Show HN: Webfont for Press Logos - <AUTHOR> http://fontfamous.com <comment><USER2> You got some potential there, but you need to grow that collection by several orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER3> You're suggesting the author expands the list _at least_ from 28 to 280 logos (or maybe 2800?). What exactly are you expecting to get for free?

<comment><AUTHOR> We will be adding more logos and it's open source so others can contribute if they are so inclined.

<comment><USER3> I think you did fine work, and could very well stop there. The "orders of magnitudes" comment is absurdly exaggerating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool! Using a font is a great idea for monochrome cases.

A few years ago I tried my hand at a similar project[0], but using SVG, CSS, and hand-written sizing[1] for each logo.

It was useful for us at Segment[2] because we needed to our partners's logos all over the place, and I didn't want to have to create new assets for every possible size/color combination, and to keep them all visually aligned too.

And then I started adding more non-Segment-partner logos too, like Heroku[3] or GitHub[4]. Here's an example in use from a side project[5].

Using CSS and SVG meant that we could keep "full color" and "full color reversed" version of the logos, in addition to just flat colors. Trouble was that hand-writing the sizes is something that only people with a trained- enough eye can do, since they need to be nicely optically aligned, so it got unmaintainable quickly, especially once we wanted to let partners onboard themselves. At one point my co-founder Peter had even written a Slack bot that would create vector versions of the logos automagically using Nightmare[6] and Swiftly[7] under the covers.

Anyways, some of the vector files or prior thinking might be useful for expanding your collection. Good luck!

[0]: [https://github.com/logo/logo](https://github.com/logo/logo)

[1]: [https://github.com/logo/heroku/blob/master/index.css](https://github.com/logo/heroku/blob/master/index.css)

[2]: [https://segment.com](https://segment.com)

[3]: [https://github.com/logo/heroku](https://github.com/logo/heroku)

[4]: [https://github.com/logo/github](https://github.com/logo/github)

[5]: [http://www.hn-button.com/](http://www.hn-button.com/)

[6]: [https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare- swiftly](https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare-swiftly)

[7]: [https://99designs.com/blog/inside-99designs/swiftly- now-99de...](https://99designs.com/blog/inside-99designs/swiftly- now-99designs-tasks/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input and resources!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would probably be more useful if they were optically the same size. Looks like it's currently basically a monospaced font. E.g. The New York Times is illegible next to CNN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was curious about how we might be able to solve that. Not entirely sure. Open to css based solutions!

<comment><USER5> It isn't really a technical problem, so I don't think it makes sense to look for a technical solution. But it's not complicated; like kerning and optical adjustment of letter shapes, someone with an eye for it will need to adjust the size of each logo manually so they all "feel" equal and look good together. For reference, Tobias Frere-Jones has an interesting blog post about optical adjustment of typefaces [1].

As it currently stands, anyone using the font will need to do this themselves.

[1] [https://frerejones.com/blog/typeface- mechanics-001](https://frerejones.com/blog/typeface-mechanics-001)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://herearesomelogos.tumblr.com/](http://herearesomelogos.tumblr.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> FontFamous.com strives to tbe the official font of Here Are Some Logos ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it legal to show their logos on one's site without permission?

<comment><USER8> No.

<comment><USER9> Well, this could be a case of fair use. You're using New York Times' trademark to discuss a certain aspect of the company (they wrote an article on this topic). That could fall under the "News Reporting" exception itself.

<comment><USER8> No not with the logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        > Stop wasting time searching Google Images

I don't think there's much of an advantage in development time to find, download, and implement this over doing the same with images. That's an odd angle to take in the opening paragraph IMO.

For me, the attraction is purely at 'runtime': I'd much rather serve a font over someone else's CDN than a bunch of images on my own host.

Plus, if the companies' logos/fonts change; I trust the community to be more on top of patching that than me noticing and grabbing a new image!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I hadn't actually thought about that as an advantage. I manage many sites and get press for lots of projects, so this will save me a bunch of time, but I like that benefit as well. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's actually pretty cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me know if you use it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any specific reason why the class name is prefixed with `pr`? :)

<comment><USER13> Might be pr as in PR (public relations)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, we will be adding logos for sure.</comment>


Show HN: Backbone + Node.JS bookmarking app - <AUTHOR> http://www.bookmarkmanager.co.za/demo

<comment><AUTHOR> I am learning by doing and would appreciate some feed back.</comment>


Facebook Class Action Suit - <AUTHOR> http://www.discusr.com/post/476/facebook-legal-notice-of-settlement-of-class-action

<comment><USER2> So if you read the long form notice (<http://docs.fraleyfacebooksettlement.com/docs/notice.pdf>), the terms are actually not as horrible as normal.

Yes, class counsel wants ridiculous fees, but it seems rather than the "we're gonna pay everyone 10 bucks and call it a day", they also seem to require at least a few changes from facebook, though some of them seem laughable:

"Encourage new users, upon or soon after joining Facebook, to include their family in their profile information, including their parents and children. Where both a parent and a minor child are users and confirm their relationship,

Facebook will provide parents of Minor Subclass Members with certain additional educational information and tools to control whether their children's names and profile pictures are displayed in connection with Sponsored Stories"

Hey, we didn't want to bug people to find their parents to expand our large social graph! We were legally required!

<comment><USER3> As is usually the case with these types of settlements, the lawyers (on both sides) win and the defendants (facebook) win.

<comment><USER2> The lawyers make something, but when people see lawyers get 2 million or 3 million from some large litigation, they don't understand that the lawyers probably put in 3000+ hours of work (each), plus large cost outlays.

it's hard because i'm not familiar with this particular case, but in cases _like_ this one, they often front well over a million dollars.

<comment><USER4> Wow, I wish my work was worth a thousand dollars an hour.

<comment><USER2> I said "each". It's not like this is one lawyer, it's probably 2-5 lawyers from each firm, including associates. Then they also have support staff, etc.

All the documents in a large case with a very large class can amount to hundreds of thousands of pages (maybe millions). Someone has to review that stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I filled it out. It asks you under the penalty of perjury if you think you were "injured". I had no problem saying yes because I took issue with a couple of things people liked, and I felt that others may have felt the same way about things I liked.

This will probably discourage many others from filling it out, though, in addition to the time it takes.

It would be nice if it asked the questions about whether a person considers himself or herself a part of the class before asking how to pay them. It would be a bit of a waste to fill all that out and not submit it.

<comment><USER6> >I had no problem saying yes because I took issue with a couple of things people liked, and I felt that others may have felt the same way about things I liked.

Is this a joke ? I fail to see Facebook is responsible for the opinions of people you chose to add. Do you equally cry foul if you overhear comments you don't like in public or on a message board such as HN ?

The question is intended for people who were subject to bullying, direct threats, sexual abuse etc.

<comment><USER5> Nope, just a weakly held opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        "Facebook denies any wrongdoing and any liability whatsoever."

I dislike those statements, at least say "we are paying money because some people were displeased with our action" ~_~

part of $20MM being split up at max $10 increments, less than 2 million people.

Everyone should exclude themselves from the lawsuit just in case something comes by in the future.

        If paying $10 to each Authorized Claimant does not exhaust the Net Settlement Fund, the remaining funds will be distributed to the not-for-profit organizations identified below, unless the Court orders otherwise as discussed in Section 2.3(b) of the Settlement Agreement.

so even if no one else participates in the claims, it goes to a good(?) cause.

<comment><USER2> 1\. Counsel asked for 7.5 million in fees, so you should assume the amount being split up is only 12.5 million, total.

2\. Nobody ever admits wrongdoing in a settlement, because it would lead to more lawsuits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was asked, but I'm not taking part in this suit. I was not harmed or put out in any way, and would bet that most people that participate weren't either. I really dislike this type of class action suit. Instead I wish they would get me my money for the thousands I've put into my car for a design flaw that has been obvious for years- but no- instead of justice where justice is due, there are tons of people getting 10 bucks from a company that they don't even pay for their service for something that the company didn't even do.

Justice will not be served.

