PHP 7 deployment at Dailymotion - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.dailymotion.com/php-7-deployment-at-dailymotion/ <comment><USER3> Hack and HHVM solves what is, IMO, the worst feature of the default PHP runtime environment[0] - and that is the superglobals.

It wasn't mentioned in the post from Slack, but default superglobals and the earlier register_globals design decisions are the worst and most impactful wart in PHP.

Because it was designed as a templating language, the default web server interface, which is CGI - will auto-expose all variables in global scope, ex.

        echo $_POST['user_id']

PHP has a horrible reputation with security for this reason - we all know that somehow, somewhere, in almost every project someone is pulling in a user- controlled variable from a superglobal and they aren't escaping or checking it properly (since you can't be warned about it but the feature will work).

Worse - and i've seen this _a lot_ , even with Laravel, CodeIgniter, Cake, Symfony/Silex etc. you end up with these well structured projects that declare request classes, methods and variables etc. etc. but then sometime down the road a developer takes a shortcut in a method and pulls in a $_GET or $_POST inside a controller (usually because they don't know how, or aren't bothered to - changing all the related classes) - running around the default exec stack.

I've seen this so often - because it's so easy to do it. The most common place is where a designer has built a frontend AJAX form. They now need to build a quick backend check, so they Google "php backend ajax username check" and they'll likely get a result like this one:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29459183/check- username-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29459183/check-username- availability-using-ajax)

where the 4th and 5th lines to the solution are:

        $username=$_POST['username'];
        $query="SELECT * FROM username_list WHERE     username='$username' ";

they copy that into a file called ajax_username_check.php and save it to the server - and they've now destroyed all that previous good work by opening up a very blatant and easy to find SQLi vulnerability. Their database will be on pastebin within a month.

You can spot this type of vulnerability from the frontend because the URLs used in the AJAX calls don't match the URL router patterns for the rest of the app (ex. GET /user/username_check_ajax.php vs /user/check_user).

In other languages you can't get that without using a standard library that will escape the values by default. Any solution you search for will always be a safe method to obtain the variable values by default.

Some good news: Hack doesn't expose superglobals in strict mode:

[http://cookbook.hacklang.org/recipes/get-and- post/](http://cookbook.hacklang.org/recipes/get-and-post/)

I'd _strongly_ recommend that this is used in all PHP projects, since it strictly enforces variable access - even in cases where you're using a framework that is supposed to enforce it.

IMO PHP missed a big opportunity with not removing superglobals in version 7 and enforcing an explicit safe request object much like other languages do. They likely wanted to avoid it because of the cluster of register_globals and magic_quotes from earlier versions.

[0] I think it is important to distinguish PHP the language and PHP the runtime. PHP the language is now decent - having caught up with a lot of features (although I find it very verbose and harder to read) while PHP the runtime is undoubtably still a horrible runtime - hence HHVM

<comment><USER4> I don't get why people keep harping on super globals are being inherently bad. The variables are there. You can use them or ignore them. A variable definition harms you in no way other than a tiny bit of memory usage which is capped by the HTTP limit on POST and GET limits anyway. What? You think you're gonna get hacked because $_POST['ihaxyou'] is set to 'w00ts'?

No one does this anymore:

mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `id`=".$_POST['ID']);

There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with having $_POST['whatever'] inside a controller as long as you're doing proper checks.

Are you expecting it to be an integer? Easy

if(!ctype_digit($_POST['ID'])) { // throw exception here }

Contrary to the hive mind you don't need some special encapsulation class to pull your post and get variables.

HHVM does not in any way solve this issue. You still have to write proper validation into your code or you'll get hacked. What's with people expecting frameworks to do everything for them these days?

<comment><USER5> > Are you expecting it to be an integer? Easy

> if(!ctype_digit($_POST['ID'])) { // throw exception here }

ctype_digit is broken. Try passing integer values. ctype_digit(50) === true, but ctype_digit(100) === false. And "0000001" passes as true, which most people in the majority of scenarios would prefer not to pass. I can't remember what the even-worse-bug is with ctype_digit is, but even if you cast the value to string [ex: ctype_digit((string)$var))], there is some value that still passes for true when it shouldn't - do _not_ use ctype_digit. is_numeric() is also unusable for validation [is_numeric("123e4") === true]. is_int() is a strict type-check so can't solely be used to validate request variables which are always strings (...or arrays, more below).

The _only_ correct ways to verify that a variable contains either a valid numeric string or integer is by comparing type, and then using a regex or a double string-then-int cast.

ex: unsigned database ids: if ((is_int($var) || is_string($var)) && preg_match('/^[1-9]\d*\z/', $var)) { // definitely an int > 0 }

ex: signed integer: if (is_int($var) || (is_string($var) && (string)(int)$var === $var)) { // valid int (including negative values) }

Frankly, developers who don't understand how request variables are handled in PHP have zero chance of properly validating input. Find any site/app written in php, even if built on any of the major frameworks. You can instantly break 30-50% of them by passing an array where a string is expected.

Find an app that takes "?query=hello+world". Instead pass in "?query[]=hello+world". Want an example? Log in to Facebook, then visit this search page[1]. Look at the query string and then what was searched for - <USER2> the contents of the search box. Bam, even Facebook gets it wrong! Same thing with Symfony's search[2]. Or Packagist (composer's package manager repository)[3]. More seriously at Yii[4], which exposes an internal error to users as they try to string-trim an array ("Error - trim() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given").

Most developers - including many seniors who have been exclusively coding in php for years - have no clue. You will either cause a 500 Internal Server Error, or your input array will result in an output string of "Array" if they typecast your array to the string they expected. Even the major frameworks, when you pull user-submitted values, simply passthrough the value submitted. Your app expects a string (or a string that contains a numeric value), and instead any user who knows the "[]" syntax can pass in an array.

Really reflect on this fact. Most applications start handling a submitted array value as if it's a string. The bugs this produces are astronomical in some cases.

If you think your framework protects you, think again. The frameworks' request objects also do not have strict type checking. The same goes for their form and model validation classes; if you're using the built-in "integer" or "numeric" validators, you're probably doing things wrong.

It's a nightmare. You could try to blame PHP, but really it's the developers - including the developers of every major well-known framework I've ever touched - that have absolutely no clue.

Related tangent: comparing password and password confirmation fields. Many developers do if ($password == $passwordConfirm) {}. In PHP 5.x, "10" == "0xA" (so type "10" in password field and "0xA" in the confirmation field, and it passes validation). This changed in PHP 7 though. There are only two correct ways to verify that two strings are exact: $password === $passwordConfirm (triple equals), or strcmp($password, $passwordConfirm) === 0.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q[]=hello](https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q\[\]=hello)

[2] [https://symfony.com/search?q[]=hello](https://symfony.com/search?q\[\]=hello)

[3] [https://packagist.org/search/?q[]=hello](https://packagist.org/search/?q\[\]=hello)

[4] [http://www.yiiframework.com/search/?q[]=hello](http://www.yiiframework.com/search/?q\[\]=hello)

<comment><USER6> >try passing integer values. ctype_digit(50) === true, but ctype_digit(100) === false.

That is hilarious! I love how even stuff that is supposed to fix other stuff itself end up being completely broken. But hey, it is documented.

Learning Php is like taking a massive loan. It get you started easily, but causes eternal suffering in the long run...

<comment><USER5> It is in fact documented; what I didn't explain is that ctype_digit treats integers < 127 as chr() equivalents. It's _designed_ to juggle both strings and integers, which indeed works against php's usual method of type juggling. This is because ctype is a port or wrapper around the C lib which behaves as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We did the same thing with HHVM, and had VERY similar results; getting it to work was plain hard, and i had a lot of concerns about our ability to ever go back.

Before we ever launched with HHVM completely, PHP7 came out. With only a few weeks of work, we managed to make the switch. The gains were identical to what we saw on HHVM, only the experience of working with PHP7 was so much easier for everyone involved.

Having said all this, I think HHVM served a great purpose: It raised the bar and PHP is better because of that. All in all, a great outcome for the people of the Internet.

<comment><USER8> Hack's influence is all over PHP7, unsurprisingly. As someone still bound to PHP due to technical debt, I'm thrilled this happened. PHP still has warts, but changes in 7 are tantamount to ES5 :: ES6. The language feels more mature, real, sensical.

<comment><USER9> A much needed overhaul to the utility functions (array, strings etc) should be the next step.

<comment><USER8> Of course, but they won't do that because of backwards compatibility and I get that.

It's one of the nice parts of rebranding. Hack could keep and throw out anything they wanted because it was intended for private FB use. At some point, PHP will have to start cutting off the stdlib PHP4.x warts. There's enough about PHP 7 that's good enough to be compelling to anyone working in an interpreted language on the web, but the (well earned) reputation keeps a lot of people away.

