Swiss salary cap fails at ballot box - <AUTHOR> http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Salary_cap_fails_at_ballot_box.html?cid=37362410 <comment><USER2> Ben & Jerry's used to have a company policy that limited the pay of top employees to 5x an entry level employee. Of course it was dumb-foundingly stupid and they ultimately had to drop it when they were unable to find a CEO capable of managing a $75 million dollar company for $88,000 a year. The company suffered from mind-boggling mismanagement as some positions remained unfilled for years and were then often filled with grossly incompetent hires who were willing to work for such pay.

We no longer live in a manufacturing economy. In service industries the value of an employee is almost entirely reflective of their responsibility and/or the amount of money they bring to a company. Most of you work in software... how much more valuable is a GREAT engineer vs a mediocre engineer... or an awful engineer?

This is childish sophomoric ideological baloney based on jealousy, not on need. How many Swiss do you know that are dying of starvation or lack of health care? The world bank says the average income in sub Saharan Africa is a little over $1,300 a year. Maybe we should tie all out incomes to a maximum of 12x THAT number. Would that make the world more fair? Would that actually help anyone in Africa? Would it help economic development or encourage more people to start businesses?

It is hard to see this stupid legislation as anything more that rich people in rich countries bitching that someone's Bentley is bigger than their Mercedes.

<comment><USER3> how about we let the citizenry do whatever we want and force the politicians to take a net salary that is 12x the sub-saharan africa value?

<comment><USER4> Because then politicians would be considerably more likely to accept bribes, and only the uber rich, upper class, indenpendently wealthy people would be able to be politicians.

The UK used to not pay MPs. In the 19th century there were working class movements for politicians to be paid ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartists) ), so that working class people would be able to stand in parliament.,

<comment><USER3> _Because then politicians would be considerably more likely to accept bribes, and only the uber rich, upper class, indenpendently wealthy people would be able to be politicians._

But that happens anyway. Look at the "socialist" president of France. Four houses (three holiday homes on the riviera), millions of euro personal wealth...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> > The aim was to reduce the salary gap to a 1:12 ratio – in other words to limit the salaries of top executives based on the annual minimum wage of the lowest paid employee within the same company._

I don't know how the law works in Switzerland, but as a hypothetical top-exec in an American company I can think of a way to screw over the little guy. I would not hire anyone below a certain salary range. I'd have those jobs filled with contractors; technically not employees. Thus defeating this law. And as an added bonus I suddenly don't owe a bunch of people health-care benefits either.

<comment><USER6> Actually if you have "single client" contractors a lot of labor laws will grandfather those employees as "real" employees, and you'll have a lot of back taxes and they'll end up in your employee register.

It's exactly to avoid this sort of exploitation. A lot of people don't seem to know about labor protections, unfortunately employees are just as misinformed of their rights as business owners are.

<comment><USER7> Require in the contract that you are not their only client, but lawyer it well. "We only work with contractors with a diverse set of clients as we believe that diversity promotes excellence."

Create buffer companies for those contractors to also work for indirectly for you if necessary. You might still have to pay some taxes, but you won't have the same problem as the Swiss salary cap is trying to prevent if it were implemented.

There will always be ways to exploit systems. You see it as exploitation, but those running the companies see it as necessary to compete.

<comment><USER6> all those extra layers are going to end up making it _more_ costly in some cases.

Also, parts of contracts can be invalidated. Just because you put something like that in the contract doesn't mean you're not violating labor laws.

Some jobs make more sense to be outsourced, in which case contractors will usually already exist and offer "reasonable" prices that will be cheaper than having a full-time employee around.

Other times it doesn't make sense, but employers will try and convince employees to become contractors, so that a lot of employee taxes end up coming out of the employee's side of things. Of course, the employee thinks that this is necessary to keep their job. The construction and taxi industries are very bad at this. It's exploitation, plain and simple.

<comment><USER7> I agree that min/maxing is easily exploitation, but it's also what those companies see as necessary to compete, and it is what high relative fitness companies do to not fail. One company gets a competitive advantage from doing perfectly legal activities which can allow them to edge out their competition from the market. See: Walmart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's fairly ignorant to think it's impossible for one employee to be worth more than 12 of another. For example, I imagine Drummond (Google's CLO) provides far more than 12x the value of a new hire.

<comment><USER9> You're making a couple of assumptions:

1) The value of employees can be measured individually. Say you've got 100 assembly line workers. What's the value of losing an assembly line worker? Almost nothing. What's the value of losing all the assembly line workers, divided by 100? Pretty big number! In the U.S. we tend to define "value generated by an employee" in terms of "marginal cost of replacing the worker" but that's arbitrary.

2) That renumeration should be tied to value generated by the individual employee.

<comment><USER10> 2) You're saying remove the supply of part of the equation? By this logic my iphone should cost $100,000 because it generated that much value for me. Or I should've paid my accountant closer to 50k instead of the 1k I paid him because that's how much the penalties would've been.

<comment><USER9> I'm saying that its an arbitrary choice for a society to allow companies to base compensation on supply and demand. As soon as you institute law to keep laborers from occupying factories and taking them over, everything subsequent is arbitrary and can be chosen to achieve whatever social goals you want. Supply and demand is not some law of nature. Its a phenomenon that emerges in particular legal regimes.

<comment><USER2> Supply and demand is a economic model that exists in ALL economies that have finite resources and free exchange. The only ways to overcome supply and demand in the long run (as even the law of gravity can be overcome in the short run), is to either limit free exchange by force or have access to unlimited resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The more interesting referendum that is still pending in Switzerland is the guaranteed monthly income referendum. There is another pending referendum, as yet unscheduled for vote, about paying every Swiss citizen a guaranteed monthly income of 2500 CHF (~$2755).

The guaranteed monthly income has long been a proposal for getting rid of a whole host of complicated welfare schemes, which sometimes have perverse incentives that prevent you from getting back to work as they go away if start earning money. The idea is simple; just give everyone a certain basic amount of money, no matter how poor or wealthy.

It would be quite a bold move if Switzerland actually implemented it. I have my reservations, but traditional need-based welfare has so many problems, it would be interesting to see if such a dramatic change would actually work.

<comment><USER12> I can tell you this will get like 80% no votes. We voted two years ago if we want 6 weeks of vacations instead of 4 resulting in 66% no votes. Swiss people like to work. We are raised with the believe that work is our strongest asset.

I talked to a lot of people about this topic. It's hard even to find one who might consider it even remotely.

<comment><USER13> This seems orthogonal to how much the Swiss like to work once you consider it as a more efficient replacement for existing benefit systems, rather than adding a new benefit.

I guess electorates are bad at understanding opportunity costs though, so they might vote for a more expensive version of something they don't like, to prevent appearing to support the less expensive version of that thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> American here, watching from afar. I personally do not mind the socialist overtones of the measure. I think a big problem was that it aimed for an unrealistic ratio (1:12). A ratio that was closer to existing practice might have been more tactically effective. If at first you fail, try, try again (somewhere else)!

What I really like about the 1:12 idea is that a more practicable version of it would put in place an incentive for self-interested and self-serving execs and board members to look after the wellbeing of employees in a more substantial way than the "career advancement" programs and similar palliatives that are currently fashionable. At the moment there are few real incentives in place for companies to look after employees, and this feeds into the ghastly and unseemly wage inequality that we're seeing.

Obviously there would be an ongoing game of closing loopholes, but that's always been the case with things like taxes, so the difficulty of implementing something like this is not a showstopper in my mind. The worries about talented execs leaving in droves seem to me to be speculative; if anything, I wonder whether companies might benefit from the flight of execs who are there primarily for the extremely generous compensation.

<comment><USER15> Probably should've been more like 1:20 or 1:30.

<comment><AUTHOR> "in real life", it would have been closer to 1:21 actually due to the bill's proposed salary span calculations:

\- calculated based on hourly rate instead of monthly salary

\- bottom is defined as the top hourly wage of the bottom 10% wages (1:12 => ~1:14)

\- bottom wages: 40hrs/week vs top wages: 60hrs/week (~1:14 => ~1:21)

one pro-bill study therefore calculated only 2500 persons would be affected; their cut salaries would be almost entirely spent on new jobs; only minor insurance/tax losses ; and no company would leave Switzerland - all of which was wishful thinking at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV "The aim was to reduce the salary gap to a 1:12 ratio – in other words to limit the salaries of top executives based on the annual minimum wage of the lowest paid employee within the same company."

Can't you get around that by having a company owning smaller companies? Kind of like a corporate franchise.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure smart people could've come up with hundreds of ways to get around this new law if it would've been accepted. It would've probably turned into a cat-and-mouse game where the lawmakers would have to keep catching up to new loop holes found by corporations. This is most likely the reason this initiative failed. Most of the people I talked to here in Switzerland that voted against it said they like the idea in theory but it would be pointless to commission the government with trying to limit salaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Let's say that this passed and became law. With this law in effect, why would I want to work as an executive in Switzerland when I can get much better pay elsewhere?

<comment><USER14> Because you like living in Switzerland, you love what you do, you make generous compensation and you add value to the company. Quite simple, actually.

