German parliament passes bill allowing banks to sell and store cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/12603/new-law-makes-germany-crypto-heaven <comment> m-i-l This article is attempting to put an extremely positive spin ("new law makes Germany 'crypto[currency] heaven'", "leads to institutional investors", "major breakthrough", "massive for adoption") on a government crackdown. To be expected given that decrypt.co is funded by ConsenSys, which was in turn founded by someone who had (in Feb 2018) an estimated "net worth in cryptocurrency to be between one and five billion [US] dollars"[0], so they have a vested interest in promoting cryptocurrencies. But why does this sort of advertising keep on cropping up on HN?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lubin_(entrepreneur)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lubin_\(entrepreneur\))

<comment><USER2> Bloomberg is founded by a billionaire with a vested interest in... whatever he has an interest in? Washington Post by Bezos as well. Should we ban all of this so-called "independent" media from HN?

<comment><USER3> Well, Bloomberg probably has some actual cash. The crypto guy has a bunch of tokens he needs to turn into usable money. So he has a interest in keeping the price up while he slowly exits without crashing the price.

<comment><USER2> Honest question - does it bother you every day that any cryptocurrency is valued above $0? Does this violate you intellectually?

<comment><USER4> This doesnt sound like a "honest question" to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read this and assumed crypto meant cryptography. I guess at this stage we should come up with a new short term for cryptography, since crypto has been subsumed.

Could this maybe be editorialised to cryptocurrency for clarity?

<comment><USER6> _> we should come up with a new short term for cryptography_

 _" they"_ should come up with a new short term for cryptocurrency

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately the free market cares about crypto->cryptocurrency more than about crypto->cryptography.

We are all, unfortunately, under control of an entity that values financial growth at all costs over any sort of scientific merit.

<comment><USER8> Can we use that to garner public support for cryptography under the banner of digital currency / cryptocoins?

Something like this:

The five eyes are trying to ban crypto! The government wants to be able to access your life savings when it inevitably all goes digital!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems they're making all crypto exchanges not registered in Germany illegal for their citizens. I wonder what the punishment will be for a German who buys crypto from an unregistered exchange?

<comment><USER10> I'm not so sure about that. I haven't looked up the legal text, but to me it only sounds like operating some services like crypto exchanges requires a licence.

As a citizen I can interact with a Canadian bank that has no German licence, as long as I don't launder money. The Canadian bank just can't do business activities in Germany (advertisement, opening an office, etc).

Overall this seems like a bigpositive since it gives crypto currencies a more solid place in the German legal framework, taking it out of the niche

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what this means regarding the transparency of transactions and the anonymity of user ids. Is anyone aware of the new law's implications?

</comment><comment><USER12> It appears to be a two-pronged law that permits banks to act as custodians, while at the same time requiring other custodians currently operating in Germany to obtain a special license and comply with other regulations.

</comment><comment><USER13> The initial purpose of Bitcoin according to its creator was to abolish central banks. The fact that the state uses force to collect taxes in fiat currency means that you have no chance to escape fiat, this new regulation makes sure of that. It means nothing more than Bitcoin has utterly failed in its mission.

<comment><USER14> Did the creator himself seriously think Bitcoin would be the end of banks?

<comment><USER15> Be careful, because banks and central banks are not the same things.

<comment><USER14> I'm just wondering if people who claimed to believe Bitcoin would end the banking system came up with that amongst themselves or were basing it on something "Satoshi" had said.

I had the impression Satoshi was relatively matter of fact about Bitcoin, but I haven't read much of his/her/their own words.

<comment><USER16> Read the white paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know, smells fishy

</comment><comment><USER18> If they build up the infrastructure with that famous German engineering I'd just as soon stay away.

<comment><USER19> Ah, come on. By 2022 all state administrative tasks will be 100% digital for German residents. That will be defined by law. There is nothing to worry!

<comment><USER20> What I don't understand is your banking. As a Czech person, I strongly felt like German banking is 20 years in the past. Why the heck would you have ATMs with opening hours, and not accepting all cards? Why does it cost so much (or anything?) to withdraw? Why are your businesses not accepting cards, or only accepting some cards with weird details like "CCs only German, other cards only EU"?

<comment><USER21> >As a Czech person, I strongly felt like German banking is 20 years in the past. Why the heck would you have ATMs with opening hours, and not accepting all cards?

Never seen an ATM with opening hours, other than ones located inside shopping malls where the entire mall completely closes during the nights.

I never had an ATM refuse my card, tho. The worst was some steep fees (see below).

>Why does it cost so much (or anything?) to withdraw?

Because banks are in the business of making money ;) Seriously tho, most Germans do not pay for withdrawals, you "just" have to remember to go to an ATM of your bank or one of their partners, which admittedly you have to know about and then it's a bit of a hassle.

>Why are your businesses not accepting cards, or only accepting some cards with weird details like "CCs only German, other cards only EU"?

Now that's actually more of an issue, indeed. I think it's a combination of

\- Germans still really loving their cash, so everybody usually has at least a few bucks in cash with them,

\- Germans always being a bit conservative about new tech (that can lose them money or get their persoanl and/or banking data into the wrong hands),

\- Germans really despising when somebody in front of them wants to pay for small purchases slowly with a card (insert into reader, type PIN and/or sign) instead of quickly with some cash

\- and small shops not wanting to go through the hassle of setting up this stuff. Both legal and also the tech aspects are a burden; there is a lot of red tape to get accepted by upstream processors and CC companies; and the system isn't exactly unified either. Especially small independent shops that usually sell stuff at a few bucks per customer do not really seem to see the point in offering card payments. And from what I heard, purely anecdotal and second hand, it's far more of a hassle to get set up to accept credit cards, especially issued by foreign banks, than German bank cards, so that may explain why some shops will accept some card but not others.

Then again, everything that's part of a chain or franchise usually accepts cards, and most actual restaurants do too (but some still don't, which can lead to a lot of awkwardness once you try to pay), as do virtually all gas stations, and so on.

As a German, that's just something you're used to and expect: The people in the doner shop or asian food truck or Kiosk (newsagent/corner shop) will stare blankly at you if you want to pay your less than 10 bucks with a card, even when they accept cards.

Anyway, banks been rolling out contactless payment systems recently, which might change things for small item purchases finally (or rather eventually). Which, of course, is an area where Germany lacked behind.

<comment><USER20> > Never seen an ATM with opening hours, other than ones located inside > shopping malls where the entire mall completely closes during the nights.

Yeah. In Czechia we can use the card to open the enclosed area and use the ATM.

> I never had an ATM refuse my card, tho. The worst was some steep fees (see > below).

I have never seen a Czech ATM that can't handle literally any card from planet Earth, meanwhile the first German ATM I saw has been MasterCard only. And then the second and the third one as well, I was not amused.

<comment><USER21> I have never seen an ATM in Germany that couldn't handle at least Visa and Mastercard, on top of Maestro and normal giro withdrawals.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Exercise 20: Zed's Awesome Debug Macros - <AUTHOR> http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/ex20.html

<comment><USER2> Awesome would be something outside the box or rather, outside the function scope. Of course, using longjmp is not much more novel today than using this approach which is tried and ugly. I find that a mix of classic return tests and longjmp in exceptional cases makes for the easiest error handling in C. David Hanson, among many others, has a much better set of awesome macros for exactly this; [https://github.com/drh/cii/blob/master/include/except.h](https://github.com/drh/cii/blob/master/include/except.h)

<comment><USER3> Absolutely! C Interfaces and Implementations should be read by anyone coding C these days. Absurd how little known it is though.</comment></comment>


Breaking up the Container Monolith - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/05/04/breaking-up-the-container-monolith/ <comment><USER2> They complain about Dockerfiles and have a broken link to some project with 288 commits, without even acknowledging that a Dockerfile isn't needed to build a docker image. It is just as easy to build from a regular old disk image, a chroot, etc. I don't blame RedHat for trying to capitalize on the container frenzy, but this doesn't reflect well on them. Also, kind of expected more from the SELinux Coloring Book.

<comment><USER3> I also feel like Docker's multistage feature already solves the container size flaw.

>This tool also allows us to build containers without all the container development tools inside it (yum, GCC, secrets, etc). Basically, Buildah produces clean containers, which means the container can be much, much smaller.

With docker you basically have one stage where you load all the dev tools to build the application or library. Then you have a second stage where you merely copy your application and run it. I often have a Dockerfile that builds a java library which then merely copies the .jar file into an empty docker image. The end result is usually a docker image smaller than 10MB. Then I add this image to the dockerfile that actually needs the library by adding it as an empty multistage and as part of the last stage I just copy the files of the library image into the application image. This way you can "inherit" multiple docker library images into one application image.

<comment><USER4> >>> The end result is usually a docker image smaller than 10MB.

You forgot to install the JVM to run the .jar, didn't you?

<comment><USER5> A possible option for containers that all run JVM applications is to have a volume mount for all of them that points to an external filesystem containing the JAVA_HOME contents. This somewhat violates certain containerization principles but can help reduce some disk usage across dozens of containers on a host.

