SocialCoin: A Cryptocurrency for a Global Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://llsourcell.svbtle.com/socialcoin-a-cryptocurrency-for-a-global-basic-income

<comment><USER2> Any 'SocialCoin' scheme pales in significance to the prospect of a decentralized network that can prove individuality, which the author brushes off with a 'oh someone will figure it out'. This kind of technology would have huge, far ranging impacts, much greater than any impact that Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even Dogecoin could ever hope to aspire to.

If you have proof of individuality, proof of work goes out the window, proof of stake goes out the window. The entire thing that makes Bitcoin and any decentralized network hard goes out the window. Proof of human individuality in a decentralized network would completely rewire society and computer science in ways we can't imagine.

This SocialCoin thing is rooted in the world we have today, but the idea is predicated on a technology that would make it irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested in reading about any potential research in this area, it's quite a fascinating unsolved problem. Like Bitcoin's solution to the P2P untrusted consensus problem (Two Generals Problem), I would think that the solution to ensuring individuality (see the Sybil attack [2]) lies in some approach that isn't 100% failsafe but probabistically ensures the desired result is highly likely (see 51% attack).

I think a web of trust [3] is something that could work. Given a system of nodes with public keys (the most common form of identification in P2P), a possible approach to estimate the 'individuality' of some identity/key would be to measure its degree of relationships with other nodes who vouch for its authenticity, weighted according to the 'individuality' of the other nodes (something that could be solved with an iterative approach, as in PageRank/EigenTrust). The idea being that while a malicious node might vouch for many of its identities, it doesn't have any link to any other node and thus would be weighted lower.

Turns out this exact approach had been developed in 2011 [5] (just found out now, wow, see fig.1 on page 3) and also in other research with SybilGuard [4]. I'm not sure of the limitations of these formalised definitions, but it looks to me like much of P2P research (see PolderCast, a marvellous innovation) -- the possibilities are never realised until someone implements it in software.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem)

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

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust)

[4] [http://www.math.cmu.edu/~adf/research/SybilGuard.pdf](http://www.math.cmu.edu/~adf/research/SybilGuard.pdf)

[5] [https://ccl.northwestern.edu/papers/2011/kurve.pdf](https://ccl.northwestern.edu/papers/2011/kurve.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Any known identity system can be gamed, including web of trust.

Proof of work is the _only_ known viable sybil attack prevention mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> In order for SocialCoin to work, we need to figure out a way to create a decentralized ID system that doesn't rely on government issuance like a Driver's License or a Passport. This is currently an unsolved problem._

 _> One possible way to do this is to have there be agents in the SocialCoin Distributed Autonomous Corporations who a user would schedule appointments with._

I can imagine these "agents" colluding together to prevent people from receiving their basic income unless they receive a cut for themselves.

<comment><USER6> I think eventually we will learn to do this by analysing a person's connection to a network. Today a spy/criminal can gain a new identity by acquiring a fake passport, what if verification of identity came not from a document, but from an analysis of your relationships on a blockchain, who had signed that they know and trust you, and when had they done it, and who had signed that they trusted them. A trusted identity would become something that took years to build. I work with a small team of developers, drip by drip I'm trying to convince the other three this is what we should be working on.

<comment><USER7> I've long been quite interested in whether there's a meaningful way to use WoT approaches to demonstrate _uniqueness_ of an identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do not think bitcoin derivative is the right solution for something like basic income.

It is hard to distribute resources fairly and anonymously, this kind of thing that governments excel at precisely because there is no expectation of anonymity. It might be possible to come up with a solution, however at that point it would likely be either too complex to be practical, or not fair, or not anonymous.

TL;DR doing this with crypto-currency defeats purpose of crypto-currency.

<comment><USER9> Another way of framing the problem is that we don't currently have a distributed way to authenticate identity at scale; currently the least worst solution is some kind of bureaucratic institution. (Public key encryption is a good start, but it doesn't prevent the creation of infinite sock puppets, or offer a good solution for stolen keys.)

<comment><USER10> Maybe the limiting factor for each participant is social interactions of a certain sort -- something to act as a rough proxy for "time", specifically "time interacting with fellow humans". After all, time is the finite resource that we can only divide between our sockpuppet identities, but we can't poof more of it into our aggregate identities. That's assuming that this "certain sort of interaction" is something that can't easily be scaled out of sync with our time (as could perhaps be done with our digital interactions on Twitter).

My first crazy thought was some sort of average proximity from other human beings, where perhaps our phones could sign a digital transaction when we pass within a certain proximity and stay there some amount of time /t/, for some value weighted by proximity and time. The time-proximity (to make up a word, because why not?) from fellow humans might vary by geography, but I assume it might have some degree of consistency on the order of magnitude. So someone in Toronto, Canada would have a value comparable to fellow citizens, but would obviously not be on the same magnitude as someone in a rural Russian village. So if I'm in a certain geographic place and my time-proximity for interacting with my fellow humans is consistent, and aligns with margins of error for that place, then maybe some undescribed service or oracle monitoring the identity network are happy. but if that drops drastically, then maybe that's because i've created a new identity and started to sign interactions with that. Or maybe it's something more innocent, like a job switch. Or a depression. Maybe that's what the oracle needs to confirm.

But anyhow, simple time-proximity wouldn't work, as the real humans are using phones that aren't visually confirming the interaction with another real human. So maybe it would need to be something like Google Glass that recognizes and signs transactions using eye contact as the trigger -- detecting eye contact as a symmetrical relationship, reading/sharing identities, signing and broadcasting a record of that human interaction. Someone could fake data, but it would likely interact with the "real" world network's data in a detectably odd way.

I guess what this is all about is a distributed, self-referential version of TrustCloud.com. But none of this seems to solve the "this is a human: y/n" sort of question -- but more like a "this human is likely 80% of a human identity in geography X" or something like that. So maybe they now deserve a certain take of a pie (if socialcoin were a thing).

Anyhow, I'm sure this is incredibly flawed on many levels, but it was a fun thought experiment to work through :) Feel free to point out any glaring errors in logic, or to promptly ignore it, for that matter

<comment><USER10> ugh. embarrassed by my uncharacteristic rambling... :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing this autonomous corporation should do is have a tax built in to pay the verification teams, and also to keep the system going as mining becomes harder and harder -- if say 2-3% of all transactions go to pay verifiers, and into the GBI pool, ... it might be more stable. You could also have some sort of bonus program where people could run small-time cpu/gpu miners on their home pc--donate all the hashing power back to the main network where 100% goes towards the GBI pool, and it'll sort of be like a huge botnet of miners keeping the gbi aspect going... etc... -- There will need to be a LOT of thought about how to ensure stability 5+ years into the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> You're right about the problem, your solution is off.

> It doesn't matter if retailers don't accept the coin, users can just > exchange the coins for bitcoins or local fiat currency for immediate real > world use.

No entity would give fiat currency for these SocialCoins unless they had some real or speculative value.

> The basic idea is that 10% of the profits that miners earn from mining this > coin is pooled and distributed to every member of the network on a bi-weekly > basis.

Are these "profits" from inflation or a transaction fees?

<comment><USER7> _" No entity would give fiat currency for these SocialCoins unless they had some real or speculative value."_

Or the entity had some other interest in keeping the scheme going.

Not that this necessarily seems likely/sustainable/advisable...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "In order for SocialCoin to work, we need to figure out a way to create a decentralized ID system that doesn't rely on government ... This is currently an unsolved problem ... The user would set an appointment with 3-5 agents individually and each agent would scan the user's irises in person to verify that they are a real human"

This has to be satire

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that governments will sooner or later start taxing work of robots to redirect the resources into social safety nets.

</comment><comment><USER15> Could this be the most ambitious project of all times? It requires

\- mass adoption of cryptocurrencies

\- guaranteed basic income

\- libertarian principles limiting the role of government

My guess is that we'll have that mars colony first.

</comment><comment><USER16> You could bootstrap the identity verification off of Facebook and do some machine learning to look for bot clusters.

</comment><comment><USER17> Or we can get rid of monetary systems and use a resource-based economy (read Venus Project).

</comment><comment><USER7> If this can actually be worked out, I'd love to see it. I'm pretty skeptical though.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hahaha. This is so blatantly stupid.

>In order for SocialCoin to work, we need to figure out a way to create a decentralized ID system that doesn't rely on government issuance like a Driver's License or a Passport. This is currently an unsolved problem.

It's unsolved because it is literally impossible. There is no rigorous mathematical definition of identity, and no way to construct a generic identity-proof algorithm. Even humans can't agree what constitutes an identity, and we've had many millions of years as social animals to evolve heuristics.

Are clones separate people? Are molecular copies separate people? Are brain simulations separate people? If they are, I can just spawn 1,000,000 copies of my brain and collect their SocialCoin. And then it becomes a competition of computing power, just like Bitcoin!

And, of course, there's no non-blinded automated test that can differentiate a human and a machine, neither in theory nor in practice.

