The mindfulness conspiracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality <comment><USER2> One goal of mindfulness and meditation is to reduce the amount of noise in our heads so that we can see things clearer. This allows us to take more _effective_ actions.

The author seems to have a clear bias that radical == good, and this puts me off. Radical action can be good, and it can be bad. Mindfulness can help us see which case is which.

<comment><USER3> Fully agree, mindfulness can help one come up with even more radical actions. It can be a tool for activists to cope with the pressures of activism.

It doesn't sound like the author has done any mindfulness practice

<comment><USER4> Does it though? Do we have any kind of data about it?

If it helps one activist and million corporate drones and people looking for status quo, the practice is not on the whole a friend of activism. So what are the numbers?

<comment><USER3> You are adding the goal of turning status quo warriors into activists. Mindfulness is not designed for that and has never claimed to do that

<comment><USER4> No, more like not turning activists into content status quo followers. But it's problematic to discern the two.

Perhaps a study on how many activists quit when using or not using mindfulness techniques. Though the confounder is huge, people trying this have some sort of a psychological problem most of the time...

<comment><USER3> it doesn't work like that. you should try it for yourself

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The bias clearly show through in the writing.

"Societal problems", "unjust society", " systemic change that might remove it".

Mindfulness is somewhat oversold these days, but his understanding of it seems very simplistic "Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training."

Surprise surprise, he has a book to sell about it. [https://guardianbookshop.com/mcmindfulness-9781912248315.htm...](https://guardianbookshop.com/mcmindfulness-9781912248315.html)

<comment><USER6> Thank you for pointing out the bias and the advertising aspect of this article. I just cancelled my Guardian subscription.

<comment><USER7> Why is it a problem here ? It's clearly indicated at the end and I see books as a natural complement to newspapers. I generally dislike advertisement but this seems to be one of the rare legitimate case.

<comment><USER6> I honestly don't know exactly why it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe because he's railing against capitalism (I can't even count the number of assertions in the article, and very little explanation or evidence is offered) and then procedes to try to sell his book based on what I personally think is a shallow understanding of the subject matter.

In general, complaining that the pop culture version of something is shallow and ineffective compared to a full understanding (which ironically, the author lacks), could be generalized without lack of accuracy. If you did that, it would be hard to find some ideolical construct to point a finger at, which seems to be his main objective.

Pushing your opinion is obviously okay in a newspaper. That's his right. I just won't be paying for it.

I've lately noticed a gradual decrease in the "detached analysis" coming out of The Guardian in favor of more idealist in-group circle-self-satisfaction. This probably feels good for some people but I don't think it's the way forward.

<comment><USER8> As I see it, he does object to narrowing the thinking which is imposed by capitalism as the one _and sole viable_ human society operation mode.

That narrowing is induced by neoliberal ideology, as he thinks. I do too, by the way.

He even introduced me to "disimagination" neologism which I greatly admire, and I am not even done with the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Depression can be created by a hostile environment in individuals with no prior issues.

With a background of ever-increasing pressures on the individual to perform, the author rightfully calls out self-help for being "damage control procedures" only: practices that can help individuals cope with an untenable situation for longer.

The manner of the calling-out is hyperbole and full of opinions but in my opinion there is some truth at the core.

<comment><USER10> I would agree, or at least acknowledge that there was some truth here, if the worker's revolutions that have happened actually made anyone happier or less stressed.

The only thing I've seen in all my travels that made anyone any happier is strong family ties.

<comment><USER11> > the worker's revolutions that have happened

Which ones are you thinking of?

<comment><USER10> Russia, Cambodia and Vietnam are the ones I've personally visited (and I live in Berlin, so plenty of stories of life under communism here). But I've also spoken to people from Cuba and Venezuela.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was in a relationship with a girl that had Borderline Personality Disorder.

This totally rewired my brain and I had to go to therapy. There I was recommended mindfulness meditation.

It really helped me a lot to get rid of racing thoughts and finally get some sleep and general peace of mind.

<comment><USER13> Hey, I'm glad mindfulness helped you. I think my girlfriend might have BPD and i'm not sure what to do, would you mind sharing your story? Can PM if you would prefer.

<comment><USER12> Yes, of course. But how can I contact you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There we go. The authors biased and naive opinion of mindfulness is just that. His opinion. Without any awareness of itself.

What happens when we have nothing to think about but thoughts? We lose ourselves in the content of thought without seeing them for what they really are.

Human says "my thoughts", yet believes himself to be the content of the thoughts, the seemingly very important thoughts that start with "I" and everything that comes after it.

Where are the thoughts appearing in? That's you.

And staying in this perspective on purpose is mindfulness.

And being mindful sets a lot of things straight.

Radical change starts within and everything outside follows after it. And you don't need to do anything for it. In fact, sometimes you need not to.

<comment><USER15> > There we go. The authors biased and naive opinion of

> mindfulness is just that. His opinion.

Except, it's not labeled as opinion. At this point I just consider the entirely of The Guardian an an opinion piece.

<comment><USER4> There are a scarce few facts in there, about origins of the commercial training practice and size of the market, as well as a few companies that benefit from it. That's about it.

Opinion pieces, no matter how biased and disagreeable, are still necessary. Facts do not make one think on their own. I would like more facts in them.

<comment><USER15> > Opinion pieces, no matter how biased and disagreeable, are

> still necessary.

I don't disagree, I just believe they should be very clearly labelled as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is not only ridiculous, it may actually be dangerous journalism because it hints at the fact that this may be a conspiracy by the people 'ruling the world'. And it does that with no real evidence.

Anything has pros and cons, even if they are not obvious at a first glance. Doesn't mean there is an obscure element to it.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't. That's your interpretation reading between the clear lines of text. It is being promoted by high stakes journalism and corporations though. No conspiracy needed, as it brings desired results. The motive is clear and not ulterior. Companies want to keep you happy so that you can be exploited more, and if that falls they want you to internalise blame for your own mental state. If you internalise mindfulness, you might be amenable to internalising other values beneficial to the company.

Article does say that the practice can make odious status quo palatable, removing a source of discontent and thus activism.

There are comparisons between the style McD was sold and mindfulness, but nowhere do I see implication that it is some kind of conspiracy.

Article has an ethical dig at neoliberal values at the end, equating them to magical thinking.

<comment><USER16> > nowhere do I see implication that it is some kind of conspiracy

Except in the title, for starters. And then in your comment, which is built on the assumption that mindfulness benefits corporations. Your whole argument is a stretch at best, but even if I were to concede that companies benefit from this, it is hardly proof that they would actively invest time, money and effort into playing this incredibly long game through which their gains are, at best, indirect. I think you're looking for a conspiracy theory where there is none.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This makes the assumption that our priority is to change/fix things. I'm usually of this mindset too, but there's something to the argument of accepting what is and being calm and present to the moment.

We can't really know which approach is best, because we can't A/B test human life. Who knows... perhaps if everyone were calm and peaceful, much would change without activism.

<comment><USER18> If you want to change/fix things then being calm and present is a useful skill to be able to assess what the problem actually is and how to address it without being being drawn to actions that are not thought through.

Mindfulness does not imply you should not get angry at injustice, for example, but that you might want to observe that emotion arising and understand what you're actually angry about and why before you act. Sometimes you'll catch yourself being manipulated, or you'll realize you're angry about the wrong thing, or lashing out at the wrong person or entity.

As such I think the author would have done much better to focus on why mindfulness is not about inaction, and should not be used as an excuse for inaction. If someone wants to focus only inwards, that's got nothing to do with mindfulness, and in fact if they use mindfulness as an excuse for that, they are failing at being mindful if they're not mindful that it is just an excuse.

Mindfulness certainly can make some people more ready to accept life as it is, but the point then is that suffering for the sake of suffering is pretty irrational - if you can find a way to accept your current situation, then that is good. But accepting it does not mean you can not want to change it. But you should be aware of why, not just blindly fight for something that might not make you or others any happier.

I do think you're right that if everyone were calm and peaceful much would change without activism, but I also don't think mindfulness means no activism. Different activism, perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Counterpoint: mindfulness makes one less prone to the torrent of distracting junk we're being fed and lets us focus on the problem we could act on...

</comment><comment><USER20> Mindfulness is being aware of what goes on in your mind. How can anyone argue that it's a BAD?

How is staying blind to what you're actually thinking good in any way? All it does is make us a reactionary creature, which is exactly what you need to be to burn a whole society to the ground.

Thanks Guardian, this is exactly what we need. More violence, more escalation, more rash decisions. Journalism 2019 - and they ask for your donations.

<comment><USER11> The article is not arguing against being aware of what goes on in your mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know whether to be frightened of the cult-of-activism or just confused about this disorganized rant.

I see fascism hidden in words like this. The whole motivation seems to be that you must feel rage about anyone and anything which disagrees with your social ideals and any other reaction is unacceptable.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Other sources of cultural malaise are not discussed. The only mention of the > word "capitalist" in Kabat-Zinn's book Coming to Our Senses: Healing > Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness occurs in an anecdote about a > stressed investor who says: "We all suffer a kind of ADD."

So the author is upset that Kabat-Zinn omitted to name "capitalism" specifically and railing against its evils in a self-help book?

