Global recession fears grow as factory activity shrinks - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-economy/factory-activity-shrinks-across-asia-global-recession-fears-mount-idUSKCN1T40EI <comment><USER2> Whether or not this is the start is not so important, but remember it's been a while since the last one, and it's a common thing to occur in the economy, or any other ecological system.

It's also something that has an important role. Investors at some point need to decide which businesses are viable, which are not. Workers need to consider career changes. Corporate entities need to consider which projects are worthwhile. All those kinds of decisions are put to the test when not everything can be given a long horizon.

Finally, there is a twist this time. We've been running a financial experiment with few parallels over the last decade or so.

<comment><USER3> These considerations are requisite only in a capitalist system. In other economic models it is not a given that "[i]nvestors...need to decide which businesses are viable... Workers need to consider career changes." In fact, the division between investors on the one hand and workers in the other is a large part of this problem. If we socialized gains and privatized losses (in the sense of never bailing out those agents that got themselves into bad situations), these cycles would at worst be much less severe and frequent.

<comment><USER4> If we socialized gains and privatized losses, there'd be less severe cycles because there'd be less economy to have cycles on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As somebody who worked in OEM electronics since my first real job 12 ago, I can say for sure that manufacturing in China was on a downward slope since it peaked at around 2010.

A way more alarming indicator is the receding semiconductor spendings, both net and capital, for the last 3-4 years.

This means that not only stuff generally classified as "light industry goods" going down. It means that big players in the industry expect much more "inelastic goods" like server chips, telecom gear, and other businessy/enterprise stuff to also go down.

To a lot of people, it was clear that we are heading for "a long winter" in the industry for quite some time. People saw it as early as 2016.

<comment><USER6> 2016 you started seeing lead times for a whole variety of ordinary semiconductors and discretes stretch way out. I think they were expecting a recession but demand continued.

Feels like manufacturers are edgy and don't want to get caught out.

<comment><USER5> I'd say, back then major players realised that they need to get more careful with capital spendings.

In short term, _there was_ a demand overshoot, but now their decision seem remarkably rational.

<comment><USER6> I think in 2001 3Com got stuck with a $1 Billion worth of inventory that had to be scrapped. Sales of durable goods tend to fall off a cliff during recessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Couldn't this be caused by people's waning desire to buy the next big thing and keeping their devices longer? Rushing for the latest and greatest phone doesn't feel as exciting as it used to. Laptops and TVs last half a decade or more now too.

<comment><USER5> I believe it is more less it. People in my circles who pay big money for serious market research papers showed me some in December. There was a very visible trend of people deciding to downgrade for their third or fourth smartphone.

Here is a repost of my post from December:

> Very true, I'd say a downgrade is the trend. I saw like 10+ people deciding > to switch from "superphones" down to mid-range models, and even dumbphones > for their new phones. People who had ultrabooks, often try Atom based > notebooks and sufraces. The key deciding factor for such people, I think, is > having a good screen and bearable ergonomics (no microscopic keyboards, or > batteries.) The data I have access to tell that the "big screen, small CPU," > is the category with the biggest year on year growth. Atom based 14 and 15 > inchers are selling like hot cookies.

> As a person working in the industry, I can say that's a very visible trend. > People switch their devices more due to battery and physical wear than > actual need for more features.

> In that respect, things got very "Japanised" in respect that Japanese > cellphone makers are often making new models every season with no real > changes other than cosmetic.

> Japan is also the only developed market where "dumbphones" ever saw few > upwards trends in last

<comment><USER8> What about those billion or so people who are just starting to get the taste of consumption culture, having recently risen from poverty? Those quotes seem very Western-centric.

<comment><USER5> > recently risen from poverty? Those quotes seem very Western-centric.

Thinking of rich people in Asia only as those "nouveau riches" you see glitzing their wealth in London and Dubai is also a very Western-centric view.

You have to remember that "rich foreigner" population you see in the West is less than 1 percent of 1 percent of their home countries' populations, and those usually go apart even from their home country definition of "rich people class."

This is even more true for bigger emerging economies: in India and China, an even bigger portion of relatively rich people is completely content with staying at home, and not seeing a reason-d'etre in immigration to the West or imitating Western lifestyles.

I was recently on assignment in Kazakhstan, where I rented a room in possibly the most expensive coworking space in the country. All people around used mid- tier Taiwanese brands. And those were the people who drived LC200s or G-Wagons.

I had same feeling in Pakistan, where I met people making country's small, budding middle class. All of them successful young professionals, with nice cars, settled down families, and expensive houses in Bahria towns. None of them ever cared of not owning a 20th iPhone or a 5Ghz gaming PC. Most cared more about household appliances, and _not_ having to obsess about specs of stuff they buy. They like practical, simple, well done stuff with some whiff of nice design taste added.

<comment><USER8> Sure, iPhones etc are luxury products. But the rising demand for low or mid- tier goods is still rising demand, and the production numbers of high-end SKUs are naturally lower and unlikely to affect total numbers that much.

But the global smartphone market is quickly saturating, if it hasn't already, and _that_ is bound to affect numbers. Smartphone _tech_ is also quickly nearing the flat end of the sigmoid curve, which naturally disincentivizes upgrading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fear of recession is irrational. There is no need for continuous growth.

<comment><USER10> If there shall be no growth, there may be no innovation. Essentially every product and service has to be created the same way, using the same amount if manual labor, as yesteryear.

Economical growth is not necessarily growth in consumption of resources. It is also a measure of getting more out of less.

<comment><USER11> I see, so there has been no new Japanese product or innovation during the 20 or 30 years of Japanese deflation? Every car is from 1990, every CD walkman still available, created with techniques of the 1990s? Are you sure about that?

I'm sorry, but nothing of what you say follows.

<comment><USER12> The Japanese economy kept growing in terms of real GDP during that time: [http://wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Japan+real+GDP](http://wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Japan+real+GDP)

<comment><USER11> Yet Japan's current GDP is lower than that in 1995, and has only been over 1995 level in two years.

There was plenty of innovation, new methods, product launches and new companies during the great Depression, even in the peak year of decline, and in all countries affected.

GDP and GDP growth is a decidedly modern invention anyway.

<comment><USER12> It's fundamentally meaningless to compare nominal GDP between different years because of changes in the value of money. The current GDP of Japan is only nominally less than in 1995 because the values are measured on different scales.

The Great Depression would have been a better example to use because even real GDP declined drastically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel like I have been reading these "global recession fears mount" for about the last 6-7 years.

<comment><USER14> Since Taper Tantrum in 2012, it's been non-stop.

I wonder if this is how economic reporting has always been. I wonder if it's just click-bait feeding off of fear in readers' lizard brains.

From the outside, /most/ of the worries really do seem legit this time. I'm young, so I don't know what other times were like. But at the least -- the worries aren't fake news.

Taper tantrum seemed real. The European Banking Crisis -- I'm still not sure how nothing happened there, especially with Italy. China has really been the backbone for global growth since 2008, and Kyle Bass is making a pretty convincing argument that at least some of that has been an illusion.

I know I hear over and over again that this is "the most reluctant bull market in history". I'm sure every time is different. But I'm wondering if one of the things that really is different is how much uncertainty has been at the core of this market. There are very few people this time that believe everything is rosey.

<comment><USER13> I'm with you, I also feel too young to know if this is how it has always been or not. We are in the longest period of growth for some time, and the aforementioned temper tantrum, so it does seem like we are due for a recession, but it is hard not to tune the noise out.

<comment><USER15> I'm with you on the 'too young to know from experience' boat, though there are groups that have been trying to measure the probability of recession through macro indicators across consumption, production, and employment. [https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/cfnai/index](https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/cfnai/index)

From speculation, while there are tons of factors that may be giving this business cycle legs, I think one that's not spoken of enough is that many business may be a bit less cyclical today. Thanks to the cloud, companies can scale up and down on a whim rather than slowly build up an excess of hardware and staff to maintain them. Even industrial companies like rail car manufacturers have gotten smarter by leasing factories on short term and using temporary labor.

