Founders, teach your employees statistics - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/founders-teach-your-employees-statistics <comment><USER3> I'm a huge fan of pandas (<http://pandas.pydata.org/>) for data analysis. It offers a lot of the basic functionality of R, but everything is in python. The original author of pandas, Wes McKinney, even wrote a book about it: Python for Data Analysis (<http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023784.do>).

One caveat I would mention about data analysis would be that statistics is not just number crunching. It is really a bit of an art to making sure you are looking at the right sample of data in the right way, and ensure you are accounting for all potential biases. Surprisingly, I have noticed as I've gotten more experience doing data analysis, it takes me longer to do and I make less confident assertions. But on the other hand, I now very rarely make assertions which were incorrect, which is extremely important. I believe that incorrect data analysis is significantly worse than no data analysis.

So, the advice I would give to people getting started is whenever you come to a conclusion by analyzing a particular piece of data, ask your "if I look at the data differently, can I come to the opposite conclusion?". You would be surprised how often the answer to this question is yes, and that is a good indicator that you a) need more data or b) cannot make a significant conclusion. This can be especially difficult when you are already _sure_ you know the answer to a question even before you do the data analysis, but you really have to be disciplined about it.

<comment><USER4> > One caveat I would mention about data analysis would be that statistics is > not just number crunching

Agreed. Analysis that is well presented _tells a story_. The story begins with where the data comes from, then describes how the data was analyzed, and finally how the results relate back to the real world. If any of these pieces are missing, or unconvincing, it's a good sign that something is off, like you say, with either a) The data, or b) the significance of the conclusion.

I emphasize the story aspect because the act of laying out all of the assumptions in a semi-narrative form goes a long way towards deobfuscating the potentially confusing statistics. It is also the sort of discipline that can help to lay bare all of the assumptions that could make you _sure_ that you know the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree that learning statistics is invaluable.

I disagree that teaching R is the same as teaching statistics.

<comment><USER6> I definitely have to agree. There is nothing more dangerous than plugging some numbers into R, typing t.test(some_numbers) and proclaiming "Hey look at this great p-value!" without understanding what a p-value is actually telling you.

The most important part of doing statistics right is actually understanding what you're doing, and you're far better off using less powerful tools that you understand than pumping data into fancy functions that you can't really explain.

And more important than just raw number crunching: understanding statistics gives you an improved intuition regarding data. The real value in statistics is the new tools it provides for thinking about problems.

A better solution than "learn R" would be to read through something like Head First Statics and the move on from there to more advanced stuff, and only then start hacking around in R.

<comment><USER7> Could not agree more. Most stats tools are so complicated that one spends more time learning/thinking about the logistics of running an analysis ("Should I run a chi-squared or a Fisher's Exact Test? And how do I get it to run?") than about the part that demands real human creativity: thinking through the right questions to ask, biases in the sample, etc.

Disclosure/shameless-promotion, I'm the cofounder of <https://www.statwing.com>, an easy to use stats tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Statistics is incredibly important since every scientific publication and public policy decision these days refers to statistical results to justify their conclusion.

Given this, a class in "bad statistics" would be even more useful - <USER2> numbers are presented using a veneer of statistical analysis to fraudulently imply incorrect conclusions that benefit the interest group or organization publishing or financing the study. As case studies such a class would have no shortage of examples, for example the more than 50% of peer reviewed journal articles whose findings were actually false. (per Ioannidis, [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124))

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! That's a great point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I say teach them the business. Statistics is a fine tool, but you need to know what you are doing. You can build a regression line to predict sales in a given month, but you migh forget important drivers or to just _ask_ people with experience.

On top of that, remember that looking at the past to predict the future does not always work. First, because you might not have a past (if you are a start up...); second, because new tech and facts might screw up your regression analysis very easily, especially in a fast moving sector (and if you are a start up...).

Said that, I find simple _descriptive_ statistics very useful, I wish people in business knew at least what a variance is.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the most difficult things to do is tell the numerically illiterate how your conclusions are useful. Many people have a huge distrust of math and believe intuition trumps all considerations. I think it's a cultural thing. Don't hire people that are afraid of quantification. They don't need to know the exact procedures, but they shouldn't be violently striking against quantification. Your sales team doesn't really need to understand statistics beyond that it serves a certain function, focusing on certain measurable targets.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll bet you could tell some great stories from your AdSense days to illustrate your point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we used a ton of stats to inform product decisions, measure the health of the auction and inform our sales team (prioritize leads).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> birken has made this point already but as a more general one. If you are already using Python in any way then use that instead of R, you will be much happier.

If you are not already using python then it still might be the right tool over using R. R has great functionality but my god are there ever warts in the R language and ecosystem.

Also: I'll add my support to the opinion that you need to be very careful that you understand the statistics you are doing or you will be asking your tools to lie to you and not know it. A whole lot of the statistics you are going to want to do will be more advanced than stats 101.

</comment><comment><USER13> Problem: then they will realize they are getting a shitty deal with 20,000 shares out of 80 million and want a real slice. Better to leave them numerically illiterate.</comment>


Beyond React 16 by Dan Ambramov – Async Rendering and React Suspense - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6iR3Zk4oDY <comment><USER3> So glad someone captured this talk!

At the 15 minute mark, he introduces a new paradigm for asynchronous IO _within_ render functions; see a screenshot here: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/wybqgtftuyqipk8/Screenshot%202018-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/wybqgtftuyqipk8/Screenshot%202018-03-01%2009.41.11.png?dl=0). This is groundbreaking, to say the least, as previously this needed to be done by adding higher-order components to inject the result of the fetch as a prop at some higher level; now, it's as simple as changing the src property in a single line of code.

One of Dan's colleagues, Andrew Clark, described how this is implemented on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/969171217356746752](https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/969171217356746752)

        Here's how suspending works:
        - in the render method, read a value from the cache.
        - if the value is already cached, the render continues like normal
        - if the value is not already cached, the cache *throws a promise*
        - when the promise resolves, React retries where it left off

Digging into the source code released in this companion tweet, imageFetcher.read() indeed throws (instead of an exception) a Promise that is apparently caught by React's new error handling infrastructure and handled somewhere up the chain. [https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/packages/simpl...](https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/packages/simple- cache-provider/src/SimpleCacheProvider.js#L187)

The talk indicated that there will be tons of support for granularly choosing when/how to show spinners, allowing interactivity with the rest of the interface, etc. while this loading is ongoing.

It's a bit magical, but promising to say the least!

<comment><USER4> So I am guessing if a prop is `instanceof Promise` or some other constructor then it must trigger this response . . . is that correct?

<comment><USER3> React isn't changing any logic of the types of props; if you actually pass a Promise as a prop, it will be treated 100% as it was in previous React versions.

What's happening instead is that imageFetcher.read() either returns a string OR _throws_ a promise; it never _returns_ a Promise.

So <Component foo={fooFetcher.read(...)} /> either gets instantiated with the fetched Foo, or throws so React.createElement(Component, ...) never gets called in the first place.

Only if you physically _throw_ a Promise (or "thenable") does the new logic apply: [https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/12279/files#diff-1996...](https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/12279/files#diff-1996f2b11f9c68c0a81652e32be88ddbR132) is called inside an exception handler.

<comment><USER5> Wow, I never would have considered throwing anything other than an Error. On the face of it, this seems like an incredibly powerful technique, but is it an abuse of a language feature?

<comment><USER3> Python "abuses" exceptions in a similar way every time you iterate over a generator: [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1124...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112463/why- do-iterators-in-python-raise-an-exception)

At the end of the day it's just a control flow mechanism. And theoretically, if you lack data needed to render, it's an exceptional condition.

<comment><USER5> It's a very interesting technique; I will definitely be keeping an eye out for appropriate use cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> typo in the title - its Abramov not Ambramov

It's interesting that Lin Clark basically demoed Time Slicing a -year- ago at ReactConf: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCuYPiUIONs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCuYPiUIONs) and in the first 10 mins of Dan's talk you see basically the same thing with user interaction applied.

createFetcher is brand new and here's the metaconversation on Twitter/Github: [https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/969168681644179456](https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/969168681644179456) and [https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/12279/files#diff-50d8...](https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/12279/files#diff-50d8f0a9fb4af9baa0c2d4b8905567a7)

with a couple implementations here ([https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/969169357094842368](https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/969169357094842368)) and here ([https://twitter.com/actualhypercrab/status/94131894239559680...](https://twitter.com/actualhypercrab/status/941318942395596801))

// style discussion below

one thing I really appreciate about this talk is hard it is to even communicate asynchronous problems and the solutions to them. Personally the lagging animationFrame clock display (for time slicing) and the loading state devtools (for "react suspense") were actually the bigger "wow" moments. (Yes I know this talk is not about the tools or the charts)

he does another thing I'm a fan of - starting with a question. this helps frame the rest of the talk: explaining why the question is a big deal, breaking the question down, proposing some solutions, showing how the solutions answer the question.

bottom line - there's more to learn from this talk than _just_ React.

