result in redrawing or other performance degradations_

He calls it tracking mode; the full name is a "run loop mode"—specifically, UIEventTrackingMode. When you're scrolling or zooming or transitioning a view, the main thread restricts which actions are performed: timers do not fire, sockets are disabled, and many other tweaks. This is why animations on iOS are so smooth (in my opinion).

<comment><USER3> In the apps I've written, it's not common for timer and/or I/O events to come into the run loop during an animation. Hardware acceleration will make a much bigger difference. Romain measured a 1000X performance improvement in one case: [http://atnan.com/blog/2011/11/10/ios-vs-android-ics- hardware...](http://atnan.com/blog/2011/11/10/ios-vs-android-ics-hardware- accelerated-graphics-pipelines/)

I/O in the main thread and GC are also common culprits. StrictMode is helping with the first. The latter was improved in Android 2.3 with the concurrent garbage collector. There are still more improvements that can be had there, but like I said, HW acceleration is the biggest win. When apps start optimizing for HW acceleration, allocations will likely decrease (because the apps won't be re-drawing on every frame), and GC overhead will become even less of an issue.

<comment><USER2> Hardware acceleration is a huge boost, but the main _remaining_ problem with Android is stutter. This is where run loops really help.

As you say, I/O in the main thread and GC are central causes. Both are problems that Apple doesn't have, because of run loops and manual memory management respectively.

Also, the focus on multithreading the heck out of everything is not the way to go. There is real, substantial overhead to having multiple threads. Run loops are such a powerful tool precisely because they let you keep everything on the main thread (avoiding context switch overhead) while giving you an easy way to prioritize UI when needed (event tracking mode).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your work notebook? - <AUTHOR> How do you handle your work notebook? How do you store things? All locally or in the cloud (so the device can be quickly replaced). How do you stand to private data on the computer (LastPass Addon for example, or other private files on the computer). Would like to know your opinion or advice. <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki) and notes are synced to my own private nextcloud server.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use OneNote, and I think it's great. Lots of categories, nested categories and I love the ability to write wherever in the board you'd like</comment>


Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, research reveals (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy-tax-havens <comment><USER4> Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 people have more wealth than 90% of the planet. All the arguments about investment and job creators falls flat; we have gobs and gobs of excess capital desperately seeing some productive investment. Capitalists don't need any more capital at the moment.

(Reminds me of the hedge fund carried interest exemption, which primarily benefits less than 100 people in the USA, with the vast majority of the benefit to the tune of > 1 billion dollars going to about ~5 people. So much so that they spent millions lobbying Congress to stop any attempt at closing the loophole and succeeded.)

I wish the old Soviet Union was still around. The communist revolution scare put the fucking Fear of God into the capitalist class.

<comment><USER5> > Something is wrong and broken with "modern capitalism" if a mere 90,000 > people have more wealth than 90% of the planet.

Nothing is wrong or broken.

Have that other 90% start and run their own businesses or go to school and get a degree in business that allows them to become a C level exec or invent a product and launch a startup.

90% of the people on this planet don't do SHIT. Because doing shit is HARD. Most are content working for someone who's willing to take risks, often with consequences to their own personal lives.

And that's OK. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur or C level exec. Most people prefer simpler life.

For nearly a decade I lived across the street from a retired fireman. He put twenty years or so on the job and retired with a very generous pension and full benefits, for life. I watched as he amassed RV's, boats, jet ski's, Harley's, cars, etc. Living the life, as they say.

At the same time, almost everyone on the same block got up at five or six in the morning to go to work every day. Office workers, customer service folks, a couple of engineers, a couple of doctors, I know them all. And, in my case, well, it was 18 hours a day 7 days a week in the garage working on developing a product. For two years the external view was that I didn't have a job or didn't go to work, when, in reality, I was doing the equivalent of five jobs and was working every waking hour.

So, a couple of years later the product launches and it does very well. Seven figures per quarter very well. I decided it was time to replace our two cars, which had nearly 200K miles and were in bad shape. When the two mid-range (nothing fancy) cars appeared on my driveway the comments I got were, well, incredible. "Wow! You must have won the lottery!". "Dude! Did you rob a bank!". "You don't work, how did you buy these cars!". "Are you a drug dealer?".

Nobody EVER made a comment about the fireman being set for life when he did not contribute a dime to his pension plan that paid him six figures a year and his gold-plated health plan. No, the entrepreneur was the "drug dealer" on the block.

I created dozens of jobs through an incredible personal effort and sacrifice and somehow didn't deserve what I had. I was compared to the 99% purely based on my wealth.

Funny how everyone sees people who make money as undeserving purely based on how much they make yet have no clue what it may have taken to get there and can't be bothered to ask.

