I Tried San Francisco's Electric Scooter Share and It Was a Nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/i-tried-san-franciscos-electric-scooter-share-and-it-wa-1825275906 <comment><USER3> I use it all the time and love it.

I wish the media and government would talk more about the needles and drug pipes everywhere on the sidewalks rather than these awesome scooters.

<comment><USER4> I walked market street from valencia to embarcardero yesterday: a beautiful sunny day, lots of tourists and activity.

Along with my wife, we spotted a man passed out face down on the sidewalk soiled himself, another one with extreme protuberances all over his body, pants down, scratching himself with a stick, a fight on the corner of the payday loans on 7th~ with the fighters yelling at walkers to "mind their own business", broken hypodermics, and the list goes on.

It's frankly embarrassing that san francisco calls itself a touristic city. Its a showcase of american decay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use them a lot in SOMA and it's generally been great. I actually like Spin the best because they're the least popular and their scooters are the least worn. I have maintenance issues with maybe 20-30% of the bird/lime scooters already, so I'm wondering what it'll look like in a year.

Also I try not to look too long or go too far out of my way for a scooter. Occasionally I can't find a scooter listed on the map and it ends up negating any time savings of using a scooter.

<comment><USER6> "Generally been great" / "20-30% have issuesL. Yea something doesn't add up or people are ridiculously forgiving just because it's a hip SV startup that's providing the (non-)service

<comment><USER7> You missed the distinction between brands. "Generally been great" refers to Spin scooters. "20-30% have issues" refers to Bird/Lime scooters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm wondering if the scooters are up to being used every day for months. The normal kind are made to last only as long as a person might use them - <USER2> might total a few hours or miles until they lose interest. Are these different?

</comment><comment><USER9> I use it daily and it's actually pretty nice. Personally the they don't bother me when they are "littered" on the sidewalk either

</comment><comment><USER10> Little authoritarians shutting down innovation with their helmet laws and whining about a scooter! on the sidewalk! are why we can't have nice things.

</comment><comment><USER11> I loved Scoot when I was in SF. Except after it rained. Some Bezos-bald tires on those things.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Nightmare"?</comment>


Ask HN: Self-employed devs, how do you plan/think about your career? - <AUTHOR> I take for granted that we won't be able to keep up with the last tech stacks and that we will eventually need to find a way out.<p>What real options do we have? <comment><USER2> Very carefully.

I currently work as a self-employed independent contractor in the cloud- engineering and devops automation sector in the greater Boston area. I have a strong focus on minimizing cost while making sure the customer achieves that they intend to, and that has given me an edge over fellow contractors that like to drop a known pattern in place and call it a day.

Here's an example.

I had a meeting a few days ago where I was asked to optimize a section of a product that made no sense to me (eliminating DNS and SSL tunnel start-up times). I have a firm believe in how I operate that I do not want to waste my customer's time, money, or my time in the work that I do.

I came back with a data-driven response showing other areas of the product with low hanging fruit that got seconds of time back instead of milliseconds on the area they wanted. I implemented one solution as an example, and landed several more months of contract work with them as a result.

I don't want to waste my time to get paid, I want to solve interesting problems and _get paid solving them_. I also want to stand behind my work, and stand proud.

So for me planning my career is as simple as finding companies that have problems I can address, for me that is low level network protocol analysis, distributed systems, cloud deployments, and java optimization. I hit those hard, and then build up quotes from customers I have worked with to show potential leads what I am capable of. Understanding that anyone you are talking to is a potential lead was huge for me. Just because it's some guy you ran into at a bar, some woman talking about her start-up, whatever - they all are potential customers, and you need to hold yourself as a professional.

Don't be an ass, establish credibility, and show that you actually care. Money follows.

</comment><comment><USER3> if your worth as a "dev" is tied to the fact that you know js framework X really well, you have a foundational problem in your skillset.

learn real skills. whatever framework someone fancies can be picked up over the weekend. 80/20.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am able to stay aware of new technologies. I may not write in them, but I know where to go to learn more.

A good team will hire for personality fit first, and ability to learn, a programmers mindset.

</comment><comment><USER5> In 2007, being a seasoned Win32 programmer, I was experiencing anxiety, because web development seemed to be taking over the world, and I had not yet written so much as an HTML tag. One day, I started fiddling with Javascript, and six months later I was a mid-level front end developer.

Since that time, I never worried about this again. We have the real option of learning whatever tech stack we want.

<comment><USER6> You went from zero Javascript/HTML to a job in six months? Is that common? I feel uncomfortable applying for a job in something I only have a few months experience with.

On the flip side, I've found that sometimes you don't need to panic about these things, and the flavour of the month is just that. I'm still making money from Win32 code in 2017, even though iPads & tablets were meant to replace all desktop & laptop computers by now.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I did. And I've done the same thing twice since then. In my experience, top companies will hire people on the basis of being good, experienced programmers who know how to learn platforms.

<comment><USER6> Huh. Thanks for the reply - clearly I've been selling myself short!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't it harder to learn new technology if you're busy with a full time job that makes you work with the tech _they_ want?</comment>


Depth-First Iterative Deepening (1985) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cse.sc.edu/~mgv/csce580f09/gradPres/korf_IDAStar_1985.pdf

<comment><USER2> I recently implemented depth-first iterative deepening in an Artificial Intelligence class project to solve the classic missionaries and cannibals problem [0]. The professor remarked that while there have been some optimizations over the last few decades, using them can be quite messy – to the point where the combination of A* and iterative deepening is still commonly used in the field.

I'm fairly certain that the claim in the introduction – "Unfortunately, current AI texts either fail to mention this algorithm or refer to it only in the context of two-person game searches" – is no longer true.

From my current textbook (Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach [1]):

"Iterative deepening search (or iterative deepening depth-first search) is a general strategy, often used in combination with depth-first tree search, that finds the best depth limit. It does this by gradually increasing the limit — first 0, then 1, then 2, and so on — until a goal is found... In general, iterative deepening is the preferred uninformed search method when the search space is large and the depth of the solution is not known."

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionaries_and_cannibals_prob...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionaries_and_cannibals_problem)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern- Approac...](http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach- Edition/dp/0136042597)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a live sports score API or database? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> ESPN has a scores API that's in beta for "premium partners" only at the moment. Unless someone here can say otherwise, I'd recommend against using FanFeedr as their data doesn't look to be too accurate or up-to-date.</comment>


Java Deployment Toolkit Performs Insufficient Validation of Parameters - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Apr/119 <comment><USER2> This is covered in InformationWeek Article 'Serious Java Flaw Surfaces'[ [http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/04/se...](http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/04/serious_java_fl.html) ]</comment>


How can I teach a bright person, with no programming experience, how to program? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96504/how-can-i-teach-a-bright-person-with-no-programming-experience-how-to-program <comment><USER2> Wow, the selected answer by Joel is, unusually, awful. Has he ever tried to teach someone who is at his 30's and with no programming experience? He suggests the "The C Programming Language, K&R"? Yeah, at that pace he will be able to write a `for loop` by the time he is forty.</comment>


Wunderlist is shutting down on May 6th - <AUTHOR> https://www.wunderlist.com/ <comment><USER2> I made the migration to Microsoft To-Do and to be honest it's pretty similar in terms of features. There's some nice integration with O365 if you use it at work where flagged emails and tasks assigned to you in Planner end up in To-Do as well. They really just need to add support to the macOS and mobile clients that let you switch back and forth between a personal Microsoft account and a work-related Office 365 account. That functionality seems to only exist in the Windows 10 client right now.</comment>


Apple Now Has $121.3B In Cash: More Than Amazon's Market Cap Or A Space Station - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/25/apple-now-has-121-3-billion-in-cash-more-than-amazons-market-cap-or-a-space-station/ <comment><USER2> This isn't such a great thing. Bad time to have cash. Bad yields and lots of currency risk out there. Apple isn't willing to invest chunks of this into longer term investments that can yield potentially huge returns? Looks like they're happy to sit pretty with their current line at the top.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure it's "cash" in the accounting sense, which is actually "cash equivalents" -- stuff you can quickly convert to cash, and that is not considered to be at risk (so this would exclude, e.g. buying stock).</comment></comment>


Show HN: An imitation of the iOS8 system keyboard, built in Swift - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys! I built a custom keyboard for iOS8 that imitates the looks and behavior of the native QWERTY keyboard. The goal from the start was to be entirely programmatic: all the art and layout are generated in code, so it's much easier to extend than something built using XIBs and PNGs. It's rough around the edges (due to deadlines), the code is messy, and I don't intend to devote too much of my side project time to maintaining it as a framework, but I figured it might make a good starting point for anyone doing something similar.
The project page: https://github.com/archagon/tasty-imitation-keyboard
Here's how it got started. I speak Russian, but I'm terrible at typing on anything but the standard QWERTY keyboard, and so I was interested in getting transliteration (along the lines of http://www.translit.ru) working on iOS8. On a Mac, this was as easy as building an "input method", which sits between your input and output and converts things as you type. But on iOS8, if you're building a custom keyboard, you really have to start from scratch. My goal was to make a keyboard that looks pretty much the same as the system keyboard but allows you to change the way it behaves, thus fulfilling the same goal as an input method in a roundabout way.
The behavior isn't perfect. The graphics deviate, there are a few rough performance edges, and there are some features missing (including iPad support). But it works! I made my translit keyboard[1] and got it into the App Store.
[1]: http://translit-keyboard.archagon.net <comment><USER2> Cool stuff!

