Cable Internet Is IP over MPEG - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/1168940577070747648 <comment><USER2> This isn't really for silly legacy reasons... you might want to send an MPEG2 stream via the DOCSIS side of the cable system. It's just a header, basically.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess T carrier lines are better with 192 bits per frame.</comment>


Ask HN: The future developer rig? - <AUTHOR> Every day we read about tablets replacing desktops, we read about smart phones and app markets on the desktop replacing traditional operating systems.
At some point say ten years from now how will developers be interfacing with systems to write code?  Will we be the last customers of laptop and desktops with mice and keyboards? "Specialist" devices that allow programmers to develop code for all the "normal main-line devices"?
Will my grandson watch me type and wonder what I'm doing?  Laughing at how old his grandfather is and that he "still uses a keyboard and a mouse"?
Exactly how are we going to program all these things when the only thing on the market will be tablets, smartphones, smart TV's and app environments without command lines or desktop interfaces?
I find it funny that 30 years on and I'm still using Vi to edit files on really fancy terminal programs (thank you iTerm2).
In a world full of interface innovation the low-level still means knowing how to ssh to a box and vi files?  Really? <comment><USER2> > Will my grandson watch me type and wonder what I'm doing? Laughing at how > old his grandfather is and that he "still uses a keyboard and a mouse"?

My 5 yr old _son_ does exactly this! He calls typing on a keyboard "working", whereas writing on the ipad screen isnt "working" according to him. He tries to do things on my laptop by touching its screen ... the spoiled brat!

</comment><comment><USER3> We're going to be stuck at workstations for a while yet.

Tablets are great devices for _consuming_ media, but they suck for typing and suck for creating. Laptops are a lot better for creating but I still haven't found anything that can match a good, solid desktop with multiple monitors and a clicky keyboard.

<comment><USER4> I agree, touch screen devices are great for consumers but even just writing this message on a nexus 7 is annoying. We will be stuck for a while with desktops and laptops, but I can imagine surface like tablets to be common for developers and writers at some point,since it can be used like a lightweight laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny how we're already discussing the possible death of the mouse when I still can't say I'm 100% comfortable using it besides the keyboard.

Businesses brought us the personal computer at the scale that we've become accustomed to. Hobbyists prepared the road, business paved it and now we're all driving on it.

As soon as businesses will switch to tablets en masse to do their daily work we will see a move away from the desktop as a mainstream device. Until then the future of the desktop is secure and economies of scale will still help us.

Another element here is the gamer scene and the fact that servers share 90% of their architecture and components with high-end desktops.

Wires will disappear more and more but that's just a detail.

I think desktops will be here for the foreseeable future, but laptops will be more and more under fire from the tablet market.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you heard of the Lindy effect? "The longer a technology has been around, the longer it's likely to stay around."

Writing code by typing has been around for decades, so you'd expect it to be around decades from now. Likewise, I expect lots of people to continue using vi or emacs twenty years from now.

[http://architects.dzone.com/articles/lindy-effect-and- techno...](http://architects.dzone.com/articles/lindy-effect-and-technology)

</comment><comment><USER7> I actually wrote a research paper just last semester for my undergrad operating systems class on 'user interfaces in the year 2022', and although this wasn't my exact focus I'll share some things I noticed while researching as well as others papers on this topic.

I don't think the traditional keyboard and mouse will completely go away. We will see improvements in both, but for productivity means there's no highly- productive and intuitive interface on the horizon to replace them altogether.

I think we'll see a huge improvement in touch-screen interfaces. I never realized just how bad our touch-screens were before researching this, but I'd expect to see a huge jump in the next 10 years. This includes increased haptic feedback and the introduction of dynamic buttons [1].

[1] <http://www.tactustechnology.com/technology.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One thought that bothers me is as "Developer Rig's" become more and more specialized (i.e. still have command line access, multiple monitors etc.) we will have more challenges getting them. Think about the years we would build our own game rigs because that was the best way to squeeze every drop out of the currently available hardware.

The Mac Pro is a perfect example, I doubt Apple will ever give it serious investment, maybe one more rev next year and that'll be the end of life. As all the various vendors rush towards Tablet and Smart phones etc. we will slowly become the "minority" and end up going back to building our own rigs.

Anyone want to start an Alienware for Developers?

<comment><USER8> Sure why not, I'm in :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In terms of an interface, unless we can come up with something vastly superior to a keyboard, it's not going away.

The keyboard is pretty intuitive and extremely explicit (if I press the A key, there's no confusion about what I meant to press)

I'm not so sure about what will happen to the mouse though, it's a bit more abstracted compared to the keyboard and I reckon touch interfaces will be the norm soon enough.

In terms of what the rig would be, currently I do all my development on a virtual machine, SSHing into it and using vim. I think our desktops and laptops could become thin clients and we'll do all of our work on remote machines that are "in the cloud"

<comment><USER10> I think that the many people who struggle learning to touch-type would disagree heavily with you regarding how intuitive a keyboard is. I'm pretty certain we could come up with a more natural method of input, however that could have the potential to diminish the important characteristic you raised regarding explicit and specific input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The death of the desktop is greatly exaggerated. For creating content you need lots of screen space and precision input. Also you need the same for stalk... I mean chatting with 5 people simultaneously on various kinds of social media and im-s.

What tablets are providing is good enough personal computational power.

Do you really care if your monitors will be connected by wires or by wireless streaming from a device.

Same is for input. Mouse and keyboard are precise.

So the workstation of tomorrow - you will have your own computation unit that you will carry with you and dock and connect to whatever peripheral devices are required for your current needs...

</comment><comment><USER12> The need for precision input will never go away. What we'll continue to see is continued hybridization of the tablet and laptop ala-ms surface. No developer really wants to work on a a subset os and or jailed OS(iOS) full time or an underpowered machine (surface).

What I would like to see is something like a 13" tablet that runs a full OS (i.e. Full OSX, Linux, etc) that I can dock while at a workstation to one or many larger monitors AND several input devices (Keyboard, Mouse, Wacom, Printer, etc). Then when I am on the go, I can grab the tablet(brain) portion and if needed a precision interface or two (wacom, keyboard that's portable enough) and stuff them in my bag hopefully taking up less or equal space/weight to what say a MBA would take up. And it would be great if it would do this in a graceful fashion. Basically I don't want to have to compromise between devices. The only compromise I should have to make is that if I am on the go, it's not feasible to carry around a 30" monitor.

<comment><USER13> I was going to reply with the same setup: a full power tablet with great docking to a very large monitor and bluetooth input devices.

A little off topic, but I just finished 23 days of travel up the Amazon River and my Android phone (Galaxy III S with 1280x720 screen) was the perfect combination of portability, Internet access, application access, taking pictures and video. Perhaps a smart phone instead of a tablet would work also? With a full power large format phone, you do give up a lot of ease of use with an on-screen keyboard.

I think the real change will come when we have living environments where screen displays are everywhere and we basically live in the interface. I just submitted a Leap Motion developers application yesterday and I can not help but hope for future living environments that have sharable flexible input and display devices that automatically link up with a super phone in my pocket so I still have all of my data always with me.

<comment><USER12> A pocket device could work, but the need for a larger than pocket sized screen would be needed in certain scenarios, i.e. I want to go down to the coffee shop and code for a while and not have to squint at a small phone screen the whole time. Actual screen size is just as important as resolution in certain workflows IMO.

The sharable interfaces in every location option I think is further ahead than just a powerful tablet /w full docking options. I think projected interfaces will come around even before that happens though.

<comment><USER14> I think the consensus might be underestimating things like Project Glass and new directions in keyboards (microfluid haptics, perhaps even more radical designs). For example it seems like it didn't take long for people to accept in-ear headsets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's more likely for your grandson to wonder how you're using a keyboard and mouse without a vim-clutch[0]. I think the future developer rig is going to have alot of physical doo-dads and whiz-bangs to allow you to work faster, but you'll still be using ssh and vi.