<comment><USER7> Yep, nice link roundup - beat me to it :)

Also see the summary post on the React blog for the key takeaways from the demo:

[https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/03/01/sneak-peek-beyond- react-...](https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/03/01/sneak-peek-beyond- react-16.html)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link.

But boy, the Apple presentation style is so heavy in that blog post. "We call this...", "We can't wait..."

<comment><USER9> Sorry if the tone was a bit much! I figured it would be helpful to establish common terminology that people can refer to, and I'm serious about our excitement here – not exaggerating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I express how excited I am for async rendering.

In my experience React has had 2 major paint points. async anything, and styling. And this fixes the former, and I'd argue that the latter isn't necessarily their job to fix.

Also, to have done this in a way that keeps a LOT of backwards compatibility is amazing.

<comment><USER11> What do you think is so painful about styling in React? Genuinely curious. The scoping of stuff? The organization?

<comment><USER10> There are basically 3 options, and they all have really big downsides:

* CSS modules - can use any CSS preprocessors, fast, can be extracted into CSS files, but it's very hard to "theme" and very hard to style/modify 3rd party components.

* Css-in-js - uses Js to render, using preprocessors is much more difficult, can't easily extract into CSS files, somewhat easier to theme and share.

* Inline styles - even slower, harder to preprocess, harder to extract, but very easy to theme and override.

And all 3 don't work well with one another. So if you get a widget made with inline styles, overriding the color is hard with CSS modules...

<comment><USER12> Isn't the whole point of CSS-in-JS that you don't need a toy language to do preprocessing if you have a real language like JavaScript?

I haven't really used SASS et. al., but my understanding is that they were hacks to get shared constants, functions, and derived values in a CSS that predated custom properties.

<comment><USER10> But with the downside of basically replicating a lot of what the CSS engine does in Javascript, further polluting the already stressed "main" thread in many JS applications. And doing it in a slower, less battery efficient, and less cacheable way.

And in my opinion, a language like SASS isn't a "hack" but is a very specific and extremely powerful language which is dedicated to one use (styling) and therefore most styling-specific code is very natural with SASS, however with JS it gets more difficult (want to extend another style defined elsewhere? You kind of need to work with JS that wasn't really designed to make that an easy task, in SASS it's `@extend %other-class`)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FYI: A higher quality version of this video is on the React blog at [https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/03/01/sneak-peek-beyond- react-...](https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/03/01/sneak-peek-beyond- react-16.html).

<comment><USER12> I certainly understand the bias to host it on your own infrastructure, but I really appreciate that I can download from YouTube for offline viewing on the metro. Couldn't find a way to do that with the official version.

<comment><USER9> That's really helpful to know for the future, thanks! We didn't have a strong preference so ended up with FB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So if I understand it correctly, anything after this line inside the render...

        const movie = movieDeatailsFetch.read(props.id);
        ...

... will block rendering and will defer to a parent <Placeholder /> component to render instead?

Interesting magic I'd say, since I wouldn't expect such a line to block my rendering.

Wouldn't it be a more "React way" to have HOC component or a render prop that would work exactly like this .read() API?

       <MovieDetailsFetcher>
         {movie => <MovieDetails movie={movie} /> }
       ...

Then this HOC component doesn't need to have the IO-logic in the render, it can put it in the `componentWillMount` or inside another lifecycle method of React.

What's the advantage of putting the IO operation in the render instead of inside a lifecycle method?

Also, how's race-conditioning done? Does the fetcher library have the logic to only render the last fetcher, or is it more complicated than that?

There's lots of magic, especially in the IO part, and would've loved if he went more into detail on how it's actually done - it's a JS-conf afterall.

Also, a fetch()-promise-based API is not the only type of IO-interface we have. In fact it's only one of many.

HTTP2 for instance is on the horizon offering more complex interfaces with open connections possibly returning several results like websockets - on the other hand a Promise only returns one result and then dies. Observables might be a more interesting abstraction for IO-kind of things.

Also, testing this seems rather complex since the render is effectively doing a side-effect.

In any case, cool lateral thinking and I love hearing these type of talks about cool new futuristic stuff rather than some boring old thing everybody knows about.

<comment><USER14> >will block rendering and will defer to a parent <Placeholder /> component to render instead?

Yes, but only after the delay period passes. Before that, nothing will happen on the screen (at least not until I add an inline spinner as one of the last steps). Preventing a spinner from appearing and instantly disappearing on fast connections is exactly what this feature enables.

>Interesting magic I'd say, since I wouldn't expect such a line to block my rendering.

It works by throwing a Promise (and React catches it and waits for it before retrying rendering). So it's not really magic, just an unfamiliar pattern. Conceptually this is similar to algebraic effects in languages that have them.

>Wouldn't it be a more "React way" to have HOC component or a render prop that would work exactly like this .read() API?

No. If you watch the demo closely you'll notice we _don't_ show the spinner if the load is fast enough. React prevents updating the whole tree. This is impossible to express with a HOC without reimplementing the whole React in it.

>There's lots of magic, especially in the IO part, and would've loved if he went more into detail on how it's actually done - it's a JS-conf afterall.

As I said earlier the actual mechanism is quite straightforward. We throw and later React retries.

We'll be posting an RFC with details. But for now we felt it was important to _motivate_ this work, and even the motivation barely fit into 30 minutes.

>Observables might be a more interesting abstraction for IO-kind of things.

The core purpose of this feature is to suspend rendering until data is ready to avoid flicker and things jumping around. You can use observables in your code but I'd argue that, save for a few use cases, having components jump around as new items "come in" is a janky experience. You can always build a Promise interface that coalesces those observable updates into Promises of a final list before rendering.

>Also, testing this seems rather complex since the render is effectively doing a side-effect.

I actually think testing will get easier because now you can wrap your tree with a fake cache in tests. Then even components that do data fetching won't attempt to reach the real network.

>Also, how's race-conditioning done? Does the fetcher library have the logic to only render the last fetcher, or is it more complicated than that?

The fetcher library doesn't have much logic. It's basically a cache backed by two Maps (for pending and resolved data).

React just retries rendering after Promise has resolved (or re-render happened due to another reason, like prop change). So there is no need for explicit logic handling race conditions. Instead of keeping continuations "in flight" we just abort rendering and retry when data is ready. So there's nothing to race for.

<comment> just-boris Thank you! I appreciate all your replies, but want clarify this one:

> This is impossible to express with a HOC without reimplementing the whole > React in it.

What is the problem here? We return `null` from the beginning, then spinner, if reached timeout and finally, the provided component, if data has arrived.

<comment><USER14> Please watch my demo. It doesn't just unmount the children when I start fetching. It keeps the _previous_ screen in place (and fully interactive) while the new screen is loaded. If the new screen is ready fast enough, then it fully replaces the old screen without any intermediate state (empty or loading).

I know it's a bit hard to believe because none of JS libraries I'm aware of can do this yet. But that's what it does thanks to cooperative scheduling and a double buffering-like system we implemented. I totally understand that it doesn't quite "click" from the first explanation because you really need to try it to get it.

But to explain it again: React doesn't _remove_ the child tree, it _suspends the whole update_ from committing before the tree is ready. So there's no "holes" or "spinners" if it loads fast enough.

Intuitively my last example with Img component may help. There's no a way a leaf Img component could delay the whole page from rendering before. With suspense it is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think my only concern for throwing a Promise to do a non-local goto and cause the scheduler to delay rendering that component is whether the thrown Promise can be caught by mis-behaving code that makes it difficult to debug what's going on. It would be nice to have a more line-of-sight API as well vs only an exception based model.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there plan to implement the react-core in C or other native language ?

I can see that being compiled to webassembly for browsers and react-native can have multiple language support ?

<comment><USER7> No, there's no plans to rewrite the React core in C, Rust, Reason, WASM, or anything else right now.