Please stop this nonsense of comparing the N percent to the M percent based on how much money they make or have. If you are going to do that, include HOW they got that money and, in particular, WHY the M percent couldn't be bothered to even try to do better, educationally or in business.

Hint: You are not going to become wealthy working at McDonalds or, in general, working as a employee at 99.99% of companies. The only corner case being joining a startup that goes public and your stock options make you wealthy. Like I said, corner case.

It's funny how people who often make the argument for this unfairness have their brains short-circuited when you ask them if it was unfair for Steve Jobs to become incredibly wealthy or, to use someone who's around today, Elon Musk.

<comment><USER6> You're trying to justify extreme inequality with an emotional moral argument over hard work. The fallacies you're making are:

1\. Assuming wealth is earned (counter-example: inheritances, rent-seeking)

2\. Assuming wealth is compensation for contributing to society (counter- example: rent-seeking)

Even if those two bullet points were true as you've assumed, I'd still argue that capitalism in its current form of extreme wealth inequality is NOT leading to a socially, economically, and technologically optimal society.

For one, poverty is a very real man-made problem. When all your energy is dedicated solely to surviving and you live paycheck to paycheck, of course you won't be able to do things like contemplate and pursue business opportunities (and then people like you call them lazy).

.01% of the population having more wealth than the other 90% is akin to being on an island of 100,000 people where 10 people own more land, bananas, etc. than 90,000 people.

Even if these 10 people were all Einsteins and Elon Musks like you'd probably claim, it's clear that this most likely isn't an optimum allocation of resources. Land that could be put to better use for the community (eg. farming, manufacturing) is hoarded for the pleasure of a few people. Resources are allocated for the pleasure and whims of 10 people (eg. luxury goods). Money sits vacant in bank accounts while business opportunities and opportunities to otherwise help the community go unrealized. Capital and power is so concentrated that it's effectively a monopoly, leading to a totally lopsided system that places the interests of these 10 people above the other 99,990. Want to start a business requiring a large investment? Not happening unless the "owners" approve, and probably not on favorable terms to you. You start to see things like debt slavery being required simply to partake in society (eg. education). The list goes on.

Also, you need to recognize that making a profit does not necessarily correlate to contributing to society (eg. renting out land you own, jacking up an HIV drug's price 5,000%, high-frequency trading, planned obsolescence), and contributing to society does not necessarily correlate to making a profit (eg. open source software, scientific research, taking care of a kid, teaching and having an educated populace). I'm not saying we need to abolish capitalism. Just that we need to recognize the imperfect nature of it, and seek to alleviate those problems.

<comment><USER5> You can always find extreme cases to support any conclusion. There are bad players at every level, rich and poor.

I do not appreciate victim mentality because i am the grandson of genocide survivors who made it despite having not a dime to their name, no education, no language and the most tragic experience one could possibly imagine. I have zero sympathy for victim mentality.

That does not mean I am not sensitive to the plight of those trapped by circumstances almost impossible to escape. We, as a society, must help them. I do what I can as often as possible.

I see lots of people complaining about the poor while sipping their $5 latte from Starbucks and typing their comments from a $2,000 Apple laptop. Very few of them will stop drinking their lattes and buy a $400 computer so they can donate money and time to help others. As they finish their latte they blame the rich and capitalism for all of the worlds problems. A mirror is a powerful device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Basic income doesn't solve this problem. I've worked with several executives who get to decide how much they want to "appear" to make in the United States -- all the rest is hidden offshore in stocks. The stocks they own have a very low "face value" \-- since their value is set by transfers from other offshore stocks set up in a maze through different countries (so the Panama revelations won't catch them.) I have literally worked with executives hiding billions. Basic income does absolutely nothing to solve the problem of opaque financial instruments (derivatives, trusts, non-profits, and charities are also used to make money disappear. But mazes of offshores seems to be preferred by the rich people I have worked with - they are legal and well understood by all the big accounting firms.)

It would be very easy to make holding such stock illegal. And, considering the cost to our society and our world, any downsides would be outweighed by the incredible gain.

<comment><USER8> > It would be very easy to make holding such stock illegal.

Really? I think the USA already has many laws in place to make offshore tax evasion harder. These laws also have the effect of making it very hard for Americans to do (honest) financial stuff in other countries. For example, you want to buy a second home in another country, and maybe open a bank account there to take care of related bills? Or maybe you see some great investment opportunities in another country and want to open a brokerage account there, to buy some ordinary shares? Well, because of the laws already in place, many foreign banks don't want to deal with you, because complying with these laws is such a hassle. Well, I guess maybe it would be worthwhile for them if you were a billionaire. Also, you might end up with a tax bill of more than 100% of your gains back in the USA, if you're not careful.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't matter how hard you make tax evasion - if it's possible, then those with resources to spare will be able to game it, and those without will suffer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will keep going as long as people agree that survival of the fittest is a sound and fair argument to make the rules in society. Everyone is fending for themselves, and less and less people consider it to be a fair deal to contribute to society. So less join with it, and the one who do want to shield themselves from it. The result is rent seeking and an epidemic of tax dodging.