</comment><comment><USER9> Good luck getting $10 in the settlement. I got a settlement check last year on a Google Adwords class action suit that I think I was automatically included in. I don't remember ever doing anything to join it. Anyway my check was for 60 cents, and this was for a suit involving an actual paid service. How much do you really think you'll get back on free?

<comment><USER10> I remember getting a payout from Apple because of the way they advertised the size of their monitor screens. I received a coupon for a few bucks off on the purchase of my next _Apple_ monitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Each participating Class Member who submits a valid and timely claim form may be eligible to receive up to $10."

I got one of those mails to, but for $10 filling out the form is way too much effort.

<comment><USER12> And it's "up to $10". Totally not worth it.

<comment><USER2> If you want to exclude yourself (in case you get bored and want to sue them later), the form is here:

<https://secure.gcginc.com/fbk/excl/exclform.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I received this today, too. Does every Facebook member get one of these or only a subset (e.g. only US residents)?

</comment><comment><USER14> My sister-in-law got one of these too. It came from "facebookmail.com". Anyone know if this is legit?

<comment><USER15> I was curious about that, but `whois facebookmail.com` shows Facebook's nameservers for it, which means it's under their control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Leaving facebook would still be the better option - even if you still show up in sponsored stories.</comment>


6.8 magnitude earthquake hits Japan, tsunami advisory in effect - <AUTHOR> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/japan/index.html

<comment><USER2> this is old!</comment>


I am so confused, What should I learn Django or Ruby on Rails? - Kishy-nivas I first learned Django, but later had a look at Rails, it was more implicit and easy to do stuff than doing it explicitly in Django, based on remote job perspective should I learn Django or Rails, <comment><AUTHOR> Generally Rails is more powerful than Django though they have a similar set of features. If you are making a webapp I would go with Rails or Rails API. If you are making a website with some webapp functionality I would go with Django and Wagtail CMS. The free CMSes available for Rails aren't great. One feature that Django is missing is asset fingerprinting. In Rails the filename of the static asset changes when the content changes, which helps deal with caching.

</comment><comment><USER2> I feel Rails is not as "popular" as it used to be, and Python is getting more mainstream due to ML and AI and Bigdata etc, similar to what Android helped Java. I would think Django is a safer bet, though, Python is not the best lang for the web, not for the client side for sure, on the server side, PHP(laravel) might be a better fit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rails is still very popular and it's also managed by a company who is very profitable and active.

I think it's in a league of its own. 10+ years of documentation and community support, a massive ecosystem, and the core framework's abstractions and features come from real world use cases (which is why they feel so easy to use).

</comment><comment><USER4> Probably a better question to ask is, "Should I learn Python or Ruby"?

[https://github.com/mjhea0/python-ruby](https://github.com/mjhea0/python-ruby)

<comment> Kishy-nivas I know python, but I love how Rails works, with less code, implicit functions, when compared to Django Rails seems so easy to work with and productive, so I thought to hear about the things I will miss by choosing Rails over Django.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The tech stack does not really matter as long as you as solving the clients problem.</comment>


World's Most Capable Active Rocket Set for End of Year Debut by SpaceX - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2017/11/most-capable-active-rocket-set-for-end-of-year-debut-by-spacex/ <comment><USER2> SpaceX can't possibly build an orbital rocket, they don't have the experience.

The Falcon 9 won't work, too many engines.

You can't land boosters once they've reached hypersonic speeds, 100-1 shot.

Sure 9 engines can work, but not 27, look at the N1!

Musk always over promises.

That last one may be true. The pad they need to launch the Falcon Heavy still needs to be repaired after last explosion. Might not be ready till early 2018.

</comment><comment><USER3> How did they resist comparing it to the Saturn V?

      Falcon Heavy: 100,000lb to LEO.
      Saturn V: 310,000lb to LEO.  107,100lb to Moon!

<comment><USER4> Don't forget to compare launch costs:

From Wikipedia \</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Saturn V: $110 million per Vehicle (In 1966 dollars) equivalent to $16.6 billion in 2016

Falcon Heavy: $90 million (In 2017 dollars)

It really highlights the value of the intellectual capital passed down to us from previous generations. I bet most of the Saturn V cost was R&D.</comment>


No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers - <AUTHOR> https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/its-official-no-more-cheap-shipping-for-chinese-sellers/493043 <comment><USER4> This actually sounds like a good thing. It costs Chinese shippers almost nothing to send stuff directly from China, while it costs me quite a lot to send stuff within the US, largely because I'm subsidizing all the Chinese shippers.

Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm subsidizing the Chinese shippers.

<comment><USER5> > Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) > outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm > subsidizing the Chinese shippers.

International shipping was expensive before China flooded the market b2c.

If you sent a pkg to China, the US would only have to drop it off in China, the last mile delivery cost is mostly up to China. The actual air freight cost to USPS is about $5/kg.

I think what's really happening is that USPS (and Canada Post!) are using international shipping as a profit centre because there's little competition and they need to subsidize legislated activities (6x/week door-to-door service for 53c or whatever it is).

<comment><USER6> As I understand it (and even though I live in NZ I manufacture in China and ship all over the world from there) much of the airmail shipping from China is essentially founded on arbitrage of the empty space in air-mail shipping containers from Asia to the West - it's while it takes a while and sometimes your package goes out of Hong Kong, sometimes Singapore etc

In essence those packets are cheap because some smart person is buying up the empty space in containers that are already going and filling them - I assume that Air-Mail FROM the US could be equally cheap if someone was entrepreneurial enough to do the same there

<comment><USER7> Don't know about air mail, but for maritime and rail transport, there is much more going from China to the EU or US than in the other direction by volume.

This means cargo carriers have to send back empty containers to China.

As a result, it's cheaper to book a container, from, say, Antwerp to Shanghai than the reverse. The difference can be quite substantial, potentially hundreds of USD per container.

For the other parts of the trip I don't have any hard info but I would think rail and truck is cheaper in China per km when converted to USD.

<comment><USER8> >Don't know about air mail, but for maritime and rail transport, there is much more going from China to the EU or US than in the other direction by volume.

Where can I verify this? Thats looking at only the direct transport? Or also indirect transport?

Consider a hypothetical container from the US/EU going to Africa (bringing products, second hand goods, "recyclables", ...), then the container could pick up raw minerals and resources going to China, now theres an empty container in China and it _has to go back_ to US/EU?

<comment><USER7> It's because the shipping containers belong to the shipping company, and are rented out for the trip.

So the shipping company will have a bunch of empty containers at the port of landing (destination), and needs to send them back to the port of departure to be filled again.

If trade between the two ports is balanced, then the containers will always be full regardless of the port of departure.

But since trade is _not_ balanced, they wind up having to send empty containers on the "return" voyage. Which is pure loss for the shipping company, so they are willing to heavily discount routes that have empty containers transiting.

Which are these routes does change of course, but they are often those originating in the EU / US and arriving in Asia.

<comment><USER9> If the containers were the only concern, they could be melted down and shipped back to China in a far more compact form.

Container manufacturing is very automated, so it can be very cheap to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lots of speculating why it is cheaper to ship from China than domestically, a lot of it misguided.

The root cause is that quite a few years ago the consortium of national postal providers which setup agreements on who pays for which parts of international shipping decided that China was classed as a developing country and given subsidized rates by other countries. This wasn't a big deal when the agreement was made because it was before the days of pervasive online commerce, and there just wasn't that much sent from China to other countries via the postal service.

I encourage everyone interested in this to checkout this podcast episode from NPR's Planet Money: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the- postal-illuminati)

> The reason for this price gap, Jayme claims, is a secretive group of postal > policymakers that meets every four years to fix international shipping > rates. A kind of postal illuminati.

> Today's episode: A conspiracy theory that's actually real. How the decisions > made behind closed doors make it cheap to buy things from across the world, > but are also distorting the global economy.

