Financial news without the bullshit. Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.finimize.com/?ref=hn <comment><USER2> An email signup can't be a Show HN. Please read the rules:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

Also, voting rings (e.g. asking friends to upvote a post) are not allowed here. We ban accounts and sites that do this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone,

Just a bit about why I create this service.

Basically, I created Finimize so we, the millennials, can finally start understanding finance. Too many hours are spent forcing ourselves to read the Wall Street Journal or listening to bankers -- and we don't really understand what they're telling us and, in the case of bankers, if it is actually true. But it's important that we at least have a basic understanding of what's going on in finance, so we can manage our savings (especially in a world of basically zero interest rates on saving accounts) and somewhat understand what all these up-and-coming FinTech startups actually do (from robo advisers to lending providers).

So we built Finimize to give you a tool to de-mystify this complex world of finance. We want your finances to suit you, not the suits ;)

I would love to hear your feedback on what we're doing! You can either post it here or e-mail me at firstname.lastname@example.com

Thanks, Max

</comment><comment><USER3> I use it everyday, super helpful to keep up with what is happening in the financial world and what that means

</comment><comment><USER4> Need to post email to get any information? No thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean? Yes, you need to submit your e-mail so you can receive the daily e-mail...

Feedback can be sent to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Consize and interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> I signed up a few weeks ago and learned a lot ever since. Easy to read & to understand, with catchy headlines and topics. I must admit that I do not read every single one though. Layout can still be improved imo, but already a fine product!

</comment><comment><USER7> Great. THANKS</comment>


Hackfest 2016 presentation videos - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaXanmjyAPzF_Sa1JHpgZlHWz0_MDYTe2 <comment><AUTHOR> The hackfest posted many videos from the HF2016 event. There are some very interesting presentations in there.

You'll find a lot of cool topics such as ios hacking, php7 opcache security, dark web, internet of dongs, IMSI catchers (will freak you out) docker security and way more. Oh and the presentation from Chad M. Dewey about hacking the high seas is really funny.

To anyone near Quebec interrested in hacking, you must go there every year ;)

Thanks to the hackfest organisation and all of the presenters, that was indeed a really cool conference. Happy new year!</comment>


Why Europe! (yeurope blog) - <AUTHOR> http://log.yeurope.net/ <comment><USER2> Ugh... I don't see anything original. I don't like "blogs" that just link to random stuff the author likes.

<comment><USER3> It's not a 'blog' but a tumblr. Tumblr makes it easy to repost links, quotes, videos, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> note all these articles came from news.yc

<comment><USER5> You beat me to it! I don't know what goes on in Europe with investing in startups, but if you're not an accredited investor doesn't that cause problems with future rounds of financing? Somewhere I remember reading that this guy is getting his seed investing money from a conference he's throwing.</comment></comment>


WebGL and HTML5 Challenges For The Future - <AUTHOR> http://codeflow.org/entries/2011/sep/11/webgl-and-html5-challenges-for-the-future/

<comment><USER2> My main concern here is that Adobe's new flash plugin will allow some of these things for 3d on the web and set back adoption of WebGL to the point that it's also DOA.

I know mouse capture seems like a security concern to many browser vendors, but just have a dialogue to agree to mouse capture and a clear use of ESC to exit it. If they don't do it, some plugin will and we'll be set back into another X years of flash dominance in online gaming again.

<comment><USER3> It's a risk but at the same time Adobe has a lot of the same issues to fix as what webgl has. It's not going to be easy for either solution to make a dent in the adoption of the 3D web. Some of the biggest problems with WebGL and Flash will be drivers, security and prevention of abuse.

At least with WebGL you have multiple groups working on solving the major issues. I don't see Flash fixing these things alone.

There also Silverlight that will come out with their own solution but like with Flash I don't see it as an easy win over WebGL.

<comment><USER4> "At least with WebGL you have multiple groups working on solving the major issues."

I'm not sure this falls under the "advantage" column in this scenario. Number of "groups" doesn't count for anywhere near as much as "number of people", and there's no particular reason Adobe can't field as many people on their one side as the other interested groups can in total, unless one of those groups _really_ commits. Having a lot of big names on the list doesn't guarantee than any given name has more than "a guy we told to subscribe to the mailing list and scream if somebody proposes something that doesn't serve our interests". (That's by way of example. I know there is non-zero real commitment, my point is that it isn't at all the case that this group _must_ outweight Adobe's ability to solve the problem.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really don't understand this obsession with shoving _everything_ into the browser. In native applications 3d graphics are great for games and certain scientific applications but camera control issues etc make them too awkward and confusing for almost anything else.

The UI demands of games seem to me to be strongly at odds with the UI needs of just about every other kind of app. I wish all this effort was directed instead at making HTML5 less painful for laying out information in an elegant and straightforward way. CSS still leaves a lot to be desired in this respect.

</comment><comment><USER6> Any front end coders here using HTML5 over using HTML?

What are the advantages of using <article> , <section> and <footer> vs. <div id="footer>, per example?

<comment><USER7> The markup changes don't give any performance advantages, they just help to standardize things. They aren't essential to HTML5 being useful. LocalStorage is one of the big advantages. Canvas has some interesting uses, although still needs work to be competitive. Video and Audio tags could be useful in the future, if a consensus is ever reached about codecs.

Basically, you're asking the wrong question. Switching to HTML5 for markup changes is silly. The power of HTML5 isn't in semantic changes, it's in everything else.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why I was downvoted here?

I am mid-level front end coder (HTML/CSS & plug and play Jquery scripts) who hasn't used HTML5 yet (i do use CSS3 often to design sites & code).

I've only glanced over the mark up and wondered why I would use that over what I've been using past 2 years.

I know there are <video> and <audio> mark up tags that in some years will kill the need to use flash. What are the other advantages - the everything else?

<comment><USER3> I think the down vote is mostly because the article is centred on WebGL and nothing to do with the new mark-up elements in HTML5.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Bad Paper' Explores the Underworld of Debt Collection - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/10/09/354846672/bad-paper-explores-the-underworld-of-debt-collection <comment><USER2> Collection agencies are incredibly easy to sue. Unlike the story says, there is a _lot_ of regulation, but it's up to you to enforce it. If you can find a rule that they're not following (and they never follow all the rules, way too expensive), you can take them to court and get $1,000 per statutory violation.

If ever a debt collector is fucking with you, google for collection agency lawsuits. :)

<comment><USER3> The story is about debt collectors selling to one another, so I imagine the "there's not a lot of regulation" line is in reference to the debt market itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are also a couple of interesting articles about this. Here's one that I think was submitted to HN a few months ago:

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/15/magazine/bad-p...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/15/magazine/bad- paper-debt-collector.html?_r=0)

Fascinating stuff.

<comment><USER5> Also recommend that article. I couldn't believe there was a market place for trading collections between debt collectors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Planet Money recently did a show about this as well, called "The Buffalo Talk- Off" [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/08/354591198/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/08/354591198/episode-574-the- buffalo-talk-off)

<comment><USER7> I think this is more or less the same story (by Jake Halpern) being double- dipped by NPR.

<comment><USER8> Halpern seems to have been doing (or getting?) a huge press push. I don't mean that to criticize; everything I've read/heard related to this has been really interesting and I really want to read his book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The idea that there's a moral obligation, beyond any legal one, to pay one's debts is probably something that's invaluable to folks who do this collection.

Do you guys feel debts are morally bound? I'm not sure how I feel about it, because on one hand you've given your word to pay, but on the other hand you didn't necessarily consent to this level of collection effort, and though I guess it makes sense that debt is transferrable, you didn't make your original agreement with the person actually collecting the debt, so it doesn't feel good to pay a stranger so they don't harm you (via your credit).