<comment><USER9> They don't have to remove them. Just put the updated versions under a namespace. This will slowly help developers migrate.

<comment><USER8> Even that will break existing code, which is the reason it hasn't happened in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At ServerPilot, we decided early on not to support HHVM for similar reasons: we could see PHP 7 was going to offer the same performance benefits without the pain, breakage, and downtime of HHVM.

Early on, before PHP 7 was released, we had to explain this to many of our users who use ServerPilot to host WordPress, Magento, Laravel, and other PHP apps. They often thought there was no downside or risk with HHVM, it was as simple as dropping it in as a replacement. Nowadays, with the hype around HHVM dying down, we don't get requests for HHVM support much anymore.

For a huge company like Facebook, HHVM makes a lot of sense. And the existence of HHVM really sped up the PHP 7 development efforts and provided a great benchmark for how fast PHP 7 could be. So, the PHP community should be very grateful to Facebook for that even if HHVM isn't the future of PHP.

</comment><comment><USER11> > It took less than a week to migrate our codebase (a 10 years old PHP > monolith)...

> And it took 4 hours to migrate our custom extensions.

That seems like a very small amount of work; I'm impressed at how smooth a transition that must've been.

I'm also quite surprised that

> we can handle twice more traffic with same infrastructure.

Wow, I didn't think that PHP application code would be such a bottleneck. Maybe it's not that, but if the entire codebase is written in PHP, and you replace it all in one shot, you just get such an improvement. But I thought DBs, etc. would play a bigger role.

<comment><USER12> have you ever loaded a stock magento server? Set it up, add maybe 10 products with basic images, and turn it loose.

Give it a reasonable box. 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of ram.

You are capped at something like 3-5 requests per second, with an average load time of 5 seconds..

Just blows my mind. Simple Java web app on the same server is doing 500 requests per second. Python app, with the horrible gil and all that nasty is going 200 requests per second. And magento is rocking 3 requests per second??!?!?!?!?!

I wonder how much global energy consumption would go down if PHP was not a thing.

<comment><USER13> comparing "simple java app" to something as complex (overly? needlessly in some cases? sure) as magento is nowhere near apples and oranges. compare it to broadleaf or konakart, maybe. I've no doubt java will probably still be faster, but it won't be 500 rps vs 3 rps.

<comment><USER12> Except I have built Java apps that did the same kind of things as Magento, and yes it really was 500 to 3.

<comment><USER14> Benchmarks or no you haven't.

<comment><USER15> Without getting into a pissing war if Brian says he's done something on the JVM, trust him.

Also if you need someone to validate that their system does 500 qps, you really need to check your assumptions. I'm trying very hard to think of what kind of system I'd build that would do less than that (hint each q would be big)

<comment><USER14> With all due respect, no. It's trivially easy to just claim that you've done something that happens to anecdotally prove the point you're making. I could say I've written a PHP app that gets an easy 1000 qps without flinching.

Without anyone dropping any factual proof my app is definitely better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to run one of my site (25K unique visitors a day) on PHP 5.3, when HHVM came out with stable version I shifted to HHVM and I had similar experience. Now I am running it on PHP 7 and I have to say I am more than happy with results. As much as PHP is not cool for today's developers it has served on some really high traffic sites and stayed useful even with the test of time.

P.S. Now I wish somebody just implements a good Async IO system and ability to run HTTP right off the PHP engine (I know there is php -S ...; I am talking about a better async system).

<comment><USER17> HHVM implements a good async I/O system [0] and has the ability to run HTTP.

[0] [https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/async/introduction](https://docs.hhvm.com/hack/async/introduction)

<comment><USER16> This seems interesting hopefully someone will pick this up and make even the mysql_* and other sync functions async too. This could be final nail in the coffin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _In other languages you can 't get that without using a standard library > that will escape the values by default._

Escape for what context?

Escaping for SQL is different from escaping for HTML, which in turn is different from escaping for JS.

How does your hypothetical Request object know how to escape any given variable? Does it ping every open database handle to figure out how they want their data escaped? Does it use some kind of static analysis to figure out in what format (HTML? XML? JSON? CSV?) the app is going to spit out the value later on?

Or does it simply run a bunch of cargo-cult functions like

        return htmlspecialchars(strip_tags(mysql_real_escape_string(addslashes($_POST['var']))));

and hope that everything will be okay?

</comment><comment><USER19> What tool are they using to show the memory footprint of php processs in [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*bFnYX8NE-V6P2U01Uc...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*bFnYX8NE-V6P2U01Uc3W1A.png).

<comment><USER20> It's Pinba. [http://pinba.org/](http://pinba.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Had a similar experience deploying HHVM at a previous company, I wrote up a blog post of the issues we ran into / how we worked around them[0]. One thing the dailymotion blog omits is hacklang which has additional features like lambdas, async support (though PHP 7 will soon?), strict typing, collections, generics and more. That said, if you're just trying to squeeze more out of an existing codebase, then PHP7 wins hands down.

[0] [https://ma.rtin.so/when-hhvm-doesnt-work-quite- right](https://ma.rtin.so/when-hhvm-doesnt-work-quite-right)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a shame that HHVM has so many compatibility issues compared to PHP7, as I would love to be able to use Hack.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow today is PHP day on HN :)

<comment><USER24> At least this one isn't ripping it to shreds (so far). The other discussion...that was rough to read as a PHP dev.

<comment><USER25> I would assume by this point that PHP devs would be fairly confident and comfortable with their decision to continue with PHP and would be used to others bagging on it unnecessarily.

As a JS/Web developer you learn to ignore the hatred of the web that it seems to get from the HN crowd.

<comment><USER26> >As a JS/Web developer you learn to ignore the hatred of the web that it seems to get from the HN crowd.

As an occasional full stack developer (not by choice), I can confidently say that the reason people hate on popular web tech is that it is uniformly terrible compared to non-web tech. I'm no fan of Java, for example, but I'll take it over PHP any day. JavaScript is so bad that I (and many other developers) will put a lot of effort into using any alternative, such as typescript, purescript, Elm, etc.

<comment><USER27> This is the typical "hatred of the web" that I usually ignore. ES2015 brought a ton of huge language improvements that are still filtering out into usage, Babel means you can use them all now without waiting for browsers to implement them, Webpack gives you a ton of flexibility for packaging it, Eslint allows you to lint in a completely pluggable way, NPM (and now Yarn, which fixes many of NPM's problems at scale) allows you to effectively manage dependencies, Typescript or Flow allow you to incrementally add the benefits of static types, and Javascript's "functions as a first class object" allow it to behave as a powerful functional programming language.

It's very possible to write--and _deploy_ \--very high quality Javascript today.

<comment><USER28> The length of that paragraph and the number of tools mentioned is exactly one of the problems of web development. It's like missing the forest for the trees. And even with all the huge language improvements, it's still no where near the capabilities and safety of non-web languages.

But I don't disagree that it's possible to write very high quality JavaScript code -- it's just a little bit painful.

<comment><USER27> It's certainly a little bit painful, but that's only because these things are brand new. These tools let you create applications most comparable to native apps, and could you imagine developing for iOS or Android without a Xcode or Android Studio? The current trajectory is very, very good, and it's with a bunch of tools and ideas that came from the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Kind of ironic this wasn't a video post.

<comment><USER30> At least it's not hosted on youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > During few months, this project wasn't the priority, so we decided to wait > the release of PHP 7 to compare performances.

I have no idea why the author is choosing to write in such a strange grammatical style.

<comment><USER9> Not everyone is a native English speaker. I am not and probably sound as weird. If it makes sense though who cares?

<comment><USER32> Exactly, the author is French. While I am sure this was reviewed by someone else in the Dailymotion (a French company), the reviewer was also French.</comment></comment></comment>


LLVM-Py: Build Compilers and VM's in Python - <AUTHOR> http://mdevan.nfshost.com/llvm-py/

<comment><USER2> Info on the Ruby equivalent, rubyllvm:

[http://www.rubyinside.com/llvmruby-a-compiler-toolkit- availa...](http://www.rubyinside.com/llvmruby-a-compiler-toolkit-available-to- rubyists-1362.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Ubiquiti vs. Mikrotik vs. PC Engines for Home Network? - <AUTHOR> I am looking to upgrade/refactor the networking in my home, primarily the wifi setup. Currently I have a Netgear R6400 that just doesn't seem to be cutting it (even with dd-wrt or the other options installed). I'm in a ~3200 sqft home, no brick or anything, just wood and drywall. The "demarc" location for our cable modem is in the basement which is also where the patch panel is. I have cat5 ran to most of the rooms, although the jack in each room is sometimes in a not-so-helpful location.
I have seen a lot of people complimenting the three brands in the title but they all seem to have their own issues...
The Ubiquiti stuff looks really cool, I'm just not sure how interested I am in essentially being locked into their offerings once I start. They are also the priciest it appears.
With the Mikrotik and PC Engines stuff it seems like you typically get the router part, but still need to provide the wifi APs which doesn't get me very far and potentially has me back to using Ubiquiti APs.
Having a router with something like pfSense running on it is awesome, but not really a requirement. I also don't want to have to tinker with the setup every week. I'm looking for something that is solid and stable, without vendor lock-in and price does matter (no enterprise type stuff).
Any ideas or suggestions from the HN folks? <comment><USER2> I've used them all by the hundred.

