Powerline.el - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jonathanchu/emacs-powerline

<comment><USER2> Was there a reason for posting this particular repo for a version that hasn't been updated in 6 months? Milkypostman has maintained a different version[1] (which is what you get from MELPA if you use it) which just so happens to need a new maintainer[2] as of several days ago.

[1] [https://github.com/milkypostman/powerline](https://github.com/milkypostman/powerline) [2] [http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1kc2jk/powerline_need...](http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1kc2jk/powerline_needs_a_new_and_loving_maintainer/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For any Vim/Tmux users, the original Vim Powerline is being ported to Python and JSON (beta) and made more general so it can be used in more terminal apps than just Vim:

[https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline](https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline)

<comment><USER4> And there's Vim Airline being maintained by bling too, purely in vimscript, if you're not a fan of the mainline Python version.

[https://github.com/bling/vim-airline/](https://github.com/bling/vim-airline/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's one of the best elisps I've planted in the past few weeks. The other one was dired-efap.el, which eases your filename editing in dired buffers.

<comment><USER6> Except adding arrow shapes to look like Vim (it's genuinely pretty though), I couldn't tell.

<comment><USER7> The arrow shapes are not a "vim" thing, they're a powerline thing. Especially as an earlier commenter mentions, the powerline core is independent Python code now, usable in other terminal apps like tmux, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Care to explain what this is, what it does and why I want it?

</comment><comment><USER9> What's it do?

<comment><USER2> Just looks nice, unless there's some tangible benefit to the separation of parts by contrast. I think it also cleans it up a bit, though you could do that yourself or with diminish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I realise this is important for people that isn't a bit colour blind like me, but if I cared enough about prettiness to install this then I wouldn't be an Emacs user. :-)

Edit: It is worth reading as nice elisp code.</comment>


The dply button standard - <AUTHOR> https://dply.co/button <comment><AUTHOR> dply was posted here a few days ago. I didn't really get the whole idea until I saw this page.</comment>


DuckDuckHack is now in Maintenance Mode - <AUTHOR> https://duckduckhack.com/ <comment><USER2> As someone who has actively participated in DDH for a while now, here are my views:

\- A non-trivial part of the current contributions included "cheat sheets" which IMO, really required a lot of effort to ensure correctness/usability but don't really provide much improvement to search results(I don't think I myself used the feature in the past 1.5 years more than 3-4 times), so, this should really free up time for DDG staff to focus on the more important instant answers and features.

\- The community has been, for a while now, getting smaller and less contributing in the recent past. Backed by data from official repos(the number of commits over time, that is)[1]. After all, there are only a finite number of instant answers before they just become redundant.

\- The current model for the triggers(when an instant answer gets displayed) is quite restrictive. It's just regex-based. IMO, a lot more growth can be achieved using ML models for triggering, A/B testing etc.

I'm still kind of disappointed with this. Perhaps unrelated, but does anyone have any suggestions for people willing to work on similar open source projects.

[1]: [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- spice/graphs/con...](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- spice/graphs/contributors?from=2011-07-03&to=2017-09-10&type=c) , [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- goodies/graphs/c...](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- goodies/graphs/contributors?from=2011-07-31&to=2017-09-10&type=a)

<comment><USER3> Kiwix - most people are too conditioned to think that search has to happen online and don't even realize what is possible offline.

Entire web archives such as the entire dump of wikipedia and stackexchange (including media and indexes for search) can be stored locally. The missing piece is Google level search quality on the local machine. Given that brute force substring search can process Gigabytes in seconds nowadays. If you have enterprise grade server hardware things are reaching 1000GB/s. At this rate, there is no reason to think in a couple years local search of all known human knowledge can't happen on a local device at Google level result quality.

For anyone interested in the search space look into whats possible today in local offline search.

<comment><USER4> You might be right, but human knowledge is also expanding, of course. The question is: will it expand faster than hardware capabilities?

Anyway, I wish we'd see more search and NLP related posts here on HN. It deserves far more attention than it gets.

<comment><USER3> For the average person this rate does not matter. They don't need access to the cutting edge of quantum physics, astronomy, dance, art or javascript.

All you have to do is look at the speed at which new info is being added to Wikipedia and Stackoverflow which is stabilizing, i.e. it is not growing as it once was. Basic/foundational knowledge is more or less all covered. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Modelling_Wikipedia%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Modelling_Wikipedia%27s_growth)

And that sum total comes to 50-60 GB compressed. Think about that number. It's not big.

<comment><USER5> The sum total of our collective intelligence is equal to an install of gtaV... Crazy.

<comment><USER6> Wikipedia is not the sum of our collective knowledge. It's little more than the preface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The subtitle is "Past, Present, and Future", but I'm really missing what the future will hold. All they mention is that "We're not sure what the next community initiative will look like"

</comment><comment><USER8> Only vaguely related: Is there any fully FOSS general purpose web search engine which gets close to DDG? It seems by now it should be possible to run a community supported completely transparent search engine with relatively limited means ($X00k/year).

<comment><USER9> > It seems by now it should be possible to run a community supported > completely transparent search engine with relatively limited means > ($X00k/year).

I'd argue the opposite, the time when such a thing would have been possible is long past. If you want to get anywhere near to the quality in results that the big engines offer then you're going to be spending some pretty big cash.

<comment><USER10> In my experience, the bar for quality has been rapidly dropping as of late. At this point, most of the things I type into google come back null or with random results -- even with results that used to return data that was relevant.

<comment><USER11> Can you please provide an example of this type of search?

<comment><USER12> I look for scientific papers a lot and have found that I'm getting a lot more sites like IFLS or Ars that are reporting on said paper. Or I'll get related studies, but not the one I'm looking for, when the related studies definitely don't contain a word I'm using.

This is even expanding into my code search. Like I'll type "do something os related python linux" and get commands for windows as the first few hits. Clearly I don't want windows.

<comment><USER11> Like a link please, I want to see "null or with random results". Not sure how customized results affect things though.

<comment><USER12> I can only account for my experiences. Only time I've ever had null results was when looking for really obscure things. I'm not the person that you originally replied to.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for taking the time to provide a specific example where the results weren't up to your standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I understanding correctly that the instant answers (actual content) is not on GitHub, and is only available on a web page semi-locked down from scraping attempts by JavaScript paging?

If this is not correct, anyone have a link to the exact repo I should be looking at? The link in TFA only goes to the main account page, not any specific repo, and the repo names are not clear enough to tell if they have what I'm looking for.

<comment><USER14> The Instant Answers are all on GitHub but in four separate repos which, I agree, can be confusing.

* [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies) \- "Goodies" which are generally static answers such as cheat sheets, colour picker or unit conversions.

* [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice) \- "Spice" for using public APIs, e.g. weather, transport status or currency conversions.

* [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-fathead](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-fathead) and [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-longtail](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-longtail) \- "Fathead" and "Longtail" are less common and are for text lookups, e.g. of programming docs.

Disclaimer: DuckDuckGo staff

<comment><USER13> Thanks for clarifying!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this mean the end for Instant Answers? I hope not - it's one of the information sources my bot uses to research the world.

It's amazing to see so much human effort went into this project and the full 1200-word list. I thought I had read somewhere that this was automation backed by Wikipedia, but apparently it was entirely manual?