Apologies in advance for mentioning my own work, what you've done is hugely useful to the world beyond just your Russian transliteration. Just want to mention that the Minuum [YC W14] keyboard has a disambiguating transliteration keyboard available amongst its Russian layout settings, curious to know what you think (though be forewarned that our Russian language model being in need of some additional vocabulary). I'm not aware of other keyboards that combine transliteration with autocorrect the way that Minuum does.</comment>


Microsoft released Spotlight-like launcher for Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21262060/microsoft-windows-10-launcher-powertoy-spotlight-alfred-download-build <comment><USER2> Perhaps I'm missing something but isn't there already pretty much the same functionality available when you press just [Win] (instead of [Win]-[R]) and start typing?

> Keys will be remapped as long as the Keyboard Manager and PowerToys are > running in the background, and you can swap individual keys and even Windows > shortcuts.

Keys can already be remapped via a Registry entry under _HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout_ , which does not require anything running in the background, although this works for individual keys only.

There is even a great GUI utility to simplify creating the correct Registry entries: [https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys](https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys)

</comment><comment> alok-g I am using classic shell [1] start menu which includes launcher and works so much better than the built in start memu.

[1] [https://coddec.github.io/Classic- Shell/www.classicshell.net/](https://coddec.github.io/Classic- Shell/www.classicshell.net/)</comment>


Show HN: Blogo - A blog editor Mac app for WordPress bloggers - <AUTHOR> http://www.getblogo.com <comment><USER2> Installed it. Very nice and clean layout. Well done folks! Now for the feature requests :-) \- disqus vs wp spam prone comments integration? \- mobile version? I usually begin all my blog posts while walking. Currently use Notes on the iPhone and love how when I get back to my MBP its there synced. Just these 2 would be enough for me to switch to using this as my tool of choice for blogging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing feedback semerda!

# Disqus vs wp spam prone comments integration?

Absolutely. This is an important feature we NEED to deliver.

# Writing posts while walking

Yeah, we are finishing a "secret integration" for this exactly situation in the next few weeks.... :)

<comment><USER2> No worries, anytime! Happy to help with Beta testing. I write for 2 blogs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic!

Just saw your post about Yerba Mate. I'll be in SF in September and I'll bring 1 pack of brazilian yerba mate for you. I drink everyday and it's delicious. You'll love it.

<comment><USER2> Sounds good :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> First thing I saw "só testando mesmo" in the screen cap. Well, parece legal (looks cool), I'd like to test it out but, unfortunately, I've got the only mac (the original MBA) that doesn't allow upgrading to 10.8/9.

Nice work, though

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks! We tried to support 10.8 but there's a lot of features that wasn't supported by the OS, like native notifications, iCloud etc. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be interesting, if it could plug(o) into Draft ([http://draftin.com](http://draftin.com)).

Great concept, though; it's not just an editor, but a publishing tool (CMS).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. We have plans to integrate with many platforms and partners. At this moment we will focus on WordPress to validate and iterate faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It never stops loading and it crashes on me when I try to type anything. I have a self-signed certificate, maybe that is the cause? I'm running the latest version of Wordpress.

<comment><USER6> @grimborg can you please email us at email@example.com (or submit a ticket via our website) with this issue? We can help you better at our support channel. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Glad to see how fast Blogo is growing. Rough team, as Amure is well known for any brazilian involved in startups. Cons that Linux/Android would be lovely welcome.

</comment><comment><USER8> OMG! Blogging just got so much easier. I was dreaming about a tool that would allow me to startup a few different posts and came back to edit and publish them later.

</comment><comment><USER9> My blogging suffered severely when Blogo stopped working with the latest OSX a couple of years ago. Why did you guys stop working on it?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a different team and different time. The main reason is that Apple decided not to support Ruby/Cocoa anymore and at that time, the team wasn't ready to rebuild it. Now, I can guarantee we'll do everything possible to recover your trust. It would be awesome to have you onboard again.

<comment><USER9> No worries, things happen. I knew it was due to Apple and rewriting an app is hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looking good. It reminds me of Windows Live Writer. Are you beta? How can I try it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, good to hear from you. Yes, we've just released our public beta and you can download it on our website if you join the beta program.

About Windows Live Writer, we do have a lot of beta users that migrate from Windows to Mac and are helping us building a very good product. WLW still have a lot of users but Microsoft decided to shut it down. :/

<comment><USER10> Can we expect a Windows version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi gverri. We believe in creating a tool for all bloggers, despite their OS. :)

Sounds good?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey you guys: you're tripping HN's voting ring detector like mad, and all the new accounts you're creating are just getting themselves and the rest of you penalized. Please don't do that! (And no sockpuppet comments either.)

Best of luck with the project!

Edit: oh, I'm afraid this post doesn't qualify to be a Show HN because the product isn't ready to be tried out. As the new guidelines say ([https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)), landing pages and beta signups definitely don't count. But you're welcome to do a Show HN later when the product is ready to be played with.

If I'm reading this wrong, let us know (email@example.com) and we'll put "Show HN" back in the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I just change the link to be a direct download one?

<comment><USER11> Yes, absolutely, if the software is ready to be tried out. And we'll put "Show HN" back in the title in that case, too.</comment></comment></comment>


Switching my open-source projects from Bitbucket to Github - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2013/06/09/switching-my-open-source-projects-from-bitbucket-to-github/ <comment><USER2> GitHub really has won the war on opensource, bitbucket is nice though for unlimited private repositories (if it's only you or tiny team).

It seems that if your project isn't on Github it doesn't exist (there are some obvious exceptions to this).</comment>


Prototype and wireframe your ideas with a Betabook - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/betabook/betabook-the-portable-whiteboard-for-the-digital-a/pledge

<comment><AUTHOR> I've used an early prototype of this, it is absolutely wonderful for visualization / prototyping / wireframing!</comment>


The average age of HN (in 2012) is lower than the average age of Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/social-network-average-age-580px.jpg Full article with more demographics<p>http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/08/21/report-social-network-demographics-in-2012/ <comment><AUTHOR> Full article with more demographics

[http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/08/21/report-social-network- de...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/08/21/report-social-network-demographics- in-2012/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Great chart. Facebook that's crazy..

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook is dead and buried :) #FB>40</comment>


Airbus's tie-up with Bombardier is damaging for Boeing - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21730466-american-aerospace-giants-campaign-tariffs-against-c-series-aircraft-has <comment><USER2> Typical. If US can't compete on merits then they typically come up with some contrived reason to levy tariffs in order to cripple anything Canadian that just might be successful. Same thing happened to lumber, dairy, poultry, livestock and anything else that gets made north of the border. In the meantime all those industries are pretty happy to take the pork when and where it is available, Boeing probably more than any other company _in the world_. So this complaint is about as disingenuous as it gets.

Not that any other country cares one bit about Canada. Even the UK, which has a pretty big stake in this whole thing has kept mum, presumably because they don't want to upset their own future trade deal with the US.

<comment><USER3> Let's invite Canada to join the EU - they would be a great fit !

<comment><USER4> Canada has already made a free trade deal with the EU called CETA, all the more reason to play hard ball with the US during the new NAFTA negotiations.

[https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://w...](https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.international.gc.ca/ceta&ved=0ahUKEwibzdjgxv_WAhXlqlQKHbgiDs8QFghGMAI&usg=AOvVaw0w3uaCIqbHbRZQgPE1MTA5)

<comment><USER5> Which — from my point of view as a Canadian consumer — is neutered by protectionism, as the one EU product I'd really want (decent affordable cheese) is excluded by the powerful Ontario/Québec dairy lobby.

<comment><USER6> I bet there are a _lot_ of us that want cheap European cheese. It's basically the only thing I check in the news about trade deals these days! :)

<comment><USER2> Come and live here. There are some other fringe benefits beyond the cheese.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm unclear on why / how a 300% tariff on the Bombardier jets would be considered fair or good in any way, for anyone other than Boeing. Is this just classic corrupt lobbying or is there more to it?

<comment><USER8> Their complaint is that the Canadian government subsidized development costs (which it arguably did), so it's unfair competition.