That's how the social net is slowing being deconstructed. I actually have a lot of sympathy for politicians who legitimately try to make people work together (not necessarily taking sides here). Seen how politicians are being systemically hated, I'm sure politics is actually a very tough job right now.

<comment><USER11> How are politicians "systemically" hated?

<comment><USER12> Congress has a 11% approval rating. Nearly 90% of Americans agree that it's performing inadequately

Given that all 535 members won an election to get there, that is pretty surprising.

Widespread dislike of the entire political class is a new phenomenom in US politics. It seems to be driven by:

* Unprecedented polarization

* Filter bubbles -- new media makes it easy to hear only news you already agree with.

* Gridlock and dysfunction

<comment><USER13> > Given that all 535 members won an election to get there, that is pretty > surprising.

I agree with your premise that politicians are generally disliked, but the obvious explanation of this is that voters disapprove of many of the representives they didn't vote for, especially those who belong to a different party or no party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is one of those re-occurring strawmen that just won't die and it's hurting the debate.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course wealth does not trickle down. That's why it's defined as wealth. The real discussion to be had is the difference between lazy wealth (ex. real estate) and active wealth (investing in your own company)

The claim has never been that people like the Koch brothers somehow spend their wealth to the benefit of people "below" them and since it's their wealth then of course it's not trickling down.

The claim is that a lot of the wealth that is created from the millions of businesses which then result in jobs, a couple here, a couple there benefits people.

It's obvious that if you think about the ultra wealthy then the trickle down effect is minimal there is a limit to how many Bentleys you can own.

But if you take the large majority of small businesses and entrepreneurs who create a little but in quantity then wealth does trickle down. Working wealth that is.

<comment><USER15> Do most people work for large, medium, or small businesses?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that they work mostly for large businesses. If so, then "job creation" effect of small businesses is not that great.

<comment><USER14> The job creation effect isn't the argument here.

The argument is wether wealth is better while active rather than passive capital. People with great wealth don't spend proportionally as much as people with less wealth.

I.e. it's true that the wealth of the 1% doesn't trickle down but the 99% does because it's active and thats what makes the economy go around (economic activity, spending money)

But if you want to discuss that then:

"...American Business is Overwhelmingly Small Business. In 2012, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, there were 5.73 million employer firms in the U.S. Firms with fewer than 500 workers accounted for 99.7 percent of those businesses, and businesses with less than 20 workers made up 89.6 percent..."

<comment><USER15> That just shows that almost all businesses in America are small businesses. It says nothing about whether most employees in the US are employees of large or small businesses.

<comment><USER14> Because that's not important to this discussion.

The point is that lots of small businesses are much better "consumers" because the they have much more needs than if you only had a few big companies.

The number of employees aren't important, the number of companies are.

The wealth which the trickle down economy critics talk about is not the wealth that is meant when talking about trickle down effects by most people.

The wealth that is meant is the wealth of the many small companies rather than the few wealthy who have most of their wealth in ex. real-estate.

The wealth of the few ultra rich isn't trickling down, but the wealth of the many small companies are because it's creating other jobs in other companies.

In other words.

If we live in a world were only 1000 people had any wealth their ability to stimulate the economy from their own needs aren't enough compared to their wealth.

But if we lived in a world where 100000000 are sharing the wealth then that alone creates much more economic activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There doesn't seem to much in the article to suggest it doesn't trickle down, so the headline is rather sensationalist. They are saying that lots of it goes off-shore, but unspent wealth will not "trickle down" anyway (granted, there is perhaps more incentive to spend if the alternative is getting taxed, but the extent is unclear). These people are likely still spending quite a substantial amount back into the economy (and tax, although obviously nowhere near what they "should" be).

I do think there is general agreement that trickle down is not as effective as "advertised" but that doesn't mean zero effect.

It's also worth noting that the headline figures are total amount saved offshore across all countries, not the tax on that amount (or its returns) for a given country and its alternative internal tax structures.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. If they ever spend it, it'll trickle down. If they don't spend it, it'll be increasing the value of all the dollars that everybody else has - they've basically lending money to the rest of the world until such time as they decide to spend what they have, then it'll cause some inflation and the poor people will effectively be paying back that loan.

If they never spend it, then everyone else wins. Setting fire to money or burying it in a hole is like donating it to everyone else who also has money.

I don't understand what the problem is with a small number of people having a lot of money. What harm are they doing? Or is it simply plain old-fashioned jealousy?

<comment><USER13> > Or is it simply plain old-fashioned jealousy?