<comment><USER4> This is a great point -- how are cycles different as capital costs plummet, the velocity of information approaches infinity, saleable goods de- materialize, labor pools globalize, and addressable markets approach all the people on earth?

From my non-expert view, most of macro econ is practically religion anyways, and their predictions are basically non-falsifiable. Even so, I'm sure some informed folks have been thinking about these very issues, I just have no idea who. Would love any pointers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Curious: does anyone actively sell stocks in this situation - even if it's in a retirement portfolio you'd presumably not touch for a long time? I've sold some in the last few weeks though I know the general advice is not really to do anything.

<comment><USER17> Anecdote: I've seen recession prediction virtually every month by some trustworthy brilliant person during past 2 years. One of them was Mark Cuban who actually went all cash in last October/November. This is what he had done just before year 2000 bubble popped and he was one of the few surviving billionaires. To his credit, market _did_ went bust on December 21, 2018 with massive drop of 20%. I was literally in awe of Cuban's instinct but then the market almost immediately recovered like nobody's business. I'm now suspecting that government has developed some extraordinary tools to keep market stable. Many conventional laws of economics are pretty much defunct at this point. Massive QEs, printing money and racking up debt has done nothing to cause inflation or any adverse effect. Even Iran situation, North Korea stuff, Seria bombing - all of that barely even registered on market. There is something very very strange going on.

<comment><USER18> "Back in the spring of 1720, Sir Isaac Newton owned shares in the South Sea Company, the hottest stock in England. Sensing that the market was getting out of hand, the great physicist muttered that he ' could calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people.' Newton dumped his South Sea shares, pocketing a 100% profit totaling £7,000. But just months later, swept up in the wild enthusiasm of the market, Newton jumped back in at a much higher price — and lost £20,000 (or more than $3 million in [2002-2003's] money. For the rest of his life, he forbade anyone to speak the words 'South Sea' in his presence."

[https://www.businessinsider.com/isaac-newton-lost-a- fortune-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/isaac-newton-lost-a-fortune-on- englands-hottest-stock-2016-1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it's likely we'll see a lot more economic news in the months ahead.

As Bill Clinton famously told us, US politics are largely anchored in the economy. Public perception of the state of the economy is going to be very much in focus through November of next year.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know though. I believe that I have saved carefully for the worse to come, but I am not sure would it be sufficient or not.

Certainly not big capital spending whatsoever in next year. Risky time indeed.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, hopefully we see a decline in CO2 emissions for a while because of this.

<comment><USER17> Probably not. Recession first impact vulnerable industries that depends on government subsidies, growth and innovations. The alternative energy companies are therefore first to be impacted. This is often exaggerated by reduced prices of conventional energy as consumption drops. You would typically see pull back in manufacturers releasing electric cars or people investing in building solar/wind farms.

<comment><USER13> The last decline, or non-increase I suppose, in CO2 was attributed to a global recession

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't see a global recession from this - just one in China and Australia which is already in one.

<comment><USER23> I find it hard to believe that this will be contained to Australia and China.

Australia certainly deserves what it gets (my home country) given its attitude towards debt and housing, but I think the contagion is real.

<comment><USER24> Contagion is real - but - contagion spreads along specific vectors, some more damaging than others.

A China 'slowdown' will probably not hurt the US, in fact, it may give the US leverage.

A China 'crash' will surely have emotional contagion among investors, which of course matters, because if they pull the plug on activities it'll translate into real world effects ...

But the 'material' contagion of a Chinese crash ... it's harder to predict.

I suggest that the issue is far more likely to be damaging as a 'trigger' to a bubble burst or something else, rather than materially damaging in and of itself.

<comment><USER25> I think people fear that the trouble in China is reduced global demand, not just the trade wars or a local problem.

<comment><USER24> Yes, it will have knock-on effects, but a serious China slowdown is in and of itself no reason to cause recession pretty much anywhere.

Again, it could burst some kind of bubble and start a recession, but a China slowdown itself is not enough.

<comment><USER25> I was trying to point out that since China's factories are so much export oriented that seeing decreased factory activity most likely means a weak global demand.

If the problem was with chinese real-estate, yes, the risk for contagion was minimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Factory activity in Asia is a good indicator in a world where none of us can easily see the wood for the trees. Shame the article wasn't big on actual numbers.

We all have our local bubbles to contend with. In the US there are tariff taxes that affect the world but are a US thing. Then, in the UK, there is the joy of Brexit. You would not guess there was a problem if you were to be out and about in the UK this last weekend, however, read the papers and you will see stories about how that there is no inward investment, auto manufacturing is kaput and the High Street is losing many shops. Speak to some people and these indicators can be seen as unimportant, after all, isn't everyone buying online these days so the High Street demise is more of a shift to other fulfilment means, with no net loss involved? It can all be handwaved away.

With the example of Brexit the predicament can be blamed on Brexit and is therefore not part of a global recession, even if the frozen UK economy contributes to the big, global picture.

I am sure that in every market there is some local whataboutism, an ability to blame a local recession on silly politicians, a business scandal or some other local factor. In this way we could all walk into a global recession without anyone seeing it, thinking it was just us that was feeling a bit skint.

There are always people thinking we are on the verge of some mega crash. Personally I have been expecting the housing bubble to collapse for many decades but it has not happened. I have given up on that one now. I once worked in weather forecasting and, if you listened to me, then you would always have expected rain (I didn't understand low-lying clouds too well). Because of this tendency and bias that we all have it can be hard to make sense of media pundits and their forecasts of the economy. We also only listen to those that we are inclined to agree with.

There are always some indicators that are fact oriented and helpful, I think factory activity in Asia is one.

What I am surprised at is that there isn't a good indicator based on internet search activity. For instance, with the housing market in northern climes there is what the mortgage industry says for PR and then there is reality. Sales of flooring products, and by proxy, internet searches for flooring products may be a better indicator. Nobody fetishes over getting new carpets or laminate floors, people don't overly window shop for it, they just buy that stuff when they move home or have money to upgrade their existing dwelling. It is a purchase that can be easily put off. I need a 'basket' of these indicators and some Google Trends 'fu' to see the wood for the trees.

<comment><USER27> > ...there isn't a good indicator based on internet search activity...

For this one point, Google Trends (formerly known as Zeitgeist) is available: [https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US](https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US)

But, I'll caveat that it is __AN INDICATOR __, and __not the only __indicator...And in fact, not even sure if search activity is a good enough signal to use as an input...Or at least not in isolation. Putting my digital adversarial hat on, if i had even meager resources to organize a bot farm to cleverly submit tons of searches in one direction or another, i think that would sufficiently skew your input signal right there. Just sayin '.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hm, I think some people may have missed this bit:

 _The trade conflict between China and the United States escalated last month when Trump raised tariffs on some Chinese imports to 25% from 10% and threatened levies on all Chinese goods._

 _If that were to happen, and China were to retaliate, "we could end up in a (global) recession in three quarters", said Chetan Ahya, global head of economics at Morgan Stanley._

It strikes me as quite a precise predication. Though of course, that does not mean it is correct.

</comment><comment><USER17> TLDR; Terrifs are the root cause. With continued increase terrif recession might be official within 3 quarters. JP Morgan has taken u-turn and is expecting 2 rate cuts from feds. Other central banks around the world are planning rate cuts as well. South Korea production fell by 2X than expected. Not all economies are loser, however, India and Vietnam might see increased business.

<comment><USER29> Hard to take you serious when you misspell "tariff"

<comment><USER30> Terrific!</comment></comment></comment>


The Importance of Picking The Right Host And How To Do It - <AUTHOR> http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/the-importance-of-picking-the-right-host-and-how-to-do-it34382.html <comment><USER2> For those interested, I added a yc feature request for a section dedicated to hosting a few days ago. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32341> I think it would be nice if we could discuss vendors, prices, levels of service, and other pros/cons. For example, the ability to handle traffic spikes is something everyone wants, but I'd rather hear about it from a customer than a from claim on the vendor's website...