[0]<https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-clutch>

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm betting that traditional devices won't disappear, as having a real keyboard is too important. We'll probably see a surge in tablet/laptops convertibles, and towers will continue to lose ground wrt laptops.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interface innovation is not the same thing as "innovation in solving a real problem". The best interface is "no interface" and command line is the best interface for many cases. One day we will automate all system administration (really?) and we will stay in the front of a super control panel for all our servers and services that run in "cloud" but meanwhile command line rules :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Other people need to type besides programmers. If touch-screen keyboards eventually become good enough., programmers will be able to use them too. And programmers may use some more visual interfaces, but pure-text will still be more powerful.

<comment><USER19> Touch screen keyboards lack something essential: feedback.

Such keyboards are not usable for anything other than casual typing; you're not going very far with them.

<comment><USER20> > Touch screen keyboards lack something essential: feedback.

Not forever:

[http://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/24/apples-research-on- tacti...](http://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/24/apples-research-on-tactile- feedback-for-touchscreen-keyboard-revisited/)

[http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-patents-keyboard- with-a...](http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-patents-keyboard-with-air- feedback-technology/)

<comment><USER19> You are missing the point. Any such surrogates are only getting you so far. To go anywhere near the real thing, you have to behave like it - not to mimic it.

You're second link stands behind my argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It could be Jarvis the Developer AI Assistant aka DAIA™ of Tony Stark's creation in the recent Iron Man movies. Voice activated commands, holographic interfaces that responds to gestures, audio-visual programming instead of text, etc.

<comment><USER22> Which only works when you've got a ton of room and nobody else around to listen to the dialog. Seriously, imagine trying to run something like that in an office environment. Everyone's dialog and gestures would be terribly distracting. Yes, for a movie it looks clever, but in real life, in a real workplace it'd be horribly annoying.

Not that it'd be out of place in, say, a home setting. There you don't have as many problems with interrupting everyone else's train of thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there anyone here use cloud based workstation ?, for example you use virtual machine in amazon and access it from low powered device or laptop.

</comment><comment><USER24> "In the beginning, there was the command line..."

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, you don't _have_ to use vi or emacs. IDEs exist. I personally find Eclipse to be a huge pain in the ass for anything other than superficial Java maintenance, but it's there, and sometimes it's the right tool.

The command line will never die. It's precise. It works. If you don't know how to use it, you're not a programmer. End of story.

I think that, just as programming is becoming multi-lingual over the years, it'll be more important to be able to switch between (a) emacs/vi and the command line and (b) a read-only IDE for code comprehension/navigation. (I'm surprised Github hasn't taken that on, at least for the major languages.) IDEs are great when you're reading code but they become a mess when people use them to write it, or when IDEs become formally a part of the company developer environment. (Watch out if the latter happens.)

I think the low level will change more slowly than the high-level. For low- level, staples like C (and possibly Go) will remain in force. It's at the high level where the rapid change happens. Of course, this kind of change is good and bad. It's great when you're in charge and get to play with fun new tools, and it's horrible when you're a grunt and change is inflicted upon you by others.

<comment><USER26> > The command line will never die. It's precise. It works. If you don't know > how to use it, you're not a programmer. End of story.

Precision would match the input to the output. Why should the tool I use to make Python, JS etc ever produce something that's not parseable by the interpreter for those languages? Why should people ever miss a bracket? Especially when they're learning.

Vim has shortcuts for yankingaand deleting and putting lines and paragraphs, which have little meaning in programming. You can't delete a block, or a statement.

<comment><USER27> Being _able_ to manipulate language-sensitive components is very handy; being _restricted_ to manipulating them can be mind-bogglingly annoying... for people, the source text is also a text.

Structure editors were super trendy ... like 25 years ago. There's a good reason they've pretty much died out...

<comment><USER26> Why would it be annoying to not be able to write invalid code?

Source is not free text, that's provable by needing a parser. Much in the same way the DOM isn't HTML, a lesson already learnt the hard way in web development.

<comment><USER27> My statement isn't based on pontificating, it's based on lots of people writing structure-editors and everybody hating them.

Despite the end-goal being a correct parse-tree, it turns out that making it _impossible_ to have intermediate "incorrect" states feels very constricting, and people don't like it. The surface text representation may be an irrelevant detail to the compiler, but it's _not_ to humans.

[A lot of the research was aimed at beginners, without previous programming/editor experience, who probably have the most to gain from such assistance (no missing semicolons!), and no prior habits to unlearn. But even there, structure-editors were not popular.]</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Any collaborators out there intersted to work with me on a Node.js project? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/s-a/deep-js

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a commandline app documenting Javascript code.</comment>


V Is for Vaporware - <AUTHOR> https://christine.website/blog/v-vaporware-2019-06-23 <comment><USER2> I don't understand these kinds of articles at all, maybe somebody can help me.

So the author has overhyped its creation. So what? Humans get attached to their creations and can't view them objectively. That's a documented psychological fact -- just look at your typical parent, their kids can do no wrong in their eyes.

I tried following V's story lately on HN and truthfully, I got very surprised by the ton of hate and insane nitpicking. I get it, things are promised and are not yet delivered. It's one guy. And he's creating a C language competitor. C has what, 40+ years of backing? I dare you to do better than him. I personally don't have the balls to even attempt such a thing. But at least I am not bashing the guy.

I actually applaud him for not being a typical introverted engineer and that he gets out of his way to address criticism here on HN -- not always constructively, granted, but I'm prety sure most of you cannot take that much flak and not snap. And he tries to make a semi-okay website.

V is not harmful to anyone in any way even if half the claims on its page are not true [yet]. Getting in $500 - $2000 of donations in a month for development of something like this is peanuts and does no harm to anybody, anywhere.

Are you aware there are dozens of Twitch "streamers" shaking cleavage on a webcam while failing at a videogame, raking in thousands of hard-earned $$$, and that this is happening every day for years now? Why don't you go piss at _that_?

<comment><USER3> > _So the author has overhyped its creation. So what?_

Either: "Someone got excited, took a closer look and wrote a blog post", or "someone got mildly annoyed by the overhyping, tried it out and wrote a blog post about it". It seems to be fairly factual criticism to me, comparing the marketing claims to actual experience.

And especially because getting a language going is such a big project I don't get why you'd state things that aren't there yet - everyone would expect an early version to not have all those things if there weren't claims to the opposite, so being honest about the state of things doesn't really hurt you. To the contrary, it avoids people being disappointed when they want to try something that's claimed as a feature and it isn't there. And some probably consider it unfair towards projects that are less bold in their claims.

I'm not sure what the "harmless" comments are about - the article doesn't mention anything about that (or the income) at all?

<comment><USER2> > _I don 't get why you'd state things that aren't there yet_

I interpreted it as "things I want to eventually add", and I already conceded that the author has some false claims (as the blog post points out as well).

Think of it as a roadmap / mission statement. It gives you a good idea if you want to use it when it is eventually ready. A small bit of marketing.

> _I 'm not sure what the "harmless" comments are about - the article doesn't > mention anything about that (or the income) at all?_

Zig's author has said they have been discouraged to work on their tech since they allegedly work harder and deliver more yet get less donations: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230384) (which is a child of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230351)).

Several other people in this thread (and I think others if memory serves) have expressed displeasure that V's author collects donations.

That is toxic. People get donations for all sorts of stuff. Let them, and don't be bitter about it. The way the HN crowd seemed to latch onto V's author specifically was very peculiar for me to observe in the last several months.

<comment><USER3> I hadn't seen that thread you linked - ugly in both directions IMHO. I see why people have a problem with it, some of the comments are over the line IMHO, and it's still just someones small project, so I get why looser standards should apply. To me, the comments there are different than what I read from the article submitted here.

EDIT: large rewording, sorry!

<comment><USER2> (I see you edited out most of your comment. Still leaving some of mine in place.)

> _I did not read the page as a roadmap..._

I'll say again that I fail to understand what's so bad if somebody didn't say something is WIP and claimed it's ready. We're programmers and very far from helpless clueless non-technical users. We can download the thing, try it and see for ourselves.

I am asking: where's the actual, measurable, tangible harm in that?

