'No Morals': Advertisers React to Facebook Report - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/business/media/facebook-advertisers.html <comment><AUTHOR> [EDIT] I don't know why this post has been flagged. It was on the front page for a while, now it's gone. Are there any mods who can comment?

\</comment><comment>-

'The revelations may be "the straw that breaks the camel's back," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer for the Publicis Groupe, one of the world's biggest ad companies. "Now we know Facebook will do whatever it takes to make money. They have absolutely no morals."'

When an ad executive is calling you out for doing whatever it takes to make money... you know you've got problems.

I remain convinced that the only thing that will turn Facebook around longterm is a new CEO. No illusions about that happening any time soon due to Zuck's control of voting shares. The stock will have to tank for at least another 3-6 months before the prospect of a shareholder revolt will finally motivate the board of directors to put an adult in charge.

I'm no fan of Uber, but I have to admit that they have made progress as a company since Kalanick was ousted and Khosrowshashahi took over. The same kind of values-based turnaround is possible at FB. But not with Zuck at the helm.

<comment><USER2> >The stock will have to tank for at least another 3-6 months

I hope so! I'm starting there next year so the less their stock is worth then the more I can profit on my RSUs assigned on joining.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a crystal ball, but if I had money to play the market I would be shorting the heck out of FB right now. So I think you're in good shape. That said, did you consider working for another company that wasn't so ethically compromised?

<comment><USER2> Well, I consider this my golden ticket to raise the money needed to comfortably start a family with my partner. Call me Machiavellian, but this is the goal I'm willing to work in the sewers a few years.

<comment><USER3> You're undermining the well-being of your future children by doing so: you generate the start-up costs for your family by creating a world in which a company will psychologically manipulate them from the age they're starting to form their independent identity onwards. For that matter, it might actually even undermine your relationship with your partner — by constantly exposing them to lifestyle porn and fostering unhappiness.

I hope that ends well for you.

Sometimes, your means goals can undermine your top-priority goal.

If you were really Machiavellian, you'd be a welder with a side project using pilfered IP — realizing that being "in the sewers" is much more productive if you're not destabilizing the very society you're going to later depend on.

<comment><USER2> My dad taught me critical thinking and to think about the motives of different actors around us (people, corporations, media, politicians).

I'll try to raise my children similarly. I'll teach them about privacy, like my dad who insisted that each family member should have their own account on the family computer, even when we were small kids with my brother.

The way I see it, if it weren't for FB, there would be others trying to manipulate them, like other tech companies, advertisers in general, or simply scammers. So the need to raise your children to be conscious about these things is not a recent development, and not strictly due to FB. I know this doesn't make me "innocent" though.

<comment><USER3> "The world is already toxic, there's nothing wrong with me manufacturing poison!"

I get the logic, I just don't agree — and I think it's the kind of thinking that underlies "penny wise, pound foolish" or similar sayings. It's also just outright untrue that anything like Facebook existed over 20 years ago — you're contributing to something new, or at least a massive escalation in kind likely to bring about qualitative differences, not merely producing "more of the same".

Also, I think it's naive to say kids with critical thinking skills are equipped to fend off hundreds of PhDs backed by thousands of programmers implementing their tools, coupled to all of their friends peer pressuring them.

Or adults, or institutions, or....

I don't want you to think I don't respect your motivations or view, though — I just think you made some errors in assessing trade offs, in a way that hurts not only you, but everyone else.

I think that's worth pointing out.

Have a good one, and sincerely, best luck starting a family!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess it's nice that these execs are in high dudgeon in the NYT, but nothing will change until they move their money.

<comment><USER3> I think of it like watching something really big move:

There's a lot of whines and groans as stress builds, but inertia holds it in a roughly steady state until — snap! — it's in motion, and the entire side of a mountain sloughs off.

It's _really_ bad for FB if large ad agencies are talking about them as two faced, doubting their honesty and wanting to see actions, or just outright grumbling about how they want to move platforms.

Those are the noises that precede a large scale break.

<comment><USER5> Kind of like how Hemingway described going bankrupt... "Two ways - Gradually, then Suddenly"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Question for mods: why is this post getting flagged?

<comment><USER6> We don't know exactly why users flagged this post, but it's possible that they felt the issue was sufficiently discussed at the time (there were heaps of Facebook-related posts about the report then). We've turned off the flags now so the discussion can continue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the possible explanation. I just came across the source article in my news reader today so I assumed it was today's news. Not sure how I missed it last month.

I know there were various threads on HN about the NYT report, but I don't remember any discussion of this particular topic around advertisers. Did I miss this being previously discussed in HN?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This doesn't have anything to do with this but as a developer I cannot longer see the word "React" with its intended meaning.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why is this flagged? Advertisers calling out Facebook is a big shift in the industry. Two years ago, agencies talked about their love for Facebook's people-based marketing.</comment>


Airline Brings Cuddle-Class Seating to Coach - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/01/airline-introduces-cuddle-class-seating-to-the-economy-section/

<comment><USER2> They always tell you to buckle your seatbelt when seated, so how do you get your seatbelt on when lying down like that?

<comment><USER3> This is for long haul trans-pacific flights (e.g. Auckland to San Francisco). I take that route often. It would be highly suspicious if the seatbelt light was on for 12 hours straight. Also, the cabin is seldom full, so getting to lie down without paying for extra seats is quite likely. On my last trip from SFO -> AUK I had three seats to myself and managed to sprawl out across the chairs, albeit uncomfortably. This will be much nicer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great for travelling with young families. I wonder where the lifejackets are kept now.</comment>


Dynamic Video Ads Improve CTR, CAC, and Purchases - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Link?</comment>


Tesla increases Supercharging prices to the point that gas might be cheaper - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/78366-tesla-increases-supercharging-prices-point-gas-might-cheaper.html <comment><USER2> It's funny that the article it references for the price hike says, "First off, yes sure it's a bummer that prices are going up, but it's still significantly cheaper than gas."[1]

They're also trying to compare NYC an LA Supercharger/electricity prices to "national average price" of gas including, "several regions seeing prices under $2 per gallon." Their comparison is $32-36 to fill up a 100kWh battery back versus 12 gallons at $2.85 for $34.20. I'm not really familiar with that class of car (or electric cars), but I'd assume anything comparable would take premium gas. I found a gas station in Westminster, CA (shown in one of the pics) and a local Chevron is currently charging $3.49 for regular and $3.69 for premium. The gas station I used to go to in LA that's only a few miles away is currently $3.09 for regular and $3.39 for premium. It would have been nice if they're going to make a comparison, try to do an honest apples-to- apples comparison.

The rate hike and how the cost compares to gasoline is worth noting, but the electrek.co article it linked to had much better information.

[1] [https://electrek.co/2019/01/18/tesla-increases- supercharger-...](https://electrek.co/2019/01/18/tesla-increases-supercharger- prices/)

<comment><USER3> No car requires premium gas anymore.

<comment><USER4> High compression ratio / turbo gas engines definitively do. Try pushing a BMW M3 ( competition for the model 3 perf ) on 87 and you'll see how long the engine lasts.

Look up engine knock.

<comment><USER5> It lasts just fine (Source: I've done it)

The M3 has knock sensors, like everyone else.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=bmw+m3+knock+sensor](https://www.google.com/search?q=bmw+m3+knock+sensor)

If you look up engine knock on wikipedia, it will tell you the same

From: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knocking#Knock_detectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knocking#Knock_detection)

"Due to the large variation in fuel quality, a large number of engines now contain mechanisms to detect knocking and adjust timing or boost pressure accordingly in order to offer improved performance on high octane fuels while reducing the risk of engine damage caused by knock while running on low octane fuels. "

<comment><USER6> "...while reducing the risk of engine damage caused by knock while running on low octane fuels."

That doesn't necessarily mean it reduces the risk of engine damage to zero. The engine still has to knock for the sensors to detect it and adjust unless it uses flex fuel sensors. Yes modern engines CAN cope with lower octane fuel than they were designed to use, but you would lose performance and run an increased risk of damage. If the manufacturer states a minimum octane rating you would likely be voiding some parts of your engine warranty by running the incorrect fuel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those not familiar, Superchargers are the exception not the norm for charging your car. You use it to travel long distances, but not typically during your day to day commute. Superchargers are meant to be a convenience to rapidly charge your car on the go if you need it.

If you regularly charge at home, like most people do, you can get extremely low rates at night during off-peak hours. It only costs ~$0.12/kWh for us in SF. Something like $9 to charge the car from 0-100% for ~300 miles of distance.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I'm curious, do you typically pay actual "hourly rate x hourly consumption" in a regular US household? Where I live (Europe), even though we have new fancy "smart electricity meters" with resolution of a few seconds, all the deals available from power companies offering electricity are based on "monthly average rate x monthly consumption".

<comment><USER8> In California, the three largest utilities do charge hourly rate * hourly consumption. There are "Peak" "Partial Peak" and "Off Peak" periods defined by summer/winter and weekday/weekend. Paper bills as well as utility websites will show how much electricity (kWh) are used during each period. Websites will also show hour by hour usage.

<comment><USER2> How widely implemented is it? I lived in Los Angeles for over a decade, lived in half a dozen places (moving between Glendale Water and Power and LADWP). A few years ago, when shopping for houses all over the LA area I would peek to see if they had smart meters, too. I've only seen a few and never lived anywhere that had them.