The only people who think up foolish schemes like this are those who utterly fail to grasp the genius of solving voting problems with HashCash style proof- of-work mechanisms.

<comment><USER7> I don't think we need to solve the question of molecular copies or brain simulations before considering this. Clones already exist, of course, in the form of identical twins - and I can't imagine us considering them anything but separate people.

I totally agree that this can't be done with math _alone_ , but I've not seen any proof that it's "literally impossible" to produce a system where the incentives work out for enough people to play by - and enforce - the rules with the _help_ of math.

I've also not seen credible proposals for such a system, I don't _know_ that such system could exist, and I certainly don't know that we will be able to produce such a system any time soon. These _are_ hard problems. But "literally impossible" is a bold claim - far too bold unless you have more to support it than what you wrote above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The economics behind this is staggeringly flawed.

Technological innovation _increases wealth_. This is a basic economic principle as evidenced by the industrial revolution (machines took over most of those old jobs, and now there's much less unemployment, poorhouses don't exist, and the average person is much richer in _real_ terms.) To speak of some kind of saturation point where there is a machine for everything is pretty crazy.

Let's step into lala-land and assume there's one machine that can produce anything and perform any task. It requires no maintenance and no inputs. What's the problem? Everyone can have everything. No money required. Winning.

Stepping back to reality all these machines will require production, sales efforts, maintenance, electricity, network infrastructure, yadda yadda. Goods- producing machines will need a supply chain and QA, and people to figure out what to make with it next. And when exactly do we foresee machines taking over the service industry? A machine that provides business consultancy? Cuts your hair? Caters to your animalistic needs? This stuff is a long way off if it's even possible.

Even when machines can do all this we'd need to remove every source of friction in the economy before we could even begin to dream of approaching that saturation point - in short that means global governance and regulation, no taxes, free trade, no behaviour limiting contracts, no currency risk, no language barrier. All of these things create market distortions that create the potential for profit, and where the potential for profit exists, people will exploit it, and there will be jobs.

Long story short: we have many, many problems left to solve before we can all kick back and let the robot butler massage our feet.

Further, the idea that a basic income is best tackled with a crypto-currency is nonsense. Crypto-currencies, like other currencies, derive their value from the underlying assets. You can mine coins, but you can't mine value. In the UK we have a bottom-line tax rate of about 30% of GDP, and about 30% of that is social security. We're a generous country in this regard and have lots of people happily living their lives doing nothing. It's pretty close to this romantic notion of 'basic income'.

If you haven't done the maths on that yet, the UK's percentage of GDP spent on social security is 30% x 30% = 9%. Assuming SocialCoin is the only currency in the world and that global PPP is uniform (and in line with the UK today), we need to solve (as per the 10% of mining proceeds idea):

required_inflation * 0.1 = 0.09 required_inflation = (0.09/0.1) = 0.9 = 90%

A world with 90% inflation is a world in crisis. Assuming instead that we give _all_ mining profits to the needy, we'd still need to maintain 9% inflation...which is also a world in crisis.

I haven't, and won't, even touch on the absurdity of the very notion of 'basic income' (but there's a reason it doesn't enter economists heads).

All in this is just a thin and problematic veil over the desire to redistribute wealth from those who have it to those who don't. Theoretically this is already solidly solved - you take lumps of money from the rich (in any currency you fancy), you walk over to the poor, and you hand it to them. You don't add conditions to it and you do everything to seriously minimise administration costs. This is the _second fundamental theorem of welfare economics_.

<comment><USER19> The problem of wealth distribution is certainly not solved, because the system you are describing, in which wealth is taken from someone, involves coersion. It requires violence to enforce. It requires consolidation of power. The system proposed here, however simple, is describing voluntary wealth redistribution. No one is forced into the system, but the rules of the system are set to level the playing field.

I think this is a good start, and we will likely see many more implementations of this basic idea. One genius aspect of software-based currency is that it allows the possibility of the establishment of laws without a police force. The currency is its own police force. Anyone who doesn't like the rules can choose to use another cryptocurrency with different rules. This is consensus- based law, and it is a movement in the right direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> crypto-currency's value is derived from the "greater fool theory" I don't think socialcoin will fly. Happy to be proven wrong.

[http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/05/need-taxes-mmt- pe...](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/05/need-taxes-mmt- perspective.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> A system where people can survive and reproduce without working can't end well.

Imagine it in the context of computer resource management - "every program deserves this much RAM and this much CPU". When you have randomly varying, recombining programs, what will the result be after 50 generations? Eventually a program will evolve to reproduce faster, and it will come to dominate the population. Why would you think that such a thing wouldn't happen with human beings, too?

What do you think happens when you provide unlimited free food to a population of rats? A few continue being "productive" \- searching for new food supplies, etc. but they get out-reproduced by the ones who just eat all day. So the population explodes, eventually the food runs out, and then they all die.

So overall I think that a global basic income, combined with unlimited reproduction, would have a horrible outcome for humanity.

<comment><USER22> > What do you think happens when you provide unlimited free food to a > population of rats?

1) No idea, I'm not a rat, nor do I have any expertise in the economic lives of rats. Have there been any studies that show this? I don't have access to many journals.

2) Do you think that humans have the same goals, aspirations, and survival behaviors as rats? Do you think they are so similar that given a cage and food, humans would reproduce until they all died out?

<comment><USER21> This link is somewhat relevant: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam)

In India there's a species of bamboo that flowers every 48 years; during each flowering, the rat population explodes. Once they've eaten all the bamboo, they turn to anything else they can find.</comment></comment></comment>


Linux rootkit detector adds hardware punch to security scanning - <AUTHOR> http://gcn.com/articles/2013/09/20/lynuxworks-rootkit-detection-system.aspx

<comment><USER2> But... how does it work? Without such information this article reads little better than an advertisement.

<comment><USER3> My thought exactly. My gut feeling says the value is in the range from "inadequate" to "bullshit" since I cannot see a way in which software on an external device can run with higher priority than software on the server itselves to which it is connected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it injects itself using some hardware hooks, more or less the same way as described in this this previously submitted article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6393029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6393029)

With such a hardware root-kit, it could be possible to detect other software root-kits by looking for patterns in memory and/or other suspicious behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a pretty useless fluff article. I am none-the-wiser as to how this will work to protect my farm of Linux VM's. To add insult to injury the Lynuxworks website has run out of steam.

</comment><comment><USER6> At first glance I thought it had a key switch on the front. If it did, then I would trust it...</comment>


A 12-month review of ConvertKit's AWS bill - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.convertkit.com/2020/06/18/april-aws-bill.html <comment> mongo-db-hater Had you choosen bare metal servers, you would have saved 90% money spent on AWS.</comment>


Show HN: Tiny (339 bytes) smooth-scrolling to same-page targets, no dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ameesme/SlimScroller.js <comment><USER2> Cool! Microlibraries FTW, and I see requestAnimationFrame is used, so it must be more performant than most other similar libs. Definitely will try it out. Kudos!</comment>


Trying and Being - <AUTHOR> http://advogato.org/person/apenwarr/diary/132.html

<comment><USER2> This guy is really channeling PG (see also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1374008>)

"I disagree here with Yoda, who said there is no try. There is try." <http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html>

_Update:_ Wait, the two were published around the same time. Never mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> "It takes a lot of hard work to understand the universe well enough to be able to be properly productive in the zone."

Does he really mean "the universe" or the "space" of the task at hand?</comment>


Disk42 is closing down - <AUTHOR> https://www.disk42.com/en/

<comment><USER2> This is sad; I was really looking forward to this software.</comment>


Launched DACA – Stories of the Designers Behind Your Favorite Projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/digital-and-computer-arts-daca <comment><USER2> I love how you did the site. Its laid out really well and nothing i have ever seen before

</comment><comment><USER3> Dope! good reads!</comment>


Chinese AI: Year 1 of ChinAI - <AUTHOR> https://chinai.substack.com/p/chinai-48-year-1-of-chinai <comment><USER2> I would go with "chAIna" as a name

</comment><comment><USER3> Section 5:

> Chinese people ... care about AI-related ethics issues,

> including privacy. Let's dispel once and for all with this

> fiction that there are no discussions of AI ethics

> happening in China.

I'm happy to hear that :-) But one of the biggest privacy violators is China government, right? I'm curious why the section didn't mention about that

<comment><USER4> I'd guess some things affect the way they see it.

a) Their media probably doesn't point it's finger at Chinese gov very often about this specific subject (or any other) b) Our media/government is just too eager to point their finger at China, for many social/cultural/political regions. This barrage of criticising tends to make many people believe the issue is exaggerated and even fabricated after some time. c) If you're Chinese, item 'b'is specifically impacting, since you not only may prefer believing in your own government, you know for a fact that US and NATO have specific interest in painting your country badly, regardless of how much truth is or isn't involved in the arguments.

