Fundamentals of Linear Algebra and Optimization [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis515/linalg.pdf <comment><USER2> My test for linear algebra books is how they first present matrices and matrix multiplication.

If they define a matrix as an NxM table of numbers with a multiplication operation defined as this complicated formula with a couple of nested sigmas, and then much later a lemma is mentioned that says every linear transformation can be represented as a matrix and then the composition of two transforms is the matrix multiplication of their matrix forms, I throw the book away in disgust. I throw most books away in disgust.

This is the second book I've seen that does it right, but unlike the other one [1] this one wraps the very correct presentation of matrices in so much technical language and such a boring cover story that I almost threw it away in disgust anyway.

My greatest wish in STEM education is that we teach linear algebra better. It's such low hanging fruit and could change so much!

[1] which I saw linked in HN a year ago and don't remember the name of, but it was something like "linear algebra taught the correct way" and was apparently well known in the States so ask your friends

<comment><USER3> I would teach linear algebra with a book that barely mentions linear transformations.

In finite dimensions, linear transformations and matrices are exactly the same object mathematical objects, with very different notations (matrix notation (boxes with numbers inside) vs the linear space/linear transformation notation). I would rather the students to learn deeper mathematics only in matrix notation, rather than to master less substantial mathematics with both notations.

Teaching both notations may reinforce the idea that matrices and linear transformations are different mathematical objects in finite dimension. Teaching the more abstract notation is mainly useful in infinite dimension (Hilbert spaces).

<comment><USER4> This is exactly backwards.

Whether you're discussing the Jacobian of a function, or change of basis matrices, learning the matrix formula is a lot less useful than seeing how it falls out of the linear function definition.

The formula is hard to memorize and gives no intuition for why anything is true. But from the linear function definition it is easy to reconstruct the formula.

In fact this is so true that I would say that anyone who only knows the matrix definition does not actually understand linear algebra.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I may be a troglodyte, but I was bored senseless in my linear algebra, calculus, discrete mathematics, statistics, etc classes in college. Then they tag all the interesting stuff like AI (we didn't call it Machine Learning back in the 90s) at the end of your major where you actually use it. I had to go back and relearn it all because I didn't pay attention the first time. Note to mathematicians (or at least math professors): lead with the interesting stuff before the theory. It'll make learning easier and more fun.

<comment><USER6> > lead with the interesting stuff before the theory. It'll make learning > easier and more fun.

As a mathematician I say:

What is considered as interesting is different for each person. I, personally, for example deeply love this really abstract stuff (but of course I am aware that other people have different preferences). So I would say even finding "interesting stuff" that many students in the lecture hall might be interested in is really, really hard.

Another important argument against your idea is: To be even able to formulate the ideas from AI, one first have to learn and understand the words of the language in which one will formulate this. And these words are like "vector space", "linear map", "tensor product" etc. and understanding their meaning means knowing theorems about them. Starting with advanced topics, such as your AI example, is like giving beginner language learners a really advanced text in the foreign language that they just begin to learn. In other words: A reallz dubious idea.

Considerung your post I can only ask you why you did not have a talk with the course advisor of your faculty. He would immediately have told you why these lectures are important for the things that you are actually interested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Folks looking for introductory books in this area may also enjoy this new in- progress book: [https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/](https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/)

As a follow-up I would recommend Trefethen & Bau, _Numerical Linear Algebra_.

<comment><USER8> Boyd and Vandenberghe will have a monopoly in anything optimization related if they keep on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great!

There's so much hype about machine learning but so few people seem to appreciate the fundamental importance of linear algebra (especially in ML).

This fast.ai course is also great: [http://www.fast.ai/2017/07/17/num-lin- alg/](http://www.fast.ai/2017/07/17/num-lin-alg/)

<comment><USER10> Cool new course! I'm thinking about taking their Practical Deep Learing for Coders course at the moment: [http://course.fast.ai/](http://course.fast.ai/)

<comment><USER11> If you're at all interested in actually doing deep learning, then do the course! It's by far my favorite resource for actually learning to do deep learning.

Of course it won't give you the math background, but you can abd should pick it up after.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I took Prof. Gallier (the author of this document)'s class when I was a graduate student at Penn. [http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/home.html](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/home.html)

It is one of the class I enjoyed the most when I was there. Some of his other books are quite enjoyable as well.

Dr. Gallier's PhD work was focused on logic, but his current research has a lot to do with computer graphics and computational geometry. He spent a long time study graduate-level algebraic geometry and algebraic topology while having the duty to be a professor at computer science department. His stories is always an inspiration for me to learn more.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're into Clojure, there is a fast linear algebra library Neanderthal (I'm the author) that covers both GPU and CPU, is easy to use, and comes with lots of tutorials that cover a linear algebra textbook chapters, as well as more advanced numerical computing uses (solvers, factorizations, etc.):

The list of guides is here: [http://neanderthal.uncomplicate.org/articles/guides.html](http://neanderthal.uncomplicate.org/articles/guides.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd recommend watching these videos for some motivation: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab)

And remember, linear algebra has broader application than just geometry!

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this going to be a textbook? I can't find it in print, but it looks like a great text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I'm honestly not sure. I just stumbled across it while looking for linalg resources. It appears to be legit, since the author is with UPenn and it's on a upenn.edu site. But I don't see an explicit license notification or anything, so not sure if you're even allowed to print it out yourself or not.

<comment><USER16> Was in his class at Penn, he gives all this stuff away with no issue. Didnt have to pay anything for course materials and its all open to the public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did fields other than R and C eat the authors' children or something?

<comment><USER7> Often linear algebra tools are applied to Hilbert spaces or Banach spaces, where fields other than R or C don't make much sense.

Looking at page 25 of TFA:

> _In Definition 1.2, the field R may be replaced by the field of complex > numbers C, in which case we have a complex vector space. It is even possible > to replace R by the field of rational numbers Q or by any other field K (for > example Z /pZ, where p is a prime number), in which case we have a K-vector > space (in (V3), ∗ denotes multiplication in the field K). In most cases, the > field K will be the field R of reals._

<comment><USER17> Yeah, lots of courses pay lip service to the existence of fields of characteristic p during the initial few weeks, then proceed to ignore them completely.

<comment><USER7> How relevant do you think finite fields are for solving applied optimization problems? What proportion of a course do you think should be devoted to them?

<comment><USER17> Every ordered field has characteristic 0, so I don't think finite fields are likely to be terribly useful for solving optimization problems. But:

(0) There is way more to linear algebra than linear programming.

(1) A linear algebra course is not the right place for an extensive study of how to solve optimization problems anyway. That belongs in a real analysis course.

<comment><USER7> This is a graduate-level course in the department of computer and information science.

> _Prerequisite(s): Undergraduate course in linear algebra, calculus_

> _The goal of this course is to provide firm foundations in linear algebra > and optimization techniques that will enable students to analyze and solve > problems arising in various areas of computer science, especially computer > vision, robotics, machine learning, computer graphics, embedded systems, and > market engineering and systems. The students will acquire a firm theoretical > knowledge of these concepts and tools. They will also learn how to use these > tools in practice by tackling various judiciously chosen projects (from > computer vision, etc.). This course will serve as a basis to more advanced > courses in computer vision, convex optimization, machine learning, robotics, > computer graphics, embedded systems, and market engineering and systems._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You had me at Bourbaki.</comment>


Kodak Loan Disclosure and Stock Surge Under SEC Investigation - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-loan-disclosure-and-stock-surge-under-sec-investigation-11596559126 <comment><USER2> Does anyone have a non-paywall link?

<comment><USER3> [https://archive.is/JTR8F](https://archive.is/JTR8F) here you go.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Getting an Uber ride with the Amazon dash button - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@geoffrey___/getting-a-uber-ride-using-the-amazon-dash-button-c4dcef42051c

<comment><USER2> Nice hack! you could do so much with a simple button like this.

Can't wait for much hacks!

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised there hasn't been any cheap wifi-connected buttons like this before. Or at least none that gained popularity.</comment></comment>


'Give Us Your Passwords' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/give-us-your-passwords/516315/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This is my worst nightmare. Authorities want no one to have any privacy. Imagine a future world where authoritian leaders have surveillance over everyone and everything. I have nothing really secret in my email, nothing illegal. but if the us does it, then the uk or the rest of europe next. then they share the names and passwords back to the us, and then the us has my passwords. We need to change the rules governing border authorities in the us. I know its not an area of normal civil rights, but they operate under the control of the pres and the congress. Why are they okay with unjustified search? Eventually it will start hitting the families of congressmen, and they'll notice, just like a few of them started accepting gay people when their own kids were gay.

<comment><USER3> > Authorities want no one to have any privacy.

Except for themselves. Thereby putting the lie to many of their own arguments.

I'd like to ask what can even be considered "evidence" or proof of action, when we and our data are all so compromised that anyone could have done anything to it. How to prove it's actually the result of the person you're accusing?

