Let's relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/12/9/13881712/move-government-to-midwest <comment><USER2> I've worked with a lot of ex-federal employees that left mostly due to cost of living in DC (need a married couple both working with a federal salary to live anywhere close to work) and not enjoying the incredible sprawl of the area. Always fantasized about government jobs being relocated to less populated areas. Would be a great chance to develop better planned cities or help rejuvenate areas.

Just a fantasy though. About as likely as high-speed rail from SF to NY.

<comment><USER3> It's been done before, check out Brasilia, Yamoussoukro, Naypyidaw more recently.

I think it's fair to say that it's not been a massive success, and that federal employees generally did/do everything they could to stay in the old capital.

Aside from the fact that the entertainment and cultural options available tend to be limited, distance from the rest of the family and friends, as well as the perspective of being tied very strongly to a single employer are usually unappealing.

You run a real risk of losing anyone senior/competent, and keeping only the most junior of your staff, who have no other option but to relocate.

To stand any chance of success, I would think that the process needs to be fairly gradual, with good transport connections with the historical centres of activity.

<comment><USER4> DC itself is an example of a new planned city for a government capital. It just happens to be pretty old (for a US city).

<comment><USER3> Yes, but it was created from scratch rather than relocated from a pre-existing well-established capital. It was also set up relatively close to the large cities at that time, unlike the examples I've given, or a location deep in the Midwest.

<comment><USER4> The majority of the Midwest is within 200 miles of a major population center. And then any effort to establish more government offices would tend to choose areas at least nearby existing centers.

(You can check this with chains like Cleveland-Detroit-Chicago-St Louis-Kansas City; each interval is less than 300 miles)

I don't disagree that it would need to be an incremental process.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like we agree completely then, 200/300 miles is just the kind of distance that a high-speed train is perfect for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Although I don't think this is feasible or even necessarily the right thing to do, I personally am dying to go back to the Midwest.

Coming from beautiful, friendly, cold Northern Michigan, I'd be ecstatic to get out of the DC area, but good luck moving the other 10,000 NASA employees.

It's a different culture in the Midwest. Some good, some bad, but overall I personally prefer the ability to have friendly conversations with strangers back home than the (generalizing here) awkward, egotistical, self-interested metropolitan area here. The first questions you are asked in DC are inevitably "Where do you work?" and "What's your title?". That being said, DC is a beautiful city and there's a lot of great things here.

But still, I'd much prefer to be camping on a beach on Lake Michigan...

<comment><USER6> I think you are really stereotyping here. I suspect your impressions are based more on your social circles than the actual culture. If your circles are in work related settings or with other transplants from outside D.C., the experienice is a lot different than if interacting with D.C. natives. Likewise for non midwesterners who move to the Midwest.

<comment><USER5> You certainly have a point, and I definitely was generalizing.

My social circles consist mostly of international folks who work in various agencies and laboratories, and a few who work in private industry.

My biggest fault with DC (and most of the east coast to be honest) is just the difficulty of starting a conversation with someone. It seems like a lot of people walk around with their heads down here (either glued to a phone or the pavement) so as to avoid making eye contact. Folks here also give me strange looks when I say "sorry" all the time.

But hey, different cultures and different strokes. Not saying one is objectively better, but I definitely know which one I prefer personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Management 101: Go back to reading peopleware before taking (or suggesting) stupid decisions.

All case studies ever done about relocating an entire company to far away have _always_ gone bad.

People didn't follow. Of the few who did, some will realize next year that it was a bad idea and leave. All your present and past employees will distrust you because you forced them to abandon their life.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's on a different scale, but in the UK the BBC decided to move a lot of their operations out of London. This was party done as a political move to spread the jobs out from the south east of the UK to the north of England, which is in a similar postindustrial situation to the Midwest (I presume).

They needed up moving most of the tech and R&D departments, children's programming, and see news, sport, and radio shows.

</comment><comment><USER9> Judging by comments it fees like the HN crowd has an incredibly warped view of the Midwest. It is amusing because it is a rather great place to live.

<comment><USER10> A lot of snobbish comments here IMO, coming from Europe I'm getting an image of the Midwest as a place where 99% people work in agriculture and don't know how to read or write.

<comment><USER11> It's a very misleading stereotype because where I grew up in the Midwest, seemingly 80% of my classmates had a parent who was an engineer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author suggests moving all 20k NIH employees to Cleveland, and seems to think that all 20k will go along with this instead of finding different employment that doesn't involve uprooting their families and moving to Ohio.

<comment><USER13> The basic premise may be disruptive in a "Big Bang" move but could be accomplished gradually by building new facilities and shifting project flow over time.

Also, the DoD makes fast changes like this all the time as the result of BRAC. Government employees don't tend to just up and change jobs - they are career workers who like the stability and promise of a pension.

<comment><USER14> Would the German experience of transitioning from Bonn to Berlin be of much relevance here?

<comment><USER15> It's STILL not completed, over two and a half decades after the wall fell. The amount of money wasted is incredible (7.5M € in 2016 in direct costs, [http://www.merkur.de/politik/hendricks-stellt-bericht-zum- bo...](http://www.merkur.de/politik/hendricks-stellt-bericht-zum-bonn-berlin- umzug-vor-zr-6828708.html)), not to mention wasted time and the loss of efficiency because teams and management are split across Germany.

<comment><USER14> Really! I had no idea. I barely ever see a reference to Bonn in anything I read about Germany these days; I'd formed the impression that everyone had moved in the 90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pretty weird to see a discussion of the economy in the midwest without a single mention of Chicago - you know, the third largest city in the US... ;)

<comment><USER17> Just moved out of Chicago. Would not recommend. Besides the north corner and downtown the city and state are broke poor and crime ridden.

Enjoy your insane taxes without much to show for it. Chicago is notorious for corruption and the massive state budget routinely evaporates and screws everyone

<comment><USER16> FWIW, I moved back to Chicago from SF. Would totally recommend. World class cultural institutions (SFBA can feel a little provencial at times), great quality of life, super affordable for a city of its stature so starting a business is much much cheaper here.

To each their own, but if you think taxes or politics are broken here, you've clearly not experienced SF. :)

<comment><USER17> Didn't move there either for many of the same reasons :) . Nicer weather but otherwise most of the same issues

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Already exists. It's called the Denver Federal Center.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> Back in the early 90's the CIA had planned to move to WV; never happened obviously.

<comment><USER20> Sen. Byrd moved a bunch of federal facilities to the part of WV closest to DC. No entire departments, but significant back-office operations are there. Here's an FBI example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Criminal_Justice_Informati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Criminal_Justice_Information_Services_Division)

Looks like Byrd was behind the attempted CIA move, here's how that ended: [http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal92-...](http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal92-1108662)

<comment><USER21> For context: the `Sen. Byrd` referred to above was the senator from West Virginia from 1959 to 2010. Clearly, he was trying to get federal dollars for his state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really do enjoy the DC area, however I would love to be back in the Chicago area. Sure it would be a locality pay cut, but housing is so much more affordable.

</comment><comment><USER23> The supposed precedent for this is that DC survived sequestration?

The worst thing to happen during sequestration was a week or two of furloughs -- the author is proposing the permanent removal of tens of thousands of jobs.

More than half of federal employees are over 45. So you're either forcing them to uproot their families, or (more likely) forcing them to switch careers at an age where that's not so easy.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are government agencies and regional offices in the midwest already. DFAS in Indianapolis, for example, is housed in one of the largest government buildings outside of the Pentagon. [1]

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

</comment><comment><USER25> 66% of Americans live within 100 miles of the border. It would make more sense to move all the Americans living in the middle (sometimes middle of nowhere) and focus on making the cost of living in major cities more affordable; 9 of the top 10 cities are all within 100 miles of the border.

<comment><USER26> Have you considered that some of the 34% of people living in 'the middle' prefer to live there? I find it hard to believe you are seriously advocating the forced relocation of citizens in the name of making 'more sense'...

<comment><USER25> I'm suggestioning that American stop subsidizing vast unpopulated areas of its country for the benefit of a subset of the country. Once the subsidies are deverted, the areas will naturally depopulate.

<comment><USER19> Subsidize? Maybe those vastly unpopulated areas of the country ought to stop feeding those 100 miles from the coast.

<comment><USER27> I agree with you. I constantly hear (especially during election season) about how the blue coastal states are basically 'subsidizing' the idiots from fly over country - some statistics about tax payments and farm subsidies tossed out to make the case.