<comment><USER5> If you are a chinese in China, you mostly aren't consuming overseas media. Whatever "our media" is reporting is irrelevant.

The Chinese government likes to make examples of overseas companies on privacy issues, sometimes they'll even make an example of a domestic company, if they are feeling particularly daring they'll single out a corrupt official in some obscure local government, but that is the extent of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Subscription link - [https://chinai.substack.com/](https://chinai.substack.com/)

Archive list - [https://chinai.substack.com/archive](https://chinai.substack.com/archive)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you prepare mentally? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everybody,
I'm facing some big exams this August (EE undergrad, 1st year) and I want to be mentally ready for the task. What can you recommend to prepare myself mentally?
I've been looking into some mental preparation for athletes but I haven't come across onto something "trainable" (like doing something everyday for 15min.). What I picked up during reading Michael Jordans "Driven from Within'" is that Michael Jordan was never scared before a match because he knew he was prepared (trained x amount of hours for a match, etc.) so well. Maybe, I will be in this shape at the end of the preparation time, but maybe I won't that's why I'd like to train my mental coolness.
Thanks for your help. <comment><USER3> Why are you asking, do you have test anxiety? Have you had problems studying? Why do you consider these tests so important (not saying they are not, I just do not know if/why they are)?

The short answer is to ensure you have studied well in advance, not worry about it and just go take your exams. Further detail may change the answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but I have had blackouts from time to time during university exams (the environment and the people just make me nervous). However I wasn't well prepared, so the blackout isn't the only reason I didn't perform well.

I haven't had any problems studying, I just want to make sure to have this part of the test taking covered. They are important to me because I don't want to repeat a whole year because I was nervous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have another area in which you habitually feel confident and prepared? You can try to isolate those components and then bleed them over into exam- taking.

People also have different motivations and personalities. For example, some people do exams best in a relaxed manner. Others work in a heightened state of awareness. This sounds silly, but I feel like a special forces op in exams, trying to slash through problems. Are you more motivated to dominate an exam curve or to show you're just as good as anybody else? Strategies will differ accordingly.

Lastly, it is my experience that you can practice an absolute sense of confidence. Nothing flashy - think calm, deliberate, relaxed, and very alert. It's easiest if you restrict it to a limited context, but sitting down for an exam is perfect. Compose tests in which you will do reasonably well - maybe by mixing problems you know how to do with more complex ones you'd have to tackle in a more flexible way. Go to the exam site, do the test under exam conditions, and up the difficulty over time. If you don't have enough time to prepare this way, do the same thing but don't take a whole exam. Just practice being confident for the first 5-30 minutes.

EDIT: You mentioned that you have had blackouts and are nervous with the environment. I've never tried this, but I'm sure professors would let you try practicing while they are giving their own exams. Explain you have test anxiety and ask to sit in. (I have to admit, the thought of 'practicing' a circuits final during others' calc exam makes smile. They'll be thinking _who the hell is this guy, and why hasn't he ever showed up for class?_ )

I would also recommend listening to John Eliot's _The Maverick Mindset_. Take his advice over mine.

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but I always did _no_ studying the day before, I just made sure I got a good nights sleep. The only exception was one term where an illness and a death in the family had me learning my first term organic chemistry up through the night before (which I then aced :-).

If you enter this last day before the exam confident that you've mastered the material as much as possible doing this should work, perhaps you might view your ability to do so as more of a test of your lack of anxiety or whatever. If you can pull it off it should leave you mentally refreshed and ready to do your best on Der Tag.

</comment><comment><USER6> Studying wise you want to make sure that you've got a good solid plan that you are confident with. Make sure that you are happy that at least a week before the exams you have all the material covered, then you can spend the last week looking at stuff you are less sure of.

Don't study on the day of the exam. Don't study for the evening before either.

Night before, make sure that you have everything you need (pen, calculator, ID or whatever) ready to go. Drink plenty of water, have a good meal (with mates is always good - but avoid alcohol). Don't go to bed at an unusual time. (waking up too early or late won't help).

Morning of the exam get lots of food on board, carbs good of course - <USER2> again don't eat anything you wouldn't normally. Keep on drinking water. Leave for the exam so that you're 5 minutes early. That way you can grab a seat and calm yourself down if your nervous.

When you get to the exam avoid talking to people about the exam - make general conversation (keeps you calm) but don't talk about exams. Too many people moan about how they're supposedly going to fail.

In the exam itself assuming that you have studied enough then you should be fine if you pace yourself and work through it logically.

Stay positive an it'll work fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Basic, but also great advice, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Coming from the I mental preparation for athletes area I found the book "In Pursuit of Excellence" ( [http://books.google.com/books?id=VtzYIGXuo- gC&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=VtzYIGXuo- gC&lpg=PP1&dq=in%20pursuit%20of%20excellence&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false) ) very good.

"The Mental Athlete" ( [http://books.google.com/books?id=OVqMC9Zs3cAC&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=OVqMC9Zs3cAC&lpg=PP1&dq=The%20mental%20athlete&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false) ) though seems to be closer to your intentions (I can't recommend it though as I haven't read it yet, but FWIW all books I read from this publisher turned out to be excellent and superficial skimming of it's google books page seems to confirm that).

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, very interesting. Thanks for sharing. May I ask what you exactly do or did? Mental trainer?

I'll try to get my hands on "In Pursuit of Excellence".

What I also found is "10-Minute Toughness: The Mental Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins". I'll report on this as soon as I finished reading it.

<comment><USER7> No, I am not a mental trainer. I am a software developer. It's just that I once studied sports science and I am still very interested in anything coming from that field... especially considering that it is sometimes surprisingly applicable in my current work.

edit: some of the "performance psychology" things I learned helped me passing some of the more hairy tests during for my b.sc. in bioinformatics

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool! I'll definitely look into your recommendations, thank you again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I listened to upbeat dance music that I loved on the mornings I had my quals. Along with a few snippets of transcendental classical (justifies-the- existence-of-the-human-race kind of music). At the end of the day, whatever happened, I'd still have that music. It shrunk the stress down to human scale for sure.

And second the good night's sleep tip.

</comment><comment><USER9> i am a professional classical violinist and I second the comment about rest. In all my years preparing for competitions and concerts, resting a lot the day of, and napping before the big event works the best.</comment>


Valley Talent - <AUTHOR> http://rkoutnik.com/articles/Valley-Talent.html <comment><USER2> Most software that has been or will be written is boring CRUD mixed with specific use case business rules, but that doesn't mean that talent is inapplicable to "technically simple" problems. Even the simplest application can devolve into a mess of complexity. True talent is managing that complexity. That skill has a place in any non-trivial enterprise that uses software, not just those that solve NP-hard problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> The core problem is that there's little _incentive_ to build complicated, high-effort startups and hire appropriately-skilled people for them because venture capitalists are giving tens of millions of dollars to people who build quick-and-dirty apps that follow trends which will die within a month.

<comment><USER4> On one hand, absolutely. The current wash of investment means that there's plenty of CRUD startups that get funded that wouldn't otherwise. They'll get acquihired at best and the cycle continues.

On the other hand I don't think that founders will say "Oh, I won't pursue that technical passion project - I'll just build another Twitter!" The incentives to plunge into hard technical problems are not (at their core) based on money. That's just a plus. And lots of investor money means that those with the skills are more likely to found a company instead of letting a side project languish on a hard drive somewhere.

So those who can build amazing things will continue to do so. The current funding environment isn't stopping them. Having more CRUD apps than you can shake a RAM stick at is a small price to pay for enabling the next Stripe or Heroku.

<comment><USER5> The thing is, there is a lot of interesting things that you could reduce into 'crud' per say. Or crud with servers.

For example, would bitcoin be a 'crud app'? Is mint a 'crud app'? Is pinterest a 'crud app'? Facebook or Instagram?

<comment><USER4> BTC: No, there's an astounding amount of cryptography there. You can build CRUD stuff on top of it.

Mint: (assuming the financial tracker) No, ask anyone who's worked with bank software before - it ain't pretty.

Pinterest/FB/Instagram: Possibly. At the start? Absolutely. What makes those companies valuable is their network effect - everyone you know is already there. Supporting users at that scale takes a lot more than just reading up on the latest APIs. FB invented a (sorta) new language to tackle their scaling problems.

<comment><USER6> For more info there's the Bitcoin whitepaper: [https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've seen an alternate anecdote developing, one in which talent is growing weary of delivery, social, and data startups. It appears to result from both a financially stable base (engineers having made money from prev mentioned startups) and a desire to have a larger impact.

Additionally, something I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere, but the API availability is unfathomably vast now. I was checking out Google's developer console and there are over 100 incredibly robust APIs just a GET request away. In the real world, you can order drone images, turn off your lights at home, monitor your health levels all from url endpoints. These computational implementations are encouraging talent to work on projects that are beyond the scope of a laptop and a dorm room.

I for one am optimistic in Valley Talent, and can't wait for the next few years.

