Unnecessariat - <AUTHOR> https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/ <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech:

 _The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning._

Everything he listed has gotten worse, not better. Both local communities and our institutions have fragmented, crumbled, or turned, at least in part, cynically exploitative (see: degree mills, asset forfeiture, Creflo Dollar, myriad regulations enabling rent-seeking and hindering free enterprise).

Because HN and tech world chatter is my background noise, I think about Universal Basic Income, though I don't know much more about it than a definition. It seems to me the "winners" in the current game can provide assistance and some level of comfort in a more expansive and efficient way than the degrading system in place today. But they can't provide meaning. Neither can the institutions Carter listed, alone. At minimum, an earned trust in all or most of them is a foundation on which secure footing can be had to build a life, a family, a community. But I don't know how we get there from here. It sure doesn't seem that either party is steering that way, or that our current media is capable of engaging with the situation without driving 10 different outrage-optimized wedges through it.

The civic and moral fabric of the nation is not an election-winning topic, as Carter found out.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash You were right until your last sentence. Reagan made the nation _feel_ that its civic and moral fabric was strong. Nevermind that his policies undermined civil society and his religious backing was hypocritical of anything close to Christ's teachings on compassion, it made people feel strong and so it won him the election.

<comment><USER3> Trump's got the same thing with the specific brand of disempowered people that the article's talking about.

<comment><USER4> I have found people are frequently ready to kill one another to protect THEI specific brands of the disempowered of choice, often at the expense of the disempowered brand they despize.

<comment><USER5> The culture war is a great tool for dividing the disempowered and keeping economic issues off the table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article: _" We aren't precarious, we're unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what's worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that._"

That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it.

Get behind the $15 minimum wage. Then the 8 hour day and 40 hour week.

Overtime is coming back to America, on December 1, 2016.[1] The threshold below which overtime must be paid rises from $455 to $913 per week. This affects about 4 million US workers. Goldman Sachs says this will add 100,000 jobs, as employers try to avoid paying time and a half for overtime.[2]

[1] [https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/](https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/) [2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-new-obama- overt...](http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-new-obama-overtime- rule-to-add-jobs-2016-5)

<comment><USER7> You seem to have missed the point of the article. The $15 minimum wage will most likely help the precariat. This is a good thing. But it will do little if anything to help the unnecessariat.

> ... no matter how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans, > the ones killing themselves on purpose or with drugs, don't. Don't, won't, > and know it.

Overtime and wage increases are not going to help people who don't have jobs, and can't be trained for high paying jobs. UBI _might_ help them, but might have some other unbeneficial social effects. And maybe if we invent Soma we could give people a safe way to escape a crushing reality.

But the gist here is that for a certain underclass, things are not improving, and no solutions are being offered. No one even cares that these people are dying, no community is organized around helping them. Nothing. It's bad enough to make one want to take heroin.

So vote Trump! If you can't save the world, better to watch it burn. Fire walk with me.

<comment><USER8> > But it will do little if anything to help the unnecessariat.

A higher minimum wage will most likely _hurt_ the unnecessariat. One way to think of a $15 minimum wage is a prohibition on anyone who's labor is worth less than $15/hr from working. Not only will it make the current unecessariat's situation worse, it will likely expand it's ranks.

<comment><USER9> Elasticity in the US labor market is much closer to 0 than -1. Not only has this been studied, it's been studied enough that we can do pretty solid meta- studies to find bias is the studies:

[http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/studying-the-studies-on- the-...](http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/studying-the-studies-on-the-minimum- wage)

I wouldn't advocate a jump straight to a $15 minimum wage because for sufficiently large MW jumps the elasticity has to start heading for -1 (and beyond -- that's just the break even point) and we only have good information for small changes. But for small changes the evidence is unambiguous. The traditional narrative taught in Econ 101 is an oversimplification.

It's not hard to figure out why: markets set the actual price of labor between the producer price (minimum people will work for) and consumer price (value to the employer) based on bargaining power. If employers are winning at the bargaining power game, wages will be close to the minimum. If employees are winning, wages will be close to the maximum. _Only those earning wages already close to the maximum will be affected by a minimum wage increase._ Since the unskilled labor market is flooded, approximately everyone is on the "minimum" side of the spectrum. Both theory and evidence say that small MW increases are boons to laborers under these conditions.

As machines advance and begin push humans out of the market, the maximum side of the spectrum will begin to drift downwards and impinge on all the people crunched up against the minimum side, squeezing them out of the market and into "unnecessariat" status. Minimum wage will become an ineffective tool at that point, just as you say. But we aren't there yet.

<comment><USER10> > Not only has this been studied, it's been studied enough that we can do > pretty solid meta-studies to find bias is the studies.

The cited blog is by the CEPR, a leftist/progressive think-tank, this doesn't make their conclusion wrong, however, my reading of the graph present on the blog looks more like there is a negative elasticity, with respect to the demand for labor at higher wages, indicated by the meta-study. The graph looks like it might be as large as -0.1, suggesting that doubling of the minimum wage could have a noticeable negative impact on employment. Not all studies show that happening, but a greater number do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a pretty great personal account, and it helps me tremendously in my goal of understanding this group of people who feel left out and overlooked by their government. However, it's also a good demonstration of how people find ways to rationalize acting against their own self-interest.

One example: The author observes that the unnecessariat is having lots of economic value extracted from them, e.g. from required, high cost healthcare plans. She implies things were better when there was no requirement (and thus no coverage). I think that's a common sentiment among conservatives, which is why they have voted continually against Obamacare. But as she points out, these are people for whom even moderate healthcare costs can be devastating financially. So why didn't they all vote for Obamacare and for the public option, subsidized by higher taxes? And why didn't she consider that a reasonable enough future to even mention it?

I worry the answer is that they've given up on using (representative) democracy to improve their lives.

<comment><USER12> _So why didn 't they all vote for Obamacare and for the public option, subsidized by higher taxes?_

Because _there was nobody to vote for who offered that._ McCain's proposal was to deny that the problem existed. Obama's proposal was Obamacare without an individual mandate. Clinton's proposal was Obamacare _with_ an individual mandate. Those were the only entrees on the proverbial menu. No candidate ran on a public option, so you couldn't vote for that even if you desperately wanted to.

Ironically, one of the first moves of the candidate who got the most votes, Obama, was to decide that Hillary Clinton had been right after all and include an individual mandate. So if you voted for him over her because you opposed that idea, you were officially SOL.

<comment><USER13> > Obama's proposal was Obamacare without an individual mandate. Clinton's > proposal was Obamacare with an individual mandate. Those were the only > entrees on the proverbial menu. No candidate ran on a public option

Actually, all of Obama, Clinton, and Edwards ran on a public option. They differed on other points (as you note, during the primary Obama opposed and Clinton supported an individual mandate, and there were various other differences between the three plans, but largely Clinton and Obama cribbed their plans from the same place Edwards did first, so they all looked pretty similar.)

<comment><USER12> They sometimes mentioned a public option, but it was never central to either Obama's or Hillary's pitch.

See here for an evaluation of Obama on the issue: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2009/dec/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2009/dec/23/barack-obama/public-option-obama-platform/) It was included in his platform, but as an "also, too" kind of thing. And if you took your evaluation of his position from what he said on the stump, you'd never have known it was in his platform at all.

(I'm omitting Edwards from this discussion because he flamed out so early.)

<comment><USER14> My recollection is that it was included, but then traded to the relevant industries for their acceptance of the plan we have now. Whether it was always intended as a chip or was a serious part of the plan is open for debate I suppose, but the best chips are ones that are serious, so I'm not sure there's much difference in practice.

<comment><USER13> Kind of, in that opponents of any bill were joined by some Senators that were closely tied to the insurance industry to threaten to filibuster the bill (which passed the House with a public option) if a public option was included, looking several attempts (both passing the form the House did and putting forward different public mechanisms) to include a public option in the Senate version, and dropping the public option was the only way to secure Senate passage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of a This American Life episode where many members of a town collected disability because doctors there didn't consider them "smart enough to work". Seems to be the beginning of Universal Basic Income in all but name.

On another note, it must be depressing to live there.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/490/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits)

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately it's not a Universal Basic Income at all.

UBI and related proposals like Negative Income Tax minimize economic distortion. As you make more money, there's a smooth transition from receiving money from the gov't to paying net money as your taxes increase.

When you're on disability, you are generally not allowed to work. Any "substantial gainful activity" beyond roughly $1k / month ends your benefits [1].

So you might have a choice between $13k/year working 0 hours a week, or he could make $15k/year working 40 hours a week doing something menial and unpleasant.

If you tried to design a system to incentivize the working poor to drop out and accept a lifetime of poverty and gov't dependence, it's hard to see how you could do more. The fact that the program also incentivizes states to convert welfare recipients into disability is just icing.