In reality, the situation is reversed. The US largest export, by FAR, is agriculture and meat, almost none of which comes from the coasts.

If you want to count GDP, do you really think that the trillions of dollars of bank profits from lower Manhattan are really as important to the economy of the US as the trillions of dollars of corn, soy beans, wheat, beef, pork, etc that's produced in the Midwest? The former is just redistribution of wealth, the latter is actually traded to other countries.

How bout all that energy produced in Oklahoma, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Texas? Do you think the US would miss it more than they'd miss the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in DC on mostly dubious military spending or on the thousands of silicon valley companies finding creative ways to serve tracking ads?

In reality, if the red states and blue states separated from each other, you'd have one nation with massive real exportable wealth divided by a small population, and another nation with mostly printed and worthless dollars backed by non exportable services, divided by a huge amount of people and their unfunded entitlements.

<comment><USER25> Less than 1% of the GDP if you're being generous: [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food- statistic...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics- charting-the-essentials/ag-and-food-sectors-and-the-economy.aspx)

What am I missing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> So this guy wants just a little bit of a planned economy. Not too much, mind you. Just the right amount.

Newsflash: If doing business gets easier, then more business will be done. More business leads to more economic activity and more jobs.

It's not that complicated.

<comment><USER29> But momentum is definitely factor. Once you have a successful city/region, people flock there, often to the point of overcrowding. Businesses want to be where the "talent" is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So move jobs to a place where people don't want to be?

<comment><USER31> You can move the jobs without moving all the people. There are a lot of people outside of the DC Metro area who have the necessary qualifications for most federal jobs.

When I was a kid, my father worked for a federal agency in an office that was two hours from Washington and, for some reason, they moved all 400 jobs out of our town to Philadelphia. The jobs all moved even though many of the people didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How much of the money that would be re-injected into these communities was taken via taxes in the first place?

<comment><USER33> [https://mises.org/blog/which-states-rely-most-federal- spendi...](https://mises.org/blog/which-states-rely-most-federal-spending)

The current situation is that 39 of the 50 states get back more in Federal spending than they put in in Federal Taxes.</comment></comment>


Real-Life Telepathy is closer than you think - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/real-life-telepathy-is-closer-than-you-think <comment><USER2> This is a repost. They can transmit one bit (rotate or don't rotate) with about 85% accuracy. That's not nothing, but it's not that much either.</comment>


SCI Runs OpenVMS on x86-64 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciinc.com/remotevms/vms_techinfo/vms_news/OpenVMSOnX86-64.asp <comment><USER2> VSI (now called VMS Software?) just uploaded a webinar talking about their roadmap for OpenVMS, including the new hobbyist program.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYmHGp9Z3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYmHGp9Z3c)

<comment><USER3> Oh cool! What are they doing for the new hobbyist program?

<comment><USER4> I am going to attempt to transcribe what was said about the Hobbyist Programme:

The last thing that I wanted to touch on has to do with a new community licensing programme. I have been with VSI almost 3 years and everywhere I've had a chance to talk to people or go to events, I am always asked about Hobbyist Licenses. I'm pleased to let you know we are introducing a new community license programme which will begin in the fall of 2020. As many of you are aware, HPE allowed those on the HPE Hobbyist License programme to make one additional request or purchase of the HP version of OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses towards the end of last year and with that programme winding down, we have gone ahead and decided to proceed with a similar programme called the Community Licensing Programme. The content available will be basically for Integrity users and for Alpha users. There will not be anything for VAX users, no VAX licenses. There will be some requirements placed upon the user in terms of agreeing to our end user license agreement, our EULA, and also the stipulation that these are not to be used for commercial gain or for commercial use and there will also be some limitations in terms of what the users get but we believe it will be robust enough for you to do the things that you wish to do. So again, we're delighted to announce this programme and delighted to be working with you for all of these changes that are going on and we're excited. We appreciate you, we appreciate the business that we receive, and the good news is that we are continuing to grow. And also regarding the community license we do anticipate the same for x86. So with that I would like to now turn the time over to Mr. Clair Grant. ...

(sorry for any errors or omissions, please do not regard my poor attempt at transcription as being accurate, I urge you to listen to this section yourself, it starts at about 7 mins 50 seconds)

Personally I'm very sad that VAX licenses will not continue to be provided, as I love the VAX architecture, and have great nostalgic fondness for it.

<comment><USER3> Thank you! Verily, the VAX omission is grievous.

<comment><USER5> They just can't do it due to licensing, without releasing their own VAX build of OpenVMS. That's not going to happen for obviously reasons.

<comment><USER6> I wonder, if you get from VSI an Alpha or Itanium license file for OpenVMS, would OpenVMS for VAX accept the same license file?

People long ago cracked the license key generation for OpenVMS. (Plus, there are various leaked license files floating around, including non-expiring perpetual licenses.) The OpenVMS hobbyist community has always opposed doing that – there is no reason to do that when there is a legal method to run OpenVMS, and there was a concern it would damage relations with HPE thereby threatening the future of the hobbyist program. But, if there stops being any legal way to run OpenVMS on VAX, I wonder if the community attitude would change on that topic?

<comment><USER5> They wont because the PRODUCER value is wrong in the VSI licenses. But you are correct, that for most uses outside of commercial museum systems, its probably not much of an issue since there are license generators out there in the wild.

It is really unfortunate, that a community which has always been highly adverse to software piracy, would be forced into such a situation by HPE to maintain their hobby systems though. At this stage, VAX VMS being out of support for so many years, and having such little commercial value even under emulation, it just seems silly HPE does not issue a perpetual non-comerical license for VAX systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On Oracle Cloud. Strange choice...

But running in a VM is a very good choice. Keeping drivers up to date with continually changing hardware is a fool's errand reserved for Linux, BSD, Apple, and Microsoft developers.

<comment><USER8> They're running it on VirtualBox. That's just a normal desktop VM, nothing cloudy. It happens to be owned by Oracle (through their Sun aquisition), but it's an open source product.

Yes I know it's a strange thought. Someone just running something on their own machines with their own software ...

<comment><USER9> Disclaimer: I work at OCI — Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

> Within an hour of receiving the kit, SCI had OpenVMS V9.0 running in the > Oracle High Performance Cloud inside an Oracle VM VirtualBox environment.

This is confusing. OCI doesn't have a "High Performance Cloud" product. We do have high performance compute, but that is simply latest and greatest hardware via bare metal instances. High performance compute is a standard and long-time part of our portfolio. Perhaps SCI is referencing one of the legacy Oracle cloud products? (I doubt it, Oracle is sun-setting the previous generation of IaaS and migrating all customers to OCI.)

To GP, I don't think choosing Oracle Cloud is a strange choice anymore. 5 years ago pre-OCI, certainly. Perhaps even two years ago when OCI was still new. But it has come a _really_ long way. From feature, performance, and cost perspectives, it's a compelling product.

<comment><USER10> There is this:

[https://www.oracle.com/cloud/solutions/hpc.html](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/solutions/hpc.html)

There's a set of shell scripts linked in there to demo this all, but it uses some feature sets that I haven't heard of at all.

Disclosure: I'm also an OCI employee, but this post is my own opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wrote many thousands of lines of VMS fortran. I had a lot of fun. Maybe I can do it again.

</comment><comment><USER12> OpenVMS is truly remarkable in its journey through time, hardware, and owning corps.!

It's been ported onto different arch several times through its long existence. The previous migration was off Alpha onto Itanium IA64 (Itanic as is known). The port to x86-64 is what should've happened instead. Meanwhile, many companies may have migrated to emulators, or off OpenVMS altogether.

Oh, well, better later ...

Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER13> Can't wait! Loved VMS, and still love it.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is neat, what'll it cost?</comment>


Framer: Prototyping Toolkit - <AUTHOR> http://framerjs.com <comment><USER2> Demos are totally broken on Firefox (OS X)... Better hope you don't have to demo it anywhere besides Chrome.

... This is one of my pet peeves as I'm almost sure it'll work on Chrome.

By targeting only one browser, for no good reason, we're (we being engineers/developers) going to end up with the IE 6 situation all over again. Standards are our friends, not enemies.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like what you guys did there. prototyping is important to show your ideas to clients or friends. But im asking myself for what type of user is this framework?

As a coder i can do mostly the same with jQuery or any other animation framework and have at the end maybe some code i can extend or reuse in the finished product. Also from the example code it looks like it needs still a fair amount of time do get something ready (much code).

As a designer you have to learn code and have to learn this framework to work mostly non visual inside a code editor.

