oneJob

Interesting possible side effect. Ocean freight vessels are, disproportionately, on of the greatest contributors, and in fact one of the greatest contributors in absolute terms, to CO2 emissions. Perhaps Amazon's involvement will shine a spotlight on this issue that has heretofore gone under the radar.

The Fed Chief is put there by elected officials. Same for Treasury. Same for most of the regulatory agencies. The economy is very much handled by fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policy, which is handled by individuals that are handled by elected officials.

Seriously, the amount of basic misunderstanding of all things not programming related here on HN is starting to get to me. I can't read these threads without being compelled to correct such obvious errors. If you don't know what you're talking about, at least phrase it in a way so that it comes across as an opinion, or better yet, research before you type. It's ruining the quality of these threads.

This sort of sh*t scares me. Thinking that software is a purely technical endeavor where an expert can always be "right" and thus ignore non experts.

Respectfully Jono, I think your reply is symptomatic of the issues at the heart of the matter. GitHub is, whether it expected to be or not, whether it wants to be or not, now at the heart of the OSS community. For the "Director of Community" at a company which plays such an important role in the OSS community, which itself plays an enormously important role in the broader software and civic communities and is populated by abnormally high numbers of passionate and talented contributors, to respond to a HN story with such a high profile by:

1) apologizing for being new

2) extending borderline patronizing praise (the OP likely wanted a response to the issues put forth, not your approval)

& 3) a promise, which you can't necessarily keep, to put eyes on the issue instead of speaking to the issues raised directly.

It's not what I would expect from someone in that role at that sort of company. It's, unfortunately, what I would expect from a company that had the sort of issues raised by the OP.

Silicon Valley is most definitely an important part of history, regardless what Hacker News and its ilk do. It is named after the primary material input of its name sake first innovation, the integrated circuit. Robert Noyce, the "Mayor or Silicon Valley", Robert Moore, and the rest of the "Traitorous Eight" founded Fairchild Semiconductor and then these two went on to found Intel, a unicorn among unicorns. They accomplished all this by challenging many business norms including "not being company men" and selling their product at a loss until volume was up enough to turn a profit. They didn't just spin off companies, they are the ones that transformed the orchards into the Silicon Valley you take for granted today. They and their progeny laid the social (even the use of venture capital!) and technological foundation that is taken for granted today. Many people I ask have no clue who Robert Noyce is, and know Moore only for Moore's Law. It's like being a publicist and not knowing who Guttenberg is. It's embarrassing really. Silicon valley is already a part of history. I know this and I am young, not someone of an older generation that lived any of this. It's all so rivht there in front of your face, it's hard not to know this stuff. Hacker News, many threads show an ignorance of a lot of this stuff, and I'm just about over it all.

Would love your take on the open-sourxe/proprietary issue, especially as it affects the farmers ability to fix or improve their own equipment, legally.

Re: VHS, granting that I was speaking in superlatives and that VHS might be one of one of multiple primary influences, here is a quote from an industry insider stating the same idea [1].

Re: AC/DC, DC was financially viable. You might notice that we still make use of DC, where it does much close quarter nut kicking. DC was financially uncompetitive over distance, but not because of magic finance. It was uncompetitive because someone had to buy, build, and install the associated hardware to make it work over long distances. AC required much less in that arena, because of the technology, not magical finance. AC as a technology was more viable then DC as a technology over distance because the technologist, not the banker, endowed it with such awesome, nut kicking powers. And nut kick it did.

[1] http://www.macworld.com/article/1050627/pornhd.html

Indeed. I stopped reading when I got to that line. Modern tractors are industrial production machines valued according to their output, and designed as such. These things are indeed complex, expensive, wonders of technology. Not only that, they are no longer simply tractors, they are now parts of systems.

I think there is some valid discusion to be had re: Who gave them the right and should we continue to recognize that right?

The issue of symmetries of power brings into call the granting and enforcing of rights at a very basic level. If rights are not endowed in a symmetric fashion, shouldn't we step the conversation back and talk about that instead of throwing our collective hands up and agreeing to participate in perpetuating institutionaled inequality?

Let's rewind. VHS won because of porn. Listening to music is now a buffet style affair because of Napster. AC kicked DC in the nuts and the public applauded because it was better and it could.