\---

I think America needs sweeping entitlement reform. Not "entitlement reform" in the euphemistic Republican sense of cutting benefits, but reform done with empathy for the poor and guided by competent economists. IMO the goals should be to simplify and combine the many ways we have of giving money to poor people, and to reduce the perverse incentives that those programs create.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's probably also worth reading the recent Slate Star Codex blog post that cites this.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/23/three-great-articles- on...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/23/three-great-articles-on-poverty- and-why-i-disagree-with-all-of-them/)

<comment><USER18> I found that really interesting too. My comment from there:

Throwing money at the problem of poverty, ironically, is actually being treated as a serious answer by international NGOs these days, where for ages people tried everything else on the assumption that the feckless poor would spend it on drink. Build infrastructure for them, food aid, subsidized goods, food stamps, workfare, every which way but "here have some cash". But when they actually tried the cash, it worked. That's one reason I'm optimistic about a basic income. Another, is that I feel that a whole lot of creativity has been stomped flat by, basically, living one paycheck from the street. With an inflation-pegged basic income that's enough to subsist on, and protected against creditors, effectively that fear would be gone. Bad news for employers wanting cheap poor people to do awful jobs. Good news, for all those individual people. I have a feeling they'd rebuild their local economy. I have a feeling, too, a lot of people stuck in the city by the necessity of the next paycheck, would move out and join them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I often say to my fellow engineers that software engineering is a profession of destroying jobs. There doesn't seem to be any follow up discussion though, everyone just nods and moves on to the next subject.

What _can_ we do? There is no stopping the train of automation.

<comment><USER20> Of course there's no followup discussion. The fact that software engineering is "destroying jobs" is the wrong problem to focus on, but any discussion that approaches the right problem -- capitalism -- is practically taboo in United States.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism (EDIT: it looks like I said "feudalism" and meant "the current economic model of Europe"...), with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm.

Of course, there'll always be room for islands of capitalism (imagine New York or San Francisco as a free city), and a modern neo-feudal system will allow social mobility more readily than the original; but still.

I'm not trolling, by the way. The usual assumption is "if not capitalism then communism," but there are older, more interesting systems out there.

(There are also younger, scarier systems out there. The far right is getting disconcertingly strong in Europe, and indeed in the US; I think that if we don't explicitly choose some sort of neo-feudalism, we're going to get neo- fascism instead, or possibly just the original kind of fascism.)

(Disclaimer: neo-feudalism does not mean the revival of torture and oppression. One, "revival" implies that they aren't currently with us. Two, I think that a king, who answers only to God, assassins, his own conscience, and his hopes for his heirs, is less likely to turn lawless or pander to bloodthirsty mobs than a president is.)

<comment><USER22> > _Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism, with elites -- who are more > or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing > and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the > common people and towards the collective defense of the realm._

This post is a good reminder that capitalists are the radical liberal utopians of an earlier age, and what the realistic alternative is: social engineering and control of ordinary people by elites who think they know better, in the best case.

Count me out. I'll die fighting before I become a serf.

(edit: Also, it's just not true that the elite in capitalism are mostly permanent and hereditary. There are over two million Cuban-Americans who either came to this country with nothing to their name, or are the descendants of those who did. Today, they've found their way to the middle and upper classes in about the same proportions as non-hispanic white people who have been here for much longer.)

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Then again, the prevailing opinion of the 19th century was that "inalienable rights" are so last century and the only true rights that exist are those that can be won from a free market.

<comment><USER23> That's pretty much the prevailing opinion _now_ , and probably moreso than even during the Gilded Age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm reminded of the book 'Wasted Lives' by Zygmunt Baumann. In it he describes how the ever changing nature of capitalism constantly creates a population that is surplus to requirements. Think of what happens to dockside communities when the harbours are automated and the dock work dries up. Or coal mining towns when the mines are closed. This pattern is repeated all over the world throughout history as capitalism renews itself through creative destruction or flees to low wage countries in response to labour militancy.

</comment><comment><USER25> > In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term "precariat"

Not really. It began to appear in German books in 2005 ([https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Prekariat&year...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Prekariat&year_start=1950&year_end=2015&corpus=20&smoothing=0)) and searches took off in the end of 2006 [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Prekariat%2C%20preca...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Prekariat%2C%20precariat&cmpt=q) The German version of the word is still more common.

It actually really surprised me that the word is so young, as I think the word is pretty much common knowledge in German.

</comment><comment><USER26> Automation can automate manual labor jobs the easiest. Maintaining cities, crafting medicine, colonizing space -- these are important jobs that humanity has.

I think the bigger issue is that most people don't have resources to pursue training to tackle this kind of work.

There are so many problems left to solve in the world it's a joke to say "there isn't work to be done"

<comment><USER27> > _There are so many problems left to solve in the world it 's a joke to say > "there isn't work to be done"_

There is a lot of work to be done, and there will be in the conceivable future - but it doesn't mean there's _profitable_ work to be done _by humans_. a) machines keep replacing us doing more work and doing it better than us, and b) capitalism doesn't optimize for useful work, it optimizes for profitable work - so even if there's a lot of world problems to solve that could be tackled by the poor and uneducated, they're still screwed if they can't feed themselves from that work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm reading two books right now. _The Rise and Fall of American Growth_ [1] by Robert Gordon and _The Grapes of Wrath_ [2] by John Steinbeck. They complement each other, and this post, very well.

I would recommend Gordon's book as an objective overview of the astonishing growth in economic and quality of life terms from 1870-1970. It's not as thoroughly researched as I expected it to be, and the prose is somewhat clunky, but it's a good lesson in the history of technology that we take for granted nonetheless.

Steinbeck's tale of the banks/landowners displacing poor, rural farming families is also extremely pertinent in light of this post. Car dealers extract value from the fleeing, unnecessariat farmers in "Grapes", while insurance companies/debtors prisons extract value from the unnecessariat rural poor chronicled in this post. The promised land of "Grapes" (California) continues to be successful today, with the coasts accreting a large portion of the nation's wealth. It's also just a beautifully written and thoroughly considered (to the point of seeming spontaneous) piece of art.

I am waiting for the next paradigm shifting technology with bated breath.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth- Princeton/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth- Princeton/dp/0691147728/)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Grapes-Wrath-John- Steinbeck/dp/0143039...](http://www.amazon.com/Grapes-Wrath-John- Steinbeck/dp/0143039431/)

<comment><USER29> I've read Gordon and am planning a review (I've published a "first impressions" at [https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius](https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius)). Some (brief?) thoughts:

1\. His history of change 1870 - 2015 is good. Some weaknesses, but solid, and he makes his case for dramatic changes. A mention of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs would improve the discussion, but his point even without stating that is of drastic changes (and improvements) to basic food, shelter, clothing, and security needs.

2\. He misses some _infrastructure_ with his focus on consumer impacts. Less so with early work than in his discussion of information and communications infrastructure, in which I think there _might_ be some weaknesses to his argument (and a possible out for the optimists).

3\. You'll find the meat of his theory in the third section of the book. Chapters 15-17 IIRC. Focus your critical eye there.

I've got many quibbles with his _economics_ arguments, though most of the errors actually _bolster_ his overall argument -- I feel actual recent trends are _worse_ than Gordon states.

Steinbeck's _Grapes_ is a true classic. Reading that as a story of an epic animal migration (as Steinbeck begins it) is humbling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren't precarious, we're > unnecessary

You're not unnecessary.

Have you read your local candidates' views? Have you identified the ones with whom you agree? Have you ever run a voter registration drive to help elect them? Or suggested to friends who share your views that they run for local office?

You're capable of making change. Putting so much energy into saying you're unnecessary shows you have the time.

<comment><USER31> Not entirely sure about the "shows you have the time" part.

It doesn't take that long to write a blog post, particularly not a blog post about something you clearly think about a lot and feel passionate about.

I'm not convinced that "you had some time to write a blog post" equates to "you have enough time to thoroughly research your local politicians, network with all your neighbours, and if necessary run an entire political campaign."

<comment><USER30> If a person can maintain a blog with ~40 posts over the last year and a half [1], they can afford to spend some time reading about their local candidates' positions as it relates to issues they care about. Networking is just a Facebook group or page away. People in less developed countries such as Cambodia are mounting campaigns this way [2], and they have lower wages, longer hours, and worse living and working conditions than Americans. People there live under a government that has the longest running dictator in Asia (31 years), yet they show up in droves every chance they get to vote.

I'm not attacking the author. I understand the feeling of worthlessness and its effect on your desire to do things. My point is she has the ability to do these things. And, nobody can bestow confidence upon you to act.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sit...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmorecrows.wordpress.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

[2] [http://sea-globe.com/virtual-democracy-social-media- election...](http://sea-globe.com/virtual-democracy-social-media-elections- cambodia-cpp-cnrp/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Fantastic article. Extraction of value by the elite is the problem and a partial solution is a movement for local business and constantly pushing back even with simple things like paying for local goods and services in cash, not credit cards. Why should banks get 3% on all local transactions?

Our system is grounded on the requirement for growth, and somehow that has to change. There is nothing wrong with businesses that don't grow and pay decent wages and serve their communities, but our economic regime heavily discounts companies that are not growing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Just referring to the first section which was about AIDS, I'm curious about this statement:

 _" For much of the 80's, AIDS was killing thousands of people every year, and the official government response seemed to be: Who cares? Let the fags die."_

I was around during the 80s, too, and I remember a tremendous national effort to address the problem. From 1982 on, there were crash research projects all over the US and Europe to figure out what AIDS was, and find ways to treat it.