<comment><USER18> Right-o. So we're mostly Americans here, at least more so than we are Swiss: let me use American figures.

Assume minimum wage of $7.25/hr, equivalent full-time salary of $14,500/yr. You're the CEO of a firm doing labor-intensive business, with a large number of minimum-wage employees and low-ish profit margins (they tend to go together) so that raising wages would mean swift bankruptcy. Your maximum salary is now $174,000. Which is not a bad rate of pay, but it's not a _really really good_ rate of pay. Heck, I've made that much before (2010, when the market un-crashed and my stock options were actually worth money).

You used to make more, so you own your little chalet, and you've got a nest egg of $4.5 million. You make about $175k/yr off the stock market alone.

You love what you do... but do you love it more than a full-time job skiing in the Swiss Alps and living off savings?

<comment><USER19> While Switzerland doesn't have a hard minimum wage, the reasonable minimum is around triple your figure or CHF 20 ($21) per hour.

Lidl (a chain of deep-discount stores) recently ran a campaign touting their new minimum of CHF 4'000 per month. Some smaller businesses are a bit below that, but you'd be hard pressed to find a position below CHF 3'500.

At half a million per year, I'm confident I could make ends meet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm from switzerland. We voted yes this year on the "restrictions on fat cat salaries" [1]. And this was a try to hop on the train on people's currently antipathy regarding some top executives in our country. But there are like a dozen ways to get around this. Fortunately we voted no (my opinion).

[1] [http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Voters_accept_restric...](http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Voters_accept_restrictions_on_fat_cat_salaries.html?cid=35127030)

<comment><USER20> Foreigner living in Switzerland, the fact that it seems to easy to get around was what was bugging me most.

Do you have pointers to arguments pro and cons used during the campaign (in particular why having the execs paid by a different company wouldn't work, and how stock compensation was supposed to work in this scheme)? (in german, english or french)

<comment><USER12> It's pretty easy to search for these arguments?

"in particular why having the execs paid by a different company wouldn't work" this would work. you could just launch a new company with only the ones earning the top salaries. Some say even a holding would suffice. But it looks like this was covered.

Btw: my favourite poster during the campaign.. always got hungry :D [http://www.handelsblatt.com/images/1-12-initiatve-in-der- sch...](http://www.handelsblatt.com/images/1-12-initiatve-in-der- schweiz/9114614/3-format3.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who actually agrees with this law? In fact I'd go even lower to a 1:5 or 1:3 salary ratio. This way all employees become independent contractors who can set their own hours, they become emancipated from the corporate ladder, they're forced to develop entrepreneurial experience, network, form micro-companies that can work for multiple companies and develop enhanced specialities, have low level workers become CEOs by virtue of necessity, have less job security leading to increased competition and quality among all levels of workers preventing the big company style slide into mediocrity etc, etc.

Sounds like a much better system to me.

Edit: The analogy I see is like changing from owning your own servers to moving to a cloud/aws-like pay for use model. This sort of change reduces risk and unlocks innovation.

<comment><USER21> Of course it's a wonderful idea, and it would be even better if it applied to contractors. I don't get the HN mindset of "He totally deserves billions of dollars, he threw together a few photo filters and created Instagram! Those poor kids can rot!"

<comment><USER22> I don't get the statist idea that it's any of your damn business to decide who does and doesn't "deserve" a particular amount of money. Given that free markets have lead to prosperity for average people on a scale that would've been unimaginable a few short centuries ago, while people living in socialist utopias like Cuba and North Korea continue to live in extreme poverty, those who support redistributionist schemes like this are clearly the ones who want to see poor kids rot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This kind of law just invites hacks to work around it. It might sound nice on paper but it will never ever work.

I actually agree with the spirit of it, but rather than provide a hard cap, I think it'd make more sense to offer incentives instead.

I don't know exactly what the right incentive would be, but off the top of my head I think you could offer tax breaks to companies that have lower salary deltas, or allow executives to make as much money as they want but incentivise investing that money in local swiss ventures.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it should have failed. There are too many ways to get around this law by just outsourcing labor, creating subsidiaries, issuing dividends, etc. I think the better approach is marginal tax rates.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe the inverse (or is it reverse?) is better, the lowest salary can't get below 1/12th of the top salary?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm yet to see the day when a proposal that puts the rich at a disadvantage gets passed.

</comment><comment><USER27> _Our fight will continue against fat cat salaries_

Yeah, that explains it all.

<comment><USER28> Precisely. It seems it was more motivated by jealousy than any realistic possibility of changing anything.

Instead of attempting to attack a _symptom_ of the growing gap between super rich and the rest of us, they should be looking at underlying causes. Hint: regulatory capture and central banking.

<comment><USER9> It's utterly unsubstantiated handwaving to assume that income disparity results from regulatory capture or central banking.

The basic mechanics of capitalist societies result in winner take all systems in which having more money makes it easier to earn money. Divergence is mathematically assured.

<comment><USER29> You really can't claim that anything is mathematically assured without providing formal proofs. Care to share them?

<comment><USER30> It's intuitively obvious. Capital earns returns, generates more capital. If you think of it as a distributed systems problem, it's obvious how it converges.

<comment><USER29> Right. I don't believe in using intuition to reason about complex social systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone who actually thinks this is a good idea should read Thomas Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice ([http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas- Sowell/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas- Sowell/dp/0684864630)), and everything else Sowell wrote, and Hayek and von Mises, and Friedman and all the other economists who've long since debunked this kind of idiocy . . .</comment>


Wind map data visualization - <AUTHOR> http://hint.fm/wind/index.html

<comment><USER2> This is a report from ~2 weeks ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3767889></comment>


Zlib.js: zlib, deflate, inflate, zip library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/imaya/zlib.js

<comment><USER2> Any idea how it compares to [http://gildas- lormeau.github.io/zip.js/](http://gildas-lormeau.github.io/zip.js/) ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, can someone give useful ways this might be used in a browser?

<comment><USER4> How about [https://github.com/creationix/js- git](https://github.com/creationix/js-git) ?</comment></comment>


Thunderstorms Observed Triggering Nuclear Reactions in the Sky - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/thunderstorms-observed-triggering-nuclear-reactions-in-the-sky-lightning-gamma <comment><USER2> This seems to be reversable, nuclear reactions causing lightings.

[http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/11/15/how-to-make-an- ato...](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/11/15/how-to-make-an-atomic- thunderstorm/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_nuclear_explosio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_nuclear_explosion)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not very keen on these things, but I do understand some of nuclear physics and the reactions thereof.

Maybe I'm in over my head, but how come satellites made for detecting radiation or nuclear explosions didn't pick up on any of this before?

If not, is it possible that satellites could detect this and produce more data for everyone on these lightning gamma ray flashes?

<comment><USER4> I seem to remember from the Las Vegas Atomic Museum that lightning would indeed trigger false positives in early gamma ray detecting satellites.

Edit: The article does note that it was picked up by satellites before but there's conclusive evidence now.

<comment><USER5> So were those false positives in fact real signal? It wouldn't be the first time that 'noise' turned out to be signal.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the intent was to monitor Russian nuclear testing, not just measure gamma radiation in general.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to find the users for a goal-intelligence application - <AUTHOR> There's a (likely non-profitable) application I'd like to build based on providing people with information about their goals.<p>While its a pretty generalized need, I feel like there's a definite particular demographic that would enjoy using the application - People who are pro-technology, infovores, 'self-improvement' minded, people into self-directed education etc. I'm just not sure where to find those people. <comment><USER2> LinkedIn is a great resource for connecting with people. You could probably make some inference based on where they went to school, Coursera courses they posted, certificates they took, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you'd like to build it, build it, it will be easier for people to self- identify as finding it useful.

Good luck.</comment>


Cloud Design Patterns - <AUTHOR> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn600223.aspx <comment><USER2> Cache-Aside is an Antipattern. It forces you to define your caching logic at the application layer, and suddenly the app must care about--and actually implement--your caching strategy. This is very difficult to scale correctly and is a common source of stale data and race conditions.

Better to treat caching as part of your overall database infrastructure. If caching "hot" data is really important for your app, make sure your data layer supports read-through and write-through caching. Or use the "CQRS" Pattern and read from a different source than your writes (allowing your writes to transparently apply whatever underlying caching strategy you need to support the reads).

The MSDN article on CQRS actually has some good advice on combining it with Materialized Views and handling consistency issues. Worth reading if you're interested in solving your caching problems.

<comment><USER3> i just finished implementing a similar pattern: atomic-cache (cache+eventually consistent modifications) and while it's debatable whether the pattern belongs in your "database" layer or "app" layer, you certainly do need this pattern somewhere.

For me, my orm layer is in my app, and my database is just google datastore. I have ideas for eventually writing a db caching layer as you suggest but it's rather a lot more complexity beyond the "get it working and move on" principle.

<comment><USER4> Are you using something like Objectify with the google datastore?

<comment><USER3> no, just the gcloud-node (npm) module and a home-rolled orm.

objectify looks interesting! but I'm a nodejs user, not java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What CQRS, an index table or simply "retry" (is this even a "pattern"?) has to do with "the cloud"?

Don't get me wrong, I think is a lovely page (bookmarked), but I fail to see how those techniques are necessarily tied to the cloud.