I respect those working to improve the system from within, but also respectfully point out that change of the sort this article is talking about comes from the outside. Revolutions all have one thing in common. Out with the old, and in with the new. Copyright law is old, it is administered by old people, and it is kept in place by the old guard. Open source hardware, distributed open source software development, 3D printing, crowd funding, and on and on, these are all new.

You can attempt to evolve (fix) the old rules, you'll fail. It seems to me to be a safer bet to simply begin playing the new game, even though the rules are not totally worked out yet, even though people say it isn't legit, even though there are no referees to call foul or panel of judges to provide approval and award medals. Out with the old, and in with the new.

There is a follow-up by Mr. Graham [1], and there is a follow-up to his follow-up by the original open-letter author [2].

I would like to add one thing. Given that Mr. Graham has put forth an essay on an (macro) economic topic, and his employment of the 'per se' argument method, there is an obvious lack of proper treatment of the basic and foundational economic concept of 'ceteris paribus'.

Without employing the tool of 'ceteris paribus' in his his essay Mr. Graham has left the door wide open for discussion of all sorts of things which might form a critical response to his argument: "But economic inequality per se is not bad." On the same topic, in his follow-up he weakens his argument substantially by prefacing it with: "I thought it might help clarify matters if I tried to write a version so simple that it leaves no room for misinterpretation." Less words does not necessarily make for a smaller room, Mr. Graham.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/sim.html

[2] https://medium.com/@RickWebb/paul-graham-s-second-inequality...

Let us define the Identity Property of Being as 'being at one with oneself'.

Given that: time = money

...and that 'Time is All We Have'. [1]

...we can write: time/time = money/money

Which is equivalent to: (time)(money) = (money)(time)

Dividing everything by money^2 give us: time/money = time/money

Since we know that: time = money

...we can write: time/money = money/money

Which is: time/money = 1

So, we have shown that valuing time over money results in the Identity Property of Being.

[1] https://youtu.be/IAqgvotGrsg

The question, as relates to that, has always been, can you stay solvent longer than the market can stay irrational? Cause what you're really saying is that the market is not reflecting the pricing data it implicitly has available, and so is not currently rationally priced. Another problem with timing the market based on the implications of macro monetary policy is that (as you do a good job of pointing out) it is just one element of many that create the environment for the companies, and it is the companies which create the fundamental value for the market. The depression you're talking about is (as all depressions are) one caused by fundamentals. Governments have quite a few tricks in their bag to get around the deflationary issue you bring up. As for "China's lack of global consumer brands, ...", once their consumer class is up and running (which is exactly what all of China's government's spending is aiming to do) they will have more consumers than the US has citizens, and then (a lota) some. Basically, it's just not that simple.

So, you know that the NYSE was started by a bunch of guys on the edge of town under a tree? The key was they were located at the heart of the business district, where the transactions were occurring. This has been true and crucial since the early days of "finance", since back in medieval and Renaissance times when merchant houses (as in 'establishments', not actual buildings) exchanged debt and eventually stock.

As to the US stock market being "fairly transparent and not run by the whims of the government", check your history man. The US stock market has seen some crazy wild, stock manipulation, insider trading, government manipulating, bucket shop, boiler room, "oops, we have too much paper to process so shut the whole thing down" days.

And, I should add, those days aren't over. The mess is still all there, it's just much more sophisticated and comes with a better staffed and better funded marketing department.

It has created a nice software ecosystem by being a good target for developers because of its (massive) user base. It has a massive user base because Google works hard to make it a good, user-friendly consumer product and they work hard to get manufacturers to get (many models of) handsets to market. It helps that the average person needs and can afford a phone, most of which are now smartphones. Linux never made the effort required to be a serious consumer grade product (well, Ubuntu gave it a good go).

This is not so much a technical issue. Sure, the technicals need to be there, but when the average consumer goes looking for a computer, they don't start with the question, "How stable are the apis for this OS?" They do not know what an api is. And developers will not develop just because of stable apis. The Windows phone has not been a resounding success, but if ever there were a product that I, as a developer, would target due to expectations of stable apis, that would be it.

Appification is why my dad uses the iPhone. He can do cool things by hitting squares with his finger, and then get on with the rest of his day which will likely include a lot of mentally draining tasks. It's the same thing that gravitated folks to Apple's first graphical operating system. The user friendliness. The approachability. Not the cutting edge object oriented software behind it. But the mouse and a picture of a garbage can.