Mikrotik is very "opinionated" on how you configure and use them. Some people love this. I've come to loath them whenever and wherever I see them. Professional grade price and hassle for amateur grade performance. (on the bright side, they've been pretty stout physically... I had one unknowingly working _underwater_ )

Ubiquiti is what I use everywhere I need commercial grade "stuff" I can hand off to a customer. Also very picky about using their software to configure and use the parts, but all free, can self-host and very easy for novices to get the hang of.

At home, I've been using PC Engines since "WRAP" with addon Atheros cards for wifi and my own custom spin of read-only debian. Its a full on server in a router box. It can do anything. The best for hacking by far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great info, thank you! How do you like the wifi performance with the PC Engines option? My only concern with that option is that the wifi AP will be in our basement and will lead to some of the wifi "blips" I see today.

Do you run any other APs with with it?

<comment><USER2> You can choose your wifi card and antenna setup so I have a big card (500mw) with a large antenna that covers my house easily. Before I got the bigger card and antenna, I had a TP link in bridge mode in a bedroom for extra coverage. That also worked fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again. Mind sharing your wifi card and antenna setup? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Having a router with something like pfSense running on it is awesome, but > not really a requirement. I also don't want to have to tinker with the setup > every week.

I barely 'tinker' with mine.

If you have the skills, an 'embedded' PC with linux, freebsd or openbsd on it is all you really need. If you want 802.11 (WiFi), it's best to stick with linux. (OpenWRT runs on x86 if that's what you're used to.)</comment>


Defense Firms Battle Long Wait for Security Clearances - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/defense-firms-battle-long-wait-for-security-clearances-1540033200 <comment><USER2> I think that the paperwork burden of clearances are a barrier to entry to the defense systems market. The defense/aerospace companies are just like producers of kosher foods: an elaborate record keeping and certification process keeps out more agile competitors.</comment>


Does our model weigh the same as a duck? - <AUTHOR> https://opnbnch.substack.com/p/does-our-model-weigh-the-same-as <comment><AUTHOR> Biased benchmarks run rampant in ligand-based molecular property prediction. This write-up examines whether we are complicit with this trend in our prior analysis "Predicting hERG liability in novel chemical space."[1]

[1] [https://opnbnch.substack.com/p/predicting-herg-liability- in-...](https://opnbnch.substack.com/p/predicting-herg-liability-in-novel)</comment>


What makes karma valuable? - <AUTHOR>

I think its primary function is a commodity for bonding and shaping the group, i.e. like economics or information flowing on a network. <comment><USER2> It's a reward mechanism. It's mere existence makes it valuable.. kind of like fiat money :)

But seriously, on the micro scale, earning a single karma point feels good because it means somebody appreciates what you said. On a macro level, it lets you compete with other people, and serves the same purpose that high scores in video games do. Humans respond very well to an abstract notion of wealth, and humans are naturally competitive.

<comment><USER3> I think it's more "valuable" on your 'micro' (per thread) scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see karma in the sense of politics. In the case of Hacker News, each person is given a vote on each of the submissions--essentially electing the best stories to appear on the front page.

This is a direct democracy, which has some shortcomings, particularly in voter apathy and the promotion of self-interests, where voters put their own needs before the needs of the whole. As the population of a direct democracy grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to accurately represent the will of the people (successful direct democracies usually emphasize consensus over majorities).

These problems are addressed in a representative democracy, where representatives are elected to vote in place of the people, as in the case of Congress or Parliament.

I believe that as online communities grow, voting systems begin to fall apart because the votes cease to represent the will of the community as a whole (the special interest groups take over the site). A common way website owners deal with this problem is by bringing in moderators or by somehow weighing votes based on some criteria, seniority or otherwise.

But I digress...

Karma is there to give people power over the direction of the community. Without karma, you would have no control over what you see, much like state- run media.

</comment><comment><USER5> It is simple feedback. It tells you that your contribution (however small or infrequent) is valued by others.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a Cory Doctorow fundamentalist, I believe that my high karma score will eventually allow me to own Disney World.

But it could be that it's just a crude mental hack that we substitute for all the normal social signals we get when we socialize in person. We can't smile, frown, applaud, backslap, suddenly remember a previous engagement, or cough pointedly here. Even a deliberate change of subject is hard to pull off when the posts appear in arbitrary order. All we can do is use karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's kind of what I meant. People have to do this kind of value exchange to form an effective group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The people whose opinion it represents.

<comment><USER8> I think it represents what both pg and esr have expressed at some point: that good, or even great hackers, often don't recognize themselves as so until being recognized as such by other good hacker. Karma allows us to get an idea of how we fit on the scale and see what our strengths or weaknesses are. If you make a post / statement and it doesn't get upmodded, you want to know why; was your reasoning to shallow, is there something that contradicts / disproves your view, etc.

That's why there's the effort to keep fluff posts out; it changes it from being "hacker karma" to "interesting karma" at best and "amusing karma" at worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The more karma you have, the more likely you are to reincarnate into something cool the next time 'round the wheel. Lots of karma=rock star. No karma=a snail.

<comment><USER10> Something cool? You mean a hacker?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's there to make me feel bad.

</comment><comment><USER12> Shhh... I want to keep reading great articles.</comment>


Using GameStop as a bank - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/14/03/the-first-national-bank-of-gamestop <comment><USER2> Consider a venn diagram containing "people smart enough to game GameStop into being their bank", "people not smart enough to avoid overdrafts", and "people not creative enough just to set up a prepaid debit card system for themselves". In the overlapping space of these three circles, you'll find this guy, and a very confused leprechaun riding a unicorn.

<comment><USER3> _people not smart enough to avoid overdrafts_

Remember that historically, banks have processed transactions in whatever order is most likely to produce an overdraft, even if the same set of transactions, processed in chronological order, would not produce an overdraft. Also note that the complaint is not that he overdrafted, but that he can't turn off the overdraft "protection" that charges him a fee -- he'd rather just have the transaction declined, and can't get his bank to do that.

<comment><USER4> Can you produce a source on the "banks have processed transactions in whatever order is most likely to produce an overdraft"?

<comment><USER5> Here's an example: [http://consumerist.com/2013/10/22/bank-of-america-stops- over...](http://consumerist.com/2013/10/22/bank-of-america-stops-overdraft- friendly-practice-of-re-ordering-transactions-from-high-to-low/)

Most big banks have done this for a while and only recently abandoned or are abandoning the practice. I anticipate a large class-ation suit and payout within the next few years, because they took this to wildly abusive levels. For example a few years ago I went out one day and made 2 small (<$10) debit card purchases, passed an ATM of my bank and made a cash deposit, and then made a larger purchase an hour later (which was why I had deposited the cash, as I had a low balance). Chronologically this was all good, but thanks to transaction re-ordering I got hit with $105 in fees (#35 x 3).* I got it reversed, but the sad fact is that for a long time the transactions shown on your account and your available balance were treated as fictions to be re- arranged at the bank's convenience if doing so would yield fee income.

* _eg for illustration, though I don 't remember the specifics:_

      a. starting balance       $30
      b. debit card      -$10 = $20
      c. debit card      -$10 = $10
      d. cash deposit    +$60 = $70
      e. debit card      -$65 = $ 5

_Which all looked fine at the time (eg checking recent transactions and available balance at ATM following deposit), but 24 hours later the transactions had been reordered from smallest to largest and my account looked like this:_

      a. starting balance       $30
      e. debit card      -$65 =-$35
      A. Overdraft fee!  -$35 =-$70
      d. cash deposit    +$60 =-$10
      b. debit card      -$10 =-$20
      B. Overdraft fee!  -$35 =-$55
      c. debit card      -$10 =-$65
      C. Overdraft fee!  -$35=-$100

_I wish I were making this up, but sadly not. I was just lucky enough to have the smarts and time to go into a branch and browbeat a manager into getting the charges reversed. However, my understanding is that millions of people have been ripped off by this trick in recent years._

<comment><USER4> Most accountants would list numbers and place them in ()'s for negative values.

This really breaks my mind when it comes to transactions though, as ALL transactions SHOULD be globally ordered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is finance. Anon is storing his assets, dealing with uncertainty.

In 'Poor Economics' there was a chapter about saving in West Africa. Apparently the way some people there do it by contributing some money in a pool on a periodical basis and each time the group meets, the pool is immediately given to one member, whose turn it is. So if you are in $10-per day group that withdraws once a month, you can be sure that once every 30 days you'll withdraw your $300, without worrying too much about banks, withdrawal fees, etc.