One might as well write an article jumping all over CBT: that by helping patients recognise Automatic Negative Thoughts and breaking the loop, psychologists are conspiring to keep society in the evil grip of capitalism.

This whole thing comes across as a strawman argument.

<comment><USER4> CBT and MCBT (which uses mindfulness), has control and "being able to progress" as the goal, not just changing emotional state consciously, which the pure mindfulness as taught can devolve into. (A crutch instead of a fix.)

Acceptance of the present should not mean letting it stay the same forever. It's more "what's done is done". MCBT still has you focus on repeated occasions when you do this, and changing them h this might be by changing yourself but not necessarily the only way you can approach it.

A sane therapist will tell you if the situation you're in is not conducive to therapy.

Acceptance is a tool. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, which is why CBT and MCBT have more tools than mindfulness which is taught in a tiny version of ACT.

<comment><USER22> > Acceptance of the present should not mean letting it stay the same forever. > It's more "what's done is done".

I'm not sure how mindfulness could possibly be construed to intend letting things stay the same forever. Impermanence is one of the pillars of Buddhist thought and mindfulness directly addresses it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I enjoyed the article. I see mindfulness being a truly helpful tool, but I can also see it as being a bludgeon to numb people to the status quo. The closest thing that I can think of that is similar is physical exercise. Physical exercise is legitimately helpful for maintaining a healthy life for nearly all (if not all) human beings, but there is definitely an industry around getting people to buy things to get them into shape with various probabilities of success. Similar to the author's assertion about physical exercise, there are credible factors that affect physical health outside of just physical exercise such as diet/nutrition and physical/mental stress. Dealing with these other issues that affect physical health is more difficult and particularly when food-producing industries have a vested interest in getting people to eat more, and employers have a vested interest in getting the most out of their employees.

For what it is worth, The Guardian's "the long read" section has the following in the subtitle, "The long read In-depth reporting, essays and profiles" [0]. I think they could stand to add a bit more guidance / messaging to indicate that this piece is separate from their reporting without harming their brand or appearing to insinuate some position over another.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long- read](https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read)

<comment><USER21> Mindfulness walks you away from living on autopilot and having your thoughts driven by emotion. If it "numbs" you, I'm not sure what you're doing but it isn't anywhere near awareness.

People seem to really be addicted to this emotionally driven autopilot existence and seem over and over to insist that if you aren't being driven by emotion you're incapable of doing good. It seems to be the next wave of the attempt to reject the – what I would call – first order rationalism which builds its understanding of the world out of what easily fits into straightforward models and rejects or handwaves the existence of everything else.

\--

Anything remotely beneficial (any many things that aren't) will have a whole herd of self-help industrialists trying to sell it to you, they're better off ignored. Their presence really has no signal as to the legitimacy to what they're selling.

<comment><USER23> Thank you for replying 'colechristensen.

The example that I would give is how someone might view homelessness in San Francisco, the first time, the next few times, and then subsequent n times.

The first time a person can truly be utter shock. The next few times might remain uncomfortable, but less of a shock. In the subsequent n times, this person might stop seeing homelessness altogether except for the more gratuitous moments.

I am refining my thoughts here, and the part I see at issue is not mindfulness as a whole, but its partial or selective application. The author's point is that the parts of mindfulness industry and parts of the economy as a whole benefit from the spread and application of the self-regulation/desensitization of mindfulness and it is in their interest to stop any sort of follow through action that would disrupt the status quo.

By stopping mindfulness at self-regulation and not following through with action, an outside observer would be hard pressed to find the difference between someone practicing this much mindfulness and someone who is just apathetic. I think this is where the calls to emotion that the author makes, and my use of the word "numb" comes in: it is question posed by someone else asking, "Do you not care?" In this way, I think the author is trying to argue that some of parts of this mindfulness industry is effectively selling mass- produced apathy and mass-produced self-regulation/compliance. To take this even farther, I think it would be possible to argue that this combination of desensitization and no-follow-through is basically learned helplessness [0].

To be completely honest with you, after writing all this out, I think the author could have made this point more clear.

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

<comment><USER21> What you are describing just is not mindfulness as I have seen it described or taught anywhere.

Mindfulness and learned helplessness are diametric opposites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I directly know "mindfulness" people and some TM people. They all seem to doing roughly the same thing: avoiding thoughts, or pushing thoughts out of their focus/ignoring thoughts that arise.

My bystander observation is they're all developing memory problems. Obviously mentally replaying and analyzing memories strenghtens retention and these people avoid doing it. It's idiotic.

<comment><USER25> I feel there's a subtle difference between 'pushing thoughts out' or 'ignoring' them, and 'observing them (impassively)', which is what I've been taught when it comes to mindfulness/meditation/zen.

When I meditate, my impression is not that I avoid or push away thoughts. Rather, it's as if I observe them from a distance, and inspect them, smell them, turn them over, etc.

In many cases, true, these thoughts sort of dissolve of 'disappear'. But in other cases they merely change a bit in quality, or they remain with some context added.

Generally speaking it's not so much about avoiding, replaying, or analyzing memories (and strengthening retention), as it is about developing and practicing discernment as to _what_ thoughts are worth replaying, analyzing or avoiding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The article literally starts with this: "It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism..."

For a more meaningful discussion of mindfulness, I recommend the "Mind The Mindfulness Hype" episode of The Psychology Podcast [1] . They dig into what the scientific method has to say to mindfulness, what studies have been made and what is missing, and what benefits can be realistically expected. And what's over the top hype.

[1] [https://www.scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/mind-the- mindfulne...](https://www.scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/mind-the-mindfulness- hype-with-david-vago/)

<comment><USER27> Sam Harris regularly claims that it reduces the half life of emotions such as rage.

I personally find that a 'deterministic' view of life achieves that for me.

For whatever reason when I meditate I can only leverage it as a relaxation tool, as opposed to witnessing my thoughts occur, which I think is somewhat 'mindfulness'.

<comment><USER28> I've struggled to get very much out of mindfulness (primarily via Sam Harris) but this 'half-life of an emotion' thing is one of the bits that has worked.

The best example I've experienced was being in an argument with my wife about something or other that had gotten heated to the point I was getting angry. But then I got a phone call from someone at one of my clients - I immediately had to be a different person for that call. Once it had finished I came back to my wife and felt like I entirely had the _choice_ as to whether I would be angry again. I was, in fact, almost certainly treading an automatic path down which I _would have_ made myself angry to continue from where we were. Instead, the obviousness of this was so apparent that I didn't - because it suddenly felt artificial.

<comment><USER22> What Sam Harris teaches in his meditation app is not 'mindfulness' as commonly understood, i.e. in the vein of Vipassana or even MBSR. It's more like his own lite version of Dzogchen practices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> his arguments doesn't make sense. Using this way of thinking psychoteraphy is bad, because you are not fighting the system that damaged you. Of course he is using Zizek as authority and he treats his word of gospel, I think he lacks critical thinking that he advocates

</comment><comment><USER15> Just the first statement says alot about the writer:

> It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the

> ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful

> meditation may be the enemy of activism.

Every interaction I've had with mindfulness so far hasn't been that it was "sold", it was just simply offered. It's not an organized religion or ideology, from what I've seen there doesn't appear to be a hidden agenda. I've personally found it quite interesting to reflect on the subject of mindfulness and my (current) conclusions I have regarding how to live my life - there's a lot of overlap.

It's not something that exists to "help us cope with the ravages of capitalism". Political ideology aside, it's simply there to help you think and act more freely by understanding your thinking and acting. My friend who studies mindfulness says (para-quoting): "it's about understanding your actions and why you take them, it's about separating yourself from your immediate reality". I think most people could potentially benefit from such an idea. In general I believe people should take more time to "do nothing" and reflect.

As for being "the enemy of activism", if clear thinking is the enemy of activism, I think this says more about the current state of activism than it does about mindfulness. In general, I believe we shouldn't be striving to produce a society who dedicate their lives to activism. It's perfectly okay to be an activist, but there has to be more - life is short after all.

<comment><USER30> _> Every interaction I've had with mindfulness so far hasn't been that it was "sold"_

In defense of the author, it isn't really hard to come to the conlusion that mindfulness is mostly an attempt to sell stuff: Open the search engine of your choice, type in "mindfulness" and look at the results. Look at any pop- psychology, lifestyle or fashion magazine, and be greeted with advertorials for "calm" or similar apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It should be pointed out that mindfulness is one of many practices in various esoteric belief systems (typically with a view to complete self-realization) and when taken out of context and practiced alone it can have benefits (depending upon the individual) but is much more powerful when combined with all the practices of a belief system (Buddhism, Taoism, Bon etc).

</comment><comment><USER32> I think the author doesn't understand mindfulness. Achieving mindfulness can only help you to know what exactly you want to change and what you can change.

It seems to me that the author favors radical change, either in general or he assumes everybody knows what exactly must be changed and how. Which I doubt.

"Capitalism" has spared the Western world increasingly more suffering, so there is no point in "going back" anywhere.

While I do favor corrections in terms of wealth distribution, I'd be hesitant to implement any unproven radical changes.

I fail to see why mindfulness meditation is any obstacle to this.