Except, it's not really about transparency. It's about the rubber hose of compliance and coercion. Wherein dirty evidence of unknown provenance, lack of chain of custody, and the like are all merely tools toward political, economic, and social ends -- private ends, of those in control of the hose.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best/quickest way to create mobile app ui mockups? - <AUTHOR>

Do most people just use the old pen and paper or is there some free software out there to help with this? <comment><USER2> Try <http://balsamiq.com/></comment>


Show HN: HiveFlux, a real-time task tracking app - <AUTHOR> http://www.hiveflux.com We just launched HiveFlux. It's a new web app for teams where you can see what everyone else in your company is working on that very second.<p>Would love to hear your thoughts. <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm the CEO of HiveFlux, a new tool that lets you know what everyone else in your team is working on that very second. It's a new take on enterprise productivity so I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.</comment>


Microsoft, Amazon, & IBM express 'solidarity.' Should they end police contracts? - <AUTHOR> https://www.protocol.com/microsoft-amazon-ibm-police-contracts <comment><AUTHOR> Original title was too long. It was:

Microsoft, Amazon and IBM express 'solidarity.' Should they end police contracts?</comment>


Someone made a violin out of a laptop – and it sounds just lovely - <AUTHOR> http://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/violin/features/laptop-violin/ <comment><AUTHOR> A better title would be "An optical sensor which makes a laptop into a bowed musical instrument".

Nevertheless - a lovely performance on a rather unorthodox instrument!</comment>


YouTube Introduces a Paid Service Called Music Key - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/business/media/youtube-introduces-a-paid-service-called-music-key.html <comment><USER2> To me, the re-introduction of the $8/month fee for Google Play Music All Access (mercifully rechristened as Google Play Music) is the most important part of this announcement. Apple is reportedly wooing publishers to allow them to sell Beats subscriptions for $5/month, which matches the average spending for top iTunes customers.

If iTunes' best customers spend $60/year, asking $120/year from EVERYONE seems ridiculous. Spotify recently tried to address this flaw with family plans that drop the cost to $6/month for a family of five -- but that's still too much hassle in what should be a dead-simple transaction. Steam demonstrated the revenue potential of irresistibly priced digital goods a decade ago... I don't know why music has been so slow to catch up.

\- - - - -

The Youtube Key portion of the announcement is great, I guess, but not for me personally. I don't watch many music videos and have been able to download them forever through third-party extensions anyway.

However, in the audience that DOES watch music videos -- young, female, often tech-illiterate -- there's quite a bit of money waiting to be tapped. Years ago, iTunes scored big by offering that demographic hassle-free music downloads rather than piracy or CD ripping.

I doubt ad-free YouTube is as compelling an offer, but it's probably worth something to regular visitors; and if Spotify/Beats/Play/Rdio are fungible, then maybe YouTube Key will be the unmatchable add-in that sells Google music subscriptions. Lower prices are probably more valuable to customers than ad skipping is, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> > As part of the introduction of Music Key, YouTube's music catalog is getting > a makeover for all users, paying or not. The site will now offer complete > albums, adding static video files with high-quality audio where no official > videos are available.

This is great news for for the huge audience that builds massive music playlists on YouTube and uses them as their primary music consumption mechanism.

> For paying subscribers, YouTube will add two features that will be > especially attractive to users on mobile devices: the ability to play songs > in the background while using other apps and to save songs for offline > listening.

Really? Both of these features are implemented in plenty of third-party apps. I guess it makes more sense to view the service as a Google Play Music subscription with some added goodies, but still...

<comment><USER4> Such third party apps often have their dev keys revoked for offering such features.</comment></comment>


Department of Redundancy Department - <AUTHOR> https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/department-of-redundancy-department/ <comment><USER2> I liked the note at the end about Pair Instructing. I forget many disciplines haven't embraced pairing to the degree programming has.

In college I took an elective course taught by a husband and wife pair from the geology department. They interacted with each other a lot, and it definitely encouraged us to join the conversation with questions and comments of our own. Overall, it was a really good class. Okay... so it was a survey of bad science shown in environmental disaster movies, but the teaching style was an important factor as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author holds a rather loose definition of redundancy. If a user-friendly loop construct is redundant because you could use use jumps, then a car is redundant because you could just walk everywhere. Phones? Redundant, just go over in person and talk. Running water?</comment>


Google updates Location language after tracking backlash - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/17/google-updates-location-history-language-after-tracking-backlash/ <comment><USER2> "Rejoice everyone! We've fixed the issue...by admitting we're going to keep tracking you."

I don't think this is legal under GDPR at all, but I'm sure I'll be proven either wrong or wrong in the multiple legal complaints and lawsuits Google will have to face in the EU over this in the next few years.

This and other similar moves we're seen from Google in the past few years seem like they are "ballsy". I don't think Google is being ballsy, I just think they've figured out that whatever the cost/fines governments will ask them to pay, it will be _worth it_ as a cost of doing business. Hopefully they'll be proven wrong on this eventually and that the fines will keep escalating until they learn their lesson.

</comment><comment><USER3> Android (and IOS too) needs a user setting that will not just turn off location reporting, but will cause the lowest-level device drivers of GPS and other location sensors to provide spoofed data to all layers above it. That's the only way to stop this crap. It should automatically provide unfiltered data when the user dials 911, but in no other circumstances unless the user explicitly authorizes it.</comment>


Ask HN: If you were to pay for a small online product to what would it be? - <AUTHOR> What is Lately, I'm doing research about different markets and different products. I ask this question from different businesses and even though many tools are available, still a lot of people don't know about them. The HN community however are more knowledgable in this scene and I would like to know your opinion. <comment><USER2> A software that can run on iPhone, android, windows phone, and desktops.

A person would take the software, and import a tab-delimited list of words + definitions. Some of the definitions would have web links. They'd then have a the software + list, which is the thing they'd distribute to end users. The software should have some way of searching the lists.

Many of the end users are not going to be sophisticated computer users, so asking them to import a word list is probably not practical.

Changes to the wordlist would be handled by updates.

You would either sell this to NHS health trusts and let them deal with updating it, or you'd sell it as a service and brand it and deal with the updates for them. Or you could include ads, but you'd need to carefully screen out any ads for alcohol or other problematic public health stuff.

Example entry:

PLACE [tab] Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment [http://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/qual-clin- lead/place/](http://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/qual-clin-lead/place/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A Lastpass replacement which has a free software client, high availability, first class GNU/Linux support and Yubikey support. I'll easily pay more for this than I paid Lastpass.

(I don't trust Logmein and want to move away from Lastpass and haven't found a satisfactory alternative).</comment>


Future Historians Will Rely on Wikipedia's Covid-19 Coverage - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2020/05/wikipedia-coronavirus-information-future-historians.html <comment><USER2> Just a little warning to future historians - backup, backup, backup!

Unfortunately, too many details on Wikipedia tend to deteriorate. In the aftermath of 2004 election, there was a lot of articles on Wikipedia about suspected election fraud and anomalies. I don't think it is still there as extensively as it was back then (I looked and now it's a single, medium sized article).

<comment><USER3> The whole point of the article is the Wikipedia's revision history is public, on a per-article basis. It is concerning when entire articles are deleted, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am hugely impressed with Wikipedia lately. It's become almost journalistic.

Example: yesterday I was looking at covid-19 case rate graphs and noticed that Israel had a sudden surge in R approximately around the 17th of May. I got curious about what could have changed, but where on earth was I going to find a comprehensive timeline of specific measures in Israel's coronavirus response? Where could I find that level of detail? Answer: Wikipedia.

(and if you're wondering - schools reopened fully, followed closely by a lifting of mask restrictions due a heat wave, followed by houses of prayer reopening to groups of 50 people - all supposedly with distancing rules, but clearly these are not effective)</comment>


Show HN: Community Events - kpasa - <AUTHOR>

http://lax.kpasa.co/
Hi, I needed a side project to teach myself Django & AWS but couldn't think of anything Earth-shattering to work on...  After searching and coming up empty I decided instead to build the kind of events site I've been waiting for for about ten years.
Though events sites are a dime a dozen, after all these years I still haven't found one I like.  None seem to focus on what I want to know--what are the fun (and best) things to do today and this weekend?
I'm wondering, can such a mundane site pay for itself?  It's been fun implementing all the ways it could.  I would appreciate some ideas on the premium services front.
Also, would anyone be interested in renting the app for use in their city, on something like Amazon Marketplace?  Finally, if it doesn't get traction on its own I'm thinking of open-sourcing it to see if hosting/consulting are a possibility.
Would appreciate any thoughts, and thanks for your time.
TL;DR - I've made an (events + reddit + meetup + gmaps mashup) prototype for fun
        and hope to turn it into something. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://lax.kpasa.co/></comment>


German online bank uses Bitcoins to transfer loans - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-bitcoin/german-online-bank-uses-bitcoins-to-transfer-loans-idUSKBN1ID07Y <comment><USER2> The title and article body claim that they hold a bank license but as far as I can see[0] they only have a license as a financial service provider ( _FDI_ ) for investment brokering ( _Anlagevermittlung_ ) and proprietary trading ( _Eigengeschäft_ ). In particular they are not regulated as a bank with capital requirements ( _CRR-Kreditinstitut_ ) and can't do their own lending business ( _Kreditgeschäft_ ).

On their website[1] they make no claim of being a bank. The text only speaks about being a "regulated financial institution" and the footer states "unbank" and "no bank". Their terms of use[2] clearly state that they are only a credit broker, don't loan themselves, and are not party of the loan contract. This is not banking and I'm not sure why Reuters uses that word so much. They don't even mention once that this company is not the lender and heavily imply they are.

