Realtime metrics using Redis bitmaps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getspool.com/2011/11/29/fast-easy-realtime-metrics-using-redis-bitmaps/ <comment><USER2> It is very good to see this article and Redis bitmaps exploited, since it is an extremely memory efficient way to store data, and given the encoding, it is extremely fast to also fetch big amount of information this way.

I really suggest to also looking at GETRANGE and SETRANGE operations that allow to access sub-ranges of a large bitmap fetching or setting arbitrary ranges fo bits.

Probably Lua scripting in 2.6 will enable a lot more interesting things combining server side execution and bitmaps. Thanks for sharing this work.

<comment><USER3> It would be really cool if redis supported the ability to count the high bits in a string as a native command. No need to pull a 16k string down to client

Although it is another command in a growing list of them. maybe something for lua.

<comment><USER4> This is something that should probably be implemented natively, for speed. Preferably with GCC's __builtin_popcount intrinsic, if it's available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does it compare with just using sets? Usually only a small fraction of your total userbase is online any given day, especially as dead accounts accumulate... wouldn't the bitmaps be inefficiently sparse?

<comment><USER6> You can do clever things with word aligned hybrid bitmaps to heavily compress sparse bitmaps.

Though, if you are storing binary users, 700 million users take less than 90 MB of space (assuming a straight array implementation). Old days wouldn't _need_ to be kept in memory. If you want to think beyond redis, you could keep the active data in redis then flush old data to disk for later querying.

Sounds useful if your users map to a (0, Max] integer representation. Sounds complicated if you use uuids or external vendor IDs for users anywhere (you'd need an intermediate mapping table somewhere).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a quick ruby implementation:

<https://github.com/cmdrkeene/bitmap-counter>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> An honest question: what use are realtime metrics if you can't act on them in realtime? If it takes a day or more to gather enough data to make a decision and react to it with code or otherwise, then anything more than daily metrics seem like a distraction. I suppose it can be useful if you have some automated systems in place or if you're using it for alarms.

<comment><USER9> If you're pushing changes to production many times a day, you can use realtime metrics to notice if anything goes awry, and know when you should roll back. It won't give you the same nuances as an A/B test over a month, but it's a great way to do a quick double check to keep things moving quickly while avoiding disaster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do they know that user ids are contiguous?

<comment><USER11> The same way the length of a meter is known. By defining it. They are measuring visitors, they can assign any numbers they like to those.

In my (limited) use cases for redis which interfaced with external information like that I usually had a mapping table anyway, to get something like

users:nameFromExternalSource:myIncrementalId

foo:myId:ThatUsersFoo

bar:myId:ThatUsersBar

Note again that I'm no expert on redis. There might be problems with that approach that I don't know about - but for me this worked out quite well and seemed to save memory vs any foo:externalIdOrUsername:dataHere name scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Compressed bitmaps would be cool too.

<comment><USER13> Are there any cool bit level compressors?

You can take advantage of sparse bits and doing logic operations on them in compressed state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool!</comment>


Freedom to Compete Act [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/7563e7ae-ca85-423b-b3e8-b44ce3b4eb54/1DC3C59DB28D9D2D273ACEB3087742E4.the-freedom-to-compete-act.pdf <comment><USER2> Simple, straightforward, to the point, and understandable by a layman. I wish more bills could be like this.

It's not perfect. As other commenters mention, this only protects hourly employees, not salaried employees like myself (and I assume a majority of most other commenters here). But it is also a good start. It is a much more egregious pile of BS that someone vacuuming floors or flipping burgers for minimum wage is required to sign a non-compete than I am. I would love it if I was protected from non-compete agreements too, but I'll happily take Non- Compete Agreements for Sandwich Artists are Illegal BS as a stepping stone toward the ultimate goal of Non-Compete Agreements are Illegal BS.

<comment><USER3> I skimmed the document and missed that part. That's disappointing. Why bother making the distinction? What's different about salaried employees that they should be subject to non-competes but hourly workers shouldn't? I understand that lower paying jobs need protection, but I have never heard of a minimum wage worker at a fast food restaurant having to sign a non-compete. This law seems to only have an impact on skilled hourly workers who likely aren't in a different situation than salaried workers.

<comment><USER4> There are companies that value their trade secrets. If you employ an engineer for ten years and they know the ins and outs of your process and then go to work for a competitor, soon the competitor has a better product because they have all their own secrets plus yours.

In theory you could try to use an NDA, but the problem with an NDA is that if the employee goes to work for the competitor and then suddenly they have all your secrets, there is no easy way for you to actually prove that they weren't independently rediscovered by some other person at the other company, and nobody there has any incentive to tell you different. You may not even know that they now have any specific one.

The restriction is obviously unreasonable to the employee, because it prevents them from switching jobs to another that uses the skills they're trained in, but now it's politics. Who has more political power when a bill prohibiting non-competes comes before Congress?

Excluding professionals makes it so those companies no longer really care and makes it a lot easier to actually pass the bill.

<comment><USER5> But the situation is symmetric: your risk of losing secrets to your competitors is exactly balanced by your prospects of gaining secrets from your competitors. This tends to flatten the playing field and make secrets relatively less valuable, which promotes the spread of knowledge, and makes everyone better off in the long run.

<comment><USER6> All of what you said is only beneficial to the employer if the employer believes that the competitor's secrets are as valuable as the employer's own secrets. Which is almost never the case. Especially not for the largest employers. The likelihood of some startup's secrets being as valuable as Google's secrets is remote in the extreme.

<comment><USER5> No, the symmetry necessarily holds in general. It is not dependent on anyone's belief.

Now, it is true that some company's secrets will be more valuable than others, and it's also true that most companies think that their secrets are more valuable than their competitors. But because of the symmetry, most companies are simply and necessarily _wrong_ about that.

It is also true that some companies will lose money as a results of losing secrets. But society in general will be better off. Which of those is preferable is a matter of taste, of course. Some people are perfectly fine with a legal regime that enriches them (or that they think enriches them) at the expense of everyone else. But if people are making rational decisions, most people should prefer enriching society at the expense of the wealthy rather than the other way around.

<comment><USER6> > _It is also true that some companies will lose money as a results of losing > secrets..._

That's the point though, how do Google's stewards square their pottential support for losing secrets, with their fiduciary duty to numerous teacher, firefighter and police officer pension funds? That duty to the investment funds backing heaven only knows how many 401k's? Their duty to countless other pension funds and retirement accounts?

"Society will be better off in the future your honor." Is only gonna go so far.

This is part of the problem, society _might_ be better off at some undefined and uncertain point in the future. But for investors in Google, they _will_ be better off right now, and in the short term future. So we're always in this position of trying to argue an idealistic future, that never turns out the way you plan it in any case, against an optimal present.

I think as techies we have to start presenting arguments for the changes we'd like to see in the world that are a bit more practical. Not only on labor issues like non competes, but also on issues like tech's relationship to labor, tech's relationship to fundamental rights, tech's relationship to children, etc etc etc.

At present, a lot of our arguments sound a little tone deaf at best, callous at worst, and out of touch at the mean. I've said before, in my neck of the woods, if I tell people, "Amazon treats their employees like crap." They get it.

If I say, "Google can track your location with android phones so don't bring your phone to see your weed man." They get it.

I can even say, "Facebook is full of Ruskies trying to influence the election." They'll get it. They'll know what I mean and everything that entails.

But if I come at the people in my small town with, "Big Tech is what drives wealth inequity by disrupting traditional labor markets and causing data privacy issues. Which, of course, concert to cause knock on effects in the larger economy." Yeah, that's the kind of post-graduate parrot-speak that makes them look at my mother disapprovingly for raising such a pretentious ass-hat.

<comment><USER5> > That's the point though, how do Google's stewards square their pottential > support for losing secrets, with their fiduciary duty to numerous teacher, > firefighter and police officer pension funds?

They don't. It makes perfect sense for Google to oppose right-to-compete.

However...

> "Society will be better off in the future your honor."