<comment><USER7> It's actually very widespread in all sorts of countries and cultures.

There was a good Planet Money show that talked about it here: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/18/193176928/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/06/18/193176928/episode-466-diy- finance)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susu_(savings)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susu_\(savings\))

<comment><USER8> What is going on with that Wikipedia article. The first two sentences are written badly to the point of being incomprehensible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like satire to me, I wouldn't read to much into it. And I think that the fact that some people are taking it seriously just proves that it's actually pretty good satire.

<comment><USER10> "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."

<comment><USER11> That's only /b/ though. Based on post numbers this is from /v/, but yeah, anyone can lie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Two words: counterparty risk.

If GameStop goes under, I don't know where "customers who have pre-orders" end up on the line of 'creditors'.

<comment><USER13> Same as other unsecured creditors, unless the company convinces the bankruptcy court & the other creditors it's to the benefit of the business in the long run to give them what they paid for.

Most corporate bankruptcies are restructurings, not liquidations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instead of posting judgement over this guy it would be more interesting to talk about other financial hacks.

One 'hack' I do is to use my credit card outside my country, but when I get paid in my own country my family repays the credit card debt with that money; is cheaper than using wire-transfer (i.e. western union) or direct bank transfer.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure if I understand. Essentially you're saying your credit card company has a better exchange rate than the other two services?

<comment><USER16> Yes, I can believe that is what he is saying. Certain banks/credit cards have relationships with foreign institutions that can cause unexpectedly low fees, given the right circumstances. On top of which, I've found that both Western Union and bank-to-bank transfers, on the whole, are a huge ripoff on both rates and fees--especially for frequent, small volume scenarios.

When I worked in Canada, I used the no-ATM-fee agreement [1] between ScotiaBank and Bank of America to convert USD to CAD and transfer money between the accounts. This involved the rather odd procedure of going to a ScotiaBank ATM, withdrawing a lot of CAD off of the USD in the BofA account, and stuffing the cash right back into the ATM as a deposit on the ScotiaBank account. Any other procedure, including using a teller or trying an online wire transfer, would have been more expensive and inconvenient. The above had no per-transaction fees and only a 3% conversion fee added to the market rate, which is about average compared to credit cards. (Any of Western Union's "instant" options for this kind of transaction require about 9% in fees.)

There are some credit cards with no foreign transaction fees, which is what I would use today if I had to do it again. Using such a card to purchase items in the foreign country, and then paying off the balance with the home country bank, results in "free" currency conversion. That's what GP is referring to.

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

<comment><USER17> Yup, I did the same thing in China by withdrawing RMB from my bank account at Bank of America at a China Construction Bank ATM and immediately depositing it in my local account. Zero fees and good exchange rate.

The only annoying part was that the amount I needed to pay my initial rent + security deposit was more than my daily withdrawal limit, so I had to transfer up to the limit three days in a row to get enough money in there to start.

<comment><USER18> I heard from a colleague that this deal no longer exists.

I opened a CCB account before my last trip to the US. I was charged a 3USD ATM fee at the BofA ATM. I don't know what exchange rate was applied when the 303USD was converted to CNY, but most Chinese banks load these transactions much less than those in the UK (which usually charge 2.25% to 2.75% above the Visa wholesale rate).

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that was in 2009. I don't know if CCB/BoA still have the no-fee agreement.

But now I have a checking account at Schwab that refunds all ATM fees, including internationally, so I could do it with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This guy complains about overdraft fees. Isn't the simple solution not to overdraft? Almost any bank has online access to your account, and ATM/Debit transactions seem to show up immediately. If you are getting toward the end of your pay cycle, make a daily check of your balance. Have a habit of mentally subtracting some fixed amount (say, 1,000) from your balance whenever you look at it, so you always have a cushion too. BTW, when you have a bank turn off overdraft privileges, that applies to your debit card only (i.e., instead of letting a transaction go through it will get denied at the terminal). But any check or automatic withdraw will still generate an overdraft fee.

If you need something a bit simpler, set up two accounts -- one for recurring bills, a second one just for your debit card. Have your paycheck split accordingly between the two accounts (or set up an bi-weekly transfer to coincide with your paycheck deposits). Any utility bills, mortgage / rent payment, etc comes out of the bills account. Then you never miss an important bill payment. Bonus -- to make this work, you need a bit more going into the bills account than what goes out. At the end of the year, you will then have a surprise savings balance sitting there.

<comment><USER20> Man, no offense, but you sound like someone who has never worked paycheck to paycheck. I'm not endorsing his banking scheme, but I can sympathize with the shityt overdraft fees are.

Also "seem to come in order" is not really good enough when you are down to 5 or 10 dollars left. Also, I have seen many examples of banks processing things out of order to maximize the overdraft fees. Ie. processing larger transactions before smaller ones that occured before them chronologically, so that a number of 4 or 5 dollar purchases would end up each having a $35 overdraft fee.

For 95% of situations it would be much more in the customers interest to just reject the transactions. But the banks make a killing off of exploiting the people who can least afford it (those with almost no money in their account).

edit: downvotes? Anyone care to actually tell me what is downvote worthy in this post? The guy's recommendation to "subtract 1000" from whatever your balance is is totally infeasible for a large portion of the population.

<comment><USER21> > The guy's recommendation to "subtract 1000" from whatever your balance is is > totally infeasible for a large portion of the population.

I liked how the example used $1000, too. As if poor people even have that much _in total_. A better example would have been +/\- $10, but a lot of people here have absolutely no comprehension of poverty in the US.

<comment><USER19> My apologies -- I meant 100, hit an extra key. And for the record, yes I am currently living mostly paycheck to paycheck, although I make decent money (my own fault -- I've got a live-in significant other, she can't work any more due to disability, and I've had to take over her expenses, including car payment [her's and one of her kid's), meds, etc.) But even so, I'm able to do odd jobs for people, and that all goes into a buffer balance. Yes, I can't compare myself to someone on minimum wage, but when everything you make goes to existing obligations (again, I could have said no to a lot of things, but when it is the choice between more credit card debt for a vet bill, and putting down a pet that has been instrumental in drawing a certain family member out of deep depression...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I doubt Gamestop accountants are too thrilled about having to do extra work, or potentially be accused of money laundering or running an unlicensed money transmitted business.

They can put an end to this overnight by having a simple TOC having to be signed on every preorder. In US you wouldn't want to break TOC...

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the larger point of this is that this guy found a system not intended for this at all, and it still works better than businesses set up for this purpose.

<comment><USER24> I dunno, my bank not only pays me 3% interest on a current account with free withdrawals from most ATMs and free payments to other bank accounts, it also doesn't send me computer games I don't want if I don't forget to cancel them.

<comment><USER25> What bank pays 3%?

<comment><USER24> Santander in the UK. It's a big market share ploy, but it's a good one, and there isn't really any catch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quality contribution(s) in an anonymous community? Who'd a thunk!

</comment><comment><USER27> If anyone wishes for whatever reason to read the original thread, [http://archive.foolz.us/v/thread/235956257/#235956257](http://archive.foolz.us/v/thread/235956257/#235956257) here. Caution: it may contain content that you find offensive, but was posted in jest in the original context. There is also content that is offensive and posted with the intent to offend. There is also content that is funny, but was posted with the intent to offend. There is no known algorithm to distinguish between them. Read with caution. Images are not archived, only thumbnails.

Edit: And before I forget. This thread is on the videogames board, but some people post pictures of anime girls wearing clothes. I've seen people get extremely angry at that practise, so if you're one of them, turn images off or something.

</comment><comment><USER28> Really? That's what passes for journalism? Straight up copy garbage from reddit, which copied it from 4chan, and republish it without adding ANY original thought to it? That's normal on Buzzfeed, but I didn't know kottke.org was this worthless.

<comment><USER29> Kottke isn't a journalist, he's a blogger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Gamification is clearly the future of banking.

</comment><comment><USER31> Or he could... just... I dunno. Use cash. If cash = empty, then no more purchase? Because clearly the guy can't handle his finances using debit cards and keeps on overdrafting his account.

<comment><USER32> By using cash, if his/her house gets robbed, s/he would lose the whole paycheck. Hell, for all we know, s/he might not even be able to trust the people s/he lives with.

<comment><USER31> Yea and gamespot might go bankrupt or a meteor could hit him on the head. I mean we aren't talking large sums of money here if he is over drafting his checking regularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why not just use a reload-able prepaid debit card if he/she is that bad at managing money? Managing your bank account is not that difficult.

I bank with Chase and they warn you if you get under the notification level you set, my phone will actually vibrate in my pocket with the message just after I swipe the card. Also even if you do overdraft and you get notified (with Chase)and can go make a cash deposit that same day and they won't charge you any fees. BOA is a different beast, stay far, far away from BOA if you can.