Please don't make the mistake of thinking this is jealousy. There are plenty of wealthy Americans who generally oppose the wealth inequality we have today, and I can't imagine they are jealous of themselves for believing that. I think that if one is empathetic to those who grow up in different environments (whether it be of a different race, religion, or income bracket) then the realization is that they should have equal opportunities to succeed. That, in my opinion, doesn't seem very likely if so much money remains at the hands of those in the top wealth echelons.

Could the nation succeed by putting business interests first? Perhaps, but at what cost to the vast majority of its people? To some, that cost is not acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I was incredibly wealthy I would attempt to have a not insignificant portion if it offshore as a hedge against my local or national government instituting an out-sized tax on wealth or nationalizing my business.

</comment><comment><USER19> Rich people do not need money. Give them more, they will invest it or hoard it. Give poor people money, they will spend it right away. Which helps an economy more?

<comment><USER20> The answer to this logical question is obvious. Unfortunately this is a debate that is dominated by emotions and not logic due to 100+ years of propaganda, brainwashing, M.A.D. scare tactics, and the fallacy of Malthusian-Darwinian ideology

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They are breaking the social contract to operate. We give them limited liability, they give us the finger.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is offshore money a good investment? Sounds to me it would just be sitting there passively, by the uncle scrooge mentality it would therefore be a gift to society. Money is an obligation of society to return something to the individual who owns it. If that obligation is never claimed, great...

</comment><comment><USER23> The poor are really pro at spending money. Then can turn trickle down into firehose-up and given the chance.

<comment><USER24> This is an important difference between the rich and the poor. The poor actually spend their money.

<comment><USER25> Which means that BI would stimulate the economy in a way that trickle-down economics cannot.

<comment><USER26> You understand that "stimulate" in the Keynesian context means "cause inflation and lower real wages", right?

Why would this be a good thing in an economy at full employment?

<comment><USER25> > Why would this be a good thing in an economy at full employment?

This is a strawman argument. Apart from (arguably) Switzerland, what other economy is at full employment?

> You understand that "stimulate" in the Keynesian context means "cause > inflation and lower real wages", right?

1\. Real wages have been decreasing year-over-year since the '50s. BI would not change that.

2\. This is the least of the worries for the 19.9 million Americans who live in abject poverty, and the many more who have to choose between paying rent, food or transportation (=cannot even afford to find a liveable job.)

<comment><USER26> The US is at 5.5% unemployment, the UK at 5.4%, Germany at 4.8%. This is the ballpark of the natural rate of unemployment.

Do you really believe there is a significant pool of workers who are unwilling to work currently, but might work if we inflated away the value of their sticky nominal wages (thereby fooling them into thinking they weren't taking a pay cut)? Where are they?

(1) is just not true. Real comp (which is actually what I should have said, since comp is what determines buyer and seller willingness to trade) has done nothing but increase. [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB)

If BI did not change this then it would not be stimulus. So which is it?

<comment><USER27> Just to be fair, you should include labor force participation when quoting those low unemployment numbers. If you include people who gave up looking for a job after the meltdown we're closer to 9% unemployment.

<comment><USER28> Don't forget to add underemployment to the list - people who have jobs, but not enough working hours to survive.

In the US, at least, an incredibly common opinion is that those people are scum, and deserve nothing. It's very strange to hear you call it the 'natural rate of unemployment.' The human impact poverty has on the unemployed is devastating. (Yes, there is also the working poor.)

<comment><USER26> _It 's very strange to hear you call it..._

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

 _In the US, at least, an incredibly common opinion is that those people are scum_

I've literally never heard this opinion expressed.

Certainly one can criticize the people you describe - they could work, but due to their pride or whatever, they refuse jobs because the nominal wage is too low. They refuse to solve their own problems so we need stimulus to trick them into doing so.

But this is a fairly uncommon position - most people have no understanding of sticky wages and don't understand that stimulus is about lowering real wages, or that people could find a job if they lowered their nominal wage demands.

<comment><USER28> > I've literally never heard this opinion expressed.

Pretty much everyone who thinks that the unemployed don't deserve state entitlements (Typically, because of the poverty of their character).

Nominal wage demands are held up at the bottom end by people needing to make a living wage. Yes, a skilled computer programmer asking for $7/hour could easily find work at the height of the dot-com bust - however, they'd still depend on handouts, be it from the state, or their relatives for survival.

And when we move down the wage track, things don't get any better. How would people already receiving close to minimal wage attain employability by lowering their wage demands?

This also only solve a problem for the individual, rather then society as a whole - it largely shifts unemployment around, and pulls everyone's standard of living down.

<comment><USER26> _Pretty much everyone who thinks that the unemployed don 't deserve state entitlements (Typically, because of the poverty of their character)._

That's a completely different claim. It's also a claim you agreed with - <USER2> just acknowledged a few sentences down that many unemployed people could work if they chose to. Does this mean you also believe such people are "scum"?

