Scottish Parliament Backs Independence Vote and Defies U.K - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-28/scottish-parliament-backs-independence-vote-in-defiance-of-u-k?cmpid=BBD032817_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170328&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily <comment><USER2> Man, what happened to the people that created the British Empire? The one that the sun never set over? Losing Australia and India and Canada, sure, they're overseas, hard to manage, and the cultures are (in some cases) very different. But England and Scotland? Find me an older partnership than that one (yes, I know it hasn't always been friendly, but still). And for some reason, Brits are content to throw all of it away and shrink back inside their turtle shell.

As an American, I love watching Top Gear and feeling their nostalgia for great British cars, and for cars made in someone's shed with panels pounded by hand over wooden molds... are there any actual British car companies left from those days? Jaguar and Land Rover are owned by the Indians, Mini is owned by the Germans, MG is owned by the Chinese.

Is this what Great Britain is now? Just the bottom half of a tiny island in the North Sea? And people are content with this? I understand empires rise and fall but it's still kind of sad to watch. A nation that once owned the entire world, now they're closing their borders because they're afraid of the big scary world outside.

Glad to see Scotland isn't putting up with it.

<comment><USER3> A very odd comment.

England and Scotland are not a partnership and have spent much of their histories at war with each other. Scotland formed the UK with England because they were bankrupt.

And the UK are not "closing their borders because they're scared of the outside world". They've decided to leave a trading union that doesn't allow them to control their borders, in which no elected person can introduce new legislation, and in which they are not allowed to negotiate their own trade deals.

You seem very much to have "bought the hype" here.

<comment><USER4> England and Scotland (as well as Wales and Northern Ireland) are very clearly a partnership. There is significant imbalance therein, but that doesn't render it nonexistent.

And the UK is very much flapping about with little idea of what it is doing and why. Immigration does seem to be the biggest concern - but there is little evidence as to _why_ it is the biggest concern.

If anything, I'd suggest that Brexit is the result of the same phenomenon that elected Trump - a general dissatisfaction with the state of governance and a lack of options with which to deal with it. People are understandably frustrated and want to effect some change; it's easy to believe promises made to this effect.

<comment><USER3> Is it possible that you can prove literally anything there that you have said?

<comment><USER4> I'm not really sure how one could prove impressions about political events… it's certainly the impression I have from inside the UK though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Two interesting aspects to this vote:

1\. Rhetorically, "every argument used by Theresa May against the EU can be used against her by Nicola Sturgeon" [1]. Returning control, cleaving oneself from a significant trading partner, waiting to know the precise terms... These arguments are both use by and usable against Theresa May.

2\. As a New Yorker, I'm excited. It's sad, particularly since smart people I know voted to Leave. But our city has an unrivaled claim to London's crown in the Middle East, Western Europe and Northern Africa. Worst case: we can arbiter between the City of London and emerging economic centers in Dublin and Edinburgh.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2017/03/playing- st...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2017/03/playing-stalemate)

<comment><USER5> Of course brexit arguments work for the SNP: the separatist language is universal, from Yugoslavia to Slovakia, from Sardinia to Catalonia, from Texas to Libya... the big bad government far away is the root of all evil, "we" have to take back control, "they" oppress us, our tribe is _different_ from their tribe...

It's always the same story: when you start talking about drawing lines, you give an excuse to anyone to look for differences, and because we're all different at some level, you don't know where it's going to end. Do we think people in Aberdeen and Glasgow are happy to be ruled by Edinburgh? That people in Manchester are happy to be taxed to build railways in London? Of course not. Egoistic tribalism is natural, and it scales down terribly well. You legitimise one level and soon enough you're fighting the same arguments three levels down: my town won't be ruled by your town! My district won't be ruled by your district! My street won't be ruled by your street!

This is what the British elites of all stripes have unleashed upon us, with their intolerance for progressive rules agreed in Bruxelles. We are running towards the ethnic conflicts of yore. Sad days.

<comment><USER4> That's a bit of a shallow argument. So long as one accepts the existence of nation states, one must accept that there are lines between them. The lines, then, are subject to change by political consent.

Scotland voted _strongly_ to remain in the EU, and despite this it will be leaving. That's obviously part and parcel of being in a union, but coming so soon after an independence referendum in which one of the key arguments was "voting for independence means leaving the EU" it seems pretty obvious why there would be disquiet. It's demonstrative of how difficult it is to have a political union where there is such wildly disproportionate power wielded by one member through the weight of population.

I'm an absolute card-carrying supporter of Scottish independence. But honestly, I'd rather see genuine federalism in the UK to deal with the structural constitutional problems. However, there is no political will to make that happen, so it seems like a lost cause.

<comment><USER6> > Scotland voted strongly to remain in the EU, and despite this it will be > leaving. That's obviously part and parcel of being in a union

I don't know why it has to be part and parcel of being in a union. Let me make a comparison to Australia–in Australia, constitutional amendment referendums must be passed by both a majority of voters nationally and also a majority of states. So even if 52% of Australians nationally vote in favour of a constitutional amendment, if it fails to also get a majority in at least four of the six states, the amendment fails.

If the UK applied the same rule as Australia does–the UK doesn't have a written constitution like Australia does, but Brexit no doubt is an issue of constitutional level importance–then the Brexit referendum would have failed, since even though it got a national majority, it only passed in 2 of the 4 constituent countries.

Or, similarly, look at the US–constitutional amendments aren't passed by national referenda, rather by votes of states legislatures, but still 75% of states must approve, so a bare national majority in favour of a constitutional amendment is unlikely to be enough for its ratification.

So, David Cameron could have designed the Brexit referendum to require a double majority of national voters and constitutent countries, very similar to the Australian model, and somewhat similar to the US model, but he chose not to do that–and had he done that, Brexit would have failed. Healthy political unions tend to have strong mechanisms for protecting the rights of their smaller members, but the UK has basically non-existent mechanisms for doing this, and while the Brexit referendum could have been a good opportunity to start doing that, it didn't happen. So this isn't "part and parcel of being in a union" at all.

<comment><USER7> > So, David Cameron could have designed the Brexit referendum to require a > double majority of national voters and constitutent countries

I'm not sure he could have designed it to "require" anything, since after all it was a non-binding referendum, with which the government was free to do whatever it chose, and it's not clear that there is any basis for a binding referendum.

The decision _after the fact_ to treat the referendum as if it were a binding, simple-majority-rule, measure, OTOH, is ceetainly questionable.

<comment><USER8> _The decision after the fact to treat the referendum as if it were a binding, simple-majority-rule, measure, OTOH, is ceetainly questionable._

There were plenty of questionable things about the referendum, but I really don't think this was one of them. If you look at Hansard during the debates on the enabling legislation, one MP after another spoke in terms of giving the people the final say, or words clearly to that effect. If you look at the official booklet, sent to every household in the UK by the government at taxpayers' expense, it too contained wording that clearly implied the people would decide.

Personally I'm of the view that we need more direct democracy to fix our political systems rather than less, and I see little democratic legitimacy in arguments about Parliamentary sovereignty given the alternatives available to us today. So for me, whether or not I agree with the result, as a matter of principle I would have preferred the referendum to be absolutely legally binding anyway. But even if our most senior lawyers held that it was not, it seems quite clear that even before the vote the expectation both of Parliament and of the general public was that the referendum result should decide the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The Conservative Party, which governs the U.K. though is the largest opposition group in the Scottish Parliament, says no referendum should take place, not least because there's no public or political consent for one."

That's odd - didn't the fact that this measure passed 69-59 imply that there is political consent? Brexit passed on a far slimmer popular margin.

<comment><USER10> The British have always been rather keen on giving people the "right to vote" when it is best for them. The last few Scottish independent votes were times selected with the best odds of remain (same with northern Ireland for that matter).

<comment><AUTHOR> > _The British have always been rather keen on giving people the "right to > vote" when it is best for them_

Brexit was a massive miscalculation by Westminster [1].

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/22/tory-fury-as- davi...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/22/tory-fury-as-david- cameron-suggests-labour-government-in-europe/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think of all the time, attention, political capital, and other resources Brexit and similar issues consume. Imagine what could be accomplished if it all was directed toward productive pursuits like economic, political, and social gains.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yuval Noah Harari had interesting things to say about nationalism versus globalism.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_nationalism_vs_gl...](http://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_nationalism_vs_globalism_the_new_political_divide) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari)

</comment><comment><USER13> I had just finished writing this for a non-Scottish friend...

Most people outside of Scotland misunderstand why a country like Scotland wouldn't want to be 'free'. It's because a vote for independence is also a vote to break a 300-year-old union in which we are a major partner. The separatists say we are dominated by England, but I often wonder who dominates who? The separatists want to replace this working Union with the EU, a failing 40-year old experiment in which we would only play a minor part, and be dominated by Germany.