<comment><USER6> You could base all the images on the same layer, then the disk space wouldn't be an issue, right?

<comment><USER7> That would lead to a small _image_ size because you would just apply the .jar to a base Java install but it doesn't do anything for the container size because they all will have their own JVM copy.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand what you mean for the container size. If they share the same base layer it won't use more disk space to store than splitting it up, surely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also no mention of [https://github.com/rkt/rkt](https://github.com/rkt/rkt) ?

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah, what's happening with that? Haven't heard anything about it lately

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dockerfile is the best thing Docker has to offer. Simple, text-based, easy to learn, consistent enough for practical use. What's the problem?

<comment><USER11> * Single inheritance. Dockerfiles cannot be easily composed, you need to arrange them in particular order. This leads to either kitchen-sink images or deep, brittle hierarchies.

* Leading to: inheritance for construction. Lots of images include a bunch of irrelevant material because it was easier to FROM an existing image than to tease apart the kitchen-sink into the brittle hierarchy.

* Meaning: using composition isn't really "a thing" in the sense that it's commonly used. I'm given to understand that OCI layers can, if you recalculate the hashes, be layered in arbitrary order. In an ideal world the build tool can check that there won't be layer conflicts, meaning you can treat layers as immutable mixins, rather than immutable parents. Instead of FROM, you could have UNION or PLUS.

Then of course the less abstract stuff:

* Mystery meat. Dockerfiles make development solely responsible for managing all dependencies from the OS up. An awesome tool and a problematic responsibility. You've graduated from worrying about XSS holes in your web framework to fretting about kernel bugs and glibc glitches. Where I work we have _an entire team_ devoted to tracking CVEs that affect code we ship. Do you?

* Mystery meat, at scale. Now you have 5,000 containers running ... what, exactly? What versions of what OSes? Are the runtimes up to date? You're going to need to either rigidly control Dockerfiles -- in which case, what did it buy in terms of dev flexibility? -- or you're going to need to buy tools to scan all your images. Docker sells such a service, as it happens.

Dockerfiles are a simple, clean exposure of the original concept of layered FSes, processes and ports. But they are not without limitations.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, we compete with Red Hat and Docker in the PaaS space.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if the problems you describe can be solved by anything less than fully declarative approach; and even NixOS isn't there yet.

<comment><USER11> I've elsewhere put the view that configuration management tools more or less fill this role, as they build on the existing nature of filesystems: spread your stuff horizontally into tree structures, so it doesn't collide.

Most of the ordering dependencies don't show up until runtime. The bits at rest can generally be played in any order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Broken link to Buildah [https://github.com/projectatomic/buildah](https://github.com/projectatomic/buildah)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've not really been a fan of the Redhat ecosystem for years. Fedora, RHEL, etc. while "stable" always feel like if I want to build something a bit more modern requires contortions that even Debian Stable did away with years ago.

As for "Buildah", what about Deis and build packs deployed to Kubernetes? RH has gotten better in recent years with Openshift syncing closer to Kubernetes releases, but are still a far cry from how CoreOS handles things with Tectonic.

<comment><USER14> Huh? Fedora is one of the most bleeding edge, "modern" distributions you'll find.

<comment><USER7> And then you can move to Rawhide if that still isn't new enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unikernels are a better simpler tech than containers but somehow we're stuck with containers.

<comment><USER11> Containers don't require a per-technology implementation, so it's easier to adapt existing systems to use them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Embrace and extend?</comment>


Knowledgebase Flexible Like Database - <AUTHOR> https://ntile.wiki <comment><USER2> Attracts with a simple structure. I've started using it with my team - so far we're pleased

</comment><comment><USER3> This service makes possible almost every structure I can imagine

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting service! I'll try it</comment>


Jacques Pepin, unlike other celebrity chefs, will actually teach you how to cook - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2016/05/jacques_pepin_unlike_other_celebrity_chefs_will_actually_teach_you_how_to.html <comment><USER2> I grew up in the town next to Jacques and asked if he would take part in a project for French class.

He invited me and my project partners to his house, gave us a tour of his TV production kitchen, let us film a segment for our video, and signed a copy of his book for or teacher.

Needless to say we got an A+ but more importantly we got to spend time with an incredibly intelligent and empathetic master. Forever grateful that he took the time to meet with us silly but curious kids.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I learned the most from JP is the "no fuss" approach to cooking. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. A relaxed approach. I typically follow the school of though of the Modernist Cuisine, where precise measurements are everything. And don't get me wrong, they work great. But cooking like that feels more like an engineering project. Results are great, but it's "less fun". What I learned from JP is to be flexible within reason, and to relax, share with friends and family in the kitchen and have more fun in the process.

Last year, KQED did a radio interview with JP, and people kept asking him what was his favorite knife brand, type, etc. He said "the sharp one". And he showed amazement at how chefs are now celebrities. "After all, we are just food preparers". His humility is the real teaching here.

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of this article I was reading the other day, comparing writing code to cooking:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recurring reminder that Pepin's chicken deboning video is the best cooking video that has ever or will ever be put on the Internet:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8)

<comment><USER6> Damn, I've just re-watched it, like a dozen times before...

But a question: all those TV cooks trade convenience in front of the camera for hygiene, do they?

Jamie Oliver is my favorite offender, always mixing all kinds of dressings and sauces with his bare hands, then, without even touching a towel, grabbng the refridgerator door.

Here in that video Pépin has just been handling chicken, his hands are covered in grease, and he picks up a pinch of salt from a bowl where the rest theoretically remains for the next five days.

Am I just too extreme?

<comment><USER5> You are mostly too extreme. Home cooks are way more squeamish about proteins than professional cooks and butchers are.

But no part of his technique depends on how casual he is with his proteins. I'm pretty careful about chicken and cross-contamination, and I can execute Pepin's deboning technique in under a minute. I use paper towels, for instance, instead of side towels when breaking down birds.

<comment><USER6> Technique is a good point, and the one I'm actually really interested in. I'm a beginner in cooking, and just today I made a bad trade: leave the big chef knife be and take the smaller serrated one, so I'd only have to clean one knife. The result should come as no surprise: a trip to the hospital to have a nasty cut desinfected and bandaged, because I didn't manage to staunch it.

I thought I had already learned that lesson: Proper tool and good technique is important. Obviously not.

<comment><USER7> Just curious, what happened exactly? Should you have used the big chef's knife, or the serrated knife?

In my experience, the only use for a serrated knife is for bread, especially hard crusty bread.

A big chef's knife should be able to do most things in the kitchen.

<comment><USER8> In a kitchen with knives kept properly sharp, sure, it can do a lot - if that big knife fits your hands well. Sometimes a smaller or different shaped knife is just as useful - always smooth and sharp, of course.

But in the home kitchen, things change some. Cheaper knives don't always take well to sharpening and most folks don't know how to sharpen knives. Taking this into consideration, a serrated - or partially serrated knife, as is popular with cheaper knife sets - becomes a better and probably safer choice with some items.

Take tomatoes, for example. Most home cooks get a easier slice with a serrated blade than the smooth, simply because the smooth-edged knife must be sharp to slice through the skins. Celery can be a similar thing - the serration cuts through the strings better than a dulled chef's knife.

Some of this is likely technique as well. I was lucky enough to be taught some knife skills from a chef, who I worked in a small establishment with. Lots of others don't put any practice into it, nor can the home cook generally build up the skills as quickly simply because the volume is less.

<comment><USER7> > Cheaper knives don't always take well to sharpening and most folks don't > know how to sharpen knives.

I'm sort of a sharpening fanatic (I have an apex sharpener) so I just generally reach for my big chef's knife, or my little paring knife for detail work.

Sharpening serrated knives is quite unpleasant though, I don't like doing it at all.

> Most home cooks get a easier slice with a serrated blade than the smooth, > simply because the smooth-edged knife must be sharp to slice through the > skins.

But a smooth-edged knife actually slices, the serrated knife pulls and tears. I usually have a couple of tomatoes on hand when I'm sharpening my knives, just to make sure I'm happy with the edge I put on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Try, Cooks Country [https://www.cookscountry.com/](https://www.cookscountry.com/) is by far the best. You can grab the recipes on line, that's how they make their money so you pay, and they show you how to cook it on the show. You can't go wrong. Also, Jacques focuses on French recipes. Yes, it's nice but that's not the only type of food I want to cook.

<comment><USER10> Everything on PBS is gold. Jacques Pepin is my favorite, but America's Test Kitchen/Cooks Country, Lidia, Ming Tsai, even Nick Stellino. All great.

<comment><USER11> I've always had an affinity, going back to my childhood, for Martin Yan for his cleaver style and catchphrase "If Yan can cook, so can you".

<comment><USER12> There are videos of that guy taking apart a whole chicken in 12 seconds.

Just a truly impressive level of skill.