</comment><comment><USER3> If anything, I think this story just illustrates the importance of using small pages which don't require database hits. I've weathered several slashdottings, and my server has hardly blinked -- because the pages which slashdot has directed people towards have been static HTML, and it's easy to serve a 20kB HTML file to hundreds of visitors per second.

Complexity is the enemy of stability -- the more complicated your web site is, the more fragile it will be. For a web site which is always available, keep things as simple as possible.

<comment><USER4> "Complexity is the enemy of stability..." -- absolutely agree here, and my most difficult decisions have been choosing between those two vars. I guess the problem is how do you build a useful and innovative system and still keep it simple?</comment></comment>


Google Intrusion Detection Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.fredtrotter.com/2016/08/22/google-intrusion-detection-problems/ <comment><USER2> If Google is ever going to fix their cloud market share problem[1], they need to reverse the deeply engrained perception that they don't support or maintain their services for the long term.

The majority of Hacker News pundits will all have the same gut reaction to these kinds of anecdotes: complete and total lack of surprise. And although not all of us are in a position to control the vast budgets of the enterprises that drive much of this marketshare, the opinions of the rank and file do have a vast impact and I believe Google's unstable support and product commitment is one of the biggest things holding them back.

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/technology/google-races- to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/technology/google-races-to-catch-up- in-cloud-computing.html)

<comment><USER3> I just want to say that Google's supposed lack of support _is_ just a perception, despite all the usual comments below.

Real example: we use Appengine, and the other day I spotted a bug in a request handler. I filed an issue on the Appengine issue tracker, and have been having a back and forth conversation with a a very real (and very skilled) engineer about how to resolve it. This is outside our support contract, so anyone with an software issue has exactly the same access.

This doesn't cover situations such as the OP experienced, of course - but if they had a support contract, I think they'd have found the issue was resolved quickly and efficiently. We pay $150 a month for a silver support contract, and when we've needed help, we've got personal, prompt and effective support.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. If your organisation depends on any service, you need effective support, and you need to pay for it. That goes for Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce or anyone else - good support costs a lot, and they all have to cover costs. Each company uses a different model, and some include more support costs in their base charges than others.

I happen to like Google's model where dipping your toe in the water costs very little, and when your service proves itself you can ramp up support as you need it. But it leaves Google open to criticism like this the OPs, who let their small project grow big without contingency planning and then complains when something goes wrong.

Finally, the only reason I'm commenting here is that I was so impressed with the support from the engineer mentioned above that I said I would mention him next time Google's perceived lack of support came up on HN. Promise kept!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why people are ever surprised about Google offering substandard support for really anything.

Time and time again Google products prove to make the happy path happier, but as soon as anything should go wrong, you're on your own with no explanation, and no support.

Additionally, and as an aside to the core issue here, I've found the recent Google Cloud UI updates to be a real pain. When I last used them, I did acknowledge that it was beta, but I seemed to lose an awful lot of oversight of an awful lot of things. It's put me seriously off it vs. AWS.

<comment><USER5> > It's put me seriously off it vs. AWS.

Can't really compare, but AWS isn't great either.

I've experienced instances when an instance (1) shut down, (2) rebooted on it's own.

AWS support would point you to the SLA if you were to report the incident.

<comment><USER6> EC2 instances are meant to be ephemeral.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't sound factual at all. Got docs which support that? They send us emails every time they plan on doing intentional maintenance on our instances.

<comment><USER5> I wish it wasn't true. On all the occasions, I was told that there was "an issue with the underlying hardware".

<comment><USER8> It is worth noting that "the cloud" is synonymous with "someone else's computer"

<comment><USER9> > It is worth noting that "the cloud" is synonymous with "someone else's > computer"

Well, no, its not, otherwise "private cloud" would be incoherent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My name is Terrance and I work on Google's Cloud Support Team. Our team mission is to Reduce Customer Anxiety. We take that very seriously, and Fred's experience obviously shows that we fell short this time. The process should have been an easy flow to follow, and it was not. We are reviewing this incident in detail to ensure that we make the process less error prone and quicker in the future.

Best, Terrance

<comment><USER11> How does one reach someone at google in an emergency when you have no access* to any google services?

* locked out of your account

<comment><USER12> Write a good blog post and get it to the front page of a news aggregator

<comment><USER10> We became aware of Fred's problem before we knew it was here.

-Terrance

<comment><USER13> That doesn't really answer the issue, or the question. How are we supposed to get in touch when things go wrong? The blog post clearly showed that support was an afterthought and not properly QA'd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a perfect example of why I refuse to use Google Cloud. Google in the past has put me through similar automated loops with Adwords and Adsense. Even disabling an Adwords account for 2 weeks for reasons I still do not completely understand. After weeks of trying to get a hold of the right person and being pushed through a ton of different channels, it was finally re-instated with a generic apology and still no concrete reason as to why.

I have learned that it is way too risky relying on Google services for crucial business operations.

</comment><comment><USER15> The Nth story about that guy who runs a business depending on Google services and suddenly starts telling everyone else they shouldn't run their business on Google services because Google services flagged them and they realized it was a bad idea to run a business based on Google services...

<comment><USER16> Yup. This is note even a remotely surprising story. If you're building your business on Google, you're building your business to be arbitrarily shut down. You should not operate any business critical service or store any business critical data on any Google product or service.

If anything, this is one of the more generous stories, because Google gave them a day or two of notice first. Usually you just find your Google account shut down one day.

<comment><USER17> Well, I wouldn't go that far. If you run your business on Google Services, you definitely need to have a contingency plan for what you're going to do the day that Google decides to arbitrarily cut you off, though.

But in some instances it might be financially worthwhile to take advantage of their services (particularly their free or very cheap ones) as long as you have a plan for standing up something else when that happens.

For instance, I'm pretty comfortable using Gmail, even though I know they might someday pull the plug on my account for no particular reason. I'm comfortable doing that because all my mail is backed-up elsewhere, and in a pinch I could restore everything or stand up a new mailserver in a day. It would be obnoxious, sure, but it's not exactly breaking new technical ground or anything. The years of free service I've gotten out of them make that risk manageable.

I could easily see a company taking that bargain for various other services. The problem becomes when you simply rely on a 3rd-party's infrastructure as if it was your own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the google M.O. - optimize all processes through cheap machine learning and heuristics and accept that some people will get screwed along the way.

The number of people that can be served at very little cost without any human involvement is apparently very lucrative. Google just considers customer service as an archaic relic that predates the invention of behavioral algorithms.

<comment><USER19> And it works quite well from them. Yes, people on HN and on internet will complain...

Also it could be that customer support is just overrated.... The problem is that 95% of support calls / issues are anyway just people complaining about things which are not at all related to the actual Google service.

But, on the other hand, hackers which try Google Cloud and are bitten by lack of Google support do have influence on decision making process in big corporations.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, how dare all those little people complain when they're inadvertently crushed by the glorious Google behemoth. Don't they realize how insignificant they are? Their entire lives are simply rounding errors at Internet Scale.

Sometimes the end result is less important than how you get there, and how you treat the ones who don't fit into your plans. It happens all the time with big companies, but Google even more than most. They KNOW that the potential for problems exists, but so long as it only affects 5%, who cares? Fuck you, got mine.

I think that the attitude conveyed by Google's lack of support is what inspires a lot of people to post rants online, rather than the frequency of incidents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Once had Google kill a Spark job after it was running for about 12 hours because they thought we were doing something nefarious. It cost us thousands of dollars in wasted time and Google spend because their automated system made a mistake. They never attempted to fix it, refund us or even seem concerned.

