Pyrrhic Victory - <AUTHOR> https://granolashotgun.com/2020/06/16/pyrrhic-victory/ <comment><USER2> Two parts of this short and powerful piece really leapt out at me:

> all under the auspices of a hard line Republican administration

> Washington under any administration will have no choice but to bail out all > the state and local agencies and every insolvent pension scheme wholesale

There are underlying problems being forced to the surface by COVID that go deeper than political parties. Somewhere between the 1970s and 2000s American politicians as a class (and possibly a supermajority of voters too) have accepted that running up debt literally does not matter.

The economy is brutal. It is a fabricated social concept built on trust right up until the moment it breaks out into the physical world and things that desperately need to happen stop happening because it doesn't make any economic sense.

The persistent bailouts are making losers of people who make good long term decisions. Sooner or later, nobody will be left who makes good long term decisions. Such people have been exorcised from the financial industry.

<comment><USER3> > running up debt literally does not matter.

The creditors don't seem to mind it either, happily buying hundred-year bonds with near-zero interest rates.

Also remember that every "saving" is also a "debt" on the other side of somebody's ledger. Quite a lot of that corporate and government debt _is_ "savings"; $270 billion of it is owed to Apple alone. [http://thewire.fiig.com.au/article/2018/04/24/how-apple- inve...](http://thewire.fiig.com.au/article/2018/04/24/how-apple-invests- its-$270bn-cash-stockpile)

> The economy is brutal. It is a fabricated social concept built on trust > right up until the moment it breaks out into the physical world and things > that desperately need to happen stop happening because it doesn't make any > economic sense.

This was one of the questions that Keynes explored - how it is possible to have productive capacity idle because there isn't _enough_ credit for people to buy the products.

It's also the idea behind a lot of the "green new deal" schemes; do things that need to be done but don't offer a specific return, but benefit society and the planet as a whole.

> The persistent bailouts are making losers of people who make good long term > decisions

How, exactly? What "long term decisions" would not have been worse off if the 2008 bailouts hadn't been made and a large chunk of Western retail banking had gone insolvent, tying up accounts until it could have been resolved? There is an important difference between "this business is no longer viable", and "this business is perfectly viable in the future but is experiencing a temporary shock which its cashflow and trade credit cannot cover".

<comment><USER4> >> The persistent bailouts are making losers of people who make good long term decisions

> How, exactly?

Keeping interest rates very low is hurting people who are saving money. Not just in banks also via pension funds[-], retirement schemese, life insurance.

It pushes savers into taking risky bets with real estates or stocks or even direct consumption (spending money instead of saving them is very risky bet on the future of events).

[-] The pensions will be low because 1) compound interest on riskless part of one's pension assets is low 2) Other assets that one will be purchasing with retirement money will be grossly inflated with cheap money chasing yields, via consumption etc.

<comment><USER5> You forgot inflationary pressure from all the "free" money. That is what really upset me the most about the 2008/etc situation. I was looking to buy a house, and you would have never known there was a housing crisis where I lived (Austin).

The banks were more than willing to sit on assets than actually sell foreclosed properties at market values. So while the housing prices went down slightly, your talking maybe a 10% after a decade of 10% a year increases. The "dip" didn't even last 2 years.

I myself made an offer on a forclosed/vacant house, and the bank counter offered above the listing price.

I had friends who tried to buy already forclosed houses and literally sat around for a year+ waiting for the banks to accept their offers. Eventually like me, actually buying other properties.

<comment><USER4> I did mention pushing savers into real estate and other assets. Lots of people are flipping houses simply because thay cannot get decent returns on bank savings anymore.

Same goes for professional money managers of all kinds who simply cannot provide decent returns to their customers by buying bonds like old school. So they are forced to chase yields in other risky assets.

Also with bank savings everyone has an equal chance. With risky assets - richer people are priviledged with better access to higher returns (via better access to information, scale of investment, credit etc.). So disparities grow.

<comment><USER3> Why are people _entitled_ to a positive return on capital, a particular form of unearned income?

<comment><USER6> People are _entitled_ to allocate their savings as they choose. It naturally gravitates to positive returns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We're in the midst of an unprecedented effort to time-shift wealth/money/value.

Never before in history have we attempted to store wealth at this scale for things like retirement.

In a world that was continually growing at a pretty solid pace (i.e. since WW2) that was sort-of conceivable because the bigger next generation effectively created more space for that.

But now people live, and retire, for muuuuuccchhhh longer.

And sovereign-wealth funds, retirement funds, insurance funds, etc, are much larger.

And population growth is slowing (and with, financial growth).

Some very hard things to square coming up.

<comment><USER8> What does it look like 20-30 years from now when potential advances in the biosciences extend the average lifetime by 20 years?

<comment><USER9> Even if people lived no longer than before, the cost of education and healthcare will keep rising, and there's seemingly nothing we can do about it.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on- cost...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost- disease/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is interesting how different countries and cultures deal with the same challenge. Streets were pretty empty and shops were closed for maybe a month here in Germany. Now (almost) everything is open again, the streets are full. Unemployment rose somewhat but not catastrophically. The images and videos we get from the US feel apocalyptical in contrast.

<comment><USER11> You have to be careful with what you look at in the US. The media here is definitely cherry picking the worst of the worst to show people. Were some places hit really hard? Yes. Absolutely. Does the entire country look like NYC? No. Not even close.

<comment><USER12> Hey, even the outer boroughs seem more-or-less normal. It's just Manhattan that looks post-apocalyptic, and even there it depends greatly on the neighborhood.

<comment><USER13> I live 90 minutes outside Manhattan, upstate.

Things aren't normal here. I can definitely see how one might mistake things for being normal because businesses are opening up and people are going outside, but if you look more closely, about half of the shops and restaurants remain closed, and the places that are open are operating at half-capacity. If you talk to the business owners, things are rough. Some local businesses aren't staying open because they're making money, they're staying open because they lose less money by being open (which is a big difference). The hope is that they'll be able to start operating profitably again, but that's far from guaranteed.

I really doubt that we have insight yet into how this is going to play out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "That policy will work for as long as the rest of the world continues to accept US dollars as something other than pieces of funny green paper…"

What a nonsense. Like if the USA is the only one doing it.

Everybody is doing it and at the same time.

I hope this help some people to dispel this myths about the "public debt" and living to the grandchildren expense. What markets are covering this public debt when everybody is doing it at the same time?

If something, this situation show how strong the modern economy is. Think about it, a big part of the economy just stopped and the supermarkets are full and there are not supply problems.

People are suffering because they are not payed, not because there is not food available. Compared that to what would happen in other times in history if a relevant percentage of the population stopped working globally.

<comment><USER15> I think you missed the point. If the current administration, or possibly some other dumb one in the future, undermines US credibility where other countries unpeg from the dollar, we are going to turn into a shithole country pretty quickly.

<comment><USER14> "other countries unpeg from the dollar.."

I don't know what that means. In the current international arrangements all the important currencies are floating against each other all the time.

The value of the dollar (respect other currencies) comes from being the currency of one of the most valuable economies in the world.

<comment><USER16> I think you severely underestimate the power of positive feedback. Some economists argue that around of third of US GDP can be attributed to the unique position of the dollar. If for some reason foreign investors and governments will lose their faith in dollar (even today gov. bonds already have negative inflation-adjusted profits, imagine if inflation will be 10%-20%), then they will start to dump bonds and assets nominated in $ (and don't forget about even potential targeted economic attacks, e.g. from China).

This will mean that not only the third of GDP will effectively disappear, but also that all inflation which was exported into the outer world until now will come back at once. This will launch a crisis an order of magnitude bigger than 08, which can be QEd anymore, because no one outside and probably inside US will buy gov bonds anymore (it's effectively already true today, but for now it's compensated by a low money velocity due to the pandemic). Without cheap money US business will lose a lot of its competitive advantage. And don't forget that capital today is much more mobile compared to the beginning of the 20th century and thus positive feedback forces are that much stronger.

