The problem isn't piracy – it's competition - <AUTHOR> http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthetics-punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/ <comment><USER3> This article is totally wrong. It mentions two very important things, but gets the implications of both wrong.

1) Competition is an issue. But competition isn't driving down prices. Despite all the music out there, people continue to gravitate towards the big record label stars. Nobody is competing by producing something people like as much as Rihanna, except cheaper. Instead, the "competition" is by delivering Rihanna for free by infringing copyrights.

2) Marginal costs of production of music are zero. But that does not mean music should be free, any more than it means iPhones should be $200 or whatever. The point about competition shows that music is not fungible. People have rejected indie music. They want Rihanna. Now, when you're talking about a product that is not fungible marginal cost is irrelevant. It doesn't how much each Hermes bag costs to reproduce.

<comment><USER4> > Despite all the music out there, people continue to gravitate towards the > big record label stars. Nobody is competing by producing something people > like as much as Rihanna, except cheaper.

You seem to be under the impression that people determined her art to be of greater value and thus a higher demand for it was created than all of Rihanna's competitors. That is only very slightly true. Demand for Rihanna's music is created mostly by record companies' aggressively promoting it and advertising it in various venues, not because people decided with no outside influence that her music is better than the competitors'. Rihanna won because her record company is better at salesmanship than her competitors. Now her popularity is soaring in a bandwagon effect, as is typical of popstars or really any popular phenomenon.

Your point that music should not be free because of its marginal cost of production being zero is an interesting one -- just as there isn't an expectation for the iPhone price to be $200, it does indeed make sense that music shouldn't be free. But, with all the talk about capitalism being a faulty economic system these days, a particular recipient of rage -- and rightfully so, in my opinion -- is that entity which charges bad prices [1] for its goods. Now, you might be wondering why it's _music_ which gets all this drama about people objecting to its costs, and not the banking sector or something. That's because it's a thing that's close to people -- everyone listens to music, and naturally everyone wonders why it costs so much when the means of its distribution are effectively zero.

Personally I think we as a society need to first think deeply about corporations that operate essentially on a rentiering model of monetization (the recent wave of 'sharing startups' are a prime example) and then we should worry about what is a good model of music distribution. But hey, record companies are basically rentiering companies as well.

[1]: Bad as in socially or morally irresponsible. If some company finds a cure for cancer -- and that cure, it turns out requires only $2 to make for every pill, it would not be ethical to charge an exorbitant price like $20,000 for it, no matter how much the research costs were (people dying is a bigger concern than people not getting paid). This is obviously an extreme example, but you get the point.

<comment><USER3> I'm not going to say I think our existing system is without flaws, but here's some food for thought: pop media is a wholesome product. It doesn't destroy the environment like Apple's or Samsung's phones. It doesn't con people into giving up personal information like Facebook. It doesn't take advantage of desperate third world labor like everything Wal-Mart sells. It doesn't use up scarce resources like gasoline production, contribute substantially to our carbon footprint like shipping, pollute precious water resources like manufacturing, clog up our rivers like farming. It doesn't destroy our precarious fish stocks like the seafood restaurant I went to last night. Music and movies are actually priced so most people can afford them, unlike say life-saving drugs or medical care.

So even if we're reevaluating the basics of our economy, it seems to me like music and movies are among the last things that deserve our philosophical ire.

<comment><USER5> > It doesn't destroy the environment like Apple's or Samsung's phones.

 _" Looking at the 44 concerts, U2 will create enough carbon to fly all 90,000 people attending one of their Wembley dates (in London) to Dublin," Helen Roberts, an environmental consultant for carbonfootprint.com, told the Belfast Telegraph. Put another way, U2's CO2 emissions are reportedly the equivalent to the average annual waste produced by 6,500 British people, or the same as leaving a lightbulb running for 159,000 years._ [1]

> It doesn't con people into giving up personal information like Facebook.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/arts/music/jay-z-is- watchi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/arts/music/jay-z-is-watching-and- he-knows-your-friends.html)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)

> It doesn't take advantage of desperate third world labor like everything > Wal-Mart sells.

Wal-Mart sells pop media.

[1]: [http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jul/10/u2-world- tour-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jul/10/u2-world-tour-carbon- footprint)

<comment><USER3> You're comparing apples and oranges. The carbon footprints of iPhones alone sold in a single quarter is in the millions of tons. You point to a couple of privacy breaches versus Facebook whose entire business model is based on breaching privacy.

<comment><USER5> _The carbon footprints of iPhones alone sold in a single quarter is in the millions of tons._

Yes, and humans exhale almost a billion of tons in the same period. I don't think just measuring the total is very helpful; you'd need to analyze carefully the value of each things, and what they replaced. How many carbons were saved when teenagers start defining themselves based more on their smartphones that on their cars?

 _You point to a couple of privacy breaches versus Facebook whose entire business model is based on breaching privacy._

Sure, but being less bad than Facebook is not an achievement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Utter crap. Not everybody can be a musician, at least in the genres I listen to, and the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is painfully obvious. I'm not being elitist here- I wish anybody could make what I like (and do it well), then there would be a lot more for me to enjoy. Maybe this is the case in rock music or whatever the author is familiar with, but it isn't in all genres.

And still, the income from selling tracks is miniscule. It is not competition doing it, it is just the ease of getting it for free on the internet.

<comment><USER7> Sorry but many many many so called artists cant play or compose anything to save their lives.

P-diddy never played an instrument. Plenty of popular singers are mediocre to say the least. And many many many very talented musicians make no money what so ever.

Musical talent have very little to do with whether you can live from your music.

<comment><USER6> _Musical talent have very little to do with whether you can live from your music._

For some genres of music yes, for others, no. There are genres where sound design is of the utmost importance. I'm not saying competition isn't a factor universally- I'm saying genres without significant competition still have the same problems, so it clearly isn't the dominant factor.

<comment><USER7> The genres where it matters are not genres where you can make a lot of money and are not the genres we normally talk about when we talk about piracy.

<comment><USER8> A few electronic music acts might disagree with you here. Daft Punk? Skrillex? The Prodigy? A lot of importance on sound design here, and it is major enough to be on topic on most of those debates.

<comment><USER7> Lets not confuse things here.

It is not because of their skills around sound design that they or any other become popular. It has to do much more with timing, culture etc.

Again there are many great great sound designers and and composers out there that will never see any fame at all.

It's much more complex than just the music itself.

<comment><USER9> So you're saying that their music isn't actually outstanding, they just got lucky? If so, I'd be grateful for a list of artists who makes as good stuff as Daft Punk or Prodigy does, but who didn't make it because of "timing, culture etc.". They can very well be my next facourite bands.

<comment><USER7> No I am not saying that. I am saying it's a much larger chain of events than simply their skills and talent that makes someone popular. Luck is one of them the same way it is for startups. Timing is another again just like startups, network and so one.

<comment><USER9> Yeah probably, but also a lot of the stuff that is acclaimed is just really good. Luck plays a factor, but I'd be surprised if there were guys who make music as good as say Radiohead's, who are toiling away in obscurity because they were unlucky.

My point is, a a lot of the indies make music which, while being solid and obviously requiring tons of work, still can't compare to the output of the few talented guys who made it. For the most part it's not luck, just skills gap. Almost nobody wants to listen to decent music if they can enjoy masterpieces.

<comment><USER7> There are. Believe me there are.

Great bands are built over time, they are not inherently great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Competition has _always_ been a problem. But the answer to that problem was people buying _records_ of _music_ that they liked. No videos.

Stop fooling yourselves. Piracy _did_ seriously wound the music industry. CD-R drives in computers and the internet, filesharing on Usenet, Napster, Googling for mp3s. Then record companies were getting less because they were selling singles vs. albums (though they sold 35s decades before with no problems, but albums/full CDs brought in more than the singles, at least when there was only one really popular single on an album/CD).

The industry is _not_ coming back either. The record companies have little incentive to put money into a loser, which means everything is candy, peanut butter, and honey. No gourmet. Dave Brubeck would be a homeless man in today's record industry.

<comment><USER11> In today's record industry, Dave Brubeck would not be homeless, he'd be one of the many thousands of extremely talented people recording stuff you've never heard because there's so much competition; but he'd find some audience and go around performing and making do. He'd probably struggle financially like lots of others and rightfully complain about gross economic inequities today in our corrupt system. None of this has anything to do with the red herring about "piracy".

<comment><USER12> > In today's record industry, Dave Brubeck would not be homeless ...

I have to repeat something funny that Brubeck said -- he said the most common question asked by fans was, "How many musicians are there in your quartet?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I read stuff like this I think, oh, I can download Linux, emacs, the GNU Science package, quantlib, a few pirated quant books and then call myself a quant trader. I mean come on, just because the tools are cheap or free does not translate into me being competitive.

Music and art has always been about competition. Let me talk about space I know better, Poetry - The Roman Empire produce a total of four major poets Horace, Virgil, Catullus and Ovid. That is it four. A thousand years of history you get four.

Anyways, everyone wants to be on top, but the top is only so big. And Art has a nasty winner take all effect (as clicks pointed out). That is the game deal with it.

As for Piracy, it is a side effect of making money. People only pirate things that have value. Otherwise the use of the word piracy does not make any sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> Before the twentieth century, and even today in some parts of the world, music wasn't something you buy. It was something you participate in. Before the invention of the phonograph, people would bring instruments to parties and play music themselves. It took time for this tradition to die out. Even in the 40's movie theaters frequently showed sing-a-long shorts! While recorded music has brought first-rate professional performances to the masses, it has robbed untold millions of musical expression. How many of us learned to play some instrument or another as children, but never bothered to keep playing because we didn't like the music we were taught to play and didn't think we could ever play well enough to be worth listening to? Odds are most people reading this are much less musically accomplished than their great-great grandparents were.