<comment><USER16> DDG staff here - Instant Answers aren't going anywhere :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is why I'll never use another service by DuckDuckGo ever again. First they shut down DuckDuckReader and now this.

<comment><USER18> I thought I was familiar with most of DDG's operations. What was DuckDuckReader? RSS reader or something?

<comment><USER19> That was a joke essentially ripping on people throwing fits about Google shutting down products, most famously Google Reader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [Unrelated]

I was not aware of this being open source.

A quick look-through led to this sample search -- "Movies with Keira Knightley". However, "Keira Knightley movies" fails to give the same instant answer. Any permutations of words "Keira", "Knightley" and "movies" on Google seems to give the list of movies -- which is how the behaviour should be I guess, will probably open an issue/PR :)

</comment><comment><USER21> What was DuckDuckHack?

<comment><USER22> Seems to be an editing community for instant answers on duckduckgo search

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I started making something with DuckDuckHack, soon realized I bit off more than I can chew. I wanted to delete what I did so at least the name would be available to someone who wants to do a good job, but have no idea how to delete it.

</comment><comment><USER24> > That's over 5,000 pull requests, 250,000 lines of code and hundreds of > squashed bugs!

I was expecting "hundreds of new bugs".

</comment><comment><USER25> How can one join the Duckduckhack community. And what's the selection criteria?

<comment><USER26> You pretty much submit an instant answer or two and they add you to the duckduckhack-community group on GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems that discarding your community once you have made enough money is trending.

<comment><USER28> How does this sort of conspiracy theory make any sense in this context? Or even in general?

If they are making so much money, why would they end the program?

<comment><USER29> To be fair, the comment from DuckDuckGo in the Reddit thread[1] says that they will continue to put resources into it ("staff are still improving the Instant Answers we have, and will create any new Instant Answers we see are needed"). Which means the only change really happening here is to shut off the contributions that DDG receives from others for free, which doesn't really make sense as a business decision, either.

On the other hand, if you view it as an announcement that they're going to be taking Instant Answers closed source to keep future changes in-house, then it makes sense.

1\. [https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/6ymjj8/duckduck...](https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/6ymjj8/duckduckhack_is_now_in_maintenance_mode/dmq6ilk/)

<comment><USER14> Just to clarify, the Instant Answers will remain open source on GitHub and maintained in public.

Disclaimer: DuckDuckGo staff</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Accept tiny donations for your content. Half goes to charity.  - <AUTHOR> https://www.centup.org/publishers

<comment><USER2> Love ideas like that!</comment>


NBC News: All Visitors to Sochi Olympics Immediately Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEeJJVZ5P8

<comment><USER2> It's pretty safe to assume that an incredibly busy wireless network in Sochi (or really anywhere) is about as safe as the Black Hat conference wifi.

<comment><USER2> Some better details from the ISC: [https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/To+Merrillville+or+Sochi+H...](https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/To+Merrillville+or+Sochi+How+Dangerous+is+it+to+travel+/17579)</comment></comment>


Show HN: numpy re-implemented in Golang - <AUTHOR> https://praveenpenumaka.github.io/posts/numpygo <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR

I re-implemented numpy partially for implementing ML algos. Here is the [code]([https://github.com/praveenpenumaka/numpygo](https://github.com/praveenpenumaka/numpygo))</comment>


Textografo: Generate Diagrams and Flowcharts with a Simple Textual Syntax - <AUTHOR> https://textografo.com <comment><AUTHOR> Textografo was built for IT and Business people. Key capabilities are: \- Text to diagram technology \- Diagram Animation in one click \- Real-time collaboration with teams and clients</comment>


MACsec: a different solution to encrypt network traffic - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2016/10/14/macsec-a-different-solution-to-encrypt-network-traffic/ <comment><USER2> I have implemented MACsec on Juniper devices for many clients. It's great to see it finally supported in Linux. It would be great to see more vendors supporting it.

In my efforts to be as vendor agnostic and possible, and as open minded towards solutions for my clients, it's always great to see multiple ways to deploy something this complex.

For your further consumption, here is the Juniper documentation: [https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos/topics/con...](https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos/topics/concept/macsec.html)

AND because the lions share of networks are Cisco: [https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/ios-nx- os-...](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/ios-nx-os- software/identity-based-networking-services/deploy_guide_c17-663760.html)

This is really great stuff.</comment>


Gravity Battery Concept - <AUTHOR> http://gravitybattery.info/ <comment><USER2> At larger scales, these are called pumped-storage hydroelectric plants. There are currently more than 100 GW of pumped-storage capacity in the world, with efficiency ranging from 70% to 87% [1]. They are, in fact, some of the largest batteries we've ever built.

They store electricity by pumping thousands of tons of water uphill when demand is low, and letting it fall back down past a bunch of turbines when demand is high. Water is much easier to handle than a solid block of steel, and it's much more scalable as well. You just need a hill and some water, possibly an already existing reservoir. Pumps can be turned on and off almost instantly to meet fluctuating demand. There's one about 10 minutes' drive from where I live. It's marvelous, and the two artificial lakes (one at the top, one at the bottom) also make nice parks for the public to enjoy.

Since pumped-storage plants seem to work so well, I wonder if there will be any need to install smaller versions in each home. It's probably going to be difficult to match the efficiency of much larger units. Maybe these will be more useful as backup batteries.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)

<comment><USER3> I suspect that the big problem with this concept (vs. the hydroelectric example) is going to be the amounts of energy involved. Let's suppose the shaft is 500m deep and a 100kg battery -- potential energy is simply F * z, so F = 980N and z is 500, which gives you 490kJ. A wH is 3.6 kJ (you'll need ~10-20 of these to run an iPad for an hour). You're going to need a really big weight and a really big shaft.

This shouldn't be surprising -- with a fairly small motor and good gearing you could raise a remarkably large weight a remarkably long distance with relatively little energy.

Also note that with a hydroelectric dam, the storage mechanism also happens to be the power generation mechanism (dam + turbine) so you aren't incurring huge additional construction and maintenance costs relative to just building the power source, so even if you replaced the weights with a giant tank of water, the entire storage mechanism is extra capital investment and maintenance on top of the solar panels.

If the fundamental problem you're trying to solve is baseline power, it's probably more efficient to bring power in from somewhere the sun is shining (8000 miles away, say):

"As of 1980, the longest cost-effective distance for Direct Current transmission was determined to be 7,000 km (4,300 mi). For Alternating Current it was 4,000 km (2,500 mi), though all transmission lines in use today are substantially shorter than this." (Wikipedia)

<comment><USER4> _A wH is 3.6 kJ (you 'll need ~10-20 of these to run an iPad for an hour)_

I'm pretty sure a whole iPad battery only contains ~7 Wh (1,900 mAh * 3.7v) and it can run for 10 hours.

Edit: OK I was looking at completely the wrong device for these numbers. Thanks miahi!

<comment><USER5> if an ipad has a 40Wh battery and can run for 10 hours then it consumes 4Wh per hour so runs at 4W or 4J/s. 100kg dropping 1m releases 1kJ so will supply an ipad for 1000/4 = 250s = 4min. so a 100kg weight needs to drop 15m to power an ipad for an hour.

i don't completely understand the parent comment - what are "these"? but you do not need multiple weights and shafts to run an ipad for an hour. a single 100kg weight and a 15m shaft is sufficient.