This aphorism implies that this decision is going to be made by a judge. It isn't. It is being made by the legislature, and the legislature is supposed to reflect the will of the _people_. So the right outcome here (if everyone is acting rationally and honorably) is to enact right-to-compete _despite_ Google's objections.

The situation is no different than (to pick a very extreme example) that it was right to pass the 13th amendment despite the fact that it was vociferously opposed by a lot of people who lost a lot of money as a result.

<comment><USER7> I agree with every point you've made in this thread, but bilbo0s has a good point about the optics. The vast majority of the voters do not understand economics, do not think systemically about "the greater good", and wouldn't follow an argument as abstract as "Most companies _think_ their secrets are worth more than their competitors, but the only ones who are correct about that are giants like Google, who have every reason to push for trade-secret and non-compete agreements that restrict your labor freedoms and hamper your ability to get a better wage." There's a bunch of leaps of logic here that I believe and you believe because we understand competitive bargaining and have worked for Google, but which are completely foreign to someone who takes the first job they can get because they need money right now.

The fight for the 13th amendment was framed as "Slavery is evil. If you support slavery, you are evil too." That's the kind of moral argumentation that's simple enough that it can get voter support. There was _a lot_ of economic jockeying going on and fights between new vs. entrenched interests going on in the Civil War, but all of that was hidden from the voters and largely written out of the histories. "Google spies on you" is an effective way to convince people to vote against Google's interests; "Google is commoditizing their complements and restricting their ability to make contracts to better their bargaining position" is gibberish to the average voter.

It's an unfortunate fact of life that nearly all good decisions are made for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I wish everybody could just understand markets and systems and vote according to their enlightened best interest - but they don't, and much of the fucked-upedness of the world comes from that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > ''(3) LIMITONAPPLICABILITY.—This sub-section shall not apply with respect to > any employee described in section 13(a)(1).

That's:

| (1) any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity (including any employee employed in the capacity of academic administrative personnel or teacher in elementary or secondary schools), or in the capacity of outside salesman (as such terms are defined and delimited from time to time by regulations of the Secretary, subject to the provisions of subchapter II of chapter 5 of title 5, except that an employee of a retail or service establishment shall not be excluded from the definition of employee employed in a bona fide executive or administrative capacity because of the number of hours in his workweek which he devotes to activities not directly or closely related to the performance of executive or administrative activities, if less than 40 per centum of his hours worked in the workweek are devoted to such activities); or

I think that means that this doesn't apply to... a great number of people who really wish it did.

<comment><USER9> >or professional capacity

what does that mean legally? it seems very vague.

<comment><USER8> "Professional" as a term of art refers to architects, doctors, and lawyers. "Professional capacity" includes engineers, programmers, really, anyone you might colloquially refer to as a "professional".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While reading this, I found that "Computer Professionals" are often exempt from Minimum Wage and Minimum Hours/Overtime Pay, because of 29 usc 213(a)(17). (104th congress, HR 3448)

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house- bill/3448...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house- bill/3448/text)

Fortunately, this bill (in it's current state) does not reference that exemption, and only exempts executives, school employees including teachers, and outside salesmen.

<comment><USER8> | professional capacity (including any employee employed in the capacity of academic administrative personnel or teacher in elementary or secondary schools),

Are computer professionals not.. professionals?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The press release: [https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/rubio-i...](https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/rubio- introduces-bill-to-protect-low-wage-workers-from-non-compete-agreements)

a labor lawyer's take: [http://employeeatty.blogspot.com/2019/03/marco-rubio- introdu...](http://employeeatty.blogspot.com/2019/03/marco-rubio-introduces- anti-noncompete.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Looking at the Congress page for it, it has been introduced two and a half months ago, and hasn't seen any further action since then. Is it scheduled for a committee hearing?

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/124...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/124/all- info)

</comment><comment><USER12> Not perfect, and doesn't go far enough, but it's absolutely a big step in the right direction. Has my support.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bit off-topic, but love that the URL is just the straight up path to the file on the Windows machine.

<comment><USER14> This was the first thing I noticed. Government demonstrating its competence!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks great.

If only we hadn't foolishly allowed them to exempt us under teh fair labour standards act.

<comment><USER6> That's definitely the 'gotcha'. Gotta start somewhere though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this one is aimed at companies trying to make janitors and food service workers sign a NDA. A good step to be sure protecting some folks that don't get a lot of attention.

<comment><USER3> Non-compete. Not NDA.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, my damn error, I thought NDA was included, but not so. Non-compete for non-exempt is a good start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I get this error message every time I try to visit the US Senate website:

 _> Sorry, a potential security risk was detected in your submitted request. The Webmaster has been alerted._

</comment><comment><USER17> Thank you senator rubio

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great. Makes me think more highly of Marco Rubio, especially given how simple it is. I hope it passes, and hope it's extended to all types of employee.

</comment><comment><USER19> The PDF is beautiful. Is it made with Latex ?

</comment><comment><USER20> Woo Hoo!

</comment><comment><USER21> Rubio, a Republican, wants to decrease the power of employers by curtailing non-compete agreements?

I'll give this some serious consideration if it gets out of committee, and until that time I'm thinking this is bill is more about signaling than anything else. Still, increasing regulation on employer relations like this is a good start.

<comment><USER17> I mean republicans are generally in favor of a free market and non competes literally reduce competition

<comment><USER22> Why, the existence of noncompetes is exactly free market in action. "Competition" != free market.

<comment><USER17> No its not. The freedom to contract is nowhere to be found in the traditional libertarian view of rights to life liberty and property. In fact, libertarians (including those center libertarians in the republican party) consistently reject the ability for people to sign away their rights via contract.

You cannot claim in good faith that republicans support the 'freedom' to contract your rights away. Can you contract the rest of you labor away for a fixed sum (ie slavery)? Of course not. You have the grand ole party to thank for that too. The ethic is consistent

<comment><USER8> "You give up the right to spend 40 hours a week the way you want, instead spending them the way we want, while we give up the right to use some our money however we like and instead give it to you."

That's the employee giving up their right to the fruits of their labor and the employer giving up their property right to the monies used to compensate the employee.

<comment><USER17> And none of those things interfere with the more fundamental right to life liberty and property. Is the employer allowed to hold the employee there against his will if he changes his mind? Of course not. You cannot give up your right to leave a contract at any time. Which is why non competes are decidedly anti civil rights and thus anti libertarian and thus against the rights based factions of the rephblican party</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, in 20 minutes (2014) [video] - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2014/10/23/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-t-2.html <comment><USER3> I wish more people could have Thomas Piketty's balanced view on capitalism. Too often it is treated as some sort of game where you have to pick sides whether you are for or against capitalism.

Especially in America there seems to be a kneejerk reaction to any calls for regulations or moderations of the effects of the free market. Usually it is dismissed without further discussion with "look what happened in the east block countries!"

But I think Thomas Piketty has a very good point in his book that if you in fact favor capitalism, you ought to be open to regulation of it. The alternative is what we have seen again and again in history, inequality gets so bad that we get uprisings and revolutions. Inequality is breeding ground for radical ideas like communism. Otto von Bismarck understood that and gave Germany the beginnings for a welfare system. Not because he really cared about workers but because he understood the dangers of inequality with respect to radicalization of the poor.

Today we can see the same thing starting to play out in America. The US have now been on a path towards ever higher inequality for many years and we can see it reaching a breaking point. Politics is getting ever more radical. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would never had gotten the support they got without the economic fundamentals having shifted so much.

We already know what high inequality leads to in modern times, because we have seen it play out in South America again and again. They oscillate between one political extremist or populist after another.

I think if the US doesn't actually seriously try to reduce inequality, the US risks ending up with its own Hugo Chavez character, or alternatively a right wing authoritarian.

And if inequality doesn't cause revolutions, there seems to be a good case for it causing asset bubbles. We saw this in 1929 which market the end of a dramatic wealth inequality increase, just as 2008. I think it will happen again because the fundamental problems have not been solved.