For a substantial portion of the twentieth century, technological limitations made recording and distribution expensive. You could make a lot more money by promoting a star and making everyone want a small number of records than you could by recording everything under the sun! Some of those stars were just gifted amateurs who had mass appeal the moment they walked in from the wilds. Those were rare enough that we soon learned how to manufacture stars, and the methods have reached a level of sophistication where musical talent isn't even necessary anymore (see autotuning).

The internet has practically eliminated the costs and difficulty of distribution. The moment you record something, you can send it to the other side of the planet almost instantaneously to as many people who are interested in it exist. Recording still takes some knowledge, but the equipment required to do professional quality recording is now easily accessible to hobbyists. Natural prodigies are still showing up now and then, and _stopping_ them from recording great music would be more challenging than allowing them to do so! It's the manufactured star system that's collapsing. It costs a lot to do research on what should appeal to teenagers in a few years, hire professional writers to design songs matching your research results, hire somebody who looks good in a latex bikini to record those songs, shoot videos, etc., and finally have a team of professional audio engineers digitally massage her horrid caterwaulings into something that doesn't sound horrible when blasted through iPod earbuds at top volume.

Manufactured music superstars are a dying breed, and good riddance. My playlist is devoid of them and full of gifted amateurs, and I couldn't be happier with the change! The global musical monoculture is ending and a diverse, global party is replacing it. We are working towards the point where music can be created by anyone, anywhere, to be shared with everyone, everywhere. Perhaps, as we listen to superstars less and to ordinary people more, the pressure to play like a superstar or not play at all will drop away and we'll reclaim the tradition of participatory music that we've been robbed of. Perhaps, one day, people will start bringing their instruments to parties again!

<comment><USER15> Participatory music is great, and continues to this day, but it didn't produce Handel's Messiah or Beethoven's 9th. High-quality original music has been something people buy for many hundreds of years. It's just that until recently, the only people who could afford to buy it were rich patrons.

Copying technologies (first printing, then audio recording) have made such music available to the general public. Copyright has created the financial means to create such music specifically for the public's tastes.

It also protects amateurs or indie artists from exploitation, by preventing big companies from just stealing the songs and re-recording them with their manufactured stars.

Manufactured stars are not collapsing, by the way. Music piracy has been rampant for over a decade and we're still stuck with Myley Cyrus and Justin Bieber and One Direction.

The exact opposite is actually happening--piracy is hurting middle-class artists and their indie labels, while big labels just force their manufactured stars into 360 deals. So they don't care if they lose half their sales to piracy. They're getting a slice of everything else: every tour ticket, every sync license, every TV appearance, every endorsement deal, every t-shirt, everything.

<comment><USER11> "Copyright has created the financial means to create such music specifically for the public's tastes."

Hypothesis there, I don't accept it, and there's little controlled empirical evidence for it.

Piracy is hurting artists is also a baseless assumption that is grounded really strongly in a bunch of reactionary people's minds who can't yet realize that the economic assumptions they had from an earlier time were actually flawed to begin with.

"Losing sales to piracy" is a tenuous hypothesis. Some evidence shows that piracy _increases_ sales more than it reduces them.

At any rate, we have enough music now for everyone to listen to neat things for the rest of all lifetimes on the planet. There's no need to subsidize it anymore with these schemes to criminalize sharing.

<comment><USER16> If that were true, shouldn't music sales be exploding instead of decreasing?

<comment><USER17> No, as there's more going on than piracy in the music business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1\. Marginal costs are not 0. The musician has a cost, his time has a cost. So, let's not fall in the trap of seeing only certain costs. Of course, a cook that does music in his free time might have a marginal cost of 0, but not everybody listens to that. Amateur music, when it sounds amateur, is horrible. I challenge the assumption that amateur is good enough for many, it is not true, I have never seen people listening to crappy music in their cars.

2\. There is an easy way to make money: concerts.

3\. _The obvious answer is the destruction of neoliberalism_. No it's not. The obvious answer is more liberism, because, believe it or not, less copyrights BS is completely in the realm of neoliberism. While what he hints too, planned economy and State, is exactly what has created these ridiculous music labels that cash out on monopolies instead than real value.

<comment><USER19> The marginal cost, that is the cost of one additional copy, is zero. ( Actually it is some server cost, so < $10 per TB.) The musician., studio etc. are upfront costs.

<comment><USER18> For me the marginal cost is the additional song, not the additional copy of a song.

Then again, if one looks at the obvious, that musician have to make money from concerts, it becomes clear that marginal costs will never be 0 in the music industry. Competition or not competition.

<comment><USER19>
        For me the marginal cost is the additional song, not the
        additional copy of a song.

From the perspective of the musician, who sells to a record label, yes. From the perspective of a record label, and thus what determines the prices for customers, the marginal cost is zero. So the record labels need some other revenue stream, and hence the push to control the entire 'celebrity product.'

<comment><USER18> Yes, I get this point. I am just saying that there are other ways to look at this and that there still are plenty of costs in making music that generate plenty of profits.

Finally, we should be happy when marginal costs are 0, it means free for all, more for all. It is only who wants to go back to the State economy that can find flawed arguments against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Piracy only kills music that people are willing to bargain for, i.e. where the cost matters and not so much the music. That translates to a lot of mediocre crap generated and promoted by the record industry themselves.

However, the reason people buy works of good musicians and bands is that because it means something to them to own that particular cd or album. That's something you can't pirate because the point is to own something from the artist and through that bond emotionally liken yourself to him/her.

If someone's good, it doesn't suffice to copy his music for free because you can hear it in a lot of places anyway. And you've probably already copied his albums from same place or some friend by the time. But you're still craving for the only remedy which is to buy the album yourself so that you can listen to _your own copy_ of that album.

People want to own things that they deem important, and nothing's going to change that. The market for that is smaller than the preplanned pop music market of today, but it's still a big market and it's also a market that isn't subject to whims of trends that come and go.

</comment><comment><USER21> A comment from the article: "In point of fact, I don't think you can get around the fact that we need to renegotiate how our economy works. It's just going to become more and more obvious over time."

It's already obvious. We're very rapidly moving toward a world where a tiny, tiny elite capture massive percentages of all value through controlling a small number of convenience portals. The value of all other non-commodity goods tends toward zero, or the cost of whatever commodities they require.

This does resemble the post-Capitalist terminal state Marx described. Marx did _not_ advocate a revolution, nor did he say "from each according to his ability" and so forth. That was Lenin and Trotsky. Marx was really talking about this-- about the fact that capitalism would eventually overproduce itself into obsolescence. He wasn't anti-capitalist so much as post- capitalist, sort of a sci-fi thinker talking about post-scarcity.

But I'm not a Marxist per se, and I don't think he had the right formula for "what do we do now?" I think that remains to be discovered.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think a big problem is clearchannel. While the marginal costs are zero, the costs of marketing are not. The musical literati with their Pitchfork magazines and their music blogs and their custom-made Pandora lists and all that can dive into the deep end of indie music, but the laymen still just use the knob in the car, and the knob in the car is effectively controlled by the big record companies and they only offer it to musicians that they totally control.

This means that, while the indie market is growing and the communication for indie fans is better, the indie fanbase can't really effectively invade the mainstream until terrestrial radio dies its long-overdue death.

If you want to go out of your way to select your music streams, there's a lot for you. But for people who just want background music to some other task, the process of digging around and separating the wheat from the chaff is time they just don't want to allocate for 4-minute chunks of music.

</comment><comment><USER23> I kind of wonder if a newer _patronage_ model may spring up, where people can pay an artist for works and then maybe even contribute themselves, adding a personal touch. We can already crowd-fund musicians, and donate to those that release their music for free. Why not go back to patronage?

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem isn't piracy, it's the mediocrity of the stuff put out by professional music industry.

<comment><USER11> Your statement would be valid if the concern was only about quality, but higher quality wouldn't rescue a completely obsolete economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hoodie Allen and Hopsin are laughing because they have embraced new ways of making money with their music. Mostly via social networking. There are more that are doing this but these 2 are good examples.

<comment><USER26> Are you referring to this stuff?:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodie_Allen#Fandom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodie_Allen#Fandom)

I'd love to hear more detail.

<comment><USER25> You can also download all his music except 1 album for free. [http://www.hoodieallen.com/music/](http://www.hoodieallen.com/music/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm obviously no economist, so can someone explain if price tends to be equal to the marginal cost, who is supposed to cover the fixed cost?

<comment><USER28> In the classical era, wealthy patrons contributed the fixed costs - <USER2> of musicians, providing room and board and practice time for sponsored composers and musicians, etc..

In the 20th century, the "record companies" covered the fixed costs - recording, distribution etc.. They did so by offering only contracts that were economically very unfavorable to the artists, and using some of the revenue from the more popular acts to finance others that they hoped would make money for them (not for the artists).

Today, unless a musician is foolish enough to sign up for the old-style ripoff contract, it's DIY. But the fixed costs have declined - the musicians invest in practicing their craft at their own expense, and pay for instruments as always, but low-to-mid-quality recording and internet distribution are orders of magnitude cheaper than the old means of $100/hour studios and hauling boxes of CDs to stores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So the software industry will be next, right? Zero cost distribution. Is this a factor in the popularity of offering SaaS?

</comment><comment><USER15> Total bullshit. The most pirated music is the most popular music, not indie amateur stuff no one has heard of.