<comment><USER6> "these" are the Wh's

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm really sick of hearing about this idea. At least this one doesn't make the same mistake of suggesting it should be human powered, but the energy density of gravity is ridiculously low compared to practically any other technology we have. It works for hydroelectric plants because they have HUGE reservoirs to supply them.

Assume one of these gravity batteries uses a 100m deep shaft with a counterweight the mass of a Cadillac Escalade. The energy stored is 100m * 2700kg * 9.8m/s^2 = 2.6 MJ.

The first deep-cycle battery I found through google (retail price $260) is 90Ah * 12V * (assume 80% discharge cycle) = 3.1 MJ. It just doesn't add up!

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem is the poor density: power stored is just mass * gravity * height. So if we want to store 1kWh, using a hole 500m deep (about the max for elevator cables, which seems analogous) this would need a 750kg weight.

Storing the same amount of energy in a lead-acid battery would only take 21kg, a LiFePO battery only ~10kg. And those don't require digging out a 500m hole, or the supporting equipment to winch a car up and down a skyscraper.

</comment><comment><USER9> Has anyone worked out how much energy this could actually theoretically store given the number of weights as n, the mass of each weight as m, and the height of each well as h?

My physics is a little rusty, and I'm sure someone will come up with an answer before I figure it out.

EDIT:

If my math is right (using this [1] as reference),

      E = m * g * h (J)

gives the energy E in joules. 1 watt hour is 3600 joules, so:

      E = m * g * h / 3600 (Wh)

So, if this system were made up of 4 x 200kg weights suspended over a 50m well, it would hold

      E = 4 * 200 * 9.81 * 50 / 3600 = 109 Wh

109 Wh. That's hardly enough to run a few high-efficiency light-bulbs for an hour. I don't mean to be a naysayer, but this doesn't seem very efficient at small scales.

[1]: [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/39281/needed- ener...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/39281/needed-energy-for- lifting-200-kg-weight)

<comment><USER10> It's just mass * gravity * height.

So, for instance, 1000 kg with a working height differential of 1000 meters can store a theoretical maximum of 2.72 kilowatt hours (9.8 million joules).

<comment><USER11> You would have to factor the efficiency motors that raise the weights, and the generator that lowers them to get a more accurate estimate.

<comment><USER10> That's why I used a kilometer. There's little need for an accurate estimate, capacity for such a system is very expensive, either in dealing with huge masses or huge distances.

By way of comparison, a thousand dollars of lead acid batteries would have more capacity (and despite the issues with lead, such batteries are quite recyclable...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Similar concept is already in use with hydroelectric power generation. It's called pumped-storage hydroelectricity: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)

<comment><USER13> Indeed, I was about to point this out. I visited the Drankensberg one[1] in South Africa a few years back. It's amazing how big the complex was for such a simple concept (if memory serves me correctly the turbines were 50 or so stories underground).

I'm very interested to see if graphene supercapacitors may eventually have a role to play here. Using gravity seems a bit "primitive".

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakensberg_Pumped_Storage_Sche...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakensberg_Pumped_Storage_Scheme)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a terrible idea. It would cost a fortune to build a "battery" that stores no more energy than a simple lead-acid deep cycle battery.

About the only advantage is that with simple maintenance, this system should last indefinitely, while lead-acid batteries have a limited lifespan.

(Oh, and didn't web-sites that are nothing but one giant image go out of fashion around the turn of the century?)

</comment><comment><USER15> In Johannesburg we have a whole lot of deep mine shafts that are no longer being used, and one of the main ideas for reusing them is to turn them into hydroelectric power stations. During the night when the electricity is cheaper, the water will be pumped up to the top, and during peak hours the water will be allowed to fall back down and provide power if necessary. It's a similar concept but on a much larger scale.

<comment><USER16> Are they really that big? Stored-hydro stations are efficient because of lake- sized reservoirs, and it takes uncountable miles of tunnels to have the same volume as a medium-sized lake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I (like many people) have had this idea an energy storage mechanism. Unfortunately gravity batteries have an extremely low energy density for weight [1] or volume and so are only really a valid choice for something that operates at the scale of a hydroelectric dam.

Heat batteries make more sense for energy storage at a household level, whether it's heating or cooling. They're smaller, can require almost no maintenance and have a much higher energy density.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_ignoring_external_components)

<comment><USER18> LightSail Energy system uses heat and compressed air to store energy:

[http://www.lightsail.com/](http://www.lightsail.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Using potential energy to store electricity is nothing new. Many hydroelectric damns pump water to a high reservoir when there is excess electricity generated to store it, and let it fall to a low reservoir when more is needed.

EDIT: See wikipedia link explaining it, with examples. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_energy_storage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_energy_storage)

</comment><comment><USER20> Better would be to use your whole house as the weight. And store the energy in angular momentum.. That's limitless energy storage :D

<comment><USER14> Wheeeee.....!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is just a large physical battery. The only way to win is if storing the energy in a weight system is more efficient or has more capacity than storing it in a chemical battery. It's certainly not as scalable as a chemical battery and requires a lot of infrastructure to pull off.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any reasonable estimates of (investment, maintenance) costs per joule of capacity?

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd be curious to see the immediate/longterm ROI for something like this. It seems like there would be an incredible amount of resources spent on initially building a powerhouse like the one in the picture.

<comment><USER24> There's one in England that's mainly for tea kettles after major television events, like Eastenders. They're one of the power storage options that has the quickest ability to change their output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've always imagined a frictionless spinning top instead of a long shaft (using permanent magnets, perhaps with some copper coils for stabilisation). You don't need a big geometry, and you can go faster and faster, up to relativistic speeds if required, without any inefficiency. (of course, it must be in a vacuum tube.)

EDIT: thanks everyone, now I know that _that 's_ what a flywheel is. Had heard the name, never found out what one was.

<comment><USER26> You mean a flywheel: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage)

They're in use for a number of applications, namely in datacenter UPS systems.

The main downside is a catastrophic failure mode. Lots of mass, spinning at high speed. Just apply imagination.

Their energy density is pretty good relative to batteries, which is to say terribad compared to hydrocarbons. Good ones are pretty expensive, and they require periodic servicing for bearings, gaskets (for vacuum sealed systems), etc. Generally limited to niche applications for now, but there are various pilot projects to look at them for train system energy recovery and grid storage.

<comment><USER25> yeah, my thought process had some pretty complicated failure systems. The thing is, with magnetic suspension, you can "catch" the thing using it's own energy. With a good and fast enough controller, you could catch the thing where it is and flood the tube with air to slow it down. since all you're doing is dissipating energy, you can use it to soften the crash.

In terms of energy density, you can just *keep increasing the speed can't you?

<comment><USER27> > _In terms of energy density, you can just increasing the speed can 't you?_ > //

In which case you only need a tiny mass to start with ...

The speed limitation is presumably going to come in with the rate at which you can alter the magnetic field to still accelerate the mass. Also you'll get drag as it impinges on local fields (Earth's magnetic field) and there'll presumably be eddy currents and local electrical fields to cope with too which will become more significant at higher flux rates.

<comment><USER25> :( you're probably right, the universe always finds a way to ruin all the good ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A pretty illustration of a terrible idea. Gravity just isn't that strong of a force. Electrostatic forces in chemical bonds on the other hand...

