Ask HN: Should there be a cap on an individual's net worth? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Sounds nice but unfair & would destroy the economy.

Unfair - Who takes the extra wealth? Politicians? Because they are honest and aren't wasting public funds.

Wasting another person's money is the easiest thing in the world. If you're married and are the bread winner, you'd understand.

It'll kill the economy because innovators, entrepreneurs will simply move elsewhere.

Or worse, they'll limit their efforts to match the cap.

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

Also see: The cobra effect

<comment><AUTHOR> >> Sounds nice but unfair & would destroy the economy.

This is one of the possibility but not definite.

>> Unfair - Who takes the extra wealth? Politicians? Because they are honest and aren't wasting public funds.

The maker of the wealth can still keep the extra wealth but not as his own net worth or personal wealth and is not supposed to use it for his own benefits. Like even 1% of the wealth beyond cap should not go for his own benefit and instead should be forced to be used for the benefit of others.

LOL, no definitely not politicians, that would lead to the cobra effect.

Not suggesting simply one should hand over money above cap to others and forget but just not simply keep benefiting from the wealth beyond cap. Like making $1M and buy one home and then make $1B and then buy 25 homes. That sounds unfair at a global scale for a small amount of unfair at individual level.

>> Or worse, they'll limit their efforts to match the cap.

I don't think those who reach the cap would be narrow minded to limit below cap and i think they would simply keep going beyond cap for the greater good at least as they seem to project their image.

Why would they limit from cap, if they can find a way to make money they can still keep making money. Only thing is they cant simply use it for their personal benefit and all the money they make beyond cap should be used for other's benefits, its not unfair because they did not make all their wealth on their own individually, so many people bought products in amazon and supported their business for example.

Even now the wealthy individuals seem to be making such investment for others benefits in terms of charity but it seem to be a very personal choice which they can deny at will or very less to make any meaningful impact or goes in a skewed direction.

If such a rule is accepted globally, what would be a right number to set as cap?

<comment><USER2> >>Even now the wealthy individuals seem to be making such investment for others benefits in terms of charity

You know charity is tax deductible right?

>Why would they limit from cap

This happened when France taxed people in higher income bracket

>This is one of the possibility but not definite

France's richest guy left the country. And France found it hard to attract managerial talent.

>they cant simply use it for their personal benefit and all the money they make beyond cap should be used for other's benefits

Sure. My cousin who doesn't bear my surname counts as "others" right. This would be a nightmare to track if self administered. If the wealth is collected by some TRUSTED party, same issue as I mentioned earlier - corruption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely! Socialism, however, has its caveats and would destroy our current expectations of an economy.

We should instead be teaching the populace to abandon self, and be providing every single individual with sufficient means of survival for absolutely free: clean housing, nutritious food, purified water, and abundant electricity.

The extras can then be earned by performing extra civil duties.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch" ... as long as individuals are attached to their greed.</comment>


Ask HN: SAAS companies, why don't you have a "pause" subscription feature? - <AUTHOR> In lieu of the the CANCEL subscription why don't more subscription based companies do not have a PAUSE feature? <comment><USER2> Probably because they a. haven't thought of it but if they have b. because SAAS makes money from people leaving subscriptions they're not really using running.

It's a nice idea and might be clever to present to a user as an alternative during a cancel/delete flow.</comment>


Linking behavior and revenue is the big data superpower - <AUTHOR> http://usermind.com/blog/using-data-relationships-to-generate-big-insight <comment><AUTHOR> What role does data science play in your org?</comment>


HN Recap: Top articles on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://hnrecap.com/

<comment><USER2> There's also <http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/> (the highest-voted stories not appearing on any previous day.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Similar but specifically for the last 7 days hour by hour (for when that approach suits): <http://hackerslide.com/>

Makes me wonder that an official API that lets people read the site however they like would be useful (especially as most of us can code).

</comment><comment><USER4> I find <http://news.ycombinator.com/active> useful ('Most active current discussions').

<comment><USER5> In order to reduce the clutter, I sometimes use <http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100> to only show stories above certain score. The threshold can be set to any desired value.

<comment><USER6> What is the timespan on the /over URI anyhow? 1 week?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Extracted from this item: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2236191>

</comment><comment><USER7> Larger text would benefit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for the link.

<comment><USER8> Apparently a simple "Thanks" and +1 gets you downvoted. I've found the way the top posts from the past are organized using Ruby interesting, so normally I've said thanks. Next time I will keep my fingers crossed when I simply like a post.

<comment><AUTHOR> My observation ...

It's more than a simple "Thanks" getting downvoted. People regularly say thanks, but not simply for links like this. Your upvote suffices.

However, if you've had a specific exchange with someone, and they've specifically replied, then a "Thanks" is welcome and accepted.

<comment><USER8> I think I get your point, a short comment and with no substance can be seen as "noise" and it gets downvoted.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Natural language processing in Clojure, Go ,Cython - <AUTHOR> http://samibadawi.blogspot.com/2010/10/natural-language-processing-in-clojure.html

<comment><USER2> As a computational linguist, I could not really extract any useful information. Sure, it lists the availability of NLP libraries for some languages, something a cursory Google search would turn up.

What I would be interested in:

\- How mature are the libraries?

\- Are the libraries general enough? Often, a particular component is developed with one task in mind, and requires a lot of hoop jumping to use for other tasks (e.g. in classification).

\- How does performance compare for actual tasks? Python may be a slow language, but selective use of C or Fortran (e.g. NumPy) make it fast enough for most work.

<comment><USER3> As a total beginner willing to learn, it helped me grab a few keywords and libraries names to get started.

What would you recommend for complete beginners willing to learn ? My first focus is on trying to extract meaningful data from scraped html, if that matters.

<comment><USER2> These two books are really recommended:

\- Speech and Language Processing, Jurafsky and Martin

\- Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing, Chris Manning and Hinrich Schütze

Together they provide a very good overview of the field, from tokenization to robust parsing.

I cannot really recommend one library. The last two years, I have been working on a parsing/generation system that was developed in our research group (Alpino). We use very little external software (only for maximum entropy model parameter estimation and building finite state automata). We use Prolog, because it is ideal for writing unification grammars and C/C++ for components that Prolog is not well-fit for (part of speech tagger for lexical restriction, finite state automata, term compression, language models, etc.).

This system is amongst others used for extracting syntactic structure for question answering (based on e.g. Wikipedia data and newspaper texts).

<comment><USER3> Thanks, added to wish list!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> hal daume, who also wrote "yet another haskell tutorial", is an NLP researcher, and uses O'Caml, Haskell and C successfully: <http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~hal/software.html>

andrew mccallum, one of the originators of conditional random fields and also an NLPer, has recently been using scala: <http://code.google.com/p/factorie/></comment>


www.dev.github.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.dev.github.com/

<comment><USER2> You need the w's. <http://www.dev.github.com/>

The links at the bottom of the page go to other "www.dev.github.com" pages, but the links at the top go to "cbwa.info". Both domains resolve to the same IP, "18.104.22.168".

</comment><comment><USER3> Issue with their CNAME aliasing?</comment>


A Second Market is Emerging: Marketplace for Private Company Stock - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/04/a-second-market-is-emerging.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder, has YCombinator considered creating one of their own? The number of portfolio companies (it never occurred to me until just now how possessive that terminology is) by now must be quite large so there would be a wide variety to choose from and there are probably accredited investors that would be willing to piggyback on the YC certification mechanism and let the founders cash out a little bit.

In fact, if the markets became liquid enough you might be able to skip the whole "round" feature of entrepreneurial finance all together and just release shares into the marketplace as needed on a week by week basis.

There are, of course, a bucketful of practical problems, and a truck-full of legal problems (the kind that get you in jail for violating securities laws) but in principle it could be worthwhile to do.

I suppose if you take that thinking to the logical extreme than any random small business could bring shares to market and the entrepreneur and investors can decide through the market mechanism whether they can deal. That would be an interesting world to study finance in.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure we could skip the "round" feature of entrepreneurial finance? It is a classic problem in market economics: whenever you deal with low volume, unique items, you won't have enough information to set a fair price. Market economics don't really work until you have a real _market_ around a single item, whether it be pork bellies or Google stock.

More broadly, anytime the economic stakes of a transaction goes up, you'll often have the whole bargaining/negotiations spiel (e.g. cars and Oriental carpets). But the cause in that case is due to the cost efficiency of paying professional negotiators to extract more money out of the average consumer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "explore our markets" section of the SecondMarket site immediately evoked "parked domain advertising".

</comment><comment><USER5> What are the legal implications? Can you openly trade shares in your private company in such a market?

<comment><USER6> The NYT article linked to has more details. Basically "The new market will be open only to accredited investors and qualified institutional buyers."