An equivalent would be like California wanting to leave the USA because it has, in recent years, voted Democrat. While some are agitating for that, the citizens know that the federal government for all its faults, still gives many benefits, and any such proposal will never get serious traction. People can be californians AND be Americans in the same way that I can be Scottish AND British. Imagine then, how frustrated Californians would be if those agitators put governance to the side, while pushing for "once-in-a-generation" referenda every few years.

The reality is that every poll shows that the Scottish people don't want another referendum. They already voted, and want to get on with their lives. Today's vote was pushed by the SNP (scottish National Party), who will use any pretext to have another try at independence, despite 30% of their own followers voting for Brexit, and increasing anger at their lack of action on policies that actually matter to people's daily lives. The SNP have overplayed their hand to the extent that lifelong Labour supporters I know are going to vote Tory just to stop the SNP.

<comment><USER6> > The separatists say we are dominated by England, but I often wonder who > dominates who? The separatists want to replace this working Union with the > EU, a failing 40-year old experiment in which we would only play a minor > part, and be dominated by Germany.

The UK is far more lopsided than the EU. England has a majority of the population (~83%) and a majority of seats in both the House of Commons (~82%) and the House of Lords. By contrast, while Germany is the biggest country in the EU, it still contains a minority of the EU population (~16%), and a minority of the votes in the EU institutions. The EU also has much better institutional mechanisms to protect the rights of its smaller/weaker constituents than the UK does – e.g. unanimity for many major decisions, double majority voting in the Council of the European Union (55%–72% majority of member states representing 65% of the EU population) – by contrast, the House of Commons and the House of Lords both have a decisive English majority and 50%+1 in each chamber is enough votes to pass anything at all.

<comment><USER14> In fact it's a lot more complex than that even. The fact that Scotland has a devolved govt. where England does not means that Scottish MPs can vote on English only issues but English MPs cannot vote on devolved Scottish matters [1].

The lopsided nature is in part because Scotland has a population of less than London (alone) and other areas of England such as Yorkshire would probably qualify for devolution based on their population (pretty much the same as Scotland).

The whole issue is highly politicized by all sides.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems disingenuous to suggest that Brexit gives ground for IndyRef2; it was always a possibility during IndyRef1.

<comment><USER16> Pro-independence has risen in the polls since Brexit. It's enough to give the SNP enough political clout to push for another referendum. Brexit was a remote possibility during the IndyRef campaign. On the contrary, Cameron said multiple times that Scotland would have no guaranteed place in the EU as an independent country, making thinly veiled threats of opposing Scotland joining the EU. Cameron was backed in this by the conservative Spanish government who would very much like to prevent Catalonia from holding its own referendum.

<comment><USER13> The polls have actually shown a significant decline in the pro-independence vote (apart from a single outlier) since Brexit. And if the pro-independence side had won the country would currently be out of Europe.

<comment><USER4> _And if the pro-independence side had won the country would currently be out of Europe._

It is difficult to make that claim with any certainty.

<comment><USER15> Given Spain has power of veto, seems hell-bent on preventing Catalonian seccession, and as recently as a few months ago was reiterating its opposition to an easy Scottish accession to the EU[0], I think the burden on proof lies on those making the claim against.

[0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/22/spain-rejects- nic...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/22/spain-rejects-nicola- sturgeon-brexit-plan-scotland-seemingly/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So long, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

<comment><USER18> Yes, now is the time for an emotional, nationalistic, knee-jerk response. Maybe if you play it right you can get back to killing each other again.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my cloud storage service MyNetworkFolders - <AUTHOR>

My Network Folders (mynetworkfolders.com) is a new service we have created for storing and sharing files in the cloud, with a desktop-like twist. We are currently in open beta and provide 1 GB of storage for free. Check out the Home and Blog links for more details on the service and please sign up to take it for a spin. I would be really interested to hear your opinions about the idea, the implementation, what you like and especially what you hate.<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> Hi,

had some suggestions.

1\. Would be great if people can simply signin using open id instead of going through a registration process

2\. Also post sign up I cam across a weird page as in something related activation false and all was displayed

3\. Might wanna think about how you can convey the message with fewer text. e.g The defult panel talks about REST API but do you really need to mention it there. Am just guessing your target segment will include 80% non tech folks

4\. The same goes for tour. People are lazy and impatient to go through all the text. Instead try how you can convey the same info via pictures only

All the best

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER3> link <http://www.mynetworkfolders.com></comment>


Billion-year-old fossils set back evolution of earliest fungi - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01629-1 <comment><USER2> I grew up thinking that roots brought nutrients to trees, but the more we learn about fungi the more I wonder if trees are just the mechanism of fungi farming their own nutrients out of thin air. Maybe the entire tree, both above and below the ground, is a root.

</comment><comment><USER3> another article with a bit more background: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fossil- discove...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fossil-discovery- pushes-back-origin-fungi-half-billion-years-180972274/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Does this mean that multicellular organisms may have evolved much sooner than we thought?

<comment><USER5> It might push back the date of multicellularity for fungi, but that's evolved many times and I'm pretty sure some filamentous prokaryotes got there first, but I don't have a reference handy.

<comment><USER4> Ah ok. I thought that it happened only once or twice on Earth, but I must have been thinking of the origin of mitochondria.</comment></comment></comment>


Swiss police arrests Fifa officials in Zurich - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32895048

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't know who FIFA are, watch this great John Oliver segment:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I)</comment>


Alternative of 3D Tour (Realtors/Buyers/Sellers) - fe-volcanioo Hello, I'm a developer and I'm improving an idea for the last 2 weeks. I want to get more perspective from the realtors and the buyers in this thread.
Currently, when buyers interest in a property (from the photos) they are connecting with the realtors to visit that place. To make faster this process some third-party companies created a solution 10 years ago (maybe) as 3D Tour. Buyers can visit places online like they are inside of the home without going there. (e.g. https://www.vpix.net/754104)
The price of 3D Tours is quite expensive and needs lots of equipment. My results of the searches say "A video might be more effective than a 3D Image".
So, come back to 10 years ago;
What is the purpose? => The purpose was to make faster and understandable of home visits. What do we want? => We want to give more information about the property's rooms and the places.
How we do that?
3D Tour: We need to get some equipment and took some 3D photos with some professional people. We have to pay some money to a third-party company for all of them. That means we can't do this thing for every property because it's expensive.
Alternative of 3D Tour: 3D Photos? Why it's necessary? We can give to people a video for each room. So we don't need professional people. We only need someone who can use a photo machine to record all room videos. (Each room will be 1 minute)
What if the users can use a screen like that instead of 3D tours experience?
* My main purpose is to minimize all requirements of 3D Tours and ensure online tours as many people as possible.
* They can ask a question while they are doing their tours.
* They will be able to see all details of the room as a content while they are watching the video of the room.
* They can pass other rooms easily.
Guys - I'm a developer. You all are the experts of this sector and I want to hear your thoughts about it. What do you think about this solution?
Solution's Template: https://prnt.sc/tpk2d3 <comment><AUTHOR> I think the benefit of 3D tours is being interactive.

Zillow already has a technology to let you create a 3D tour similar to the example you share with just a phone [https://www.zillow.com/z/3d-home/](https://www.zillow.com/z/3d-home/)

</comment><comment><USER2> You can use an Azure Kinect and one of the example programs to walk around and create a 3d model. This capability has gotten much cheaper, probably profitable while charging $1k per house, maybe less even.</comment>


How is it that 'Hacker News' still doesn't have search? - <AUTHOR>

Come on guys, this is getting stupid. This site has been up for over a year, it's popular, there are tons of new stories everyday, and we still can't search! What's going on? <comment><USER2> What's going on is that I have a few other things to do. Like writing essays and dealing with 58 (so far) startups we've invested in. Since the main advantage of implementing search would be to save people from going _all the way to Google_ ([http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+Readmo...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+Readmore)), it's not a huge priority.

<comment><USER3> Why not open source and let hackers on here help ;)

<comment><USER4> brand dilution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for confirming my belief that putting up with the JVM or the CLR is worth it because you get awesome libraries like Lucene, Nutch, and most other things you want but don't want to write yourself or come up with an unsatisfactory workaround for.

Yes there's Google, but Google lacks transparency and if something doesn't index they won't tell you and there's nothing you can do about it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Your best bet for searching Hacker News for now is <http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com/> (an external util)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I knew I had seen a post about an external search tool but since I couldn't search the site I couldn't find it again. ;)

<comment><USER7> ycsearch.com is not as fancy, but it is a bit easier to remember. Although, I guess it is just as easy to remember site:news.ycombinator.com, which it is functionally equivalent to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> You're a hacker right? You should be building a search tool yourself! :-)

Kidding, but yes, I share your frustration.