Lin Clark, who works for Mozilla, gave a talk on "What WebAssembly Means for React" last year ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GHJ4cbxsVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GHJ4cbxsVQ) ). In a recent Twitter thread, she said that some more useful WASM pieces are in the works, but still not likely to be a big improvement or worth the effort to rewrite React ( [https://twitter.com/linclark/status/967860936550879232](https://twitter.com/linclark/status/967860936550879232) ).

<comment><USER17> It would be really interesting to one day have React be a polyfill for an in- browser async DOM renderer.

Is that in (very, very, long-term) consideration?

<comment><USER14> I think my talk paints a relatively convincing picture why DOM nodes aren't a sufficient primitive if you care about the features I described, as you'd need something like React to orchestrate those updates.

<comment><USER16> Hello Dan,

Great talk ! My thinking behind the top statement was with a native implementation of react-core, the react-native story becomes more compelling with JSX(ish) UI templates / CSS Styles and multi language business logic support.

Once you have this, the browser becomes another target. I see Flexbox implementation is already native with Yoga [0].

[0] [https://yogalayout.com/](https://yogalayout.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm pretty excited to see how the api could interop with some new native features of js, like for ex async class functions are now possible and I bet a setup like this could remove a lot of IO overhead in the future

      class Test {
        async render() {}
      }

Kind of hard to come up with a concrete use-case with how little we know about the new features. Still super interesting though!

<comment><USER19> Interop with language feature is definitely a thing. It helps people to understand a tool without the need of digging into implementation details, since those details are language features that developers already familiar with.

There is a way to do this kind of things with current React version (16.2): [https://github.com/alexeyraspopov/react- coroutine](https://github.com/alexeyraspopov/react-coroutine)

You can use generators, async functions, and even more, async generators. Worth checking examples in the repo.

<comment><USER18> Nice, awesome work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I did a little demo of working with the new Suspense API.

[https://github.com/birkir/react-suspense- demo/blob/master/sr...](https://github.com/birkir/react-suspense- demo/blob/master/src/App.js)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is pretty amazing, kudos to the React team! Just hope that SSR isn't an afterthought with this feature. That is probably been my only little grouse with the React team that SSR compatibility is always a 'Not sure, someone should try it' response.

<comment><USER21> I guess another question I have is how does the React or the Redux team see this playing with Redux. Dispatch returns promises but then the cache is the redux store itself - so would the fetcher read from the store possibly?

<comment><USER7> I'm a Redux maintainer (as is Tim Dorr, who submitted the post).

Use of promises with dispatching is, as far as I can see, not relevant to this particular discussion. It seems that the caching aspect is up to you - <USER2> important thing is that if a component decides it needs to wait for data before it resumes rendering, it needs to throw a promise.

What _is_ relevant is figuring out how to synchronize dispatched actions that cause updates to the Redux store with React possibly pausing a given component tree re-render cycle, applying a different update, and then resuming the rest of the original update. We've had some initial discussions, and are still trying to grasp what the impacts are here.

Ultimately, it's possible there will be internal changes to the React-Redux library - we just don't know what those changes will be yet. But, if there are, we'll do our best to keep the public API stable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe a dumb question or wrong forum. But how do you start using latest React in a project?

<comment><USER23> Npm has alpha versions firstname.lastname@example.com and react- email@example.com you can experiment with.

<comment><USER14> there be bugs</comment></comment></comment>


Sharyl Attkisson releases video of apparent computer hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/10/sharyl-attkisson-releases-video-of-apparent-computer-197961.html <comment><USER2> No lag in working with the document, potentially signifying real close proximity. If you want to buy the narrative, that is. Heck, I can RDP in to my pc with another pc/laptop on a directly wired network, and still have splurges of x,y mouse mapping madness, often requiring a do-over (even if its just a few pixel-wide adjustments), none of that is apparent here, which suggests shenanigans, or a patched, improved RDP. Release the source! ok, that was kinda dumb.</comment>


BuzzFeed News Asks Readers to Chip in with Donations - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-news-asks-readers-to-chip-in-with-donations-1535395575 <comment><USER2> I'd gladly support BuzzFeed News. Just today they broke this huge story [1].

[1] [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orph...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orphanage- death-catholic-abuse-nuns-st-josephs)

<comment><USER3> Buzzfeed really do produce some first-rate journalism. Their investigative work is absolutely equal to anything being produced by traditional newspapers.

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/investigations)

<comment><USER4> I agree - their news division has really impressed me over the past few years. They really should spin themselves off to avoid the negative association between their journalism and the clickbait pop quizzes and gratuitous native ads from the rest of the company.

<comment><USER5> I thought their strategy was for the clickbait revenue to support the costs of their news division.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even the dedicated news section has headline now that reads: "x has a lot of people shook on twitter."

Won't pretend to understand what kind of language appeals to 18-20 year olds, but is that demographic valuable enough to have such garbage articles/headlines interspersed with actual journalism? Such an enigma to me.

Seems unlikely that the demographic they're catering to at the expense of everyone else would chip in with donations.

<comment><USER7> The front page of NYTimes.com currently lists among the hard news the headline "Dogs in Poofy Dresses. You're Welcome." but I don't think that prevents a wide range of age brackets from reading and supporting it.

<comment><USER8> There are a lot of people who feel the Times has gone steeply downhill in the last few years. Personally, I've gone from an avid subscriber to never visiting.

The Journal, the Economist, and the BBC are my go to these days.

<comment><USER9> When I was 18-20, I wanted to be the sort of person who read _The Economist_. I got a subscription when I was 22 or so, I think. I kept up with it for a bit and then realized it wasn't actually improving my life in any way - not even keeping me meaningfully informed about the world.

Now that I'm older I'm more excited about people using "shook" as slang than about reading _The Economist_ , and I intend on donating $100 as soon as the button is live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The Guardian, a U.K.-based newspaper, has raised $130 million from reader > contributions since April 2016.

That's actually a significant portion of its revenue (~$275 million last fiscal). Quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://archive.is/77hdf](http://archive.is/77hdf)

<comment><USER12> Irony, but thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always had mixed feeling about buzzfeed, the same mixed feelings I have with Google. It's like there are 2 separate entites :

1) the Buzzfeed that is amazing and produce some incredible stories

2) The clickbait attention-whore buzzfeed that makes me lose faith in humanity and in the internet in general.

For those wondering about Google :

1) The Google we all loved at first, creating incredible products that impact people lives for the best

2) The creepy Google that tracks everything that I do all the time and makes me angry that I cannot find any alerternative that could be as good.

I would have a really hard time donating to buzzfeed as long as it is not clear for me what buzzfeed really is (Amazing stories creation or click bait article).

Edit : typo and layout

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I actually think the offer to read this story on your Kindle is quite clever...if they offered that to me in a pop-up before serving me a barrage of ads, I might even prefer it.

And it's an honest revenue model! _And it 's 86 pages_, for crying out loud...they should charge way more than $0.99.

Push that, instead of donations. IMO.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is stupid. If you're a corporation, you don't get donations. You charge customers for a service. If you want donations, start a non-profit.

As a New Yorker, I'd gladly pay a yearly fee to go to BuzzFeed-sponsored events. But if I'm going to donate to support journalism, there are lots of solid competitors for my money.

<comment><USER10> Journalism is in an on going funding crisis. I hear what you are saying, but there are plenty of publications that have gone belly-up after putting up a pay wall - there are just too many alternatives with near identical content. This is probably "their own fault" for training the public to expect free online content, but at this point every possible business model is on the table, including asking for donations in association with articles on highly charged issues.

<comment><USER14> > _there are plenty of publications that have gone belly-up after putting up a > pay wall - there are just too many alternatives with near identical content_

I don't fault them for trying. But if there are "many alternatives with near identical content," what is lost in their going?

There is ad-funded free content and quality content behind paywalls. Donor- funded nonprofit journalism exists in some markets. But donor-funded private enterprise? Foolish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just as soon as they chip in with some real journalists

<comment><USER7> If only the journalists that reported these stories in 2017 at BuzzFeed were real:

* Helping to free an innocent man who'd spent 23 years behind bars

* Exposing the true scale of Russia's targeted assassinations in the West — and how UK and US authorities have turned a blind eye

* Sexual assault at Massage Envy

* A dirty offshore bank — and its blue-chip Western enablers and protectors

* BP's dangerous accidents in Alaska

* The US government's shadowy national security contractors

* Whistleblowers: FBI software contains Russian-made code

and more: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/markschoofs/the-year- in...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/markschoofs/the-year-in- investigations)

<comment><USER16> You can't build a reputation on garbage clickbait, and then expect people to take you seriously on-demand. Integrity isn't a light switch that you can flick on and off. To take any investigative piece seriously, I have to have some trust for the people that produced it, and I don't trust Buzzfeed to be anything other than low-quality, no-integrity mindless garbage.