In that context, it's not foreign at all. I'm mean, the first time I saw the command line, that was foreign. But now it's not. But hitting a picture of an envelope to send mail, not so foreign.

Yeah. Totally what I was thinking. Other than that though, solid theory.

trackers on our phone. trackers in our cars. trackers in our web browsers. and all non-government, non-big brother. this is the definition of soft power and the panopticon, and yet, this comment will likely only annoy most folks...

software spyware and hardware spyware champs team up!

Thanks programmers! Wouldn't have been possible without you!!

Induction cooktop.

More efficient. Solar powered (renewable) so no need for going out for fuel which can be very dangerous and time intensive. Much, much safer than an open flame. No fumes. Small footprint and extremely portable. Robust. Cool.

Also, check out the book "Changing For Good" by James Prochaska. There is quote, (not from the book) "Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth." So bounce ideas off people you know and trust. Seek council and constructive criticism. Read evidence based "self help" books. Get a life coach. Because, "I want to change this or that about me" is never as simple as it seems. Especially if you want to make it a beneficial change.

I wish I could sit down with every person on this thread and devote as much time as required for me to hear out their position and me to make mine. But, since I can't and since the info is already out there, I'll just say, please, pleaseeeeee go educate yourself.

Humanity has just about built the infrastructure to lock in 2 degree temp increase. We are talking about a matter of years, not a decade. We are talking about locking in, not higher probability.

Yet, there is uninterrupted talk of growing our economies (but little talk of reducing the wealth gap). If our economies are to continue growing. If we continue to be an extraction oriented species. If we continue to spend tens of billions a year searching out new fossil fuel reserves when we can't use half of those we already know of without pushing the 4-6 degree threshold..?

Nature, will go on. Some portion of humanity, will go on. It's not the end of the world. Just the end of the world as we know it.

If today everyone ditched their cars and used public transit and bikes, we shut down the airlines, and became vegan we'd be most of the way there. Switch to organic farming and cradle-to-cradle manufacturing would almost surely get us the rest of the way there.

Yeah, I know, that's not going to happen and people don't want it to. My point is simply, the solution is not some black magic or future technology. The solution is simply a choice.

edit: for cradle-to-cradle, see... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle-to-cradle_design

So, should I tell them that the Internet is post-Nation State? Or do you want to?

Here is my prediction, after watching "Terminator Genisys". The dangerous AI is not the AI humans "invent". It is the AI that runs away. But, what AI will humans allow to "run away"? What scenario presents an opportunity for one group of humans to attack an AI and then provides the opportunity for said AI to be released from its lease ("run away") and become that which we all fear?

So, you have 'red team' and 'blue team'. Blue team is super rich and builds itself an awesome AI. Red team needs some "rally round the flag" pick me up and so, looking around for targets, decides that attacking a bunch of machines is a safe bet. If they win, awesome. If not, then they didn't kill any persons, just made a bunch of junk.

Blue team's response is to internalize the threat (as is only natural, or is at least politically expedient to some subset of blue team) and frame the situation as follows: "This is what we built our AI for. This is an existential threat. It has the capacity. We only need to let it off the leash. The choices are 'destroy' or 'be destroyed'. This is nothing less than an existential moment for our civilization."

And, with that horrible, non-technical, propaganda riddled rationalization the AI developed by the most well meaning of people will be let off the least, will run way, and nothing that we know about the AI up to that point will be worth diddly squat.

I respect anyone that tries to tackle this issue. But, the nature of the issue, the kernel of the problem, is nothing less than Pandora's box. We won't know when it is opened. But, the AI will.

I was not under the impression that Apple Pay users have an imprint of their finger print next to the transaction information and time and date stamp somewhere. That would be ridiculous. If the user validates a transaction using their fingerprint, somewhere it probably say something along the lines of "verified with user's fingerprint, which is not stored here." This creates what we call, linkages. It's not all in one place. That would, again, be ridiculous. But, the more linkages you have the better picture you can draw.

The cryptographic proof strictly verifies whether or not the currency is authentic or counterfeit. There is no implicit value in the proof. In fact, there is a cost to calculating the proof.

The value is in the willingness of the person holding the i.o.u. to honor that i.o.u.