<comment><USER10> I wonder how easy it would be to make a firefox plugin that let you easily search the site of the tab you're in...

<comment><USER11> I have one made, just trying to figure out how to share it.

I can't find anywhere on the Mozilla development site that just lets you upload the xml file. They want to make me fill out a form that builds the plugin for me. Problem is that their form isn't really powerful enough to actually make a decent plugin. What am I missing?

For now it has been uploaded to: <http://www.lorebroker.com/ycombinator.xml>

Just download and stick in your searchplugins directory (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins in Windows) along with the other plugins you find there.

<comment><USER12> I have created a plugin, that can be used for searching ycombinator.It is available here: <http://trk7.com/yc>, on just needs to click on it to install in FF and IE7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I went ahead and created a Google Coop search here:

[http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=013284775634912373901%3Avm...](http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=013284775634912373901%3Avm_- vlwn1zu)

</comment><comment><USER14> Google has already indexed this page. Pretty impressive. One quick hack would be to put up a search box that redirects to a google search.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aycombinator....](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aycombinator.com+%22How+is+it+that+%27Hacker+News%27+still+doesn%27t+have+search%3F%3F%22&btnG=Search)

<comment><USER15> Google seems to like news.yc. I week or two ago I did a search for something obscure _without_ using site:news.yc, and it returned a post from this site that had been posted something like 48 minutes before my search.

<comment><USER7> I remember a few instances of people submitting google searches as stories and within an hour the news.yc story was showing up in the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> With so many hackers here, why doesn't someone familiar with Lisp write a simple search module and send it to PG who can just check it for sanity and plug it in? I know its not easy to do without seeing PG's source code.

PG how about making news.yc open-source so we can all work on it?

</comment><comment><USER17> Use Google.

Search is hard to do if you hack all the code (no external search engine or a database).

</comment><comment><USER18> I could be wrong, but I don't think the site has been up quite a year yet...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah you might be right, it sure seems like it's been that long. I'm sure it was here in 06, 9 months is plenty of time to put in "select * where title like '%query%';"

<comment><USER2> The site launched in Feb 07.

Doing search right is not just a matter of searching titles. And unless you're prepared to work hard to get it right, you're probably not going to do better than Google.

<comment><USER19> Adding a sitemap might help Google index the old pages better. Adding date- based archive links (like many blogs do) would probably help as well (making the site structure more like a tree and less like a list).

[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.htm...](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree, a Search will be quite helpful</comment>


Show HN: Self-updating, simplified time zone list - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vvo/tzdb/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I needed to build a current time zones select box much like the one you can find on Google Calendar. Turns out Google Calendar uses a simplified time zone list. But such list is not really standard.

First, the actual text being displayed is not a list time zones but rather a list of UTC offsets and their names. For example the IANA time zone list has "America/Los_Angeles". But google calendar displays "Pacific Time - <USER2> Angeles" which is good because most of the time people will email you saying "Let's have this call at 5PM PT"

Grouping time zones is tricky, you can group per offset in the same country safely, which is what I've done in this project.

The project is self updating given data from geonames using GitHub actions. There's an npm package you can use too.

Enjoy!</comment>


Show HN: Guess Game by Screenshot - <AUTHOR> http://scrame.spotpot.co/start

<comment><USER2> As you progress, images take like a good second to fully load (at least for me). Also, is the timer decreasing as you progress?

Fun game. Is the scoreboard legit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. You're right, if the images are not yet cached it takes a while. First I pulled thoses images via Google Image Search but the results were not satisfiable but neither it's now. I'll take a look on better techniques.

Timer is decreasing and you got +2 seconds if you answer right.

Scoreboard is (now) legit ;)</comment></comment>


In-vitro meat: Would lab-burgers be better for us and the planet? - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/07/eco.invitro.meat/

<comment><USER2> [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M91dv1_QuuA&client=mv- googl...](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M91dv1_QuuA&client=mv- google&xl=AdsControl2) makes the onion less ludicrous, or makes this more... I dunno</comment>


TypeScript Express Tutorial #7. Relational Databases with Postgres and TypeORM - <AUTHOR> https://wanago.io/2019/01/14/express-postgres-relational-databases-typeorm/ <comment><USER2> TypeORM lacks support of DateTimeOffset PostgreSQL datatype. I did submit a support patch and the TypeORM did not paid care even replying it. I believe this is one the best SQL libraries for typescript however the team seem to lack will or power to manatain the project well enough.

<comment><USER3> there is no DateTimeOffset type in PostgreSQL, do you mean timestamptz? Can you send a link to a support patch you sent?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What have you learned in 2014 so far? - <AUTHOR>

Anything at all.<p>Mine: You rarely need to under-estimate the time it'll take to do something. Over-estimate and deliver early, you'll earn a lot of credit from people by doing so. <comment><USER2> All the time you hear about smart, gets-shit-done types that can take your company to the next level, or the opposite, the non-productive, not as smart, jerks or assholes that could be detrimental to your startup.

What is 1000 times more insidious is very smart, insecure people. You hire people like that and they'd destroy your company from the inside, because they're (probably) affable, do good work and are so good at navigating internal politics that if you're not paying attention they can chase off the type of people you need and quietly toxify your culture without you noticing it.

The problem is that they are out of their depth, but are not used to failure, so they will do _anything_ to avoid looking like they have failed at anything, including abiding criticism, or engaging in things they're unfamiliar with. If you put them in positions of power. Good Night, and good luck.

<comment><USER3> As a smart and insecure person now i feel more insecure about trying hard

<comment><USER4> meh. op is just a generic, post-hoc, bitter whine because someone pissed them off. you could replace the whole thing with "stinky brad with a stupid beard" and it would be as useful.

also, read anti-fragile and fail more often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few things so far:

Be careful who you trust. Expect the worst from people, most probably that's what you're going to get.

Most people have no clue what they're doing and are simply reacting to situation.

As for the more technical:

Best practices are mostly bullshit. There is no such thing as doing it right.

Analysis paralysis is a silent killer. I've spent the first decade of my professional life learning how to be a better programmer. Seems like I am going to spend the next one learning about compromises and getting shit done.

<comment><USER6> Amen to the more technical part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> a lot about julia, jenkins (and ci in general) and docker (partly i think, and inspired by anti-fragile (below), because i've decided it's ok to be wrong more often).

on the non-technical front, i've learnt i have a problem communicating in the culture i live in (chile) and that this has become critical (because it's affecting my health care). i'm not sure what the fix is yet. though.

also, reading anti-fragile has helped solidify some ideas i've had for a while, but which seemed unconnected.

and today i just learnt that you can't convert raid 1 to 5 and expect the volume group you had layered on top to survive. but i also learnt that my backups worked, so there's that ;o)

</comment><comment><USER7> I am still learning that the business side of things is tough, very tough. A finished product will not just 'take-off' on its own.

Sales and marketing is just as important as the tech side of a product.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can provide power to both an anode and cathode so that turning off the power to the cathode completes the circuit by grounding it. Useful for common anode displays (seven segment and otherwise).

</comment><comment><USER9> You should not build a product before being sure there's a market for it. Even if "it's just 200 lines codes". Scope creep is a real thing.

</comment><comment><USER10> * Being unemployed isn't so bad.

* Working in an open-plan office is hard, but not impossible.

* Markdown is even better than I thought it was.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have learned Sketch in general enough to produce my own work without the need of Illustrator.

</comment><comment><USER12> That Scala and Akka are overrated.

<comment><USER13> Could you elaborate on this please?</comment></comment>


Over a Third of Americans Battle Job Burnout Every Single Week - <AUTHOR> https://www.studyfinds.org/the-new-normal-over-a-third-of-americans-battle-job-burnout-every-week/ <comment><USER2> "Conducted by telecommunications company TollFreeForwarding.com, "

an odd source, but OK.

I work remote from a place outside the US. Last thanksgiving my boss (from the US) was on Slack. So were... all but one of my US colleagues. I see them writing at all hours of the night. On a work trip it was more or less assumed I'd work from 9 AM (8:30 ish really if you count coffee before) until 10 PM. I'm not on pagerduty anymore but my daughter still sings Frere Jacque as "Something's broken Something's broken It's your fault!, It's your fault!" I spent half my life on pagerduty (so over half my life - waking and asleep, working in some sort of fashion).

It depends on the industry but there's too many people who are de facto actually at work every waking moment (and sleeping, if you count on-call).

Combine this with the nagging suspicion that none of this actually matters (See "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber) and burnout, detachment, etc. shouldn't be a surprise.

<comment><USER3> > It depends on the industry but there's too many people who are de facto > actually at work every waking moment

If "at work every waking moment" means "needs to be able to respond to emergencies", then this is actually the norm for everyone in the world until very recently. Anyone who doesn't have an employer is "at work every waking moment" by this definition. Peasants, housewives, aristocrats...