<comment><USER9> Morally bound? Ha. I once had debt collectors come after me while I was unemployed and living off savings and unemployment checks -- counting down the days until I would be homeless. The company in question attempting to collect the debt made over a billion in profits that year alone, while I owed them not even $200.

If anything, they were morally bound to forgive the debt in it's entirety. They could easily absorb the loss without even blinking, while the money owed meant the difference between being able to afford a few more weeks of food or begging for it.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised by how few people on HN feel contracts have a moral obligation aspect to them, but once you believe there is no morality in a legal contract, then a whole lot of things become permissible, specifically related to pirating and other kinds of legal trespasses.

Do you believe in individual responsibility, then? That is, if I, your friend, promise to give you a ride to the store and then don't follow through, am I morally culpable?

<comment><USER10> Individual responsibility cuts both ways. You are responsible for picking up your friend. Your friend is responsible for assessing your reliability.

I would argue that most people who think they're talking about morality are actually talking about risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We use a startup called TrueAccord at WePay - they're trying to disrupt this industry using data: [https://www.trueaccord.com/](https://www.trueaccord.com/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the mention, Bill! We're working hard to make a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone that has been involved on the IT side of the collections industry for about 12 years now, I feel like I need to point out some common misconceptions about the industry that this article highlights.

One is there is a difference between debt buyers and collection companies. Some agencies do buy the debt (usually as a different division or a different corporate entity), but when you talk about collection agencies, they are usually working on a contingency to collect the debt. There are also 2 different ways that agencies work for debt owners, which are 1st party and 3rd party. 1st party they are calling as a contractor for the debt owner using the debt owner's name, they usually have direct access to the clients systems . 3rd party they are calling you to collect on a debt and using their agency name and working entirely off their own systems.

3rd party collection companies are extremely easy to sue. Most of them would do criminal background checks and would not hire someone with a record (other than maybe DUI/DWI). They also fall under the FDCPA, which as a poster above mentioned, makes they incredibly easy to sue. The FDCPA is so out of date and open to interpretation that even if you do everything right, you still get sued. It is very similar to patent trolling in the software industry. The cost of litigation is so much more than the cost of a settlement that pretty much every agency is just going to settle.

Now what the article does talk about with how the paper that is being sold to debt buyers is unfortunately true and the data from some of these is awful (I have seen some, but the companies I have worked for usually don't work this kind of stuff). And the article is also correct that most of they will not have itemized statements that prove that you owe the debt. Most of the debt that is being talked about in the article would be out of the statute of limitations to sue (this varies state to state usually 2-6 years), and would also be considered to not be eligible to be reported to the credit bureaus (being over 7 years old). At that point there is legally nothing a collection company can do to you, except keep trying to contact you, and once you request them to cease contact they legally have to (if you do this verbal it is also best to follow up in writing by certified mail, it will make you lawsuit stronger).

I will say that there are good people and good companies working in this space, but you never hear about them. The collections side of the industry does provide a valuable function and really does not need more regulation. They already have different laws in almost every state, the FDCPA (which does need to be updated for technology, its ancient at this point) which is enforced by the FTC, and now the industry is also dealing with the CFPB.

What I do agree with is that there needs to be more regulation to debt buying. There need to be better controls in place to protect private data. Excel files (that often are mangled because some idiot didn't import them right from a csv export) are passed around way too much. While the good agencies and debt buyers do take data security seriously, most of the smaller ones don't. I can say that as someone that has worked in this industry, that I would not want my person data treated the way some of the companies I have worked with do (Not the collection agency itself, because I have usually been in charge of that side of the system, and I have always done my best to protect that data like it was my own).

<comment><USER14> _The FDCPA is so out of date and open to interpretation that even if you do everything right, you still get sued. It is very similar to patent trolling in the software industry. The cost of litigation is so much more than the cost of a settlement that pretty much every agency is just going to settle._

Nah, it's the exact opposite. The FDCPA is clear and violations are obvious. That is why the collection agencies settle. Litigation would not only be costly, it would be costly _and_ futile when the collector inevitably loses.

The FDCPA, formally, 15 U.S.C s. 1692 et seq., is abundantly clear about what activities are forbidden. There is some legal jargon in it, but it is clearly written. If anyone cares to read it, it is less than 20 pages long.

The FDCPA does not leave violations open to interpretation. It explicitly _lists_ false representations and unfair practices that are unlawful, including such unambiguous things as 1) Claiming the debt collector is affiliated with the government, 2) Claiming the debtor has committed a crime, 3) Claiming that a debt that the statute of limitation ran out on can still be sued on, 4) Not putting certain notices in collections letters; said notices are provided using the _exact words_ that are compliant (enabling cut-and- paste compliance), 5) Threatening to sue when you do not intend to sue, etc.

Mostly, obvious things like this are the kind of violations that debt collectors actually commit. Note that they are often the most efficient collection methods, because they terrify people or leave them ignorant of their rights. Without the law, every collection agency / law firm would be forced to use these techniques in order to compete. That would mean many consumers would be terrified out of their wits, instead of having the mildly unpleasant experience of interacting over the phone with used-car-salesman types.

I think most collection agencies and collection firms are aware of the law and actively avoid doing this stuff. The ones that violate the FDCPA are not doing so because the law is outdated and hard to understand. Their behavior is an intentional choice or willful ignorance.

You want outdated and hard to understand? That would be the various patchwork of laws regulating telephone calls.

<comment><USER12> And that's why FDCPA litigation is decreasing and TCPA litigation is growing. Path of least resistance. Though, you have to admit, practices and law governing UDAAP isn't as clear as the FDCPA examples you bring here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a template for a letter or a tutorial to challenge the debt?</comment>


Ask HN: Why artists don't make money? - <AUTHOR> I have been observing that many of my artist friends and other artists outside my circle, don't make a living off their art.
There could be several reasons for that. One is that artists who make 'reasonably good' money are the ones who have their name/brand out. So people tend to pay more to them over lesser known good artists.
What are some other reasons in your opinion? <comment><USER2> People buy art for 3 reasons;

1\. They like it and want to put it on their walls. (This is most art, and artists selling to this group need an additional income.)

2\. They're seeking the validation from their peers that comes from showing you have "good taste". (Artists selling to this group can make a moderate living but they won't get rich.)

3\. They're investing. (Artists selling to this group can get to be millionaires.)

</comment><comment><USER3> My neighbor Nan makes a living as an artist. For about three decades she primarily paid the rent by working regular jobs. These days she works pretty much every day as in seven days a week: painting, teaching, selling, marketing.

She has decades of craft and decades of knowledge about what will sell and decades of rolodex. It's a business. She still does art for its own sake and it is way more awesome than what pays the bills...but what pays the bills is what pays the bills.

One of the things about Nan is that you wouldn't know she's an artist from meeting her. No black turtle neck, no angst, just the woman who grew up from the child and went to the grocery store to buy milk when the kids drank it all.

So what is the reason that most artists don't make good money? It's hard work and luck and perseverance, like many other occupations and not like programming is today in that there is not a lot of corporate demand.</comment>


Tutorial: create a machine learning pipeline for Iris classification - <AUTHOR> http://docs.seldon.io/iris-demo.html <comment><USER2> Seems like the data site is down. What is the format of this example data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Iris data is in CSV format. Download is working for me now: [http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/machine-learning- databases/iri...](http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/machine-learning- databases/iris/)

Feel free to also post questions to the seldon-users group: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/seldon- users](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/seldon-users)

Good luck!</comment></comment>


I Was Suspended from Facebook for My #MeToo Post - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dcopaken/sunday-night-like-so-many-other-women-i-created-a-metoo-post-65574472c33e <comment><USER2> I think Facebook automatically detected the photo as being sexually explicit and possibly harassing, so it flagged the account automatically (I would guess the ML algorithms were trained on photos like that). At least it was brought back quickly, although the process for appeal should be easier in cases like this (someone from Facebook, can you comment on how easy the process is?).