<comment><USER7> The real question is about the sellers. It might evoke Bubble #1 mindsets, but raising money by selling stock openly (in this case, not an IPO) could be a good way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the NYT article..."For one thing, it could be a thin market, on both sides of the trade. The Securities and Exchange Commission allows the trading of unregistered securities, but only for select investors. The new market will be open only to accredited investors and qualified institutional buyers, which the S.E.C. defines as financially sophisticated enough to invest in high-risk securities about which there is little public information. These include individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 million and institutions that manage at least $100 million in securities."

Understandable...but, drats. There are more than a few startups I would be interested in investing in, but I don't qualify as an accredited investor.

</comment><comment><USER7> The note about Facebook common stock valuation is interesting.

</comment><comment><USER9> One big problem, in my mind, is that lots of nonpublic companies have additional rights attached to stock, especially if it's preferred shares. For example, an employee selling shares might have to offer the shares to the company and the other shareholders before selling to anyone else, etc.

I find the naming interesting as well. IPO's are the primary market; the stock markets themselves are already the secondary market.

<comment><USER9> There's a bit in Fred's comments about dealing with the Right of First Refusals (ROFR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What happens when the lawyers get a hold of this?</comment>


"Fingerprinting" chips to fight counterfeiting - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/fingerprinting-chips-fight-counterfeiting-0501 <comment><USER2> Something to note: the whole "96 of 128 bits" thing _drastically_ reduces entropy. By my count it's only got ~27.2 (!) bits of entropy, as in, if you have _one_ number in the database it's take ~2^26.2 tries on average to get a valid one.

There are n choose k bitstrings with exactly k bits set to the correct value. Hence, there are sum(n=96 to 128 of 128 choose n) length-128 bitstrings with at least 96 bits set to the correct value. There are 2^128 length-128 bitstrings. Hence, your chance of randomly generating a bitstring with at least 96 bits set correctly from a length-128 bitstring is sum(n=96 to 128 of 128 choose n) / 2^(128), which works out to ~1 / 2^(27.2).

If I did the math correctly, that is.</comment>


Why I'll be Pirating Adobe's Products From Now On - <AUTHOR> http://parkerrr.com/ill-pirating-adobes-products-now/ <comment><USER2> A guy from Adobe replied in the comments. Apparently Adobe is a bit uncomfortable with the advice that their support rep gave about downloading a pirated copy of the software:

 _Hi, your blog post was brought to my attention. After reading this post, I want to apologize for the way that your issue was handled. Our tech support agent provided you incorrect information as far "that its OK to download pirated software". This is not a company policy suggestion and should not of been suggested. We prefer to provide you a link to download the Adobe software from an Adobe server. Downloading pirated content can contain viruses and cause security issues. I can help you with downloading the software from the Adobe's server. I have sent you my email via a private message on your contact page. Please contact me at your earliest convenience

Thank you

Scott V

Adobe Customer Care

Follow us on @AdobeCare_

<comment><USER3> "should not of been suggested"

 _twitch_

<comment><USER4> I think a lot of time is wasted on perfecting spelling/grammar because of comments like the one above.

Are you having difficulty understanding Scott's message or intent?

<comment><USER5> >I think a lot of time is wasted on perfecting spelling/grammar

Are you sure about that? Scour any comments section for 10 minutes and it should be clear that not enough time is being used to perfect spelling/grammar.

>Are you having difficulty understanding Scott's message or intent?

No, but that doesn't mean we should settle for the lowest common denominator.

<comment><USER6> I think you mean "greatest common factor". "Lowest common denominator" is in fact the ideal format for clear, accurate expression of computation.

"Lowest common denominator" is what people say when they don't understand what the original term means, and think "lowest" must be worse than "greatest".

See also: "could care less".

<comment><USER7> Lowest common denominator is a phrase with different meanings in different contexts. It means the LCD in maths (used for simplifying fractional arithmetic) and it also means the "basest form of something which all members of a population are able to comprehend/use".

There is a loose commonality in the usage but the term "lowest common denominator" as used here is not the mathematical term. GCF is a mathematical analogy but doesn't work as a direct usage as it would be unclear what the "factor" is that the people are to hold in common whilst in the original phrase it's clear that the denominator (standard) to be held in common is the sum of language understood [and used correctly] by all. It is lowest because greater ones can be achieved by excluding proportions of the population that has been used to establish the standard.

Whilst I couldn't care less the real meaning I've always assumed that "I could care less" is a shorthand for something along the lines of "I could care less but that's too much effort given how little I care about it". YMMV.

All language can be misunderstood by those who wish to misunderstand it.

E&OE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it interesting that despite Adobe (and many other companies) fixating on the idea that really what you're buying is the -serial-, not the binary, they don't continue to offer the binary.

It runs at complete odds with the claim, and also what is clearly the expectation of the OP.

I think we, as humans, have issues with buying 'permission' to use a good, even a digital good; what we want is to -buy- the good. Not license it. And since when we 'buy' it, it's now ours, it's free for us to share (or so the logic goes).

It also seems rather amazing that Adobe's fix would be to tell you to download the software from an illegitimate source, given that the frequent anti-piracy scare tactics are that such downloads are ripe with malware, and will steal your serial, your bank account passwords, your soul, your little dog too, etc etc.

<comment><USER9> They don't offer the binary because cracks and keygens get out that make installing it trivial. And since the version N-1 or more back is still totally useful they don't want to support shooting their own bottom line. What they _should_ do is offer a signed realtime .dmg for logged in users. But since they are Adobe and have their crufty ass codebase head stuck so far up their hard drive they will never do that.

It is time for terracotta, porcelain or some other ceramic to start pushing their media wielding wares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Me: So you're telling me I should download an illegal copy of your > software, and use my legal serial with it?_

> _Support: Yes Sir, that will work._

Seems to me if they tell you you can do something with their product, you aren't pirating. You're following their instructions, though I'm no lawyer.

<comment><USER11> The way this brief interaction is constructed would lead one to surmise that the SOFTWARE is not what is protected/IP/sold to you... it is the LICENSE key.

Thus, downloading software should never be an offence.

He paid for the serial, not the software..

<comment><USER12> Or more precisely, he paid for the license. He can use the serial in multiple computers, but that'd be illegal too.

<comment><USER13> Actually, IIRC, Adobe's EULA says you can _install_ the software on multiple (up to 2) computers, but only _use_ it on one at any given time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yet another Adobe story:

I paid for CS4, infrequent user, after a couple of hardware changes (SSDs etc) it wouldn't install anymore. Long Skype call to US (over an hour), treated like criminal.

Forget it, I'm your customer taking the burden of your business problems. Happy Acorn user now.

So many dollars over the years on PS/Macromedia/etc, never again.

So tired of companies treating honest customers like criminals.

Edit: how many times have I bought a movie on iTunes to show my kids how to do it right, and then torrented it as I couldn't wait for the download, too slow.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Edit: how many times have I bought a movie on iTunes to show my kids how to do it right, and then torrented it as I couldn't wait for the download, too slow."

Strange, I find iTunes the fastest way to download media + you can watch while downloading. For me that usually means spend 30-60 seconds downloading and then start watching and the download keeps up.

<comment><USER15> Not here (Australia). iTunes can take anywhere up to 40 minutes to download enough of a high res movie to start watching. And can then randomly stop the movie as it fails to keep up enough bandwidth over the 1:30 or so run duration.

Torrents are normally half an hour from start to finish.

<comment><USER16> Are you using Google DNS? I've had issues with CDNs because of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This post is superficially about bad support but the underlying issue is the move to subscription-based pricing (Creative Cloud).

Slightly in Adobe's defense, a subscription model would avoid this particular issue, where the customer needed support for a 4 year old version. Subscriptions just get everyone on a recent version always. The problem of course is that the subscription price is so much more expensive for casual/budget users. Casual users used to skip upgrades because they don't need all the latest features (some would say bloatware). Now they have to pay a minimum of $240/yr (1 app) and as much as $600/yr.

Adobe has essentially screwed these less profitable _but very loyal and evangelistic_ customers in favor of extracting more revenue out of those that depend on Creative Suite. Wall St. responded favorably to this revenue pop but I fear this has (further) damaged Adobe's brand in the long term.

Interesting fact: the folks responsible for the Flash Platform fiasco were rewarded by being put in charge of Creative Suite. It's like the CEO said, sure, Flash worked out great, why not hand them the crown jewels and a shotgun?

BTW I 100% agree with the Sketch recommendation. It's much better than Fireworks or Photoshop for UI-related design.

</comment><comment><USER18> I had a HORRIBLE, cumulative 7.5 hours with their tech support, trying to get them to provide the promised-on-the-package supplementary license keys to provide full support for the CS 5.5 Suite on 32-bit Windows XP.