This will mean that "one of the most valuable economies in the world" is in a very shaky position. I really-really hope that this scenario will not end in a nuclear war...

P.S.: Japan is in a different position, IIRC most of its debt kept inside the country. Plus it's a creditor nation, while US is a massively debtor one.

<comment><USER14> So, if I understand it properly, your model of the world is that the USA needs to borrow in dollars (its own currency) in order to finance itself. In the case that there were not enough buyers for their bonds, the interest rate of the bonds should go up because offer and demand.

This beg the question of where is the money coming in the current situation, where all the major countries are following the same policies.

At the same time, you are saying that "foreign investors" and "governments" are buying bonds with negative inflation-adjusted profits because they have "faith" in the US economy. So, in the last years, at the same time the deficit and the public debt went up, the "faith" has gone up as show by the interest rate.

Here is an alternative view: the markets are powerless to determine the interest rate against the central bank. An example, Italy and the crisis of debt of 2011. They had a debt crisis until the ECB decided there will be not more crisis.

The markets dance to the song that the Fed sing. I don't know what more have to happens for people to start accepting it. The federal government don't need the markets, the markets need the bonds.

<comment><USER16> The interest rate is low because, as you correctly say, Fed uses infinite money from printing press to make it so. In other words, foreign and domestic actors already don't want to buy those bonds at the current rate, which is precisely the early stages of the process I've tried to describe in the previous message. It's just that they haven't started actively selling assets nominated in $. Yet. (Well, apart from Russia, which has significantly reduced amount of US bonds in its reserves)

Normally, printing money in such fashion (I hope we agree that Fed + government does essentially that today? MMT proponents just propose to make this process honest and transparent) would increase inflation, but in 08 this inflation got mostly "exported" into foreign countries and today, as I've said, it's compensated by low money velocity (see the Fisher equation). Money velocity was steadily dropping for many years and it's another serious indicator of structural problems of modern economy (one can view it as one of the consequences of the rising wealth inequality). But the main problem in my opinion is that I doubt that Fed will be able to drain liquidity fast enough when velocity starts to rise, which may launch all the described positive feedback forces, thus making situation geometrically worse.

A free lunch can not be infinite, one day you will have to pay. The scenario which I've described is just one possibility of how the current system may crumble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looking at those pictures from Norway I'm struck by how different our countries actions have been during this crisis. Here hardly anything is boarded up (even business that have failed or gone online-only just have an A4 notice in the window explaining the situation and apologizing for the lack of service), and even when things were at their worst there were still people in the streets, a lot of shops, offices, and industries were still operating.

So now I have to wonder: are those pictures representative of the US as a whole?

<comment><USER18> The boarding up is because of the looting and rioting. Before that they were just closed as they would 'normally' close.

<comment><USER19> That was true in my neighborhood in Chicago but I'm not sure it was in San Francisco (where these pictures were taken).

I remember seeing board ups there very early in the shutdown.

<comment><USER20> It's true in SF as well. There were a few businesses boarded up when SIP started but most of the boarding happened after union square and a few other streets were looted around end of may. In june we went from something like 5-10% boarded up to the 30-60% now depending on district.

Even a lot of grocery stores are boarded up now, and quite a number of convenience stores like CVS stopped operating in half their locations and where operating, with reduced hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The FED is buying out every asset in existence, that means that there aren't any markets, any prices, everything is state-owned and the economy is entirely socialized, and it's now the "USSA". Stock markets are surfing the wave to grab as much as possible before the inevitable crash and collapse.

No wonder the IMF head said we need a "Great Reset". This can't end well...

<comment> nappy-doo You realize the Fed isn't controlled by the government, right? Some of the leaders are selected, but the decisions CAN (not necessarily are) made without consultation of any of the branches of government. Besides the oversight of the leadership, there is no power granted to the branches of government into the Fed's decisions.

<comment><USER22> _> You realize the Fed isn't controlled by the government, right?_

Wrong. The Fed is part of the government; it's just a part that's not described anywhere in the Constitution. But we've long since given up on the idea that the government should be limited to what's actually described in the Constitution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> One of my parents is a pensioner and their attitude towards money is that "I earned it, and so it's my money," regardless of whether that money is in their accounts or in their monthly check. They really do view all of that money which comes to them as being an entitlement which is already funded, and not part of an ecumenical system of money.

> I have very clear memories of the political battles of the 1980s and 90s > when my parents' generation were in their prime working age. They demanded > two contradictory things from government. First, they wanted their taxes > reduced dramatically. Second, they wanted all the perks and services they > were already receiving.

I can't put it any better. The government, to my parents and collateral relatives (uncles and aunts), is simultaneously evil for taking Social Security taxes from paychecks, and also good for paying out Social Security to them, but they don't register the cognitive dissonance.

> So instead the gap was filled with debt, unrealistic future promises, > attrition, and a can that was kicked down the road. Society went way out on > the risk curve in search of "growth" that didn't actually exist anywhere but > on paper.

Yep. The idea that Social Security is paying it forward (or paying it backward) is just too tough.

> The meme will be simple and palatable. These were benefits that were earned > from years of hard work. These are the deserving recipients of what is due > them. That's completely different from just handing out fake cash to random > slackers and wastrels who squander the money on Netflix and Amazon Prime > without contributing to society.

I can hear the sarcasm in the author's inflection. And I can also hear its stark effectiveness in my parent's complaints.

<comment><USER24> Social security taxes were never reduced. Income taxes have been through various taxation schemes but the total Federal tax revenue as percentage of GDP typically always hovers just under 20% regardless of tax legislation: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S)

<comment><USER25> Because the effective tax rate never really changes that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You ought to see Atlanta. We have more people outside now than even live in the city. The yuppie dog parks with membership fees and booze have waiting lines.

Consequently, you should also take a look at the Georgia coronavirus case volume. But it's as if nobody gives a damn.

<comment><USER24> [https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/](https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/) looks like case count has been flat for the past couple months and deaths are down.

<comment><USER27> Flat? there is literally a second peak on the daily case count chart and a 3rd peak is forming. Deaths have been dropping but are now flattening off and primed to rise.

<comment><USER28> Deaths have clearly peaked and are going down. Cases could be increasing due to increased and/or improved testing.

<comment><USER27> The 7 day average for Deaths has been static for about a week now. And given the state of the premliminary death date in the 14 day window it will start rising in a week.

<comment><USER27> Historical note: I was wrong, whilst positive test results have and continue to sky rocket deaths, after levelling of for a week, continue to fall.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for following up. I have been watching it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A bit off topic but why are all the windows boarded? I haven't seen this practice in other parts of the world despite the fact that most stores are/were also closed long term.

<comment><USER30> The BLM protesters and related events smashed, looted and burned a lot of retail locations a couple weeks ago. During/after most retail locations boarded up, even 10 miles from downtown SF.

This is not that unusual in the US, and happened in previous years in LA and Oakland.

It's not to close long term - it's to survive until the next day or week.

<comment><USER31> They were also boarded up a month or two before the protests... At least in Seattle. It's loss prevention - don't leave merchandise visible behind windows if the entire street will be empty for months to come.

Edit - E.g. This business which was not out of the ordinary when it boarded up end of March. [https://www.instagram.com/p/B-GT1hhgPZS/?igshid=12qp4pjwu2jv...](https://www.instagram.com/p/B-GT1hhgPZS/?igshid=12qp4pjwu2jvn)

<comment><USER30> Jewelry stores were previously boarded up in SF, but operating grocery stores, Target, and Walgreen's seemed to be a new thing.

Stonestown Mall, which is a long way from downtown SF, suddenly boarded up McD and Target during the protests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Heads up: this page has 200MB of resources.