<comment><USER11> They did a really good job explaining the situation in that Planet Money episode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _This is great news for U.S. sellers, especially eBay sellers._

Exactly the intended consequence. Why should US taxpayers subsidize shipping costs for products to come from China? It made no sense at all in today's economy unless the only thing you care about is paying less for your goods regardless of the consequences, which I don't think is a majority position of adults today.

<comment><USER5> The actual consequence will be Chinese sellers using US warehouses and drop- shipping from there.

Others send over a container with each ordered good and slap a local post's label on it.

Possibly that local post's label is attached in China and the container just gets dropped off at a USPS DC by the private freight forwarder.

It's already fairly common.

Overall, a few more US jobs, and _maybe_ more USPS revenue for what are now domestic shipments.

Edit: OR these buyers Shift to Amazon, which can deliver for less than USPS can via private courier, and pool every more items per delivery.

<comment><USER13> Is that a problem? Seems like if they do that then it's US domestic mail, playing by all the same rules (and high rates) as any other domestic mail item. Competing with Chinese shippers would look exactly the same as competing with anyone shipping out of LA/Oakland/Seattle.

<comment><USER5> It's just not going to be a boon to US drop-shippers, the Chinese ones will still have a lower cost of operations by dealing direct and almost 100% Chinese labour costs.

<comment><USER14> You seem to be completely overlooking the fact that it is way cheaper to ship an item from China to a specific location in the US, than it is to ship the same item from within the US.

<comment><USER5> It'll be good for the USPS (or maybe not if people just order off Amazon and they deliver), but the benefits to US jobs will be oversold.

<comment><USER14> I haven't really heard jobs being a part of this discussion at all, the reasoning _and_ the rhetoric has been about leveling an _clearly_ unfair playing field.

The USPS will certainly make more revenue, and in turn they should be able to pass that on by reducing shipping costs for people shipping from within the US.

For companies drop-shipping _from China_ , regardless of whether the person running the business is in the US or in China, the impact is the same. But for US based businesses that inventory items and ship out of the US, this change would be a big advantage.

<comment><USER5> > The USPS will certainly make more revenue

Maybe. The main benefactor may be Amazon people switch to them. They have the lowest domestic shipping costs (presumably, since they've implemented their own in-house couriers).

The actual cost of USPS of delivering a package is kinda complicated. If USPS is going by your house every day, how much do their costs go down if they have 1 less package to drop off?

Dividing total costs by packages delivered doesn't tell that story.

<comment><USER14> > Maybe

If prices are raised as significantly as suggested, you think they'll only _maybe_ make more revenue? If the sales completely stopped, or there was a mass exodus (eventually) to Amazon there may not be an increase, but this seems fairly unlikely in the short term.

> If USPS is going by your house every day, how much do their costs go down if > they have 1 less package to drop off? Dividing total costs by packages > delivered doesn't tell that story.

Of course, but we're discussing revenue.

<comment><USER5> Americans should pray that USPS doesn't only worry about the short term.

<comment><USER14> Indeed. But that's yet another topic isn't it.

<comment><USER5> Seems related enough.

<comment><USER14> Let's finish the first topic before moving on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is one way to mitigate knock off products from China. If the shipping costs come up to the norm, they won't always (if ever) be the cheapest product so the real one will win out more often.

Various products will have different tipping points where it just doesn't make sense to ship and/or they aren't getting enough sales to justify it.

Personally, I like it and it seems like everyone wins.. except people who undercut the real product with cheap, inferior knockoffs.

<comment><USER16> Nonsense, not everything from China is a knockoff and there are a lot of genuine non-copied products. How weird to think their economy is just "inferior knockoffs".

<comment><USER17> Resources aren't copied and value-added products like steel aren't either although techiques to produce or grow may be.

Please cite some examples of geniune products. China is known for making existing products cheaper. The techology area is mostly copy-paste.

<comment> j-c-hewitt Almost any top brand you can think of manufactures extensively in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone shed light on the subsidy structure behing the current model, are shipments from China being subsidized by shipments from other countries or is there government money involved ?

In any case this kind of subsidy is not necessarily bad for developing countries, and it was probably instrumental in China's phenomenal economic growth, but it is now in the conquering superpower category, it's time it loses this advantage.

<comment><USER19> It's not really a subsidy so much as an underpayment by the foreign goverments[1]. There is no tax money involved, and all the subsidizing comes from the increased revenue from raising domestic shipping costs.

The UPU has been around for decades, but it's only been since 2010 that the USPS has formalized the process with the "ePacket" shipping.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the- postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from- china/)

<comment><USER20> > There is no tax money involved, and all the subsidizing comes from the > increased revenue from raising domestic shipping costs.

If the USPS loses money, which it has been every year recently, who pays the difference?

<comment><USER19> We do, the domestic customers of the USPS. But not via tax money; rather via increased local rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good. It should not be cheaper to ship across the Pacific ocean than ship domestically.

<comment><USER22> Bad for the environment as well for trans-pacific shipping to be cheaper

<comment><USER23> Aren't ocean vessels one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence?

<comment><USER24> In terms of dollars per unit weight moved, yes. They are not only moving massive amounts of cargo with low drag, they're also relatively lightweight compared to the product being moved. Also, there's no maintenance cost to keeping a flat path across the Pacific like there is in keeping roads free of potholes.

In terms of environmental damage, not at all. Container ships burn some of the nastiest, most sulphrous and damaging forms of crude oil in existence, with little to no emissions controls.

I think rail transport is best, but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER25> Sulfur dioxide emissions at sea are not that damaging compared to in land. They did make some zero emission cargo ships but it was pretty expensive due to crew complement for the reactor.

<comment><USER26> Interesting. There is only one operational cargo ship powered by a nuclear reactor - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> ". . . all USPS international GEPS contracts will be terminated September 31st."

Do courts just do the reasonable thing when contracts stipulate deadlines on dates that don't exist?

<comment><USER28> Generally, yeah. Of course, your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For some context as to why this is significant, listen to this great Planet Money podcast about international shipping rates.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the- postal-illuminati)

</comment><comment><USER30> So is drop shipping from China now dead?

A major benefit of drop shipping from China was the pretty much $1 shipping for almost any item via ePacket.

Obviously the products are still cheaper, but with a 25% tariff on most goods, and what I can only assume will be a close to DHL price for shipping, a t-shirt drop shipped from China will probably cost more than one made and shipped domestically.

To continue to be competitive, drop shippers are going to have to think about bulk imports and warehousing, thus no longer being drop shippers.

<comment><USER16> >So is drop shipping from China now dead?

Probably. This is going to drop a lot of sellers off of Amazon and eBay, and likely have major effects on independent small business dollar/99c stores.

<comment><USER31> Also businesses like Harbor Freight will benefit, because it will be much harder/more expensive to buy direct. Same thing with the "cheap" brands at places like Menards.

This will slow the pace of innovation in a lot of areas, especially among electronics hobbyists. Cheap chinese circuit boards from Shenzen are a major driver for electronics related businesses, robotics, drones, and lots of other areas.

This is going to hurt a lot of people in the US, and put more money in the hands of big business like most other initiatives coming out of the government lately.

All this isn't talking about the elephant in the room, which is the fact that this agreement is changing because our delusional President doesn't like non whites.

<comment><USER32> There are lots of companies that buy in bulk from China and have US distribution. They will still be around for your Shenzen electronics needs.

I have very little sympathy for people who were depending on what was essentially taxpayer-subsidized shipping from China. If you can't do what you're trying to do without that subsidy, you probably shouldn't be doing it. I'm certainly not interested in having the USPS lose money so someone can save a few bucks on a servo or flight controller vs. buying it from a legitimate retailer like Adafruit or Hobbyking (which has US warehouses in addition to its HK ones; I expect they'll need to expand the domestic ones now).

The end-user cost of a good needs to encompass the price of manufacturing it and transporting it, inclusive of as many externalities as we can. Too many problems in the world are caused by artificially cheap goods that don't capture their full cost.

Keeping stuff cheap for the purpose of having cheap stuff is not a noble goal.