So what is the target audience for this tool?

<comment><USER4> As a developer I can build out an interactive prototype from designs much much faster than by just using jQuery, so I am an audience for this. Proving out interactions early is (usually) much more important than having re-usable code at the start of a project..

Our designers - who know enough code to make use of this tool - can prototype interactions from their designs without asking a developer to help them. They are an audience for this.

Are we really going to have another "why do we need this automation tool when we can do this by hand?" conversation yet again on Hacker News?

<comment><USER5> As a designer, I'd say this is correct. Many of my weeks consist of coming up with concepts, prototyping them quickly, and testing designs on users. The faster I can cycle through this, the better my designs are for users.

In other words, designers favor tools that let them prototype a high volume of designs in a short period of time. Framer lets me work faster than jQuery, and at a higher quality than tools like Axure, Fireworks, OmniGraffle, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I downloaded the app and tried to open it but I got a message saying "Framer Generator is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."

Edit: It looks like Mac OS X is rejecting the apps signature. I was able to open the program by going into Package Contents, modifying the executable to remove the signature and then manually allowing it to open despite the warning about opening apps from unidentified developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Code signing was giving us troubles. But I removed the signatures for now. Thanks for posting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or has Apple become more open than before. Just the other day I saw another website listing Apple as it's customers.

Looks great btw, I am looking forward to play with it at work today.

</comment><comment><USER8> Really great. AFAIK, there is no windows/linux support. I know OS X is pretty universally used by designers but is there a chance we'll see a windows/linux port?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm getting no scrollbars on this page, which makes it hard to...scroll. (Latest Chrome on Windows 7)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some examples with code:

Dropbox Carousel Onboarding: [http://examples.framerjs.com/#Carousel%20-%20Onboarding.fram...](http://examples.framerjs.com/#Carousel%20-%20Onboarding.framer)

Google Now: [http://examples.framerjs.com/#Google%20Now%20-%20Overview.fr...](http://examples.framerjs.com/#Google%20Now%20-%20Overview.framer)

<comment><USER10> Many of the examples seem partially or entirely broken under Chrome 34 (running on Windows 7).

<comment><USER11> Same here, on Firefox 32 / OS X 10.9. There are a few that show some broken- looking elements but nothing ever happens.

<comment><USER10> On the "Questions" page it says that Chrome support is patchy, and Firefox / IE aren't supported at all. So far as I can see this isn't stated upfront on the front page, but is buried. Annoying.

<comment><USER12> What kind of developer releases something for Chrome only?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> nice,so it can import psds directly right? what versions of photoshop does it support? and what about illustrator support?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just added a compatibility table: [http://framerjs.com/more.html#compatibility](http://framerjs.com/more.html#compatibility)</comment>


Deno CRUD API and JWT Authentication - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/22mahmoud/deno_crud_jwt <comment><USER2> Here is my take, I wrote this quickly but I want to add onto it, let me know your thoughts

[https://github.com/Kirbyasdf/deno-auth](https://github.com/Kirbyasdf/deno- auth)

</comment><comment><USER2> will you be finishing this? looking forward to see how you do db migrations and errorhandling...

also do you think it would be better to to pass the db as a client already connected to avoid overhead everytime a request comes through opening a new connection...</comment>


Born in 1980? A mathematical surprise awaits you in 2025 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/born-in-1980-a-mathematical-surprise-awaits-you-in-2025/

<comment><USER2> Summary: roughly once every 100 years in the vicinity of the year 2500, the calendar year will be a square number.

As observations go, this certainly is one.</comment>


Contra Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/isteve/contra-paul-graham/

<comment><USER2> The comments on this article are a rare collection of bigotry, racism and open hatred against Indians. That's insanely stupid.</comment>


How Serverless Computing Will Change the World in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-serverless-computing-will-change-the-world-in-2018-7818fc06b447 <comment><USER2> Already submitted earlier today and still sitting on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16041164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16041164)</comment>


Expectations for WatchKit - <AUTHOR> http://david-smith.org/blog/2014/11/06/expectations-for-watchkit/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's unfortunate that WatchKit probably won't allow you to build fully native apps until WWDC, but I'm looking forward to taking advantage of Glances and actionable notifications in the meantime. Hopefully Glances will allow enough interactivity to compensate for not having full apps.</comment>


Technical Thoughts on OpenShift and Docker - <AUTHOR> https://www.openshift.com/blogs/technical-thoughts-on-openshift-and-docker <comment><USER2> Key quote (for me)

> Portability and reducing lock-in have been core OpenShift values since we > first announced. The truth of the matter is many of our users don't want to > be locked in to OpenShift or any PaaS. We don't want them to be locked in > either.

Not being tied to infrastructure is a pretty amazing feeling. Being able to switch from my VPS to OpenShift, some other Docker-enabled PaaS, bare metal, EC2, or my internal OpenStack cluster seamlessly offers a tremendous amount of choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the combination of Docker style LXC containers and kernel level MAC (i.e. SELinux) is a great approach and helps build upon the "high security" goals of OpenShift.

I was also happy to hear about the resources you're providing to help Docker run on more distros with a better approach to filesystem layering (dm thin). Red Hat is again demonstrating its commitment to and alignment with the larger open source community -- so thank you for that.

The team here at [http://deis.io/](http://deis.io/) welcomes these efforts and looks forward to the development of a healthy Docker PaaS ecosystem.</comment>


Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs - <AUTHOR> https://flipboard.com/@HBR/-why-germany-still-has-so-many-middle-cl/f-d472ddd580%2Fhbr.org <comment><USER2> > Tax advantages are another reason. The high taxes on assets in France and > the inheritance tax in the U.S. prevent the accumulation of capital > necessary for the formation of a strong mid-sized sector.

Really? How?

<comment><USER3> I've heard the argument that, with high inheritance taxes, the heir of a family-owned company has to sell parts or all of the business in order to pay the tax. I don't know enough about the issue to say whether there is some truth to it.

<comment><USER4> The one direct exposure I have had to the issue of inheritance tax was with a small Midwest-based distributor. The owner was very old and wanted to pass the company to his daughters, who had actually been running the business for decades (and when I came along, his granddaughters were working the office).

His issue was that what the government decided his business to be worth could only be paid with more cash than his business generated in 5 years. This meant that his heirs would have to mortgage their shares to cover the inheritance tax, which places ownership into a different category of investment.

<comment><USER5> The owner could have gifted a small interest in the company to each daughter, grand-daughter, and perhaps their spouses in each year of those decades, letting subsequent value growth and inflation accrue to the surviving family members.

And also, perhaps transformed the company ownership structure into a limited partnership as well, claiming a lower market value for the shares owned by limited partners.

tl;dr: First rule of US estate planning: Die broke.

<comment><USER4> I asked the same question, and his response was, "do you really think the government hasn't thought of that already?"

<comment><USER5> Well, the government has thought of it, and, at this point, appears to think it is legal.

Look up "family limited partnership" or see:

[http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...](http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1104&context=elders)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianluster/2014/03/18/why- form...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianluster/2014/03/18/why-forming-a- family-limited-partnership-means-less-stress-at-tax-time/#8658aa8658aa)

Note especially the discount from fair market value for shares of interest in an FLP.

[usual disclaimers - not a lawyer, not legal advice, see a qualified professional in your jurisdiction, etc.]

The problem with tax/estate planning is the same problem as insurance \- the time when you really want to have done it is often the time when it is too late to get it. (e.g., founder/owner is dying, building is flooding or on fire, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He missed the main reason: currency suppression.

Germany has managed to suppress the value of its currency over the years to make its exports artificially cheap, which encouraged growth, creating manufacturing jobs.

It did this firstly through reunification (dragging down the value of the DM) and subsequently by joining the Euro (Southern Europe had the value of their currencies pegged higher than their 'natural' value, Germany's was pegged lower).

Germany's export boom after joining the Euro would have been short lived if they reverted back to the DM as the value of their currency would have risen in value, pushing up the cost of exports, ending the boom. Instead it continued unabated.

China also achieved the same thing largely by buying foreign debt (mostly US treasuries). As did Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, all of which achieved similar results. There's no magic sauce, it's just a question of whether industry takes political precedence over banking (which likes an overvalued currency).

<comment><USER7> I don't understand why this comment is being down voted. While "currency suppression/ currency manipulation" is usually spoken about in association with fraud, this is most certainly one of the reasons that has allowed German manufacturing to remain competitive despite having higher labor costs. Excellent comment.

e.g. see this article on Politico which basically says the same thing: [http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/05/26/trump- right-...](http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/05/26/trump-right-about- germany-trade-000445). The reunification part though: I had not thought about that, and is an interesting revelation.