<comment><USER8> When I have looked at Google API's they always seem to be half completed and badly documented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I now use a quick test whenever I hear about a new startup: I ask myself what's the "trick" they are proposing. If the trick is sufficiently clever, then I raise the odds of the startup getting initial traction.

Here are a few examples:

1) rent out cars that people leave at airport parking (i.e. flightcar, etc.) 2) group people together for a buying discount (i.e. groupon, etc.) 3) a middleman service that uses middlemen (i.e. magic, etc.)

Most of the hot new startups aren't delivering on a basic need (like food or shelter), but seem to be like one-off computer hacks. And that's not a bad thing. These are smart people bringing out clever solutions that deserve talented valley employees.

The returns that these startups will generate are much more attractive for short-term investors and will have clear advantages over the long-term mentality needed for building a hard new technology.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think talent, at least in engineering, has very little to do with the success of startups. The "Absolutely" and "Absolutely not" engineers are the same. There are good ones and bad ones everywhere. It's hardly ever the fault of engineers that the company they are working at doesn't make it. Likewise, very few companies make it because of engineering talent.

<comment><USER4> Talent does not exclusively create success - there's still some elements of luck and market in there. It's still a huge part of success. Look at the absolutely insane amounts of effort companies are putting in to attract talent.

<comment><USER11> The companies put a lot of effort into finding people who are 1) sufficiently competent and 2) cheap. That's quite a bit different than trying to find the best of the best although it can be plenty hard if you're not willing to pay the market clearing rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this is in line with what someone once called "fetishizing complexity".

If I work on a project that is complex, I am a good engineer because I solve hard problems. If I work on a simple problem, I'm just another code monkey.

I think a good engineer can take a complex problem and frame it in a simple light. I think a less great engineer can take the same complex problem and come up with a complex solution. From many perspectives, the second engineer is the one innovating.

Note: I'm talking about complexity in a business sense. There are many problems that are mathematically difficult and don't fall under this umbrella.

<comment><USER13> As an industry, we do a poor job of distinguishing the good engineer coming up with an elegant solution and the lesser engineer coming up with the complex solution to the same problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a lot of everything in the valley.

For complex software, take a look at some of the database companies. For flight hardware + software, AirWare is doing some cutting edge work.

Even the "simple" gets complex at scale (ex. Facebook).

</comment><comment><USER15> Thinking that the 'talent' necessary to make a successful startup or product is just 'coding talent' is as naive and ill-informed as thinking that the only talent needed to play in the NBA is being tall. Coding is just one of the important aspects of starting a company, there are many others.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reads like someone who has immersed themselves in the SV bubble for a year or two and now thinks they know it all. Hint: talent is orthogonal to whatever trends are happening in SV (or elsewhere).

</comment><comment><USER17> >> One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent'.

This is a common refrain? I'm an experienced engineer about as far outside Silicon Valley as you can get in the U.S., and in more than twenty years I have never heard this sentiment expressed. Perhaps the author needs to make some new acquaintances.

</comment><comment><USER18> I found this article to be contradicting itself. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you read code line-by-line, you're just obtaining more knowledge, not talent. How does this suggestion lead to more talent?

<comment><USER19> Knowledge nurses talent, but it is not in and of itself knowledge. The knowledge of how to solve a problem that has been solved before is incredibly useful, but the real talent in our industry is the talent to solve new problems in new ways, and most people develop that talent but not just looking at how a problem was solved but deconstructing the process of how the designer of that solution came to the conclusion they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Randall, I have a suggestion for your site: add the article title as the HTML title, so the tab shows up as "Valley Talent" instead of "Randall Koutnik."</comment>


Ask HN: Why did both "fastmail is down" posts get flagged? - <AUTHOR> HN is always full of positive opinions about Fastmail. Why would posts about its downtime, which seem relevant to many HN users, get flagged? Downtime seemed to have shown some important aspects about their infrastructure (which I mentioned in my comment on one of these posts) <comment><USER2> Because they're off-topic. HN Guidelines say:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting."[1]

Why is a brief interruption in Fastmail or Twitter or Netflix interesting? These things happen all the time. As a Fastmail user, I noticed that Fastmail was down, and then I looked at their status page to confirm they were really down and the problem wasn't on my end. Then I waited five minutes, and they came back up. Seeing a post about it on HN doesn't help me at all. And someone who is not a Fastmail user wouldn't care in the least.

They said they lost network connectivity to a couple of racks. What interesting things can we learn about their infrastructure from this? Their back-end IMAP server got disconnected and their web servers stayed up. It's a completely generic problem that can happen in any datacenter.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. If there is something interesting to learn, they'll hopefully write about it later. _That 's_ then something we can have a meaningful discussion about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe when they flagged it fastmail.com didn't appear to be down. A title like "Fastmail had an outage" might work better.

Fastmail says it's up again now, but sluggish

[https://twitter.com/FastMail](https://twitter.com/FastMail)

[https://www.fastmailstatus.com](https://www.fastmailstatus.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> There seem to be lots of emotional flaggers, that's about all I've gathered. Maybe someone could elaborate further.

I personally am seeing a delay in receiving(1-3 mins), but not sending mail, both via IMAP. I have not checked webmail. Assuming this is a blip, FM certinaly will still continue to be my choice since this would be the first outage I've noticed and I love most everything about the service.

Status page shows degraded still: [https://www.fastmailstatus.com](https://www.fastmailstatus.com)</comment>


Random Darknet Shopper - <AUTHOR> https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/r/ <comment><USER2> This is a play on Darius Kazemi's Amazon Random Shopper: [http://randomshopper.tumblr.com/post/35454415921/randomized-...](http://randomshopper.tumblr.com/post/35454415921/randomized- consumerism)

<comment><USER3> [http://xkcd.com/576/](http://xkcd.com/576/) I think was first.

<comment><USER4> That was purely theoretical though, Randall(sp?) never actually implemented or ran it did he?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PDAS - (Plausible Deniability As a Service) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering whether they took any special precautions before starting this. Might have made for an interesting talk at the local police precinct.

<comment><USER6> If you look at their gallery exhibition page ( [http://www.kunsthallesanktgallen.ch/en/exhibitions/current.h...](http://www.kunsthallesanktgallen.ch/en/exhibitions/current.html) ) you'll find this sentence:

 _We also thank Dr. iur. Bruno Glaus for the help in legal matters._

A quick search reveals that he is lawyer, so I think it's safe to say they've certainly thought of the legal side of things first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't the statistical probability of ordering a non-drug item fairly low? This does not appear to be random. But it's still great art :)

<comment><USER8> Has anyone ever actually done a survey of what's available on these markets. I don't doubt there are a lot of drug offerings but I feel like most of the "It's all drugs!" assertions come authority figures who tend to say that about a lot of new things.

<comment><USER9> A recent article by CoinDesk [0] quotes the total number of listings on each of the biggest dark markets (before the seizures) and the number of listings for drugs; drugs made up a large majority of listings on all markets except Evolution, about half of whose listings are for drugs.

(The numbers come from a report [1] by the Digital Citizens Alliance; the report says the count is from January 2014, but says nothing further about methodology.)

The markets that sell weapons have significantly lower proportions of drug listings, so presumably many of the non-drug listings on those markets are for weapons; much of the rest is likely exploits, credit card numbers, forgeries, etc.

0\. [http://www.coindesk.com/dark-markets-grow-bigger-bolder- year...](http://www.coindesk.com/dark-markets-grow-bigger-bolder-year-since- silk-road-bust/)

1\. [https://media.gractions.com/314A5A5A9ABBBBC5E3BD824CF47C46EF...](https://media.gractions.com/314A5A5A9ABBBBC5E3BD824CF47C46EF4B9D3A76/8854660c-1bbb-4166-aa20-2dd98289e80c.pdf) [PDF]

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't cite Coindesk for any reliable report. [1]

1\. [https://ihb.io/2014-11-09/news/official-coindesk-longer- voic...](https://ihb.io/2014-11-09/news/official-coindesk-longer-voice- digital-currency-2-13449)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least here in Norway some thinks the government shall prosecute people based solely on the fact that they received a letter containing a forbidden substance. The idea appears to be that one would only spend money ordering a forbidden item to oneself (a false logic if you ask me. I have received gift in the mail several times. From Amazon, not drugs through).

If the government start to prosecute based on receiving only, one interesting counter measure would be to create a random darknet shopper that also send the product to a random addresses, thus offering plausible deniability to everyone receiving illicit substances by mail.

</comment><comment><USER12> Heh this reads like the contents of Hunter S Thompson's gym bag for a long weekend. Of course he would need two sets of a fireman's master key-chain.

This is really interesting though. Maybe after a while they could exclude drugs. I find the most interesting thing about these darknets to be the random and obscure stuff people are selling. Like from the second fireman's key-chain console, where it lists among other things for sale, a "TOP VPN LIST that don't keep logs," an "nba playoff pick," a "BANK DROP ONLY 20% FEE," and a "Request Custom Hotel Booking."