A similar thing happened when my friend when he outed a person who sexually assaulted his ex-girlfriend a few years ago, and the post (which got flagged most likely due to heated discussion about the accused person) was flagged and removed automatically. My friend seemed to not know how to bring it back, so I guess the process for appeal is vague or not easy.

</comment><comment><USER3> It should be painfully obvious why she was she was suspended for posting that stuff.

<comment><USER4> It isn't to me.

Could you please elaborate?

<comment><USER5> Photos of genitalia are typically grounds for deletion/suspension in most social circles.

<comment><USER6> It depends very much on context, doesn't it? There are probably not many social circles suspending you for photos like this one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc) (or those in the OP's article)

<comment><USER7> Facebook doesn't wasn't dongs in people's feeds. Scroll, scroll, penis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a little bit of a non-issue at the moment. Facebook restored her photos, but there might have just been the algorithm mistake that happens often.

<comment><USER6> "The algorithm" should never be an excuse. There are many real people on many levels of responsibility behind "the algorithm". Facebook restored it only because the story gained a traction (it is even on HN, right?). What is the rate between restored and not-restored in such cases if the story is not as prominent as this one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Come on I can't even view this stuff at work. Put a NSFW warning on it or something.

</comment><comment><USER10> She posted pictures of nudity. I read this at work. Warning, dick pic inside!

<comment><USER11> Start drafting your Medium piece talking about getting fired for supporting the #MeToo movement.

Seriously, I don't think any reasonable employer is going to take any action against someone viewing this. PR nightmare.

<comment><USER10> If someone walks by my desk and sees a picture of a dick, they have no idea that I'm reading about the Me Too movement. All they see is dick. And they don't confront me about it, they quietly say to their manager, "hey, this guy was looking at dicks on his work computer and I saw it, I feel sexually harassed". Boom. Instantly fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Humanities major is "traumatized" by getting temporarily banned from Facebook for posting artsy dick pics.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't really like facebook, but the two reactions (putting it down and putting it up again) were appropriate. The first one show that the algorithm do its job, the second show that a human factor still exist. However i agree with the poster: if facebook do not put a mean to reach out in the put-down email, this is a mistake that should be fixed.

<comment><USER13> The algorithm could flag it for human review instead of deleting it automatically, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Of course she was suspended, taking justice into your own hands is never okay (unless you are defending yourself in the moment). She becomes judge, jury and executioner in the moment she shares those pictures online.

<comment><USER2> You could take this argument and say that women shouldn't directly say that they were raped because it's taking justice into their own hands (by telling others about the misdeed rather than letting it happen in a court). The reason she was suspended was not because she "took justice into her own hands," it was because the photo was explicit and an algorithm automatically suspended the account.

<comment><USER14> No you can't. There is very fine silver lining between the two. She should have blurred out the face of the man as it can have very serious consequences(perhaps not in this case). I'm not condoning his actions but his trial should be through legal means and not a possible public lynching.

<comment><USER2> It's the same as taking a photo of someone on the street in general, except this time the man flashed her. Would you say the same for someone who takes a photo with a clear face of someone on a food stand? Plus, it was 30 years ago, not yesterday, so it would be beyond the statue of limitations anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Revolution at the Washington Post - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/washington_post_bezos_amazon_revolution.php <comment><USER2> Two things stood out to me while reading the article: the focus on speed and volume of publication. Two things that were notable by their absence: focus on accuracy and newsworthiness, and in-depth reporting. I'm glad to see that they've staked out a plan for profitability, and put in place tools to do the job efficiently, but I really want to see that they have a commitment to producing good news. How would Woodward and Bernstein fit in in an environment where:

 _You need to input a time to end—when do you think that story you're writing is going to be ready? As your time draws near, the desk will send a reminder: Hey, your story is due in an hour. We see you haven't yet finished the third paragraph. You see the curve every day of how many pieces of content were published by hour._

</comment><comment><USER2> _So successful has the Post become in the digital game that it now licenses its content management system to other news outlets, a business that could generate $100 million a year._

Wow. Makes sense, though. Parallels Amazon/AWS.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Impressive story, the case of "coding & mobile is eating world"</comment>


Doomsday clock tells when Japan's sex problem will cause country to go extinct - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/this-doomsday-clock-tells-you-when-japans-sex-problem-will-cause-the-country-to-go-extinct-a7236976.html <comment><USER2> If I may, XKCD is as opportune as ever: [https://xkcd.com/605/](https://xkcd.com/605/)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you expand skills of junior developers in your team? - <AUTHOR> Hey. I do i have junior developer in my team who is not expanding his skills... at least he seems to struggle with the same and basic channeges in JavaScript all the time. He is not finishing tasks in reasonable timeframe. He seems to be bored with basic and easier tasks, he wants to work on bigger chalenges. However, i cannot let him work on task for 3 days which could be finished by senior developer in 1 day max. Still i want to keep his happy. I am sending him a lot of related articles which should help him, answering every question he has but he is not making any progress.... What would you do?<p>Thanks for your tips in advance. George <comment><USER2> I've seen 3 different kind of devs. The go-getter that figures it out on their own, the "tell me how to solve it" person who doesn't really want to be a dev, and the type you have to mentor. If your junior is type 2, you'll want to get rid of them because they won't grow.

As for type 3, you'll need to understand how they solve problems and use that to help them tackle their tasks. I've had devs that can't hold a lot of information in their brain so they have to map things out on paper before solving them. Documentation will help these a lot since they won't remember methods and how things interact. Some devs might not be that creative and they'll have a hard time figuring out how to count unique values in an array. For these, it's like muscle memory. They'll need a lot of handholding up front but eventually they'll be able to easy tasks with ease. Others are visual learners so you might have to do a lot of pair programming. A lot!!!

As for the bored portion, good luck. That's more of an entitlement issue that you'll have to navigate on your own.

</comment><comment><USER3> Repeatedly struggling with basic tasks is a warning sign. I'd have this individual write docs / walkthrough to reinforce. If the issue persists, time to move on.

For learning new skills, 10% time working with new tech / tasks.

Why can you not let him spend the three days?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are quite small team (3members), he can make progress with easier and smaller tasks intead of getting stuck on one thing for 3 days without guarantee it will be finished and working at the end

<comment><USER3> Junior developers need time and mentoring. Either expectations need to change or you really want a non junior developer.

If the individual is not able to do the learn the basics tasks, you may need to revisit their employment and possibly your hiring process

<comment><AUTHOR> we have been short of developers so the hiring process was literally "we wants you"... so hiring process is not the thing... i want him to get better not to be thinking about anybody else at least for now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Should a Startup Operate as a Nonprofit? - <AUTHOR>

In light of the news that YC will now fund nonprofits[1], why should a business or organization choose to operate as a nonprofit instead of as a for-profit company? What advantages are there to being a nonprofit? What are the disadvantages?<p>What's different about building a successful nonprofit versus a for-profit startup?<p>[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6341568 <comment><USER2> Non-profit, meaning "non-stock" corporations need capital and initial support to get started as much as any other entity.

Clearly YC considers the investment in non-stock entities a charitable contribution towards a (potential) good cause, and is not participating to see a profit on their investment, but is just as interested in helping the founders figure out their mission, and funding market.

Non-stock organizations raise money just as competitively and actively as stock organizations, and have a community of users and donors, as well as user-recipients.

[http://Water.org](http://Water.org) is an example of an entity that is actively and successfully raising millions of dollars toward a their mission and purpose, with a successful community of supporters and recipients.

</comment><comment><USER3> Obviously, the disadvantage of a non-profit is that you cannot sell shares of the company or receive dividends from revenues the company creates. You can only receive a salary.

If it makes sense to receive donations and to operate a non-profit, then a non-profit start-up is something that benefits the world.