Given the nearly 100% rate of this for all of history, it seems weird to argue that the current -- much lower -- rate is too high.

<comment><USER4> You mean emergencies such as your hot shot boss calling you 2am because he wants to discuss some bullshit idea he just had?

I've worked in a couple of places where this kept happening. First time I was junior enough to care and put up with it. Everyone understand: this is not normal. Unless you specifically signed up for pager duty sort of job, no one should put up with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> > First time I was junior enough to care and put up with it.

I think that's the game at a lot of companies, to just prey on the young and hungry who probably don't know any better and are more likely to put up with bullshit like that.

<comment><USER5> I get the feeling that ageism in hiring is often driven by this.

<comment><USER6> As a fully formed adult with responsibilities and kids. There are so many job posts you can tell right away aren't for a certain demographic. People who may push back because they have a parent-teacher conference on the schedule already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So why do they stay at these awful jobs?

Health insurance. Fear of losing, or even changing what they have (sometimes accompanied with some very real and not just anxiety out-of-pocket costs running into the thousands of dollars).

Decoupling health insurance from employment is the #1 thing we could do to improve quality of our work. But in the long run, I dream of a day when wage labor is looked back on as nearly as terrible as chattel slavery.

<comment><USER8> Most companies would love to do away with the expense of health insurance and all of the administrative headaches and costs that come with it. But since most full-time white collar jobs offer health insurance, changing jobs might change your coverage some but won't leave you insuranceless. Now if you want to go out on your own or create/work at a startup, health insurance can be a big issue.

<comment><USER9> Big companies already have the HR staff to deal with health insurance. It's in their interest to keep health insurance tied up with employment, as it gives them an advantage over small business and individuals, because individuals who work for small businesses that don't offer health insurance have to pay for it with post tax dollars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A year ago I had a 6-week paternity leave at 33 years old. It was the first time since I started my career that I was able to unplug for a significant amount of time.

This time off was truly a magical time for me, and even though I had to do a ton of work around the house and with the baby, I felt a sense of purpose. I started to feel like a real person again.

I came back to work and I made some huge gains for the company for a short period of time... my creativity was back, my motivation was back. The things I did after paternity leave paid off a huge amount and had ripple effects of increased productivity for the entire company.

Then, I burned out again. Now I'm just a zombie who occasionally writes code and counts down the hours until I can go home. It's obvious to me that I just need some extended time to myself, but that doesn't fly in America. I think my employer would rather me be a zombie than to just have some time off to recharge.

<comment><USER11> > I think my employer would rather me be a zombie than to just have some time > off to recharge.

And you probably don't think you can even ask your employer about this: what would it say about your devotion as an employee?

<comment><USER12> > don't think you can even ask your employer about this

I wonder how much of that is in our own minds, though - my boss is a pretty cool Chinese guy, and I tell him I need time off to deal with something, he says no problem, let me know when you're back. But I still feel like I'm being silently judged - not just by him, but by everybody.

<comment><USER11> > But I still feel like I'm being silently judged - not just by him, but by > everybody.

Does "everybody" include you, too, by the way? Are you actually just judging yourself for taking time off, and assuming everyone else is?

Do you judge others for taking time off too?

I don't have an agenda here, really, except the point out that this being "in our own minds" is not that different from "assumptions that come from our culture"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Americans really need more vacation time. For a while I worked with only 15 days a year. This never gives you the opportunity to ever really relax. Life becomes just one endless meaningless time of working year after year that kills any kind of creativity . I can see this in a lot of workaholics. They just go through the motions of working hard but don't get much done.

And once you have been in that machine for a while taking a little time off feels scary and unfamiliar.

<comment><USER14> "Only" 15 vacation days?

I'm not sure if you're in the US, or if you're including paid holidays, but 15 days is the average number of vacation days for people with 25 years of tenure in full time jobs in the US. Most people with less tenure get much less.

So that wouldn't be an "only" in the US.

[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm)

<comment><USER15> Your general position that Americans often don't get a lot of vacation time by the norms of developed countries isn't wrong, but your choice of data is.

That table is 23 years out of date, and it was only for employees at "small private establishments", which generally means <100 employees in BLS terminology. They generally provide less vacation time than the overall average of employers.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>---

As of 2017, the average in the US is around 15 days after _5_ years, 17 days after 10 years, and 20 days after 20 years.

[https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/private-industry- workers-r...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/private-industry-workers- received-average-of-15-paid-vacation-days-after-5-years-of-service- in-2017.htm)

Approximately 90% of full time workers have paid holiday and vacation in some form.

[https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2017/ownership/private/...](https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2017/ownership/private/table32a.htm)

\</comment><comment>--

Also, to note the obvious: The norms for your average HN reader in terms of benefits are likely to be different (better) from the average person in society. I would consider 15 days to be an "only" in the part of the job market I am in.

<comment><USER14> I couldn't figure out in what year my bls link was published; thanks for finding better data, 23 years old is terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Job burnout? Try LIFE burnout. The job I've managed to compartmentalize and keep at bay, but life is burning me out and I'm not out of my thirties yet. Things are getting faster and more expensive just to live.

<comment><USER17> Kids will do that to you. Don't take on a huge burden if you aren't prepared for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find that If my work isn't meaningful, it can really drain the life out of me (even more than truly demanding jobs).

I wonder if a couple generations ago people felt just as burnt out. It seems like this generation is the most burnt out but who knows. With everyone connected all the time, I doubt people are getting proper rest between work. If you're answering emails over lunch, you're still working and not resting your eyes/brain.

There is a movement[0][1] towards shorter workweeks which I'm really interested in and, shameless plug[2], I run a site on this topic as well. There is real movement right now towards a 4 day work week in Western society especially in the UK.

[0] [https://www.4dayweekus.org/](https://www.4dayweekus.org/)

[1] [https://www.4dayweek.co.uk/](https://www.4dayweek.co.uk/)

[2] [https://30hourjobs.com](https://30hourjobs.com)

<comment><USER19> I think there are some fundamental things that _have_ changed that are much different than 40-50 years ago:

1\. Work was much more compartmentalized 30 years ago. People may have worked long hours, but for the most part, when they were "done" for the day, they were done (obviously there were exceptions, like people on call). Now, though, there is always email and texts and Slack, so it's more difficult to fully decompress from work.

2\. The nature of big business has drastically changed. First, many more people are in service jobs, and I'd argue that actually building something concrete has a higher immediate payoff for most folks. Also, as jobs have gotten more efficient and segmented, most people are more removed from decision making and a tangible feeling of how their effort goes into producing a valuable product.

3\. The increasing inequality in America means there is more fear of falling behind, and jobs themselves are more tenuous, so there is more stress to work harder lest you fall out of a middle/upper-middle class.

<comment><USER2> 40-50 years ago if there was an emergency my boss had to pick up a nice, chunky landline phone and call me, and _hope_ that I was home. Now they can just summon me on a whim. Of course, my boss might not even know a thing was broken, because he was at home and not at work too! (Unless he worked for a factory on shifts, power plant, restaurant, etc, - other non 9-5 business)

There's a reason all my vacations are mysteriously vague camping trips to places with terrible reception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In Academia, it's not too uncommon for people to take extended sabbaticals to focus on a project without being distracted with work nonsense, but I haven't really heard of any company doing that in the US.

I would love to take around a month every year just to focus on a purely technical problem instead of focussing 20% of my time in technical stuff, and 80% of my time going through bureaucratic hoops that seemingly have no reason to exist outside of creating a job for the bureaucrats.

I have an OK job overall, but there's just a metric ton of approvals and paperwork that I end up having to do to actually write code, and as a result I get burnt out fairly often.

<comment><USER21> I took a sabbatical for couple of months last year and totally wasted the whole thing lazing around.

<comment><USER22> That's not a waste at all. Sounds like you probably needed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I feel burnt out regularly. Earlier in my career I loved reading about software development, both research and practice. But my job isn't particularly stressful. At some points, I feel stress at work, often due to a lack of control over the work environment and vision of the leadership. But they don't push me to work a lot of hours. We're encouraged to use our PTO.

I think the issue, in American culture, is bigger than just employers and career choices. My wife and I discuss this subject often. The problem is that we are a two career couple who are raising a child in a culture that hasn't, and may never, adapt to not having one parent at home. Our society isn't setup for it. Vital services, like healthcare or simply furnace maintenance before Winter, require a person home from 9am-5pm. Doing so requires either working remotely or a promise to make up the time when you get back to the office.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Maybe working remotely will help. Maybe we need to postpone careers until kids are raised like my parents' generation did. (My wife is far better suited to a career. I would gladly volunteer to be at home if we didn't need both pays.)