<comment><USER33> Thanks, I've been watching the inspector (currently at 110MB downloaded) for the last few minutes wondering when it might finish so I can read.

I can probably just skip the blank space and read the text but I assumed the images were meaningful since they are taking so much leading space, that might not be the case though.

<comment><USER34> Asking everybody: is there some page where one can enter the URL and see minimized pictures from some web page?

E.g. I guess these 200 MB in 60 pngs could be reduced to cca 2 MB jpgs all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I thought the angle he was going at was that our fight against the Coronavirus was going to be a Pyrrihic victory because we cratered our economy in the process.

Apparently he was going after some other indirect angle about people ragging on cities doing poorly and those same people being dependent on revenue from cities.

The first would have been a far more fitting essay, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER36> He has some good writing (he's a regular contributor to Strong Towns), but I feel he's also a 'doom and gloom' guy.

He's correct about cities and their importance, but there's a lot going on with macroeconomics that seems to be 'weaponized' by a lot of people, rather than discussed carefully and critically. I suppose the latter happens in academic journals that don't see much public exposure.

Remember the doom and gloom people who predicted runaway inflation during the last financial crisis?

I'm no expert, so it's difficult to parse out the legitimate worries from people Pushing An Agenda.

</comment><comment><USER37> This thing with nailing boards to the office front is alienating me. What's underlying this strange behavior? Is the general expectation of damage being done to uninhibited buildings really reasonable?

<comment><USER38> In cities, it seems reasonable. Bored kids with no supervision will go around breaking things for fun, especially if they think it's unoccupied and nobody will care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Finance, Insurance, Real-Estate: FIRE. It's called FIRE because if you let them freely trade in a market system, they will eventually end up with everyone beholden to them and the price of everything inaccessible save through them. This will set everything on FIRE. It will erode people's incentives to trade, devalue labor to ensure people are beholden to them, and make your country vulnerable to fascism and foreign military occupation as a result of in-fighting, as oligarchs attempt to divide and conquer a country from within and block the state's ability to collect taxes for defense all to avoid their private losses and the loss of their precious wealth!

ITS ON FIRE!

</comment><comment><USER40> Do we really need all these stores? They all sell useless crap no one needs, after it's been torn out of our beautiful habitat, causing immeasurable environmental, animal, and plant health damage, transported around from place to place dozens of times on diesel, only to be used once or twice and thrown away. I'm glad they are boarded up.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm in Austin TX, it looked empty like that a month ago. It was nice, not to have to sit around in traffic for once...

OTOH, it took about a week before the roads/stores were full again. Around here there are plenty of closed businesses too, but the ones that are open seem about as busy (if not more) so than usual.

While the idea of shutting everything down during a pandemic to keep from wiping out 50% of the population/whatever might be a good idea. It was pretty apparent early on that this was low single digit % and overwhelmingly people with existing serious conditions. Telling those people to self quarantine really was the only solution. Its readily apparently that nothing actually changed in the month we stayed at home in TX. No vaccine, no additional personal protective equipment, nothing. So we all just sat at home and destroyed a large part of the economy for nothing. Particularly since to have done it "right" we would all still be sitting at home waiting for a vaccine or whatever. Given the current time-frame it might be another 6+ months. Even the testing hasn't gotten good enough to test everyone in contact, much less even find everyone who has been in contact. Maybe the one thing we now know is just how effective good masks can be. Not that anyone is even wearing masks anymore at some places (home depot for one).

So, big waste, nothing gained, and states saying closed until something changes are going to be in a world of hurt. I predict they will be forced open by politics long before either the testing/tracing or vaccine situation changes sufficiently to make a difference.

<comment><USER41> Just playing devils advocate, but if only those at risk were supposed to quarantine, would those at risk but not financially secure lie to keep working, and would those at risk lose their jobs? Basically, "you're at risk, so go home and be unemployed and sit there waiting for the world to move on without you and strip you of everything"? I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer, I'm just wondering about how selective quarantining would have worked in practice.

<comment><USER5> Well, hopefully some solid unemployment funding would have been sufficient (or at least a good start). Not that I consider the current unemployment checks to be particularly helpful given how at least in austin they are 1/2 of the average wage.

You would be talking a few percent of people staying home collecting unemployment (say 2-4%) which is about 1/3 of the current national unemployment. Yes, there probably would be a decline in restaurant/etc business because people were "social distancing" but nothing like stopping everything that wasn't a grocery store. But even then it would not be as bad. Overwhelmingly the older generation is the one at risk, and is already retired and staying home. It was the young 20 somethings working "service industry" that were all sent home. The ones with the lowest health risk, and the largest financial need.

AKA, it would be a big recession, but nothing like what we are about to experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm glad i live in the eurozone. A place where something like this couldn't possibly happen....

oh wait.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't think I understand what this is saying?

There are a lot of pictures of boarded up businesses, and the theme seems to be that taxes will suffer so that pensions suffer so the retirees suffer so the federal government will give them money. And that might not work if confidence in the dollar wanes.

Is that it?

\- - - -

Empty streets are a good thing because the pandemic is still on. Without hella tests and a vaccine distance and soap are our friends. The metaphor I think of is an invisible fire. Until we have ways to see the fire the best you can do is keep the fuel (you and me) apart.

\- - - -

The economy will reconfigure. "Reboot the economy!"

The whole point of markets is that they act as a kind of natural cybernetic governor (in the mechanical, not political, sense of the word.)

Those empty buildings and store fronts will come back to life as soon as possible. The physical infrastructure is not getting damaged by the virus.

People want to work, start businesses, build homes, go to school, all that. The demand is there.

\- - - -

As an aside,

> First, they wanted their taxes reduced dramatically. Second, they wanted all > the perks and services they were already receiving.

FWIW, you could do that by trimming a tiny bit off the defense budget and improving health care efficiency.

(Defense and health care are the two largest parts of the US budget.)

\- - - -

Speaking of which I think people will continue to value the dollar as long as the USA maintains it's military supremacy. We're the 800-lb gorilla still.

</comment><comment><USER44> (Chrome) crtl+shift+i <<< this opens the dev console. Click on "Console". Enter:

        jQuery('img[data-attachment-id]').each((i, e) => jQuery(e).remove())

Then enter. Voilà, al images (A lot) are gone.

</comment><comment><USER45> > I'm 52 and have never had a cavity

What? Certainly that can't be true.

<comment><USER33> There's a big genetic component to oral health, such as the DEFB1 gene.

Some people are lucky and never get cavities.

Others are unlucky and need constant fillings despite a stringent oral health regimen.

<comment><USER45> I imagined as much. I'm 35 and had a few cavities, and have friends who've had loads of cavities and even teeth removed. But no cavities at 52, I never thought that effect was so extreme. I would like to understand what exactly in your genes is preventing cavities. Because from what I know cavities are largely bacteria attacking your teeth? So some people have better defense afainst those bacteria? How exactly does that work? I mean, microscopically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sorry but I don't really buy it. The density that was the urban center will likely be dispersed. It will take some time and be painful, but the market will correct and shift.

Keep in mind that when level 4-5 self driving vehicles finally do arrive, studies have shown that people will tolerate much longer commutes, especially if they can work, sleep, or just relax in their car. That will push urban sprawl even further out and reduce city population density also.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have a lot of problems with this post.

* Photos of boarded up storefronts are used to imply that these stores are out of business. They're not, the reason they're boarded up is because of BLM rioters.

* Photos are not good evidence of real estate availability. No data is used or sought.

* I don't accept the handwavy notion that people leaving the city will automatically tank pension funds. The closure of the Chinese restaurant in the city is the opening of the Chinese restaurant in the suburbs. People still want to be near stores and restaurants and they can get that without being in the city.