<comment><USER17> I see you're being down voted into nothingness (ironic when the topic is about integrity, journalism, free speech) but I agree.

Buzzfeed has been garbage for years at least here in Canada, some pretty vile people work there (Scaachi Koul). I too can't take them seriously considering their history. Maybe the US version is better and maybe I will find them trustworthy but I can't see it happening anytime soon.

Even the NYT after that disaster with the hiring of Sarah Jeong. I didn't realize it was OK to be racist as a retort I foolishly choose the option of just never being racist.

Trust takes years to develop but will disappear in an instant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it incredibly fascinating that a site like Buzzfeed can do amazing journalism, but the majority of mainstream media falls grossly short but expects the same respect.</comment>


Happy 95th Birthday, Martin Gardner - <AUTHOR> http://lingpipe-blog.com/2009/10/20/happy-95th-birthday-martin-gardner/ <comment><USER2> Martin Gardner was a huge influence on me too - it's largely due to that early influence that I have a PhD in Pure Math, and now go out to schools to show how and why math can be fun, exciting, engaging, confusing and rewarding, all in equal measure.

I hope I'm carrying on his tradition. I still dip into his books for inspiration, and aspire to write as clearly, elegantly and above all effectively as he did and still does.

Happy Birthday ,Martin Gardner!

<comment><USER3> I grew to like Gardner's writings somewhat now. They however, indirectly, had almost devastating effect on my earlier life, promoting sort of mathematics I never could do.

There is "bag of tricks" culture of mathematics (<http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf>) where one often stands no chance against a "tricky" problem without prior acquaintance with "tricky" sort of shortcut principle. I was always too slow and never grokked or scored this sort of mathematics. I barely found anything profound or beautiful in Gardner's SciAm columns. They were scary like black magic more than they were interesting. My teachers all from this school just bashed me and didn't told me there is richer structured, theoretical and constructive side to mathematics. The same year I qualified to the International Physics Olympiad I got _non passing_ grade in mathematics, at which point I dropped out of HS, went to do what unexpectedly turned out _mathematical_ physics and now I'm for a degree in pure mathematics, several tantalizing years later than if my teachers were not so enchanted by Gardner's tricks.

<comment><USER2> That's fascinating - thank you for sharing it.

I travel a lot, speaking to students all over the UK and beyond, and I've found something. Sometimes to get the audience hooked I'll present a cute little something that's odd, unexpected, or counter-intuitive. Many of the students light up wanting to know more.

But others find their intuition challenged and get very defensive. The result is that they are completely turned off, unwilling to engage. For them I need to take a step back and show that there is ordinary stuff that is of itself intriguing - challenging and fun.

It sounds like you needed to be given more structure, more development, more flow. It's there, but most school teachers don't know about it.

My wife says the impression she was left with from school was that math is just a bag of rules with no unifying theme. The "bag of tricks" is a similar problem.

I hope you're now starting to see the beauty and elegance that comprises the main body, as opposed to the cute wrinkles.

I'd welcome an email from you if you're interested. If you reply to this we'll work out a way to get in touch.

<comment><USER3> Thanks :)

I now know the structure, that's why I "grew" to appreciate Gardner nowadays (albeit now I also find he's doing many things "simple as possible and even simpler" (contrary to the Einstein quote) and thus... still unnecessarily convoluted, so I'm not sure if I like him already).

I know your email, but have nothing of value to say ;]

<comment><USER2> As I found for myself, Gardner (and his approach) is not for everyone. You're one of the others. I'm trying to create material that's not "tricks" and stuff, and is more aimed at people in your position. Partly because I think I'm better at that, and partly to complement the other approach.

I'm pleased you've found something you like, and wish you the best.

EDIT: for clarity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My local library in Germany had some of his translated books when I was a kid- Those books, along with my TI99/4A, had a greater influence on my intellectual life than anything else in my past.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a collection of Scientific Americans dating back to the 60's, there are lots of nice pieces by him in some of those issues.

Recreational Mathematics is more or less his 'invention', and I'm sure that through his column he managed to engage lots of people and got them to play with numbers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I walked around my high school in the 70s with a flexagon in my pencil case that I cut out of paper and put together.</comment>


What is the difference between startup incubators and accelerators? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-startup-incubators-and-accelerators

<comment><USER2> The truth is simply that "incubator" is an older, more general purpose term, and "accelerator" is a new word coined by the Kauffman Foundation to describe YC and things like it.</comment>


High-Tech Trash: Will your discarded TV end up in a ditch in Ghana? - <AUTHOR> http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text

<comment><USER2> Computer refurbisher (and uses EPA certified Recycler for End of Life) for people with disabilities.

Mostly for Georgia, but working to expand to bordering states.

www.touchthefuture.us GA Number 770.934.8432

</comment><comment><USER2> Almost forgot - NGO (501(c)3) donations in US are tax-deductible</comment>


The Middle Way, and Why Apple Will Reboot the MacBook - <AUTHOR> http://charliepark.org/macbooks/

<comment><USER2> Au contraire. Apple will drop Air and Pro and unify them all in one simple choice for the consumer, just pick your screen size in 11, 13, 15 and 17 inches.

That's it. Apple's simplicity and beauty.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I also want to say that a lot of the argument in this post revolves around the option for an optical drive. I think it's much more likely that Apple eliminates the built-in optical drive across models and releases an updated external version with Thunderbolt for the pro market.

<comment><USER2> Yep, I got an Air and never had the need to use an optical drive. Even downloading 4GB of Xcode over the wire is not a burden anymore. 'Bag of hurt' comes to mind.

<comment><USER4> My 13" MBA is the absolute best computer I have ever owned (and I have been using laptops daily for 15 years).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went back and forth between a MBA 13" and a MBP 17". There are stark contrasts here. So why did I end up with a MBA 13"? It has the form factor akin to the iPad; in that you can take it anywhere. When you're carrying a MBP or other larger notebook around you sometimes feel like you might be carrying too much with you.

The higher resolution on the MBA convinced me overall. Since I've had the MBA, I guestimated that I'd use "Remote Disc" at least a few times. I've never used it and never needed to. Software on a disc is almost always older than what I can download online, I don't play games or music - but if I did it would be digital/App Store anyhow.

A 15" Air would be a great addition.

</comment><comment><USER6> >When Apple dropped floppy drives from the iMac, they were dealing with an early-adopter set of consumers.

No, this is incorrect. The iMac was the computer for people that were new to computers and the internet. It was the computer for everyone, not early- adopter gadget geeks. When they dropped the floppy there was an enormous amount of bitching from said gadget geeks, yet the computer still sold very well with the general consumer.

The rest of the article is iffy at best, I don't see Apple adding another tier of laptop products when they are simplifying their other product lines (e.g. iPad 2 -> iPad)

</comment><comment><USER7> MacBooks are gone, they were replaced with Airs. Basically it is size vs performance. MacBook Pros are fast, Airs are sleek. Given the choice people want an Air form, but sometimes people can't choose them (game performance, faster compiling, whatever).

The original MacBook was a cheap alternative to the pro. That is now the Air, MacBooks aren't coming back. When the Air form is as fast as a Pro, the pro form factor will disappear as well.

<comment><USER8> I agree, the old choice was "Fast, cheap or thin" for MB Pro, MB, and MB Air respectively. The current choice is "Fast or thin." Why on earth would they want to reintroduce the cheap? And if they did, why would they make it more expensive than the thin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using my MBP with an external DVD drive for a while now and I've been happy with it. What makes you think Apple wouldn't just drop the internal drive and supply an external one for a few years?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they could absolutely do that. It's possible they could do both — reintroduce the MacBook and also reduce the Pro form factor down to match the Air. At that point, the question becomes "how would they sufficiently distinguish between the regular and the Pro" ... and that might be where retina displays, higher storage, touchscreens, etc. come into play.

The tiering strategy is what I find really interesting, so that's what I wanted to explore with the post. But, yeah, I could see them dropping the optical drive, and that seems to be what most people project will happen.