</comment><comment><USER24> I work six days a week. I leave my house at 7am return home around 7pm, pretty much have time to make dinner and chill for an hour so then go to bed and do it again. I haven't really been out and done anything for a few years now. My body is in pain constantly, I'm always exhausted but my sleep is always poor. I don't remember what it's like to not feel burnt out. It's been like this pretty much since I was in my early twenties and I'm in my thirties now and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of this stopping any time soon.

<comment><USER25> That's not healthy. Please take some time off for a vacation and return to a normal 40 hour work week.

There's a good reason why people fought for a 40 hour work week. Life is not just about work; you need to relax too.

I refuse to work more than 32 hours a week, and that's working out very well for me. I have time for my hobbies, my kids, my friends and family, and I have time to just do nothing at all on occasion. And the hours I do work are very productive as a result. Admittedly my current project is so interesting that I often work a bit more than 32 hours, but it's because I want to, not because I have to.

<comment><USER26> > Please take some time off for a vacation and return to a normal 40 hour work > week.

You might as well say "Please win the lottery".

Seriously though, please tell me you're not so out of touch with reality that you actually believe the sentence you wrote is meaningful advice. People can't just snap their fingers and create a better job out of thin air.

<comment><USER25> People should and people have. A century ago, unions declared massive strikes for these and other issues.

A normal, sane job is not as rare as winning the lottery. Entire countries have people working very normal, sane hours. Americans need to stop tolerating these ridiculously long hours. Do 8 hours of good work for 5 days a week, then relax, sleep well, so you start your next day well-rested and ready to deliver another 8 hours of good work. This is a sane balance. Working more than you rest is not. Sacrificing your health and your life for your employer is idiocy.

<comment><USER27> _Sacrificing your health and your life for your employer is idiocy._

Hardly anyone is sacrificing their health and lives for an employer. They are doing it for the money and hopefully insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm burnedout because I'm bored.

I'm not a dev, I'm closer to a BI Analyst if anything. What I do is the epitome of bullshit jobs. The company would be wildly profitable if I just stopped showing up. Yet my reviews and feedback are always glowing even if I do 1 'thing' a week, and yeah 6 months down the line some finding I put into motion results in some marginal change somewhere. It's hard to feel the motivation to do more when the output feels irrelevant.

I'd leave, but it'd be hard to match the benefits, salary, and work/life balance in my region. I know I need to change though because my skills are atrophying due to the ennui.

</comment><comment><USER29> As a European (for now, oho) this doesn't surprise me at all. American working patterns are bonkers.

You guys have this concept of 'vacation' which well, isn't.

15 days or whatever per year pretty much all just must either get banked for emergencies, admin, or maybe that one Mega Holiday where you fly across the world and spend a week or whatever trying to forget your life.

I don't get it at all. It might make sense if you're a founder or whatever and you love your job. Most people are working to live, but there is no "live", because there's no time that isn't work.

I'd rather be homeless. Can I choose to be homeless in Europe instead tho? ;)

<comment><USER20> I'm genuinely curious; how many days do Europeans typically get?

<comment><USER30> The legal minimum in NL is (the equivalent of) four weeks per year (20 days on a 40 hours/week contract), so not that much more than US. Some fields (healthcare, construction, education) get more than that.

However, none of that can be usurped by your employer for other things than vacation. For example, your employer isn't allowed to deduct pay or withhold vacation hours for doctor's visits during work hours. Major life events, like funerals or child births are paid leave. And for most professions, there's no such things as unpaid overtime: you work more hours, you either get more pay or receive more vacation hours.

<comment><USER31> I think 20 is the minimum but from what I've seen 24-25 is the most common (at least in the IT field). I've got 28.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sprints? I love sprints...I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel day in, day out.

Seriously, screw scrum and 'agile'

<comment><USER25> This has nothing to do with scrum and agile. Or if it does, then they are part of the solution, because one of the rules is that you don't do overtime. If there's too much work to include all features before the deadline, you drop some of the features. Scrum is meant to help estimate based on real work by developers, rather than on overly optimistic planning by managers. They empower the developer and give them the autonomy to do the job the way they see fit.

<comment><USER33> It's funny that some managers give the deadline first and then direct the developers to do Scrum to figure out how to do it in that timeline.

<comment><USER34> "But we need to know how much it will cost us"

"External factors demand we implement feature X by that date"

"Let's just hire more people, preferably more PMs"

"We have many more ideas in our pipeline. In order to orchestrate these, we need precise estimations."

<comment><USER17> My last job kept hiring more PMs and no techs. It was horrible. I kept having to tell the customers "Sorry we can't get the projects done, we have 5 project managers and only 2 techs."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What's interesting to me is -- for every "burnt out" coworker I see another one with similar pay and title who isn't burnt out.

I think a lot of people think they are unable to say "no" nor "pushback." In my experience, saying no actually gets you more respect than saying yes.

<comment><USER12> My personal experience has been the opposite, actually. Early on, I realized that I was constantly being asked by coworkers to "look at this, look at that", none of which were related to the work that my actual manager had assigned me. So I said no: I focused on what my manager was telling me to do. That seemed to be the "right thing" to do. Everybody hated me because I wouldn't help them. They showed up in meetings and said they couldn't meet their commitments because commandlinefan "wasn't available to help me get CVS set up on my computer". Management churn being what it was, I never had the same manager for more than six months anyway, so by the time performance reviews came around, whoever my manager-du-jour happened to be based my performance review on the consistently negative things he was hearing from my coworkers. I couldn't even defend myself by pointing to having accomplished what the previous manager told me to focus on, either: priority churn being what it was, most of it ended up being scrapped before it was used. I finally saw the writing on the wall and did a complete 180. I became the most helpful guy in the world. If anybody, ever, for any reason, asked for my help, I dropped whatever I was doing and focused on helping them until their problem was fixed. Performance reviews went from "needs serious improvement" to "exceeds expectations". I rarely, if ever, finish anything that I'm actually supposed to be working on, and nobody cares. It's all reputation, and mine is stellar. I haven't said no in 20 years and I've never been more loved by corporate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was let go from my first dev job (fresh out of college no less) and the couple of months following were actually some of the happiest days of my life. Despite being unemployed, I got my mojo back, taught myself a bunch of new shit unrelated to programming, and tried a lot of new things I wouldn't otherwise have tried. Oftentimes I wonder how I could have been so happy given the circumstances, but it finally dawned on me: getting let go obliterated any conscious or subconscious burnout I had been suffering. I felt like a person again.

</comment><comment><USER37> This ... article ... is awfully scarce on details concerning the study, authors, methods, or links to any of the above.

There's a more direct link here, though still nothing on methods or sampling:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20191103070123/https://tollfreefo...](http://web.archive.org/web/20191103070123/https://tollfreeforwarding.com/blog/stress- anxiety-and-exhaustion-the-extent-of-workplace-burnout-in-modern-america/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Just a couple days ago there was a big discussion about an article that said that early retirement will lead to cognitive decline. Work and burn out or retire and vegetate? Surely there are some better alternatives?

<comment><USER39> Retirement for me would mean working on what I love and only that. Presuming that my creativity and contribution are dependent on having an employer is shortsighted.

And I can't imagine being an exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How do you burnout every week? Is that a new use of the word? As far as I know, burnout takes months if not years to recover from.

</comment><comment><USER41> On one hand, I think this could depend very heavily on exactly how the questions is asked.

On the other hand, this doesn't really surprise me.

</comment><comment><USER42> 100% in Silicon Valley</comment>


Open Sourcing Seurat: bringing high-fidelity scenes to mobile VR - <AUTHOR> https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/05/open-sourcing-seurat.html <comment><USER2> Isn't this just view frustum culling?

<comment><USER3> Not really. The process takes RGB and depth images and regenerates a new mesh of the scene.

The process is able to reconstruct occluded objects by using multiple images from within a view box. That way the scene should look fully intact as long as the viewer is within the box.

Think stitching together a 3d panorama but with enough capture data that you can also peek around things.

<comment><USER4> It's great for performance enhancement but it seems like it would never work with global illumination.

<comment><USER3> Depends what you need. Everythin including GI is baked into the mesh.

If you want dynamic lights, you could try to bake a out the scene as diffuse and then again as normal maps. Then you can have simplified realitime illumination while still baking in AO, static diffuse lights, and the LODed mesh.

<comment><USER4> It still doesn't sound like it would work with a lot of direction-depended specular reflections or reflective surfaces.

