pluckytree

It’s in the financial interest of much of the technology industry to vociferious campaign for encryption, but they don’t. If Google stopped using any encryption, don't you think their business would suffer?

It may be in their Apple’s financial interests to do so, but it’s also the right thing to do. As you (partially) say, they care about the user experience. That experience includes taking steps to protect user information and they’ve had a long track record of doing just that. They did this long before it probably had any noticeable effect on the bottom line.

Whenever there’s an article proclaiming education or healthcare or airports or fill-in-the-blank are better in another country, this "oh, well, they are a small country and you can’t compare them" arguments gets dusted off again.

If we have 1 major airport per 10 million people (made up nuumber) and so does another country, how does that argument make sense? With a big country, economies of scale should lead to even better airports but it doesn’t.

IHMO, this is just an excuse to refuse to learn from the example of other countries, regardless of size. A country so large should be even better at doing what small countries do well. Especially showing basic human decency and humanity toward other members of their species.

Plus they are talking about caring about security and putting plans in place. Are they claiming they never cared and never had plans to make the situation better?

This is just like reporting on government where they report an idea a President mentions as "President dramatically reverses his entire 20 year belief system"

Cynically (and probably accurately), it’s a clever way to disguise a user feature (security) as a way to gather data so as to "protect" them. Sound familar?

I thought they were going to present a case that vacation increases overall employee productivity over the long run, which would have been a lot more interesting. I’d rather see more research into productivity and vacation as well as more education so companies realize they can get more bang for the buck just by changing how they treat employee downtime.

Having government come in and force companies to pay more in wages overall doesn’t seem like the best idea. Many companies, especially young companies struggle to keep their head above water and even small changes in wages can push them into closing up shop. There is no discussion in this article about any potential negative consquences. Magically, we’ll increase every company’s expenses and they will hire more people and no company will fold because of it. This is not a realistic scenario they are presenting.

I never understood the mocking, either, especially since he’s been proven extremely right about the ill-effects of consuming processed sugars. I suspect it’s rooted in his anti-nuclear and anti-war views and it just grew from there. His views on Vitamin C were just a convenient target.

It’s uncomfortable to those with analytical minds to accept the fact that we know so little about the human body and how it works. Studies are always contradicting each other because the scientific method dictates that studies must be reduced to the minimum of variables. But the body is far too complex for that. Most of what I was taught nutritionally in school as a kid was wrong. Most of the health advice was wrong. We were told butter is evil and we should eat margerine. We were told fat was evil and that cholesterol causes heart disease despite no evidence other than correlation. We don’t know how or even if consumed cholesterol gets turned into cholesterol in the bloodstream. It’s virtually universally believed that salt is bad despite it being an essential nutrient. It’s universally believed that sun is bad and we must slather ourselves with sunscreen and now we all have Vitamin D deficiencies. Read the literature that comes with any prescription drug and there will be a paragraph explaining that they have no idea how the drug works. Many are no more effective than a placebo. There’s a perception that has persisted most of my life that we are always at a point where we have these things figured out, but ten years later they are proven wrong, but we don’t seem to notice that.

There is an almost religious fervor surrounding science when it comes to our health and nutrition. Lots of research in the past few years surrounds gut bacteria, something that wasn’t even on the charts even 10 years ago. Now we are realizing that we not only know nothing, we know less than nothing.

I don’t think Pauling will be vindicated on Vitamin C because this came from a time when it was universally thought that there was a pill or an injecton for anything and we just had to discover it. If you read Pauling’s books, you’ll realize that he never advocated it as a panacea, but part of a complete dietary and mental regimen. His research is compelling and it’s not hard to see how he came to the conclusions that he did.

It’s good to hear I’m not the only one learning from history and realizing the uncomfortable fact that we know so little and this treatment of ulcers is the exception rather than the rule. How did we not discover this was bacterial for so long? It’s not like this is the 19th century after all.

It’s clear we need government intervention that punishes those that profited richly from the collusion between government and big business. I would recommend letting industry draft any legislation intended to fix this problem.

So, who wants to volunteer to lose all trade with the United States?

The chicken crossed the road to speed up the process of evolution and natural selection.

I’m pretty sure I know what the headline of this article didn’t tell me. What it was about.

"We should not seek revenge on those who have committed crimes against us, or reply to their crimes with other crimes. We should reflect that by the law of karma, they are in danger of lowly and miserable lives to come, and that our duty to them, as to every being, is to help them to rise towards Nirvana, rather than let them sink to lower levels of rebirth." — the Dalai Lama

Steve Jobs never took sole credit for inventing anything or changing the world. He always heaped substantial credit to the smart people that worked under him. It's the media and many people that inflate the importance of individual people and attribute everything to them. How many times do they use a star player's name rather than referring to a team by their name? Think "Michael Jordan battles Larry Bird tonight on ESPN".

It's hard to dispute that Apple as a whole has changed the world in profound ways, whether you like them or not. Steve Jobs' greatest attribute was assembling great talent and motivating them into creating great things. Perhaps this comedian doesn't like the way that he pushed people into doing what they felt was impossible.

Perhaps Apple would have changed the world without him, but surely it would have been very different without him. Even though he can't be given full credit by any means, he deserves a lot of it for motivating people and pushing them to their creative limits. Steve Wozniak has been very critical of Steve over the years but also recognized that his contribution was essential to getting products into the hands of people. When you read that Steve Jobs or Scott Forstall was the "creator of the iPhone" I suspect all of them would laugh and vigorously correct you. And they would be absolutely right to do so.