(IIRC, the cleaver is actually a Chinese chef's knife, different in construction from western meat cleavers which are thicker and heavier to chop through bone.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm late to the food-on-tv game. I learned a little in school, where we actually had mandatory "home economics" classes that taught basic food safety and a few simple dishes, along with things like balancing a checkbook (yes, there were people who didn't make the connection between that and math class) and basic hand and machine sewing. I learned more from my parents, but mostly I learned from my grandmother.

As a result, I arrived at college in a little better shape than most of my peers, who could barely work a microwave. Driven partially by necessity, they watched a lot of food network back when it was mostly how-to shows and the only "competition" they aired was late-night translations of the Japanese iron chef show.

A decade later, food network was nearly all competition and food-tour shows. They stood up a sister network -- cooking channel or something similar, which seemed to be mostly re-runs of their old how-to shows, some of which are surprisingly good. Unfortunately, it too is falling to the competition tv genre, and if you want actual cooking instruction you have to catch it early morning or late night, when the remaining non-competition shows are still on.

It would be nice if, along with cookbooks, some of those shows were available in complete collections that I could purchase.

<comment><USER14> My wife still teaches "Consumer and Family Studies" in one of the few school systems here that still has that curriculum. From how amazed the kids are that you can prepare things from scratch I don't think there are too many parents and grandmothers out there cooking dinner. Mostly takeout and packaged goods.

PBS has a secondary channel here called Create that runs a lot of the older cooking shows during the evening and prime-time hours. Maybe take a look and see if it available in your area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tempted to say "how to think". The now famous chicken deboning is a biomechanics tutorial in disguise.

</comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps oddly, another celebrity chef that you will learn worthwhile things from is Heston Blumenthal (despite the fact that the actual dishes he makes tend to be the sort of incredibly complex creations that you'd never think of making at home). You wouldn't use his recipes, but if you listen you'll learn much about the basic chemistry and physics that underlies a lot of the "why" of cooking and baking (things like: salt binds together the meat in patties / sausages; the purpose of oil on a pan is to increase heat transfer into the food).

The "in search of perfection" series is pretty good in this vein, because he takes routine dishes (eg fried chicken, pizza) and analyses how to optimise them, which gives you an insight into the most important parts of the preparation.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you like Jacques check out some of the videos with him and Julia Child. Especially the ones where she's getting on in years, the banter is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER18> Jacques and Julia ... those were the days

My boiled eggs always come out perfect and more importantly easy to peel thanks to him.

</comment><comment><USER19> He is fantastic if you want to learn how to cook. His shows are funny and entertaining and also teach and make things look simple. Another show I can highly recommend if you want to learn how to cook is Good Eats with Alton Brown. Both shows teach while being enjoyable to watch.

<comment><USER20> Good Eats and Fast Food My Way were my introduction to cooking. I think the latter was more influential for me because it helped me to stop measuring and cook by feel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love Pepin. Mostly because of his delightfully pleasant accent but also because his no-nonse view of cooking as a craftmanship.

</comment><comment><USER22> I really hope they put those classic episodes on YouTube.</comment>


Polaroid and Apple: Innovation Through Mental Invention - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1739935/ten-steps-ahead-erik-calonius

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this excerpt. It gives such a simplistic insight into two brilliant minds:

 _It's like when I walk into a room and I want to talk about a product that hasn't been invented yet. I can see the product as if it's sitting there right in the center of the table. It's like what I've got to do is materialize it and bring it to life--harvest it_

</comment><comment><USER2> Were one of those "hacker news book websites" able to keep me abreast on releases?</comment>


Chrome extension to add scannable barcode Canada Post tracking page - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/canada-post-add-tracking/nokmdkhphnokepcndpkdojefopjgnacb <comment><AUTHOR> If you use the Canada Post mobile app to track shipments (like I do), I found it incredibly annoying that their tracking page on the CP site doesn't provide a scannable barcode that you can scan with their own mobile app. So I created an Chrome extension to add in a scannable barcode on their tracking page.

Feedback is appreciated, also leaving a review on the chrome store is also welcome!</comment>


Tip the Odds in Your Favor: How to Count Cards - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Count_Cards

<comment><USER2> I get that it's not a very detailed article, but it seems sort of bad to omit that it's pointless to attempt to count cards when a continuous shuffle machine is in use.

</comment><comment><USER3> A somewhat simplistic strategy, but the right idea: the odds are in favor of the house, so you need to have bet big when you win.</comment>


Hologram Within a Hologram Hints at Solution to Black Hole Information Paradox - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/hologram-within-a-hologram-hints-at-solution-to-black-hole-information-paradox-20191119/ <comment><USER3> Fascinating. I know the work these physicists are doing is vastly more complex and involved, but I can't help but draw comparison to my own musings.

I've been chipping away at various angles of information theory as a hobby for a few years now, conceptually for me a black hole in the traditional sense is like compressing random bits to a single zero or one - there'd be no way of getting information back out in the original order. Encoding a higher dimensional representation holographically would be like having a side channel of information I guess, so you could have the 0 or 1 as the 'black hole' but still can reference external state data to reconstitute meaning from it. Entropy is preserved, and laws of maths and physics are no longer being broken.

Say, I can divide a sequence of bits by 2 if they're even, or add one then divide by two if they're odd, repeatedly until the result is 1 (after which the sequence repeats indefinitely, but we can stop at 1 - similar but different to the collatz conjecture). If I know the sequence of operations I can rebuild the original data, but encoding that sequence of operations is the exact same amount of information as the original sequence (in my tests at least).

I'm kind of comforted by the fact that it may turn out black holes aren't destroying information, merely transforming it.

<comment><USER4> The reduction of information aspect you suggest contradicts one of the key elements outlined in the article (the QM view that information might be transformed (combined/processed) but never removed).

I offer my own, within this realm of discussion, layman's perspective that a black hole might be metaphorically similar to an above ground swimming pool with a (small) hole in the side, within a still larger pool. If there is an orderly structure within the small pool the flow will remove structured information from within and spray it back out.

Following the above metaphore and the impression the article gave me: a black hole does something similar but in a more fourth-dimensional hysteresis format. Over time the energy and "information" contained within (or released out as other forms of energy) is observation-ally constant. This would be a lot more like the way a moon can create tides that pull water in and out of a bay.

While I would also love for science fiction toys like the Portal Gun (or other wormholes/gateways) to be a reality, I really doubt they're actually possible and even if they are this would probably be as close to realizing them as discovering the principles of electricity were to creating the microprocessor.

<comment><USER3> Can you point out specifically what I said that contradicts, not trying to be obtuse but I want to reassess my thinking.

The reduction of information example I thought agreed with the article, because traditionally (or in other words in layman's understanding) a black hole seems to have been represented as thing that removes information from the universe, which would be like taking a sequence of binary and reducing it to a 1 or 0 through some hidden methods. You'd never be able to get back the original data - unless you had some encoding of the steps taken to reduce, i.e. through a transformation.

Genuinely I'm just not quite sure which bit of my analogy contradicts the article, and perhaps I've just not been clear enough in what I am writing, but I appreciate your comment in any regards.

<comment><USER5> Basically quantum theory forbids hashing (because it's an irreversible form of information loss) — but what you are proposing is not a hash since it produces a stream of bits which re-encode the original string (simply in a different form).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is sort of the basis of a visual model I have designed for a 4 cube/tesseract (what I call the "kaluza-klein cube" or "holocube") and a 5 cube (I call the "holofractal cube").

Holocube/Kaluza-Klein Cube: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/3o0ovqe41j624wy/image4.jpeg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3o0ovqe41j624wy/image4.jpeg?dl=0)

Holo-Fractal Cube: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/gmk375cgu2rylcu/image1.jpeg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/gmk375cgu2rylcu/image1.jpeg?dl=0)

Although Kaluza-Klein theory has been disproven, I can't help but be amazed that solving Einstein's equations in the higher dimensions independently results the equations for electro-magnetism (light). I also can't help but like the idea quatum mechanics is simply physics for higher dimensions, and that all objects we believe are 3D extend both inward into 4D (particles) and outward from the object in 4D (light/electro-magnetism).

Edit: May be more accurate to say solving Einstein equations in 5th dimension independently yield the five-dimensional Einstein equations yield the four- dimensional Einstein field equations, the Maxwell equations for the electromagnetic field, and an equation for the scalar field.

<comment><USER7> > solving Einstein's equations in the higher dimensions independently results > the equations for electro-magnetism

Could you link a source to this? I would love to read about it.

<comment><USER8> That's a pretty big claim. It potentially means the theory got close to a unified theory. Can a real physicist chime in?

<comment><USER6> It was a unified theory, and Einstein approved (note, this was pre-weak and strong force so it was a unification of gravity and electro-magnetism only). It was eventually disproven, but the math serves as the basis for higher dimensional theories (i.e. string theory)

<comment><USER8> How was it disproven (I see the erroneous electron mass part)? I suppose I am interested in the quantum field theory section of the wiki, which is unwritten.