[0]: in the database of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority: [https://portal.mvp.bafin.de/database/InstInfo/institutDetail...](https://portal.mvp.bafin.de/database/InstInfo/institutDetails.do?cmd=loadInstitutAction&institutId=146194&locale=en_GB)

[1]: [https://www.bitbond.com/about_us](https://www.bitbond.com/about_us)

[2]: [https://www.bitbond.com/terms_of_use](https://www.bitbond.com/terms_of_use)

<comment><USER3> So much for accuracy of Reuters. What else do they get wrong when they can't even tell when something is a bank or not?

Sad thing is these kinds of articles get translated and end up in hundreds of papers all over the world all as fact.

<comment><USER4> If you've ever read an article about something you know really well (company you work for, someone you personally know well, topic you are an expert in), I think you'll find that in most news articles there are exaggerations/questionable numbers printed all the time.

<comment><USER5> And then the Gell-Mann Amnesia kicks in!

 _"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray 's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."_

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the- ge...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann- amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Traditional money transfers are relatively costly due to currency exchange > fees, and can take up to a few days," Albrecht told Reuters TV in his office > in Berlin's fashionable neighborhood Prenzlauer Berg. "With Bitbond, > payments work independently of where customers are. Via internet it is very, > very quick and the fees are low."

I don't see this argument as valid. When was the last time the currency of a solvent country fell more than 10% within a day? With Bitcoin this happened just yesterday. This means you lost 10% of your money during fiat -> Bitcoin -> fiat if you kept the Bitcoin for longer than 12 hours.

Edit: bitbond.com has a link to a "eBay SEO" optimizer in their website footer. I don't know how much this says about their credibility.

<comment><USER7> > "Traditional money transfers are relatively costly due to currency exchange > fees, and can take up to a few days," Albrecht told Reuters TV

Giro transfers clear within minutes. This is the day-to-day mechanism that EU citizens use to pay their bills. This smacks of a US-centric analyst who does not understand the Euro market at even the most basic level.

The reality is the US is _decades_ behind the state-of-the-art in banking and pretty much none of the issues that are relevant to US citizens are relevant _anywhere else in the world_. Sending money to someone else's bank account within minutes is pretty much a solved problem, for anyone who isn't living in a 70s-era cheque-based world like the US banking system.

Sending some bits between highly trusted parties within a formal banking system is not some unsolved problem that only Bitcoin can tackle.

<comment><USER8> > Giro transfers clear within minutes. This is the day-to-day mechanism that > EU citizens use to pay their bills.

Not true at all. This is just starting to get implemented in the EU. Until now transfers took usually a full banking day, thus nothing happened on the weekend and holidays. Last year over easter I had a transfer between two German banks take 7 days because of that.

And international transfers are still a nightmare.

<comment><USER9> It depends entirely on your Banks peering agreement.

It generally clears within minutes if you're transferring between participating Banks. If not, the maximum amount of time they're permitted to take is exactly one business day after they've accepted your order. This acceptance is not necessarily the time you've entered the details on their website. It is often, but there are some outliers that only accept them at a specific time each day. (But still let you schedule them at all times.)

<comment><USER10> FWIW I've never seen a SEPA transfer take 'minutes'. Usually it takes around one business day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "Traditional money transfers are relatively costly due to currency exchange > fees, and can take up to a few days"

I would like to see some worked examples here that take into account local Bitcoin pricing and the time taken to withdraw from exchanges, vs Western Union and other commercial "Send Money" organisations. The space is intensely competitive, so I suspect the margin consumers pay if they do a minimum of research is tiny, so I'm skeptical that Magic Bitcoin Magic is somehow making this better.

<comment><USER12> Transferwise is quite cheap. I haven't been able to change bitcoins efficiently to many currencies. Euros and usd are the main ones. I'd say transferwise is probably quicker and cheaper but you never know. The actual btc-fiat exchange can be very cheap if you are a 'maker' in the market.

<comment><USER13> For European currencies (I use GBP, EUR, DKK, SEK) I find Transferwise to transfer within 5 minutes.

That's reasonable, as banks in those places usually support very fast local transfers, and that's what Transferwise is doing. A bitcoin exchange could meet this speed, but won't be able to beat it.

<comment><USER14> Most cryptos are faster than any type of wire transfer except card payments.

<comment><USER15> Very US-centric. Elsewhere in the world "wire transfers" \- transferring money from one bank to another happens more or less instantly.

When I pay myself from my business account and it happens just about instantly. Max I've ever waited was like 15 minutes.

Using Transferwise, a friend from Australia paid me back in the UK and it went through in like 1 hour.

<comment><USER10> Isn't Transferwise basically just using their accounts in both banks to achieve that, and rebalancing them later (if necessary)? That's not really representative of the performance of the banking system, is it?

<comment><USER15> For the international part, yes, but still the Me > transferwise and transferwise > friend transfers are "wire transfers" and both of them happen fast enough for the whole transaction to be completed in just a few hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went to a meetup once where Radoslav presented Bitbond. Referring to it as a bank is quite a stretch.

<comment><USER17> If it's registered as a bank, it's a bank. As long as you get all the usual regulation and protection, why wouldn't you think it's a bank?

<comment><USER16> In fact, it's not registered as a bank. It's registered as a financial services company: [https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2016/10/91093-brief- german-...](https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2016/10/91093-brief-german- bitcoin-startup-bitbond-recieves-bafin-licence/)

In addition, it'd be quite weird if a random startup can get a banking license just like this. Consider N26, the Berlin-based fintech "bank" and unicorn took years and just got theirs some months ago.

<comment><USER17> The article says: "In 2016, Bitbond was officially licensed as a bank and has gained many investors since." Maybe the article is wrong then.

<comment><USER15> It is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would two currency exchanges (say USD->BTC then BTC->EUR) ever be cheaper than one (USD->EUR) ? There's nothing special about Bitcoin that means it will have lower spreads than other FX exchanges.

<comment><USER19> I don't think real issue here are the currency exchange fees, but the transfer fees charged by banks and the logistics related to doing bank-to-bank cross- border payments.

When transferring via Bitcoin, you only to get the recipients Bitcoin address and that is. Do a bank transfer to another side of the world and you need to find out bunch of information for the recipient (their bank details, probably address etc). There's also a chance you will get some of this wrong and then there will be a manual hassle to sort things out.

<comment><USER18> How are they avoiding these charges? The customer isn't requesting bitcoin, so you still need to transfer the money from the recipient exchange into their 'fiat' account...

<comment><USER20> This is obvious... once you establish trust from Bank A to Bank B (and correspondingly Bitcoin account A and B), you can transfer the money very quickly with 100% assurance it was transferred to A and B.

The older way of doing this would be based on expensive contracts, legal regulation, and potentially intermediaries, who will happily take their own cut.

<comment><USER18> The only intermediaries being added are the bitcoin exchanges. The loan originator has to initiate a bank transfer from their account into bitcoin exchange 1, and from bitcoin exchange 2 into the customer's account. That's now two 'legacy banking transfers' instead of the normal 1. More intermediaries, more transfers, more costs (and more risk of money loss unless there is a similar amount of regulation & contracts in both cases).

<comment><USER20> Not quite right. The old way of doing it actually worked like this: Bank A in country X transfers money mega-bank B in country X. Mega-bank B transfers money to mega-bank C in country Y. Mega-bank C in country Y then transfers it regional bank D in country Y.

Bitcoin will allow smaller banks to transfer money without the help of the giant banks who have built up relationships (and binding legal agreements) over the years.

Honestly, even though some large banks bullish on bitcoin, the real benefit will accrue to the smaller institutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been a client for multiple years and have taken heavy losses on the loans I have handed out

<comment><USER22> What made you staying a client then?

<comment><USER21> you can't just exit existing credit contracts. these aren't bonds that could be traded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They are using the banks of the bitcoin exchanges.

As a swift alternative that's fine, but you can't avoid banks if you're using country denominations.

</comment><comment><USER24> If Bitcoin is such a good solution, why do they have to mislead with news about banks that aren't banks?

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting. This is the sort of transaction that altcoins like Ripple and Stellar try to facilitate, though in a more centralised way. I wonder if Bitcoin's popularity will overcome its speed limitations in this instance.

<comment><USER26> Bitcoin's lightning network is currently maturing (it allows instant free transfer of Bitcoins off-chain). That should work perfectly for banks, given that unlike regular customers, banks don't transfer money only in one direction, so the lightning channels should stay balanced for much longer.

<comment><USER27> LN, aside from being complete vaporware, is most certainly _not_ free. Or, it's as free as bitcoin was promised to be "free", in that it isn't free at all.

Not to mention that, should it ever prove to work at any reasonable scale, LN is basically adding a layer on top of Bitcoin that gives up almost all of the things that were supposed to be core values.

<comment><USER10> Nevermind LN, regular tx fees are virtually zero at the moment.

[https://transactionfee.info/charts/feerate/median](https://transactionfee.info/charts/feerate/median)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Econophysicist Accurately Forecasts Gold Price Collapse  - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25269/?ref=rss <comment><USER2> The gold price has collapsed? I hadn't noticed.

Not saying his sealed prediction wasn't correct, but your headline seems to ignore the fact that gold's currently at $1223/oz.

<comment><USER3> The headline is link-bait; as the article details, this is a system to detect when some market is going to change "from superexponential growth to some other regime (which may not necessarily be a collapse)."