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

However Boeing is also quite subsidized, just more indirectly through defense contracts. And what's more, Boeing doesn't even offer a competitive product. They don't sell any aircraft in this size range.

<comment><USER9> It's not like the defense department would not be developing and buying jets if Boeing didn't exist. I don't really think of defense business as a subsidy. Though admittedly I'm sure there's plenty of grease money being spread around.

<comment><USER10> Defense spending isn't supposed to be a direct subsidy, but the DoD does sometimes blatantly choose one product instead of better competing products based on industrial concerns. E.g. that tanker buy where Airbus won the competition, but the DoD reversed it and leaked emails showed that it was done purely to benifit Boeing. Or that the US Army refused to allow the widespread introduction of a modern infantry rifle that isn't made by Colt, forcing the US Marines to designating their new rifle as a "light machine gun".

Every country does this, since having your own defense industry is a massive strategic boon and keeping those high-tech jobs are good for the economy. But it's definitely anti-competitive behavior and the respective defense companies do get a lot more taxpayer money for the capabilities the country gets than would be optimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title seems to suggest that mergers and co-operations are good if it revolves around US companies, but bad if done by Canadians or (shock!) EU companies?

As if Boing never, ever received subsidies, just to drive out competition out of US and worldwide markets? Do people realize that Airbus is still incredibly small and financially fragile compared to the almost to-big-to-fail Boing?

<comment><USER12> Market Cap Boeing : 153.11B Market Cap Airbus : 62.41B \</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---- As of 20.10.2017

For reference

</comment><comment><USER13> > In this case, Bombardier's response will serve only to consolidate further > an already oligopolistic market

So basically like every other government intervention in markets in the name of helping the 'working class'...

A small group will get jobs and make more money in the short term in exchange for long term growth, competition, and innovation.

The biggest factor never fully considered in these protectionist policies and campaign trail rhetoric is always the fact these companies operate in a global marketplace. It's easy to shift operations or capital to foreign markets with more business friendly policies. So domestic restrictions rarely hurt the large companies, it only restricts local jobs and the smaller companies who can't afford to compete in this fashion.

</comment><comment><USER14> I keep seeing arguments that Boeing made a mistake in pushing on the tariffs, or that this deal with Airbus is bad for Boeing.

They're wrong. In Boeing's ideal world, they're the only airplane manufacturer in the world. The next best thing, is to only have Airbus as competition. Boeing's interests are served tremendously by keeping the global market as consolidated as possible down to just Boeing and Airbus. They have one main target to focus on when it comes to competition and politics. Airbus eating Bombardier is the next best thing to Bombardier going out of business. Simply put, Boeing would rather Airbus own / control Bombardier, than have Bombardier exist as a successful independent airplane manufacturer.

<comment><USER15> I get your argument; but one of Boeing's objectives has been to try and keep Airbus out of the US (both defense and commercial). This deal with Delta will showcase, within the US, the CSeries. That could result in other US airlines following suit (particularly smaller regional airlines). Airbus is already fairly successful within the US with regional aircraft sales, this will only further cement that.

Plus keep an eye on China's Comac. They're only ten years old (2008) but due to massive state investment are becoming pretty competitive, they may be eating both Boeing and Airbus's lunch by 2030 if this level of investment continues.

<comment><USER16> If by state investment you mean the well-tread path of Chinese corporate espionage - [http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120317/ISSUE01/3031...](http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120317/ISSUE01/303179980/china- leans-on-boeing)

Fortunately for Boeing, a plane is not so easy to copy as many of their other successful corporate thefts.

<comment><USER17> You do realize that the Snowden papers show that Boeing did exactly the same corporate espionage, aided by the NSA steaking data from Airbus and directly giving it to Boeing?

The US is just as problematic as China in these things, and has the same levels of subsidies for industries deemed important to national security.

<comment><USER14> > The US is just as problematic as China in these things, and has the same > levels of subsidies for industries deemed important to national security.

Let's talk about government subsidies:

(July 2015)

"China's Global 500 companies are bigger than ever—and mostly state-owned"

"the top 12 Chinese companies are all state-owned. They include massive banks and oil companies that the central government controls through the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the ruling State Council (SASAC), which appoints CEOs and makes decisions on large investments. Of the 98 Chinese companies on the list, only 22 are private."

[http://fortune.com/2015/07/22/china-global-500-government- ow...](http://fortune.com/2015/07/22/china-global-500-government-owned/)

Using one example to proclaim that the US is committing as much intellectual theft as China, is comical. The US has dramatically more to lose than China does, given its general technological superiority (whether at the university lab level or the corporate R&D level).

The second point is even more absurd, and very easily demonstrated to be false (as I did above). Most of China's largest corporations are State controlled entities. Most of their largest industries, such as steel, are directly controlled by the government. A very large share of the Chinese economy is operated by fully nationalized, or partially nationalized fake corporate entities. So called State corporations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "News of the tie-up was greeted warmly not only in Canada but also in Northern Ireland, where the C-Series' wings are made. The Democratic Unionist Party, the province's largest party, which supports the government of Theresa May, the British prime minister, said it was "thrilled" with the deal."

This is quite important too. If the UK had a functioning Foreign Office they would have been wading in on behalf of Bombardier. The DUP have an extremely disproportionate influence at the moment, but at least they're using it to preserve jobs in a deprived area this time.

<comment><USER19> Has it been greeted warmly in Canada? I certainly don't get that sense.

<comment> Harvey-Specter The sense I've gotten is that there was a lot of concern from potential customers about the ability of Bombardier to continue the C-series program without being able to sell to the US market. This deal assuages those concerns, which helps with making sales to customers outside the US as well. So it's a good thing, but its disappointing that it came to this.

<comment><USER13> It also means a small group of factory jobs are moving to the US, so publicly it can appear as a win to the US administration. In reality there was quite a significant cost for very little gain (costs to the global economy, US diplomacy with CA/UK, domestic US competition, etc), and the profits are still ultimately going to Canadian and UK companies.

This just isn't a productive use of state resources.

They'd do more for the economy and working class by getting out of the way of business instead of generating even more convoluted backroom deals with megacorps like Boeing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Boeing saw an ally in the Trump admin and NAFTA renegotiation and tried to play a curve ball.

Because some of these planes may actually be made in the US, it's possible Airbus+Bombardier may have completely outmanoeuvred Boeing, rendering the recent rulings irrelevant.

Canada, a small open country with an open culture, is really in a tight spot next to the USA.

Ironically, I'm not sure how much open borders benefits Canada - it benefits _Canadians_ because they can move to the US ... but almost everyone I know who is talented moved to the US long ago - that's where the HQ of everything in.

One could say the same of midwestern states: sans a 'core' economic sector to drive them, the rest of the more powerful states will eat their lunch.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I've wondered for a while about the crowing over students from Waterloo moving to the US. Would Canada be better off if there was no TN visa and companies would have to employ them in Canada? Also good point about Canada and the midwestern states being in the same boat. I'm sure Nebraska loses a decent number of software engineers to California every year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a Québécois, I haven't seen much discussion about the effects of diluting Québec's shares in the plane. The article says our new stake is 19%, down from 49%. I feel we got kind of shafted in the deal, given we bought these shares at a valuation of ~5.5B (for 2.8B) and now Airbus gets a bigger share for free. I don't think this means good news for our investment.

<comment><USER22> Having a 19% stake in selling 6000 planes (as the article mentions), is worth a lot more than a 49% share in selling 300 planes. Also, Bombardier had to constantly discount the plane and take lower margins just to get airlines to buy, which with Airbus's sales and support network will no longer happen. Plus a lot of the uncertainty of the project has magically gone away.

This is a great deal for Québec.

<comment><USER23> Very valid point, but I'm wondering if 'assembly' does more to the US to avoid the tariffs on the C-series; does that mean there will be less economic benefit for Quebec? For example, by assembly jobs moving to the US.

They may gain in value of their acquired shares but they may also lose in terms of wider economic output for their province.

<comment><USER10> Only final assembly of the planes that are sold to US airlines will be done in Mobile. In the Airbus world, final assembly tends to mean bolting together a relatively low number of finished sections that were produced somewhere else. So a lot of the labor will stay in Canada.

<comment><USER24> > In the Airbus world, final assembly tends to mean bolting together a > relatively low number of finished sections that were produced somewhere > else.

Pretty much the same as modern Boeing. Something like 70% of the 787 structure is made abroad but glued together in the USA:

[http://static1.uk.businessinsider.com/image/58a768badd0895f0...](http://static1.uk.businessinsider.com/image/58a768badd0895f0288b4818-800-/chart-889.jpg)

Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Sweden and ( if RR engines chosen ) UK all send their assemblies to Seattle and Charleston. That's without considering avionics and internal systems.