<comment><USER8> I think the reason this is downvoted is that the situation in Germany is relatively unchanged since before the Euro was introduced. Saying German success is mostly based on the Euro is a great narrative but completely ignores the reality that Germany's economy was already strong and getting stronger in the decades before that.

That's not saying Germany doesn't benefit from the Euro today or that it wouldn't be profoundly stupid for Germany to abandon the Eurozone but it's not an explanation, just a contributing factor.

<comment><USER6> "Saying German success is mostly based on the Euro is a great narrative but completely ignores the reality that Germany's economy was already strong and getting stronger in the decades before that."

Which part of "it wasn't just the Euro, reunification had the same effect" was I unclear about?

<comment><USER9> > Which part of "it wasn't just the Euro, reunification had the same effect" > was I unclear about?

West Germany was before the Euro and before the reunification economically strong.

It was the world's largest exporter in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1990. Around 1960 Germany was already second largest exporter in the world.

Reunification was in October 1990.

<comment><USER6> As far as I was aware it happened in the early-mid 90s:

[http://savingusmanufacturing.com/blog/general/how-did- german...](http://savingusmanufacturing.com/blog/general/how-did-germany-keep- position-as-the-world%E2%80%99s-top-exporter-for-so-long/)

"Germany surpassed the United States to become the world's leading exporter in 1992, around the time that Germany joined the European Union as a founding member."

<comment><USER9> As I said Germany was already the world's second largest exporter in 1960. Behind the US, which has 4 times the population.

Germany then became the largest exporter in 86, 87, 88, 90, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.

In 2016 Germany is the third largest exporter after China and the US. The account surplus (goods, services and investments) was the largest, next is China.

<comment><USER6> Where is this data?

<comment><USER9> For example: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exportweltmeister](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exportweltmeister)

[https://unstats.un.org/unsd/trade/imts/Historical%20data%201...](https://unstats.un.org/unsd/trade/imts/Historical%20data%201900-1960.pdf)

Percentage of world exports in 1960:

United States 16%

West Germany 9%

UK 7.8%

France 5.4%

[https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/wtr13-2b_e.pdf](https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/wtr13-2b_e.pdf)

Percentage of world merchandize exports in 1980:

USA 11%

West Germany 9.5%

Japan 6.4%

China 0.9%

Thus the claim that Germany is a leading exporter because of Euro currency manipulation fails to explain why Germany was one of the leading exporters in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and 2010s. In all those years it was in the top three.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is a big contributor:

A further pillar of the Hidden Champions' competitive strength is the unique German dual system of apprenticeship, which combines practical and theoretical training in non-academic trades. The Hidden Champions invest 50% more in vocational training than the average German company.

I think a 4 year college degree does not make sense for a lot of jobs. It just puts students with more debt, and sometimes skills that don't lead to a job.

<comment><USER11> We have similar educational system here in Czech Republic. There are numerous pros and cons. Basically at the age of 15 you have to choose what you want to do with your life as changing careers are not that simple. And lets be honest, most of 15 years old kids have no idea what they want to spend rest of their life doing.

I did take this technical route (focusing on electronics, computer networking and programming) and it give me some edge when I started my CS degree, but further study of medicine, law or even art is out of question as I don't had any theoretical basics for those majors. All I study during my high school was mathematics, physics and specialised subjects.

<comment><USER10> In america you are required to take english, math, physics, chemistry etc. in high school. I am just talking about the post high school years.

<comment><USER11> Well, it is different system here and in Germany. Vocational study or technical high school is limiting your choices of uni and career paths.

Post high school you either go work (you already spent few years on the job during school) or uni.

There are tons of jobs that are closed to you when you choose wrong path at the age of 14 or 15 and it is really hard to change the tracks.

It is good system for manufacturing companies and economy, but not that great for some people.

<comment><USER12> What makes it really hard to change tracks? I imagine if there were enough political will, that's a solvable problem.

<comment><USER13> It's not true. At least for Germany. Take a friend of mine for example: He went to Hauptschule (Germany has a 3-tier school system where children are split up after primary school, Hauptschule is for the least skilled children). He left Hauptschule a year early with very bad grades to start an apprenticeship with a carpenter. After three years of school and practival training he graduated to journeyman with honors (i.e. all grades: A). This gives you a scholarship for master school or college (if you want). He chose master school and earned the master craftsman degree. He finished that with honors, too and got another scholarship. Now he actually went to university to get a bachelor in something called wood-technology.

In many academic traits it's actually beneficial to go for an apprenticeship first. Architects often become carpenters of masons before studying architecture, a friend of mine who's a nurse got her Dr. med. last week. The list could go on for a while.

<comment><USER11> But thats one track. Say you went carpenter route when you were 15 and now you want to study medicine or electronics or CS. You are going to lack basic background: even with master school it is really going to be tough to learn all the chemistry, mathematics, biology or physics that is required for those majors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article grinds too many axes to be as insightful as it could be. E.g., "[T]he inheritance tax in the U.S. prevent the accumulation of capital necessary for the formation of a strong mid-sized sector." is just casually tossed in there.

</comment><comment><USER15> Germany is a highly decentralized country. Maybe go and study in one of the metropolitan areas but then return to their beloved villages far away from the maddening crowds. In fact many of these hidden champions are in the "middle of nowhere" with often sub-par logistics (e.g. no immediate Autobahn or major train connection).

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the most important factor has been missed: planned luck. All the countries (in Europe) who are having success today are the ones who had a crisis (each for a different reason) in the '90s and made structural reforms. During the crisis in the 2000s and 2010s, these countries (Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, etc.) were leaner, more flexible than their "competitors". Fun fact, most of these countries are protestant. It would be interesting to have an explanation for this correlation.

<comment><USER17> Max Weber has you covered: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism)

However, the German economic powerhouses are the Southern states - all of which are predominantly Catholic

<comment><USER3> In Baden-Württemberg (the South Western state), 37% are catholic and 33% are part of the official evangelical church, with likely a few in smaller protestant groups. Likewise for franconia, which is mostly within the state of Bavaria.

<comment><USER17> I'm not the one in this thread claiming causation but if there is correlation it is in Germany almost certainly between Catholicism and economic output rather than Protestantism: [https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Römisch- katholische_Kirche_i...](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Römisch- katholische_Kirche_in_Deutschland#/media/Datei%3AKatholisch_Zensus_2011.png)

<comment><USER3> I doubt the effect of denomination would be very big, so not taking into account much stronger factors (e.g. West vs East), this map doesn't say anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, that's a pretty appalling article.

Seems to avoid even mentioning the desire of most of Europe to try and learn from what went wrong after the Great War. In 1918-1930 Germany was left so weakened by peace treaties that the seeds were sown for WW2.

Post-WW2 the allies felt that a Germany crippled would only bring future wars, and a huge co-ordinated effort to build a sustainable industry and economic growth was put into motion. Germany and the people of Germany should profit from peace. Part of this was the Marshall Plan, part the European Recovery Program.

This positioned Germany to have a couple of advantages, namely that the Victorian era mass production methods that had been pioneered could be discarded (but remained in place in a lot of the other European developed countries). In Germany these were fully replaced by WW2 era production methods as most of Germany's industrial capability had been destroyed or damaged.

Additional processes to limit industrial capabilities (the key method of which was limiting steel output of the Ruhr Valley, which acted to restrain all industry) meant that industry was incentivised to find a larger profit per unit rather than slimmer margins from more units.

Combined with not being able to maintain a military, Germany was able to invest in skilled manufacturing like no-one else were able to.

Over a course of 50 years this resulted in not just a modern manufacturing capability to be put in place, but for that to be at the very highly skilled end of manufacturing.

The reason so many of the mid-sized market leaders come from Germany can be traced back to post-WW2 policies to ensure that Europe could be at peace. Some of these policies were undoubtedly exploitative in the short term, but long term have achieved their goal.

<comment><USER19> > (most of Germany's industrial capability had been destroyed or damaged)

Tony Judt in Post War ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29658.Postwar](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29658.Postwar)) actually claims that this is patently false. That Germany actually came out of WW2 with most of its industry intact (it was away from the most bombed cities and majority of fighting actually happened in France/Poland/USSR) and was in significantly better shape than Frace and UK industry-wise. As an added bonus, the industrial lines were freshly retooled, significantly more modern than the ones in France and UK and its wartime focus could be rather rapidly converted into highly profitable peacetime industries that were highly sought after in 20th century economic boom (chemistry, car manufacturing, electronics, etc.)