<comment><USER31> Having worked at the USPS, I can say definitively it will lose money anyway, and it is not taxpayer supported except by special request (USPS can ask congress for funding for special needs, which they can deny)

So, despite all the people complaining here about "muh dollars subsidizing", that isn't correct. See the USPS FAQ for more info.

The UPU situation was not great, but it has a limited impact on taxpayers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In addition to Amazon 3rd party sellers, this seems like bad news for Shopify. They host a _lot_ of Chinese drop ship stores that work because of these artificially low rates.

</comment><comment><USER34> The impression I get from that thread is that the dream here is now Americans can do what they do best, sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent. Previously, you could go to a Chinese website and have the Chinese factory send you a widget directly to your door. Now that will be too expensive, but hey we have a solution! An American will order a bunch of widgets in bulk, ship them over in a cargo ship, come up with some fancy marketing, and then sell the widgets to you at 200% markup. You know these folks will never hire electrical engineers to certify safety and conformance, or work with the factory to improve the product in response to customer feedback. They're there to do one thing: sit in the middle of the transaction and charge Chinese manufacturers for the privilege of selling to Americans.

But hey, look on the bright side... at least there is someone you can sue when your widget blows up.

<comment><USER35> Pretty much. I absolutely fucking hate Amazon now. It's full of white label products. You can tell the seller does no real safety testing of any kind from their broad array of random shit. You can't even trust the kitchen equipment for chance they made the steel with lead or the silicone is mixed with something toxic, etc. Completely unregulated market place of stupid. And this is on top of Amazon's counterfeit problems they half ass enforcement. I'm surprised nobody has died yet from counterfeit or substandard automotive goods of all things.

<comment><USER36> > I absolutely fucking hate Amazon now. It's full of white label products.

So is Walmart and Dollar General. It's always been the customer's responsibility to buy the product they want, not the store's. Don't want counterfeit crap? Don't buy IFONE FROM APPEL in the listings. I don't know when the last time I got counterfeit crap from amazon is because I look at what I buy before I buy it.

<comment><USER34> White labelling and counterfeiting are two different things.

White labelling is just rebranding; I go to Home Depot and buy some screws, print out a label that says "jrockway's miracle fasteners", slap it on top of Home Depot's label, and sell them to you, that's white labeling.

Counterfeiting is when you inject seemingly-identical goods into the supply chain. You mix up some soap and blue dye in your bathtub, pour it into some recycled Tide bottles, and ship them off to Amazon's warehouse as "Tide brand laundry detergent". Now you are selling them to customers seeking a genuine product, but they're not getting the real thing.

White-labelling is a perfectly legitimate thing. Counterfeiting is a crime.

To be extra clear, your "I look at things on Amazon before I buy them" technique is exactly the sort of procedure that won't protect you from counterfeiting. The counterfeiters already fooled Amazon. Amazon thinks they're selling you genuine merchandise. But they're not. That's what upsets people.

<comment><USER37> What Chinese companies actually do is both really. They take an order of 1000 say Apple iPhones then actually produce 2000, keeping 1000 for themselves. They then sell the knock-offs themselves within China or into the U.S. on e-bay and other 'used' sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't know why USPS doesn't just raise its rates across the board. I understand why, 50, 20, or even perhaps 15 years ago, it was important to keep mail ultra cheap. But today, I'd argue >95% of mail comes from businesses, and most of that are ads in some form or another. It's ridiculous to me that I can send a piece of mail to the other side of the USA in 2 days for less than $0.50. I don't want prices to go up, of course, but at the same time, I have trouble listening to the woe-is-me attitude of the USPS, while their pricing scheme makes no sense at all.

<comment><USER39> > I'd argue >95% of mail comes from businesses, and most of that are ads in > some form or another. It's ridiculous to me that I can send a piece of mail > to the other side of the USA in 2 days for less than $0.50

Don't you think these two facts are somehow related? They have to go by your house every day anyway, carrying paid junk mail, and the marginal cost of delivering an actual letter is quite low. Maybe a bit analogous to newspapers/magazines, where the price you pay may not even cover the printing costs, but the difference is subsidized by the advertisers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I ordered more than 1000 parcels from AliExpress, banggoods, gearbest and hobbyking. Never ever I had to pay import duty costs (Netherlands) and in most cases shipment was either free or a redicilous low amount. If everyone would be like me, no store would exist anymore here in Holland. Even though I am a bit of a hypocrite, I do think it's fair to make the market a bit more fair.

<comment><USER41> Just curious, what type of stuff do you buy? I find that the quality often is poor when buying from Aliexpress with artificial ratings boosted by the seller doing anything to get a high review. Banggood has been better with more accurate ratings.

<comment><USER42> Not OP, but I've used AliExpress to stock my home electronics lab with resistors, LEDs, Blue Pill microcontroller boards, connectors, etc.

All dirt cheap, often in individual parcels, shipping cost close to zero.

<comment><USER40> yes same here. Connectors, crimping tools, wire, electronic components, props, electric motors, control boards, radio sender/receivers, antennas, batteries, tools etc. You need to find your way. The stores have a lot of crap, but once you get a grasp of everything you find out that there is actually quite decent quality stuff out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Some of my friends in NYC were ordering single screws for various electronic devices for < $.20 that were shipped from China with no shipping.

I always found that funny...

</comment><comment><USER44> Here's a good article on this shipping quirk: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the- postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from- china/)

I think it's good for the US economy as well as the environment. It makes no sense for something to ship further to bring shipping costs down.

</comment><comment><USER45> So what does that mean for US companies sending packages into countries that are part of the UPU (Edit: virtually all countries on Earth)? Can each country now refuseand set their own rates for transporting US parcels the last mile?

<comment><USER46> Probably, since everything is bilateral in agreements and negotiations. The point isn't to minimize costs but to even out the playing field. US companies drop-shipping overseas will likely pay more, but that's a consequence deemed overall worth it for the US local economy and market.

<comment><USER47> Isn't the US already disadvantaged here...

Last I ordered in the US (to Denmark) I paid 30USD flat fee for custom processing... On top of shipping and customs. (On an item worth 20 USD)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anybody else notice that they said "September 31st"?

<comment><USER48> This is fine for an end date. Any duration should be specified as half-open, _t₀ <= t < t₁_. This way it's clear that September, even its last day, is in the period and October is not.

<comment><USER46> Yes, but try codifying that and you won't get far enough to make that comparison. E.g. mentally or on a computer, 'Date.Parse("2019-09-31")' is an error ;)

<comment><USER49> Any properly defined software should take a date that doesn't exist and move it forward or backward to a date that does. Leap years would crash every computer every February if that wasn't taken into account.

<comment><USER50> Except that the whole February/leap year case is part of the Gregorian calendar. Moving the date forward or backward to a date that does exist is not a set rule and would only cause unnecessary confusion for a user or other developer for that matter; even worse if you were to do it without notifying the user. Wouldn't you agree that it'd just be better to catch the error and tell the user they "done messed up"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think it's fine for the environment to be honest. Sending 1$ sort of thing free shipping overseas does not sound right.

</comment><comment><USER52> In Brazil, the local mail charges R$ 15 (~US$ 4) to deliver international packages from "certain countries" i.e. China. The result is, ultra-cheap freight has almost disappeared, most sites like AliExpress now charge around US$ 4, but the class of this kind of package is not charged again here, so it is still kind of cheap.

OTOH mail from USA is damn expensive. I don't buy more things from USA because of this. And local customs tend to target USA packages more so the chance of paying import tax is way higher, too. Even packages from Europe and Japan are cheaper, and one can see they are more distant places.

</comment><comment><USER53> South African experience. I buy a fair number of items on Aliexpress. Stuff you can never get in any store here. I use the Post Office to ship because courier is just too expensive. It takes 40 to 60 days to arrive. The hold up appears to be the SA Post Office. Since a few months ago the Post Office now charges approximately US$2 processing fee for each package. Its a fair charge I guess but there hasn't been any improvement in delivery times. Sometimes stuff arrives after so long that I have forgotten why I ordered it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a good background article, but I worried it was too political to submit directly:

"On October 17, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Universal Postal Union (UPU), an intergovernmental organization that sets the rules and rates for international mail delivery. The decision to withdraw has been widely seen as another salvo in the Trump administration's campaign against what it deems as unfair trade practices benefitting China. This post explains what the UPU is, why the Trump administration is withdrawing from it, the legality of withdrawal, how this decision is related to the trade war with China, and what could happen next."