<comment><USER33> > "Capitalism" has spared the Western world increasingly more suffering

"Spared" implies that there's a clearly worse and inevitable alternative. Unless we shake off this ingrained cold-war mentality no other alternatives than status-quo will seem plausible.

<comment><USER20> Who is disputing that there are clearly worse alternatives? Pick almost any part of history.

You're talking about alternatives to the status-quo. Sure, there's lots to be improved, that's not what the disagreement is. The disagreement is whether to have a calm conversations and plan for a better future, or - like the Guardian suggests - burning it all to the ground because capitalism = bad.

<comment><USER33> > Who is disputing that there are clearly worse alternatives?

No one, and neither do I. That's why I added inevitable. Because the problem is the false dichotomy of Capitalism or Stalinism. It's obvious that the people calling for radical change are not even close to supporting Stalinism. But for some reason this is always assumed when just criticism towards Capitalism is presented.

> The disagreement is whether to have a calm conversations and plan for a > better future

Moderates never ever find a "good" time for true change. It should always be delayed and slowed down until it eventually evaporates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Be mindful of the source of this - the quality of content coming out of The Guardian has slipped since its recent change of editorial - it is much more content with click-bait and sensationalism than with anything more substantial.

From the opening line this seems to be coming across as little more than a virtue signalling piece for anti-Capitalists, and progresses into tired old tropes about Western consumerism.

</comment><comment><USER34> As soon as I read "meditation may be the enemy of activism" the image of the Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức burning himself to death in 1963 popped up in my mind.

From Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c))

"Đức calmly sat down in the traditional Buddhist meditative lotus position on the cushion. A colleague emptied the contents of the petrol container over Đức's head. Đức rotated a string of wooden prayer beads and recited the words Nam mô A Di Đà Phật ("Homage to Amitābha Buddha") before striking a match and dropping it on himself."

"Photographs of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm government. John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Đức on fire, "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.""

<comment><USER4> Buddhism is not just meditation. It is a big ethical system.

By stripping ethics from it you would stop all its activism.

<comment><USER35> Indeed. But a premise of Buddhism is that the ethics came about as the result of meditation.

<comment><USER36> This is not the premise of Buddhism.

Here is a good starting point for understanding what is: [http://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN074.pdf](http://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN074.pdf)

<comment><USER35> I didn't say it is "the" premise of Buddhism. I said it is a premise of Buddhism.

It is.

The story of Shakyamuni Buddha achieving enlightenment after 49 days of meditation under the Bodhi tree is pretty well known. There, of course, are a lot more antecedents to contemporary Buddhist thought and ethics than that one incident, but it's fair to say it's a pretty core part of the historical tradition, and precedes essentially everything that came after.

For context in this discussion, I am a practicing Zen Buddhist.

<comment><USER36> Ethics affect the seeds you plant. If your seeds are bad you will not even have the opportunity to learn meditation.

Meditation is for going beyond all that.

> I am a practicing Zen Buddhist

Who?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Zizek may say this is late capitalism of the west.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article has obviously nothing to do with mindfulness and is a cheap attack on capitalism from the growing socialist revolution propaganda machine.

Anyone who actually knows what mindfulness is can immediately see that they're building the biggest strawman ever with the sole purpose of forcing anti capitalist agenda down our throats.

Remember this: It used to be that news were facts and you formulated an opinion on them. Now the news is opinion and you're trying to figure out what the facts were.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is an interesting reversion to form for the Guardian. Religion as the opiate of the masses is straight from Marx.

<comment><USER39> As if it hasn't long time ago.

<comment><USER38> Oh, of course. But this one is particular is a classic Marxist trope, it's interesting to see it popping its head up in a new context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> From an outsider's perspective, it just seems like a way to replicate daily prayers.

I'll stick with the Rosary thanks.

<comment><USER41> The rosary is great for contemplative prayer [0], but does your mind ever wander from what you 'should' be thinking about to various mundane things (last weekend's sporting events, your car needs an oil change, what to make for dinner)?

One part of mindfulness meditation is deliberate practice at directed focus, and that practice improves your ability to think about what you want to think about rather than what your mind wanders to. There's another common practice where you actually intentionally practice allowing your mind to wander, and consciously choose to dismiss those thoughts.

I see mindfulness meditation as orthogonal to actual prayer, a little axe- sharpening that improves not only my prayer life but my general thought processes as well. If I only have time for one and not the other, obviously prayer is more important.

[0] For people who don't know, the Rosary is a series of meditations on different aspects of the lives of Jesus and Mary and the ministry of Jesus, in the form of an easily-memorized sequence of rote prayers. The rote nature of the prayers allows the person saying the rosary to use the brain's fuzzy focus to think about each aspect in turn. In total it consists of the Apostle's Creed, 6 "Our Father"s, 53 "Hail Mary"s, 6 "Glory Be"s, and one "Hail Holy Queen", taking between 10 minutes (if you're in a rush) and 20 minutes (if you're sleepy).

<comment><USER40> Many thanks, very interesting reading</comment></comment></comment>


Millionaire buries $5M treasure in the mountains - <AUTHOR> https://www.science101.com/eccentric-millionaire-buries-treasure-incredible-discovery-2/ <comment><USER2> there gold in them hills</comment>


Male Answer Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://clicks.robertgenn.com/male-answer.php

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Much of the "research" on this is armchair theorizing, the only paper I was able to find (easily) was this: [https://segue.southwestern.edu/userfiles/PSY3320301-f06/male...](https://segue.southwestern.edu/userfiles/PSY3320301-f06/male%20answer%20syndrome%20article.doc). It states

"Perhaps most importantly, our results suggest that "Male Answer Syndrome" might be more appropriately referred to as "Masculine Answer Syndrome," as gender-role appears to be a stronger predictor of the behavior than does biological sex."

Many comments can be on the procedure followed on this paper. For example, the question they use, "Why is the sky blue", is scientific. It may be just that men (in general) are more interested in such scientific questions than women. They should have used either neutral questions, or some other female-biased ones. They should have calibrated scientific aptitude for their subjects.

</comment><comment><USER3> See also the term "mansplain."

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mansplain>

</comment><comment><USER4> It has often bothered me that many people will simply ignore you or pretend not to hear you when they don't know the answer to a question rather than say "I don't know."

</comment><comment><USER5> Answering a question helps me to think about a problem, so I tend to prefix answers to questions I don't know the answer to with "I don't know, but.." and then I make an intelligent guess.

</comment><comment><USER6> _"Why Sap green?"_

What the he'll does that even mean?

<comment><USER7> I would guess that since it is artists talking that she was asking why he chose "Sap green" for a particular portion of a piece of art he made as opposed to another color.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> See also concept of "rapport talk" vs "report talk".

It's often crucial to understand which mode you and others are in.

Like in vim.</comment>


Proterra, an electric bus that can travel farther than a typical city bus - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051475/meet-the-electric-bus-that-could-push-every-other-polluting-bus-off-the-road?partner=hackernews <comment><USER2> There are other electric buses. Volvo, for example, has a concept bus going through tests on line 55 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Here's an article, alas in Swedish, about the bus - [http://www.goteborgelectricity.se/node/19499/om- elbussen](http://www.goteborgelectricity.se/node/19499/om-elbussen) .

Some highlights: electric motor using lithium-ion batteries and regenerative braking; charged from the power grid at the terminal stations; charging take about 6 minutes, which is more than enough for the entire route; and wi-fi and power outlets onboard.

Do note that it's only a 10 km route. The spec page at [http://www.goteborgelectricity.se/sites/default/files/conten...](http://www.goteborgelectricity.se/sites/default/files/content/PDF/volvo_electric_concept_bus_se.pdf) says that the charge time is 6 min/10km. The bus mentioned at fastcoexist appears to be designed for a full-day charge for the entire route, rather than more frequent quick charges during the day.

<comment><USER3> > The bus mentioned at fastcoexist appears to be designed for a full-day > charge for the entire route, rather than more frequent quick charges during > the day.

Which is not that practical because it has to carry all that extra battery weight. There are other american electric bus companies that are cheaper and better than this.

Future eBUSes have to be route configurable, this way it'll be lighter and BMS would be much simpler.

<comment><USER2> I think that's a good point.

Though isn't that part of a more complex calculation? Gothenburg already has an electric tram service, which uses a pantograph to connect to overhead power lines. They already have the staff with experience similar to what's needed for an electric bus which charges up at the end-points.

But in a city which doesn't have that infrastructure or experience, or which may have difficulties in getting the rights to install new power systems at the stopping points, it may be more cost effective to use a bus that can be in service for a longer time before recharging.

<comment><USER3> > Though isn't that part of a more complex calculation? It is, but it's not a > big problem. The vehicle/bus will have to be serviced every N Kms, at this > point, the garage will know either to put a bigger battery in it or to put a > smaller one -- this decision would be generated from a sophisticated > algorithm which crunches all the measurement data taken from that route, and > measuring these KPI nowadays are proven to be cheap.

