Ask HN: Is .NET knowledge useless? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am a new graduate. I will be continuing my education with a masters in CS in University of Cincinnati.
My question is; is .NET knowledge useless?
Everywhere I look, everyone is using * nix + php + nosql/mysql/postgre. By everywhere I mean giants like Facebook, or any startup job post I look at.
I admit I am no expert but I like .NET, particularly C# and MSSQL. I enjoy using Visual Studio, mostly because it lets me create very fast. I love it's support tools like IntelliSense.
Should I switch to php+*nix+nosql, and start learning those? <comment><USER2> Not sure where you're looking:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=C%23,php&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=C%23,php&l=)

There's quite a lot of C# jobs out there, but I doubt there's many in the 'dude we're a startup' scene. Perhaps there's where you're looking? The C# jobs are going to tend to be in larger corporate America (in the US, obviously.

Personally I think MS has been painting themselves in to the corner of only being a viable toolset for larger corporate America due to their pricing. They acknowledge this themselves with programs like BizSpark and WebsiteSpark.

It's a good language, and .NET is a powerful framework, just very tied to the Windows platform (mono notwithstanding). And the Windows platform is pretty expensive compared to other platforms. Although the tools are very nice, if it comes down to spending thousands on premium tools vs saving thousands and learning to do stuff 'by hand', most startups choose the 'by hand' route. BizSpark and/or WebsiteSpark can help reduce that upfront cost for a few years, but at some point you'll need to pay the piper.

If you _want_ to work in a startup working in the web space, PHP/Ruby/Python will be the way to go. Those are even runnable on Windows - MS has made a lot of commitment to getting PHP running well on Windows. If you're looking for a high-paying corporate job, C# may be the better route, depending on where you're located. Oh, you're on Cinci - there should be a lot of options between Cinci, KY, IN, and perhaps TN or PA. You're a few hours from a lot of places.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Dude we're a startup and we're a complete .Net stack! :) We're even using Windows Azure! (see profile)

We have some experience in other frameworks as well but .Net is by far our favorite. We've been happy so far with the BizSpark program too.

<comment><USER2> That's cool that you are. I'd suggest you're probably in a minority, but good luck to you all the same. The ability to execute on ideas is the most important thing, and if it's easier for you to execute using a .NET stack, fantastic!

<comment><USER4> What minority is that exactly that they are in? .NET vs what exactly? "Microsoft vs. Open-Source" maybe? Or ".NET vs. Haskell"?

I'd think they are the minority on HN but I always chuckle at people who think all startups post/read HN and thus HN is representative of the entire startup culture...

<comment><USER2> To be clear, it's my gut feeling - based on the personal experiences, that most web-based startups are _not_ using the MS platform for a variety of reasons, pricing being one of them. The "vs" example above would simply be ".NET vs non-.NET" If you think .NET-oriented web-based startups have a > 50% share of that market, I'd _really_ be curious as to any evidence (even anecdotal) for that belief.

"startup C#" - 818 jobs [http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=startup+C%23&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=startup+C%23&l=)

"startup php" - 1373 jobs [http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=startup+php&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=startup+php&l=)

However: "php" has 17236 [http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=php&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=php&l=)

"C#" has 41446 [http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=c%23&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=c%23&l=)

C# has a _much_ higher number of job postings, but far fewer with the word "startup" in the post.

Yes, totally unscientific, but it seems to indicate what I'm seeing in the real world. Looking at my own network, which includes a variety of .net, php, ruby, python and java folks, the overwhelming number of people involved in bootstrapping, freelancing or startup endeavours are not using .NET.

Again, I point to websitespark, bizspark, and MS' own efforts in helping PHP operate smoothly on their own platform. 10 years ago PHP was laughed at by most MS people I know. Today, it still is by many of the same people, but Microsoft as a company must see enough demand for it that they spend time with some of the PHP development team making sure that PHP runs smoothly on Windows. MS now provides a one-click installer for PHP on top of that.

Yes, certainly, all this is simply anecdotal, and I've absolutely no way of knowing for certain how many 'startups' use .net vs not using it. When people still refer to facebook as a 'startup' perhaps the term has lost all meaning whatsoever, and anyone who's opened a company in the past 15 years is now running a 'startup'. But again, I fall back to my own experiences in and around my network. People * I know* using .NET are generally doing so in larger corporate environments (where it's much easier to afford all the tooling which makes .NET fun/easy to develop with) People _I know_ in smaller orgs, smallbiz startup mode, or freelancing are generally _not_ using .NET, primarily because of price.

The pricing is part of the motivation behind websitespark and bizspark programs of the past couple years. If MS themselves weren't seeing a defection in the smallbiz/startup scene away from the MS platform, I doubt we'd have seen these programs come in to existence in the first place. We certainly didn't see them 12 years ago.

This belief was also largely reinforced by casual 'in the hallway' conversations with attendees at the recent CodeStock event in Knoxville. While language-agnostic in theory, it's still largely an MS-oriented event, based on both attendees' background and session topics around 50% of the topics were .net-oriented)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should be careful in thinking that you have to choose. In fact, regardless of what you do with .NET, I think it's a good idea to learn about the *nix environment and some languages that you're not yet comfortable developing in.

In my program at school I see a ton of students leaving university knowing nothing but one to three statically typed OO languages, and assuming that those paint an accurate picture of the full range of programming languages.

I'm not saying this is you, but if you're not comfortable outside of C#, Java, C/C++ etc. you're limiting yourself. Programming languages may be difficult to master, but you can glean a surprising number of lessons from one language by spending a few weeks with it. I think a few languages a year isn't asking for too much, and whether you use them or not, the lessons will transfer to the language you spend most of your time in.

If all of your programming experience involves using IDEs, do yourself a favor and spend extensive time in a powerful text editor like vim or emacs. While these editors might not have the advanced features present in IDEs, making the trade in favor of a more powerful programming language used in concert with a less powerful editor may actually make you more effective. The point is that you can't discern between the two until you've spent ample time in both. Being uncomfortable outside of an IDE can be a serious crutch as it keeps you using languages that the IDE can take full advantage of, and this excludes a number of languages that you should expose yourself to.

Nosql is an orthogonal issue. While relational databases are unlikely to ever go away, if nosql databases continue seeing success, there's no reason to think that seasoned .NET folks won't also make use of them.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're going to be continuing your education with a Masters from U of Cinn, you're going to be using whatever tools they use in their curriculum.

That looks like Python and C++ in CS121-122, C++ in CS229, Lisp and Prolog in CS602, etc.

I would imagine that's going to be keeping you busy, but if you want to learn php on the side, sure, go for it. On the other hand, there's really nothing wrong with .NET, and there are lots of C# jobs out there, if that's what you're concerned about.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nothing wrong with .NET - perhaps one of the reasons it doesn't look like it is being used is because it's more corporate. Startups don't use M$ for a variety of reasons....cost is a big one - have you seen licence fees for sql server? insane I tell you! That said, I believe stackoverflow is .NET MVC so...not huge like facebook, but certainly an excellent product with an active community.

.NET, like any framework, has its quirks.....it can be a little frustrating sometimes with the way it tries to abstract you from the actual GETs and POSTs in webforms, but there you go. I do think the IDE and debugging is something that works fairly well in .NET. In fact, I often wonder if Microsoft couldn't just market their IDE and make it compatible with PHP/Ruby/Python etc rather than ASP per se.

At the end of the day, I like to think programmers use the tool best suited to the job at hand - languages are the tools, learn .NET, learn php, learn Ruby, heck dabble in everything that looks interesting even if just to get a feel for it - then you can make informed decisions based on experience.

Same with OS - doesn't matter which platform you are best on Windows/Linux/Mac - but at least get a feel for the others.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are tons of .NET jobs out there. They're just not at 'cool' small web startups (like Facebook). Pick any Fortune 1000 company (or any of the consulting companies that those companies use) and you'll find plenty of .NET jobs within their walls.

</comment><comment><USER9> .NET, for the most part, is a big company framework. There are startups that use it (I used to work for one), but concentrating solely on .NET stacks the odds unfavorably if you want to work for a startup. You can always learn more than one stack, of course.

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't worry, if you plan to be a good developer, you will know both technologies (and even more). So right now you can pick safely either of them. Yes, it's that simple :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Mainstream application development needs .NET and Java. They are the dominant. Others, are backends made in Lisp, Prolog, C++ and others..</comment>


The Menace and the Promise of Autonomous Vehicles - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2018/06/12/the-menace-and-the-promise-of-autonomous-vehicles/ <comment><USER2> I stopped reading at "Central to AV testing is the "trolley question". No, that's not a central problem. If it was, it would be covered in driver's ed and driver testing. It's not. Most accident avoidance is pure braking.

On the evidence, the central question in AV testing is "can we trust the human to take over fast enough when the automation does something bad?" The answer appears to be "no".

He also parrots Uber's whining about California's "regulation" of AV testing. The California DMV autonomous vehicle testing rules mirror those for human driver learner's permits. You have to get a license. You have to show proof of insurance. You have to report accidents. You have to have a licensed driver on board. DMV can pull your license if you have accidents. You can't carry passengers for hire. You can't drive a heavy truck. No surprises there.

DMV does require reports of minor accidents and of disconnects, and they publish that data. That's what irks the companies with bad automatic driving systems - public disclosure that they suck.