Hence the wording 'Country of final assembly' on the onboard safety cards, carefully chosen to obscure origins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A related summary of Boeing's dispute with Airbus being mediated by the WTO for the last decade: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and_Boeing#World_Trade_Organization_litigation)

<comment><USER26> Quote from the link

"The tax incentives given by the state of Washington and believed to be the largest in US history surpassing the previous record of $5.6bn over 30 years awarded by the state of New York to the aluminum producer Alcoa in 2007. The $8.7bn over 40 years incentive to Boeing to manufacture the 777X in the state includes $4.2bn from a 40% reduction in business taxes, £3.5bn in tax credits for the firm, a $562m tax credit on property and buildings belonging to Boeing, a $242m sales tax exemption for buying computers and $8m to train 1000 workers,

Airbus alleges this is larger than the budgeted cost of Boeing's 777X development program and the EU argues amounts to an entire publicly funded free aircraft program for Boeing"

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How bad is this for Embraer?

<comment><USER28> Its not, there are less players in the market and therefore good for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I sure hope it works out for Bombadier, retains some diversity in passanger jets

</comment><comment><USER30> GE buys Alstom, Airbus gets Bombardier.. it's a mess</comment>


Over 8M code matches for "import React from 'react'" on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/search?q=import+React+from+%27react%27&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93 <comment><USER2> React has take over web development</comment>


Why you want to run Java 10 if you're using the G1 Garbage Collector - <AUTHOR> https://www.opsian.com/blog/java-10-with-g1/ <comment><USER2> Are there any performance results for single threaded versus parallel for full GCs? Is the increase linear in the number of cores?</comment>


Employees at home are being photographed every 5 minutes by video service - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/work-from-home-sneek-webcam-picture-5-minutes-monitor-video-2020-3 <comment><USER2> Man, their website copy is cringe city:

"3 Availability Settings Available means you're free to chat if someone needs you.

Busy mode means you're pretending to be busy so other users have to hit you up to see if you're free to chat.

And away, well that obviously means you're in the toilet."

This kind of cutsie stuff doesn't make me think they take the convergence of my private space and work space seriously.

</comment><comment> 1970-01-01 [https://youtu.be/XfQFq8jMMsY](https://youtu.be/XfQFq8jMMsY)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just make sure the fist photo of you is a photo of you attached to some Ferris bueller like string contraption, then change it once or twice. Done.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say this s--t makes my skin crawl, but that line's already been taken. ;)

Honestly, one of the top reasons by far I've chosen remote work over the years is precisely to get away from this kind of nonsense. If I need to be in a meeting with somebody, I'll be in a meeting with somebody. Otherwise, for the love of god leave me the eff alone so I can concentrate on getting my work done!

</comment><comment> m-p-3 A good reason to get a webcam cover. And Dell even have a webcam privacy slider built-in in their newer models.

IMO this should have been done a long time ago. The next step should be a physical switch for the microphone.

</comment><comment><USER5> This would rage me enough to seriously start gaming. If they do screenshots than on my private computer put up just out of view.

</comment><comment><USER6> a) Of course we need more connected office tools that will completely saturate local ISP trunk routes

b) While I can see the connected culture aspect of this tool, it should be a surprise to no-one that this can totally be used to ensure that butts are indeed in seats. I can easily see something like this being used in a 100% remote call center or offshore dev sweatshop (which, to be clear, I do not support).</comment>


PGP needs to be retired in honor - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/blog/posts/on_pgp.html <comment><USER2> >"Consider your average investigative journalist or whistleblower, with windows or a mac, that they haven't updated because then their kids favorite game doesn't run anymore or they simply don't want windows 10. .... This makes forward secrecy a mandatory requirement, as this implies that the malware has to be constantly active and thus also enhances chances of detection and mitigation."

This is a bit of a straw-man argument. Forward secrecy or not, if you can get root on the client device, you own everything. So if you are a journalist/whistleblower, and have invested the effort to learn PGP, you should use Tails or something more appropriate for your job than windows or a mac.

Edit: This may be a good use case for hardware support for trusted execution (Intel SGX), along with all the other nasty features that it brings (DRM). The threat model for trusted execution is that the OS cannot be trusted whereas the app is sacrosanct.

<comment><USER3> So for those us that need to run Windows/OSX to run software, like Photoshop, for our job, we should just give up on PGP? Seems like a supporting argument for the article then.

<comment><USER4> Your argument comes down to the threat model. A journalist whom also uses Photoshop is free to use whatever system they have sufficient trust in for the nature of the communication at hand.

If they're likely to be killed because someone reads the content of their messages, they should easily be able to weigh that cost against needing to boot of USB every now and again.

So that said, if you use crypto-system X on a machine you cannot trust, crypt- system X will not be able to protect you very much.

<comment><USER3> I understand the threat model. However that notion implies that those of us who aren't at risk of death over our emails should give up PGP. Given that (I assume) most of us aren't at risk of murder by the nation-state, PGP is dead.

I would prefer a solution where everyone could reasonably get end-to-end encrypted emails. Unfortunately, given the unfitness of PGP for this goal, coupled with recent work in the space, it looks like we will either get plaintext over decentrailzed email, or e2ee inside walled gardens.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing stopping you from having more than one identity. If you don't mind too much if malware has your PGP details, then all good. If you would like a more way to securely store these details for other sorts of communication, perhaps a different machine, a live-CD or hardware token[1][2] can be justified.

I think it is also worth remembering that even the most liberal western democracies have laws that one way or another prevent people from keeping secrets from the law. If everyone has it, and uses it, and it cannot be back- doored, it will be banned rather quickly IMHO. And the people who don't care about privacy -- i.e. most everyone -- won't care about crypto being banned either after the right wing press is done with them. (Restated: we shouldn't force people to close their curtains any more than we force them to open them).

I'm rambling, sorry.

Both of these might also work with your phone via NFC. [1] [https://www.fidesmo.com/](https://www.fidesmo.com/) [2] [https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey- neo...](https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey-neo/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the title is a little inflammatory. The conclusion does not say we should stop using PGP but consider the weakness inherent in its operating model and assumptions when evaluating future replacement. I think it is fair to say that the world is still waiting for said replacement, and until that arrives, PGP still has a number of valuable properties, one of which being _it exists_.

<comment><AUTHOR> the listed examples all exist. signal is already more widely used than pgp ever was in the last 25 years.

<comment><USER5> Thats an impossible statement to prove. Signal is centralized with a concrete list of users. PGP is decentralized with no possible way of knowing how many use it or dont

<comment><AUTHOR> count the keys on the keyservers, apply some multiplier, chances are that it's still less than signal users today.

<comment><USER6> > _PGP is decentralized with no possible way of knowing how many use it_

> _..., apply some multiplier, ..._

You glossed over that like it was nothing. Let me rephrase GP: "... with no possible way of knowing the multiplier".

Obviously there exist k such that for n keys on "the keyservers" (we'll have fun enumerating those too) and s signal users, k*n > s.

<comment><AUTHOR> according to [http://keys.mayfirst.org/pks/lookup?op=stats](http://keys.mayfirst.org/pks/lookup?op=stats) there's currently 4594571 keys on the bulk of public keyservers. considering the rumors that facebook and others also do signal and their user base is around a rumored billion, the k that i glossed over is around 217. even if we assume that there's dark masses that never ever used a keyserver, we ignore the fact that out of those 4.5 million pgp keys most are expired, revoked or simply lost, so the active keys on the keyservers are probably much less, and thus k is also much bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My biggest point of contention with this is... what should replace it? PGP is the current and retroactive psuedo-standard for verification for everything from email to code to builds.

Any replacement would have to be at least semi-compatible, so as not to break the (likely) hundreds of solutions relying on and expecting PGP.

<comment><USER8> I used to be skeptical about this... but if the Signal protocol sees more widespread adoption outside of the Signal app and Whatsapp, it could be a good fit.

I'm very open to hearing about reasons why this wouldn't be the case, though.

<comment><USER9> AFAIU, the Signal protocol doesn't work with email, only with sms. Am I mistaken in this?

<comment><AUTHOR> the protocol is very generic and does not require anything related to phones. it is actually 3 parts, a key exchange, a signature mode and a ratchet. how you combine these is up to you. the app is one way to combine them with phones. there's other ways to use the protocol, that could also be applied to emails

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps I'm just out of touch, but I'm not familiar with any of the alternative tools they mentioned. If we retire PGP (and its GNU clone), what widely available tool should we use in its stead?

<comment><USER11> Signal? Some paid services seem to be blossoming, see [https://protonmail.com](https://protonmail.com)

<comment><USER10> Signal is not much of a PGP replacement. There's a lot that PGP can do that Signal can't: signing, encryption of large blobs at rest, and key management.