If someone wants to gain reputation and build a resume, this is a good way of doing so.</comment>


Mercury Spill - <AUTHOR> http://www.jefftk.com/p/mercury-spill <comment><USER5> It may have cost you $50,000 but you now have +50 karma on HN and rising. Some would say a bargain! ;-]

In all seriousness, cool story, glad you're okay, and this makes me think "insurance" as a business needs to be re-thought entirely. How many times has it happened that insurance companies weasel out of paying? Objectively you might think THAT was their primary job.

<comment><USER6> Insurance is such a scam. A friend of mine made two claims within about five years: once for water damage and once for a burglary.

The insurance company agreed that she was covered. So they paid her and then dropped her. No big deal, right? Wrong. Once you've made a claim or two against your insurance, it can be very hard to get any new insurance company to cover you. She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way up -- negating her original claims.

Did you know every claim you make goes into a CLUE report? It's like a credit report, but few people know about it. Once you make "too many claims" \- even if they're legit and beyond your control, you become an insurance pariah.

Because of this, I avoid making any claims unless absolutely required.

<comment><USER7> > She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way up -- > negating her original claims.

This isn't a scam at all. That's exactly what you'd expect from insurance. Insurance isn't there to save you money. In fact, the expected value of an insurance plan is _always_ going to be negative on an infinite time horizon[0].

The whole point of an insurance plan is to _smooth risk_ : instead of the small possibility of a catastrophic failure, you take the relative certainty of having a fixed monthly payment (your premium). At a very high level, it's sort of similar to taking on consumer debt (credit card debt): in the long run, you'll _always_ pay more than if you just paid cash up-front, because of the interest. The difference between credit cards and insurance is that you don't know when the expensive event is going to happen, so you agree to _always_ pay the monthly payment regardless of what happens. And while banks charge interest based on the risk that you won't pay back and the opportunity cost of that money, insurers charge you a premium in exchange for the luxury of not having to guess whether next month will have an expensive event or not.

In your friend's case, the fact that she had two claims adjusted her relative risk profile, which means that her premium had to adjust accordingly.

[0] If it weren't, there'd be no point to going into business as an insurer, because you'd be guaranteed to make an operating loss. The only way you'd be able to make any money is based on the investments that you make, at which point you might as well eliminate the insurance side of your business and operate as a bank. (Interestingly, this is why the relationships between banks and insurers are so close in many countries, and also why most insurance markets - car insurance and health insurance[1] being two notable exceptions - have surprisingly slim profit margins).

[1] Health insurance is a special case because, strictly speaking, it's not really "insurance", but that's a whole separate discussion.

<comment><USER8> What? The point of insurance is to _pool risk_. The expected value of insurance is _not_ automatically negative. Look up the term "actuarially fair". Yes, there is moral hazard in insurance and it is sometimes necessary to exclude bad actors to prevent markets from unraveling, but to not to the extent which has become common in many sectors. Your whole post reads like an specious apology for bad behavior in the insurance industry.

<comment><USER9> > The expected value of insurance is not automatically negative.

I'm curious how this math works. In my (quite likely incomplete) mental model of insurance, there are only a few terms: premiums, payouts, profits. It would seem that they have to balance. So if you pool risk, you are summing the payouts. Those payouts are covered by the sum of premiums. Any profit is the sum of premiums minus the sum of payouts.

Profits = Premiums - <USER2>

Is this right so far?

Because then it seems that the expected value of insurance to the customer is the negated value of the expected profit of the insurer. Put another way: if the expected value of insurance is _not_ negative, shouldn't the insurer raise premiums or exit the business?

Again, I know next to nothing about insurance and I'm asking to learn.

<comment><USER10> Insurance companies need a lot of cash on hand to cover low probability events. However, they can invest this money, so things like life insurance where risks increase over time but the premiums are fixed, can end up with a higher average payout than insurance premium, the difference being time value of money. In other words you end up paying the opportunity cost, but not nessisarily a nominal cost in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's arguably overkill for domestic contamination by elemental and inorganic mercury. Even that family in that contaminated house was probably at far greater risk from methylmercury[0] in predatory fish. So cutting predatory fish from the diet would have arguably been more cost effective. But it's hard to say. CDC[1] is more nuanced on the topic than EPA[2]. And I do tend to trust CDC.

[0] [http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html](http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html)

[1] [http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf)

[2] [http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html](http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html)

<comment><USER12> They have a 1.5 year-old that undoubtably puts everything in his/her mouth.

Even the CDC factsheet says the impact of low levels of exposure is unknown. And we're not talking about the milligrams in a CFL bulb, a speck of mercury. This was _cups_ of mercury.

<comment><USER13> Impact unknown! Meanwhile many American dentists install mercury amalgam (about 50% Hg) in tooth cavities inches from the brain where it will sit for years on end. How can anyone support this with a straight face. The response is something like 'yes,we know mercury is a devastating neurotoxin but it's tightly bound in the amalgam and there is no proven statistical relationship to say it's dangerous'.

<comment><USER14> Haven't amalgam fillings been phased out yet? At least in the Netherlands most dentists now use composites to fill cavities.

Wikipedia seems to suggest that the performance of those is comparable to amalgam: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_composite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_composite)

Cost also seems to be comparable, where composites may even be cheaper than amalgam, because of all the environmental issues surrounding the amalgam material.

<comment><USER15> In Poland you only get composite if you pay extra, National Health Fund (mandatory insurance) gives you the amalgam. And a month of waiting, where time is crucial. And no anastheatics for drilling. SLAVIC FUN!

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I believe it's the same in the UK. I don't think the month of waiting is too bad, cavities take a long time to develop. A checkup every 6 months should be enough to prevent them from developing too far.

<comment><USER17> In my experience NHS dentists in the UK will give you composites if the filling is in a visible area. Also, they _do_ provide anaesthetic!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how this kind of thing plays out for people that don't have anywhere near $50k available. I'm assuming since the company worked first and then invoiced, that the options would be either (1) sell the house and use the proceeds (assuming equity exists) to pay off the cleaning, or (2) declare bankruptcy.

If the company were to require pre-payment for cleaning, then it's really just down to either (1) abandon and have the bank seize the house, or (2) sell the house for pennies on the dollar to an investor.

Things like this (well, not this exotic, but like a busted sewer line which could cost $20k to replace) used to keep me up at night after we "bought" a house. I've found I can rest by mentally reframing the mortgage as rent and knowing that an "out" (strategic default) is always there if something goes very expensively wrong.

<comment><USER19> (3) clean it up with a dustpan :-D

Seriously, mercury is not dangerous unless inhaled or ingested. Suit up with a cheap hazmat and gloves and clean away...

<comment><USER20> Yeha, I'm a bit dumbfounded about the calling of the fire dept, the reaction and so on. I would have just figured out where it was coming from and cleaned it up myself with some gloves and a dustpan.

<comment><USER21> And if you miss any, your young daughter is going to find it. Seriously isn't something you want to mess with.

<comment><USER22> This happened to me when I was about 9, when I didn't know what mercury was. There was a few droplets on the floor and I ended up poking it with my index finger for a few minutes. To this day I don't know what the medical effects were.

<comment><USER23> Unless you licked your finger afterwards, nothing.

<comment><USER24> Even if you lick your finger, if it is elemental mercury then probably nothing either. But don't try it!

<comment><USER25> Just curious: what would it need to be for it to do something? Not that I'm planning to...

<comment><USER23> Atomized somehow so that it would be inhaled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had a physics class in a community college that had us handling open containers of mercury for our experiments. It was maybe 15 years ago.

Someone in one of the classes managed to knock one of the jars over, and mercury spilled everywhere on the floor. Either the students hid their spill from the staff, or the staff just had some janitors do a simple sweeping of it, because I noticed spheres of mercury everywhere in that classroom throughout the semester.

I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently.