It is my understanding EM is more or less directly relatable to more fundamental forces (or rather derived from it) so even being able to fit EM in it means that the others must fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related PBS Space Time episode about the "Black Hole Information Paradox" (in general, not about the particular paper discussed in the article):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XkHBmE-N34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XkHBmE-N34)

</comment><comment><USER10> [dead comment that isn't exactly terrible but I don't particularly want to vouch for]> Schizophrenic rants about black holes containing meaningful coherent "information" are as sane and rational as flat earthers

It's not "coherent" information. It's the markings caused by a trillion different impacts. And smoothing things out takes energy, so it would be strange if all those marks dissolved away spontaneously.

The statement "the things that fell into a black hole affect the radiation coming out of it" isn't even a weird thing to say!

<comment><USER11> It would be _very surprising_ if the things that fall into a black hole affect the radiation coming out of it.

The reason is that "the things that come out of it" are reference frame dependent. That is, you and I will disagree on what is emitted as Hawking radiation. In fact a free-falling observer will observe NO Hawking radiation!

So Hawking radiation must be determined entirely by spacetime geometry, which depends only on mass-energy-momentum and not things like baryon number.

Oh, and "smoothing things out takes energy" doesn't seem right. Consider the heat equation: a solid with a temperature differential reaches equilibrium while conserving energy.

<comment><USER10> > It would be very surprising if the things that fall into a black hole affect > the radiation coming out of it.

I mean absent all the exotic physics calculations, since that comment is saying that people are too twisted up in theoretical math. In a very basic sense it seems reasonable.

> So Hawking radiation must be determined entirely by spacetime geometry, > which depends only on mass-energy-momentum and not things like baryon > number.

I'm not really following that 'so'. Lots of things are reference frame dependent but still depend on exact particles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how this relates to Cosmological Natural Selection theory - the idea is that the black hole 'bounces' into a child universe, which inherits some of the parent characteristics. Perhaps the information finds its way there.

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-logic- an...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-logic-and-beauty- of-cosmological-natural-selection/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Popularizing the bleeding edge of theoretical physics like they do in IAS is hard. The holographic principle is something you can grasp. It's also possible to understand the general concept of duality. But how anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence works and what follows would require more than reading these articles can give.

You could test learning and understanding by making questions based on these articles where answers are not given in text and I doubt that you could answer any of them. Or they could write two articles where one is carefully crafted nonsense and it would be hard to figure out witch one is true.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe our understanding of black holes is woefully incomplete and the paradox is a result of our own ignorance.

<comment><USER15> That's more or less what the "paradox" is telling us, and research like the the OP is attempting to address.

It's a conflict in predictions involving different theories - <USER2> mechanics only, vs. quantum mechanics plus general relativity. It's a "paradox" in the sense that the two approaches reach conclusions that contradict each other - both can't be right.

The conflict implies that one or both theories are incomplete or incorrect in some way - which we already knew, because quantum mechanics and general relativity are known to be incompatible with each other in various ways.

Such conflicts are rich ground for discovering new physics, because they highlight very specific weaknesses in existing theories. That's why people like Hawking, Susskind, and many others have spent so much time on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This could be a ground breaking change in our understanding of black holes, right?

</comment><comment><USER17> This appears to confirm a prediction of mine that black holes aren't really black holes -- you can escape them just fine !

I think physicists will become more and more convinced of this fact -- there can be no impassable communication barrier (no event horizon).

I believe black holes will be understood in the future as simply arbitrarily massive stars with increasing time dilation. That's because historically it was always assumed black holes do exist, and worked from there. Models of collapse were never fully laid out, and most don't consider an external observer as the correct reference. It's essentially analogue to thinking the field of electrons would diverge when sufficiently close to them (and the paradoxes this would bring).

The light escape mechanism will _not_ turn out to be exotic -- it's simply ordinary light being emitted by objects making its way out in an ordinary null geodesic, which is possible since there is not event horizon :)

<comment><USER18> Sorry I don't think you should be downvoted. But I think the main criticism of your post, is that yes, we do have an impassable communication barrier in the sense of locality and the speed of light. A black hole's singularity, after all, can be equally described as "light slowing down" or "space stretching". So while there's no hard "information barrier", there is still no possible means of communication.

<comment><USER19> I think what he meant was that we have no proof that "singularity" even exists. Cosmologists have a penchant for coming up with infinities: infinite density in the moment of "Big Bang", infinite time dilation at an "event horizon" etc, but in actual observation nothing infinite was ever seen. A particle's field is represented with an 1/r2 function but somehow there are no infinite fields in real matter - black holes may turn out to be something similar too!

<comment><USER15> Modern cosmologists don't generally believe the Big Bang involved infinite density, nor do they believe that physical singularities of infinite density exist.

Confusion arises because theories predict these things, but one has to be careful to distinguish cases where the theory is being used in a regime beyond its effective domain, from other cases where infinities are less problematic. For example:

> in actual observation nothing infinite was ever seen.

"Real" infinities do show up in various places in physics and cosmology, not in the sense of objects with infinite density, but in more abstract ways. For example, it takes infinite energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light - which we interpret to mean that it is not possible to do that.

A more relevant example is that beyond our cosmic event horizon, light that is emitted "now" will never reach us, even if we wait an infinite time. That is another kind of abstract infinity that doesn't pose any serious conceptual problem.

One effective way to model this case is that the light is infinitely redshifted, very much like light from the event horizon of a black hole. In fact, some models equate the two cases.

You can argue that infinitely redshifted light doesn't actually exist, and in a sense you'd be right - but the point is that very good models predict that the light tends towards being infinitely redshifted, and the effect is that we never see it, even after infinite time.

As such, talking about infinite redshift effectively means that the light in question doesn't exist in the region in question, and "infinite redshift" is a consistent way to model that. Infinite redshift also implies zero amplitude, which again implies that the light in question doesn't exist in that region.

(As an aside, Heisenberg tells us there's no such thing as a consistently zero amplitude quantum field, which gives us a direct link to Hawking radiation from event horizons!)

> I think what he meant was that we have no proof that "singularity" even > exists.

As I mentioned, that's not controversial. But what the original commenter wrote was "you can escape [black holes] just fine !" That contradicts everything we know about physics, including our observational evidence of actual black holes.

Importantly, the infinities that arise at the event horizon are also observer- dependent. The infalling observer doesn't see anything special at the event horizon, it's only an external observer that observes time and redshift tending towards infinity.

This is again analogous, if not equivalent to, the cosmic event horizon I mentioned - the cosmic event horizon isn't common to all observers. If you could travel to the location of the cosmic event horizon we observe from Earth, you would find nothing special there, and you would observe another cosmic event horizon 46.5 billion light years away. It's similar to the ordinary visible horizon on Earth in this sense.

So there's no fundamental physical problem in this case with taking the infinities literally, as long as you correctly understand what that means. Besides, for the question of escaping a black hole, it doesn't really matter whether these values actually "reach" infinity - you still aren't going to be able to escape a black hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand why there is a black hole information paradox. Nothing ever falls into a black hole in our frame of reference - it takes infinite time.

<comment><USER21> From my understanding, that is incorrect. As more stuff approaches "original" event horizon, the mass of the black hole + mass of stuff near the horizon grows, which extends the horizon outwards, effectively consuming stuff, that got close to it.

<comment><USER21> Hopefully better explanation:

Imagine a black hole with mass M and radius R.

Let's assume to have radius R+1m, a black hole has to be of mass M+1kg.

Any falling matter trying to approach R will cross R+1m in finite time. At some moment 1kg of matter will cross R+1m. At this moment, that 1kg will effectively be inside the horizon.

<comment><USER11> "Effectively inside the horizon" isn't a good way to think about GR. Observers have reference frames, and can only observe according to their own clocks and rulers.

If you (a distant observer) watched your blinking probe approach a black hole, you would see its blinks slow and red shift as the probe approaches the horizon. You cannot see it enter the horizon, as light cannot escape from inside the horizon. There would be a last blink, as the red shift approaches infinity.

If the event horizon were to increase in radius, the effect would be to further slow and red shift the blinks.

<comment><USER21> Can't you claim, that if probe reached R+0.5m (which you could potentially see), and then subsequently BH grew to R+1m, that probe's last blink happened in the area, that later became BH?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds Men Are Paid More Than Women - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/technology/google-salaries-gender-disparity.html <comment><USER2> Crickets? No discussion? No arguments about how having children is the reason (probably because it clearly shouldn't be a factor at entry level positions)

<comment><USER3> It's a dupe. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206287)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would be suspicous of accuracy fromemployee-driving data collect of compensation. Companies go to great lengths to keep that private.

Of course, I am suspicous of company reported compensation data as well.

So suspicous data + suspicous data != accurate data, automatically.</comment>


Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/number.html <comment><USER2> A LOT of these have massive errors. I strongly recommend comparing all that to this paper:

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ca1/fa0ffca55e9003053de2f5...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ca1/fa0ffca55e9003053de2f5ef36a25819109b.pdf) \- Harald Hammarström - Rarities in Numeral Systems (2009)

And this page:

[https://mpi-lingweb.shh.mpg.de/numeral/](https://mpi- lingweb.shh.mpg.de/numeral/) "Numeral Systems of the World's Languages"

By the way: If anyone can find a digital copy of this paper from 1840 by Augustin-Louis Cauchy (yes, THAT Cauchy!):

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6877129426190119313...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6877129426190119313&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en)

I'd very much appreciate it.