I use PGP as part of my backup solution, encrypting my backups at rest with an asymmetric key. I can't do that with Signal.

<comment><USER12> Signal does a better job of practically everything PGP does with regards to message encryption. Yes, PGP is more useful for encrypting files or signing updates. I agree that it's too early to write of PGP for those applications. But people should use Signal instead of PGP for message encryption.

<comment><USER13> > But people should use Signal instead of PGP for message encryption.

Signal the protocol or Signal the service? There does not appear to be a mature FOSS toolchain for the former that can replace gnupg and Thunderbird/Enigmail, and the latter is only available on Android and IOS smartphones.

<comment><USER12> Don't use email to send secret messages.

<comment><USER14> Any chance you could elaborate on this? What about email is inimical to secret messages? Why are they less secret over email than through some other medium?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another "I don't think PGP is good enough" and "here's all these things"

Yet none fully replaces PGP yet. Before you actually retire PGP, maybe you need one of these projects to finish a real, complete, reviewed and high quality replacement ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> some of these tools actually fully replace pgp (see opmsg for example) however that is actually a very low bar to master. it seems pgp is seen as a silver bullet handling all use-cases like a charm, this is far from reality, actually it fails in many cases, and specialized tools might actually fit the purpose much better, also surpassing pgp in their special niche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > hopefully there'll be more and better tools

Good criticism, but we need an actual plan for "repeal and replace", rather than "hope" for better tools.

</comment><comment><USER17> I started reading to know what's wrong with PGP, but it very quickly escalated to the discussion about making educated bets about cryptography as a whole. I think this is hugely important topic and it is a real shame this is not being discussed more. Maybe security people a more conscious about that (I surely hope so), but general public doesn't seem to be. And by "general public" here I actually mean self proclaimed paranoids and not your grandma or a girlfriend. We talk a lot about if something is proclaimed secure by so-called experts, about theoretical weaknesses of Telegram or something, monitor important 0-days, buzz about how bad it is to give all your private data to facebook or google and how fucked we all are. But we rarely seriously talk about who our adversaries really are, what exactly we are trying to protect and if we're using the right tools for that. About making educated bets. And in the end of the day, this is all it is actually about — making educated bets. Because not all our data, not all our accounts are equally important, and they are not equally important to the different kinds of adversaries. So the only way to be somewhat secure is to recognize, that there's no absolute security and we cannot protect everything. So better start taking it consciously and focusing on what's really important.

</comment><comment><USER18> Agreed, PGP is dead, long live to GnuPG!

<comment><USER19> GPG is still the domain of nerds. But yes, we all still use email and as long as we do I will use GPG with my coworkers who know how.

<comment><USER20> Or people that value strong privacy + will tolerate using a command written down on a piece of paper.</comment></comment></comment>


The Evolution of the Headphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.ligo.co.uk/evolution-of-headphones/ <comment><USER2> Why is the entire internet turning into a 21st-century version of Geocities, with every hack web designer coming up with new and innovative ways to piss off users who just want to see some content? Do designers really think users want to be annoyed by some scrolling display? Are they the internet's new sadists, tempting us with interesting content, only to subject us to by badly designed, incompatible, painful interfaces? I still have nightmares about mouseover pop-up boxes. Leave my god damn scroll wheel alone.

</comment><comment><USER3> As I scroll through them, the audio from the first section keeps playing until it's done... so if I scroll down to the 2010's its like it's playing 5 layers of audio and I can't even tell what's going on.

<comment><USER4> What browser? I had no problems, FF 31.0, cookies denied, ABP in place, flashblock running.

Cool presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can only get the text to display if I scroll down and then back up, and I'm not getting any audio. I disabled uBlock and Disconnect.me and I'm not running any noscript-esque extension. Chrome 36 on Windows Vista.

</comment><comment><USER6> Really interesting & the fact they call Beats by Dre a "fashion accessory" is a subtle middle finger :)

<comment><USER4> I don't know about that. Headphones is headphones, or at least headphones was headphones. Then Beats "brandified" them, made them cool (cooler), make them shiny.

Some speculate that Apple bought Beats precisely their accessorizationability factor (yeah, yeah, it's early, I'm grasping for neologisms to summarize the concept). Basically, Beats figured out how to cost-effectively profitably mass produce many variations on a common product to increase cool factor and consumer choice.

Given ambient noise, compressed audio, and always-imperfect listening conditions, sound quality is definitely not the first thing most consumers look for (notice I didn't write listen for) in a set of headphones.

(I have decent reference headphones for the house, but elsewhere it just doesn't matter.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't work in my browser.

Safari - Version 7.0.6 (9537.78.2) on OS X 10.9.4

</comment><comment><USER8> Site doesn't work. OSX Chrome 36.0.1985.143

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this presentation, thought it was pretty slick. Unlike a lot of sites for which I must fiddle with my cookie manager, my ad blocker, and my flash blocker, this one worked great right off the bat, and I really like the multimedia presentation.

Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ad Blocker is going nuts 300+ blocked 'ads' and still going.

<comment><USER6> The site seems to be using Youtube for videos & audio might explain Adblock issues

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lame attempt by a cordless phone store to score some google-juice. I first thought this was some 7th grader's history report.

</comment><comment><USER11> ditto, page sucks. It was probably 10 times the work of a regular site and it's not navigable. Sorry whoever built and paid for it. It's really annoying. Please fix, as the content appears good. maybe I should browse with styles off. Use a normal timeline, isn't there timeline.js or something for this kind of project?

</comment><comment><USER12> Low contrast, thin text on top of images? Seriously?

This is completely unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER13> Rocket 88 for the win!

</comment><comment><USER14> We can argue all day about the use of scroll for navigation, but that would be sad because this is seriously cool.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure which part of it was coolest -- the confusing navigation, the poor use of relatively low-res images for a responsive background (they look terrible on a browser-maximized 2560x1440 display), the default-on sound that many pages had (I realize this is about sound, but no webpage should play sound without user interaction [other than just scrolling to the page]), or the fact that it hung/crashed my Chrome tab on the last page.

<comment><USER16> The last page hung my Firefox as well. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seriously, when will this "scroll for next page" fad be over? This is completely unusable with a scroll-wheel.

<comment><USER18> I get the feeling that many, many, many of these scrolling sites were only tested with two-finger scrolling on an Apple laptop touchpad. They often feel extremely awkward with a regular scroll wheel.

<comment><USER19> I use an Apple trackpad with two-finger scrolling for 70% of my web browsing. I have yet to encounter one of these scrolling sites that didn't feel extremely awkward on it. Maybe the target audience is iPad users? I feel like the behavior might make sense on a tablet.

<comment><USER20> On iPad. Was not good. Edit: just rechecked. Nothing scrolls, it's all 'click to continue'.

<comment><USER19> Well... Maybe it works in Netscape Navigator?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Site has a completely unusable user interface.

<comment><USER22> What's unusable about it? Scroll down or click the arrows.

<comment><USER23> It doesn't work correctly more than half of the time in Firefox and IE 11 (scrolling, clicking, cursor keys). There is also a transparent red area layering above half of the screen (maybe it's intended and fits the "Beats" headphone, the last picture?). The "1990s" are missing too, with the Sony disc man (portable audio CD player), its ear plugs and the later MP3 CD player.

<comment><USER24> Funny enough, click to continue works 100% of the time on my Windows Phone.

I don't get any indication that I can even scroll though (nor does attempting to pan down do anything).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What happened last time it was as warm as it's going to get later this century? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/are-past-climates-telling-us-were-missing-something/ <comment><USER2> Global warming is real and humans contribute to it. Just stating that so I am not called a 'denier' as I have been before.

That being said, the computer models predicting what the consequences of global warming will be, have greatly over estimated (at least the timeline of) real world impacts. Since I was a kid I've heard in the news that in the next 5 years or 10 years there will be all these catastrophes linked to global warming and I have yet to see them come true.

I remember the BBC reporting years ago that the children of today would only know snow from what they've seen in snow globes, things like that. I think part of the reason for inaction is due to the news media over simplifying the problem and reporting (perhaps even exaggerating) the worst long term predictions.

<comment><USER3> The numerous one-in-a-thousand-year floods don't get you? The super-typhoons and unprecedented hurricanes? Drought and the human migration motivated by drought and flood? Species extinction? Wildfires? Loss of islands?

I think it was the photos of disinterred coffins floating through the flooded streets of New Orleans that first really hit me: it's here.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you read all of his comment.

Picking a single event like New Orleans isn't great evidence. I lived through a once in 300 years hurricane in southern England in '87 - that tells us nothing.

But the increasing frequency of adverse events and once in a x years events is starting to nod its head in the direction of the impacts of global warming starting to manifest.

The point he made is a good one - media sensationalism, supported by people who should know better; it does more harm than good.