<comment><USER10> I was a little surprised when they released the Thunderbolt Display without a built-in optical drive. I fully expected them to make that into a de-facto docking station and drop the drive from all portables and the Mac Mini (they did so on the latter) - a slimline drive and controller would have added very little cost considering the Thunderbolt electronics (i.e. a PCIe bus) are already in there anyway.

But then the whole Thunderbolt thing really hasn't taken off - I suspect Intel is artificially keeping the bridge chips' away from general availability to keep prices high. Which has resulted in a rather lacklustre product line-up one year after launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was surprised that having less part numbers wasn't one of the counter- arguments the author included. Because Apple has so few products it makes their supply and distribution chains more efficient. The economies of scale are a huge part of their profitability.

Thats why I assume they will have the same number of laptop models or less in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. I've updated the post. (The site's cache might take a few minutes to clear.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Simpler solution:

Add MBA with 15" screen.

Retina display only on MBP models.

Nice stair step pricing and less confusing overlap. Either slimmer and lighter or faster and better graphics. No 11" MBP because people demanding nice graphics want bigger displays. No 17" MBA b/c thin and huge doesn't appeal to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Apple will come out with a brand new version of the MacBook line, in 13″ and 15″ screen sizes. It'll have the Air's form factor, but will use larger- capacity drives."

Yeah, lost me there. Apple's not going to come out with a higher-priced product under a _different_ brand name that looks essentially identical to an existing product in their line.

The author is overthinking it. They upgrade the MBA line, add a 15" version. Maybe update the MBP line, removing the optical drives (let's face it, they're going) but keeping superior graphics and maybe room for a second drive. Much easier to explain, fewer SKUs, etc.

Or, more radically, they just up the power on the MBA line (maybe having more processors options per size) and just drop the MBP as a line. Call them all Macbooks. Have 3 sizes with 2-3 processors each. Done.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd imagine Apple just releasing a 15" MacBook Air. Keeping it simple.

</comment><comment><USER14> He didn't point this out, but the 13" macbook air and the 15" macbook pro have the same screen resolution. The air has a much higher dpi screen.

<comment><USER15> The 15" Pro has an option for a higher res screen at least; I'm typing this on one with a 1680x1050 screen. I guess you have to pay more for it; one more place where they could potentially simplify the options with a bit less price segmentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is no way that this is going to happen. You can just feel the confusion over the product lines increasing when conceptualizing in the last paragraph before the 'Why?' bit. Now imagine every decision maker at Apple doing the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Disc drives will be out. Buy all your stuff at iTunes.

As for what consumers will want to buy...whatever Apple tells them to.</comment>


Did Arrington Just Kill YC News? - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuphustle.com/2008/03/11/did-arrington-just-kill-yc-news/ <comment><USER2> I was wondering the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is just a repost...</comment>


Thanks, but I have accepted another offer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@TreyceMeredith/thanks-but-i-have-accepted-another-offer-aaf90107ddb <comment><USER2> This reads and looks like it was written by a teenager. Quite ironic that it is preaching professionalism.

Edit: I did not mean this as "only girls are unprofessional" so I removed that part. Teenage boys are equally as unprofessional, but I don't think they express it in the exact same way. If this was filled with dick jokes and the like I would have written "teenage boy".

<comment><USER3> Sorry, what about being a girl conveys unprofessionalism?

<comment><USER4> "teenage" girls aren't the height of professionalism, I think was the thrust there. The use of the word "like" frequently denotes this. Nothing wrong with girls, period. But teenagers aren't looked up to as the paragons of professionalism.

<comment><USER3> Are teenage boys the height of professionalism? I think the gender comment is unnecessary, irrelevant, and harmful.

<comment><USER5> Oh, come off it already. It is clear what he meant, you are just trying really hard to be offended by something.

<comment><USER6> Yes it was clear the poster was being derogatory to girls. It's also clear you are trying to normalize and justify such behavior. Both are unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading this, all I could think was "Welcome to job searching." Companies that pull some of these things are places you don't want to work for. Contact emails you and then ignores your replies without reason? Run away. Have a meeting scheduled and they don't show? Run away. Get interviewed but then get told you don't have enough experience? Run away.

Finding a job isn't just about getting paid the most money. You need to be in a job where you value the work and the people you work with. Because if I'm the one hiring for the role, if I detect that your only interest is in getting paid, I'm going to run away.

</comment><comment><USER7> I value talented people but sometimes during the hiring process I find myself thinking:

1\. You're spoiled

2\. You're overpriced

3\. Your lack of humility is going to burn us one day

Technical folk and designers hold the whip hand right now, but that's no reason to abuse it.

<comment><USER8> From the other side of the table, employers usually hold all the cards. I don't care about your mission, your values, just show me the money. This is a transaction, not an interview for me to be a part of your family.

I will be polite, but if you offer a dollar less in total compensation than the other person, I will accept the other offer and thank you for your time. Have to make hay while the sun is shining, and the music could stop at any time. Don't say someone is overpaid when the issue is you don't want to pay market rate; you're bringing emotion into a business transaction. Can't hire someone for a role? You're not paying enough or you're not willing to train someone to be as niche as you need.

Source: Infosec, ~2-3 contacts a week from recruiters.

EDIT: To those who are replying that I'm detached, not who you'd hire, etc, that's perfectly fine. Hire someone who undervalues their time and values your team or your working environment over getting paid what they're worth. I work hard to save up faster for financial independence; I want to spend my time working on what I want, not what someone else wants me to work on. Life is short.

<comment><USER9> It could be that people offering less simply don't value your skills as much. I've certainly seen people who think they are senior but in tests come out only intermediate. That someone else will buy into their senior claim doesn't mean the companies that do a better job judging skill level don't pay market rate. You seem to be implying that there is no such thing as being overpaid, which is pretty nonsensical.

<comment><USER8> > It could be that people offering less simply don't value your skills as > much.

Entirely possible. Luckily, someone's inability to properly value an employee's skills doesn't prohibit said employee from finding an employer who will pay the market clearing price for their time. Value is determined by the market, not an individual hiring manager.

> You seem to be implying that there is no such thing as being overpaid, which > is pretty nonsensical.

There isn't such a thing. Someone is getting paid what they were able to negotiate between two willing parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The hiring process deck is thoroughly stacked against the job seeker, allowing companies to get away with all kinds of abuse, flakiness and lack of follow- up/courtesy. The trick as a candidate is to simply not take anything personally, and not get focused on That One Employer. Someone else mentioned "professional detachment" and that's really important as it's an employer's market (and it usually is).

Just a rough napkin-estimate, but I'd guess that out of the recruiters that URGENTLY REACH OUT WITH A GREAT OPPORTUNITY PLEASE RESPOND, 75% won't even get back to you after your polite "Thanks for getting in touch, I'm interested!" response.

Of those that get back to you and do a brief phone chat, you will never hear back from 75% of them about going forward with a phone screen with the company.

After the phone screen(s) with the company, 75% won't get back to you about going on-site for the "whiteboard hazing" interviews.

Of those, 75% will ghost you. So you should _expect_ around a 0.4% hit rate.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is bad advice for designers, sound very spoiled and prepotent. I don't think good experienced designers would be swayed by this, but beginners might read into this.

Focus on your skills and what you want to do, and you will be fine. Stay away from 'priests' like this, they will not help you, you are only there to admire them.

One skill that I would always value in designer is that he can produce in medium we are using ie. html. Photoshop is bad starting point and this alone will put you above others (in my humble opinion).

<comment><USER12> Is the "spoiled" part because of the presentation or the content? My read of the content is that it seems routine (for at least this person) to have hiring staff at companies routinely ignore follow-up emails, miss meetings, and engage in the designer equivalent of data structures and algorithms pedantry/hazing in the software side. I'm not sure wanting hiring people to have sufficient respect for the author's time and education to not do those things is "spoiled."

<comment><USER11> Like, you know, like, presentation :).

I agree that people miss appointments etc, but this is again distraction from bigger picture, where you would focus on your skills and what you really want to do. And especially how you want to do it, process is also important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading this, it seems like one of (at least) two things might be true:

1) The article is written for other members of the author's group, but wasn't really meant for broad consumption. Yes, it's online, in public, etc, but either the author wasn't thinking about that and/or ignored it. I say this because it feels like something one would say when complaining to friends at a pub after hours. It's got this "we've all been here, don't you just hate it?" sorta vibe to it.