Second thing. In the future when people become more aware/educated about carbon footprint and pollution this wouldn't be a problem. And that future is more near than ever, look at the VW scandal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: The MySpace Redesign - <AUTHOR>

I just don't feel much of a change in experience here.  You look at the userpage themes, the new front-page, and really, what's new?  Take a step back and I see overuse of the gradient, a bigger ad area, and that's really about it.<p>What are your thoughts?  Combined with just not feeling excited about this (which even if I hate the company, I'm always hoping to be thrilled about a change in design and new user experiences), and seeing lazy execution, I call "failboat" on this. <comment><USER2> Not much new there, really. Anyways, I only use MySpace to check out new bands or set up gigs with them. None of my friends use MySpace anymore. Facebook definitely won that race, it's just easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> its cleaner. thats about it.</comment>


Array.js: A better array for the browser and Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MatthewMueller/array <comment><USER2> There's no doubt this is a nice little library. There's also no doubt that I won't use it. Why? Because all the neat stuff in this library is available with Underscore, and Underscore works with plain vanilla arrays.

It might be possible for a library like this to really catch on so much that a) other people use it, and b) even when they don't you get so much power you don't mind typing array(someOtherRealArray) all the time. JodaTime is like that.

But the thing that JodaTime has that Array.js doesn't is an enemy. JodaTime hates the built in Date, Calendar, etc classes in the JDK. It hates them and replaces them with extreme prejudice, and anyone forced to work with those APIs does not weep.

Array.js does not have an enemy, it has a friend it wants to help be a little better. It's a nice library, a helpful library. And that's why it will soon be forgotten, I'm afraid.

<comment><USER3> (disclosure, I work on Underscore)

I think this is a pretty neat approach. It would be fun to play around with a version of Underscore that implemented a version of the idea. I make take a crack at it...

<comment><USER2> Creating a new datatype would pretty seriously go against Underscore's implicit philosophy of being a set of functions you bring to bear on ordinary data structures. In other words, you can try, but I suspect your pull request be voted down fairly decisively.

EDIT: apparently you are the creator of Underscore. Which makes me feel sort of silly for saying at least the second part. I think the first part stands, however.

<comment><USER3> Probably, but I'm thinking that it might be an approach worth taking a look at as an alternative to the current:

        _.chain(array).map(func).filter(func).reduce(func).value()

Taking a look at returning an array-like (or object-like, depending on what you pass in), for that same use case:

        _(array).map(func).filter(func).reduce(func)

... could be nice. The devil's in the details of interoperability with other libraries, as other folks note in this thread.

<comment><USER2> So in order to save one call to chain() you'd use a non-standard object over a native array? What would underscore methods return, then? Perhaps it could do type detection and return what it gets, but then you have the issue that the executing code needs to be aware of that too - which means a type check at the caller before invoking the underscore expression. Needless to say, I think that's a lot of added complexity for not a lot of benefit.

Heck, if you really wanted to adapt something from Array.js you could do the naive (but I think correct) thing which is to add a flag to all underscore methods indicating whether or not the method should return an "Underscored" object or the basic data type. This could even be an initialization parameter for Underscore.

What does this buy you? I can only think of two things. First is they get a more object-oriented feel to their code.

        var foo = _.filter([1,2,3], func, true);
        // later on...
        foo.filter(func2);

I guess the first question I have is, what does line 3 do? Are we mutating foo? Or returning something new? In which case we've managed to save precisely one character

         _.filter(foo, func2);

Even worse, we're saving the wrong character. One undersung quality of having one global object per major library is that, in the code, you get a _big_ contextual clue about what's going on from the way it's invoked. Contrast these two lines:

        foo.filter(func2);
        _.filter(foo, func2);

Try to imagine that you're encountering these lines deep in the bowels of the code. Which one is easier to understand?

The second thing you get is a (what I think is) esoteric benefit of being able to "ship" underscore functionality with the data to far away places. This is only an issue in full require()-controlled programs where there might be some communication between closures, and one side wants to use underscore in that context, but not add a dependency. Personally, I think being able to do that is just asking for trouble, as, again, your calling code maintainers are going to be totally befuddled by running into objects doing things that no other objects in that side are doing - or worse, doing something that looks familiar, but isn't.

<comment><USER4> You're saving at least two characters there ;)

I think sensible semantic naming still helps in this circumstance.

        yummyBars = candyBars.filter(function(bar){ return bar.yummy; });

makes it clearer that the thing you're getting back is like the thing you had previously.

One place this could be useful is in Backbone.Collection where the array- returning mixins from underscore all hand back bare arrays, on which devs must then switch to _ prefixed functions (although you're right that this does keep a clear conceptual separation between collections and other arrays).

<comment><USER2> I get a warm and fuzzy when I _know_ what that method does, that it's not some random filter that could mean something totally different. (And yes, this does mean that my code is not very object oriented at all!)

<comment><USER4> That's okay! Use the right tool in the right place. And agreed, I like knowing where a function comes from.

I'm not totally convinced by the move to 100% functionalist constructs (there are some places where OO is nice), but it's a nice stylistic practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think having events and query is overkill and is no longer an array. You are essentially making a database at this point but trying to pass it off as a basic array to replace the lightweight builtin Array. I would even shy away from calling it array since it really does very opinionated things.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently using both Knockout observable arrays [1] and Underscore array helpers [2] in a project, and the Array.js library looks like it mashes both of these concepts together quite nicely.

[1] <http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/observableArrays.html>

[2] <http://underscorejs.org/#arrays>

</comment><comment><USER7> My first thought was "overriding the default Array object is dumb". But it turns out Array.js doesn't overwrite JavaScript's built-in Array objects. Instead it's an array-esque Object:

        var arr = array([1, 2, 3, 4]);   // An Array.js "array"
        var arr2 = [];  // A real JavaScript array

It's definitely too heavy for most array use cases. Sometimes all you need is a simple list.

</comment><comment><USER8> Having worked on a similar project for clojurescript (1), I've found that the main challenge to using this "array spoofing" technique widely is interop with other libraries. For example, angular.js internally has inconsistent ways of validating an object is an array, sometimes bottoming out in Object.toString and other times instanceof Array. Many libraries behave similarly, and so array.js objects will not behave as expected if handed off.

On the other hand, interop with D3.js has been ideal as it generally assumes that any non function parameter is an array, so there I"ve had more success and would expect array.js to similarly work well.

(1) <https://github.com/dribnet/strokes>

</comment><comment><USER9> Why do they use strings as function using to-function (<https://github.com/component/to-function>). Like .select("age>10").map("adress.streetname");

While to-function is cool and your code is shorter and more readable. You must be aware that you miss

\- static code analysis such as synax checking \- compile time optimizations (because the AST is missing) \- static code analysis tools \- code coverage checking tools

I would recommend using real functions, or using clojurescript or coffeescript in order to get shorter code.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is really nice, and useful, I would love to see more like this, but wonder if there isn't some room to join forces between the best JS libraries out there and try to create a common utility belt compilation (e.g. work to avoid conflicts, and namespace collisions, joint testing, shared convention and merge efforts on similar things) e.g. I would love to have the JavaScript equivalent of Apache commons / Guava (previously Google collections).

I mean, if there is one thing I do like about Java (when I can't use Scala for some reason), is those utility belt libraries (and JodaTime of course). Whenever I hit a wall trying to do something in plain old Java, Guava / Apache Commons seems to read my mind and have a data structure, or a utility to the rescue.

Do you think it's a good thing to strive for? Do you see it happening?

<comment><USER11> if you look at the code, it's based on TJ Holowaychuk's component: <https://github.com/component/component>. there's i believe 600 "utilities" you can pick and choose from: <https://github.com/component/component/wiki/Components>. since it's CommonJS, you won't have any namespace collisions or conflicts.

i don't know how this relates to Apache commons, JodaTime, or Guava however, but i just wanted to add a little context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For reference: [https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/reference#MVCArray)

Pretty much the same functionality, done three years ago.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. Though I wouldn't want to include the entire Google Maps API just to get a nice array helper class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a nice little library but it looks like the meat of it is in Enumerable which is pretty nice but it's really slow when working with larger arrays.

If you don't need the events then lo_dash/underscore is probably the better tool.

<comment><USER14> ... and you dont want something fired everytime you map().filter().reject().map().filter().some()... which might lead to nothing but bad performances ,especially on huge collections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is that a Schwartzian transform hiding in the sample code?

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been working on something that does something like this for 2 years ... it's a busy field: <https://github.com/kristopolous/db.js>

lines like this:

       DB()
        .insert(what)
        .find( DB(".contentDetails.regionRestriction.blocked.indexOf('US') > -1") )
        .select('id')
        .each(Timeline.remove);

</comment><comment><USER17> Better? If its using object properties then beware there is a very significant performance hit looping over object properties vs looping through a native array. Array looping is 5x faster in V8 trunk with a simple 10 element benchmark.

</comment><comment><USER18> I look at this and think, again, that JS really needs a way to override attribute and indexing operations, like Python's __getitem__ and __getattr__.

There's not many things I miss after switching to CoffeeScript from Python, but this is one of them.

<comment><USER18> Also, I really dislike the custom string parsing implied by things like: .select('age > 20').