The problem is simply that teenagers like to get stuff for free.

<comment><USER30> >The problem is simply that teenagers like to get stuff for free.

Thats funny because I sometimes download indie amateur stuff without paying and I am not a teenager, but I (and my many friends) are apart of the problem. So is the problem really teenagers getting stuff for free? No, not entirely.

Augments with absolutes rarely work and make you seem like you have an agenda.

<comment><USER30> *Arguments</comment></comment></comment>


Sam Altman presents a political vision for California… and the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/12/with-the-united-slate-sam-altman-presents-a-political-vision-for-california-and-the-u-s <comment><USER2> Sama should consider just getting behind Brand New Congress post-partisan insurgent DINOs and RINOs for these reasons:

\- A third-party (ie Draft Bernie, Libertarian, Green, etc.) is a Catch-22 nonstarter. It sucks, but that's the current paradigm and unlikely to change.

\- Replacing one corrupt rep in either party with a progressive, clean-money, grassroots-focused rep makes a progress delta of 2.

\- When necessary and sufficient reps are replaced, forming a sizable majority (which is indeed possible), it's possible to steer leadership to do what's right. Also, the possibility is open to leave to destroy the remaining establishment party dead-weight by forming a viable third-party from the top and majority of political talent.

Also worth doing:

\- Overturning Citizens' United by state-ratified Constitutional amendment. A corrupt political process is just a reality show, not a healthy representative republic.

\- Eliminating, or otherwise mitigating, the Electoral College to follow the popular vote.</comment>


Ask HN: What free photo hosting service should I use for my GitHub projects? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for a reliable free photo hosting service where I can host images for my blogs and github projects. It would be nice if that service has album feature so that I can categorize uploaded images a/c project. So far I have tried Imgur and PostImage but they didn't appeal to me. Imgur wasn't user-friendly (no direct way to upload to existing album) whereas PostImage was buggy. <comment><AUTHOR> I went ahead with PostImage because despite being buggy it had a clean interface, had album feature(gallery), direct links, mass upload etc.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why not just use AWS S3?

<comment><USER3> OP wants a free service. Picasa with public visibility for albums comes to mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks good. Do they have an API or are there 3rd party tools available ?

<comment><USER3> API: Yes ([https://developers.google.com/picasa- web/?hl=en](https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/?hl=en))

They have their own web and desktop client to upload and manage albums. 3rd party tools likely exist (since there's an API) but I've never used any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> why not create your own CDN if you have some hosting space or create one on AWS?

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently don't have hosting space and I plan to use free AWS for a project (later on).</comment></comment>


Western Digital adds "Red Plus" branding for non-SMR hard drives - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/western-digital-adds-red-plus-branding-for-non-smr-hard-drives/ <comment><AUTHOR> I had been planning to get a NAS since the beginning of this year but have held off because I'm just unsure of which HDDs (brand|types) to get.

<comment><USER2> Do the research and you should be able to find out if a target HDD is SMR or not. Whatever you do - avoid the Red Minus by WD!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Let's segment further to muddy the waters... 3 shades of Red now. Soon they can write a book.</comment>


Vuex Pathify – ridiculously simple Vuex setup and wiring - <AUTHOR> https://davestewart.github.io/vuex-pathify <comment><AUTHOR> I've just released the 1.0 version of Vuex Pathify.

Pathify provides a declarative, state-based, path interface to your Vuex store.

What that means in English, is that you access store properties by path, and only by path. The plugin simplifies Vuex's API from 4 operations, 4 helpers, 3 accessor syntaxes and 3 or 4 naming formats to just 3 methods and a single path format.

Aside from the docs link above, there's a bunch of CodeSandbox demos so you can jump in and work with real code straight away:

[https://codesandbox.io/s/github/davestewart/vuex- pathify/tre...](https://codesandbox.io/s/github/davestewart/vuex- pathify/tree/master/demo)

Cheers,

Dave</comment>


Are Index Funds Communist? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-24/are-index-funds-communist <comment><USER2> No.

And if passive funds cause poor allocation of capital, that will increase the returns of smart active investing - a negative feedback on pure passive investing.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that the value of the components of the index is heavily tilted by peoples perception of the value of the index, and not the values of the components.

<comment><USER4> Not at all. Arbitrageurs will always trade away such market inefficiencies. Ultimately valuations always converge to DCF, although it can take a while.

<comment><USER5> That's very interesting, can you point me to some reading material related to DCF convergence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Index funds are good. They are a way of saying "I don't know how best to allocate capital, i'll leave it to the professionals who do, and simply capture the market return for myself". Ideally, most money will be managed by index funds, and a small pool of extremely efficient money managers (some mix of quant and discretionary) will manage a comparatively small pool of capital that actually determines the prices of everything. There is nothing bad about this. This is the way all economic activities become more efficient.

<comment><USER7> That is essentially affirming the authors take on the story though, is it not? If it is really preferential for investors and society at large to follow the signal of professional managers, than in the future this might even be further consolidated by advances in tech, and the result will simply be a rationally managed system that allocates capital by planning or design, rather than through numerous 'amateur', active market participants who act on spontaneous price mechanisms.

I also don't see anything intrinsically wrong with this, but funnily enough it does seem to imply that the title of the article is correct

<comment><USER8> everyone seems to be reacting to the question in the title, rather than the point of the article, which is skeptical about perfecting the algorithmic trading robot (the mythical middle between a marketless communist ideal and market-dependent capitalist ideal). that is, capital allocation is (NP-)hard and a decentralized capital market might just be the most optimal (though imperfect) solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an asinine argument that seems to be driven by the belief that there is such a thing as efficient allocation of capital in the real world. Or perhaps just sour grapes that some of the unsophisticated investors they like to take advantage of are instead putting their money index funds.

Maybe both.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nobody forces anyone to buy an index fund. If it stops making sense, we'll find new ways to invest. No need to forbid anything.

<comment><USER11> It's certainly not true that "what makes sense for investors" is any meaningful indication of what makes a good policy for a society as a whole, and I rather think it's usually the opposite.

<comment><USER12> Okay, but the burden of proof is on those who think that limiting investors is beneficial in this case. I don't think there's much of an argument for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Indexing is cheaper, yes, but that 's because active management has > positive externalities, and if no one will pay for it, those benefits will > disappear._

Indexing can be active. Particularly when it comes to exchange-traded funds. There are many to choose from which mix different equities in different amounts. You can invest by particular sectors, or geographically or whatever.

Choice of investment instruments in the financial market (some of them automated) is just capitalism at work.

Funny how when a factory is automated, the financiers call that capitalism. When their own jobs are automated, it's suddenly communism.

</comment><comment><USER14> The author of the article seems to think that their performance on the capital market is the only thing that determines a company's success. But if companies lose money on the actual market they serve with the products they produce, they're still losing money compared to the company that makes a profit, and they are still at risk of going bankrupt.

The capital market may be important, but it's not what it's really about. It's not the actual market. It's just a facilitator. At best.

</comment><comment><USER15> > There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and > AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the > world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of > state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical > decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost > probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no > longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a > college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of > business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled > out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect > world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast > and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common > profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities > provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

Network, 1976

<comment><USER16> For a nice satire of this idea, Jennifer Government [0] is a good read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No. No one has shown that passive indexing is creating poor allocation of capital, there is still lots of smart investors in the market

</comment><comment><USER18> Moderators, this is missing the [2016] thingy.

</comment><comment><USER19> stock markets are a joke now, we have to give time for money to work or be invested by any company and wait a bit to see returns.

With micro-seconds investing by bots and algo, it has become more of gambling than investing.

</comment><comment><USER20> No.

Are investment advisors/managers charlatans performing on average worse than random?

Yes.

</comment><comment><USER21> Capitalism is earning from capital. So Index funds are in fact pure capitalism.

Potentially they can benefit the less wealthy as much as the wealthy. For some, alike that feels innately wrong. And any fiscal equalizer always feels communist even if it results from free markets.

Index funds can also potentially benefit the fiscally naive as well as the savvy. But if this is the objection then it is cherry picking: the same parties rarely object to inheritance which benefits unsophisticated investors on a vastly larger scale.

</comment><comment><USER19> and we don't talk about the enormous fees taken away behind the scenes in active investing

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

> ... an almost entirely serious claim from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co....

Ah. The folks selling high-fee actively managed funds don't want you to buy from Vanguard.</comment>


A more cooperative Auto Correct for the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.uxproductivity.com/blog/2012/07/06/a-more-cooperative-auto-correct-for-the-ipad/

<comment><USER2> I like this idea. Actually, having never really used an iPad much, I'm surprised it doesn't already do this.

The Autocorrect drives me mad on my iPhone for the same reason.</comment>


Protecting Yourself from Electro Magnetic Pulse (1989) - <AUTHOR> http://readtext.org/survival/protect-yourself-from-emp/ <comment><USER2> Original: [http://textfiles.com/survival/emp.pro](http://textfiles.com/survival/emp.pro)</comment>


Moving from Java to Scala - One year later... - <AUTHOR> http://blog.danmachine.com/2011/01/moving-from-java-to-scala-one-year.html <comment><USER2> FWIW, we've had lots of success w/ Scala @ foursquare (99% of our server code is in scala). It's been a great recruiting tool (great engineers are attracted to companies using new technologies), and we find it much much less verbose than Java would have been.

<comment><USER3> What problems or issues have you encountered specific to Scala and Lift with Foursquare ?

<comment><USER2> 1) The scala compiler is a little slow (compared to javac). 2) Lift is a pretty new framework and we run into warts/bugs from time to time. It can also take a bit of time for new engineers to get their head around it.