I also remember the ACT UP group and especially the reports of them invading medical conferences and screaming verbal abuse and threats at the researchers.

You could have written a similar kind of "What about us?" article in 1935, when fully 25% of Americans were out of work and no prospects. Or in 1905, when the Progressive movement arose in response to the grim abuse of factory workers (as per Sinclair's "The Jungle"). Or in 1890 when the robber barons were riding roughshod over small farmers and other businesses and American society was riven by vast injustice and income disparity. Or in 1875 when Blacks, freed from slavery, were disenfranchised, refused education, and put down violently all across the South. One could go on and on.

Things are not now, nor will they ever be, perfect. It's always possible to find fault with the system. It's important to keep trying to improve things.

Yet, I have to believe that the blogger who wrote this article has a roof over her head, not in danger of freezing to death for lack of utility payment, owns a computer, probably also a smartphone, probably also a car, and gets three square meals a day despite feeling underemployed or overlooked. In short, the poor and the victims of the vast economic changes that have convulsed our society are better off today than ever before.

At the same time, huge debts and vast regulatory structures have choked off the kind of small and medium businesses that at one time employed much of the middle class. We have a lot of work ahead of us to restructure our society and level the economic field once again. I think it's possible.

New disruptive industries will arise that will afford fresh opportunities for young people. 3-D printing might be bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., for example. The energy sector, currently in a bit of a slump, nonetheless has a bright future between fracking and solar/wind alternatives. The chemical industries are moving back to the U.S. thanks to rock bottom natural gas prices. There's a lot to be hopeful for, actually.

Just my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER34> Disclaimer: Very half-baked idea follows.

The problem seems to be rooted in automation replacing jobs faster than it creates new ones. The solution, then, may be to limit automation so that we have close to full employment.

The best (economically) way to limit automation is to tax it. You set the level of the tax, and basic economics does the rest. The jobs that are more economically done by humans (after the tax on automation) get done by humans. If there are still too many people unemployed, raise the tax. If the job market gets tight, lower it.

What could go wrong? Plenty:

The tax might not cover _all_ forms of automation.

The tax might be set at levels that are politically determined, rather than for the effect on employment.

Raising and lowering this tax could react in unfortunate ways with the business cycle.

Foreign countries using automation could eat our lunch. We could to some degree handle that with tariffs, but they might respond with tariffs of their own and kill our exports.

I'm sure there are more possible problems that I haven't thought of. Never the less, _in theory_ , this might be a decent solution.

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I would call it consumeriat. Our consumption drives supply and we need it to fund things like infrastructure and technology that help us consume things better, and in the process the general standard of humanity rises (as long as there are sufficient resources and the planet is not too disrupted by climate change).

<comment><USER7> That's cool and all, but it's not exactly what unnecessariat idea is about. People who in the past would be considered the proletariat -- the source of labor and capital -- are no longer useful economically. The labor they offer is no longer useful to society.

If a hundred people can be replaced by one skilled worker and some robots, that will always be the better deal due to costs like insurance, work speed, management overhead, lawsuit potential, and so on. So simple jobs that these people used to do simply do not exist. And while everyone can be a programmer, not everyone can be a competent one.

So yes, the standard of living for the labor class has decreased relative to others, but is still high. It's still high enough they get access to addictive drugs. Which is a problem, but also a symptom. I feel like the root cause is that we really do not have a great economic theory to handle the case where labor cannot produce sufficient value to capitalists. (IANAEconomist, though.)

Note that they're still human beings and we still have some duty of care to them as a society. Fixing consumption is not going to stop these people from killing themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> relevant:

"Bessen argues that during times of technological innovation, it often takes years before workers see higher wages from productivity increases. Bessen stresses the importance of the standardization of education on the job as workers adapt to new technology."

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.html) James Bessen on Learning by Doing

</comment><comment><USER6> The California suicide map is interesting. Coastal suicide rates are low until north of the Bay Area. Then they are very high.

<comment><USER5> California's major cities are doing well, while its rural areas like those of much of America have been in a depression since 2000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> William F Buckley advocated for forcibly tattooing people? I guess he really was a crypto-Nazi after all.

</comment><comment><USER37> The map of suicides per capita are pretty depressing. 5x higher in the south west vs the east?!

</comment><comment><USER38> The aids epidemic affected a much smaller community than the suicide and drug problem does, though. So I'm a little lost by the comparison.

<comment><USER39> The AIDS epidemic affected a community. The suicide and drug problem doesn't affect a community, which is why the community banded together to create change and the non-community hasn't. It's a contrast, not a comparison.

<comment><USER38> Well, the contrast lost me because population size wasn't contrasted.

<comment><USER39> If you still think that population size is relevant to the point, the contrast is still lost on you.

<comment><USER38> Imagine 10% of your community dies a year. Now imagine 0.1% does. Do these differing percentages make any difference to your sense of urgency and willingness to fight the problems causing those deaths? No? Well ok then.

<comment><USER39> Imagine a percentage of your community dies a year. Now imagine a percentage of people die who _aren 't part of your community at all_. Does the differing membership in your community make any difference to your sense of urgency and willingness to fight the problems causing those deaths?

I'm not saying the percentages aren't relevant to the larger discussion, but the membership in a community point is also relevant, and doesn't require the percentages to be a valid point that stands on its own.

<comment><USER38> I wonder how many of the suicides and overdoses are veterans? Farmers? Both those communities contribute here. I've seen smaller scale outcries on veteran and farmer/rural suicides and drug use. Couldn't this lack of large scale outcry be explained by the small amount of people that it relatively effects when compared to aids in the gay community?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> <inserts entire James McMurtry catalog here></comment>


Sexual assault cases: Students accused are winning lawsuits in court - <AUTHOR> https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/04/13/me-too-campus-sexual-assault-lawsuit-awareness-month/3455983002/ <comment><USER2> Why do universities have to do anything? Report it to the police, and they should deal with it and use the proper procedures. After that it's the courts.

Having some kangaroo courts and then losing lawsuits never helped anyone.

<comment><USER3> We don't see university students as full adults. So when a student is harmed we see the university as having partial fault and a role in resolving the situation.

<comment><USER4> Most university students are 18 or older, so legally adults. The university may have some culpability, but that's even more reason for courts to investigate, not the university. I almost see it as obstruction of justice if not turned over to courts.

Imagine if Google has a sexual assault review process that didn't involve handing evidence over to police. That would be pretty bizarre and anti-victim justice.

<comment><USER3> They aren't allowed to drink at 18. In many other ways the law infantalizes them including the Title X tribunals universities are required to have. When the combination of energy drinks and liquor was banned in WA state it was done so on the theory they were taking advantage of "kids". "kids" who were the legal drinking age of 21. [1]

The path to adulthood is an extended progression in modern times and does not end at the age of 18. The law has many more milestones before full rights are provided.

[1] "They're marketed to kids by using fruit flavors that mask the taste of alcohol" [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-oct-27-la-na- bl...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-oct-27-la-na-blackout-in- a-can-20101027-story.html)

<comment><USER4> You're right, but I'm not sure why this is relevant to why universities should have non-judicial, non-criminal courts for sexual assault.

<comment><USER3> Its an extension of Loco Parentis. They aren't children, they have some agency and responsibility hence the "court". But clearly society doesn't think they are quite ready to be left solely to the whims of the justice system. The court covers other offenses as well.

<comment><USER5> If a person of the same age who was not attending college and living with their parents were assaulted, would it be the parents' responsibility to bring the perpetrator to justice? No, it would be the job of the criminal justice system. So why should two cases be handled completely differently just because one happened to occur on a college campus?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Those involved are barred from talking about the case by the agreement.

Tangential, but I think these sort of silencing agreements are overwhelmingly to the detriment of society, and should be illegal/unenforceable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why schools should not have kangaroo courts. Why should someone get less justice if they happen to be a student?

<comment><USER8> > " _Why schools should not have kangaroo courts._ (sic)"

From [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/kangaroo%20court](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/kangaroo%20court)

" _kangaroo court (noun)

1: a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted

2 : a court characterized by irresponsible, unauthorized, or irregular status or procedures_"

There should not be any place that has kangaroo courts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Which means there are lots of fake cases.</comment>


Google joins Open Compute Project to drive standards in IT infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/03/Google-joins-Open-Compute-Project-to-drive-standards-in-IT-infrastructure.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Finally, racks go metric.

The 19 inch rack is one of the oldest standards in computing. ENIAC used 19 inch racks. Open Compute, though, uses wider, and metric, racks. 19 inch rack gear can be mounted in Open Rack with an adapter.

The Open Compute spec says that shelves of IT gear are provided with 12 VDC power. There's power conversion in the base of the rack. Facebook has standards for distribution to the racks at 54VDC, 277VAC 3Ø, and 230 VAC (Eurovolt). Apparently Google wants to add 48VDC, which was the old standard for telephone central offices.

Facebook's choice of 54VDC distribution is strange. Anyone know why they picked that number?