</comment><comment><USER13> Kind of a dick moving, posting detailed pictures and descriptions of that seller's "stealth" packaging...

<comment><USER14> Not really. This is public information.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2lwhzs/steal...](http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/2lwhzs/stealth_is_the_most_important_thing/clywzrs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is going to get them placed on all of the watchlists.

</comment><comment> andrey-p Why is someone selling ebooks on a dark market? Surely there's more straightforward ways to get it if you're going down the illegal route anyway.

<comment><USER16> Convenience and safety. Someone can pay $0.99 and avoid the trouble of tracking down all of the pdfs themselves as well as avoiding accessing a bunch of other sites.

<comment><USER17> Not sure how much I trust downloading files from the same area of the internet that sells drugs and has people offering to kill others for money.

<comment><USER18> Then maybe you should conciser purchasing a legitimately licensed copy of the ebook set

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This brought a smile to my face. Dope sneakers tho!

<comment><USER20> please excuse my ridiculously naive and simple question: but are they real from some sort of black market or just a really good "fake?"

<comment><USER16> It's listed in the Counterfeits category (a real Nike Air Yeezy 2 Platinum sells for $2,000). It's a good fake though.

<comment><USER21> It's a photo from the shop's site. Probably lifted from Nike. The actual product could be way worse.

<comment><USER16> There's a link in the listing to a RAR that contains actual photos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do those shoes glow in the dark? Other than that, I don't get it. You can have a random shopper in your life just by getting married (goes for either sex; also, I wouldn't want to discriminate against other forms of relationships).</comment>


"Decentralisation in stages" – Streamr DataCoin's approach - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4N2rjpuC4U&t=1115s <comment><AUTHOR> The company is building a decentralized data streaming platform/marketplace for monetizing data produced by the Internet of Things.</comment>


How to Create an Online Booking System - <AUTHOR> https://www.123formbuilder.com/blog/how-to-set-up-an-online-booking-system/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you're looking to create an online booking system that works anywhere online, without coding, follow this guide.</comment>


Alienware Steam Machine now a Windows PC for the living room - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/06/alienware-steam-machine-now-a-windows-pc-for-the-living-room/

<comment><USER2> Is this because they spent the money on the hardware and by the time the steam machine/controller releases the time/money spent researching would be wasted?

Wondering what software they will try to push on top of Windows 8.1 to make this more of a living room computer.</comment>


Happy 2nd Birthday Pion - Sean-Der https://twitter.com/_pion/status/1262135198029758464 <comment> Sean-Der Open Source only exists because of individual contributors, so I wanted to take a chance to thank everyone that has contributed. I see a lot of 'project anniversary posts' that like to list all the features that have been added, but Pion is different then that.

If you are interested in getting involved now is a good chance. There are lots of problems to solve, and it is a great place to learn.</comment>


Someone is sending fake emails pretending to be YC - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ycombinator/status/633842017022271488

<comment><USER2> If in that email my status of "decline" is different, I would like to accept as true. But how they obtained the list of emails of who signed up for the program?</comment>


"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." What Would a Siri API Look Like? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.teaapp.com/post/24212825807/tea-earl-grey-hot-what-would-a-siri-api-look-like

<comment><USER2> I don't know how this is going to work. If you and I both make a Twitter app. And you ask Siri to tweet something, how is she going to know which app to send the request to?

And how is she going to decide which messages are to be considered for tweeting to begin with. If I make an app that checks hockey scores and you ask for the baseball game, how is she going to know the difference between the two and that my app can't do baseball scores.

It all gets very complicated very fast. I won't be surprised if API (if any) is very limited. So don't get your hopes too hight.

<comment><USER3> Android's had this solved via intents for years now.

Applications register to say "Hey, I want to handle this action". When the user initiates that action, if there are multiple apps that can handle it, the user is prompted to choose which app to use to handle it, with the option to remember the choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> +1 for the Star Trek TNG reference

If you want a glimpse into what it might look like check out AssistantExtensions (Jailbreak) <http://ae.k3a.me/tutorial.htm>

And SiriSports which is built on top of it [http://www.iphonehacks.com/2012/03/sirisports-nba-mlb-nhl- sc...](http://www.iphonehacks.com/2012/03/sirisports-nba-mlb-nhl-scores-using- siri.html)</comment>


Sixty years of Green Eggs and Ham - <AUTHOR> https://brianjayjones.com/2020/08/11/sixty-years-of-green-eggs-and-ham/ <comment><USER2> Green Eggs and Ham is a great starter book, but IMHO the greatest of Dr Seuss's many great books is _Oh, the Places You 'll Go!_. His mastery of "simple" English is stunning, kids find it enthralling, and the messages are surprisingly deep.

Here's the text, but the original illustrated version is so much better: [https://www.poetrygrrrl.com/oh-the-places-youll-go-by-dr- seu...](https://www.poetrygrrrl.com/oh-the-places-youll-go-by-dr-seuss/)

<comment><USER3> When I graduated high school my English teacher sat the 35 or so of us in my small class. He sat us down like kindergarteners and read us this book. It's one of my fondest memories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Cerf bet me fifty bucks I couldn't write a book using only 50 words," he said later. "I did it to show I could." This encapsulated the lesson I learned from the recent Michael Jordan documentary - take silly bets and trivial insults seriously and you can be driven to do great things.

<comment><USER5> Hemingway also allegedly won a bet with a six-word fiction: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

<comment><USER6> This is a job for QuoteInvestigator! [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/28/baby- shoes/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/28/baby-shoes/)

(It was not Hemingway.)

<comment><USER5> That's quite an extensive investigation to read!

<comment><USER6> After 10 years he has built up quite a repertoire, and it's starting to get rarer to run across a quote he hasn't covered.

The primary lesson is that almost every famous quotation has been misattributed, inevitably to someone more famous. It's surprisingly unusual to find a famous quote that the famous person actually said.

<comment><USER7> Except Churchill, I'm sure

<comment><USER6> I'm afraid Churchill is very much included. He didn't say "up with which I will not put", he didn't say "I am drunk but you are ugly and in the morning I shall be sober", he didn't say "if I were your husband I'd drink that poison", and so on. He didn't say most of the best Churchill lines. Lincoln didn't say most of the best Lincoln lines either. Same with Mark Twain, Einstein, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Green Eggs and Ham, narrated by the Reverend Jesse Jackson on SNL in 1991, after the death of Dr. Seuss.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA)

<comment><USER9> Laugh tracks do make things funnier

<comment><USER10> SNL is filmed in front of a live audience

<comment><USER8> That's what the "L" stands for! ;) It's also why they always say "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" at the beginning of each show.

I disagree that laugh tracks make things funnier, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> master-litty I often battle an odd insecurity about taking too long to do things. I've taken some time to write this comment, for example, and I can't help but wonder how long all these other comments took to write -- How normal do I compare? If I'm slower than average, is there something wrong with me, and is there something wrong with that? Surely, I tell myself, I must be focusing on the wrong things, and my time would be spent more productively elsewhere.

I once thought it was an issue of intelligence, but my wife has helped me see the careful thought I put into every word, every stroke of the pen, every movement I make. The time I take is deliberate, purposeful. The issue I've recently faced is justifying the time spent to create a certain quality of art and work.

It feels quite normalizing to read about Dr. Seuss and his year-long struggle to create this book. Inspirational, even. Look at all the joy this man has brought into the world. Look at how his time spent has served everyone well.

Look at the fun he had along the way.

You can't quantify that against time. If you find a way, perhaps you shouldn't.

<comment><USER11> The newer Dr. Seuss books feel like they have a fraction of the effort put into them. Sometimes a couple sentences seem like ones written by the original Dr. Seuss but then they decided it was too hard and just gave up on quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> ...and an eloquent, nuanced, and powerful reading of the tome:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA)

<comment><USER13> ...or a more modernist rap of the same:

[https://youtu.be/nwDGRUzv3SE](https://youtu.be/nwDGRUzv3SE)

<comment><USER14> Moxy Fruvous also did a song inspired by the book:

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

<comment><USER15> And don't forget Bob Dylan's* cover:

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

*not actually Dylan but it's a great take on him and there's six more Seuss songs on the album.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For me the genius of "green eggs and ham" is that you read it to your kid at about the time they become more picky with their food. So the book is a lesson too.

Some days I really want to read this book to my kid: [https://www.amazon.com.au/You-Have-F-king- Eat/dp/1501238663](https://www.amazon.com.au/You-Have-F-king- Eat/dp/1501238663)

<comment><USER17> That lesson can backfire. When my father decided to treat me to "green eggs and ham" on my birthday thinking I'd be thrilled. But in order to mix in the food coloring he needed to chop the ham into pieces and scramble the eggs. Because it didn't match the image of whole ham and unbroken yolks, I hated it and threw a tantrum. I was quite the problem child.