The professor also seemed to be going crazy, which suggests to me that this happened more than once in the past and he was suffering from the effects of mercury poisoning.

<comment><USER27> > I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently.

As the post mentions, the world at large didn't realize that vapors from mercury spills are toxic until recently.

<comment><USER28> Um, someone (not saying I) may or may not have played with mercury from a broken thermometer as a child. Is that person (not necessarily I) a walking health hazard? How does this work?

<comment><USER29> Short term exposure isn't much of an issue, unless you inhale or ingest it. (Simply playing with it isn't going to send out massive amounts of vapor; it's not super volatile.) The real fear is that it seeps into a hard to clean place and provides a steady stream of vapor over a long time.... basically what the OP illustrated about his house.

Previous generations had no qualms playing with it or lighting it on fire in science class. While it might not have been super healthy, we also don't have a generation of mad hatters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> _So people would use a mercury seal to put pressure on the water, allowing the system to run hotter without boiling._

I didn't quite follow this part. Where in the system does the mercury go, how does it add pressure, and does it have anything to do with Wikipedia's description of using mercury in glass-to-metal seals?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to- metal_seal#Mercury_se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to- metal_seal#Mercury_seal)

<comment><USER31> This page describes that system, I think:

[http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot- water-h...](http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-water- heating-continued.shtml)

(the "Honeywell Heat Generator")

<comment><USER32> I've now linked that from the article; thanks!

(I read that page when I was first reading about this the night of the spill, but had forgotten about it. Holohan is amazingly knowledgeable about old heating systems.)

<comment><USER33> Did your home inspector note the upfeed system in the pre-purchase report? Did you sign a waiver limiting the inspector's liability?

<comment><USER32> Just reread the inspection report; they didn't notice it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A friend of mine has a "mercury blob maze" [1] where you have a little blob of mercury trapped in a plastic container and you have to get it through the maze - it was fun to use at different temperatures, as the blob would want to break apart when hot, or not move at all when cold. Shaking it turns it into 300 blobs.

Upon seeing it, my science teacher dad had some cool stories about playing with Mercury 20-30 years ago in high school classes. They used to take it out and handle it, no big deal :)

[1] Like these [https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X)

<comment><USER35> Elemental Mercury isn't especially dangerous though. People freak out over the word "Mercury" but forms like that aren't bioavailable for the most part and are reasonably safe. I wouldn't go breathing the fumes for extended periods of time, but holding a pool in your hand in science class isn't going to kill you.

That's why it's a bit frustrating to read stories like this where the cleanup crew goes overboard and racks up tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills for a simple spill.

<comment><USER32> Breathing the fumes for an extended period of time? That's exactly what we would have had without the remediation.

<comment><USER36> Not necessarily, since there was nothing to vaporize it. He even shows an old picture he'd taken of it where the drops had sat undisturbed for so long that they had a chance to oxidize.

<comment><USER32> The techs measured vapor at 37,000 ng/m3 after the first day of cleanup, at which point there was no longer any easily visible mercury. Like water, mercury doesn't need something to vaporize it; you just end up with some vapor as long as there's liquid present.

(Post author here.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What's really crazy is that apparently some people have the idea that mercury is an 'investment' and will voluntarily keep jugs of it in their home: [http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/Attachmen...](http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/AttachmentA.pdf)

<comment><USER38> That document says, "People often keep jars of mercury in their homes because they think that mercury is worth money, like liquid silver. In reality, mercury is nearly worthless, but the cleanup cost after a large spill easily can exceed the cost of a home."

[http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs...](http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs-2015-mercu.pdf) gives the price of mercury as US$1850 per 76-pound flask, up from US$1076 in 2010. That's US$54/kg, or US$730 per liter at 13.5 g/cc (cf. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29)). Silver is currently [http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html) US$15.76 per troy ounce, which is US$506.70/kg or US$5315 per liter at 10.49 g/cc (cf. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver)). Silver also has the advantage that it won't make you sick if you spill it.

As a point of comparison, copper is sufficiently expensive that people steal copper pipes and wires from unoccupied houses. Copper costs US$2.41/lb. (US$5.31/kg), less than 1% of the cost of mercury. The junk man in the slum where I'm going this afternoon will pay you AR$35/kg for it, which is US$2.23/kg, which is enough to incentivize the cartoneros to break the yokes off any CRT discarded on the street within hours. (He doesn't list a price for mercury on his sign.)

So "nearly worthless" seems like an exaggeration — mercury is worth more per liter than any other commodity substance you're likely to have in your house other than silver and Freon-22 — but it also doesn't seem like a really smart investment, especially if you have kids.

<comment><USER37> I'm not sure it's exaggeration. Who do you _sell_ your jug of mercury to at $1850/flask...? Would any scientific or industrial consumer want to buy random flasks of unknown quality from laymen at fair prices? Just quoting bulk commodity prices for mercury is like noting that a particular diamond costs you $2k at the department store and assuming that you must then have an asset worth $2k.

<comment><USER38> Your analogy is a little off: $2k at the department store is not $2k in the Antwerp diamond markets. The USGS prices are for wholesale markets, not retail mercury.

The recycling shop in the slum has to deal with the same issues with the copper they handle. My price from his sign was out of date, perhaps due to our world-leading inflation: he pays AR$45 per kilo, which is US$2.87. The difference between that US$2.87/kg and the US$5.31/kg that CME copper contracts trade at is exactly the cost of converting random chunks of copper of unknown quality bought from laymen into copper acceptable to scientific and industrial consumers, plus his profit.

If you're not a neoliberal, you could reasonably argue that it's unfair that the junk man pays you only half of the bulk commodity price for your copper. This does not defeat the point that the price he pays is sufficient to motivate people to aggressively recycle copper. In fact, even the AR$8/kg he pays for aluminum is high enough that _cartoneros_ remove heatsinks from discarded computers.

Maybe whoever handles mercury recycling in the US is willing to pay somewhere between 25% and 50% of the bulk commodity price for jugs of metallic mercury of unknown purity. In fact, maybe they'd be willing to pay even more: maybe removing the impurities from a kilogram of impure mercury only costs one to five times as much as removing the impurities from a kilogram of impure copper, not ten times as much. The USGS report I linked notes that more than 50 companies in the US currently collect mercury for recycling from "Mercury- containing automobile convenience switches, barometers, compact and traditional fluorescent lamps, computers, dental amalgam, medical devices, thermostats, and some mercury-containing toys," and even more companies collect metallic mercury.

…that said, my attempts to find offers in the US on the internet to buy mercury for recycling for anything approaching US$54/kg are not finding anything. At all. So maybe the EPA guy is, in practice, correct.

<comment><USER37> > $2k at the department store is not $2k in the Antwerp diamond markets. The > USGS prices are for wholesale markets, not retail mercury.

A _retail consumer_ investor, who is storing it in their home, is paying _retail consumer_ prices. They aren't showing up at the cinnabar mines and tapping a spigot for bulk prices. My diamond analogy is exactly correct. That's why it's a scam: because you are paying inflated prices for something you cannot possibly sell at anything remotely like what you paid for it, and in the case of mercury, it's worse than if you bought some diamonds because at least diamonds aren't ticking timebombs.

<comment><USER38> you're saying you pay the spread because you're taking prices, not making them. diamonds have a huge spread at retail, and so you get screwed; gold's spread is so low that you can actually make money doing this, although more or less only by chance. i'd've expected mercury to be more like gold, but so far i can't find much evidence of a current functioning mercury market.

<comment><USER37> At least in the case of gold, there's a very large retail market with lots of connections to the investment market, and as far as I know, gold is easy & safe to store & refine, so if you sell some scrap gold to a gold dealer they don't have _too_ much trouble refining it into something standardized. The rarer something is, and the more dangerous, the more you're going to pay in costs.