<comment><USER4> Communism isn't some "radical" boogeyman, it's just a process to eliminate inequality. (Why should there be any inequality at all?) We don't need to be diminutive about relatively different ideas; that's unhelpful at best.

<comment> hash-set Yeah, tell that to the millions of dead left in its wake.

<comment><USER5> There have been nowhere near enough actual trials of communism to conclude anything fully. The core examples were all poorer countries with various problems, corruption… To reject communism as a concept over the atrocities of Stalin et al is as reasonable as rejecting capitalism because the U.S. was built on slavery and the genocide of first peoples.

The atrocities were real, and they did connect to economics, but to just assert that capitalism _is_ the slavery of U.S. history or that communism just _is_ gulags and bread lines is extremely short-sighted. Neither system was anything like the core principles of the economic models (which are just models, so we _should_ reject anyone who focuses only on the models and not on practical reality, but we can't treat each real-world case as the definitive case either).

<comment><USER6> Review "The Black Book of Communism" for a catalog of the death and misery from communist countries, over and over.

Voluntary communes and Kibbutzen have failed as well - none have been capable of operating without subsidy.

<comment><USER5> All you're saying is that attempts at communism have all had major problems. That's true, but it's not enough to be conclusive.

If you want to pick examples that point various ways, you can note that Cuba has corruption, lack of democracy, is an impoverished island suffering the effects of significant economic embargoes in the global system and yet still vies for having one of the best health care systems. They even a top country in providing doctors to serve abroad in troubled places!

And the Soviet Union was a horrendously corrupt place that failed in most respects to live up to communist ideals and yet still managed to compete technologically with the richest countries on the planet despite being economically far far far weaker in fundamentals. The U.S. only barely beat the Soviets in the space race etc while being massively richer. The Soviets had many orders of magnitude more losses in WWII also.

The history of Communism is one where anti-communists did everything they could to undermine any success, the trials were full of corruption and abuse, and even _still_ they had notable successes.

The kibbutzen failed not strictly because all the ideas were unworkable. They failed because they had to function economically in a larger context. None of them had wealth along the lines of successful capitalists either. Capitalists have only ever operated capably by controlling a lot of capital or getting subsidy, at least in the form of law enforcement that serves the side of capital.

We _can_ conclude that all attempts at communism so far have had serious flaws. We can also conclude that capitalism has always had serious flaws too. Anyone who takes a polarized one-sided view on this stuff can be rejected as just being dogmatic. Piketty is not one of these one-sided dogmatic people, he's actually interested in studying empirical evidence and not concluding more than the evidence can truly support.

<comment><USER6> > major problems

That's a bit of an understatement. It has a pretty much 0% success rate, for both coercive and voluntary attempts.

> capitalism has always had serious flaws too

Yes, but nothing like the communist failures, and capitalism has had incredible success stories.

> The Soviets had many orders of magnitude more losses in WWII also.

Nobody doubts the heroism and sacrifice of the Red Army in WW2. That's a whole 'nother topic, though.

> The U.S. only barely beat the Soviets in the space race etc while being > massively richer.

The USSR was able to direct massive resources at single problems, at the sacrifice at most everything else, but the US could do it with little sacrifice.

> did everything they could to undermine any success

Nobody made the communist countries perform mass slaughter.

> The kibbutzen failed not strictly because all the ideas were unworkable.

They couldn't feed themselves. No communist system has ever been able to feed itself. All have required imports from capitalist economies, or starved, or tolerated capitalist farmers.

<comment><USER5> > Nobody made the communist countries perform mass slaughter.

And _communist ideas_ also had zero to do with those countries committing mass slaughter.

Communism, even in a very flawed form, has indeed succeeded. See Cuba. The _main_ reason they would be wealthier with capitalism is because the U.S. would have proactive economic ties instead of working to isolate them. Given their isolation and inherent lack-of-wealth relatively speaking, communism there is at least in a state no reasonable person can describe as 0% successful, even if you have points of criticism.

In terms of kibbutzen, you do realize that the entire premise of self- suffiency, i.e. sustinance farming, is basically the definition of poverty, right? I mean, the whole premise that a small community can achieve for themselves in isolation a whole decent standard of living is nonsense. We acheive the greatest standards of living through widespread connection in larger groups on larger scales. Trade and all and specialization… No effort for tiny isolated communes could ever achieve the quality of life of large cosmopolitan economies, That issue isn't a strictly communist vs capitalist one.

Communism is indeed a simplistic model that is unworkable in a rigid dogmatic sense, just like anarchy or capitalism. There's no example of pure version of any of these ever existing.

Being closed to discussing the actual ideas of communism by just talking about Stalin's atrocities or tiny communes failing is a good way to just close yourself to actually engaging with the intellectual questions. Obviously, all philosophical / political principles are distinct from the complexity of real- world economic practice. We can still discuss the principles as a way to think about and explore the issues. Communist principles, as ideas, have _nothing_ to do with mass slaughter.

<comment><USER6> > kibbutzen..

..simply do not produce enough to sustain themselves. Capitalist farmers do, with a surplus they sell. All such voluntary collectives have collapsed (unless they get subsidies from the government).

> have nothing to do with mass slaughter

I strongly suggest reading "The Black Book of Communism". Every advocate of communism needs to read it, if only to prepare an answer.

You're right that nothing in the principles of communism suggest mass slaughter. But those who try to implement it time and again resort to it. The reason is fairly straightforward - people resist having all their property expropriated and being forced to work on collectives. The response is to kill them.

Again and again.

<comment><USER5> I'm not an "advocate of communism". And it's nonsense to say that capitalist farmers produce enough to feed themselves as a response to my point about internal isolation. No capitalist farmer with the same amount of resources and wealth as a kibbutz would be all that productive without utilizing the benefits of the rest of our complex market economy and what that provides to them. In other words, it's the larger context that is the factor, not the internal structure of the farm. The kibbutzen were only communist in an internal way, not living in a communist world.

"having all their property expropriated and being forced to work on collectives" is also not a principle of communism. Forced labor is not a communist value.

<comment><USER6> > nonsense

In simple terms, capitalist farmers produce a surplus, kibbutz farmers produce a deficit. Kibbutzen operate within a market economy and have all the resources of it that are available to the capitalist farmer - they still can't make a go of it.

> not a principle of communism.

Collective ownership of the means of production means confiscating it.

> Forced labor

When the collective decides that certain work must be done, and with no market forces, that means assigning people to the jobs. I.e. forced labor.

<comment><USER5> Anyone who views any of these ideas with a rigid dogma is misguided. The broad scope of varied ideas that fall under the concepts of communism do not exclude the concept of markets. Markets are extremely valuable.

If you wanted to say that there are major fundamental problems with having no markets, I'd agree completely. Communism is not a set of ideas necessarily anti-market.

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

Or, to be pragmatic, if we agreed for this exchange that "communism" meant precisely an economic structure without markets, then I'd agree that's simply unworkable. All of my points in this thread rely on my assumption that the term "communism" refers to a wider scope of ideas and models, some of which have _some_ merit but which nobody ever should dogmatically advocate (nor should they dogmatically reject as being synonymous with Lenin/Stalin/Mao).

<comment><USER7> To the best of my understanding, market socialism is just worker coops operating within a traditional market economy. That would mean it's not an actual political ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the interest of giving the fuller discussion:

Picketty's book has been out for a while now. It is good economics. It deserves rightful praise, and scrutiny.

Acemoglu and Robinson's answer[1] is also good economics. Digestible podcast form here [2]. It purports that Picketty's "r>g" model is flawed. It also deserves a reading.

All of this is part of a larger discussion, which C21 started. r > g doesn't seem to explain nearly as much as Picketty presents in the book, but that doesn't mean his larger idea is fundamentally invalid, or that he didn't introduce something valuable.

[1] [http://economics.mit.edu/files/10422](http://economics.mit.edu/files/10422) [2] [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/11/daron_acemoglu.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/11/daron_acemoglu.html)

<comment><USER9> One thing that always puzzles me about r > g is that it's comparing a first derivative to a second derivative. How can this be meaningful?