Semi-related, my favorite cheese is Swiss because it has holes in it, and that's how cheese is portrayed in comics.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I don't plan on using it as a recipe!

More a lesson on "See how much time he wasted refusing it when he could have simply tried it to begin with?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For the record, my 10 year old self actually made green eggs.

I was trying to make scrambled eggs. I put some Cayenne pepper in. I dumped a bunch. I realized it was hot. I had heard that mint would make food taste less hot. So I dumped in more and more and more and more.

Eventually it turned green. But didn't stop being waaay too hot to my 10 year old self. (I'm sure that my 50 year old self would find it mild.)

</comment><comment><USER19> For those too young to have seen it, I present the Reverand Jesse Jackson narrating 'Green Eggs and Ham'. A classic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA)

</comment><comment><USER20> I learnt to read from this book. It had been read to me so many times I knew every word, and while watching along, the change from `i am sam` to `sam i am` is where it all clicked.

</comment><comment><USER21> I came across an old copy of Come Over to My House which we have now read _many_ times. It is nice to have an accessible cross cultural theme where the characters actually interact with each other.

At our local library newer books sometimes make an attempt but mostly limit themselves to token depictions of a head coverings, black kids, and wheelchairs.

I hope even the somewhat sanitized recent edition will have the staying power of the other more well known stories.

</comment><comment><USER22> "I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you. Thank you, Sam-I-Am."

At this point, the character has realized that his quite firm refusal is having no effect. Growing weary of being ignored, he makes a show of capitulation and eats, exclaiming faux appreciation to Sam for his efforts.

After this episode, he never eats green eggs nor ham again. In adulthood, he would often think back to this moment with regret for having failed to stand up for himself.

</comment><comment><USER23> Once again we are faced with limitations, restrictions, being the fruit of creativity.

Or maybe it's money and a gentleman's honor.

</comment><comment><USER24> This was a great book to try to get my six year old to use English. He liked to read it aloud.

It took a few years to get to a second one though.

</comment><comment><USER25> Its a great catchy book, and it was interesting to learn more about the origins of it. Both my 3yo and I can recite it from memory.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a story of capitulating to bullies. "Sam" is a bully.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a great article and the content very interesting about the books.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've always been profoundly "creeped out" by Dr Seuss' books—the text and the illustrations, now as much as when I was a kid and part of the target demographic.

<comment><USER28> You probably want to avoid _The Seven Lady Godivas_ then.

<comment><USER27> Thanks, I hate it. :)

Speaking of creepy kids' books, what gives with _Marianne Dreams_? It felt like real nightmare material when I read it as a mature adult.

<comment><USER28> Wow, that sounds like a juvenile _Videodrome_.

<comment><USER27> Yeah... now that you mention it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://brianjayjones.com/2020/08/11/sixty-years-of-green- eg...](https://brianjayjones.com/2020/08/11/sixty-years-of-green-eggs-and- ham/)

For the those who don't want to read a twitter thread but want a posting by the original author.

<comment><USER6> Changed from [https://twitter.com/brianjayjones/status/1292552188464705536](https://twitter.com/brianjayjones/status/1292552188464705536). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Offtopic, but on the topic of green eggs, several differents breeds of chickens can lay green, and even blue and lavender colored eggs.

<comment><USER31> Do you mean the shells, or the yolks? The illustrations in the Seuss book show lime-green yolks.

<comment><USER32> You just have to let them mature:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg)</comment></comment></comment>


Napoleon's Vision for a New Imperial Rome - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/57493 <comment><USER2> Interesting factoid... many cities with imperial ambitions were built on areas with seven hills , as Rome is/was.

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

many capital cities in the above list, including Constantinople, capital of Byzantium and Moscow, Russia which considers itself the heir of Byzantium. Plus Albany NY, Seattle WA, San Francisco (not a capital but an important city in CA).

<comment><USER3> I'd probably question that given how many cities want to be a new rome and how famous Rome's seven hills are. It's easy to pick any collection of seven hills in a city that has more hills than that and say they're 'the' seven hills of the city.

<comment><USER4> The trick is to do it with less than seven hills.

<comment><USER5> "But that last hill is just a landfill"

<comment><USER6> This at least would not be out of character for Rome:

 _Monte Testaccio is an artificial mound in Rome composed almost entirely of_ testae _(Italian:_ cocci _), fragments of broken ancient Roman pottery, nearly all discarded amphorae dating from the time of the Roman Empire_ [.]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why the fascination with Rome? I ask this having studied Latin and ancient cultures both in high school, college, and since (check out the excellent "history of Rome" podcast). Rome is the city where it all started but as an imperial seat Milan and Constantinople made far more sense as seats of government. It seems "because that's what we've always done" is the logic and reasoning for Rome to have been the seat of empire and the antiquarian ideal of reestablishing that empire is why modern conquerors have placed so much emphasis on Rome as well. To me it doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER8> I've heard people compare the Roman Empire with the United States (implying an eventual, similar downfall).

What are your thoughts to such a comparison?

<comment><USER9> The comparison empires such as the Roman or British, contract physically and decline, literally.

One of the obvious flaws in comparing them to the US, is that the US power emanates outward from its epic domestic economy, which has been the world's largest since shortly after the Civil War. The US economy didn't require the present size of the US military or its global positioning to get so large - nor did modern Japan, Germany or China (#3, #4, #2) require epic global militaries to do what they've done economically.

What would the downfall be? The US is going to contract physically and lose its overseas land holdings? It has few. It has a massive size core land holding that is the country itself, including all of its resources. The Roman Empire had no such thing, nor did the British Empire, for two prominent examples; their land holdings were largely conquered, foreign cultures. One would have to project the US shattering into state regions, multiple countries. It's very unlikely to be allowed by the Federal Government.

It will be forced to pull in its military and close 100 overseas bases? That will be a benefit, its people will be healthier and wealthier if $250 billion were presently diverted from the military to infrastructure, healthcare or almost anything else domestic.

The dollar will lose its position? The US economy was by far the world's largest prior to the USD reserve standard. If you roll the economy forward 30 or 50 years into a theoretical downfall time, then chop 1/3 off its GDP per capita to represent the downfall -- with 380 million people it would still have the world's #1 or #2 largest economy and still have one of its highest output per capita figures. The Eurozone, Japan and China do not require any unusual global military superpower positioning to have powerful currencies, there's absolutely no reason to think the US does (other than in cases of fantasy US collapse projection); they require large economic output to support and make relevant the currencies in question (Euro, Yen, Yuan).

Right now you can combine Spain and Italy's GDP per capita figures and you are still below where the US is at ($65k). So how far does the US have to fall economically, while having a future ~380 million people, to no longer be a global superpower compared to everyone not named China?

For the US to implode as a global superpower, its economy has to shrink by around 50% to 65% or more. For example here's a % comparison on GDP to other nations over the decades:

In 1980 France had an economy 25% as large as the US; now it's 12.5% as large approximately. Was the US not a superpower in 1980?

In 1980 Italy had an economy 16.6% as large as the US; now it's 9.3% as large.

In 1980 the UK had an economy 19.7% as large as the US; now it's 12.7% as large.

In 1990 and 2000 Japan had an economy 50% as large as the US. Now it's about 24%.

So how far would the US have to fall economically (the base of its military power is its economic output, the ability to tax & fund it), compared to where it was at in 1980 versus other powerful nations, to no longer be considered a global superpower? I think these figures put it into perspective, you'd somehow need the US to massively collapse economically. What would cause that? Federal debt? It can deal with that for a long time yet and ultimately very slowly debase its enormous dollar wealth to deal with it (basically debase the $130 trillion in wealth at 1% per year, so if you're still growing at all it might end up as a net wash or close to it, until you erode the debt enough to flip the scenario).

<comment><USER10> Yes, I think the only thing that could bring down the US would be another civil war, but I don't know how big the dissonances between the states are right now.

<comment><USER11> I think the worst-case here is that political stagnation and populist anger continue to increase, leading to popular unrest and a military coup or other suspension of democracy. Factional civil war seems very unlikely because urban vs rural is not a regional divide.

But what's interesting is that political breakdown leading to a military coup wasn't what brought down the Roman Empire, but it _was_ what brought down the Roman _Republic!_ So maybe we're just entering the real imperial phase of our history.

<comment><USER12> it's part of what brought down the western empire. commanders of armies sent to secure the borders would often march back and try to secure the throne. this is what a lot of the third century crisis was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Side note, and I'm far from the first to say it, but I miss designs like this - it had personality and made sites look different from each other. Now everything looks like Bootstrap or Material UI.