It depends on detecting that the market is in a superexponential growth regime in the first place (the article indicates that was hard/impossible earlier) and matching the specific pattern of its behavior to human behavior model stuff. I can well believe it works and it'll serious utility if it pans out.

Even if it changes the market(s) as good prediction systems tend to do, since this is a particularly unhealthy type of market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Macroeconomists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions.</comment>


Optimal Waist-to-Hip Ratios in Women Activate Neural Reward Centers in Men - <AUTHOR> http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0009042

<comment><USER2> Translation of title - "Babes with curves are hot!!!"

<comment><USER3> tl;dr there's no pics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is just a confirmation/refinement of something known for a very long time. I just finished reading [http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Desire- Revised-4/dp/04650080...](http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Desire- Revised-4/dp/046500802X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266311756&sr=8-1) , if you're interested in such stuff it's a really good book. Most of human "mating behaviour" is understood to a pretty amazing degree if you read the right things. Doesn't make actual mating any easier :p but it puts a lot of perspective into it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't Sir Mix-a-Lot already formulate this as "My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns, hon"?

</comment><comment><USER6> At the risk of sounding snobbish, brains turn me on _way_ more than bodies. Brains last, bodies go pretty quickly.

Maybe I'm just poorly reward-motivated, though. My wife and I effectively lived together for 3 years before getting married, and we both waited until marriage for sex.

<comment><USER7>
        Brains last, bodies go pretty quickly.

Neither last without constant care & maintenance.

<comment><USER6> Granted, but the stereotypical "ideal" body simply doesn't last through a lifetime, no matter how it's maintained, though a mind can last through even the longest life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> news: Scientists Discover That People Think That Things That They Think Are Good Are Good.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly enough, Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR) has come up here before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=908868>

</comment><comment><USER10> I kinda' prefer the golden ratio, myself. NSFW: [http://www.reddit.com/r/nsfw/comments/9v6zt/curvy_in_all_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/nsfw/comments/9v6zt/curvy_in_all_the_right_places_follows_the_golden/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wonder why there's tons of those articles and they talk about fertility cues but never deliver any solid data on this.

it's always 'women prefer this mans face because of fertility cues', 'man prefers this ass because of fertility cues'.

<comment><USER6> This is relatively solid data, actually. They used a fMRI to watch the blood flow (indicative of activity) in the "reward center(s)" of the brain with a higher incidence than without that 0.7 ratio.

* shrug * more proof that the super-thin look is horrible for both women AND men.

<comment><USER11> I'd like to see the data on the hip-waist ratio indicating higher fertility. Seems to me most women are capable of bearing children.

<comment><USER12> The baby has to fit through the hole in the middle of the pelvis. If a women's hips are narrower I would suspect that there is a higher likelihood of her birth canal being narrower meaning less chance of a successful natural birth.

You really have to discount c-sections and such when thinking about 'fertility' since it would stand to reason that a lot of reactions are instinctual.

> _I'd like to see the data on the hip-waist ratio indicating higher > fertility_

You might have trouble with that if you follow my advice and ignore medical 'intervention' like C-sections since in previous years doctors would do a C-section at the drop of a hat (IIRC, the rate used to be 80% whereas now it's around 60%).

[edit] further investigation makes my claims to be a bit 'pie in the sky:' <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-section#Incidence>

Here is another relevant tidbit I found while investigating:

      A previously unexplored reason for the increasing section rate is the
      evolution of birth weight and maternal pelvis size. Since the advent of
      successful Caesarean birth over the last 150 years, mothers with a small
      pelvis and babies with a large birth weight have survived and contributed to
      these traits increasing in the population. Even without fears of malpractice,
      without maternal obesity and diabetes, and without other widely quoted
      factors, the C-section rate will continue to rise simply due to slow changes
      in population genetics.

<comment><USER11> Good point about the c-sections, but still, I am not entirely convinced. For one thing, that wouldn't explain waist/hip, or would it? It would then all be hip, and women would get increasingly larger hips? Also, thinking about Asia, I think women are very tiny there, and they still get children. Their babies are probably smaller, too. But making bigger and bigger babies does not seem to be a "goal" of evolution, either. Otherwise a woman's height would be attractive, which I don't think is the case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Former Lala CEO says Apple bought them 'for the people' - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/03/29/former-lala-ceo-says-apple-bought-them-for-the-people/

<comment><USER2> So if you got bought for the "people" then those people go off to create some other company -- isn't that a waste of money?

Why not just setup an investment arm, invest in those people and keep a cut of their next ventures -- because you know there will be other ventures.

There seems to be some delusion that creators will want to stay long term at BigCo. The fact is that creators will always seek to create - and there are only a few slots within any BigCo to support _the_ in-house creator. The slots at apple, for instance are filled with Jobs and Ives...</comment>


Stop 'Using' "Useless" '"'Quotes'"' - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/lambdax/stop-using-useless-quotes-1bba0a88406a <comment><USER2> Explicit is better than implicit. I've had too many things break in the past because I trusted the parser to "do what I want". Now I trust explicit quotes to keep ambiguity away.

Oh. And: Stop Using Medium. TYVM

<comment><USER3> "Medium."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nope. I'd much rather keep my code uniform, than have to think about when to use quotes or not.

And if other people following the specs bother you so much, maybe seek OCD treatment.

<comment><USER5> "I'd rather do busywork maintaining my code to conform to an ideal of quoted uniformity than be forced to think whether those quotes are of any benefit to me or to the reader."

<comment><USER4> 1\. HTML is read by parsers 99.9% of the time. Rare is the human who cares to "View Source" on a site. 2\. If you have a decent editor, those quotes are inserted automatically, so no busywork required.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Parsers don't care. Humans do. 99.9% of time spent reading the html source is spent by humans, because they are so much slower than browsers. 2. I don't know what "decent" means in this context. Automatic code/quote insertion is wrong when I do not want them. It leads to less readable code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When writing my code for myself only, I don't quote my attribute values unless necessary. If writing in a shared project, I will match the existing style, which is almost always to use quotes.

But things that bother me much more are:

• Putting type="text/javascript" on


Computing with Text-Graphic Forms (1980) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800087.802795 <comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://www.pgc.com/pgc/home-stuff/papers-full/computing-w- tg...](http://www.pgc.com/pgc/home-stuff/papers-full/computing-w-tg-forms- abstract.html), which no longer works.</comment>


Monitoring a UPS with Grafana on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://blog.linuxserver.io/2018/11/15/monitoring-a-ups-with-grafana-on-linux/ <comment><USER2> I recently came across the same problem and ported a similar php script to python instead: [https://github.com/LeoVerto/telegraf-apc-ups- status](https://github.com/LeoVerto/telegraf-apc-ups-status)

</comment><comment><USER3> Incase anyone didn't know but Linuxserver.io creates a shitload of docket containers for a NAS solution called Unraid. Many of the containers are well maintained and stable. One of the most user friendly network attaches storage solutions I've ever used.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting how 'Ups' didn't register with me as 'UPS'. Influx with grafana is nice to graph a lot of stuff, nice that you can do a electricity bill estimate too.</comment>


Microsoft backs Epic against Apple in legal fight over Unreal Engine on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/microsoft-backs-epic-against-apple-in-legal-fight-over-unreal-engine-on-ios/ <comment><USER2> With phones replacing traditional uses of laptops and desktops, "but its a phone, and their software/their rules" will not be an appropriate defense of Apple. We would never accept Microsoft banning Chrome or Firefox from being installed on W10 because it "duplicates native functionality". Or maybe that's unfortunate way computing is headed with Google/Apple tightly locking in their platforms and their rent-seeking policies on their App stores. Time will tell.

Tim Sweeney is the epitome of geek success. Hes a self-made wildly successful programmer-businessman with nerd-cred that rivals John Carmack. It's sad to see that he is not getting enough support here. (I fully accept that MS is probably just backing the anti-apple sentiment in this case)

<comment><USER3> "With phones replacing traditional uses of laptops and desktops, "but its a phone, and their software/their rules" will not be an appropriate defense of Apple."

Really? Despite the hand wringing Apple is not a majority of the market, nor anywhere near market capture MS was during the antitrust days. That did nothing to alter Microsoft's perch. The only thing knocking MS off the top of the hill was the innovation of the smartphones/tablets.

For me the appeal of the iPhone _is_ the walled garden. It just works. No, it's not perfect but it's way better than general purpose computers. Which I also use and also have their place.

To me iOS is an appliance. A tool. Pick it up, use it and move on. No thinking about managing/maintaining it is required. It's why for many of my family iPads are their primary computing devices. Because they don't want computing devices - the want devices that will let them surf the web, talk with friends and family and do other tasks. Period. They don't give a rats ass about "computers" (hint - an opinion shared by the majority of people on this planet, whether we like it or not).

Why isn't there room for both models? Why can't there be tightly managed platforms, totally open platforms and then anything in between? The mere existence of iOS doesn't prevent people who don't want the rules imposed by iOS to pick some other solution. Yet ironically you want to dictate to Apple how they should be able to run their platform while complaining they are too restrictive?

And as I made in another comment, the hypocrisy of Microsoft in particular on this is hilarious. I'll take them seriously on this subject when the Epic Store shows up on Xbox Live and MS isn't taking a cut out of it either.

<comment><USER2> I don't want to beg Apple or Samsung or Microsoft or Google to be given the ability to program a computer. I don't know if you realize it, but that is the way things are headed now.