(The supplementary keys are required to activate/validate a couple of included installers for older versions of a couple of products that are compatible with 32-bit Win XP whereas the 5.5 versions are not.)

If this hadn't been for a close family member, I would have given up.

Adobe will NEVER get another penny out of me -- nor them, for that matter.

\</comment><comment>---

By the way, when it came down to it, all it took was for a "supervisor" \-- to whom the support associates kept going while they put me on hold -- to understand, acknowledge, and attempt to use a system _already available to them at their desk_ to look up the specific scenario and product package and have that system generate a key.

I ended up repeatedly explaining this to various support associates. Finally, one with a bit more gumption actually went back to their supervisor and prodded them to have a second look. 10 minutes later (while I sat again on hold), I finally had the license key or keys (I forget; 2 products were involved in the 32-bit older-version downgrade, IIRC).

THE ENTIRE 7.5 hour struggle was to learn for myself what their validation system was like and to repeatedly call and prod and follow through on ineffective suggestions in order to appease them, until finally a rep pushed back against their supervisor and that supervisor deigned to get off their duff and actually look in their system.

I tend to try to restrain my vitriol and particularly public expression of same, but in this case I will say: Die, Adobe, die!

P.S. Also, the support reps would promise to call back and check on the result of procedures they would insist I first try. I think once, one actually called me back. All the other call-back promises: Nothing.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was hoping this would be about how annoying the pricing is for Creative Cloud. If I was a designer then I could justify paying that kind of monthly tariff, but as primarily a developer who needs infrequent access to Photoshop or Illustrator the pricing options are just highway robbery. At least in the old days I could pay up front and stretch it out over time to get my money's worth by deciding when and if to upgrade. Adobe is really pushing me as hard as they can towards the competition, and I've been using Photoshop for over 20 years now, so it's no light decision to give up such a familiar UI.

<comment><USER20> 25 bucks a month for students is not that bad. And 50 month is totally reasonable. I find it much more accessible than before. And honestly I think that's less than the money the average person here spends monthly at coffee- shops. Or in one night out!

Here's how you can afford it: avoid eating 5 sandwiches in a posh bar per month, and cook sometimes by yourself.

<comment><USER21> My IT budget for the year is about $500. Doesn't fit.

<comment><USER20> But for what i remember, neither illustrator or photoshop cs5 alone did fit in that.

EDIT: [http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/cs6._sl_id- contentfilt...](http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/cs6._sl_id- contentfilter_sl_catalog_sl_software_sl_creativesuite6.html) [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362428,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362428,00.asp)

<comment><USER22> but you could buy software once and use it for several years, skipping a few versions before upgrade. There are lots of users that don't need latest bells and whistles.

<comment><USER21> This. I used Fireworks MX (released 2002) until 2 years ago

<comment><USER23> Yeaaah, I am not the only one. It was the good old time! Each new version after the MX was a deception, damn Adobe.

You switch to what?

<comment><USER21> Inkscape and gimp.

<comment><USER24> I agree. Inkscape and Gimp do everything I need them to do. The last time I hit a limitation was when I needed Inkscape to create a multi-page document. But that was more than a year ago and I managed without that function.

<comment><USER21> I think the only irritation I get is gimp startup time on windows.

Need a replacement for Adobe Lightroom and I'm sorted then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Adobe does practically nothing to deter piracy except put the token lock on the shed. Their copy protection has always been trivial to break. They seem to have worked out that it's better for someone to pirate their tools than it is for them to use a competing, cheaper product. Their bottom line would probably take a huge hit if they were to ever make it less than trivial to pirate.

Not sure if this strategy is starting to take a back seat with their new subscription offerings. Seems like they might be trying to bring the pirates into the fold. Time will tell.

<comment><USER26> The number one competitor of free alternatives like Inkscape or GIMP are pirated versions of Adobe's products. At least non-paying users are still perpetuating the Adobe monopoly on digital design and formats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A better, more insightful article than the stupid title implies. The author is dealing with the problem of how to install software he's already paid for.

<comment><USER28> Smartdraw (www.smartdraw.com) is very similar. They do not even allow you to download the software you have paid for and force an upgrade for a steep price.

<comment><USER29> SmartDraw is also kind enough to include spyware/malware with their installation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hate to say it, but I pirate Adobe's software for real. I use Pixelmator and Sketch, which are superior products at one tenth of the price. However, I often need to open files in Adobe's legacy formats, and since they do not provide any sort of converter software, I must take the only option available to me.

<comment><USER31> Can you clarify how pirating Adobe's software is "the only option available to [you]"? I get that it's ridiculously expensive and generally a pain in the ass... but needing to do something expensive doesn't provide justification for bypassing the cost, or in any way make "paying for the product" no longer an option.

<comment><USER32> Meh, it's an industry monopoly they have on a global scale. And a web developer from india cannot afford the huge price that comes with Adobe Photoshop - so they pirate it. Don't care personally, what do you they expect, in the real world? Shades of gray and all that.

Another example: games.

A AAA game costs 60$ on Steam a price 90% of the people online in South America can't afford. So what happened recently? A lot of latinamerican online stores sell Steam games for a much more realistic price. For example, a AAA game costs $30-$40 on sites like Nuuvem.

<comment><USER31> No offense, but there really aren't "shades of gray" here. I've definitely pirated things, but not wanting to pay the cost of something doesn't entitle you to spring forth "illegally downloading" as a justified option.

The article's case, where downloading the software legitimately was actually not an option, _does_ establish that other option: he has paid for the software (or the serial, or the dream of software, or whatever), but Adobe has now made it impossible to legitimately access the software. He didn't contact Adobe and say "I've decided I must use your software, but I do not wish to pay, so it's cool if I pirate, right?"

<comment><USER33> There may not be "shades of gray" as far as the legality and fact of copyright infringement goes. But morally, it's certainly not so clear cut. A 14-yr-old me pirated Photoshop and used it to screw around with some filters (I've got little artistic talent) and whatnot. There's certainly no harm done to Adobe in that case - I wasn't gonna buy Photoshop for a total few hours of playing around. Someone living in a poor country that simply could not afford the software is in a similar position. It doesn't harm Adobe, but locks them in further - just like Microsoft benefited greatly from piracy, too.

It's still illegal, but there is clearly different levels of morality. If a large, profitable, studio was pirating software, that's sorta sleazy. People that legitimately can't afford it, eh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> About a decade ago I bought some OCR software. I used it for a few years, then flattened my OS and had to reinstall it.

No dice. It was not supported any more; I even had the license, but the company's activation servers no longer worked. I could pay $400 or so to buy a new version or do without.

I did without. I refuse to buy that company's products.

<comment><USER35> Why don't you name and shame the company?

<comment><USER34> Honestly, I couldn't remember the name of the company, I'd buried it.

Let's see . . . oh yeah, Omnipage.

The activation was painful, too, involving a key server and a few cut-and- paste operations that were easy to get wrong.

I haven't needed to do any OCR in the last couple of years, but I'm sure I'll investigate other options than Omnipage before I'll use their products again.

I'm happy to buy software. But I have to be able to use it indefinitely, without activations (which depend on companies still being around) or time- limited licenses that are just designed to fuel an upgrade pump. I don't insist on source code or freedom, just quality. I'm not on a holy mission, I just won't buy software on bad terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You can find the CS5 trial downloads here: [http://prodesigntools.com/all- adobe-cs5-direct-download-link...](http://prodesigntools.com/all-adobe- cs5-direct-download-links.html)

All you need to do after that is insert your Student and Teacher serial number.

<comment><USER37> The annoying part is that you have to jump through cookie hoops to get the file, even though pro design appears to be affiliated with Adobe. Adobe does run a "hidden" FTP with installers for everything back to like version 9 of the software in the suite (excepting, for some odd reason, CS 5.5).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Installing old-school, shrinkwrapped box software onto computers that lack disk drives is a real pain point for a lot of people.

I made a little video[1] explaining how to install MS Office Mac 2011 onto a MacBook Air -- for my own use, in case I ever needed to do it again -- and it's received over 36,000 views.

LOTS of people have trouble with this. The Microsofts and Adobes in the industry don't appear to realize the difficulty their customers face.

1: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz3hloQl_qs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz3hloQl_qs)

<comment><USER39> Installing office is kids stuff, all 9 DVDs of native instrument's komplete 9 (not even the ultimate version which has like another 100 gigs of samples included) took 2 days using another laptop's drive over wifi.

<comment><USER40> A cat5 cable really isn't that expensive.

I don't understand the distaste people have regarding wired networking. In my office, I have several people who complain about the wifi having congestion. In the heart of the CBD, with tons of other networks visible. "That network cable on your desk, which I put there for you to use, plug it in and this problem goes away". They plug it in, comment on how quick and clean their network is now... then complain the next day about wifi congestion.