<comment><USER3> 54VDC and 48VDC are roughly the same thing in telco land. E.g. I hooked up a Juniper MX960 last week with "-48 VDC Nominal" power supplies. The operating voltage range is -40 to -72VDC.

A "48V" rectifier will output 54VDC to the power bus (feeding batteries and systems) since it's battery float voltage. If the rectifier goes offline (loss of AC power) the batteries will power the bus keeping systems online.

I'm curious what the actual difference in practice is between Facebook's 54VDC and Google's 48VDC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > energy efficient and more cost effective ... engaging the industry to > identify better disk solutions for cloud based applications

My pet issue w/IT infrastructure is the management modules. Finding a server w/a management module that works everytime is nigh impossible. Do google and Facebook design their own or do they somehow just work around their quirks?

<comment><USER5> Google and Facebook don't bother with management modules; They're more likely on switched power for each machine, with significant work in automatic netboot reprovisioning when things go wrong on these systems. In the event that fails, they swap machines out for diagnosis... if they bother with the diagnosis part.

<comment><USER6> Ahh yes, the tried and true "turn it off and on again" philosophy...

All kidding aside, if it's a random rare issue (some bit flipped somewhere), chances are that power cycling it may fix the issue (upon initialization). If it's anything more serious, the issue will likely persist, in which case taking the machine out of production is likely the best immediate course of action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't followed this project too closely, but, it seems interesting that it has taken this long for Google to join (and the conspicuous absence of Amazon). Anyone able to speculate on why now?

<comment><USER8> Pure speculation: Google was the first to build very high density server farms. As such, they had various proprietary designs and approaches, and became heavily invested.

And then it took them a while to decide that leveraging the open source ecosystem would be better than maintaining those various proprietary elements.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it is speculation, Google has always considered the infrastructure things they did as a competitive advantage, super top secret stuff that even other employees don't know about kind of silos.

And to your second point, it is interesting that OCP (some of it perhaps influenced by people who had worked at Google and then later worked at Facebook) appears to have minimized some of the advantages Google had, and now they find themselves possibly getting behind (one of the nice things, and bad things, about open projects like this are that you get a lot more resources applied to making things better than one company can muster).

For similar reasons I wonder if ARM will displace x86 if only because there are probably 15 to 20 independent teams of smart people with ARM architecture licenses making better ARM processors, and perhaps 4 such teams at Intel making improvements in the x86 architecture. At some point it seems "open" seems to eventually overwhelms "walled garden." Although I'm totally open to counter examples where that hasn't been the case.

<comment><USER10> From what I've seen the challenge ARM faces in the datacenter is support for ECC ram.

<comment><USER9> I agree with that, I would love to see an ARM server chip with a full ECC memory path. However I note that ECC memory subsystems are "well understood" from a hardware perspective so one of the teams working on ARM processors will no doubt apply that to their version and we'll if there is more demand than just the two of us :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great news and just another nail in the coffin of what Wired calls the Fucked By Cloud vendors: [http://www.wired.com/2015/10/meet-walking-dead-hp- cisco-dell...](http://www.wired.com/2015/10/meet-walking-dead-hp-cisco-dell- emc-ibm-oracle/)

<comment><USER12> He fails to explain why "Amazon" is the future. He starts off by insinuating it's because traditional vendors are more expensive... I guess I'd ask to see the raw data he's using.

I've run the numbers, AWS isn't cheaper _AT ALL_ unless you're talking bursting workloads that run for less than a month, or a company that only needs one or two servers but still needs the reliability of a larger environment. Anything outside of that is cheaper to do on-prem 9 times out of 10.

Either he's got his head in the sand, has bought into the "cloud is cheaper hype", or he has other justifications he fails to list.

<comment><USER13> Well, netflix just migrated all their servers to amazon EC2. I'm sure it was cheaper for them.

<comment><USER14> And Spotify moved to Google Cloud. However, these are isolated cases that don't reflect on the average experience. For one, they most likely got a much, much better deal because of sheer volume. It still doesn't change the reality for companies with a handful, or even a few tens or hundreds of servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting that it looks they are dumping 12v and going back to telecoms standard 48V :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> And, as not an employee of a multi billion pound company, how can I get involved?!

I ask every time, and this project is amazing, but, it feels just for the big guys!

<comment><USER17> You can buy OCP compatible stuff, promote it, join the mailing list, blog about it, and so on. Otherwise, you can't. It's basically the club of kids who build this kind of hardware stuff (do R&D on infrastructure).

When Facebook started OCP it seemed like an awkward initiative, after all, who would manufacture OCP-compatible stuff, when you can't find anything OCP- compatible at all? (It needs custom racks, for shame! Madness!) But slowly, it turned out, that there are multiple groups working on custom designs, trying to get out of the world of half-assed firmwares, crazy sales calls and useless support vectors associated with traditional vendors.

So initially it only made sense if you had at least a few thousand servers and a team to work on that extra few percentages of efficiency. Nowadays, it seems a much more diverse club. And especially after the network stuff got opened up - the timing with SDN was right anyhow - they seem doomed to succeed.

<comment><USER18> The equipment is available from various vendors, but the biggest hurdle is finding a datacenter facility that can handle OCP gear. Retail colocation is pretty much 19" racks only and 120V/208V power only. Even small scale wholesale datacenter deployments are tough to do if you want to go whole hog on OCP specs.

You can still get OCP hardware in standard 19" form factors for these environments, but I don't personally see much point in it. You're seriously limiting your vendor and hardware selections, and if you aren't seeing the purported power efficiency gains then it's not worthwhile. The allure of eliminating the pain of classic vendors is still there, but there are paths through the Dell / HP / Supermicro maze that are tolerable without burning it down and going to OCP.

There are other challenges with OCP's overall design in standard facilities beyond the server cabinet level too. Their (optional) battery cabinet design -- where you save on the facility cost by omitting the UPS bank in favor of battery cabinets for every triplet rack -- is explicitly forbidden at basically every top tier datacenter provider that I'm aware of. No batteries allowed on the floor because of the fire suppression system. You can definitely get a provider to build you a room where they'll let you have batteries on the floor, but that is a multi-megawatt sort of problem, not a 50kw sort of problem.

<comment><USER17> Yes, you need at least a cage, so hundreds/thousands of servers minimum. And that's where power conversion gains might mean you get ~10-20 servers' electricity for "free".

But that means you need to basically run your own DC operations. Cables, batteries, monitoring, hot spares, and good luck finding a DC that even allows you to speak about putting fire hazardous stuff "there".

Yet it can be done. Money talks, hence the seemingly amazing success of OCP out of nothing.

... ah I should have read your last paragraph, before writing anything :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Debian Trying Out Xfce Over GNOME By Default - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTUwNDE <comment><USER2> I've been using this combination for years and it has been copacetic. Xfce is somewhat similar to Gnome 2 (its peak IMHO) or Windows XP, but delightfully lightweight and free from most of the annoyances of those.

Aspects I particularly like include:

(a) can be configured for text labels, not only icons

(b) a menu with logical access to everything

(c) relative lack of the kind of gimmicky features which get in the way for those who don't want them

(d) the UI is not especially esthetic, but is unobtrusive and prefers function over decoration

(e) utilities for configuring the system are included, so newbies don't have to spend as many hours web-searching to find out how to perform common tasks

(f) fast/responsive

Anyway, if you prefer something else, IIRC you can choose Xfce, LXDE, KDE or Gnome in the installer.</comment>


Ask HN:  How do I approach investors? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys.   I'm at kind of an interesting point that I have never really made it to with any of my previous projects.
Without getting into too much detail we've developed a mobile application with some pretty heavy server technology behind it capable of gathering very interesting crowd-sourced information.
I have a few customers lined up now ready to go, however capital to buy all the tablets I need and continue to pay my developers while we build this is becoming an issue very quickly.
What should I be doing from here?  I mean really all I need is $50k (for now), which doesn't seem like a lot, but to a startup corporation it is next to impossible to get that from a bank or lending institution.
I'm based out of London, ON and there isn't a lot of venture cap's or angel investors floating around up here.
Any advice would be appreciated at this point. <comment><USER2> Friends & Family (F&F) is the quickest and easiest. Spread it out over several people and spread it out in 3 month payments. Make sure you set very specific milestones and a very concrete go-no-go milestone, so you fail as quick as possible.

I'm assuming you're a smart person who can make $100k+ in a real job. If so, add a guarantee that you'll pay back the full borrowed amount within one-two years if you don't make the go-no-go milestone. This option opens up more funding sources. For example, an older relative with savings in the bank near retirement will need that money, but not for a few years. If it were a typical investment scenario where the money was borrowed and if the company failed, the money was not repaid, that person could not invest because they need the money.

The other option is to get a loan from a local business development department. I don't know what ON looks like, but most cities in the US have these types of BD programs that have a goal of creating jobs in the community. Relatively easy to get, just have to jump through a few hurdles. The requirement in my town is the "get rejected by a traditional funding source." Haha...that's a pretty easy thing to do!

I would be very hesitant to receive any money from a professional investor at this point in your startup. You'll have to give away too much of the company and you'll have a boss that has your balls in a vice for the rest of your time at the startup.