<comment><USER5> You could probably bake out normals as part of the process (essentially generate a G buffer) and use that for specular type effects.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In the computer age, why are people still asked to do their own taxes? - <AUTHOR>

Isn't it feasible for the government to track all major taxable items by computer so that people don't have to report it themselves?<p>This is already done to some extent, so why not take it further and get rid of income tax returns altogether? <comment><USER2> A fantastic article by Lessig on this very topic:

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/posts.html?pg=7>

The teaser: _Imagine if tire manufacturers lobbied against filling potholes so they could sell more tires. Or if private emergency services got local agencies to cut funding for fire departments so people would end up calling private services first. And what if private schools pushed to reduce public school money so more families would flee the public system? Or what if taxicab companies managed to get a rail line placed just far enough from an airport to make public transportation prohibitively inconvenient? Pick your favorite of these outrages, and take note of how it makes you feel. You'll experience it again when you read the next story - and this one, unfortunately, is true._

</comment><comment><USER3> That's pretty much how it works in Finland, at least. You get a "tax proposal" in the mail. If it's missing deductions or you have special reporting duties like foreign capital gains, you can amend it and return the form; otherwise you don't have to file anything. (It seems that the majority is satisfied with the proposal as-is, which presumably is a great relief to the tax office compared to the old days when everyone had to file their own forms.)

<comment><USER4> On a slightly related note, I saw that when Sweden overhauled their pensions systems a yer or two back they basically defaulted people to joining one of two state-run funds and gave everyone a list of alternatives and an easy 'opt- out' clause (opt out of the state-run fund; you have to pay into some sort of pension by law). This, too, seemed to work well for most people without unfairly restricting the liberty of those who would rather manage their own financial affairs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The government already collects the taxes for you through withholding. I fear that if people didn't file their taxes themselves they would lose all respect and recognition of how much they pay for their government, which is bad for democracy.

The easier taxes become, the less people complain about paying them. The government then has an easier job of justifying how they spend that money. Arguably, taxes should be as inconvenient, difficult, and painful as possible.

On the other hand, having to file taxes really sucks and I would rather not do it. So there's an argument both ways.

<comment><USER6> I have often wondered why Republicans/Libertarians/other-tax-haters have never (as far as I know) made a serious effort to abolish the automated W2-style paycheck withholding.

If everyone was required to write out checks to the IRS manually on a quarterly basis like self-employed people are I think larger scale tax reform would happen very quickly due to grass roots political pressure. Those quarterly checks really sting sometimes!

<comment><USER7> Ironically, it was actually Milton Friedman who came up with the idea for automatic withholding. He later lamented this after he realized the impact it had on the growth of government.

I think the initial idea may have come from the desire to enforce fairness, which is a great idea, but sadly it also led to tax increases being far easier to implement, as all the IRS needs to do is threaten to shut down a business if it doesn't make the proper withholdings.

As it stands, enforcing withholdings is the primary way that tax money is collected and it's taken extremely seriously by the IRS. There are even massive penalties for paying withheld tax late (something like 25% interest).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The answer is simple. There is a huge and powerful tax lobby that doesn't want to see this happen.

<comment><USER9> If we're assuming that the government is evil and sufficiently organized, then it seems much more likely that they would want to calculate taxes themselves. They could make a lot of money just by "accidentally" introducing a few errors.

<comment><USER10> Only if the aggregate impact of those errors is lower than the aggregate impact of the overpayment mistakes that people make when the file their own taxes. The latter also offers much more in the way of plausible deniability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are many old-line industries, especially when lots of money is involved, where computers have not been used to their full advantage yet; right now they're just used as electronic filing cabinets with better auditing and retention than paper.

Also, in the United States, the IRS is prohibited by law from competing with commercial tax-preparation services. This is why you have to pay Intuit or TaxACT to file electronically. Presumably, this doesn't help to foster innovation either.

</comment><comment><USER6> Income is only part of the equation. You also need a mechanism to track all business expenses and various itemized deductions. That basically implies that you can't automate it without having _all transactions_ tracked and categorized. Which would be kind of scary!

<comment><USER12> Most people don't deduct business expenses, and most people don't have sufficient medical expenses to exceed the 7.5% threshold. For the small number of people who do, they would amend their forms.

As for other deductions, state income tax & property taxes are already known to some governmental agency, just need to pass it on up. My bank sends me a total of my mortgage interest together with my other tax forms, I'm sure they could file that with the IRS too. The only other common deduction I can think of is charitable contributions. It would be a bit of work to set up, but it seems within the realm of reason to have charitable organizations provide that information to a centraal system as well.

<comment><USER6> Anyone running a small business (well over 10,000,000 people in the USA) will be deducting business expenses. It would be silly (nuts?) to fill out Schedule C but not deduct business expenses.

I suspect an even larger number of people currently itemize deductions. Medical expenses are one of about a million possible deduction types. And if you're keeping records you can often beat the standard deduction.

If you can't solve these two cases and can only solve the simplest cases what's the point really? People with such simple tax situations can do them in an hour or two anyway. The burden it would place on government and industry just does not seem justified.

The "complex" returns still need to be "amended", processed, audited, etc. The very cases which consume the most time and effort today would still be consuming the most time and effort with no savings given a piecemeal simple- case-only automation effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Mint.com CEO said he was cooking up something revolutionary, last I heard. It's still in the works. I wonder if this is it...

<comment><USER14> A commercial solution to the IRS's problem? Existing tax preparation software takes past returns into account and just asks the user to enter new information. How would Mint's system be better (aside from having access to your banking history)? The third-party intervention (and profit) doesn't go away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you don't file your taxes the IRS will do this for you. But they impose huge penalties for the service.

<comment><USER16> My understanding is that they don't impose additional penalties, actually. They just don't include a lot of deductions, and so the bill comes out higher. To fix it, you then have to file addendum paperwork, which is more time- consuming than the initial tax filing.

Edit: There will be late filing penalties, however, because they don't file one for you, unless you fail to file for a long period of time. And, those can add up to large additional fees.

<comment><USER15> They do use the standard deduction. They charge a failure to file penalty plus interest fees.

You could still come out ahead if they don't know about some income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's much easier in India too. Basically, if you are a salaried person, You just attach the copy of the taxes that the company has paid on your behalf (after deducting it every month from your salary) with an one-page form and submit it.

After coming to US, I was perplexed to see the complexity of the tax filing, which was incongruent to every other system I've encountered. Getting a driving license and a work permit were so much easier in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER18> I believe this was discussed in the tax day thread, Japan does it this way.

<comment><USER19> Yep, same in UK. For the vast majority of people: low-middle income, one employer, the employer works out your tax and deducts it monthly for you. No tax reporting forms, and if a mistake is made over the year, it's repaid at the end.

The only time you do a tax return is if you earn over a preset limit, or if you have multiple substantial income sources.

<comment><USER20> Or if you're self-employed etc. Technically even if you're renting a spare room and it's all covered under the rent-a-room allowance you have to do one. Still, they're fairly easy and you can do them online etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Its especially useful to be able to threaten people with an audit when the tax code has become so complicated that compliance is nearly impossible.

For example, if a president nominated a certain person for a position that you happened not to like, it would be right handy if you were guaranteed to be able to prove that they "broke the law" when it came to filing their taxes if you looked hard enough. You could get a lot of miles out of that one before people realized _it works on everyone_.

<comment><USER22> Compliance is easy, unless you're trying to hide your income. Pay X% of your total gross income for the year. Subtract the standard deduction (which is fixed every year). Subtract state income taxes, if any.

Done. What's so hard about that?

The tax code is only complicated for people who choose to make it complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> we have that for salary in France. But other gains (rented properties etc.) are not yet accounted for.

Belgium and Germany for example removes the taxes "at the source", which means that when you get your salary you don't have anything else to pay on it, your employer already sent the money to the State. I don't know how they do on other taxable revenues.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you paid tax on gross income only this could work. But because the government can't know your deductions it would only work if you disallowed deductions for expenses etc. Businesses might not like that. There are also a lot of decisions to be made on how you handle specific situations, like standard deduction or actual expenses for your auto.

</comment><comment><USER25> Cash. And cash means privacy, so it matters.

</comment><comment><USER26> tax isn't about raising money. we have fiat money the government can print as much as it wants. taxation is about keeping aggregate demand for fiat dollars high.

<comment><USER26> kindly point to the factual inaccuracy of my post. our current monetary policy is about controlling aggregate demand for dollars. this is not controversial.

<comment><USER7> How does taxation keep aggregate demand for fiat dollars high?

On the margin, people work for their after tax income. If taxes went away, employers would pay employees the same amount as their current after-tax income -- why would they pay more than necessary to provoke someone to work?

<comment><USER26> because if there was no central demand for money denominated in us dollars people would be free to use all sorts of competing economic systems.

<comment><USER7> That may be but you did not answer my question.

<comment><USER26> your second question doesn't make sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Tax isn't about raising money... its purpose is to instill fear and drain your mental energy so you are not equipped to compete with the bureaucratic entity that imposes tax on you.

<comment><USER28> I'm reminded of the phrase...

"never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity"

Honestly I'd like to believe there's some secret Government cabal out there finding indirect ways to drain people because at least then I'd know Government can do something competently. I mean, even if Government's doing a bad thing competently we can fight to change that.