<comment><USER3> There is a valid trolley question but it's not about how the AV makes decisions.

It's about whether the benefit of developing AVs as fast as possible outweighs the risk of accidents caused by immature AVs.

If AVs can save 1000 lifes a year then going Uber style and risking 100 deaths to speed up development of AVs by even just 2 months might save more lifes than trying to avoid deaths entirely.

<comment><USER4> The evidence of what actually happens when you "go Uber style" and cause a death as a result strongly suggests that risking 100 deaths will not speed up development of AVs...

Edit: genuinely perplexed by the downvoter who apparently believes the Uber "move fast, break things, suspend testing for at least several months after attracting widespread public opposition" approach has been a net positive for their prospects of commercialising self driving cars in the near future?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be much easier to countenance arguments that self driving cars will save us all if humans weren't such good drivers.

[http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalit...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview)

In Massachussetts, the number of deaths per 100 _million_ miles driven is 0.66. Those are the massholes. By contrast, it was reported that Uber required human intervention once in thirteen miles while Waymo required human intervention once every 5000+. Those are not directly comparable to fatality statistics because the interventions are also for things like avoiding disturbing events like hard braking, but they are still illustrative.

[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/leaked-data-suggests- ub...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/leaked-data-suggests-uber-self- driving-car-program-years-behind-waymo/)

Let those orders of magnitude sink in. The humans are driving in all weather conditions all over the country while self-driving cars are in (generally) sunny relatively controlled areas.

Personally, I have hope that we can eventually beat humans, but these kinds of statistics call for a careful, deliberative introduction of this technology.

<comment><USER6> So you think it's reasonable to compare the rates that humans not only get into crashes, but actually die (or kill) in crashes - to the rates that a human takes over for an early alpha tech version of self driving vehicles?

Your stats not even remotely "illustrative" of anything other than what they say of the presenter.

<comment><USER5> This would be academic if someone hadn't actually died. I don't know the numbers, but I'm fairly sure that just tanked the self-driving stats pretty hard.

EDIT: Also, consider what avoiding "hard braking", which was a large reason for human interventions iirc, actually means. It means either that the computer jams on the brakes hard for no reason or that it only realized it needed to brake substantially after a human would have realized the necessity.

EDIT2: Uber had driven 3 million miles at the time of the death according to the below article. A single incident does not statistics make, but based on the NSTB analysis so far, that version of the software made a systematic error. That puts Uber's score at very handwavy 33.33 per 100 million miles. I'm sure the number will change with software revisions and just from random chance. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber- driverles...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber-driverless- fatality.html)

EDIT3: I should mention that I was initially hesitant to compute this "statistic" because it's so raw and will wildly fluctuate. Interventions are more solid statistically. I don't think it's crazy for someone to look at a heavy box of metal that requires constant supervision to do the right thing and conclude in the absence of (appropriately) extensive testing that it's dangerous.

<comment><USER6> And now you're just making up stuff. I'm shocked... Disengagements have absolutely nothing to do with "avoiding hard braking". Disengagement numbers and analysis are completely open you can find them here [1] along with the reasons, miles driven, etc. A disengagement is defined as, _" a deactivation of the autonomous mode when a failure of the autonomous technology is detected or when the safe operation of the vehicle requires that the autonomous vehicle test driver disengage the autonomous mode and take immediate manual control of the vehicle."_

So for instance if the software is providing a buggy output and the car is stopped for debugging, recalibration, etc that counts as a disengagement. And that is indeed, by far, the most common occurrence. It's extremely rarely to actually avoid a crash - let alone your fixation with "hard braking." Some companies, such as Nvidia, specifically clarify that literally 0 of their disengagements (in their case out of 109) had anything to do with extraneous conditions such as road surface, construction, emergencies, etc.

[1] - [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2017)

<comment><USER5> Hard braking was discussed in a news article I have read some time ago about Uber specifically. Your attitude is not helpful. The list you linked does not include Uber though it does include many others. Thanks for the link.

EDIT: I'm looking at Waymo's totals, whom I consider to be a safer player than Uber. The data totals come from your link on their page 2 Table 2: Disengagements by Cause. The time period spans Dec. 2016 to Nov. 2017.

        Disengage for a recklessly behaving road user: 1
        Disengage for hardware discrepancy: 13
        Disengage for unwanted maneuver of the vehicle: 19
        Disengage for a perception discrepancy: 16
        Disengage for incorrect behavior prediction of other traffic participants: 5
        Disengage for a software discrepancy: 9

<comment><USER6> News articles on this topic tend to be less than worthless - an increasingly typical state of affairs. In this case the reason is quite direct: people are scared of revolutionary technology, and especially self driving vehicles -- and nothing gets clicks like fear mongering. Don't believe everything you read, let alone parrot it.

You'll also notice the paragraph in Waymo's report, which is typical: _" Note that, while we have used, where applicable, the causes mentioned in the DMV rule (weather conditions, road surface conditions, construction, emergencies, accidents or collisions), those causes were infrequent in our experience. Far more frequent were the additional causes we have labeled as unwanted maneuver, perception discrepancy, software discrepancy, hardware discrepancy, incorrect behavior prediction, or other road users behaving recklessly."_

In other words, they ended up disengaging because of "emergencies", which your imminent hard braking would apply as - exactly 0 times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > What does it mean to experiment with technology that we know will kill > people, even if it could save lives?

This tagline ignores the fact that every new technology ever invented has killed people. Machines fail. Buildings collapse. Bras and vending machines and popcorn and fire hydrants all kill people. The simple passage of time on large projects kills people.

People are going to die no matter what. If we can reduce the body count then that's a win.

<comment><USER8> Sorry. Cars have a slightly more potential to kill than bras and vending machines and people dying of natural causes..

<comment><USER9> Heart disease, cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases are the top 3 leading causes of death in the USA, all regarded to be natural causes. Accidents are #4, and car crashes are included in that.

<comment><USER10> And if we exclude the age group to the people who use cars the most, like people in middle age driving around their family? I would guess most of the people in that car are not that likely to die from 1, 2 or 3 anytime soon.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, cars are best for killing (and crippling) people in the prime of their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently read this paper ([http://sjha8.web.engr.illinois.edu/resources/DSN2018.pdf](http://sjha8.web.engr.illinois.edu/resources/DSN2018.pdf)) from the dependable systems conference. Seems like AVs are no where near ready.

This is not just a Uber problem - it is pervasive across most manufacturers. The rate at which these AVs are getting better essentially means we won't have "human level" cars in a long time.

<comment><USER12> I have no idea if AVs are near ready, but that analysis seems a bit shallow. All the dataset gives them is the number of disengagements and the miles driven each month, but not all miles are necessarily the same; for example, it makes sense that Waymo et all would start taking their cars to streets with more traffic/people/etc as they get more confident in the system's ability to navigate in easier areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> America's car death rate is far higher than most rich countries. We could save 20,000 lives per year just by following best practices, but nobody gives a shit, so let's all fantasize about magic cars.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, autonomous vehicles _might_ offer some benefits inclding road safety in the very long run, however we could do so much better right now if laws were enforced / people were actually following them or just care. The system is designed with plenty of buffer in it, it is just the nature of most drivers to disregard speeding limtis and safe trailing distances.

As a consequence imo it is misguided to measure AVs against _average_ drivers, because more average drivers on the road is exactly what I would rather not have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article is claiming that the development of self-driving cars will require killing people on public roads. That's a tantalizing prospect ("kill thousands now to save millions later"), but no evidence or arguments are presented why. Sure, there will be deaths due to road accidents, but is it really inevitable that more people will die due to failures of engineering like Uber's or Tesla's?

<comment><USER16> Utopias are always justified this way, and the worst crimes are committed as a result. After all, if a potentially limitless number of lives are saved in the future, you can argue for sacrificing millions today. Somehow people never seem to understand that nothing real or worthwhile is down that road, and as a species we go down it repeatedly.

I think the best argument against this, is to demand that the person willing to let many die is the _first_ to die.

<comment><USER17> "I think the best argument against this, is to demand that the person willing to let many die is the first to die. "

That's why I am saying that all road testing of autonomous cars should take place in the neighborhoods where the executives and their children live and are on the road. That would align the incentives of the company and the public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > It will take billions of miles—and some unknown number of people killed—to > gauge whether, by a statistically significant margin, AVs are safer than > human-driven cars.

This kind of lumps all the AVs together. There is evidence though that Waymos are already safer than human divers - from 2012:

> Google announced Tuesday that its self-driving cars have completed 300,000 > miles of test-drives, under a "wide range of conditions," all without any > kind of accident. (The project has seen a few accidents in the past — but > only with humans at the wheel.)

> To put that into perspective, the average U.S. driver has one accident > roughly every 165,000 miles. [https://mashable.com/2012/08/07/google- > driverless-cars-safer...](https://mashable.com/2012/08/07/google-driverless- > cars-safer-than-you/?europe=true#VYLbEm9KDgqB)

Since then I think they have logged about 6 million miles and had one semi at fault accident when their car thought a bus would give way but it didn't and hit them. I don't think Waymo would been looking to order 62,000 vans if they were not confident they would be safer than human drivers.

They have also had far more accidents with humans at fault crashing into stationary Waymos than the other way around.