<comment><USER38> Basically I agree with everything you say, with one exception. There are many methods to refine gold, but none of them are particularly safe, involving, for example, the evaporation of substantial amounts of mercury, gold cyanidation (what Turing's mother believed killed him), chlorine gas, or boiling _aqua regia_. This kind of thing can be made safe, but it's even more difficult than making mercury processing safe.

So I suspect that the main issue is storage and transportation, not refinement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does US$38k to clean up a few cups of mercury seem ridiculous to anybody else? That would be a very dangerous quantity of mercury if it were in a form like dimethylmercury, but it was metallic mercury. Wouldn't it make more sense to dump some powdered metal into it to amalgamate it, sweep it up and put it in a bag, and open the windows to let the house air out for a day or two?

<comment><USER39> This was my thought as well - I've heard metallic mercury is relatively safe. However, a little bit of googling turned up this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_mercury)

The issue with metallic mercury is the vapors are easily absorbed through the lungs, and not easily filtered (requires an activated carbon filter).

<comment><USER38> It is indeed _relatively_ safe, in the sense that it takes thousands of times as much metallic mercury to kill you as it would take dimethylmercury. But vapors from metallic mercury have been known to cause acute poisoning for centuries; that article mentions a well-known case from 1810.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Author here: happy to answer questions.

<comment><USER40> How long have you owned the house? Toxic waste like that are grounds to sue the previous owner if not disclosed during the purchase...at least in California.

<comment><USER41> > I talked to a lawyer, who didn't think we'd be likely to succeed if we tried > to get the insurance company to pay anyway. They did think whoever owned the > house at the time of the spill would be liable, but it would be hard to > prove that the spill happened at a certain time and they may not have the > money.

Right from the article. Sounds like there have been multiple owners, no way to assign blame. Last owner probably can't be fined for something they had no knowledge of.

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure, but maybe this is something title insurance is supposed to cover?

<comment><USER41> Doesn't seem to from my short reading, I'd not heard of it until now. Title insurance seems to be more for issues with the records about financial liens against properties that aren't properly recorded. It doesn't seem to cover this scenario and who knows if the author had it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yikes. I'm glad my house was built in the 80's. No asbestos, no lead in the paint, no mercury hiding out in my ceiling.

How dangerous was this contamination, though? I know mercury evaporates, and that it is an air quality concern, but given its location and assuming normal levels of indoor air movement, is it worth $50k to abate it?

I tend to be skeptical of mold issues, for example, but I also imagine that mercury is way more harmful than mold spores, mostly because you can't smell mercury.

<comment><USER44> The article says: _There were still areas in that room that were .037 milligrams per cubic meter._

Wikipedia gives the following info: _Chronic exposure by inhalation, even at low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 μg /m3, has been shown in case control studies to cause effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep disturbance in workers._

Even if the first number is as high as it is because they handled it, things like that they found it while sweeping the kitchen suggests that not all of it was sitting quietly somewhere, but was possibly disturbed regularly or even ingested. Given that mercury stays in the body for decades and is especially bad for children, that doesn't seem like something one should risk.

(+ of course once the building is condemned, you can't really say "yeah, ok, no, we'll risk it")

<comment><USER45> I would definitely be very uncomfortable with my health had I been living there, balls of mercury in the bathroom seem to suggest that there was quite a high degree of exposure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _Call it $50k total?_

Jesus fucking _Christ._ So I guess the lesson here for the average homeowner is "if you find a mercury spill, don't tell anyone or you'll lose your home"?

Also:

> _They were using a Jerome meter, which can only measure down to 3000 ng /m3 > when the safe indoor limit is 300 ng/m3_

Huh? Why would a mercury-abatement crew use a mercury detection meter that can't actually detect hazardous levels of mercury?

<comment><USER47> Exactly what I was thinking, I'd consider myself pretty financially solid but $50k would ruin me. I'm assuming the OP was doing renovations of some kind already and had the cash on hand, or at least the majority of it.

<comment><USER48> OP could just cut back on their charitable giving.

And, perhaps that's what they did: [http://www.jefftk.com/donations](http://www.jefftk.com/donations)

<comment><USER49> Wow--that really is an extraordinary level of giving, relative to what they have earned. I suppose that's one way to cushion the effect of a financial shock--get used to living on only a fraction of your total income and donate the surplus when available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Disagree with his last point here:

 _(One thing this illustrates is that the downside risk of owning is much higher than with renting.)_

Financial risk, yes; health risk, no. Only a homeowner who _owns and lives_ in the dwelling would care enough to follow the proper procedure for cleaning up a hazardous materials spill such as this.

Landlords who invest in buildings (old, decrepit buildings) for the renters' income have almost zero incentive to handle a situation like this correctly.

<comment><USER51> In this case, I believe OP is actually a landlord, who invested in this old decrepit building for rental income. But what do you know, he has plenty of incentive to handle this situation as thoroughly as possible, because he lives there too! Moral of the story: "homeowner" and "landlord" are not mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This sounds so familiar... Here's a story about my 1961 house that is built on concrete slabs.

About 18 months ago, we noticed a bit of the hardwood floor was bubbling up. We ignored it. About 6 months ago, our water pressure started to drop and then disappeared altogether. The plumber came and told us that our well pump (which was relatively new) wasn't working. They pulled the pump and the PVC bushing around it was cracked, so it had been running nonstop trying to keep pressure up. Plumbers fixed the crack, put the pump back in, it still wasn't working... They pulled it again and replaced it.

I mentioned to the plumber that the floor was bubbling up and he told me that what likely happened is that the supply line was leaking under the slab (where they put them in the 1960s), probably causing the floor to bubble and the well pump to turn on and off frequently, increasing torque on the bushing, which caused it to crack and subsequently burn out the motor. He referred me to a contracting group that could help with the problem under the slab.

Fast forward to June of this year. Contractors begin to pull up the wooden floor, only to find there's asbestos-laden linoleum under it. An asbestos remediation firm came and removed the entire wooden floor and the asbestos. (Note: the wooden floor was parquet, of a formerly-standard size that no longer is made, meaning to replace it and match the rest of the house, we would have to find somebody to cut each tiny little board.)

Early July, contractors jackhammer into the slab and cannot find a leak. While investigating, we discover that the septic tank is full and backed up, likely from some landscapers running over the septic field with a bobcat about 3 yrs ago. It had been slowly draining and we had it serviced 18 months ago, but it was again full and plumbers began to speculate that sewage was standing in the lines under the house and that an old septic line was leaking -- not the supply line. Nobody can figure out what to do because the original plans to the house are missing, the plans to an addition are missing, and nobody knows where the supply lines or septic really run, in spite of the fact they had snaked cameras through them 4 times.

Meanwhile, we have a huge hole with ragged pieces of rebar and concrete everywhere in our family room. My 2 and 4 yr old daughters learn to walk around it carefully because it's impossible to get to the kitchen without walking through the family room.

Plumbers come back 4 weeks later with a plan to replace the supply lines and the septic lines. We have to take a break to get insurance approval and take out a HELOC to cover costs that insurance won't cover. This takes a while.

Ten weeks after the first hole in the slab, they start digging to replace the septic/supply lines and they mistakenly break into the air ducts running under the slab (the fancy new thing to do in 1961). Surprise: the air ducts are made of a fibrous material that sort of looks like cardboard but might contain asbestos.

Today, the asbestos remediation people came and took a sample. The HVAC repair people (took 4 companies to find somebody to attempt to repair the 'cardboard' ducts) put a camera in them and found that the vibrations from the jackhammer used to cut the slab (likely) had caused many other collapses in the air ducts in the same room. The only saving grace here is that it appears that the 'cardboard' ducts only were used in that room and that they are metal in the rest of the house (please please please). Now, the demolition team has to come back and remove most of the rest of the slab in that room and in the kitchen in order to replace the 'cardboard' ducts that are collapsed; all prior to doing final repairs on the supply and septic lines running under the slab. When that's done, we'll have to repair the slab, get new floors, new kitchen countertops, and hope that we can move back in.