 _Nominal wage demands are held up at the bottom end by people needing to make a living wage. Yes, a skilled computer programmer asking for $7 /hour could easily find work at the height of the dot-com bust - however, they'd still depend on handouts, be it from the state, or their relatives for survival._

Where I am right now many computer programmers survive easily on $7/hour. It's considered a good wage except in tech hubs (Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon). If your theory were right I should be surrounded by about a billion corpses.

But lets assume that one can't survive on $7. Suppose we adopted stimulus and inflation caused $10 post-stimulus to buy the same goods and services as $7 pre-stimulus. Isn't the person who suddenly became willing to work due to this trickery still failing to survive?

 _How would people already receiving close to minimal wage attain employability by lowering their wage demands?_

You are correct that minimum wage can cause unemployment, particularly during recessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> And then it floods back in in places like the Vancouver real estate market.

</comment><comment><USER30> The article has nothing to do with trickle down or taxes: it just underscores that many people are not too excited about keeping their property in places where rule of law is rather peculiar. E.g. if you look at the title graphic, 2nd largest capital flight figure is for Russia -- I highly doubt its 13% (iirc) flat income tax is to blame for that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Great article - "...new study suggests a staggering $21tn in assets has been lost to global tax havens. If taxed, that could have been enough to put parts of Africa back on its feet – and even solve the euro crisis"

</comment><comment><USER32> some time ago, the definition of "trickle down" on wikipedia used to contain, in the first sentence, the statement that the goal is to achieve wealth distribution. the contradiction was too glaring, i presume ;) because, if so, then why not just give the money to the people? their spending will then inevitably reward and enrich those market actors that deserve it, leading to a much healthier market then one created by governments transferring money to arbitrary, politically connected capitalists.

ceterum censeo, basic income is the future!

</comment><comment><USER33> Offshore is down. What were you expecting?

<comment><USER34> Isn't that clever?

Of course it is. Land is above "sea level" and all that.

(Except when it's not, but in the whole macro sense land must be above sea level)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Capital goes to where to where it will do the most work.

<comment><USER35> Counterhypothesis: capital goes to where it will extract the most wealth, without necessarily producing greater societal value. Often the inverse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> NB: This is a 2012 article.

<comment><USER36> Dated Saturday, July 21, 2012

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income) FTW

<comment><USER38> You should research all tenets of basic income including the economic side of it by getting the opinion of actual economists on it before you make your decision. If you're not properly considering an idea then that leaves room for personal biases.

Government doesn't know how to run anything well, because the tenets of capitalism don't apply to government. The best managers of business are in the private sector where the real money is and where they have the most control.

The director of the FBI for example has a salary that tops out at about $200K plus benefits. No business manager who is truly great would want that job, so they don't. They incestuously promote from within most of the time and don't seek outsiders to fill top jobs. So nobody treats any government service as a business, and they get complacent and lose sight of the real goals, plus they don't tend to be able to budget. When was the last time you heard of a government department tightening it's belt on it's own? Private sector companies do it often to stay efficient.

Proper decision making starts with admitting that you can't possible know every angle to a particular issue. You can't be a great economist, a great businessman and a great government worker all-in-one. This is why business people surround themselves with people who DO know what they're doing (such as accountants, lawyers, engineers, marketers, etc).

How many hours have you spent researching basic income? Because extremely back-of-the-napkin math would tell you that a basic income of $20,000 is greater than the entire current government budget. Supporting a concept that would instantly consume over 100% of the current government budget is absolute madness.

Taxing rich people won't pay for this, even if you tax them at 90%. You have to squeeze the middle class and the lower class as well. Literally every level of the population suffers because working is no longer incentivised.

<comment><USER39> >Government doesn't know how to run anything well, because the tenets of capitalism don't apply to government.

Who built the freeway system, ran the Manhattan project, created CERN, put people on the moon, and sponsored the research that led to computing and the Internet?

>The best managers of business are in the private sector where the real money is and where they have the most control.

Given the number of incredibly destructive, if not downright stupid, CEOs in recent corporate history, that's simply not a reality-based argument.

>Literally every level of the population suffers because working is no longer incentivised.

Literally every level of the population is already suffering for much the same reason. Current forms of capitalism _penalise long-term strategic investment_ in favour of asset sweating and smash-and-grab corporate raiding that provide short-term quick-fix profits but destroy long term growth potential.

Wall St will _always_ prefer a quick buck now to a million dollar payout fifty years from now - and that's not a smart way to run a planetary economic strategy.