</comment><comment><USER34> It strikes me as really weird that a company would take your money for a preorder. It's not really a thing here in the UK, I don't think. Amazon certainly doesn't take my money before the product actually ships, and large stores like GAME or HMV only take a small, non-refundable deposit.

<comment><USER35> When I worked at GAME we didn't even take a deposit. Managers are pushed to get as many preorders as they can, and as a store it directly affects how many units of a game you get in so there's a big incentive there. It got to the point when we'd ask people if they wanted to preorder anything just in case they wanted it later; there was no obligation to buy it so no harm to the customer and the store would benefit by getting more stock.

It was always fun looking at the preorder list.. there were quite a few vapourware titles on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Or just buy games with your rewards credit card, return them for a cash refund, then pay off your credit card bill with the cash.

You can return new games if they are unopened, used games within 7 days. You get free points and GameStop foots the bill for the credit card fee.

Not sure if it's illegal, but definitely a dick move.

<comment><USER13> Every store I've heard of refunds credit card purchases to the card in question, not cash (although with a no-receipt you can sometimes exchange it for store credit, & possibly sell that at a smaller discount than the rewards payoff), and every credit card I've ever heard of doesn't give you rewards if the charges are reversed (either because of a refund or a chargeback).

Many stores (eg, Home Depot) also track their customers' refunds and will stop allowing you to return merchandise if you're an outlier.

<comment><USER36> Right, but GameStop lets you return credit card purchases for cash.

Just last month I returned a used game that I didn't like they gave me cash even though the original purchase was with a credit card.

My guess is that since they've already eaten the processing % to debit your card they don't want to pay it again to credit your card. Not sure if large scale retail still pays on the reverse, I'm assuming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Bet that works real well for paying bills / making online purchases

</comment><comment><USER38> This is retarded. What happens if GameStop goes belly up? You could be out the games and the money. I think this must be a trolling.

<comment><USER39> Games are like porn - is the best way for people to procrastinate and delay facing the real life issues.

This industry will die the last.

<comment><USER38> I realize the game industry won't go away overnight but individual companies will always come and go. The same plan would have been equally plausible with CD stores in the 90's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm kinda confused, has this dude never heard of Credit cards? Or is he already so bad at money that his credit score is too low?

</comment><comment><USER41> Sounds better than keeping your money in bitcoins

</comment><comment><USER42> Money laundering?

<comment><USER43> Walmart gives cash back when you return something purchased on a credit card. Not sure what the parameters of this are, but I had it happen once with a ~$300 purchase and it was weird and very "money launder-y"

<comment><USER44> Walmart gift cards on cardpool.com generally have a pretty tight spread and high supply (liquidity?).

I'm kind of curious how many Walmart cards are actually bought as a legitimate gift rather than as some kind of vehicle to transfer money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I guess Aaron Greenspan needs to sue Gamestop now...</comment>


Google Hired All The Men At This Startup, But Not The Company's Only Woman - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-post-on-google-acqui-hire-2014-4 <comment><USER2> >'But that's not the case when you're the only member of your five-person company who's left behind...Even though she founded the company and "the product was my idea," she didn't get a deal because she was not an engineer.'

While technically accurate, the headline is pretty sensational. She goes on to describe herself as a generalist (and not an expert), which is something that is not really the target for aquihires.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Perhaps this is a better title: Google Hired All The _Engineers_ At This Startup, But Not The Company's Only _Designer_

<comment><USER2> To be fair to her, it sounds like she did a lot more than design, but sure, I think focusing on role in this case is more accurate than gender.

Also, and at least to my ear, 'All' sounds like more than 5 people. Unfortunately, "Google only hires 80% of a company in an aquihire" doesn't have the page-view potential.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Agreed. But lots of things that were not coding. I'm guessing Google was all staffed up on people to do those things. And "All" does invoke a feeling of more than 5 to me to. If the company was 80 men and 20 women and they took all the men and none of the women, then I'd say there was some issues. But "all" 4 men and not the 1 women (who happened to have a different skill set)... meh. I'm not convinced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't particularly know how the acquihiring process goes, but couldn't the to-be-acquired negotiate that the acquiring needs to employ everyone?

<comment><USER4> California is an-at will employment state. What this means is any employee can quit and any employer can let go without cause as long as it isn't against the law (which is insanely difficult to prove to begin with). Any offer they provide to her (salary, earn out, etc)... Would not have mattered if they hired her on and let her go a day later... Ultimately contracts are fickle like that. There are probably exceptions to all of the above but most likely difficult to enforce in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think most people misunderstand what an acquihire actually entails, so they get up in arms over a statement like this.

It's not uncommon for even male founders to not join on in an acquihire. In an acquihire, the only thing the acquiring company cares about are specific talents/skill sets. The product, business, and assets of the startup are worthless to the acquirer. It looks like in this case, Google was only looking for the engineering talent and nothing else. There's no sexism here on Google's part because they're doing exactly what's best for Google. Gender isn't part of this equation for them.

Now, the lines on the startup's side are less clear cut, but if this was a failing startup, this would not be sexism, but a clean way out for people to get jobs. If it wasn't, it just sounds to me like she cofounded a startup with people she shouldn't have trusted. Men make that mistake all the time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't buy this at all. If she founded company she would have equity and some sort of agreement(s)/documentation supporting her story.

If she can't product any documentation then she's out-of-luck.

Lesson to all of us: get things in writing.

</comment><comment><USER7> "when google hired all the engineers at this startup, but not the only non- engineer" <\-- that's the headline.

</comment><comment><USER8> How would she have felt without the 10k payout, while all the engineers left for Google regardless?

<comment><USER8> Its called 'aquihired' for a reason. They didn't need any of the startup besides the talent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are a generalist (read: women.. Wink wink), think twice about slaving away at a start up because the payouts might not apply to you.

Bummer.</comment>


Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared of Capitalism, Not Robots - <AUTHOR> http://usuncut.com/news/edit-complete-hw-stephen-hawking-says-really-scared-capitalism-not-robots/ <comment><USER3> To be fair, it's not really capitalism he is arguing against, but rather Special Interest groups misusing their position in a capitalistic system. Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winning liberal / "capitalist", spoke against monopolies and Special Interest groups for ~30 years [1].

I would have loved to see a Milton Friedman and Thomas Piketty debate although. :-)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2T2Ee8zm6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2T2Ee8zm6s)

<comment><USER4> Are you so sure about that? Capitalism is at its core about the (private) accumulation of capital in the sense of means of production. This capital is used by human labour to produce things. Technological change is ultimately a process by which the ratio of capital input to human labour input increases.[0]

In a sense, robots (automated machines) are the perfection of capital, where the ratio becomes arbitrarily high: human labour becomes decreasingly needed until it's basically unnecessary.

Private ownership of this capital - which is what capitalism is all about - <USER2> then absolutely the problem, because it pits a small group of capital owners against a majority which depends on the products produced by that capital without having anything useful to trade left.

[0] How you measure this ratio is an important but difficult topic, and in fact one must be careful not to let an implicit definition of measures frame the discussion.

<comment><USER5> > Private ownership of this capital - which is what capitalism is all about - > is then absolutely the problem

It's only a problem if you can't/won't tax. If you can tax owners of the capital and give away that money to other people (bureaucrats, army, unemployed, everybody) everything still works just fine. Everybody still has money to buy stuff and this keeps the game that capital owners play between themselves live.

The only way we can screw this up is to weaken the governments and strengthen the corporations to the point that governments won't be able to tax. So probably private armies are bad idea, also neglecting people so that they pummel their own governments.

So it's ok if billionaires own all the robots, that make stuff, sell stuff to poor (everybody who's not a billionaire), as long as government can tax billionaires 98% tax and bomb them if they don't pay up.

<comment><USER6> Is that just a thought experiment, or do you really think that would work?

Because I don't think it would work. Why would producers give bombs to the government? Why would they give food to the populace? Why would they submit to taxation when they have more power than the entity trying to tax them?

<comment><USER5> > Is that just a thought experiment, or do you really think that would work?

That's how it already works. Money is taken from capitalists and redistributed to bureaucrats and military and some expended to appease the populace.

> Because I don't think it would work. Why would producers give bombs to the > government?

Because it's good money and government has already plenty of bombs to force people to make more bombs for them.

Similarly you could ask, why on Earth any company supplies stuff to IRS. Because it's profitable and because you could face consequences if you openly refuse.

> Why would they give food to the populace?

Because populace will pay them with money, for the cheapest, best quality food they can make. Money will come almost in full from producers pockets, but it won't be a problem for them because as long as competition pays the same or more then it's all good.

> Why would they submit to taxation when they have more power than the entity > trying to tax them?

Wait!? US capitalists have more firearms, bombs, tanks and planes than US army?