Those are the two biggest things I would say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great review, thanks :)

In terms of Scala in enterprises, I think the question is not only if it is or can stay the "better" programming language with long living support, but also how popular it will become, i.e. how easy it will be to find (and afford) skilled developers for it (and the numbers you found don't allow too much optimism yet).

And I think that is not only true for enterprises - also startups should ask themselved if they can easily get talent for the technologies they use or how much time they will need to spend on getting people trained.

I look forward to the next review - in another year? ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Any other HN'ers with Java to Scala experience? A friend of my friend tried doing the same, but eventually his team decided that its not worth the effort (I don't know more details actually, only that they are doing some enterprise software)

<comment><USER6> I've been using Scala for about a year now. Started writing some test using ScalaTest, ScalaCheck, and Specs, and really liked it. Then I solved some hard problems using Scala, with a lot less code, and a lot fewer bugs, than it seemed like we would have ended up with using Java. I'd say about 99% of our codebase is still Java, but the Scala bits are quite noteworthy both for leading to something nicer to maintain over time (mostly by need no maintenance, or very very little), and for solving a hard problem without an explosion of Java boilerplate. A more functional approach ends up being a bit easier to test. The collections framework is >awesome<. For us it has been a slow, grassroots thing, and I don't think we are going to see a big bang, but those of us who have taken the plunge have a very hard time going back to Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Even though I haven't developed any project in Scala yet,"

I stopped reading there and started skimming, and nothing changed my mind back.

Many languages are cool until you actually have to support something you wrote on them. That's when you find out the real dirt on the language.

<comment><USER8> You probably should have continued reading. Given the context I'm pretty sure that the author meant "Even though I hadn't...". See this quote a few lines later:

"Now, one year later, after writing 8622 lines of code in Scala"</comment></comment>


Chorus: A jQuery plugin for embedding timelines - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sharkbrainguy/qorus

<comment><AUTHOR> Chorus makes it super easy to embed live timelines from twitter, facebook, friendfeed, hackernews and github into webpages.

<https://github.com/sharkbrainguy/qorus> is a port from the original MooTools module <https://github.com/sharkbrainguy/Chorus> to a jQuery plugin (it's a popularity contest right?).

check out the live demo: <http://gerardpaapu.com/qorus/demo/></comment>


Rate limiting with memcached - <AUTHOR> http://simonwillison.net/2009/Jan/7/ratelimitcache/ <comment><USER2> I'm not one to peddle my own wares, but Alchemy (distributed memory array storage) fits the bill for a slightly more elegant solution. Think of a hash with key => array pairs.

With Alchemy, you can just stuff the times of your most recent "actions" into a key. Here's a Ruby psuedocode example:

        alchemy[ratelimit_184.108.40.206_2009-01-07] << 1.minute.ago
        alchemy[ratelimit_184.108.40.206_2009-01-07] << 20.seconds.ago
        alchemy[ratelimit_18.104.22.168_2009-01-07] << 5.seconds.ago

        alchemy[ratelimit_184.108.40.206_2009-01-07].select{ |e| e > 30.seconds.ago }.size

In that brief example we've defined a true rolling window (30 seconds) with the ability to grab the true count of actions performed (size) with only one cache query. And similar to the pure memcached version the article suggests, you don't have issues with race conditions.

<comment><USER3> Where can I find more information about Alchemy?

<comment><USER2> <http://github.com/teej/alchemy/tree/master>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In this age of massive botnets, I don't see the point of grouping the requests by IP address, as he suggests: the attacker will just use his 500000 different machines to attack a single account.

So you should probably keep track of the username or account ID that the request is being made for, and rate limit on that.</comment>


Sorting algorithms demonstrated using traditional folk dances - <AUTHOR> http://algo-rythmics.ms.sapientia.ro/

<comment><USER2> strangely, I've seen all sorts of diagrams illustrating sorting algorithms in action, but apparently interpretive dance is the best way to visualize it. Who knew?</comment>


How Kosovo Was Turned into Fertile Ground for ISIS - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/europe/how-the-saudis-turned-kosovo-into-fertile-ground-for-isis.html <comment><USER2> Well thanks to NATO and the western powers. Most Europeans "western contries" are complicit and responsible for this. Anyway, Europe is a bunch of puppets states controlled by the warmongers in Washington. There is no foreign policy in Europe since the end of WWII thanks to the American Establishment of "Peace" (what a joke) and saved us from the freaking comminists. Then we discovered Operation PaperClip where the right wing governent of Italy and CIA made in USA bombed train stations killing women and children and blamed the communists. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN YUGOSLAVIA, who really want to learn: [http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/17/nato-the- humanitarian...](http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/17/nato-the-humanitarian- dismemberment-of-yugoslavia/)

<comment><USER2> ..."The 'Kosovo Liberation Army', which was recognized by the US State Department as a terrorist organization, received British and CIA training and arms.[35] The group received the majority of its funding – and many members – from the Albanian diaspora, Islamist fundamentalist groups, and the international drug trade. The KLA relied on drug trade, assassination, intimidation (of not only Serbs but also ethnic Albanians who opposed them), destruction of Serbian property (namely homes and churches), and other acts of ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians....

<comment><USER2> f __k you US and Western Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.spc.rs/eng/isis_graffiti_monastery_dechani](http://www.spc.rs/eng/isis_graffiti_monastery_dechani)

</comment><comment><USER4> And the EU is trying hard to make Kosovo enter the EU...

<comment><USER5> Of course, they're a favorite of the USA to make themselves a stronghold in the Balkans. But they still don't seem to get that Kosovo isn't capable of holding their own country economically. Being part of Serbia had it own benefits too, being on its own is something else.

<comment><USER6> I wish it was possible to just unite Kosovo with Albania. But that would probably cause just as many problems as it would solve...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It all started with the misguided bombing of Serbia. And tearing Kosovo from Serbia for no good reason.

<comment><USER8> I think genocide and mass deportions are a good enough reason

<comment><USER9> I think you are badly misinformed.

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War#Civilians_killed_by...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War#Civilians_killed_by_Yugoslav_forces) Plus, mass murders and other forms of ethnic cleansing also happened in Croatia

<comment><USER9> Everything can be pushed or covered up by propaganda, but let's look at official census of Kosovo:

Of course, you failed to mention, or didn't know, that only 50 years before the conflict, the ethnic structure was:

1953: 65% Albanians vs 23% Serbs

In the eve of the 1999 bombing, it was:

1991: 82% Albanians vs 10% Serbs

And after the bombing and separation:

2011: 93% Albanians vs 1.5% Serbs

So, Albanians jumped from 65% to 93% and Serbs virtually disappeared from 23% to 1.5% in just 60 years. So, can you tell me - how's that explained?

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

<comment><USER8> Looking at your table, from 1953 to 1991 number of serbs actually grew, it's just that number of albanians grew at a much higher rate, so their % increased. As to what happened in the next 10 years to the serbian population, I don't know, you suggesting that they were deported by the albanians?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Japanese Officials Reveal Execution Chambers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/asia/28tokyo.html <comment><USER2> "Japan also has a 99 percent conviction rate..."

How it took 7 paragraphs to get to that, I have no idea.

<comment><USER3> That's not automatically a bad number. Japan has a ridiculously low incarceration rate (63 per 100,000 compared to 748 in the US and 96 in France) so it doesn't seem as though they randomly pull people from the street and then convict them with near certainty. They might throw out many cases with less than airtight evidence.

<comment><USER2> All fair points, and you could make many, many more. So could the other side. In fact, that would make for a great article, because people like you and me care deeply about whether innocent people are being killed arbitrarily. A fair, factual debate about how often that likely occurs would make for a great read.

Wait a second, isn't that what we just read? No, no it's not. If it were, the text I quoted could've been the title because, whether or not you're right, 99% is NINETY-NINE PERCENT and it deserves a goddamn explanation. That much we can agree on.

No, we didn't just read an article _about_ the death penalty. We just read an article about the best way to abolish it. _That_ article takes as a given that the death penalty is immoral and that it should be abolished regardless of the opinions of the nation's citizens. Whether you personally agree or disagree with those presumptions is irrelevant. It's irrelevant because, as you're well aware, plenty of people don't and you don't just write them off as stupid or unimportant. They're citizens just like you are.

To write the article we just read is to believe that their opinions should be ignored. The New York Times is telling you and me, "Anyone who thinks the death penalty is in any way acceptable is a hick or a redneck or a retard-- you know, the same people who DON'T read The New York Times. Not YOU though. YOUR opinion matters. We can tell because YOU read The New York Times. YOU think it's immoral, which is why YOU want to read an article about how to get it the hell out of here, opposition be damned. _Isn't that right?_ "

Even Fox Fucking News doesn't report on, say, the gay marriage debate in this manner. They may be heavily biased to one side, but at least they concede there's a debate to be had.

<comment><USER3> Other side? I didn't write that comment because I'm on any particular side. I'm actually all for abolishing the death penalty but that doesn't really matter. I think this is fine article about a Japanise minister's campaign to abolish the death penalty, padded with some background info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good luck changing public opinion. I think that route is pretty hopeless, the abolitions of the death penalty in Europe were not preceded by big changes of public opinion. That expert panel seems like a good idea, though.

There is no evidence which would make for good, rational reasons to keep the death penalty around, what keeps the public convinced is a strong moral conviction that certain crimes are so heinous that they should be punished with death. That seems almost like a human universal to me. If you want to abolish the death penalty you can't use public opinion, you have to circumvent it.