The fact that BRD didn't have to support and invest into standing army also funneled investment into emerging industries - investment that was way slower to come in destroyed France and exausted UK.

Was he wrong? Are there any sources contradicting his research?

<comment><USER20> if Germany had more intact pre-WWII industrial sites than is commonly portrayed, that makes the original question even more interesting. how did German industry become, and remain, so competitive in the first place?

the US also had intact industrial sites after WWII, but its middle class job base has not been so well preserved in the face of recent global competition.

<comment><USER21> May have something to do with taxes and maybe more effective use of public funds? Germans are taxed at higher rates (and more importantly, lower thresholds for higher rates) compared to the US or UK, so the distribution seems more even, allowing a larger middle class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of the Hidden Champions are publicly traded companies. Companies of that size are very likely to be acquired in the US. Consolidation is a constant activity by many public firms and probably (I am speculating) tends to reduce the proportion of mid-tier companies relative to Germany.

Once acquired, these companies have an additional set of factors weighing on them in that the founding team is likely to leave, budgets are controlled by, and, profits are sent to an external firm. Those three factors will reduce the company's ability to determine it's own fate.

<comment><USER23> A significant part of the Mittelklasse is certainly part of the car industry. Maybe BMW, Audi, etc are not that keen on acquiring?

<comment><USER24> In the US, the big three automakers generally don't acquire small companies. A lot of work in the industry is done by companies like Delphi (who also have sites in Germany)

<comment><USER23> Is the car industry a significant factor? How does Detroit compare to Germany?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >Germany is far ahead of other large countries with regard to mental internationalization. This includes language competencies, international experience from student exchanges, and university studies. Countries such as France, Italy, Japan, and Korea lag far behind in these respects.

Don't know much about France or Italy, but know enough about Korea and to a lesser extent Japan about how important language and international studies are for an already overly rigorous education system.

That along with the bombshell assertion without evidence that the inheritance tax is the greatest burdens companies face today removes any credibility from the rest of the article.

<comment><USER26> > That along with the bombshell assertion without evidence that the > inheritance tax is the greatest burdens companies face today removes any > credibility from the rest of the article.

You disagree with one point [1] and question another, so for that reason you discount the entire article? If you can't align new information with your existing mental model, then the new information must be completely wrong?

This attitude has become so pervasive and so pernicious. Somehow even information has become partisan.

[1] BTW, do _you_ have enough familiarity with Germany to make this comparison, or are you holding the author to a higher standard than yourself?

<comment><USER25> There is at least one enormous falsehood in the article, and in another, a large political assertion made as though everyone agrees with it.

Of course I'm holding the author to a higher standard. Mine is a comment on HN, the other is an article by a purported expert on a specific topic.

Information isn't partisan, but it inevitably ends up used for partisan purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What people overlook, also this linked pieces is, that Germany also has the banking system for this. You can say, there are three types of banks, private, state and co-op banks. And while there are huge private banks, most state and co-op banks are organised locally. Almost every district has its own Sparkasse und many towns still have a Volksbank or Reifeisenbank.

This is an important feature of the economics in Germany I think. Yes, many of these banks might be too small today and many merge into bigger banks but they are still the most trusted banks in the country.

</comment><comment><USER28> Perhaps this means Germany could suffer disproportionately as a result of automation. It's also worth pointing out that Germany is not immune to global trends that may erode the ability to sell based on quality - I recently bought a 2001 BMW E39, thought by many to be the best BMW ever made. In fixing up the E39 I've come across the same opinion over and over again: BMWs/German cars in general are not as well made as they used to be.

Edit: I'm not saying _my_ E39 is thought to be the best BMW ever made of course :D

<comment><USER29> If anything Germany will suffer from the consequences of not investing in education for the past four decades as we are already seeing the lack of capable, well-trained, high skilled workers.

German education basically has been focussed on producing low level work forces and ignoring the rest, you can see that clearly while hiring.

<comment><USER30> This is not correct. We are quite over educated here in the high skilled workforce - nowadays much more students, meister and techniker everywhere, and sure we have created a low wage sector recently as well, but this is another story and represents a much smaller share of the entire workforce.

<comment><USER29> Have you tried checking out some of these students these days? Have you missed the shortage notes about classical Meister, etc. roles given out the past decade?

Also low wage sector is a few million people (last official numbers are about 8 million people). Compare that to high skilled workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Related: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUjqQZLbKgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUjqQZLbKgA)

</comment><comment><USER4> One thing not listed in the article is that German tax policy is very export- friendly.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think our education system is pretty solid and well equipped to deal with tomorrows challenges and create competent employees (this is just briefly addressed in the article). While our education system is pointlessly complicated, a typical product of german bureaucracy, it's surprisingly flexible. If you want a job in Germany, you have do get some form of a degree. Especially "hidden champions" don't hire unskilled labourers, ever. There are essentially 3 options:

1\. the apprenticeship: Still popular it is the most practical of the three. It takes a few years where you learn to master all the basics, even if its in practice handled by a machine, but also all the necessary theoretic backgrounds so that you know what you are doing. All the practical skills are taught at the company and there are (mostly) special schools for the theoretic parts. Also important: The apprentice already earns something during his apprenticeship! For some, depending on the individual circumstances, this is very important. Also you apply your skills as soon as possible, since the company already pays you, it tries to get you productive as soon as possible. Apprenticeship are no joke, they produce hard working, competent and practical employees. There are A LOT of companies looking for apprentices right now and not enough applicants.

2\. the "dual study system"(direct translation): This is getting more and more popular and for many it is the right choice. It's a mix between apprenticeship and a university study. Half of your time you spend at your company, the other half you study at special "applied university"-like institutions(legally, they are not universities in Germany). I think especially for CS, most would be in good hands in these programs. They don't focus on super-theoretical stuff, they are very practical while providing your with a valid bachelor-degree in the end. For some subjects, the dual is the better option. The applied universities are not super focused on research and staffed with professors coming from the industry. They will teach you real-world, relevant stuff without neglecting the theoretical basics. After the bachelor, you have the choice to delve deeper into research with a master, either at this institution or switching to a traditional university. Also, you get paid during your study.

3\. the university study: Well, this is essentially the same compared to your universities beside that it's free ;) They are often way more theoretical then the dual-study system. You have to be motivated by your material, since it's not immediately useful. Also in germany as an university student you are very independent, nobody pushes you to go to your lectures, take the tests or do your weekly problem set. Many get too relaxed and perform better in a more controlled environment. But if you're interested in the theoretical side of your subject and you want get a more academically demanding degree, the university is the right choice.

As a CS-student in germany, automation and digitalisation of factories (industry 4.0, as we call it) is the buzzword heard everywhere and i think this system is equipped to handle the challenge. Don't underestimate the apprentices, they know their stuff. 2-3,5 years of training are separating him from unskilled labor.

</comment><comment><USER33> Germany's real secret is that they don't pay their engineers.

An engineer, even with a PhD from a world class university, makes around 55k. Even in cities like Munich they will laugh about you if you request 60k.

Sure, if you have tons of experience, industry contacts etc., maybe more SOMETIMES. But let's get back to the 55k. A short internet search (www.nettolohn.de) tells us this is approximately 2600 Euro net pay per month. And this is for a full time job that is likely very stressful and comes with tons of responsibility. An English teacher in China (Shanghai, Beijing) can make 3000 Euro net a month.

Even if you claim my numbers are a bit off. It gives you an idea.

<comment><USER34> First of all, you have to adjust this for the cost of living and the fact that employers have to pay about half of the health insurance and retirement savings cost on top of the salary as well as three or four weeks of payed holidays etc. 55k Euros in Munich is easily worth more than $100k in the US.

Second, a CS graduate can certainly get 60k in Munich and a PhD will likely have 70k or more. At BMW this may be 80k or more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Rarely mentioned is the fact that post-war Germany turned to free markets, hence the "German Miracle". This persisted until 1970 or so, when the German economy turned significantly towards socialism and big government.

<comment><USER36> It seems they did well both before and after 1970. So???

<comment><USER35> The growth rate flattened out after 1970.</comment></comment></comment>


iOS: Preparing Your App to Be the Default Browser or Email Client - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/allowing_apps_and_websites_to_link_to_your_content/preparing_your_app_to_be_the_default_browser_or_email_client <comment><USER2> Is this new? i haven't been following their stance on these things for a while and not sure if this is a big deal or not.