<comment><USER39> No distaste of wired networking, just didn't have the possibility of running a cable between both machines due to location in the house.

<comment><USER40> Sorry, didn't mean to come off as attacking. Just a hobby horse of mine...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have an issue with the car analogy. First, warranty isn't forever. Second CS5 was released four years ago, which is a really long time in software, to make the analogy more accurate you'd need to take a really old car that doesn't have replacement parts being made for it anymore to the dealer and claim they need to fix it.

There's also the issue of Student/Teacher edition means you can't use it except for educational purposes, and it seems like the author was going to use them for professional work, which means he needs a different license, legally speaking.

Finally, it's not up to Adobe to provide you with installers just because you can't be bothered to go get a disk drive. They're not that expensive. The problem exists solely on the author's side, not Adobe's.

<comment><USER42> Bullshit.

Absolute bullshit. When you're paying HUNDREDS of dollars for software, damn right I expect better support 4 years down the track. Hell, it's barely even support. Let me download it, like you used to only two years back. Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER41> Bullshit yourself. Cars cost hundreds of times more and typically get just four years of support. Hardware typically gets a year free, and it also costs a whole lot more than software.

You didn't pay for any sort of extended warranty. Legally the only warranty required is that at time of purchase it work as advertised. It did, and while Adobe has an additional warranty they've added, it doesn't say you get everything you wish for just because you want it.

Even saying you purchased the full creative suite at $2600, that's $650/year, $54.17/month. You didn't pay all that much for it, slightly less than $2 a day. Even assuming you purchased it near the end of it's life, that's 3 years, making it $72.23/month, which is only $2.37/day. That's less than the price of a meal.

Additionally, they have no responsibility to provide you with an installer. You got your installer, based on the post the author still had the installer, but happened to purchase a computer without a disk drive, which is essentially purchasing a computer without the minimum system requirements of the installer. The author could purchase a disk drive, or borrow a disk drive, or use his old computer's disk drive across the network (something OS X has the capability to do built in).

Adobe also never had to provide downloads of those installers in the first place. Just because they previously had them available to download doesn't mean they have a responsibility to continue keeping them available for download. Your losing your disks is your fault, not Adobe's.

So, bullshit yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is Adobe lining themselves up for someone to do to them what they did to Quark. And by the same mechanism: utter contempt for the customer.

<comment><USER44> Please, yes! That would be amazing.

I used quark for years back in the day and when InDesign CS1 came out it seemed like the industry switched overnight. Until then even though both Quarks 4 and 5 had been released no one I knew, including printers, had gone further than Quark 3.1.

The entire creative suite cost less than Quark and Photoshop was essential anyway. No contest. Plus it had support for OS X, could do transparency (no more creating drop shadows in Photoshop and importing them as a flat TIFF, the joy!), had really good typography support (no more creating a separate text box for bullets and manually aligning them), and getting a press-ready PDF out of it wasn't some sort of voodoo.

The difference 10 years makes. Now Adobe software is slow, bloated and buggy with only minor reasons to upgrade version to version. It seems like the fit and finish is worse on each release and watching photoshop or illustrator creak into life, even on my SSD macbook, is a painful experience.

I think the only reason I've upgraded recently is due to their policy of making newer version file formats incompatible with the older version, so I've had to if I want to open files from colleagues. Creative Cloud is a blatant attempt to extract as much rent as they can before the gig is up, not as a way to provide a useful service. For that reason I won't be upgrading from CS6, even though as a designer it's the software I use most.

We need an Adobe competitor who'll either remind them they can write good software when they have to or consign them to irrelevance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> How is it adobe's fault that the OP no longer has a optical drive? He purchased physical media in the first place, Adobe, nor any other vendor, is under no obligations to provide convenient access to him for years down the road. Sure, it'd be nice if they did, it is completely understandable that they don't. CS5 is four year old software.

Also, we're talking about an academic version of the software, which retails for about $200, not the full $799 for one App, or $2200+ for the full suite. They sell it to students so some day they'll buy the real thing when they do commercial work, which the academic license doesn't allow.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't think Adobe has actually cared too much whether or not individual customers pirate their software. From what I've heard, piracy has actually helped the popularity of their products so that more companies and schools, who account for the bulk of their revenue, will buy their products en masse.

<comment><USER47> it would suck for them if all students started using GIMP, get hired and ask their boss: Can I use GIMP for this? It's absolutely free.

Then you start seeing job postings looking for "GIMP experience required."

<comment><USER48> However the fact that large companies are usually averse anything new would make that difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The problem is just: "You have old software, which was distributed on CD/DVD and have no drive anymore." The solution: get a drive or use another Mac's drive via Remote DVD. The problem is not only with Adobe, but with others too. Like there is no MS Office download, AFAIK.

Yes, Adobe has a ridiculous pricing policy, especially if you live outside the US (yeah, translating from English to English is expansive, UK version, AUS version, I get that </irony>). But that is a different point, I think.

<comment><USER50> Actually there s. I'm experimenting with MS cloud based products and was forced (more or less) to dl the entire thing during registation even though I have a legit ms office installed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> wow, quit your bellyaching and borrow an external cd-rom. Or, buy one for $30 (or less?). I don't know how you value your time, but surely $30 is worth it for the amount of time you've spent thinking about this, writing about it, on the phone, and now responding to people about it.

also, hilarious that in my chrome, the obnoxiously massive adobe flash banner on your blog is crashing: [http://snag.gy/FEVCV.jpg](http://snag.gy/FEVCV.jpg)

<comment><USER52> That "obnoxiously massive adobe flash banner" that is "crashing" is intentional: [http://parkerrr.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/MZCin.png](http://parkerrr.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/MZCin.png)

Also, the "time [OP has] spent thinking about this, writing about it, on the phone, and now responding to people about it" is certainly worth more than $30 since it represents an issue that _many_ people (including myself) have encountered, and I'm glad someone took the time to publicly document their frustration on behalf of the rest of us sharing that frustration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> There's no such thing as "pirating". "Pirating" is just a buzz word that some use as a ignorant epithet and others hold as a badge of honor.

The question is, "Am I breaking copyright law by downloading this software?"

Here's a flow chart so you can check for yourself:

        Did you purchase said software?
          a) Yes
             -> Then you are not breaking copyright law.

          b) No
             -> Then you are breaking copyright law.

Distributing the copyrighted material, as many torrent clients do for you automatically, is another matter altogether.

</comment><comment><USER54> Obviously, if you use proprietary software, you do not control it, it controls you. The FSF message rings true as usual (not as always, I don't think the world is black and white).

Many people have these stories. How you got screwed over by some proprietary company in some way. The only solution is for the company to guarantee their trustworthiness by respecting software freedom i.e. being FLOSS.

</comment><comment><USER55> For all those stating in the comments they only need to use Adobe products for an hour a month and can't justify CC.

You can download Adobe CS2 for free.

[https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?pid=4485...](https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?pid=4485850&e=cs2_downloads)

</comment><comment><USER56> It seems to me that if you're planning to apply your serial to a piece of software that you download off The Pirate Bay then that software is not an illegal copy. It's only illegal if you breach your licensing agreement.

</comment><comment><USER57> > Me: So you're telling me I should download an illegal copy of your software, > and use my legal serial with it?

If you have your legal serial number for the software...it isn't pirating.

<comment><USER58> If you are torrenting copyright files and therefore uploading bits of it in the process, you are enabling copyright infringement. At least by the standards of a number of courts around the world.

<comment><USER59> You can disable uploading and become a pure leecher and court problem solved :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> As long as we're griping about Adobe. Why the hell can't I install Photoshop or any Creative Cloud product for that matter on a case-sensitive HFS+ drive!

There is a hack you can run to trick the installer into thinking the drive is case-insensitive and after that everything works without any problems. No further hacks or workarounds needed until you have to install again on a clean machine.

I know it is not their most common use case but it can't be that hard!

</comment><comment><USER61> I remember than after downloading Spore (the game) and finding it to be very poor quality I checked the forums. No official EA people were there but literally the advice everyone got was "here's an illegal version, it runs faster and doesn't have most of these bugs, don't worry, it's just as good but much better". Goes to show that pirated software is rarely an inferior product at all.

</comment><comment><USER62> I had a similar issue with Apple accessing my download for an old version of iWork (this was before the App Store was launched). Took me an hour on the phone and a few hours waiting for them to get back to me via email, but I did eventually get a download link to some internal server...

I was amazed they didn't have a real procedure for it, but that's how a real support team handles the issue.

</comment><comment><USER63> Microsoft told me the same thing. When I didn't have a disc for windows they told me to "borrow it from a friend".

My friends on tpb had it.