The future looks bleak as we, in the west, can go 100% nuke, zero carbon etc but it's like a fart in a jacuzzi compared to what China will bring as its economy scales to western per-capita size.

<comment><USER5> Tough sanctions are the solution to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read an excellent book, _The Ends of the World_ , on just this subject: [https://jakeseliger.com/2017/09/18/the-ends-of-the-world- pet...](https://jakeseliger.com/2017/09/18/the-ends-of-the-world-peter- brannen). But the book gets there through looking at the last five mass extinction events. It turns out that either every one of them, or every one except one, hinged on changes in atmospheric carbon levels, which we didn't realize until relatively recently.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is about the Mid-Miocene Climate Optimum, which was a period of 5 degrees C of warming about 15 million years ago. Another similar event is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which was a period of warming (6 degrees C in 20,000 years) about 55 million years ago. The PETM was in response to a massive increase in atmospheric CO2 (several times more than humans have added), though what caused the injection of CO2 is currently unknown. Interestingly, although during the PETM the Earth had no polar ice caps to begin with there was still a rise in sea levels simply due to the thermal expansion of the ocean. There was a great deep dive into the event on the podcast In Our Time by three climatologists: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hpmmf](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hpmmf)

<comment><USER8> You should note that the PETM CO2 increase was over multiple orders of magnitude (appr. 20,000 year vs 100) and theoretical rate of emission was 1-2 orders of magnitude less than the current rate.

<comment><USER7> While that's probably true, it's not known for certain what the rate of emission was. 20,000 years is only an upper bound. It's possible that the process that led to the CO2 emissions happened over very short timescales (e.g., a comet impact or volcanic activity). Until we know the process, we can't constrain the rate.

<comment><USER8> I upvoted you, thank you for replying, but please give me a bit of charity and understand I was replying with the standard geological uncertainties assumed. But my understanding is the best fit is volcanic activity by peat or coal beds over a much longer relative timeframe than current emissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The one big problem I don't see talked about as much for some reason is ocean acidification. Given more of the surface of the planet is covered in ocean than in land, and the influence the oceans have on everything, it's pretty hard not to get worried about it. One consequence that is already happening (partly due to ocean acidification, and partly due to water getting warmer) is coral reef die-offs/bleaching.

</comment><comment><USER10> A better and much more recent proxy observation for the effect of a warming climate is the Eemian [1] aka the last interglacial. Peak temperature 125k years ago was at least 2 C higher than today, and global sea-level was 8-9 m higher (of which less than 0.5 m is attributable to thermal expansion of ocean water). Scandinavia was an island.

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

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know if there is any party or even organization anywhere right now pushing proper utilization of the free market to at least internalize the current cost of CO2 emissions (though that by itself could not solve the historical lack). It seems like this would actually be one of the few places where a free market should work extremely well: simply set the price of emitting a ton of CO2 at the ratcheted price (defined by bid) of industrial removal (time period of a day or less) a ton plus some assured margin (7%? exact number could be figured out by experts). The government would serve as the pivot, emitters would pay in units at the existing price, so a pool of credits per ton would collect. Anyone who could meet a minimum volume level (the whole point is massive industrial scale removal) would be able to bid for those in whatever amounts they could handle per day/week/month. If they figured out a new scalable way to remove a ton more cheaply, they'd be able to underbid anyone on a more expensive method and collect the much wider margin until they used up the pool at that price, while meanwhile the price for emitters would automatically be adjusted down to the new cost plus minimum margin. The government might have to get the ball rolling by funding an initial plant, but after that it should be self sustaining, and would it make energy prices directly embody the emission cost in a very clean way that would allow the rest of the economy to locally optimize as necessary.

Obviously there would be many low level implementation details to work through, but this seems obvious enough that I assume it's been proposed many times. However I haven't been able to figure out the right search terms to find any papers developing it further. I've seen plenty of carbon pricing schemes proposed but all of them seem to use pretty arbitrary rates rather then simply directly internalizing the goal of zero net emissions and letting a market on each side sort out how best the meet that goal in any given place. I'd love it if anyone knows where I could better search, after some recent work I do have access to college resources again so academic journals would be fine too. There are also of course plenty of awful schemes by various political parties pushing various subsidies or "efficiency improvements" or whatever in a command-control fashion, but that's not great either. Any HNers who have ideas/sources would be awesome.

<comment><USER11> So far the free market has failed spectacularly at addressing global warming.

<comment><AUTHOR> The free market has never been used to address global warming (it's badly used in general in fact, possibly in part because few people seem to actually understand what it is or even internalize that it's a tool at all, not an end, and like any tool there are applications it is a poor fit for). Amongst the foundational requirements for a free market to work at all is that the price should embody all costs. There are some problems of course where this simply isn't very practical, particularly ones that are heavily non-linear/non- reversible. But that's not the case for carbon emissions, in fact it's a pretty good fit. The problem is "release of fossil/long term stored carbon into the atmosphere", it's easy to measure at various points at the fuel level, and since it's a gas that will evenly diffuse worldwide and is uniform removal _from_ the atmosphere can take place anywhere in the world by anyone using any method. That makes it well suited to abstraction, with a market system on each side of the equation and government acting as a pivot. Wouldn't even require global buy-in to make a difference given that the energy market is primarily globalized anyway, if a few major polities decided to require it and also made access to their own markets take it into account it'd have a major effect no matter what anyone else wanted.

<comment><USER11> We got carbon trading a while back. That doesn't seem to have made any difference whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was going to be about the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum)) or (and?) the clathrate gun hypothesis ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis)). Sobering stuff, particularly heartbreaking for parents of young children.

edit: this is getting downvoted, so perhaps it's a miscommunication. I am most worried about heat waves and disrupted weather patterns causing more common crop failures and the geopolitical stress/conflict that will lead to. You can see the beginnings of this in Syria, Yemen, and various N. African countries where climate change induced drought was the underlying cause for the civic unrest. Look at the migrant populations fleeing these areas. I don't mean anything melodramatic, just that this will be a period of hardship and suffering greater than what we've become accustomed to in recent history.</comment>


DeepWisdom won the championship in AutoDL challenge NeurIPS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DeepWisdom/AutoDL/blob/master/README_EN.md <comment><AUTHOR> Automated Deep Learning without ANY human intervention. 1'st Solution for AutoDL challenge@NeurIPS.</comment>


Secret 3G Radio in Every Intel vPro CPU Could Steal Your Ideas at Any Time - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Secret-3G-Radio-in-Every-Intel-vPro-CPU-Could-Steal-Your-Ideas-at-Any-Time-385194.shtml#

<comment><USER2> It could, if it were true, but it looks like this is just speculative.</comment>


LinkedIn, a champion of privacy rights? Don't buy it - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/LinkedIn-a-champion-of-privacy-rights-Don-t-11547080.php <comment><USER2> I have bottomless hatred for LinkedIn because, a few years ago, I allowed them to access my contacts. They claimed they'd use them only to find which were on LinkedIn. Instead, they emailed _all of my contacts_ using _my name_ to invite them to join LinkedIn.

At the time, this included old girlfriends, old bosses, and lots of other incredibly awkward contacts.

I believe they were eventually the subjects of a class-action lawsuit over this. What utter, disgusting sleazebags.</comment>


The Math-Class Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/math-class-performing/421710/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> "Students rarely think that they are in math classrooms to appreciate the beauty of mathematics, to ask deep questions, to explore the rich set of connections that make up the subject, or even to learn about the applicability of the subject; they think they are in math classrooms to perform."

Where will you find the instructors to teach the students to appreciate the beauty of mathematics, etc.? And assuming that you do find them, will they be able to squeeze into the available time the instruction in everything from basic arithmetic through algebra?

</comment><comment><USER3> 13 + 23 + 33 + …63 = (1 + 2 + 3+ …+ 6)2

Is this confusing anyone else?</comment>


The $131M Ford Rollover Death Verdict That Twitter Broke - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1686864/ford-rollover-verdict-brian-cole-131-million-twitter <comment><USER2> Surely there was a better way to get this story out than piecemeal via 60 staccato tweets? I know this article is supposed to show Twitter is important "new media" that changes the way news works, but I have never seen such a salient topic so well destroyed by interjecting hard stops every 140 characters. It was like reading a NY Times editorial in the form of an IRC chatlog. The format belied the potential of the content.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not post an article and then tweet the link, that's effectively the same and would be a lot easier on the eyes than trying to piece together a bunch of tweets.

The funny thing is that with multipart-sms the medium that twitter is copying is no longer hampered by the this limitation, but the imitator still is.

</comment><comment><USER4> The 'news' here is that the story was put on the internet via Twitter.