On the other hand Ubers crash seems like a reckless effort to try to catch up by cutting corners and Tesla's it's your fault if you didn't look for a few seconds attitude seems iffy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Over $100 billion has been invested in this as yet unproven technology, there is no historical analogue for that. This money has been invested either because the players involved stand to make a lot of money, or else they stand to lose a lot of money if they don't invest in the technology. Moreso the latter than the former, really.

Plenty of lipservice is paid to the potential safety benefits, along with a laundry list of other social benefits, but really it's about money.

By logical extension, autonomous vehicles have to be safer than human drivers, or they just won't fly. Too many accidents invites regulatory scrutiny, time consuming safety audits, and worst of all, public backlash.

If you look at the players across the industry they can be broken into two distinct categories: the offensive players, and the defensive players.

The offensive players: Namely Waymo, but also Cruise, Aurora innovation, Drive.ai, Argo.ai, Zoox and Nutonomy: their safety records are impeccable.

But there are two prominent defensive players who both would be better off if AVs were never a thing: Tesla and Uber. For them, screwing it up for everyone is a net benefit to their business models.

Now, if we were actually concerned about safety, we wouldn't be driving, we'd be riding bicycles (or walking or taking the train/bus), and our cities would more closely resemble what they were in the 1930s or earlier. But there's no money in bikes, and everybody hates them.

</comment><comment><USER19> One of the most dangerous states of mind, is to be pursuing something that you are convinced will save people's lives in the future, but that might hurt people now. This type of thinking is unrivaled in causing previously normal people to do horrendously bad stuff. Add to this the potential for profits, and it becomes a very toxic mix, where a person can be killing people while trying to make a profit while fully convinced that they are a very good person and are doing humanity a great service.

We have historical experience with an analogous situation. Medical experiments and drug development. People became so focused on "the greater good for humanity" that they did horrible stuff to study participants (see Tuskegee Syphilis Study). Or drugs were not adequately assessed for safety in pregnant patients and severe birth defects occurred (see thalidomide). This is one of the reasons we have Institutional Review Boards to review medical studies and the FDA to review drugs, because people involved in a project like this are so good at fooling themselves.

When developing drugs, pharmacy companies aren't allowed to say "This drug will cure X and benefit so many people. We would like to ignore the side effects happening now because the cure will be so beneficial in the future."

We need the equivalent of an Institutional Review Board/FDA for self driving cars.

As part of the submission, the engineers have to document what sensors they are using, what the limitations of those sensors are, what algorithms/machine learning techniques they are using, and the limitations of those. They also need to disclose the engineering tradeoffs and design decisions (for example, not having LIDAR).

Then there need to be tests for self-driving cars for safety on the unhappy path.

What happens if there is a concrete barrier in front of you?

What happens if the lane markers are bad?

What happens if the car in front of you brakes?

What happens if you are driving with the sun facing you?

What happens if the truck in front of you drops something in the road?

What happens if a child darts in front of you?

And so on...

Then based on the testing, certify the car for self-driving only in certain conditions that were shown to be safe based on the independent testing.

After a self driving car is on the road, all data collected by the self driving cars should be shared with the review board so that there can be ongoing monitoring. In addition, users of those cars should be able to report incidents and near misses to the review board.

<comment><USER20> You know, I'm not in this field but this should be stuff that I assume would/should already be done BEFORE even putting it out to the market.

<comment><USER21> Then why did the multiple deaths caused by Uber and autopilot happen?

<comment><USER22> USA motor vehicle fatality rate is 7.1 deaths per billion vehicle-km. Hard to test that without going outside onto real roads with real drivers. (Tesla fatality rate at time of third and most recent fatality: 14.3 deaths per billion autopilot-km, which is significantly worse than I had realised).

<comment><USER22> Note for anyone reading this in an archive: this was based on information which I later learned was incorrect. The number of autopilot-km driven was not at the time of the 3rd death, but either the 1st or 2nd, depending on if the autopilot was involved in the incident of 29th January 2016.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not paying thru the nose to be a Musk guinea pig nor going to walk the streets of Pittsburgh .. avoiding having an Uber car run me over.

Progress will be a killer!</comment>


Remote Workers Should Move to College Towns - <AUTHOR> https://blog.zachwf.com/2020/05/hey-you-with-remote-jobwant-to-live-in.html <comment><USER2> I don't want to live near college kids -_-

<comment><USER3> The restaurants per capita are so much better in a town like, say, Bloomington Indiana than an equivalent community in population without a large university.

You aren't moving there for the students, you're moving there for the professors and grad students and associated intellectual staff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > American office-workers now work completely from home; this policy will last > until the end of 2020 for many and will likely shift millions of office jobs > to fully-remote workers.

Justifying the word "likely" is key here, surely?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair criticism. I don't have a confident estimate for the number of new remote employees, but here's a hand-wavy one: one third of the 130M US jobs can be done remotely [0]. 20% of CFOs expect about 20% of their workforce to be remote in the future [1]. Assuming a uniform distribution across company sizes and no other remote jobs outside of those 20%, we'd expect 1/3 * 130M * 1/5 * 1/5 = 1.75M new remote jobs.

The assumptions here are obviously strong and wrong but it does seem like "low millions" is probably the right order of magnitude.

Moreover we can expect highly-regarded companies like Facebook and Twitter to be bellwethers for the rest of industry. If their remote work experiments succeed, I suspect expansion will follow rapidly (I expect the reverse if they fail).

[0] [https://news.uchicago.edu/story/much-us-staying-home-how- man...](https://news.uchicago.edu/story/much-us-staying-home-how-many-jobs- can-be-done-remotely) [1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/ezequielminaya/2020/04/03/cfos-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ezequielminaya/2020/04/03/cfos- plan-to-permanently-shift-significant-numbers-of-employees-to-work-remotely--- survey/#1a7448d9575b)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the response. I wonder how many of the 1/3 in the first article can be done _fully_ remote, i.e. without needing to come in once or twice a week, which might make moving out of the city less attractive. The uniform distribution seems strong too... at $50m revenue it feels like you're looking at big businesses which have a lot more leeway for offering remote positions. How many of the 130m jobs belong to such big businesses? It all seems pretty hard to predict.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nope. A good rule of thumb: where people go to retire + good internet. There are other factors but this one gets you far.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice idea. Too bad the retirees didn't figure it out twenty years ago when they started bidding up the price of real estate in these little shangri las. The best parts of Hanover NH (Dartmouth) rival Palo Alto in price. And gosh, Palo Alto IS a college town first. The same for Cambridge, MA.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why? To drive up the COL for students more?

</comment><comment><USER8> And drive up the rent in the area such that college kids can't afford to rent anything?

<comment><USER9> "college kids" have more disposable income than just about any other segment of society outside the top couple of %.

<comment><USER10> Source? Top percent cutoff is about ~700k/yr, top 5% cutoff is ~300k/yr, and top 10% is ~100k/yr. This is for the entire US. ([https://www.epi.org/blog/top-1-0-percent-reaches-highest- wag...](https://www.epi.org/blog/top-1-0-percent-reaches-highest-wages-ever- up-157-percent-since-1979/))

TBH I can see an argument for a college student living at home with low expenses, a job, and/or plenty of loans having more disposable income than 90% of the population. But I'd hesitate to call that the average student experience. The average student income seems to be around $25k/yr as best as I can find on a quick search.

I don't see how the math works out for your average student to have more disposable income than someone making 300k/yr. How does that work?

<comment><USER11> I think the claim, as it's typically presented, is that college students don't pay their own rent, so they are not sensitive to the expense. Affluent parents driving the demand for dilapidated student housing leads to local inflation.

Taken to extremes, this is an absurd claim. Lots of college students pay for their own expenses and are obviously very sensitive to cost. But you generally do see higher rents and worse housing in college towns.

<comment><USER12> It's an aggregate of parents, scholarships and loans, not just any one of those things. Plenty of students spend an unwise chunk of their loan money on consumer goods and housing, since they want those experiences _now_. At the same time there are also thrifty students and homeless students who are just barely getting by. A lot of different types of people go through large universities, and I think the appeal and the cost is much like big cities in that respect.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm deleting Snapchat, and you should too - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@katie/im-deleting-snapchat-and-you-should-too-98569b2609e4 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not deleting Snapchat myself at this point in time --- I use it to chat with a few people who I'm more likely to get iMEssage/SMS from; mostly have it installed to study UI/UX changes --- but I thought this was worth reading/thinking about.

Particularly since I did not read the Recode article linked ([http://www.recode.net/2015/6/8/11563322/snapchat-ceo-evan- sp...](http://www.recode.net/2015/6/8/11563322/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-on- diversity-features-for-the-olds-and-more))

</comment><comment><USER2> >year 2020 >you are going to jail because you got jaundice

funny time</comment>


Salary Hikes for H-1Bs? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/05/21/trump-minimum-wage-for-h-1b-visa-holders-could-reach-250000-a-year/#290491801f1b <comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if this is popularity tactics or if there is material benefit to the economy with all these new and funny rules.</comment>


Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant <comment><USER2> Interesting commentary on the Gaussian Copula Formula in _2005_ :

[http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2005/09/gaussian-copula-and- cre...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2005/09/gaussian-copula-and-credit- derivatives.html)

<comment><USER3> It's interesting that Li himself thought knew traders were trusting the model too much. In theory, this knowledge could have made him a lot of money, but in practice it's probably difficult to correctly short the market (since he couldn't really know when the collapse was coming, or how big it would be.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've red numerous Wired articles which have butchered subject matter I am an expert on.