<comment><USER22> And you compare that to the many stories you hear about Amazon waiving invoices when people inadvertently ran up multi thousand dollar AWS bills by accident or when credentials were exposed. (Happened to an ex-colleague of mine years back - AWS creds committed to a public git repo - minutes later there's like 40 10xlarge or g2.8xlarge or whatever instances mining bitcoin. First thing he knew about it was Amazon ringing him up saying "this $10,000 spike in your typical use, that's not really you, right?" and shutting it all down for him and reversing the charge...)

Then you consider this when you decide whether to base the next big business decision on an AWS or Google Cloud platform…

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Intrusion detection false alarms can be a problem if you run anything like a web crawler. I have one running at "sitetruth.com", which is a site rating system hosted on a leased server. (Not a cloud service, a leased rackmount server). One of the things it does is to find the home page of a site by trying "example.com" and "www.example.com", with and without HTTPS. Some sites will block access for 30-45 seconds if those requests are made too fast.

About once a year, there's a serious intrusion complaint, as the crawler, which obeys robots.txt, examines about 20 pages on a site in a few seconds. No more than three connections at once, but some sites are touchy. The server leasing company sends me a warning letter, I reply and call tech support, and there's no big problem.

I can recommend leasing servers from Codero as an alternative to dealing with the Borg of Mountain View. I've been a customer for five years, and nothing bad has happened. They now have "cloud services" too, but I haven't used them.

<comment><USER24> > the crawler, which obeys robots.txt, examines about 20 pages on a site in a > few seconds.

That seems like something that could be slowed down slightly with little negative impact, and a big positive impact (no annoyed people, no interaction with support).

<comment><USER23> Our user is waiting. We rate sites on demand, and the user is looking at a rotating "busy" icon in their browser search results during the rating process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Posting this 4 days later, what happened next:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-won-skeptic- afte...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-won-skeptic-after- shutting-site-down-2016-8)

 _Google then shocked him again, in a good way. Within four hours of tweeting, someone from Google had contacted him and had restored access to his project._

 _Trotter says that, it turns out, he and his team bear some responsibility. They had inadvertently set up a server wrong, exposing a hole, and a hacker was using his company 's to conduct a "denial of service attack," which is when hackers overload another website or online service with so much traffic, it shuts down._

</comment><comment><USER26> Lol

Sorry to be so harsh, but Google has always been this way.

Why do people keep putting essential stuff in someone else's sandbox? Your effectivly adding a SPoF, that you have no control over

<comment><USER27> Is Amazon or Azure or Heroku really any different?

I've had similar problems in the past with Amazon shutting down services and providing little to no support to get it remediated. Even after paying for technical support, it was impossible to recover (in our case, it was a billing issue that was entirely Amazon's fault).

My general recommendations are:

\- be sure you have fully scripted your deployment process, \- be sure you are making remote backups of critical data (often times this is as easy as setting up simple replication of S3 to GCS or Azure's Cloud Storage) \- rely as little as possible on their "value added" features \- if you do rely on their value added features, be sure you still have someone on staff who can quickly replace it with something minimal (e.g. know how to install your own mysql)

At the very least, this will put you in a position where you aren't 100% locked out of your data, or have to completely rewrite your application in order to move to another provider.

You don't have to go crazy with some kind of hot failover, or active-active deployment. Just have daily snapshots of your data and mitigate the risk of your PaaS provider.

No matter who your hosting provider is, you should probably have this sketched out as part of a "disaster recovery" plan.

<comment><USER26> > Is Amazon or Azure or Heroku really any different?

Nope, and thats why I don't use them. There are situations where they make sense, but people should be much more skeptical about them. I don't have stats, but IME I've yet to see a company that actually saves money by using them. I've seen one company that did save money the first year, but got too addicted to "just spinning another instance up" and stopped optimizing their code. The next year they were bleeding cash.

So, speaking from my experience: It's more expensive, less configurable, and unreliable. Why do people keep buying the cloud lie?

<comment><USER28> I worked on a project that costs about $5k/month to self-host. After moving it to AWS, it was about $2k/month. So $36k/year savings in hosting costs. In our case outgoing bandwidth at AWS was about 10x cheaper than what our ISP offered.

Having spent years help running a physical hosting company, working with virtualized servers saves LOTS of time. I still find it amazing and much, much cheaper in staff-hours to reboot a cluster and have it come back up on 2x larger hardware when a project grows.

<comment><USER26> Right, I'm not saying hosted solutions are never the answer, they are just less often the answer than people seem to think. Too many people buy into the cloud-hype, and never look at the numbers until it's too late.

And that doesn't even touch the trust you have to have in your provider.

And I love virtual more than physical. But I set up my own virtual server and run them myself.

<comment><USER29> > And I love virtual more than physical. But I set up my own virtual server > and run them myself.

Where do you keep the machines? In your bedroom?

<comment><USER26> Depends if you mean for work or home.

For work, we have a DC. For home, yes, I keep them in my office.

<comment><USER29> You're paying for a super ninja ultra special internet connection as well? Yikes. Interesting concept though.

So your strategy for scaling up is building a data center then?

<comment><USER26> > You're paying for a super ninja ultra special internet connection as well?

Not really. Just a normal home connection. If you design your services sanely, and don't have much traffic, it's not really an issue.

> So your strategy for scaling up is building a data center then?

Well, it depends. You really should do a cost-benefit analysis, because each product is different. But if it makes sense, then yes.

<comment><USER29> But your whole argument was that for some serious application you shouldn't trust on cloud services, wasn't it? The kind of things I was doing half a year ago you couldn't run on your home connection. So this whole "run important stuff on your home connection" is just a signal that you're not doing anything great.

<comment><USER26> > But your whole argument was that for some serious application you shouldn't > trust on cloud services, wasn't it?

Well, with everything, there are pros and cons. My argument is that I think it's silly to trust someone else with your infrastructure. There can be benefits to doing so, however, your giving up a lot as well. And in terms of cost (which is usually the main argument that I hear), I've personally never seen it work.

Your trusting someone with something pretty critical with your business, so you should think long and hard about which direction you want to go. If your cloud-service gets arbitrarily shut down or has an outage, what responses can you take to fix it? Usually not many. Thats essentially adding a SPoF, which is generally considered a big no-no, although it does happen.

> The kind of things I was doing half a year ago you couldn't run on your home > connection.

I'd be curious as to what your doing then.

> just a signal that you're not doing anything great.

I guess that depends on what you mean as great. I do a lot of _useful_ stuff: email, web-apps, file-store, home-automation, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reaching a human being is a common problem with all Internet businesses. I've had similar frustrations with Google competitors. As an industry, we have to do much better with customer service. Our users are real human beings.

<comment><USER16> This is why when it comes to web hosting, I only do business with companies that have 24/7 phone support. It limits my options a lot. GoDaddy and HostGator both provide this, most others I've seen don't.

But before I got my first HostGator account, I called their tech support line at 2 AM, and got a guy named Chris with a strong Texan accent. And I've had escalated issues at odd hours where I've actually spoken directly to sysadmins there. Ticket support only hosting simply can't compete with that service, no matter the cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Dollars to donuts these guys got hacked. Still pretty shitty the appeal process was busted.

</comment><comment><USER32> So, everyone's basically saying:

> Google sucks

> Don't rely on Google if you want your business to succeed

> This is old news! Happens all the time

> Google = SPoF

...you're all looking like trolls to me. Please, do tell how Spotify manages to service 60+ markets with some core pieces of infrastructure on Google's Cloud offerings.

<comment><USER11> Spotify will have a phone number of someone they can call.

I've had this issue with google too. They'll shut down your account, your whole account - google apps email and all - if an automated system detects something dodgy. In my case an automated system at ebay accused my site of phishing which it wasn't.

There is a paid support option, but when your account is shut down you are unable to access the required code.

I don't think you can appreciate how inaccessible Google is until they decide you're a bad actor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I hate that Google don't give a damn about its users. To them interacting with humans is a waste of time and money... They prefer to automate everything and manage servers, robots and programs instead.