There may have been seasonal price changes with dumb meters, but they couldn't have done weekday/weekend without them.

Smart water meters seemed to have decent distribution. Perhaps because of the droughts?

<comment><USER9> I believe most of Edison moved over to smart meters, and they're the biggest provider in SoCal. LADWP is rolling it out at a snail's pace.

<comment><USER2> That's good to know. Edison always showed up when looking for programs like solar or a smart thermostat, LADWP never did. I just never lived anywhere serviced by Edison. Looking at their service map, it looks like Edison covers everywhere around LA/Glendale and covers a very large area all the way to the Nevada and Arizona border.

I wonder if there's a better cost/benefit for rolling it out to a sparsely populated (or dense pockets with large areas in between)? Where LADWP may favor new construction or something?

<comment><USER9> Edison pretty much charges 2-3x more for peak usage, 30% more for "off-peak", and 20% less for sleeping hours compared to LADWP depending on tier. So they made a bunch more money since people don't just suddenly shift all their electricity usage to after midnight. I remember there being a lot of outage when they rolled out smart metering since most people had pretty drastic increases to their electric bill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is probably a good move for Tesla. The reason Superchargers exist is to enable road trips, which are a tiny fraction of most people's driving. For anyone with enough money to afford a Tesla, if you need to use Superchargers often, you're better off with a PHEV or a conventional car, because even with Supercharging, you just waste so much time charging relative to gassing up. Even so, there is a certain profile of person that buys a very expensive car and then can't resist the allure of free electricity or the cool Supercharging tech. With so many new Model 3s, these people will clog up the Supercharging lanes, and make roadtrips in a Tesla even more painful. Simply increase the price ten bucks or so, and the cheapskates and tech enthusiasts will disappear and leave the Superchargers to the roadtrippers that have no other option.

<comment><USER11> wow that was quite the anti-salespitch...

<comment><USER12> The truth is that in some areas, superchargers are already behind demand. Superchargers need to have more stalls than peak demand because charging is already slow compared to fueling up with gasoline. The time disparity is fine if there's no wait because it basically fills the need for most people's necessary occasional rest stops anyhow, but adding more wait would turn it into a negative experience.

I haven't yet had to wait for a supercharger, but I have seen full superchargers that I haven't needed to use. With the huge increase in vehicles from the 3's being sold, I expect congestion to increase before it's counteracted by more charging options.

I'll be pretty bummed the day I have to start waiting. Waiting might tip the scale for me from electric being a better roadtripping experience to gasoline. On the other hand, autopilot is pretty sweet.

I hope they don't fuck up supercharging like they've fucked up service. It's a necessary ingredient to a great overall experience.

<comment><USER13> If you're interested in autopilot in a traditional car, the Acura RLX, BMW 5-series, Mercedes C-class, Cadillac CT6, and Audi A4 have equivalent systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article lost me at "Most homes are not wired to handle 120kW chargers, which are likely not cheap to set up."

If the author had done any research, he'd realize that there's no such thing as a 120 kW home charger. (The weasel word "likely" only confirms the lack of research.)

<comment> crooked-v And, of course, you almost certainly wouldn't want the extra expense of one if they were available anyway, because if your car is _already at home_ it's pretty unlikely that you need it charged up again in the next 20 minutes.

<comment><USER15> I think the main thing electric cars need in order to win, is the ability to recharge _anywhere_. Slow is fine, but if it can charge during every lunch break and rest stop, that still adds up. I'd rather have a slow charger on every single parking space than a network of superchargers.

<comment><USER16> It can. You can plug a Tesla into any 110 outlet. (It's just 4x slower than a 30A/220).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Electrek are reporting that Tesla have now partly rolled back the price increase in response to the backlash:

[https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger- price...](https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger-prices-back- down-customer-backlash/)

</comment><comment><USER18> A friend of mine owns a scrapping yard. Surprisingly he makes very good money (business is all about logistics and knowing what you should accept (profitable) and what will cause you troubles)

He says he hasn't accepted Tesla battery for 2 years now, because how complicated and expensive recycling is. According to him, there is not a single person that knows exactly how to properly secure used batter how to de- assemble and then properly recycle. He says its a nightmare ready to come true. He said eventually he can imagine some country will allocate yards of lands just for a sole purpose of storing old dead Tesla batteries altogether, just like we store dead nuclear plant rods under sea or high in mountain's caves.

<comment><USER19> > He said eventually he can imagine some country will allocate yards of lands > just for a sole purpose of storing old dead Tesla batteries altogether, just > like we store dead nuclear plant rods under sea or high in mountain's caves.

And most probably those countries/regions would not be the rich ones which now purchase Teslas like there's no tomorrow (think Norway, the Bay Area in California), but instead the toxic dump will be passed on to relatively poor areas of the world like the Campagna region in Italy [1] (with the added benefit of generating some extra business for the local Mafia) or the seashore of a sub-Saharan country [2]

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and- a-d...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and-a-deadly- cover-up-in-an-italian-paradise-t/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_dump)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Honest question: where I live (typical Spanish small/medium city 300.000 inhabitants) most (like pretty much everybody) people live in flats and lots of people do not have a way to plug their cars at night. Anybody knows how this can affect the use of purely electric cars? Even small ones, I mean (yes, neither I nor most people will buy a Tesla).

<comment><USER21> We have underground parking here in Amsterdam under our block of flats. The owners association discussed installing some charging poles. At 6000 eur/pole it didn't go down very well

<comment><USER15> Why does charging have to be harder than simply plugging into a power outlet? The building has power, a few extra power outlets doesn't cost much. The hardest part is linking it up to every person's own electricity meter.

That is, in my opinion, what the future should look like. As long as charging poles are expensive, they're not going to be everywhere, yet they need to be.

<comment><USER22> Standard power outlets, in the US at least, are only equipped to deliver 1-2kW, so fully charging a EV would take days (though if you only used 5-10kWh of charge a day, it might not be a problem). It's putting in the higher voltage, higher current outlets that's expensive.

<comment><USER15> Good point. I looked it up, and in Netherland, a regular power outlet is rated for 3.5 kW, which is probably still not enough.

For devices that require more power than that, there's three-phase current, also called "krachtstroom" (= "power current") in Dutch, which, from what I understand, can deliver up to 19kW (though intuitively I'd expect it to deliver 3 x 3.5=10.5 kW). We have this for out induction stove. Getting it was a bit involved, because it turned out our house had only a single 35A connection, whereas 3 (usually 3 x 16A or 3 x 25A) is more common, so we had to have our electricity connection upgraded.

Still cost less than $6000, though, and many Dutch houses already come with a connection that can handle this. Though that might not be true for other parts of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always hated how Tesla used gas savings as part of "how cheap" their cars were. It felt dishonest. Just give me the damned msrp without tax credits or gas savings.

<comment><USER7> Yeah it is somewhat misleading, though they do clearly show the true purchase price vs the "Savings price" on the final page after you configure the car. The first few pages sort of bait you in to thinking it's cheaper though.

In the end, I thought their pricing and buying process was a breath of fresh air compared to my experience with my Audi. By the time I walked out of the Audi dealership I had spent about $6k more than the original quoted price they gave me on the floor. I had about 3 pages of papers that look like excel sheets "explaining" it all. Tesla gave us a half page sheet with maybe 6 line items that clearly explains the costs.

The gas savings really do add up though. One of my previous comments I did a rough TCO between the Model 3 and my Audi A4 and found we saved about $1500 a year in fuel costs. After 5 years the car ended up being about $10k cheaper than my Audi despite it having a higher sticker price

<comment> semi-extrinsic > After 5 years the car ended up being about $10k cheaper than my Audi despite > it having a higher sticker price.

This would imply a really huge running cost on the Audi over the Tesla _in addition to gas_ \- what's that cost? Assuming it's a new car, I assume repairs etc are covered under warranty?

<comment><USER7> Much of the savings was from rebate/tax credit programs. I didn't factor in maintenance at all since they are unknowns.

My original comment with more details is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773680)

Also my Audi doesn't have any Autopilot equivalent so I probably should have left that additional $5k out of the cost of the Model 3.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Ah, so if you had compared the Model 3 to a similar-segment petrol car such as the Mazda 3 (4-door), it would be the other way around and the petrol car would come out $10k cheaper in TCO. The Audi A4 is only that expensive because it's a premium segment sedan, the Model 3 is (by design!) not a premium segment sedan.

To clarify, I think you're not comparing "electric car" with "petrol car", you're comparing it with "petrol car for which I happened to pay a $20k premium because it's a status symbol".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's not entirely surprising. My BIL got a model 3 a few months ago. When he takes it on trips, he's never found a supercharger that can charge at full speed, because they're either overcrowded or broken or both.

Maybe by increasing the rates they hope to get people to use them less often and they'll have more money for repairs.

<comment><USER17> Also, the Model 3 can only supercharge at "full speed" when the battery is under the 50% level or so.

After 50%, the charge rate starts to taper pretty quickly.

If the battery is cold then you may also see reduced charge rates. In cold weather, it's better to supercharge _after_ a long drive, as the battery will be warm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They charged about 20 cents per kWh in Virginia, and gas is about $1.92/gallon, so that was already the case.