To be supremely clear - You can support convenience without compromising on these ideals. What you seem to be alluding to is a "kiosk" / zero-maintenance feature, or an OS mode with stripped down functionality that makes things simple and convenient for people who need it. I am not opposed to such functionality whatsoever. It is an orthogonal issue to having control over your own computing devices.

>Why isn't there room for both models? Why can't there be tightly managed platforms, totally open platforms and then anything in between? The mere existence of iOS doesn't prevent people who don't want the rules imposed by iOS to pick some other solution. Yet ironically you want to dictate to Apple how they should be able to run their platform while complaining they are too restrictive?

What choice are you referring to exactly? Or rather, is there even a choice in the market?

Has the market "spoken"? Things don't just happen by themselves. What's wrong with demanding things from companies? Don't we demand that manufacturers stop using supply chains that exploit slave labor? Don't we demand companies spend money on workers' safety? Don't we demand that companies pay a living wage? Don't we demand companies to respect our privacy? Don't we incentivize companies to donate to good social causes? These things were considered not mainstream-important at one point in time. What a horrible time we would be living in, if people would have just said "take it or leave it". Even in a capitalist society, we have a long history of getting companies to focus on things way more important than money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Of course Microsoft will be announcing the Epic Game Store on XBox Live any day now.

Right?

<comment><USER4> You mean like they offer EA Play (Game Pass competitor) on Xbox Live?</comment></comment>


Eric Schmidt's next act bodes well for tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eric-schmidts-next-act-bodes-well-for-tech-2011-01-21

<comment><USER2> This would be pretty interesting to see, but I'm not sure how much I trust Schmidt. He has said some pretty creepy things in the past; him as director of an intelligence agency would be, er, potentially very scary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dvorak is just trying to play on the "Google knows too much" sentiment. He's usually wrong and sometimes a jerk. In this case it's both.</comment>


Five Nights in Pyongyang: Inside the Secret Brothel of North Korea's Elite - <AUTHOR> http://www.eastasiatribune.com/north-asia/five-nights-in-pyongyang-inside-the-secret-brothel-of-north-koreas-elite/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-check-whether-East- Asian...](https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-check-whether-East-Asian- Tribune-is-a-fake-news-website-or-reliable-source-of-news)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is freaking amazing..</comment>


AWS Firecracker Open Source: Secure and Fast MicroVM for Serverless Computing - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/firecracker-open-source-secure-fast-microvm-serverless/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18539539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18539539)

</comment><comment><USER3> New, secure, VM..

        sudo chmod 777 /dev/kvm

But... but... almost.

<comment><USER4> Oh dear. Given the audience for this article I'd assume that readers know that this configuration is not suitable for production... but then again it would probably be a good idea for the article to state that!

<comment><USER5> Hi, I work at AWS and before that on KVM since it was a thing.

Restricting /dev/kvm these days doesn't make much sense. The interface is designed to be safe for any user. The fact that we started as a character device and not syscalls is just a historical decision.

<comment><USER4> Thank you, I have learned something new! I believed it was somewhat similar to having access to the Docker socket and I was always sure to restrict it. Everyone please ignore me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where/How to test user's perception about e.g. your logo? - <AUTHOR>

I have been using me logo for quite some time and just yesterday one of my friends told what he sees in the logo and it wasn't nice. I did not see it, neither anyone from my team nor anyone I handed my business card to.
What's in question is the letter F. What do you guys see?
http://www.followmeintravels.com/ <comment><USER2> I see the GNOME logo with "something" sticking out.</comment>


Forget Apps, Carbyn Has Built A HTML5 OS - <AUTHOR> http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/09/15/carbyn/

<comment><USER2> Are you fucking kidding me? Someone, somewhere doesn't know what the terms HTML and OS mean.

<comment><USER3> No it's true, they send javascript to the southbridge to control your Uart

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seen this somewhere before, it's call JoliOS. And that's the name of the version that you can actually install as an, you know, OS. The one that runs in the browser is called JoliCloud. Figures this would be on Techcrunch...

Oh, and webOS.</comment>


Ask HN: What was your best investment in yourself? - <AUTHOR> I wrote a blog post recently (http://gferreira.me/what_was_your_best_investment/) that talks about my best investment in myself.
In short it was studying to get my A+ certification which allowed me to get into the IT field and led to a successful career.
I'm curious about what other people consider their best investment. I'd love to hear other's opinions. <comment><USER2> Mine was going back to school to get my MS in CS after getting a BS in a field I didn't much care for. It has increased my income and job satisfaction many times over.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I have a BS in IT management and I've been thinking about going back to get a MS in CS. Still looking for the right program though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a few of mine:

* Learning BASIC and later 6502 ASM on a Commodore 64 when I was a kid... play, not work.

* Being a "hacker" (sense two) in the early 90s. While this was not legal, I learned more than I would have in probably anything else. This is particularly true because there just weren't the open resources available back then... how else would a suburban middle class 15 year old in the Midwest learn about applied cryptography, Unix C coding, or how IP routing works?

* Installing Linux in 1993 from floppies, learning C around the same time.

* Founding a failed startup years ago. This one was a mixed bag. It was a painful experience, but also hugely educational.

* Working for a business consulting firm that specialized in early stage companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> BSCS at a damn tough school. Gave me both theoretical and practical foundations for everything technical I've done since.

(and the obligatory xkcd for this topic, [http://xkcd.com/519/](http://xkcd.com/519/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome xkcd! It's 100% accurate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> First, just simply spending so much time in my childhood just reading about and playing with computers.

Secondly, going back to University. While I never had much of a problem getting jobs without a degree, the jobs I've been offered since getting a degree (MSc in Applied Math) are far more fun and interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> \- Learning Linux in the early 2000s

\- Learning Python around Python 1

\- Learning JS at the same time node was beginning

Current investment is learning Unreal Engine, AgiSoft Photscan and Maya now WebGL is in all browsers. I'm making a bet that the best 3D stuff on the web will be created using the best 3D tools, not the best JS 3D tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> How are you going about learning JS? It's my secondary language right now and I've read books, look at code on github and subscribe to newsletter to try to pick it up BUT I haven't been able to be fully "fluent" in it.

I find it hard to explore objects and learn JS core. So much is done with frameworks these days.

<comment><USER6> JS (for the browser anyway) is difficult in that there's basically three generations, and any docs you read are may be from any of them:

1\. Per browser DOM APIs

2\. jQuery

3\. Modern DOM APIs. document.querySelector(), nodelist.forEach(), element.classList() etc. You'd use CSS transitions for animations you used to do in jQuery.

Personal style also comes into it. Some people use function variables, others functions declarations. Some people put script tags everywhere, others use one of two modules systems. There's no one right way to do things. But there's a lot of wrong ones.

First things first: understand the basics, like async and closures. They haven't changed.

And get the yellow book with the bird.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny! I picked that book up yesterday! Assuming you're referring to Eloquent JavaScript. Thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle), A New Earth (Eckhart Tolle), and Radical Honesty (Brad Blanton). I am now at peace and happy all of the time. I could spout off about technical stuff, but none of that has paid off as much as the mindset these books gave me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the book recommendations! Added to audible!!</comment></comment>


A playground for the command line JSON processor jq - <AUTHOR> https://jqplay.org

<comment><USER2> i absolutely adore jq.

it is one of my favorite command line tools ever.

whenever i do anything remotely clever it makes me feel like a programming god! =)

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the same here! +1</comment></comment>


Is AES a Secure Cipher? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptosystem.net/aes/

<comment><USER2> Off topic, but a site straight out of 1997 makes it harder to take this seriously.</comment>


Top validation errors  - <AUTHOR> http://w3clove.com/charts/errors

<comment><USER2> Pie charts are intended to show how one constituent value compares to the whole. Since these errors are not mutually exclusive (a single page can fail validation for multiple reasons), and since the top 10 reasons constitute an arbitrary whole, they should really be using a bar chart.

Um, like this: <http://bl.ocks.org/2941604>

<comment><USER3> Thanks Mike, I've updated the charts. It really looks better as a bar chart:

<http://w3clove.com/charts/errors/bar>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The two most popular are a crock:

* Required attribute alt missing: Most images are decorative, having alt is pointless in most cases. Should be optional.

* & didn't start a character reference: proving this was a bad choice for an escape character to begin with

<comment><USER5> You indicate than an image is purely decorative by providing the attribute value `alt=""`.

<comment><USER6> Which provides no more information than no alt attribute at all.

<comment><USER7> No, it shows the author has thought about alt attributes and has included them because doing so is standards compliant.

For images that are purely decorative including an empty alt attrib is valid. People using screen readers (and people with images turned off[1]) don't need to hear (or read)"SMALL RED BULLET" for all 7 items in the list.

[1] I often have images turned off. I'm using a mobile broadband dongle. My ISP uses horrible proxies to compress images. I'm in the UK. The IP of the proxies is 18.104.22.168 through 126.96.36.199 - this is sub-optimal for many obvious reasons. Bypassing this proxy is trivial, but means I download a lot more data.

<comment><USER8> I'm guessing a 3G provider other than Three or Vodaphone - said proxy is why I left T-Mobile. Last I tried you can instruct the proxy not to alter your web traffic using HTTP cache control headers e.g. <http://www.lewiz.org/2007/01/hacking-t-mobile-web-proxy.html>

<comment><USER7> Yes! They re-write webpages to insert a bunch of script, which re-writes all alt tags to instructions for fetching higher quality images for this or all images on the page. It is annoying. They also have a psuedo-random interstitial telling me that I'm over the "fair use" allowance.