</comment><comment><USER29> GravityLight[1] applied this concept at small scale: to power a white led in e.g. rural areas without power, a bag of dirt is suspended from a dynamo.

[1] [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting- for-...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting-for- developing-countries)

</comment><comment><USER30> >(H) Generator & CPU > The generator axis gets spinned

I think you mean spun. Aside from that, very cool!

</comment><comment><USER31> I have another idea: just throttle the hydro and nat gas plants?

</comment><comment><USER32> I refuted a few of his points and got banned from commenting ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> The ghost of Storm King rises again.</comment>


The terrible truth about your tin of Italian tomatoes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/24/the-terrible-truth-about-your-tin-of-italian-tomatoes?CMP=twt_gu <comment><AUTHOR> Submitting this here, because the top comment on "The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant" [0] was about tinned Italian tomatoes.

Also submitted [1] back then, but didn't got so many upvotes.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15162126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15162126)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15164216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15164216)</comment>


GM's decline truly began with its quest to turn people into machines - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1510405/gms-layoffs-can-be-traced-to-its-quest-to-turn-people-into-machines/ <comment><USER2> I'm no expert in car production lines but I would assume most major car manufacturers use the same production techniques so I find it hard to believe GM's decline can be linked to "treating assemblers as though they were little whirring parts of one giant machine".

<comment><USER3> The article specifically addresses that, providing examples from different car manufacturers about how they treated their workers differently. (The company culture, the additional responsibilities they were given, etc.)

The article is 7,000 words long, but it has a lot to say about the culture at factories where cars are produced.</comment></comment>


Show HN: QuickNews, a News Aggregator Based on Doc2Vec - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
Not happy with the current news aggregators and thrilled about ML models for text processing, a colleague and I built an aggregator fully based on Doc2Vec: https://www.quicknews.ai/.
We currently poll ~120 news sources every 15 minutes, and construct a personalized news feed for every user.
There are plenty of ways in which Doc2Vec is used here: 1) Clustering the articles into topics 2) Deduping overly similar articles when generating the feed 3) Routing notifications about breaking news to interested users 4) Calculating similarity between domains/publishers, so as to recommend sources similar to the ones the user already clicked on 5) Dislike (only on Android, and somewhat fickle)
I'd be delighted if you tried it out and let me know what you think. Available on Android and iOS, with a web version planned.
Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quicknews.app
iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/quicknews-the-real-news-app/id1489638005 <comment> Lex-2008 Sounds interesting! Will see how it works out. Ran into an issue: when I clicked an article I wanted to read, "swipe left" was registered, instead. Good that you have an "undo" option, but maybe the "swipe threshold" is too low?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Yes, the threshold is too sensitive, but we didn't catch it when testing on my device. My colleague is fixing it and we'll have another version out very soon.</comment></comment>


Lies, Damned Lies and the BLS Inflation Statistics - <AUTHOR> http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/lies-damned-lies-the-bls-inflation-statistics/

<comment><AUTHOR> Pull a $20 out of your wallet. What do you see? I see about $5 of purchasing power circa 2000. Yet the BSL says it's about $14. Does that even pass the giggle test?</comment>


My daughter took on Dash and Dot, kid-friendly robots that teach programming - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/22/my-daughter-took-on-dash-and-dot-the-kid-friendly-robots-that-teach-programming/view-all/ <comment><USER2> anybody knows a company which imports them big style to europe?</comment>


First Sale Under Siege: If You Bought It, You Should Own It - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/first-sale-under-siege-if-you-bought-it-you-should-own-it <comment><USER2> EFF is leaving very important details out about at least Kirtsaeng. What's happening in that case is not simply that publishers are trying to claw back rights from US consumers. Supap Kirtsaeng took advantage of discounted pricing that Wiley offered students in poorer countries to arbitrage prices. This trick is called "parallel importation" (or "grey market importation") and it's a legal grey area, especially where copyright is concerned, turning on whether owners exhaust the right _to import_ on first sale.

In short, the defendant in Kirtsaeng is taking advantage of a discount program Wiley never intended to offer that defendant in the first place in order to subvert Wiley's whole pricing scheme. Whether Wiley can use a legal argument about first sale to stop this or not, it seems apparent that Wiley will one way or another prevent that from happening.

Knowing HN, these details probably don't do much to change your view of the case. But you should still want to know them! This is something the EFF used to be good at, but now is quite bad at, and despite the fact that EFF mostly supports causes I agree with, I urge you to direct your donations to ACLU or other civil liberties charities instead.

<comment><USER3> In a global economy, restrictions on parallel importation are destructive and backward.

What happened to "free trade"? I see no difference between buying something in country A and selling it in country B and buying and selling within the borders of country A.

As borders continue to fade away, restrictions on importation will become restrictions on first sale rights. So I really draw no distinction, personally.

<comment><USER4> Recognize that your position may have the following implication: if the producer cannot segment prices regionally, they may choose to charge the US price globally - in this case they lose the marginal sales in poorer countries, and customers in poorer countries lose access to the product. No one wins in this scenario.

<comment><USER5> I read a hypothesis that airlines would be unsustainable without price discrimination. That is: if tickets were uniformly priced, there is no price at which ticket sales (demand) would exceed fixed costs. Without gouging business travelers, there wouldn't be enough revenue to subsidize the pleasure travelers, who would stop flying because they couldn't afford unsubsidized fares. And the industry would fail.

This hypothesis is an extreme case, but it shows a mechanism how price discrimination can be welfare-increasing. That there can be tradeoffs between first-sale freedoms and societal wealth. (Because first-sale restrictions -- tying tickets to names, like a contract -- is what keeps secondary markets from equalizing airline fares).

<comment><USER6> If you have a link to this, I would love to read it. It makes a lot of sense, and I'd be interested to read it in more detail

<comment><USER5> This is probably unsatisfying, but it's where I read about it:

[http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- com...](http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- complexity/img22.html)

ToC: [http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- com...](http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel- complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.html)

You could email the author and ask him, he seems to know.

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm fine with first sale not applying to digital goods, but then you cannot call it buying but must call it renting instead. But of course, if amazon was honest and replaced the 'buy' button on a kindle book with a 'rent' button, people would be outraged at the price.

If i cannot leave something to my son in my will, it was never mine to begin with. You can't inherit kindle books, so it's obvious that you don't buy them either. There's no such thing as "buying a license", legally speaking that's called "renting".

<comment><USER8> "There's no such thing as "buying a license", legally speaking that's called "renting""

Is this your legal opinion as a lawyer?

<comment><USER9> Well, i'm a lawyer, and his position is at least defensible.

After all, the difference between leasing and buying is exactly right to use vs ownership.

Leasing/licensing have retention of ownership in the provider, buying does not.

Without having thought about it for more than 5 minutes, I can't think of any legal difference other than terminology.

Note that there is a difference in real property: Licensing is about giving someone the right to do something that would otherwise be unlawful, whereas leasing is generally about right to possess.

However, this is not the distinction software "licenses" are making.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bravo, EFF.