To explain further, r is return on investment, which approximately means rate of growth of wealth of capital. That is, it is a the first derivative of a stock, or equivalently a flow. g is the rate of growth of income, where income itself is a flow. So it's the second derivative of a stock. How does it even make sense to compare these two quantities when they don't have the same units?

<comment><USER10> > One thing that always puzzles me about r > g is that it's comparing a first > derivative to a second derivative. How can this be meaningful?

It's not. It's Piketty trolling the economics field, which has become overly math-y, and try too hard to distil complex interactions into basic formulae.

It's basically his way of saying that capital's share of income is growing faster than labour's share of income, or that the return (r) on capital is outpacing the return on labour, which is represented by the growth rate (g) of the economy.

In other words, it's not a real mathematical formula. It's an idea, a basic premise, merely represented by a 'formula' because hey, it's how every economist does it nowadays, right?

<comment><USER9> r isn't the growth rate of capital's share of income though.

r represent the return on capital (which is proportional to capital's share of income), not the growth rate of the return on capital, or the growth rate of capital's (share of) income.

On the other hand, g isn't the return on labor, or labor's share of income. It's (approximately) the _growth rate_ of the return on labor.

Would you rather have $100 and then get 200% of it every year (r = 200%) or get an amount that increases at 100% every year (g = 100%) starting with $1? With the second option you'll have twice as much money in just 11 years. So in this picture income eventually wins, even though r > g. It's not just "not a formula" it is total nonsense. It doesn't make sense to compare a growth rate of an amount to a growth rate of an annual increase!

<comment><USER10> In Piketty's model, r is return on capital. So that means it's the return on things like equities (and btw, interest is compounding on investments, don't know why you represented otherwise), real estate (Piketty is not overly find of the role of rentiers/landlords in the economy), machinery and so on. So the money accrued by the owners of wealth and machinery that is, essentially passive income, or income generated by capital, is r.

g is the growth of the economy. We calculate it as GDP, what he's interested in is basically people's combined incomes and economic activity that goes with it.

The premise that r > g is saying that people who have wealth, their return on that wealth will always be higher than the growth of the economy. If the economy grows 1%, the return on capital (remember it's all capital in the economic sense) will be more than 1%. Now this isn't true for all years in all places, but it has been shown to be true in the long run, which is how wealth is accrued quicker by those who already have wealth, and how inequality increases. Keep in mind Piketty's book is a massive tome.

And btw, comparing a rate that's calculated as %/year to another calculated as %/year is mathematically correct.

Your example is nonsense btw, it almost seems like you've confused r with g, because interest certainly compounds with capital, whereas with income, while you'll get increases over time, it generally isn't of the same magnitude and relates to labour, of which you have a finite amount.

<comment><USER9> I haven't confused r with g. I think you may not have thought through what these quantities represent. r is the return on capital. An asset worth A returns A*r per year. This says nothing about wether A increases or decreases. You can use your capital income to buy more capital assets. But you can also use labor income to buy more capital assets. Basically the argument only works if you assume all capital income is saved, but no labor income is saved. But then the savings rate is doing all the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wonderful talk. One thing he called for was a wealth tax, which is something that makes complete sense but is going to be very unpopular. On the otherhand, he also calls for progressive income taxes (something that is reported by the media and an easier pill to swallow) - in my country, Canada, progressive income taxes are not the answer IMHO.

We didn't have as much inequality for education (i.e. lots of decent Universities, not terribly expensive). The problem is wealth in the form of housing has exploded for a large fraction of the population (typically older people) and has left young people (well, anybody without a house) in the dust. In major cities like Toronto and Vancouver, average detached houses cost well over a million bucks. This is also happening because of bone-headed environmental policies (I'm all for the environment, I just don't understand why people without homes are punished for having a green belt while people with homes are rewarded). Our current PM (I'm a fan) has done many good things but he doesn't get this. We had something called the child tax credit, which families with children would get unconditionally - this became something you'd get based on income. Now, young people who are desperately saving for downpayments are hampered even more ... buying a home is just out of reach. In my humble opinion, a wealth tax is the way to go and young people should make their voices heard to our representatives.

In summary, people need to understand the difference between income inequality and wealth inequality. I argue the problem is NOT income inequality - it is wealth differences.

<comment><USER12> I'm tempted to blame ultra-loose monetary policy, but I'm not so sure. I live in the Bay Area where house prices are also out of control, but I'm not sure why we focus on prices (rather than monthly debt payments) since what, 90% of the market is payment buyers?

In any case, I do believe the current interest rate environment has distributional consequences that haven't been well-studied. It seems the biggest beneficiaries of this environment will be people with lots of debt- financed assets who manage to sell for high nominal prices. On the other hand, a lot of people think rates aren't coming down any time soon (check the yield curve on US treasuries, the 30-year rate is like 3.4%) so maybe this will be a one-time shock where people who took on a ton of debt ca. 2008 will reap big one-time profits as cheaply-acquired assets realize big capital gains.

In any case, I think it's naive to assume holding rates so low, for so long, doesn't have major wealth transfer effects.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. The question is what does a young person do? Take on an asset that is known to be overvalued or wait for the rate climate to change.

As a data point, condos in Toronto (condos in Toronto are generally tiny and not the most desirable place to raise 2 kids) appreciated by 9-10% this year despite continuous bubble talk by various levels of govt. You and I both know this will not stop until rates rise; and they won't - at least in canada - because of a significant problems in the oil sector of our economy. Is the right thing to do to buy into this "ponzi" scheme and try to time the exit? Or continue to hold the course of staying out of it and waiting for rates to rise. I have rented since 2008 when I graduated and I'm tired of shoveling my money into the fire :'(

<comment><USER13> Doesn't logic on trying to time the market apply here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Serious question: How much more information do you typically retain by reading all 696 pages, versus watching a 20 minute summary?

The linked webpage talks about that, saying that it needed to be condensed into a TED talk because the book scared of many people (myself included).

But for all the prodigious evidence, how much do you really remember? Does any of it come up in conversation at a dinner party?

> Piketty predicted (correctly) [that it] ... would attract vicious assaults > from the mainstream of economic thought.

Ah, so is this more of an academic thing. Not just for the layperson, but for the economist. Like a dissertation that needs to be backed up with a ton of evidence and references. Ok, I think I answered my own question. I also just changed my own attitude towards reading books like this. It's not entertainment, it's knowledge.

<comment><USER15> Reading the whole thing is more in the entertainment realm. He advises some things that aren't acceptable in the US like government control of CEO salaries, but also some things that aren't acceptable anywhere, like confiscatory taxes. I.e. he states that there wouldn't be government benefit to taxing the super rich so heavily they are no longer rich because there are too few of them to contribute meaningfully to large state projects, but he still states they should have confiscatory (his term) taxes applied to them just to remove their wealth so that there is less income inequality.

When people talk about the book or summarize they often stick to the more factual stuff, like the fact that income equality is real and growing, but they often skip over the other parts that no one would actually agree with like the above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Suppose r > g as Picketty claims. What would be the implications? One I could think of is that rather than investing in human labor (e.g. education), it would make more sense to invest in capital (e.g. stock market) since that would yield you higher returns. Also, all the talk about wealth inequality uses percentages like the top 10%. However, the top 10% is not stable. In fact, the turnover is very high, much higher than it has been in the past. For instance:

> Over the past 30 years, the origin of the wealth of the richest people in > the United States has shifted away from old, inherited money. Our new > metric, the self-made scores developed for the Forbes 400, shows that > increasingly we find self-made billionaires among the ranks of the richest > people in the country. This has accompanied the incredible increase in > wealth of the members of the Forbes 400, which has jumped 1,832% times since > 1984, when the total net worth of our list was $125 billion, compared with > $2.29 trillion today [0]

And just a casual look through the richest lists, you don't see a lot of old money. Most are first generation wealth.