Donald E. Knuth cites it in TAOCP while discussing Balanced Ternary:

"Cauchy pointed out that negative digits make it unneccesary for a person to memorize the multiplication table past 5x5." [Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. 11 (Paris, 1840), 789-798]

But he doesn't elaborate on it further, and neither does anyone else from what I can tell, and I have yet to figure out the trick. (I currently try to teach myself to EFFICIENTLY do all my mental arithmetic in balanced ternary - not an easy task!)

<comment><USER3> >But he doesn't elaborate on it further, and neither does anyone else from what I can tell, and I have yet to figure out the trick

5 * 9 = 5 * (10 - 1) = 50 - 5 = 45

Specifically, you need to know everything in the 5x5 area, and how to multiply by 10.

More generally, any digit 6-9 can be rewritten as (10 - (10 - digit)) and then you can apply distribution rules to clean things up. Here's a three by two digit example:

247 * 68 =

        (10 - 3) * (10 - 2) +         // 7 * 8
        10 * (10 - 3) * (10 - 4) +    // 7 * 60
        10 * 4 * (10 - 2) +           // 40 * 8
        10 * 10 * 4 * (10 - 4) +      // 40 * 60
        10 * 10 * 2 * (10 - 2) +      // 200 * 8
        10 * 10 * 10 * 2 * (10 - 4)   // 200 * 60

evaluating we get

        100 - 50 + 6 +
        10 * (100 - 70 + 12) +
        10 * (40 - 8) +
        100 * (40 - 16) +
        100 * (20 - 4) +
        1000 * (20 - 8)

And then to finish up:

        00056 +
        00420 +
        00320 +
        02400 +
        01600 +
        12000 =

16796, which is the correct answer.

Edit:

The fun thing to think about is conceptually why this works. If you consider numbers as just bits, all you're doing is converting the highest bit from base to sign, without actually changing it, doing the multiplications on the lower bits, and then tracking the sign to know whether or not to add or subtract later.

Or to put it another way, you're shifting your set of numbers from being +0 - +10 to being -5 - +5. This makes the lookup table smaller, but requires you to do some additional intermediate lookups (up to four, one in each "quadrant" of the 10x10 table) to be as powerful.

Fun to conceptualize that way.

<comment><USER4> I think this is one instance where using a larger look-up table (i.e. multiplication table up to 10x10) yields clear benefit. The technqiue using only 5x5 increases the number of intermediary results to keep in one's head.

<comment><USER5> Most everything is easier with negative digits. Easier addition, easier rounding, easier multiplication, much easier subtraction. The one part that needs slightly more distinct techniques vs. what you are used to is division, but it's still probably easier overall.

The grandparent poster's example only looks more complicated because we don't have standard glyphs for the negative digits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other hand, switches from a base-10 to a base-20 at 80 and then switches things up at 97.

According to the listing, Welsh sits somewhere between these two but it has separate numbering systems for {20s, 40s, 60s, 80s}, {30s, 70s, 90s}, and {50s}. That seems much more complicated than either Huli or French.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Hindi is ranked 4th most difficult but the system is identical to English (rank 41). Just the symbols for the digits are different. Even they are similar looking!

<comment><USER8> Hindi/Marathi are _not_ easy, you _almost_ have to memorize the numbers 1-100.

Hindi and Marathi both have dedicated names for the tens (11, 12, 13, ...) and after that numbers are named in the reverse order of their digits. E.g. 45 will be five - forty.

_except_ the word for five will be different from the word for five in, say, 75. Similarly, the word for "fifty" in the fifties is different for many of them.

There's a lot of variation which you basically don't realize if you speak these languages natively, the variation can't be boxed into "rules" to make it easy to learn, and the end result is that you just end up implicitly memorizing it.

It's hard to realize because you basically end up modeling this subconsciously as there being multiple ways to say "five" and multiple ways to say "seventy", so the numbers seem to be following a fixed scheme, but in reality you've learned which synonym to use where.

In fact when folks talk about french numbers being weird and complex, this is often the counterexample I give.

I suspect this complexity arose from having synonyms for numbers which eventually randomly settled down, and also from having sandhi (rules for melding words together) which got corrupted over time, leading to things like "tay/ees" vs "chau/bees"

The website probably should have used the "different form"/"different word" thing it did for English. But note that the site did consider "twelve" to be its own number, not 10 + 2, which is basically what's happening here too, just extended 1-100.

<comment><USER7> > Hindi and Marathi both have dedicated names for the tens (11, 12, 13, ...)

Same deal with English.

> and after that numbers are named in the reverse order of their digits. E.g. > 45 will be five - forty.

Which is similar in complexity to English, just the order of speaking is reversed.

> _except_ the word for five will be different from the word for five in, say, > 75. Similarly, the word for "fifty" in the fifties is different for many of > them.

Now I realize what you're saying. It seems that I _have_ memorized every number. Because I never thought of this.

<comment><USER8> > Same deal with English.

>

> Which is similar in complexity to English, just the order of speaking is > reversed.

Yes, I was mentioning these to paint an accurate picture, not to contrast with English :)

\-----

As a native Marathi / nonnative Hindi speaker, I can tell you that the Hindi numbers are pretty hard to get, and took me forever to get used to, even though the variations are almost the same as the ones Marathi has.

(However if you asked me about Marathi I'd have the exact same response as you, "what complexity? oh wait I see I've memorized everything oops")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't see Russian listed anywhere on there, but I suspect it would be in the top 20 on this list. It is a pretty straightforward base 10 complicated by archaic phonetic rules that change the pronunciation and stress of words with logical roots in unintuitive ways.

In addition, countable nouns (like cars, people, cities, but also including multiples of 100, 1000, etc...) change form depending on how many of them there are (1, 2-4, 5-20, 21-24, 25-30 etc...) Usually these separate forms are phonetically related, but sometimes there is no connection at all. These rules don't come in to play when strictly counting numbers until 200, but is an integral part of what makes it hard to count things in Russian.

There are also wrinkles like the word for 40 (сорок) and 90 (девяносто) that don't fit in the usual tens pattern like 20 (двадцать - two * ten) or 30 (тридцать - three * ten). Any Russian speakers care to explain what's going on with those two?

<comment><USER10> Initially, Russian used the same convention for 40 as it does for other multiples of 10. Other Slavic languages still do. However, 4 (четыре) is the longest word by syllable count in the 1..10 range, so over time a shorter word that used to mean "a bag with 40 skins" (apparently a standard count to make some article of garment) came to replace it. The original meaning is all but forgotten now, and _сорок_ means only 40 now.

90 also used to use the more common form of "nine tens", but for some reason came to be replaced by something that looks like it means "nine out of hundred" but the etymological explanations for it seem to be rather inconsistent. One explanation is that Russians used to count by 9 -- remnants of that can be seen in fairy tale expressions for "very far" \-- "beyond three times nine lands".

<comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing. Studying Russian has helped me notice interesting patterns in languages. Where there is much friction (due to heavy usage, difficult pronunciation, or both) languages tend to break rules to make things easier to say.

For example, it's trivial to conjugate a verb like "контролировать" that you might only use occasionally, but verbs that you say dozens or hundreds of times a day, like "идти" become increasingly irregular.

<comment><USER10> You're welcome.

Irregular verbs generally tend to be the ones that are used most often, and that are most archaic.

Looking at languages there are lost of interesting patterns you can notice. It's even more fun if you look at ones from an entirely different family. Some agglutinating languages may have no irregular verbs at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd put traditional Danish numbering a bit further up the list... it's pretty strange ([http://www.olestig.dk/dansk/numbers.html](http://www.olestig.dk/dansk/numbers.html))

<comment><USER12> I was surprised to see Danish so high on the list, but after a short while it's not too surprising. It's base-20 for the first 20, like English. Then it's backwards base-10 up to 99 with special names for the whole 10s, 42 is pronounced as "2 and 40". Above 99 it's base-10, 420 is "400 20". But if it's 428 it's "400 8 and 20", but 512 would be "500 12". It's not difficult, it's just a special rule for 1-20, backwards for 21-99, and then straight as you'd expect (including the irregular first 20). Okay, it is quite confusing for none native speakers. To our defense, we use a system more like the Norwegian and Swedish for formal documents including contracts and cheques, though the latter has been phased out in Denmark.

The "perfect" would obviously be a purely base-10 with suffix if it's 10's, 100's, ect.

<comment><USER13> That's nearly exactly how german works, 428 is "4-vier 100-hundert 8-acht and- und 20-zwanzig", 512 is "5-fünf 100-hundert 12-zwölf" (excuse my rusty german). The und thing is a germanic thing I think.