The quoted lawyer from the human rights organization who presumably has some experience fighting the death penalty seems to be very aware of that (as are her US counterparts, by the way): The "death penalty should not be enforced by a majority opinion."

<comment><USER4> _There is no evidence which would make for good, rational reasons to keep the death penalty_

According to you. If one murderer gets out and commits further crime, that's enough evidence for most people. If that further crime is murder, no additional discussion is required.

<comment><USER3> I really don't want this to turn into a discussion about criminology or, goodness forbid, whether the death penalty is right or wrong. Those discussions are always very predicable. I think the history of the abolishment of the death penalty and current efforts to abolish the death penalty are much more interesting.

I made that assertion (no rational reasons for the death penalty [+]) only to show why it might be easy to convince technocratic politicians why they should abolish the death penalty. That's easy. I wouldn't put much hope in grass roots movements which want to abolish the death penalty. Those run on public opinion and moral convictions which are much harder to change.

[+] "Rational" might be misnomer, I'm not sure about that. What I mean is that there is no evidence which suggests that the death penalty leads to better deterrence or reduces cost. You will have a hard time finding criminologists who don't agree with that.

<comment><USER4> Umm, no. You said that there was "no rational reasons for the death penalty" because it was a straw man argument that mischaracterizes those you disagree with in a way that appeals to you. Period.

I am also not arguing about the death penalty. But there is rationality on both sides. Not just your side.

<comment><USER3> "Rational" really might be a misnomer. It wasn't meant to be an insult. "Moral convictions" are fine reasons.

It is, of course, imaginable that there would be "rational" (again, might be the wrong word) reasons for the death penalty. I can imagine a universe where the death penalty increases deterrence, reduces cost and where wrongful convictions are exceedingly rare. I would imagine that it would be very easy to convince technocrats to introduce the death penalty in that universe [+]. All I asserted was that it seems to be consensus among criminologist that we are not in that universe.

[+] My own strong moral conviction – which, in this imagined universe wouldn't be, in my parlance, "rational" – would be to not introduce the death penalty, all those reasons be damned. I can certainly sympathize with those wanting to keep the death penalty in the real universe for moral reasons.

I'm nevertheless not really sure whether I really would oppose the death penalty in the imagined universe because I also happen to believe that policies with regard to at least certain human freedoms (I would include "life" and "opinion") have to have some sort of useful effect on the world beyond making me happy (i.e. being congruent with my moral convictions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's great that some of these issues are actually being discussed, now that the LDP is out of power. I have to wonder how much longer the current government will remain, though.

By the way, the 6 PM news in Tokyo carried these pictures on Friday. Unfortunately, can't tell you what they said.</comment>


Storm Ciara helps plane beat transatlantic flight record - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-51433720 <comment><USER2> >The fastest transatlantic crossing belongs to BA Concorde, which flew from New York to London in two hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds in 1996 - hitting a top speed of 1,350 mph.

That was the fastest commercial flight. The fastest transatlantic crossing by an aircraft was the SR-71 in 1974:

1 hour 55 minutes Average speed over 1800 mph

[https://tacairnet.com/2015/09/02/the-sr-71s-record- breaking-...](https://tacairnet.com/2015/09/02/the-sr-71s-record-breaking- transatlantic-crossing/)

<comment><USER3> > 1 hour 55 minutes Average speed over 1800 mph

It felt weird that my first reaction was to wonder what took so long. For some reason I was thinking that surely the Blackbird could make the crossing about 60 minutes faster than listed.

Looking at a map, I saw that the air line distance from Fortaleza to Dakar is just over 1,900 miles though. So I'm thinking "transatlantic" must mean more than my own basic definition. (Plus I don't know if these locations would have enough runway for the SR-71, or if the reason we haven't heard of faster is because US taxpayers aren't footing the gas bill to arrange a shorter route)

<comment><USER4> The blackbirds have to show down to refuel.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand. Are you saying they refueled over the Atlantic while setting this record?

<comment><USER5> Most long distance Blackbird flights involved taking off at low fuel weights, then refueling shortly after take off. So yes, the record probably involved refueling over the Atlantic.

<comment><USER6> They refilled _immediately_ after takeoff.

Then, if they got a full tank of JP-7 around NYC, that gives them a one-way range of 3250 miles, which is less than the 2999 nautical miles of LGA -> LHR. The SR-71's range is a hair over 3200 nautical miles. Getting a full tank of the special JP-7 or landing around LHR would be do or die time, because that would be just about bingo fuel.

<comment><USER7> Is the 3200nm range while at cruising speed or for max speed? The link mentioned it was in afterburner for a long period.

<comment><USER5> They're approximately the same speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see people talking about this but they all seem to have a hard time understanding air speed and ground speed.

The way I like to explain it is imagine a person walking up an escalator. Your total speed is your walking speed (air speed) plus the escalator speed combined (ground speed). Just walking up regular stairs would be like an aircraft flying with no wind.

It can also happen in reverse. If you walked down the up escalator your walking speed (air speed) may be equal to the escalator. Your total speed (ground speed) may even be zero. Aircraft leaving London going to NY were fighting the wind their ground speed was reduced.

<comment><USER9> Also why it's still a subsonic flight even with a ground speed greater than the speed of sound (~1200 km/h).

Edit: as explained in the article, hum.

<comment><USER10> Speed of sound is 767 mph. Without the wind, they were at 801 mph, which is still well over the sound barrier. I still don't understand.

<comment><USER11> The article says it's "slower than 801 mph", but sadly doesn't specify how much slower. The ground speed was 825 mph, so if Ciara is so impressive, I'd expect it to give a bigger boost than a measly 24 mph. The article doesn't specify the unassisted airspeed, unfortunately. Considering the jet stream was moving at 260 mph, naive math would suggest the air speed was 565 mph.

<comment><USER12> ...which is about the commercial cruise speed of a Boeing 747 (570 mph), so your naive math may be pretty close ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it's windy enough could they have done a 180 on arrival and landed into wind blowing at the usual landing speed, coming down near vertically with respect to the ground?

Here's a bush plane doing this at 40 knots:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7vP13XPMNfc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7vP13XPMNfc)

<comment><USER14> Technically yes, but the jet stream blows at high altitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been on a plane that did this before, only our jet stream current was a bit slower and thus our ground speed was hovering right around 800mph for most of the duration.

The turbulence was rough going in and out of the jet stream, but while "in it", it was about like any other normal flight.

We ended up shaving over an hour off the flight time (SFO - LHR, might've been 90min in fact), but alas, due to the "law of early flights", we then wasted a lot of that time penalty boxed waiting for an open gate.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised they didn't slow down to conserve fuel and arrive on-time. In the USA, if your flight is more than 20 minutes early, you are usually stuck on the tarmac waiting for a gate.

80 minutes of fuel for that plane must be very expensive. Is it possibly to fly that plane, at say 200 knots ground speed, and save on fuel? Or are they stuck at their speed they filed in the flight plan, to keep traffic separation?

<comment><USER16> I asked similar question about angle of attack (both 737 max and AF447) - can't they just look at a glass of water to see they are at wrong angle.

But with planes it doesn't work that way - everything is relative to the air outside, not the ground. With good tailwind you still have to go with your cruising speed relative to the tailwind. Your ground speed will be insane. The opposite is with headwind.

<comment><USER17> Maybe a gyroscope + glass of water ?

<comment><USER18> No. Angle of attack behaves in some very non-obvious ways-

For example, if you maintain the same attitude, but decrease thrust so that your forward airspeed drops, and you begin descending... your angle of attack increases, despite the aircraft not actually rotating.

Why? When you start descending, the air below now seems to be "coming up at you"\- you go from

      ---> (===

to

        7  (===
       /
      /

if that ASCII art helps at all (equals signs being the wing)

Now consider how roll, yaw, and crosswinds affect this- as the AoA becomes variable across the wing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is nothing, one time I flew from Midland to Dallas in a Cessna 172 in an hour and 20 minutes. My ground speed exceeded 180 knots at times!

</comment><comment><USER20> The BA callsign isn't "Speedbird" for nothing. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Despite travelling faster than the speed of sound the plane would not have > broken the sonic barrier as it was helped along by fast-moving air.

It makes sense but that is still fascinating to me...

<comment><USER22> Well _all_ aircraft are traveling faster than the speed of sound with respect to much of the universe, but not relative to their surrounding airstreams...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are we entering a future where plane routes are designed to follow storms ?

<comment><USER24> We already do [1]:

> They are aligned in such a way as to minimize any head winds and maximize > tail winds impact on the aircraft. This results in much more efficiency by > reducing fuel burn and flight time. To make such efficiencies possible, the > routes are created twice daily to take account of the shifting of the winds > aloft and the principal traffic flow, eastward in North America evening and > westward twelve hours later.

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

</comment></comment><comment> 8f2ab37a-ed6c On that note, it seems that the amount of turbulence has been increasing over the last few decades as a consequence of global warming?

</comment><comment><USER25> Not a record. This flight got to 717kt, but the fastest record for a 747 is 752kt: [https://groundspeedrecords.com/top-3-models/?terms- filter=15...](https://groundspeedrecords.com/top-3-models/?terms- filter=15&aircraft-manufacturer=Boeing)

<comment><USER26> It's a flight time record, not a ground speed record.

So yes, a record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > The four hours and 56 minutes flight arrived at Heathrow Airport 80 minutes > ahead of schedule on Sunday morning. > According to Flightradar24, an online > flight tracking service, it beat a previous five hours 13 minutes record > held by Norwegian.

Extremely poor proofreading there from BBC. 4:56 hour scheduled flight when the previous record was 5:13? The numbers simply don't make any sense.