* Even less do I accept the notion that everything we as a society undertake should ultimately benefit pension funds. This is a euphemism to get people to believe that corporate interests are your interests. The average American is not invested in the market and the people that are invested should have been made aware that market returns are not guaranteed.

I do agree that we are seeing an emergency in the Fed's debt spending. Future historians will probably look at the Coronavirus meltdown as the Gavrilo Princip moment that exposed the house of cards.

<comment><USER33> Businesses (at least in Denver) were boarded up months before the riots. It's about the property being unattended, plywood is quick and easy to put up as well as take down when the employees are back.

I agree that they shouldn't be used to imply the business is permanently closed. The effect in the photos is still pretty striking.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best mobile app analytics tool? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Take a look at [http://count.ly/](http://count.ly/) and [http://www.localytics.com/](http://www.localytics.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I've looked at Flurry and heard great things about localytics.

Do you prefer any of the two above (Countly & Localytics) in particular?</comment></comment>


E-commerce is still less than 5% of retail sales -- huge growth opportunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.splatf.com/2011/08/ecommerce-2q11/ <comment><USER2> Over half of "retail sales" fall into: Motor Vehicle sales, Building Materials, Gasoline, Food Service(restaurant/bar), Food(Grocery). I don't see online retailers making significant headway in those areas.

<comment><USER3> "According to comScore, non-travel/auto/gas/food e-commerce sales represented just 7.1% of total retail sales in the US in Q2 2010. But, significantly, online sales have grown at an annualized rate of 9.7% since 2006 (vs. the 2.3% annualized decline in total retail sales over that same period, which includes the Great Recession). Leading online retailers, like Amazon.com, are growing even faster—30% per year for the past several years. This growth in e-commerce should only accelerate."

[http://www.adventurista.com/2010/09/bessemers-top-10-laws- of...](http://www.adventurista.com/2010/09/bessemers-top-10-laws-of- ecommerce.html)

<comment><USER2> I appreciate the blurb but my point is Amazon.com will not be selling gasoline over the internet. Nor will your monthly Costco run be replaced by a giant insulated box delivered by UPS.

Yes online retail is a small and growing portion of the retail sales market and the market is large but it is not as large as some might think.

<comment><USER4> It's more efficient for someone to deliver that box from Costco to several houses close to each other than it is for several people to all drive to Costco. When most people visited several stores then driving into town was more efficient but the big box stores really change that equation.

EX: Giant home delivery is not free, but compare how much it costs to drive to the store and do the shopping yourself and it quickly comes out significantly ahead.

<comment><USER5> Not to split hairs, but I think it's interesting: If you drive somewhere to pick up, you pay cost of transportation, while if they deliver, they'd pay that cost. Therefore, the delivery service might raise prices making consumers believe that driving to get it yourself is a better deal. Kind of like the guys willing to drive 300 miles to save $500 on buying a car, I find people often underestimate the opportunity/transaction costs of purchases made in person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yup. But it's not nearly as cool with the hipster kiddos, or the venture capitalists who cater to them, as social/mobile/photo/videos are. Meanwhile, we are in the distant background, building solid businesses.

I am actually surprised to see this make it to HN.

<comment><USER7> wow. ties.com & scarves.com. Impressed - the domains alone must be worth a bomb.

In the UK I see a number of large e-tail brands fighting to take the fashion/clothing market, e.g asos, net-a-porter + of course all the big b-n-m retailers now have fairly mature e-commerce channels. Do you really think there's still space in this market?

<comment><USER8> As someone who works for an eCommerce company and has a wife who shops online, absolutely. Whenever she tells me about how this company or that company has a bad shopping experience, I pass that along to our sales department. There are plenty of retail sites (certainly in clothing & fashion) that are running on platforms that are several years old, and would benefit from things like simplified checkout, ajax shopping carts, better integrated email marketing, abandoned cart campaigns, review follow-ups, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Machu Picchu was purposely built on intersecting fault lines: research (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/machu-picchu-was-purposely-built-top-intersecting-fault-lines-180973216/ <comment><USER2> Visited there a few years ago. Our guide explained to us that the indentations in the walls, that are like windows that only go halfway through the wall, were earthquake proofing technology. He said it dampened the propagation of shock waves through the rock wall to avoid catastrophic damage. Pretty cool stuff.

It's an incredible place, I wish everyone could go see it with their own eyes, like so many things out there. Sad to see the note of over tourism at the end, and the plans for a new airport.

The road less traveled has always appealed to me, but by traveling those roads, I kind of ruin what I like the most. Don't know how to reconcile that. Like, I loved hearing how the town at the base of Macchu Picchu only allowed bringing in supplies by horse to restrict the development to a reasonable pace. (At least at first–now there's a train.)

But, in the interest of that road less traveled, I'll throw out a recommendation for the Salkantay trek to get there from Cuzco. It approaches it from the opposite side than the Inca trail. You'll get less ruins on the way there, but the villages and wilderness were outstanding, not to mention Mt Salkantay.

<comment><AUTHOR> off topic: did you feel altitude sickness?

<comment><USER3> Wikipedia says Machu Pichu is only 2,400 meters / 7,900 feet altitude? That's not _that_ high.

I mean, sure, try to acclimate somewhere if you're coming in from sea level, but much of Colorado is at that elevation, and the peaks are above 14,000 feet. Traveling to ski at Telluride is more elevation.

<comment><USER4> That's right. Before I went, I spent at least a 18 months hiking trails in Colorado with similar profiles to the one we'd do on the 1 day Inca trail which led to a 2nd day at MP. I also ski a decent amount every year here in CO.

I can say with certainty that it wasn't enough to keep up with our Inca guide or even to tackle the hike with no complaints. While I'm sure it helped considerably to prepare for months ahead of time, I personally feel that there's some other unquantified difference between here and there that makes it just a bit harder. But try it and let me know if it was just a walk in the park. Just don't drink the coca tea the night before you start your hike like I foolishly did.

We also did hyanu piccu, which is absolutely amazing and an additional hike that is like a sprint at the end of a difficult race. It doesn't take long, but at the very least can give you a great carido workout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Machi Picchu was one of the few items on my world travels bucket list that was actually more spectacular and awe-inspiring than expected. Many famous landmarks are nice but kinda just ok when you are up close. Machi Picchu is a whole other category. The trip to get there is a journey itself whether you trek or take the scenic train from Cusco.

I tell all my friends that if they only go to one major world landmark before they die, Machu Picchu is a good choice.

<comment><USER6> I travelled through the Andes, Amazon rainforest etc... and while it was amazing overall, I wasn't impressed with Machu Pichu. There are way older and better built things all over Asia and Europe.

<comment><USER7> The alien spacecraft landing area in Nazca, PE, is not all that old but still amazing and worth visiting. I mean, aliens! On Earth!

<comment><USER6> I mean I know United States Americans like to call outsiders aliens or illegal aliens but that doesn't mean they have spacecrafts

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Today, it faces very modern threats including overtourism, a problem that will only be exasperated by plans for a new airport in the region."

...I don't think that's what "exasperated" means. The author may have been exasperated that the problem is likely to be exacerbated by the building of the airport, though.

<comment><USER9> He must have meant "exacerbated."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone told me these were lost stone working techniques when I visited. This makes so much more sense! The rocks are so large and smooth and fit together so perfectly, it is arrestingly beautiful.

<comment><USER11> I hate these types of claim. We know roughly what techniques could have been used. The mystery is maybe in why they went to such a great amount of effort. These buildings would have required many decades to construct and involved thousands of workers.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's a bit like claims that "we don't know how they built the pyramids" and such. There are multiple competing theories. The fact that we don't know, for certain, exactly which one matches what was done thousands of years ago doesn't mean the technique has been "lost." There's no engineering mystery here, just a gap in historical knowledge.