</comment><comment><USER64> Just do the localhost hack and you can use it all for free. Takes 1 min. [http://theflashblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-active- ma...](http://theflashblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-active-master-suite- cs4-using.html)

</comment><comment><USER65> I'd rather give money to small developers who build great products than steal from Adobe.

</comment><comment><USER66> If you truly care, develop a free alternative that is just as good as their products. See RMS.

<comment><USER67> Problem is, the open source community apparently decided Gimp and Inkscape were probably good enough, and few people who've ever used Adobe software would likely agree.

Never mind that employers probably won't have them installed, and probably won't allow them to be used in house, they won't care if Gimp and Inkscape are on your resume if they're looking specifically to hire for photoshop/illustrator experience, and these alternatives would also have to deal with proprietary image formats, which might make the end result unacceptable to free software purists.

<comment><USER68> > Problem is, the open source community apparently decided Gimp and Inkscape > were probably good enough

I suspect the projects are just short on developer effort, and that no-one decided it was "good enough" to not need improvement. If you are submitting patches that are being denied by the project maintainers, you are welcome to fork the project. _That_ is the "open source community".

<comment><USER66> This is an excellent point. You don't necessarily need to start from scratch if there are existing projects which you might be able to contribute to. If you don't like the direction of certain decisions, you are certainly free to fork the project and continue in your own direction as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I don't mind their new subscription model but: 1\. why do i have to pay 50% more because I am in Europe? 2\. why do I need to keep running a 500mb service just to keep adobe's apps licensing working?

</comment><comment><USER70> Again, this goes back to the old adage that people pirate software because companies make it inconvenient to use their product. Look at how Steam, iTunes, etc... have changed media distribution...

</comment><comment><USER71> Got this when I visited your page: [http://imgur.com/ulQuiSe](http://imgur.com/ulQuiSe)

Seems like your overlords got the memo. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER72> >It all started with my new Macbook Retina. A gleaming beacon of self-worth, and productivity (Yes, Mac IS more productive).

I stopped reading after this.

</comment><comment><USER73> If someone made a tool that extracted layers from PSD's they would get rich.

\- SVG files from vector layers. \- PNG files form rastered layers.

</comment><comment><USER74> so wait, you _not_ going to borrow a CD drive and make an ISO of the disk you've _already_ bought?

</comment><comment><USER75> It seems attacking Adobe shit (by writing a blog post) is the best way to get their correct support.

</comment><comment><USER76> After they got hacked I won't deal with them every again!

I'm back to pirating.

</comment><comment><USER77> I just don't get such people, how can someone be so persistently annoying instead of just downloading the damn software somewhere else?

Or maybe connecting an external DVD drive/using Apple Software to connect to some DVD drive over network.

Instead this guy wastes his time calling hotlines and writing a pointless blog post - I guess that's what it means to be more productive on a Mac. (Of course, there are people that don't know how to solve such an issue, but this person is probably not one of them)

<comment><USER78> The starting point is where you say to yourself to do it "the right way". It turns out that you had a blind spot and your solution was far from being right or optimal. Time for a reality check.

In this case "pirating" was a viable solution but the quest for a binary changed into one about "rightfulness". Reality check: "what are you trying to achieve?".

<comment><USER77> Of course I agree that it would be better for customers to have the binary available on Adobes servers.

What is annoying to me is that this is so obvious and trivial to everybody here on HN, yet this developer feels it is important to declare to the world that he is going to pirate Adobe software from now on because of his "shocking" experience with Adobes customer support.

In the end it might even be that the software was always available on Adobes website, but some frontend developer made a mistake, or that the support guy didn't know better and gave him bad advise.

And then there's this line:

> I was greeted by Adobe's "International" support team, based out of India > where they can pay pennies on the dollar for you to get support in broken > english. It's almost as good as real english… almost.

My blood starts to boil when I read something like that, even though I agree that it can be hard to communicate with someone that doesn't speak your language well.

<comment><USER79> I agree on the last point, this complaint is so casual and frequently expressed. What is the issue? That they are paid less and the service would be better otherwise? The adobe CEO is Indian too. Fact is that when I work with international teams, the English of Indian team members have been a breath of fresh air compared to ESL European counterparts. This call center first world problem trope is tired. Would love to see folks deal with call center operators from areas of the UK with more abstract manifestations of English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Downloading software is not piracy. Using it is. After all you are entitled to personal backup of your install media. The fact that the backup is distributed and cloud based is irrelevant.

<comment><USER81> There is another reason why downloading software from "somewhere else" is less than ideal in a case like this. The reason is that the pirated download might not be the original software as provided by the developer; there is no guarantee that it doesn't have, for example, some virus in it.

<comment><USER82> Nice FUD. But one could just scan it with an up-to-date antivirus to be sure. Unless it is some form of government funded virus it will most probably get detected.

I have yet to encounter a hard to detect and remove virus coming from a downloaded software from "somewhere else", I'd rather install software coming from the scene than a download portal such as softonic.

<comment><USER83> It's pretty trivial to create undetectable droppers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Epic games, makers of Fortnite, raise $1.25B - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/26/epic-games-the-creator-of-fortnite-raises-1-25-billion/ <comment><USER2> At what point does a company stop raising money? Aren't they raking in the micropay money?

<comment><USER3> Never. That's the purpose of the corporate bond market. Allow companies to sell structured debt for operations, research, growth etc... normal fundraising stuff

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Fortnite section at my nearby Halloween store had empty shelves - they had pretty much sold out. I expect it's popularity to be ephemeral, much like "Angry Birds" was, but if you've got the hot game, you need to run with it as far and as fast as you can.

<comment><USER5> isnt fornite free to play?

<comment><USER6> Clearly, you do not have any kids addicted to this game. My two nieces and a nephew, are costing me ~$100.00/week in in-app purchases. This has been going on for a little over a year now.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that not good to let them spend that much money? $30+ a week per kid seems like quite a bit of money to be spent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My 10 year-old nephew had a Fortnite costume that honestly made little sense without the $60USD (separate purchase) foam pickaxe that he barely even wanted to carry around all night from an early Halloween trick-or-treat in his neighborhood. It captured him from social pressure to want to be included but I don't honestly see him pursuing the game in any major fashion beyond cosmetics.

</comment><comment><USER9> I really hope they can launch their own store, with decent standards to entry, and a 12% commission. Steam is a dumpster fire.

<comment><USER10> Please no. We have Steam, Gog, Origin, Ubisoft, Twitch and Discord game stores now. Doing a game store is not a simple thing and stores being built by those who make the games is generally anti-consumer because there is no negotiation of sales.

<comment><USER9> Epic make Fortnite and Unreal Engine. They already have their own launcher which is on tens of millions of PCs.

<comment><USER10> so does ubisoft and Blizzard. It's a gimmick that hinders useability in favor of complete control.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Single Most Important Piece Of Software Developer Career Advice - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0dzSEoJtsM

<comment><USER2> "...the most important piece of advice I give to developers for getting a good job is... _your resume_."

Thanks for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I realize now that it should have been "don't be a dick."</comment></comment>


Credit Growth and the Financial Crisis: A New Narrative [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://papers.nber.org/tmp/80614-w23740.pdf <comment><USER2> This is an odd way of framing it (the NBER article isn't quite so slanted).

If you were leveraged in 2008 you were more likely have (on paper) a high credit score (with assets far in excess of liabilities). But you were also going to get hammered, and be more likely to hit a cashflow wall. If you had a job, one house, and one loan, you probably weathered the storm.

It's a little odd to frame that as "poor" vs. "investors," though. The anecdote that always struck me from Lewis's Big Short was that toward the end, lenders were pushing recent immigrants to start no-money-down rental empires, because recent immigrants haven't been here long enough to have credit hiccups -- so they start with high credit scores, even at modest incomes. And for every high credit score loan, the CDOs could launder multiple C-grade loans into a AAA security.

The systemic problem was bad securitization math, which led to unsustainable returns in housing investments. A significant element of that was enticing average Joes to over-leverage themselves like "investors."

(The idea that Community Reinvestment Act lending was anything as systemic as the rating errors is totally bogus, as far as I can tell).

</comment><comment><USER3> Do people really associate subprime loans with poor people? This article is the first time I've ever seen subprime described that way. I've always taken it to mean any loan where the borrow is stretching themselves too thin or where there is low or no down payment.

<comment><USER4> I have repeatedly had people on the US right explain to me that the 2008 mortgage crisis was due to government-mandated loans to poor people.

As an example, here's some 2008 discussion of this thesis: [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subp...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subprime_suspects.html)

Here's a 2016 discussion of similar themes: [http://ritholtz.com/2016/06/no- cra-not-cause-financial-crisi...](http://ritholtz.com/2016/06/no-cra-not- cause-financial-crisis/)

That never matched my understanding, but it was practically an article of faith for them.