Can't understand what's the big outrage about V. There have been multiple threads about it on HN lately and the amount of hate and bitterness by other HNers is comical and totally unexpected on this forum which I viewed in a higher regard until just recently.

EDIT: Additionally, a comment from `dang`, one of the moderators: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20251393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20251393)

<comment><USER3> Oops, I just had removed that section after reading the other thread a bit more.

To "where's the actual, measurable, tangible harm in that?": People's sense of what's fair or not doesn't necessarily match that perfectly. A single project being overhyped probably doesn't do much harm (although discouraging contributors to other projects, taking mindshare from them, ... probably is a minor form of harm, even if hard to quantify), but I think people dislike it because it distracts and it _would_ be a problem if it became the norm. Again, my initial comment in this thread was without the context of other discussions and only based on the article.

<comment><USER2> Eh, maybe. We're a much smaller community and we self-correct quite well IMO. If people start claiming obvious non-truisms left and right we'll ignore them and their projects will never take off.

Thanks for the good discussion. ^_^

<comment><USER3> Yes, with the additional context I totally get where your original comment came from, and as I said in a comment to the creator here I hope this doesn't overshadow the work long-term.

side note: as a vaguely related comparison, Rust, despite all it's merits, still has some problems with being overhyped, not even by its creators, who at least from what I've been seeing are fairly careful about it, but by random fans, which causes friction in the wider community, because people don't like being promised unfullfilled things or being told to feel bad for what they're doing. I respect Rust, I don't like it's fans pretending everything would be better if I used it or comparing my daily work to war crimes because it involves C++, it's a factor I need to actively tune out because I know there _is_ something behind the hype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The invention of programming languages is well trodden territory. The original author of this site has written about it: [http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html)

It's hard to get excited about V if you've studied a lot of programming languages and watched some new ones come into use. I also recommend the Artima articles with the designer of C#: [https://www.artima.com/intv/anders.html](https://www.artima.com/intv/anders.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be nice if people were supportive of this effort instead of just pissing on it.

Of course it is incomplete at 0.0.12. Was it over hyped? Sure. Good for him to have time for some marketing of his work next to _actually writing a working compiler with a good start for a standard library_

This thing is real and here to stay.

How about this: instead of writing about frauds and vapourware, contribute to the project. File an issue, fix a bug, work with the author.

We should applaud and encourage these efforts.

<comment><USER6> Thanks :)

It's 0.0.12, the first public release. What's with all this "vaporware"?

The compiler can already compile itself in 0.3 seconds and is written 100% in V:

[https://github.com/vlang/v#installing-v-from- source](https://github.com/vlang/v#installing-v-from-source)

It allows building easy cross platform graphical apps: [https://github.com/vlang/v/tree/master/examples/tetris](https://github.com/vlang/v/tree/master/examples/tetris)

It has easy cross compilation and can even compile itself for another platform: [https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137537130887077890](https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137537130887077890)

It allows to build small performant GUI apps like Volt: [https://volt- app.com/](https://volt-app.com/) (Volt 1.0 RC 1 for macOS has been used by thousands of happy users for several months.)

It powers a simple forum: [https://blog.vlang.io/forum](https://blog.vlang.io/forum) And the entire forum is one 65 KB binary.

It can translate and build DOOM: [https://github.com/vlang/doom](https://github.com/vlang/doom)

It has very extensive and simple to read documentation that covers pretty much the entire language: [https://vlang.io/docs](https://vlang.io/docs)

I think it's pretty good for 0.0.12.

Come back when it's v1.0 by the end of this year.

<comment><USER3> If you have all these great examples, why aren't they on the marketing page instead, and future plans clearly on a roadmap or whatever? They're pretty cool achievements! And something I can now go look at is way more interesting than something thats "coming soon". Good luck with your project, I hope this drama doesn't overshadow it too much long-term (but you're probably better off if you work on your messaging to avoid this topic getting back up over and over)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was a fun read, but hating on a language that doesn't even have a minor version yet feels unfair!

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice hit piece. All of the criticisms could have been patches. Most of the criticisms are exaggerated. Looks like it took 2s to build on the macbook instead of 1. The 'zero dependency' binary links to libc (as if most programmers wouldn't expect this.)

<comment><USER9> I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I would like to point out that it took 2 seconds for it to throw an error that the file had more than 50k statements. It did not build at all. It's not really even a valid test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why does the internet care so much? My recollection of the events is that the guy put up a website for an in progress language. Someone else posted it on HN and people started shitting their pants.

The author owes you nothing.

<comment><USER6> Your recollection is correct.

People don't like that it doesn't yet do everything perfect at 0.0.12.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is toxic. So what if he overpromised and underdelivered? I would rather people support his cause and actually build something that delivers on the hype rather than sit on their high throne and shit on ambitious projects.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure the author understands what "Work in Progress" means.

A good portion of the article seems to be taking claims marked (WIP) and saying "hah! gotcha! this doesn't work yet!"

Almost like, I dunno, a work in progress.

<comment><USER13> They were only marked as WIP when people noticed they were missing.

<comment><USER12> The article literally has "[wip]" quoted throughout.</comment></comment></comment>


Inequality: A Piketty problem? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/05/inequality-0

<comment><USER2> There's obviously a strong intention to find some way of rationalizing your existing political opinion when a book like this is published, either against the status quo (in the sense of agreeing with the book) or in favour of the status quo (finding some way of 'debunking' it). This is made worse because there is a whole industry in providing the material to reinforce our preconceptions. And, also, because the news cycle is by nature much faster, and much less patient, than would be necessary to fully judge the economic case in a book like this. It doesn't make good copy to say that the conclusions will be tested over the next years, and to wait for that gradual outcome.

At the moment it seems to be very difficult for professional economists to come to a clear conclusion, so in terms of the academic judgement of the work, the rest of us should hardly be coming down strongly one way or another.

Edit: Ironically, there seems to be an error in the linked article:

> For America, the outcome of the analysis is relatively muddy (based in part > on the fact that the source data themselves are harder to parse, according > to Mr Giles). The trend for the top 1% share does not seem to be affected. > For the top 10% it is harder to say; here is a chart Mr Giles produces:

When you look at the chart, it's the 10% trend (the triangles) which is unaffected, and the 1% trend (the squares) which is muddied. I therefore say with utmost confidence that I have debunked the debunking of the debunking of Piketty. I don't know which of my preconceptions that means I can keep intact.

<comment><USER3> Political intentions aside, I'm very impressed by Piketty's elucidative and insightful reply:

> _For the time being, we have to do with what we have, that is, a very > diverse and heterogeneous set of data sources on wealth: historical > inheritance declarations and estate tax statistics, scarce property and > wealth tax data, and household surveys with self-reported data on wealth > (with typically a lot of under-reporting at the top). As I make clear in the > book, in the on-line appendix, and in the many technical papers I have > published on this topic, one needs to make a number of adjustments to the > raw data sources so as to make them more homogenous over time and across > countries. I have tried in the context of this book to make the most > justified choices and arbitrages about data sources and adjustments. I have > no doubt that my historical data series can be improved and will be improved > in the future (this is why I put everything on line)._

For putting the data up online, he's proven himself to be a true scholar. This is how progress is made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FT was quick to compare Piketty to Reinhart-Rogoff. Felt like a hit piece.

<comment><USER5> You have to understand that FT is a conservative news organization. If you think about their primary audience (wealthy businesspeople), it was no surprise that they tried to take a shit on Piketty's work.

<comment><USER6> This is the laziest of criticisms. Don't like someone's argument? Don't even bother reading through, let's check who sponsored the study, or maybe the author is a hypocrite, or at least cheats on his wife, and anyway, it's racist.

You could just as easily dismiss Piketty: Oh, he's just some French lefty (cheese eating...), of course he'll conclude that inequality is the problem and we need to tax wealth.

<comment><USER5> >>This is the laziest of criticisms. Don't like someone's argument? Don't even bother reading through, let's check who sponsored the study, or maybe the author is a hypocrite, or at least cheats on his wife, and anyway, it's racist.