<comment><USER13> How the stones of the pyramids were worked is no great mystery. The interesting part is how they were lifted into place. The external-spiral-ramp and one-long-ramp theories both seem extremely unlikely. Internal-ramp seems plausible but isn't yet mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those who understand Portuguese, Prof. Menegat recently appeared on the Fronteiras da Ciência podcast to talk about this work:

[http://multimidia.ufrgs.br/conteudo/frontdaciencia/Fronteira...](http://multimidia.ufrgs.br/conteudo/frontdaciencia/Fronteiras_da_Ciencia-T11E12-25.05.2020.mp3)

</comment><comment><USER15> A fun read about MP:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10111087-turn-right- at-m...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10111087-turn-right-at-machu- picchu)

</comment><comment><USER7> The trouble in that part of the world would be finding a place to build that isn't on a fault line.

</comment><comment><USER16> > "It would be impossible to build such a site in the high mountains if the > substrate was not fractured."

No, that's not what you have demonstrated. Because A is much more likely than B, doesn't mean B is impossible. Maybe I'm pedantic here but I feel this logical fallacy undermines the quality of the researcher's arguments.

<comment><USER17> If you're intending to disqualify a peer-reviewed study being covered by Smithsonian Mag due to a single sentence then yeah, you're being pedantic.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, did not mean to discredit. What I meant was: The researcher did all this work to build up a chain of arguments to support their hypothesis and then basically says "every other hypothesis is impossible."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would be interesting if the mountain that Machu Picchu was built on -- was actually a Pyramid or some other man-made structure at one point in time in earlier history, and if so, if there are possibly any artifacts buried deep underneath...

</comment><comment><USER19> >> It was discovered by western science in 1911, when Yale professor Hiram Bingham III was tipped off to its existence by locals and led to the site, then overgrown with vegetation.

So... it wasn't "discovered" by western science if it was known to locals all along... why not simply state that western scientist learned or were aided by locals into the site?

<comment><USER20> I think you're misparsing the sentence. It just means that this is when it first became known to "western science".

<comment><USER21> It's whitewashing of the world .

Take for example the Monk Fruit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siraitia_grosvenorii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siraitia_grosvenorii)

Known in China...but scientific name attributed to the westerner who "found it" in the 1930s.

It's very common if you are cognizant of it.

<comment><USER20> Hardly. We don't often use Chinese words in English regardless of the context, presumably because English speakers find the terms difficult to remember or hard to pronounce.

Chinese does exactly the same thing. I mean, is 盲文 [1] 'yellow' (euch--your terminology) washing? It meets the same standard.

And how about China claiming to have invented high-speed rail, mobile payments and ecommerce? [2] No cries of racism for that one? Strange.

There are many parallel examples.

Edit:

[1] 盲文 lit. _blind language_ aka _Braille_ in English, after its creator.

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

<comment><USER21> What? I don't read Chinese but Google translate tells me that 盲文 is Braille, and individually it breaks down to "Blind text".

The same standard would be if China took the word "Braille" and then in Chinese, it is named after the first Chinese person who read Braille.

If you think English speakers have an easy time saying "Siraitia grosvenorii", the scientific name, named after the "discover" Grosvenor, then you have some serious delusions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to motivate people not only to look at online ads but also to give you feedback on those ads - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Just adapt <http://listengame.org> to advertising.

</comment><comment><USER2> Take a look at what squidoo.com has been doing with ads. They let users up/down vote ads.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is no one signing up for my service? - <AUTHOR> https://visualteamstatus.com<p>Have at it.  Open to any and all feedback.  I'm confident my tool provides real value, but I'm not getting any traction. <comment><USER2> Personally I wouldn't sign up because I don't use Visual Studio Team Edition. In the past I've worked at Visual Studio shops but even then we did not use Team Edition.

I am sure there are Team Edition users out there but I think they are a small part of the set of HN users. Thus, your marketing has to be highly targeted to be effective.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hadn't heard of "Visual Studio Team Services", is it a popular tool?

How are you finding users of that services?

My knee-jerk reaction is to suggest you need to put a bit of effort into design. This just doesn't look like a professionally built tool.

I'd stop the AdWords, take a bit of time and do a clean-up. You don't have to hire a designer, copy as much as you can from here - [https://www.visualstudio.com/team- services/](https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/) this is what your customers are used to buying.

Find out who the buyer is. Who buys for the team? I'm guessing this is mostly corporate customers. Have you spoken to any of them about their needs?

What does $4.99 cover? Is that per team member? Per project?

What do you mean by 'no one signing up'? Is it really 0? Do you have a few? What were your expectations? How did you arrive at your expectations?

</comment><comment><USER4> How are you advertising this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently not very well :) I have some Google AdWords campaigns going on and I posted it here when I launched it.

<comment><USER4> This appears to be an enterprise product. Forget about ads for your first 25 customers. Focus on selling in the real world - even when people tell you no in the real world you can at times find out something valuable about their reasoning. Dont write any more code / add any new features unless it leads to a prospect signing up as a client.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Colordrop 2 – advanced color analysis app - <AUTHOR> https://getcolordrop.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm the developer of Colordrop - an advanced color analysis app for iOS. The app originally launched in 2015, and was featured with the launch of the App Watch. Colordrop 2 is a completely redesigned version, and offers more features for creative professionals.

Unlike similar color picker apps, Colordrop provides integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, and provides the most detailed color information compared to any other app. You can view values for over 10 different color spaces, as well as similar colors from palettes such as RAL and Material Design.

The app also has an accessibility focus, featuring a WCAG contrast checker, as well as a color blindness simulator.

Take a look and let me know what you think!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you market your web app? - <AUTHOR>

Now that I have launched an evening/weekend project into a saturated marketplace - what is the best way to market it? <comment><USER3> If you can tell us a bit more about the project, it might help. Marketing strategy and tactics are pretty tightly coupled with the product.

... if it's a saturated market, minimally, figure out a way to position your product out of that market and into another one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a document portal - shepherddocs.com. I had several requests to build a simple client portal for accountants/financial advisors so decided to build out a SaaS vs. do it per client. They're happy with it so I would like to gradually get the word out.

Its a saturated market but I feel if I can capture a sliver of the need - <USER2> would be enough to liberate some of this coder's free time. Also - a lot of solutions are 'heavy' - these fellas just wanted a simple app that they can customize and 'bolt' on to their web site.

Thanks for the curiosity.</comment></comment>


Renouncing citizenship: Did Eduardo Saverin do anything wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/05/renouncing-citizenship?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/dideduardosaverindoanythingwrong <comment><USER2> I don't think he did anything wrong... but, personally, as an immigrant in the United States it's tough to swallow.

I'm currently in H-1B status and work for a top tier hedge fund. I recently resigned because I decided it was time to go full on with my own company, and even though I have lived here for 2 years, paid my share of taxes, and have enough saved up to support myself for at least 1.5 to 2 years, if I don't succeed/raise money to sponsor my own H1B in the next few months (or take a new job) there's a chance I will have to go home.

Oh, and even getting a chance at getting those few months, is dependent on the USCIS approving my change in status from a specialist worker to a "tourist."

There's just so little room for error as an immigrant, but the fact that you can make lots of mistakes is one of the things that makes the US so awesome for gutsy Americans.

Immigration is a messed up thing and it's just sad to see someone throw a citizenship away that so many people would fight like crazy for. I doubt he would have gotten that first chance to make it big anywhere else.

<comment><USER3> Singapore doesn't have a capital gains tax.

At 15% long-term capital gains tax rate on $3.84B (4% of Facebook),

He saved $576 Million by giving up his citizenship and moving to Singapore.

<comment><USER4> Not exactly. He's paying some tax now, while Facebook is still private. It's just that once it's public, the value of his stake will be much more transparent and so he'll have to pay more taxes.