The only reason I'm still using them is that they don't charge for MB or GB; I pay for three months and get "unlimited surfing". They block some stuff after you hit 1GB, but that's trivially easy to get around. Which I do, since they've said I get unlimited web use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This shows how well browsers handle bad HTML.

It always surprises me when I make a mistake in my code and I don't notice it until I next few the source because the browser has understood what I was meant to do.

I guess although this is good for the end user it isn't always a great thing for developers learning HTML if they're able to write bad HTML without ever knowing they're doing something wrong.

<comment><USER10>
      > This shows how well browsers handle bad HTML

It's not that hard to handle something like an <img> tag with no alt attribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd be glad if they changed the format of entities to something like &non- whitespace; suddenly all uses of & on its own becomes legal and is backwards compatible

<comment><USER12> Why use character entities at all when serving documents as UTF-8?

<comment><USER5> You need them for < > and &.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting to see the validation for Hacker News:

[http://w3clove.com/sitemaps/check?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycom...](http://w3clove.com/sitemaps/check?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)

You wouldn't tell there were so many images, would you? Should they have an "alt" attribute?

<comment><USER7> They are functional. They need an alt tag. Having [grayarrow.gif] and [graydown.gif] is sub-optimal.

<comment><USER13> While we're at it, we should stop using tables, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anybody else think its a little absurd that `alt` on img tags are still required for valid HTML?

<comment><USER15> It's absolutely ridiculous, especially since you can get away with alt="".

<comment><USER13> No it's not. An empty alt specifies that it's a presentational image. On the other hand, no alt is unhelpful, as you can't tell if the omission was intentional, or the developer is just lazy.

<comment><USER16> An empty alt can also just mean "I used a tool to generate this and didn't fill out the alt field" or "I just want this page to validate and still don't care".

Making the alt tag required won't make lazy developers/content providers any less lazy, so requiring it actually _weakens_ the signal you're looking for.

<comment><USER13> And then if we make it optional, now developers and software don't have to even consider putting any alt content.

At least requiring one makes them think about it. And tools can put in "image".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what on earth is "mibenumid" (last entry)? googling for it shows that it's a popular name for a url query param, but i'm not sure how that's relevant (perhaps the error comes from the "&" separator in a URL not being escaped?). is it used by some popular middleware? the pages google is throwing up seem to be asp...

<comment><USER18> <http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets>

>The MIBenum value is a unique value for use in MIBs to identify coded character sets.

>The value space for MIBenum values has been divided into three regions. The first region (3-999) consists of coded character sets that have been standardized by some standard setting organization. This region is intended for standards that do not have subset implementations. The second region (1000-1999) is for the Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 coded character sets together with a specification of a (set of) sub-repertoires that may occur. The third region (>1999) is intended for vendor specific coded character sets.

However that specific error (reference to entity "x" for which no system identifier could be generated) has this message:

>This is usually a cascading error caused by a an undefined entity reference or use of an unencoded ampersand (&) in an URL or body text. See the previous message for further details.

I notice this on one website that is using MIBEnumID:

<span

      class="st_facebook_large"

      displaytext="Facebook"

      st_url='http://www.hardrock.com/locations/cafes3/events.aspx?locationid=108&MIBenumID

Could it be that it is just throwing this error because of the unencoded ampersand? And that since it is part of some MS/ASP.net setup it is everywhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> yeah I too agree that the "alt" attribute should not be considered an error. Maybe just a warning.

There's a separate chart for the top 100 warnings:

<http://w3clove.com/charts/warnings>

</comment><comment><USER19> uh, forge tthe alt, should the no closing img tag be on the list? or not closing br? i've never used those, ever. they make no sense.</comment>


Megaupload: A Lot Less Guilty Than You Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.granick.com/blog/?p=739

<comment><USER2> The thing that annoys me most about megaupload is that it was run by a scammy douchenozzle fraudster glory-hound who few people will feel sorry for, regardless of the ethics or legality of shutting down the site. It's like the DA using bogus evidence to pin a murder on a convicted child-rapist, it might be wrong but who's going to defend that guy?

<comment><USER3> It's worse than that. Add in that the FBI accompanied New Zealand police (or, according to our quasi national paper "led the raid") and it feels a whole lot worse. <http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/the-mega-conspiracy/>

<comment> Anti-Ratfish Dotocm and three others were arrested after an FBI-led raid at the mansion, which he leases, on Friday morning. The FBI is seeking to extradite the men to the US to face charges of conspiring to commit racketeering, conspiring to commit money laundering, copyright infringement, and aiding and abetting copyright infringement over the internet through the website Megaupload.

That's the quote, here is the source. [http://m.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&#...</a></comment></comment></comment>


'No Way I Can Lose': Inside China's Stock-Market Frenzy - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-way-lose-inside-china-200000772.html <comment><USER2> This is crazy. Old enough to remember 2000 and 2006 frenzy buying of anything. Assuming that any assets (house, stock, etc) will continue to appreciate is insane.</comment>


Cognitive Dissonance - <AUTHOR> http://7cspuram.blogspot.com/search/label/Cognitive%20dissonance

<comment><AUTHOR> "Give me The 'Serenity' to accept everything, The 'Courage' to change nothing, The 'Wisdom' to stay indifferent".

</comment><comment><USER2> Sounds more like confirmation bias than cognitive dissonance. Still, nice read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Think of all those events (I wonder why, I wonder how) without thinking about their true confirmatory nature, you might find dissonance.</comment></comment>


New multi-page HTTP compression proposal from Google - <AUTHOR> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2008JulSep/0441.html

<comment><USER2> Support for something like this would be a step in the right direction, but I think there are a couple of simpler ways to improve HTTP:

A similar peeve of mine is HTTP headers.

If a browser opens a connection to a web server, and the connection is keep- alive, the browser will send several requests down than one connection.

But for _every_ single request, it'll send out it's full headers. That's really wasteful and idiotic. Send full headers when the connection is opened, there is no need to repeat every single time.

Also if the connection is keep-alive, it'd be reasonably simple to have gzip compression over the full data - not per request. This would achieve the same as the google proposal, but in a better way IMHO.

The HTTP headers can add up quite a bit if you're using XMLHttpRequest or similar. Also if the data is small, compression isn't worthwhile. HTTP header spam is a PITA.

So if I had my way:

* Headers _only_ sent once at the start of a connection, not per request. Send them if they change - eg a new cookie has been set since the last request :/

* A new transfer-type to specify that the data is gzipped as one - instead of gzipped per request.

Those 2 simple changes to HTTP would make things _so_ much better.

<comment><USER3> Those are interesting changes.

It's true most headers don't change. One I can think of that usually changes between resource types is Accept. Usually it will be slightly different between <img> <script> <link> and <iframe>, but this probably wouldn't make much of a difference if you allow only to send changed headers. I'd be curious to see how much bandwidth you save with this. You also might want to allow for header removal as you do header change. I can't think of a scenario where not removing a header would cause a problem, but there could potentially be one.

For the gzip as a whole instead of per request, there's one reason I can't see many browsers taking advantage of that. Most browsers will make requests like, write request, read response, write request, read response. Instead of write, write, write, read, read, read. So I'm not sure how you could unzip everything together unless you wait to display the items till the entire connection is finished. Also, this would require the client to give an indication when it is done writing requests to the stream, so that all the data can be fetched from the server and then zipped together. Which would require a much bigger change to the protocol.

Is there anything I'm missing?

<comment><USER2> The main gain with headers would be for comet like applications. In Mibbit/Meebo etc type applications you're sending a lot of small messages, interspersed with HTTP header spam. Often the data is smaller than the HTTP headers.

For gzip, I don't see an issue. The only change that would be needed would be for the gzip state to be saved between requests. For the browser, it would request object A, get the response, unzip it, display. Then it would request object B, unzip it using the previous gzip state, etc.

For the sender, likewise. So there would be no change in terms of timing. The only change would be that the gzip state would be carried over to the next request. (It's possible I'm remembering wrong and gzip can't do this - if so a different compression method that can be compressed/decompressed individually, but using a running shared dictionary/state would be needed).

<comment><USER4> Comet optimizes for latency, with the big improvement of avoiding the latency of opening a TCP connection and sending the request.

With both long polling and streaming you could probably send the headers long before the actual data is ready to be sent as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read the whole thing, and I just don't like it. The beauty of HTTP headers, cookies, and elements is their simplicity (or primitivness). They are easy to implement.

This proposal will introduce a huge complexity to the HTTP spec. If you have implemented caching in a client, it is so easy for things to go wrong, even if the clients are right, the server, content managers could mess this up roaly really fast.

The other thing I don't like, is that when using raw sockets, and try to implement HTTP over it, (many reasons to do this, especially in mobile), now you have to deal with more complexities.

As somebody mentioned above, eliminating duplicate http headers, and addressing the duplicity issue in the markup language itself (i.e HTML5 or XHTML2), and not the transport protocol.