[https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal- unio...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-union-guide- perplexed)

<comment><USER54> That post, like everything else I can find about this news, is a year old. Did this really happen?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the summary is that it hasn't happened yet, but it's proceeding on schedule to happen at the end of September 2019.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >The administration has given the UPU an ultimatum, that they: either allow the USPS to set rates _for China mail_ that arrives in the U.S., or the U.S. will officially leave the UPU on October 17th.

(Emphasis mine)

why "for China mail" ?

why not "no exceptions: all over the planet everybody pays the same local rates, or else we leave the UPU" ?

This smells like hidden import taxation, but I hope I am wrong. But then why insist on phrasing the ultimatum with referene to "for China mail" specifically ?

EDIT: adding another gem:

>Global Supply Chain News: After Three Years of Secrecy, Amazon Starting to Ramp Up Global Logistics Services

>they are actively looking to compete in the shipping industry

...

>The project's name: Dragon Boat.

>As part of that strategy, Bloomberg reported Amazon had plans to take on freight forwarding and brokerage services directly, eliminating a set of middlemen.

>...

>Among the most important ramifications from Amazon's vision: small Chinese manufacturer will be able sell to American consumers with no one else than Amazon between them.

So if an American company (in this case Amazon), will perform transport within China, does that mean that reciprocally, Chinese companies can also become a mail service in the US? They could be paid a low wage, and eat cheap food that is shipped internally. Is this really about balancing trade or about big corporations doing to mail, what they did with manufacture: export jobs to China for increased profit?

</comment><comment><USER55> This is an issue in Australia too, and since we are usually followers and not leaders for these kinds of issues it might mean a change is on the cards for us too. Is there an easy way to find out? My hope is that the USPS leaving the Union is enough of a threat to shake up the rules for all countries.

</comment><comment><USER56> Great planet money episode on the topic:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the- postal-illuminati)

<comment><USER57> >FOUNTAIN: Anna sent us a chart that estimates how much less. And it says, if you or I wanted to send a three-quarter-pound package somewhere in the U.S., the U.S. Postal Service would charge around $4.76 for the last leg of the journey.

>MALONE: Yeah, the so-called final mile. However, if that same package came in from China, the USPS would only charge China Post $1.39. That means the USPS charges you and me roughly 3 1/2 times more than what they charge China Post.

Comparisons like this are very misleading. They aren't comparing apples to apples. In particular, they take a retail price for fast shipping with tracking and compare to a wholesale price for slow shipping without tracking.

It's true in general that UPU rates are cheaper than the comparable US rates but by 10-20%, not a factor of 3.5.

<comment><USER46> UPU rates do include tracking. All ePacket deliveries from China include last mile (port-to-door) tracking.

<comment><USER57> UPU and ePacket are two different programs. ePacket is more expensive, includes tracking, and is profitable for USPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I just got an email from eBay Main Street, which is eBay's mailing list for political issues which affect their sellers.

This email is tells me to call congress to NOT withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, under the logic that it will make it harder to ship stuff from the US to other countries.

<comment><USER59> Of course this is bad for eBay, and perhaps etsy, shopify and others. The flood of direct-from-China sellers selling cheap products and shipping for free (on USPS's dime) will stop.

<comment><USER60> Definitely bad for eBay and etsy. They're absolutely dependent on the flood of cheap goods.

Honestly this is disastrous for etsy, but maybe it'll help them get back to their roots and be useful again.

<comment><USER61> This sounds like a win for America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Two questions:

1) What are the possible unintended consequences? This is fairly drastic. Certainly, something(s) unforeseen are going to happen.

2) What are the new opportunities? For example, importing in bulk and shipping from here (as opposed to individual orders shipped from China).

</comment><comment><USER63> Warehousing won't solve the greed problem at USPS. The $5 poll tax on all shipments is just insanity. Stamping "priority mail" on 1st class packages and using red, white, and blue boxes doesn't justify their greed and incompetence, no matter what the USPS execs think ....

I foresee that withing 6 months China will have 100M square feet of dropshipping warehouse space in Vietnam. This is another in a line of Trump "look busy, change nothing" initiatives, the only difference this time (vs the border do nothing initiatives) is that this time the problem is real, unlike the non crisis at the border where immigration is near a multi decade low!

<comment><USER14> > "look busy, change nothing" initiatives

Why would China create more warehouse space in Vietnam, or so many people spend time writing about this topic, if nothing is changing?

Have I taken your comment literally when it was intended to be metaphorical? If so, could you more clearly clarify the specific idea you are intending to transmit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> And yet another international agreement unilaterally exited by the US.

These agreements (eg INF ABM) are extremely difficult to create, but easily trashed by a single recalcitrant.

It seems like the whole international order is breaking down.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would any other Americans prefer to have just 3x/week delivery and still have cheap shipping internationally?

This seems to be more about propping up the USPS' inefficiencies at the cost of higher prices for consumers.

<comment><USER65> Not me.

I had a neighbor for while who worked full-time for USPS. Postal workers provide reliable service, and are able to earn a livable wage without driving themselves into the ground like the contractor delivery services. I like that USPS is a piece of the American infrastructure fabric, and I like that it employs local people in a sustainable way.

I do not consume nearly enough things that require international shipping to value cheap shipping more. And even if I did, the ethical implications involved with destroying decent jobs for Americans and losing a piece of our national delivery network would stil not make it worthwhile sacrifice in my book.

<comment><USER5> It's great that the USPS employs people that way.

The real question is why are others allowed to do any differently.

Buyers voting with their feet will only go so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> If it goes into effect September 31st then it's never going into effect.

</comment><comment><USER67> Really what needs to happen is that the UPU in general needs to be redefined. The Chinese sellers can still access Europe, Canada, and basically anywhere else, which isn't going to stop especially since most countries are not as aggressive as the US when it comes to China trade. Hopefully the reduction in sales due to the US leaving the UPU kills off a bunch of the Chinese businesses but it is definitely still going to be a problem elsewhere.

<comment><USER68> While I would be happy to see a more equitable and sustainable distribution of jobs and industries between the U.S. and China, the phrase "Hopefully...kills off a bunch of the Chinese businesses" uses language which is a bit off- putting. If those businesses changed their business model to sell more to Chinese consumers, or utilized U.S. distributors more, that would be good.

I realize that you were not actually suggesting that anybody should get killed, just pointing out how it sounded from my perspective, a little off- putting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Will this even matter when Chinese Alibaba/Aliexpress sellers recently started sending their items to Singapore to avoid tariffs and shipping restrictions?

<comment><USER46> It's neither a tariff nor a shipping restriction. The UPU affects all international shipping, so Singapore or China is all the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Having bought a couple drop-shipped goods from China, I, for one, won't miss it. The most noticeable effect I have seen is scammy listings on eBay and Amazon, unresponsive sellers, and unreliable delivery time.

I have not seen any arguments of the form "but the price of X will go way up."

<comment><USER16> >Having bought a couple drop-shipped goods from China, I, for one, won't miss it.

I will, China makes good stuff depending on if you do your research to what's quality and is just a cheap piece of crap.

<comment><USER70> I've had great success getting all sorts of stuff delivered straight from China (usually sold through eBay). As long as you don't need it next week (or sometimes next month), you can save a ton. Compared to domestic sellers who want to gouge me $7.99 to ship a 5 square inch bag of diodes 50 miles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I am still able to go on ebay and buy small items (usb cables, camera lens caps, plastic pry tools, etc) shipped from china for $0.80. Is this going to change?

What about the same situation for items shipped from Thialand or Vietnam? There's quite a few of those available as well.