This is a place where CoffeeScript or LiveScript really shine. In LiveScript it would look like:

users.select (.age > 20)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> looks nice, but why doesn't it just extend the core array type? (I mean with a "class", not by adding things to Array.prototype). That way things like Array.isArray() still work. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER20> This is also similar to the Backbone.js Collections type which inherits functional-programming methods from Underscore.

The main difference seems to be that Backbone expects objects as members of the collection.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think there are more use cases for similar tool but based on _Set_ instead of an Array. Otherwise worth noting

</comment><comment><USER22> I was just thinking yesterday that something like this would make my life so much easier. You read my mind!</comment>


Castor: A browser for the small internet (Gemini, Gopher, Finger) - <AUTHOR> https://sr.ht/~julienxx/Castor/ <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone curious, because Gemini is relatively new and kind of has flown under the radar:

 _### 1.1 What is Gemini?

Gemini is a new application-level internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between files.

Gemini is intended to be simple, but not necessarily as simple as possible. Instead, the design strives to maximise its "power to weight ratio", while keeping its weight within "acceptable" limits. Gemini is also intended to be very privacy conscious.

You may think of Gemini as "the web, stripped right back to its essence" or as "Gopher, souped up and modernised a little", depending upon your perspective._

[https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.txt](https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.txt)

Gopher and finger should be obvious, but just in case:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_\(protocol\))

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

<comment><USER2> I was delighted when I saw that Gemini is maintained by someone on SDF (named Solderpunk, never heard of him before). This seems as good a time as any to plug [https://sdf.org](https://sdf.org), a great little community which has the feel of a 90s BBS that never went offline.

<comment><AUTHOR> The site isn't at www.sdf.org for the record, it's just at sdf.org. There's a big difference in what you'll find!

<comment><USER3> I'm getting redirected from www.sdf.org to sdf.org, but now I'm curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try this, which should bring you to MetaArray stuff:

[https://www.sdf.org/](https://www.sdf.org/)

(It's what was originally linked to.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The small Internet" is a really important thing. Broadband access is not nearly as ubiquitous outside major cities as people believe. People in rural areas may have slow and unreliable (and probably expensive at the same time) connections and retro hardware.

I've read about children climbing up old towers and waiting hours (!) for the school website to load so they can access their homework during the quarantine days. I bet the same information could be delivered in seconds if that was a Gemini or a Gopher page rather than a "modern" web page bloated with JavaScript frameworks and everything.

I would even suggest discussing an idea of making maintaining a good lo-fi (e.g. Gemini/Gopher or pure HTML) site mandatory for organizations of certain kinds, the same way having wheelchair ramps and proper fire safety equipment is required.

<comment><USER5> I think this is the wrong solution.

We need strong whitelist controls in all of the browsers. Because when you connect to a website, you have no idea if it's going to start downloading 30 MB worth of images and 40 Javascript requests.

It's gone completely out of control. I say this as a web dev on a rural connection. Not only is it slow, I PAY for this, bandwidth is limited. For some lazy dev who doesn't compress their images, and it downloads without me noticing, I pay actual money for that.

If browser preferences has options for auto disabling Javascript on a webpage that initiated X amount of outbound connections, or auto stops when there are 30 img requests on page load, I should be in control of not allowing that. I should be in control of setting that threshold for different request types.

We don't need a second, lightweight web. We need to fix our tooling at the client level.

<comment><USER4> > If browser preferences has options for auto disabling Javascript on a > webpage that initiated X amount of outbound connections, or auto stops when > there are 30 img requests on page load, I should be in control of not > allowing that. I should be in control of setting that threshold for > different request types.

I doubt this is hard to implement. Somebody can build a Firefox/Chromium fork (or even an extension perhaps?) implementing this functionality and they don't have to be a real genius. Once I needed that for some time I just used a local proxy to cache and limit what is downloaded.

The only problem is the actual web sites are not designed with the fact somebody might want to control them this way in mind and can easily happen to be unusable unless you let them download a ton of stuff.

I doubt the problem can be solved without some sort of enforcement by a major power (Google, governments or whatever). At the same time trying to enforce anything on the existing web doesn't seem making much sense to me.

<comment><USER5> I agree, it's not difficult to implement.

For instance, in Apple Mail, there is a setting that is labeled: Prompt me to skip messages over X MB. I bet almost nobody ever sets this up. But I do. I get a prompt asking me if I want to download 20MB of attachments. It also lets me skip downloading remote content in messages, but I can override and allow it with a click of a button.

If browsers had similar advanced options, that users needed to manually enable, then those users would understand what's happening when a website isn't working because of the content blocking.

There are lots of possible UI implementations. A button that says: X amount of things were blocked, would you like to reload the page and disable blocking? Or replace img tags (etc) with placeholder buttons, and click the placeholder to initiate the http request.

Safari has recently done some great UI for controlling which websites have access to autoplay. I would like to see this expanded, where I can choose to either blacklist or whitelist Javascript, or images and videos over X MB.

I don't think it needs enforcement, I mean, you can't control anything on the client end already. We already have APIs to check if cookies etc are enabled. We could expand this to check for other fine grain controls, like are images enabled. Or just use the noscript tag, which devs should be doing anyways but usually don't.

Anyways. For those on slow connections... this problem will only get worse over time. Something will eventually need to be done about it, otherwise like 20% of the connections are going to get left behind unable to even use the web.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that sites fail without their JS. Oftentimes even if that JS is purely decorative and shouldnt be required for a site to function. I block all known google domains on my laptop and as a result am cut off from a great many sites (blocks ads and captchas). I also use the dillo browser and disable css, js, and images. It is an unusable mess. Gopher and gemini provide a content first approach that will not work for everything and is in no way going to _replace_ the web. But is really great for certain types of content/discourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've made my own Gopher client[0] some time ago, but TBH after the novelty of making it, eventually i abandoned it because i couldn't find anything interesting in there. The most interesting stuff were either gateways from the web or blogs which also had a web version.

On the other hand it was fun making it with how ridiculously simple the Gopher protocol is. Sadly it seems that "Gemini" requires TLS that kills that simplicity - Gopher can implemented by anyone, TLS... i think it is a bit harder.

[0] [http://runtimeterror.com/tools/gopher/](http://runtimeterror.com/tools/gopher/)

<comment><USER8> Gemini allows clients to function without TLS, but it limits their access/functionality.

I'd be very interested in seeing an attempt at a minimal, portable standalone implementation of TLS suitable for Gemini's needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> BearSSL is pretty tiny, though I haven't looked at it beyond a glance at the homepage after a friend linked it. Is it what you had in mind?

[https://bearssl.org/](https://bearssl.org/)

<comment><USER8> Could be promising. I'll do some reading. Thanks, kick!

<comment><AUTHOR> Always happy to share what I know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi there, I'm the maintainer of Castor, if you have questions feel free to ask! I also make a ncurses command line client Asuka [https://git.sr.ht/~julienxx/asuka](https://git.sr.ht/~julienxx/asuka)

<comment><USER10> I've written up some notes as I went on running Castor on macOS (which I'm guessing was not a target platform) in case anyone finds it useful or you need to point people to such: [https://tcp.rip/text/misc/install- castor.txt.html](https://tcp.rip/text/misc/install-castor.txt.html)

The settings used by `install` break on macOS, btw, where it's (annoyingly) -d instead of -D to create directories, so I've just been running it directly from the releases folder for now.

I am not used to using GTK on macOS but the performance is not good, but it does run and loads pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Gemini protocol is cool. I've been thinking about writing an implementation of it, and perhaps eventually a *.sr.ht frontend for it. I think the browsers have a lot of work to do before they're pleasant to use, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> There are still a few Gopher and Finger services on the Internet.

* Gopher: [https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A70+gopher](https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A70+gopher)

* Finger: [https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=product%3Afingerd](https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=product%3Afingerd)

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot of Gopher ones! Reports of the death of Gopher have been (mostly) exaggerated; it's probably got more users now than it did at its peak.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't that make this it's peak?

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's got a smaller percentage of on-line users on it, is it really peaking?

<comment><USER13> Good point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In case people want to build this on Ubuntu, I needed the following

       apt install build-essential rustc cargo libgtk-3-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libssl-dev

Gemini sites load so fast, it's a little crazy. I played around with Gopher a bit, but mostly through browser add-ons and proxies. A native text-only browser is very fast.

</comment><comment><USER14> Recent discussion of Gemini: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424)

</comment><comment><USER15> known servers: [https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/serve...](https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/)

spec: [https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/...](https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/spec- spec.txt)

docs: [https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/](https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/)

software: [https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/softw...](https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/software/)

test ur gemini client: [https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.conman.org/test/torture...](https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemini.conman.org/test/torture/)

using the protocol ...

known servers

       printf 'gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/\r\n' |openssl s_client -connect gemini.circumlunar.space:1965 -ign_eof

spec

       printf 'gemini.circumlunar.space/spec/spec-spec.txt\r\n'|socat - ssl:gemini.circumlunar.space:1965

docs

       echo -e '/docs\r\n' |socat - ssl:gemini.circumlunar.space:1965

software

       echo -e '/software\r\n'|socat - ssl:gemini.circumlunar.space:1965

protocol allows for virtual hosting but does not (need to) use sni

       printf '/software/\r\n' |openssl s_client -connect 22.214.171.124:1965  -servername gemini.circumlunar.space -ign_eof

       printf 'gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/software/\r\n' |openssl s_client -connect 220.127.116.11:1965 -ign_eof

</comment><comment><USER16> If you prefer a terminal-based browser, there is also ncgopher at [https://github.com/jansc/ncgopher](https://github.com/jansc/ncgopher). Despite its name, it also has support for gemini browsing, though it still is work in progress. That said, Castor is great!