 _In this age of instantaneous media, when being first is celebrated more than being right, and wire services like Bloomberg trumpet beating the competition by nanoseconds, there are still those rare moments when a major story breaks and no one is there to report it._

That doesn't mean the story would otherwise have gone unreported; it just wouldn't have hit the mainstream as quickly.

Usually those big verdicts show up first in the regional legal newspaper/website within a day or two of the court publication of the opinion. Sometimes the law firms involved will put out a press release if they've had a particularly big or legally distinctive win. I'm not sure that condensing the information down to 140 characters and getting it out first adds any real benefit; Ford stockholders obviously have an interest in such news, but generally such things are priced in when the action first comes to court and after appeals have been exhausted and/or settlements reached.

Funny thing is, the writer wasn't there in court either - he tweeted the verdict because someone from the plaintiff's office called to update him (he had written about the attorney and case several times on a freelance basis). Seems to me that his grumpy tone here is to do with the fact that no existing media outlet purchased his story or gave him credit for announcing it, despite its apparent newsworthiness. Unfortunately, the big media outlets are probably correct in assuming that the public is not very exercised about the death of a potential baseball star back in 2001, and is already quite well aware of the fact that Ford Explorers produced in the 1990s had a dangerous tendency to roll over and that it has cost Ford a ton of money already. It just doesn't strike me as the hot story the writer considers it to be.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the guy who broke the Stephen Glass plagiarism story back in the day. He has a history of being first.

EDIT: Steve Zahn played him in "Shattered Glass", which is a pretty great movie. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323944/>

</comment><comment><USER6> The guy was doing 80 and not wearing his seatbelt. I don't see how Ford is to blame. An SUV is not a sports car.

<comment><USER7> I read over some of the coverage and it stipulates that Cole was wearing a seatbelt, but due to the give of the seatbelt, he was still ejected.

The Explorer is unsafe, because if it does roll, it will be crushed by its own weight, regardless of speed. 1 in 2,700 Explorers manufactured between 1990 and 2001, has been involved in a fatal rollover. The numbers are worse for its predecessor, the Bronco II, where it is 1 in 500.

I couldn't find a source of truth for Cole's speed at the time, but by all accounts, it didn't sound like he did anything else wrong (he swerved to avoid a car driving on the wrong side of the road).</comment></comment>


Heat Wave Results in Highest U.S. Electricity Demand Since 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40253 <comment><USER2> Since 2017? It's only 2019. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> Amusingly the headline could also be written "2018 and 2019 electricity demand lower than 2017"

<comment><USER4> That's a boring headline.

Also a boring headline: "US oil use peaked fourteen years ago, in 2005." And yet, it's also true.

[https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_oil_consumption](https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_oil_consumption)

So is, "US per capita energy use has been falling since 2007."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-01/americ...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-01/americans- electricity-use-just-keeps-falling)

In order to get clicks, you have to frame everything in alarmist terms.

<comment><USER5> A .gov site is packing headlines to get more clicks? Why do you think that is?

<comment><USER6> 1 click = 1 tax

<comment><USER7> 1 doge = 1 doge

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> During the recent (ongoing?) European heat wave I read that AC is uncommon in Europe. I wonder if it will become more common now that heat waves are becoming more common?

<comment><USER9> I suspect that many European buildings have good passive thermal insulation, because of colder and longer winters than in most of the US. This must help get by with fewer active cooling devices.

Also, European side-opening windows make it much harder to install an AC unit than American slide-up windows; in many cases your only option is a split system.

<comment><USER10> We (very) generally build with sticks and bricks with uPVC framed double or triple glazed windows. Double skin of bricks externally, one skin internally for load bearing walls and wooden "stud" walls for the rest. However there is a lot of variation after that. Modern building regs stipulate a _lot_ (decent amount) of thermal insulation in roofs and acoustic insulation between floors and rooms if possible. When we had our 1920s build modernised somewhat, we had to have additional steels and wooden structure added to account for potential additional snow loading on the roof because it would no longer melt quickly.

Yes, we do get good passive cooling in general with this design. Some better than others. Half of the ground floor (first floor in en_US) of my house is tiled with underfloor heating. The dogs love it when dumping thermal overloading - it is cool to the touch regardless of air temperature.

Now, if I wanted to add AC to my house it would not need to account for window shape. I don't understand that comment. Slide up windows are called sash here in the UK and are generally associated with the Victorian era! To add AV I would simply get another consumer unit added to my home 'leccy feed. Then I would fit the internal air out in the primary living area and connect to the external unit by drilling holes in the wall. Not sure where the windows fit into this. Oh and I'd try and fail to get the wife to close the bloody doors.

Not going to happen - I'll stick to being British and whine when it gets warm.

<comment><USER11> The majority of American air conditioning units are window mounted, like these: [https://www.consumerreports.org/window-air- conditioners/how-...](https://www.consumerreports.org/window-air- conditioners/how-to-size-a-window-air-conditioner/)

As an example, the house I grew up in, late 1940s, was piped for heating only, to an oil furnace. When my parents wanted an AC, they got a window unit. (Bonus: The original heating system had ceiling vents, at some points the house was re-vented for floor vents)

My place has in floor heating, if I wanted AC there aren't any vents in my house, so same thing, I'd have to get a window unit.

<comment><USER12> That is not true most houses built in the US have central AC not window mounted. They might be popular on the West Coast but the majority of house do not have those.

<comment><USER13> Most new housing in the US has central AC, but most housing here predates that being standard.

In the Northeast especially, window units are very common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), which operates the third grid in the US, has a page with realtime load data:

[http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_condi...](http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_conditions.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> AC is a positive feedback. The warmer the planet, the more AC is used, the more electricity is generated, the more GHG are emitted. Repeat.

Of course this cycle could be broken with renewables, but the vast majority of the world's electricity comes from fossil fuels.

<comment><USER16> Very true and let me add a note. "Positive feedback" in everyday terms seems like a good thing. In systems speak:

> _A positive feedback loop speeds up a process._ [0]

So in this context, that is highly undesirable.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like energy demand created by heatwaves should be low hanging fruit for compensating with solar power. It seems the sun is usually shining during a heatwave. Am I oversimplifying or missing something here?

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is this even news? What is next? The temperature is highest since the last week?</comment>


NYC: Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator Program – June 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://eranyc.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Quick summary: this is a new incubator program in NYC, offering $25,000 in seed funding, three months free co-working space, access to a network of 140+ mentors with a wide range of expertise, free legal help from Gunderson, and a demo day in front of what should be a great set of seed investors, in exchange for 8% equity.

They've just started accepting applications - April 30th deadline.</comment>


Making 3D movies with Xtranormal--serious fun, not yet a serious tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/national/2009/01/16/have-xtra-fun-making-movies-with-xtranormal/

<comment><USER2> This is awesome... Incredible potential.

</comment><comment><USER3> Witness the Flip video camera. Accessibility can be key. Being "serious fun" often seems to be better than being a "serious tool."

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't like it. You should trust a good text more than an avatar. You see that they are just artificial creatures, because their speak sounds weird and their eyes have no expression.

I prefer to read a good text, so I can define the speed I read it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice interface and you can try before registering. This would be great for making custom cartoon clips for children if only the voices matched the characters.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, though not actually "3D movies".

</comment><comment><USER7> Fun story!</comment>


Evapolar: World's first personal air conditioner - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-personal-air-conditioner#/story <comment><USER2> Great product guys! Best of luck with it!

</comment><comment><USER2> So only 1 component, the evaporative cartridge, requires replacement which can last up to a year depending on amount of usage im guessing?

<comment><USER3> Yes, you got it absolutely right.

The only thing that needs replacement is evaporative cartridge.

It can last up to a year depending on amount of usage and quality of water.

If water contains too much of impurities you'll need to replace the cartridge more often.

<comment><USER4> How much will replacement cartridges cost?

<comment><USER3> $20 with tax & shipment,

see here: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-personal- ai...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-personal-air- conditioner#/story)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do cartridges have a shelf life when not in use or will they last indefintely until put into the Evapolar?

<comment><USER3> Our cartridges doesn't have any organic elements so they last indefinitely until put in the Evapolar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does it smell??