I read the FT article when it appeared. What seemed remarkable was that, even though it took Piketty _years_ to compile and work with the data, it took the FT editor _weeks_ to come up with a rebuttal [1]. That by itself should tell you something.

[1]Unless he read the original French version from last year, but that's doubtful because the book became popular (and therefore dangerous to the upper class) only after being translated to English.

<comment><USER6> It tells me nothing. Finding mistakes is always easier than writing the book containing them.

And the list of those supposed mistakes is public[1], behind only a registration wall. Piketty either made them, or not. They either substantially change the results, or not. You don't need to make guesses based on timing.

Perhaps Chris Giles is motivated by pleasing his "wealthy businessmen" audience. Perhaps he spent sleepless nights pouring over the text to find something, anything. Maybe he even cheats on his wife.

But so what?

[1] [http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/data-problems- wi...](http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/data-problems-with-capital- in-the-21st-century/)

<comment><USER7> I get the whole dismissal of the ad hominem-based conclusions thing, and you have a point.

OTOH, it is equally fallacious to suggest that Giles' cheating on his wife is as irrelevant as his ideology or that of his employers.

At this point, we don't know who has it right. But, it is not unwise to look suspiciously upon a person's ideology and/or leanings when approaching their work. This is especially so in today's world of corporate-owned media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For me, the money quote from this article was:

 _Scott Winship, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute who disputes Mr Piketty 's overarching narrative about inequality wrote on Twitter last night:

"I've spent time with Piketty U.S. wealth ineq[uality] spreadsheet and LOTS of time with his income data. He's not up to funny business."_

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad to see the debate and discussion surrounding Piketty's work. I'm very slowly reading through the book itself and it's almost like relearning my Economics degree 10 years later.

<comment><USER10> It's a pity if the discussion would be reduced to nitpicking though, rather than a real discussion about the books real scientific merits and its consequences for how we want to build our societies.

<comment><USER11> Harrison Bergeron comes to mind

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You don't often see scientific work having implications in world economic policies that much, but when it does, it's really entertaining to watch.

It's still weird that it takes the work of an economist to prove something that everybody already knows. That's a big elephant in the room.

It puts a little faith in my political opinions that some could start listening to this discussion. It kinda pains me to watch you need to hear the word of an economist to prove it to you though.

</comment><comment><USER13> This piece takes issue with the 'brushing off' response to the reported inaccuracies

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-24/piketty-fudged- his-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-24/piketty-fudged-his-wealth- data-progressives-still-support-his-compelling-theoretical)

<comment><USER14> I notice that the author of your link implies his main point but never states it clearly. This is usually a bad sign.

<comment><USER13> What point is that?

<comment><USER14> That wealth hasn't been concentrating at the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised to see so many left-wing views on HN. I thought most hackers were libertarians.

<comment><USER16> I'm surprised you see them as "left-wing".

Are these "left-wing" too? * [http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/05/inequali...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/05/inequality-0) * [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/is-piketty- all-w...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/is-piketty-all-wrong/)

<comment><USER15> I was referring to the comments you often find in political threads on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "In some ways the new FT criticisms may not matter much, although I think not in a way which is reassuring for Piketty." \- haha

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/wha...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/what- do-the-piketty-data-problems-really-mean.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> To be honest, the work never seemed rigorous enough in the first place to go about finding 'fatal flaws' in it.

<comment><USER18> my impression is that, regardless of outlook, economists have overwhelmingly praised the book as extremely thoroughly researched, setting a new bar for evidence presentation in economics literature.

<comment><USER19> As pointed out here [http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/05/why- didnt-p...](http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/05/why-didnt- pikettys-harvard-publisher-spot-the-errors-which-the-ft-has-exposed/)

"Perhaps the idea of one's instincts being proving empirically correct is rather intoxicating, which partly explains the success of his book. Perhaps Piketty gave the left intelligentsia a story which (as tabloid hacks say) was "too good to check".</comment></comment></comment>


Handwriting recognition for Kindle Touch (sudoku) - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2012/kindle-touch-handwriting-recognition-slick-feature-puzzazz

<comment><USER2> This article was also picked up by MSNBC: [http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/14/10408891-sta...](http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/14/10408891-startup- gets-kindle-touch-to-understand-handwriting)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't have suspected the Kindle touch screen to be sensitive enough for this kind of technology.

I also didn't suspect that there was a whole category of Kindle content I had never heard of.

Now I feel stupid.

</comment><comment><USER4> congrats Roy! Exciting stuff</comment>


The Best Performing Cryptocurrencies of 2017 Thus Far - <AUTHOR> https://www.subverter.co/2017/06/01/the-best-performing-cryptocurrencies-of-2017-thus-far/ <comment><USER2> How does one judge the "performance" of a cryptocurrency? In the abstract, I'd say what marks a currency's "performance" is its ability to be exchanged for goods and services; in that sense there really aren't any performing cryptocurrencies.

They seem to mean "which has the biggest increase in spot price this year?", which is a kind of weird thing to judge a currency on.

<comment><USER3> Liquidity by itself has an objective and quantifiable value. Bitcoin, and possibly a few other cryptocurrencies, have some unique properties that have intrinsic value, like algorithmic fairness, low transaction costs, logistical simplicity, and lack of centralized control over money supply. BTC has a distinct possibility of becoming the future default Exchange Currency in international currency markets, which basically means that the transaction costs of trading A -> BTC -> B are cheaper than trading A -> B directly.

I'd argue that if it were possible to isolate effects from hoarding and speculation, that the spot price would represent the intrinsic value of its liquidity and other intrinsic benefits. And thus, to the degree that prices are not influenced by speculation, the price reflects performance.

But since we know that prices are heavily influenced by speculation, I'd argue that the better metric for performance should be daily trading volume. Because that is a more direct measure of liquidity. It might be meaningless by itself (the trading volume doesn't "represent" anything more than the total value that exchanges hands everyday), but contextually it is important. The 24 hour bitcoin trading volume is currently $1.6B. The currency trading volume across all worldwide currencies is $5T [1]. So BTC can roughly be considered to have 3-ish orders of magnitude of difference in liquidity over the worldwide currency market. As someone who has no involvement in BTC whatsoever, I find that pretty impressive.

[0] [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/)

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/global-markets-currency- volum...](http://www.reuters.com/article/global-markets-currency-volumes- idUSL5N18E3K3)

<comment><USER4> > lack of centralized control over money supply

This might be clear to someone with more experience in the field, but it's not apparent how the benefits of such a constraint is quantified. For example, the fed raising interest rates is not translated to a deterministic response from the stock market and so using bitcoin might have sound fundamental advantages but equivalent pragmatic limitations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there something like a crypto etf for all these high grow coin that's more passive?

<comment><USER6> Yes, and it is itself a crypto coin:

[https://www.iconomi.net/](https://www.iconomi.net/)

<comment><USER7> They're still "comming".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > now that we've reached the halfway point of 2017

Aren't we 5/12-s into 2017? Given the volatility of these currencies, a month could make a lot of difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Err, yes. Apparently I need to go back and learn how to count months in a year again. I've updated the wording. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While many of these cryptocurrencies have some underlying function besides speculation, seems to me they are mostly a way around pyramid scheme laws at the moment. Such a huge number of competing pyramid schemes going all at once should produce some good data for a few economics PhD's.

</comment><comment><USER10> I strongly suspect that buying these currencies will be much, much easier than selling them. There will be lots of tiny currencies where people are grateful to give currency for US $, but very few people want to give US $ for your currency.

<comment><USER11> WorldPay is probably in that group, it has a market cap of $1-$3. Dollars. But many of them, in a given day, trade value in the millions to billions. It drops off pretty quick after the top 5 by market cap (Ether is #2 and is in the billion/day range, Ripple is #3 and half that, Lumens is #12 and is $44M).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did not know that there were so many other bitcoins out there. Has anyone actually bought anything with these other coins or is it pure speculation.

<comment><USER13> Many of these are pure speculation or beginning projects.

Others are platforms (ETH) or ledgers (XRP) that are seeing significant growth in usage.