This is caused primarily by extremely low gas prices, though, not just Supercharger pricing.

<comment><USER26> Even with gas that cheap you're paying $0.06 per mile (30 mpg). At $0.2/kWh you're only paying $0.04 per mile.

</comment></comment><comment> tedk-42 <disclaimer>i don't own a tesla</disclaimer>

Wow. No-one pointed out that they strategically need to force people off their super-charging network. Raising the prices and removing the 'free' for their early adopters is an excellent start.

The fact is too many people were using it incorrectly and it's causing them grief as the people who need to use it must queue up to do so.

</comment><comment><USER27> Eh, so I still get to drive the best car ever made, and I'm supposed to be upset that it's only cheaper than other cars by a little bit? No, not upset about that.

<comment><USER28> I did not know that having a build quality somewhat lower than a Yugo and a UX that even a Yugo designer would throw up at was part of a "best car ever made" description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Rent seeking? Probably rent seeking.

<comment><USER30> How can it even remotely be considered rent seeking to charge for a service you provide?

<comment><USER29> Rent seeking always involves charging for a service you provide. That's not the qualifier. Rent seeking here would be to provide cheap/free fuel until capturing enough of the market, then raising the prices to above market price. Not saying they succeeded. But to me it looks like they tried.</comment></comment></comment>


Get Ready for New SameSite=None; Secure Cookie Settings - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chromium.org/2019/10/developers-get-ready-for-new.html <comment><USER3> I've gone back and forth on this since it was first announced.

It's a very tough pill to swallow and is absolutely going to break a lot of web content. There's just no way around that. And there are very few things that are worth breaking the web over.

This is probably one of them. The security benefits of this change are very, very high. It's fixing something that arguably was broken since the introduction of cookies.

I am, as a rule, fairly skeptical when Chrome/Chromium devs say they're going to break something for security. Usually I think they're wrong, this time I think they're right, and I'm grateful that they've pushed for the change.

Also to the Chromium team's credit, they're taking the lead on something that they are 100% going to get criticized about. There are going to be some very angry threads about how they did it wrong, and how a 2020 release is too soon. I don't think the rollout has been perfect either, but... somebody has to do it. Once everything dies down, Firefox is going to implement the same changes, and no one will bat an eye because everyone will have already adjusted to Chrome. There's very little upside to being the browser that makes these changes first, but one of the browsers needs to do it first.

A nontrivial portion of our privacy/security problems on the web come from some fundamentally bad sandboxing; and frankly, cookies are badly sandboxed. This change makes the default at least a little better, and will immediately block a large number of CSRF attacks.

So, yeah. I get that it's annoying, but I'm with Google on this one.

<comment><USER4> Firefox and Safari are way ahead of Chrome on this. Safari has blocked third- party cookies for years, with no way to opt-in to supporting them. Ad companies have worked around that restriction, using a number of circumventions that Chrome does not currently intend to block.

When ad companies attempt to circumvent Safari's third-party cookie policy, Safari tries to block them as part of their non-standard ITP (Intelligent Tracking Prevention) program. [https://clearcode.cc/blog/intelligent-tracking- prevention/](https://clearcode.cc/blog/intelligent-tracking-prevention/)

Firefox has followed suit with an "Enhanced Tracking Protection" feature, which was optional, but became mandatory in September of this year. [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/03/todays-firefox- bloc...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/09/03/todays-firefox-blocks-third- party-tracking-cookies-and-cryptomining-by-default/)

Rather than fearing to break the web, Apple has broken the web's ad tech frequently and aggressively; users seem not to mind.

Browser vendors fear "breaking the web," in part because they're afraid that users will switch browsers if their favorite web site stops working. But it turns out that if you just break the web's _ads_ , users tend to like it, if they even notice in the first place.

<comment><USER3> The point of this change isn't to break ads, the tracking benefits are at best incidental. Ad networks can just opt-out anyway.

The point is to block CSRF attacks on ordinary websites for developers who don't know enough to secure their cookies.

> But it turns out that if you just break the web's ads, users tend to like > it, if they even notice in the first place.

Breaking just the web's ads wouldn't have the same impact on security. The reason this change is valuable is because it's not restricted to specific blacklists or domains or applied via an algorithm, it's universal. I really like the tracking protections that Safari/Firefox are adding, but comparing them to this is apples and oranges.

They're policies that are designed for different purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not mentioned in the article, but critical for debugging and testing - <USER2> has added a 2 minute grace period, where cookies set in that time period are still allowed on non-get requests even without a samesite policy. This is considered temporary and will be removed some day in the future.

If you test with Chrome 78, and your app works, you can't know if it'll work once the 2 minute grace period goes away. Please test your app using an old version of Chrome (76/77) with the flags for this enabled.

<comment><USER6> Wow, what an incredibly hard to debug hack. I fear the day I'll walk into this. Thanks for making me aware.

<comment><USER7> There is a DevTools console message warning you about this that pops up if the cookie would have been rejected, if not for the 2 minute threshold for POST requests (and friends).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kills most Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerabilities, since sites will now need to explicitly opt-in to allowing authentication cookies to be served in cross-site requests.

Of course, it'll probably be a long time before enough browsers support this that you can actually rely on this behavior, and even once support is universal there'll probably still be some sites doing dumb stuff like setting `SameSite=None` on authentication cookies without taking additional precuations, or allowing data to be modified with GET requests. But overall this is a huge win for security on the web.

Previous discussion from back when this was first announced: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19853090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19853090)

<comment><USER9> >it'll probably be a long time before enough browsers support this

Will it? All major browsers now receive automatic or timely updates. The speed of features rolling out over all major browsers is pretty rapid now days and unless you care about supporting IE you can expect new features to be ready to use within a year.

There is only so much you can do to support users using a discontinued browser many many years out of date. Unless you want to be stuck in 2013 forever you have to let them go eventually.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that this is a critical security feature, so the consequences for users are rather severe if you rely on it but their browser doesn't support it.

Instead of your site simply being broken or a certain feature on it not working, you'd instead be opening up all users on older browsers to a CSRF attack against your site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For anyone else wondering: the new default SameSite=Lax should (continue to) work fine for cookies with the "Domain" attribute, for sharing with subdomains.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for mentioning this. I've poured through docs on SameSite and none seem to mention subdomains or what setting is required for a cookie set at root Domain to be shared with subdomains.

<comment><USER12> The other thing I had a really hard time finding an answer to is how SameSite handles sibling subdomains like www.foo.com and api.foo.com.

Apparently browsers will use the public suffix list to determine what constitutes the first part of a domain which is identifying, and anything beyond that is considered SameSite.

So www.foo.com is the same site as api.foo.com, but user1.github.io is not the same site as user2.github.io. Because github.io is on the public suffix registry.

That is according to web.dev anyway...

[https://web.dev/samesite-cookies-explained](https://web.dev/samesite-cookies- explained)

<comment><USER13> Correct, in that I think of a "Site" as an entity defined a layer above the "Domain". However the "Domain" attribute and the "SameSite" attribute control different behaviour.

"SameSite" affects sending the cookie in situations where top-level site in the browser context is different from the target site of the request where the browser is determining if it should send cookies. e.g. on example.site with an iframe to widget.site

"Domain" determine the the highest level domain to which cookies should be sent, regardless of the browsing context. e.g. on example.site an iframe on widgets.example.site or top-level navigation to accounts.example.site

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Se...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Set-Cookie) details: > * If omitted, defaults to the host of the current document URL, not including subdomains. > * If a domain is specified, subdomains are always included.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for breaking it down and the reference link.

I have a couple of setups where an application has a single sign-on for root and subdomains. The shared cookie has the Domain attribute set to the root domain, but (so far) they have _no_ explicit SameSite attribute.

I searched around and came to the conclusion that the above setup will behave the same way with new default SameSite=Lax. However, there wasn't a canonical reference that I could point to, to prove this works as I expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My website has one affiliate link to Amazon page and a PayPal Buy It Now button (implemented as a form). Chrome's console message suggests I add 'SameSite=None' and 'Secure'. Any advice on where I would add those properties and if they are the right value for these type of links? I didn't realize these type of links had anything to do with cookies.

<comment><USER15> Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't the whole point that Amazon and PayPal need to update their cookies if they intend for these affiliate/pay now links to their domain to pass along their own cookies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Archived copy, which can be read without JS enabled:

[https://archive.is/YOIND](https://archive.is/YOIND)

<comment><USER17> Ridiculous that they're trying to secure cookies but their blog requires you to access at least 6 domains to get more than a title. They push out other ad providers with the comfort of knowing they can use their CDN's to harvest user data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it ironic that Microsoft will be implementing it when the latest version is IS11 on a fully patched windows 7 host doesn't support samesite.

I have no idea why the host OS is relevant, but the feature should never have been limited by it, and it's a nasty move given it's a security feature and not just some random shiny new button.

<comment><USER9> Windows 7 is end of life in about 2 months. There should be no expectation of future updates on an OS passed its EoL especially when it was such a long support period.

<comment><USER18> Same site was implemented in IE some time ago, but they didn't implement it in Windows 7 (which, as you pointed out has not yet been end of lifed).