Disclaimer: I'm the author of ncgopher.

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought this was using Motif based on the screenshots. Man, imagine how much lighter it could be if it was actually using the motif toolkit

<comment><USER18> I thought so too. Are they running Gtk on mvwm?

<comment><USER9> It's GTK on FVWM

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I maintain a .plan file and finger server at email@example.com / finger://email@example.com/ if you want to try something out.

<comment><USER19> I need to get my NodeMCU weather station back online so I can feed it to my .plan file and run fingerd again.

Back in the 90s, it was good fun seeing all the stuff people put out on finger. Aside from the link someone else posted to Shodan, is there a list of finger servers anywhere?

<comment><USER6> The author of Castor hosts an awesome finger server. Try finter://typed- hole.org

(fingering the main host will give you a list of quirky options, including how to get the current server cpu temperature)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> These technologies could be used to create a valuable network of low- distraction reference resources. They might dodge the Eternal September problem simply due to the the high barrier to entry and win mindshare among sophisticated users by delivering real value.

This would require a community focus on tooling and content.

First, common tools must support Gopher/Gemini output:

* Pandoc * Template engines like Jinja and Mustache * Static site generators like Hugo, Gatsby & Jekyll * Webservers like Apache and Caddy

Then those tools can be used to mirror content like:

* Wikipedia * ReadTheDocs * Docsets (eg for Dash) * HackerNews, Lobste.rs, Reddit? * RFC archives * Github/Gitlab repo READMEs

Suddenly you could spend your whole day in pure-text mode and never open a browser that does enough twitter to kill your flow.

<comment><USER6> There is currently a partial lobste.rs mirror hosted at typed-hole.org over gemini (as well as gopher). Gopher also has gopherpedia which mirrors wikipedia (many clients for gemini also support gopher). While I dont think mirroring should be the end goal, I agree it is a good stepping stone to original content to have , as you put it, low-distraction access to these resources.

Recent work has gone on to allow git cloning over gemini and there is syntax support for the, admittedly minimal, text/gemini format in vim and emacs.

I would love to see pandoc support (and believe someone recently mentioned working on on the mailing list). Great ideas! Pick one and build!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> IIRC, John Carmack used finger for blogging for the longest time.

<comment><USER10> He did. There are numerous archives of them, and they seem to do well on HN when they're posted every year or two.

[https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan- archive](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting project, but can't we already do this with an ordinary browser?

The modern web still supports lightweight pages (like HackerNews).

<comment><USER23> from [https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.txt](https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.txt)

 _> In particular, Gemini strives for simplicity of client implementation. Modern web browsers are so complicated that they can only be developed by very large and expensive projects. This naturally leads to a very small number of near-monopoly browsers, which stiffles innovation and diversity and allows the developers of these browsers to dictate the direction in which the web evolves._

...

 _> Experiments suggest that a very basic interactive client takes more like a minimum of 100 lines of code, and a comfortable fit and moderate feature completeness need more like 200 lines. But Gemini still seems to be in the ballpark of these goals._

...

 _> Gemini is designed with an acute awareness that the modern web is a privacy disaster, and that the internet is not a safe place for plaintext. Things like browser fingerprinting and Etag-based "supercookies" are an important cautionary tale: user tracking can and will be snuck in via the backdoor using protocol features which were not designed to facilitate it. Thus, protocol designers must not only avoid designing in tracking features (which is easy), but also assume active malicious intent and avoid designing anything which could be subverted to provide effective tracking. This concern manifests as a deliberate non-extensibility in many parts of the Gemini protocol._

<comment><USER22> Perfect, thanks.

It seems to me these goals could be achieved while retaining browser compatibility. Just define a strict, automatically verifiable subset of the modern web stack. This could be privacy-friendly, and support easy implementation, while making it enormously more approachable, no?

How does their transport protocol stack up against HTTPS/TLS? Is there unnecessary complexity that can be avoided by reinventing the wheel here?

<comment><USER24> I agree it would be nicer to have a subset of HTTP and HTML/CSS (not sure if JS could ever be made safe) but as cookies show, the simple fact that headers exist in HTTP and can be extended, makes it a privacy-problematic protocol from the start.

The transport protocol used by Gemini is protected via TLS, just like HTTPS. It has the great advantage that the only way for a user to identify itself is by using mutual TLS, which is basically the only 100% secure way to do it (the fact that it's impossible to use mutual TLS on the web tells a lot about the incentives going on there). Gemini absolutely does not re-invent the wheel here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I went through the docs of gemini to see an example of how a gemini file should look like, only to realize, that it's a flavour of markdown. Or at least that's what I understood.

</comment><comment><USER26> Gemini needs a sacc like client:

\- written in C

\- Dumb simple

\- Fast

Bombadillo is a bit sluggish for my taste.

<comment><USER6> Bombadillo dev here. When you say sluggish do you mean at the transmission layer or in the user experience? I'm working on adding in some concurrency for both screen drawing and requests that should eventually result in increased speed for the user when navigating around (less blocking going on overall). Sadly, I am a little ways away from having time to complete it. Would love patches if you are interested though ;)

Also: I definitely agree a sacc-like client would be great!

<comment><USER26> screen refreshing is -sometimes- slow, getting the content is as fast as sacc.

        .go version
         go version go1.13.1 openbsd/amd64

Also, I'd love to go back/forward with h/l.

<comment><USER6> I can definitely add h/l into the next release :) As to the screen refresh, I am not in love with the current method for screen drawing and hope to have that incrementally improved over time. Thanks for the info/feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What gtk theme are you using? It looks so old school

<comment><USER9> It's a ripoff of NsCDE Irix theme [https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE](https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks very nice. Please, add also basic HTML (no CSS, no JS) rendering. Link tags like next in header are sometimes used to add some structure, that is seldom exposed by browsers.

<comment><USER9> Thought about it but I prefer to focus on alternative protocols for now.

<comment><USER11> Dropping in to encourage you to _not_ add HTML/CSS/other web shit. We already have web browsers, and I appreciate that you're working on something distinct. Keep up the good work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Typically what I like, frugal and light. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is cool as hell</comment>


Ask HN: Full time vs. contractor? Which is best in CA? - <AUTHOR> Assuming equal compensation, which would you prefer? <comment><USER2> As a contractor, you would have to pay for taxes, healthcare, time-off, etc. out of pocket and not be entitled to certain benefits. Compensation may be higher but still be competitive after taxes and other costs. Also, it depends on the length of your contract and if full time conversion seems promising.

As a full-timer you would be payed competitively and would entitle you to benefits such as healthcare, bonuses, stock, pto, etc.

Hope that helps</comment>


Building a HyperLocal B2C Marketing, Analytics and CRM for SMBs as Lean Startup - <AUTHOR> http://kafechew.com/2015/06/17/building-geosenti-as-lean-startup/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on a hobby project, GeoSenti based on Lean Startup Methodology.

Value hypothesis: SMBs with physical locations of importance (Restaurants, retails and hospitalities) want to identify the potential customers nearby them through social media and give them incentives to consume their services/products, especially during the idle time.

The goal is to test the market with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), generating qualitative and qualitative data before committing more resources or just terminate.

Looking forward to your feedback! ;-)

More about GeoSenti:

GeoSenti is a HyperLocal B2C Marketing, Analytics and Social CRM for SMBs with physical locations of importance, like restaurants, retails and hospitalities.

It tracks customer issues, intentions, sentiments, satisfactions, experiences and feedbacks at a selected location from multiple social sources.

It then turns this aggregated information into more relevant and actionable data to help SMBs developing real-time and right-time precise marketing strategies.</comment>


Powdered Alcohol  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bevlaw.com/bevlog/alcohol-beverages-generally/powdered-alcohol <comment><USER2> Under atmospheric pressure, ethanol melts at -114C. One way to "powderize" it is to make it into an ester, which in this case would be an ethyl ester[1,2]. Hydrolysis of the ester will occur under acidic conditions which would be brought about by dissolution of carbonic acid. The latter decomposes in acidic conditions to form CO2 and 2 protons. Ester hydrolysis in acidic conditions is reversible. This would explain why they claim their product to contain ~50% ethanol by weight: they need a lot so that the equilibrium concentration is at around 5%.

Assuming my guessing is correct, the innovation here is in the ester. They must have used a "safe, food grade" carboxylic acid to pass certifications. All the powder contains is probably:

\- Food dye

\- Flavor

\- Carbonic acid

\- Some ethyl ester

EDIT: A human stomach is also acidic. Ester hydrolysis in alkaline conditions isn't reversible (saponification). If our stomach were alkaline, drinking Palcohol would be very dangerous. The alcohol content in the stomach would skyrocket even if it were low in the drink.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester) [2]: [http://www.chemguide.co.uk/organicprops/esters/hydrolysis.ht...](http://www.chemguide.co.uk/organicprops/esters/hydrolysis.html)

<comment><USER2> I can't re-edit my post. Here's a related patent[1] which they might own. The ethanol is apparently trapped by cyclodextrins, I was wrong.