But in the grand scheme of things, ALL of these are speculation plays at this point. With maybe, just maybe, the exception of bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a similar chart for poorly performing cryptocurrencies, or is basically everything going up?

<comment><AUTHOR> 48 experienced negative growth in the period, actually. You can take a look at the complete dataset in CSV format ([https://gitlab.com/subverter/cryptocurrency- growth/raw/maste...](https://gitlab.com/subverter/cryptocurrency- growth/raw/master/archive/2016-12-31_2017-05-31_USD.csv)) to see which they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, uh...what's the fastest way to take $1000 of play money and start speculating?

<comment><USER16> rule 1. don't leave coins on exchanges.

coinbase

gemini

poloniex

rule 2. don't leave coins on exchanges.

<comment><USER17> after buying transfer to separate wallet? and where? what wallet would ya recommend?

<comment><USER18> Buy a hardware wallet. I would recommend the Ledger Nano S. I have no affiliation with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What am I doing wasting time with Bitcoin, when WOP had a 14,087% (!!) gain???</comment>


Ask HN: Best place for product blog? - <AUTHOR> Hey! We did launch www.aidlab.com (health monitor) couple of days ago. As we don't have our own /blog subpage (to make our site as simple as possible) we are wondering where is the best place to write about new features, releases, use-cases or some interesting technical details (like-a-dev-blog) about our product?<p>Those are not 'stories' so we believe that medium would not be appropriate. Or is it? <comment><USER2> At [https://wordpress.com/](https://wordpress.com/) you can get a custom domain for 3 USD/month, link that (DNS CName entry) to blog.<yourdomain>.com. There are many companies that do Wordpress hosting, e.g. [https://wpengine.com/](https://wpengine.com/), [https://getflywheel.com/](https://getflywheel.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! How about some existing platform for dev-blogging?</comment></comment>


Why Your Health Insurer Doesn't Care About Your Big Bills - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/why-your-health-insurer-does-not-care-about-your-big-bills <comment><USER2> "The Affordable Care Act kept profit margins in check by requiring companies to use at least 80 percent of the premiums for medical care. That's good in theory but it actually contributes to rising health care costs. If the insurance company has accurately built high costs into the premium, it can make more money. Here's how: Let's say administrative expenses eat up about 17 percent of each premium dollar and around 3 percent is profit. Making a 3 percent profit is better if the company spends more."

Wow. Great example of free market distortions that don't work. Now if there was true competition in the field, a company would never be able to get away with this.

<comment><USER3> A free market does not work for health care. At all.

Or, more technically: health care does not meet the requirements for a "free market", so cannot exist in principle.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Free market is great for wants but absolutely horrible for necessities.

<comment><USER5> Wants and necessities are not economically distinct, and that's not why health care and health insurance don't have the features there make free markets efficient.

Lack of transparent utilities at the time of transactions is more of an issue.

<comment><USER6> Transparency works if you have a choice.

Outside of libertarian lala-land, most U.S. citizens are limited to three, two, or oftentimes, just one healthcare insurer. Also, most U.S. citizens will pay anything to not die.

<comment><USER7> > Outside of libertarian lala-land

"la la land" implies people are unaware of reality. Libertarian's by and large aren't naive. They know what reality is. They realize people don't have choice and want to change that by opening up competition for pharmaceutical sales and insurance across state borders and even country borders.

Just because something is far from the reality of current day does not mean it doesn't have merit or that the people who want it are la la land.

Imagine a world where if a drug is approved in the EU but not our FDA then we can still buy it. Or a world where if a drug is cheaper in Canada we can buy it from there. Or if the people on the other side of the border between two states has lower premiums than I can actually buy that plan without moving to the other state.

And further more, insurance and drug companies will feel the market pressure of consumers having real choice.

Doesn't seem that "La La" to me.

<comment><USER8> > Imagine a world where ... if a drug is cheaper in Canada we can buy it from > there.

This assumes that the issue here is a regulatory failure, rather than intentional price discrimination on the price of drug companies.

Forcing the entire world into a single market with the same prices would raise drug prices on most of the world, without necessarily reducing prices meaningfully in the US.

<comment><USER7> Correct, I am assuming that regulation drives up cost which may or may not be true. Let's assume that is wrong...

And I agree, taken in isolation you are right. There is no guarantee that opening up the markets will lower prices. In fact, as you say, the opposite might happen.

But, I am also assuming that opening free trade between markets (not merging into one giant market as you say) will produce competition. Not just with insurers but also with pharmaceutical companies and safety agencies.

On the safety front if there was some reciprocity between safety agencies that the pharma company doesn't have to have their drug approved in every country that they want to sell in.

Now, you will say there is no guarantee big pharma will pass along that savings but...

\- These savings should allow new entrants into the market by lowering the barrier of entry

\- It allows multiple drugs that treat the same illness (but are not patent infringing) to compete. As opposed to currently it can be years (if ever) for a foreign drug to enter the US marker.

Edit: To summarize. The pharma and insurance companies can charge what they want because they are a monopoly. You are assuming the monopoly will continue when trade is opened. I am more optimistic if it can be executed well as opposed to just blind deregulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" Those rising costs eat into every employee's take-home pay."_

 _"...every time health care costs rose by a dollar, an employee's overall compensation got cut by 52 cents."_

When you read things like this, you should be remembering all those articles you saw about "the widening wealth gap." This is one of the mechanisms by which wealth is extracted from what's left of the middle class and given to wealthy shareholders.

And when you read...

 _" The hospital and insurance company had agreed on a price and he was required to help pay it. It's a three-party transaction in which only two of the parties know how the totals are tallied."_

...you should be reminded of the now commonplace idea usually mentioned regarding Facebook et al: If you're not paying (your own medical costs, directly), you're the product. The analogy isn't quite one-to-one, but the insurer kind of sells you to the hospital. But then the hospital wants its cut too. So they work out a deal. Your illness, to either of the two companies, isn't a misfortune; it's an opportunity. They jack up the price and basically end up splitting the profit.

It needs to be regulated. But legislators beholden to those rich shareholders will fight that idea, and they'll tend to hide it behind some deep-sounding philosophical argument about free markets that they don't actually believe.

</comment><comment><USER10> Healthcare is the most extreme example of Republicans clutching to the fantasy that the free market fixes everything. The ACA was pretty flawed, but it was better than nothing.

<comment><USER11> Free market? How is it a free market if you can't even find out the price before you pay? The Republicans are no help, but not because they purport to believe in free markets.

<comment><USER10> They call it that though. My whole family is hardcore Republicans. In their mind, lack of rules from the government = free market, period. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they still think the US has the best healthcare system in the world because it isn't run by the government. Seriously.

<comment><USER12> Would they be swayed by a discussion of how Medicare has a choke hold on the whole hospital system?

They are always a major payer and so hospitals will do what it takes to be Medicare certified. In high density areas there can be enough rich people for a hospital to not bother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you just apply common sense and think about it - it makes sense :) Insurance companies are not interested in lowering prices. They are interested in:

1) Not spending more than they captured in premiums in current year.

2) Increase of cash flow.

Once you combine these two you realize what insurance companies are looking to get steady increase in medical costs over long time. And medical service providers are playing along.

<comment><USER14> No, common sense says people and companies will chose providers with best coverage at lowest price. Insurance companies does have huge incentive to lower the premiums. I think the article is simply not well researched. The guy thinks of insurance company as middlemen who negotiates for him. That's true only to an extent because insurance company does have to build a network. If they miss out on big players like NYU then their lower premiums are pointless. The most flexibility customers want is to chose any doctor they want. Hospitals have taken advantage of this since long and negotiatons are not simple for insurance company to build their network. Medicare is different beast.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but when you're locked in to only choosing whichever your company provides you there's not much opportunity to switch, so there's really nothing you can do.

<comment><USER15> Exactly.

> _No, common sense says people and companies will chose providers with best > coverage at lowest price._

This is basically the argument Comcast uses to justify their de facto monopoly. In Comcast's case, their "competition" doesn't even exist on the same scale (which is hardly competition).