The Kirtsaeng case is quite important because, if lost, it would create a loophole to destroy "first sale" in the U.S. entirely. Just cease manufacturing any sort of copyright material in the U.S.; move ALL production to Mexico or China. If the Kirtsaeng case is lost, reselling any of those works would become illegal, eliminating used book stores and similar enterprises entirely. And indeed, this could apply to any product with writing on it or code in it - massive incentives to move all production of such things out of the U.S., since then you would be able to prevent ANY secondary sales of your product.

VERY important case, with massive implications for the future structure of U.S. society and the economy.

<comment><USER11> Wrong. If it's sold in the US, first sale applies. That's why it's called the 'first _sale_ ' doctrine, not the 'first _manufacture_ ' doctrine. I already have books that were printed in Mexico and China, and you probably do too.

<comment><USER12> Given the practice of tax dodging, how many items are really sold in the US by US webstores? Are you sure that all those amazon books are sold "in the US" and not from Ireland or some small island somewhere?

<comment><USER11> If the transaction is initiated by a US consumer inside the US, it's considered to be a US sale. If you dig into the case law on this, you'll find that the concept of first sale doctrine is perfectly well understood by the legal establishment and is not about to shrivel up and blow away.

There's an excellent (albeit technical) introduction to these issues in the 9th circuit's ruling on _Omega S.A. v. Costco Wholesale Corp._. Read up also on some of the journal articles from the Wiki page: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale_Corp). and if you're really itnerested, dig into the amicus briefs.

<comment><USER13> The Second Circuit specifically disagreed with the Ninth Circuit on this point, distinguishing its holding from the Ninth Circuit's in Omega.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The argument is actually about what you own. Is it the media or a license for one person to play it?

Most people I know are fed up with such word games and just plain old steal the bits and bytes (well duplicate them - whether or not that is stealing is another question). The media industries are just hanging themselves even more by the day. I don't see any tears being shed.

</comment><comment><USER15> How does this currently apply to software? Specifically desktop software apps, and OSs.

<comment><USER14> Exactly the same way as other media. In fact sometimes worse.

I have tried to sell a few bits of software via eBay (used windows XP pro retail box) which have been uninstalled or replaced with partner action pack licenses. After a day or so, I get an email from eBay saying that the item has been withdrawn due to a complaint from the manufacturer.

This is what they want.

I'm in the UK btw and am concerned this may become an international issue.

<comment><USER16> That's ebay's choice, but they're certainly not obliged to do that by copyright -- in the EU, at least. First Sale has been upheld (in the context of software) by the ECJ pretty recently (even for software you've downloaded rather than bought in retail), in the UsedSoft case -- [http://www.linklaters.com/Publications/Publication1403Newsle...](http://www.linklaters.com/Publications/Publication1403Newsletter/TMT- News-November-2012/Pages/EU-Used-Soft-Oracle-ECJ-approves-sale-used- software.aspx)

Choice quote: "This broad interpretation of Article 4(2) is necessary as otherwise the effectiveness of the rule of exhaustion would be undermined since suppliers would merely have to call the contract a "licence" rather than a "sale" in order to circumvent it."

IANAL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At what point do we realize that these people are simply trying to extract rent from our electronic communications, and we should circumvent them at any opportunity, and punish the politicians who are bought off to give them power?

<comment><USER18> I'm game with extracting reasonable rent under reasonable terms.

When we're talking about designed-obsolete college texts selling for hundreds of dollars for century-old wisdom .... Several lines have been crossed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The copyright owners have a bigger problem than what they may consider unauthorized copying. Drawing attention to compositions in sound and vision has become so much more difficult because it has become so much easier to distribute them. The scarcity has gone and so has the price. Quite a bit of the value has now decisively shifted to compositions in touch, smell, and taste, which cannot be distributed digitally.</comment>


Why Did China Just Devalue the Yuan? How Trade Works with Free-Floating Currency - <AUTHOR> https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/why-did-china-just-devalue-the-yuan <comment><USER3> This is one of the few articles on HN that I read the whole way through. Good job whoever wrote it.

The interesting thing here is that the case is made that China can (and does) manipulate its currency and that devaluing one's currency is what has led to the shift of manufacturing jobs from the developed world to China (and other places) but it also notes that this suppression of currency value is becoming increasingly difficult.

Doesn't this support the argument that currency manipulation is ultimately time limited?

On a side note, I always like to point people to this [1] on the subject of free trade, specifically the conflation between free trade and free movement of capital.

[1] [http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/](http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/)

<comment><USER4> "Recently China allowed their currency to fall below the key level of 7 yuan per dollar."

China isn't devaluing their currency, they are supporting it at its current level and artificially keeping it above 7.

When they stop supporting it, it decreases in value. Where would their currency go if they stopped propping it up?

<comment><USER5> Do they? All complaints I heard so far is CCP keeps yuan artificially cheap to prop the exports.

<comment><USER6> They have in the past (to fuel/build their export-driven economy), but I think things might have changed recently with the trade war.

<comment><USER7> Trade war is one reason, other is external debt in USD. This is explained in great details in article that China needs 100 billion dollars every year to service its external USD debt. So they don't want to let CN¥ fall in value significantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great article. I worked at a Forex trading firm and this is a great way to explain China's dilemma.

Really, this is kind of what happened to every other east Asian economy the past 60 years. They grow at a rapid pace for about two decades, then hit a ceiling as their low currency value becomes a hindrance rather than a benefit.

Like the author explains, this is the Japanese model. And every country who has copied it as done so less effectively than the Japanese.

First Japan, then Korea, then Taiwan, now China.

For me, the fundamental advantage in this trade war with the US is that the Chinese are replaceable for the American economy. Sure, there will be some pains as companies move their factories from China to Vietnam (or wherever), but ultimately, there are other places in the world with cheap labor.

There is no other America in the world. China's number one customer is America and China doesn't seem to realize this. If you don't keep your relationship good with your number one customer, then you will lose them eventually.

And that's what's happening.

The Chinese have to get better at international relations or they will be more isolated as time goes on.

No one wants to deal with a partner who bullies them around. Especially when there are better deals on the table.

<comment><USER9> You were going great until that very last part.

But, it is clearly true that China's current position is not unlike that of Japan in the 90's, or South Korea not long after.

I think China's advantage is that they are big enough to create a large consumer market themselves. The U.S. was once in this position, as was the U.K. before them, and they both managed to make the transition from selling to other, richer markets to selling to themselves.

The big problem is, that both the U.K. and the U.S. had periods of internal stress during that transition, and because they were democracies they could blow off steam with electoral "revolts" instead of the literal kind of revolt. Perhaps China has the internal stability to be able to avoid this problem, but perhaps not.

<comment><USER10> Well, not so fast. You are correct that China is indeed different, but if you look at hard data [0], the internal consumer market in China is not substantially larger than Japan, and certainly way smaller than US.

Furthermore, the consumer market data includes food, which by a large extent has to remain a domestic product. If we assume that food is 11% of the market (based on "$1.46 trillion worth of food in 2014." in the US [1]), then:

US domestic market (without food): $13.32T ($11.85T)

EU domestic market (without food): $9.61T ($8.55T)

China domestic market (without food): $4.7T ($4.18T)

Japan domestic market (without food): $2.76T ($2.46T)

As you can see, China is not big enough, by a large margin.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_marke...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets#)

[1]: [https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food- ser...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food-service- industry/market-segments/)

<comment><USER11> If the world stay where it is today forever, sure.