<comment><USER3> It is new and a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just browser and email clients that can be registered as default? What about e.g. SMS messaging apps like signal?</comment>


The week Garfield died. Analysis & comics - <AUTHOR> http://teaching.zachwhalen.net/comics/content/when-funnies-arent-so-funny-anymore-or-week-garfield-died <comment><USER3> While reading this, I couldn't help but feel that it had the tenor of an english lit assignment... then realised that it was exactly that.

A+ notwithstanding.

<comment><USER4> That tenor, the idea of it, the very thought, comes with little, almost no practice whatsoever. You, the reader, are astute in making this observation, however English Lit. is more than a tenor, it is a soprano of the highest order!

(English lit. encourages students to write essays that include unnecessary words or phrases. Bullshitting is a fine art apparently)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds be of the great Garfield minus Garfield (The standard strip, but with Garfield removed): <http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/>

It's actually brilliant - Apparently J. Davis loves + approves of it too - says it bought a whole new perspective to his work.

<comment><USER6> See also the Nietzsche](http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/) Family Circus.

<comment><USER7> You might want to check out <http://scottmeetsfamilycircus.tumblr.com/> in that case. Quite funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of a much dark, and wittier, comic (imo): <http://pbfcomics.com>.

<comment><USER9> PBF is definitely edgy. It often makes me feel that I shouldn't be laughing at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's plausible that Jim Davis was on vacation that week, and somebody with some talent filled in. Then he came back unfortunately.

<comment><USER7> By the time this came out, Davis wasn't writing his own Garfield strips anymore. I remember him saying in an interview that he thought this week was a "fun joke" to play on readers. He obviously didn't read much into it.

Am I alone in really wishing this sort of thing wasn't on Hacker News? Not just because it deals with comics, but because it makes a mockery of real analysis. Garfield is not art. It's brilliant marketing, but no actual content - not by the time this strip had been created, anyway. Analysis like this distracts from the analysis that really matters: analysis that might introduce casual readers to an entirely new medium. I'm not exactly a comics maven, but I remember reading a strip-by-strip analysis of Krazy Kat, a comic that absolutely does benefit from such analysis. It got me into that entire era of comicry. There are more recent comics that benefit from such analysis. Peanuts. Bloom County. Calvin & Hobbes. Each has strips that benefit from really thinking, panel by panel.

This? A mockery! Nothing interesting is happening. The person that made these strips was just stringing along clichéd views. The only interesting thing is that it happened in a strip that's usually punchline after punchline - <USER2> comic itself is bland, derivative, and in fact quite bad. This isn't the "I'm upside down" of Peanuts, or the pterodactyl flying away in Calvin & Hobbes. This is bullshit. And the analysis is bullshit compounding bullshit. It's a disgrace. Stuff like this is why people mock the sorts of analysis that really ought to be praised.

<comment><USER11> Should I send you a box of matches, perhaps you'd be interested in burning his article?

There is no "right" intellectualism, thinking about things and analyzing things does not first have to pass through a filter created by you on what is right to think about, and what not.

Your statement is awful because it advocates the creation of a limited and closed world, with only special topics being "worthy" of thought.

<comment><USER7> You're fighting a straw man. I never said things weren't worthy of thought, or that there is shame in thinking about really stupid things. I said that I disliked the attention it was receiving on Hacker News. To take it to one extreme, while I'd never tell somebody that writing fanfiction was bad, I wouldn't nominate it for a Pulitzer. I wouldn't give the writer awards. I recall reading something wherein a fanfic writer was complaining that the lack of published fanfiction novels was "censorship" on behalf of publishers. Similarly, is it censorship for my to say I _don't_ want awful, nonintellectual papers on Hacker News? No.

The problem with _your_ statement (I won't call it awful) is that the flip side of intellectualism is that there are standards to be had. It means that while I can't deny people thought, I _can_ choose to rebut the things that they say, which I attempted to do. I didn't just say "Garfield, shit, censor." I said, "I dislike this, because it makes it look like analysis is merely bullshitting about really simple things."

This article isn't thought-provoking. It doesn't teach anything unless you've never seen these comics before. Even now, I doubt anybody gets _anything_ out of the article - all they get, they get from the comics. The article is fluff. By criticizing it, I wasn't denying high schoolers the right to critique! Far from it: I was saying that while high schoolers may not be smart or discerning in the crap they write, Hacker News is, and I dislike that so many people are voting up a crap story. There's no intelligent discussion coming up. The big talk is about whether or not Garfield Minus Garfield ripped off other things (which it did). People aren't discussion the fine art of comic craft, or _anything_ interesting comics-related. This story's taking up a slot it shouldn't, and it's absolutely one of the worse Hacker News stories I've seen. It ticks me off because it's indicative of the community.

And for that matter, it ticks me off that you think it's right to bend and twist what I said. You make me out to be an intellectual Nazi. "Send me a box of matches." All the suggestions of censorship. I mean, come _on_. You've been here longer than I have, and still you see it necessary to respond so childishly?

It annoys me that this is what this site's becoming. And my original point was, calling _this_ intellectualism is insulting the real intellectuals. It's like calling XKCD a physics teacher.

<comment><USER11> The thing here is that we have core philosophies that are different, and our statements here are indicative of these philosophies.

Let me explain what I mean:

In Germany it's illegal to publish or display Nazi material. I believe that we both are against the Nazi philosophy, but it appears to me that you belong to the group of people who would favour censoring such material, while I believe in absolute freedom of expression, and that such material should not be in any way illegal, and people should be free to argue for and against it.

Censorship is when it is not illegal to write the material, but it's illegal to make this material available in a public forum. What you advocate is the same as the German Government policy - you want these people free to write the material you don't like, but you actively work to make it not publicly visible in a forum you frequent.

I've never read a critique about comic characters, and I'm not particular interested in this particular one, but I am a very strong proponent of complete freedom of expression.

The problem with your path is that it's VERY subjective. You say you don't like it, but where is the line? What if I post an article about how Hamas builds a Bomb using cow manure. This may be interesting from a hacker perspective but it will offend many sensibilities - the point of the upvote, downvote button is to act as a filter, so if enough people find it interesting, it will go to the top, no matter how loudly _individuals_ complain.

Final point : don't take my arguments seriously. I argue this dispassionately, and I don't expect you to take the points personally. Read my text critically, not emotionally.

<comment><USER7> Yeah! Of course. It's all about arguing, not about getting angry.

I think that you should be free to do anything. I don't, for instance, hate Garfield, and I don't hate the people that think it's worth analyzing Garfield. On the contrary! What I dislike is that this is an awful article, and it's on Hacker News. If you were to submit a story talking about Nazis that was poorly-written and ignored entirely the fact that Nazis did what they did, I'd get annoyed if it got upvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember seeing a For Better or for Worse (<http://www.fborfw.com/index.php>) comic where a guy says hi to a little girl in a shopping cart at the store, she waves back. Her mom freaks out and moves the cart, scolding the girl for talking to a stranger. The last frame of the comic has the guy saying "Sometimes I hate this world". Not very funny. I mean... what?!

<comment><USER7> Well, yeah. Not all comics are funny. FBOFW has a serious side to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately, Davis went back to writing the same old shit after that story arc.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, how weird -- I've read a very similar analysis before, which I assumed this was. Then I noticed the current date. I wonder where this person ripped it off from?

<comment><USER15> <http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> what the fuck ...</comment>


Facebook using dubious tactics to garner support for FreeBasics platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/savefreebasics?notif_t=iorg_trai_submission <comment><AUTHOR> There has been enough evidence to show that Facebook is intimating friends that you supported FreeBasics even if you have not clicked. Also, is it right for a platform to push its agenda on its customers? They did not sign up for this. This is FB trying to influence a policy that can affect a country</comment>


Introducing Microsoft.Data - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.asp.net/davidfowler/archive/2010/08/02/introduction-to-microsoft-data-dll.aspx

<comment><USER2> I'm little bit afraid of more inlined SQL commands. That's sad. In times of .NET 4, lambda-expresions...</comment>


Patent Troll Sues Ventilator Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/new-low-bad-patent-patent-troll-sues-ventilator-company <comment><USER2> Wow, shooters gonna shoot.