<comment><USER46> Yes and yes. I don't see any other outcomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The problem here is an organization which has a right of regulating the market by setting artificial rates. The shipping price should depend only on private companies their pricing policies.

Bad thing is that people blame China instead of the United Nation bureaucracy. :(

</comment><comment><USER73> Will be interesting to see the effects of this. Especially Shopify drop- shipping stores and Etsy stores full of cheap garbage. Hopefully it helps clean up some of the noise...I don't think those stores were adding much value anyway.

</comment><comment><USER61> Yeah this is the one (and only) thing Trump did right. I can't believe we let China get cheap shipping for so long on our dime.

</comment><comment><USER74> Do we have a link besides a random post from some dude we all don't know?

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm wondering how this is going to effect the hobbyist and small business electronics markets here in the United States?

Know how cheap and easy it is to get a small number PCBs made in China and shipped to the US? That's over.

So is any number of small electronic parts that would've been shipped free or cheaply from China. Cheap ESP8266 boards? Nope. Cheap automotive relays? Nope. Basically any and every kind of piece of electronics components, modules, etc you can think of will jump in price drastically.

Even if it doesn't need to - it will (like I've seen on the tariffs, prices jumped for small amounts of electronic components just because, even if they were being shipped directly to the end-user consumer - when that's not a part of the tariffs - direct to consumer sales shouldn't be affected, but because the vendors could do it, they did it anyhow - just to make some extra cash).

So where are hobbyists and others supposed to get these parts now?

Digikey and Mouser for some of it. Surplus for others. But for boards and modules and such - well, there's just Sparkfun and Adafruit - maybe a couple of others (not sure?).

But they are likely to raise their prices too, because they depend on the components (resistors, diodes, mosfets, chips, aka the "raw materials") to make their boards (Sparkfun makes them in-house - or at least some of them - but I don't know what Adafruit does).

Or we'll have to pay the extra shipping fees and other costs (because the chinese sellers will just add on some extra cost - just to grab it - it's inevitable).

This will have a ripple effect; small entrepreneurs and startups - <USER2> startups especially - won't be able to compete, unless they base themselves in Shenzhen - because where are they going to get the components cheaper than a competitor who is already there? They aren't made in America any longer (and they never will be again - get that fantasy out of your head if you think that's going to happen).

Radio Row is gone. The original "silicon valley" is gone. Heck, there used to be a ton of computer (mini) manufacturers and businesses here in Phoenix - they are virtually gone, too.

And now with this change - however you feel about it - is going to hobble the next up-and-comers, and current suppliers. At least, that's how I am seeing it.

Now I'll admit - it wasn't fair for competition here - but it wasn't as if China was doing something wrong, as far as I understand it. They were playing by the rules set forth by an international body. Maybe it wasn't fair to us. But instead of letting this kind of thing go on for 1-2 decades, it should have been fixed back then. Now it is likely to destroy or severely change at least one or more areas of enthusiast and hobbyist things (think also RC, drones, etc), as well as probably a ton of other non-electronic things. Do we really think there are that many suppliers here in the US that will charge low prices (competitive with Chinese suppliers) and have fair shipping rates to boot?

The fact is, it will likely still be cheaper to ship it from China, even with the extra cost on shipping - since you're going to be paying that anyhow. For instance - my goto - 12V DC gearmotors. I can buy one kind from a supplier of Ametek (maybe Mouser or Digikey); I will pay whatever the high cost of shipping such an item to my door in addition to the price. Have you ever priced those motors in small quantities?

When you can get them...I've seen prices 10-20x over the equivalent motor from a supplier in China. What would cost $15.00 in China for a single motor, can be up to $100.00 or more from a US manufacturer for the same specs. Let's say it cost $10.00 to ship to my door, whether from China or the US, and let's say the Chinese supplier adds on an extra $5.00 "just because fee" \- well, which is cheaper? $110.00 dollars for the US motor, or $30.00 for the Chinese motor?

It's all a farce in my opinion - this administration essentially raising prices, which is going to be passed on to the consumer ultimately, trying to gain support from US small businesses (that's the political angle), at the expense of the rest of consumers, and is selling it with some kind of idea or expectation that this is somehow going to lead to the United States becoming a large scale manufacturer of "everything" that we get from China now. Of course what isn't said is that, even if that fantasy somehow did become true - <USER3> items manufactured here would still cost a hell of a lot more to make, and they would be virtually unsaleable on the international market because of that (let's ignore the fact that we'll be lucky if other countries ever buy from us again).

I see a very, very bleak future ahead for this country - no matter what happens with this current administration or the next. Maybe that was always going to be the case. The problem is, prior to this admin, that date was likely out a few decades - now those decades have been erased, and that future is happening now (and it is worse than it would have been had it happened "naturally" I think).

I say if you are an American and are under 30 years of age, and you have any marketable skills at all, you might want to think long and hard about emigrating. Dead serious on this.

<comment><USER76> Buy an ESP8266 board from me for $1.85 shipped domestically via First Class mail: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/113772095761](https://www.ebay.com/itm/113772095761)

<comment><USER77> Not to pry, but how can you do that?

The cheapest way I can find to send _any_ package to an address even across the street is $2.66.

Do you just stick a stamp on it and mail it like a letter?

Will you still be able to get your ESP's cheap enough after the shipping change?

<comment><USER76> Non-machinable letters with the automation discount cost $0.65. Protective mailers add $0.30. No tracking though. I import by FedEx and ocean freight. This change won't affect me directly but the tariffs are killing me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I almost never order stuff from China here in Canada because its very expensive to ship anything and inconsistently takes forever or semi-forever.

I was wondering how Wish.com made money...

<comment><USER79> This is not a us-specific situation, e-packet deliveries ship to Canada too. I get plenty of stuff from AliExpress with free shipping

<comment><USER80> living in canada, I genuinely hope we follow suit and increase the cost of shipping from china to canada. It's encouraging incredibly wasteful buying patterns, and sets up a system canadian companies can NEVER compete with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> It has always struck me as mad that I can order an individual widget from China for less than it would cost for the postage of that widget in my own country.

</comment><comment><USER82> Aw, now I have to buy everything off AliExpress.com for a fraction of the price and free shipping.

Just hope I can remember ordering it when it arrives 30+ days from now.

</comment><comment><USER83> This genuinely won't change anything on Amazon because top sellers are already using FBA.

This is bad news for Ebay/Wish/some-shopify-dropshippers.

<comment><USER84> I thought/wondered the same regarding wish.com. Although this 2019 Forbes article makes it sound like it's not a death knell.

> _Shipping is cheap thanks in part to an agreement between China Post and the > U.S. Postal Service that allows goods that weigh 4.4 pounds or less to be > shipped at low rates. About 15% of Wish's shipments qualify._

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet- the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet-the- billionaire-who-defied-amazon-and-built-wish-the-worlds-most-downloaded-e- commerce-app/#6095147170f5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> It is still going to be cheaper to order directly from China then to pay someone in the US to order it, repackage it, and mail it to me. (Or even to be lazy and order it on my behalf from China, but US companies will repack it so you don't find out their sources). The US just doesn't have the manufacturing capabilities anymore, and even if the US wanted to have its own manufacturing capability people are not going to work China wages, they are going to demand US wages. So again China will end up being cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER86> I guess this is good, but all it means for us is higher prices. Shipping wasn't the thing killing these "small businesses".

</comment><comment><USER87> Not sure how it works in Australia - but I see Chinese and HK sellers doing super cheap shipping. less than domestic seems to be able to.

</comment><comment><USER88> Now canada can become the shipping hub for epackets and it can be forwarded to US addresses from there. Good opportunity for someone.

<comment><USER80> shipping from canada to the usa is fairly expensive and slow (customs delays are fairly common). better to ship to a depo in the usa and mail out from there to individual buyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Oh, Universal Postal Union "terminal dues." Those were scheduled to go up in 2021 anyway. China is still getting the "underdeveloped country" rate, because the last 10 year rate setting was in 2011.[1]

[1] [http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and- transit-c...](http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and-transit- charges/about-terminal-dues-and-transit-charges.html)

</comment><comment><USER90> I get how this subsidy came to be in the first place, but am surprised that I hadn't heard anything about it prior to this

</comment><comment><USER91> Always amazed me when buying something of Amazon and it's shipped from China cheaper that if shipped domestically.