2) The article is written to be click-bait/incendiary on purpose. A while back (a year or two?) someone else wrote something similar and it blew up big. More than anything it gave people something to shake their fist at. It gave older people an excuse to look down on "the kids today", younger folk could shake their fist at the poor treatment they receive from older people. I wonder if this author is also trying to go viral in a similar sort of way. I feel like it takes a particular skill to write these sorts of things - it's gotta be believable that a 22 year old would write this, but also push enough of the older generation's buttons that it'll inflame them, too.

3) Obviously, there's other possibilities that I hadn't thought of that might be true :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I question the design sensibilities of any designer who makes such liberal use of animated gifs.

<comment><USER15> I hate this thread

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15094804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15094804)

the last time this was posted

</comment><comment><USER17> None of the points he makes are invalid per se, but the language and tone of the piece makes him come across as whiny at best, spoiled and entitled at worst.

<comment><USER18> What was wrong with the language and tone? Apart from it being informal and casual?

It's Medium, not an industry whitepaper. There's no expectation of Serious Business Writing™ here.</comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency - <AUTHOR> https://iconow.net/goldman-sachs-report-explores-use-of-bitcoin-as-currency/ <comment><USER2> Bitcoin is not remotely usable as a currency now. The fees are incredible, the confirmation times ridiculous. We need to move on to something more modern like Ethereum, Stellar Lumens, etc. immediately. Asking the current 1 mb blocksize version of Bitcoin to be a currency is like Goldman Sachs writing a report saying they want to run their website on Intel 486 processors.

They mention Zimbabwe moving to it as an alternative. The average Bitcoin fee is now $40 and the average weekly salary there is around $60. It is ludicrous to even think about asking someone to spend almost a week's wage for something as simple as a transaction fee. Bitcoin has failed completely at accomplishing the "banking the unbanked" goal that drew many of us to it in the first place. That story and that loss is a long, convoluted, and sad story for another time. But other cryptos with teams willing to adapt and listen to reason are moving forward with this torch.

<comment><USER3> On-chain scaling is not sustainable. If you want to handle as many transaction as for example Visa, you would need 1 GB blocks every 10 minutes, which would make the whole blockchain heavily centralized because regular users won't be able to host full nodes to validate payments.

About "adopting" and increasing block size. I think most developers agree that we would need to increase it at some point, but I believe core Bitcoin developers refusing to do it to accelerate real scalability solution (e.g. Lightning Network). After we have a working scaling solution we might see increase in block size to lower fees and increase throughput.

<comment><USER4> Not sure why you and the other person mentioning lightning have been downvoted. I've noticed increasingly it's not possible to have reasonable discussion about bitcoin on hacker news. It seems the folks from /r/btc have found this place.

<comment><USER5> Please explain how the Lightning Network developers solve an unsolved NP-Hard problem in computer science regarding routing? [1]

The Lightning Network design is exactly what the first sentence of Satoshi's Bitcoin whitepaper seeks to avoid - payment processor middlemen.

      "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would
      allow online payments to be sent directly from one party
      to another without going through a financial institution." [2]

The LN design was chosen as a solution by certain investors who want to extract fees as payment hub liquidity providers.

LN can't solve the TSP without either publishing a map of all nodes and routes, or having all nodes broadcasts to all nodes. The former significantly reduces decentralization and further removes the "electronic cash" aspect requiring payment processor hubs, while the latter will suffer from latency/scaling issues/DDoS susceptibility.

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

[2] [https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Fiestly, LN routing is actually closer to a shortest-path problem than the TSP.

Secondly, even if it was the TSP, you don't need to 100% solve it in order to have a working system. How do you think _actual_ travelling salesmen can exist? They just pick a good enough route, nobody is checking whether they picked the perfect route, and nobody cares.

<comment><USER5> Either the Lightning Network has found a solution to the routing problem which the entire internet has relied upon since 1989 [1], or the LN marketing is disingenuous and the actual implementation will be nothing more than an excuse to extract wealth to centralized payment processor hubs, further distancing Bitcoin from the main design of electronic cash:

      "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would
      allow online payments to be sent directly from one party
      to another without going through a financial institution."

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/05/31/net- of-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/05/31/net-of- insecurity-part-2/)

<comment><USER7> jstanley makes a very good point, especially considering that Bitcoin itself is a probabilistic good-enough solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem, rather than a perfect deterministic one. But you didn't even address jstanley's question, you just repeated the exact same talking points you posted higher up in this thread, hoping that readers can't tell the difference. That is not an honest debate, but propaganda.

The constant repetition of talking points without actually addressing the critiques of those talking points may fool the gullible, but the technologically savvy see it, and it costs you your credibility with them. You guys are like Marco Rubio [1] constantly repeating the same talking points regardless what critiques are thrown your way.

[1]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4-OTvTrw1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4-OTvTrw1A)

<comment><USER5> I cited BGP.

You've provided no technical details, only an ad hominem fallacy.

Feel free to explain actual technical details of how LN does anything interesting, other than further centralize Bitcoin into centralized payment processor hubs?

As per the LN white paper:

      8.4 Payment Routing

      It is theoretically possible to build a route map
      implicitly from observing 2-of-2 multisigs on the
      blockchain to build a routing table. Note, however, this
      is not feasible with pay-to-script-hash transaction
      outputs, which can be resolved out-of-band from the
      bitcoin protocol via a third party routing service.
      Building a routing table will become necessary for large
      operators (e.g. BGP, Cjdns). Eventually, with
      optimizations, the network will look a lot like the
      correspondent banking network, or Tier-1 ISPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article makes the point that Bitcoin could be viable in many countries where people already use foreign currencies because they don't trust their domestic currency.

That's one of the few arguments for cryptocurrency that I find convincing, but I think it's a stronger argument for cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. The Bitcoin transaction fees are so high right now that it doesn't make sense to use it for small purchases, which really limits its usefulness for people in poor countries.

For example, right now the average Bitcoin transaction fee is more than $20, and the average annual income in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the countries mentioned in the article, is about $400 per year.

<comment><USER9> I am struggling to see how cryptocurrencies would have any tangible advantage over US Dollars in developing nations.

Remember that in many of these countries, most people don't have smart phones, and there's a lot of people who don't even have phones. Electricity and internet connections are intermittent at best.

Good luck convincing Cambodian street hawkers that your magic internet money is better than a good old fashioned Greenback.

And another reason that cryptocurrencies will struggle to catch on: it's hard to bribe people with magic internet money. There's no paper trail or proof if you bribe someone with cash.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. It also requires considerable levels of technical literacy to use, maintain, and properly secure blockchain tokens, and even with all that people regularly have their bitcoins stolen or irreparably lost.

<comment><USER11> I love how Fiat Money was designed to be impossible to use for illegal purposes, and there is no way to steal it. I mean really, if there were a way for it to be used in that way, surely your argument would be pointless, but luckily we know that the more middlemen we introduce between us and another party, the more affordable the transaction will become.

<comment><USER10> > _I love how Fiat Money was designed to be impossible to use for illegal > purposes, and there is no way to steal it._

So, I catch the meaning behind your sarcastic quip, but all you're doing here is offering up an absurd strawman. Obviously any currency can be stolen or used for illegal purposes, that's a willfully disingenuous interpretation of the argument because nobody has ever said that. This kind of reasoning would be like if someone said "the nature of dynamic typing makes the code prone to error" and you respond with "I love how strong static types were designed to make bugs impossible to produce, and there is no way it will cause the program to crash unexpectedly".

<comment><USER11> > and even with all that people regularly have their bitcoins stolen or > irreparably lost.

> Obviously any currency can be stolen or used for illegal purposes

So what is the purpose of your argument if all of that simply points out that any currency can be stolen or misplaced?

<comment><USER10> On my part, I am going to end the discussion here since you appear to have ignored everything else I posted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you think bitcoin would make a good currency, ask yourself what happens if you have any debts, lease or mortgage denominated in bitcoin.

At least hyperinflation wipes out debts, in hyperdeflation some people become millionaires and others owe millions based on whether you had positive or negative money at the start.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. Ask people in Italy or Greece whose banks made them take out mortgages in Euro.

<comment><USER14> What else would they denominate their mortgages in? Their respective national currencies were abolished after the introduction of the Euro.

Although it could be argued that joining the EMU may not have been their best interest in the first place, but that is the fault of their politicians, rather than the banks.