Original numbers: [https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1226395432252780544...](https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1226395432252780544?s=19)

> Fastest across the Atlantic tonight from New York to London so far is #BA112 > at 4hr56m. #VS4 in 4:57, and #VS46 in 4:59.

And average flight time is 6:10

<comment><USER28> The "ahead of schedule" refers to its conventional ETA, not the previous record.

Which also ties in nicely with your quoted 6:10 average.

<comment><USER27> ah yep, my bad. thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What literature do you read? - <AUTHOR> I know a lot of people here are futurists and Phillip K. Dick fans, so I look forward to hearing what other literature you enjoy. <comment><USER2> Herman Hesse "The Glass Bead Game" is incredible. For great mind fucks, check out the crime fiction of Jim Thompson: 1st person, you're a petty crook, dumb & scared, people trying to kill you are right behind you, and most the books end with you being caught and killed in the last sentence. It takes a day or two to shake off his books' reality.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the spoilers. I'll pass, now.

<comment><USER4> As someone who's read some of Jim Thompson's books (notably The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280), that's not really a spoiler, the books are quite different from that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After reading Game of Thrones I wanted to read more book series, so went with science fiction ones:

      Started with: Dune, by Frank Herbert (+ 5 books in the series)
      Continued to: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (+ 3 sequels)
      Now reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov (+ 5 books)

All those are pretty great in sense of that they take set in span of thousands of years, and touch bit different ideas around society, myths, religion, morals, physical and mental technologies.

Other than that, been been enjoying some classic literature, Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, James Clavell, Haruki Murakami and books about Richard Feynman.

<comment><USER6> Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series is rather epic, as well.

<comment><USER7> but far too long, he should have tied it up after the first five books or so.

<comment><USER6> agreed. Sadly GOT seems to be going down the same path

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been chewing through some Neil Stephenson books lately. I think a lot of his earlier work was somewhat prescient (in terms of general themes) and some of his newer work bring up some interesting societal points especially about the role of government with regards to technology. Another theme that I feel is particularly relevant lately is the bifurcation of the technically skilled (or even aware) and the technically unskilled. He puts up an interesting split in Anathema which wittingly or not might well represent a lot of the current hacker/tech-elite discussion in society at large. Anathema is well worth a read and Cryptonomicon is just plain fun (perhaps more relevant lately than it was in its own time).

<comment><USER9> Pedantic, perhaps, but the author's name is _Neal_ Stephenson, and the book is _Anathem_ (its a blending of "anathema" and "anthem")

<comment><USER8> Haha, Sorry, wish I could edit that now. No more posting to HN after more than three beers :) . Anathema was just a typo but I changed N[ie|ea]l back and forth a few times.

My stupidity aside, awesome author and Anathem is definitely worth a read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The trilogy of _Neuromancer_ , _Burning Chrome_ , and _Mona Lisa Overdrive_ is still my favorite work of fiction, and also, to my mind, exemplifies the kind of taut, awesome writing that I would want to do if I wrote novels. It the only series of 3 books I have read more than once.

I caught these books at just the right time in my life (age 13 or 14), leading my high-school fascination with Japan and rekindled interest in computing, and probably played an inordinately large role in me ending up as a programmer who lives in Tokyo, two decades later.

I like great sci fi best, but I think most of it is crap, including virtually all of the old pulp sci fi and Asimov I grew up reading (which was basically all of it), Star Wars/Trek, etc.

Other than Gibson's stuff, some of the truly spectacular sci fi I have read is the very-dense-and-not-at-all-thriller-ish Mars trilogy ( _Red Mars_ , _Green Mars_ , and _Blue Mars_ ), and the fast-paced-and-awesome _Spin_ by Robert Charles Wilson. That led me to read all of Wilson's books, many of which are also good. Also Haldeman is an author worth reading, though not all of his books hit their mark.

Great sci fi is my favorite fiction, but IMO most of it is broken by being fundamentally implausible. Other fiction I consider great in other genres include _Memoirs of a Geisha_ , _Cold Mountain_ , _REAMDE_ , _The Son_ , _The Road_ , the lighter but still version of that post-apocalyptic concept _The Dog Stars_ , _City of Thieves_ , and _All the Pretty Horses_ and its sequels.

It's probably symptomatic of a major flaw in my character that despite also buying dozens of nonfiction works ( _Lincoln_ , _On China_ , and so forth) over the past few years, I haven't finished any of them.

<comment><USER10> Oops, I meant _Count Zero_ , not _Burning Chrome_. The latter isn't part of the Sprawl trilogy, but rather a collection of short stories (some good, some not so good).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, most of Neil Stephenson's work is just great. Cryptonomicon is my favorite, but The Baroque Cycle (three books) is very good as well.

If you're into crime/mystery fiction, the recently deceased Elmore Leonard was one of the best. A few of his books have been made into movies (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, The Big Bounce) with mixed results, but I do I highly recommend reading the books, which are numerous.

For a different sort of fiction, James Clavell's Shogun, Taipan, and Noble House are great. In fact, Noble House very well be my favorite book. It's a long (~1400 page) book about business dealings, political intrigue, and more. All set in the context of 1963 Hong Kong.

Those who like a touch of historical fiction could take a look at Conn Uggulden. One of his series, The Conqueror, which is about the rise and fall of the Mongol empire is pretty interesting. The books are a light read, and not particularly complicated, but it's entertaining and has some neat historical bits.

<comment><USER12> I think "King Rat" might also be part of James Clavell's series.

Even if it isn't, you should like it if you like the others

<comment><USER11> Yeah the Asian Saga includes King Rat, Shogun, Noble House, Taipan as well as Gai-gin, The Whirlwind. They're all pretty good books but I believe Taipan, Noble House and Shogun are considered Clavell's best work, in that order (personally I like Noble House best).

Thanks for the recommendation though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does Goodreads allow "groups"? That could be handy.

Edit: yes they do, and that's exactly what they're called, and there's already one for Hacker News: [http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/94469-hackernews](http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/94469-hackernews)

<comment><USER4> I'm in that group as well, but it's more or less dead - a problem is that Goodreads doesn't really define what groups are about, and users don't really see in their "timeline" when something new happens in a group.

Maybe the mods of that group could have a monthly book club or so?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kafka. Catch 22. Orwell. Hemingway. Plato. But mostly pathology these days.

</comment><comment><USER15> I liked _Rainbows Edge_ because in addition to a nifty story, it felt like a blueprint or use case for the near future. Marshall Brane's _Manna_ did something similar, even if you don't consider it fine literature. Charles Bukowski for poetry, which for some reason I can relate to, despite not sharing any experiences with the author ... which kind of worries me.

Various practical books such as _Secrets of Power Negotiation_ by Roger Dawson if that sort of thing will help you.

<comment><USER16> Rainbow's Edge read to me like an up to date, go-with-the-times version of Neuromancer. I'd should probably revisit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am currently reading a book called "The Housekeeper and the Professor" of Yoko Ogawa.

I haven't finished it, but I find it quite interesting. It's the story of a housekeeper and a professor of mathematics who can remember new memories only for 80 minutes.

Here is a link to the relevant wikipedia article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Housekeeper_and_the_Profess...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Housekeeper_and_the_Professor)

</comment><comment><USER18> Nothing 'exotic' really, my all time favourites are Asimov, Heinlein, Philip K.Dick, Stephen King (particularly dark tower series), Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card (Ender series), William Gibson, Douglas Adams.

I was recently coaxed into reading the 'Kingkiller chronicles' by Patrick Rothfuss, I was sceptical thinking it would be something like Harry Potter (not my cup of tea) but I ended up really liking it, looking forward to the third book.

</comment><comment><USER19> Everything from Vernor Vinge is top notch. Start with A Fire Upon the Deep. If you like it read the other two books of the trilogy. It's a space opera by degree of events but it never gets cheesy. The amount of ideas put into these books never cease to amaze me.

Rudy Rucker's Postsingular followed by Hylozoic are great books. It's a rather humorous view on postsingular way of life. It's hard to describe his books and Rucker's writing style is not everyone's cup of tea but William Gibson likes it.

Also if you haven't read anything from Michael Swanwick you should give his books a try. It's not strictly science fiction because he likes to slide into more psychedelic and surreal areas of fiction. But I consider that his charm. Start with The Iron Dragon's Daughter.

I also have to mention Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom. I actually don't really like Doctorow's works. Some of them are boring. But this particular book is an exception and absolutely worth reading. A lot of interesting ideas are in play there including reputation based currency, eternal life (through ability to backup/restore body and memories) and extreme transhumanism.

</comment><comment><USER20> A lot of stuff:

Asimov's _Foundation_ (I only recommend the trilogy, though; _Foundation 's Edge_ is good but will make you want to read _Foundation and Earth_ , which does severe damage to the universe. Haven't read the prequels.)

Asimov's short stories

Tolkien

 _Ben Hur_

 _The Count of Monte Cristo_ (brilliant revenge story)

A lot of Brandon Sanderson's work ( _The Stormlight Archive_ is promising to be fascinating)

Too long a list of other stuff to put here.

</comment><comment><USER21> While I often read Science Fiction and recently enjoyed Corey Doctorow's _Rapture of the Nerds_ , Last week I finished Jeet Thayil's _Narcopolis_.

Currently, I am reading the third volume of Rick Atkinson's history of the second world war, _The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945_. I've enjoyed all three volumes over the past decade.

</comment><comment><USER22> I love biographies/auto-biographies of people _not_ in technology (directly) who live an interesting life.

"Giant Steps: The Remarkable Story of the Goliath Expedition From Punta Arenas to Russia" by Karl Bushby

Unbelievable what it feels like to just take off...