Wait for professional investment until your profitable and then it makes way more sense.

Keep us posted!

<comment><AUTHOR> You hit the nail on the head and I do believe I can probably round up the money from friends and family in the shape of a loan. Especially with the go- no-go system laid out in place ready to go.

The idea of small 3 month increments working towards it is also very appealing.. Thanks for the solid advice.

 __EDIT __I also noticed that you recommend staying away from investment firms in order to preserve control of the company, but I'm honestly a bit scared to grow something like this myself with my limited experience in this area. Do you think my chances for success change at all with a 'professional' at my side?

<comment><USER2> There's a big difference between investors and a support network.

Very few (any?!) investors are really going to help you with the grunt work of making the business successful.

Never assume that a good investor is a good operations person or a good marketer or a good visionary.

I love working solo. Less distractions. Less wasted time. The only person I have to argue with is myself.

That is not to say I don't have help; I just use strategic help for specific purposes.

I found a bad-ass marketing guy that helps me develop my marketing strategy. I use him when I need him. No equity or long-term commitment.

Same for infrastructure issues and sales strategies.

I have people that hold me accountable to keep me laser-focused.

To answer your specific question about professional investors helping your chances of success, it depends on your definition of success.

If you're trying to build a lifestyle business (highly recommend), then investors will explicitly block your success.

If you're trying to build a high-growth, 3-5 year exit business, then investors _might_ be able to help.

I would still stay away from early-stage investment though. Use professional investment for the growth stage; this is the place where their experience will be directly relevant to your objective (fast, hard growth).

<comment><AUTHOR> During my trials and tribulations of the past week I came to realize the exact same thing you posted here.

I am now looking at strictly friends and family to get the initial startup capital I need until I can properly valuate what we have here.

Great advice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey norcode. You're pretty close to Toronto. There are a lot of angels near there. Hit them up. I'd recommend talking to the StartupNorth guy, David Crow. I'd also recommend talking to the Globalive guys... specifically Anthony L.

There are also a whole number of incubators you can talk with in and around Toronto (and Montreal). Year One is a good choice but take a look around.'

Im originally from Toronto but I'm out in SF now working on my own startup, UpOut. Let me know if you need extra advice (martin at UpOut)

<comment><AUTHOR> I will certainly check them all out. Thanks for the comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you applied to Angellist yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> __UPDATE __I've read some very mixed reviews about using sites like this. It's really hard to apply the garbage filter.

There are definitely some investors that seem solid though. Thanks again.

<comment><USER3> Angelist is useful once you have 1 investors. Investors follow standard herd mentalities... that's why angelist works... probs not for Canada.</comment></comment></comment>


A case for the infinite free trial. - <AUTHOR> http://www.woutersmet.com/2014/02/13/a-case-for-the-infinite-free-trial/

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea. It would be nice to see some numbers on whether this "tactic" would results in more conversions and engagement, and how does it compare to the "limited" trial.</comment>


Microsoft fixes 'big boobs' coding gaffe - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18922629

<comment><AUTHOR> Now we just need to "fix" CAFEBABE (java) and ABADBABE (By Apple) (Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)#Magi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_\(programming\)#Magic_debug_values))</comment>


The Cyber Security Body of Knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://www.cybok.org/ <comment><USER2> As someone who has been in this game for 15 years, I have to say that by the time anyone has infosec written down and categorized it is obsolete. The CISSP, for example, bombards you with questions about thoroughly obsolete attacks. I let mine expire and allow my resume to speak for itself.

Furthermore, after a couple hundred interviews over the course of my career, use of the term "cyber" is a huge red flag. Very few such people with "cyber" on their resumes are hired where I work.

<comment><USER3> I'm not Internet famous like some of the security guys around here, but I'm good enough to get a job nearly anywhere I want. I wouldn't want to work for a place that harbors illogical grudges against benign words that over time have become used by almost everyone working in the industry. It makes me wonder what other petty things the company would be needlessly elitist and toxic about.

I've only been conducting interviews for a few years, but I haven't noticed a correlation between a lack of ability and the use of the term cyber. I don't think its on my resume (haven't had to update in a few years), but I wouldn't make assumptions about anyone that did.

<comment><USER4> In all my years I've never seen a single resume using the word cyber. But I wouldn't hold it against anyone. that's silly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Page 4 of the Scope[0] document looks particularly useful in broadly (albeit briefly) highlighting the various domains inside computer security.

Could be a nice 1 pager for highlighting some of the things I do to outsiders. Would be useful to those looking to get into this field (i.e. CS undergrad) too.

[0] [https://www.cybok.org/media/downloads/CyBOKScopeV2.pdf](https://www.cybok.org/media/downloads/CyBOKScopeV2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> this is a draft? at this stage of the game in 2018 this is all they have? one would do better to invest time in the 8 domains as developed by ISC2 (CISSP).</comment>


Hands-on with the RED Hydrogen One, an ambitious smartphone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/19/17372510/red-hydrogen-one-smartphone-hands-on-photos-video <comment><USER2> > The Hydrogen One is very big. The prototype used we looked at was larger > than an iPhone 8 Plus

Glad to see a review of this and know the dimensions more but the reviewer doesn't mention when the phone is supposed to be made available by AT&T / Verizon

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if I would personally want one, but it does seem pretty darn cool. Especially the physical old-school look esthetic of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Any info on the "4 view holographic" display?

<comment><USER5> In the video, yes.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't explain much.</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla SSL policy bad for the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.uml.edu/~ntuck/mozilla/ <comment><USER2> Unbelievable. I've been poking about here for like 6 months now. You are all very smart people. Why is this so hard to understand?

 _If you do not have a valid certificate signed by a CA, SSL is not providing any security_.

Yes, the warning you get when you visit a site with an invalid cert is much scarier than what you see if you visit an unencrypted site. But it's the sites that use encryption that users care about, because _those are the sites that get their passwords and credit card numbers_.

Perhaps you think the browser should make an exception for self-signed certs. After all, there's nothing "wrong" with their signatures. Nothing's expired. No signature fails to validate. Why not just make the URL bar orange or something? _Because anyone can create a self-signed cert and sub it into a Bank of America SSL connection_.

It sure is annoying that you have to pay $20 every year to keep an SSL cert. I totally agree that this a problem. But right now, without that $20, you have a connection that provides cryptographically zero security. Short of coming up with a way to create a trustworthy CA that runs for less than $20 a year, there is no great solution to this problem.

<comment><USER3> To borrow from Eliezer, if you really can't believe something that is happening can happen, then your mental model is wrong.

I originally posted: _Every time I have hit this message, it has been mostly irrelevant to me and disrupted what I was doing_

[I'm no longer so certain - I can't be sure my router configs haven't been stolen by a MITM attack. I suppose I really ought to find out how to generate and install SSL certificates from a trusted root on them, and post them to someone at the remote sites on an encrypted pen drive.]

I manage a fair amount of networking kit, I find Google results to mailing lists with mysterious and pointless SSL connections. As someone posted in the "End of the Windows Era" thread: "I don't care what OS you have, as long as you have a reasonable browser". This isn't reasonable behaviour.

SSL does not prove anything useful - at the very most that you are connecting to the site your browser intended to connect to, assuming the site DNS hasn't been hacked.

Anyone can pay $20 and get a valid certificate and that doesn't mean you should trust them with your bank account details. Any site with a valid SSL cert might have been hacked behind the SSL termination. If you're scared of MITM attacks, aren't you just as scared of valid SSL certificates on sites with fake DNS or hacked servers?

<comment><USER2> The security of the DNS and the security of SSL are unrelated. This is one of those Reddit memes that won't die. You can claim to be bankofamerica.com all you want, but you cannot complete an SSL exchange with a signed certificate that says so.

<comment><USER3> Why not?

If Eve can take control of DNS and redirect bankofamerica.com to an IP on her servers, and it goes to a webserver with a ceritficate signed for "bankofamerica.com" by a widely trusted CA, then the browser will load it without complaint and show it as a padlocked site.

The only guard seems to be whether she can get any certificate company to sign a certificate for bankofamerica.com. Since it's cheap and easy to get basic SSL certificates from many places, this doesn't seem a very difficult obstacle for her to overcome with a bit of forging, social engineering, insider access, bribery, etc.

(I imagine that she could go to the real bankofamerica.com, save the certificate details it presents, and pass them on MITM style - but hope there are replay-prevention techniques involved. This doesn't affect the question above, though).

<comment><USER2> The premise of your argument is that it is "cheap and easy" to get a certificate signed by a CA trusted by Firefox and IE for a "bankofamerica.com" domain.

It is not "cheap and easy" to get that certificate. As evidence for that argument, I put forth the fact that no criminal has ever managed to do it.

Now you're starting to see why certificates are so important to security of SSL!

<comment><USER4> It was cheap and easy to "steal" microsoft's certificate in 2001. <http://cc.uoregon.edu/cnews/spring2001/mstheft.html>

<comment><USER2> That event was so rare that it made national news, hasn't happened since, and has never happened to a financial institution.