<comment><USER13> There was a gap beween the Euro being created and the elimination of local currencies.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but during that time the exchange rate between Euro and legacy currencies was fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo More than a little disturbing. They talk about helping developing economies, but what you can bet this means is that they'll be screwing over those people some way or another.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#2007%E2%80%93200...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#2007%E2%80%932008_Subprime_mortgage_crisis)

[http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/goldman-sachs-doj- settlement/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/goldman-sachs-doj-settlement/)

This is the end game of cryptocurrencies; not worldwide financial liberation but the same massive financial institutions further cementing their power. Kind of funny that they are looking at Bitcoin at a point where it's more valuable but is more poorly suited to be a currency than ever before. Says a lot.

<comment><USER16> The problem in hyperinflationary situations isn't lack of access to hard currency, it is usually readily available on the black market. The problem is the lack of _affordability_ of hard currency. How many US dollars do I get for this piece of hyperinflating funny money? Probably not many.

Bitcoin is really no different from transacting in US dollars or any other hard currency, in fact it's arguably worse in pretty much every way. And you won't be able to get Bitcoins at affordable funny-money prices any more than you can get dollars.

So when you hear things like "Zimbabwe should switch to Bitcoin", just mentally replace that advice with "Zimbabwe should switch to USD" and imagine how that would play out. Harsh austerity measures, deregulation, and privatization to get a few measly millions of World Bank loans that will be gone in no time. Any country that finds themselves in a position where they can't issue their own currency is going to have a real hard time of it.

So just think "shock doctrine, but with Bitcoin".

<comment><USER17> Umm... You do know that Zimbabwe has used the USD and South African Rand as its currencies since 2009, right? They abandoned the Zimbabwean dollar due to hyperinflation. All I've ever seen there is USD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has the Bitcoin crash of 2013 already been forgotten? It's totally irresponsible to use such a volatile asset as currency.

<comment><USER19> Bitcoin in 2018 is not the same bitcoin in 2013.

<comment><USER5> Correct, it's actually measurably worse.

As time passes, Bitcoin becomes more exploitative to new users. [1]

Not to mention, the bandwidth is severely crippled and the network is basically unusable for normal transacting. Take the case study of Steam discontinuing Bitcoin payments. [2]

[1] [https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/)

[2] [https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...](https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1464096684955433613)

<comment><USER19> Bitcoin is a portal, not a coin you'd use for actual exchanging.

<comment><USER20> Can you elaborate on this? In what way is it any more of a portal than government issued fiat? Is it because the infrastructure is more robust because it has been around the block longer? Is there some other technical detail that makes it exceptionally good at being a portal?

<comment><USER19> It's a portal to crypto I meant. You buy bitcoin to buy other currencies.

<comment><USER21> So it's a worthless middle man?

<comment> FLUX-YOU It's a store of value or something. But I dunno, maybe they've dropped that narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> EDIT / UPDATE: Here's the same story covered on Forbes.com

Forbes : Goldman Sachs Caves: Bitcoin Is Money [https://outline.com/5R8akm](https://outline.com/5R8akm) [Clutter, Adware free version]

I still haven't been able to locate the actual bitcoin report that GS sent it's client.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel like every bitcoin post becomes Groundhog Day.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bitcoin and blockchain systems are nearly all designed to exploit new users and extract capital from greater fools who are too late to the game and didn't read or understand the rules and fine print.

Satoshi's Bitcoin and many of the crypto-currencies that have followed create and distribute the supply that effectively creates a decentralized pyramid- ponzi scheme. Semantically, a more accurate term is needed;

Bitcoin is a Satoshi scheme,

.. or a "Nakamoto Scheme" [https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/)

Imagine an economic policy that uses a "limited" amount of pie as "currency". Bitcoin gave half of this pie away to the first few users who arrived in exchange for the least amount of work/effort possible. Any user arriving later will need to waste more hashing power (computational work) in exchange for a smaller sum of newly generation coins for a successfully mined block reward. _or_ the user might be convinced to purchase a previously produced coin from one of the early adopters. Buying a Bitcoin is worse than zero-sum, as money from buyers is exchanged for previously generated coins, the network must increasingly waste computations and energy.

Satoshi's economic model creates a system where participation is only beneficial if you can exploit the ignorance of another new user who enters the network after you. Bitcoin effectively relies on psychological manipulation though deceptive marketing claims like

      "Bitcoin is deflationary"
      "Bitcoin is rare"
      "Bitcoin is a store of value"

When what actually happens is you either need to enrich someone who generated the coin for far less than you're paying, or waste more electricity and computational work than other early users for significantly less share of the pie.

If you understand the computer science behind Bitcoin, you'll realize how ridiculous the false equivalency to gold is.

1\. The claim of "rare" doesn't exactly hold true.

Consider the 10,000 BTC pizza - how did this happen? This was the direct result of Satoshi's economic policy, granting vast sums of BTC to mint out very quickly very early for a short duration to the very small pool of people who ran the software. Satoshi's algorithm produced BTC in plentiful quantities enabling the 10,000BTC pizza - thus it wasn't rare if you were Satoshi and the dozen other early whales hording as much as possible, until the algorithm begins cutting off the production and limiting later users from producing coins, starving the economy. Now there's a psychological game being played, where public relations and marketing must convince new users to buy in. Because the exchanges are unregulated, they can manipulate the spot price though wash trading and painting the tape [2] (where trades are falsified and you just sell the same item back and forth to your friend for a higher and higher price).

The supply was created by running a piece of software. It's not magic. Most of the supply was produced very early on and as much as 30% of all Bitcoins are owned by less than 100 people.

      Best estimates are that there are about one million
      holders of Bitcoin;  47 individuals hold about 30 percent,
      another 900 hold a further 20 percent, the next 10,000
      about 25% and another million about 20%, with 5% being
      lost.  So 1/10th of one percent represent about half the
      holdings of Bitcoin and 1 percent close to 80 percent
      (http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-
      of-the-bitcoins-2013-12). The concentration of Litecoin
      ownership is similar
      (http://litecoin-rich-list.blogspot.com).
      Most of the big wallets have been in place from early on,
      so sitting back and watching your capital grow has been a
      very successful strategy.

      The distribution of Bitcoin holdings  looks much like the
      distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes the
      China's and even the US' wealth distribution look like
      that of a workers' paradise

2\. Easy migration to more advanced e-cash services See: [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/all/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/all/)

3\. Bitcoin network requires ASIC miners, largely centralized in China [3]. Assuming the inveitable surpassing of a more advanced cryptosytem making Bitcoin obsolete, as the market is informed there will be a decline in BTC's spot price and once this falls below the cost of OPEX for miners, the hardware goes offline and the network will cease to function. Maximalists will attempt to offer an emergency fork, in any attempt to save their "investment", just as they have developed the lightening network to create centeralized payment hubs, so "investors" can act as liquidity providors and take fees, instead of miners.

4\. Electricty usage is unsustainable, GOTO 3

5\. [4]

      Bitcoin value is make-believe just like money. But even
      though there is bitcoin-sphere governance, there are no
      bitcoin-sphere assets. Taxes are not paid in bitcoin.
      There is no FDIC, only hackers that lift a million here
      and there. And when nation-states decide its a nuisance,
      what are the guns of bitcoin? It's anonymity? From the
      same government that created PRISM and then used
      mind-magic* to make everyone forget about PRISM? Please.
      You may think crypto-currencies that require more power
      than a small country to run can fly under the radar, but
      somehow I think not indefinitely. After all, becoming the
      next big thing would mean its a threat to the American
      dollar, do you really think the US Gov will shrug and say
      "shucks bitcoin went from a ponzi-novelty to something
      that will totally usurp this hegemony we worked so hard to
      make. Guess we'll have to call it a day." (If you think
      this, sell your Bitcoin and buy an imagination.)

      The day you can pay tax bills to a government in Bitcoin
      is probably the day you can rest easy. Until then dear
      Bitcoin holders, you do have something of value, just like
      the Louisiana territory has value. But in this 1800's
      metaphor, what makes you so sure you're America?

      Monopoly money is good to have, while the game is still
      running.