One thing is to put our services in the cloud, another is to put our concepts in it.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily cloud, but a lot of these patterns have to do with asynchronous distributed systems design (for example leader election, all the queueing patterns, sharding, circuit-breaker). CQRS is part of that (eventual consistency, scalability, etc.). Distributed systems are not necessarily tied to the cloud, but it's a very good fit because of the flexibility the cloud offers.

<comment><USER5> There's a lot of people out there doing distributed systems that are hosted "indoors" (Or should I say "on earth"? What's the opposite of "cloud"?). A lot.

Don't you agree that putting "cloud" on the title may be misleading?

<comment><USER7> 'What's the opposite of "cloud"'

"on-premise"

<comment><USER8> So what is an on-premise cloud?

<comment><USER9> Lol. Or "private clouds" as our CFO calls them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's going on over at microsoft? They've had a flurry of OSS announcements, a linux-for-switches fork, are posting relevant tech articles etc. This isn't the same microsoft I know. Is there some sort of change in the direction of leadership? I haven't seen any articles about changes in strategy in these directions but am seeing a lot of activity.

<comment><USER11> Satya is what happened. Microsoft finally has a CEO that gets it.

<comment><USER12> Most of these changes would have had to have gotten started under Balmer. Nadella has only been at the helm for two years. If anything, Nadella has been doubling down on a plan Balmer put into motion.

<comment><USER13> Not quite true, Satya led cloud and enterprise org. before stepping into CEO. Many of the initiatives at Azure started with direct involvement from Satya. He also pushed for open Microsoft long before becoming a CEO, its just that now he is the CEO, he can make it happen.

<comment><USER12> But MS has been open sourcing more than just the cloud stuff for longer than just the last two years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting read. Although, I wasn't a fan of the banner asking for feedback at the bottom. I immediately clicked no without reading what it was (It was something to the extent of 'Is this page helpful?') Although, after dismissing it I wanted to say Yes but after submit I can't change my opinion.

<comment><USER6> Same here, I did the same. Also: for me all MSDN pages became reeeeaaaally slow ever since I installed Ghostery. I just see a blank page for like 5 seconds before I can see the content. More people with this problem?

<comment><USER15> [Full disclosure, I work at Microsoft] @an4rchy, I think if you open the page in private mode it will most likely ask you again. If that does not work, feel free to contact me and I can pass on your comments (my email is my HN alias + microsoft.com).

@Avalaxy, it would be great when you click Yes or No, that you also try to add a comment about your issue or why you liked the page. I can not speak for every group, but most groups I know of review the voting and comments for all of their pages really carefully. For example, my team has a weekly discussion on this and what we plan to do to improve the pages. If a page gets a negative vote along with a comment why it poor, it is much easier to improve the page, however, if it simply has a negative vote we have to make guesses as to why it was poor.

<comment><USER6> I get that, but the point is that I accidentally clicked No because instinctively I thought that was the way to dismiss the bar (in my mind it was something like: do you want to provide feedback yes/no, to which I clicked no). Only after clicking I realized my error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Microsoft contributing to OSS is too much like a US Federal Tax return for my taste.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, don't bother collecting tax returns.

(Actually, there's several hundred million in unclaimed returns from 2012 that are about to expire.)</comment></comment>


The Mindful Commute - <AUTHOR> http://mindfulcommute.org <comment><USER2> I think this is true about more than just commutes. Aside from Instagram and this place, social media just makes me disgusted by my friends and the media. What's the point of something that worsens relationships, which are the only thing that matters? Maybe this election made me realize how angry and unfocused it all makes me feel, but either way I've blocked those sites with an extension.

I feel much calmer now, and I'm pretty sure I'm more productive. I also feel like I have more energy for things that matter, like going to the gym frequently. I think "the feed" of social media is exhausting and unending, and feels very unhealthy.</comment>


Logging to Logstash JSON Format in Nginx - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pkhamre.com/2012/08/23/logging-to-logstash-json-format-in-nginx/

<comment><USER2> So if I set my user-agent to "}, what would Logstash do?

If there's no explicit JSON support when coercing user data into JSON, be very careful that you don't produce something that looks like JSON but isn't.

Or in other words: In this specific case I'd recommend just emitting normal combined log format because there's already support for that in logstash and that support is explicitly made to be tolerant of dirty data, whereas I would suppose their JSON support isn't (either it's JSON or it's not, but who knows in what strange ways a webserver could encode their access log)</comment>


Turning Coal into Bitcoin? The Dirty Secret of 2017's Hottest Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-15/turning-coal-into-bitcoin-dirty-secret-of-2017-s-hottest-market <comment><USER2> The title of this article is terrible. They are making it seem like the Chinese mining farms are contributing to the bitcoin price. This is completely false AFAIK. There is no link with mining and the price of bitcoin.</comment>


The KH-11 (aka Keyhole) is dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/08/ula-delta-iv-h-launch-nrol-65/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the Wired story this morning:

"Clapper briefly notes some programs the intelligence agencies are closing or scaling back, as well as those they're pouring additional funds into. Overhead imagery captured by spy satellites was slated for reduction, for example, while SIGINT, the electronic spying that's been the focus of the Snowden leaks, got a fresh infusion."

</comment><comment><USER2> There may not be any more DIV-heavies launching from vandenburg, but the F9 is scheduled to start from vandenburg next month, and there may be F9-heavies launching, eventually, as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess other than a few targets like watching North Korean nukes, most general 'war-on-terror' type requirements have scaled back the role of satellite intelligence in favor of drones.

Interesting reading todays leaks to see the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Program [1] is just under the equivalent of one NASA [2] :

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/national/black-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/national/black-budget/)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA)

Can we swap them for a link to google maps and doubling of the NASA budget :-)

<comment><USER4> The NRO and the NGA programs are going to be on a need to know basis, aren't they? That is, knowledge about what's going on is compartmentalized. This adds to the cost. I recall reading a reference (which I can't find now) that claimed a Top Secret program was 20% more costly than an open program. I remember feeling surprised, because my personal estimate was about double for anything Secret.

We can double NASA's budget, can NRO and NGA, and still come out ahead financially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bummed I missed it. We can usually see the contrails from Vandenberg launches. The Delta4 Heavy is something of a beast as I understand it, an engineer that works for ULA described it once as 5 rockets flying in a very tight formation :-) Perhaps we'll see some SpaceX use of Vandenberg which would be fun, then perhaps I'd get enough notice to drive down and watch the launch.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dead? From the article it looks like the launch was successful?</comment>


We don't allow users to pick password. We generate it and store it in plaintext - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ppentestlabs/status/1202906268991664128 <comment><USER2> While this post might be trolling, I don't actually see many issues with this scheme.

The weaknesses are that a password, once leaked, can't be changed. And sending it over email pretty much constitutes a leak.

But on balance, password reuse is such a large problem that I suspect this scheme will end up with fewer account compromises per year than a service using regular password hashing without 2fa.

<comment><USER3> What most sites call a "password" is really just a cached email challenge. Tweak this so it generates a new token on every challenge, and it's actually pretty slick. If the service is compromised such that the userdb is copied, they can just wipe the whole cache.

The biggest sin here is inventing a new method, requiring actual analysis of its properties. The indignation from the cargo cult is a bonus though. Most of the upset is probably from people being prevented from setting their password to the same one they use on every other site.

<comment><USER4> Medium already got rid of passwords and uses email tokens for all logins. It's really annoying as an end user, but it does work. Assuming they're not a troll, I think their sin is trying to reinvent a method that already existed, and reinventing it poorly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sending the password over email still doesn't make any sense. It should still work like every other password reset scheme. You click on a verification link sent over email and then you can enter a new password on a https secured site (or it will be randomly generated).

Whether the password is generated or user created doesn't matter. All the old password handling rules still apply. Don't store passwords in plain text. Don't send them over insecure channels. Always offer an option to reset passwords instead of showing the stored password to the user.

The explanation against securing the passwords in the database is also completely illogical.

>If a hacker was able to get into the system then that would mean he might have other things to look at then decrypt or recover a string that we generated when you signed up

If I were a hacker and I could covertly just dump your user/password table then I wouldn't even bother writing a single update query. I would just sell the accounts for $10 each. It would be very difficult to notice the data breach. Who is going to reset e.g. 10 million user passwords just because 10000 were compromised without any evidence that it wasn't user error?

<comment> j-pb So you put the accounts up for sale, and then what?

Who would buy access to somebody elses infosec homework. Because that's what this site is.

They're essentially playing a low stakes game with low effort.

And I give them big KUDOS for that, cause the average web dev joe would follow all the "best pratices" store user passwords and billing info, hashed, salted, cursed, put in stakes that were never needed & get hacked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was three tweets in before I realized what their username was.

I don't care if these tweets are real or just someone trolling. This is true art.

<comment><USER6> Definitely trolling, but there is someone out there reading this and saying "hmmm, this makes sense"

<comment> j-pb Is it tho? Show me the attack vector that makes this model dangerous. Not inconvenient because somebody else messed with your highscore or marked some of their tutorial videos as watched. But "oof I have to call my bank", "I have to tell people that wasn't me", "let me make a photocopy of my id so that I can proof its me" dangerous.