The same thing happened to us in 2013 luckily had backup servers at Linode.. took them 2 weeks to solve the problem it was a bug in their billing system.

Google gave us $8k credit and I gave them another try and convinced myself that GCE was very young in 2013.

Now I'm just worried! It's 2016 and our entire business depends on their platform and their support sucks! Even the $400/month version!!

Google, why can't you have support like DigitalOcean and Linode?

<comment><USER34> _Google, why can 't you have support like DigitalOcean and Linode?_

Because it's totally not in their DNA?

Because GCE and company are relatively low priority offerings? Would you agree these are higher:

Ad Words etc., which make the bulk of their money.

Search etc. which among other things has you seeing those ads.

Android and all their other efforts to keep themselves from losing their access to the users of the above.

For a while, Google+ was an anomalous offering they were pushing very hard (with this sort of brain damage with linked accounts that hit hard with their real names policy), but they might try such a stunt again.

Compared to the two service providers your mentioned, which only do one thing. Even AWS is I gather rather like that, there's it + all the Amazon selling stuff which is significantly separate. Some of the DNA is shared, but that's not all bad, such as the focus on customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Google, said to have very high hiring bar, yet I've seen more than a few times now that their product lines are sub-par. I'm sure the explanation they give is that we are very big and we can ignore the 1% corner cases and have the mentality that "we are so big we don't really care about smaller parts of the internet".

Also, the hypocrisy in using very logical questions to hire people but not sticking to similar logic in the product line is laughable.

<comment><USER36> It feels like they have an entire company of Mr. Spocks without a single Doctor McCoy to round things out.

<comment><USER37> Mr. Spock would have approached the issue of support more logically and would have thought things through more carefully.

It's more like they have an entire company of Sheldon Coopers, without a single Penny or Leonard Hofstadter to round things out.

<comment><USER35> Sheldon would have never agreed to release a system with flawed design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Of course it's easy to pattern match this to previous stories of advertisers and publishers being banned from Google's ad products, people losing their email access on Gmail, etc, but this is an entirely different area of the company, and one where account managers are very much a thing. It strikes me as odd that one couldn't just email or phone their account manager to ask for clarity on a situation like this?

<comment><USER39> Google tries to get away with as little human supervision as possible. I doubt they have an actual account manager

<comment><USER40> They have an account manager, it's just a robot named Samantha West, programmed to insist she's a real person:

[http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/10/meet-the-robot- telemarke...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/10/meet-the-robot-telemarketer- who-denies-shes-a-robot/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I admit to having a gmail.com account

\----

I really don't understand how anyone can use Google for production. If you don't pay for support to have a way to actually get a hold of Google...

... Someday you may be in a world of hurt and have absolutely no way to get ahold of anyone. You can post a story and hope and pray that Google might read it and have someone reach out and remedy the situation.

</comment><comment><USER42> We got the 100k credit which is nice. Noticed the actual technical side is excellent - vastly better than azure and AWS (AWS especially - I find the whole UI and way it works so clunky).

However, despite using our credit to buy gold support when it came to using it I couldn't work their tickets UI at all. Turns out you need to change products from your Google apps support to cloud platform by some tiny link which is not at all obvious.

I had to phone up and it was obvious people hit it all the time as the operator instantly knew what the issue was.

Also related: azure by default didnt renew your free trial despite an active cc being on file. It just shuts everything off with no obvious warning. What other service does that?

Honestly think these companies need to do some proper usability testing on their flows because there is so much clunky weirdness in cloud providers right now.

</comment><comment><USER43> Not sure if he missed it on the support page, or simply is not willing to pay the added cost, but Google does offer a paid support option with both phone and email support options. Obviously the more you pay the quicker the response and more access you have to those options.

<comment><USER16> I suggest reading the article.

"Google offers support solutions where you can talk to a person if you have a problem. We view it as problematic that interrupting an "allergic reaction" as a "support issue". However, we would be willing to purchase top-tier support in order to get this resolved quickly. But there does not appear to be an option to purchase access to a human to get this resolved. Apparently, we should have thought about that before our project was suspended."

<comment><USER43> Hey thanks, but I did read the article, and saw that part. That is why I said that he may have missed that part of the page. And just because he says he would be "willing to purchase top-tier support" doesn't mean that he doesn't have a limit on how much he would pay for said support, thus my saying that maybe it was too much for him.

<comment><USER44> My impression from the article (and the quoted bit) is that you can't pay for support once your project is suspended.

<comment><USER45> As far as i can tell, this is false (I have a suspended test project, and the support options still seem to be there)

I think he means "there is no 'pay to talk to a human'" option in the FAQ/etc for _this issue_.

That is, he wants to pay to talk to a human about just this issue, and thinks somehow that paying for the support option will not give him that (or is too expensive for that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This makes me wonder, which do people dislike more: not having access to support in almost any capacity except "help desk tickets" which might not get answered for days, e.g. how Google handles non-free support tiers, or horribly long wait times on phones? My gut says that the former is worse, especially in this case, because you can just turn your phone on speaker and wait for the queue to finish up (or with some systems, have them call you back when the queue is to you).

I almost can't believe that Google doesn't have a support line for its account holders for Google Cloud, when you have companies like Paypal and United Airlines, which have many more users (paying or not) and have support lines.

</comment><comment><USER47> The situation of having a project fully shut down without adequate information or process by which to correct it is clearly unacceptable. That said, I was involved in recently migrating to GCP and it has worked wonderfully for us thus far. We run a fairly standard java/MySQL web app, with paid silver support. Questions are answered promptly in our experience. We found compute engine VMs to be faster (and cheaper) than EC2, the developer console easier to use, and better quality documentation/APIs.

</comment><comment><USER48> Just wait until you can buy one of their self driving cars.

</comment><comment><USER49> I usually defend GCP as they have better technology and platform architecture but I definitely agree that they have major communication problems. While there are plenty of individuals available through social channels, it does seem to be very informal most of the time which does not inspire confidence as a business looking for a solid foundation.

</comment><comment><USER50> This sounds like a nightmare. One that I can't imagine happening at Rackspace Cloud...

</comment><comment><USER51> Bet you cash money the affected site is or was in a ddos botnet.

</comment><comment><USER52> Google = rain man.</comment>


Man Uses Kickstarter To Piss Off Corporations  - <AUTHOR> http://anthonypompliano.com/2013/11/27/lil-dicky-just-used-kickstarter-to-screw-the-record-labels/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand what makes this story markedly different than the story of any other self published act in music/art/entertainment.

Also, this tends to work a lot better for artists with mass appeal than for those whose work is a bit less approachable and thus profits from proper curation by well respected people/companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> The piece that caught my eye is the Kickstarter rewards. He understands that people want to gain access and develop relationships. Very powerful realization that is actually working

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Title is kind of misleading - should probably say "record labels" not "corporations" at least

<comment><USER4> And I'd be surprised if the record labels really were pissed off, I can't see any reason why they would be.

<comment><AUTHOR> He has captured a demographic that is nearly impossible to grab the attention of. That is worth big time money to record labels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's not really trying to piss off corporations - sounds like he's just trying to hustle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely hustling. I don't think he set out to piss off record labels, instead he avoided them, which pisses them off. Kickstarter is making this more and more common by empowering individuals</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Benjamin Franklin - <AUTHOR> https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/317571_1451826491698_1114320286_31065474_1013297472_n.jpg

<comment><USER2> Add Einstein to this list, and three of them have the same biographer.

Walter Isaacson did a great job with Franklin and Einstein. Hopefully, it isn't too soon for Steve's biography (a bunch of Einstein's letters didn't get released until some time after his death, so a biography in 1955 would have missed some detail)</comment>


How My Printer Caused Excessive Syscalls and UDP Traffic - <AUTHOR> http://zinascii.com/2014/how-my-printer-caused-excessive-syscalls.html

<comment><USER2> At least all he had was excessive syscalls.