A "perfect" cryptocurrency provides two of the three requirements of currency (a means of transferring value, and a unit of measurement of that value) but it does not (as no tangible or conceptual thing ever will) provide intrinsic value for the exchange. Value is subjective. Gold is useful today, not so much tomorrow. Gunpowder is useful to you, but not so much to me. Given that it has been debunked that currency arose out of trade and barter (i.e. currency with intrinsic value has replaced items with trade specific value so as to be more fungible), well, where is the value then?

Trust is the value. You trust you can, once your currency is verified, exchange it for something you value from someone. If that person does not trust that the currency you are offering will be able to be tendered elsewhere,,, then no exchange, because the currency is of no value to them.

What if everyone stops using U.S. dollar bills tomorrow? Does my bank account morph into some other value that I can use? Is it tied up in some vault of gold at the US Treasury? No. It becomes a worthless number on a register somewhere. But, the bartender at my local watering hole might vouch for me that I had that much or that I made that much money or that my credit was good. Trust = Credit

Without trust there is only trade and barter. Without the ability to trust that the future will have value in it, I'm only going to go with what is right in front of me right now. And a proof, it's interesting (I loves me some math), but, most of the time, I'm not going to say it has some sort of intrinsic worth that I'd trade, say, you a burrito for it.

When I buy a burrito and then look at a receipt (as I always do after buying a burrito) I do not see the visa surcharge, or any others. I see tax but that's it. At the end of the day, the consumer pays, because there is no free lunch, there are no free burritos.

I may have made an incorrect assumption regarding claims handling, though I'm not sure how that translates me to being "very misinformed".

I wasn't speaking only from the vendor perspective (idk what it looks like to them) or the Apple Pay customer's perspective (I'm not one of their customers) but I highly doubt it's worth my time to research to confirm that adding Apple Pay into the mix does not somehow increase the attack surface or how it does not somehow increase the amount of my personal information that is with Apple.

My AmEx card has had tap-to-pay functionality for years now. I keep it in my wallet where it is nearest the outside and can use without removing from my wallet. Easy. No buttons. No QR codes. And it's old tech. Still not seeing the obvious argument for throwing such an important piece of my public persona (personal finances and credit) into the same basket as my cell phone.

"Apple (AAPL, Tech30) gets just 15 cents for every $100 in Apple Pay transactions, according to Gillis."[1]

In addition to the minor surcharge, there is the (opportunity) cost of Apple's hardware, the costs to vendors of supporting (yet) another platform, the consumer provides value to Apple in the form of consumer information, the consumer now has their fingerprint tied to payments, and then there is everything that goes along with the terms and conditions. Regarding the security, I'm not sure what the details are, but it seems that the attack surface is increased substantially. I'd personally prefer to have Visa, AmEx, etc reviewing and resolving fraud and other claims, seeing as how they've been doing it for decades and their bottom line depends on it, whereas Apple is relatively new to the game and Apple's bottom line does not depend on it.

Apple Pay might be awesome. Idk. But it's not "just a nice frontend for Visa, AmEx, etc., with better security".

[1]http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/26/technology/apple-pay/

All these "Company"Pay systems are horrible for the consumer. Sure they may give a particular consumer a particular benefit at a particular point in time, but on balance they are the Facebook of currencies.

One of PayPal's initial strategies was to maximize transactions for which both the payer and payee were PayPal customers. This decreased PayPal's operating costs and reduced fraud by a large amount. Sounds like everyone wins, right?

That's simply not what currency is. Currency is an transferable i.o.u. worth whatever the creditor says it's worth. The most pervasive currency is currently the greenback. Every additional party or layer between you and the U.S. government increases credit risk and transaction costs everytime you make a transaction outside the pay network your currency is held in.

Visa is so convenient because they try to be everywhere, because that's their business. Apple is not a payment network. Walmart is not a payment network. Walmart Pay is simple one part of Walmart's portfolio. Since it's not their core product, they will by necessity make compromises that negatively affect their Walmart Pay from time to time in order to benefit some other part of their business. Look to GE Capital for a case study of what can go wrong there.

Just as Facebook is a walled garden for communities, these pay networks are walled gardens for currencies. Some are actually really great, just as Facebook is actually a really great community site. But at the end of the day it's not your garden. With other options such as Visa or cash, I find it difficult to justify turning over yet another critical apect of my daily life to a profit driven corporation according to the limiting and onerous terms and conditions they set.

Phew. Now I can go back to watching Wes Craven's "Shocker".