</comment><comment><USER92> Only in the US. In Europe Aliexpress still rules. No shipping costs from China at all, and much cheaper product costs.

</comment><comment><USER93> I buy $1-$5 items from China somewhat regularly. What are they likely to cost next year?

</comment><comment><USER94> Related to the website if not the article, but I wish this website did not hijack ctrl-f.

</comment><comment><USER95> This is good for the environment

</comment><comment><USER96> So what we should expect is internal shipping costs to go down as a result of this?

</comment><comment><USER97> If the Trump administration had just opened with this, I think we might have saved ourselves a lot of stock market turbulence with tariff pissing contests. U. S. sellers start in the hole by the fact that they can't even compete on shipping prices with Chinese companies. It reminds me of the Shell gas station owner I worked for many decades ago who complained that the local drugstore could _sell_ quarts of oil cheaper than Shell sold it to him, a Shell station owner. Now how are you supposed to succeed with a rigged system like that?

Let's see how it goes when the price of shipping actually reflects the fact that the $1.50 piece of molded plastic had to take a boat ride half way around the world.

<comment><USER98> Tangentially related, but I was surprised at how blatant a lot of supplier price fixing is. Either you sell at the supplier agreed price or they don't supply you. This keeps prices up for the sellers, which presumably is good for the supplier as well. That's in the more open market of independent businesses.

In your example, the drugstore may be selling at cost or at a loss to bring people in the door, or he may actually have a cheaper supplier. But for the Shell Station franchisee, he likely has a contract to buy Shell products from a particular distributor, so even if he could find a lower priced distributor he is unable to use it. That's all part of the franchise business model, where the franchiser double dips by taking licence fees and contractually obliges you to use their services as well. Subway charges high margins for their mandatory dishwashing soap supply for one example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> Ouch for AliExpress.

<comment><USER100> This will probably drive Wish out of business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Does this affect me somehow as a consumer in the EU?

</comment><comment><USER59> Excellent!!

This may have a highly desirable side effect of cleaning a lot of junk/fake products on Amazon.

This will also impact Etsy, and perhaps Shopify and eBay.

</comment><comment><USER102> Glad we're finally waking up to the realization we were siphoning off GDP to a nation that doesn't align with our values.

</comment><comment><USER103> But only for US customers.

</comment><comment><USER104> "All US and Canadian shipping is crazy expensive" \- A Typical Brit

</comment><comment><USER105> This change seems to only affect the US, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER106> What would be the concession from the Chinese?

Or do they up the ante and impose more tariffs on incoming U.S. goods?

Is this something that the Hacker News community actually supports Trump on? More curious than anything - you just don't see a lot of support for any of his initiatives here.

? Why all the downvotes?

<comment><USER107> I support this, and I'm a rabid leftist. Things should cost what they cost. The only time government should interfere with pricing is to force companies to price in externalities.

<comment><USER108> _" I'm a rabid leftist"_. I appreciate your candor, but if you think _" things should cost what they cost"_, then you're not nearly as rabid as many of the rabid leftists that I've encountered.

<comment><USER109> I think what is left and right have been evolving since the 60s. Leftism is being fought over now between anarcho-capitalists vs labor while the right is being fought over between big business vs nationalists.

<comment><USER110> What is left and right has been misunderstood in evolving ways since the 60's anti-intellectualism set in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> I am a very good client of Amazon. Love this company, what a terrific invention.

</comment><comment><USER112> Not sure why everyone thinks this is a good thing. If the Chinese government wants to subsidize shipping so that US consumers can buy products for less money, what is the harm?

The reason postage is expensive in the US is because there is a legal monopoly on first class mail, and very little competition for premium services (which is why Amazon decided that launching its own shipping carrier would be highly profitable).

So the blame for high US shipping prices rests with the US government, certainly not with anything China is doing!

<comment><USER19> The Chinese government was not the one subsidizing it. The original UPU treaty [1] stated that countries would pay a flat rate when shipping to another country. This was original passed several decades ago. The USPS only was getting paid $1.50 per package to forward on any parcel that arrived for a USA destination from China. Since no USA tax money was involved, the "subsidizing" gets passed onto domestic shipping in the form of increased fares to help cover the loss in revenue.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union)</comment></comment>


Thoughts on Uber's List of Postgres Limitations - <AUTHOR> http://blog.2ndquadrant.com/thoughts-on-ubers-list-of-postgres-limitations/ <comment><USER2> I think its worth mentioning again that what Uber ended up using has no resemblence to an RDBMS (single table, manual indexes).

So regardless of whether their complaints are justified or not, it should not be taken as an endorsment of mySQL over postgres, but rather of an endorsement of NoSQL over RDBMS .

Which is really just what every company at these scales do (except for google and f5 if whitepapers are to be considered).

<comment><USER3> Uber runs a lot of databases in production. We stopped using Postgres a while ago for new applications that talk SQL, and this article explains some of the reasoning.

We still have many applications that talk directly to MySQL, and we still have our original API monolith that talks directly to Postgres.

All new applications are being built using distributed databases like our in- house Schemaless system which happens to be backed by MySQL, and we also have Riak and Cassandra in production.

<comment><USER4> I would love to see a similarly detailed write-up on your guys' transition from Riak to Cassandra. Especially considering you would have been really, really deep into the details and guts of operating Riak at the red-line from your time at Voxer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Potentially the most useful part of this post to me was this part

> 2ndQuadrant is working on highly efficient upgrades from earlier major > releases, starting with 9.1 → 9.5/9.6.

I hadn't heard of that before. Anybody know more about this? I'm currently babysitting a 9.1 deployment which we desperately want to get upgraded. The amount of downtime this can tolerate a very limited and I was currently tasked with coming up with a plan. Its going to get hairy. If such a tool is really on its way, I could make a case for holding off on the upgrade for a few more months and save quite a bit of work.

<comment><USER6> you can use pg_upgrade with -k - it will complete within seconds. Afterwards, things will be slow until a complete analyze updates the statistics, but the update itself can be done in seconds.

I have updated ~2TB of database from 9.0 all the way to 9.5 over the years.

<comment><USER7> The problem with this is that if anything fails, you can potentially corrupt your data and have no backup plan. To make that option safe, you would have to copy your data directory first, and you need to be offline for that. So you have to add the time it takes to make that copy.

<comment><USER6> This is why I ensure that the slaves are up to date, then disconnect them, pg_upgrade the master and resync the slaves (which is required anyways). If something goes wrong, I would fail over to the slave.

Also: You don't need to be offline to copy the data directory. Check `pg_start_backup` or `pg_basebackup` (which calls the former)

<comment><USER7> That requires the master and slaves to run different versions for a while. And that is not possible with stock postgresql, is it?

Regarding your second point, I meant copying the data directory as in a 'cp' command. Or rsync if you will. The functions you mentioned are only useful when doing a dump, isn't it? And recovering from a upgrade problem using a dump is way slower than just starting the previous version in the backup data directory.

<comment><USER6> _> That requires the master and slaves to run different versions for a while. And that is not possible with stock postgresql, is it?_

Yes. That's not possible. But if I announce the downtime, bring master and slave down, migrate the slave and run our test-suite, migrate the master, run the test suite again and bring the site back up, then I know whether the migration worked.

If the migration on the slave fails, well, then I can figure out where the problem lies and just bring master back.

If the migration on master fails, but works on slave, then I can bring slave up as the new master.

No matter what, there's always one working copy and the downtime is limited to two `pg_upgrade -k` runs (which is measured in minutes).

 _> Regarding your second point, I meant copying the data directory as in a 'cp' command. Or rsync if you will._

Yes. You execute `select pg_start_backup()` to tell the server that you're now going to run cp or rsync and to thus keep the data files in a consistent state. Once you have finished cp/rsync, you execute `select pg_stop_backup()` to put the server back in the original mode.