<comment><USER5> here is somebody's counterpoint:

"It seems to me that AJAX can be used to solve this problem in a simpler manner. Take Gmail for example--it downloads the whole UI once and then uses AJAX to get the state-specific data. The example from the PPT showed a 40% reduction in the number of bytes transmitted when using SDCH (beyond what GZIP provided) for google SERPs. I bet you could do about that well just by AJAXifying the SERPs (making them more like GMail) + using regular HTTP cache controls + using a compact, application-specific data format for the dynamic parts of the page + GZIP. Maybe Google's AJAX Search API already does that? In fact, you might not even need AJAX for this; maybe IFRAMEs are enough.

I also noticed that this proposal makes the request and response HTTP headers larger in an effort to make entity bodies smaller. It seems over time there is an trend of increasingly large HTTP headers as applications stuff more and more metadata into them, where it is not all that unusual for a GET request to require more than one packet now, especially when longish URI-encoded IRIs are used in the message header. Firefox cut down on the request headers it sends [2] specifically to increase the chances that GET requests are small enough to fit in one packet. Since HTTP headers are naturally _highly_ repetitive (especially for resources from the same server), a mechanism that could compress them would be ideal. Perhaps this could be recast as transport-level compression so that it could be deployed as a TLS/IPV6/IPSEC compression scheme.

Regards, Brian "

<comment><USER6> I assume the main argument against this idea is the burden it places on the Javascript engine. Its the same reason people use gzip and not packer (well, assuming packer produces a smaller file, which happens sometimes).

Engines are getting faster, but they still really can't compete with native browser facilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't read the detail of the specification, but is a great idea.

The amount of similarity between pages of Markup (esp XML) or related pieces of JavaScript could be significant.

I found this Google PowerPoint that hints at some of the benefits [http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:RIkP-5qZ4awJ:assets.en....](http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:RIkP-5qZ4awJ:assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/7/Shared%2520Dictionary%2520Compression%2520Over%2520HTTP%2520Presentation.ppt+SDCH+results&hl=en)

The PPT claims _About 40 percent data reduction better than Gzip alone on Google search._

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link (of a link) to the PDF: [http://sdch.googlegroups.com/web/Shared_Dictionary_Compressi...](http://sdch.googlegroups.com/web/Shared_Dictionary_Compression_over_HTTP.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Can't be a coincidence that they started pushing this a week after Chrome arrived. I wonder what other proposals Google has coming?

</comment><comment><USER9> Curious as to how this compares to standard GZIP compression over the course of a hundred pages on a website.

<comment><USER10> Another post cites 40%.</comment></comment>


A Day at the Park - <AUTHOR> http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park <comment><USER2> Having taken more to wondeering what the questions should be than the answers, I find this brilliant. Possibly also a guide to some difficult conversations and questions from others.</comment>


In Norway, personal income is a matter of public record - <AUTHOR> http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-10-23/news/17186807_1_tax-records-norway-tax-list

<comment><USER2> While I accept that it might not be _so_ bad once you get used to it, I really can't imagine any reason that it could be a _good_ thing.

The government could also compulsorily publish photos of everybody's genitals every year. Again, you'd probably get used to it, and it probably wouldn't be as bad as it sounds, but I can't see any upside to it.

<comment><USER3> > I really can't imagine any reason that it could be a good thing.

It means that anyone who's interviewing for a job at a company can look up what everyone else at the company makes, so they don't have to waste time interviewing with companies that pay too little, and it gives them better negotiating leverage.

In general, it pushes the labor market toward being an ideal liberal market. Marx thought that would result in the wages of labor falling to just above its cost of production, i.e. just enough to feed and clothe you. It looks like he was wrong.

<comment><USER4> Marx had a labor theory of value, just like adam smith which is entirely wrong. The cost of a good is determined by the value it provides to the consumer. The consumer will not pay more than the value it provides the to them. In Marx's view the cost of a good is determined by how much it cost to produce.

<comment><USER3> I have the impression that the standard economic doctrine was that the cost of a good was determined by where the supply curve intersects the demand curve — which is to say, the point at which the amount it costs to produce it _is equal to_ how much value it provides to the consumer.

This in itself doesn't contradict Marx's point (and what Marx thought the real value of things was is irrelevant). The point where he got it wrong was apparently in equating the cost of keeping a laborer alive with the cost of their labor.

To elaborate, if you're not familiar with these ideas of supply and demand curves, the idea is that as you produce more and more of something, the cost to produce it eventually starts to go up forever.

For example, working 20 hours a week might have a negative cost, working 40 hours a week means you don't have a lot of socializing time, working 80 hours a week means you have no leisure time unless you have someone else to cook and clean for you, working 100 hours a week means you're sleep-deprived and have time for neither leisure nor cooking and cleaning, working 168 hours a week is invariably fatal within a few months, and working more than that is impossible.

On the other side, the incremental value to the consumer diminishes after some point, ultimately reaching zero. A single fork per person is useful every day, six forks per person is useful only when they invite friends over or want to postpone doing the dishes, thirty forks per person is useful only if you're doing funky art projects by bending forks, and 300 forks per person would be valuable only as scrap metal, i.e. the labor that went into making them produced zero or even negative value.

The theory is that these two curves must intersect in at least one point, and that's the market equilibrium. It's commonly assumed that they intersect in only one point because they're monotonic, but that's probably not true.

<comment><USER4> Yes, of course supply and demand factor into the cost. Your argument above is using the theory of marginal utility (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility>) the labor theory of value was replaced by that <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't that be a deterrent for anyone who wants to establish a business in Norway?

Look at the quotes : "Actress and director Liv Ullmann, for instance, earned $17k ... Pioneering women's long-distance runner Grete Waitz, a nine-time New York City Marathon champion, earned $13k"

Either their best and brightest are dirt poor or they prefer earning and keeping their money abroad.

If that was the objective of the law, it's a success.

<comment><USER6> The article states, "Income earned or kept abroad, or otherwise in some sort of tax shelter, is not included."

I would assume that both Ullmann and Waitz earned most of their income outside of Norway.

<comment><USER7> Yes. Actually, the public information is not the income or value of property, but the amount of tax paid on these, which means that the numbers splashed all over the internet are estimates (for instance, people with zero-income dependants are taxed at a lower rate).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As mentioned in the article, this is not uncommon. The same is true for Sweden.

<comment><USER9> Same thing in Finland. If I remember correctly, there's even a number you could text the full name of any tax payer and get his income in the previous year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, news from 2009. Not surprising as this has been well known for years. You can also look up anyones name from a phone number, and anyones address from a name ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> "The children of people with low wages are being teased about it in the schools,"

Of course, the problem is that the information was made available, not that parents don't teach their kids not to tease ...

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't public income considered to be the cause of inflating CEO pay?

</comment><comment><USER13> Do you know how to find out how much given person (in Sweden, Finland or Norway) earned last year?

<comment><USER14> Sweden: <http://ratsit.se/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know where I can download this dataset?

<comment><USER7> I don't think you can do it. Technically, the lists are available (for a short time if I am not mistaken) for perusal at a tax office; in practice, they are released to the media (e.g. major news outlets), who give you access to search by name plus league tables and aggregated statistics by year of birth, postcode etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> (2009)

</comment><comment><USER17> Great point. In contrast look at what we generate in this country - [http://www.zerohedge.com/article/matt-taibbi-asks-why-fed- ga...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/matt-taibbi-asks-why-fed- gave-220-million-bailout-money-wives-two-morgan-stanley-bigwigs)

<comment><USER3> I think you may have posted this comment on the wrong article?

<comment><USER17> Actually, the article is a "contrast and compare" statement. Norway is relatively open in its treatment of money and government, witness their handling of taxes. Alternatively, the US is relatively opaque, witness the article. I am not sure that I support either over the other. I had hoped to spur a conversation on the issue. I failed. It isn't the first time. Probably won't be the last. Perhaps because I am new to this process of posting and commenting, I failed to understand that it is necessary to draw the line. My apologies.

<comment><USER3> It would help a lot if you had described in your original comment why you thought the other article was relevant, as you did to some extent here.

<comment><USER17> That I did get. Not only did I not get a discussion going,(not for the points --but for the discussion) but at least two people were honestly confused by the post. What I have yet to learn is how deeply to comment if I should comment at all. I'd really like to contribute. But its clear that I would do well to stick to the reading unless its really, really in my field.

Thanks for your help.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Privateer Holdings Hits the Jackpot with $12B Tilray Stake - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/thiel-backed-fund-hits-jackpot-with-12-billion-tilray-stake <comment><USER2> I know this is somewhat tangential to the story, but with now it looking like there will be a bunch of newly-minted billionaires in the burgeoning cannabis sector, I can't help but think of all of the (largely poor and minority) people whose lives were ruined by marijuana charges.

It's just kind of fascinating to me how we reserve the terms "drug dealer" mainly for (again, largely poor and minority) illegal drug sellers, but that very word "drug dealer" conjurs up more than illegality, but a real moral judgement that these are "bad people". But if you're rich and pulling on the levels of power to do it "correctly", you are a forward-thinking entrepreneur.

Not really sure what my point is in posting this, but just I guess as a reminder that how we even talk about morality is subtlely guided by the structures of society that are not "right or wrong" in and of themselves, but just how powerful people set things up to benefit them.

<comment><USER3> What is also amazing about this is that it made me hesitate strongly about legalization of all drugs. Big ass companies selling drugs almost immediately as the market opens up is not how I pictured "decriminalization". Should coca- cola just sell straight up heroin? Should one of these companies produce internal documentation about the damages of marihuana and hide it, just like tobacco did?