[1]:[http://www.google.com/patents/US3795747](http://www.google.com/patents/US3795747)

<comment><USER3> I'd doubt this because the rate of de-complexation is usually pretty low (which is why it's useful as a mechanism for slowed drug delivery -- the cyclodextrin-complexed compounds move around much more easily than the usually-hydrophobic drug de-complexes from the cyclodextrin).

Edit: reading the application -- this doesn't appear to be cyclodextrins, but some configuration of small-chain length glucose polymers (mentioned 1-20 with an average of 10).

<comment><USER4> It looks like the powder is made by a physical process. Just as water absorbs into a towel. Ethanol apparently absorbs into dextrin powder and stays as a dry solid.

From the patent:

EXAMPLE II A 150 g. amount of the bulked 5 DE. MOR-REX dextrin of Example I was blended with 250 g. of 90% by weight water) ethanol in a Hobart mixer at speed No. 2 with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. A dry-tothe-touch free flowing powder was obtained that contained 56.2% ethanol and 8.3% moisture. The bulked ethanol containing flowable powder was packaged in air-tight foil envelopes and after 6 months storage had retained its flowability characteristics and its original alcohol content.

EXAMPLE III A teaspoonful (3 g.) of the product of Example II, when added to 10 ml. of water produced a clear, sparkling low-viscosity alcoholic solution with a nonsweet strong alcohol taste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I confess, I've accidentally inhaled a bit too hard from a glencairn glass full of scotch tilted a bit too far towards my nose. That sucked pretty hard, but inhaling this powder would probably be a _lot_ worse. Also, this product seems to be targeted at the same demographic that posts youtube videos of themselves trying to snort cinnamon.

I predict hilarity.

<comment><USER6> I predict overdoses. Something tells me that it'd be way easier to consume too much alcohol too quickly if it's in powdered form.

<comment><USER7> The concentration of alcohol in the common beverages is approximately: beer: 5%, wine 15%, vodka 50% (the exact numbers varies a lot).

It's not possible to "dehydrate" the pure 100% alcohol to reduce its volume. It must be trapped with some kind of additive to make it look like a powder. Also, the powder has small holes, so it's ¿20%? air and a few % of additives and the rest is alcohol. Let's just assume that it's 100% alcohol to simplify the discussion.

So, 1 glass full of "powdered alcohol" will be equivalent to at most 2 glasses of vodka (3 glasses of weak vodka, 1.5 glasses of strong vodka). It will not be equivalent to 10 glasses of vodka.

(With the same calculation, it will be equivalent to 7 glasses of wine or 20 glasses of beer. But people usually drink vodka in smaller glasses and beer in bigger glasses.)

Anyway, given the abundance of morons, I also predict that there will be overdoses, but this "powdered alcohol" is roughly as dangerous as vodka.

<comment><USER8> The added danger comes from the inhalation risk. Alcohol straight to the lungs will get into your blood stream easier and it takes surprisingly little alcohol in your blood to kill you. If you calculate the lethal BAC (0.4) against your body mass/volume you'll see its a very small quantity of alcohol in the blood.

<comment><USER9> I think the inhalation risk is overstated here. This stuff is 12% alcohol by volume according to the label. You've got about 5 liters of blood. If all the alcohol goes straight to the bloodstream, to get a BAC of .4% (.004) you're going to need to snort (5000 * .004 / .12) = 166 milliliters of this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From Palchohol's FAQ, "5\. How is it made? If we told you, we'd have to shoot you. We are in the process of patenting it and it is currently patent pending."

So, guess I'll just wait to read the patent then.

This product is way too "bro" for me. It's like Soylent for Jocks.

<comment><USER11> But drug legalisation is a good thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Website is down - From wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_powder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_powder)

<comment><USER13> I've wondered if a similar process could produce "dehydrated water". Powdered water that could be liberated by adding a small amount of some catalyst could be better for transportation since it wouldn't slosh around in a storage tank.

<comment><USER14> What ? Are you serious or is this some kind of joke that I'm missing.

"dehydrated water" !!

<comment><USER15> I see you ignored the second sentence of the post. Try reading it, it answers your question.

<comment><USER6> No, it just states a scientific sounding premise for the idea, but it doesn't make the concept any less absurd.

<comment><USER15> The idea of trapping water is not absurd. The name is intentionally absurd as a joke. The joke name is explicitly overruled by the description. All you need is a chemical that holds water in some manner and releases it in the presence of a catalyst. How is that concept absurd?

<comment><USER6> Hydrous compounds have existed for ever, but that doesn't mean they're "dry water."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I read a summary of this product somewhere else. "For when you're going into a place that doesn't allow you to bring alcohol from outside, but doesn't mind large quantities of mysterious white powder."

<comment><USER17> I'm sure that it'd be way easier to conceal half a dozen sachets of this stuff than a six pack of beer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They should Call it VIP.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN635IDZcrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN635IDZcrU)</comment>


How Payments Providers Screw You (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.jackkinsella.ie/articles/how-payments-providers-screw-you <comment><USER3> Feeling the burn right now on this. I collect a $9 a month for my videos that have helped thousands of people learn to code and get their jobs. For over 3 years of running it I have not had a single dispute until now. One of my customers subscribed and has been watching my content for 2 months and decided that he is now done and decided to file a dispute.

Before I could even email them any evidence or make my case I was told I would most likely lose this dispute. My payment gateway told me they would charge me $500 for arbitration fee if I lost the dispute. I forwarded them my t&c and proof that the customer has used my site and content. I even reached out to the customer to ask why they did what they did, no answer.

It's a crappy system and online payments is broken. Credit card and payment processing is hugely broken and far behind the times.

Fortunately I am in the position to do something about it. My team and I just recently finished building and launched a new payment engine, we have already started processing payments in the millions of dollars just a few months in and will be taking on Banks, VISA, MasterCard and all traditional payment platforms. It sounds far fetched but when I've decided to tackle something I don't fail. I've made it a personal goal to innovate in the payment space. I'm so very excited about the future.

<comment><USER4> The worst part about chargebacks is that as a small merchant you are entirely screwed, to the point of absurdity - almost no evidence can save you, even if you have actual security video and a card present transaction (been there, done that)!.

Then, after dealing with that situation for close to two decades in various businesses - I finally need to call Amex for my own consumer dispute for the first time ever. It was against a giant corporation quite well known for their entirely-on-purpose dark pattern billing tactics. I simply wanted Amex to block any future charges as I couldn't get them to cancel without jumping through absurd hoops such as showing up in person with photo ID while living out of the country.

Amex basically told me to jump off a cliff. Not even re-issuing the card saved the future charges as they now have a system to give the vendor the new card info. I had to fully cancel my Amex to get the charges to stop.

Why Amex decided to try to enforce a civil contract (especially one they never saw) is beyond me. It was my account, and my option to freeze charges. I was fully prepared and ready to deal with a civil case should the vendor had tried to go after me once the credit card charges bounced. But Amex didn't even give me this option.

That is the day I went from a pretty large proponent of Amex customer care/etc. to someone who de-evangelizes them every chance I can get. And that's not saying any other credit card companies/banks are any better - <USER2> that I spent decades being screwed by the credit card system as a merchant, to only get screwed as a consumer on the other side when supposedly they were "on my side".

<comment><USER5> > Amex

25 years ago my companies Amex card inexplicably hit it's 25k credit limit. Their response when asked why; fuck off and wait for your monthly bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm right in the middle of looking to jump ship from Stripe and PayPal. Stripe is increasing their conversion fees to 2% for grandfathered accounts on June 1st. They also have a 0.6% international card fee. Since I'm Canadian, this is going to hurt.

2.9% + 0.6% + 2% + $0.30 = more than a 6-6.5% cut for 90% of my sales.

While looking around for alternatives, Braintree stood out for having reasonable fees.

Although what really surprised me was that I'm not doing things by the book. Although I'm adding a sales tax for Canadian customers, I don't do this internationally. This is okay for the US and most of the EU since I'm well below their reporting thresholds, but it certainly adds some risk in back- taxes for other countries.

That's when I stumbled on a platform called FastSpring, which acts as a merchant of record. They handle all international sales tax for you and have cool features to show prices in your customers currency, etc... They have a steep price (around 6-8% I heard) but with Stripe increasing their fees to match close to this, why not switch and possibly make due-diligence a lot easier if I decide to sell?

Anyone else in a similar position? How do you handle sales tax globally? Is there a certain revenue number you should hit before worrying about this?

<comment><USER7> > That's when I stumbled on a platform called FastSpring, which acts as a > merchant of record. They handle all international sales tax for you and have > cool features to show prices in your customers currency, etc...

I don't know about international sales tax, but FastSpring does not handle domestic US sales tax correctly. I noticed this when I ordered an upgrade to BBEdit, and the tax came to 9.24% instead of the correct 9%. I contacted Bare Bones Software (makers of BBEdit) about it.