<comment><USER4> The only reason it's less dangerous is their service isn't protecting or offering anything of value.

If they had no password at all, and anyone could log into anyone's account with just a username, you could still make the claim that their threat model was only, "that's inconvenient, someone messed with my account." Heck, if every third time you tried to log in, you were automatically logged in under another person's account, you could still make the argument that their threat model was low.

But that wouldn't mean their security policy was good.

Their decision not to store much data has nothing to do with the terrible way they are storing and managing the data that they do collect. They're arguing that hashing passwords would require them to store more sensitive information. That's like arguing, "I can't lock my door, because then I would need to put more valuables in my house." The two decisions aren't related.

<comment> j-pb Yeah exactly, but for this particular usecase the "token based login" seems to be the best tradeoff between complexity and requirements.

They seem to have put the effort elsewhere, e.g. keeping their system devoid of billing and credit card info. Something a lot of shops that salt and do multi round scrypt hashing probably don't, because even though they do follow best practices, they don't actually think about security.

Would I have built it with hashing and automatic keygen on reset? sure! But this thing seems good enough tm.

Security isn't something where one solution fits all, otherwise everything thats low stakes like this (homework, guitar notes collection, my dogs homepage) gets the same security best practices as the hight stakes stuff (medical, financial, social).

I'd rather have this hacked together in php, but my bank run idris code, and my kitchen robot run haskell, than everything using node with scrypt hashed JWT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Clever marketing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems legit.</comment>


World's most frequent flyer has an insane weekly itinerary - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/07/27/worlds-most-frequent-flyer-has-an-insane-weekly-itinerary/ <comment><USER2> For a 3-year period (2009-2011) I held the highest status on American Airlines. It was wonderful to get the upgrades and the recognition and I gave back by booking trips for friends and family using my miles. But then, I met someone wonderful who made me want to stick around home more often...

</comment><comment><USER3> The last quote about home being his favorite place to go was sweet.</comment>


Learning JavaScript in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://spotofdata.com/frontend-in-2018/ <comment><USER2> I can't help but feel bad for folks who are coming to front-end dev now. with such a massive (and rapidly changing) list of "you should learn..." subjects, I think the biggest challenge is keeping focus on the most fundamental things.

I've interviewed so many junior and mid-level candidates who will opine at length about react vs. angular or why redux is the one true way to manage state, but who don't know about `setTimeout` or other fundamental language features. that kind of spotty, "just throw it together" knowledge may be enough to land a job somewhere, but it certainly isn't enough to solve anything beyond factory-floor, Lego-like app delivery.

I wish I knew the solution, because the problem only seems to be getting worse despite my thinking that "peak framework" is just around the corner in the js community.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I can relate to this on other domains. But maybe in some cases Lego- like app delivery is enough? In my case I really mostly want to do simple static sites now (and build up experience to make more complex apps soon), the reusable components of React and the static site generation means one can work with a limited subset of JS and do _something_. Not aiming to be a specialised Frontend dev.

It's hard to do a compromise when needing to know other parts of the stack (backend, DS, devops). Perhaps in several scenarios one can be happy with some Lego-like apps (pareto rule) and hire specialised frontend devs when needed?</comment></comment>


App yourself - build publish & share - <AUTHOR>

bit.ly/mmYstA <comment><USER2> FYI -- many folks here, me included, won't follow a shortened link.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can give it a try @ bit.ly/mmYstA

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> or @ www.yabb.me</comment>


Votes could be counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers - <AUTHOR> http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-1/ <comment><USER2> This is why we absolutely do not need electronic voting (or electronic vote counting) in any way.

Paper voting (with polling locations distributed to balance load) with hand counting and verifiable addition operations to get the final vote counts is what is needed.

Having voted in person at town hall, and then having helped count the votes, I know that it is doable - just like any other laborious task is doable with enough people involved. Electronic voting just doesn't buy you anything more than risk - all at the cost of verifiability.

The other advantage to hand counting with a neighbor nearby is that there is a strong penalty for manipulating the election - your neighbor will notice. These machines make it _way_ too easy to manipulate elections at mass scale without detection.

<comment><USER3> And yet we trust software to do things like run our credit card transactions and withdraw money from our bank accounts.

The resistance [from several in the industry not just your comment] to making voting happen via software really concerns me.

<comment><USER4> That's significantly less important than voting. And the incentives are properly aligned: the bank is responsible for making its systems secure, and if they lose your money they have to refund it. Voting? Not so much. Lost ballots? "Woops :) sorry."

If the voting machine vendor executives faced actual personal serious jail time for botched counts, I might be more inclined to trust it. Then again, I bet you a tenner they'd suddenly have a lot more fail safes in place.

Aligned incentives is absolutely, 100% required for anything to work in our society. It's what we're built on. Otherwise you will always be swimming upstream.

<comment><USER5> _> Aligned incentives is absolutely, 100% required for anything to work in our society. It's what we're built on._

I wish more people understood this simple fact of human psychology. It's astonishing how often people will support some system that incentivizes bad behavior, and then act surprised when people behave badly.

What's more, when faced with this situation, these same people will resort to shaming the bad actors rather than fixing the broken system.

<comment><USER6> Aligning incentives properly is _hard_. I think a good example is about how to best incentivise General Practice medical care centres (UK NHS system). Patients seen? Patients in catchment area? Mortality/Morbidity rates? Patient outcomes (how you measure these is a rabbit hole of perverse incentives)...

Each and every idea has a logical optimum strategy for the trust to maximise income, and all of them aren't quite what you're trying to achieve. So you really want to blend some of these (and others) together in just the right mix, but without creating hundreds of hours of admin just to support the metrics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There have been many statistical analysis pointing out to potential election fraud due to the electronic counting of the votes. For those who missed it, here is a comprehensive report on potential election fraud during recent Democratic primaries: [http://www.election-justice- usa.org/Democracy_Lost_Update1_E...](http://www.election-justice- usa.org/Democracy_Lost_Update1_EJUSA.pdf)

The last part is related to the electronic counting of the votes. Here what Fritz Scheuren, the 100th President of the American Statistical Association, had to say on the Democratic primaries "as a statistician, I find the results of the 2016 primary voting unusual. In fact, I found the patterns unexpected [and even] suspicious. There is a greater degree of smoothness in the outcomes than the roughness that is typical in raw/real data […] the difference between the reported totals, and our best estimate of the actual vote, varies considerably from state to state. However these differences are significant—sometimes more than 10%—and could change the outcome of the election"

</comment><comment><USER8> The CEO of Diebold Election Systems in 2004, where GEMS came from, was Walden O'Dell, who was also a fund-raiser for the Bush campaign at the time.[1] "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" wrote Mr. O'Dell.[2] He resigned in 2005 after being indicted for securities law violations.

That's probably when this feature went in.

[1] [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Diebold_Election_System...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Diebold_Election_Systems) [2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/machine- politics-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/machine-politics-in- the-digital-age.html)

<comment><USER9> In part two it's claimed the feature was added on 6/27 2001.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's sad that elections, one of the most important things we have here in America are ran on closed sourced copyrighted systems owned by corporations. They say it's rigged, I would hope it's not but really who knows if they don't have access to the code?

<comment><USER11> I think it would be nice to have the source code open for review. However, that doesn't solve the problem. It's very difficult (impossible?) to guarantee the reviewed software is what's actually running on the machines, not to mention how does one validate the compilation, the OS, the firmware, the hardware—you get the picture. And the voting machine itself is only one part of the whole voting system.

It sounds like this is something you're interested in. I encourage you to take a look at what's being done. I've shared a couple of links elsewhere in this thread, which if nothing else can provide a starting point.

<comment><USER10> Yeah good point. Hashing the binary wouldn't really help because they could modify the GUI to report the wrong hash and most people who aren't computer people wouldn't really get what it means anyways.

I been thinking a blockchain based system would be interesting, but it'd have to be really easy to use for everyone. People who have no computer or phone all the way to the computer expert.

<comment><USER11> I think blockchain might have some application, but I'm unconvinced that computer technology alone is going to solve it. Have a look at this slide deck from Ron Rivest (of RSA fame).

[https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf)

I think he does a pretty good job of covering the history of modern voting and how technology can be properly applied.

You might find this Google Tech Talk by Ben Adida "Verifying Elections with Cryptography" interesting as well:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The entire argument is DOUBLE instead of INT [http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction- magic-3/](http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-3/) within some Access database.

<comment><USER13> Access has a signed 32-bit long integer type, so it is odd to see a double used here. Still a hell of a lot of stew from one oyster.

<comment><USER11> I've seen all kinds of data type mismatches in databases. Unfortunately, I don't find this all that surprising.

<comment><USER14> "Harris found the "DOUBLE" setting in all GEMS databases from all states for version 1.18 forward. Looking at older GEMS databases, version 1.17 and before, votes were instead configured as whole numbers (LONG INTEGER)."