<comment><USER3> Only realized capital gains are taxed. The capital gain is not realized until the stock is sold. So the answer is no, he's not paying "some" taxes now on his fb shares.

He may have sold some stock to private investors but I don't think that's what you meant.

<comment><USER5> He's actually paying as if he sold it all at the time his citizenship was revoked. It's the "exit tax" all the stories on this mention.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what Eduardo could have done wrong. He came to the US as a wealthy man, paid for the education, invested his money into stock trading then invested his proceeds into some flimsy venture written in PHP and created thousands of jobs and billions of wealth for risky investors. Now he's heading for the exit and going to buy an exit ticket worth half a billion dollars. Instead of creating some obscure umbrella corporation in some shady overseas jurisdiction, "sell" his shares to it and do not pay a dime. And now they call him having no respect and appreciation for his foster country. I'll never manage to understand these commies.

<comment><USER7> I would guess a lot of it is envy disguised as patriotism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> By my math, Eduardo Saverin doesn't avoid any tax at all by leaving the US, regardless of whether or not his stock goes up or down. If he leaves, the US takes 15% of his stock now. If he stays, the US takes 15% of his stock later. But either way, the US have taken away 15% of his ability to spend.

Let's work through it with numbers, in case that isn't clear. Say Saverin has $100 worth of Facebook stock. He renounces US citizenship. He sells enough stock to pay $15 to the government, leaving him with $85 in Facebook stock. Over the next year, Facebook doubles in value, leaving him with $170 in stock. He cashes out, and there's no tax, so he ends up with $170 in cash.

Now imagine he stays in the US. He has $100 in Facebook stock, which he pays no tax on because there is no taxable event. Facebook doubles in value over the next year, so he ends up with $200 in stock. Then he cashes out, paying 15% in capital gains, leaving him with $170 cash.

Clearly he ends up with the same amount of cash either way. Perhaps Saverin is avoiding tax by leaving the US, but neither this article nor any other article I have read identifies how he is doing so.

<comment><USER9> See this comment below. Also you could make the case that you are locking in the 15% LT cap gains rate, which could and likely will increase at some unknown point in the future.

>> The numbers on and analysis of his tax liability in the article are demonstrably wrong - at a level of error unworthy of The Economist. His tax liability is calculated on the value of the stock as of the date he renounces citizenship, which was last September. Today, Facebook is worth maybe $100 billion. Early this year, a private equity offering put the value at $50 billion. Last fall, who knows, and it's all subject to negotiation with the IRS - my guess is no more than $25 billion. That means he evades 75 % of the tax bite by renouncing citizenship, and will be paying at most maybe $125 to $150 million of that $500 to $600 million tax liability he would owe if he sold all his stock next week.

<comment><USER8> If we assume that Saverin had to pay his taxes by selling shares at the same price at which the IRS assessed then, then my logic still holds. Saverin would have to sell 15% of his stock to pay the 15% tax.

If, as you suggest, he is able to sell his shares at a greater valuation than the IRS uses to calculate his exit tax, then you are correct. When you renounce your citizenship, I have no idea how long the IRS gives you to actually pony up the exit tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thomas Jefferson:

"Our ancestors... possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed them, of going in quest of new habitations, and of there establishing new societies, under such laws and regulations as, to them, shall seem most likely to promote public happiness"

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems people have missed the article where Eduardo explains why he renounced his citizenship:-

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972209>

<comment><USER12> I'm not in a position to evaluate this, but I have seen other reporting to the effect that U.S. citizens are facing increasing challenges in investing abroad, in as much as foreign entities don't want the complications in reporting (and attendant risk) mandated by the U.S. government and its IRS. (Which is the main point in the parent's linked thread that posts a WSJ article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As long as he didn't broken any law, and he didn't regret what he did, why someone would say he did anything wrong?

You may think, he earn his money in the US soil and he should contribute back to the US people. Morally correct. However, if that means he have to fund the US government by paying tax and portion of that money eventually used for launching a war in the middle east, I also think legally avoiding tax to the government is morally correct.

<comment><USER14> Taxes don't fund war. Borrowing funds war.

<comment><USER15> Taxes are the basis for repayment upon which those funds are lent to the government. It's like saying the median house isn't bought with income, but rather with a mortgage. Generally true, but try getting a mortgage without any income (now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are only two countries in the world that tax non-residents: America and Eritrea.

[http://renunciationguide.com/Citizenship-Based-Taxation- Inte...](http://renunciationguide.com/Citizenship-Based-Taxation- International-Comparison.html)

As there is no representative for American citizens abroad (they can vote in Federal elections, but the district is based on place of last residence), this is essentially taxation without representation.

Saverin has lived in Singapore since 2009. He renounced his citizenship in 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Saverin>

Given the situation, I don't see why he would keep American citizenship.

</comment><comment><USER17> The big idea here is that no other country in the world handles taxes in this way. As far as I'm aware, no other country is as aggressive as the US in taxing income earned by it's citizens while working overseas.

<comment><USER18> He "earned" the money in the US and only our deferred tax model on stocks allowed him to extract the value much later. I wonder if we will ever just tax the actual options, shares or RSUs by number rather than by their dollar value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Saverin's exit is a warning sign, a symptom of a growing sickness in America. All of the envious, hateful attacks on the "top 1%" and the likely prospect of punitive new taxes to support our out-of-control entitlement state make entrepreneurs like Saverin a target, and he knows it.

<comment><USER20> Yes, the out of control entitlement state which collects... significantly less taxes than most of the 20th century.

I hate to sound like a populist, but for goodness sake some perspective is necessary.

<comment><USER21> There's a difference between tax rate and effective tax rate; the high taxes of yore were never really paid by anyone with money.

<comment><USER22> Prett sure the effective tax rate is declining as well...

<comment><USER3> The average effective corporate tax rates last year was 12.1%

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If American infrastructure invented Facebook then American infrastructure would have invented Facebook.

<comment><USER24> Actually it did, and it was called the Harvard Connection, but a scam artist of a contractor thought it was a good idea and lead the founders on as if he was putting the finishing touches on the site to delay their launch and them settled that crime for pennies on the dollar, and here we are.

How complicit Saverin was in this crime is questionable, but it's clear that Zuckerberg knew exactly who he was "fucking" (his words) and how from his IMs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm an immigrant myself and I owe everything I have to USA! There is almost no other country in the world, where an immigrant can make as much impact as a native person can.

For this opportunity we should give back as much as we can.

<comment><USER26> And are you still paying taxes on your American income to you r home country? B/c that's how tax laws work for the US. If you really believe what you're saying, send 30% of your income to your home country, just because you're loyal like that. Also stop taking deductions from your American taxes, just so you can help out the govt. And if ever you decide to move back to your original country but keep your US citizenship/green card, don't forget to send 30% of your foreign income to the US every year for the rest of your life. Because you owe everything to the US, right? Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Legally or morally? Legally, I'm not a lawyer but I would guess not. Morally, he has to live with the decision he made oh and legally too since renouncing US citizenship is permanent (as far as I can understand the government site I read).

<comment><USER28> Since when has not being an American citizen made you immoral?

<comment><USER27> I was referring to the tax question at the heart of the debate. I'm not the most articulate person, perhaps moral is not the best or most appropriate word but it doesn't feel that far off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Of course not.

And I don't want to hear complaints from people who haven't paid at least 500 million in taxes.

He has done much more for the us than has most people on welfare. They certainly haven't paid their fair share.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not saying he did anything wrong, but it is a bit of a slap in the face. I think the US should have a policy of not admitting renouncers to the country under any status.

<comment><USER26> what happened to "land of the free", as in freedome to decide where you live and your citizenship?