It's still in support, and the function shouldn't even care about the host OS, I think the lack of implementation was more likely completely intentional (on the level of 'if Windows.version < 10 return true') which is an absolute dick move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This change makes a mockery of Google's commitment to a compatible web. There have been 5 SameSite drafts over two year. This change is strictly incompatible with two of the drafts that shipped in two different browsers (Chrome 66 and Safari 12). Users of LTS Linux distributions will find random websites broken because of this change. It's a great idea on paper, but by shipping so many incompatible versions in the draft stage, Google has virtually ensured breakage for certain user agent - service combos. They should have held the change for another 18 months.

<comment><USER20> Can you give some examples with specifics on how their changes are causing problems? I only recently became aware of the SameSite setting and was considering using it on my apps, but might hold off

<comment><USER19> If you return SameSite=None to Chrome 66, it ignores the cookie entirely. If you return SameSite=None to iOS 12, it treats it as SameSite=Strict. At the time each software was written, the behavior was blessed by the spec ("None" wasn't yet a valid value).

<comment><USER21> Here is Google's current list of incompatible clients. Someone should write an npm or Python module that encapsulates all these exceptions so sites can decorate their cookies correctly without worrying about these details.

[https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site/incompatible- clie...](https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site/incompatible-clients)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What am I missing, what's the point? Companies can still aggregate data about you by combining data from those separate cookies?

<comment><USER5> On top of preventing CSRF, it forces labeling of cross site cookies, commonly used for tracking. There's an option in the latest builds to remove all 3p cookies (and add a site allow list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why doesn't this break Google tracking?

<comment><USER24> 1/ Google Analytics uses 1st-party cookies since their scripts execute directly on websites. 2/ Chrome relays its own browsing data.

<comment><USER25> Can you point me at a link for 2?

Disclaimer: despite working for Google, I don't have a clue about this. I'm deep in the backend.

<comment><USER26> Ostensibly for SafeBrowsing[1] I believe...

1: [https://superuser.com/questions/75841/what-is-1e100-net- and-...](https://superuser.com/questions/75841/what-is-1e100-net-and-why-do-i- have-tcp-ports-open-to-it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why are cross site cookies allowed at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to just disable them entirely?

<comment><USER28> I've heard that [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2109](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2109) (the cookie RFC) was originally meant to not allow third-party cookies by default.

In my opinion, cookies on cross-site requests (third-party cookies) should be sent to web servers under a different request header, since they're semantically different (do not necessarily imply user authorization and intent) from cookies attached to a request initiated by the user from a first- party page.

<comment><USER29> >cross-site requests (third-party cookies)

I thought "third-party cookies" generally referred to cookies that were set in a third-party context. Whereas you're talking about cookies being read in a third-party context.

<comment><USER27> What is a scenario that would illustrate the difference? On paper third party cookie just means "any cookie from another domain". How would you read another domain's cookie without some feature that explicitly allows it, like the Chrome feature in question?

<comment><USER29> Oh, you're right there isn't a distinction, for some reason I thought there was.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


American Emergency Rooms Confront a Crisis of Violence - <AUTHOR> https://www.city-journal.org/violence-in-americas-emergency-rooms <comment><USER2> It's not just emergency rooms, example of a food store in San Francisco:

'...When I sit down with Desaulniers, he's tired and stressed and the deep creases between his brow are furrowed.

In our brief meeting, I get an up-close look at how much he's juggling by the number of people who approach him as we're talking at one of the tables in the grocery store's cafe.

For starters, there's the worker who has arrived to fix the $4,000 broken window due to a robbery early that morning. There's also an investigator from the District Attorney's office who drops by to share that a customer who bit Desaulniers in the arm is being subpoenaed (This is the second customer who bit him). And there's the employee who asks him to deal with an uncontrollable customer who is shoplifting and hollering that he needs to use the bathroom'.

[https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SoMa-San-Francisco- Ha...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SoMa-San-Francisco-Harvest- Urban-Market-drugs-14450121.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> The US used to have places to send those people. Santa Clara, CA had "The Great Asylum for the Insane".[1] Later "Agnews State Mental Hospital", then "Agnews Developmental Center", and finally demolished for a Sun Microsystems facility. It was the classic "funny farm" in a rural area, with impressive architecture.

This was the early 20th century solution to homeless crazies. Was it better than what we have now?

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

<comment><USER4> The "state hospital" in my area was shut down in the eighties. It turns out that many of their treatments were ineffective and inhumane. I believe there is still a support group for former patients that is active.

<comment><USER5> I don't know how much truth there is to it, but people I've known that worked in metal health institutions have complained that they're systemically being shut down with no where for the patients to go. They say that often patients end up being handled by police, EMTs, and medical workers. None of which are particularly expert in dealing with mental health issues.

<comment><USER3> That happened in the US a long time ago, starting in the 1960s.[1] "By 2000, the number of state psychiatric hospital beds per 100,000 people was 22, down from 339 in 1955." During this period, prison populations went way up.

[1] [https://www.uniteforsight.org/mental- health/module2](https://www.uniteforsight.org/mental-health/module2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't limited to ERs. I have a close friend that works as a nurse at Stanford (not in the ER) and the treatment they have to endure there is insane. Patients have punched her, spit on her, asked her for sexual favors, massages, and the list goes on. Worse, Stanford wants their nurses to treat patients like hotel guests which makes matters worse. The staff has no recourse when patients act this way. Seeing all of the sexual harassment backlash in Silicon Valley makes me wonder why it hasn't applied to places like hospitals - it's as if this treatment is expected and hospitals are immune because they're seen as a last resort for sick people. Where else do you send them?

<comment><USER7> Presumably the people making those offenses aren't educated computer science students (referring to the parallel with the Sillicon Valley).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The one thing that I find hard to believe in our society these days is the amount of violence shown to medical teams in hospital emergency rooms and also first responders and paramedics who are trying to save lives in the field. It is endemic here in Australia too, not just the US.

I grew up in South East Asia, where I and my friends were taught to pretty much revere the people in this line of work. I guess it is still that way in those countries too, highlighted by a recent video of the protests in Hong Kong where huge crowds of protesters would willingly make way for ambulances to get to casualties in the crowd.

Is it something that we need to ingrain to our kids as they are growing up, so that they have more empathy? It astounds me that a paramedic friend of mine was recently kicked and punched by 2 "friends" of an unconscious person as she tried to save his life on the street. She says it is a really common thing nowadays. Where is your mindset at when you try to prevent someone from saving your friend's life?

</comment><comment><USER9> _"I have seen a colleague kicked in the face; I've seen a nurse kicked in the chest and have to get medical treatment. I've seen patients spit on people and throw urine across the room," he added_

Why is our society so tolerant of this? Why should anyone, let alone an educated, working professional have to put up with this?

<comment><USER10> What solution do you propose?

<comment><USER11> > What solution do you propose?

Ban those people from emergency services.

<comment><USER12> This would not be a good measure of society.

<comment><USER13> The best measure of society is compromise and social valor. Those who have neither deserve none.

<comment><USER14> I can't tolerate the concept that people don't "deserve" basic things like health treatment based on their behavior. It's sick to me, and a hallmark of a sick society.

<comment><USER15> Health treatment isn't really a basic thing. I find it really bizarre how people keep trying to write in more and more luxury goods as god-given rights.

Whenever I think of rights, it is things that society and other people must _not_ do, rather than something that other people must provide for me.

<comment><USER16> Think of it as a duty. Love thy neighbour and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article fails to mention that ER departments tend to be underfunded; hospitals typically do not generate much revenue through ER departments and they are often blamed for losing money. There are many articles out there, this is just the first one I grabbed.

[https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/7-things-to- kn...](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/7-things-to-know-about- emergency-department-profitability.html)

[https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter- art...](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter- article/emergency-rooms-labeled-biggest-crisis-american-health-care)

With little motivation to staff up, this seems like the predictable outcome.

<comment><USER17> Why is this relevant at all? Why is violence in an ER a predictable outcome of understaffing? That makes no sense.

<comment><USER4> Less staff means higher wait times, long wait times lead to frustrated and angry patients. People with mental health issues might be less able to manage a longer and more stressful visit. Exhausted providers might me less effective managing upset patients. And so on.

This article calls out people with mental health or drug addiciton specifically.

"As doctors and nurses administer care, they risk physical assaults from drug- addicted or emotionally disturbed persons"

<comment><USER18> Mental illness exacerbated by drug use that leads to ER visits is a pretty disordered state of affairs to begin with.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons that would make sense for a person to wait an hour or so in an ER once they have been stablised/triaged, such a for observation, further diagnostic tests, or the attention of a particular specialist.

An otherwise-healthy person can generally deal with this without getting violent, even if they're feeling a bit stressed, but if someone's tripping balls and being chased by robotic dinosaurs, then it's no wonder that people are acting out and behaving in ways that transgress social norms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Similar issues in France right now

<comment><USER20> Is France also dealing with an opiod crisis? That might explain it

<comment><USER19> No the underlying causes are different. Social tensions, budget cuts, inadequate management... all these leads to delays and mishaps in emergency rooms. To a level we've never seen before (forgotten elder died after too many hours unattended).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well...doctors and nurses are some of the highest paid people in the US and these problems are directly caused by a lack of a social safety net and mental health care. It's like they took the Hippocratic oath and didn't think it applied to not bankrupting people for getting sick.