On top of that, they claim that there's also specific functionality to deal with rounding in the output results - why would anyone do it if they honestly thought that votes are always integer. In fact, they even present an email discussing the implementation of this, so it wasn't exactly under the radar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm deeply unconvinced by TFA (and the rest of the series). There are insufficient technical details (and those that are there are taken way out of context) to judge whether a) the author's conjecture is reasonable, and b) the author actually has sufficient understanding of such details to make their claims credible.

There's stuff like 'some code I found an FTP server one time' which add considerable amounts of doubt and ambiguity.

That said, such objections merely highlight the root cause of the problem - the software and process is not auditable. If it was I could just go and check for myself. Without that access neither I nor anyone else can verify the claims, nor the counter claims that everything is legit (though see also Thompson hack, reproducible builds, etc)

I'm not a 'closed source = evil' kind of a person but here it seems like an absolute no brainier.

</comment><comment><USER16> I read part 1,2,3,4 and found multiple issues with this article. In part 2 they show results for alaska with fractional numbers. What isn't clear is that it's actually results from part 4 where they edited the access DB to change the numbers to match set percentages they wanted.

Second reading those emails in part 2 it seems they are discussing that the per candidate numbers in weighted elections (when the machines are used for those) then adding them they show totals with one less digit. But that only matters if they have fractional parts which they haven't shown to have happened in a real election.

There doesn't seem to be any proof of actual fraud here. Just a bunch of suppositions.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure that storing ints would be more resistant to fraud than storing as doubles. You could easily manipulate the vote by randomly switching X% of votes like so:

        if wrongVote && rand() < X:

            FlipVote()

This would have the same effect as fractional voting, even if you store as integers.

<comment><USER18> But that would be easily detected by looking at the source code or disassembly. I think the concern here is that the "weighted" election mode provides an easy way to manipulate election outcomes while providing deniability ("oh, that code is just used for weighted elections in California").

<comment><USER19> Wait, are there actual states in the US that use weighted elections? I thought the whole point of the US's system is that (ideally) every citizen has as much say as anyone else.

<comment><USER18> Apparently California has a system (Proposition 218) where local government can impose certain property taxes, but such taxes have to be approved by a 2/3 majority of property owners, and the vote is weighted by the amount of property they own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I gotta wonder: if this was really a way someone was trying to steal an election...why would they bother?

Once you have thoroughly owned the voting machine system and can set weights why not, I don't know, just ignore the counted ballots entirely and report the totals as whatever you want?

<comment><USER21> Because of the need to do it in a way that is both plausible and not readily detectable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't see what the problem is. Fractional vote transfer is a basic feature of Single Transferable Vote (STV) elections. Although there's no reason to do any counting on the voting machines themselves in that case, just recording the ballots.

<comment><USER21> The problem is when it can be enabled in elections that do not use Single Transferable Votes, and discovery can be plausibly denied as a configuration error (oops, it's still set to weighted voting from a previous election and wasn't reconfigured correctly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The paper ballots that caused the 2000 debacle really wasn't any better the problems with e-voting we have today. The problem isn't the medium of voting but who is in charge of creating and maintaining the ballots.

<comment><USER24> The paper ballots that were punch cards caused problems.

The paper ballots that were marked and optically scanned caused no problems and were easy and fast to recount.

Some counties in FL had the old punch card ballots, some had the optically scanned. All of the problems were with the punch card ballots. And with the lawyers arguing over hanging chads and other nonsense.

<comment><USER23> You're also forgetting about the butterfly ballots that confused voters because of their design. A large number of voters claimed they voted for the wrong person because of it.

> [http://andrys.com/flballot.html](http://andrys.com/flballot.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any sort of software for voting machines really _ought_ to be open-source. Anything less than complete transparency is a non-starter.

<comment><USER26> And how do you verify the machines are running that code?

And how do you know someone's just not adding to the total when it's collated?

<comment><USER27> You have redundant integrity checks involving cryptography and independent, human professionals built into the compilation/deployment/testing process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> there are cryptographic voting systems that would allow results to be verifiable and for voters to verify their vote was counted. That and FOSS voting software would probably help .

</comment><comment><USER29> On reading that headline I thought maybe someone had come up with a voting system where you could assign a portion of your vote to one candidate and a portion to the other. E.g. 60% to Clinton, 40% to Trump

<comment><USER7> If you read beyond the headline, you'll see that this is actually the conclusion of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What would be wrong with a voting machine assigning you a UUID that you can print out and verify your vote on a website where everyone else's 100 million votes are displayed?

<comment><USER31> When ballots are not secret, they can influenced by social, political, or economic actors through punishment and reward. For example, voters in many places used to face extreme peril if they voted against the candidate picked by their social group, party, or union. This peril ranged from reduced social standing, to loss of employment, and even physical violence. As such coercion is contrary to the democratic objectives of an election, secret ballots were introduced to ensure ballots represent the free will of the voters.

There are mechanisms by which one could both keep the ballot secret and allow a public tally. But to avoid hacking, like the floating-point vote-value in GEMS outlined in another story, the system does require bullet-proof crypto.

Regardless of how the ballots are counted, I do believe there should always be paper backups, scanned, and filed so that citizens can examine them digitally and in person if necessary. With that system one could spot-check any suspected irregularity. Only with such physical redundancy would I trust digital voting systems at this point.

Sometimes there's no substitute for good old dead trees.

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

 _Article 21.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "The will of the people...shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which...shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."[19]

Article 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights (the Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica) grants to every citizen of member states of the Organization of American States the right and opportunity "to vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections, which shall be by universal and equal suffrange and by secret ballot that guarantees the free expression of the will of the voters".[20]

Paragraph 7.4 of the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, obligates the member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to "ensure that votes are cast by secret ballot or by equivalent free voting procedure, and that they are counted and reported honestly with the official results made public."[21]

Article 5 of the Convention on the Standards of Democratic Elections, Electoral Rights and Freedoms in the Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States obligates electoral bodies not to perform "any action violating the principle of voter's secret will expression."[22] _

<comment><USER32> What if the UUID is secret?

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure what that would mean. How do you keep the UUID secret in a way that you can use for verification?

<comment><USER32> You send it to the person who it belongs to. Then when the want to check if their vote went through properly, they can look up the vote that corresponds to their UUID.

<comment><USER11> Okay. What prevents someone else from accessing the UUID, either before or after its sent to the person it belongs to? I could be missing something, but I think this is still vulnerable to coercion or vote selling.

<comment><USER32> How would they go about accessing it? Presumably people can protect information they deem private. Like their social security number for instance.

<comment><USER11> Threats of physical violence? Bribes? There are ways to design the system that guarantee that the voter can verify they voted but _can 't_ prove who they voted for. No need to keep the UUID secret. It's very desirable to have a system that we can trust even if conditions aren't necessarily antagonistic.

BTW, thanks for engaging in this discussion. It's important and it's helping me rethink through all of this.

<comment><USER32> Those are problems with all voting systems. In the current system someone could Threaten/Bribe you to take a selfie with your ballet after it has been filled out.

<comment><USER11> Okay. I'll grant that there are likely ways to potentially coerce or sell votes in any system. If there are straightforward, inexpensive ways to make it more difficult to do so, we should.

<comment><USER33> The private, non-electronic ballot box makes it pretty hard. That's one of the main beauties of the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is really disturbing. We need a DARPA-challenge level effort to get some better solutions designed for this.

It can't be that hard. A git repo per machine, recording an audit trail further verified by the block chain, could be the start of a solution, for example.

<comment><USER32> "A git repo per machine, recording an audit trail further verified by the block chain"

This is just a list of technologies. It's not the start of a solution, and it isn't even really clear what problem you are trying to solve.

<comment><USER33> The problem of undetected vote tampering at scale > individual voter being relatively easy -- this problem was pretty clear in the original article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm pretty sure most voter fraud/electronic count type issues can be solved with git (and/or blockchain). Anyone working on that?

<comment><USER35> Its hard to implement those without timestamps and anonymity is impossible with timestamps plus ubiquitous cameras and modern image analysis software, not to mention "the internet of things powned by foreign governments and corporations".

I'm not implying anything, but an anonymous vote for Trump was registered into the blockchain at 9:55:01 at XYZ elementary school, and at 9:55:23 a hacked gas station security camera across the street shows a dude walking out the door and into a car license plate WTF-123 that seems to be registered at the same address as drivers license number 1234-XYZ which happens to be VLM and his rather studly DL demographic data (height weight race gender) seems to match the dude in the video... Meanwhile VLMs phone, which is powned by the NSA, KGB, and god knows who else, records VLM's GPS coordinates as in the voting booth at 9:55:01 and shows him driving the car back to the coordinates of his house. And of course VLM's kids went to that elementary school when they were little. So it could just all be a coincidence, but I think I might know who VLM voted for ...

<comment><USER34> Very true, it would not make a perfectly anonymous voting system, but I think it could prevent some fraud.

You could take steps to separate the name from the vote of course. e.g. After the person confirms their identity somehow, give them a random number that only they see/have access to, associate the vote with that number.

The "repos" could be made public and you could confirm your vote afterwards. No vote could be "changed" if it was in a chain of hashes...

Your point about timestamp is true. And although I personally think we could stand to be more open about how we vote (and also more accepting of others) I agree anonymity is important.