And this has completely turned me off from reading Wired articles on things I am interested in, but don't know enough to know when they are oversimplifying, embellishing, or just plain getting things wrong.

I tried reading this, because I do want to know, but I got that sinking feeling of being BSed and gave up.

<comment><USER5> Kinda reminds me how everyone demonized Black-Scholes when LTCM collapsed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it the formula that killed Wall Street or an inability or unwillingness to recognize its limitations? Sounds like the latter.

</comment><comment><USER7> i'm generally skeptical when people claim they have discovered the single X that caused Y, especially when Y is this particular Wall Street collapse. i don't think this article gives a particularly convincing argument about why this formula single handedly "killed Wall Street".

</comment><comment><USER8> the formula seems to be missing a closing parenthesis</comment>


John McAfee's biopic could be titled "Running in the Background" - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/05/12/john-mcafee-portland-belize-mysterious-murder/2135255/

<comment><USER2> Or "Stealing Cycles from Productivity Software"</comment>


Show HN: Idealist – Track your startup ideas - <AUTHOR> https://bnc.lt/idealist-HN

<comment><USER2> Nice job, very clean. I currently use a notepad to track my ideas. I am an android user though...

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no problem to this solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's like saying To Do list apps are a solution with no problem, yet every few months there's a new favorite To Do list app that has some moderate success. So, I'd say that there is definitely a problem. It's not like people don't want / need to keep track of ideas. I would agree through that there are a TON of existing solutions. People keep track of ideas in notebooks and Evernote, etc. So, the pain point definitely isn't that high, but the solution I made is the best for me =]

I find it nice having an app dedicated to just my ideas, which also lets me categorize and rank them.

<comment><USER4> you know what is amazing and hilarious? i have an idea on my pad that says: Idealist - a way to collect and help you move forward with your startup ideas

=D

Now mine was slightly different, since it was oriented more toward people in developing countries who don't always have the resources or support to think an idea should be pursued, but still, love it

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha awesome! It actually took me a long time to come up with the name, but ultimately it stuck. Very funny that you came up with the same thing!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tech giants let the Web's metadata schemas and infrastructure languish - <AUTHOR> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1291509746000855040.html <comment><USER2> Actual title: Google and other tech giants are happy to have control over the Web's metadata schemas, but they let its infrastructure languish

I know that hating on Google is fashionable, but that's a bit too much editorializing. Especially considering the content of the post, and Google just being a small side note.

\---

On-topic: I recently looked into using schema.org types as the basis for a information capturing system, but many of the types are somewhat outdated, of questionable quality or just missing. Development indeed seems slow, while changes that are needed by one of the larger involved companies get pushed through quickly.

I think a big part of that stagnation is a lack of interest though. The whole semantic web domain has been pretty much inactive.

It's a real shame: having canonical types for most things in existence, and have those actually be supported as import/export formats or for cross-app integrations, would be immensely valuable! But there is absolutely no business incentive there - rather the opposite. Easy portability of data is not something most companies would want.

<comment><USER3> > But there is absolutely no business incentive there - rather the opposite. > Easy portability of data is not something most companies would want.

That depends on what kind of data it is. For example, your home address is not part of your bank's primary business model, but keeping it up-to-date is important for it. If data portability in and out of the bank makes it more likely that you'll keep it up-to-date, that's useful for your bank as well.

Legislation and customer demand is also making it more and more palatable. If some data is not critical to your business model, but being the sole guardian of it is a legal/reputational liability is, then actually handing control over that data over to someone else and re-using that is very useful.

<comment><USER4> That's interest on the side of the data consumer not the data provider, for lack of better words.

If the bank was the one owning the information they would not want it to be shared with others as that would allow their client to easily migrate to another bank which they definitely do not want.

But as the one receiving the data,sure, it would be nice to have others share it with me, they'd say.

I'm afraid without legislation data sharing is never going to be a thing.

<comment><USER3> At this moment that bank _is_ the entity that keeps this data. Their challenge is, however, that the data gets outdated. But if they give other parties the ability to access that data, then the consumer will have more motivation to keep it up-to-date, and the bank will now have access to more accurate address data.

(Note that the bank is an example - it could be another party.)

<comment><USER5> The solution for this would be for banks to use the government as single source of truth - in Germany we have the Melderegister anyway, it's mandatory to register your primary address.

Unfortunately it's not allowed by law that a consumer gives "push access" to e.g. banks, health insurance or employers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of the tragic situation where if you process XHTML locally using XML tools that incidentally fetch the DTD, then things block and become absolutely dirt slow, because the W3C sysadmins are permanently pissed off by that: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/13865692/82](https://stackoverflow.com/a/13865692/82)

<comment><USER7> This is great. It's a perfect solution too, because it's not super long, but it's long enough that nobody is going to go into production without figuring out how to cache it

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was once put to me that Google's promotion system creates this dynamic.

Starting a new project that garners widespread attention looks good in a package, but replacing lightbulbs and scrubbing floors doesn't. Folks create a splash, get promoted, then move on and are not replaced.

I've never worked at Google, so I do not know if this dynamic is real. I would be interested to hear from Googlers about incentives to work or not work on something.

<comment><USER9> Former Googler, 16 hours ago, stated: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077692](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077692)

<comment><USER8> He says incentives and recognition began to shift by 2010, which is good to hear.

But that leaves me wondering how the linked situation occurs. It's a cliché that Google shutters projects or loses interest. I don't know whether that's particular to google or if it's due to an availability heuristic (Google is well-known, so its wanderings-off are widely publicised).

But if there _are_ such dynamics and incentives, they are worthy of attention. Google exerts enormous gravity on the fabric of the technology industry, it would be helpful to avoid hurtful externalities arising from internal incentives.

<comment><USER10> My theory is that Google is notably worse at this because their core advertising business is so profitable. Most companies would have been forced to become good at managing projects by necessity but until ad revenues substantially decline Google can subsidize a ton of inefficiency and still report good numbers to Wall Street, just like Microsoft's various write-offs in the 90s and 2000s.

<comment><USER8> It certainly doesn't help. I refer to this as the "Mississippi of Money" problem. If a river is deep, wide and fast-flowing, you can do pretty much anything and still get somewhere.

The rest of us have to make do with leaky canoes, going up a certain creek, often sans a paddle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't schema.org supposed to be an "industry wide" collaborative effort? In which case we must also remark on the disinterest shown by players like Microsoft, Apple or Google, or even Facebook, Twitter and so on, all of whom benefit by this semantic markup.

<comment><USER12> My opinion is the disinterest from bigger players is because of the lack of traction/interest from the broader community. Maybe there's a chicken and egg problem that comes with bootstrapping any new standard

<comment><USER13> IMO, the reason for the lack of interest from the broader community is because it's unnecessarily complicated, and somehow simultaneously incomplete to the point of being almost unusable for some projects.

It was clearly designed by bureaucrats who enjoy making rules and sub-rules and sub-sub-rules. It doesn't matter if it works, or is useful, as long as there are plenty of rules.

There's a reason nobody wants to play with the jerk dungeonmaster.

<comment><USER12> That's fair. I can see that being the issue. Speed and ease of use don't go hand in hand with having a well defined ontology and processes for updating it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google is dropping the ball here, as they stand to benefit the most from a single central ontology for the web. It does illustrate that this approach doesn't work if you are looking to innovate quickly and not be dependent on the goodwill of a single institution that doesn't even know who you are.

Maybe we can finally stop using ontologies for the semantic web and start solving the hard problem of language pragmatics.

<comment><USER15> A single ontology would level the search/structured-web playing field. Right now Google has a huge advantage because they leverage their ML/NN knowledge and funding to "extract" structured information from the unstructured web. New players just can't do that without a lot of time & funding, which wouldn't be the case if a lot of the data was in a structured and agreed-upon format/schema.

<comment><USER16> ML/NN methods and knowledge only become _more_ effective and powerful if accurate input data is available. You can not just "extract" information, but try to perform complex queries, inference etc. over structured data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to see schema.org updated and used more. As someone still doing linked data work, albeit in academia, I mainly use it simply to provide more context to self-created, domain specific properties within ontologies using things like rdfs:seeAlso, skos:related, etc.

Ideally it'd be nice (imo) if schema.org had more domain specific extensions, similar to the bib[0] one which allows for things like comic book properties to be described.

[0] [https://schema.org/docs/bib.home.html](https://schema.org/docs/bib.home.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand. This is a tool for Google to extract information from websites and keep potential visitors on Google instead. Every use case for and future progress on it will be measured on that metric.

They don't care to address any of the issues or "fix the infrastructure" because this isn't a "organize all the information in the world!" project at all. The guys that take Google visitor retention stats into their next performance meeting are probably poking fun at all the ontology nerds that have descended on their metric-driven scheme.

<comment><USER19> From the official website:

> Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, > maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet, on web > pages, in email messages, and beyond.

> A shared vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters and developers to decide > on a schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. It is in this > spirit that the founders, together with the larger community have come > together - to provide a shared collection of schemas.

If this isn't an "organize all the information in the world" project, then Google and the other companies involved are branding it in a horribly dishonest way. In which case, they should be criticized for presenting a company-specific visitor retention strategy like it's some kind of altruistic gift to the world.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter have their own 'lite' metadata schemas that they use to help identify and render links. Hardly anyone criticizes them over it, because they haven't registered a generic domain like 'schema.org' and presented their work like it's some kind of community-driven collaboration. They're upfront that it's just a simple API for their website.