<comment><USER15> _" Who built the freeway system, ran the Manhattan project, created CERN, put people on the moon, and sponsored the research that led to computing and the Internet?"_

There's also all of the taxpayer-funded and govt-run basic medical research that the pharmaceutical and medical industries get a free ride on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well, this is what you believe it does, but is it proven or at least fairly convincingly demonstrated by at least some model or more thoughtful argumentation?

I have not researched this topic or given any longer thought about this, so at this point I am honestly curious.

For example how would the market react to this? Mostly what would happen with prices of essential goods and housing?

More importantly, how would people react sexually? Would they start having more babies just because they now can? What group of people would pick up this behaviour?

For example in my opinion most of the possible wealth accumulation in the third world countries is destroyed by very high population growth (in most countries above 4 times in 50 last years; fortunately this decreasing in many places).

Is this mostly a solved problem for developed world?

<comment><USER41> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465477) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER40> Thanks! I did not expect it to explode like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Whatever happened to the principle that whoever makes the through legal trade gets to own it?

Why does the US have such gigantic monetary needs?

How on earth does the US get into 18 trillion of debt?

Where's all thr fruits of that money????

Surely the solution is not for the government to keep being given more of the people's money?!!

Government is a bottomless pit waste of money with very weak oversight - <USER3> more money you give the government - the more it wastes.

If people paid for the things they need directly, rather than have the cost/administration overhead of government, society as a whole would be richer.

Corporations don't use very many government services - so why should they be heavily taxed?

The more ridiculous the taxes in the US become, the more businesses will simply incorporate overseas.

The US taxes need to become radically lower and radically simpler - then the US stands a chance to actually collect taxes.

See Ireland 12.5 corporate tax rate.

</comment><comment><USER43> With all the attacks from the left against allegedly "privileged" people, I can actually well understand why those people want to secure their property by moving it out of reach. The fun thing about this new outrage (the "Panama Papers") is that it will probably spawn more of that, in order to protect against the populist new regulations and taxations that will inevitably follow.

The only thing I find regrettable is that it is not available for average incomes - I would love to have something like that. In case some massive redistribution schemes appear along the horizon, maybe a new industry around that will evolve.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey, folks, go start a business before voicing opinion about these matters. It's just amazing how there's this recurring theme on HN of folks without a clue about business thinking they actually know something.

Better yet, this is HN. Go formulate a startup and apply to YC, let's see how far you get and what you learn about what it takes to provide excellent innovative products that people want to buy. You'll also learn the gut- wrenching realities of being an entrepreneur.

And then, a few years later, you'll find yourself having a surreal conversation with some know-it-all who never risked anything, never tried to innovate, never tried to launch or run a business, who is absolutely certain you are a greedy pig, your company is evil and the customer service person should be just as wealthy as you are.

You don't understand just how dumb some of these comments sound from the vantage point of someone who achieved success through continued struggle and effort spanning years and at great personal and financial cost.

There's nothing wrong with Capitalism. What's wrong is the victim culture we seem to be developing --which leads exactly nowhere at both a personal and national level.

I say this in the nicest possible way. Get a clue. Please.

<comment><USER44> Apparently complaining about living in poverty is victim culture. Apparently complaining about working two full-time minimum wage jobs while barely being able to pay the bills is victim culture. Apparently complaining about not being able to afford a quality education for your children (so that they do not have to live in the same poverty) is victim culture. Apparently complaining about not being able to afford healthcare is victim culture.

Sure, people doing startups or creating other businesses work hard, but that shouldn't be the norm. Working 40 hours a week as an employee should be enough. And by the way we're not even complaining about the people creating businesses, we're complaining about the people who inherit their wealth, get everything handed on a silver platter, and who still aren't grateful and don't want to pay their employees more than minimum wage. We shouldn't accept that kind of wealth in our society when there are people living in (extreme) poverty.

<comment><USER5> How dare you?

My grandparents arrived at these shores without a dime to their names, without command of the language, from a GENOCIDE where they endured the trauma of having seen members of their families raped and murdered. They woked their asses off and made it. And they instilled that culture on their children and grand children.

So, yes, fucking stop thinking like a victim. It's insulting.

Yes's there are those who absolutely need help. Stop complaining and go help them. Don't blame others.

<comment><USER45> Solidangle probably didn't know anything about your personal background. So you have no right to accuse him of being insensitive. Also, it's good that you were able to turn a bad situation into something good. However, the mere fact that you, individually, managed to succeed doesn't mean there's not a problem that's worth talking about. Your personal story is relevant, but anecdotal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reinstate hystry's Hacker News - <AUTHOR> hystry.com lets me read Hacker News comments in chronological order instead of having to go back to each story (http://hystry.com/newsyc/follow/).  I found it invaluable and I was a lot more involved in the community when I could follow the conversations easier.  It died a couple days ago, apparently its IP address was banned from crawling Hacker News.
pg, could you please let them back in?  Please, pretty please?
EDIT: or at least change the Comments page to include link and title for the story each comment pertains to? <comment><USER2> Wow, this is awesome. I've managed to make something at least somebody wants. It's a start.