Perhaps a system like this would be efficient enough to greatly reduce the voting time window. Make it harder to determine who voted by timestamp due to "noise". (or perhaps, can't vote unless there are 5 people present... not a perfect solution, just throwing some ideas at the wall.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > PART 1: VOTES ARE BEING COUNTED AS FRACTIONS INSTEAD OF AS WHOLE NUMBERS

Should really be

> PART 1: VOTES COULD BE COUNTED AS FRACTIONS INSTEAD OF AS WHOLE NUMBERS

Existence of the feature doesn't indicate it's use, although it is obviously worrying.

<comment><USER37> Definitely a sensationalized clickbait headline that's not backed up by the article in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> more fundamentals on the issue: [http://ithipster.com/47.html](http://ithipster.com/47.html)

<comment><USER39> That's not exactly 'more fundamentals'; it's a much shorter, less informative, and more biased piece. The linked article goes far more in-depth, is far more objective, and after reading through the first 5 articles I feel a little bit more edified about the issue.

Now I understand the core beef: that a schema change to this voting software caused all votes to be stored in their relational DB as doubles instead of ints, and a good way for observers to verify that an ordinary election isn't behaving as a weighted one behind the scenes was never added, which makes this voting system insecure and not what a reasonable person would consider "observable".

The article you linked, on the other hand, made me feel patronized, skeptical of the author's central premise, and a little bit uncomfortable.

<comment><USER38> biased which way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> They implemented the fractional voting feature just in case the United States reinstitutes the three-fifths compromise. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- Fifths_Compromise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise)

</comment><comment><USER41> > _What fractionalized votes can do:_

> _They allow "weighting" of races. Weighting a race removes the principle of > "one person-one vote" to allow some votes to be counted as less than one or > more than one._

This is extremely inflammatory language. What I think they mean is:

> _They allow "weighting" of electoral contests. Weighting an electoral > contest removes the principle of "one person-one vote" to allow some votes > to be counted as less than one or more than one._

However, what they wrote seems to heavily imply a _racial_ bias to electronic elections. Why they would choose to use such racially charged language around such a benign topic at this time seems only to drive links to their site over such a non-controversial issue.

<comment><USER11> I think they're using "race" in the contest/competition sense, aren't they? For other uses in the article:

 _" The "Summary" vote tally, which provides overall election totals for each race on Election Night"_

and

 _" Presidential race in an entire state switched in four seconds"_

Granted, they could have chosen other language that's less likely to be misconstrued. As for the choice of language, I don't think the article is all that well written (for another example, mixing "fractional" and "decimal" to mean the same thing). I don't think there was that much thought put into the language.</comment></comment>


Exploring Information Leakage in Third-Party Compute Clouds (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://hovav.net/ucsd/dist/cloudsec.pdf <comment><USER2> Interesting how they managed to get co-hosted! Almost a decade later now, the Spectre vulnerabilities make the described attacks seem quaint and theoretical. Still, I wonder whether Spectre has actually been used to successfully attack systems cross-vm at EC2. The attack is not simple after all.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the true death rate from Covid 19? - <AUTHOR> CDC says (as of now) 190,000 people dead. There are  pushbacks saying that most of the deaths are in nursing homes caused by the policy of sending sick people home. Another complicating factor is the number of people with pre-existing conditions. How does one come up with a true representative cost of the pandemic? (Maybe something that worked in the past e.g. spanish flu?) <comment><USER2> Many studies tend to find that the actual death rate hovers around 1.5x the official count. And like you say, there's significant confounding, so it would be hard to say. Further, it's clear that is can cause heart and lung problems that persist post infection. So the "true" number is somewhat uncountable, it would be the official count, times 1.5, minus relevant confounding (weighted).

An additional point to what you listed is that insurance companies get a "bonus" for a covid death, which as ridiculous as it sounds is intended to incentivize care during pandemics like this (for example of what this is intended to prevent, see spanish healthcare workers walking away from care homes).

<comment><USER3> The insurance bonus is actually intended to incentivize coverage, rather than care, and act as a stimulus to the insurance industry. I'm not endorsing that policy, just stating it as plainly as I can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > How does one come up with a true representative cost of the pandemic?

I don't think we'll ever know. It touched just about everything we do on this planet. Unprecedented effects, outcomes, and changes.

\- died from COVID directly or exasperated

\- life shortened by Covid, but most diseases have this effect as well

\- life shortened by being locked down, mental health, not exercising

\- died because they did not seem treatment / screening for other diseases (stroke, cancer)

Then there is all the economics stuff, which I'm not sure you asking about (to be part of the "cost")

</comment><comment><USER5> In the same way that people kept dying after 9/11 from all sorts of cancers from concrete dust etc, we won't know this figure for decades, certainly until all longterm complications are known.

Do you count people whose lungs are at 70% then die of respiratory complications?

<comment><USER6> Yeah we should, just like we do other diseases.

As the data comes in we can publish weighted risks.

For now, basic outcomes tell the basic story. People can weigh it from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am going by outcomes.

That is dead people/recovered people, and that number world wide is roughly 5 percent. My local numbers are higher, like almost 8 percent last I looked. Some places are lower. New Zealand is pretty much 10!

Edit: I see 4.5 percent globally now. It has approached 7 before.

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

People dividing by infections are actually getting a lower best case number. Think everyone infected not dying. Secondly, the cases in progress are not outcomes yet, so comparing them against known dead people reduces risk perception by over counting non outcomes and dividing into known outcomes.

One could get an upper bound and assume all infected will die for a similar worst case number.

People dividing by population are computing something different. Not death rate.

Some want to argue about Covid causing deaths in people with existing conditions. True, but that does not make the basic outcome equation wrong. It does speak to some people having more risk.

Some want to argue about testing. And that we don't see all recovered cases. Both of those things do vary the metric some, but as an overall risk assessment, those errors do not change things much.

Note, recovered stats are no longer widely shown in the US. I leave you to make your own conclusions.

Finally, go look at the cruise ships and their numbers. Little test beds. 5 percent is entirely plausible.

Until I see a lot more data, I am going with outcomes.

Global stats show roughly 5 percent. That's high enough to continue to be careful.

If you are sick with something else, it will be higher.

If you are old, or feeble, or have some conditions, it will be higher.

BE careful. There are dead people in my circles already.

Also, not dying could mean being impacted. I don't know what those numbers really are, but they could be 20 percent. Depends on what data. We probably don't really know.

Heart problems.

Lung problems.

Brain problems.

All are being reported.

I myself survived this thing. Was sicker than I ever want to be again. Hoping I don't have post Covid problems.

Wish I did not have to worry about it.

As the data comes in, the death rate will change, and so will the post recovery conditions numbers.

In this pandemic, basically becoming endemic, it will pay off to be conservative, IMHO.

It is novel and that means all of us want to know more than we actually do. The only real cure for that is time for the people doing the science to get it done.

Ideally, politics stays mostly out of the way. Ideally...</comment>


The Next Industrial Revolution Could Put Millions Out of Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-next-industrial-revolution/498779/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> ...and it might not auto-magically create new jobs, something which some people repeat as if it is as inevitable as a law of nature.

Also, a large part (40-50%?) of the population might not be needed, or even desired, e.g. poor and older people that put a strain in the economy, so, they might be delegated to "b class" citizen status, and might end up living in some developing world like wasteland/slums in the next 50 years or so, while another big percentage has service jobs, and a 10-20% of luckier people live in closed communities.

It's not some sci-fi fantasy, it's already in development, and even the norm in lots of parts of the world, nothing (and surely not naive techno-optimism) prevents it from coming to the West.

<comment><USER4> As of right now both views seem to just be idle speculation. I'm not an economist but every other time similar things have happened in industry the economy has balanced out. What I don't get is how what is happening now is fundamentally different to the point where the economy won't correct?

<comment><USER5> If robots and AI are eliminating an entire sector (starting with driving for instance), what other manual or low skill jobs are there _that aren 't already targeted for AI replacement?_ We don't need 2m more car mechanics or farm workers. This time it seem likely a certain class of job is going away.

Half the population is below average intelligence, and perhaps 25% (total guess) might be best suited to a manual or semi-skilled role. What are we going to do with them?

When similar things have happened previously, the once semi-skilled (eg) shipbuilder becomes a low wage driver or call centre worker. Many in an area didn't get those few roles, so became unemployed (and often depressed) for the rest of their careers. Some steel or shipbuilding towns haven't fully recovered even today.

Longer ago the farmhand could get any number of manual roles in the growing industries. Blacksmiths became car mechanics, fuel attendants and so on.

Also when it's only a number of regional cities affected, like with coal, steel or shipbuilding, it's much easier politically than when it's national.

<comment><USER6> Relatively low margin, fragmented service jobs. Waiters/waitresses, fitness instructors, barbers etc. Those jobs are often still better than the jobs being automated away (truck driving), just less economic to build such specialty robots, at least in the near term.

<comment><USER7> Except none of those types of jobs offer the stability of the original industrial jobs, and are generally geared more toward younger workers, who have longer. So it's a much worse situation for those workers as the jobs are higher risk.

If you were a 55 year old long haul trucker, you aren't going to be able to replace the income/benefits you had with a $7/hr (pre-tip) service sector job.