<comment><USER12> "Und" is "and" in English, and "og" in Danish, and is used in Danish as well. I think Danish and German is quite similar as you say. It's been 20 odd years since I learned to speak German and it's long since forgotten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another article that was published a while ago had an interesting take on it. There is a quite high correlation between numbering system of a language and how quickly/well kids speaking that language learn counting and math skills. Apparently, the article itself is taken down, but I found an archived version. [https://web.archive.org/web/20141215072819/http://playthink....](https://web.archive.org/web/20141215072819/http://playthink.wordpress.com:80/2008/11/17/gladwell- why-asianchildren-are-better-at-maths/)

<comment><USER15> There are a few articles linked on the bottom of the page (dead links unfortunately) that purport to show the same.

> "Surprisingly enough, it's proven that Chinese-speaking children are better > at counting numbers than English-speaking counterparts because of their > language. Bilingual children are better at counting when they think in > Chinese than in English. The irregularity of the English number system makes > it harder for children to count numbers properly."

Not sure I'd give much credence to that hypothesis, though. Hard to disentangle the many factors influencing the results. Having said that, the Chinese numbers are pleasantly short and logical, by and large.

English has the advantage again in big numbers, where we have million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, etc., with the Latin prefix N indicating 10^6N (long scale, old British usage and continental Europe) or 10^(3+3N) (short scale, American usage).

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

<comment><USER16> If the questionable hypothesis is correct, this would surely factor into the assessment of numerical IQ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can any native Hindi speakers comment on the difficulty of doing math in a language where every number 1-100 has its own name?

<comment><USER18> Every number doesn't have its own name. If you observe closely there is a pattern. From 21 to 99, you can observe that every digit at tens place decides the suffix and the digit at ones place decides the prefix.

<comment><USER19> Further, the author says "because of a lot of irregular pronunciation, you have to memorize 100 different words as if it were a centesimal system". But I could say the same for English. We won't say "three-ty-three", we say "thirty- three". Hindi's irregularities are pretty much at the same level.

<comment><USER8> No, for English the thirty series is always "thirty-foo", and numbers ending in three are always "foo-three". It is true that you don't use the same word for the number when it's in the tens place (like Chinese), but that's as complex as it gets (and the teens, of course).

In Hindi 40 and 41 use a different word for 40. 51 and 53 use a different word for 50. 55 and 45 use a different word for 5. Plus there are smaller but still significant differences between pretty much every number -- e.g. it's chauBees, but puchees and chauNtees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The base 60 Sexagesimal system used by the Sumerians is always an interesting one.

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

<comment><USER21> > The number 60, a superior highly composite number, has twelve factors, > namely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60, of which 2, 3, and 5 > are prime numbers. With so many factors, many fractions involving > sexagesimal numbers are simplified.

It really makes a lot of sense actually.

<comment><USER22> This is why I still do woodwork (as a hobby) in imperial units.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Khmer is quite complex, and isn't on the list:

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

Up to 30, it's got a base-5 component so, for example, 16 = dap pram muoy (10 5 1). From 30 onwards, like Thai it follows the more straightforward Chinese number system.

The numbers in Scottish Gaelic have recently been changed and are now base 10:

[https://gaelicgrammar.org/~gaelic/mediawiki/index.php/Numera...](https://gaelicgrammar.org/~gaelic/mediawiki/index.php/Numerals#Decimal_20-99)

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, Tongan number system is simply beautiful. Pure elegance that I'm sure could be defined mathematically very simply. I myself can only scribble a naive implementation for natural numbers in Javascript:

      const base = ["noa", "taha", "ua", "tolu", "fa", "nima", "ono", "fitu", "valu", "hiva"]
      const tongan = n => Array.from(n.toString()).map(Number).map(i => base[i]).join(" ")

Not as pretty as I thought. Probably would look better in functional language.

<comment><USER25> English numbers aren't much harder.

        englishNumbers n = ten9 !! (n - 1)
          where infixr 7 <<>>
                (<<>>) = liftA2 (<>)
                ten1 = ["one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", "seven", "eight", "nine"]
                ten2 = ten1 <> ["ten", "eleven", "twelve"] <> (["thir", "four"] <> prefixes) <<>> ["teen"] <> (["twen", "thir", "for"] <> prefixes) <<>> ["ty"] <<>> ([[]] <> ten1)
                  where prefixes = ["fif", "six", "seven", "eigh", "nine"]
                ten3 = ten2 <> ten1 <<>> ["hundred"] <<>> ([[]] <> ten2)
                ten6 = ten3 <> ten3 <<>> ["thousand"] <<>> ([[]] <> ten3)
                ten9 = ten6 <> ten3 <<>> ["million"] <<>> ([[]] <> ten6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Danish typically ranks high on these lists because the names for some of the tens have etymological roots in base 20.

But this doesn't add any complexity, compared to having just named tens.

Nobody is doing any kind of everyday counting in base 20 in Denmark. Everything is base 10, with 9 irregular named numbers for the multiples of 10.

<comment><USER27> As a parent of English/Danish bilingual children I have to tell you that you are very wrong on this.

My children still occasionally make mistakes when saying numbers in the range 50-99 in Danish, they haven't said the English numbers wrong for years.

That the word for 50 contains the word "tre" (three) and the word for 90 contains the word "fem" (five) is very confusing to our children, especially when the English equivalents are so simple in comparison.

<comment><USER26> Fair enough. As a child I could never remember if it was 50 or 60 that had "halv" (50 is halvtreds, 60 is treds, neither word have any resemblance to 5, 6 or 10, but 50 sounds a bit like it ought to be half of 60), but my point is that the number system has nothing to do with base 20 except a few etymological roots of some names, that for all intents and purposes might as well be random.

But you are right: they are worse than random, since they are named close enough to other entities to be confuseaable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think they're understanding the complexity of the Japanese number system by quite a lot: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word)

<comment><USER29> Classifiers are mostly orthogonal to the number system, and they're really no different from e.g. English using "a herd of cattle" or "a murder of crows" to redundantly encode the kind of thing being talked about. I'm actually not aware of any language that _doesn 't_ have different units of measurement for different objects, it's just that some languages effectively make it mandatory to use them. (E.g. in Chinese you could just always say 一个 to mean "one" but it sounds strange when there's a specific form that's more common.)

<comment><USER30> Yes, they are different from English. In English you say "one herd of cattle", "two herds of cattle", and so on. You just need to know a plural of "herd" and the regular numbers.

In Japanese the _numbers themselves_ depend on the counter. You can't say "one day", "two days", "three days". You can only say "one day (ichinichi)", "foobar (futsuka)", "bazbar (mikka)", and so on. And this counting system is used pretty much _only_ for days. Except similar words to "foo" and "baz" here are also used to count some things. But not the others.

Also the rules of combining a numeral and the counter are very inconsistent. Here's my implementation of Japanese counters, suffices to say the English version would be like 5 lines of code:

[https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran/blob/master/dict- counter...](https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran/blob/master/dict- counters.lisp)

And here's the pronounciation generator for so called "regular" numbers.

[https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran/blob/master/numbers.lisp...](https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran/blob/master/numbers.lisp#L82)

I.e. 1000 = issen (ichi+sen) 3000 = sanzen (san + sen), 800 = happyaku (hachi + hyaku).

<comment><USER29> The completely different number words used for some things are actually not related to the counter, although it may appear like that because the written form uses the Chinese-style number + counter system. The spoken words are holdouts from ancient Japanese (before Chinese become influential), which TFA discusses separately.

The situation is similar to Latin or Greek numerals in English, which are also applied pretty inconsistently. E.g. _duplicate, triplicate, quadruple_ , ... but _pair, triple, quadruple_ , ...

In general, all languages are riddled with exceptions, ambiguities, contradictions and archaic forms, but it's easier to notice them when you're learning the language later in life and have the "logical" structures of your mother-tongue to compare them to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Typo on traditional Welsh:

 _The traditional system is basically vigesimal (base 20), but it calls 50 "half-hundred" and 19 "two-nine", and it also uses 15 as a reference point._

</comment><comment><USER32> im surprised not to see lezgi language here. we have 1 to 10 10+1 to 9 20+ 1 to 19 (ie 37 is 20 and 19) 40+ 1 to 19 3x20+ 1 to 19 (ie 63 is 3 twenties and 13) 4x20+ 1 to 19 hundred

</comment><comment><USER33> > Polari is an in-group language of gay and lesbian people, theatrical people, > and circus people in Britain. It's interesting 8 and 9 are called "6 + 2" > and "6 + 3" in Polari.

Crazy interesting [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8yEH8TZUsk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8yEH8TZUsk)

</comment><comment><USER34> Doesn't hindi have its own script for numbers as well?

The 'Number' column doesn't reflect the same fact very well.

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

</comment><comment><USER35> Why is hungarian considered more complex than english or norwegian? Hungarian has regular "on ten one" for 11 and "on ten two" for 12, when english and norwegian have different words; and teens are arguably also more complex.