</comment></comment><comment> hn-cmt The Schema.org vision certainly is not dead within Google. See the Google- backed DataCommons project at [http://datacommons.org/](http://datacommons.org/) which heavily relies on the schemas defined by schema.org. Headed by the creator of schema.org.

</comment><comment><USER20> My solution was to reverse engineer highly ranked web pages. I used a subset of the schema that seemed to be universal to those pages. Schema.org just gave me the proper file formats.

<comment><USER21> Extrapolating is this possibly a "JavaScript - The good parts" sort of problem?

Care to elaborate further as to which of the schema that your kept/found most useful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think their choice of JSON-LD as the recommended format and not being transparent in how it effects results is the biggest issue. JSON-LD requires duplication of content, where as microdata is inline with existing content.

<comment><USER23> JSON-LD is also much easier to generate in scenarios where you can access post meta data and output scripts but can't necessarily filter HTML markup output (WordPress, corporate CMS, etc.).

And you can generate it dynamically: [https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/generate- st...](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/generate-structured- data-with-javascript)

<comment><USER22> A lot of websites are now generated using static site generators and it is much easier doing so inline, than have to duplicate the content which also makes the pages much bigger. Like I said the issue is more about lack of transparency about how it may effect ranking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Actual thread for anyone wanted to look at the images which Thread Reader stripped:

[https://twitter.com/alkreidler/status/1291509746000855040](https://twitter.com/alkreidler/status/1291509746000855040)

<comment><USER24> The images show up just fine for me? If you're like me and don't like Twitter, use nitter instead; it works just fine without javascript (the entire thread is there on one page)

<comment><USER10> Their lazy loader appeared to fail - the first image rendered but none of the rest did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So fork? Its not the big G's responsibility to solve all the internet's problems and honestly most other web metadata standards have failed, only difference is that this one has a big name attached we can all blame.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is one question I always have about the semantic web schemes? What if it finally catches on and the end sites just immediately start lying their ass off for selfish purposes? Like many of the earlier search engine optimizations to try to land common hits on a massive page that doesn't actually provide what you are looking for.

The only way around that is for somebody to do the processing of the real data to validate that it isn't just bullshit for a nefarious purpose. From what I've heard about the Semantic web conceptually seems a bit skeumorphic as a concept.

<comment><USER16> The nice thing about the newer semantic web standards is that they're a lot more detailed than the "description" and "keywords" standards of old. It's more obvious if a website is providing misleading information for self-serving purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> All the information is already out there. Ontology is a crutch.

</comment><comment><USER28> @dang there's a typo in the name: should say "infrastructure", not "infrastrucure"

It's missing the T, as-in: _infrastrucTure_

</comment><comment><USER29> How do you avoid the Bike-Shedding problem?

Would forcing the proposer to quantify costs and benefits help?

<comment><USER30> How does the IETF manages it? It operates by seeking broad consensus. That might work. Also getting a good compromise done should be in the interest of everyone. Plus there could be iterations every few years. (Like there's with JS/ECMAScript via TC39.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's "langushing" and they should do it for us? It's flourishing and they're doing it for us and they have lots of open issues and I want more for free without any work.

Wow! Nobody else does _anything_ to collaboratively, inclusively develop schema and the problem is that search engines aren't just doing it for us?

1) Search engines do not owe us anything. They are not obligated to dominate us or the schema that we may voluntarily decide to include on our pages.

We've paid them nothing. They have no contract for service or agreement with us which compels them to please us or contribute greater resources to an open standard that hundreds of people are contributing to.

2) You people don't know anything about linked data and structured data.

Here's a list of schema: [https://lov.linkeddata.es/dataset/lov/](https://lov.linkeddata.es/dataset/lov/) .

Here's the Linked Open Data Cloud: [https://lod-cloud.net/](https://lod- cloud.net/)

Does your or this publisher's domain include any linked data?

Does this article include any linked data?

Do data quality issues pervade promising, comparatively-expensive, redundant approaches to natural-language comprehension, reasoning, and summarization?

Here, in contributing this example PR adding RDFa to the codeforantarctica web page, I probably made a mistake. [https://github.com/CodeForAntarctica/codeforantarctica.githu...](https://github.com/CodeForAntarctica/codeforantarctica.github.io/pull/3) . Can you spot the mistake?

There should have been review.

[https://schema.org/ClaimReview](https://schema.org/ClaimReview), W3C Verifiable Claims / Credentials, ld-signatures, and lds-merkleproof2017.

Which brings us to reification, truth values, property graphs, and the new RDF* and SPARQL* and JSON-LD* (which don't yet have repos with ongoing issues to tend to).

3) Get to work. This article does nothing to teach people how to contribute to slow, collaborative schema standards work.

Here's the link to the GitHub Issues so that you can contribute to schema.org: [https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg](https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg)

...

"Standards should be better and they should pay for it"

Who are the major contributors to the (W3C) open standard in question?

Is telling them to put up more money or step down going to result in getting what we want? Why or why not?

Who would merge PRs and close issues?

Have you misunderstood the scope of the project? What do the editors of the schema feel in regards to more specific domain vocabularies? Is it feasible or even advisable to attempt to out-schema domain experts who know how to develop _and revise_ an ontology or even just a vocabulary with Protegé?

To give you a sense of how much work goes into creating a few classes and properties defined with RDFS in RDFa in HTML: here's the [https://schema.org/Course](https://schema.org/Course) , [https://schema.org/CourseInstance](https://schema.org/CourseInstance) , and [https://schema.org/EducationEvent](https://schema.org/EducationEvent) issue: [https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/195](https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/195)

Can you find the link to the Use Cases wiki (which was the real work)? What strategy did you use to find it?

...

"Well, Google just does what's good for Google."

Are you arguing that Google.org should make charitable contributions to this project? Is that an advisable or effective way to influence a W3C open standard (where conflicts of interest by people _just donating time_ are disclosed)?

Anyone can use something like extruct or OSDS to extract RDFa, Microdata, and/or JSON-LD from a page.

Everyone can include structured data and linked data in their pages.

There are surveys quantifying how many people have included which types in their pages. Some of that data is included on schema.org types pages.

...

Some written interview questions:

> _Which issues have you contributed to? Which issues have you seen all the > way to closed? Have you contributed a pull request to the project? Have you > published linked data? What is the URL to the docs which explain how to > contribute resources? How would you improve them?_

[https://twitter.com/westurner/status/1291903926007209984](https://twitter.com/westurner/status/1291903926007209984)

...

After all that's happened here, I think Dan (who built FOAF, which all profitable companies could use instead of [https://schema.org/Person](https://schema.org/Person) ) deserves a week off to add more linked data to the internet now please.

<comment><USER32> I think that might be fair, but when she makes org came out it pitched itself as trust us we will take care of things, so yeah they don't owe us anything but track record matters for trust in future ventures by these search engine orgs

<comment><USER31> schemaorg/schemaorg/CONTRIBUTING.md [https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/blob/main/CONTRIBUTIN...](https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md) explains how you and your organization can contribute resources to the Schema.org W3C project.

If you or your organization can justify contributing one or more people at full or part time due to ROI or goodwill, by all means start sending Pull Requests and/or commenting on Issues.

"Give us more for free or step down". Wow. What PRs have you contributed to justify such demands?

[https://schema.org/docs/documents.html](https://schema.org/docs/documents.html) links to the releases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What's in it for the tech giants? Google is merely interested in peddling its ads to its Chrome users. Use Brave instead.

</comment><comment><USER34> Google neglect a project? No...I don't believe it.

Isn't this SOP for Google?</comment>


Growth Hacking for Remote and International Developers – Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://mobycast.fm/episode/growth-hacking-for-remote-and-international-developers-part-1/ <comment><AUTHOR> In 2001 I went to India and hired a software team and I felt like a total pioneer. These days I'd say we still haven't hit peak international team, but there aren't many companies or people that don't have at least tangential experience with it. Chris and I tell our own stories and reveal our own happy surprises on taking this journey in this week's episode of Mobycast.</comment>


CIA possibly uses geofencing to restrict missiles given to allies - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-missiles/cia-devised-way-to-restrict-missiles-given-to-allies-researcher-says-idUSKBN1YY1BF <comment><USER2> TLDR: To restrict the effectiveness of MANPADS accidentally falling into the hands of extremists, they have developed geofencing technology that prevents said MANPADS from being used outside of a specified geographical area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Deployment unknown but documents date from the time when such weapons were deployed in Syria.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Created LaunchRock page for my project, now what? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I have created few days ago a landing page with LaunchRock for my new side project (http://cv-rocks.launchrock.com).
Now what? What could be the best ways to advertise it in addition to the standard social sharing?
And how do you think I might improve it?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Talking to the users and getting feedback on the product to improve it might be better than having more users for a product where there are substantial improvements that can be made easily or where there are necessary improvements that have not been made.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Before you spend your social capital on advertising/sharing, make sure you have _something_ to share/advertise.</comment>


Show HN: NovelPad, an online editor for writing novels - <AUTHOR> https://novelpad.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all! I've been working on this for the past 6 months, after many years of being a wantrepreneur. This is the first time I've launched a product and taken payments. Would love to hear any feedback or questions on any aspect of the site, product, etc.