I didn't see this until now because I can't seem to go back to reading Hacker News without the ability to bounce between my interface and the original.

I'm sure hystry'll be back once PG's given us a timeout :) And it's a well- deserved timeout. My crawler process seems to have gone rogue and I wasn't keeping an eye on it. Definitely my mistake.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you sure YC is blocking hystry?

The hystry blog makes no mention of anything like that.

It might be that Kartik just stopped running it, for whatever reason.

Note that the last blog entry was back in November, so maybe he's just moved on to something else, e.g.

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this out by emailing him yesterday. I thought it would be better if I made the case for reinstating it by telling pg the value it creates for me while using his site. Kartik had nothing to do with this public request.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The comments page shows all of the comments in order, but hystry shows the link to the article next to each comment, lets you filter out comments from specific stories, and view all the parents of a comment.

It's hard to get a feel for it now since the feed got shut down, but I could browse through the last 100 comments in just a few minutes, and quickly get a feel for which stories people were talking about.

<comment><USER4> It was really pounding the server. Crawling for a search index is ok, but retrieving pages to dynamically update stuff generates a lot of requests.

If you can tell me what you think is missing from News, I can try to add it.

<comment><USER5> What would be great for kartik's app is a live "push" style feed of all the new content on hacker news (possibly including votes too). This way, the load on the site would be minimal.

This would also let a lot of other people scratch their own itch to try out outlandish new ideas. Few of us newsyc readers are even going to bother thinking up ideas for your site because we realize that there's a low chance of them being implemented. You just couldn't implement them all if you wanted to. If you provide this feed though, it would allow people to get the instant gratification of coding up their own ideas and, I think, a lot more innovation would occur.

I don't think you're trying to get rich by selling this site so there's not much to lose. Brand dilution likewise seems unlikely in this case. Any other downsides?

<comment><USER4> _This would also let a lot of other people scratch their own itch to try out outlandish new ideas._

There's an even better way to do that, which is to let users write little Arc programs to control the way pages are generated. That is the eventual plan.

<comment><USER6> _"... let users write little Arc programs to control the way pages are generated ..."_

Marc Andreessen has an article that describes how Ning is designed as a _"Runtime Environment"_ just as you have described ~ <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/09/the-three-kinds.html>

_"... I believe that in the long run, all credible large-scale Internet companies will provide Level 3 platforms. Those that don't won't be competitive with those that do, because those that do will give their users the ability to so easily customize and program as to unleash supernovas of creativity. ..."_

It would be a good way for hackers to develop, share, debug Arc code. Boost the language develpment using the pre-release code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did hystry get permission from PG to crawl the server? Did they agree upon a certain rate at which hystry would access hacker news?

<comment><USER8> Should they need to? They should be free to scrape and represent, and ycom should be free to block them if they choose. When you pursue anti-rights relating to the ownership of information distribution you come to disgusting solutions like current copyright models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is that different from the "comments" link? Other than you don't have to login.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I just burn the bridge? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, i would like to get some advice and opinions here. First, i live in Sydney, Australia and I have been trying to start a company for 3 times while i was in grad school and now working full-time. Each of those time, I found it really hard to start something while working as full timer. I found myself and the team totally burnt out and things are just not moving as fast as we want. And, as a result, the idea just never become reality. I still learn something out of those fail-times though.
But now, i am really determined want to make it happen. I am thinking of quitting my day job by the end of this year and take the plunge even though i haven't got a clear sense on what i wanna do and whether the idea might works or not. Somehow, i have the funny feeling that i would be able to survive. Well..the scary feeling is still there. :P
Another thing, regarding co-founders, of all those 3 attempts to start a company, i always had partner (not necessarily motivated one!). But, if i take the plunge to start-something up, most of my friends are not ready to take that risk yet either financially or commitment wise. So, i'm thinking i might just do it by myself.
The business is not necessarily web-start-ups that might take few months to develop and takes time to attract users. If i quit, i definitely need business that is more revenue-driven to survive as i only have 6 months saving.
Now, the question is, what should I do to improve my chance of success despite the situations (sole founder and inexperience)?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I recently quite my day job to be a consultant/freelancer in order to do similar things to what you describe.

I spend the majority of my time working for clients, still, but I get to charge a lot more than as an employee, which means if I keep the same lifestyle, I can support weeks without any work - or in this case, working on my own startup ideas. It's not technically a 'startup', because I don't want to take the plunge and go all-or-nothing, but being freelance definitely gives me a -lot- more flexibility to work on my own project.

This might be a good solution for you in the interim until you can jump straight into another full-time business venture?