<comment><USER36> probably because it has special words for 20 and 30, and switches between "9 on 20" to "30 plus 1"

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice to see that Mandarin and Japanese have simple number systems compared to English. It might be worthwhile to learn them and impress your friends while you're reading numbers from restaurant menu-cards :)

<comment><USER38> Apparently the person who compiled this has never tried to actually count items in Japanese, to figure out which of the two number systems to use and which counter words to use.

<comment><USER39> The person who compiled it is Japanese

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wouldn't unary be considered the least complex?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which language/society/culture uses unary?

<comment><USER41> Some very dead ones. Unary works like hash marks. We have archaeological records of that number system but GP is wrong. Doing multiplication in your head with unary would be a horrible experience. And any number over ten would put the listener to sleep.

I suspect in a unary language system people would invent their own counting strategy in their head.

Edit: ah but Wikipedia reminds me that gauge systems such as for grinding or wire use unary for negative numbers. Eg 000 guage wire or OO ground flour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How do they quantify complexity?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've deliberately chosen a title for this submission that says more clearly what the content is about, and thus helps people decide whether to click through and have a look.

The page's actual title is: _" Number Systems of the World"_

I don't think that's as informative.</comment>


Students in Switzerland build a wheelchair that climbs stairs - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/17/students-in-switzerland-built-a-wheelchair-that-knows-how-to-climb-stairs/ <comment><USER2> The inventor of the Segway first invented a far superior stair-climbing wheelchair, the iBOT, way back in 2003, but it was regulated out of existence.

[http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/02/11/ibot-discontinued- unfo...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/02/11/ibot-discontinued-unfortunate- disabled-perhaps-budding-robotics-opportunity)

However, the FDA recently reclassified it so it may be put back into production within a couple of years.

[http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMe...](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/MedicalDevices/MedicalDevicesAdvisoryCommittee/OrthopaedicandRehabilitationDevicesPanel/UCM378315.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Hmm, that's interesting. Comparing the two sets of images, the Segway one certainly _looks_ far less safe that it actually is, I wonder if it fell victim to that gut reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My mother is wheelchair bound. A stair climbing powered wheelchair would be useful to get over 1-2 small steps at restaurants. She would never in a million years use it for the use case in the video. Most people don't realize how scary it is even to go up and down steep wheelchair ramps in a power chair (especially for elderly). Going up, as shown in the video, is one thing - going down is probably terrifying. For instance, to account for a steep decline, you have to tilt the seat back at an extreme angle. You can no longer see where you're going! It is probably most similar to going up the lift hill on a roller coaster where you're tilted back looking up at the sky.... except you're going down in a direction you cannot see, you're in full control and you can easily screw up at any moment if you get nervous and panic. It's not something the person in the chair can easily do on their own.

In the USA, there's a large influx of amputees because of the recent wars. I can imagine most of those younger men and women can handle climbing stairs in this thing, but at the same time most of them are fit enough to wear prosthetics and can probably just walk up.

So it is a problem, but I think the solution has to involve making the person in the chair feel 100% safe and comfortable.

<comment><USER5> This is similar to riding a Tibetan horse in the mountains. Going up is well enough, but going down...wow, pretty scary and I would imagine any legged vehicle would be similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how well this would work on carpeted stairs? Since the treads are gripping only the 'nose' of the stair is there the possibility of slippage on the pile? What if the padding gave way or the treads pulled the carpet away from the stair?

How well would this chair recover from scenarios like this? Or in any failure for that matter.

It certainly looks like it has a lot of promise!

<comment><USER7> It probably won't be a problem because people sometimes walk like that one stairs too (at least I do!). For walking the loads would be higher because they're concentrated on one foot on one edge of one step. The failure mode of the carpet pulling away is interesting though! A walking person might just fall onto the next step while this wheelchair looks like it could keep popping the carpet out step by step as it falls all the way down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was anyone paying attention when the Dean Kamen wheelchair stopped being made? Was it cost/demand, didn't work? The wikipedia article says something about the FDA reclassifying it but that doesn't seem to explain why it stopped being made.

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

<comment><USER9> It sounds like the market was too small:

[http://forums.segwaychat.org/archive/index.php/t-20984.html](http://forums.segwaychat.org/archive/index.php/t-20984.html)

I looked at the iBOT page in the Wayback Machine, it jumps from a sales page to a page with a statement they aren't selling it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As mentioned in one on the comments on the article, a patent for something very similar was filed with 1988 priority in the US: [https://www.google.com/patents/US5123495](https://www.google.com/patents/US5123495)

Wonder why it hasn't made to the market in the 27 years since that patent?

<comment><USER11> I live in Australia, here stair climbing wheelchairs are obviated by wheelchair ramps in to every public use building and commercial building. Wheelchair bound people are also given subsidies to have ramps installed at their homes too.

Additionally, I'd hazard a guess that price effects consumer uptake. If the the stair climbing feature costs, probably at least(?), $5,000 to $10,000 dollars extra fewer people are likely interest.

edit: a word and a space

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That video is really melodramatic. It's a guy slowly ascending a staircase with these crazy dynamic shots and music that would be more appropriate for a compilation of airshow maneuvers. That said, it doesn't look technologically like it's all that interesting unless they've managed to make it super-cheap.

<comment><USER13> If it's at all affordable for people who are confined to wheelchairs, a working stair-climbing wheelchair would be a life-changer for tens or hundreds of millions of people. Airshow maneuvers, by comparison, are pretty, but also pretty unimportant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of these Japanese stair-climbing hand-trucks that you see delivery people using to get supplies into the shops in the subway stations:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCEglW9e5EQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCEglW9e5EQ)

</comment><comment><USER15> This probably weighs 12 tonnes.</comment>


Cyber-Attacks Surge as COVID19 reaps new exploits. Here are 10 WFH Security tips - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/relay-sh/10-tips-to-squash-digital-viruses-during-a-novel-wfh-era-3269fba981ae <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing your experience. So, work is letting you run a VM for your personal use, on their hardware? That's great but it seems a bit out of reach for many...what are the details there? And which VM?

Interesting about turning off scripts, too. That's going to be a no-go for a lot of online tools these days. Do you find that it takes a lot of up-front whitelisting?</comment>


Ask HN: SaaS peeps, what's your charge approval rate? - <AUTHOR>

I run a time tracking service (http://letsfreckle.com) and I've been digging into our statistics lately, since a surge of traffic  has doubled the number of paying accounts (yippee!)
I noticed that the approval percentage for charges -- that is, actual monthly billing -- is only 84-86% (varies by card type).
On the other hand, we've had 0 charge backs. But we only have about 250 paying accounts at the moment.
What's your experience?
Is that approval percentage normal, or is it low? It seems low to me but I've got no prior SaaS experience. <comment><USER2> Before you start making stats you need to take in to account the time that it can take before chargebacks and credits start to come back to you. This can be up to 6 months depending on the IPSP and the processor as well as the card company.

So unless you are already operating for a long time you really shouldn't say that you have '0' charge backs. If you manage to keep that up though you have a very good thing going.

The approval percentage is fine, it is basically a function of how much fraud you would be seeing, if you continue to see '0' chargebacks in the long term then you could think about relaxing your conditions for approval a bit. But don't make any drastic changes there, change, and observe over some longer period.

That's because if you do mess up on the approval side and there are a bunch of chargebacks in the pipeline you could easily go over the maximum chargeback rate that will terminate your account (typically 1%, but this varies as well).

Another thing to keep an eye at it credits, these are usually higher than chargebacks but strongly correlated. So more credits -> more chargebacks. If you also have '0' credits then you should count yourself very lucky and hope the situation persists.

Personally I think 250 signups (which is about two months worth on my site) is a little low before making the claim of 0 chargebacks. I'd think you need at a minimum 8 months worth of data and a thousand or so running accounts before you can do the stats.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't say 250 signups, I said 250 paying accounts ;)

About 170 of those have been around for over 3 mos. We have been growing very slowly (on purpose). We've been billing >100 customers a month for over 10 months.

I'm not saying there will never be chargebacks, but I suspect a lot of the initial accounts are people who know me from my blogging, speaking, etc., and so are a lot less likely to initiate a chargeback. Yay, social ties.

If we have a 15% charge failure rate (to put the approval rate backwards), that's normal, you think?

Historically speaking, how many of your charge failures have been due to things that get fixed -- expired cards, maxed out lmit -- and how many are signs of a fake/worthless account?

<comment><USER2> So as long as your growth rate is that low you'll do fine. It's when your growth _rate_ increases that you have to be careful.

> If we have a 15% charge failure rate (to put the approval rate backwards), > that's normal, you think?

That's fine, really. Pretty much on par of where I am, completely different service but all the same mechanisms apply.

> Historically speaking, how many of your charge failures have been due to > things that get fixed -- expired cards, maxed out lmit

Expired cards are the 'killer' of most accounts, especially if you charge a low amount, the sweet spot is about $20 /mo, so we charge (deviously) $19.95, that way we extend the total $volume per account at the expense of our short term income. 6 _19.95 > 3_$24.95.

Maxed out limits only happen around Christmas, and our IPSP takes care of that by retrying on the charge a few weeks later.