At work, we had a problem where a computer was spamming the network with DHCP requests. It ended up physically locking us out; the embedded system which controls the card reader and unlocks the door locked up due to the load. I had to use an alternative way to get in, isolated the maglock, and later power- cycled the embedded system.

Needless to say, we enabled storm control on the switch after that.

<comment><USER3> You might want to put your security system and other infrastructure hardware on a separate VLAN.

Not only does that help prevent stuff like this, it turns out that a lot of embedded hardware isn't that great from a network security perspective.

<comment><USER2> We didn't even have VLANs enabled on the switch back then.

And even then, the storm control is useful; the same broadcast storm also made the office wireless unusable (most APs use a basic rate for broadcast and multicast).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yet another reason to cordon off printers and other mystery meat devices to their own special VLAN...

<comment><USER5> I feel like this couldn't happen soon enough. All those mysterious networked AV devices (why does my TV want to be on ethernet anyway? It's not even a smart TV) and their mysterious poorly written firmware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminded me of a Reddit comment I read just earlier today about overzealous mDNS packets causing battery life issues on Android: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2ler3t/maybe_the_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2ler3t/maybe_the_reason_why_nexus_5_owners_are_still/clu6qct)

Funny that these happened to appear on the same day :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll point out that the original vmstat output also revealed 3000 interrupts per second, in the column right next to syscalls. Many times it can be faster to look around at the high level instead of immediately diving deep. In this case, checking to see which device was causing the interrupt storm would have led to "something on the network" pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is mDNS really so useful? Of all the people I know who know about it, everyone has disabled it when possible due to all the useless network traffic it produces.

Apparently Canon's wireless printers are well known for doing mDNS floods:

[http://digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=148153](http://digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=148153)

[http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2171044.html](http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2171044.html)

<comment><USER9> mDNS has utility in small networks for your average Joe. In these circumstances (1) it shouldn't be a problem, (2) it shouldn't flood (there's logarithmic decay and there actually has been thought put into this), (3) names are discoverable without relying on anything else, (4) and it does its job in being the mechanism for DNS-SD to piggyback on so that services can be discovered automatically. Being independent of other services working or not — e.g., DHCP, (unicast) DNS — means "it just works", even if other network services fail.

There is a beauty in the ability to just have all of your computers, printers, and peripheral devices otherwise plug into a switch (without any additional network service equipment — no router/dns/dhcp multi-combo device added in the mix) and that everything just ends up working. Link-local addressing takes care of IPs, mDNS takes care of names, and DNS-SD through mDNS takes care of automatic service advertisement — "Hey, I'm a printer, use me if ya wanna!"

Further, failure of proper mDNS implementation in a device (perhaps resulting in malformed packets or over-zealous flooding) is just a failure of that device's design, not mDNS per se.

Having said that, still... yes, I think the home/SOHO router/switch/access- point/dns/dhcp multi-combo device should handle DNS-SD registrations and DNS, and that mDNS shouldn't be needed.

In medium/large networks (those actually managed by someone putting on an IT hat), it's perhaps not as appropriate, but still shouldn't be a problem assuming everything is subnetted with mDNS in mind. Of course, name resolution is handled by unicast DNS, and with regard to service discovery in this context, someone manages the DNS-SD records on the unicast DNS server so you don't need mDNS to be the mule for DNS-SD to ride on in those circumstances.

<comment><USER10> >someone manages the DNS-SD records on the unicast DNS server so you don't need mDNS to be the mule for DNS-SD to ride on in those circumstances.

Are you talking about TXT records for services or something like that? I thought that most of the consumer level tools (for adding printers) were _only_ looking for records via mDNS.

That said, in $CURRENTJOB, network printers are found via whatever the current version of NETBIOS is called - I don't think I've seen any mDNS traffic around.

<comment><USER9> For a simple DNS-SD setup on unicast DNS, yes, it's basically a combination of PTR and TXT records. See [http://www.dns- sd.org/serversetup.html](http://www.dns-sd.org/serversetup.html) for more information.

For example, in one network, multicast was completely disabled — no mDNS happening there — and so on our local (unicast) DNS server (BIND on a 'BSD), we added DNS-SD entries (PTR + TXT records) for printers (to a CUPS print server with Active Directory authentication) which gave all the iOS devices AirPrint capability to all the printers on the network (even AirPrint to old dot-matrix printers), entries for Apple TV/AirPlay, etc. Apple calls it "Wide- Area Bonjour" and it works with Macs and iOS devices just fine — it's Bonjour with no mDNS involved (more specifically, it's just DNS-SD with a unicast DNS server).

In a sense (and completely avoiding all of the details and particulars of the matter here, because that opens up a whole can of worms and a much longer discussion), mDNS is basically supposed to be the modern IETF Internet Standards branded replacement for the name service aspect of NetBIOS (and other local network name service protocols). See also [http://lwn.net/Articles/252323/](http://lwn.net/Articles/252323/) ... Also, in a sense, Zeroconf (an umbrella term which includes IPv4 link local addressing + mDNS + DNS-SD) is replacement for SLP ... and SSDP & UPnP in a sense too (although they're not directly comparable concepts)... Read [http://www.zeroconf.org/zeroconfandupnp.html](http://www.zeroconf.org/zeroconfandupnp.html) for a better explanation on the UPnP side of things... (Again, using a really vague phrase "in a sense" here and glossing over the details and doing a hand- wavy gesture.) There are different matters of naming, service discovery, and higher layer protocols — and drawing lines of correlation aren't always direct nor as clear cut as some would like.

<comment><USER11> A service instance is a combination of an SRV record containing the service hosts name and port and a TXT record containing meta-information (key=value pairs). Services instances are found via PTR records.

For HTTP services in a browse domain called example.com, you'd query for _http._tcp.example.com PTR records and get back a list of instance names such as HN._http._tcp.example.com. If you then wanted to connect to the "HN" HTTP service you'd then lookup the SRV and TXT records at HN._http._tcp.example.com.

For anyone interested, dns-sd.org hosts some example services — try `dig -t ptr _http._tcp.dns-sd.org` and go from there.

<comment><USER9> Yep! I forgot to mention the SRV records for some odd reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What were teh effects? How did the author notice? Was his server lagging? his OSX machine? If would be pretty awesome if you could dos MACs with 250KB/s flood.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question. I should have mentioned that in the post perhaps. The reason I initially ran vmstat was just to make sure my dev machine was "zeroed out". Recently my kernel builds had taken twice the time as normal and I wasn't sure why. That's when I noticed this. It turns out this had no significant effect on my build times but was rather an effect of a different change I made weeks prior. I also noticed no ill effects on my laptop that I recall.</comment></comment>


Average IQ in Europe by country (map) - <AUTHOR> http://jakubmarian.com/average-iq-in-europe-by-country-map/ <comment><USER2> One of the authors of one of the reference materials (Tatu Vanhanen) of Lynn and Vanhanen is fairly suspect in his methodology of applying and analysing of IQ scores.

Fact #1: It's not actually obvious what IQ scores measure, what amount of cultural bias the scores have and does it even make sense to compare IQ scores between different populations. Well, it's a number so yes, you can numerically compare it, but - as we engineers would put it - it's not obvious that the scalar value of 'IQ' has the same dimension in disjoint populations.

There are various attempts to map human beings mental capabilites on various basis functions (IQ, Briggs-Meyers etc.). From the point of view of armchair natural scientist none of the the approaches are very convincing as hard core analysis tools. As facilitation tools they can provide value, but facilitation always includes discussion and holistic analysis of what actually the number means in each situtation.