Not sure these guys are the brightest shooters in the game though...</comment>


Ask HN: Why is communication among physically nearby devices still impractical? - <AUTHOR>

Why is peer to peer ad hoc communication among physically nearby commercially available end user devices still impractical in the 21st century? Why 5+ smart devices sitting on my desk and 20+ smart devices around my house can't communicate, sync or exchange information without going through servers thousands of miles away? What stops companies implementing simple both way fm radio, or ad hoc wlan communication, or mesh of all the smart devices? Even, IoT which once came with the promise to remove this digital divide is now forming on infrastructure centered model. Smart devices now a days mean always-connected-to-the-infrastructure devices. What is the reason behind the huge gap between physically nearby and digitally nearby for today's smart devices?
Possible reasons that come to my mind are-
. Technically not feasible.
. Significantly less value from business perspective.
. Government(s) discourage companies to improve significantly in peer to peer ad hoc technology for security reasons.
Any idea? What's going on? <comment><USER2> Bonjour on the mac was really cool when everyone was implementing it. I could goto a conference and open iChat and instantly be able to chat with anyone else in the room. I could browse photos taken by my wife at home that were on her computer. I had a little mp3 "radio" that would play music from local users that had itunes (or itunes like) running. My router would just appear in my browsers list of local devices. Interacting at home was nice and handy, but interacting out in public was where it just magically "worked".

I am going to say that the cloud killed this. If companies can get you to interact with your friends and family in your own house through their cloud service than they get a lock in strategy which is a bit of an incentive to kill their local stuff. It also doesn't help that the major device that you would like to have talking is your cell phone which has a major company behind it pushing their cloud for all it is worth.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's there, if you look. AirDrop between Apple devices, for example, seems to do just fine.

DLNA orchestrates media between disparate (non-Apple) devices as another example. My desktop downloads a video, my NAS shares it, I press play on my Android phone, and the video is output on the TV.

So my various devices _can_ talk to each other, but it took Sony and Intel an untold amount of resources to achieve. For something as simple as copy and paste of text, there's no such body dedicated to making that work.

<comment><USER4> AirDrop is broken with my devices: imac, iphone, mb air, nothing older than 2 years. might be the FW though, but after disabling the rules they still don't find each other allways.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried recently? It works every time for me _now_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interoperability is a lot of work, and requires agreements on interchange formats, which is even more time consuming, and it won't sell more devices, and once you have this, you now have to worry about security.

Technically, it's certainly feasible and you do have specialized deployments where devices use mesh networking.

Governments don't really limit peer to peer tech.

There's simply better return for R&D dollars developing other features.

</comment><comment><USER7> Mobile device makers don't want it. In their mind each person has one device. A person with five devices is not their target market. Users don't want it. They probably have one device and don't want to worry that someone else is thumbing through their pictures. There is also no compensation system for expending energy to carry ad-hoc traffic. If I have a bottle of water in the middle of the desert I am going to charge a large amount for it. If I have a mobile device far from a city I want to charge a lot to transfer ad-hoc traffic. There is hardly any use case where users want to communicate with random nearby people, so the ad-hoc traffic will usually be through traffic.

</comment><comment><USER8> I built a peer-to-peer ad-hoc iOS app based on multipeer connectivity called MapRhino that's meant for use in the car on road trips - that and airplanes are basically the only places left with no reliable wifi/network connections that people gather.

Maybe there are a few other use cases, like large outdoor music festivals with overloaded connections, but there just isn't a real use case for most of these services.

Come up with a compelling use case for peer-to-peer/mesh technology, and I think you'll see widespread adoption.

</comment><comment><USER9> there's security and then there's maintainability and scalability. it's much easier to maintain and fix a centralized (cloud-based) tech than it is to release a stable bluetooth stack. and when it's centralized, there's a business case.

</comment><comment><USER10> The recent discussion of the Google Tone Chrome extension¹ proved that technical infeasibility is not the issue.

¹[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9575291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9575291)

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a lot of work and movement on [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi- Fi_Direct](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct)</comment>


Brexit Is a Lehman Moment for European Banks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-04/brexit-is-a-lehman-moment-for-european-banks <comment><USER3> It's completely plausible that the post-Brexit Deutsche Bank is undervalued by the market due to panic and uncertainty, and Snapchat is overvalued by the market due to hype.

<comment><USER4> In 2007 there was viral video suggesting that Facebook is overvalued at $15bln comparing to Ford: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I)

Lets see how the story will unfold.

<comment><USER5> > Lets see how the story will unfold

You left it unstated that Facebook is now worth $283bln _more than_ Ford. So, yes, the video looks silly for crying wolf back in 2007.

But I'm at a loss to draw the correct conclusion from this. Is it rational that Facebook is now worth 6x as much as Ford?

<comment><USER6> On Facebook v. Ford, in terms of how shareholder value gets built and sustained, yes, the market is being as rational as it ever gets. Consider the following five dimensions:

CREATING THE PRODUCT: Facebook's engineers provide the framework, but each day's content is created free of charge by 1.5 billion active users. That's great for profit margins! At Ford, cars don't get built unless the company buys steel, glass, tires, etc. and pays workers to put it all together. That really squeezes margins.

GENERATING DEMAND: Facebook's users share content and invite their friends to join, at no cost. Media companies beg to play in Facebook's ecosystem. By contrast, Ford needs to spend billions on advertising to get people excited about cars.

OBLIGATIONS TO CUSTOMERS: Facebook has a modest-sized fraud and security team that keeps everything tidy. They do heroic work, but there aren't 50,000 of them. At Ford, the requirements for inspections, safety tests, recalls, legal settlements when vehicles go bad, etc. are vastly larger.

OBSOLESCENCE: Ford has $58 billion invested in plant and equipment. Every day, those factories get a little closer to being obsolete. Ford must constantly either raise cash or reinvest profits to keep its factories competitive. That means less free cash for shareholders. By contrast, Facebook has just $8 billion invested in server farms, beautiful headquarters, etc. Its asset- maintenance burden is vastly less -- and should stay that way forever.

MAKING MONEY: Ford's net income zigzags all over the place, jolted by lots of market/economic issues. Net income was down last year; historically it's ranged from $11 billion to sizable losses. Facebook's net income totaled $3.7 billion last year and is climbing at a very snappy rate. 35% a year? Doubling? Still hard to tell, but it keeps going up.

Put all those factors together, and Facebook is a growth stock with a pretty straightforward path to making its business hum. Ford is a cyclical stock that may have already posted its peak profits. Ford may be a bedrock part of the U.S. economy, but that doesn't always get you a lot of love in the stock market, for reasons above. Yeah, Ford has $150 billion in revenue a year and Facebook had just $18 billion. But markets value companies on their growth prospects. I've got no trouble believing that Facebook's overall opportunity to make money is 6x better than Ford's.

<comment><USER7> Shouldn't this analysis include the level of risk unique to a social network i.e. a usenet/myspace/digg/frendster crash?

Businesses that rely on and grow from network effects, die from them too at an even faster rate. A scandal or rival product could take FB to zero. Some would say that history tells us it is FB's inevitable outcome. I know some believe that it can't happen and the FB is "the last social network" but that sounds a little bit like bubble participants claiming "this time its different".

<comment><USER8> They'll switch to business intelligence in that case (like Foursquare). They've got enough data to last them lifetimes.

<comment><USER9> Interesting that you mentioned Foursquare. I considered them a has been for such a long time and only recently realized that they are still around being the geolocation API provider for a bunch of products. Successful pivot, I think.

<comment><USER10> My assumption was that it was never really a pivot. It seemed that the geolocation API was always their primary strategy. I thought that was why it continues to be odd that so much of Foursquare's usage and network loss seems attributable to their own consumer confusing actions to split out the social network part into a new brand (Swarm) instead of the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is fundamentally wrong. As Matt Levine said, "proper phrasing is 'DB supports $1.7trn of assets with an equity value equal to SnapChat's'" [1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/742800372473946112](https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/742800372473946112)

Edit: For a more complete analysis of DB's capital position, they have published Moody's report on their credit. [2] I don't see much in there that would suggest DB was insolvent, but they do seem to be having some difficulty reorganizing their business.

[2] [https://www.db.com/ir/de/download/Moody_s_on_DB_26_May_2016....](https://www.db.com/ir/de/download/Moody_s_on_DB_26_May_2016.pdf)

<comment><USER12> In normal circumstances, yes. But DB's solvency is in question. An insolvent bank is worthless.

<comment><USER13> DB may be insolvent, but to be fair, there aren't many banks that can pay out the figures recorded in the managed accounts. I recall one Utah bank which is supposedly able to, and there may be others, but usually a mainstream bank cannot fulfill 99% withdrawals of assets on short notice.