[1] [https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it- possibl...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it-possible-to- estimate-the-gini-coefficient-for-bitcoins-and-if-the-trend-is)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin- inequality-2014-1](http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r04gfWfRkE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r04gfWfRkE)

[3] [https://qz.com/1055126/photos-china-has-one-of-worlds- larges...](https://qz.com/1055126/photos-china-has-one-of-worlds-largest- bitcoin-mines/)

[4] [https://hackernoon.com/the-guns-of- bitcoin-1f779309a718](https://hackernoon.com/the-guns-of-bitcoin-1f779309a718)

<comment><USER23> You seem to be confused. Bitcoin doesn't require buy-in. It doesn't give any promise of a positive return.

Simultaneously, you argue that "easy migration to more advanced e-currencies" is a deficiency, even though they use the same scarcity model.

The rest of your post is just ranty conjecture.

If you want one thought on why digital currency has value, consider this:

Currently, to send money between two people in the US, it takes 3 business days, typically costs some transaction fee, and is limited to the range of the border. It is slow, expensive, and local.

But we are in the age of information. We used to have the same restrictions for paper letters. But now I can send an email to anyone in the world in seconds for no effort. It is fast, cheap, and global.

Why shouldn't money be the same way? There is no incentive for traditional finance to improve its product, because regulation is so high that it is difficult for new entrants. Complexity and incompatibility is an advantage; it creates lock-in. There is no incentive for governments to improve, because full control of their local systems is exactly what they want.

Fast, cheap, global money is in the interest of the people, but not the incumbents. Decentralized scarcity is what enables it.

Now that it is here, why would we have 200 non-interoperable, complicated, slow local systems, when we could have one that works everywhere, according to a predictable economic model? Or a variety of economic models, that the world could choose from and watch play out against each other, not based on jurisdiction, but practicality?

Like other types of information, money will flow through the path of least resistance. As crypto becomes more accessible, all of the world's money will flow into it, because it will be better.

Parts of the world which have never had access to traditional financial services will leapfrog it and go straight to crypto, connecting directly to the rest of the world and taking advantage of the ability for people to be their own bank, instead of waiting for permission to connect to the old system.

Anything that is just information can be made digital, and anything that is digital trends towards fast, cheap, and free. Money is an example of something that is just information, like music, movies, and news.

All money will flow to digital currency in time because it is money that is built for the information age. We are at the very start of the S-curve.

<comment><USER24> > _Currently, to send money between two people in the US, it takes 3 business > days, typically costs some transaction fee, and is limited to the range of > the border. It is slow, expensive, and local._

I received funds via Fedwire today. It took about five minutes. Both sides' banks waived fees on account of our account balances.

<comment><USER23> It's true that some banking systems are improving in terms of speed. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's happening now that crypto has been around for 8 years, and is increasing in size.

Most immediate US-based sends and receives are virtual, based on 2nd-layer systems like Venmo and PayPal, not actually moving money but updating the numbers in your account before funds land.

Unfortunately for the Fed, speed and fees are not the whole story. There are still the problems of it not being global, not being private, inflating away, and not actually being owned by the people. (See the Cyprus banking haircut.)

These are small factors in most people's daily lives, but are important enough at a large scale to have money flow in the direction of crypto, and as a result all money will flow towards it until everyone has these advantages.

<comment><USER24> > _I don 't think it's a coincidence that it's happening now that crypto has > been around for 8 years, and is increasing in size_

Fedwire is run directly by the Federal Reserve [1]. It traces its history to the first electronic funds transfers, which started in 1915. It started doing automated transfers in the early 1980s. Until the 1980s, it was free; after that it costs between 3 and 80¢ for member banks. Almost every American bank will waive their mark-up (or even the whole fee) for accounts with over $15 to 50 thousand.

Internationaly, there are numerous RTGS systems including but not limited to SWIFT, CLS, _et cetera_.

> _See the Cyprus banking haircut_

See the MtGox haircut.

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

<comment><USER23> Maybe you can elaborate on the reasons why fedwire is not more popular than, say, ACH? I suspect there is a reason that stems from its centralization.

<comment><USER24> > _why fedwire is not more popular than, say, ACH?_

To understand this, we have to compare two classes of systems: real-time gross settlement (RTGS) [1] and net settlement [2].

Suppose you and I are banks. At 9AM I send you ten dollars, at 10AM you send me ten dollars, at 3PM you send me another ten dollars and finally, at 4PM, I send you ten dollars. At the end of the day, we're back where we started (minus transaction costs). If we actually moved the cash between our banks, that would be RTGS. It's as fast as funds can travel. It results in a lot of paperwork and means we must have the cash for potential transfers immediately available. No exceptions.

We grab a beer and say "let's settle, on the net, at the end of the day." The same transfer instructions come in. This time, though, no cash moves intraday. At the end of the day, we tally everything up and find we're balanced. We move money around internally an call it a day. Much easier, and therefore, cheaper. Moreover, between when I deducted the funds at 9AM and may have had to settle at 4PM, I might have made a margin loan. This is net settlement.

The next day, at net settlement, I owe you ten more dollars than I have. We grab a beer and say "let's settle the day after. That way, we can sell or borrow if we come up short." This is net settlement with delayed settlement.

From top to bottom, the system gets slower and more profitable. Many of these costs, _e.g._ intraday liquidity and risk management, don't go away with cryptocurrencies. Net settlement will always be cheaper than real-time settlement, and delayed settlement cheaper still.

Payers prefer ACH because it gives them time to scramble, if needed. Receivers prefer to receive by wire because it produces immediately-available funds. What gets chosen depends on negotiating leverage. I struggle to see the advantage of a crypto-currency based RTGS, which is less reversible than EFTs, slower than wires, and more expensive than both for most participants.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_gross_settlement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_gross_settlement)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where can I read the actual report?

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried looking for it. Haven't found it yet. It was supposedly distributed by Goldman Sachs to it's Clients, so hoping some client will post the actual report / PDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The first few bitcoin transactions happened when the government rolled out bond notes correlating well with a reduction in US$ money supply. The black market was paying 90% on a bond note a few weeks later it was 55% on a bond note. Bitcoin is making it easy for these parties in this market to repatriate money. The important consideration is this is usually principle+profits and so the risk vs reward of using bitcoin is at a minimum over 'getting the money out'. I don't think there is any problem with this. Will this reduce the need to use the US$ on the black market ? Yes if more people owned bitcoin then they could swap it for goods on this market rather than deal with any fiat transactions. Most of these transactions would be US$10k+-US$150k. Compare buying a bitcoin to the cost of offshoring US$ which is usually about 10% on principle. If you look at the math bitcoin is a good proposition assuming you can sell it on the other side. Bitcoin is useable in Zimbabwe or any other country which has a black/grey market for repatriating money.

Edited for brevity.

</comment><comment><USER27> Don't think they will ever even consider using this as a currency themselves, it's but a routine paper on how people have attempted to use it as a currency in my opinion. The title is simply to drive more readers to the site.

Any Cryptocurrency used by banks or finance companies will be behind locked doors without public trading and no media will be involved if they are smart.

</comment><comment><USER28> If GS says so, they are pumping it up for their own profit. Don't ever trust the biggest balloons making machine ever. It also means Bitcoin is BS.

</comment><comment><USER29> Bitcoin is the best, the exchange of its value is the problem, exchanges will need to do better.

</comment><comment><USER30> This article seems like enough to say, "Let's call a top right here and now"

</comment><comment><USER31> More and bigger sharks are coming into this space. Which is perfect.

</comment><comment><USER32> And this article is published on iconow.net

I am guessing it's not biased?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, Forbes also wrote about the same story / GS Report, if that's any consolation.

[Clutter, Adware free version] Forbes : Goldman Sachs Caves: Bitcoin Is Money [https://outline.com/5R8akm](https://outline.com/5R8akm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They would 'explore' anything they could trade, by any mean 'legal', to maximize their profits. They'd be mad not to 'explore'.

</comment><comment><USER34> As an investment vehicle? Probably.

As a currency?

With that kind of volatility, it would be difficult. If I were to sell my used car today in, say, BTC, it would be tough to determine at what price I want to let it go.

This is not to mention what how the buyer would haggle (e.g. "I think BTC will go up next week, so how about BTC XXX for your 2013 Hinda Civic?").

</comment><comment><USER13> There are these universal truths - things created by all sentient beings throughout the universe. The wheel, nuclear power, markup with angle-brackets, and bitcoin.</comment>


a16z on Rigetti Computing (YC S14) - <AUTHOR> http://a16z.com/2017/06/20/rigetti-computing/ <comment><USER2> Are there other examples of startups tackling problems that were only addressed by departments of larger problems and those startups then using their focus as an advantage?</comment>