<comment><USER2> It wasn't immediately apparent based on the landing page, that I would be able to export my finished novel, or that you provide some sort of security for my work (syncing, backups with Dropbox, Google Drive, maybe?). I think those will be people's two biggest questions or apprehensions.

I kind of hate the scrolljacking. It's too flashy. It's sluggish. It is kind of distracting. I think the small gif of the kanban is much more effective, and the rest of the copy is too.

Maybe a bit of top padding on the 'CenterCallout' where you say "Writing is just one click away" and "A new way to note".

You might want to sprinkle one or two more calls to action for purchase or trial in between some of the feature descriptions.

Otherwise, the kanban setup for chapters and such seems really intuitive and I'm surprised I haven't seen that before in this context. I'd definitely be interested in giving it a shot. Maybe paying the $8 will encourage me to write more. I'll bookmark it to check out after work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi pearce! Thanks for the great feedback. The editor does allow exporting to both Markdown and Word, and I'm slightly embarrassed that we forgot to mention it on the front page. I'll fix that. (The last section near the bottom does mention that we do daily backups -- perhaps I should move that up. We also keep hourly revisions of each novel.)

Your suggestions for the copy and additional CTAs sound like a perfect A/B test to run, which I'll get on ASAP. Still trying to figure out all of this marketing stuff, and all suggestions are _very_ welcome.

It's still a young product, so we have a long way to go, and we're still learning. Thank you for taking the time to look at it! Can't wait to hear what you think of the actual product.</comment></comment></comment>


Why is LTE equipment being installed in an Apple Store? - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/16/why-is-lte-equipment-being-installed-in-an-apple-store/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr: nobody is really sure, but speculation is rampant.</comment>


Why extroverts fail, introverts flounder and you probably succeed - <AUTHOR> http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-28/national/36587180_1_extroverts-introverts-extroversion <comment><USER2> I completely agree with this. Extrovert vs Introvert has been a large subject of thought for me - not only as a developer with a desire to lead a startup and a passion for product management, but also as a 60/40 extrovert/introvert with a 100% introvert significant other.

I always recommend to anyone to read the book "Quiet" ([http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World- Talking/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World- Talking/dp/0307352145)) to appreciate differences in personalities and learn how to communicate effectively with opposing personalities.

This post in particular puts me a little as ease, because I've largely felt that I'm one of the rare ones not in an extreme. Glad to know I'm not the only ambivert out there.</comment>


Pointers and references practice (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://frainfreeze.github.io/practice/cpp/pointers <comment><USER2> > "This page contains set of challenges that you can go through to test your > understanding on the topic."

Let me tell you that none of those problems are challenging at all. They're entry level stuff.

<comment><USER3> Challenges aren't universally challenging. They have an audience that they're aimed at, and presumably you're not in this one.

<comment><USER4> +1. Pointers are the pain point for beginners in programming generally and sometimes for those who switch from other languages. This article is good start point for them to catch up if they need to.

<comment><USER5> It's true. It took me ages to understand indirection, and I didn't fully understand its purpose until I was presented with a programming environment that didn't have it. (Programming a PDP-8 with machine language.) I created my own pointer system and tada, the light switched on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Teen Who Hacked CIA Director's Email Tells How He Did It - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/hacker-who-broke-into-cia-director-john-brennan-email-tells-how-he-did-it/?mbid=nl_102015 <comment><USER2> > ... providing the Verizon employee with a fabricated employee Vcode ... got > the information they were seeking. This included Brennan's account number, > his four-digit PIN, the backup mobile number on the account, Brennan's AOL > email address and the last four digits on his bank card.

What's the use case for giving out the PIN? Seems like some elements of the account holder's record should be revealed to no one by default and only accept input and give confirmation. Perhaps the default behavior should be not to trust the support team with this information.</comment>


Google maps gets it wrong ... - <AUTHOR> http://maps.google.com/maps?q=plymouth%20PL4%20UK%20breakwater

<comment><AUTHOR> This should be a map of Plymouth Sound in the UK, with the breakwater at the bottom, most likely. Make sure you have the "satellite" imagery turned on, and you'll see two overlaid images of the breakwater.

Oops ...</comment>


The Billionaires Are Getting Nervous - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/bill-gates-warren-tax.html <comment><USER2> Warren's wealth tax makes me feel like she doesn't really understand how most wealth is held by billionaires. It's extremely illiquid, held in company stock, private business, wealth funds, private equity, and other things that don't allow someone to easily pay her 6% wealth tax ever year. It also would fundamentally change how businesses are owned in America. Imagine Bezos having to sell off 6% of his Amazon stake every year...eventually he wouldn't be the major shareholder any more. Mutual funds would become the large shareholders of every business since they would get to avoid this tax. The stock market would tumble (in my opinion), as there would always be a constant "sell" pressure on the market.

Now, she's an incredibly smart woman and I'm sure she does know exactly how it's held and its problems, which just makes me think she's trying to grab headlines with her platform without any real plans on how to do it. (Which seems to fit with her pattern on her platform anyway).

<comment><USER3> She's sufficiently smart to know that a wealth tax won't have the impact you describe. In the same way that X% corporation taxes don't pull in anything like the revenue that you'd naively expect.

Your argument is, essentially, an "everything else being equal" one. But it won't be. Company structures, trusts etc will be restructured to best deal with whatever the new laws state. As they do with the current laws.

Of course, the corollary is that she's also well aware that it won't raise anything like the money that's suggested but, from her perspective, that's not a problem either. In fact, the opposite. Bringing in a wealth tax that the wealthy avoid is probably close to ideal: deliver on your promise and still have the bogeyman. Result.

What I think is genuinely interesting is that the whole idea of a wealth tax is now considered to be electorally sensible. That's a huge change from a decade or so ago and, potentially, makes way for much more radical policies to be touted without the usual faux-shocked response.

<comment><USER4> It can be changed otherwise the poor will do something. Just too extreme these days.

Btw it takes about 8 years to reduce the wealth to 60%. That will do the balance and you can have another president by then. It is not forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Yet he is now the latest affluent American to warn that Senator Elizabeth Warren's plan for much higher taxes on the rich would be bad not just for the wealthy but for the rest of America, too."

I've watched the clip several times now and this is horrible characterization by this journalist. The title of this piece even seems to be click bait-y. We're starting to have a national conversation about more heavily taxing billionaires again but so much of the media is pumping this up into a "the Populists are going to eat the rich" kind of hysteria.

IMO.

<comment><USER6> I find it interesting that individual journalists are also terrified of this. Like, do we really think the current system is a sustainable system 50 years into the future?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a lot of billionaires on hacker news given the comments. The past two Republican presidents have pushed for and gotten massive tax "reforms" that reward these same people and cost the treasury massive amounts of new debt. Seems like just reversing all of the "reforms" would be fairly simple to implement and return the lost revenue without even needed to do anything new.

<comment><USER8> Non-billionaire here.

I'll almost certainly never be a billionaire. But I will probably do well enough, because I've learned how to live below my means and how to invest. Doing this properly will make anyone relatively wealthy after a reasonable working career.

The system works. These days, we have low unemployment, rising wages and a great market for retirees. It's not a good idea to mess with it.

<comment><USER9> You would likely never be affected by the wealth tax. Do you think your prudent lifestyle will lead to > $50 million in assets?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most of these billionaires' net worth are not liquid cash, they're in shares of the companies they founded/own. Jeff Bezos' $111B net worth, for eg, is mostly in $AMZN stock. The way a 6% wealth tax accrues, if he does nothing productive with his money, he would have to pay $6.67B the first year...and then a similar amount every year after that. After 20 years, $111B would turn into $32B — a ~71% tax rate over that time period.

And because most of his wealth is tied up in his stock, he would have to liquidate large portions of $AMZN to pay the yearly wealth tax bill. That kind of sustained mass influx of supply of $AMZN shares on the stock market would wreak havoc on its stock price, which would reverberate through retirement/pension funds. Few would gain from it.

If you took all of Bill Gates' wealth, you could fund the US Federal government for about 8 days. Not 8 days every year, 8 days total, one time. If you took all of the Forbes 400 wealth, you could fund the federal government for about 8 months. The upside is 8 months of runway, and the downside is that you would destroy decades of _created_ wealth (wealth is not zero-sum), a tide which has lifted a lot of other boats, particularly those of the upper-middle class.

<comment><USER11> > he would have to liquidate large portions of $AMZN

Not at all. He'd just have to sell that stock to someone else, with no operational effect whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought Gate's commentary was on Warren's proposal for a 2%/yr tax on all assets (not income) in excess of $50m.

The article instead seems to be entirely about marginal tax rates.

A wealth tax has a lot more implications than changes to the marginal tax rates on income and capital gains-- it has different economic effects and requires far more invasive interactions from the government.

E.g. the content of Gates' home is largely his own private business, but under a wealth tax will he have to account for all his possessions and report them to the government? If not, then why wouldn't the tax be avoidable by buying expensive art?

In the past, including recently, Gates has been pretty consistent about supporting higher tax rates for the wealthy, in particular citing estate taxes and capital gains as areas that deserved focus. ([https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/bill-gates-suggests- higher-t...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/bill-gates-suggests-higher-taxes- on-those-with-great-wealth.html)).