But I think the reality is that big bureaucracies end up creating so many rules and regulations that not even they can sort it out. Which is why we have such a complex tax code in the first place and why Government has to force each citizen to do their own taxes.

<comment><USER29> It's my understanding that the tax code is complicated because we are a loophole abusing people, and we must be handled with kid gloves. It's not just a matter of "chaos and stupidity breeding new bureaucracy." The goal is more noble: create a system that can't be gamed but is flexible enough to account for every exchange of money, as well as many non-monetary exchanges of some value.

<comment><USER28> Consider this though: Maybe congress thinking it can create a system that accounts for every exchange of money and not have loopholes is the stupidity.

I personally think most bureaucracy starts out with good intentions. The tax code included. But with every well intentioned law to close a loophole they added more and more complexity and therefore more and more possible loopholes.

<comment><USER29> What's the alternative?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Concatenative Programming Matters - <AUTHOR> http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-concatenative-programming-matters.html <comment><USER2> The problem with stack languages for me has always been in typing. I find it difficult to track the exact stack effects of each word (function), particularly if these functions are pushing, popping and applying functions that themselves modify the stack. Even when dealing with something as simple as optimized x87 code, I would annotate all the FXCH etc. to keep track of the bits of the arithmetic expression on the stack, as I tried to keep multiple operations in flight.

Yes, I know Christopher Diggins' Cat is statically typed. The problem isn't in compiler diagnostics, it's in readability.

In a stack language, an expression as simple as 'a b c d' is cryptic. If c consumes two arguments, in applicative terms it would be d(c(b, a)); if b consumes one argument and c only one, then it would be d(c(b(a))); if d consumes two arguments, b one, and c none, then it would be d(c, b(a)). And this ambiguity makes it very hard for me to read the code unless I'm intimate with all the individual words. You have to understand everything to understand anything.

Unfortunately, I suspect that concatenative languages tend to derive their power from this ambiguity, because the lack of specificity leaves considerable flexibility for what the words can do with the stack.

So my considered opinion for now - and this article doesn't really change that, it is mostly a tutorial - is that stack languages are best as a compiler target rather than a human source form.

<comment><USER3> I always liked this (slightly paraphrased) quote:

        Idiomatic Factor does not (explicitly) use the stack.

That is to say, in Factor, a popular concatenative language, you tend to use higher order functions and high level combinators instead of manually shuffling stuff around on the stack. Sure, from time to time you still need to move stuff into the right place, but its easy to keep track of the stack if you only need to consider two or three items. At least, that seems to be the theory - I have not used Factor in a number of years so don't know how well that holds up in practice.

Also, Factor does allow you to use local (named) variables and infix syntax when it makes more sense to do so. Concatenative languages do not _need_ to be unreadable at all and for some things I think the concatenative code is actually more naturally readable.

" _If c consumes two arguments, in applicative terms it would be d(c(b, a)); if b consumes one argument and c only one, then it would be d(c(b(a))); if d consumes two arguments, b one, and c none, then it would be d(c, b(a))._ "

 _'a b c d'_ in a concatenative language is akin to _'a | b | c | d'_ in a shell script (where a stack is being threaded from function to function) or _'d(c(b(a(STACK))))'_ in most languages where each function has a type _'Stack func (Stack s)'_. It doesn't change depending on how many arguments a function takes off the stack - its always _'d(c(b(a(STACK))))'_. Of course, since literals are essentially functions which push their value onto the stack, what you say is true if _a_ , _b_ and _c_ are literals. I don't find this nearly as confusing as what it sounds like from your comment.

In code like '1 2 + print', all the words you see are functions. 1 pushes the value of 1 onto the stack and so on. This is interesting because you can easily factor out any part by replacing it with a new word that calls the replaced word:

        :A 1 2 + print

        :add2 2 + ;
        :B a add2 print

A and B are the exact same.

This is also interesting: <http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Concatenative%20language>

<comment><USER2> Here's another way to look at it. The stack is the global state of the program; and this global state is passed as an argument to every function. By an unkind interpretation, a stack language is the opposite of functional; every function isn't just mutable, it mutates the world.

In a shell pipeline of 'a | b | c | d', I can see the dataflow clearly. 'c' never sees the output of 'a' directly; it must be mediated by 'b'. But for a stack, 'a b c d', I have no idea if c uses the value a or not, unless I know the definition of b and how many items c consumes.

When reading stack code, I find myself mentally inserting parentheses to see how far back each operation reaches; for higher-level operators, I find myself wanting to insert comments describing the shape of the code being implicitly constructed. I need to see the "tree" (though frequently a dag) shape.

This isn't different in complex infix expressions. There too, parentheses are often needed for clarity - and good programmers use them even when not necessary - and for very complicated expressions, I'll spread them out across multiple lines, with indentation to make the tree explicit, where performance or similar concerns prevents writing out the expression in a more long-hand fashion.

<comment><USER4> That's one reason I've found the pipeline metaphor not great as a way of introducing concatenative languages. To me, the shell pipeline, which has a data-in/data-out streaming kind of flavor, generalizes (with multiple input/outputs) into dataflow languages, not into concatenative languages. There are definite connections between the paradigms, but imo the stack- manipulation is a different thing not present in stream/pipe based languages. The graphical music language Pd literally draws the pipelines as wires connecting input and output ports on functions (inspired by physical patch cables), which seems much closer to what I'd expect a generalized version of shell pipelines to look like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Statically typed concatenative languages are precisely dataflow languages. _Dynamically_ typed ones aren't, because they can have dynamic stack effects. But the diagrams in my article look just like PureData programs for a reason.

<comment><USER3> Dataflow languages are what I'm most interested in these days when it comes to programming languages and I've always liked the symmetry between concatenative languages and pure dataflow languages (visual ones or just stream/flow based textual languages).

I've also been doing a lot of Max/MSP programming lately and really love working in its "passing messages along patch cables" system, but am frustrated by its lack of higher order objects and lack of aggregate data types (hell, it won't even let me create a list of lists).

What I really want is a Max/Pd-like language with richer set of data types (algebraic types with pattern matching would be a good start) which can be trivially and unambiguously converted between visual and textual representations. A concatenative language may make this a lot easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're really going to like Prog, then. It's concatenative but focused on ADTs and pattern matching. Abstraction is easy thanks to quotation. I have some neat ideas in mind for an editor, as well, that would do just what you say—display a flow diagram of a program or selection as you edit. Concatenative languages are indeed, as the bland Wikipedia article puts it, "highly amenable to algebraic manipulation" of this sort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone who's never read it, I strongly recommend _Thinking Forth_. The style of thinking is surprisingly relevant to programming in other kinds of languages.

<http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/>

Also see <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3389286> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2378062> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2884131> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2585750>

</comment><comment><USER6> This article introduces concatenative langauges, but it doesn't explain why they matter.

In my work, I found that the lack of syntactic marking for arguments of function calls is a devastating drawback. Coming back to my own function definitions a week after writing them, I spent minutes unpuzzling the code. I could use every trick and write the function in the most elegant way, using combinators in the style of Factor, and that made it worse. But writing it out with local bindings also didn't help. As soon as you write a nested expression, you start to lose the sense of which values are being passed where.

gcd n1 n2 n2 0 = if n1 else n2 n1 n2 mod gcd

gcd zero if else "mod" plus swap gcd

factorial 1 interval product

I was designing a Forth-like functional language with generic functions, and for a long time I felt that the lack of markings didn't matter. I thought that one could understand the code "well enough" without knowing exactly where the arguments were going. There is something to this argument, and there's a lot we can do to make code say what it does. But sometimes the author just had to _implement_ something, and technicalities arose, and when you go to read it, the code doesn't "read" and you have to bring your own intelligence to figure out what it does -- it won't tell you. In these cases, explicit argument marking is indispensable.

In Forth-like languages, simple things are wonderful and elegant. There is no other shorter way to write than point-free. And, writing with combinators is satisfying, and it can make the "essence of the function" more evident. But unless you severely constrain your style to ultra short definitions, avoid nested expressions, and use local variables profusely, you're constructing puzzles for yourself.

It's almost like the concatenative style is too optimal. You have to back up a step in beauty in order to get a practical tool.

<comment><USER7> The two best-known features of Chuck Moore's style -- extreme simplicity and extreme factoring -- must be how he avoids the dangers you describe. I wonder if these qualities go beyond stylistic choice and are actually necessary if one is to build real systems in Forth. That might explain why programmers who come from other languages tend not to stick with it. Your story is reminiscent of others I've read in the past (most prominently [http://www.yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack- machi...](http://www.yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack- machines.html)) that talk about being in love with the Forth model and then abandoning it because it got too complicated to make it do what they want.

Makes me wonder if trying to do what you want in that model is a recipe for disaster; instead, maybe you have to let the model tell _you_ what you can do: if it's simple you get to do it and if it's not you don't. Chuck would see that as a great advantage, but most programmers wouldn't.