<comment><USER14> Yes, but could have been a little wider, or offering some sort of 'print' view.</comment></comment>


How Tapprs nabbed the crook - <AUTHOR> http://tapprs.com/2012/how-tapprs-nabbed-crook/ Very interesting story of Starup in India which works on Camera Accessories rental .. <comment><USER2> Great story of how rental startups should handle & prepare for fraud.</comment>


ClearCoin CSRFs (bitcoin fun day continues) - <AUTHOR> http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19667.0

<comment><USER2> Once upon a time, there was a penguin who learned how to fly. He held a huge weekend event where he taught all the other penguins to fly. They gathered from all over the southern hemisphere to learn how to fly. After a few hours some started to catch on. By the end of the weekend, they all figured it out. It was amazing. Everyone kept talking about how much fun flying was when they walked home the next day.

It seems the entire bitcoin community can't wrap their heads around what being decentralized means. We've got this great network, but it's supported by a couple of sites. It's a centralized community/economy built on a decentralized currency. It's a bunch of penguins who can fly but are walking home anyway.</comment>


OCaml in Operations - <AUTHOR> https://michipili.github.io/essay/2016/04/11/ocaml-on-operations.html <comment><USER2> One clarification. As of a couple weeks ago, OCaml does have native support for many of the services AWS provides, via code generation:

[https://github.com/inhabitedtype/ocaml- aws](https://github.com/inhabitedtype/ocaml-aws)

I've been using these bindings internally for about a year, so the kinks have been worked out. A few more data types need to be supported by the code generator (in particular, the map type), and then it should have full service coverage.

<comment><USER3> Why the GCC requirement on FreeBSD? And that definitely shouldn't require actually creating a static link.

Edit: whoops, replied to the wrong parent.

<comment><USER2> The reason for each step is documented in the bash snippet. At the time of development, zarith (a transitive dependency) hard coded the GCC dependency in its build process. Perhaps it shouldn't, but it definitely did and continues to require the symlink on systems without GCC. I submitted a patch to fix this in zarith, but it has not made it to opam yet. See The patch here:

[https://forge.ocamlcore.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&ai...](https://forge.ocamlcore.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1451&group_id=243&atid=1096)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can see why people start to use OCaml more and more for things like CLI tools, metrics collection and other things like http proxying (most of the stuff came up HN in the last few weeks). I am hoping that OCaml finally gets its momentum and gets more widely accepted. It is a pretty sweet language with amazing features and type class.

<comment><USER5> > It is a pretty sweet language with amazing features and type class

Type classes is the one thing that OCaml does not have. It might get a sort of similar to use mechanism called modular implicits, but we will see about that in the future.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's the OCaml version of "the year of Linux on the desktop" :(

<comment><USER4> You can still be hopeful. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always wanted to learn OCaml because I thought ML was a very nice language. Great how a rewrite of the JS code cleared up a lot blurry implementations. I wonder if F# could be applied here as easily. Funscript and Websharper compile to JS from F#. F# is opensource, and always suffered in published benchmarks, because the slower Mono platform was used due to MS licensing restrictions on using the faster .NET platform. Now that MS is opensourcing so much, and recreating bash in Windows, F# is going to be more applicable I think in operations too.

<comment><USER6> Last time I checked, js_of_ocaml looked a lot more mature than Funscript (whose repo doesn't seem to suffer from an excess of activity).

I think the big thing missing for OCaml right now is a solid persistence system (preferably something lightweight).

<comment><USER8> > "a lot more mature than Funscript (whose repo doesn't seem to suffer from an > excess of activity)."

That's because development work has moved to Fable:

[https://github.com/fsprojects/Fable](https://github.com/fsprojects/Fable)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> ... or the release by Bloomberg of an OCaml to JavaScript compiler_

I have never heard of bloomberg/bucklescript.

How does it compare to js-of-ocaml? (which is what the author actually uses, according to the article)

<comment><USER10> see [http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/#README#A-naive- benc...](http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/#README#A-naive-benchmark- comparing-to-the-Immutable-map-from-Facebook)

<comment><USER9> Okay, so Bucklescript is intended to become the next generation of js-of- ocaml, right?

<comment><USER11> Hi, there is a link here: [https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript/wiki/Difference- fr...](https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript/wiki/Difference-from- js_of_ocaml)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The most important skill in software development - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2015/06/18/most-important-skill-in-software/#.VYhBb4-9CrA.hackernews

<comment> white-flame These are the important skills in software development:

      Abstraction
      Communication (in person, in documentation, & to the computer)
      Understanding the use & environment of the software

These are intertwined, contain the organizational skills from the article, and are pretty difficult to test and quantify.

</comment><comment><USER2> The most important skill in software development is too have your site ready for Reddit effect.</comment>


A Cheap, Simple Way to Control the Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests.html <comment><USER2> This seems promising. Test everyone, all the time, for a short of time. Virus should be done soon-ish.

Thinking about the way it could fail is frustrating. There's everything from employers resenting employee's absence to who knows what pundit denouncing the plan.</comment>


Show HN:  Redline.cc, the easiest way to report visual bugs - <AUTHOR>

As a developer, one of the biggest obstacles I've encountered has been how to communicate with designers - especially, when it comes to constructing their designs. Over the years, I have come to realize that Designers and Developers just see the world differently -   Developers see the world as defects in code text and Designers see the world as defects in pixels. This "language barrier" is what Redline (http://www.redline.cc) addresses -it allows Designers (or anyone really) to enter bugs visually and directly on the web page. Then, those mark-ups automatically creates a bug ticket in your bug tracking system (currently, we support Pivotal Tracker and JIRA).<p>My co-creator and I would love to get some feedback! If anyone is interested in getting a beta key email me at firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Clickable : <http://www.redline.cc>

This seems like a nice way to report visual bugs and would be pretty useful for us instead of sharing screen through skype or making a printscreen before adding info around it. But how does your solution integrates with someone already having a bug tracker solution (for everything not visual). Can you integrate with other platforms?

How do you handle "replay" of the bug? I mean if I have a div not loading properly on my firefox browser, how will the developper "see" the bug if he loads the page in another browser or even another version/OS. Do you "print" what's displayed when the designer reports the bug?

EDIT: My bad, you already indicate you only support Pivotal Tracker for now !

<comment><AUTHOR> We have integrated with Jira and Pivotal Tracker for now (though we plan for more in the future).

The way that replay works is that we actually take the screenshot from the current dom state (after disabling javascript and all the moving bits). So even if it is a very dynamic site (like the customink.com lab: <http://www.redline.cc/bug/152570393#vdb_box_1>) we are able to reproduce exactly what the bug reporter saw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just finished a project where this would have been perfect. The lack of integration into Pivotal Tracker is what kept me from using other apps like this.

In addition to Koopajah's questions, I was wondering if perhaps you could set it so you'd have to double-click to edit once the bookmarklet has loaded, so that you can still interact with the page and highlight elements that may be initially hidden or inactive?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have talked about doing this. The problem is that when a developer goes to fix a bug they want to see (at least in our estimation) an exact replica of the state that the bug occurred in. We thought that adding in anything that changes (or anything dynamic) would just be confusing when it came time to repair the bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In your video "most every web project" is not grammatically correct.

"most every" is nonsensical. It's two determiners juxtaposed, and conflicting ones at that. It's either "every" or it's "most". It could also be "almost every".

Later on "a couple clicks". Do you mean "a couple of clicks"?

</comment><comment><USER5> This appears to be a simple way for a designers to enter bugs. Super simple. Have you guys thought about adding github bugs support?

</comment><comment><USER6> I love that this requires almost NO set-up, and integrates with tools I'm already using, unlike a lot of similar products out there.</comment>


Isosurface Extraction Using Marching Cubes Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lettier/isosurface <comment><USER2> If you like marching cubes in WebGL, here are some more examples (both CPU and GPU based implementations):

[http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_marchingcubes.html](http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_marchingcubes.html)

[http://webglsamples.org/blob/blob.html](http://webglsamples.org/blob/blob.html)

[http://webglsamples.org/caves/caves.html](http://webglsamples.org/caves/caves.html)

[https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/bumpy- metaballs/](https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/bumpy-metaballs/)

[http://dev.miaumiau.cat/rayTracer/](http://dev.miaumiau.cat/rayTracer/)

[http://dev.miaumiau.cat/sph/](http://dev.miaumiau.cat/sph/)

[http://mikolalysenko.github.io/Isosurface/](http://mikolalysenko.github.io/Isosurface/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Marching Cubes not already outdated algorithm to do this !?

Why not use state pf the art algorithm for this, like Marching Tiles ?

<comment><USER2> For few other approaches implemented for WebGL see here:

[http://0fps.net/2012/07/12/smooth-voxel-terrain- part-2/](http://0fps.net/2012/07/12/smooth-voxel-terrain-part-2/)</comment></comment>


Weight loss apps no better at helping shed pounds than pamphlets - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/weight-loss-apps-no-better-at-helping-shed-pounds-than-pamphlets/ <comment><USER2> I've lost 45lbs in the past 18 months, initially by eating more healthily and latterly by increased exercise.

I'm a big user of MyFitnessPal app to record my daily calorie intake, scanning a barcode to record calories is brilliant and just recording what I eat/do each day makes a big difference.