Color me completely unsympathetic.

<comment><USER22> You're "completely unsympathetic" that ER nurses (making a little over minimum wage in some cases) and on-call doctors are getting assaulted at work?

<comment><USER23> A few years back, my wife had to go to the ER due to sudden life-threatening illness. They were getting ready to stabilize her (barely) and turf her out because of an issue with health insurance (my employer was happy enough to take the premium out of the paycheck but never informed the insurance). It took a lot of pleading to keep her that night. A young black guy might well have been arrested.

Right now I am dealing with fantasy bills from an ER visit a few months ago.

The whole medical-industrial complex can die right now. I have no sympathies for anyone in it. If they get assaulted in the course of work, they earned it many times over.

<comment><USER24> I can totally see being upset with the people in administration and billing. But how can you be that upset with the doctors and nurses, when your whole complaint is that you wanted _more_ of their attention?

<comment><USER23> The physicians and nurses are the public face of the healthcare mess. It's only natural that they would attract ire. You go to the physician and you know they'll overbill you. It's sickening. You get angry the moment you walk through the door.

<comment><USER24> You could stay home instead.

<comment><USER25> Yes stay home witha severe injury. Why does no one think of that? Are you even being serious or just making antagonistic posts?

<comment><USER24> The dude hates doctors and nurses so much that he thinks they deserve to be physically attacked. And yet he is desperate for their services. This is a contradiction. I'm attempting to point this out.

<comment><USER23> You can look at it the other way: you need physicians and nurses, and because you have no alternative they fleece you by any means possible, and the rule of law doesn't apply to them.

A couple of years ago I fell for the high-complexity drug testing scam at the intake visit. It goes like this: you pee in a jar, and they send it to an out- of-network lab. A few weeks later the 4.5 kUSD bill arrives, which isn't covered by insurance. Everyone denies responsibility: the physician says you gave us the sample, the insurance says out-of-network, and the lab says services rendered. The charges eventually went away, after several afternoons on the phone.

Civil society offers no solution. It's no surprise that people give way to their anger. There isn't even a contradiction.

<comment><USER25> Ridiculous. The best part about paying for a drug test is that it literally offers no benefit to the patient. He or she knows firsthand whether they took any drugs. (Excepting cases where something is slipped into a drink but that accounts for ~0% of tests performed.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Evicted", an ethnographic study of tenants in low-income housing (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/07/evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city-matthew-desmond-review <comment><USER2> Important frame to consider, here in the comments: we're all reacting to an article that's reviewing a book. A long work of sociology.

So the article isn't the ground truth; it's a tiny digest, plus a reaction by the article's author. The book itself is a project of research, which also isn't ground truth. But they bring up provocative points that most people haven't considered.

And in some cases, won't consider. If your mental model for how the economy works somehow doesn't allow the situations described in the book or article, I'd hazard to say it's your mental model that's in error.

<comment><USER3> > If your mental model for how the economy works somehow doesn't allow the > situations described in the book or article, I'd hazard to say it's your > mental model that's in error.

What situations? People being evicted? People paying rent for trailers? What economic insight are you supposed to take away from those things?

I would say that if your mental model of how _society_ works does not include those things, yeah, it should. If everyone realized what was happening, maybe there would be more support for basic income, Section 8 vouchers, etc. That's my view--raise taxes and give more money to poor people so their lives are better. But that's an entirely different point, and not one that the article is making.

The article is an archetypal example of what I call "well intentioned but economically ignorant liberalism." The folks who campaigned to make tenements illegal were not conservatives. They were liberals genuinely concerned about the living conditions of those residents. However, they were also ignorant about how economics works. So they tried to address the problem simply by making tenements illegal ( _i.e._ taking an option away from poor people).[1] Calls to regulate check cashing places and payday lenders out of existence (or articles that demonize landlords who rent to poor people, like this one) fall into that same bucket.

Reading the article, what kind of solution do you think the article is leading you to? Maybe making it harder for landlords to evict tenants, or limiting the rents that trailer parks can charge tenants. What does that do? Cause landlords to be less willing to rent to poor people, or less likely to invest in a new trailer park. _I.e._ it takes options away from poor people, and ironically _reduces competition and raises prices_ in the markets that cater to poor people. Making _some_ poor people better off ( _e.g._ the ones that get the trailer park before the rent controls kicked in), but making poor people _as a whole_ worse off.

[1] [https://fee.org/articles/the-hidden-war-on-affordable- housin...](https://fee.org/articles/the-hidden-war-on-affordable-housing/)

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's an easy answer. Therefore, we should not expect obvious policy prescriptions from the article, book, research project.

(I do hear your objection about the title; I see HN's title is updated to be less click-baity, and more reflective of the book's content.)

I think the point of the book is to try to understand the situation as lived by poor people, and (if I recall the longer-form radio review correctly) the role eviction specifically plays in the cycle of poverty.

To the extent there's a policy prescription here, it's to focus poverty-relief efforts on housing security. To the extent there's an economic prescription here, it's perhaps just the realization that the rental market, as it currently exists, is playing a role in that cycle of poverty (leaving aside exactly how "free" the market is in the first place).

Seeing the work in isolation, though, and looking for answers... I think that misses the point. Personally, I see this as another insight into how expensive it is to be poor: whether it's banking, housing, educational opportunities, etc, the poor are dealing with a different set of challenges and tradeoffs than I experience. (Hence, the utility of the book.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The assertion implicit in the headline ("poverty exists because it's profitable") is the article's assertion, not the book's.

This is quite silly. Through all of human history the vast majority of people have been miserably poor, and it's only recently that a slice of humanity has managed to claw their way out of poverty. Poverty should be considered the natural state of humanity, not an anomaly that needs explanation.

<comment><USER5> But it's clear that the drive for profit is a contributor to poverty; arguably a lot of it today exists because of the profit motive. Furthermore, many people can't "claw their way out of poverty". I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here; the elimination of poverty is a goal that is to be strived for, even if it cannot be reached.

<comment><USER4> I absolutely agree that we should strive for the elimination of poverty, and that many people can't "claw their way out of poverty."

My point is just that we shouldn't start from the false premise that _prosperity_ is the natural state and _poverty_ must be explained, because you may end up blaming symptoms (in this case, landlords--in other cases, it's check cashing companies[0], or sweatshops[1], or the "profit motive") and implement a "treatment" that makes the poor even worse off.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good- dea...](http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-deal-upenn- professor-2017-2)

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everybody here should read the book that this article is reviewing: Evicted by Matthew Desmond. It's an incredible accomplishment in sociology and one of the most insightful works on poverty I have ever encountered.

</comment><comment><USER7> haven't economists talked about how, in general, charging rent is not really creating economic value? patent trolls, landlords, rich investors, for example... all to some degree just rake it in based on what they already have. of course there is some strategy involved, and there is work too. but maybe the point is that the way things are set up now, the reward for the work goes on indefinitely, which makes no sense. you inherited a family property and are able to profit off it your entire life, since the cost of maintenance and property taxes is offset by rent you earn from some agency renting out your house? i dont see how you are personally contributing anything. some investors already have vast sums of money, so they are able to earn vastly more sums by putting it in an index fund? also not fair, though i suppose you are "taking a risk", but i dont really find that all too compelling. you just sit there and rake in dividends and ~3% roi. suing a company for using tech that they invented but didnt patent? you are just a pure minus on society in that case. these things are all rent-seeking behaviors, i dont see how they really do anything for the greater good. i think we need to tell people who try to make money by charging rent to basically fuck off. not that you are a bad guy for doing it in many cases, but we should recognize it for the unfair practice it is.

<comment><USER8> The argument would be that the _right_ to seek rent from your capital goods, whether created, bought, or inherited, is what drives people to create these rent-creating systems in the first place.

If people didn't have the right to seek rent from the houses they build or inventions they come up with, why would they expend the effort in the first place?

(note, I don't take that view exactly, I believe motivation comes from a whole lot of places)

<comment><USER7> yes, its a good point to make. and not wrong, but i wouldn't say its the whole story. people have been creative and ingenious long before money existed. i certainly dont have enough historical knowledge, evidence, or thinking to make a compelling argument that money doesn't inspire creativity, but i really do have a suspicion that most good stuff comes from people who do it "just because", not to get rich. look at the incredible academics, artists, writers etc throughout history that weren't ever rich, nor really made the effort to be. but, for lots of day to day stuff, i do think money keeps the gears turning. so, i guess "why would they expend the effort in the first place?" ... because its fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To the vast majority of companies, poverty is not profitable (prison industry and loan sharks being notable exceptions). In fact to most companies it is critical to have an affluent market to sell things to. It's just not profitable for them to be the ones ensuring that this affluent market exists rather than let it be someone else's problem. It's a classic tragedy of the commons.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, sadly, the reason things are often so expensive for poor people is because it ISN'T profitable to service them. This means that there is little competition for their business and things cost a lot.

For example, rent for poor people is way too high. So why don't other people come in and offer to rent to them for less?

Well, poor people have trouble paying their rent a lot of the times. They have a high chance of failing to pay, and that is costly to a landlord. So that risk is priced into the rent.

What this ends up meaning, though, is that if you are poor but always pay your rent on time, you are paying for all the people who fail to pay their rent.