If your argument is that Verisign sucks, though, I won't contest it. I'm not saying the CA business model is good; I'm saying that it's silly to say you can run SSL without CAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Johnathan Nightingale of Mozilla has a good blog post explaining the rationale behind this:

<http://blog.johnath.com/2008/08/05/ssl-question-corner/>

An especially pertinent point from his post:

"Several CAs accepted by all major browsers sell certificates for less than $20/yr, and StartSSL, in the Firefox 3 root store, offers them for free."

<comment><USER6> That's not the bug though. The bug is that the error message a user sees when visiting a self-signed site using HTTPS is _much_ _more_ _scary_ than simply visiting that site on an unencrypted connection, even though by all reasonable standards this is a safer, more private, and more secure action.

If we're not going to warn folks about unencrypted links where every proxy in the way is a man-in-the-middle attack waiting to happen, why are we going through such contortions to warn them about the _same_ attacks in a situation where they are much harder to accomplish?

I've never understood this warning at all.

<comment><USER7> This is because users are being trained to use sites "with the yellow bar at the top" to do personal things (e.g logging in, credit card details, etc). Making users have to jump through a couple hoops of hoops if the certificate is self-signed is a good way to protect users that don't understand the technology.

While I understand you want to be very egalitarian about it most users would value their personal information's safety over the principle of a completely open web.

In the spirit of the open web you are free to a) not use Firefox b) fork the Firefox project c) file a bug with Firefox d) contribute to Firefox and argue for this feature to be removed

<comment><USER8> Yeah it's a branding issue. The yellow bar or the lock at the bottom should indicate a "secure" site. A self signed cert is no different from a fraudulent cert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> SSL certificates for HTTPS are a big fat scam. Why do I need to pay money to get a certificate, just to provide encryption.

Encryption should be separate from identity verification.

Of course identity verification should be properly vetted and you should have to pay a fee, and have documents checked etc.

If however, you just want to provide security for your users by encrypting http, you should not have to jump through hoops and spend money.

<comment><USER10> But what good is encrypted communication if you cant be sure who you are communication with?

<comment><USER11> What good is verified communication when you can buy an SSL cert with pretty much any fake information you want.

<comment><USER12> I'd like to know where I can buy a cert this way. Pretty please.

<comment><USER13> All that's require are scanned documents. And these documents can easily be tampered with or photoshopped. You may think your company details are checked before the cert is issued, but that's crap. We email our docs to a US company, and all the docs are issued by Irish government departments. There's no way in hell that some guy in what amounts to a call centre in the US has access to any Irish database to prove or disprove their validity. SSL certs are a crock of shit - all you need to do to get one you're not entitled to is to be slightly outside the norm, and claiming any small country as your location is good enough for that. Hell, you could make up your own government departments and documents, and that'd be good enough for must of these companies.

<comment><USER2> Give me a break. This is like saying all online security is a sham because I can always physically break into your office. You know how many times a real CA has fucked up and accidentally issued a Bank of America certificate to organized criminals in Estonia? _ZERO_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's an interesting solution. CMU just put out a tool called Perspectives that runs public notary servers. The servers probe sites periodically to get a history of keys. This can go a long way toward determining whether there is a man-in-the-middle sending you a fake SSL certificate (because it will not match the history).

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/>

(hat-tip Lauren Weinstein)

<http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000414.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> What's encryption without authentication?

Encryption ensures that only the entity you are sending the message to can read it. If you can't be sure of the entity you are sending the message to, then what's the point of encrypting it in the first place?

Why does the article pick out Mozilla in particular? Are they suggesting that FireFox makes it overly complex to ignore the warning and continue on?

<comment><USER16> Encryption without authentication is just that: encryption. The point of encryption is to make sure no one else is listening OR modifying the data in transit. Like, say, your cash-starved ISP, or the government.

<comment><USER17> No, it's not. If a man-in-the-middle attack is possible (certainly the ISP could), then encryption without authentication is as insecure as no encryption at all. And in fact _worse_ if the user has a false sense of security.

The MITM pretends to be the bank's server (or whatever) when talking to you, and pretends to be you when talking to the bank's server. Both channels can be encrypted, but the attacker still sees (and can modify) everything that you think you're sending directly to the bank's server.

This is the key point that most people seem to be missing here. If browsers didn't warn about self-signed certificate, the entire system would break down because an attacker could just use a self-signed cert in a MITM attack, and the user would have no idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Having a trusted third party is a pretty big deal in cryptography. Without it, many of the core assumptions of public-key cryptography are invalid. It's a huge part of making sure the other end is authentic. I'd place a lot more trust in Bank A's public key if it was signed by verisign, rather than an unverified third party. Having verisign's public key in my browser elimininates a large class of man-in-the-middle attacks.

If paying $20/year is too inconvenient for you to transfer your data securely, then perhaps the data isn't sensitive enough, and you shouldn't bother.

<comment><USER2> It's not even that complicated.

The problem with not having a valid certificate is this: if both sides can't tie every packet in the SSL handshake back to Verisign or Thawte's pubkey, attackers can inject their own handshake passwords and set the session key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, you can see the "add an exception" in the screen shot. You can manually add an SSL certificate to a white list, it's just a little bit harder, with a few more steps, than the previous YES|NO dialogue.

I think this a good thing. 99% of user probably don't need to or shouldn't interact with pages with self-signed certificates. That's a good thing. Self- signed certs should really only be on development pages. I'm sure this is a good anti-phishing measure.

<comment><USER16> In this case I disagree. The web is not all corporate, and there is a confusion between encryption and authentication.

A certificate, signed or no, is a means to establish a secure connection between Alice & Bob. This ensures no one is snooping or modifying the data passing between them. _this is a good thing that should be encouraged_ in an age when your ISP injects ads and the government keeps tabs on what sites you visit.

A signed certificate is a means of authenticating the identity of the presenter of that certificate, to give some reassurance and trust about the other party.

These two things can and should be kept separate. What Mozilla is doing is making it much more difficult to have a secure-by-default Web.

Imagine if your mail program suddenly stopped receiving email unless each sender either paid 100 bucks per year to VeriSign, or faxed a copy of their passport to Microsoft, or you went through a scary, four-step process to "enable" them.

<comment><USER2> A self-signed certificate does not establish a secure connection between Alice and Bob, because Alice can't verify the certificate. Bob can send his certificate, Mallory can trivially intercept it and replace it with her own, and nobody will be the wiser.

Let's _not_ encourage people to adopt security mechanisms that provide no real security. Let's make the security mechanisms we have today, which are strong enough to stop many governments and all of the largest corporations, cost- effective and easier to deploy. Let's solve the right problems, instead of trying to make ourselves feel better by sugarcoating browser warning messages.

<comment><USER16> It took me a while to get what you are saying, but you are right. I didn't know what I was talking about.

Unless you have a means of verifying the public key fingerprint I you are SOL. Wish I had more modpoints for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I once bought a broadband router that was marked down ridiculously cheap. It had all the features I wanted, and it was half the price of any of the others. When I got it home, everything was running slowly. After poking around, I discovered that my machines' DNS servers had changed from Time Warner Cable's to IP addresses in China!

If self signed certificates were indistinguishable, I may have been making connections through man in the middle machine located there without any way of knowing.

</comment><comment><USER20> One possible solution: use two icons

Since SSL covers two cases of security, both encryption and identity, maybe it's time to invent a new icon - i.e. this web site is secure (a lock) but its identity could not be verified (an id card).

Self-signed certs wouldn't show warnings, but wouldn't show the ID-verified icon. CA certs would show both.

If they're worried about user education, the first time firefox encounters a self-signed site, it could provide a permanently dismissible dialog.

<comment><USER2> You can't have one without the other. The first icon doesn't mean anything. You might as well add a third icon for "this connection is compressed". Attackers can't read your credit card number out of a compressed stream either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not entirely sure why Firefox is being specifically targeted here. The pages that Opera and IE8 throw for self-signed certs aren't much less scary.

<comment><USER3> IE8 isn't out properly yet. Maybe with enough fuss, it can be changed before it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my opinion, self-signed SSL certificates shouldn't cause this. If I want to use an SSL connection for my users to sign in with, I shouldn't have to pay tons of money for a wildcard certificate for my domain (they charge a large amount more just to add *. to your certificate). SSL is to SECURE THE TRANSMISSION, but these companies have turned it into a certificate war, where you must have one signed by a "distinguished" CA or the browser will tell you that you're visiting a "bad" site (Mozilla has a stopping guard, IE has attention images).

So don't even show the user that it's SSL. I don't care if my site seems more secure to the end-user, it just should be SECURE without regard to the mindset of the individual operating on it. Heck, even hide the https! Banks and online stores, sure, they should buy SSL certificates so they ease the end-user's mind. That is a relevant operating cost to incur for those individuals.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Snooping a connection (i.e. on a wireless link) is much easier than any of the impersonation attacks that SSL authentication prevents."

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

<comment><USER24> > I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Umm, I would. Running Wireshark or tcpdump to sniff traffic over the wire is _easy_ , and analysis can be done offline at the attacker's leisure.

Hijacking DNS and phsishing for users' login credentials to other sites requires a lot more preparation, and in most cases, prior selection of the desired target sites.

