Reporter: For $200, I will write a nice article about you.

CEO: Deal

"Oh wow, that seems neat. I should check that out"

clicks link on Hacker News

"Hmm, not sure what this is about. I'll just hit the 'Start' button"

Hits start button. 'Add a button' dialog pops up

"That seems pretty straight forward, I'll just add drag that thing labelled 'Button' from the left window pane, on to what looks like a smartphone"

Drags button over. Gets 'Congratulations' box

"Wow, this is really intuitive so far. With a little effort, something like this would be a real game changer in the mobile space!"

New dialog pops up: 'Add a randomcat component to your app

Looks around for anything labelled 'randomcat'

"Huh, thats strange. I wondered if it's labelled something else and I'm just missing it"

Looks for 'random', 'cat', 'Cat.random()', and any other possible combination

"Wtf mate?"

Gives up and leaves

> One of the main questions about something like this is about who would do boring, low-paid work with this sort of basic income.

I believe this would not be a problem in the long run for the following reasons:

- A lot of boring low-pay work is unnecessary (dealing with the endless paper trail of over-complicated bureaucracies, lots of things that companies do, like telemarketing, just because it's so cheap, etc. etc.);

- A lot of it is necessary, so it would just become more expensive. At some price, people will be willing to do this work despite the basic income. Many people actually enjoy doing meaningful work, be it plumbing or being a doctor. It's the soul-crushing pointless work that is so depressing;

- This would then create strong economic pressure to finally use technology for what it's good: automatize labor. No longer would there be the job loss dilemma;

- Likewise, this would create strong economic pressure to simplify everything: no more pointless bureaucracy, no more over-complicated taxation schemes that require an army of accountants, much less pointless meetings and other corporate fat, and so on.

I'm filled with hope by this idea and honestly believe that it has a chance of working. It's time to step into the next era.

Unfortunately, there is actual experimental evidence to the contrary. Some of the Arabian Emirates have cash payments to their ethnically Arabian citizens that are practically equivalent to a high basic income.

In those cases, all the "dirty" labor is done by legal/illegal immigrants that are not eligible for said basic income and thus willing to work for much less.

IMO this is the central problem with the idea of a basic income. Either it has to be so low that it is on the "just don't starve" level (thus making it unattractive compared to any job), or you have to lock your borders, shutting down migration.

I wish we could deport people who throw around the "racist" label casually. There is nothing racist about believing that big, complex, interdependent societies function best when people share basic values, beliefs, and culture. It's the difference between multiculturalism as practiced in the U.S., where e.g. asian immigrants to the west coast have assimilated the basic values of american society while remaining distinctive, and multiculturalism as expressed in the U.K., where e.g. many muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate to the point of wanting to be governed by separate sets of laws.

I would never say people of a minority culture/ethnicity can't be racist against that culture, but I think we often have a more nuanced view of "racism" than people of the majority culture/ethnicity. My family immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh, and integration is an important issue to us. We see a lot of immigrants who refuse to assimilate, and we believe that it's detrimental both for them, because it makes it harder for them to take advantage of all of the opportunities of American society, and detrimental to the people who live around them, because there presence creates cultural schisms within communities that cannot be reconciled. I don't think there is anything "racist" about pointing these basic facts out.

I think it's political because it reduces the debate over healthcare policy to a caricature. I lean left (hell, I voted for the Green Party in the last presidential election) but even I don't believe that every Republican is twirling their moustache and cackling "bwah ha ha, I love oppressing the poor."

This algorithm is also known as Ancient Egyptian multiplication, Egyptian multiplication, Ethiopian multiplication, Russian multiplication, or peasant multiplication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_multiplicatio...

This is not an appropriate venue for chanting political slogans.

As a swiss citizen, I'm really happy we'll have to vote on this. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to vote (I'm slightly bending towards a yes), but I think this is a very interesting debate to have. Especially because this is not a traditional left-right fight.

On the left, you have some unions saying this is going to be counter-productive and that it will reduce the leverage of employees in negotiation ("You've already got 2500, stop complaining"). Some other unions say it's going to give employee more leverage ("If you don't pay me more, I leave").

There are some people (including right-wing "economy-friendly" politician) who think this is a boost for innovation. By letting people work on what they want, without the risk of becoming homeless if it fails, you'll have more people trying to become independent / create companies.

And finally, you have what is still the majority reaction when told about this idea, which is that this is encouraging laziness.

> Popcorn wasn’t widely eaten in homes, mostly due to how difficult it was to make: consumers needed a popper, oil, butter, salt...

That's wrong, it's insanely easy to make. You don't need a "popper", just a pot with a lid. Any pot. And what kitchen doesn't have oil, butter and salt around?

But since TV wasn't around yet, what were you going to eat it to? ;)

The amount of engineering rigor that has gone into sqlite over the years boggles the mind. It's a project that has been held up as a sterling example of successful software development many times, rightfully so. I especially like this part of their license, from the top of sqlite3.h

"The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing: May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give."

They test this across the street from my office. Pretty crazy when you actually see it sprint the length of a football field, turn around and run the length again. Then again, it's also pretty funny when it faceplants and one of the engineers runs over with a fire extinguisher to make sure it doesn't explode.

Why? Honestly, how can you "outsource" such a vital part of your web app to a third party? Not only is this a privacy disaster but also, if this user service goes down or has a temporary downtime, your own business is effectively unusable.

I understand that it makes sense to not write these types of user functions and management things over and over again. The solution however, is not a SaaS, but a library or a little framework. And from what I remember, major Web development frameworks offer exactly these types of functionality.

I don't want to be a downer and you guys probably spend a lot of time on the product, but from my perspective, any business owner using a third party to handle user data acts irresponsibly. You OWE it to your users to keep their data as tight and as centralized in one spot as possible – a spot only you and employees have access to and servers only you rented and have access to and not a third party.

I'd even rather use Wordpress as a basic user management platform than use a third party service. This way, it is at least fully under my control and I'm the only one responsible if things get broken or data gets stolen.