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This might be too political but after seeing another article on basic income I'm curious what other people on HN think about the politics and economic ideas behind the politics.

In the poorest areas there are strong incentives for the residents to spend any extra money on necessities such as housing, housing maintenance, utilities, food and clothing. Much of that work would be done by other residents or local businesses. As far as I understand money distributed this way gets cycled through the economy at a high rate, changing hands many times.

I think the point is that if a $3000 a year basic income program was implemented successfully it could lead to other programs being replaced with a higher basic income.

> tax deduction for home buyers simply leads to higher home prices

This is actually a desired effect of a basic income. The poorest people often live in areas that are essentially cash starved with low real estate prices. There is often little incentive or ability to improve or maintain their homes. A basic income would provide the ability for many in such areas to spend on non essentials like home maintenance which could lead to higher prices and higher employment. Which in turn could lead to more pride in ownership and eventually end up re-invigorating those areas.

In other words, science is hard, predictions are unreliable, scientists are humans and humans make mistakes / are motivated by emotions.

As usual with pieces critical of science they focus too much on a very small number of bad eggs and seem to implicitly assume that scientists should somehow be superhuman.

What is the difference between a "market correction" and a "bubble"? Do you think there is a risk of the entire web industry imploding like it did in 2000?

For what it's worth some of my take aways for why it's different are:

1) I don't see it effecting the tech industry as a whole to the level it did then.

2) It's not leaking out of the tech industry into the media, other industries, the financial world or popular perception to the same extent.

3) The amount of money flowing into tech and especially startups is significantly less now (proportionally).

4) There are many established business models that use the internet now while in 1999 there was much more speculation and few proven models.

I agree that basically all I am saying is "This time it’s different". That is my interpretation of the situation, take it for what you will. I am not trying to prove anything and do not believe in predicting the markets in general.

In essence I was saying that I am not seeing as many or as sever warning signs. That is just my interpretation based on the very limited information that I have now and had then. I am not trying to make any predictions, I do believe in predicting the market.

I was in university during the late 90's .com boom and the current situation does not feel the same. While some of the high prices being paid for startups and talent in silicon valley point to some possible over heating it does not seem to be affecting the wider tech world in the way that .com boom did.

In 1999 and early 2000 every investing show on TV would constantly be talking about the new highs that Microsoft, Cisco, Nortel hit or the latest up and comers and the massive amounts of money being poured into it all. It wasn't the normal speal, it was like watching a cheer leading squad cheer on the the never ending boom. I don't know quite how to describe it, it was kind of eerie and surreal. And it wasn't just the investing shows that were doing it, it was being talked about all over the place, even outlets that would not normally talk about anything money or stock related.

The current situation does not seem much like that to me. Sure there are several cases of companies with sky high valuations and questionable future revenue but it's not industry wide like 1999.

That is a beautiful, amazing office, except for the part where people work. I will not work in an open plan office like that. That is my opinion but as far as I understand most scientific studies support it. As opposed to industry and agile consultants hand waving arguments. For example:

http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest...

The key here is that he got in early and sold at a great time. Right now asic miners are not profitable unless the price of bitcoins goes up substantially (1.5-2x). Then you have to factor in the fact the there are a lot of people out there willing to put down serious money on asics regardless of the current profitability. They have and will driven up the difficulty.

Buying ascis is very much a gamble at this point imo.

I made around 110 BTC mining primecoin, about 60 BTC of that is profit. I got in early and went hard. I consider the fact I did that well to be little more than luck.

Summary here: http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ceo-and-top-edi...

Awesome, thanks.

To bad you have to pay $399 to watch the videos.

http://velocityconf.com/velocity2013/public/sv/q/479

I realize it costs money to run a conference but that seems excessive.

I would also like to see many more tech article and much fewer political ones. Especially ones about the NSA, this is one instance where it would be nice if there was some kind of partitioning to HM, possibly like reddit.