What I am saying is that it's not some scheme that will get established. I'm saying that it's already the case. Governments are still stronger than corporations, same way North Korea is stronger than South Korea. Technologically and socially way behind, but with huge army.

I'm basically saying that monopoly on violence [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence) is the factor that keeps capitalism from eating us, and right after that, itself.

<comment><USER7> This explanation seems to rely fairly heavily on the current, potentially unknown state of the system, and the ability for the military to respond without delay to stockpiling of weaponry by producers.

> Because it's good money and government has already plenty of bombs to force > people to make more bombs for them. If the military could express force > against a producer the moment they refuse to supply weaponry, and before > they stockpile it for themselves, then this is true. However if the period > of delay between producer non-compliance and military intervention is too > great, the producer may have an opportunity to stockpile enough force to > mount a realistic defence.

The government, nor the military, controls the means of production that their Monopoly on Violence depends upon, let alone the responsiveness and potentially not even the stockpile (I'm not sure of the figures) to mount a sustained defence against cooperating producers.

EDIT: The idea of producers acquiring legitimacy greater than that of public institutions is also an interesting idea with respect to Monopoly on Violence. Immediate self interest of citizens (taxation minimisation) could potentially lead to a "tragedy of the commons" type outcome for public services; leaving the private sector as the only viable and legitimate provider. This could also undermine the legitimacy of public institutions perhaps?

<comment><USER5> > the producer may have an opportunity to stockpile enough force to mount a > realistic defense.

I think you are heavily underestimating capacity of armies. Hardware that modern armies operate is absolutely horrific and knowing how to use it most effectively is the only thing they do.

Capitalists know how to make money not use military hardware and I don't think anyone could stockpile enough weaponry without any government organization noticing to carve out any sort of tax independence.

Closest to what you are imagining is mafia carving out tax independence from government in Mexico or wherever. But then you have another problem if government is too weak to prevent you from stockpiling weapons, it's also too weak to prevent your competition from stockpiling weapons and that's way worse for the business than being taxed (even heavily).

> ... to mount a sustained defence against cooperating producers.

Why do you things producers would cooperate? They can cooperate to some degree but they want to get ahead of each other. Having armed competition would be horrible.

You might potentially imagine scenario, where produces stockpile weapons, unite to abolish government (and army) that due to weakness haven't noticed the stockpiling and haven't defused situation and haven't stockpiled accordingly. Then they either fight among themselves or not and become new government and army (because it's easier to tax than to manufacture and sell, when you have an army). So even in catastrophic scenario everything is back to status quo.

If you like SF I recommend "Beggars in Spain". Nice vision about what might happen if 1% gets immensely more productive then the rest of humanity.

> leaving the private sector as the only viable and legitimate provider. This > could also undermine the legitimacy of public institutions perhaps?

I know it's popular fantasy to think that governments are legitimized by services they provide to (poor) people. While in truth they are legitimized by armies that hide behind, them that give illusion by being civilly controlled in exchange for inordinate amount of resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He is simply right.

The global trend is, that governments in all nations loose more and more of their former power and (partially) dump it to international corporations which hold the real power in their hands.

There is an older documentary, that is still valid with the name "The Corporation" which shows, how corporations have used the US constitution and decades of lobbying and court cases to gain more and more power. So today, the corporations are difficult to held liable for things they do (in many cases they come away with small fees that don't even cover the harm they caused), but enjoy many of the rights which where meant for real citizen.

This documentary comes to the conclusion, that many corporations behave like psychopaths, because when a corporation has to decide, (for example) to keep the environment clean or make more profits, the corporation rule is, to go for the money and forget about the rest.

Anybody should watch this. Either on DVD, or I also spotted it on worlds favorite video site.

With international treaties like TTP and others, the power of international corporations is hardened and it gets more and more difficult to reverse this global trend. With all their lawyers and lobbyists, the corporations are bound to win over the democracies -- what dictators did not manage to.

This trend is undermining democracies and human rights, because corporations are not democratic and have only one rule to obey: The profit rule.

 _So finally, we are all governed by money and nothing else._

<comment><USER9> This is why some corporations should be forcefully converted to benefit corporations which have more stakeholders than profit alone. Big Pharma, Insurance, and Utilities should be converted first.

<comment><USER8> I would agree. The current trend (at least in Europe) is the other direction. In Europe we want to privatize more and more Utilities and other institutions that belonged to the public sector. Schools, water, electricity ...

<comment><USER9> Privatization isn't bad provided that key corporations are answerable to more than just profit alone. This is the key aspect of a benefit corporation.

A lot of what is wrong with large corporations is that they don't place any priorities on customers, employees, and the environment, when making the most profit is what they are legally mandated to do.

Making a profit needs to be balanced with the reason the company is in business, (i.e. the needs of its customers), its employees, and the environment.

<comment><USER8> > Making a profit needs to be balanced with the reason the company is in > business, (i.e. the needs of its customers), its employees, and the > environment.

I completely agree. I also don't think, that public sector is always optimal. Public institutions some times tend to be inefficient.

The problem, I see in many privatizations, is that profits are the main (and sometimes only) motive and any efficiency improvements are put into shareholder value instead into public benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No.

TPP, huge inequality, centralization, unemployment ARE NOT a consequence of free market capitalism.

In such case, automation just doesn't outpace the labor market.

Now, when tech companies are partying with an artificial economy controlled by the government, they have more than enough money to that.

<comment><USER11> People seem to be assuming that free market capitalism means companies are perfectly happy about competition, because competition is what we expect to see under perfect free market conditions. No, companies do not like competition; any sane (not to mention rational) actor in such a system will do anything it can to ensure its own monopoly. Pitting various actors with such tendencies against each other is kind of the core idea of market economy. It's pretty obvious that some actors will temporarily get ahead, and then capitalize on that to get further ahead. Hence inequality, centralization and TPP, which is another stepping stone towards companies being in charge of governments, and not the other way around.

As for unemployment, there are many things that give rise to it, but part of it is definitely market optimizing things so much that people are being pushed under minimum survivable wage and have to rely on (the bad, communist) welfare to survive. Automation is playing a serious role here, even companies know that (hence the "don't vote for increased minimum wage, or we'll have no choice but to replace our workers with robots" ads that started to appear).

<comment><USER12> Of course _established_ companies do not like competition, it is the startups that do. If we didn't have free markets, then MS would not have risen up to replace IBM (for example; maybe not the best example). What we hope is that MS is better at doing what IBM used to do.

<comment> vezzy-fnord _If we didn 't have free markets, then MS would not have risen up to replace IBM_

Considering the United States was (and remains) a mixed market economy at the time, your statement is incorrect.

<comment><USER13> A mixed market means some markets are free, some unfree - right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> David Simon described the problem very clearly:

        That may be the ultimate tragedy of capitalism in our time, that it
        has achieved its dominance without regard to a social compact, without
        being connected to any other metric for human progress. [...]

        Capitalism stomped the hell out of Marxism [...] but the great irony of it
        is that the only thing that actually works is not ideological, it is impure,
        has elements of both arguments and never actually achieves any kind of
        partisan or philosophical perfection. It's pragmatic, it includes the best
        aspects of socialistic thought and of free-market capitalism and it works
        because we don't let it work entirely. [...]

        Labour doesn't get to win all its arguments, capital doesn't get to.
        But it's in the tension, it's in the actual fight between the two, that
        capitalism actually becomes functional, that it becomes something that every
        stratum in society has a stake in, that they all share.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon- cap...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism- marx-two-americas-wire)

(the original talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNttT7hDKsk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNttT7hDKsk) )

</comment><comment><USER15> Yesterday's discussion of the Huffington Post reporting the same thing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361314)

</comment><comment><USER16> The real problem is how demand curve behaves when the price is approaching zero (which is what you eventually get as productivity increases).

Traditional economics assume that if the price of an egg is $1 you'll eat one a day. If the price drops to 1c, you'll eat 100 a day. But: Would you?

In other words, at some point we are going to live in the world where consumption cannot catch up with the production. What then? Surely, economy would collapse: Goods won't be purchased and people producing them would be fired. Those fired would not have money to buy goods. The demand would decrease. More people will be fired. And so on until last human being dies of hunger.

I would even argue that in developed world we've already reached the limit and the economy is kept afloat only by desperate measures such as whipping up the consumption using ads, lowering the productivity by employing large numbers of paper pushers and so on.

<comment><USER11> And all of that doesn't even begin to address the resource limits of our planet. We can keep artificially sustaining the system by making more throwaway products for ad-driven consumption; we can keep people employed by inventing more bullshit jobs, introducing more managers of managers of managers into advertising industry, etc. - but at that rate, we'll soon hit the energy limit and the entire system will collapse back into middle ages. Or we'll all starve and die as the planet says "fuck it, I had enough" and shuts down the ecosystem for a while.