<comment><USER8> >$7/hr (pre-tip)

waitstaff isnt paid that much hourly. Its generally on the order of 2-3$ per hour.

edit: since im being downvoted i assume someone disagrees - here is a source:

from nolo.com:

>Employers must pay tipped employees at least $3.23 an hour in 2016, $3.38 an hour in 2017, and $3.52 an hour in 2018.

[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/michigan-laws- tipped-...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/michigan-laws-tipped- employees.html)

<comment><USER5> Confused Brit question - how? That's below min wage, which I thought was national law. I imagine it's a bit lower for youngsters.

<comment><USER8> > Under federal law and in most states, employers may pay tipped employees > less than the minimum wage, as long as employees earn enough in tips to make > up the difference. This is called a "tip credit."

Technically you can sue your employer if they wont pay you the difference if you dont end up making enough in tips to end up at or above minimum wage - <USER2> practice however, suing your employer is generally not a great way to stay employed

[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/michigan-laws- tipped-...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/michigan-laws-tipped- employees.html)

<comment><USER5> Damn, that's harsh.

Only way I know round UK min wage is to be self-employed, or one of the fake "self-employed" like some delivery drivers have had to become. Surprised the IR haven't slammed the door on that little scam yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A consequence of roboticisation is the decreasing military value of large populations. If robots can build tanks and fly planes and shoot soldiers, having more people isn't an advantage. Having more robots is.

Given how our civilisations ultimately compete through force, this raises interesting questions around optimal design. Namely, every civilisation will have to choose between subsidising their poor or quarantining them. (If we are honest, we already do this to some extent with borders and welfare and immigration controls.)

<comment><USER10> Nuclear weapons changed the formula on competing by force already. After a certain amount of nukes the number of people involved didn't really matter. Now all shows of force have to be done through proxy wars in nations that don't have nukes. Sucks for Iran that they never made it to nukes.

<comment><USER9> There's a range of tactical and strategic options between nukes and, say, deploying a covert team of special ops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the biggest potential threat here is the rising skill requirements. AI / robots are eliminating the least skilled jobs, and creating highly skilled jobs. Out of work truck drivers aren't going to get jobs working at Google's self-driving car team. No new jobs will be created for humans that a robot could do, just like no one thinks about using a horse to power a machine. At some point, the bottom 10-20% in intelligence and education could be unemployable through no fault of their own.

<comment><USER12> > At some point, the bottom 10-20% in intelligence and education could be > unemployable through no fault of their own.

If their parents are not people of high intelligence, these people should rather complain to their parents that they gave them birth: Knowing that in the future a lot less people of bottom but much more of high intelligence are necessary, the parents willingly produced children of genetic material that is probably badly suited for the future.

Thus the "bad guy" is not the political system, but people of low intelligence producing children of low intelligence (in statistical average).

<comment><USER13> So you're advocating forced sterilization of undesirable segments of society?

<comment><USER12> I am against _forced_ sterilization (this would be a violation of the basic right of physical integrity). This does not contradict that it would perhaps not a bad idea to give a financial incentive for sterilization (though I have to think more about the best way of implementing this).

Nevertheless I see the much larger problem in the fact that many pairs choose to bring children to the world because this is the action that is encouraged in society (most people are simply conformists). If we could make it the default that it is _frowned upon_ if a couple, for which it will be rather likely "from available data" that the children will be in a bad position in future society, nevertheless decides to have some, I think a large part of the problem would be solved.

I also would encourage children from the bottom quantiles of intelligence or earnings to say clear words to their parents that they are part of their problem.

<comment><USER13> So you _know_ that most people have children merely to conform to societal expectations? It couldn't be any other reason, such as an innate drive?

But it's comforting to know that you wouldn't _force_ sterilization upon them, but instead merely encourage their children to reproach them for having brought them into the world.

Maybe these children could also volunteer for euthanization to reduce the burden on society imposed by such worthless individuals? This would also have the benefit of making the idiotic, conformist parents remorseful for having indulged in their mindless rutting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most fears in the comments here are uncalled for.

Let me narrate to you an alternate view from a formerly a socialist country, India. Prior to the mid 90's there was immense resentment towards computers, there were heavy import duties on computer products and anything related to them in general. It was so expensive to work with automation that it almost throttled the economic growth for a good two decades.

I hear a lot anecdotes from my dad from around 80's. Unions in India called for a national strike, like a total shutdown when the prime minister wanted to introduce computers to the country. It was believed job losses would be so immense it will impossible for the ordinary person on the streets to meet the basic needs. Also around about that time, most factory assembly workers used to protest against PCB assembly machines all the time, government offices hated digital record keeping etc.

I remember even in the 90's telephone connections used to take years to get, and things like TV's/Refigerators used to be considered very expensive to own. When Washing Machines came around most people used to identify the lazy with those buying these machines.

Yet today all of this is common. Every house hold has these devices. And the introduction of computers and automation only increased jobs and overall quality of living has only improved.

</comment><comment><USER15> I guess it is a great time to start researching basic income and other new economic aproaches for society.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Next Industrial Revolution Could Put Millions Out of Work ... Just as every other ones

<comment><USER17> I don't think this time is the same because of the scale and the cost accounting pressures that were not present last times.

First: Drivers obviously: 10 million people. Fast food: 3 million. Walmart: 1.4 million. Etc.

Secondly: offshoring (NAFTA and TPP) was never happening at the scale those treaties are indented to impart.

These two things could decimate the US workforce if they're not contained.

<comment><USER16> "I don't think this time is the same" its another big moto for industrial revolutions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The next industrial revolution doesn't even have to automate jobs to kill them. It just has to make them all so specialized that it will be highly improbable that there's any people who have that specialization.

</comment><comment><USER7> The reason this time is different is that the pace of change is faster than the workforce can respond to it.

In the past, a displaced worker could transfer their skills or pick up a new skill relatively quickly (6mo-1yr).

Today though, it's much harder for a high-school educated person to completely change their skill set to building ML systems.

I think this is solvable through education programs and shifts in how humans can train machines, but so far those systems aren't being built or deployed.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish they would stop calling it "machine intelligence." It's a crappy made up buzzword by people who wanted to call "machine learning" "artificial intelligence" (AI) but couldn't without being ridiculed. Now that AI is cool again we no longer need the term Machine Intelligence. If you want to be taken seriously by practitioners you call it ML if you want to extract money from investors call it AI.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great! We can finally get that quality of life increase we were promised way back in the day when we bought into this "go to work more" stuff.

We can average it all out, and everyone can work 3-4 days a week and have way more time to explore our passions and side projects. Imagine how much better the world will be when people have time to spend with their kids, to learn other languages, to write that book they dreamed of, etc.

Bring it on, I say!

<comment><USER21> ...and no money to afford all the consumables or pay their mortgages.

I agree with you, but we need to make a plan for all those that will put out of their existing jobs and make it possible for them to transition to jobs that can't be replaced by technology.

Technology is what drives us forward. It's necessary and is the only way we can legitimately effect our advance as a species - aside from other more controversial topics. But we cannot be blind to those it will leave behind if we allow it. They cannot be lost in the shuffle or we all lose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The main reason is machine intelligence, a general-purpose technology that > can be used anywhere, from driving cars to customer service, and it's > getting better very, very quickly

Oh, that's why we are still dealing with the crappy automated support from Google or Steam that does not seem to be working much if at all ?

<comment><USER23> Providing customer support isn't a business decision for them, in the sense that the won't put billions of dollars and decade(s) of thousands of engineers' time to win this zero sum game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Meh. That industrial revolution already happened. The number of workers needed by a factory is already 25% of what it was in the 60s. Will it fall further? Sure, as we learn how to automate more jobs. But it will be much slower, The low hanging highly profitable fruit has already been consumed.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think people really grasp what is going on here, people won't have any other jobs to move to, even if new type of jobs are created, AI will be able to do them too. Just as cars replaced almost all functions horses had, AI will replace all functions we humans have.

<comment><USER26> People are under the likely false assumption that _they_ won't be replaced by AI, because _their_ jobs require too much intelligence or creativity. At one time, rug weavers believed the same thing, and now it seems to be programmers, designers and artists.

But I think you're right - as a general trend, any job that can be automated, will be automated, as long as consumers find the product acceptable. Of course, you can't automate _everything_ because someone, somewhere, needs money to spend on the goods and services, but with a global consumer base and efficient automation, companies can probably still make a profit in the midst of mass unemployment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can anyone recommend an a good paper or essay on this subject? This development looks like an amazing economical shift and I would love to read semi-sci-fi-ish scenarios by serious economists studying past and present systems.

</comment><comment><USER28> Say What ? I don't understand this line of reasoning. For every job that is lost, a new one is potentially created due to these industrial revolutions. For example, when Cars were invented, I am sure a lot of buggy drivers lost their jobs. But they probably learned to drive and moved on. Yes when the transition happens, there may be a period of adjustment but why not. That is how we have been able to progress from the stone age till now.

If things like Robots take over blue collar jobs, I bet we will need the same humans to operate those Robots at some capacity. Computers, anyone ? And yes, may be AI will change things a bit more but I am sure we will come up with a way to manage that as well.