<comment><USER3> No. Smell is a common problem for existing evaporative coolers. That is why they are also called "swamp" air conditioner.However, we managed to sove this problem. Our evaporative material doesn't contain any organic elements so no microorganisms can spread inside the deice.reply</comment></comment>


Ask HN:: Review My Webapp - <AUTHOR> http://www.1widget.com

<comment><USER2> Very nice idea, with a slick widget appearance. The actual feed management interface could use a bit of work, though. After I add a Twitter account/RSS feeds, is there a button to get out of the "new digest" wizard and back to the list of them? Also, could you explain what exactly a "digest" is somewhere in that new digest form? I didn't really know what I was creating. Finally, some of that sample code is a bit iffy. I believe the PHP code will cause the page load to hang while it's waiting to download the page from your server, and if your server is down it will hang for a long time. Very cool idea, just apply a little polish.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good feedback. I'll work on this. Yes, I have meant to add PHP code with CURL that has a timeout.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've had this idea in mind for about a year now and finally got around to doing it. I'd be interested in any feedback you have. Since I'm not really a marketing person, I'd be interested if you have suggestions on where to market the site. I am trying out Google Adwords but would appreciate any other suggestions. Thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Contracting in Australia / Sydney - <AUTHOR> Looking for info on contracting in Sydney, bonus points for immigrant perspective.
This has been covered plenty of times for London (which is where I'm at right now), something like
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9980264
and
https://github.com/tadast/switching-to-contracting-uk
or answers covering the similar concepts is what I'm after.
* How hard / easy is it to incorporate and pitfalls?
* Typical ways the government would try to make things bad for you (e.g., London's IR35 equivalent)
* Is it even worth it, are the rates as significantly higher and / or any tax burdens on dividends etc.? Bonus karma if someone could explain how the whole dividend imputation thing works, since that seems to even everything out to about the current situation in London (i.e., you get shafted for anything above £43k / year here)
* Suggestions for services also welcome, painless accountancies and the like
* Any links to useful information (that's not obviously google-able) welcome as well
From what I could find, the immigrant part shouldn't be a problem. I qualify points-wise, and afaict there are no draconian laws like the H1B in US or similar, at least that I could find, and the points are more about making sure you're not a burden on social services and can actually find work, which as a software dev is obviously not an issue.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> (Brit who is now a Australian permanent resident through tech employee sponsorship and has lived in both Melbourne and Sydney.)

I think your main concern is what kind of visa do you expect to be on?

I have never heard of anyone getting sponsored by a company as a contractor. If you are under 31 and can get a working holiday visa for 1 year, then this could be a good route. You can extend the WHV to 2 years years by doing 3 months of work on a farm in rural Australia.

The points system can take a long time to get through, up to 18 months, and often they will only grant you a visa for specific states, rather than the state of your choice.

If you see your future in Australia, then you might be better off getting sponsored by a company on a 457 visa (mine took 5 months for approval but apparently this is long), then staying with that company for 2+ years and switching to Permanent Residency through Employee Nomination (ENS).

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I haven't studied the visa types _that_ deep (i.e., I probably know everything there is to know about the US ones, almost nothing about the Australian ones). I'm an EU (Latvian) citizen looking to get away from the clusterfuck that is post-brexit London to somewhere I haven't been an annoying number of times before.

Australia is on the shortlist of places I'm considering, so I'm not sure about the "see your future" part. It does generally sound nice and aligned with my views of the world, and it's definitely not a 1 year thing, so that sounds plausible.

From what I could find just now, a 457 does sound like the easiest path legally.

That sort of answers my question as well then I suppose, since the laws _are_ stricter than what I found at first and contracting right away is a legal minefield.

<comment><USER3> There are ways to gain permanent residency in Australia directly without having to be sponsored. Look up SkillSelect: [http://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Work/Skil](http://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Work/Skil)

<comment><USER2> That visa is probably more useful for jobs where there are regional shortages such as nurses in rural towns.

Basing on the OP posting on HN, I'm taking a wild guess that he is in tech, and unfortunately there are a ridiculously small amount of tech jobs outside of Sydney and Melbourne - one of my biggest hates about Australia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want any help with your immigration, I recommend Robert K. Steain in Sydney. [http://www.rksteainmigration.com.au/](http://www.rksteainmigration.com.au/) He can give a free consultation. (I'm a US citizen with Aussie permanent residency. He helped me with my application.) Top pro, knows all the laws and knows the people in the immigration department.</comment>


Show HN: A JavaScript editor for your phone, in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/victorqribeiro/myConsole <comment><AUTHOR> I just used it in class to create the download button to later add to the GUI.

Kinda cool prototype things on your phone, without the attention a laptop gets, while the professor is talking about some boring subject.</comment>


Chrome 37 launches with DirectWrite support for better-looking fonts on Windows - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/08/26/chrome-37-launches-directwrite-support-better-looking-fonts-windows-revamped-password-manager/ <comment><USER2> Everything looks nothing like I've been used to. It will take a while to cope with...

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, Netflix now works natively in Linux if you just change your user agent to Windows.</comment>


Show HN: CryptoTracker – Crypto Currency Portfolio in Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Max00355/CryptoTracker <comment><USER2> I tried it and the "percent change" seems to be off for me.

I just ran it and it says BTC is -0.33%, even though CMC says it's +4.63%. Is it maybe showing a different period than 24h?

<comment><USER2> Nevermind.. I see that it shows the % change over a 1h period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's over a 1 hour period. I should say that.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: British Government has "Blocked" Pirate Bay, How? - <AUTHOR>

The British Pirate party is running a proxy for pirate bay at the moment and have been asked to shut it down by the industry body. they were running the proxy because the site has been blocked by court order from the within the UK. Out of interest yesterday I googled and arrived on the Pirate Bay, from within the UK. I'm using OpenDNS, have they just demanded that British ISPs block the pirate bays entry? That seems a little simplistic to me. <comment><USER2> Try by IP:

        http://188.8.131.52
        http://220.127.116.11
        http://188.8.131.52
        http://188.8.131.52
        http://18.104.22.168
        http://184.108.40.206

Or alternative URLs:

        http://tpb.swedendedicated.com/
        http://tpb.anonhi.de/
        http://tpb.par-anoia.net/
        http://proxy.allblog.eu/
        https://tpb.pirati.cz/
        http://pirateflix.info/
        http://tpb.ezvpn.co.uk/
        https://piratereverse.info/
        http://thepiratecove.co.uk/
        http://tpb.5gg.biz/

Full list of alternatives:

        http://proxybay.info/

It's not that hard to block an IP or a domain name.</comment>


Economics focus: Don't look down - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21525851 <comment><USER2> In summary: lower & middle class people don't like it when those living in poverty are recipients of social welfare because it makes them feel as if they are socially equal to those welfare recipients.

This is an interesting hypothesis. I suppose this also goes along the lines of people getting mad when they had to work for something, but someone else didn't.

<comment><USER3> There is a another point to that though: because the money has been taken from those people they are essentially being forced to pay to lower their own standard of living and to upgrade others to get closer to them. No wonder they are pissed at this tripple whammy.

<comment><USER4> The money isn't really coming from _them_ , though. Only 50% of U.S. households pay net taxes at all, so most of the lower-middle-class isn't paying anything, not even enough to cover their _own_ use of government services, let alone anyone else's. I believe the top 1/3 pay virtually all taxes (>90%).

<comment><USER5> That's Federal Income tax they aren't paying, which is only one tax of many.

<comment><USER2> Welfare recipients still pay sales & use tax as well as property taxes (either directly or indirectly via rent payments).

<comment><USER6> Not to mention cigarette taxes and the lottery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is an entire book about this: Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status.

[http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-Right-Pond-Behavior- Status/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-Right-Pond-Behavior- Status/dp/0195049454/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313657484&sr=8-1)

It's been a while since I read it, but it was quite interesting. The author presents an economic model to explain status-seeking behavior and how it affects, for example, wages. It presents a model why "super star" performers don't get paid what they're worth (He models it as a subsidy to those below them, who would leave for a different firm if they were at the bottom of the hierarchy).

</comment><comment><USER8> It does explain something of a paradox - why do poor middle Americans support policies that harm them in the short term? Why does the guy who lost his job when a PE firm bought his factory vote for a party that supports a very low tax rate on the PE carried income? (This is ignoring whether it's right or wrong in the broader sense) Why don't the poorer 51% unanimously vote tax hikes on the wealthier 49%? I assumed it was because they still wanted to support the party that appeared stronger on defense, or lined up with their social values. This article uses behavioral economics to suggest a different interpretation.

<comment><USER9> However, this article fails to explain a similar paradox - why do rich blue state Americans support policies that harm them in the short run?

I've always gone with "expressing tribal affiliation" as a good explanation. Since your vote doesn't matter, why not try to raise your status by voting in order to raise your status and signal tribal loyalties?

<comment><USER10> In my personal case, it's a belief that I benefit from a better national infrastructure, a balanced budget, and a more stable society where we don't have a ton of people on the verge of poverty.

I don't support taxes that are "redistributive" and don't think we really have them.. to the extent that the rich pay higher taxes (which they barely do at all on a % of income basis), they're getting more value from the system.

<comment><USER11> Exactly, and I wish more people would understand this. You benefit from society/government not only when you get a check from it in the mail, but when you can profit from it indirectly.

Once people agree with this premise, everything changes. Unfortunately 30+ years of Reagan's "government is the enemy" agenda have pushed us back too far.</comment></comment></comment></comment>