So my question is, how is it possible that there is high turnover in the wealthiest while wealth inequality is always much higher than income inequality as Picketty claims? When Bill Gates generated great wealth by founding Microsoft, was that considered income or capital appreciation? I think it would be capital appreciation since he sold stock and the stock appreciated. But is this really "capital" in the sense that its passive investment like a money printing machine that was passed down generation to generation? Or if his wealth would be considered income, then how is wealth inequality always so much higher than income inequality considering the richest Americans created their wealth in a similar means to Gates?

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-a...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there- are-more-self-made-billionaires-in-the-forbes-400-than-ever- before/#21c2355ae0a5)

<comment><USER8> r > g doesn't actually explain that much in terms of wealth inequality. See Acemoglu and Robinson paper in my other reply.

There is evidence that intergenerational mobility is going down, but not so much at the tippy top of the ladder. More on the "if you are born from lower class parents, you are likely to be lower class at 40" side.

Early childhood education is shown to help with the lower rungs of the ladder; most of the damage in a child's noncognitive skills is done before the age of 4 by bad environment (absentee parents, stressed parents, etc.) This lack of noncognitive skills effects outcomes everywhere starting with educational achievement.

I am not as well read in the mobility between the middle and upper classes, so I won't comment there.

<comment><USER16> Right, wealthy parents are able to provide more opportunities for their offspring. But hasn't that always been true? I imagine the education available to the least fortunate today is much better than the education available to someone in the lower class from 100 years ago. Capitalism has allowed for better high end services, like better teachers and tutors, but overall information and knowledge has been democratized. There is no secret math or science you learn for the right price.

The problem I see is that when we talk about social mobility, we always talk about relative classes, in which case there will always be 1/5th of the population in the bottom fifth. In terms of absolute wealth, my experience is that everyone, more or less, is better off from generation to generation, at least in material terms.

<comment><USER8> > my experience is that everyone, more or less, is better off from generation > to generation, at least in material terms.

That is correct. Even when people make claims like "middle class income hasn't grown in the last xyz years" they're basing it on statistical sleights of hand, see [1].

> The problem I see is that when we talk about social mobility, we always talk > about relative classes, in which case there will always be 1/5th of the > population in the bottom fifth.

Right, but the question is more about opportunity. Like if you created a Markov transition model, what are the probabilities of going [1/5]->[2/5] (or [3/5], etc.)

> Right, wealthy parents are able to provide more opportunities for their > offspring. But hasn't that always been true?

Sure. But the point is that we aspire for our society to be meritocratic. That is we'd like it to be better to be born smart than rich. Of course that's never been the case, but we want to isolate the "why".

It's not necessarily even about opportunities. If you make college free, for example, it ends up being a subsidy on the children of the tiers [4/5] and [5/5] (playing loose with facts here) because, even if you isolate parent's wealth they __still__ end up in college more often.

Things that are difficult to measure (like motivation and noncognitive skills) are built at a young age, and a good environment is needed to foster that.

> I imagine the education available to the least fortunate today is much > better than the education available to someone in the lower class from 100 > years ago

I know it's been the case in Canada [2], I've been told it's not in the US, but I'm unsure it's really the case (turns out you need fairly sophisticated statistical models to measure it properly).

[2] [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00181-009-0275-9](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00181-009-0275-9)

[1] [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the- region/where...](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where- has-all-the-income-gone)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the US culture of exceptionalism puts individuals in 2 simple buckets, winners and losers. I think everyone wants to be a winner and then not improve the overall system but to look down on the 'losers' and signal 'success' status.

The idea that they won't be able to validate themselves and their 'specialness' in this way makes them subservient to the status-quo, vulnerable to hubris and immune to the problems of inequality. Do we have a social identity because we seem to predominatly seek validation and identity from our work.

This in group out group is an integral part of US culture and this base survival of the fittest 'superman' ideology is inherent in a frontier type economy exploiting new resources.

The system is fine tuned to exploitation but what happens when there are no resources to exploit. The US problem goes way beyond mere capitalism and communism. At some point you would need to build a society that values people independently of their work, success or money or you run the risk of creating a modern exploitative unfeeling dystopia.

A lot of these discussions especially here are marked by a distinct lack of emphathy, dehumanization and blame the victims mentality that a quick reading of the evolution of political, social and economic systems from feudalism till now will quickly dispel. Power concentrates itself.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thomas Piketty is not without major critics so here are some. Short pieces: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL90pISm7Y8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL90pISm7Y8) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqIGnPw3Qkg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqIGnPw3Qkg) [https://mises.org/library/thomas-piketty-inequality-and- capi...](https://mises.org/library/thomas-piketty-inequality-and-capital) Longer scholarly piece: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2543012](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2543012)

</comment><comment><USER19> Now we just need a 20 minutes version of Marx's Capital.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a huge fan of Piketty, and have been slogging through his terrific (but long) book and it's change my perception on a lot of things.

I don't want to challenge capitalism - competition drives innovation, and the need to survive and to make a better life for oneself is at the core of that. However, we need to admit that not all people are driven by this, and in our world (at least in the United States) it's not about survival in terms of life and death and hasn't been for some time.

The people on our streets are not there because they deserve to be, neither are many of the people in the boardrooms. Today, there's a disparity between the have and have nots and it has less to do with capitalism than the reality of growth which Piketty outlines really well in his book that's definitely changed the way that I look at it. It's hard to see value in supporting the status quo when it's only going to return 1-2% year after year - <USER2> after an excessively long period of unprecedented growth due to the devastation and rebuilding through the 20th century. However, this results in a lot of the wrong things being valued in my opinion.

I feel like we're at a pivotal point in human history. We're at income disparity levels second only to countries scourged by ISIS, we're at wealth concentrations comparable to Europe pre-world war one. Marginal income increases have little to do with marginal productivity increases of either companies or employees. I feel like the fundamental definition of value needs to be re-evaluated.

I really think that the nature of capital/wealth have really changed. When cost of living dominates anyone's ability to be a productive member of society, that's when we should reconsider how to go about either distribution of wealth that's leading to that (that hardly ever works) or instead how we quantify and define wealth. Shifting this balance in favor of what we as a society value, I think is the best way to start to really change things.

<comment> hash-set All that you said is right--we have allowed a monster to grow. And killing that monster is going to require sacrifice now. It never comes any other way.

<comment><USER20> yes - either we need to find a new "source of value" or some form of tear down needs to take place. I think historically tear downs have been at a core of human growth and progress, so I think that will happen before people are forced to change their minds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> To those who desperately want free markets proven inherently unjust, Piketty is a prophet. But he's a false prophet. He's pretty much a hack of a social scientist.

"We find evidence of pervasive errors of historical fact, opaque methodological choices, and the cherry-picking of sources to construct favorable patterns from ambiguous data." [1]

[1] [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2543012](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2543012)

</comment><comment><USER22> Alternative view on r > g

[http://www.notesonthenextbust.com/2015/06/why-was-r- greater-...](http://www.notesonthenextbust.com/2015/06/why-was-r-greater-than- g-will-it.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER23> what is the best open source software for doing oeconomic simulations?

<comment><USER24> I don't think this is what Piketty used, but I would look at Minsky: [http://www.ideaeconomics.org/minsky/](http://www.ideaeconomics.org/minsky/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is perfect. That book Capital is like 700 pages.

<comment><USER8> The fact that the book is a best seller when its intended audience is really people with a graduate education in economics tells me that most people bought is as a signal of smartness (or as an honest effort to inform oneself, but without actually slogging through the book)

<comment><USER26> I feel like there must have been some string pulling that made this book so popular.

<comment><USER8> It just came out at an appropriate time; a year after Occupy Wall Street, etc. Inequality and inter-generational mobility is clearly on people's minds these days.

Similar story happened with Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book. It's not a particularly good book -- it's rambling, hand wavy, and only ever presents anecdotal evidence as support for its claims. But the book came out at an appropriate time (right before the financial crisis) so it was embraced.