<comment><USER22> > If things like Robots take over blue collar jobs, I bet we will need the > same humans to operate those Robots at some capacity. Computers, anyone ? > And yes, may be AI will change things a bit more but I am sure we will come > up with a way to manage that as well.

Exactly. It seems like most people on HN reason with the "work revolutions" being zero-sum games or something. It's been proven over and over again it never ends up being like that, despite the numerous revolutions the Human Race has seen. It's getting a little old.

<comment><USER29> So for autonomous trucks how will human truckers keep their jobs? For the auto manufacture industry, how many less humans does Tesla employ to produce a vehicle vs in 1996? For the service industry...how many jobs are being replaced as McDonalds rolls out kiosks?

You are uninformed if you believe these jobs are staying. There is no way, mark my words, that our economy doesn't experience a net negative in jobs during this next revolution.

It's not all bad though, it could push us towards UBI, maybe a supply based economy. Otherwise we're basically saying jesus take the wheel.

A guy can dream.

<comment><USER22> > You are uninformed if you believe these jobs are staying. There is no way, > mark my words, that our economy doesn't experience a net negative in jobs > during this next revolution.

People were saying the exact same thing when sophisticated machines were introduced in automotive industry manufacturing. Sure, some people could not convert and lost jobs, but everyone else moved on to be productive in other areas.

This prophecy of Doom is happening every 10 years or so.

<comment><USER29> >Sure, some people could not convert and lost jobs, but everyone else moved on to be productive in other areas.

Tell this to the midwest, where the lie of our government's unemployment reporting is most obvious. It's honestly kind of offensive that you said that as I am from Michigan.

And as I have said in other comments ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12605690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12605690)), there are factors like the stagnant minimum wage and self-interest at play that have kept jobs in these companies that could be replaced _currently_ let alone in 10 years.

I am not here to convince you to change your mind about potential job loss. Understanding the technology, our current economy, and the political atmosphere around jobs should be enough to convince you of this truth.

As others have said, maybe there are imaginary jobs that will be invented to make up for these losses. I'm sure the banks will do their best to make sure that happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://fee.org/articles/the-curse-of- machinery/](https://fee.org/articles/the-curse-of-machinery/)

</comment><comment><USER31> 'Millions' is actually an understatement.

</comment><comment><USER32> Become a pet to a robot, have it feed you, rub ur ears etc, and put you to sleep when you are suffering...

</comment><comment><USER33> "AI will replace all jobs" is the new "safe nuclear energy is only 10 years away"

<comment><USER34> Safe nucelear energy is here, and has been for years. The number of people who have died from exposure to coal dust is far higher than those who have been harmed by nuclear anything.

<comment><USER33> I'm referring to promises of reliable, cheap and zero waste cold fusion or plasma or whatever reactors that were promised to 100% replace fossil fuels.

A handful of reactors here and there while an awesome achievement in itself doesn't really meet the expectations people of the sixties had for the year 2000.

Other analogies I considered using but was too lazy to mention in my comment were jet packs, space tourism, cure for cancer and HIV. (and you could say all of these have also been delivered... to some extent)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How many programmers were put out of work when compilers became common?

</comment><comment><USER36> Somehow I don't see it to insightful...

It seems she gives examples of AI-powered voice chat-bots instead of call center workers, the robotic burger flippers instead of humans. The cause: because "minimal wages will raise."

Have I missed something?

<comment><USER37> I think you did. Basically, no jobs are immune to the next wave of automation. I think entertainers and sex workers will still make money, but I'm not sure what else will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yeah, but by then Elon Musk will have made humans an interplanetary species and we'll be ready for the first wave of interplanetary immigration :)

Mars, the land of opportunities for the next industrial revolution?

<comment><USER39> [http://i.imgur.com/GDxqs2c.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/GDxqs2c.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Could? It's already happening.

</comment><comment><USER41> ... or not.</comment>


Aspartame and formaldehyde - <AUTHOR> http://whatdoesthesciencesay.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/aspartame-and-formaldehyde/ <comment><USER2> I rely heavily on aspartame-filled drinks because I have rejected most other drinks as not suitable to drink throughout a working day.

I've attempted to drink normal sugar-filled soft drinks and felt terrible after a few days. That's based on 3 cans a day. The amount of sugar is just too much for me to handle.

I can drink water, but it is quite boring. I actually find drinking just water stops quenching my thirst and my mouth dries out progressively. Drinking fruit juice is also not going to work as it is very acidic, and I just can't handle more than a couple of glasses.

A mix of these drinks is fine, but not ideal. I just want a constant I can drink without preparatiog.

Diet soda fits all the criteria for me. It has a taste, unlike water, contains caffeine (diet coke is my poison), and rehydrates. I can also drink it all day without any real side-effects. The downside being the aspartame and phenylalnine it contains which may or may not be an issue depending on what you read.

I do limit myself to 3 cans per day, but then aspartame is contained in other things I consume every day. The most frequent of which is sugar free gum.

If there are any alternatives to aspartame-using diet drinks, sugar filled drinks, or just plain water I should be trying I'd appreciate some suggestions.

<comment><USER3> OK this study has some perspective to aspartame converting to formaldehyde.

But what about the excitotoxic effects? I've heard aspartame excites nerve cells in the brain in unusually increased levels which eventually causes the cells to burst and die. How about the truth on that?

<comment><USER4> I touched a bit on excitotoxins in the article, but decided to leave that for another one if there was enough interest. The major issue is that the biggest proponent of the excitotxin theory is Blaylock (based on some initial ideas from JW Olney). I do not see Blaylock as being at all credible and it was actually during the research for the article that I first stumbled on upon that idea.

By far most people are worried about the formaldehyde and mood/headache effects, so that's what I ended up reducing the article to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've heard from people, including my wife, that Aspartame causes cancer. We had a 'discussion' earlier about supplements where I argued that I wouldn't spend money on anything that didn't have scientific studies to show a statistically significant impact by the supplement.

It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in science.

<comment><USER6> > It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in > science.

Me too. Still I have some sympathy for them, because science is not on-off type of thing. You can't just research if particular substance is safe or dangerous. You must know what you are searching for. You must figure out a level for "safe exposure". Thus it can take long time (even decades) before substance x is found and agreed to be harmful. Considering the history of human evolution and huge changes in our diet and chemical environment in the last 50 years, it's perfectly acceptable to be skeptical, until proven otherwise. Bisphenol A makes good example.

<comment><USER7> This reminds me of Paracelsus famous quote. "All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Allow me to quote at length from ET Jaynes' book, "Probability: The Logic of Science."

> A common error, when judging the effects of radioactivity or the toxicity of > some substance, is to assume a linear response model without threshold (that > is, without a dose rate below which there is no ill e ect). Presumably there > is no threshold effect for cumulative poisons like heavy metal ions > (mercury, lead), which are eliminated only very slowly if at all.

> But for virtually every organic substance (such as saccharin or cyclamates), > the existence of a finite metabolic rate means that there must exist a > finite threshold dose rate, below which the substance is decomposed, > eliminated, or chemically altered so rapidly that it has no ill effects. If > this were not true, the human race could never have survived to the present > time, in view of all the things we have been eating.

> Indeed, every mouthful of food you and I have ever taken contained many > billions of kinds of complex molecules whose structure and physiological > effects have never been determined, and many millions of which would be > toxic or fatal in large doses. We cannot doubt that we are daily ingesting > thousands of substances that are far more dangerous than saccharin, but in > amounts that are safe, because they are far below the various thresholds of > toxicity. But at present there is hardly any substance except some common > drugs, for which we actually know the threshold.

</comment><comment><USER9> Having Type II Diabetes I probably consume more Aspartame than I should, so it's nice to see misinformation like this debunked. I have talked to other diabetics who have even had physicians warn them about Aspartame. There is so much bad information dominating the SERP's that I prefix all my medical searches with "site:mayoclinic.com"

</comment><comment><USER10> The problem is that a lot of people worry about their aspartame intake although their diet sucks and they don't exercise at all. Aspartame in this case is your least problem. If you get 90% of your nutrition right, then you can worry about the amounts of aspartame in your soda.

I'm interested in the current state of stevia as it is a real (maybe hyped) alternative sweetener.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whether or not it has been proven to be unhealthy, I personally feel very strange after consuming even the smallest amount of aspartame. I become nervous and jittery, and feel an odd sensation in my jaw that tempts me to grind my teeth. Others may not have the same symptoms as me, but I steer well clear of anything containing the chemical.

<comment><USER12> That sounds like caffeine to me!

<comment><USER11> It happens even when I consume non-caffeinated drinks with aspartame

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Then how come I get really bad headaches when eating the stuff, but not with sugar, HFCS, or saccharin?

<comment><USER4> There's obviously no way for anyone to claim that you specifically don't, but one of the studies I looked at (and there have been others) specifically used patients who believed they got headaches from aspartame. They turned out to be more likely to get one from the placebo control than from aspartame.</comment></comment>


How to Make Your React Apps 15x Faster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hellosign.com/how-to-make-your-react-apps-15x-faster/ <comment><USER2> JUST USE shouldComponentUpdate

This will give you huge perf boost</comment>