This works while the server is running.

If you don't want the hassle of executing these commands, you can also invoke the command-line tool `pg_basebackup` which does all of this for you.

<comment><USER8> Any chance you have a blog or website where you could write up/post an example of this entire process? It sounds like the details that you've posted above would be of extreme assistance to many others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do think that you need to learn how to use in the best way the technologies you have chosen or that are present in your current setup. No matter if it is a MySQL, Postgres or any other DB, it requires as a part of a job, learn how to use at it's best. The points on the article are good, however it's true that Postgres had problems with scalability not so long ago. That's changing, however I think that other data stores have addressed the problem of availability and scalability earlier and gained maturity during the last years.

Also, there is something that caused some noise to me:

        This point is correct; PostgreSQL indexes currently use a
        direct pointer between the index entry and the heap tuple
        version. InnoDB secondary indexes are "indirect indexes"
        in that they do not refer to the heap tuple version
        directly, they contain the value of the Primary Key (PK)
        of the tuple.

That's true, but the article doesn't make explicit that the PK on InnoDB is a clustered index and, that there are other optimizations like adaptive hashing to make read queries faster.

<comment><USER10> Agreed 100%, and the author also failed to mention several other advantages of having a clustered PK and indirect secondary indexes. A few off the top of my head: reads in PK order are faster due to lack of indirection; clustered index takes up less space due to lack of storing pointers to tuples; secondary indexes will be covering (no need for PK lookup at all) if the query only uses columns in the PK and secondary index.

It is interesting/ironic to see the article complain "those limitations were actually true in the distant past of 5-10 years ago, so that leaves us with the impression of comparing MySQL as it is now with PostgreSQL as it was a decade ago." In the MySQL world, we very very frequently see the opposite -- Postgres fans bashing MySQL for things that haven't been true in 10-15 years, as well as things that simply have never been true. It certainly is frustrating, just like what the author is experiencing!

Having a favorite/preferred database is fine, but I don't understand all the extreme views -- why do so few of these articles take the view that Postgres is a better fit for some workloads, and MySQL/InnoDB is a better fit some other workloads?

Or even just an acknowledgement that the authors of these articles rarely, if ever, have a comparable amount of expertise in both databases -- which would be necessary to make a fair comparison. Yes, Uber's original article clearly shares this same problem, but at least they seem to acknowledge it more clearly than the author of this response article. Take the section on replication comparison, for example: the author is describing logical replication support in Postgres even though it's currently a third-party addon. Cool, but MySQL has all sorts of third-party replication systems too. Alibaba has implemented physical replication in MySQL. And meanwhile even in MySQL core, there are two different types of logical replication -- there's no restriction to only use statement-based logical replication as this article implies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Might be worth someone writing "a panicky guide to installing varnish" for such database issues. Pretty embarrassing though!

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know the back story to Uber - why didn't it try to improve Postgres rather than move on to feed on another host?

<comment><USER13> Most likely they don't have any engineers with the skills necessary to build/improve a RDBMS.

(note I said build, not use, different skillsets between driving a car and re- configuring the engine to run on seed oil)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> google cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.2...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.2ndquadrant.com/thoughts- on-ubers-list-of-postgres-limitations/&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment><comment><USER15> I came here to write a snarky comment, but now I can write two ;)

first: if you think any particular db platform is clearly a winner in "db wars", you are naive. there are so many factors involved in configuring the db, the backend, the frontend etc. that you can always find a case where: the supposedly winning db is failing, or the supposedly worse db is performing perfectly fine. and from my experience, you should always use the platform/framework/language that is best for the current project, not the one you madly love. clearly postgres wasn't working for uber. that does not mean it will not work for your project. i have a recent experience where a binary file of a programming object works much much faster than mysql and solves several other problems. would i say "use binary files instead of rdbms"? of course not. but in this one case it does wonders. the "tech-vs-tech" wars need to end, they are pointless.

second: if you cannot setup your blog to withstand an HN spike then maybe you don't have as much real world experience with scalability (albeit simple) as you might think (hint: static page cache behind cdn will make you almost bulletproof - also, with for example Azure, that's dead cheap).

<comment><USER16> That second point is a really unnecessarily belittling straw man, and I think such comments are counterproductive to the discussion.

<comment><USER17> I don't know, if you're going to critique the very talented engineers at Uber, seeing your blog fall over due to capacity doesn't lend you a lot of credibility.

<comment><USER18> On what information do you base your opinion that the engineers at uber are very talented?

So far what i have seen, the only thing Uber is talented at is violating local laws and then throwing sacks of money at it to pay fines or whatever. (and inflating their own (bubble)value, but probably not many people agree with that)

Seeing their blogs mysql-> postgres followed by a postgres -> mysql migration, doesn't give me the idea they are very talented (they still might be, but so far no data has proven me this). Talented would be to forsee these issues and to have avoided encountering them at all. At least that would be my definition of very talented.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure what anything you said has to do with their choice of database.

<comment><USER18> Then with your own reasoning, i'm also not sure that is worth a comment of yours.

I clearly indicate their recent changing of db software twice to avoid issues (experts could solve) is an indication one in my eyes is not very talented.

<comment><USER17> Actually no, you didn't clearly say that at all. How do the experts solve the fact that Postgres' rewrites entire indexes on row updates?

<comment><USER18> "Seeing their blogs mysql-> postgres followed by a postgres -> mysql migration" this is not clear to you? Perhaps a visit to an optician is in your best interest.

And why do you make the assumption, i'm a postgresql expert to answer that question.

Though others did, so if you would have bothered to read the other thousands of comments on the matter. You would not have needed to ask this question,

PostgreSQL Heap-Only-Tuples (HOT) from: [http://use-the-index- luke.com/blog/2016-07-29/on-ubers-choic...](http://use-the-index- luke.com/blog/2016-07-29/on-ubers-choice-of-databases)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't Postgres use mmap files internally?

<comment><USER20> No. It uses mmap(MAP_ANONYMOUS) for most of its shared memory, that's pretty much all the use of mmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> would simply coughing up the money for an expensive oracle/sql server solution have worked in this case?

</comment><comment><USER22> To me, the real news is that Uber ($50B company) didn't bother to engage the postgres community before migrating - they'd have jumped to support Uber.

<comment><USER23> I don't get the sense that Uber has had much stability in technical leadership over its lifetime. Big moves like this can be as much cultural as technical.

<comment><USER24> What would be better to have in resume, "we were using PostgreSQL and after some tuning it worked just fine" or "we designed and implemented scalable modern BigData realtime OLTP solution"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Error establishing a database connection" ^ Running on pg too?

</comment><comment><USER26> 'Error establishing database connection'

How very meta.

<comment><USER27> The site is powered by Wordpress, which, to the best of my knowledge, can work only with MySQL. Now _that_ is very meta.

<comment><USER28> I believe the blog site does run MySQL. We eat our own dogfood wherever possible, especially on important services... we hadn't regarded the blog site in the same category until now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Error establishing a database connection"

Genius !

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems that after lots of hyped NoSQL systems companies are still using MySQL or Postgresql as simple storage backend with lots of custom crutches over it, like it's 2007. So all these cassandaras and riaks failed expectations?

<comment><USER31> This is one of the more ridiculous posts I've seen on HN.

"Companies" are taking a whole range of approaches to storing data. With a combination of NoSQL, SQL and Filesystem e.g. HDFS and everything else in between. Cassandra in particular is killing it right now under the stewardship of Datastax which is why they've grown from 1 person up to 400+ employees.</comment></comment>


Hail to the Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/992-hail-to-the-twitter <comment><USER2> Wow, how long is he going to keep harping on about this point?</comment>


If Haskell were strict, what would the laziness be like? - nikita-volkov http://nikita-volkov.github.io/if-haskell-were-strict/

<comment><AUTHOR> It is in an actual language! It's called ML! And modules are better for abstraction than type classes.</comment>