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0751536954](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0751536954)

"Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination"

The first third of the book is remarkable in that Walt Disney constantly struggles with failure.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679757473](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679757473)

"Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer" by Lynne Cox

Her story is all about single focus on doing what you want to do.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013L8AQQ](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013L8AQQ)

"Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" by Steve Martin

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416553657](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416553657)

</comment><comment><USER23> I know from past threads on this topic that I am not the only person here who has found Robert Pirsig's work worthwhile. I mention it because it is currently on my nightstand, for the first repeat visit in too many years.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig)

</comment><comment><USER24> Well I'm definitely into sci-fi literature. There's simply nothing else nowadays (being in my early thirties) which can caught my attention and limited free time.

It's hard to sum it up to a couple of favorites... If you prefer hardcore sci- fi over the rest - as I do, those are definitely first choices: \- Iain M. Banks Culture books ("Excession" being the best of all to me) \- Simmon's "Hyperion" and "Fall of Hyperion"

Some authors managed to bring some good pieces of space-opera without being too much cheesy: \- Hamilton and his Void books, \- and, of course, Herbert and the Dune stuff. But I must warn the casual reader here: those kind of books can get really massive.

Second choices - but still really good books, would be stuff written by great guys like Asimov ("Foundation"), OS Card ("Enders game") or RC Wilson ("Spin").

</comment><comment><USER25> I recently read one of Victor Hugo's shorter books, _The Toilers of the Sea_ , and quite enjoyed it. I like Hugo's writing in general: has a rich feeling of time and place, with the style of the sentences he crafts sort of feeding into it. He's not exactly underrated in general, but I don't meet many people in my circles who read his novels.

I also recently read Kafka's _The Trial_ , which I've long known about but never read, and it was good but not at all what I expected. For some reason I expected Kafka to be an intimidating, serious writer, based on how his name has come to be used metaphorically. But _The Trial_ is a very easy read, engaging and plot-driven, moving along at a fast pace. You can read it in a few hours, and it feels like light reading, despite having some serious content.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isaac Asimov's robot series (start with "I, Robot" and "The Caves of Steel") is good, as is his Foundation series. Ender's Game is also good; I've heard other people complain about the other novels in that universe (Speaker for the Dead and sequels, Ender's Shadow and sequels), but I liked them fine. Cryptonomicon is rich, fascinating, and entertaining. Dune is rich and pretty fascinating. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Time Enough for Love" are somewhat scandalous, but I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Outside science fiction: P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels, as well as what of his other books I've read, are hilarious and brilliant; I would suggest "Right Ho, Jeeves" as a starting point.

</comment><comment><USER27> For me, mostly Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Phillip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Georges R.R Martin, Tolkien, Raymond E Feist, David Gemell, Robin Hobb, Anne Mc Caffrey, Fritz Leiber, J.V. Jones, Moorcock, Jack Vance, Van Vogt, Robert Charles Wilson, Lucius Shepard, Ray Bradbury, Scott Lynch, Peter V Brett, E.E Knight... just for those coming to my mind right now and internationally known. I also read french writers in the same genre: Roland C Wagner, Claude Ecken, Lionel Davoust, Fabien Clavel, Pierre Pevel, Justine Niogret, Eric Wietzel, Alain Damasio, Ayerdhal, Sylvie Miller, Philippe Ward, Thomas Geha, Laurent Whale, Jeanne A Debats, Anne Fakhouri... And a lot more. I'm a bookworm so the list's always growing ^^'

</comment><comment><USER28> East of Eden is my favorite book I've read in the last several years. Beautiful end to end and very moral. If you've read it it's totally worth reading Journal of a Novel: a collection of letters Steinbeck wrote to his editor every day as he was writing East of Eden. It's a fascinating window into the mind of a master deliberately creating a masterpiece.

Other favorites: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, In Our Time by Hemingway, The Magus by John Fowles, 100 years of solitude, Moby Dick (perhaps a precursor to all modern fantasy?) Stranger in a Strange Land, and Infinite Jest. I've also loved both of DFW's big essay collections: Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll never Do Again.

</comment><comment><USER29> Reading The Second Sex right now. I need a bit of brush up on some history and philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm a huge fan of Daemon and Freedom(tm) by Daniel Suarez. I guess you can call it a 'technology thriller', with some amazing ideas and impressions of our society. His most recent book, Kill Decision, is along similar lines and also great.

I love reading actual sci-fi too, and was most impressed by the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. Can absolutely recommend those.

Note: I didn't come to these titles myself, they were recommended by Steve Gibson from the 'Security Now' podcast. I couldn't agree more with his taste.

</comment><comment><USER31> How about David Foster Wallace? Also China Miéville and Haruki Murakami.

<comment><USER32> I went of a bit of a Murakami bender after reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. While it's still my favorite of his works, Kafka on the Shore is pretty fantastic as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I came across an excellent list of science fiction awhile ago;

[http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Science_Fiction](http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Science_Fiction)

</comment><comment><USER34> My favorite is still Frank Herbert's Dune series.

</comment><comment><USER35> The two books I have active right now:

        From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves, Emilio Segre
        A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean

</comment><comment><USER36> My favorite fiction book is Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry. I am not a fan of the Star Wars books nor am I a hardcore Star Wars fan, but this book captures me every time.

Other favorites, not including those mentioned by others already are Jurassic Park and the Harry Potter series. I like to go back and read these often.

For fun, my favorite, far and away is Foxtrot by Bill Amend.

</comment><comment><USER37> Dan Simmons Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion are two of the best novels I've read. I read a lot of scifi, and I think they have held up very well compared to some other works that came out in the 80s through the early 90s.

They present a lot of challenges that mankind may face in the future as our technology exceeds us, but they are also very entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER38> I read history books but also, many others. One of the best classics Sci-fi I've read ever is The Riverworld saga by Josep Filip Farmer. I barealy guess another serie can match the awesome of this story, maybe as some hackers point out, The Foundation is another great series and will entertain you a lot.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think I have read two pieces of fiction in my adult life. I'd love to read for recreation much more, but if I have time to read a fantasy or horror or science fiction novel, I have time to read something related to my field, instead.

</comment><comment><USER7> anything by Charles Stross, the atrocity archive could be a good place to start: humor, computers and cosmic horrors, whats not to like ;)

Another would be halting state but time have properly overrun it.

He even have a interesting background as a programmer/tech writer/pharmacist, read it here: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2009/07/how_i_go...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2009/07/how_i_got_here_in_the_end_my_n.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> I recently started Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. From what I understand, in the US the book is viewed as a must-read for students, but it's much less known here in Europe.

<comment><USER41> You are horribly misinformed. Opinions or merits of the book aside, Ayn Rand is viewed as a crackpot and is generally (I'm sure there are exceptions) not taken seriously in academia, and I have never heard of any public highschool that views _Atlas Shrugged_ as critical reading.

<comment><USER42> We read "The Fountainhead," if that's anything. Doesn't mean the rest of what you said is wrong.

<comment><USER41> I definitely should have been more clear. I meant that in terms of formal philosophy, she isn't usually ranked up there with Plato, Nietzsche or Kant, and that as far as literature goes, I haven't seen too many highschools advocating _Atlas Shrugged_. Universities might (I'm not really sure), but even then, I'm not sure it's really regarded as a "classic."

I don't think everything she has to say is bad, wrong or unimportant, even if I think she was nutty, verbose and a poor writer, but I was pointing out that she isn't nearly as important, from my perspective, as the OP claimed.

<comment><USER43> _I have never heard of any public highschool that views Atlas Shrugged as critical reading_

It's (been) required reading at West Point, amongst other places in the US. High-school reading lists are probably poor indicators: Plato, Nietzche, and Kant would be Atypical if not unheard of (if that is your standard).

Atlas shrugged has other interesting reasons to read it, however. Its main theme is actually dealing with assholes at work. Academics are embarrased by it, because its filled with "non-collegial" behaviour. But that just means they don't get out much.

Economics as a field which assumes opportunistic and deceitful behaviour are non-events. Atlas Shrugged is a great reminder of the fallacy in that. A typical Economist would consider Rand a "Crackpot", for using opportunistic and deceitful behaviour as basis for an empirical philosophy. But consider that lawyers get paid to write contracts to mitigaet the very dangers that economists assume away. Your Lawyer will tell you...never trust an Economist...theyre all crackpots and live in Ivy towers. =D

As a side bar, have you actually read Nietzche? I think academics (and a few of his old landlords) would consider him more of a "crackpot" than Rand. Clearly Rand and Nietzsche have nothing in common? Perhaps other than its the lie that tells the truth.

<comment><USER44> Plato and Nietzsche are far from atypical. Being two of the West's most literary philosophers, they routinely turn up in high school. Excerpts from Plato's _Repulic_ (e.g. _The Allegory of the Cave_ ) and any of Nietzsche's aphoristic works are especially common.

 _Academics are embarrased by it, because its filled with "non-collegial" behaviour. But that just means they don't get out much._

Where on earth are you getting this? Academics celebrate texts far less collegial than Rand's. Rand's work, as literature, is dismissed because, as literature, it isn't very good. Her work isn't taken seriously or engaged with philosophically for other reasons, but propriety isn't one of them. To invoke the ancient stereotype of the "stuffy academic" is ludicrous. Academics today are probably the most open-minded, least proprietous group around.

 _I think academics (and a few of his old landlords) would consider him more of a "crackpot" than Rand._

I can't speak to the attitudes of his old landlords, but no, modern academics do not consider him a crackpot. For political reasons he was in and out of favor around the times of WW1 and WW2 (due to the misappropriation of his work by various groups, most famously the Nazis), but he's never ceased to be hugely important to continental philosophy, and Walter Kauffmann set the record straight and rehabilitated his image for the English-speaking world decades ago.