<comment><USER5> There's a strange theory that banks and brokers had to be forced to reluctantly write bad loans, when in fact they were desperate to write more once they had a way to dump the risk on clueless speculators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We changed the url from [https://qz.com/1064061/house-flippers-triggered-the- us-housi...](https://qz.com/1064061/house-flippers-triggered-the-us-housing- market-crash-not-poor-subprime-borrowers-a-new-study-shows/) to the original source. Hopefully this will make for a more substantive, less sensationalized discussion.

</comment><comment><USER7> It was similar in the UK. House flippers fuelled the bubble. Eventually, it got so big, that even the common man on a reasonable salary was struggling to afford a home. Mortgages still got approved, and sure, people with lower incomes would be the first to default, but they were clearly not the cause.

<comment><USER8> +1 Irish experience as well. It was people with 2nd and 3rd houses that all defaulted. People with homes will usually do whatever it takes to pay them off.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: _the biggest growth of mortgage debt during the housing boom came from those with credit scores in the middle and top of the credit score distribution—and these borrowers accounted for a disproportionate share of defaults_

<comment><USER9> Edit: reread nber paper

So the argument seems to be that high credit score individuals with more than one first mortgage (flippers) rose from 20% to 35% in 02-07, and that rise accounts entirely for the excess defaults in 07.

It also accounts for the rise in "east" delinquency - people who aren't living in a home are more willing to walk away from it.

It's kind of convincing, but I don't think it lets mortgage fraud from lenders off the hook (i.e. Lax enforcement of scoring and approval etc)

Basic message is don't give commercial investments the same rights or protections as domestic mortgages - but if you are going to adjust mortgage rules the best ones to focus on are again, fraud by lenders.

And of course, reductions in securitisation of opaque assets and the misalignment of incentives of lenders and ... oh we have done this to death. We have not learnt anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's silly to think there is a single thing that caused the recession. It's a nice narrative to have a singular reason and lets you tell a story. But there's a million reasons it happened.

</comment><comment><USER11> Rapid expansion of credit strongly correlates with insolvency.

There's an excellent paper by Gudrun Johnson back when she worked at the IMF that captures it in the sovereign insolvency context.

</comment><comment><USER9> Blaming house flippers is like blaming a pastry chef for my extra pounds on the waistline - it's a side show, to the real cause.

oil prices reached record levels before 2007 financial crash. Then western economies were being forced into recession by the rising cost of energy and responded by hiking interest rates - that then triggered mortgage defaults and over-leveraged borrowers throughout economy collapsed.

We are and always have been reliant on oil - it's not determinisim but it is dependency.

When oil prices go mad, so do we, and if we are over stretched it breaks us.

We are still over stretched (personal credit at all time highs etc)

And oil has very few places to go but up over long term.

<comment><USER12> Yea, I think the petrodollar was invented not long after we got off the gold standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wait wait wait. No one thought poor borrowers that caused a nationwide housing market crash.

Furthermore, I don't think house flippers created an industry that needed an ever-increasing supply of loans for securitization and corrupted lending institutions with that demand either.

<comment><USER14> You would be wrong. It is a widely held belief that the government forced lenders to give mortgages to unqualified poor people, and that is what caused the crash.

Here is pushback against that thinking from 2008! It still has a lot of traction, probably as much as it did in 2008. With a bit of effort I could probably find a similar article from every year between then and now.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subp...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subprime_suspects.html)

Edit: from 2013 [http://www.businessinsider.com/republican-explanation- of-200...](http://www.businessinsider.com/republican-explanation- of-2008-crash-is-false-2013-2)

<comment><USER15> The two things aren't mutually exclusive. The government absolutely did strongly encourage writing loans to less conventional borrowers, with the implied threat of civil rights investigations.

At first, the encouragement was tied to home ownership programs that pre- screened applicants and provided training for owning a home. My dad ran one of these for a few years, and they were remarkably successful at transitioning section 8 recipients to homeowners and often homeowner/landlords.

Later, they decided that wasn't fast enough and they skipped the education and screening and just wrote loans.</comment></comment></comment>


Musk says Tesla will be profitable in Q3 and Q4 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/13/elon-musk-says-tesla-will-be-profitable-in-q3-and-q4/ <comment><USER3> I wished Tesla would focus more on a full ecosystem for self driving, lighter cars, including better infrastructure, rather than shoehorning their vehicles into the existing system. I just feel that with their current approach, we've ended up with an even heavier, expensive lump of metal for moving a 70kg person from A to B. I do like their product from a "coolness" perspective, but I'm not sure if it's the long term way to go.

<comment><USER4> Beyond Elon's current initiative with the Boring Company, can you be more specific with examples of what that might look like? Because otherwise, Tesla doesn't really have a choice but to shoehorn into the current multi-trillion dollar transportation network.

<comment><USER3> I think they need to focus on infrastructure, more than the car. For example, how about installing beacons in catseyes to guide vehicles so the complexity of driving algorithms can be reduced. It just seems like they're trying to solve the self driving problem in the hardest way possible by making a car "see". Also, I don't think the boring company will ever offer the same flexibility in transportation a car will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Profitable or not is kinda meaningless since they just reinvest it all anyway, I think revenue growth is more important at this point. [https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/financials?query=income-s...](https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/financials?query=income- statement) a la amazon: [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-revenue-vs- profit-2016...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-revenue-vs- profit-2016-1)

<comment><USER6> It's true that revenue and revenue growth is probably more important than earnings for Tesla's stock price, but Tesla has two challenges that Amazon doesn't have:

\- access to capital is getting tight

\- Tesla has less ability than Amazon to spin the story that "we can turn down our reinvestment at any time to turn on profits"

<comment><USER7> It's a fair comparison, although not to the present Amazon. The Amazon of today is financially entirely different to the one from 15 years ago.

Amazon nearly went bankrupt after the dotcom bubble era. They were drowning in particularly bad debt and red ink for years. After the dotcom bubble their financing abilities almost entirely dried up, the stock collapsed by ~93% or so. It was almost universally expected that they would not survive, culminating with the infamous Barron's Amazon.bomb story and a parade of stories thereafter. For the next three or so years after that story, bankruptcy was the anticipated end by the press and analysts. Tesla today, when you look at how they're being discussed by the press + analysts, and their financials, looks similar to Amazon's general condition back then (Tesla's growth is both faster and its red ink is greater, than Amazon was back then).

For reference, Amazon had $1.6b in sales for 1999 with a $719m loss, and a $30b plus market cap at the peak of the dotcom bubble. Tesla will probably hit around $17-$18 billion in sales for 2018. If the market lets out - <USER2> supportive environment broadly - you'll see Tesla's stock crater unless their burn rate is very sharply reduced. They'll suffer the same financing concerns that pushed Amazon's stock down to $5.51 / share in 2001.

<comment><USER8> Very true but somehow Wall St. is valuing Tesla very differently than they valued Amazon 15 years ago. Tesla's stock hasn't gone down that much, there's volatility but not the near 100% crash that struck Amazon. On the flip side, Tesla has needed a lot more capital than Amazon and they have issued a lot more shares to raise that capital (close to 12B now). I don't think Tesla's stock price, despite it's volatility reflects it's debt economics.

<comment><USER9> Yes. But generally today's valuation lens on a lot of these stocks looks more like the 1999 one than the 2001 one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems strange for Musk to make a stupid for musk to claim that profitability in Q3/4 is important when they're talking about his debt. The maturing debt will not be covered by the small profits. If there are profits, which I suspect there won't.

<comment><USER7> And if you're wrong, what is the cost?

It's interesting how there's no negativity check to discussion forums, because there is effectively zero cost to endlessly being wrong and endlessly negative. When confronted with even a 50/50 proposition, the obvious bet is to go hard negative against it.

The last two dozen, or more, Tesla threads I've read on HN, have been approximately 95% negative. I've never seen anything like it in the last eight years I've been reading the site. The Facebook blowback recently perhaps, although they've harmed the privacy of tens or hundreds of millions of people.

Maybe someone here can help me understand, why the extreme emotional reaction to Tesla these days? I've found you can't even point out actual positive facts about Tesla without suffering a wave of downvotes regardless.

They're going bankrupt next month. Or next quarter. They suck. They build shit cars. The panels don't fit together ever! Electric cars are easy to build. They have endless competition that will smoke them. Musk is always wrong. He's committing securities fraud, probably; or at least SpaceX is, or maybe Tesla is. They'll never get autonomous driving right. They're behind everyone in autonomous driving. China, or Europe, will eat their lunch. Telsa will never reach profitability. So what if they've grown sales rapidly, they still suck. All the other car companies are already out-producing them in electric cars. They'll never produce the Model 3 at scale; they'll never produce 1,000 per week; they'll never produce 5,000 per week; and even if they do, they'll still suck! And so on for another 57 negative concepts.