<comment><USER11> Interesting though on the supply side question. I remember reading some comment here that basically said, People do not build low income housing, they build high income housing that then gets old and becomes low income housing. That means there is a several decade lag in housing supply for low income.

<comment><USER12> Not so, because of filtering... [1]

Adding new stock at the top makes existing stock more affordable. It's a gradient - not a age-based scale.

[1] [http://cityobservatory.org/what-filtering-can-and-cant- do/](http://cityobservatory.org/what-filtering-can-and-cant-do/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is an excellent book, but as other comments have pointed out, the review misrepresents its argument.

I wouldn't say Desmond is exactly sympathetic to the landlords he profiles, but he does provide a well-rounded picture of them. The main thrust of his analysis is that eviction is a major cause of an inescapable cycle of poverty, and that preventing eviction would go further to reduce poverty and inequality than nearly any other government policy.

IIRC his recommendations involve a huge bump in the federal housing voucher program, decoupling it from work requirements (since it's difficult to get a job without a permanent home), and tying federal aid to code reform in cities (simplifying and loosening the housing code so that landlords would be less likely to ignore it).

<comment><USER3> Those are great policy prescriptions: reduce eviction by giving poor people more money and more flexibility, as well as by making it cheaper and easier to offer housing to poor people. You're right that the article misrepresents that argument.

<comment><USER14> How does it stop everyone from just squeezing more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Man people in this thread are really biting hard on the extreme straw man arguments. It is really pretty simple:

(Poverty is profitable for _some_ people) + (Doing anything about poverty is _not_ profitable for most people) + (Poor people are disempowered) => poverty

<comment><USER16> Sounds like it would depend heavily on what exactly the "some" and "most" are and how extreme the disempowerment is, and on how many people do things for reasons other than profit.

So no, not all that simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance._ -Rothbard

I'm seeing all sorts of economic flailing in these comments. Is it okay to make a reading recommendation? I think people who read them will have a better understanding of how economics actually works in the real world.

Economism by James Kwak

Economic Ideas You Should Forget by Bruno Frey & David Iselin

<comment><USER5> I would also recommend _Wage Labour and Capital_ by Marx, and the classical political economists like Smith and Ricardo. A good introduction to contending schools of economics is _Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian_ by Wolff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This video by CGP Grey, based on the book "The Dictator's Handbook" is very good at explaining why some countries are richer, even if they have plenty of natural resources: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

Another view: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash On the other side of the equation (at least regarding real estate), it can be difficult to make money from poor people without extremely low costs and tremendous scale.

There is a reason many landlords refuse to accept Section 8 tenants. It's not because they're evil Scrooges, it's that Section 8 tenants are more likely to damage properties (I've heard firsthand accounts of Section 8 tenants letting their multiple dogs piss and shit on the floor while refusing to pay several months of back rent and utility bills, and others letting their units turn into such trash heaps that delousing was a regular occurance) and vacuum up administrative time. So the rent has to be high for the landlords to be able to make a profit.

Maybe we could stop blaming the market for doing what it does and recognize that the economy and the livelihood of people is largely determined by government policy?

Bring back the Works Progress Administration. Pay people to show up and work. I know it's unrelated to the article, but as long as private employers have little competition for wages, poor people will continually be forced to accept their place in a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER19> I agree 100%

The article (I'm not sure about the book) painted landlords as evil for evicting women "Think of that next time you ask a woman why she doesn't call the police," but Crack doesn't come out of walls easily, holes punched in by that abusive man aren't fixed for free, and cops making an arrest care even less about your property than the tenants. There are insanely high cost to renting to low-wage families and most landlords I know that attempted it didn't last long doing so.

Are there some sad stories of people truly trying to improve their lives? Yes, there absolutely are, but for every "Pursuit of Happyness" Oprah level story of overcoming poverty there are 20 people who've absolutely given up and don't give a crap about anything that's not physically attached to them. It's not the business owner's responsibility to try and spur the human spirit of the impoverished.

This article is painting just a skewed of a viewpoint as the one it's trying to disprove, and I'm curious if the book is the same.

<comment><USER20> To affirm your anecdote, I had a friend who bought a fourplex in a somewhat depressed area, lived in one unit and rented the other three. It was an unmitigated disaster and a terrible experience. I spent some time with him trying to help out around the units and also discussed his experiences with him. I concluded from that I would never, under any circumstances, want to be a landlord.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm iffy on this book but I think there is a very interesting point/perspective to be made on the profitability of housing. It's expensive, and it's that way because of economics, mostly. People will charge what the market will bear. I am renting out a house in Atlanta, and I've decided I would rather have stable, good tenants, over profits. The apartment communities I've lived in are the other way around: profits over tenants. Each year apartment rates go up for most people. They never go down. Even if they did go down, they wouldn't go down for the tenant, they would go down for a new tenant. What we're seeing in places like California, Portland, Seattle, and other dense, urban areas with limited housing, is that people are being pushed out because of ever increasing rent prices. So yes, I do think that housing is high because it's profitable, and I think something should be done about that. Unfortunately I don't have an answer. I don't think it's "build more" because that will just lead to more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't buy it. Increased wealth at lower levels benefits everyone. The main problem of poverty, at least in America, is that the welfare system traps poor people in government dependency. Another massive issue, homelessness, is due to terrible mental health treatment, which is especially sad.

<comment><USER23> Totally disagree. Do you think pawn shops, payday lenders, and high-interest credit card issuers would benefit if their customers became wealthy enough to not need their services?

<comment><USER24> Payday lenders would probably (thankfully) go away, but other businesses could benefit. Credit Card issuers will do well. Interest rates go down, but credit limits can go up. A pawn shop makes money selling stuff, so if there was more money in the neighborhood, they could sell more. They may need to acquire products in new ways, and rebrand as an antique store, or general store.

<comment><USER25> Unless I've misunderstood all these years how pawn shops work, they _would indeed_ have trouble operating under the same business model as average wealth in their area increased. Resale shops and such would be fine, but the difference is that they don't sell stuff they've acquired when people defaulted on what amount to short-term secured loans.

<comment><USER24> Yes, they'd have to change their product acquisition methods, but at their core they are basically used goods resellers, and that can work just as well as a wealth increases.

<comment><USER25> Right, but then they're not a pawn shop. Payday loan places would do fine, too, if they turned into traditional banks.

<comment><USER24> It's a much bigger step for a payday loan business to turn into a bank (basically impossible due to regulatory barriers to becoming a bank), than for a pawn shop to switch suppliers. Look at it this way, when people move out of poverty, their need for payday loans goes down, but their ability to buy stuff goes up, so a pawn shop has some potential to capture the increased purchases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are people who are looking at the world and seeing how they can make money, but the more you make the more you can afford to pay, so in general capitalist prefer people to be rich.

<comment><USER27> > in general capitalist prefer people to be rich.

Capitalists prefer to be rich themselves (both absolutely and relative to others in society), and they prefer labor to be cheap, which is served by laborers being poor and insecure.

<comment><USER28> Rich customers, poor employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not only that: poverty ensures a steady supply of cannon fodder for the military. So there is a big %age in keeping people poor if you want to have a large military.

<comment><USER30> That doesn't match recruitment data for the US Army. We have a volunteer professional military with standards for recruitment that require above average individuals.

There are still plenty of poor people in the Army, quite frankly I can't think of anything better for poor people. Where else can you get housed and fed and your college paid for? Only a small portion of the military is war fighters. Most are doing boring relatively safe jobs like filling gas tanks and counting bullets.

<comment><USER29> > We have a volunteer professional military with standards for recruitment > that require above average individuals.

Those could easily be poor. Poor != dumb.

> There are still plenty of poor people in the Army, quite frankly I can't > think of anything better for poor people.

How about a normal civilian life?

> Where else can you get housed and fed and your college paid for?

In countries with a functioning social contract this is not an issue.

> Only a small portion of the military is war fighters. Most are doing boring > relatively safe jobs like filling gas tanks and counting bullets.

Right, but they're still part of the same machine and even if the %age that ends up on the front lines is not 100% that holds true historically. So that's not a counter argument, it's just a function of how the military is organized.

Note that 'volunteering' if it is your only option at a reasonably affluent life is not really volunteering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Compare and contrast: [http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores- good-dea...](http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-deal- upenn-professor-2017-2)

</comment><comment><USER32> Ain't no "what if" about it son. Every economic transaction between two parties benefits the seller slightly more than the buyer; that is the definition of profit. Sure, the buyer is getting whatever good or service they paid for, but they are ordinarily paying slightly more than it's absolutely worth.

If that element isn't present (i.e. if the transaction does not incrementally impoverish the buyer and enrich the seller by some amount), the seller won't continue to sell that good or service.

Edit: except non-profits, subsidies, and Uber

<comment><USER33> The buyer and seller both profit, or they would not engage in the trade. Each has something the other needs more than they do.

<comment><USER32> I agree and I acknowledged this ("the buyer is getting whatever good or service they paid for"). But I still tend to frame it as the buyer having incurred a cost, not having profited. The seller is the one who ends up with money in hand, that can be invested elsewhere. The buyer usually ends up with something that either starts off with no resale value, or that depreciates, or that (if you're poor) does nothing but keep you alive -- like a roof over your head let's say.