We've been in a hotel with our two daughters on-and-off for the past 3 months. I really hope we're in the house by Christmas.

Please be very careful if you purchase an old house.

Here are some pictures: [http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl](http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl)

FYI, ours is an old Westinghouse Total Electric Model Home (pdf): [http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf](http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf)

p.s. That was way more than I intended to write here.

p.p.s. Total bill, to date is > $50k. Insurance is covering 95% of it. Amica is wonderful.

<comment><USER53> I had a similar but less-awful experience (fortunately as a renter rather than owner). Living in a similar slab house, I was surprised when my shower became slow to drain and draino had no effect. I called the plumber, he came by, and eventually told me he'd fixed the problems. Two days later, the drain backs up again.

Second plumber comes and is somewhat perplexed - he pulls up roots and suspects they've grown into the line. But it's drilled out and should work now. Two days later, the drain backs up again.

Third plumber comes out and goes in from the roof vent. After about an hour of rooting around, his snake pops up through the drain and starts whackkity- whacking around the shower. He's very surprised and a bit sheepish, and suggests there's a bigger problem and we should rip out the shower to have a look at what's under it. Doesn't pretend that he's fixed it. I'm using a different shower at this point.

Fourth plumber arrives to give a second (err, fourth) opinion and is similarly perplexed, saying we likely need to rip the shower up to fix things.

Fifth plumber agrees, and says he knows a guy who can do it.

Sixth plumber is actually not just a plumber, and arrives with a jackhammer, two buddies and a fancy proble that lets him follow where all the pipes go under the house (both with a camera in the pipe and a machine that follows where it goes physically). Scopes things out for a bit, and then goes to town on the other bathroom, eventually jackahammering and digging a roughly 5 foot cube out from under the bathroom.

It turns out when they redid things in the house 15 years ago, someone failed to actually connect the drain from the shower to the sewer, so it had just been draining into the ground. Whoops!

While they were down there, they ran a new sewer pipe out to the municipal line as well. This part was pretty cool. Rather than digging up the whole yard, they just ran a 1/2" steel cable through the old masonry pipe, hooked it to a solid steel cone, and pulled the cone through with a hydraulic winch, trailing some pvc behind it. As it went, it busted apart the old pipe and put a new one its place. All in all a pain in the ass, but neat to see how they approached things.

Aside: I also have and love Amica. They've covered a couple claims for me and have been very easy to work with.

<comment><USER54> > they ran a new sewer pipe out to the municipal line as well. This part was > pretty cool. Rather than digging up the whole yard, they just ran a 1/2" > steel cable through the old masonry pipe, hooked it to a solid steel cone, > and pulled the cone through with a hydraulic winch, trailing some pvc behind > it. As it went, it busted apart the old pipe and put a new one its place.

A month ago near Paris I have seen that method used to replace water mains along a whole street - very impressive !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> wow. I remember as a kid ~20 years ago playing with mercury (my grandfather was a dentist and had a 1lb bottle of the stuff for some reason)

I think if I found mercury in my house I would literally just scoop it up and bring it to the fire department without thinking about any health hazards of it. Is mercury truely that bad that short exposure is that dangerous? I mean, I wouldnt eat the stuff (or breath it in for extended periods) but I used to roll it around in my hands and whatnot as a kid without any effects.

Considering how some people work with mercury ( see this : [http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado](http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado) ) , I feel like you need quite a bit of exposure to be up shits creek.

Then again, I'm not a doctor so dont listen to me.

<comment><USER56> IIRC one time touching cold liquid elemental mercury isn't that bad, the short-term problem is _breathing_ mercury fumes or encountering various compounds that it can react to form.

Any sort of persistent chronic exposure is definitely bad, of course, since like most "heavy metals" it accumulates and has long-term effects.

<comment><USER57> If you haven't seen mercury vapors under an ultraviolet light, it's quite dramatic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI)

<comment><USER58> It looks like same happens with dental amalgam fillings too (which also contains mercury):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA)

Most say it's safe (the FDA too) and that video just shows water vapor because mercury vapor wouldn't rise like that due to it's weight, but I'm not sure what to believe.

[http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth- ge...](http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth-gets-smoked- out.html)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> For $50k I'd at least get some further legal opinions. I believe there's also state laws about what the specific HOx policies can actually exclude (regardless of what the actual policy says), so perhaps there's something there.

Although the causality is a latent condition from when you bought the house, which doesn't bode well. If you yourself had caused the spill when doing demo, I think you'd be in a stronger position.

</comment><comment><USER60> I once had a ceiling leak of water from my upstairs neighbor. I called a contractor, and he broke open a segment of the ceiling where my vent was - <USER3> the entire gap between my unit and upstairs looked like something from Venus - terrifying colors/growths taking place. The contractor said that there was a massive mold infusion, and that we would need a hazardous material team to come clean it up, and we were looking at a bill of around $20,000 - $30,000 for the team to come do the full cleanup of the riser.

I freaked out a little, and thankfully had a calm property management company that just said, "Look the area above bathrooms _always_ looks like this, and we just need to have the people upstairs caulk a bit better around their bathtub, and we'll be fine.

I'm not going to claim I have any idea whether calling the HazMat/FireDepartment team makes sense here (Hell, Mercury is dangerous) - <USER4> it's always a good idea to see if there are _safe_ alternatives that might save you several tens of thousands of dollars.

<comment><USER61> Wait, so the property management company (which would be responsible for facilitating the mold remediation at the very least, or paying for it if they own the property or were liable for the issue in the first place) told you that mold was no big deal and your upstairs neighbors just need to caulk a little more around their bath tub (also the responsibility of the property owner) and that calmed you down?

Mold and fungi can certainly be harmful to humans. The interests of your landlords and property managers are not aligned with yours in this case.

<comment><USER62> From the context it seems likely that GP owns a condo, so bills like that would not be sent to property management. Also if anyone has an interest to lie it is mold remediation contractors whose entire business is built on exaggeration.

<comment><USER60> Exactly correct. It was my Condo, and if it was an exterior wall, then the Home Owners Association would be charged a "Special Fee" (We had recently dropped $100+K on repairing wall damage from a rain leak) - but ceiling damage would have been on me. To make matters worse, they were renters living in the upstairs unit, and when I contacted the owner, it turned out he was a lawyer, and initially all he said was, "If you have a problem, sue me."

Thankfully, the manager of our property management board was much more sane, had seen the space above bathroom vents, knew that it _always_ looked funky (lots of moisture going up through those vents), and saved me $30K.

I guess my point was - given a choice, a subcontractor can always turn a minor clean up into a $50K project, but it's entirely possible, there is a $5K choice as well that the home owner might want to consider pursuing.

<comment><USER62> Lawyer or no, I would be surprised to find that an HOA couldn't force an owner to re-caulk a bathroom. What's the purpose of all those damn inspections if not to discover and fix this sort of problem?

<comment><USER60> It's hard to force a lawyer to do anything. Thankfully the property manager had a personal relationship with him, and could just say, "Look, don't turn this into a big deal - just caulk the bathtub and stop the leaking already." But for that single phone call, I would be at least $15-$20K poorer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Maybe the lesson is to save.

There's a huge number of very unlikely risks. Too many risks to carefully avoid them all. Something unexpected will happen. Insurance can help, but as the articls shows, not always.

<comment><USER64> Seriously. I don't know a lot of people for whom a surprise $50k bill would be "unfortunately" rather than "disastrously".

<comment><USER65> I don't think there are that many people. 50K is a lot.