You could well bring up that 30 years ago China is about as wealthy as Africa, and that it is a total non-factor in the world economy.

The bottomline is this, China had 1.4 billion people, they will consume, even if they consume 1/4th as much individually, the market will be the same size as of the US. It probably already happened, just that services in China is much cheaper. Out of the 13T consumption that is the US market, how much of it is in the form of goods? You'll probably get the same level of service in China for 1/4 the price. The growth of consumption in China has been consistently greater than the growth of the economy as a whole for the past 10 years, and it'll likely happen in the foreseeable future as China's export shrink and infrastructure spending halts.

<comment><USER9> Yes, all of that.

In addition, there is a lot of Chinese money that is going abroad, to buy real estate in Vancouver and etc. If this were all brought home as domestic demand, they would have an even larger market to sell into domestically.

But, this requires: 1) that it be spread out a little more evenly, and/or... 2) that the people with the money trust their future in China enough to bring it all home

Neither of which is easy. On the other hand, neither is impossible, so it could happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It should be noted that a central bank with a floating currency is constrained in its control of interest rates the more it controls foreign exchange and vice versa.

Using tariffs to constrain the actions of foreign central banks is really quite interesting. While China has succeeded in offsetting tariffs with inflation for now, they are paying for it by giving up policy flexibility, whereas the US can effectively control the price of the yuan with tariffs.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is an awesome article! Is it possible to write an article about the next recession and it's implications? Our current financial health and environment is really different from the last one and every person I know keeps on telling how bad the next recession is going to be.

<comment><USER14> Even if the next recession is mild, the US has very little room for a stimulus thanks our debt. It's hard to predict the depth of a future recession, but one can say for sure that we have fewer options because of the debt. Keynesian principle is basically a fancy form of "save up for rainy days". We didn't, so hope the storm is short.

<comment><USER15> $4t was printed to bail out the banks. What is stopping more money from being printed this time, in the form of economic stimulus?

<comment><USER14> If you mean "Quantitative Easing", it's arguable whether it's the same as "printing money". I won't get into that debate here.

In a related issue, there's a theory making its circles in both right and left camps that if inflation is sub-par for a while, say below 2%, then printing more money won't cause problems.

Why inflation is lower than expected is an economic puzzle. But printing money to avoid paying debt may create new economic puzzles. If they try it, try it gradually please.

(The ideal annual inflation rate tends to be around 2.0% to 2.3%, based on historical record. This is in aggregate. Highs or lows tend to affect different people differently.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The US really has China in a bind here, and few will admit it. China needs to weaken its currency to offset tariffs by making their exports cheaper...but China is very very short on dollars, and each devaluation makes their onshore debt much harder to maintain. I'm sure China is waiting out the 2020 election, hoping the next President will be more dovish on China...but I think everyone (except Biden) is pretty hawkish on China within that Democratic field.

<comment><USER17> >China is very very short on dollars

$3T of dollar reserves would like to have a word with you.

<comment><USER16> a) Investment banks don't believe that number is completely accurate

b) China has used a lot of reserves propping up offshore RMB.

c) It's a lot more complicated than that.

d) 1.2 trillion in dollar debt has to be rolled over just this year

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-06/china-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-06/china- s-dollar-debt-is-surging-and-that-spells-trouble)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> China has surpassed US last year in terms of consumption of retail goods.

China's advantage is no longer cheap labor TBH...It hasn't been cheap for a long time now.

America is unique and important...But so is China.

<comment><USER8> If the Chinese protect their domestic market from American companies, then there is no point to staying on good terms with them.

Look what happened to Google. Google made all these concessions to the CCP and still got fucked.

China can't dangle the carrot of the Chinese market if they don't let American (or Japanese or European) companies have decent access to them.

China teases access, then pushes out the company after they steal their technology and intellectual property.

The world is finally wising up to this scam.

<comment><USER19> So, the Chinese are evil. Maybe, but then, there is nothing exceptional about their evil.

If you are old enough you will remember when Japan were the evil one in the 80's.

Or we can go to the history books and see how all those tactics is what the USA used against Britain.

<comment><USER20> Japan was never considered evil in the 1980s, even the economic competition aspect is overblown in today's view. China has always had a much more complicated relationship with the USA, even in the 80s when relations were at a peak due to the Sino Soviet split (and before Tiananmen).

<comment><USER21> This is a bit revisionist. As a kid I remember japan being pitched at the economic enemy quite a bit in the 80s and early 90s. "They're buying our country" was one refrain, like the claim with "the Chinese are why I can't buy a house" right now. Also things like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_\(novel\)) and a lot of other fiction showing us (americanos) working for japanese business overlords. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS_17xMmmLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS_17xMmmLY) for another example.

<comment><USER20> That is a even a bit more revisionist, our relationship with Japan was very friendly in the 1980s, and the economic competition aspect was more benign even in the rust belt. As long as we are drawing from pop culture, the movie Gung Ho ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_\(film\))) is a more accurate reflection of the sentiment of the time.

There has just to be a gung ho kind of movie for China, as far as I can tell. Likewise, Japan continued to be a top strategic ally of the USA in the 80s, it was never seen as a strategic competitor like China is today.

<comment><USER22> I remember relatives in the eighties expressing worries about the Japanese buying up farmland, and the movie Rising Sun or whatever - the theory being that what Japan couldn't do militarily they were going to accomplish economically. There was concern about Japan as an enemy but never solidly like we have with China today. As you say, Japan never stopped being an ally, and China is barely this side of detente.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very useful, in the context of this article, to see the details of the Eurozone trade balance, "Latest Eurostat data on international trade" [0]. The total surplus for the entire Eurozone is €20.6B.

Noteworthy to look at the top countries by trade surplus, where Germany represents the 900-pound gorilla:

Germany: +€111.9B

Ireland: +€33.9B

Netherlands: +€32.9B

Italy: +€22.1B

Czechia: +€10.8B

Everybody else is either close to zero, or negative. Here's the worst ones:

France: -€33.6B

Spain: -€15.8B

Greece: -€11.0B

Portugal: -€10.3B

[0]: [https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/december/tradoc_...](https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/december/tradoc_151969.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> On the flip side, a lot of countries that the United States trades with peg their currencies to the US dollar. See the last section ( _Why Countries Peg Their Currency to the Dollar_ ) of [https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a-peg- to-the-dollar-33059...](https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a-peg-to-the- dollar-3305925) and [https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a- petrodollar-3306358](https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a-petrodollar-3306358) for details.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would think it's better to have more imports than exports. The importer gets goods and services, the exporter gets numbers in a computer. Though I suppose it's a problem when the importer doesn't know how to take care of itself anymore.

<comment><USER25> the exporter then uses those numbers to buy resources (natural and political), real estate, media and influence inside importer. Until the importer is 100% dependent

<comment><USER26> Then the importer has a revolution, wipes all debts and starts again.

<comment><USER27> Seizing the assets of foreign national corporations within the US would be mutual assured financial destruction. Markets would crash and plunge the country into depression/recession as foreign capital flees the US.