What really works for me though is going to weekly slimming meeting to be weighed - which I have to pay for. I hate feeling like I've wasted my weekly fee, and I have to pay to stay on the program if I go or not.

Just having information these app's provide isn't enough in my opinion, you also need self motivation, peer pressure, financial incentive, rewards all in varying amounts for different people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any tracking and health apps are only as good as the people who use them.</comment>


Venezuela's descent into dictatorship shows democracy can be lost - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-venezuela-democracy-20170801-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter <comment><USER2> When the military threw out the elected Chavez in 2002 and replaced him with the head of the business federation, who promptly dissolved the parliament, the New York Times applauded.

The 2009 coup of the elected Honduran government, by military officers trained in the US and financed by the US, followed by the murder of many candidates trying to run in the subsequent election, didn't elicit hand-wringing by the US administration. The flow of money and weapons to the Honduran military continued. Murder and political repression in Honduras skyrocketed. All you really heard in the US news was complaints about how Hondurans and Honduran children were now crossing the US borders.

It doesn't even rise to the level of farce that the Tribune/Tronc corporation's expression of America's military ambitions in its Monroe Doctrine backyard has some lofty motives or whatever nonsense they're putting out.

<comment><USER3> How is it relevant to this article? Here they are correctly pointing out that a dictator _de facto_ is seizing even more power sending his country to a total economic disaster. There has been no coup d'état, just a rapid descent into dictatorship starting from Chavez and continuing with Maduro. Exactly in the same way it happened in Italy with Mussolini and in Germany with Hitler. Your comment seems completely out of place pointing out other completely unrelated political situations minimising the actions of a dictator that is killing hundred of people just because it doesn't fit your own political narrative.

<comment><USER4> bravo, less than an hour to invoke Godwins law.

<comment><USER3> We are discussing about dictatorships, it seems a quite fitting argument honestly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sorry LA Times, but is this a joke? I mean, have we not ever heard of coups d'Etats?

In any event, people have been telling the pro socialists (the Berkeley socialists who wanted to believe, some of whom still likely do) since Chavez took over that it was no longer a democracy --and many leftists were okay, even applauded the Anti-Americanism. Well, there is your bed.

When Chris Anderson (on the left of center) came out with "Capitolio" the left wanted his head for denouncing their pet socialist government and exposing the corruption, violence, and massive incompetence.

<comment><USER6> [citation needed]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Under Chavez, elections were still relatively fair. "

Elections were never fair under Chavez. He seized control of the Supreme Court and undercut the ability of journalists, human rights defenders, and other Venezuelans to exercise fundamental rights.

<comment><USER8> >relatively fair.

What the hell does this mean in the first place? Elections could only be either fair or not fair, you either can win in a honest competition or you can't since the regime can apply some measures to restrict such possibility. This sounds just ridiculous.

<comment><USER9> It means there's a level of fraud in most elections, but these lie on a continuum.

Here's a rough measure. If a system almost always gives the same election results as a fair election then the system is relatively fair, compared to a system which often gives different election results than what a fair system would give.

For example, if someone votes twice (eg, owns property in New York and Florida, registers to vote in both states, etc.) then that's an unfair election.

However, very few people, perhaps a handful each presidential election, do that. This is a relatively fair system because it's extremely unlikely that these fraudulent votes will change the results.

By comparison, some states had a literacy test for voting which was deliberately confusing, and where the (white) registrar was the ultimate judge of who passed. By design, a lot of black people failed. See [http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_right...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_court_the_impossible_literacy_test_louisiana.html) for an example test from Louisiana.

By comparison, this was a relatively unfair system.

<comment><USER10> Your definition of a fair election is pretty flowed as far as I understand it... You define a fair election as an election which gives the same results as... a fair election ?

<comment><USER9> No, I define a relatively fair election as one which often gives the same results as a fair election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not like the US has played any part in this whatsoever, nothing to do with Venezuela being an oil rich nation and not bowing to the US cronies. What next? News about the US sponsoring the 'Free Venezuelan Army', the moderate rebels?

<comment><USER11> Go away. The US has been aggressively non-interventionist in Venezuela through this entire crisis -- no wide sanctions or anything.

Chavez and his cronies made their own bed, and now the whole country has to sleep in it.

<comment><USER4> You must have never heard of a thing called an 'NGO' or the 'CIA'. Even when, on the surface (i.e: what CNN says), the US is not pursuing it's interests globally, you can be pretty sure that it has its finger in the pie somewhere.

heres an example of some of the US's 'assistance' to voices that they want heard. [http://www.twn.my/title2/resurgence/2010/240-241/media2.htm](http://www.twn.my/title2/resurgence/2010/240-241/media2.htm)

I'm definitely not pro-socialist or anti-capitalist, those are just overused labels which only further muddy any discourse on the issue's which matter. Given the US's history in South and Latin America though (and to be honest, world-wide), I definitely don't see them as some beacon of freedom and democracy.

sidenote, same shit happened in Brazil, Rousseff was democratically elected, media (which is owned by a small oligarchy in Brazil) fanned the flames to get her impeached, the replacement? An equally corrupt, more Washington leaning politician (we don't see the media jumping up and down as much for this one though). Dilma was looking to strengthen BRICS and that obviously couldn't go on.

(all politicians in Brazil are corrupt, thats the only reason you become a politician in brazil, no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/730909086775152641](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/730909086775152641)

<comment><USER12> > Rousseff was democratically elected, media (which is owned by a small > oligarchy in Brazil) fanned the flames to get her impeached, the > replacement?

Are you talking about the same Dilma Rousseff who has been continuously cooking Brazil's books to try to hide away a chronic economic crisis?

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

Are you talking about the same Dilma Rousseff who tried to nominate her fellow Worker's Party colleague Lula da Silva into her cabinet just to grant him immunity from being prosecuted for corruption?

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-rousseff- idUSKCN0WI...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-rousseff- idUSKCN0WI1T0)

I'm sure she was only hoisted by Brazil's own elected representatives because of bad publicity. I mean, it's not that she did anything wrong or anything.

<comment><USER10> Did you even read his fucking comment or do you just cherry pick phrases and build a strawman from that ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could say the same thing about many countries, e.g. Turkey's descent into dictatorship shows democracy can be lost.

<comment><USER14> Poland is quickly eroding its democracy as well, it's terrifying.

<comment><USER5> How? If anything it looks like it's becoming populist which is the opposite of not democracy.

That's not to delegitimize your position which is that it does not reflect your vision of what a democracy should look like.

<comment><USER15> > what a democracy should look like.

The definition of democracy varies, but if we use the regular definition of "liberal democracy" (a.k.a. western democracy) which is what we are used to define democracy as in the west, then it requires not only free and fair elections but also separation or power, and an informed public with free press.

Going from a liberal democracy into something else is unfortunately quite easy.

Step one is usually to suppress the free press, step 2 is attacking the judiciary and changing the constitution e.g. to control courts, give more power to the executive.

Populism is usually just a vehicle for this slow coup.

One might of course argue that "western democracy" isn't superior to other forms of democracy (or non-democracy) but that's a separate discussion. Both Poland and Turkey _had_ liberal/western democracy to some extent, and are losing it to something else.

<comment><USER10> Is press really free when 90% of it is held by 5 billionaires ? (France)I'm not arguing against the bulk of the argument but really calling a profit- driven press "free" is a bit of a stretch imo (though there's a difference to be made between, say, French press and press against dictatorship, I'll admit, but this doesn't change my point)

<comment><USER15> Press freedom doesn't really account for diversity, it's unfortunate but that's it.

If those 5 are all pro govt (either by choice or persuation) then it's even worse.

But press would be considered free if anyone could start a 6th outlet without being pressured to stop - and the cost of starting one is not relevant for that really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We've already lost quite a large number of democracies all over the world to all sort of oppressive dictatorships and teocracies. Where's the surprise?

It's good sometimes to remember not to take democracy for granted.

</comment><comment><USER17> couple thousand years ago Roman Republic got de-facto replaced by dictatorship (Caesar) and soon after - Empire (Augustus).

Where "dictator" originally comes from - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator)

Finally LA Times got the news...

</comment><comment><USER18> So you think you live in a democracy?

"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."

by: Mayer Amschel Rothschild

[http://quotes.liberty- tree.ca/quote_blog/Mayer.Amschel.Roths...](http://quotes.liberty- tree.ca/quote_blog/Mayer.Amschel.Rothschild.Quote.8BED)</comment>


Hustle Is Not The Answer To Every Problem - <AUTHOR> http://prtipsforstartups.com/hustle/ <comment><USER2> I've really appreciated the last few posts at that blog. Last week I learned about Parkinson's Law.

"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion."

Now I can recognize when I might be slacking off due to a large deadline and correct myself.

On the same blog I learned how to recognize and appreciate entrepreneurial wisdom in unlikely places.

I like the message in this particular article. What I took away from it is this: Hustle can be good, but it pays to slow down and see the bigger picture.</comment>