To me this suggests that NYT is just trying to create a bad guy opponent to make a boring policy discussion sound like something that requires pitchforks.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that hoarding wealth in various assets like the real estate market is also part of the problem.

Gates barely has a normal income. What he does have is a ton of wealth that a lot of us see as something broken in the system.

You could cure cancer and you still shouldn't have THAT much wealth.

<comment><USER12> > real estate market

Real estate is already taxed in the US (at the state/local level). I doubt Bill Gates would have an enormous problem with adjustments to that either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are currently three New York Times articles on the front page of HN. None of them are particularly interesting or well-written. I really don't see why this is necessary.

<comment><USER14> I would be happy if the New York Times was banned from this site. An awful lot of low quality and off topic content from there seems to constantly make it to the front page here.

<comment><USER15> > An awful lot of low quality and off topic content from there seems to > constantly make it to the front page here.

It makes it to the front page because people vote it up. This makes it de facto on-topic.

<comment><USER12> HN moderation frequently removes things that people upvote-- including some of the most upvoted subjects (they're upvoted a lot because they're divisive political stuff).

I think this is good, FWIW. I just don't think it's useful to argue that it shouldn't be removed just because it's upvoted because that's clearly not how HN is run.

<comment><USER16> That's a separate issue than what's happening in this thread: someone accusing upvoted content of being off-topic.

afaict, HN mods generally remove submissions because their comments are a dumpster fire. Though I haven't witnessed it in a while. The last dumpster fire comment section I saw, dang just stickied his comment to try to encourage people to get back on the topic of the article and avoid the obvious knee-jerk response to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think there are plenty of billionaires who would agree that taxes need to be higher, but they disagree specifically with the taxing _mechanisms_ being proposed by Warren and Sanders, namely the wealth tax.

Take everyone's favorite startup founder, Adam Neumann, of WeWork. Under Warren's plan, he would have been worth around 14 billion last year, based on a 30% stake in a $47 billion "valuation". So he'd owe close to a billion in taxes, when in fact, he was worth far less. And even if $47B was the correct valuation, there's not a great mechanism for him to actually get the liquidity to pay taxes.

So higher taxes on billionaires? I'm all for it. But we need realistic proposals to make it happen.

<comment><USER6> Then the taxes would've property shown the valuation of that company.

You're taking a whole system and applying it to a single variable and saying it doesn't make sense. WeWork should've never been worth that much and an inability to pay taxes would've shown that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The fact that the tax rate for the very rich has been reduced that much over the decades (not just in the US) shows how much they have corrupted the political process.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the tax rate has been reduced, but since Reagan became President, the US has been on an unprecedented 40 year economic growth. The same can't be said for Europe, England, or any other country with giant top bracket marginal rates.

<comment><USER19> I don't understand this reasoning. Shouldn't unprecedented economic growth mean that the vast majority of US citizens are better off than they were 40 years ago? But this isn't the case at all. Back then the vast majority of families could afford to own a home, have a bunch of kids, etc. and do it all on a single income. That is laughable today. What is the point of a country experiencing unprecedented economic growth if the citizens of that country are by and large worse off? I assume that growth came at the expense of the citizens and not to their benefit. But if not to their benefit, wouldn't it have been better to not have the growth at all?

<comment><USER2> Americans _are_ better off than they were 40 years ago.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/finance- and-e...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2018/03/31/the-average-american-is-much-better-off-now-than-four- decades-ago)

<comment><USER6> This type of measurement of being better off is inherently flawed.

Insurance costs going up and employers paying more for that doesn't mean people have been getting a better and better deal.

Also why is it that the standard of life is higher and has grown to be much higher in many European countries with the so called "slow growth" vs America?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reason wealthy don't need to pay their fair share of taxes is due to all the tax loopholes. The solution to that is not adding more complexity in our taxes. The solution is to remove loopholes and make taxes as simple as possible. For a certain well known income, there should be a certain well known tax rate. And, after a certain minimum, there should be almost no ways to get deductions from that tax rate.

<comment><USER21> Define income.

<comment><USER20> Define wealth.

However we tax, we'll have to define terms. The goal should be to remove loopholes in those definitions. Not add loopholes. By adding the concept of wealth, we'll just encourage behavior like undervaluing assets (like art, private stocks, etc). And we'll be back to square one.

<comment><USER21> Why would I define wealth? I am not proposing anybody does anything with, for, of, or in any way related to wealth.

"The goal should be to remove loopholes in those definitions"

So, define income, without loopholes. Your plan depends on this.

<comment><USER20> My plan? I'm not defining any plan. I'm suggesting that people who define plans should focus on removing loopholes that wealthy use today. Rather than giving them more chances to find loopholes. Income is something that we already use in taxes. If its definition has loopholes too, then "those people" should try to remove those loopholes in the definition.

p.s., There's a difference in reducing loopholes and having absolutely zero loopholes (something that may be impossible)

<comment><USER21> Yes, your plan, _the solution_ as you called it.

If _the solution_ is that _those people_ should _try to remove those loopholes_ from the definition of _income_ and there is nothing beyond that to explain how _those people_ should do that then it is a vacuous solution.

 _p.s, There's a difference in reducing loopholes and having absolutely zero loopholes (something that may be impossible)_

Obviosuly.

<comment><USER20> It's impressive how you've taken issue with my simple statement about "don't add more complexity to taxes; simplify taxes."

You're basically arguing that I shouldn't make this statement unless I have specific details about how to simplify taxes? I can't make a general directional statement if I haven't taken the time to learn about all the nuances? Do you always learn about all the nuances and define all the terms before starting a discussion?

<comment><USER21> It's impressive how you've taken a simple two word response to your start of discussion that aimed to succinctly demonstrate problems with your general directional statement with so much worthless blather. Do you always fail so magnificently to just accept the point when challenged in some pathetic need to 'win' the conversation?

<comment><USER20> Good point. We both are being pathetic in trying to win the conversation. Conversation that's not even that stimulating. Okay, I'll stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Marginal tax was 70%....

Yeah and what was inflation? And what was Reagan doing to fix it? It wasn't all economic unicorns and rainbows in the 70s to 80s transition.

</comment><comment><USER23> A tax on assets would be absolutely impossible to implement and would lead primarily to increase fees to accountants and lawyers.

<comment><USER24> Are you aware that taxes on assets already exist?

[https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employed/estate-tax)

The Estate Tax is a tax on your right to transfer property at your death. It consists of an accounting of everything you own or have certain interests in at the date of death (Refer to Form 706 (PDF)). The fair market value of these items is used, not necessarily what you paid for them or what their values were when you acquired them. The total of all of these items is your "Gross Estate." The includible property may consist of cash and securities, real estate, insurance, trusts, annuities, business interests and other assets.

<comment><USER23> How do they calculate the fair market value of closely held private businesses?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We've got low unemployment (record low for African Americans and Hispanics), rising wages, and a strong stock market.

Why mess with things now? I'd understand it if someone wanted to monkey with things when the economy was awful. But why mess with it when things are good?

</comment><comment><USER25> They'll cope.

<comment><USER26> Dude, don't be so casual about it! Some of them may end up leaving the 3-commas club!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Avoid giving clicks to companies like the NYT that are working to kill the open web.

[http://archive.is/i60kZ](http://archive.is/i60kZ)

<comment><USER28> Or trying to fund their operation? This article seems free anyways

<comment><USER29> Free the first time or sth. Everybody's trying to fund their operations, i don't see why paywalls aren't considered the spam (that they are)

<comment><USER30> Because there are people who believe in supporting journalism and understand that real journalism isn't cheap?

Like a lot of things in life, you get what you pay for.

<comment><USER29> There are people who support kayaking, that doesn't mean that Gmail should allow kayak fan spam in my inbox.

<comment><USER31> How is that relevant to the NYT charging for their work? You always have the option of not reading it if you don't want to.

<comment><USER29> Google considers all kinds of hidden or caged content as spam, and will delist those sites, but they make an exception for paywalls.

<comment><USER16> If your issue is that NYT can get its entire article indexed even though people will hit a paywall when they go to view it, I can see what you're saying.

But you have to balance these concerns with what's practical. After all, a search engine is supposed to help people find things.

If an NYT article actually answers your search query, I don't think the greater good is for Google to not show you that result. I don't think that's what most people would want, either.

I feel the same way about Google hypothetically only indexing the part of the article that is shown above the paywall fold. What if the rest of the article can answer your search query? I don't think you're better off not knowing such an article exists.

There are only trade-offs.

The other things that Google bans are more obviously deceptive with few upsides to be found for the end-user, like cloaking a malicious website. I don't think you could enumerate the other sorts of things that Google blocks and compare them honestly to NYT's paywall, but I'd be curious to hear you build that case.

<comment><USER32> The article is just an opinion piece on Bill Gates opinion, it really adds nothing of value, no investigative journalism, no fact checking.

I argue that the only reason people are interested in this article is because of Bill Gates opinion not the ny times.

I think search results for the original opinion would be much more relevant than a random persons opinion of the opinion. The opinion of some one else's opinion is not worth money, if ny times considers that as quality journalism I think it says a lot about the quality of their journalism.

<comment><USER31> So you're upset that the NYT ran an opinion piece in the opinion section?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is thoroughly shoddy journalism.

> The available evidence strongly suggests that taxation exerts a minor > influence on innovation.

No citation given.