They referred me to FastSpring, who hosts their store. I contacted FastSpring, and their answer was:

> Thank you for contacting FastSpring. Due to the US Supreme Court ruling in > South Dakota v. Wayfair, we have had the way we are required to collect > state taxes changed. Right now, it is taken as an average across the state.

You are _probably_ safe using them, even though they are not collecting sales tax correctly, because as you note they are the merchant of record.

When I passed FastSpring's answer back to Bare Bones, and suggested that they talk to their own lawyers to make sure that FastSpring indemnifies them from any liability for miss-collected tax, because everything I found when implementing post Wayfair sales tax handling said FastSpring is doing it wrong, they said that they too had asked FastSpring about this, found it strange, but that they and their corporate counsel believes that because FastSpring is the merchant of record that it will be FastSpring that is on the hook if there is any liability here.

This was last October, but I just checked and FastSpring is still doing it wrong. This does not fill me with confidence, because this is easy and cheap to get right for at least half the states (including mine). That's because of the Streamlined Sales Tax agreement [1]. The states that are a party to that have agreed that if online merchants collect sales taxes for sales in all of the member states, the states will cover the costs of using tax services like TaxCloud, Avalara, and a few others I don't recall to lookup rates and file all necessary reports and payments.

[1] [https://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/](https://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/)

<comment><USER8> An interesting point about sales tax is that it isn't assessed by the state to collect from the customer, it's assessed against the company. The company can make up a shortfall from their own revenues (although overcharging the customer might be problematic).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is unfortunately still very true....

On transactions of $5, we're paying anything between 8-15%

This obviously doesn't include the App Store/Play Store, where you could be paying anything between 30-45% (the standard fee is 30%, but if you're an indie seller, then usually you wouldn't have to charge VAT to EU residents (as long as you earn under a certain threshold), but Google/Apple will still charge this to customers (I assume this is because the sale is being made in their name and obviously they're VAT registered).

</comment><comment><USER10> The worst thing about chargebacks and fraud in general is that there's no incentive for payment processors / card issuers to fix the issue as they are benefiting from it by charging the merchant a fee when a chargeback is filled.

There's also a whole business made on the basis of providing anti-fraud services.

By now, credit card security should absolutely be a solved problem and it's crazy that we still in 2020, have to input numbers printed on the card to pay online.

<comment><USER11> Card security is broken by design. It can't be fixed without turning it into a fundamentally different payment mechanic.

What _should_ be happening is that governments should be clamping down on the abusive practices of the financial services giants such that they can't push responsibility for anything that goes wrong onto merchants and/or their customers, thus making huge profits but sharing none of the risk created by the flawed system they control.

It messes with my mind that in 2020, one of the biggest practical problems we have with running an online business is the simple act of getting money reliably and permanently transferred from a legitimate customer to us.

<comment><USER12> Not to take responsibility away from these financial services companies in how they screw their customers but it's worth mentioning that governments themselves are enormously responsible for causing many payment gateway problems:

Extremely paranoid and grossly onerous regulatory compliance requirements make innovation in this space difficult at best

KYC and AML rules that are both obscure, highly byzantine and don't even allow banks to clearly communicate basics to their clients mean being arbitrarily screwed for really stupid reasons and having little recourse, with financial services companies further getting an excuse to continue abusing by passing some of the blame onto government rules.

Oh and as another comment right near here mentions, payment processors simply cancelling or denying service (sometimes even freezing funds on their own account) for businesses, organizations and individuals who participate in activities that a government (especially the U.S government) doesn't like for arbitrary bullshit "moral" or political reasons. This too is despicable because it often involves economic punishment for people who are doing nothing even remotely illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hope that since 2015 this author has learned about interchange and realises that this is not down to the processors but to the issuers and schemes. This reads like a blog post about someone complaining that a bar charges more for beer than for what the brewery sells it to the bar owner.

<comment><USER14> Just to clarify, are you saying there is a way to avoid the final percentage of hidden charges by knowing about and using a different interchange?

Or, just that the blame lies with the interchange and not the payment gateway?

I'm curious if you are suggesting smart people can avoid those extra fees somehow?

Do you have a link which summarizes this difference?

<comment><USER7> I believe he means that most of those things come from the credit card networks or the issuing banks.

Many of these charges can vary quite a bit from transaction to transaction. My understanding is that really high volume merchants (e.g., Apple or Amazon) can get processing that just passes through all of those things to them. Each individual transaction might involve scores of very small fees.

At the other end of thing, you have processors that work like the way Braintree originally worked. They would look at all those little fees in aggregate across all the transactions they were processing, and sorted the transactions into two bins based on total cost for the transaction.

They then charged the merchant a fixed rate for each transaction depending on which bin it fell into. From the merchants point of view, then, if you did 100 transactions each would incur fees of either X% or Y%, and the percentage that got charged X% would be about the same every month.

There are processors who are kind of in-between. The have an X% that rolls up most of the numerous underlying fees, but do expose you do some of those fees. Here some examples I've seen on a bill from such a processor.

For Discover cards, there was an "authorization request fee" of $0.0025, a "data transmission fee" also $0.0025, a "data usage fee" of $0.0185, an AVS fee of $0.02, an "authorization fee" of $0.20, an "assessment/sponsorship" charge of 0.12%, and an everything else of 2.48%.

MasterCard had fees ofr NABU, AVS, and authorization of $0.0195, $0.02, and $0.20. Their percentage fees were for acquirer license, digtal enablement, assessment/sponsorship, cross border, global acquirer support, and the everything else bucket. These were 0.0055%, 0.01%, 0.12%, 0.6%, 0.85%, and 2.33%.

VISA had fees for variable debit, variable credit, AVS, transaction integrity, and authorization, of $0.0155, $0.0195, $0.02, $0.10, and $0.20. Percantage fees were CR product assessment, assessment/sponsorship, international acquiring, international service, and the everything else bucket. 0.02%, 0.11%, 0.45%, 0.8%, and 2.316%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like a good time to talk GoCardless. (Disclaimer: former employee, still have unexpired options).

Now, the downside is that this is recurring subscriptions only (e.g. SAAS) and not purchases. The upside is [https://gocardless.com/en- us/pricing/](https://gocardless.com/en-us/pricing/)

      - Domestic pricing: 1% + $0.25 up to $2.50 maximum

      - International pricing: 2% + $0.25.
        Currency conversions at the TransferWise rate.

UK/Euro pricing is even better, as that's their home territory. (And, you still can get chargebacks, but that's because some of these banking systems demand it.)

<comment><USER15> [https://gocardless.com/en-us/faq/merchants/](https://gocardless.com/en- us/faq/merchants/)

"Do you take credit or debit cards?

No, GoCardless is an ACH debit company."

Most people prefer credit cards. How does it work? Do you ask people if they want to pay by ACH?

Or do you detect debit cards on your credit card form and use this instead of the credit card processor?

<comment><USER8> > Most people prefer credit cards.

In the US, perhaps. If you're going after international customers — the topic which the original article complains about — you'll find that this preference isn't nearly as strong as you think.

<comment><USER16> In the UK I disagree. I personally always prefer to pay by debit/credit card. The charges are instant (and will be displayed instantly if you use a modern bank), you get the ability to make chargebacks (or the UK's law-mandated protection for credit card customers), etc. Direct Debits on the other hand take 3 days to set up before the money actually leaves the account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is anyone here (or any business you know of) using crypto currency to avoid these extra fees with international customers? If you use a crypto currency, there is no way to reverse a transaction when the customer commits fraud.

<comment><USER12> And this by the way is the real beauty of crypto. It may have a lot of friction, problems with potential fraud and associations with criminal activity, but if you want to bill customers with near certainty that no middleman service provider will arbitrarily be able to freeze your funds or boot you off their service for whatever obscure reasons they decide to invent and not share, crypto solves the problem. I just wish it could be streamlined more for wider use.

<comment><USER17> It solves one problem, but creates another (the other side). If a truly bad bad payment was made (say, account hacked) there is no way to reverse it.

Great for the receiving end, but potentially troubling for the sender.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Note that you can avoid the currency conversion fees using a Transferwise account. You'll get bank credentials for USD, EUR, NZ$, AU$ and GBP, and not pay the fees for these currencies: [https://transferwise.com/help/19/transferwise-for- business/2...](https://transferwise.com/help/19/transferwise-for- business/2977935/does-stripe-work-with-my-transferwise-account)

<comment><USER9> PayPal won't let you add a TransferWise account, for unspecified reasons.

At least that's the case for UK/EU. There are some reports of people being able to add one in the early days - but now it's like a blanket ban.

It could be because the address of the TW bank account is in New York, and they require a domestic address.

Every time I call up I get a different reason - but the result is always the same. "TransferWise bank accounts are not supported".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Joel Spolsky: "Where there's muck, there's brass":

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/12/06/where-theres- muck-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/12/06/where-theres-muck-theres- brass/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd add a "4\. Payment providers often follow the political and social trends of their host country, like Paypal/Visa/Mastercard/etc blocking payments to journalists or other groups when the US State or Justice Dept. doesn't like it."

Unfortunately the only way to get around this is with distributed systems of value exchange. And those have lots of friction.</comment>