<comment> hash-set We need a complete top-to-bottom restructuring of our Federal Government--end welfare, end the giant socialist military system hiding within our economy. We need to audit the Fed and then probably close it down or somehow come up with sound money. We need to prosecute every banker and every entity involved in the 2008 financial crisis.

That would solve 90% of what ails us. Getting the EPA off people's backs and back to some level of sanity would help a ton, too.

<comment><USER27> > (...some rant...) That would solve 90% of what ails us.

Somehow this reminds me of [https://xkcd.com/1217/](https://xkcd.com/1217/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My problem with this book is that he doesn't deal at all with the gold standard. During the timeline of his survey, the currencies were almost all gold-backed and by the end, are all fiat currencies. He completely ignores it, yet at the least he should have explained why it was not relevant.

<comment><USER29> This is a sort of facile answer, since there are a lot of details to prove, but in short, because monetary policy _over the long run_ should not have any effect on the real rate of return _r_ and economy-wide growth rate _g_ , which is what the book's argument hinges on.

The two big differences between the gold-backed system before the 70s and afterwards are:

\- We picked fixed pegs to gold, meaning exchange rates were fixed and not floating as they are now

\- Fixed exchange rates + free flow of capital is incompatible with being able to exercise monetary policy (banks can't print money since it needs to backed by gold) [1]

But it doesn't matter whether central banks exercise monetary policy or not!

Let's say a central bank today decides to print money. In the short run, that stimulates the economy, but in the long run it will lead to large rises in both nominal rates and inflation expectations, which cancel out (since real return = nominal return - inflation). The long run real rate of return is unaffected, as is the GDP growth rate.[2]

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

[2] [http://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/us- monetary...](http://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/us-monetary- policy-introduction/real-interest-rates-economy/)

<comment><USER11> Some people believe central banks are essentially printing money right now (since 2008, so for nearly a decade). Why has inflation not picked up?

<comment><USER29> 'Long run' in economist-speak means multiple decades, generally.

But to answer your question directly, it's because the financial crisis and the massive deleveraging it caused effectively sucked a lot of money from the world economies. In the absence of QE we would've seen a painful, grinding deflation like Japan went through during the 90s.

Central banks can print money to increase the monetary base, but that's directly offset by 1) the large destruction of financial value during the crisis and 2) the fact that people are just taking that money and sitting on it. The net effect is less leverage in the system and not much effective change in liquidity.

Note that less leverage is a good thing in this case -- it makes banks less likely to go bankrupt, and makes a repeat of the '08 crisis much less likely.

[http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022615/why- di...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022615/why-didnt- quantitative-easing-lead-hyperinflation.asp)

<comment><USER30> On that topic (contemporary monetary policy), I've found "the end of alchemy" by Mervyn King fairly interesting and accessible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Compelling counter-evidence to Picketty's C21:

[https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/a-26-year-old-mit- gra...](https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/a-26-year-old-mit-graduate-is- turning-heads-over-his-theory-that-income-inequality-is- actually-2a3b423e0c#.cdpw0fizt)

<comment><USER31> Why would it contradict Piketty's theory? Housing is capital.

This post seems to respond to the theory that wealth inequality is caused by the rise of automation. That has nothing to do with Piketty's theory.

<comment><USER32> Capital and land are different: you can make more capital to compete against existing capital, you can't really make more land.

<comment><USER31> Capital is used as a synonym of wealth. It's a book about wealth inequality.

The book was originally written in French, and land is considered as "capital foncier". Maybe this meaning got lost in translation, but I think "capital" also has the "wealth" meaning in English.

Nevertheless, the point I was making still holds. The Medium post isn't a refutation of Piketty's theory.

<comment><USER32> Yes, that confusion is a decent enough explanation. The important thing I want to highlight, is that as factors of production go, increasing returns to land have different policy implications than increasing return to capital:

A general wealth tax might be required if capital was actually the problem; with all the economic inefficiency that implies. I don't know for sure.

But increasing returns to land have a simple solution: a land value tax, with no negative impacts on economic activity, since supply of land is perfectly inelastic, since land is basically fixed in abundance.

(To forestall a common argument: that the Dutch are converting some of their land from below the sea level to above sea level doesn't change matters.)

We are fortunate to live in a world where Georgism applies, ie taxation to finance a welfare state doesn't have to impact the economy at all.

<comment><USER31> I'm sold to Henry George's land value tax idea, if we were to create a nation. But we aren't.

In our current situation, I would worry that taxing only the wealth "stored" in land ownership would create a massive economical crisis as capital tries to escape this new tax.

A broader wealth tax base, with a slightly higher rate for land, is a more prudent approach.

<comment><USER32> The Australian capital territories are currently phasing in a broader land taxt and phasing out stamp duty in exchange. Not flight of capital has happened so far, and no crisis either.

And how is land supposed to flee? You can't take soil with you.

Wouldn't a broader wealth tax that applies to movable capital as well lead to that very moveable capital fleeing? (As an example, I am currently in the process of optimizing my own capital gains taxes, by eg choosing the country I hold my assets in carefully.)

<comment><USER31> I was more talking about a fall of real estate valuations as you introduce a significant land value tax. And it must be significant to cancel the impact of land value on the rise of inequality.

<comment><USER32> Phase it in gradually.

Land prizes don't actually fall in practice with introduction of land value tax, if it goes hand in hand with elimination of other taxes.

In effect, shifting the tax base from labour and capital to land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> And threads like this is why I ignore HN for non tech-related stuff.

</comment><comment><USER34> This article and video are from 2014: shouldn't the post title reflect that?</comment>


Ask HN: Python or Go for future projects? - <AUTHOR> I know this is and will be for a long time a very controversial question with a million arguments on both sides of the table; but: For web projects going forward, is it more advantageous to go the python or Golang route these days? If you could provide some main pros and cons of each and a final personal conclusion to your responses, I would be very grateful to learn your true thoughts on this highly debatable query. <comment><USER2> This is entirely too generic to answer in a meaningful way, and to do so requires a lot of time on our side, especially compared to how little time it took for you to pose the question.

Similar questions have been asked here on HN, like [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9972275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9972275) . There seems to be nothing to add to those already-existing comments.</comment>


Offline/online conversion: Managing content leads discovered offline - <AUTHOR> http://timetogetstarted.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/offline-to-online-conversion-fail/

<comment><USER2> Sadly, he has no solutions to the problem, only describing it.

QR codes are rumoured to be a popular way to pick up digital tags using your cellphone, though not popular in my part of the world: <http://code.google.com/apis/chart/types.html#qrcodes>

I've also had some ideas for what TV could become, given a more intelligent video player that allow you to "bookmark" a time position, and then being able to access these bookmarks from your computer, allowing you to search online for things in the scene around that time position.

That could also replace interrupting ads that people cut out in their torrent copies anyway.

Wait... should I have shut up and started a company doing this instead?

</comment><comment><USER3> For sure.

We tried putting flyers for our website all over campuses in the Boston area.

We also setup tables and had Ferrero Rocher chocolates with our cards and url stock onto them.

The conversion rate from posters was zero. The conversion rate from the chocolates+cards was about 10%, which is surprisingly high. The chocolate+cards were at an MIT fair though, so these kids might be over wired.</comment>


When antibiotics turn toxic - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03267-5 <comment><USER3> I worked all my life to attend my dream music school, and once there things went even better than expected. Big things were happening, and bigger things were on the horizon.

I took one dose of Cipro and developed permanent tendinosis. My career was ruined. On top of the tendon damage, my nerves were on fire for about three years, and I went from being extremely mentally sharp to pretty foggy with trouble concentrating or multitasking. Though I can't prove the extent of its reach, I went from being an extremely healthy person to someone plagued by seemingly mysterious health issues -- many ususally found in people twice my age or more -- for years, and my best guess to this day is that damn drug.

Cipro robbed me of my career, my identity, and my 20s. I've never quite fully recovered or found a job I loved as much/was as good at as playing guitar.

Fuck Cipro.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry that was your experience, but that's just one side. 4 doctors told me to take it less than a month ago.