<comment><USER2> (1)

An attacker in Estonia manages to compromise a single DNS cache serving a residential cable ISP in Tuscon, AZ. Without SSL in the way, she now owns several thousand bank account logins and Yahoo Mail passwords.

(2)

An attacker in Estonia manages to compromise a single DNS cache serving a residential cable ISP in Tuscon, AZ. With SSL in the way, she now owns several bank account logins and Yahoo Mail passwords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Amusingly, this policy blocks several US Dept of Defense public facing websites.</comment>


Show HN: Handpicked freelance projects delivered every Monday - <AUTHOR> http://www.pipelinedaily.com <comment><USER2> Hi, nice project. The pricing for me is a bit off if I don't follow a single lead. You should either have \- a free month to try it out \- a price based on revenues (but that is complicated because it makes you the middleman then à la upwork) \- a system where you show maybe description of the leads without linking to the actual recruiters, and to access the link I need to pay or something.

Anyway something like that. Right now I feel very dubious paying 49$ for what is possibly a scrap from linkedin via a bot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! You raise some great points. A free trial is our most frequent request but it's quite a tricky one for us because there is a large time investment to find and handpick leads for each user, and if we offered a free trial, we wouldn't be able to offer the same quality across the board. Your idea to show a description without linking to the company is a great idea though, this could be a 'free' tier, where we show projects without contact information and users can pay a small fee to reveal them. Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thought I'd write a bit here to explain our background -- I'm James and I'm a UX/UI designer. I've freelanced for 5 years and had the struggle of dry spells and bad clients. I then began winning more work and came up with a few methods to find relevant projects.

I saw a few similar services to Pipeline but felt that they were quite pricy, so I wanted to release something myself and scale up my own methods of finding work, whilst avoiding a spammy and crappy service. I partnered up with another person and we launched Pipeline a few weeks ago.

It's built in Webflow at the moment and it's hooked up to Stripe + Moonclerk for payments.

We source leads in 3 ways:

1.) We aggregate leads from 200+ sites, job boards, Slack groups etc. 2.) We have partnerships with a few recruiters who send us leads in exchange for having their roles filled quickly. 3.) Some leads are sent directly through Pipeline.

We have found it to be a useful service but we have room for improvement and we're working on version 2.0 which will allow users to register, view project leads within Pipeline etc (we're hiring for this over on Reddit).

Thanks for looking and I hope this can at least help 1 person!

<comment><USER3> It looks like an interesting service, but it is difficult do judge a quality without getting actually relevant (to me) sample of freelance gigs... For example I recently specialize in creative coding on HTML5 Canvas and I kind of doubt I would get many truly relevant leads simply because of my narrow focus.

This does not mean this is not a good service, but it might work well for Angular developer (popular speciality) and not at all for somebody like me (fairly niche speciality). And without a 'test drive' I have no idea...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you're right. We've had people write to us with certain skills and we've had to say that we simply can't provide enough high quality or relevant leads for that certain area. We'd love to incorporate a free trial in the future, but at the moment it's quite a bit of work to gather leads for each user, but the handpicked aspect is the heart of our service and we'd hate to automate that. We'll have to add to our team and then think about offering a trial!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some thoughts:

1) Put pricing higher on the home page. I expected this to be like other services that take a project percentage, was surprised to find a $50 subscription fee, which I won't pay because I didn't find a quick answer to 2:

2) Did these leads ask to be contacted by every pipeline user every week? Either they didn't, and I don't want to spam strangers like that, or they did, and that sounds AWFUL, and climbing into a dog pile like that is going to scare off anyone who has a decent pipeline of their own.

edit: saw "We aggregate leads from 200+ sites, job boards, Slack groups etc."

That's super gross. The point of services like these is that they're _not_ from those sources.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply and the feedback! Leads don't get asked to be contacted by Pipeline users unless they submit leads through Pipeline itself. They have, however, placed project advertisements or work with recruiters so they expect to be contacted - I'm not really sure I understand this point. They don't get contacted every week, only whilst they are hiring (and we only advertise the same positions to 3 users max).

• "edit: saw "We aggregate leads from 200+ sites, job boards, Slack groups etc.""

Why is it super gross? We find and filter many, many, many leads that are super low quality and unsuitable, we're taking a lot of the sourcing work out of the hands of freelancers/agencies and we find leads from people/companies/websites that they're likely not to have visited. For us, the point of this service is to send filtered and high quality leads, saving our users time and resources that could be better spent on completing projects. Hope that makes sense?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't most people hiring freelancers accept bids within a week? My worry with this service is that by the time I see a project, the stakeholder has already hired someone for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes absolutely - that's why we spent so long selecting leads at the weekend and on Monday, because they're the freshest and those are the ones we try to send (unless a company has got in touch through Pipeline).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I worry how scalable is this as a freelancer I get good quality leads in the start but as number of users increase on the service, pool of quality leads gets scarce ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! We're currently limiting users to 100 with a view of taking up to 250 users in the future if we feel there are enough leads. -James</comment></comment>


Amimarginalized.com: Our experience with Appjet - <AUTHOR> http://shout.setfive.com/2009/01/03/playing-with-appjet/

<comment><USER3> _"... Anyway, the amimarginalized.com site uses "advanced" algorithms to determine how marginalized your career is. ..."_

Mildly readable & more an advert for their company. Interesting bug I found on the site though. By entering a term & repeatedly hitting the enter key using the same term, multiple images are rendered by the server to the client ~ <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3162006025/>

This article is a better read, _"Artificial artificial intelligence - <USER2> experience with Mechanical Turk"_ ~ [http://shout.setfive.com/2008/11/20/artificial-artificial- in...](http://shout.setfive.com/2008/11/20/artificial-artificial-intelligence- our-experiance-with-mechanical-turk/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Web developer is top 1%! w00t!</comment>


Show HN: Mimic – class-fied inline CSS - <AUTHOR> http://peterchon.github.io/mimic/ <comment><USER2> I feel like this is akin to "killing the patient to cure the disease." In the uses I can see for this, the way this framework solves the problem, to me, seems to be worse than any problem itself. Namely, I would like to know how this is any better than !important on your CSS properties.

Firstly, you're messing up your separation of concerns, you're also messing up an attribute with values that other developers will probably see as a bug — "why isn't this in a style tag?" It also won't work with JavaScript disabled (a few people will complain about that, they always do).

Why use classes at all? If the idea is to not rely on CSS, we could use a data attribute, like data-mimic or data-mimic-width="1", to apply to additional styles (although some CMS' will struggle with this).

(I realise its so easy to be negative, and HN submissions usually have their unfair share of criticism from people who think they know better. Although it obviously solves a problem for the author, at the crux of it, I'd refactor this if I found it in any projects I look after.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for taking a look. Could you tell me why this won't work without JS?

My motivation to write this is because I always have to go back and make quick margin/padding/etc changes and I hated trying to come up with more class names.

As mentioned, this isn't a framework. It was a way for me to add styles when writing styles to custom directives.

<comment><USER3> I too don't understand the JS comment.

But, if this isn't a framework then it seems rather large. If it were to do only what you describe, simple classes for simple changes, then you are loading in lots of stuff in your inc imports that isn't required.

I don't necessarily have a problem with it, it's not a bad idea. Personally I wouldn't be against using something like this that's tailored to a design so that only the necessary classes are required. That way it isn't necessary to have stepping of 1 to 100 on each property.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yes I agree it's a lot - but I'm hoping to make something that people can customize so that you don't have 0-100px of choices (but for now, it's an attempt at something new)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could you please elaborate a bit more on how a class "padding:10" is better than just adding an inline style "padding:10px"?

<comment><USER5> I'd presume because you can do browser-specific hacks/normalization with classes but not inline styles.

I don't really see the point of all of this, either, though. Maybe it's satire?

<comment><USER6> It must be effective satire, my blood boils with the possibility it's an honest attempt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm sorry that I gave you such stress - it wasn't my intention. It would be helpful if you could explain why it caused you such angst.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When doing things like this, you should take ie into consideration [http://spaceninja.com/2015/03/31/ie-css- limits/](http://spaceninja.com/2015/03/31/ie-css-limits/)

Using parker ([https://github.com/katiefenn/parker](https://github.com/katiefenn/parker)) tool to analyze the css:

      curl http://peterchon.github.io/mimic/css/mimic.css -s | parker -s

      PARKER-JS
      Total Stylesheets: 1
      Total Stylesheet Size: 126045
      Total Rules: 2551
      Total Selectors: 2611
      Total Identifiers: 5292
      Total Declarations: 3849
      Selectors Per Rule: 1.0235201881615053
      Identifiers Per Selector: 2.026809651474531
      Specificity Per Selector: 19.89199540405975
      Top Selector Specificity: 40
      Top Selector Specificity Selector: .row\:12 .col\:1
      Total Id Selectors: 0
      Total Unique Colors: 6
      Unique Colors: #3F3F3F,#3E49FF,#45497F,#1336CC,#CFCFCF,#CCCCCC
      Total Important Keywords: 0
      Total Media Queries: 1
      Media Queries: screen and (max-width: 736px)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting - I'll take a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do you handle advanced selectors? Or hover states? Or priority? Or inheritance?