To give a specific example, a lot of comments I've read, have claimed Tesla would _never_ mass produce the Model 3. Post after post for months has stated plainly that they were going to fail at it. It was obvious, supposedly. Now they're tracking to 100,000 or more in just in the second half of the year. If you point that out, the response you'll get is either: yeah but they missed Musk's original target by a mile; or: yeah, well, the quality sucks (ie a deflection and criticism shift, which points to a broader cynicism).

You'd think we were dealing with a genocidal warlord, not a car company.

<comment><USER11> > _The last two dozen, or more, Tesla threads I 've read on HN, have been > approximately 95% negative._

Maybe people are tired of the endless claims from the Tesla fans that "everything everyone else has ever done before is wrong".

Maybe the rest of the manufacturers _aren 't_ that stupid? Why do so many people here root against Ford and GM?

> _have claimed Tesla would never mass produce the Model 3_

Yet to be seen. Right now they are hand-building cars for huge losses. There's no "mass" production (on an automotive scale), and there's no $35k Model 3 in the foreseeable future. Have you given thought to why people might make such a claim? Or are you of the mind that Musk is infallible? Maybe people tire of being called dumb because they don't believe "air friction" is holding back the assembly line?

> _Now they 're tracking to 100,000_

According to whom? Tesla won't release the numbers, and the Model 3 tracker from Blomberg shows 2,300 per week. Maybe it's exaggerated claims like yours that spur negative sentiment?

<comment><USER12> > Maybe people are tired of the endless claims from the Tesla fans that > "everything everyone else has ever done before is wrong".

Of course everything everyone else has ever done before _isn 't_ wrong. Lots of it is right. But if challenging all of it is what's needed to innovate in the places where they _were_ wrong, then by all means I support Tesla and Musk. Why would I not support someone trying to innovate, and succeeding? Unless of course you want to try to tell me Tesla hasn't innovated the auto industry in any way-- in that case we can end our discussion here because we won't ever see eye to eye.

> Why do so many people here root against Ford and GM?

I root against Ford and GM and the others because with all their resources and might, they haven't done what Tesla's done....instead they've done the bare minimum. Tesla started in 2004 from scratch. If GM or Ford had committed the resources they could have to electric vehicles and autonomy and so in 2004, God knows what they would have for us now. But they didn't. They sat still, incrementally improving mileage and adding bluetooth and so on. Why would I root for that? Why are you rooting for that? What's exciting about that?

> Yet to be seen. Right now they are hand-building cars for huge losses. > There's no "mass" production

"Yet to be seen"? Geez. Yeah, clearly Tesla's not scaling at all. Selling about the same number of cars as two years ago, or five years ago. No evidence of progress at Tesla.

> Or are you of the mind that Musk is infallible?

Of course Musk is fallible. Does a person have to be infallible to innovate and succeed? Do they have to be infallible to be admired?

> According to whom? Tesla won't release the numbers, and the Model 3 tracker > from Blomberg shows 2,300 per week

Yep, no doubt the 2300 will decline back towards 1000, then they'll go bankrupt. No reason to believe that things are picking up. Just because it's 2300 now and was 150 three months ago, that's not evidence of any progress. Easier to believe they're going to fall apart.

So hard for me to understand your way of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In Musk years that would be Q3/Q4 2020.

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember him saying the same thing in 2016 or 2017, or both.

<comment><USER15> Link?

<comment><USER16> [http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/127387238...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/1273872387x0x874449/945B9CF5-86DA-4C35-B03C-4892824F058D/Q4_15_Tesla_Update_Letter.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Musk has said a lot of things that didn't ring true.

</comment><comment><USER18> Musk talks a lot.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems HN went from Musk love to hate pretty fast. I am rooting for the man.

</comment><comment><USER20> I could make a single car in my garage and be profitable. Delivering the 3's is the all and only right now. Everything else is a distraction.

</comment><comment><USER21> Dupe

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16829159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16829159)

</comment><comment><USER22> The electric cars have problems that have nothing to do with actually manufacturing and it has less exciting name, it is called power grid. If we would switch to el. cars, the first effect would be light polution due to electrical wires glowing in the night. Then the complete collapse of system. To be able to power all the cars, we have to double the amount of high voltage transport wires between the power plants and consumers (cities) + additional transformators, and this is something where billions need to be spent, it will make electricity expensier (actually the other part of the bill - the power grid costs) for everyone and el. cars economicaly useless.

Electrical cars? Yeah, I want one. Does it make sense on large scale? Not really.

As far as I have noticed, there is a pattern, bad Q results, then Musk comes with a new revolutionary idea, just pumping the hype. I am eager to see what will be next, maybe electrical cargo ship or electrical magic carpet (I would have one if those :) )

<comment><USER23> That is ridiculous. The electric grid is actually facing precipitous demand growth drop[0] due (in part) to efficiency improvements. Long range electric vehicles are able to charge when demand is lowest most of the time, and for long trips, they charge at Superchargers which are buffered with stationary batteries. Far from destroying the electric grid, electric cars are critical to making utilities profitable.

[0][https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/energy-and- environment/2018...](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/energy-and- environment/2018/2/27/17052488/electricity-demand-utilities)

<comment><USER22> Oh, sorry, I understand now. Looks like studying energetics 20 years back is something that is useful for anything else regarding electricity except electrical cars (and solar panels). My bad. I should understand that saying that king is naked will just bring downvotes from all the _real experts_ who are learning from marketing and press (that is writing articles based on material given to them by marketing).

I will just stop posting in this thread, as usualy on those two topics every average John Doe is smarter. Just go and buy more Tesla stocks.</comment></comment></comment>


Adieu google - <AUTHOR> http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/adieu_google/ <comment><USER2> I'm tired of google's stemmer getting in the way of doing specific searches. Even quotes won't keep it from showing results that are the same except for having an _s_ dropped or added. It's frustrating at times.

It was bad enough not being able to search for strings.

What I'd really like is an uncrippled search engine that lets people be very specific in their searches. I'd really like support for simple regexes.

<comment><USER3> Use the '+' character. [http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861)

<comment><USER4> [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2B$HOME&aq=f&#...</a> still doesn't work...

<comment><USER5> For comparison, here's what ddg comes up with: [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%24HOME&v=](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%24HOME&v=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree- the irony in google fighting for the next platform to be open regardless of what it is, is in google monetizing data that I would rather remain 100% private.

Google is fast approacting too good to be true status, at least for me personally: I use google voice, gmail has become my primary email client (including letting it manage my own domain email), I use google docs to edit documents on the fly, and was probably one of the first people to download chrome and chrome os.

That is far, far more information than I feel comfortable letting any one company have about me.

<comment><USER7> The other choice is simply spreading it between multiple companies. In the modern age, all that disparate data will eventually get centralized or aggregated somewhere, somehow, whether or not it's your choice to do so, that of the companies you're interacting with, your friends', your own employer's, or your government's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I missing something? Why using duckduckgo? The only mention I have seen of it is a paid ad they bought on reddit. Is there any reason they are better than the plethora of existing alternatives? Do they even maintain their own index, or are they a scraper?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ultimately the reason you should use it is because it gets you the information you want faster and with less mental effort. That's the primary goal. I'd encourage you (or anyone!) to try it for a week and then let me know how it goes with this goal in mind.

We've tried to achieve that goal via UI and a number of features that may or may not appeal to you individually. We also try to concentrate on features that the major search engines won't do because of their business position. A lot of those features are listed here: <http://duckduckgo.com/about.html>

What's not listed there that I think appeals to this crowd in particular is the background relevancy stuff I mentioned in my other comment and answer to your other question: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979479>

I think what also appeals to people like me (and by extension, I assume a lot of HN types) is keyboard shortcuts, aggressive filtering of parked/spam domains, and disambiguation.

We do have our own index and use it to improve relevancy as well as to add our own Zero-click Info and links to search result pages. Search any major topic and you should see a red box on top with a quick snippet and related topics. We also use it to build our own category and disambiguation pages, e.g. <http://duckduckgo.com/c/Social_bookmarking>

Our most recent major feature launch was Duck It!, a search view accessible from our homepage that features more topic summaries, e.g. [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=tinychat&v=d](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=tinychat&v=d). HN feedback link here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=919505>

Of course, we'd welcome suggestions for additional features/improvements!

<comment><USER9> Hey, while you're here, one thing about Duck Duck Go that concerns me is that it can be killed on a per-IP basis by locking on "safe" search.

If I accidentially do this at home, or if I find that I have to use tor too often while in coffee shops to ensure I see all search results, (or if I use tor and some idiot has forced it on for those IPs), that could be a problem.

Also, I wonder how hard it would be to spoof packets to kill IPs one doesn't even have access too? Do you send a nonce back to the user and check it before completing the banning process?