Cipro saved my life.

My only side-effect is that it left me with not being able to eat anything heavy. I can only digest something like Soylent now, so happy that Soylent is a thing otherwise life would suck.

<comment><USER5> And, unfortunately, both results are in the expected spectrum. They may even be at the same time. The list of side effects on the medications I have to take is longer than my arm written in a small font and I hope every day that I don't start to get any of them. I still take the medications, because when I don't do it my life gets bad pretty fast, but the thought always lingers "what if ..?"

<comment><USER6> The list of side effects is quite long because they write anything on there.

My Ibuprofen bypackage lists "severe intestinal bleeding, shock, cardiac arrest and coma" at the bottom "less than 1 in 10 million" (IIRC that was the category).

There is a youtube channel that details some of these mishaps and a recent episode detailed someone who took anti-depressants, which lead to being unable to sleep and that person taking sleep drugs in response. Which eventually cause her colon to explode because the drugs in conjunction stopped almost all stomach movement (She survived but her colon was removed due to extensive necrosis).

Medicine/Drugs is always a risk game. There is always a chance that a simple appendectomy goes sour and you die on the operating table. Or that a vaccination leads to a fatal infection at the puncture site. Usually medical professionals try to play it safe and the actual risk for any individual is very low or as low as it can safely be made.

If it goes sour, it can go sour really fast, which is why IMO it's important that you speak with a professional instead of self-medicating for anything beyond cough drops and headache pills atleast once to ask if you can safely take it (even if they disagree that taking is necessary), especially when you already take other medication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They gave me ciprofloxacin for about 4 days without knowing after surgery. Every day in, my ADHD symptoms got worse, my psych medication was less effective and my pain levels increased to a point I noted down 10/10 in my notebook + that page looks like I am a mad lady having a total breakdown. One and a half day later, after I got switched to another class of antibiotics my pain levels dropped to 3-4/10 and I could focus better. This happened suddenly, like someone flipped a switch in my head.

On an earlier occasion I was making detailed suicide plans the second week in on ciprofloxacin, which resolved itself shortly after discontinuation.

It has not caused permanent damage to me but this I have to list it as "allergy" for doctors not to prescribe it to me. I had problems doctors not believing the mental issues that this antibiotic cause.

</comment><comment><USER8> I suffered tendon damage and other side effects after taking Cipro.

Believe me, the reports of side effects are _real_.

It took me about 2 years to recover, and probably only because I had a mild case.

God help those pour souls who have a severe case.

To this day if I go back and read the 'floxie' forums it makes me feel blue for the rest of the whole day.

For every person that recovers, it seems like two new cases appear on the forums.

Also, there are many parallels between FQ toxicity and so called 'Gulf War Syndrome'. The soldiers were ordered to take the stuff for months on end to protect against Anthrax attacks.

</comment><comment><USER9> I had a single pill of levofloxin about three years ago (for pneumonia). I woke up the next day, barely able to walk, with mass tendonopathy (tendon loss) in my arms and legs. I did the research and found out the dangers immediately, but one pill was enough to cause massive damage for me. My recovery took about ~2 years and was slow and challenging, but I'm now part of a facebook group where I see I'm one of the lucky ones. Many people have horrible symptoms and aren't recovering years out. New people join daily.

<comment><USER10> The most worrying part is probably that they gave you a full pill; it seems that something so likely to fail should be given as a microdose to check if its well tolerated by the patient.

<comment><USER9> In the future, I hope there's a blood test to check for susceptibility... There is already talk of a gene that many people who get fluoroquinolone toxicity have in common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to read these stories and realize how different each person's biology is. I took Cipro every day for an entire year and I had no ill effects except in the summer I got a very bad sun burn. Reading these other stories, and considering my own good luck, makes me think we need better tests to see if people have any sensitivity to these drugs, before they take large amounts.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was recently prescribed levofloxacin. Within 12 hours, I started having intermittent pins and needles sensations. Rather than soldier through it, I thankfully looked up the symptoms and discovered what terrible damage fluoroquinolones can do. I got off of those antibiotics immediately, and I'm paying close attention for any delayed symptoms. Thankfully the peripheral neuropathy has gone.

When prescribed, I was given no warnings. Not even a pamphlet with tiny print. When I returned to the pharmacists with my complaints and research, they were literally Googling it--they had no idea about the FDA warnings.

<comment><USER13> > When prescribed, I was given no warnings. Not even a pamphlet with tiny > print.

That's malpractice by your pharmacist. In my state they are required to give you the "label" (that handout) and discuss the drug with you if you haven't been prescribed it before.

> When I returned to the pharmacists with my complaints and research, they > were literally Googling it--they had no idea about the FDA warnings.

This is even _more shocking._ If you're not exaggerating, you really should call the pharmaceutical licensing agency and the attorney general's office (who will send to the right agency for your state). Your pharmacy has unqualified people who are putting lives at risk. If they don't even know these basics who knows what other errors they are making?

I am not kidding about calling the authorities. I don't like the "self- righteous complainers" but this is a genuine public health risk.

FWIW I studied for a pharmaceutical license (but thankfully didn't have to take it as it became obvious to all of us that we shouldn't cut that corner and instead should hire an in-house pharmacist experienced with drug development)

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately I was vacationing in Hong Kong when all of this happened, and I suspect the laws there are much looser or non-existent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Due to a toxic reaction I'm advised to avoid rulide class antibiotics. When I mention this to medical people they often frown, once they've gone into the web equivalent of the PDR. They seem to take longer to find something to use.

My take-away from this, is that once you know you can't take a family of antibiotics you've "walked off the reservation" for standard treatment guidelines and made their job harder in ways which can potentially go to equally bad outcomes for you. Do they have a competent alternative? Whats the implications of moving up the drug "defcon" chart to something stronger?

Its not win-win to know you can't take a drug, its possibly lose-lose.

Not that there is an alternative. I'm just saying, that empowerment with knowledge you can't take eg Cipro has a consequence bigger than just "don't take Cipro"

</comment><comment><USER15> I won't take _any_ fluoroquinolone antibiotics. I had terrifying mental effects after one dose (not one course, one _pill_ ) of Avelox (Moxifloxacin). Fortunately I had no permanent effects. I had a similar, but less severe, reaction to Cipro.

Some time later I rejected a prescription of Levofloxacin, and asked my physician for Doxycycline, which I tolerate well. I discussed it with my pharmacist and she agreed with my decision. She had taken Levofloxacin for a few days three years earlier and it gave her permanent (so far) neuropathy in hip and leg, and balance problems.

This 2016 posting includes discussion of Cipro and other drugs in this class:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13273770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13273770)

Here are some relevant articles:

Fluoroquinolone-Induced Serious, Persistent, Multisymptom Adverse Effects. _BMJ Case Reports_ , 2015:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600819/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600819/)

Levofloxacin-Induced Acute Psychosis. _Indian Journal of Psychiatry_ , 2008:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745871/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745871/)

American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) warning:

[https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the- public/20160727fluor...](https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the- public/20160727fluoroquinolones.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I took levofloxacin for a week about two years ago, for a very annoying infection that had lasted for months. The infection just disappeared within one or two days, and I didn't get any side effects. Writing this here just to add some "negative" report- I wonder how many of the hundreds who are reading this thread took a fluoroquinolone in the past and simply have nothing bad to report. Still, to be clear, I wouldn't take it again, but the probabilities of getting serious damage are probably rather low.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was given cipro 7 years ago at a hospital...instant terrible allergic reaction, rash, flashing lights in eyes and tinnitus.

I was released from the hospital the day after. Nothing reported to the FDA, barely a mention of a reaction in the paperwork. I was too young to pursue any legal action.

Then over the course of 6 months my health deteriorated. Insomnia, joints started to click, got floaters in my vision. Then clicking turned into joint pain. Also, got nerve buzzing, frequent headaches, IBS, frequent heartburn. There was a time when I could not walk for weeks. Doctors would simply give up and give very little help just pain meds. Mayo clinic diagnosed my tendon issues as tendon overuse because I was athletic prior.....