> and how many are signs of a fake/worthless account?

Hardly any. Those chargebacks we do get usually are attributable to identity theft and outright fraud. That sucks because as a merchant you have very little tools to combat this. VBV sure helps though.</comment></comment></comment>


Explaining how React manages the DOM and state underneath the hood - <AUTHOR> https://levelup.gitconnected.com/a-journey-through-reactdom-render-e8fc5edc11fd?source=friends_link&sk=ef38c5fcaa82f67e65bea1ef021b3763 <comment><USER2> Very digestible. I've been using React for a long time, but never really understood how it worked in the code.</comment>


Blue Screen of Death Survival Guide: Every Error Explained - aps-sids http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/blue_screen_death_survival_guide_every_error_explained <comment><AUTHOR> There's some useful information in there, though if you need it professionally hopefully you already know most of it. This may be a good article to point the "power users" you know to.

One thing that I didn't really see covered is identifying problem components/drivers. For that, you can either follow the assorted online instructions for debugging memory dumps, or you can simply use Nir Sofer's Blue Screen View from [http://nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html](http://nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html) \- it's much simpler.

And it's probably worth checking whether your Windows boxen are configured for full memory dumps or minidumps - most of the time you want minidumps which will keep multiple versions taking very little space. Most folks reading HN probably don't need 8+GB full memory dumps if their Windows boxes crash.

<comment><USER2> When I was working desktop support, Blue Screen View and the Microsoft debugger turned out to be rather valuable tools when trying to find out which component or driver was causing issues. As an example, I had an issue where a buggy driver for Symantec Network Protection was causing machines to crash. No matter how many support tickets or emails I exchanged with headquarters IT, they didn't believe me. It wasn't until I went to them with minidumps and reports from Blue Screen View that they finally did and pushed out an update that fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is a far more complete list of BSOD STOP codes, including links to relevant MSDN articles, at [http://www.carrona.org/bsodindx.html](http://www.carrona.org/bsodindx.html)

The Maximum PC article seems to be a reasonable troubleshooting guide from the brief look I had. In my experience mystery computer problems are (in rough order, not limited to Windows, YMMV) memory, power supply, physical problems (connectors, etc), and drivers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I got BSOD last week while doing some 3D rendering work. That was once in 4 years.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is this big news? I haven't had a blue screen of death in like 5 years-- which I think is pretty average.</comment>


Changing How I Think About Finance - <AUTHOR> http://refer.ly/the-price-is-right/c/3a1f96026a1a11e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

<comment><USER2> As a veteran of the finance industry, I can safely say that the industry does make a real contribution to society, however there is a "but" here. It is also full of ruthless, greedy, narcissistic, over-paid and dangerously short- sighted individuals.

<comment><USER3> Or, perhaps, as a veteran of the finance industry, you're a ruthless, greedy, narcissistic, over-paid and dangerously short-sighted individual who would like us to believe the industry makes a real contribution to society.

Or maybe not. How should we tell?

<comment><USER4> It's not that hard. Most of finance is about the efficient allocation of capital, and to this point in history our model has worked better than any other.

It's not without its problems, namely the boom/bust cycle and propensity for fraud and periodic crises, but there are known solutions to those, if difficult to implement sometimes, especially when governments and regulators are captured to some degree or another.

But to say that finance makes a contribution to society is not false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's somewhat disingenuous to say that Milken's great insight was discovering that junk bonds weren't risky: rather, his insight was that there was a profitable inefficiency in the gap between the risk-offset price in junk bonds and the yield of such bonds.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems like there's been a concerted effort to "rehabilitate" Milken, or even build a narrative that he was set up as a fall guy in the '80s. But _Predator's Ball_ and _Den Of Thieves_ tell a pretty detailed story about what was happening in the leveraged financing practices at the time.

<comment><USER7> I think it's more that, with the passage of time, people can step back and take a more balanced look. Good ideas are still good ideas, even when bad people have them. Babies and bathwater and all that.

<comment><USER8> He certainly did have some good ideas. However, it is not clear how the insider trading part of what he did is going to stick in the bath with the baby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an incredible use of the referly platform - interesting idea with a cool article, and then several affiliate links to books on the same subject.

+1 great execution of this business model

<comment><USER10> Thank you for being so supportive, I've been in massive redesign mode for the past 6 weeks with all the content creation tools and layout and this made my day. Blog post about the shift in our thinking is on the way

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just regarding the note on Apple cash.. Its 137.1 billion usd in cash.. Not 10 billion.

Source: [http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/apple-now-has-many- billio...](http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/apple-now-has-many-billions-in- cash-more-than-hps-annual-revenue-and-vietnams-gdp/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I must be misinterpreting [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=AAPL+Balance+Sheet&annua...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=AAPL+Balance+Sheet&annual) Would love it if someone can chime in with the right way to read that kind of statement to arrive at the number the way TechCrunch is reporting it.

Presumably, I am misquoting the number for Exxon too ([http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=XOM+Balance+Sheet&annual](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=XOM+Balance+Sheet&annual)). I fixed the Apple figure in my post.

<comment><USER12> You are not counting Apple's short and long term investments. If you read the Notes to the Financial Statements[1] (the most important piece in accounting), you can see the breakdown of all the cash and securities owned by Apple, including 20M Treasury and 47M Corporate bonds.

[1] [http://yahoo.brand.edgar- online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?F...](http://yahoo.brand.edgar- online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=8888271-212228-307222&type=sect&dcn=0001193125-12-444068)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, now I am thinking I was counting it correctly for the context of my post. The $10B in cash is sitting idle. If it's in short and long term investments, that it's being put to some kind of use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the idea of suggesting books to get people familiar with an industry they probably don't know a lot about. I think people jump to conclusions about Wall Street being useless based on not really understanding what Wall Street does. Think about it: if Wall Street were useless, would anyone care whether it was working properly or not? It is precisely because it is useful that we care about it running well and correctly.

</comment><comment><USER14> The biggest insight Milken was that you could create junk bonds. Lookign back this seems trivial, but no one else had thought of doing this. Junk bonds used to be the so called "fallen angel", bonds issued by highly rated credit companie sthat later were downgraded. All of the bonds trading in the market were bonds that lost their rating. The big idea was that companies with poor credit could issue bonds, which no one had realized yet.

      This opened up a lot of capital to firm, some of which were startup in nature, that previously couldn't get capital.  This drove real economic growth that built real things.

</comment><comment><USER15> Michael Lewis was an investment banker, but was based out of London, not Wall Street. He only did training in New York, per Liar's Poker.

</comment><comment><USER16> Any reading list on Milken should include Den of Thieves.</comment>


U.S. Deficit Will Expand to Largest Among Major World Economies, IMF Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-12/u-s-deficit-will-expand-to-largest-among-major-world-economies-imf-says.html

<comment><USER2> After much drama and negotiations, they agreed to cut $37bn, or less than 1/40th of the deficit (>$1600bn). Try slicing a pizza into 40 parts and take out one of the bits in order to 'save weight'.</comment>


What does a non-libertarian transhumanist future look like? - <AUTHOR> http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/82713/

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that non-libertarian != Leninism, but that aside, it's an interesting question.

Or perhaps the nature of human enhancement itself will cause those that partake to become extreme individualists.

<comment><USER2> The flipside of human enhancement is human dehancement, right? What is to stop your favorite totalitarian dictator from taking cheap and durable genetic modification and using it to cow the populace? I don't mean "cow" like "make them quake in terror", I mean "cow" like "make them herd animals who cannot even conceive of threatening him or forming bases for wanting to do so in the first place".

Think of a technical caste populated by people with a 100% genetic disposition to high-functioning autism: they're perfect for using for the Great Leader's projects. They're smart enough to do the work, totally dedicated to the task at hand, don't ask for pay or object to abuse, and if you work one until he dies well, hey, human life is cheap.

For a moderately less dystopian future, imagine a future where genetic modification is hella-expensive (lets say $1 million to play design-your-baby) but fairly effective (a designer baby is guaranteed to look as good as the prettiest girl in your high school class and be about as smart as your valedictorian). Economically rational parents unconstrained by moral qualms would fall over themselves to buy this procedure: after all, it is just a pre- emptive and expensive version of college.

Why is this future dystopian? Because access to the $1 million design-your- baby technology is highly differentiated across class lines, and the designer babies are essentially designed to roflstomp over any sort of meritocratic competition. It would be a virtually permanent caste system -- 25 years after introduction a natural-born human (and there will be a word for them, mark my words) would be at Harvard as either a curious fluke or, more likely, an affirmative action sop to the little people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Something like Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?

It's a transhumanist future with no scarcity and a reputational economy. I am certainly afraid that the corporations will run the world enough that even after (practical scarcity of energy for the average person) that consumer goods and necessities will still be kept artificially scarce.

</comment><comment><USER4> Read Ken MacLeod. In particular, The Sky Road. (Though I guess the transhumanists are kind of libertarians in that one.)

<comment><USER5> Except for the anarcho-syndicalist transhumanists. ..</comment></comment>