There is a _lot_ of reasons why separating content and styling is benefitial to both the designer and the developer. And why semantic classes, especially with tools like Sass where abstraction and reusability are key, allow to _describe_ the content, not define its looks.

That's why we went from color="red" to style="color:red;" to class="red-text" to class="alert alert-red" to class="alert-danger".

<comment><USER9> Although bear in mind that bootstrap still does class="alert alert-danger" so they disagree slightly on that point.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but "alert" simply means "this is an alert" (so, it may be a box or a popup, depending on where it is on the app/website). "alert alert-danger" means that this alert, whatever shape it is in, is also the alert for danger. It may be red, yellow, blink, have javascript attached to it, etc.

However, it is not "alert alert-red"... What if your client wanted to never use the colour red again because his competition is branded red? You need to go through all the CSS (a few lines of :red needs to be changed to :yellow). You however also need to go through all your view, templates, possibly some hardcoded parts of the code, to change "alert-red" to "alert-yellow"... simply have it "alert-danger".

<comment><USER9> Yes, I fully understand why "alert-danger" is better than "alert-red". What I _don 't_ quite get is why "alert alert-danger" is better than "alert-danger". Isn't it possible - using a preprocessor - to maintain alert-danger, alert- warning etc? If multiple classes _must_ be used, why not just "danger" which then allows the red coloration to be shared amongst different object types without being repeated.

<comment><USER10> In my opinion it is better since having the two classes allow you, amongst other things, to use advanced selectors.

Here is an horrible example from the top of my mind:

...

<div class="alert alert-<?php echo $alert-type; ?>">...

.alert { border: 1px solid #ccc; } // Basic alert style

.alert-success { border-color: green; } // Success alert are green

.alert-warning { border-color: yellow; } // Warning alert are yellow

.alert-danger { border: 3px dashed red; } // Danger alert are red !!and have a bigger border!!

.menu { margin-bottom: 14px; } // The menu has a margin of 14px under it so nothing can get close

.menu + .alert { margin-top: -14px; } // Alert following the menu need to ignore the menu's margin

.menu + .alert-danger { margin-top: -16px; } // However, the borders of alert- danger are bigger than the regular alerts

<comment><USER9> What does

.menu + .alert-danger { margin-top: -16px; }

do that

.menu + .alert.danger { margin-top: -16px; }

doesn't? Isn't "alert-danger" redundant? It means that, in practice, you need to do something like:

.alert-danger, .list-danger, .heading-danger, .foo-danger, .bar-danger, .hum- danger { color: red; }

instead of just

.danger { color: red; }

<comment><USER10> In my opinion, you are mostly right that "alert danger" and "alert alert- danger" would be the same. The exception would be that you could easily apply global styles to "alert danger" via the ".danger" class. However, I find that in big websites, I don't want to rely on the global scope (for lack of better words) too much.

All my alerts and message styling would be in a separate myApp-messages.scss that would ultimately be merged into myApp.min.css

In this myApp-messages.scss, I would create all my own classes that then extend global style definitions if needed but avoid using them.

.alert{

      color: $text-color;

      background: $light-background-color;

      &.alert-danger {

       @extend .danger; // if needed at all

       color: $danger-color;

      }

}

As for "alert alert-danger" vs. "alert-danger". It is true that you could do something like :

.alert {

      color: $text-color;

      background: $light-background-color;

}

.alert-danger{

      @extend .alert;

      color: $danger-color;

}

In the "alert alert-danger" case, you can easily target all
 and then use advanced selectors to filter out or target more specifically its other states. You can also easily append/toggle the modifier classes with jQuery. With <div class="alert-danger", you rely on the css preprocessor to do all the work and in doing so cut yourself from using some tools.

It's all a matter of philosophy, really. I like to have as many tools to do a job as possible, so I try to have as much classes on my elements as I can without going overboard (I'm looking at you, Drupal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey, this is a very radical approach. I have great respect for people who ship something (anything!), because they have the vision to see things differently and actually execute this vision.

This may take some getting used to, and a lot of debate if using this is really worth it, but it's something. Nice job! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your kind words. It's always tough to put things out there for scrutiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, basically this is just meant to feel better about using the `class` attr instead of using the `style` attr. Oh, and spaces instead of semicolons?

</comment><comment><USER13> So now I don't have to use inline styles, just spam my css file with margin:0-100 and padding:0-100 classes, and I'm good to go?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for looking. You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who is perpetually terrified to do a Show HN, congrats for shipping something. I also don't think this idea is much better than inline style attributes, but it's something different at least. You seem to take constructive criticism well and that's a good sign. My advice (worth nothing since I haven't shipped) is to learn from the feedback and come back with something else.

Also, I should mention I did have a use for something like this. On my site, I sanitize HTML generated by user plugins, and to ensure the HTML doesn't mess up other parts of the page, I would provide a set of allowed CSS classes, but disallow inline styles. The CSS classes would not include "position" properties, so "position: static" wouldn't be allowed. Later I was able to use phloc to parse the inline styles but prohibit "position", so I didn't need a huge set of CSS classes anymore.

</comment><comment><USER15> Going to be honest.. this doesn't look too well thought out. Something like z-index you have a class for values of 0 up to 100. Not necessary IMO.

I'd recommend taking a look at Basscss for some inspiration. From my perspective, you're trying to create something similar to Basscss.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, which is why I appreciate everyone's feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's the equivalent of a front-end developper going into back-end, saying "screw this!" and hardcoding everything.

Urgh.

Also, you cannot use numbers as classes. That's not allowed and may mess up some browsers / devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi thanks for looking. Could you elaborate on your last statement?

<comment><USER10> Sorry, I was wrong. It seem that they cannot _start_ with a number but you can use a number in them so long as your class start with a valid character. I'm however worried at the use of the : character.

The style definition might be ignored in some browsers. Some other might break when they see an invalid character and stop parsing your styles.

That being said, most modern browser will be able to parse the CSS without you needing to escape any characters.

<comment><USER9> I don't think there's anything invalid about the colon character in a classname. It's _unusual_ sure, and probably not recommended (it has to be escaped in selectors, for one, which is a bit of a pain) but if it causes any tools to break, I think that's the fault of the tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> of course, and I completely agree. I started off using a hyphen, but tried a colon just to make it look similar to inline-css.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's sad that this reminds me to the worst CSS framework I've ever used (and was forced to use): [https://github.com/EasyBoxModel/EBM](https://github.com/EasyBoxModel/EBM)

Check [https://github.com/EasyBoxModel/EBM/blob/master/app/assets/c...](https://github.com/EasyBoxModel/EBM/blob/master/app/assets/css/ebm.css) to get the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey sorry that you were stuck with a framework. It's not a framework, it's meant to be a quick way to add styles without having to make more css classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This doesn't result in very readable markup or have any of the benefits of actual inline CSS, so I don't really see the need here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate you taking a look, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't really want to be negative but I really can't see how this could be used for anything other than a quick prototype scenario. I'm never going to add 126kb of css to a project just for shortcuts like this, it just doesn't make sense given that the large majority of that added css weight will never be used.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yahoo actually came up with something similar [http://acss.io/](http://acss.io/)

Benefits over just using inline styles: 1) support for pseudo-classes (:hover) 2) reduce markup bloat (shorter class declarations vs equivalent inline-style declarations)

</comment><comment><USER20> wat.css ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think this is a joke. I think this is just something that probably isn't useful as a library/framework/whatever + maybe an incomplete understanding of how CSS best fits into the puzzle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look. As mentioned, it's not a framework - it's a way for me to add simple styling without having to find/add/replace existing class. It may not seem useful to you as a complete solution like bootstrap - but when writing custom directives, it really helped me.

</comment></comment><comment> eduardo-costa There is something similar. [https://github.com/eduardo- costa/shortcutcss](https://github.com/eduardo-costa/shortcutcss)

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't think it's a joke. It contains some useful stuff like row and col which you can't do with inline CSS.

<comment><USER9> Sure, the row and col stuff makes sense ... which makes it all the more bizarre that the terrible inline-as-classname stuff is included. I fear it might be more a 'troll' than a joke; either that or this person has _really_ got the wrong end of the stick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look, I appreciate everyone's opinion on things. Could you share why you think this way?

<comment><USER9> Because why wouldn't you just use inline styles if you really wanted to do this kind of thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing stopping you from using inline-styles. It's another approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perfect, now we just need an equally redundant pseudo syntax template system that produces html on top of this.

</comment><comment><USER24> irony has reached the front end.

</comment><comment><USER25> Brilliant!

<comment><USER25> Doesn't anyone get that this is a joke?!?

<comment><USER26> I thought so as well, then I read some comments and doubt it a bit.

But this speaks for the current state of frontend. We are willing to be open/accept a lot of crazy ideas about organizing the frontend, but thankfully there is a limit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is getting crazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look. Could you share why you feel that way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is by far the most insane and stupid idea I have seen this year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the year isn't over yet :P

<comment><USER9> You have more up your sleeve?! ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does say: "more to come" maybe you'll get more laughs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>