<comment><USER28> Didn't happen when the US did it to Iran.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This article opens up with a mistake? It's 7 yuan per dollar. Not the other way around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops - good catch! Little dyslexia I guess! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting article. One thing that wasn't made clear - who is holding the new Chinese debt? Chinese consumers are the first borrowers, I assume, but then are local banks borrowing from the Chinese central bank? Is the central bank then borrowing from abroad, and why is this debt dollar-denominated? Why don't they just pay it off with cash instead of continuing to put that cash into US Treasuries?

PS, @joshuafkon, you have an unnecessary apostrophe in the "it's" in the last sentence!

</comment><comment><USER31> What's to stop exporting companies from increasing prices?

Say I'm a Chinese manufacturer of plates. I have an American customer buying 6m yuan worth every year. Previously that cost them $1m USD. Now it only costs them $857k. In both cases I'm getting 6m yuan, so I'm happy. Or, do I increase the price to 7m yuan because I know that's what the customer Usually pays, now I'm VERY happy?

Does this achieve the goal of growth (6m to 7m yuan) or does it not count because the volume stayed the same?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, currently (more or less) the devaluation just offsets the new tariffs that have been imposed. So in real terms there wouldn't be a huge change.

Absent the tariffs it would depend on the specific supply and demand for the good. I suspect both the manufacturer and the customer would split the value in some way.

Interestingly, the growth to the economy arises through how the devaluation impacts the savings and consumption rate for the countries in question. Weakening the yuan depresses Chinese household consumption and subsidies foreign household consumption. It is this change in national savings and consumption that drives the trade balance.

<comment><USER32> Why does weakening the yuan depress Chinese household consumption? Aren't households buying Chinese goods with yuan, and therefore a weakening currency shouldn't matter? Or is it that they have less purchasing power for foreign goods and this effects household consumption?

<comment><USER33> A household has a fixed amount of yuan. More expensive foreign goods take up a larger portion of that amount, leaving less for domestic consumption. Imagine every household does it, leading to less demand for domestic goods.

<comment><USER34> Alternatively, households stop buying expensive foreign goods and substitute cheaper but potentially inferior domestic goods (eg. baby formula that may be laced with melamine). So domestic manufacturers can still win, even if households don't.

<comment><USER35> I'm under the impression - perhaps incorrectly - that a big portion of foreign goods are related to mobile phone services purchased from overseas vendors. It's possible some of this can't be substituted...but I don't know what percentage of spending this represents.

<comment><USER34> That sounds unlikely, given that Google's Play Store is blocked in China and everybody uses local stores instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does this strategy still work in a world with highest possibility of migration we ever had? If I live in a consumption repressed country and can see through the internet that the consumption rate is much better in other countries, I will also use my talent and resources to move to that country.

Since I can build a network online, since I can investigate laws online, even of other countries, since I can book and prepay for different steps to take in migration I have a much easier time than ever before to simply go somewhere else.

At the same time the psychological bonding between people and nations is lower than ever since the creation of nation states. If someone tells you they live at 20% the value they would want to live, just because they want to support their country, you would laugh about them.

And last but not least, more and more succeeding in the competition of production talent and creativity is more important than anything else. E.g. a soldier with low IQ and lots of muscles might have been great 500 years ago. But nowadays he simply gets shredded by a drone that was constructed by a nerd with technical talents and zero muscles.

Altogether it doesn't seem very logical to me that such a move can really improve China's situation, if it makes them lose talent quicker.

</comment><comment><USER37> Electric vehicles are still in nascent stage; [https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/112909164662727475...](https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1129091646627274753)

Till then everyday China need 504 million US$ to buy 8,400,000 bbl/day OPEC Oil to drive its economy; [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_imp...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_imports) and [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#Currencies_use...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#Currencies_used_to_trade_oil)

Hence China is selling/exporting its products/services to USA to EARN that $504 million/day; [https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/116150270980923801...](https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1161502709809238016)

</comment><comment><USER38> I still can't wrap my head around this topic after reading the article.

>> Yuan is not able to escape China, and therefore while other countries might see capital flee the country long before the point China has reached. China has been able to prevent a collapse of its currency.

Why would Yuan escape China and why is it a bad thing for its currency?

<comment><AUTHOR> China has strict capital controls to prevent money from leaving the country.

If people believe that China is going to substantially devalue their currency, the will try to pull money out of the country and invest it elsewhere.

The risk is that the currency would then devalue more than China wants - <USER2> the point that they have very high inflation

[https://chinaeconomicreview.com/for-china-the-risk-of-a- seco...](https://chinaeconomicreview.com/for-china-the-risk-of-a-second-wave- of-capital-flight-is-now-severe/)

<comment><USER39> Chinese wealthy have been historically moving capital out of China regardless of the controls. It has been so prevalent that the newer housing development next to where I live doesn't have the number four in any of their street addresses.

Wouldn't a weakened Yuan make them want to move the wealth back, to capitalize on the new arbitrage?

<comment><USER10> What's with number 4? And, do you live in China or somewhere else where a lot of Chinese wealthy bought property?

<comment><USER40> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is the single biggest mistake every single emerging market has made in the past. Overleveraging on dollars.

These countries need to realize that being in debt to a foreign currency is never worth it. The short-term booming economy because of a market flooded with dollars doesn't ever outweigh long-term costs.

See: Argentina, Brazil

<comment><USER42> Many emerging markets don't have enough capital to invest in infrastructure and businesses in order to build there economies. When done responsibly it's a way to grow your economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Something that I have been wondering about for a long time. Why is it considered to be a good thing to export more?

It seems to me that if a country imports more than it exports, it is getting a good deal. It exports stuff and gets more stuff in return.

<comment><USER44> exporting more means you're earning relatively more money that can then be spent on assets. All spending is either on assets (property, equities, land, etc) or liabilities (cars, toys, clothes, etc). Assets are the key to wealth because assets make more money whereas liabilities cost you to loose money. Wealth begets more wealth because it grows based on compounding effects.

<comment><USER43> This makes sense for individuals, but how does this work for countries?

Let's say the US were to export more stuff to China. Now American companies have more money to buy assets. If they use this money to buy assets in the US it would just cause inflation. The land prices go up, but the total amount of land owned stays the same. If they use the money to buy land in China, I am not sure that it would have much impact on the US economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Financial tools such as devaluing their currency as a tool in maintaining a non-reciprocal trading relationship demonstrates the challenges in working with China. If your marital partner or friend did the same you would probably be unhappy with them. For instance, giving you equal conditions in my market assume that you will do the same in yours and that you will not unfairly subsidize your businesses through market restrictions as well as financial instruments such as currency manipulation.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Firstly, China has devalued the yuan to offset the rising tariffs that the > United States has been imposing. In fact, China has devalued the yuan > significantly since the Trump administration first placed a 10% tariff on > Chinese goods – effectively negating the tariffs. And with the new 10% > tariffs that Trump has promised to imposed on a wider range of goods China > has in response devalued their currency further.

I keep seeing claims that China is devaluing without numbers or context.

Here's a 10-year chart of the USD/CNY exchange rate:

[https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CNY&view=10Y](https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CNY&view=10Y)

At the start of the current administration (Jan 2017), the rate stood at about 6.96. Today it stands at 7.04.

In the two years after the 2016 election (April 2018), the yuan had strengthened to 6.28.