<comment><USER30> No one can stop you from renouncing your citizenship, but if you do you are are an alien. Ask some aliens how easy it is to get a visa to the US. If you voluntarily put yourself in that category at very least you should be at the back of the line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Fuck'em. It was a dick move given all the opportunities he got in this country. I prefer rich people more like this: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen- kin...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-king-tax-me- for-f-s-sake.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Ethically, yes. Legally, no.

</comment><comment><USER33> Objectively, he didn't do anything illegal. He just wants a bigger chunk of his cash. The problem people have is that the cash is going to a "1%"er, instead of lining the pockets of career politicians in Washingon, er, I mean paying for the health care of the poor.</comment>


Google Voice Alternative SendHub (YC W12) Launches in Canada - <AUTHOR> Looking for Google Voice in Canada eh? Time to grab a 2-4. We are officially launching SendHub in Canada with Canadian phone numbers and toll-free numbers. SendHub is a perfect Google Voice alternative for Canada - use it as a business phone number to call or text using any smartphone, tablet or PC. And that's not all! We support additional business features like Multiple Lines, Call Transfer and Auto-Attendant. Sign up now!<p>http://SendHub.ca <comment><USER2> Hm few things:

1\. During the signup process (signed up with Facebook) it asks me to enter my US number. Entering my Canadian number worked fine. 2\. Whenever i dial the number provided (its a 647 area code number) i get a message "Sorry we could not connect your call. Good-bye." not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Otherwise, excited to get started...i badly need a service like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> We followed up directly on this and it seems to be working fine now.

<comment><USER2> Really appreciate the phone call, talking to potential customers is a big thing a lot of startups never do, its just great customer service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use Sendhub every day and find it to be reliable and very user friendly. Plus Im tired of google answering my calls

</comment><comment><USER4> thanks for stepping up to the plate. trying this out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Go ash!

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it good for US residents?

<comment><USER7> It sure is! <http://www.sendhub.com></comment></comment>


Puzzle Drawers - <AUTHOR> https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/puzzle-drawers.html <comment><USER2> Pretty cool. In the Denver Art Scene I seemed to have been so entrenched in one of my lifetimes ago, there was an artist who made puzzle boxes. One day, he got an email from none other than Darren Aronofsky, asking him to make a "puzzle desk". After verifying that, yeah: it's him, he set to task to make this desk.

And it's just what you may be imagining - (except maybe you didn't expect it ALSO to be organ): there's a specific order in which you need to open and close certain drawers and such, to open a secret compartment. It took him years.

This is the artist:

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

Details of the desk:

[http://www.kagenschaefer.com/pipeorgandesk.html](http://www.kagenschaefer.com/pipeorgandesk.html)

In action:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5tenq55VPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5tenq55VPA)

<comment><USER3> That video was one of the most jaw-dropping things I have seen recently. Thank you for sharing!

<comment><USER4> Mechanical puzzles come in 10 categories and that includes Twisty Puzzles such as Rubik's Cube. John Rausch maintains the largest encyclopedic web site for mechanical puzzles. [https://johnrausch.com/PuzzleWorld/cat/category.htm](https://johnrausch.com/PuzzleWorld/cat/category.htm) There are many different designs, and one collector has over 48,000 different puzzles. Like magicians, puzzle designers, stay up late at night designing diabolical devices. Kagen's puzzle table is impressive and beautiful and his work is well-respected in the secret puzzle cabal. [https://kagensound.com/Lotus4.html](https://kagensound.com/Lotus4.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> LOL, so I work from within a public school board and I was wondering why none of your images are loading. Apparently we block the entire .xxx tld. So your images (and projects) hosted under *.jes.xxx don't load for me.

Just thought I'd give you a heads up.

<comment><USER6> Funny enough, last time I looked through domain prices, .xxx domains were pretty costly. So someone has gone an extra mile for the pleasure of owning one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ... Why on earth are the article's images hosted on a .xxx website? Is this specifically designed to trigger blockers and corporate proxies?

</comment><comment><USER8> I have trouble doing a normal drawer when doing some woodwork and this person does these complicated contraptions full of surprises. Impressive work!

</comment><comment><USER9> Craig Thibodeau is a well-known woodworker, in San Diego, who specializes in high-end marquetry and inlay, and who has increasingly been drawn to puzzle furniture. He's a former mechanical engineer.

See: [https://ctfinefurniture.com](https://ctfinefurniture.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a nice coincidence that the guy doing this happens to be named (James) Stanley, given the long history of Stanley tools. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Hand_Tools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Hand_Tools)</comment>


Intelligent To Do List App Any.do Raises $3.5 Million - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/13/intelligent-to-do-list-app-any-do-raises-3-5-million-will-further-expand-into-personal-productivity-space

<comment><USER2> Just in case anyone else was wondering, the (incompetent) mods here have changed the title from:

        Can somebody explain where is the money in a to-do app?

to

        Intelligent To Do List App Any.do Raises $3.5 Million

If the comments don't make sense, then it probably was meant for the original title.

<comment><USER3> That was a competent title change. The title isn't for adding snarky/leading/argumentative spin to a story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As was explained to me by a friend who founded a recently-acquired to-do list company, the opportunity is to monetize intent. That is, if my to-do is "take clothes to dry cleaning," the app might be able to suggest a better/closer dry cleaner. You can also imagine many similar opportunities around travel.

</comment><comment><USER5> This app looks interesting, but the permissions are outrageous. Why does it need to read my call log and smses, directly make phone calls etc?

<comment><USER2> _Hint_ \- You might be the product xD

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm not going to be installing this. I've been paying for RTM Pro (Android) for a couple of years, but it's expensive and doesn't quite fit my workflow so I've been looking at alternatives. Not interested in what looks like invasive vaporware.

<comment><USER6> I have paid for RTM pro for years. It is money well spent every year. I have met the developer of the Any.do app, and he's a good guy. Vaporware it is not. But for an app I interact with multiple times every single day I have no problem paying money to avoid advertisements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Customers, skills, and market position (as the go-to todo app) are all contributing factors. I think they intend to expand the scope of the services they deliver -- collect data and hopefully, sell out to a larger company.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would guess the money is based on speculation that a larger company (dropbox, google, facebook) would purchase your company and add your feature to their existing product.

</comment><comment><USER9> Orchestra raised a bunch of money for their todo app. And then they pivoted into Mailbox.

</comment><comment><USER10> Integrating services like Taskrabbit, home delivery etc, at least if some kickback scheme is available. Location-based ads based on "things to buy".

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the best about me page I've ever seen: <http://www.any.do/about>

<comment><USER12> Wistia too has a good page <http://wistia.com/about/yearbook>

_Hint : Are you sure each profile has just one extra pose?_

Edit : I find this page weird but its still a different About Us page <http://bkwld.com/profile>

<comment><USER13> The Wistia one is great, but that last one... WTF? Auto playing music went out of fashion in 1999.

It's completely disrespectful to their users.

<comment><USER14> Disrespectful because of the playing of music or because it's out of fashion?

(not serious)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> None of the comments make sense because the title was changed.. wtf mods

To answer the original question: because Yahoo! recently paid millions for the Astrid TODO list and is shutting it down, and VCs figure Google might want bragging rights over Yahoo! by buying a better one for even more money and shutting it down.

</comment><comment><USER16> Haven't seen that many Jews on one page since the book of Leviticus.</comment>


UK government urged to use Bitcoin-style digital ledgers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35344843 <comment><USER2> Would someone be able to explain why these ledgers are of any use for the gvt? My understanding is that what they really achieve is to established trust in a decentralised (p2p) system where none of the parties can be trusted.

But how is that relevant to a gvt? The gvt controls all its servers so what do these ledgers add? I also see these ledger technologies being proposed for financial transactions clearing systems. Again, what problem are we trying to solve here?

The article says security if a central server is hacked. But if a client gets hacked you are not really better off.

Plus my understanding is that these ledgers do not scale. Each transaction takes a lot of computing power.