If the market were really a "free market" there would be viable options between insurance companies for the insured. Sure you can pick your doctor, and to some extent your plan, but does your company offer you multiple choices for where your health benefits come from?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Many years ago my daughter had the same procedure twice in a the same year in the same hospital and the price approved by the healthcare was much higher for the firt time, when our deductible was not yet met. I can think of ways the "deductible left" may be used to maximize profit for both the hospital and the healthcare

</comment><comment><USER17> > About 1 in 5 is currently being pursued by a collection agency over medical > debt.

That's actually terrifying! In a situation like this, why can't the authorities finally admit that the society as a whole has a problem, and adopt the European model where everyone is given free medical care?

<comment><USER18> sadly, because nearly everyone involved in this system is making excellent money-- everyone except the consumer.

<comment><USER12> Even the consumer is doing nicely (well, most consumers anyway).

It's just that we'd like our health care costs to be closer to the cost of delivery than to the realized value.

<comment><USER18> Emmm, most insurance policies are $7,000 a year in premiums (the cost is split between the company and the employee).

And if you actually use it, then you are talking about another $5,000 - $7,000 in yearly out of pocket max spending.

So conceivably, a very sick person is spending $14,000 a year to keep themselves alive

<comment><USER12> _to keep themselves alive_

Your argument is that this somehow isn't worth $14,000 a year?

Like I say, It'd be great if US prices were closer to cost of delivery (cost assuming reasonable regulation).

<comment><USER18> hehe, ok I see what you mean! Sure, if the consumer is receiving value (not dying thanks to thyroid medication or etc) then this is certainly a good thing.

however as you say, we want the cost of the product/service that is keeping you alive to be near the cost of what it actually costs to deliver that result.

In the case of nearly all drugs, a $100 brand name pill really only costs $1 per bottle to manufacture, with a lot of profit, legal and lobbying fees, and salary bloat baked into the margins along the way.

So $14,000 a year really honestly should be around $1,400 a year. Like, if i get my appendix out, and I pay $1,400, the hospital and surgeon are still making awesome money. It just so happens that in the US, they've inflated the price tag of that surgery to $80,000 lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The Affordable Care Act kept profit margins in check by requiring companies > to use at least 80 percent of the premiums for medical care. That's good in > theory but it actually contributes to rising health care costs.

How did this little gem sneak into the ACA? It seems like it was put in by somebody who doesn't understand game theory.

<comment><USER20> It wasn't snuck in. In theory, if you have sufficient # of health insurers, then the ones with lower costs will be able to offer lower premiums, and win more business.

<comment><USER21> And in the far more common case in many parts of the US where you have exactly one insurer, which was already the case in 2010, you get the exasperated situation we have now.

Either Obama and the Democrat super majority of 2010 were complete idiots when they wrote the ACA or they fleeced the American people with a false bill of goods. Note that "or" is meant to be interpreted as the Boolean algebra definition.

<comment><USER22> Oh, stop. There's no way a bill of any substance -- on any matter, let alone health care -- makes it through congress without unintended consequences. You could just as easily point at any of a thousand other laws, passed by both parties, and conclude the same thing. In a functioning system of government, you go back and _fix_ the things that break, and not just, say, throw an eight-year political tantrum that gridlocks government and ultimately leaves the system in a partially broken heap of half-repealed regulations, simply because you cannot have 100% of your way.

It certainly doesn't help that the GOP systematically blocks any attempt to reduce the influence of private industry in health care. Medicare manages to control costs, but a Medicare-for-all proposal never had a chance of making it through congress because it needed GOP votes to pass.

If one party consists of "complete idiots", the other consists of corporate lackeys and paid shills.

<comment><USER23>
      a Medicare-for-all proposal never had a chance of making it through congress because it needed GOP votes to pass.

Incorrect. For awhile, Democrats controlled the Presidency and the House, _and_ the Senate Democrat caucus had a cloture-capable 60 vote supermajority. They didn't need a single GOP vote for anything. For ACA, no GOP amendments were even given the dignity of a simple up/down floor vote.

<comment><USER24> What do you make of the following:

"the Democrat-controlled House and Senate committees _adopted nearly 190 Republican amendments_ while writing the legislation, according to data compiled by The New York Times."

Source: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/21/us/health- car...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/21/us/health-care- amendments.html)

<comment><USER23> Look at the actual committee and floor votes in congress.gov (and that doesn't even count attempts that were not _allowed_ a vote). NYT is a _business_ , not an objective stenographer.

To this day, NYT will not acknowledge how phony their financial assessments are with respect to the billions of losses via just the Risk Corridors and community centers. There was more than a $5.3 _billion_ deficit in Risk Corridor spending for 2015 alone[0]. Enrollment was overestimated by the CBO by _over 100%_ even while Obama was still in office[1]. And the numbers are still in flux as insurers who didn't get all the bailouts they were "promised" successfully sue for hundreds of millions[2].

[0] [http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20161205/NEWS/161129...](http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20161205/NEWS/161129937)

[1] [http://thehill.com/blogs/congress- blog/healthcare/309902-oba...](http://thehill.com/blogs/congress- blog/healthcare/309902-obamacares-risk-corridor-corruption-never-ends)

[2] [https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/show_public_doc?2016cv...](https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/show_public_doc?2016cv0649-23-0)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Health Care Will Never Be Equal - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/health/policy/20view.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> Something bothered me about this article: the author writes it as though the only people who haven't realized this fact are universal health care / health care reform proponents. As I recall, it was the opponents of health care reform who were vociferously complaining about government-imposed "rationing" not so long ago.

In a related vein, the author also mis-states the case for universal health care. I'm pretty sure that there are no serious proposals (feasible or otherwise) on the table that provide "the best health care possible whenever [anyone needs] it." Many (most? nearly all?) universal health care proponents would be happy to have a system that provides a reasonable level of care to anyone whenever necessary.</comment>


Ask HN: Is RESTful purity too chatty for HTTP? - <AUTHOR>

Hello fellow hackers, I posted this question on SO and CodingForums a few days ago and have no replies yet.
REST principles dictate that when a resource is created or updated (POST/PUT), the response body should contain a representation of the transaction result, along with a location header of the new resource, etc. While this is all good and well, it pretty much forces you to re-request the resource to get its current state, but HTTP requests are not free - far from it. Is there an accepted approach to deal with this?
It would seem appropriate to return both a location header and an XML or JSON structure in the body to avoid a wasteful second AJAX request. The body can then use an envelope/namespace similar to SOAP that would separate any transaction response message from the resource representation itself.
originally asked here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11123571/proper-way-to-minimize-rest-re-requests-on-create-update
thanks! <comment><USER2> My take is that for the vast majority of applications the network excess is more than compensated for in style, simicity and predictability I like how REST fits my brain and yes that is a rip off of an old Python slogan

returning the resource on every POST / PUT would only be correct in a subset of use cases anyway. If you POST a wall of text to a forum why would you want it back?

add to that you may create more than one resource (how many do you return?)</comment>


Why America's Internet Is So Shitty and Slow - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/why-americas-internet-is-so-shitty-and-slow-1686173744 <comment><USER2> The big companies are less creative when it comes to the transmission of data. The FCC is not new either, it had to happen sooner or later.. what we need is dirt cheap data eliminating the need of hosted networks altogether!! eg, data that travels through solids, liquids and gases, turning the very table on which the computer is kept into a network hub..

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you.</comment></comment>


The dark side of Guardian comments - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of-guardian-comments <comment><USER2> Amusing to me that there is no comment section on this piece.

Elsewhere on the Guardian there was an article [0] talking about the issue (with comments open), and a lot the comments were along the lines of 'maybe if you stopped deleting any disagreement'

[0][http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/31/comments- audien...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/31/comments-audience- censorship-criticism)

</comment><comment><USER3> Curious if how abussive commenters would respond if they weren't blocked, but comments were hidden so only mods & them can see them. Basically, auto-consume as much of the abussive commenter's time as possible; have there pages load slowly, have comments be buggy, give them CAPTCHAs, have auto response comments viewable to only them requesting they be civil/nice, etc.