Fact #2: Tatu Vanhanen has quite a lot of publicized work where he expresses views that are quite openly racist - veiled in a thin cloack of pseudoscientific analysis. It appears that he starts from the theory that some populations have higher IQ:s and then he massages the numbers until he can "prove" his original hypothesis of bias between some populations. I will not trust any number that man quotes because figuring out who he computed it would be a waste of time. IMHO, YMMV and so on but this has been his way or working for at least three decades. So, yes, crackpot radars ahoy.

Although it would be cool to pat oneself in the back and say yes, we finns are really smart... seeing Vanhanens work quoted here makes me actually a bit shamed.

<comment><USER3> It turns out that calling things "facts" does not, unfortunately, make them facts.

To go beyond the armchair, try looking at, for example, [http://books.google.ca/books?id=jj4tKn9gb1IC&pg=PT172](http://books.google.ca/books?id=jj4tKn9gb1IC&pg=PT172)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's something wrong here... most (and most populous) countries have IQ below 100, but IQ 100 is defined as being the average of human populations. Unless other continents have significantly more intelligent people than in Europe (seems unlikely), then this chart must be significantly uncalibrated.

<comment><USER5> Maybe the overall IQ has lowered since we set the standard of 100? :)

As the movie "Idiocracy" put it, evolution does not necesserily reward intelligence.

<comment><USER6> On the contrary, raw IQ rises about 3 points per decade. The Flynn Effect.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect)

<comment><USER7> OTOH, the 2012 map shows generally _lower_ numbers than the 2007 map, which seems to suggest that Europe is running contrary to the general trend.

<comment><USER8> The whole article is about how the 2007 map was biased and how the 2012 map attempts to correct this bias. So you can't compare them the way you do it.

<comment><USER7> The only thing in the article about the relation to the older map is "Since the maps above [the 2012 maps] are based on more recent data, the map shown here [the 2007 map] should be considered outdated."

There's not one word in the linked piece about bias in the older map, so saying that's what the whole article is about is, well, odd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've always thought that IQ-tests are biased towards education, too, and not just "raw intelligence". This seems to confirm it. The richer countries tend to have higher average IQ than the poorer ones.

<comment><USER10> No, not necessarily the richer - I can spot a direct correlation between the quality of the education system and the IQ reported here. Finland, the country with maybe the best schools(not Universities, schools) in Europe is leading.

<comment><USER11> Yet, the quality of schools could be correlated to teachers and politicians with higher IQ. Chicken and egg...

<comment><USER12> If you were to compare a similar map from 1970 with the current one the notion of which came first would be much more clear. Before WWII IQ was pretty evenly distributed across the regions of Germany, but during the partition the IQs of children born in East Germany fell way behind those born in West Germany. And now with reunification and economic convergence IQ scores have converged too. Genetics may play a fairly large role in explaining outcomes for individuals, but if it affects measurable differences in outcomes between large groups the effect is small enough to be drowned out by other factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In addition to all the standard arguments against IQ (tailor at specific culture circles, can be taught and improved upon, measures subset of intelligence) it is important to remember that this is a sample of people who took the test, which by and far may not be a representative sample of a population. Most probably it's upwardly biased, but one has no way of knowing if the bias is constant across countries, which in turn makes any inference impossible.

</comment><comment><USER14> How can you get an accurate average IQ? I've never taken a formal IQ test in my life. I asked serval people around if they have and no one else has in their adult life.

<comment><USER15> When I was young, as part of my move into the public school system (from a private school in my first and second grades), I had to take one. Later, I was identified by a gifted program and had to take an entire battery of tests for most of the rest of my schooling, including numerous IQ tests. In those circles, I _didn 't_ know anybody who had never taken an IQ test.

<comment><USER14> Interesting perhaps I took one but didnt realize it. How accurate can an IQ test for elementary schoolers be for an adult population?

Maybe the test I took were not called IQ tests but were very similar. Most test I took were similar to what the SAT was, but I never got back an "IQ" score. Usually they gave us back a percentile score against the whole pool, but never an IQ number or range.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I took a bunch of those as well, like the ITBS. They're more aptitude tests than IQ tests, but I imagine there some correlation. Usually they're looking for specific subjects or learning styles

There's a bunch of different IQ tests as well (WISC, SB5, DAS, WJ) and some designed for adults, but they should give you a score. There's some special tests for people with high percentile IQs as well.

I don't know if I'd call any IQ test accurate. Mine have varied wildly over time and depending on the test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe it's just me, but I would find those numbers much more interesting if they were accompanied by a measure of spread of the IQ distribution.

</comment><comment><USER17> The blog post author did a terrible job of research on IQ by encountering the writings of Richard Lynn (funded by the Pioneer Fund, and later an administrator of the Pioneer Fund) and not finding the writings of James R. Flynn,[1] the acknowledged expert on IQ trends over time, after whom the Flynn effect[2] is named. Flynn's TED talk[3] is the place to start for understanding what is really going on in IQ score trend and in national average IQ differences to date.

By contrast, Lynn is decried as a sloppy scholar,[4] and is not taken seriously by the mainstream of human intelligence researchers.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Intelligence-Flynn- ebook/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Intelligence-Flynn- ebook/dp/B000SGBL9U/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Are-Getting-Smarter-James-Flynn- ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Are-Getting-Smarter-James-Flynn- ebook/dp/B009H7L0V0/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Human-Progress-Story- Hidd...](http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Human-Progress-Story-Hidden- ebook/dp/B00DG25JW8)

[2]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/james- r-f...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/james-r-flynn-on- rising-iqs.html)

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/23/james- flyn...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/23/james-flynn-iq- scores-environment)

[http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/what-is- intellig...](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/what-is-intelligence- beyond-the-flynn-effect/400077.article)

[3] [http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_h...](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents)

[4] [http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wichertsRavenAfr2010rej.pdf](http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wichertsRavenAfr2010rej.pdf)

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1994/dec/01/the- tai...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1994/dec/01/the-tainted- sources-of-the-bell-curve/)

<comment><USER12> I thought Unz's criticisms of Lynn were an excellent blend of accessible and thorough.

[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq- and-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-wealth/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the difference between say 97 and 101 IQ really significant?

I'd attribute the scores that are lower than 90 (or maybe 95, or 98, I don't know) directly to lackings regarding national education, but does fluctuation among the others really mean something?

<comment><USER18> With a large enough sample size small differences can be significant. It's bad practice to display a more precise IQ number than your confidence intervals, so I'll assume the differences are real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder why people focus so much on IQ instead of better metrics.

In this article, "The play deficit":

[http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/children-today-are- suffe...](http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/children-today-are-suffering-a- severe-deficit-of-play/)

there are these very interesting sentences:

"Other research, by the psychologist Mark Runco and colleagues at the Torrance Creativity Center at the University of Georgia, shows that scores on the TTCT are the best childhood predictors we have of future real-world achievements. They are better predictors than IQ, high-school grades, or peer judgments of who will achieve the most."

TTCT is "Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking".

People should really be much more interested in metrics like TTCT, rather than IQ tests, SAT tests or other not very relevant metrics.

<comment><USER3> Probably because general intelligence is "the best-established, most predictive, most heritable mental trait ever discovered in psychology." (Geoffrey Miller, Spent)

<comment><USER19> I googled it and found the following:

[http://www.barrelstrength.com/2013/12/31/ramachandran- iq/](http://www.barrelstrength.com/2013/12/31/ramachandran-iq/)

where there is:

"Intelligence (says Prof. Miller at page 189 of Spent) is positively correlated to:

        brain size
        speed of performing basic sensory motor tasks ("reaction time is a factor", as the cop said in Blade Runner)
        height
        symmetry of face and body
        semen quality (!)
        health, physical and mental
        longevity
        sexual attractiveness for long term relationships"

So it is most predictive of many things, but maybe not of future real-world achievements...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting how you'll never meet a person whose IQ is less than 100 (or even 120) on the Internet. It's a rather flawed metric.

<comment><USER21> Have you tried twitter?

<comment><USER20> The point is, nobody would ever admit to having low (even above average) IQ, not that they are actually smart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Isn't the average IQ by definition 100?