Mind you, since that last category consists of things one really needs a lot, it makes one that much more eager to engage in the trade and pay the stated price. If you can afford to walk away from a negotiation, your position is a lot stronger.

<comment><USER33> Consider the farmer and the blacksmith. The farmer makes more corn than he can eat, and the blacksmith shoes the horses. The blacksmith trades shoeing the farmer's horse for corn to eat.

They are both better off. There is no buyer/seller.

Money is just a medium for making trading more efficient. A "buyer" and "seller" is an artificial construct, and framing things as the "seller" always gets the upper hand has no real basis.

I buy things and sell things all the time. It's pretty clear that the seller has no inherent advantage.

<comment><USER32> In barter there is no seller's advantage because yeah, there's no seller. In a monetary transaction, there is, because one party ends up with money, which is more than just a medium of exchange - it's capital. You can easily rent it out and get back not only your money, but a bit extra. You could do that with corn, too, but you would have to set up the arrangement yourself, whereas the mechanisms already exist to do that with cash.

<comment><USER33> It is just a medium of exchange. It's all money is.

I doubt I'll convince you with rhetoric, so I suggest you try doing a little selling. The experience should be pretty convincing that it doesn't give you any advantage.

<comment><USER32> Well this is funny. Believe it or not, my attempts to sell something nobody wanted are actually the very thing that made me think the way I do. I had something I couldn't find a buyer for -- something specific with only as much value as any buyer would care to assign. But my potential customers had something everybody wants including me -- a medium of exchange as you say, that can be easily converted into anything else. Selling is harder than buying because what you're asking for (people's money) is more flexible and reliably worth something to a greater number of people. If you find a market, a bunch of people who want what you've got, more than they want money, you've scored a coup!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Right, this is the same as the welfare trap. Keep the poor reliant on state largesse and count on their votes. Its still exploitation.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hmm, indeed, "what if".

</comment><comment><USER36> Poverty is certainly profitable for politicians.

</comment><comment><USER37> Of course poverty is profitable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because providing goods and services to poor people is evil!

> Tobin Charney makes $400,000 a year out of his 131 trailers, some of which > are little better than hovels.

That monster! Charging about $3,000 a year in rent per trailer! Of course his actual return is lower than that, because he has to pay for the mortgage and taxes on the underlying property, as well as upkeep. Say say more like $200,000. But still! Earning about as much as a programmer managing a business that houses over a hundred people. Monster is the right word for sure.

<comment><USER38> That's a pretty poor way of expressing the idea of the article.

The point the article is making is that poor people often have their backs against the wall as far as the number of choices they have in food, housing, jobs, location, etc. They're effectively a captive audience, which makes them an easy population to exploit. Maybe this is considered acceptable in society's economic model, but at the least people should be more aware of how your options fall away as you go further down the socio-economic ladder.

<comment><USER39> > Maybe this is considered acceptable in society's economic model, but at the > least people should be more aware of how your options fall away as you go > further down the socio-economic ladder.

What rational person would expect your options to improve as you drop down the economic ladder? Less money, mo problems.

The only situation I've seen where that's remotely true is applying for student aid where if you're parents saved money they're expected to pony it up, but if they spent it all on flat screen TVs and new cars (and hence are "cash poor") they're not expected to do so.

<comment><USER40> "The only situation I've seen where that's remotely true is applying for student aid where if you're parents saved money they're expected to pony it up, but if they spent it all on flat screen TVs and new cars (and hence are "cash poor") they're not expected to do so."

Are you suggesting that everyone falls into this (false?) binary?

<comment><USER41> I do. I saved for my kid's education, and I didn't bother even applying for aid, because (a) I don't need it, (b) I wouldn't get any, and (c) it's not anyone else's responsibility to send my kid to college.

<comment><USER40> I applaud you for having the foresight to save up for your kids' education. At the same time, I think it's naive to say that the only reason people are cash poor (or even the primary reason) is because they buy flat screen TVs and new cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Competition is more than just another store offering the same goods and services at the same prices.

I'm flabbergasted at these comments. You are as out of touch as a republican supreme court justice. Willfully out of touch even.

<comment><USER43> Personal attacks are not allowed here. We ban accounts that do that and it looks like you've done it before, so please don't do it any more.

Re downthread: Whether or not comment quality on HN has "massively declined" (such perceptions tend to be in the eye of the beholder), please don't make it decline more massively still. "One more for the pile" is the credo of a litterer.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924820) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "Crystal and Trisha are fragile young black women whose upbringing was violent and chaotic; Lamar is a genial black father of two who lost both his legs to frostbite when he passed out on crack in an abandoned house; Scott is a white male nurse who lost his licence when he stole opioids from his patients; Larraine, also white, is a slightly brain-damaged sweet soul."

clearly examples of poverty caused by rich-people oppression</comment>


Timepicker for jQuery inspired by Google Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://jonthornton.github.com/jquery-timepicker/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure its nice on a desktop, but it's unusable on a phone. It's probably not your intended audience, so good effort nonetheless.

I think in the not-to-distant-future, especially as mobile browsing overtakes desktop browsing, its going to be a prerequisite that plugins/widgets work on both screens. As people evaluate whether or not to use a plugin, this will quickly become a deciding factor.

Again, not a critique of this plugin. Just a thought I had while looking at this and being kind of sad that I couldn't really experience the demos on my phone.

<comment><USER3> Seems to work fine on my iPhone?

<comment><USER4> I hate to harp on you here because you're clearly just attempting to help, but I think the statement

> Seems to work fine on [the] iPhone?

is representative of the main issue with the mobile web. Most people only build with iOS and maybe Android in mind.

Thankfully Android's browser is bad enough that it's raised awareness of how difficult it is to build complex cross platform web applications.

<comment><USER5> Works fine on my Android phone's stock browser...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice. One suggestion, it'd be nice if the selection/options updated as you typed. ie typing 06 scrolled to show 06:00, 06:15 etc. or filtered the possible options to only show those matching /06/.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see the difference between this and a <select> element, except that the latter looks much better and works cross-platform. It doesn't offer any new functionality like auto-complete or validation. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> How are you going to float a value to the right inside of a native select value? How are you also going to style the value separately (font-weight, color etc)? All that is really available is optgroups vs. options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My app uses a lot of these: I generally hand generate them however due to the range always changing.

From an astetics standpoint, when I have two times I personally like a slider with two handles. in GCal I'm always dragging my apointments longer and shorter in the overview, not in the details. My "solution" is to use two select boxes with the times, and then use this plugin to convert it to a slider: [http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/update_jquery_ui_slider_fro...](http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/update_jquery_ui_slider_from_a_select_element_now_with_aria_support/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I like it, but similar to others, it doesn't limit the input to the selections. From a UE standpoint, I found it a problem that I could type in abcd, and that's not a valid time.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like the very clean design. I get annoyed with some of the flashy plugins that have tons of options, get really complicated, and are 10's of KB in size. This one is simple and clean. Well done.

One a site note... for the duration example, is it possible to make columns to line up the time and duration in columns rather than just with spaces? I have some auto-suggest code where I'd like to make two columns that are aligned rather than just with spaces.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, the time inputs just need a common parent element for the datepair example, and it doesn't have to be the direct parent. You could use a table or do something with floats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very similar to this: <http://labs.perifer.se/timedatepicker/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Love this! I have a calendar text field / dropdown that I built in YUI that works similarly ... this is a perfect addition to that instead of the dropdown I am using now for the time field.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been using it on several occasions, it's a tiny JS and CSS file and it's pretty simple for configuration too.

</comment><comment><USER15> I got a very simple scrollbar hourpicker, I can't remember seeing something similar on Google Calendar..

</comment><comment><USER16> This is exactly what I needed for a side-project I'm working on for my mom. Thanks!</comment>


Why I don't want any Christmas presents - <AUTHOR> http://www.ericgarland.co/2013/11/27/dont-want-christmas-presents/

<comment><USER2> I don't want Christmas presents because I'm Jewish. But donate to [http://www.charitywater.org](http://www.charitywater.org) anyway.</comment>


Police are trying to arrest their way out of a mass shooting epidemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/mass-shooting-threats-arrests-after-dayton-el-paso-2019-8 <comment><USER2> [https://www.massshootingtracker.org/data](https://www.massshootingtracker.org/data)

I found this interesting if unsettling.

<comment><USER3> I clicked on a couple of the articles in your link and all 4 of them were in African American neighborhoods. Using black crime as an excuse to put law abiding white people in jail and take their firearms is unjust in my opinion.</comment></comment>


One Chipotle burrito has more than 100% of your DV of sodium - <AUTHOR> http://www.healthline.com/health/high-blood-pressure-hypertension/daily-value-sodium

<comment><USER2> It's time to end the war on salt

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L5W2saZ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L5W2saZr9a8J:www.scientificamerican.com/article/its- time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only- thi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we- know-the-truth-about-salt.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER3> The title editorializes the article, which doesn't single out Chipotle over other food options, and is titled (more accurate ) "What does half your DV of sodium look like?"

</comment><comment><USER4> I would love to know how they built that burrito. There is no such thing as a "Chipotle Burrito", because of the way Chipotle has structured their ordering system. There are literally thousands of possible combinations. Many of the popular combinations do not have nearly that much sodium. Chipotle provides a really great nutrition calculator:

[https://www.chipotle.com/en- us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nut...](https://www.chipotle.com/en- us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutrition_calculator.aspx)

Tips to keep your Chipotle sodium intake low:

* Fewer ingredients means less sodium; pick your components strategically for flavor, not quantity!