<comment><USER66> I know plenty of people that live in $1MM apartments that doubled in value over the last 10 years. So while they might not be able to "spare" $50k, it's not that big a deal overall. Of course I know other people for which that would be a lifetime of savings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Does anyone get near aroused by this kind of web design? I love it and wish every site could be "dumbed down" to this kind of easy navigation and reading experience.

I know there are "reader views" in many modern browser, but I'd also like the site structure and navigation to be easier to overview. Sort of a WAP view for the twenty-tens.

<comment><USER32> Thanks! I'm glad you like the design.

It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html readable as things change. It started out as completely unstyled, then gained a max- width as screens got wider, and eventually a little bit of media-querying to make things look better on phones, but it's still really basic.

<comment><USER67> > It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html > readable as things change

I like it and I've been experimenting with exactly the same thing. However, it's kind of hard for me to not get carried away and start adding a superfluous line CSS here and there. :-)

How do you pull in the comments from multiple sources BTW? Is it a manual process?

<comment><USER32> I pull the comments in with: [https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/commen...](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/comment_requester_wsgi.py)

(Which isn't completely up to date; I have some changes I need to push public like hn-support.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> This does seem like a good case for small claims court against Honeywell. It's probably limited in what they could recover but they could at least get some of that back.

<comment><USER29> Why small claims court? Surely the payout for such a huge health risk would be significantly higher than small claims court could provide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> You have saved your children a few IQ points.

</comment><comment><USER70> I wonder how many of these spills go unreported! In high school one of my classmates told me how he used to crack open thermometers and play with the liquid. I don't know if it was mercury or not, but it seemed to be, and he was completely unaware of how toxic it was.

<comment><USER71> My mother told me that when I was very young (too young to remember), I was sick and she stuck a thermometer in my mouth to take my temperature. And I promptly bit the end off it, and had to be rushed to the hospital to have my stomach cleaned out of mercury.

<comment><USER72> >in my mouth Was that common in the US for mercury thermometers? In Hungary it was always "under the armpit" but as far as I remember I have seen the thermometer in mouth method in US cartoons.

<comment><USER73> Yes. I always had my temperature taken orally. (Although I don't use mercury thermometers these days.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Is there anything else in the modern world where we still uses mercury in this large amount of quantity?

If so why?

<comment><USER11> The standard low-tech approach for gold mining: 1) mix crushed ore with mercury; 2) let sit for a while; 3) boil off mercury over a fire; 4) sell gold. Maybe you try to condense some of the mercury. But mercury is cheap compared to gold, so why bother?

Also, we burn lots of coal. And coal contains mercury.

Anyway see this cool EPA page: [http://www2.epa.gov/international- cooperation/mercury-emissi...](http://www2.epa.gov/international- cooperation/mercury-emissions-global-context)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> When I was a child, me and my nephews (which are about my own age) used to go to the pharmacy to buy thermometers, and break them for their mercury. With time we accumulated enough to fill up a mid-sized crystal jar, I would say around 200 grams.

We played with that mercury a lot. We passed it between our hands, which later held treats we ate. We laid down on the grown, and pour it in our closed eyes, letting it drop on the side of our faces. The only thing we came short of doing was putting mercury in our mouth. No harm ever came to us as a result.

I would have cleaned the spill for free, if I get to keep the mercury. ;-)

<comment><USER32>
        No harm ever came to us as a result.

I think you're probably right, but how do you know? It's very hard to compare yourself to a version of you who didn't have that kind of exposure as a kid.

<comment><USER75> True. What I meant to say was, I was not poisoned, nor felt sick, and so far I am into my 50s. I know there might still be time to pay for what I did as a child...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> In the end he is using the $50k expense as an argument for renting instead of buying.

I am wondering, if you were to rent, would your landlord actually cover this? Sounds like that would be equally hard as claiming it on insurance or previous owner of house. I can imagine the response being something along "our janitor was qualified to clean it up and you shouldn't have called haz team" or simply that the leak wasn't their fault. On the other hand you can easily bail out and just rent another place, unless the queue to get a rental is 3years+ in your city.

<comment><USER11> No, you just move. Not your problem. And I doubt that the lease would stand in court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Effects of Mercury on Brain Neuron Degeneration

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A)

</comment><comment><USER78> Do American house buyers not have a survey done. In the UK its a requirement of a Mortgage application.

<comment><USER32> We did have a home inspection, but the only way to find this would have been to rip up the floor or bring in a mercury vapor analyzer, neither of which are customary (in the US or UK).

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> As a kid I often played with mercury used in a blood pressure monitor. Spilling it on the table and mesmerized by its look and feel. I am not sure what damages that might have caused to my brain now that I know its toxic!

<comment><USER80> I did the same. I broke an old thermometer just to play with the mercury. I used to keep it in a small metal box. Some years later I went to check it, and I had all disappeared from the metal box!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Wow. That's crazy expensive. I'm glad to hear about this story. I don't think I'd pay $50k for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER82> This makes me feel bad for breaking a thermometer as a little boy just to play with the mercury inside.

</comment><comment><USER83> > there was a dusy little puddle

what's a dusy?

<comment><USER84> reworded:

there was a [little puddle that was dusty]

<comment><USER83> was that a slang/neologism/typo? honestly curious. english third language and all...

<comment><USER75> I assume it a typo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


3 weeks writing code in Go - <AUTHOR> https://danlark.org/2020/01/31/i-wrote-go-code-for-3-weeks-and-you-wont-believe-what-happened-next/ <comment><USER2> He lists many things he likes and very few he dislikes, but the last sentence is:

> For big and longstanding projects, I do believe Go is bad because if you > want to do something complex, Go won't let you do this anyhow.

Without a proper explanation how he got to this strong conclusion.

And especially with so many cloud infrastructure projects being written in Go (Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Consul, etcd, CockroachDB, Nebula, ...), it seems to be in contrast to the common perception, thus requiring a proper explanation even more.

<comment><USER3> I agree and in fact i think this sentence is a self-contradiction in some way :

If you want a "big longstanding" project, then doing "complex" thing is probably the thing you want to avoid at all cost. And as a proof that it's possible, one can have a look at the standard library, which is big, longstanding and is the most readable std lib i've ever seen.

<comment><USER4> So when is it appropriate to do complex things?

<comment><USER5> HPC where you try to wring the last ounce of performance from machines insufficiently powerful for the task. Weather forecasting, weapons simulation, protein folding...

<comment><USER4> That's interesting. I don't think as optimized memory manipulation via convoluted casting and such as "complex stuff". I think of that as optimization.

I thought what the author meant by complex was a gigantic system that needs to use many design patterns for good reasons; the code models a very complex, convoluted domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Last few weeks I have been working on a project in Go that required using multiple libraries I had no previous experience with. Usually when in doubts I would Google or go to Stackoverflow or Github issues.

But Google results today are mostly spam or copycat sites that echo forever some old answers. And Stackoverflow answers are too often outdated for fast evolving language leading onto false paths.

Surprisingly I started just go to source libraries and read the code. It provided answers faster and with less noise.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Undocumen...](https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Undocumented)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > if err != nil { return nil, err }

I still think this is bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER9> How can one possibly form a strong opinion about a language in _three weeks_?</comment>


Chinese Hackers Bypass 2FA - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/chinese-hackers-bypass-2fa-in-attacks-spanning-10-count-1840613473/ <comment><USER2> Bad title. RSA tokens are named but almost no technical details are given in the article.</comment>


I reimplemented tj/co in 15 lines of code - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/huytd/ae44fa2f83fc797b8f12da527ac1516c <comment><USER2> Most tj/co code is to support these yieldables: \- promises \- thunks (functions) \- array (parallel execution) \- objects (parallel execution) \- generators (delegation) \- generator functions (delegation) (see [https://github.com/tj/co#yieldables](https://github.com/tj/co#yieldables))

Have your library the same support?

<comment><AUTHOR> no, it's just a simple snippet and only support promises :D</comment></comment>