</comment><comment><USER3> One option can be to switch from a full-time job to independent consulting, so that you can still earn by doing short-term consulting projects, and still be able to devote more time to your startup.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Now, the question is, what should I do to improve my chance of success despite the situations (sole founder and inexperience)?_

Move to the San Francisco Bay Area. (I'd bet the Aussies in the audience who've made the same move would agree.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about that too actually. But, outside friends and family factors, i got to be honestly said, moving country kinda bring the whole scary feeling to the next level. I just moved to Sydney 5 years ago for study..and now..the idea of moving again after just been settle down is a bit too......jeez can't even describe how it feels...

<comment><USER4> I hear you. I only moved a few hundred miles (from southern California), and it has still been hard.</comment></comment></comment>


Building a Go Web App in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://grisha.org/blog/2017/04/27/simplistic-go-web-app/ <comment> grey-area _Apps whose user interface is fully JS-driven are sometimes called Single Page Applications, and are in my opinion the future._

Can't wait for this trend to be over. In many cases it results in slower performance and it certainly makes rendering performance really uneven as the device is asked to do a lot more work. Plus you have to write half your code in is, the Go is just a glorified wrapper around the db here spitting out JSON.

This is not the future I want.

<comment><USER2> It definitely is the future. You wouldn't load all the JS at once, you split it up on each page. Combine this with devices getting faster and faster plus server side rendering and there's only the upside of instant page changes when using a service worker to load next pages ahead of time on the client. So you would rather not have faster sites then?

<comment><USER3> You can have a hybrid approach and it's one I've used for 4-5 years.

I bundle library.js (very slowly changing core libraries), bundle.js (common subset amongst the set of files passed) and then page/function-specific.js.

library.js very rarely changes, bundle.js changes less than I thought it would initially and page specific stuff is changed cheaply since the files are typically <2kb.

Since the code that gets worked on the most is page/function specific the entry points any bugs that do creep through are isolated to that page/function and everything else works fine (handy with JS where a bug in your entire site- bundle.js can break the whole application).

I've even split off heavy libraries into bundles that work with library.js so things like ckeditor and datatables can be included and just work without been bundled into the main library (lots of users will never use ckeditor, lots will never use datatables, pretty much only admin/managers will use both).

That way you get the benefits of an SPA (lots of interactivity, json stuff, passing data back and forth conventiently, reusable components, base 'classes' for viewmodels etc) without completely handing off everything to the client and it means you can do routing and such on the client still.

Since all the data that is passed back and forth is just JSON you can also bind the data on the initial page load and pass it down with the page _on first load_ and then immediately bind it with subsequent updates coming in.

It's made it incredibly easy to refactor large applications as well since the backend is 'just' and API, communication is done over simple JSON structures and the end points can be re factored incrementally from one thing to another.

I'm not sure if the pattern has a specific name (I'm sure it does) and I'm certain I didn't originate it, it just seemed like a good fit for the problem domain I'm working in.

Back when I started doing this TypeScript wasn't really a thing and I both didn't trust myself (I wasn't a strong JS programmer) or JS (I didn't trust it for large projects).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I totally agree with this blog post do not use any so called web framework stick to the go std library as much as possible.

<comment><USER5> But IIRC, the standard library doesn't offer any support for sessions, i.e. signed cookies. That's kind of mind boggling to me. How common are web services without any kinds of sessions?

These sorts of omissions make me question what the language authors are even doing with the language if they haven't come across that need. Or maybe they just didn't share their solutions.

I have more:

Password generation. I come across that need very often in the type of stuff I do. It's pretty trivial to implement (at least something that works without considering performance), but why is this sort of stuff not included in the standard library (Python doesn't have anything either IIRC)?

Unique identifiers. Go doesn't have a library for UUID's in the standard library. I want to generate UID's for logging so I can group separate log lines into a single request (so something "fast" and doesn't have to be 100% guaranteed unique). Would have to use something 3rd party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Putting everything into one big Model struct is a good practice?

</comment><comment><USER7> Sooooo basically the same as in 2016 and before?</comment>


3 Steps to Correct 50-80% of a Negative Credit Score - <AUTHOR> http://tracksuitceo.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/3-steps-to-correct-50-80-of-a-negative-credit-score/ So the first step we're taking is to repair the damage done before we became Cash Money Superstars. We've met with a credit rehabilitation specialist who does all the hard work for us. Here's Step 1. The Game Plan: She helps us understand what we should pay off first and how we should do it. Sometimes paying off a debt completely is not the best strategy as it will re-age the debt on your credit record...

<comment><USER2> eastsidegringo... enough with the blog promotion. Most of your blog is not startup relevant, so take it down a notch if you can...

</comment><comment><USER3> This has F@#$ All to do with startups. You are just pissing people off here...</comment>