According to this timeline, the first round of US tariffs hit on April 7, 2017.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china- timeline/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china- timeline/timeline-key-dates-in-the-us-china-trade-war-idUSKCN1UZ24U)

From the announcement of the first round of tariffs, the yuan actually strengthened. It has only "weakened" in the last year, and then only back to a level that slightly exceeds that of Jan 2016.

Yet to hear the president and others tell it, China is on a currency devaluation bender the likes of which the world has never seen. Well, I'm not seeing it at least.

It seems that the 7.0 level was broadly seen as a line in the sand. But like all psychological levels, they rarely mean anything in the long term.

The trend is clearly for more yuan weakness based on the chart alone. Perhaps we'll even see even massive devaluation.

But so far that's just speculation. The chart tells a story of a massive bowl formation (strongest yuan point in Jan 2014) hinting at severe weakness ahead, but we're nowhere close to that at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER47> "China bids up the price of the dollar relative to the yuan by buying dollars with yuan, and then sits on these dollars by purchasing U.S. treasuries with them"

Is China printing yuan to buy dollars? I thought the USD was accumulated from payments (in dollars) from exports to the USA.

</comment><comment><USER48> I see a lot of comments looking at this from a 'X vs Y' lens and are trying to paint China/USA/Trump/Whoever as a bully, victim, or some other emotional label. In this kind of situation, I think it is important to remember that there are not any 'bullies' and 'victims'

Like most business, the rules of engagement are flexible dependent on those involved and their willingness to assume risk to gain a nominal advantage. Also like most businesses, the net outcome of increasing risk is not always in favor of the party taking the risk, however the net outcome is almost always in [someone's] favor. Thus, you can simplify the outcome of any risk into two categories: Internal Advantage & External Advantage.

\-- Note: I don't use the term "disadvantage" as I prefer to force myself to think of things from a advantage/standing perspective. Any loss on a countries' part is a direct result of another country gaining some relative advantage. "What is the inherent risk with Action [X], and who gains from it?"

Now regarding the issue at hand, the recent moves between China & the United States:

China is responding to the United States assuming a greater degree of risk, and corresponding reward, through recent tariff changes.

They appear to be trying to mitigate the advantage the United States gained by their actions, and thus are responding as any rational party in this situation would by attempting to regain their original advantage. The value of the currencies is, while non-trivial from a macro-perspective, a non-issue compared to re-establishing a status quo of commerce volume and relative economic position.

The question that remains now is whether the net advantages of either nation shifts as a result of this recent exchange.

</comment><comment><USER49> « _…an undervalued currency, by raising the cost of imports, acts as a kind of consumption tax for household and so reduces disposable household income. With lower disposable household income usually comes lower household consumption…the combination of lower consumption and higher production automatically causes a surge in the savings rate.

And of course, this also acts as a subsidy to consumption for other countries whose currencies can now purchase additional imports._»

The first paragraph is written by Michael Petteis. The second paragraph by the blog's author. That second paragraph is completely wrong. As Michael explains, an undervalued currency raises the cost of imports. Therefore it doesn't help "purchase additional imports".

<comment><USER50> An undervalued currency raises the cost of imports into the country whose currency is undervalued.

For _other_ countries, it subsidizes imports from the country with the undervalued currency.

He's not claiming that an undervalued currency helps that country purchase additional imports.

<comment><USER49> Ah I see, this makes sense. Thanks. I misunderstood the second paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> no mention of how devaluing the currency affects or is affected by the interest rate. china is lowering interest rates...

china's interest rate is still higher than than the us feds.

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/investing/china-interest- rate...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/investing/china-interest-rate- cut/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> Excellent article. I wonder how this news will affect those worried about the inverted yield curve?

</comment><comment><USER37> Not a single word about OPEC Oil in this article :(

</comment><comment><USER53> _Both Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren want the dollar to be weaker because, as we will see, a weaker currency will boost exports._

So, is this one way to summarize it: The lowlier a country's populace is on the world stage, the better the balance of trade, and the more the country's elites benefit? Of course, this isn't true 100% across the board. Make a country's economy backwards enough, and its businesses will lose the ability to compete in high margin value add goods.

</comment><comment><USER54> *rolls eyes.

To look at whether or not the yuan is being devalued stop looking at it vs just the dollar but against all other currencies. The trade war is pushing up the dollar significantly.

Today's value vs Aug 19th 2018.

Yuan vs Euro 0.13 vs 0.13

Yuan vs Pound sterling 0.11 vs 0.12

Yuan vs Yen 15.11 vs 16.06

Yuan vs Indian Rupee 10.15 vs 10.14

TLDR: Yuan is basically the same, rather it's the dollar that's gaining.

<comment><USER55> > _against all other currencies_

The correct method is a trade-weighted basket of currencies. So if you trade 90% with India and 10% with Japan, you weight the moves accordingly.

By this method, the renmimbi has devalued. Just not by as much as it appears by just watching the dollar.

More critically, the Chinese government fixes the renmimbi-dollar trading range. This gives this pair (among others) special status over others.

<comment><USER54> There are a number of measures. Looking at a chart you can see the trend yourself instead of taking it from OP.

[https://imgur.com/a/5sZRJbW](https://imgur.com/a/5sZRJbW)

<comment><USER55> REER is a domestically-scoped tool. It answers "should the currency move," not "has it been pushed?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Re: _China devalued their currency to offset the U.S. tariffs. But China is between a rock and a hard place. Tariffs risk severe damage to their fragile economy if not offset with currency devaluation. But, with the enormous debt burden the Chinese are now under, currency devaluation creates the real risk of capital flight from the country - and makes it more difficult for China to service it's dollar denominated debt._

Trump knows that China is in a weaker position than the US. However, all this gamesmanship (and gameswomanship) risks crashing _both_ economies (and the world economy). Trump is willing to play chicken as long as the US has the edge. But chicken is still a risky game. An interesting economic experiment is underway. Unfortunately, we are the lab rats.</comment>


Mithridatism - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism#In_practice <comment><USER2> In another thread I just responded to someone who seems to be trying this theory out for mercury. Let's see how it works out for him.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to this trainwreck?

<comment><USER2> Well I assume mercury was the culprit since his posts certainly exhibit symptoms[1]

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_as_a_hatter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_as_a_hatter)</comment></comment></comment>


µSOA – a powerful alternative and complement to SOA - <AUTHOR> http://baiy.cn/doc/byasp/mSOA_en.htm <comment><USER2> Sounds a bit like DC/OS. They are doing some interesting work as well with using CRDTs to building a distributed load balancer (by configuring Netfilter and using NFQueue).

This is the load balancer:

[https://github.com/dcos/minuteman](https://github.com/dcos/minuteman)

The fun part is the distributed KV store and failure detector based on CRDTs ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict- free_replicated_data_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict- free_replicated_data_type))

[https://github.com/dcos/lashup](https://github.com/dcos/lashup)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think the author sold this very well at all. Parts of the text have merit but overall there's nothing really new at play.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah. It's called Erlang.

</comment><comment><USER5> Waiting for Microservices with NanoSOAP and yaml envelopes.

</comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: Lossy message queue + service discovery.

</comment><comment><USER7> My take on this: [https://github.com/tinspin/rupy/wiki/Process](https://github.com/tinspin/rupy/wiki/Process)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it time to switch to nanoservices yet? Or maybe we should jump right to femtoservices? :)</comment>