<comment><USER16> That's an interesting question as well. We may be saved by the fact that as literacy and wealth increases, natality rates go down. I've heard all kinds of estimates of when we'll reach the peak, ranging for 30 to 100 years. Whether the ecosystem will support us until population grows smaller and more sustainable is unknown.

<comment><USER17> Nope. Westerners with 2 babies consume 100x as much resources as rural Africans with 7 babies. And they can continue to consume more as the productivity increases. And we have room (in the population, not in resources) to double the number of high consuming people eveery 30 years for many generations.

<comment><USER11> The westerners aren't as scary as the developing nations are, actually. We're starting to care about our energy sources, (sometimes) pushing for clean alternatives. Compare with the rest of the world, in the process of rising from poverty. They need cheap energy, and they will need even more. What will they turn to? Coal, probably. And who are we, the rich west, to deny them access to things we treat as basic human rights - like wash machines or hot showers?

It would be in our best interest as a civilization to help them build solar and nuclear infrastructure, to skip the fossil fuels. But the way things look right now, I don't see it happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fully Automated Luxury Communism is an alluring idea. Could it work?

<comment><USER19> If you could explain to the people of an earlier time all our modern conveniences and how many hours we work and how little physical effort goes into almost every job, it would probably sound just like that to them.

<comment><USER20> If you go just far enough back, the hours we work would sound ridiculous (but I do agree about the effort).

<comment><USER21> You have to be careful what you are calling work when you make a comparison like that. We might just be calling more things "work." How many people are artists, musicians, writers, comedians, or chefs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And how convenient that worldwide TPP, TTIP, CETA and ASEAN are on fast track to outlaw Robot Taxes. A lot of countries would otherwise probably try to save their then imploding pension and welfare systems with Robot Taxes.

<comment><USER23> Do you have a source for those robot taxes? Would like to read more, but google doesn't yield much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How is Hawking all of a sudden an expert in Economy? Wasn't he a physicist?

<comment><USER11> He is a physicist which means he likely understand the concept of feedback loops. It only takes so much STEM education to start noticing some worrying trends. Also, Hawking probably reads other smart people, including economists. It's not as if he first noticed this problem. It's only that if you're famous, media actually report on what you have to say.

<comment><USER25> The problem is that when you only understand half the issue, you start shouting "down with capitalism" instead of "down with corporate corruption of governments and international trade agreements negotiated in secret by unelected representatives", and there is no sensible alternative to capitalism as an economic model, but there are sensible alternatives to government corruption and unaccountability.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but another problem is that when you are too deeply involved with the minutiae of the system you lose track of the big picture - it's not corruption or trade agreements that's going to doom us, the real issue is with feedback loops embedded in the basic idea of profit maximization and growth economy. You may have zero corruption and perfectly honest people and market economy will _still_ screw you over.

Our system was pretty good for bootstrapping humanity into a technological era, and was pretty well aligned with our shared values for a time, but now it's becoming less and less well-aligned, in dangerous ways. In the end, with robots capable of doing anything, trying to keep people working for a living is prima facie ridiculous _and_ evil. We need a way to avoid this future, and focusing just on new ways to solve government corruption isn't, I think, going to help us with this much. We need to stop riding the feedback loop.

C.f. [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on- moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) for some pretty good analysis of the problem

<comment><USER25> I don't buy the argument that automation breaks capitalism. The predominant cost of almost everything is labor. As things become automated, costs go down. Food costs less, housing construction costs less, local production costs less so demand for fuel is reduced, mining and recycling cost less so raw materials cost less, etc.

The reduction in the amount of work available is proportional to the reduction in the cost of everything, so the wages from fewer hours of working buy more stuff. Everything is fine until we literally get to zero, which may not even be possible, and if it is then we're living in Star Trek fantasy land where everything is free and anyone can just press a button to get whatever they want.

The only real trouble is unemployment as a result of demand for labor not matching the skillset of the labor pool, but solving that is hardly rocket science. Large grants for education (and food and housing for students). Send everybody back to school until they're qualified to do the jobs that still exist.

<comment><USER11> Even if things in fact balance out in the way you described, the problem is that it takes too long. The market has intertia. Sending everyone to school for retraining could be good idea if not for the fact that those people who have years of training ahead of them need food _now_. Since they're unemployed, they won't have money to buy it and they will die a horrible death. Unless, of course, you propose for the public to feed them through the process, at which point we've got basic income, so we may as well get rid of the retraining part entirely.

<comment><USER25> > Unless, of course, you propose for the public to feed them through the > process, at which point we've got basic income, so we may as well get rid of > the retraining part entirely.

Why are we getting rid of the retraining part? We still need people to be qualified to do those jobs.

Obviously we don't need to separately subsidize food and shelter specifically for students if we have a basic income, and a basic income is a Good Idea. But it isn't Not Capitalism. By all accounts it's more aligned with capitalism than the ridiculous system of "subsidies for everything but not if you get a[nother] job" that we have now.

<comment><USER11> I agree. I always thought of Basic Income as a first step towards switching away from capitalism, but even a form that would replace current ubercomplicated welfare system while leaving rest of the economy intact would be a _really_ good idea and a step towards a better future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This begs a question. Why are we listening to Stephen Hawking?

Why do we think that destruction of jobs by technology is something new? Do we really think it's happening faster now than in times past? I call this presentism. The cotton gin, the loom, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine, the assembly line, domestication of the horse, the wheel -- each of these in it's time put a sizable share of humanity out of a job. Compared to the steam engine, the self diving car is a mere incremental advance.

Perhaps the time and place of the most rapid job destruction was the 19th century in the U.S and England. During this period, the standard of living of the average worker shot up somewhere between 10-fold and 100-fold. You will not find a measure by which average people's lives was not radically improved.

In free markets, the blessings of technological innovation are enjoyed disproportionally by the immediate innovators, but they cannot hold their advantages for very long, not without protection from the state. Competition levels. History and reason amply show this.

People see rising inequality and are told to reflexively blame capitalism. But is what we have today in the U.S. really "capitalism?" If capitalism is "fee markets bounded by private property rights," that's not what we have. The U.S. system is best called crony capitalism[1], or corporatism[2], and lemon socialism [3]. While some of the rising wealth of the rich today is earned, much of it is scam. Bailouts, regulatory capture[4], and the Fed's serial asset bubbles[5] -- these are just some of the zero-sum schemes which today shift massive wealth from the middle toward the top.

Automation in free markets has always and will always make everyone richer.

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

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

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

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

[5] [https://mises.org/library/how-central-banks-cause-income- ine...](https://mises.org/library/how-central-banks-cause-income-inequality)

<comment><USER27> Do you believe we would be better off if we destroyed/prohibited all the technological innovations you mentioned in your comment? Stop for a moment and think about that. Then, read the article below:

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

<comment><USER26> Um no. Read my post again s l o w e r. Love me some Bastiat!

<comment><USER27> Oops! The high density of comments criticizing capitalism made me misinterpret what you had said. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Indeed, technology leading to unemployment is happening right now while a Skynet-style AGI is IMO tremendously unlikely.

However, "everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine- produced wealth is shared" depends on someone maintaining the machines and the distribution of produce. (Because the opposite of Skynet - an AGI that maintains itself and keeps every human satisfied - is even less likely than Skynet.)

And who is going to work for free while keeping everyone else's best interests in mind?

The fact that, well, nobody would, not really, is somehow missed by people who blame "capitalism" or whatever instead of blaming human nature.

<comment><USER29> I think basic income would do a lot to resolve this tension. People can work towards their own interests with a flat tax on their income and capital gains. Those tax dollars are redirected to an electronic deposit given to everyone for the same amount every day. Lets say $35. You could vote to allocate the usage of those dollars. Like 30% has to go to housing. Then everyone is free to use additional income however they like. It's a sustained capitalistic representation of basic human interests. I suspect it'd do a lot for the economy too. Both by increasing demand (poor people actually buy things) and decreasing fear.

<comment><USER28> IMO very few people who could become good engineers would choose to do so with basic income available that essentially lets them live a so-called "life of the mind." Just an opinion, of course.

<comment><USER29> IMO those very few people would benefit tremendously from a less diluted workplace. Such that they may actually seek it out were it not for the forces that drive them away. The modern startup is essentially this. It just takes a VC to make it a reality. We're a few technical iterations from essentially deprecating everyone else. We ought to start talking about this. A "life of the mind" in a world with seamless VR and other escapes could actually be wildly more productive than our current life in the world. We should just start trying to make people more comfortable. The engineering mindset seems inherently rare. I suspect distributions converge such that it simply CANNOT be pervasive in a population. What then? We're making everyone else redundant to a degree that we don't even need the entire engineering-capable subset. Honestly I think the money is and will-be potent enough to attract the capable.