* At 690 mg of sodium, enemy #1 is that flour tortilla; go with a bowl or salad instead.

 _Note that the rest of these values are for the burrito bowl, not the burrito (some differ between the two)._

* Stick to the chicken or steak, which have more than 200 mg _less_ sodium than any other meat on the line.

* The brown rice (165 mg) has less than half the sodium of the white rice.

* Surprisingly, the fresh tomato salsa is _loaded_ with sodium at 500 mg; you're better off with less of the spicier green tomatillo salsa.

* Sorry hot fans, the hot red-tomatillo salsa has the same amount of sodium as the fresh tomato :(

* Another one that surprises people is the guacamole (410 mg), but only if you haven't looked at most guacamole recipes.

I recommend going to the Chipotle nutrition calculator and adding everything to a bowl, then look over the list. I found that by cutting out one or two ingredients, we (I always share a bowl with my wife) dramatically reduce our sodium intake.

A bowl with chicken, brown rice, fajita veg, medium (green) salsa, cheese, and lettuce has 1085 mg of sodium and 525 calories. If you split that, you're looking at 543 mg of sodium and 263 calories, which is more than reasonable for a fast food meal. The reality is that the people on the line at Chipotle almost always over-serve the portions, so you end up with at least 30% more than that (at least in my experience). You're still close to a 400 calorie meal, and not doing terrible on the sodium.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been working hard to keep my sodium intake low. It is really hard. Your palate becomes very used to it and some things taste very off without it. Whenever I make a veggie stew it is this battle in my mind of how I want it to taste and how long I want to live.

<comment><USER6> Unless you are hypertensive, there is no evidence you need to do this. Blanket low-salt recommendations are not supported by RCTs.</comment></comment>


Nagios-plugins web site taken over by Nagios - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1054340 <comment><USER2> This is pretty serious! It appears that Nagios did some very underhanded things to gain control of that project.

The bigger concern is that the _new_ maintainers have no reputation and no proven track recording quality, commitment, skills or experience on this project. I would _not_ be happy accepting updates from them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Blog post from Sam Kottler, the maintainer of nagios plugins in fedora/epel on the matter:

[http://words.shk.io/on-the-nagios-plugins-drama](http://words.shk.io/on-the- nagios-plugins-drama)

</comment><comment><USER4> What alternatives to Nagios are out there? I've seen Icinga mentioned today, what else are people using?

<comment><USER5> What about [http://cacti.net/](http://cacti.net/) ? With Weathermap plugin it is quite good thing for performance monitoring. THold and Monitor plugins are for availability monitoring and alerting. It scales very good with Boost plugin, I had 3000+ hosts, 60000+ datasources with total poll time within one minute.

Many prefer Cacti to Zabbix because the latter is clunky and confusing compared to Cacti's simple straightforward approach with plugins.

But I am actually wondering, how alive is Cacti now, because its releases are constantly postponed, and forum is not as alive as it used to be.

<comment><USER6> Cacti is just a graphing tool that sits on top of RRDTool . It doesn't provide up/down monitoring and host/service check scheduling, it doesn't provide features such as alert escalation logic, and a whole bunch of other fairly important things that a monitoring engine such as Nagios does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> monitoring-plugins is a good name. Not branded to any one company, and is a better destination for open-source development of monitoring plugins.

Anybody who really thought about it for a bit, must have known that Nagios LLC would eventually seize control of anything Nagios trademark related.

</comment><comment><USER8> At least the community had the good sense to distribute under the GPL. Its harder to dump a community with that license, so they at least have a chance.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reading through the mailing list thread announcing this, it's clear that Nagios was never really an open project to begin with. As far as the plugins site goes - they transferred domain ownership a couple of years ago. The plugins hosted on the site are compatible with Nagios and all it's forks.

This outcome and the way it happened should surprise no one.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't read that exchange trail in the issue tracker without hearing this Life of Brian sketch in my head:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE) (some NSFW language)

</comment><comment><USER11> What about Nagios itself? Maybe it needs a fork.

<comment><USER12> Been done.

[https://www.icinga.org/faq/why-a-fork/](https://www.icinga.org/faq/why-a- fork/)</comment></comment>


What to do with $300k? - <AUTHOR>

A friend of mine was telling me that he has $300k saved up and he wanted to see if I have any advice for him as far as what he can do with it. It got me thinking, you hear a lot about how cash is king these days, but what can really be done with $300k? Buy a commercial property? You have to pay 30% down, so $300k would buy you a $900k property, which isn't much in CA real estate market. And who's gonna rent it? Seems like there are plenty vacant ones already. Invest in stocks, that would be a total roller coaster ride? Start a startup?
The sad truth that I realized last night was that $300k isn't a lot of money these days.
What do you gals/guys think he should do with the money?
DISCLAIMER: This is a fake account to keep my friends identity confidential. <comment><USER2> You could live a comfortable lower middle-class life in fly-over America for more than a decade on 300k. I think I might take a 10 year vacation and just work on all of the little projects I've always wanted to get around to trying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, that would be nice. But he was looking for investment/business ideas. He's in his mid 30s and I don't think is ready to retire just yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a tough one. I'm not sure there's any answer I could recommend to someone who didn't want to invest the time and effort required to gain some expertise about it. Certainly there are opportunities in the stock markets, the commodities markets, and the currency markets right now, but I wouldn't recommend any of those for novices. Real estate is probably easier, but this is not a great time for it. And yet leaving it in CDs isn't very attractive these days either.

If he could find a good investment advisor, that person could show him how to set up a diversified portfolio. Really, that's probably the best plan. However, I don't know how to find a good advisor; I'm sure even this requires some work. And if they told him to put a lot of his money in stocks, as they might, I'm not sure that would be good advice at the moment.

Starting a startup is something that has to come from within. If he's not already doing it, it's not a good plan.

Really, I think the only good advice I can give is to do some soul-searching, and explore some possibilities (without actually spending any of it yet), and figure out what he wants to do with it. From the sound of it, that in itself is likely to be a big project that he could spend the next year or two on.

</comment><comment><USER4> He should go and see a qualified wealth advisor - in fact several - and try to develop a structured diverse folio of investments.

300k isn't a lot now, but it can make his retirement a lot more comfortable.

<comment><USER5> Do you know what that would cost? I'm just wondering if you're talking $300 consultation, $1000 or what?

Even 0.5% ($1500) spent carefully on advice could turn out to be the best thing possible.

<comment><USER4> There shouldn't be an initial consultation cost, especially with $300k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By far the best investments are the ones where you can play a major role in determining their return. So basically business ventures.

As for passive investments, if you buy David Swenson's argument that asset class is almost everything (timing and picks are really hard) then what to invest in depends a lot on your macro outlook. Personally I'm bearish on bonds, US residential and commercial real estate, and USD/euro, and bullish on Asian stocks and commodities.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are target funds that your friend can invest in. Basically you pick a retirement date, and the portfolio will auto adjust as your retirement approaches, e.g. it may invest more in stocks in the beginning and become more risk adverse over time. I'm not a financial advisor, just an engineer, but I do like Vangaurd funds because it's low cost.

</comment><comment><USER8> RED is a safe bet!

</comment><comment><USER9> Well...Apple stock could do well.

</comment><comment><USER10> What's his risk tolerance?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know, but I assume moderate. I guess it wouldn't be terrible to lose 20% of his investment if there's an 80% gain chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> BRK-B or 2 shares of BRK-A

</comment><comment><USER12> Move to a developing country and retire. If you get bored, you can always work again.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd take 50% of that, invest in a highly diversified portfolio, earning me an aggressive average of 12.5% with little to no diversifiable risk. Then take the other half and seed my own start-up earning me a significantly higher RoR. Before you know it that measly 300K is now worth 30Mil

<comment><AUTHOR> What's a diversified portfolio these days?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some cool self-hosted tools like Sendy? - <AUTHOR> Amid the ever-growing number of subscription SaaS companies, I love that there are still awesome self-hosted tools like Sendy (bulk emails using AWS SES for delivery) out there. What are some other one-time-fee self-hosted products that rock?<p>I'm not affiliated with Sendy, I'm just using it as an example of a tool that is still actively developed and that has resisted the temptation to switch to a subscription model. <comment><USER2> I built Suet - an analytics dashboard and reporting tool for Mailgun transactional mails.

Source: [https://github.com/kehers/suet](https://github.com/kehers/suet). Managed: [https://suet.co](https://suet.co)</comment>


This Is How iPad Multitasking Should Look - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/12/this-is-how-ipad-multitasking-should-look/

<comment><USER2> That's a horrible idea! I _like_ that iOS is app focussed; it's one of the stronger facets of it's UI. This is solving the wrong problem. As the author points out, gestures already make switching apps easy.</comment>


Ask HN: 2018: What are the 2 most helpful software that you use in your life? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> trello and zapier for my newish professional services business in Shanghai. I barely use them properly and they are allowing me to scale with 2 people and I am far from maxing out capabilities. Good for internal processes, client facing material, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> emacs

<comment><USER4> i came here to post the same thing..</comment></comment>