<comment><USER18> The overall average, sure. But just as that doesn't mean every single person's IQ is 100, it doesn't mean every country's average is the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> IQ as a measure is like comparing computers on speed of the CPU. It is only one measure that defines us and with that many aspects make us what we are.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a map of how well someone can use English, IQ tests are biased towards that.

<comment><USER8> IQ tests are usually done using the person's first language, not English. What you are saying is only true if English tests are used for non-English-speaking people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >Tip: Did you know that "iron" is pronounced as "I earn", not as "I Ron"?

Who pronounces those the same? And who ever said it was the "correct" way?

</comment><comment><USER26> Relevant: [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

Also relevant: [http://48laws-of- power.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/law-38-think-a...](http://48laws-of- power.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/law-38-think-as-you-like-but-behave.html)

The study might be true, but there's little benefit to us discussing it right now.

<comment><USER10> Why? Are you worried it might bring forward discussions about race superiority and that kind of crap?

In my opinion, this study can start a reasonable discourse on the difference between education systems.

<comment><USER26> Not worried, it's just a waste of time.</comment></comment></comment>


Bootstrapping & coffee - <AUTHOR> http://www.aimxhaisse.com/?p=568

<comment><USER2> Great post! Easy to read and informative!</comment>


The Cult of Elon Is Cracking - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/elon-musk-coronavirus-pandemic-tweets/611887/ <comment><USER2> This article is strange. There are a few random anecdotes, which aren't useful since they could be selectively picked to paint a certain narrative that fits this headline. It's more interesting to focus on the things Elon has said that this article chooses to call out. The article notes that Elon's claims are false but that isn't true across all the examples shared in this article.

> In the past few months, Musk has downplayed the dangers of the virus, > offered unfounded predictions about how many Americans it will infect, and > falsely claimed that children are "essentially immune" to COVID-19.

Kids _are_ essentially "immune", although that word is being used somewhat informally in this text, since they can still transmit the virus despite almost always experiencing mild or no symptoms. Children have incredibly low infection mortality rate from COVID-19. Case fatality rate for children 0-9 is still _0_ ([https://www.hopkinsguides.com/hopkins/view/Johns_Hopkins_ABX...](https://www.hopkinsguides.com/hopkins/view/Johns_Hopkins_ABX_Guide/540747/all/Coronavirus_COVID_19__SARS_CoV_2_)), and other sources that disagree nevertheless report very low non-zero figures. The recent reports of children exhibiting symptoms of Kawasaki disease due to COVID are dubious and even if they are confirmed, the incidence rate would be _incredibly_ low ([https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/no-severe- inflammator...](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/no-severe-inflammatory- symptoms-in-infected-children-here-moh)). The incidence of severe symptoms required intensive care among children is as low as 0.58%, and this is among those who are confirmed cases, which is a biased sample due to the lack of universal testing ([https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus- disease-2019-c...](https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus- disease-2019-covid-19-considerations-in-children)).

> He has called, over and over again, for rolling back the widespread measures > put in place to slow the spread of the virus, a move that public-health > officials believe could be lethal.

There is nothing unreasonable about making the case for reopening. Many countries have already taken various steps towards reopening, as early as over a month ago ([https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/04/14/834428062/in-europe-cautious-steps-away-from-coronavirus- and-toward-normalcy)). Some US states relaxed their orders partially at the beginning of May and they haven't seen spikes either ([https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- usa/so...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/so-far- no-spike-in-coronavirus-in-places-reopening-us-health-secretary-says- idUSKBN22T0HN)).

We wouldn't shut down society to save just one life - that would mean that we need to just keep society shutdown even under normal (pre-COVID) conditions, since there is always some degree of risk as we go about our lives. So clearly there is a nonzero number of deaths that is acceptable, and there isn't going to be one "correct number" for everyone. We all have different values, worldviews, and risk tolerances. Additionally, vaccines are not a near term solution. And keeping society in this shutdown state for 1-2 years is likely unacceptable to most people. So we have to confront the reality of choosing guidelines that allow a responsible reopening. Discussing or advocating for that is OK and is not irresponsible. This isn't a binary choice between complete shutdown and total normalcy.

> About two weeks later, Musk tweeted that, "based on current trends," the > United States would have "probably close to zero" new COVID-19 cases by the > end of April. The prediction turned out to be wildly incorrect, but Musk > didn't acknowledge his error. That irked some of his fans, who trusted him > to get it right.

This is about the only critique from this article that I think is fair. Elon was incredibly off on this prediction, and hasn't owned up to it. But on the other hand, I also think we should acknowledge the incorrectness of experts and predictions made by sources we are told to trust. Many predicted doomsday numbers that didn't come true. Models from sources like the IHME are constantly revised, and figures have shifted wildly through these updates. The WHO was wrong about there being no human to human transmission, and about the efficacy of masks, and other aspects. So does it really make sense to be outraged at just Elon Musk when everyone else isn't being held to the same standard of perfection?</comment>


Wardian cases and the process of transporting plants - m-i-l https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51209050 <comment><AUTHOR> If you are interested in making your own terrariums and such, check out the Serpa Design youtube channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/SerpaDesign/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/SerpaDesign/videos)

You can get started with just stuff you have lying around at home and what you can find outside.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR2Lo0rOF7g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR2Lo0rOF7g)

</comment><comment><USER2> Ahh, as a hobbyist amateur Aquascaper I like articles like this.

If anyone wants to learn how to get a great planted tank with minimal maintenance. I suggest Diana Walstad's book "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium". A beginner will easily get amazing success with this method (though it doesn't last forever and a year or two later this will start to break down).

</comment><comment><USER3> 50 Things that Made the Modern Economy is one of my favorite podcasts!

For anyone who finds this article (slash podcast episode) interesting, I'd also recommend the episode on the Hollerith punch card, which is kinda relevant to the history of the computing field :)

Hollerith punch card episode page: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz2x7](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz2x7)

The article for this episode (i.e. same format as main link): [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50578234](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50578234)

<comment><USER4> I also recommend the author's other podcast "Cautionary Tales". It's very well produced, and fascinating.

[http://timharford.com/articles/cautionarytales/](http://timharford.com/articles/cautionarytales/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently read "For All the Tea in China" which talks about these and Robert Fortune a bit, it was a fun book. [https://www.amazon.com/All-Tea-China- England-Favorite/dp/014...](https://www.amazon.com/All-Tea-China-England- Favorite/dp/0143118749)

</comment><comment><USER6> >He was a fern enthusiast but had struggled to grow them in the polluted city air.

>Ward's invention...let the light in. It kept the soot and smoke out.

How bad was the air back then, was it really so bad that a plant couldn't grow? That notion seems unbelievable.

<comment><USER7> People literally used to dust soot off their garden plants -- you can see this mentioned in some books. It was not uncommon for visibility in London to be extremely poor due to soot[0]. In fact, this peaked in the 1950's due to the combination of coal burning with automobile emissions[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London)

<comment><USER8> _People literally used to dust soot off their garden plants_

We do this in China.

Other significant western plant hunters who were active in China: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rock) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Forrest_(botanist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Forrest_\(botanist\)) Many were active in China's southwestern region of Yunnan, the origin of tea and camellias.

<comment><USER6> Now that I think about it, I wiped black road dust from brakes/tires off the windowsills of my drafty street-level SF (Oak Street) apartment every week too. One of the reasons I moved. It doesn't take much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure it makes the case well, but biology and agriculture being revolutionised by a glass box has parallels.

Don't attack a field directly. Improve it by processes that help all participants.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article reminds me of James Burke's Connections series. I'm sure it's dated by now, but worth a watch if you're bored.

<comment><USER11> Surprisingly, it's not all that dated. Some insights seem prescient, and are as applicable to 2020 as they were those 42 years ago!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh. Not a TV like I expected from the title. :-)</comment>