Ideally we would find creative ways for other people to work if they desired it. But these may become increasingly rare and undependable. People need a safety-net they can actually reason about. Modern welfare isn't it. They could relax and think MUCH more productively if it were simply: I can live in this tiny box and eat/sleep/internet indefinitely while I learn whatever I want. $35/day buys you that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We should be worried about Keynesianism and _Crony_ Capitalism. A free and fair market is not bad per se... Too bad we don't have that kind of market anymore.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _A free and fair market is not bad per se…_

Such a market is not obvious to set up. Take the internet for instance. There are several ways to get a free markets, some of which lead to healthy competition between many many providers, and some of which lead to near- monopoly.

Basically, it all starts at the handling of the last mile. There are _many_ last miles to cover, and it doesn't make technical sense to duplicate them. So, one solution is have the state build the lines, then lease them to providers at regulated rates that allow small providers (10-100 subscribers) to use them at rates no worse than the big boys. That solution tends to lead to the "free and fair" market you seek.

Another solution would be to minimise state intervention (because "free market"), and thus let providers build their own last miles —and lease them if they want to. The result? A local monopoly at worst, and an oligopoly at best.

Free markets require a proper set-up. That means prior intervention —by the state if need be.

<comment><USER26> This oft told story is pretty clearly by now a myth:

[https://mises.org/library/myth-natural- monopoly](https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly)

Any day now, Google will knock on my door to install Google Fiber in my house. Funny how for 10 years I had the same Time Warner Cable modem, and they recently sent me a new much faster one. Funny how, AT&T trucks are suddenly appearing around my 'hood to upgrade their plant so they can offer higher speeds.

As a result my service will be better, faster and cheaper. This is not supposed to be possible.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Any day now, Google will knock on my door_

Yeah, _Google_. Not a smaller, local company.

Sure, it's not a monopoly. But when only big players (like Google) end up servicing you, that's effectively an oligopoly, which is far from ideal.

Maybe there is no natural monopoly here. But there _is_ a natural "only huge corporations may ever enter here". That's nearly as bad.

<comment><USER26> I disagree.

I've seen firsthand the huge investment it takes to wire a neighborhood with underground fiber. A small company cannot do it. Okay, so what?

Google is offering free internet forever for a one time $300 construction fee which you can pay off over the course of a year. I'm buying gigabit plus premium TV package, 2TB 8-tuner DVR, etc, and my costs will be halved for a massively better product. If this is oligopoly, bring it on.

With state created monopolies, prices rise and quality stagnates or falls. I don't know anyone who would dispute that. But these so-called oligopolies constantly innovate and drive prices down and quality up. Apple is part of an oligopoly as are many other darling tech companies. The constantly innovate and drop prices. Even in the days of the so-called robber barons it was so. Standard Oil controlled 90% of the oil market for about 10 years, during which time the price of a barrel of kerosene fell something like 300%. [1]

[1] [http://tomwoods.com/blog/beware-the-robber-barons-and- more-t...](http://tomwoods.com/blog/beware-the-robber-barons-and-more-tales- of-capitalism/)

<comment> loup-vaillant > _A small company cannot do it. Okay, so what?_

So, have the state (or city) build the damn last mile. It's a public service, just like electricity and water. (If it's not a public service, maybe it should be.) Then have the state _get the fuck out_ by leasing the lines (or the bandwidth in the lines) at some price (preferably without bulk offers, which favour big providers).

I bet prices would fall _way faster_ with a scheme like this.

Also, I'd be wary of Google being my ISP. They spy on me way too much already, I'd rather limit my interaction with them (I'm off Gmail, and use DuckDuckGo). Not to mention the obvious conflict of interest created by the vertical integration: they are ISP _and_ content provider. To name one example, the temptation to make YouTube go smoother than Netflix is significant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If the so called "evil wealthy people" control all the machines that produce goods and services, what would they use those goods and services for, since the rest of the world is miserably poor?

Apparently not even Stephen Hawking understands the broken window fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER31> Capitalism and free markets are fine with some fair regulation on the outliers/abusers.

Capitalism is ultimately a human system. Humans are much scarier than robots, the robots are only doing as other humans instructed (at least at the beginning). Capitalism, a human creation and system, has become a force that is ultimately good for advancement/innovation, but one that people can take too far in greed.

Without some regulation, by design humans take it as far as they can go, it is part of our programming. But, when the future depends on the good will of mega rich humans to spread it around, that future is a very frightening prospect indeed.

</comment><comment><USER32> I thought hacker news would have more libertarians than this. I'm saddened.

<comment><USER33> So write something for us, be that libertarian! The strongest sign of a robust ideal is that it stands up well in discussion and dissent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Scientist who is an expert on X opines on Y and Z."

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm more scared of Democrats and Republicans than Capitalists.</comment>


Net Neutrality is akin to socialism - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestreet.com/story/10842616/net-neutrality-is-akin-to-socialism.html?puc=outbrain&cm_ven=outbrain&obref=obnetwork

<comment><USER2> This is the raging Ayn Rand view. Net neutrality is a valid concern for government since it's _res publica_ : a common good that can only be achieved when every citizen have it. Individual citizens or even groups of citizens can not procure a net neutrality package when it's not available or affordable for other citizens.</comment>


Show HN:  ImpasseBreaker – Double-blind negotiation - <AUTHOR>

Hey folks -- love your feedback on our negotiation platform, www.impassebreaker.com. IB uses double-blind comparison of two users' "bottom line" financial positions to determine if they have a match and can then stop wasting time nickel and diming in endless negotiation. If there's a match, IB sends an email to both users reporting the amount of the match, currently the mid-point between the "ceiling" and the "floor" and if no it sends an e-mail saying no match. A couple of use cases: real estate sales, salary negotiation, lawsuit settlement . . . We have other features on the drawing boards -- payments, settlement document drafting, among them -- for now, we'd love your feedback and thoughts on the current site. Login and use are free and you can register with a Facebook or linkedIn account. Many thanks in advance for your thoughts and feedback --email@example.com. <comment><USER2> I really like the concept! However I think your landing page could use some work. The call to action (Registering) isn't as clear as it could be. What I would do is add a big button 'register' and ask the user to pick a way to register after that. At first glance the facebook logo could just be a link to your facebook page or something.

Also you need some way to lure people in, some screenshots, a short video. I want to know in what state of development a service is before I sign up!

Hope this helps in any way :)

<comment> luka-birsa I agree with Styn, a screenshot of your page in action, a demo and/or a video would be nice.

I don't like to register for sites that aren't clear on how they work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am going to work on that. Made some minor style changes that I just pushed to try to clarify that the buttons allow for login and added a "tell me more link" under the login buttons that leads to an "about us" page. The platform is actually fully functional -- the founding team has pretty solid technical and subject matter expertise -- a software engineer/lawyer and a couple of practicing lawyers who negotiate for a living -- but your comments point to a weakness in design, and that is critical.

Many thanks! Screenshots and more explanation to follow.

Stephen

<comment><AUTHOR> OK -- I've pushed a slide-show of screenshots showing IB in action. It's accessible via the "IB in action" link on the homepage. I'll add a bit more (and I like the animation idea) but hopefully this will give you a better idea of what IB does. Thanks again for the feedback. Very helpful!

<comment><USER2> The idea is right, but I would change the blue text, in some screenshots it's very hard to read. Another thing would be to change the screenshots so they have a story. Alice is selling her 2nd hand car to Bob for example, with branching storyline for succesful and unsuccesful resolution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- I'm going to work on the the presentation style and put together some use cases. You're right -- the blue is hard. I need to move the description above the carousel and outside of the slides. There are also some decent cartoon tools I've found that may help for the examples. So will definitely refine this. Greatly appreciate your input--very helpful, on the mark, and much appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you -- that's very helpful. The FB and LI login links are fully functional but you're right it's not clear. We've also thought about animation or a video. Maybe screenshots will help -- I like the idea, and we can do that ourselves; we're completely bootstrapped have to be careful about cost. Many thanks for the feedback! Stephen</comment>


On the Future Computer Era: Modification of the American Character  (1968) - <AUTHOR> https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3780.html <comment><AUTHOR> One of numerous papers by networking pioneer Paul Baran, at RAND.

 _A warning that unintended but disastrous effects on society have resulted from improved and computerized recordkeeping, owing to (1) the habit of limiting the number of variables considered to those easily quantified, (2) the tendency to use records and scores instead of judgment, and (3) the use of information to maximize private profit without regard to the damage inflicted by everybody doing this at once. Using computers, loan and insurance companies screen out the highest-risk groups. Fire or burglary insurance cannot be obtained in areas where business development is most needed. Many people are rendered uninsurable and /or unemployable on the basis of health, education, or past failures or infractions that former generations would have successfully concealed. What future have the 40 percent of all urban youth (90 percent Negro) who will have some brush with the law, when an arrest record bars them forever? Those who understand technology have an obligation to lift their eyes from minimizing subsystem costs and at least be an early warning system for the rest of society._</comment>