Edit: the article I linked to talks about that at length. His conclusion is that if you're going to build systems in Forth, you need the freedom to shrink or morph the problem into something that can be solved simply in Forth. If you don't have that freedom (e.g. because people are feeding you inflexible requirements), it probably won't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this article is a homage to the famous "Why Functional Programming Matters" paper, I think it failed in a major way. The Why FP Programming Matters paper began each section with practical programming problems that FP solved elegantly. It built up the solutions piece by piece and showed at each step, how easy they were to comprehend, extend, and abstract.

The FP paper is very effective in making people who are hard core imperative programmers want to try FP. But the CP article here doesn't really IMHO elicit the same desire.

You should try writing another one with some practical examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't really supposed to be, but sure, I gladly will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The body does not deliver on the promise of the title, but does raise the question.

The answer seems to be that concatenative languages give you the power of functional languages using a low-level nearly absent syntax (like Lisp). I guess that's useful as way to demystify the compilation process (like how assembler and CS demystify how the CPU actually gets work done, as contrasted against magic like Ruby), and matters if you want to understand or write a VM, or reason about a program in a completely unbiased way that (for better or for worse) has no cognate to human language (but may be an elegant non-linguistic mechanical language).

For general purpose programming, I prefer a little syntactic sugar. Humans seem to have an instinct for language, and it is helpful to leverage that instinct when writing and ituitively grokking programs, if not for constructing formal proofs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed on all points, actually. My language Prog, though concatenative to make my life easier, has syntactic sugar for yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> minimalistic syntax isn't necessarily the holy grail. We can't pinpoint exactly why Clojure is hockey-sticking but Common Lisp didn't[1]. But Clojure took a minimalistic language, then made a few very tactical departures from minimalism - common data-structures have native syntax encouraging people to use more than just lists, and the native data structures are immutable encouraging a functional style. from this we learn that minimalism is a great base, but the langage forms opinions about what code should look like via its syntactical choices, and these opinions shape its community, libraries and ultimately its success. language designers must take this into account.

with that said, you can do "concatenative" programming in any language supporting a functional style (python, ruby, clojure, haskell, javascript), and some of these languages (clojure, haskell) encourage or force functional style. clojure and haskell have different opinions about how this should be done, but they are opinions, not gospel, and each has their use for different problem domains and personalities.

the author makes some assertions that a "concatenative" language, one that encourages a concatenative style, are better than functional languages. i don't think these opinions were adequately backed up at all - i'm not just skeptical, i sort of think he's wrong. both clojure and haskell strongly encourage composition over application. these languages already have concatenative opinions. i don't really see the fuss here, i don't see the need to introduce more metaphors into an ecosystem which is already unfriendly to noobs. what we need is a language as noob friendly as python which has functional opinions. ruby got noobs using lambdas without realizing it, but ruby also has some weird opinions about magic which the functional community frowns upon. there's a clear niche here.

[1] (edit for gruseom) but we can try to learn from those who are successful, especially those who failed a few times first. Martin Odersky has written all about his failures leading to Scala, and Rich Hickey talks about what he thinks made Clojure successful all the time.

<comment><USER11> There's one simple reason why Clojure is getting so much momentum: Java.

If it weren't for it sitting on the JVM and having access to all those Java libraries, Clojure would have been dead in the water.

<comment><USER12> There are several Lisps on the JVM that predate Clojure by a number of years, so whilst the JVM may be a factor, it's not the only reason for Clojure's success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Joy - Manfred Von Thun <http://www.latrobe.edu.au/phimvt/joy.html>

Cat - Christopher Diggins <http://www.cat-language.com/>

<comment><USER3> Factor - Slava Pestov <http://factorcode.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's a practical example:

I have found a concatenative language (Factor, specifically) to be extremely useful for use in a workflow system. In particular, since it's not applicative, there's no API between "words", so it's damn near trivial to combine workflow sequences together -- no API is necessary. Each sequence of words (think of it as a workflow) can consume and or produce as much data as needed -- again, without any API coordination whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER15> As much as I like the basic idea, I fundamentally dislike that the control flow becomes implicit. In order to have any understanding of what is happening you need to know the effect each function has on the stack and you need a mental model of the stack or at least it's current state.

In an applicative language this is explicit and it is probably the main reason for the fact that it is relatively easy to understand code in any procedural language once you've learned one.

<comment><USER10> in a purely functional language, you don't need to think about the stack any more. your code expresses its dependencies via composition and the order in which things happen becomes the compiler's concern. you don't need or want to have an understanding of what's happening in an imperative sense. bam, a whole class of bugs made impossible. [edit: you're right though, if you actually do need to understand things in an imperative sense, e.g. for performance optimizations, things get complicated.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I once made a variant of Backus's Turing-lecture language FP, where to compose functions you wrote 'f g' instead of the original 'g o f'. I'm curious if people into concatenative languages would call this one of them -- it satisfies the definition in the article, but there's no stack, so I'd guess not. It's more like point-free Haskell with some notational support for the style.

(On second thought, this post's title echoes Backus's. Maybe they would include FP.)

</comment><comment><USER17> The way of reasoning about `2 3 x` that it presents is extraordinarily confusing, I can't really comprehend it as it is described.</comment>


Why I started a dating consulting service in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://heymicholi.com/why

<comment><USER2> Learn. To. Dance. I do not mean goofy grinding to bad Top 40 or the running man - learn a ballroom dance. It really does not matter what it is, swing, Latin, waltz - just fucking do it.

A lot of women like to dance and a lot of men do not. Knowing how to dance is like having bulletproof patents, a killer product, two million paying customers, and a personal endorsement from the President of the United States of how bitchin your company is. Get over your fears, take a class with a bunch of other newbies, and GO OUT! There is nothing more exhilarating than asking a beautiful woman to dance and her saying yes. It is truly a remarkable feeling that most men will never experience.

It solves two problems. First, there is absolutely nothing worse than approaching someone out of the blue. It is super awkward, and unless you are Justin Bieber, never works. Two, physical proximity is a _requirement_ on the dance floor. Attraction is enormously physical, and dancing is the best way to break that barrier without being a creeper.

Find a beginner Salsa lesson in your area and get moving...

EDIT: I forgot to mention one thing. Find another of your good male friends to learn with you. Women rarely go anywhere alone, and you need to be prepared to approach a group of people. Having another person there makes the first interaction a lot smoother.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish my ex would talk to you. I think most issues that couples have is really on communication, and a lot of time we misunderstand each other. We fail to look at our partner from his/her perspective. I broke up with my ex because he failed to see my point of view and lacked generosity on understanding how I feel. I find that most guys in tech fail to express feelings and emotions when they're in relationships and fail to see things from their partners' point of view. What girl would want to date someone who's only into himself?

I think someone like you would help guys become more self-aware on what their actions have on their partners, and help them be more considerate. This is not about becoming someone you're not, but being more open and considerate about what their girlfriends when in relationship. Trust me, women don't need that much time, but how you can communicate that to us matters more.

</comment><comment><USER4> "I just can't help but think that such services are nothing more than money making schemes off of "geeks"."

Technically this is true for any form of consulting service. Are consultants just running a "money making scheme" when they advise business owners on technology or management decisions?

As long as the service is providing genuine value to clients then what's wrong with that?

There is a stigma about paying for (or even seeking) advice in areas that are considered natural behavior, but for some (especially geeky types), seemingly natural behaviors are quite foreign.

Having someone provide personalized advice, candid feedback and a confidence boost would definitely have had value for me when I was dating. Even now there are still a ton of social rules I'd love to understand that completely evade me :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No offense taken. I see where you're coming from. Styling is something I do AFTER getting to know you and what's going on beneath the surface. It should be a reflection of your own personal style and not all about what I [she] wants to see. Some of you don't know what your personal style is, but there's definitely potential. I'm here to help with that...but it starts with a conversation.

I am not charging for this...yet.

<comment><USER5> I think there's a huge need for your service. However, your customers aren't going to be very open in public forums. Maybe you should think of strategies to take the conversation offline or in private/less exposed chat rooms.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. But if you take into account how many of you are now aware of what I'm doing just by reading this post on HN (where a lot of you go), it's a good start. I don't anticipate potential clients setting up a meeting with me on here or in a comment on my blog. If it's not clear enough on my post, there are plenty of other ways to get in touch with me, including email >> firstname.lastname@example.com

If you can think of other "strategies" outside of an online 'hacker' forum, I'd love to hear from you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No offense, but I just can't help but think that such services are nothing more than money making schemes off of "geeks".

I'd recommend /r/malefashionadvice over a service that ostensibly would do the same thing. Re-wardrobe you and give your self esteem a boost.

Are you charging money for this?</comment>