Actually no, except for my point on social views. A couple assumptions I made are:

1) He wants the American economy to improve

2) He wants to do what it best for Americans as a whole

They seem like reasonable assumptions, correct me if you seem any hole in them please.

I do not think he his actions and these assumed goals are linked in a rational way.

Do you know why BoA wants to foreclose on so many properties? In my naive understanding of American mortgages it seems to make more sense for them so keep mortgages active as long as people are paying.

From his Benghazi hearing testimony

"I'm glad that you're accepting responsibility. I think ultimately with your leaving that you accept the culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11. And I really mean that. Had I been president and found you did not read the cables from Benghazi and from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it's inexcusable."

- his obsession with drastically cutting social programs at a time when so many Americans need them

- his obsession with balancing the budget when interest rates are so low and the so many things point to the problem being a lack of spending / almost nothing pointing to the deficit being a problem

- his backwards social views

I forget how easy mainstream American media goes on him. He makes some interesting points but overall he seems very much like a dogmatic and unimaginative libertarian conservative.

Good point, I definitely agree that the rights of minorities need to be protected. Some problems with this idea are with defining what are rights and what constitutes child abuse, and what to do about abuse.

The extremes of social isolation that some of these kids endure falls on the abusive side of the line for me. I don't know what to do about that, it's a hard problem. Becoming less socially acceptable to behave that way among American adults seems like a reasonable step in the right direction.

To answer your question, I think it would also be best for the scientist parents children to interact socially with other local children in rural, bible-thumping Arkansas. If they wanted to home school their kids that is their decision to make. Humans are social animals however and a reasonable amount of real world social interaction is important.

"Their playmates were so selectively chosen that they were rarely allowed to interact with other kids at all. It showed. They were socially underdeveloped to a degree that, in retrospect, is legitimately sort of troubling."

"His skin was paper white, in Georgia, in August. He hadn’t been out in the sun in months. Not only did he not understand the rules of baseball, he was, at the age of about 12, physically unable to throw an object."

"Steve, in effect, was completely socially isolated."

The culture of acceptance of this kind of abuse in the US needs to change.

Rand Paul would probably do a lot more good by learning how to think rationally.

This article conflates Libertarians with Republicans which I don't think makes sense in Silicon Valley. Yes, nationwide they tend to be in the same group but not in the valley.

Judging from comments on HN the valley does sound quite libertarian but not the kind that register and vote Republican. It seems more intellectual and based in logic while Republicans are more about dogma and scoring political points.

I am still skeptical for reasons spelled out here:

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=954

It is unclear if they are actually taking advantage or quantum effects or if similar machines could be built using much simpler and cheaper classical effects.

I still prefer trunk based development with very frequent commits and a strong test suite. Write 5 lines of code and a test, commit. When everyone is doing this, continuous integration is running and QA is testing continuously most problems get found fast. Merging is easy as well because all the changes are so small. For stability of the system and speed of development this is works pretty well.

This post makes me want to work at 42floors. Mission accomplished Jason ;)

I don't think you logic works. Your table says that if a 0 is in-putted then there is a .1 chance of getting a 0 and a .8 chance of getting a 1. That leaves a probability of .1 or something else happening, but it you add a third state it is no longer a not gate.

In other words, a not gate, regardless of the implementation must have it's columns sum to 1. This is a fundamental principle of probability and the definition of a not gate.

Exactly, instead of having a convenient -option- that could save many Americans time and money Norquist and people like him are forcing the rest of the country to use a less efficient method. In other words they are taking away people "freedoms" in order to force them to fight to get their "freedoms" back. Norquist is of course more than happy to provide helpful guidance on what freedoms should be fought for.

Sorry, poor wording on my part. I wasn't trying to make your struggles look easy. I actually found it heart wrenching to read about them. And was trying to point out that change can be easy when done in small steps systematically. Although it almost never is ;)

That is an awesome story, good job Zaphar! You make it sound easy and it can be. Just keep taking the next step, keep learning, moving forward and getting feedback and almost anyone can take themselves somewhere.

What is you blog BTW? It's not listed on your profile or twitter.