<comment><USER4> That's usually called a shadow ban. As a recipient of several across various platforms: it is obvious when it happens. You notice the lack of replies to comments. You notice the lack of downvotes. Then you just move to a different account, another IP, or another exit node.

<comment><USER3> What works then?

<comment><USER5> if people would stop being offended by everyone always it would be a great start. I doubt that there is a technical solution other than disabling comments though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do wonder what options for 'nudging' people away from these comments there are.

For example, warning people their comment looks abusive, and pointing out what a large fraction of people comment appropriately.

If a comment looks uncivil, you could show the author how generic and meaningless prejudice comments often are, giving other examples of prejudice comments that have been deleted.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Guardian could really do with a downvote button or similar. It seems one of the easiest ways to deal with iffy comments. Not sure why they don't have one.

<comment><USER8> I think there are disadvantages to a downvote button in some cases, the current setup allows for every comment to be seen as an equal (as long as it passes the community guidelines), which can be valuable when discussing particularly contentious issues. I guess it's always a choice as to what community you are looking to foster.

(Disclaimer: I'm a dev at the Guardian, but not in an area related to commenting)

<comment><USER7> Guess there are pros and cons and it's a bit of a personal preference. I was thinking that the Hacker News comments system works pretty well. Maybe they could clone that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Fashion section attracted at least twice the proportion of blocked comments as any other section. Not exactly a section I'd associate with (presumably sexist and racist) straight white men.

      Articles about feminism attracted very high levels of blocked comments

This has me curious whether it is the subject matter (rather than the sexual/racial identity) of female and minority authors that plays the largest role in the negative comments.

<comment><USER10> I suspect it likely is the subject matter. An article about something fairly non controversial (like say, a popular game or film announcement) is by definition going to get less personal attacks and troll comments than something about a heated political/religious matter or anything involving 'social justice' related issues (from any side).

If more of the female writers write the latter type of article rather than the form, this could lead to the stats shown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Article and content aside, this is a really well thought out page design and the visual aids they use are fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER12> Related current story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11478835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11478835)</comment>


A 100 year old paper article about climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6fwzbr/a_100_year_old_paper_article_about_climate_change/?st=J3O55OQQ&sh=1909f41a <comment><USER2> Apparently of Kiwi origin. Fascinating to see that the Chinese were already setting the grounds for their climate changing hoax. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, this was also around the time when people were predicting a new ice age due to "global cooling".</comment>


Designing a RESTful Web API - <AUTHOR> http://blog.luisrei.com/articles/rest.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how much of this is already supported by framework (specifically thinking about Rails). Things like ETag caching and Options requests look like they should be handled for you.</comment>


Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons' - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6973994.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084 <comment><USER2> _Marino and Reiss will present their findings at a conference in San Diego, California, next month, concluding that the new evidence about dolphin intelligence makes it morally repugnant to mistreat them._

It is morally repugnant to mistreat animals regardless of the intelligence of the animal and being a scientist has nothing to do with making such a judgment, since it is not a scientific judgment but an ethical one. Thus, the new-found evidence discussed in the article serves only to dramatize something these scientists want because of their philosophical predispositions, not because of their special knowledge as scientists. If the logic suggested in the article were true, the converse might be up for consideration as well (e.g., that we can be cruel to deer because they are so dumb).

Science and advocacy are distinct and should be kept that way. There is nothing wrong with scientists acting as advocates but, when they do so, their views _as advocates_ should normally carry no more weight than do those of others.

<comment><USER3> The article is not discussing the ethical question of "mistreatment", but rather that of legal rights. This is an important distinction.

Anyone can advocate for dolphin rights, but, as scientists who have done research on dolphins, they are in a position to make _ethical_ arguments against keeping dolphins in a zoo for public entertainment.

The rationale behind these arguments are grounded firmly in science. You have to be able to show the research that _proves_ that one animal has no sense of self, while another (a dolphin) does, etc.

<comment><USER4> "Anyone can advocate for dolphin rights, but, as scientists who have done research on dolphins, they are in a position to make ethical arguments against keeping dolphins in a zoo for public entertainment."

"The rationale behind these arguments are grounded firmly in science. You have to be able to show the research that proves that one animal has no sense of self, while another (a dolphin) does, etc."

We are all in a position to make ethical arguments; I often do. But its not science. They are obviously in a position to know more about dolphins than most, but whether we change our policies regarding them might be grounded in science (for a change), but it is not, in and of itself, science, and they aren't experts in that.

As for a sense of self, I don't treat animals humanely because they have a sense of self, but because I do.

<comment><USER5> This is more about not treating dolphins as animals, not whether or not we should treat them humanely. There's a subtle but distinct difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We certainly don't need to fear that dolphins could try to dominate or exterminate us. So why bother treating them in any special way? The reason for morale and ethics is to maintain society and minimize risk of revenge. In case of dolphins there's hardly a society, the risk of revenge is none. To keep natural balance we should restrain ourselves from killing them all off or domesticating all of them and that's it.

Maybe this is too brutal opinion for modern times but I think people have gone too far in their foolishness. We should remember our real place and our real power, so that we can learn to use it more responsibly, instead of playing silly Ramen ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Ender%27s_Game_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Ender%27s_Game_series#The_hierarchy)) games out of the boredom.

<comment><USER7> It's an emotional argument, not a logical argument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I strongly recommend the movie _The Cove_. It's much more entertaining and less depressing than you would expect. Available via DVD or bittorrent. <http://www.thecovemovie.com/> (flash site so I can't link directly to the trailer)

<comment><USER8> The movie is actually quite depressing, but I was happy to find out after watching that the practice has, at least temporarily, stopped.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I know, my point is that there is less footage of dolphins being killed than most people expect after hearing the description.

And yes, it's absolutely amazing that an activist film such as this worked. How often has that happened in the history of documentary filmmaking? I think it's a shoe-in for the best documentary Academy Award this year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article is interesting and has lots of actual facts about dolphin neurology that kept me reading.

I could do without the political crusade though.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm far from convinced. On the one hand, their shape and their environment explains why they never copied the concept of technology from us. On the other, it does nothing to prevent them having art, literature, math, or creating a pidgin and talking to us. And on the third hand, we anatomically modern humans spent our first 150,000 years doing essentially sod all, so we can hardly complain.

I would want evidence of bidirectional conversation before calling them "people". Otherwise, I think they're "almost-people". Maybe near-future science can uplift them the rest of the way.

<comment><USER11> By your standards plenty of disabled people would not qualify as people.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely the opposite - disabled people are a perfect illustration of why humans are definitely "people". We work around our difficulties. Can't hear? Use sign language. Can't speak? Write it down.

Human minds in dolphin bodies would quickly work out similar hacks. The fact that dolphins don't is what makes it hard to qualify them as people.

<comment><USER11> > I would want evidence of bidirectional conversation before calling them > "people".

There are plenty of people that are not capable of that in any way that most people would recognize.

The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they understand us but we do not understand them.

edit:

We seem to place the onus of proving your intelligence and your ability to communicate on others before giving them the moniker 'sentient' or 'intelligent'. By laying an arbitrary ('good enough for you') marker and saying 'jump over that and I'll accept you) we judge everybody by our own norms, whereas that is not a good way to look at any of these issues at all.

A nice example from the animal kingdom would be the ant, the bee or the termite. As a single individual they're not going to pass an intelligence test by human standards any time soon. But as a collective they exhibit very complex behaviour that could possibly qualify as intelligent.

To put up a barrier for Dolphins to prove they're intelligent makes intelligence a linear affair, cross the threshold and you're 'in'.

But plenty of people exist that could not cross that same threshold, even by employing the tricks you mentioned.

For instance, there is a state of being called 'locked in'.

A person is 100% aware of their environment but also 100% paralyzed. By your standards these people would not qualify as people because they are wholly incapable of communication.

see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome>

<comment><USER12> > The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they > understand us but we do not understand them.