I guess getting older gets you more conservative..

<comment><USER4> How did you picture it?

<comment><USER3> More like "organic farming", or "small batch alcohol" for a long time. I mean i pictured the actual criminal producers turning legit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Current market cap: over $20 _billion_. Current quarterly revenues: under $10 _million_. Float: a measly 17+ million shares. Borrow rates: over 500% right now.

      Lots of momentum × tiny float = crazy market cap + crazy borrow rates.

Doesn't seem... sustainable.

<comment><USER6> It's not.

Sure, the stock crossed $200 today, but it also touched $300 midday before it started to free fall and got halted three times in the last few hours of trading. If you bought in at the peak today, you lost 33% of your investment in about 2 hours.

Getting in to TLRY right now isn't investing, it's gambling. Nothing fundamentally has changed about the business recently (AFAIK), but the stock is up 80% just this week and 500% in the last month. Seems to me, the run up the last few days seems pretty much driven by FOMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TLRY/options?p=TLRY](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TLRY/options?p=TLRY)

The stock moved up so much today that you can't see any calls that are out of the money or puts that are in the money on the main page of options on yahoo finance... (as of 3:16 PM ET)

<comment><USER8> In English?

<comment><USER9> It outperformed everyone's expectations.

<comment><USER10> and then crashed beyond everyone's expectations

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Citron Research said it remains short on Tilray, calling the stock's surge > "beyond comprehension" in a Tweet Wednesday.

and

> Tilray jumped as much 55 percent to in New York Wednesday to $240, giving it > a value of more than $20 billion, higher than American Airlines Group Inc

Q2 revenue up just a touch from Q1, but losses have doubled. Of course this could be growth spending.

Up 60% today, which is absurd.

<comment><USER12> > > Tilray jumped as much 55 percent to in New York Wednesday to $240

It was at $295 prior to Liquidity halt today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see any possible way for the fund to actually make use of the "value" here. It's just a pumped stock that's had trading halted 3 times in the past hour or so. They wouldn't be able to sell without crashing the price and I highly highly doubt price is going to remain so high over time.

<comment><USER14> The borrow rates are the highest I've ever seen - 500% annualized. They'll likely be lending a significant portion of their stake, which will net them a good return even if they never are able to liquidate the stock themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a Canadian VC that was banned for life at the US boarder for investing in a US cannabis company. Wonder if these guys will have problems.

<comment><USER16> If you are an American citizen you can not be bared from re-entry, no matter how much they might want to do so.

<comment><USER17> Well, your US passport can be confiscated and declared invalid... then you can be denied entry. Happened this year to people born in the Mexican border.

<comment><USER18> Yeah this is suspect though and without due process so I bet after a few ACLU lawsuits and a couple Federal judges intervening then this will stop.

<comment><USER19> It'll probably be ordered to stop.

Whether it will _actually_ stop is...well, this administration hasn't been known for full and immediate compliance with other federal court orders relating to immigration and citizenship...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Personally, this is starting to look like a pump scheme.

Which is weird...

Because Tilray supposedly has a decent business (just Google "seekingalpha Tilray"). But the price action to date has been (as others have noted) nothing short of _insane_. The CEO has been on a press tour the past few weeks which culminated in an interview on CNBC, and he's yet to even reference the stock price. Another commenter mentioned the craziest part, "You can't even buy $TLRY call options that are out of the money as of today" \- meaning, absolutely _0_ people foresaw the price action going this crazy.

Why let it get this out of hand? It's a legit business doing legit business? Why do they need the stock price at these insane levels? The resulting burst of this bubble is only going to hurt the retail investors, and cannabis stocks in general (at least short term). Obviously my first answer is the ol' Jordan Belfort _pump and dump_ , but outside of just pure greed, it seems Tilray hardly needs this to happen.

I also learned via Bloomberg that the Tilray CEO, is a leading partner in the (private equity) firm that owns 75 million shares of unlisted Tilray stock. Which makes me wonder if he's working for Tilray, or for private equity (still).

Something is just very, very fishy about this to me.

<comment><USER21> > "You can't even buy $TLRY call options that are in the money as of today"

Exactly backwards: _All_ of the call options on $TLRY are in the money.

<comment><USER22> Still incorrect actually. There have been out of the money call options on TLRY all day.[0]

OP got mixed up because someone posted about how Yahoo finance only had in the money calls, but that was Yahoo's fault alone.

[0] [https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tlry/option- chain?callput=call...](https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tlry/option- chain?callput=call&money=out)

<comment><USER20> I get what you mean, but it depends on when/where you looked for the options. Basically saying at some point in the day, there were no OOM call options - which still...makes the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _"Our long-term vision is if a patient walks into any pharmacy in any > country in the world that has legalized cannabis that patient should be able > to obtain a Tilray product. That's our global goal," Kennedy said in an > interview this week from New York._

Hopefully this doesn't signal the beginning of cannabis consolation. It's possible that the market will follow the model of the beer market, where a few large companies have bought out numerous microbrewers.

<comment><USER24> Anecdotally microbrewers seem to be doing fine. The city I moved from (pop. ~200,000) had ~10 microbrewers. The city I currently live in (few hundred thousand people as well) also has several.

If small companies can't compete it'll be because they can't deal with the regulation or the business gets commodified and they can't compete on price since they don't have economies of scale, but the later doesn't seem likely to me.

<comment><USER25> As someone who really enjoys beer, isn't part of the reason for that because of the incredible variety of styles and flavors that can be achieved with beer? It's such a versatile medium with a large range of quality differences.

But as someone also who has never smoked pot or been that interested in it - is it anything like that at all? Or is the experience pretty generic (other than the obvious quality differences)?

<comment><USER26> It's a botanical product that has a range of tastes and flavors that span almost the entire range of culinary herbs, in a somewhat unexpected way. Quality of end product is very dependent upon quality of cultivation and genetics, and that's why in Denver, prices range from $4 to $25 a gram. Same for concentrates - the flavor and effect of the water hash and live rosin is far more delicate (for $90 a gram) compared to the base waxes and shatter that costs dramatically less, about $15 a gram.

It's like the difference between Highland Park, Dewars and $10 crap scotch but also the difference between Kahlua, Tanqueray and Limoncello - and also the quality and brand variances within a style. The dozens of varieties of herb and extract you see at the store do all separately exist for good reasons. The expensive extracts are clearly a more delicate product than the cheap ones, and among a certain brand there maybe be several very distinct (natural, botanical) flavors available.

I tend to keep a variety on hand - a lemony sativa extract like Super Lemon Haze or Jack Herer, a skunky/gassy hybrid like Sour Diesel, a bright Sativa like Columbian or Panamanian, and a heavy indica like Grape Skunk or whatever smells good (strain names can be standard or per-store) in addition to something with CBD and maybe CBN (medicinal cannabinoids). Selection for me is very flavor dependent, but also for the effects, which vary widely within a range and are harder to predict by aroma and appearance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The news about Tilray today made me think about XRP or Ripple last year when it spiked to $4

<comment><USER28> Yup, which was the perfect time to dump all your crypto bags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am actually surprised the Feds allow the stock to be traded on a US exchange. I would think that there may be some regulations on the money raised (e.g. during an IPO) and transferred out of the country based on their industry.

</comment><comment><USER29> The price will crash even if he sells a tiny amount of it.

</comment><comment><USER30> How much can he get out from this? any way to hedge his exposure to this until lockup expires?

<comment><USER31> Could do similar things to what Mark Cuban did to hedge his exposure of Yahoo stock after the purchase of his company. Basically shorting against your holding [1].

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Cuban-save-his-wealth- fro...](https://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Cuban-save-his-wealth-from-the-dot- com-crash-He-sold-Broadcast-com-for-5-7-billion-in-Yahoo-stock-How-did-he-get- out-before-it-all-went-down)

<comment><USER32> It's not shorting if you're holding, it's just and option.

<comment><USER33> People use "short" as a synonym for holding a put option _all the time_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> He better sell it quick!

</comment><comment><USER35> I guess the "Thiel-backed" bit in the title worked as clickbait. It's not like Thiel had foresight, the Privateer people did.

Or to extend it further, it's not like Privateer had amazing foresight either.

</comment><comment><USER36> Someone please explain this: Revenues in 2017: ~$21M, loss: $7.5M

But, market cap: $27B

Why?

<comment><USER34> A stock goes up when someone buys it and down when someone sells it. Valuations based on financial numbers work only if decisions to buy or sell are also based on that framework. In this case people are buying based on the felling that this is "the next big thing" without looking at the numbers. So, since people keep buying, the stock keeps going up. They will get slaughtered, but it will take time.

<comment><USER37> > A stock goes up when someone buys it and down when someone sells it.

this isn't true: to buy a share someone else has to sell it (with some exceptions)

in reality the price depends on what the buyer and seller agree (electronically or otherwise) -- just like everything else you buy

in general if demand is higher than supply the price rises, just like other markets

<comment><USER34> Right. Just easier to say buying a stock drives it up than buying a stock at the offer price removes liquidity at the lowest current offer price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So, is Thiel going to be in trouble for this or is that threat only for small investors?

[http://fortune.com/2018/09/14/canada-cannabis-ban-us- border/](http://fortune.com/2018/09/14/canada-cannabis-ban-us-border/)</comment>