<comment><AUTHOR> The short answer is when we start running into collisions we'll change the parameters of this service, or perhaps sooner. That is, I'm fully aware of these limitations/issues and am actively monitoring them.

I wanted to try the extreme case (at least for a time) to see if a lot of schools and businesses that use one static IP would find the process super simple and just use it. After all, they could set all their computers to safe search in one click. This experiment is ongoing, but it will probably evolve into a program where we have more of a back and forth opt-in process.

I hope this addresses your concern!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They want to put a random cookie on your browser and link it to your search preferences. Oh my goodness, how horribly bad of them!

Yes, Google knows all your secrets (even if you never went online, they'd probably have enough data from your contact with the rest of the world to reconstruct a profile). No, they have not shown any inclination to misuse this information. Privacy is dead - luckily, it was killed by Google and not MSN. Welcome to the 21st century, learn to cope.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the days of an invincible google are clearly over. Their brand is diluted (imho) with countless products, I think that at least for search - someone could beat them.

Eg, If facebook bought or built a search engine, it could be 'game on'.

<comment><USER12> FaceBook has a search engine, it's just that it's for searching your social life instead of the web.

<comment><USER13> Don't forget that they contract out web search to Bing. Try it, query for something on the Web with Facebook's search box. I always ignore it because it's noise -- when I go to Facebook I want to look for people, not essays or blog posts.

<comment><USER14> If they figure out how to market that better, though, they've got a massive userbase. That could be incredible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I also switched from Google to Duck Duck Go about a week ago. It's perfect for common terms, but I still switch to Google for the more obscure stuff. But it's _not_ like Google in 1999. Search has gotten harder, and more expensive -- which is part of why Google is doing what they can to get a competitive advantage (by hoovering up more of your data) and exploiting it (by selling the data, displaying ads based on it, etc.).

<comment><USER16> > ... (by selling the data, ...) ...

<http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html> -> grep Information Sharing.

<comment><USER17> They purposely restricted that section to "personal information". If they don't tie your web history to your persona, they are free to sell it or do whatever else they want with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hear you. I am still a "google fan," specifically I have a business idea I want to implement on top of Wave, and I plan on continuing using GMail.

That said, I switched my default Firefox search to Clusty yesterday. This morning, I searched for a vendor of old Rudger Mark II magazines/clips. I clicked on a paid link, and ended up spending a fair amount of money. Clusty got a profit slice that Google would have got if their privacy issues had not caught my attention.

The sci-fi author David Brin (a cool guy, BTW) advocates for no privacy as long as everyone has an equal amount of "non privacy" - the problem as I see it is the corporations, who profit by knowing everything about you via discount cards at supermarkets, the web, etc. I'll stop complaining when we have the ability to know private corporate details, have congress people have to wear Nascar-like advertisements on their clothes, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> My last straw was seeing the Chrome logo.

I've always had the " _they're watching you_ " thought running in the background of my mind. But, I have always ignored those thoughts.

Then I saw the Chrome logo. To me, it very blatantly looks like an imposing robotic eye, watching every move. I said: screw this, too f'n much. And I, incidentally, also moved on and also use Duck Duck Go. But, I still use Google as a spell checker every once in a while.

\----

Addendum: Google has the uncanny ability of making bad logos look nice.

Link to robotic eye logo: [http://www.gadgetzone.ro/wp- content/uploads/2009/11/chrome-l...](http://www.gadgetzone.ro/wp- content/uploads/2009/11/chrome-logo.png) .

<comment><USER20> Yeah, because the logo of a fully open-source browser is totally reasonable. Well, it's probably as reasonable as freaking out over 180-day anonymous cookies that improve your search results.

<comment><USER19> Well, the logo alone would be a pretty stupid reason to abandon Google. But, like I said, it was just the last straw.

And if I am going to have a last straw, the thing that removes that piece of straw must be eccentric. Yet, vaguely resemble truth. The point is to have prepared a retort to "why don't you use Google search?" Because people will ask with the intent to condescend.

I find myself smug about the robotic eye logo because I think it is ironic. It is as if a totalitarian government plastered posters onto drab brick walls. The posters say: "big brother respects your privacy." And on the poster, above those words, is a picture of a robotic eyeball staring at the citizens who stopped to read.

I'd much rather have a fun reason to change loyalties, so I don't have to go into the many details.

It'll keep me from receiving the same flak as when I switched to Linux.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that when you go into such detail about this eccentricity, it stops coming across as a funny joke ("Of course Google's evil. Did you see the _eye_?!") and starts sounding like you've cracked.

Why worry about flak? Use what works for you. If people get bitchy about that, tell them you like it, and if they push it tell them to fuck off. End of every pointless tech debate you'll ever have. If you're going so far as to build _defenses_ you're worrying too much.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't go as far as saying that I've cracked because I explained a joke. Something I called an eccentricity since I do realize it is a little out there. Besides that, I just came up with the "totalitarian government" thing, and I thought my explanatory comment was a more suitable place to extrapolate into the small story.

But, it is intrinsically me to worry too much. Sardonic fun.

I don't know why I've explained here... but in real life the almost-joke would stop the conversation _before_ there was even a debate. Which is valuable to me because hearing people's inane remarks is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard.

I enjoy the company here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been stuck behind the Chinese firewall for a while now and while I do proxy for searches that clearly need it, I surf most of my web unproxied. For whatever reason, the firewall seems to arbitrarily and frequently block many of my (non-risque and non-politically-sensitive) Google queries. The end result is that I've been using a whole lot of Bing. Aside from my habit of using Google as my default search tool, I don't see much reason in terms of performance for me to stick with them. As it is, I will likely be switching my default search engine to Bing once I figure out how to do it in Chrome.

<comment><USER22> Type "bing.com" in the address bar, hit Tab instead of Enter and search for anything.

Open Options from the tool menu. On the Basic tab, locate "Default search" and click the Manage button. In the list of "Other search engines", select bing.com and click Make Default.

<comment><USER21> Thanks! I had been putting it off because the last time I tried to configure Chromium on Linux for something (a Socks 5 proxy) it was very unfriendly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google has focussed too much on common searches (the money makers). They have had so little competition that they forgot that people select their search engine based on specific searches.

</comment><comment><USER24> I discovered the Google Accounts Dashboard today and had a similar reaction: <https://www.google.com/dashboard?hl=en>

On the one hand, once you sign over your email, you've signed over verification on any site. On the other, it's pretty jarring to see all the personal information (CC and address) and relational data (contacts, RSS subscriptions, purchase history) Google owns.

</comment><comment><USER25> What stops anybody from deleting their web history data and disabling Web History thing altogether?

<comment><USER26> You implicitly trust that it is deleted when you click that button?

<comment><USER25> I am not a fan of conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER27> from <http://www.google.com/searchhistory/privacy.html>

"You can delete information from Web History using the remove feature, and it will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Build your own Google <http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post- view.php?id=243665>

</comment><comment><USER29> i'm not sure if this is over-reaction.

* It's completely separate from your Google Account and Web History (which are only available to signed-in users). You'll know when we customize results because a "View customizations" link will appear on the top right of the search results page. _

</comment><comment><USER30> I have been noticing a decline in Google's search results, _especially_ for computer-related help. Tons of awful blog posts, from years ago, created for AdSense money.

Why can't Google [surreptitiously?] rank search results by actual relevancy (e.g. clicks & abandons)? And don't tell me because of voting rings: I have seen "voting ring detection" often as a common screening problem for job interviews.

<comment><USER31> > _Tons of awful blog posts, from years ago,_

This. While humanity has uploaded a lot of valuable, worthwhile information online in the past decade, that's just a blip compared to the amount of totally useless junk online. That makes things harder for all search engines. It also will be interesting to see how search engines cope with the internet as the number of websites/pages continues to grow in the next fifty or so years.

<comment><USER32> Sorry for this to get all meta, but what is the meaning of saying "this" at the beginning of a comment? I've seen it elsewhere, sometimes as the entire response. I'm afraid I missed the beginnings of this convention, and it's not intuitive (at least to me).

<comment><USER33> It's a shorthand for 'I totally agree and what was said bears repeating'. I think it originated on fark, but I'm not totally sure.

<comment><USER34> I thought we already _had_ a way to say that: ditto.

<comment><USER35> The original post asked a question: "Why can't Google [surreptitiously?] rank search results by actual relevancy (e.g. clicks & abandons)?"

The respondent felt that the original post contained the answer to its own question. Therefore, the respondent said, "This," pointing to the answer.

<comment><USER32> Ok, I see now that the original poster was effectively saying "this is why", not necessarily using the "this" meme that I was confused about. Still, I got my answer _and_ the post has been clarified for me. Thanks, guys.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>