Having owned a dog, a cat and numerous small animals, I can say that I think that at times I was definitely able to have a two-way conversation with most of the higher animals, but not the lower. I think the Guinea Pig I had when I was 8 was about as low down the evolutionary scale as I could have any understanding at all (lots of squeaks meant "hungry").

My Gerbil was a black box, I fed him and cleaned his cage and he ran around for a few years, but other than that, not a lot to say. My cat and dog, on the other hand, most definitely told me when he wanted outside, or didn't like this brand of food, or needed his litter box changed, or was unhappy when we moved, was cold, needed into a room and the door was closed, was happy to see me after a long trip, etc. All it took was a little bit of observation.

Research into Apes and Dolphins seems to have revealed very similar levels of two-way interaction.

I'm not saying they were particularly interesting conversations, but there was definitely an effort to communicate something by both parties and we managed to understand each other I think a fair amount of the time.

<comment><USER11> Yep. Some animals even show 'empathy', the ability to figure out your emotional state by observing you and changing their behaviour accordingly.

But it doesn't give them people rights any more than a Dolphin asking for a fish does.

On the other hand even if they weren't intelligent at all we'd still have some moral obligations towards them.

Heck, I know people I'd gladly trade for a Dog or a Dolphin for that matter.

<comment><USER13> Domesticated dogs appear to have "empathy" with humans because over thousands of generations, the ones who acted that way got fed and bred more.

<comment><USER14> Selective pressures on early humans "caused" them to behave as though they were experiencing emotion and demonstrating a sense of self, because those were the ones that got more food and produced more offspring. If dogs have evolved to demonstrate some of the behaviors humans do, how can anyone prove that they are simply mimicking those behaviors instead of actually experiencing the same neurochemical reaction we do?

It seems to me this could easily slide into a philosophical zombie argument. If dogs continue to be bred for human-like qualities for thousands more years, and eventually come to mimic nearly every human behavior, are they any different from humans at that point? Or are they actually just zombie animals demonstrating behavior without actually "experiencing" anything?

<comment><USER12> > how can anyone prove that they are simply mimicking those behaviors instead > of actually experiencing the same neurochemical reaction we do?

Tests like the Turing test see that as irrelevant. Basically if an animal behaves like it feels emotions, it _does_ feel emotions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are dolphins intelligent in a different way than chimps?

This is an example of somewhat parallel evolution after all.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good, we should then start making them liable for violations of laws as well. Dolphin researchers know for example that some dolphins like to form gangs and go around harassing other dolphins and forcing themselves sexually on female dolphins. Should we also send out the police patrol and lock them up?

<comment><USER16> I realize that this is supposed to be a joke, but there is an answer to your question and it is (of course) no.

Our law could easily deal with dolphins that enjoy human rights protection. Babies are given the full protection of human rights, yet they cannot vote, cannot drive and cannot be made responsible for any crime they may commit. Why not give certain animals a similar status?

<comment><USER17> Rights come with obligations; those who can't discharge those obligations get their rights taken from them. That's not a moral statement, either; that's a descriptive statement of what the current situation is. That is the way it is because it _must_ be that way. Rights are, ultimately, the power to draw on the resources of others in the society (even "the right to free speech" is nothing more and nothing less than the right to draw on the resources of the society to defend your free speech), and for every such draw there must be a corresponding _obligation_ or your putative "right" will draw against a non- existent account. While we like to think about the positive side of "rights", without the corresponding obligations they literally _don't exist_ ; phantoms tools that appear to exist right up to the moment when you pick one up whereupon it is revealed to be a trick of the light.

Babies are lent their basic rights against their future obligations, and the difference is made up by their parents. Babies and children are extended fewer rights because of their decreased ability to service the resulting obligations, too, so your example isn't even all that great as children's rights are necessarily quite curtailed.

Certainly our law could easily deal with obligationless-psuedorights enjoyed by animals, but our society can not deal with them having true rights. Dolphins can be extended unilateral protection, but they can't have actual _rights_ until they can also discharge the resulting obligations.

Some would define "right" to include this sort of "unilateral protection" but I think that strips us of a valuable word, and encourages category errors as what are "unilateral protections" one minute silently get upgraded to "rights" (as I have defined them) the next. I am quite certain this is considered desirable by animal "rights" advocate, even if they are not consciously using this exact line of thought. I'm fairly confident that if you asked, animal rights activists would not care to be classified as animal-"unilateral protection" advocates.

(Moreover, giving dolphins rights would just be an open invitation to yet more corruption, in the form of "legal representatives" of the en-righted animals suing in the legal system for some recompense or other which oh-so- coincidentally will go back in the pockets of the representatives. If we're _really_ lucky we'll set up a parallel "animal's right court" so the whole system can be set up as a rent-extraction racket. There is in fact an upper limit on how much of this sort of corruption we can tolerate as a society.)

(Applying my definition of "right" to the current discussion of a "health-care right" is an interesting exercise left to the reader. For every right, the question of "where's the corresponding obligation?" must be answered.)

<comment><USER16> Well, a nice definition of rights, but also one I don't share. In my mind rights don't come with obligations, and I would argue that many (for example) constitutions share that definition with me. (I know the German one does. It's less clear with the US constitution but in context I would say it does – you know, all the talk about inalienable rights and stuff.) It's kinda pointless to argue about definitions so I'll stop here.

<comment><USER17> It's not a definitional matter. You _can't_ have a right if nobody is obligated to honor it. Someone can walk up to you and say you have the right to free speech, but if in fact you say something the government doesn't like, you get tossed in jail, and nobody defends you, including the government, then you _don't_ have the right to free speech, no matter how much you are told you do.

Mistaking being _told_ you have rights for _actually_ having rights is extraordinarily dangerous. An amazing number of so-called "rights" enshrined in Constitutions around the world are of this nature, and it's both sad and funny when somebody waves around, say, the Chinese constitution [1] and claims that it actually means that the Chinese have free speech (article 35) or freedom of religious belief (article 36), both of which are _transparently_ false. People have died or been imprisoned for life for making that mistake. You may have the "right", but nobody has the obligations... so you in fact do not have the right. Just words.

(One of the great innovations of the Anglo-Saxon legal system was not just saying the word "right", but taking it _seriously_. Many countries around the world have learned how to say the word "right", far fewer have actually discovered how to follow up on it.)

[1] [http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution....](http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html) \- in fact this entire document is a steaming pile of bullshit rights that don't actually exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why can't cats be persons? They certainly have personalities. And they can recognise themselves in mirrors; at least, my cat reacts differently to seeing himself than he would do to another cat.

They are also a lot cuter than dolphins.

<comment><USER12> Why not? We've tried to abuse test like IQ and apply them to dolphins and apes and such. Dogs and cats also seem to have a measurable IQ and they certainly have personalities and emotions. And outside of a few notable areas, eating any of these animals is generally considered taboo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Finding about dolphins not mentioned in article:

Dolphins have names in dolphin speech. Sequence of sounds unique for each dolphin by uttering which other dolphins that know him might call him.

</comment><comment><USER11> Personally I think it would be great if humans started treating other humans categorically in an ethical way.

That's a ways off I'm afraid though. It's important to see that these are obviously non-related issues but I don't have much hopes for our stance towards Dolphins as long as we haven't learned to do this with each other.

<comment><USER20> To me this is quite obviously a very related issue.

As long as people refuse to recognize the moral interests of animals, it is not logically consistent for them to respect moral obligations to other humans. The moral distinction between animals and humans is a completely arbitrary prejudice and should be immediately identified as such by anybody with even a basic understanding of evolutionary biology.

Humans _are_ animals.

<comment><USER11> > Humans are animals.

I wished that was a universally accepted truth, alas that is very much not the case (not in the least in the US).

Somehow we seem to have gotten it in to our heads that we are special instead of simply evolved.

And then there are subsets of all humans that think that they in turn are even more special. Go figure...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reminders me of this time article about whales:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12whales-t.html>

An elegant piece on them.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does non-human person make them better than us?

</comment><comment><USER22> I would think Bonobos are first in line for 'non human personhood'</comment>