<comment><USER43> As a historical point, Nietszche was considered "unemployable" by german Academia following Zara. and BGE printed on his own dime. He was widely (wrongly) viewed as tin foil hat (nihlist, etc) for 100 years. PG's great essay on the history of philosophy doesn't even mention him ([http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)). Nevertheless, look where he ends up...

 _In the humanities you can either avoid drawing any definite conclusions (e.g. conclude that an issue is a complex one), or draw conclusions so narrow that no one cares enough to disagree with you. The kind of philosophy I 'm advocating won't be able to take either of these routes. At best you'll be able to achieve the essayist's standard of proof..."_

Sound familiar? Slightly _Nietzshean_?

Likewise, Rand's heterodox views have made her about as popular as Larry Summers at a "women in STEM" mixer, but then she pre-dated by 50 years the 3 [economics] nobels that took Nietszchen epistimology seriously (1991, 2002, 2009).

People still confuse here work with being expositions of free-market economics. This of course is non-sensical. What is relevant and unique is that she takes seriously the key _omitted behavioural assumptions_ of neo-liberal Economics. Which is a contr-indication of blind support for neo-liberal economics.[1]

Her work is most intersting in its analysis of the internal workings of firms, a point directly off the map of neo-classical economics (Coase: the nature of the firm 1932, nobel 1991), in particular the non-market (hierarchy) driven decisioning mechanics.

The nature of these dynamics (ie, expositions of opportunism and bounded rationality), are precisely the types of discussions dismissed by post-frege philosophy as 'crackpot', in the sense of not being formalistically relevant to Academic philosophy (viz: At best you'll be able to achieve the essayist's standard of proof).

But these topics are slightly more interesting than that.

And not exactly the work of a "crackpot".

_______

[1] Ironically, "L"iberal interventionist economic types have a greater problem with her critique of "conservative" economics. Her critique of the neo-classical assumptions also applies to its derivatives, including the variant of neo-classical commonly known as 'welfare' economics. This is the modern "L"iberal branch of economics. see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_economics)

<comment><USER44> _As a historical point..._

All fine and good, but your claim was "academics...would consider him more of a 'crackpot' than Rand." That's what I replied to, because it's not true.

You asked the parent commenter "have you actually read Nietzche?" Well, I have, cover to cover, including the _Nachlass_. More importantly, I've read exhaustively in the tradition that descends from him. Nietzsche had an enormous influence on Heidegger, Gadamer, Deleuze, Foucault, Blanchot, Derrida, and just about every other important continental philosopher of the last century. And then there are all the critics, novelists, poets, painters, sculpters...

There's simply no point comparing Nietzsche's reputation to Rand's. No one credible has ever really considered him to be a "crackpot." Even analytic philosophers like Searle appreciate Nietzsche.

 _He was widely (wrongly) viewed as tin foil hat (nihlist, etc) for 100 years._

No, not widely, and not for 100 years. Nietzsche's impact was already being felt both philosophically and in the arts by the 1910s.

 _PG 's great essay on the history of philosophy doesn't even mention him_

A few things, here.

1) It's not an essay on the history of philosophy, though it does have a section titled "History," which limits itself to a cursory discussion of Aristotle's _Metaphysics_.

2) Much as I respect pg, I'm not sure why I should put any stock in the selection of thinkers in this essay or credit his views on philosophy. He was a philosophy major for "most" of college? Nifty, but like most humanities disciplines in modern universities, philosophy, at the undergraduate level, just gets you caught up with where you should've been when you finished high school, had high school actually done its job. Even from this short treatment, it's clear that there are huge gaps both in pg's knowledge and in his understanding of, for example, Wittgenstein and Aristotle. Which leads me to:

3) The essay is simply wrong in many of its assertions. For example:

 _" The proof of how useless some of their answers turned out to be is how little effect they have. No one after reading Aristotle's Metaphysics does anything differently as a result."_

If you're interested in just how off base this is historically, here are a few things that might interest you:

[-] Any of James Joyce's novels, or any criticism exploring the philosophical undercurrents of his work, e.g. _The Aesthetics of James Joyce_ by Jacques Aubert. Joyce had a Jesuit education. Aristotle's influence is immediate, palpable, and bears incredible fruit.

[-] A fair bit of Ezra Pound's poetry and criticism ( _ABC of Reading_ , _Guide to Kulchur_ , _The Spirit of Romance_ , various essay collections like _Machine Art and Other Writings_ , and so on). Pound was influenced not only by the _Metaphysics_ but by the _Nicomachean Ethics_ and the _Rhetoric_.

[-] _Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages_ , by A.J. Minnis. I mention this in a last-but-not-least way, as Minnis traces a clear path from Aristotle to how we read today.

Now, does _the average_ person do anything differently as a result of reading Aristotle? Of course not, at least not as a _direct_ result. The average person doesn't do anything differently as a result of much at all (that's what makes them average). But the people who set the terms of culture, the influencers? You bet your ass they do -- if not as a result of reading Aristotle, then as a result of reading some contemporary equivalent, e.g. Plato -> Baudrillard -> The Matrix -> Average Person.

 _Sound familiar? Slightly Nietzshean?_

Not to me, no.

 _in the sense of not being formalistically relevant to Academic philosophy_

For analytic philosophers maybe, but continental philosophers decoupled rigor from exactness long ago. Lack of exactness wouldn't stop them from reading Rand, if they thought there was value there.

But you don't need to defend Rand to me. I'm indifferent, not hostile. I only popped into the discussion to point out that Nietzsche's place in the philosophical canon is secure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Last 3 books: Game of thrones (1, 2, 3) Currently reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (one of the comprehensive and popular works on the topic)

</comment><comment><USER46> Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse 5), Bukowski (Postman). Steinbeck (Tortilla flat). All their stuff is good, but those are my favorites :)

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm surprised no one's mentioned Philip José Farmer and his Riverworld series. The last book is comparatively weak, but the rest are great.

</comment><comment><USER48> Weird Life: The Search for Life That Is Very, Very Different from Our Own.

I am cheating with an audiobook though....spend a lot of time in a car=)

</comment><comment><USER49> "Arguably Essays" by Christopher Hitchens

"Letters to a Young Contrarian" by the same.

and "Unpopular Essays" by Bertrand Russell.

</comment><comment><USER31> The Crying of Lot 49 -- Thomas Pynchon

<comment><USER50> This is quite possibly the best book I have ever read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I tell everyone I meet who is into books to read "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski.

</comment><comment> bra-ket Frederik Pohl's Gateway

</comment><comment><USER42> Catch 22 One Hundred Years of Solitude The Infinite Jest Cryptonomicon

<comment><USER52> Catch 22 Subtext: One Hundred Years of Solitude The Infinite Jest Cryptonomicon :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Kazuo Ishiguro is a favorite: Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go

</comment><comment><USER54> reading stanley milgrams obedience to authority. Hoping to start a biography on oppenheimer soon. Don't know which biography to choose though

</comment><comment><USER55> Harry Potter; Tales of Pirx the Pilot (Stanislaw Lem)

<comment><USER56> If you haven't read "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", you're in for a treat: [http://hpmor.com/](http://hpmor.com/)

<comment><USER55> I have set my mind years ago to completely ignore Potter fan-fiction, regards of its quality.

<comment><USER57> You're missing out. I'd liked HPMOR much more then original story. Thought it's quite geeky which not everyone likes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Wool by Hugh Howey

</comment><comment><USER59> H.P. Lovecraft :)

</comment><comment><USER60> Huckleberry Finn

</comment><comment><USER61> Reading The Book Thief at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER62> A Song of Ice and Fire

</comment><comment><USER63> Judas Unchained</comment>


Show HN: 9:22 Talk – a telecom-based social network connecting strangers - <AUTHOR> https://922talk.com/ <comment><USER2> A more direct description could help, I don't think a 'phone practice' is what comes to mind when you say 'social network' these days.

On the service itself, it seems very interesting. It doesn't mention locale though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that description is a little misleading (we just redid our landing page yesterday and completely forgot to update this showHN). And about the service, we're glad you think so! However, could you clarify what you mean by locale? Do you mean the countries we currently support?

<comment><USER2> Yes, since I don't live in US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen a few of these services recently, and my biggest issue is that they don't offer the protection that an online service does.

If there's harrasment, 9:22 can't block that person from calling you, because you've given up your phone number. And ghosting an online account is way easier than ghosting a cell number, as that is suuuper inconvenient. If you want that protection it's on you to setup a killable phone number which is non-trivial.

What's your opinion on this @pranav1024?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I agree that the harassment issue could definitely be annoying to deal with. However, we introduced the monthly subscription to weed out these kind of people before they join and it's working quite well so far. We haven't had any complaints of spamming and people are liking the person-to-person connection a lot - in fact, we just found out yesterday that two of our users started texting regularly after meeting each other on 9:22.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea is interesting and there's definitely people who want to improve their social skills, but asking for a paid subscription from a user who doesn't know what to expect is a tough sell. Maybe you could make the first few calls free and then ask for a subscription?

Also, what happens if there's an odd number of users? Can't set up pairs at the exact same time with an odd number.

<comment><AUTHOR> After thinking a little deeper, we realized it definitely was a hard sell. So we redid the landing page and we're now offering a 7-day free trial (credit card required) before we start charging. About the number issue, I've put in my cofounder's number as a failsafe in case we have an odd number of users.</comment></comment>