I work now and can push myself to do many things. I manage the issues quite well and I would say it is a bit better than 7 years ago. However, fuck the medical community, I swear I have seen close to 100 doctors over the course of the last few years from Mayo, Rush, Northwestern and more and only two doctors agreed that it could be Cipro. One doctor refused to note it in my paperwork, and suggested to wait it out as it should get better. Later I found out he is an expert witness for pharma....

As someone that has researched problems since I was little.....I just cannot accept that people with a PhD can be that fucking terrible at typing "cipro tendon" into google search bar and reading studies, stories, and the black label. Or doctors are too much in debt and worry about the risk of going against the medical community. I don't know. The system is simply broken, these issues are under reported as symptoms can show up to 12 months after last dose. Doctors don't report shit and won't even ask if you took fqs.

Interesting fact is that many UTIs are treated with fluoroquinolones. 90% of people diagnosed with fibromyalgia( I have received this diagnosis a few times) are women. They also get diagnosed with UTIs a lot more than men.

</comment><comment><USER18> Be aware that not having a reaction the first time(s) you take fluoroquinolones is no guarantee that it won't happen later.

I had had several exposures to levofloxacin (a very bad ear infection) and ciprofloxacin (post-surgery prophylaxis) several years apart and was fine. A few months after that latter exposure, I took one dose of levofloxacin for an apparent infection, and within less than a day I started experiencing pain in one and then the other ankle. It was very painful to walk for about a month, my ankles were creaky and sore, and there was transitory soreness in my wrists as well. The acute pain subsided after that month but it took about five months total before my ankles were completely pain-free.

Don't use these antibiotics except to treat something that will kill you otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER19> This was a study that caught my attention recently:

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article- abstrac...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article- abstract/2689031)

Cipro greatly increased the rate of aortic aneurysm/dissection in mice when they were challenged with high blood pressure. The examination goes into detail about the reasons. Essentially the drug both inhibits connective tissue repair and starts degrading it. So the black box warning is about tendons, but there's connective tissue all over the body (like in the aorta). There's probably a subset of individuals more genetically susceptible to the disruption, but it looks like this could worsen lots of latent issues in just about anyone.

</comment><comment><USER20> this article isn't about antibiotics, it is about a specific class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. This overly broad simplification, it's like saying all cars are bad because one manufacturer's specific line of cars is prone to a failure. That doesn't mean we stop driving all cars. We address that specific manufacture and specific line of cars.

<comment><USER21> The article didn't focus solely on quins.

An example of a different class: "Researchers have shown, for example, that aminoglycoside antibiotics can cause deafness by damaging mitochondria in the hair cells of the ear."

More general statement: "They reported that antibiotics in several classes triggered oxidative stress — a build-up of reactive, oxygen-containing molecules — in mitochondria, inhibiting their function across a range of mammalian cells, as well as in mice."

I interpreted the article as saying that quins are the most obvious example of antibiotics causing harm, but one example for where they cause harm (mitochondria) is a problem shared by other antibiotics. Unfortunately there isn't a test for evaluating mitochondrial damage in the body. Since we can't test, we don't know the real extent of damage done by any antibiotic to human cells. More research is needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> fluoroquinolones are nasty stuff... should be reserved for extreme cases, like anthrax poisoning, etc... where the benefits outweigh the cons.

<comment><USER23> And this is starting to take place - reducing fluroquinolones are one of the major cornerstones of antibiotic stewardship programs.

One of the problem is that they also work _really_ well. A broad spectrum bactericidal antibiotic that works really well, isn't in the beta-lactam family (dodging both beta-lactam resistance and penicillin allergies) is _very tempting_ to use.

It's a hard fight, especially in the outpatient setting, because of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The FDA must certainly have studied this drug before approving it for use on the general public. Is there somewhere we can view records and details of the studies that were performed?

<comment><USER25> Look at the Prescribing Information. It lists the clinical data that was the basis for approval.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My opinion: these drugs are dangerous, and should only be used as an absolute last resort. I had the common reaction of damage to connective tissue - <USER2> tendons became painful and weak all over my body, to the point that at one point it was difficult even to walk. I couldn't sit in a chair because the pressure on my hamstrings was so painful. Also my skin thinned all over my body to the point where I was nicking through the skin on my palms every 5 minutes whilst gardening. Thankfully my tendons and skin have recovered somewhat, but are not what they were. I also have chronic reflux issues that came on at the same time, and which I strongly suspect are related to Cipro. I'll repeat my advice to add to all the others: do not take these drugs unless the alternative is horrific!

</comment><comment><USER27> A family member of mine ended up with permanent peripheral neuropathy in their feet within days from taking a fluoroquinolone-class antibotic for something that wasn't even that serious. They were old enough that remyelination wouldn't occur, and it didn't. Still can't feel their feet to this day, and it happened a decade ago.

Funny enough I was prescribed a fluoroquinolone a few months back without even asking; the condition was so benign that using it was left up to me as optional. The risk calculus there was unfathomably bad, and suffice it to say I didn't take any.

</comment><comment><USER28> Same sad story here, 2 doses of Cipro and joints were gone for 6 months. Antioxidants and topical magnesium oil helped. What a nightmare of a drug.

</comment><comment><USER29> Still not enough for MDs to keep fluoroquinolones for threatening conditions or resistant infections it seems. Incredible. Tons of molecules can and SHOULD be used first in most cases described here. It's just so bad. Someday we will have nothing left against bacteria and this will be entirely deserved.

</comment><comment><USER30> A lot of anitbiotics are ototoxic (damage to hearing) or nephrotoxic (kidneys).

</comment><comment><USER31> The article doesn't even mention gut flora. Aren't they considering that the systemic degeneration is caused by the damage the antibiotics inflict to the gut microbiome?

<comment><USER21> Directly from the article.

"Until recently, investigations into the side effects of antibiotics have focused on how the drugs disrupt the human microbiome, says James Collins, a medical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge."

<comment><USER31> *barely even mentions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just for counterpoint, Cf, hlt, kidney tx, amoxicillin, fluclox, gentamicin,azlocillin, ceftazidime, vancomycin, you name it... Loving cipro these days

</comment><comment><USER33> Related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17831003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17831003)</comment>


Ask/Offer HN: Anyone wants to connect? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN. Long time reader, first time poster here.
Life can be a little difficult and lonely for a solo hacker working without a proper co-founder. Being geographically disconnected from the startup world makes it even harder, missing out on all the cool meetups and hackathons I keep reading about. Over the last few weeks, I connected with a few HNers via hnofficehours, the #startups irc channel, and some HN Google docs. It has been a good experience; making new friends and exchanging thoughts over our respective projects. I found myself motivated each time I talked to these guys, pushing me to work harder on my own projects.
So I thought I should reach out and connect with more such people. If anyone wants to talk about startups, bounce ideas, get some feedback, or if you need a hand with something, if you are just feeling down and need some motivation, or simply want to make a new friend, please feel free to contact me.
My skype id is hanifvirani and my email is in my profile.
Lastly, I would like to thank HN for being such a great community and a bank of knowledge. You have been a significant help. <comment><USER2> I second the Hear Hear! Im actually involved with social entrepreneurship right now and doing several projects with non profits and technology. So ya would definitely be open to talking about them or technology and startups in general.

Im on skype under edwards_ross and my gmail is startupz.net at gmail.com.

Maybe we can setup an email list or something and get a talk going.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of people here are also on convore: <https://convore.com/hacker-news>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't aware of this one. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is what I meant about being a great community. Already had some great discussions with a few people. Unfortunately my net has been a bit unstable. Looking forward to talking to the rest, and hopefully more of you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hear, hear! I'd love to hear from and bounce ideas off other HNers on chat.

Skype: ternaryworks

GTalk: tj.hackin.smith

</comment><comment><USER5> What server is the IRC channel on?

<comment><AUTHOR> #startups is on irc.freenode.net</comment></comment>