Wow, 530 points in a system where a $10 stock going to $1 (-90%) is weighted the same as a $200 stock going to $191 (-4.5%) — 9 points in each case.

In other news, the Dow is down 3% today. Doesn't sound as much like the end of the world as 530 points now does it?

Every time you say the word "no" in your article, it’s not a fact, it’s your opinion. Trying to change people’s minds is about educating them, not telling them to stop using words or phrases or to tell them that all their ideas are wrong.

Where are you getting this data from?

How do you know this to be the case? Just curious.

No one seems to agree on whether iMessage is either hackable or whether Apple can hand over unencrypted chat content when compelled by law enforcement. Which side is right? Are the claims theoretical or have they been tried out in practice? You don’t hear of cases of people’s private iMessage chats being revealed or used in a court case by way of Apple providing them.

I’m sure Google did no research whatsoever to see whether <extremely common english word>.com was taken or not. Ha ha, he really got a good jab in there, didn’t he. So clever! :)

Interesting read but I think the author makes a false conclusion that taxes on wealth is better than taxes on income. If the US income-based tax system really were progressive in practice, then you could compare apples to apples. A wealth-based system could be just as non-progressive if there were similar ways around paying your fair share like there is in the US.

Given systems that are equally difficult to circumvent, the type of taxes that would be most beneficial are those that don’t punish earning income and saving and investing money. Things like sales taxes, consumption taxes, and transaction taxes discourage consumption and also discourage financial system manipulation by the super-wealthy.

But I think the Swiss succeed despite this because they have a much more compassionate view towards their fellow citizens and are willing to pay higher taxes if it’s used for things that genuinely make people lives better rather than line the pockets of big business and cronies. Also, US workers have a terrible work ethic and an adversarial relationship with their employers. If you feel you should get more out an employer than you give them, you’re not really understanding how the system works. If you provide high productivity and there is mutual interest in the company succeeding, then taking time off or working a normal work schedule is not anything an employer would need to argue about. A company has to make money in order to hire people. They aren’t a public service. If you’re not productive, then you are probably going to have to work longer hours so that the company can succeed enough to keep your job.

And in general, Americans are greedy. It’s what brought people here as a young country and it’s in our DNA. What works in Switzerland probably can’t really work here. But what actually could work is to use economic incentives to try to encourage a healthier economy. Instead, we waste our time thinking that taxing the rich more is the solution to everything. Sure, they should pay more than lower income people do, but it’s a multi-layered problem.

I like hierarchical if I can collapse threads I’m not interested in and comment volume is high. I’ve always wished HN would let me do that. Staggered comments can get difficult to follow if there are many levels of indentation.

With flat, you can always quote someone’s post to make it clear what you are referring to and the time linearity can be compelling, especially if you want to go back and read comments that have arrived since your last visit.

The likely reason for all this is Apple not wanting to be accused of engaging in anti-competitive behavior. It’s illegal to use your market power and financial position to sell products below cost and thwart real competition in the market. This is why they offered higher royalties later and no royalties for 3 months. It was designed so artists would get the same amount in the end but unfortunately have to wait 3 months to start getting in.

Apple’s reverse in direction is interesting. Perhaps they feel the risk is not as high as they were expecting. Apple gets sued every day of the week, but something like this could be very costly. Perhaps they know the financial benefit outweighs the risk.

Claiming Apple doesn’t care about artists is absolutely ridiculous. Except for a few high-profile critics, artists view iTunes as saving the music business and allowing even small-time artists to make a living without needing to sign with a label (other than with one of the labels that specialize in this sort of thing and for which artists don’t need to qualify).

Although this is rumored, it seems highly plausible:

Had the contracts they signed with the labels included paying royalties, they would be giving away a product far below cost for 3 months. Spotify and friends could file a complaint that this is anti-competitive behavior. It could be argued that Apple used its financial power to lose money for three months to thwart real competition in the market.

Amazon was accused of doing this will digital books by selling them all below cost, although ironically Apple was the one that got in trouble.

What happens now is unclear. Can Apple argue they didn’t intend to be anti-competitive from the beginning or will people go after them anyways. I suspect the latter is guaranteed.

If all you care about is the short-term, then forget about austerity. Juice things up a bit. Throw some borrowed money at it. Alleviate some economic misery. But long-term, living within your means leads to greater stability, a market where prices reflect reality, and people that save are rewarded. This is a far greater payoff in exchange for some potential short-term pain.

The worst part is that many governments claiming “austerity” are just playing accounting tricks and not really moving towards solvency. The solution for having spent too much and distoring the economy is not to continue to do the same.

We’ll never know who is right, though. Most of the world has been following the recommendations of this “economist” for decades. Maybe only indirectly because I’m not sure how many people pay attention to him. Spending massively is popular with the public because they get all the benefits, but will be 6 feet under when the bill comes due.

Just because it’s a government instead of a household or a business does not making borrowing against your future when you have no capability to pay it back a good idea. This guy is the same type of person that thinks that companies carrying a lot of debt is a good idea. The sign of a healthy business. Bunk.

I couldn’t find all the footnotes and linked articles to justify and support his anti-libertarian screed.

When a country accomplishes something really great, it’s not because they are small and the US is big. It’s because they are smart and we are dumb.

We hear this all the time. Portugal legalized drugs and it worked, but they’re small. Iceland forged their own path after the banking collapse, but they’re small. The Nordic countries have great education systems that cost less, but they’re small.

Always a great excuse when you really don’t want to learn from others.

Our tax dollars at work with over-paid over-pensioned government workers trawling YouTube all day long, providing no benefit to anyone other than boosting testosterone levels at the FAA.