> Congress has slashed taxation three times in the past four decades, each > time for the stated purpose of spurring innovation and investment and > growth. Each time, the purported benefits failed to materialize.

No citation given.

> President Trump initiated the most recent experiment in 2017. The > International Monetary Fund concluded in a recent report that it had not > worked.

This NYT piece is about _individual income tax_ , whereas the IMF article exclusively analyzed _corporate tax_ cuts.

> Decades of episodic tax cuts have left the government deeply in debt

Yes, though nobody in the article (or in the broader political arena) is all that interested in paying them off.

> The wealthiest Americans are paying a much smaller share of income in taxes > than they did a half-century ago. In 1961, Americans with the highest > incomes paid an average of 51.5 percent of that income in federal, state and > local taxes. Half a century later, in 2011, Americans with the highest > incomes paid just 33.2 percent of their income in taxes, according to a > study by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman

There is no source for the 1961 number. That study says that the tax rate on the top 0.001% increased 185% from 1946-1980 and decreased 3% from 1980-2014. [1]

\---

Aside from the typically bad NYT coverage, a point seldom brought up in many articles is the current income tax burden of the wealth relative the rest of the country.

More than 90% of individual income taxes come from the top 1% of taxpayers. [2]

I can't find that number for billionaires specifically, but some quick searching and math estimates that $9T from billionaires taxed at 23% accounts for $2T of $10T individual income tax.

So < 0.001% of individuals pay 20% of the income tax.

Makes me wonder what the opt-referred to "fair share" actually is.

[1] [https://www.nber.org/papers/w22945.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22945.pdf) Table 2

[2] [https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income- tax-...](https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax- data-2018-update/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Let's tax the people who pay all the taxes even more...

The worst problem with these tax proposals is that they won't even raise half as much revenue as they need for the programs they are supposed to fund.

<comment><USER31> Do you have a citation for the claim that only billionaires pay taxes? I mean, why do Americans popularly fear April 15th if only a few thousand pay?

<comment><USER34> Honestly, no fucking idea. Most Americans get a refund because they have overpaid their taxes throughout the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _The specific proposals by Ms. Warren and one of her rivals, Senator Bernie > Sanders, to impose a new federal tax on wealth are innovations that require > careful consideration._

The NYT and myself have a very different definition of "innovation".

<comment><USER36> Even if "innovative" was just a synonym of "original", it's not even an original idea, as many European countries have already tried a wealth tax -- and I'm fairly certain every country that has tried it has repealed it not long after.

<comment><USER37> A clever twist in Warren's proposal is that the Government has the right to buy your property for whatever you've listed it for.

Now I'm sure any attempt to actually do that would end in a court case, but it's not really worth the risk to the owner of said wealth to offer the government all your Rembrants at bargain basement prices.

<comment><USER38> What value goes down on paper? The value that something has to you? The price that someone else would pay?

Let say you have Warren Buffett's shoes.

Warren Buffett paid $X for those shoes.

A pair of new shoes would cost him $Y.

Someone might pay $Z as they are Warren Buffett's shoes.

Someone might pay $V just to inconvenience Warren (so he would have to go to the shoe store).

Maybe they have some sentimental value to Warren, so he would pay $T not to lose them.

What are the shoes worth?

<comment><USER39> > What value goes down on paper? The value that something has to you? The > price that someone else would pay?

I mean, I don't know anything beyond what the person you're responding to said, but they made it pretty clear:

> the Government has the right to buy your property for whatever you've listed > it for

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> A while ago, I was curious about the relationship between income taxes and growth in the US, so I looked up the data... and I was unable to find _any_ clear relationship!!!

As one of many possible examples I could give, below is a table I compiled showing the highest marginal federal income tax rate and year-over-year real GDP growth in the US since 1950. Can you find a relationship?

My conclusion, so far: There's a tremendous amount of theory, and rhetoric, and posturing, and straw-man arguments... but _very little or ZERO actual evidence_ that national economic growth is impacted one way or another. (In fact, in many cases the data shows higher economic growth during periods of higher taxation at the top of the income distribution.)

             Highest  Real GDP
      Year  Tax Rate    Change
      1950:    84.4%      8.7%
      1951:    91.0%      8.0%
      1952:    92.0%      4.1%
      1953:    92.0%      4.7%
      1954:    91.0%     -0.6%
      1955:    91.0%      7.1%
      1956:    91.0%      2.1%
      1957:    91.0%      2.1%
      1958:    91.0%     -0.7%
      1959:    91.0%      6.9%
      1960:    91.0%      2.6%
      1961:    91.0%      2.6%
      1962:    91.0%      6.1%
      1963:    91.0%      4.4%
      1964:    77.0%      5.8%
      1965:    70.0%      6.5%
      1966:    70.0%      6.6%
      1967:    70.0%      2.7%
      1968:    75.3%      4.9%
      1969:    77.0%      3.1%
      1970:    71.8%      0.2%
      1971:    70.0%      3.3%
      1972:    70.0%      5.3%
      1973:    70.0%      5.6%
      1974:    70.0%     -0.5%
      1975:    70.0%     -0.2%
      1976:    70.0%      5.4%
      1977:    70.0%      4.6%
      1978:    70.0%      5.5%
      1979:    70.0%      3.2%
      1980:    70.0%     -0.3%
      1981:    69.1%      2.5%
      1982:    50.0%     -1.8%
      1983:    50.0%      4.6%
      1984:    50.0%      7.2%
      1985:    50.0%      4.2%
      1986:    50.0%      3.5%
      1987:    38.5%      3.5%
      1988:    28.0%      4.2%
      1989:    28.0%      3.7%
      1990:    28.0%      1.9%
      1991:    31.0%     -0.1%
      1992:    31.0%      3.5%
      1993:    39.6%      2.8%
      1994:    39.6%      4.0%
      1995:    39.6%      2.7%
      1996:    39.6%      3.8%
      1997:    39.6%      4.4%
      1998:    39.6%      4.5%
      1999:    39.6%      4.8%
      2000:    39.6%      4.1%
      2001:    39.1%      1.0%
      2002:    38.6%      1.7%
      2003:    35.0%      2.9%
      2004:    35.0%      3.8%
      2005:    35.0%      3.5%
      2006:    35.0%      2.9%
      2007:    35.0%      1.9%
      2008:    35.0%     -0.1%
      2009:    35.0%     -2.5%
      2010:    35.0%      2.6%
      2011:    35.0%      1.6%
      2012:    35.0%      2.2%
      2013:    39.6%      1.8%
      2014:    39.6%      2.5%
      2015:    39.6%      2.9%
      2016:    39.6%      1.6%
      2017:    39.6%      2.4%
      2018:    37.0%      2.9%

Sources:

Year-over-year real GDP growth: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=pssP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=pssP)

Tax rates: [https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical- highes...](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest- marginal-income-tax-rates)

</comment><comment><USER41> The increasing lack of a mass market consumer base for capitalist goods & services also threatens economic growth. In other words it does society more economic good for everybody to be able to afford a dishwasher than for a few people to be able to afford luxury goods. We've had decades of rather low tax rates and decades of rather low growth and no solutions given other than to double down on the low-tax investment-first strategy.

Low taxes sure bolster economic growth in the short term and bolster investment but they also lead to forms of societal decay like income inequality which leads to crime which leads the more demand for order which leads to cementing the accumulation of power. Left unchecked the powerful will accumulate resources out of line with their actual merit to society through the leverage of their existing capital. We're in a situation now where it's increasingly obvious how the rich are overcompensated relative to their productive output but countries race to the bottom to compete for their capital. If this race to the bottom were not happening every country would be better off taxing the wealthy more fairly but we're in a tragedy of the commons situation.

</comment><comment><USER42> Tax on wealth (earnings which were already taxed once) will lead most shareholders to do the math and skip over to Canada or Europe if profitable. Especially companies ran in a remote/asynchronous manner.

<comment><USER43> You think they will give up their US citizenship? That's about the only way to get out of filing taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is the same bs* as trickle down economy.

<comment><USER45> Care to explain?

<comment><USER46> What is the government going to do with the billions collected from wealth taxes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If 'the billionaires' are as powerful as those like Warren and Sanders say no one has to worry about them ever being elected.

Additionally, I hear a lot from the left about modern monetary theory which essentially claims government can just print more money when it is needed and therefore collecting taxes is not necessary.

Which is it then? Perhaps they are attacking the wealthy out of political hatred and vitriol not out of a desire to help the poor or build roads.</comment>


Ask HN: Is 5G Dangerous for Humans? - <AUTHOR> My Facebook wall is floated with non-technical people posting articles about the danger of 5G to humans. The mainstream tech press rarely addresses the topic. The same goes for HN. If the subject comes up, most comments seem to agree that it is not dangerous, yet many outside the tech worlds seems to agree on that is. <comment><USER2> Probably. If you really care, read up on how electromagnetic waves actually affect tissue, and compute the dose rate yourself. It's moderately complicated, but doable in your spare time.

Otherwise, just remember that the the scarier the "news" report is, the more clicks it gets. The more clicks it gets, the more advertising can be shown. The more ads are shown, the more money someone makes. Thus, it's in their financial interest to scare you as much as possible. Can you really trust some random stranger to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when their paycheck depends on writing the scariest thing they can think of? And what's scarier than invisible radiation beamed from radiation towers by huge multi-national radiation companies to radiate the brains of your children? More scary = more money.</comment>