<comment><USER3> The emperor spent a billion dollars on his new clothes. A small child pointed out that he's naked. He's presently trying his hardest to make naked chic.

Have you heard of the health benefits of being naked? Naked is so easy to clean. You never need to mend naked. Naked never goes out of style. Naked is easy to color coordinate.

It isn't entirely relevant to the emperor whether he succeeds in getting naked accepted as the latest fashion or not, as long as he succeeds in not getting laughed at. Being naked is ultimately survivable, being tricked is not.

<comment><USER4> I strongly suspect that you would enjoy the writings of Izabella Kaminska over at the FT:

      Techies look upon the financial world and find its messy structures
      hard to reconcile with the physical reality around them.

      Which is why we're going to propose that the blockchain fad is mostly
      about putting finance in terms that are understandable to techies — i.e.
      as something absolute – and having them learn for themselves through
      trial and error why that's actually a flawed assumption in finance.

[http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/10/30/2143506/if-you-call- it...](http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/10/30/2143506/if-you-call-it-a- blockchain-its-not-a-single-entry-system/)

<comment><USER5> It's like how bank accounts are always used as an example when describing transactional systems, despite not working that way in reality (two near- simultaneous transactions _can_ result in you having a negative balance, and this is a feature not a bug). Naive assumptions about how the world works can certainly produce software that is clear, logical and wrong.

However, what I hear there is "oh sure, you might be able to write software for all of these other things, but not this thing that I'm an expert in, that's way too complicated". Many people have been wrong about this in other domains, and it seems to me that essential complexity can only _delay_ the point at which software can usefully automate things, not prevent it entirely.

<comment><USER6> >The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.

-John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We're already doing this in UK Government (well, minus some of the bits of blockchain that we don't want). GDS blogs about our Registers platform regularly. More info:

[https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/01/registers- authoritative-l...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/01/registers- authoritative-lists-you-can-trust/)

[https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/10/13/the-characteristics- of-a-...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/10/13/the-characteristics-of-a- register/)

The specification of our Registers is on the OpenRegister project: [https://openregister.github.io/specification/](https://openregister.github.io/specification/)

<comment><USER8> Would you care to comment on why gov.uk is using 3rd party analytics scripts run by a company based in a foreign country on the online tax assessment form for UK citizens?

Getting rid of that massive privacy and security hole would be a much better use of your time and resources than farting around with the blockchain.

<comment> grey-area Ouch. That is a pretty serious security hole on a tax website, they're using Google Analytics - google or someone who breached their security could entirely take over the tax website and record all the data.

Wouldn't it be a lot safer to handle their own analytics with a self-hosted solution rather than paying google for it? At the very least they could self- host the js so that they control what is being run on their own domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The goals here seem to be data immutability and protection against tampering data. (like in spy movies, when someone hacks a government server to add fake passport data, this should be impossible)

Also as elmar pointed out, they can have a robust network with no single point of failure.

<comment><USER2> But in a crypto-ledger system, if a computer in the UK embassy in Kenya is infected, you will still be issuing fake passports. This is effectively moving the problem away from a central server to all of the clients, and I am not sure this improves security.

I would assume that cryptographic signatures are a better protection against tempering.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't move the problem, it prevents it in certain scenarios or makes it more difficult. The scenario you describe is already a valid method of attack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are use cases where a distributed database is a better tool, the big advantages you can scale multiple nodes and have a very robust network with no single point of failure and you no longer have to worry about the individual security of each node.

The downside you have to replicate all the database in each node or at least in several nodes of the network, you can have a sub-node structure.

If you depend on computation power algo for synchronization you can have very expensive hardware and electrical bill.

If you use others alternatives like prove of stake you can do it with very modest hardware.

</comment><comment><USER12> Having read the intro the report, I don't think there's anything they're suggesting that can't simply be implemented with a spreadsheet in git repo. But that isn't as sexy.

Government has already shown reluctant to share data, c.f. the Open Data movement. National and local government still use Excel spreadsheets, and you still come across the occasional scanned-in PDF. Why do people think they're suddenly going to adopt some flashy distributed ledger tech? _Why do people think that 's the important problem to solve?_

It's a solution in search of a problem. It doesn't even solve the actual problems of trust and getting good quality data released. Blockchains often seem to be an expression of technologists' distrust of government, as though it'd all be better if other people could be replaced with code, when in fact it would undermine democracy [1].

The idea of GDS being mandated to explore the use of a specific technology is ridiculous. They should be using the technology that they choose to solve problems that people actually have.

Ultimately, this sort of hyperbolic all-in report does serve to pull the conversation in a particular direction (openness, machine-readable data), which is good, but it simultaneously undermines it by being likely to fail.

[1] [http://tom.loosemore.com/2015/11/01/blockchain-vs- democracy-...](http://tom.loosemore.com/2015/11/01/blockchain-vs-democracy- aka-software-is-politics-now/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Can this blockchain technology really leverage the big data prospects of the cloud?

<comment><USER14> ^ Not sure if serious or just creating a sentence out of buzz words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why use blockchains? Blockchains for government make excellent sense for distributed data entry, such as processing that can happen in many locations.

Imagine many administrative offices that can create many drivers' licenses, or many city inspectors on many sites, or many doctors in many hospitals -- all with distributed capabilities to create data that is securely signed, tamper- resistant, immutable, transparent, accountable, and fault-tolerant.

Kudos to Sir Mark Walport and the UK.

<comment><USER16> We already have a much simpler model for an immutable database with distributed data entry: it's a DVCS. With GPG signatures (like git tag -s), it's also signed, tamper-resistant and accountable.

Blockchains are a solution to a much harder problem, where consensual order is crucial and nodes are not fully trusted.

</comment></comment><comment> m-i-l The BBC article doesn't say much, and probably raises more questions than it answers. However, it is worth reading the government publication it links to, which was published today. Link is [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/distributed- ledge...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/distributed-ledger- technology-blackett-review) , or more directly [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/492972/gs-16-1-distributed- ledger-technology.pdf) . This publication does answer some of the questions in these comments.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you replaced "blockchain" with "encryption" this article would make sense. Ironically, the UK government is very disinterested -- antagonistic, really -- to using encryption to protect private data.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised there's been no mention yet of government transparency and accountability. This is one of the widely touted advantages of using a blockchain.

Another good example is George Galloway, who is running for mayor of London. He has committed to running the city's budget on a blockchain if he gets elected (he wont get elected but it's a nice idea) - [https://www.startjoin.com/blockchain](https://www.startjoin.com/blockchain)

</comment><comment><USER11> The basic advantage of the blockchain is to replace government not to upgrade it.

<comment><USER11> Looks like people don't like the concept of a society without government :)

<comment><USER18> How do you plan on preventing the existence of governments? Do you intend to restrict the freedom of me and my friends and business partners to form a government for our mutual aid? And if you do, with arms, aren't _you_ a government?

<comment><USER6> "The government is always the most successful group of gangsters"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN - projects that are crazy creative, like http://www.mta.me? - <AUTHOR>

This project was posted on HN a while ago (can't remember where I saw it first, but I think it was HN) - http://www.mta.me/  It is beautiful and super creative.  Know of any other projects like this? <comment><USER2> Clickable - <http://www.mta.me></comment>


Ask HN: Cyber Monday Deals for DevTools? - <AUTHOR> Any developer tools or apps giving discounts for Cyber Monday?  Here are a couple that I've found:<p>Paw: https://paw.cloud/ Little Snitch: https://www.obdev.at/index.html <comment><USER2> Moesif is offering over 50% off on yearly plans for their RESTful API debugging service today. [http://on.moesif.com/cyber2016-plans](http://on.moesif.com/cyber2016-plans)

More on Moesif: [https://assets.moesif.com/docs/5e47hqj](https://assets.moesif.com/docs/5e47hqj)</comment>