<comment><USER14> I don't think any bank can. But it's not a capital problem, it's a liquidity problem. A bank, whether an internationally active, or a mum and pop local bank, is in the business of taking short term deposits and lending the money long term. Banks are required to cover some of their deposits in liquid assets so that it can sustain some level of stress. But a full scale run on the bank where all depositors want their money back would kill any bank, big or small.

<comment><USER13> Besides being off-the-books and under-the-radar, how was Madoff's operation different than that? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER14> A bank is solvent, Madoff wasn't. Madoff didn't have any asset, the cash you would have invested with him had been used to pay off other investors.

A bank has assets, the money you lent the bank (through your deposit) is invested in a mortgage, backed by a property. You will ultimately get your money back. but it is a timing issue (and therefore liquidity), not a solvency issue.

<comment><USER15> It's a liquidity issue if the bank invested in mortgages (usually), but it can be a solvency issue if they are invested in debt (sovereign or corporate) that can be defaulted on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to work in the financial institutions group at a buldge bracket bank doing valuation and M&A on the banks team. The thing about bank valuation that's weird, is that it's balance sheet valuation and not income statement valuation. Banks don't sell things, they sell money. The make money off interest earned on loans - their cost of capital (~interest paid on deposits=0) - branch/hr overhead (if they have branches). Anyways, to compare a bank to another company that sells physical goods or widgets is kind of silly to begin with. They are not valued the same way, and they make money completely differently.

<comment><USER14> I like to think that there are two extremes for valuations.

On one side of the range, the consulting firm, which has no assets, and which value is a pure function of future earnings.

On the other extreme you have an investment fund where the value is purely a function of the value of the assets which are all liquid financial assets. You don't buy the fund at a premium, otherwise you might as well buy the underlying assets yourself.

A bank is somewhere between the two. It has what should be a reasonably reliable accounting value since at the end of the day, all of its assets are financial assets that can be sold and aren't highly specialised like a factory or a hotel building is. But on the other side a large part of the value is not just the balance between assets and liabilities. It has additional earnings (fees, trading activities, etc).

<comment><USER17> Consulting firms generate revenues. Their assets are mostly human capital, but their value is generally a multiple of current earnings, not "a pure function of future earnings".

Most banks hold a decent amount of highly specialized, illiquid debts that have no active market and could reasonably be compared in terms of liquidity to real estate or capital goods.

<comment><USER14> I am not sure I understand your point. How is that different from what I wrote.

And no, there are no line in an IFRS balance sheet for "human capital".

[edit] and on your second point, I don't think I agree. You will pretty much always find a buyer for financial assets. Unless they are so rotten that no one thinks they are worth what you have them in your books for (which may be the case for some Italian banks).

Where I think you are right to be careful with banks is with the size. If you need to wind down a massive international bank, you need to find buyers for a awfully large amounts of assets, and that will likely damage their value.

<comment><USER17> > I am not sure I understand your point. How is that different from what I > wrote.

Yeah, we are on the same page, it was just a little nit as it seems weird to me to state that future revenues are the "pure" base for valuation when future is informed by current. Just semantics though.

> You will pretty much always find a buyer for financial assets. Unless they > are so rotten that no one thinks they are worth what you have them in your > books

At the right price you will find a buyer for _anything_. I was speaking to your point about liquidity, which is not about price of the asset, but about the quantity of interested buyers and the ease of structuring and executing a transaction with a buyer.

<comment><USER14> But there are buyers for complex financial instruments. There are many hedge funds around who can do both size and complex products. And other international banks have the teams and system to buy a portfolio.

But size is a problem. When you have 2 trillions $ of assets to sell, even if they are simple vanilla mortgages, it will be a buyer's market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The guy who wrote that article is such an idiot. A reducing market capitalisation is not "shrinking the banks". It might mean the banks may be making less profits, but that doesn't make them safer, rather more dangerous on the contrary (as they can't climb their way out of a loss through earnings). Shrinking a bank means reducing its balance sheet, its leverage not its share price.

<comment><USER18> Totally, especially with leverage and a large notional insurance/derivitives liability. If reality moves in the wrong direction against that insurance and there's nothing but debt at the end to the payees, then too-big-to-fail cascade effects, ala late 2007, happen in the system again. This is why derivitives should be heavily regulated.

IMO, even the most libertarian government would not allow a normal insurance company take on so much leveraged potential liability without at least a disclosure to the consumer that says, "Hey, this company probably can't payout the policy you just bought from them." Yet somehow it's okay for financial instruments? IMO, Dodd-Frank should have forced financial institutions to calculate their overall liability on derivitives as part of their capital requirements. This would never happen though, as they trade so rapidly most banks probably don't even know at any given time what would happen to their derivitives liability if the market swung wildly, either up or down.

We're going to have another 2007 again, for sure. I have no idea when, but we did not solve the underlying problem at all.

<comment><USER19> > This would never happen though, as they trade so rapidly most banks probably > don't even know at any given time what would happen to their derivitives > liability if the market swung wildly, either up or down.

I think the technology is there to make it happen automatically. It's a deterministic system. The problem is the lack of political will to do so, which is appalling and leads to situations like Brexit and Trump.

<comment><USER20> Situations where people realise they have been decieved and decide to do something about it?

<comment><USER19> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This story has moved on. There's already talk of an urgent need for a 150bn Euro bailout.

[http://www.welt.de/finanzen/article156924408/Deutsche- Bank-C...](http://www.welt.de/finanzen/article156924408/Deutsche-Bank- Chefoekonom-fordert-150-Milliarden.html)

Or the slightly more sensationalised English version:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-10/deutsche-banks- chie...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-10/deutsche-banks-chief- economist-calls-%E2%82%AC150-billion-bailout-european-banks)

Comparisons to $UNICORN are irrelevant. If DB melts down, 2008 will look like an inconsequential stutter.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I like the illustration that Brexit is Bear Stearns especially because the market has recovered in the last two weeks(as it did with BS in 2007) and a DB implosion would be the Lehman Brother for the next collapse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > now worth just 17 billion euros

'Worth' as defined by 'what someone is willing to pay'?

Saying Snapchat is 'worth' 17 billion euros is completely and utter nonsense.

<comment><USER24> Please explain why taking into account sudo comparable sells/offers such as Slack, WhatsApp, etc.

EDIT: As noted below in the comments, LinkedIn was bought for 26 Billion in cash by Microsoft.

<comment><USER25> Why are any of those worth over a billion? Valuation should be assets - <USER2> + future profits. In reality, mostly, it's psychology + voodoo magic - negative press.

<comment><USER26> I used to think this way, then I spent the last decade watching my friends all get rich working at these kinds of companies.

You need to look at the big picture here. Young people aren't watching TV. Ad spend by the likes of P&G, Nike, and the auto industry is still largely on TV. Also, Silicon Valley largely hasn't been able to capture brand advertising -- the spend on billboards, sports stadium advertising, etc vs. direct-response like Google AdWords. Ask anyone in the industry, they'll tell you direct- response spending is a drop in the bucket compared to spend on brand advertising.

Now, tell me, one the ad industry wakes up and realizes how absurd it is to dump billions of ad spend onto a platform with rapidly declining viewership (linear TV), where is all that ad spend going to _go_?

Maybe a communications platform that's used heavily by young people (great for advertisers), to send pictures and short videos (ads?) to each other in a playful, unhurried manner?

I don't know whether that's worth $20 billion or whatever its "valuation" is, but these dumb cheap shots against ad supported tech company valuation need to end. These platforms are as big as like, several big TV networks _combined_ in viewership, with about 100x better ad targeting. How _isn 't_ that worth billions?

<comment><USER27> "How isn't that worth billions?"

ad blockers

<comment><USER28> I wonder if a "scorched earth" plan could be pitched to old school TV advertising giants, in order to score billions for adblocker research. Adblocking has "needs AI" written all over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > America sorted its banks out swiftly after the 2008 credit crisis.

Is there general agreement that the US government acted effectively in this matter, not just for bankers, but for society as a whole?

<comment><USER30> They acted quickly and avoided a worst-case outcome. As such it was effective.

However, arguably the bank bailouts could have had much better terms for the taxpayer - most of the upside was realised by bank shareholders who were not wiped out, rather than the taxpayer who bore the risk.

For comparison, Warren Buffet also recapitalised some banks in the depth of the crisis, demanded and got long-term warrants that paid out truly humongous amounts of money once bank shares rose back to pre-crisis levels. Tax payers - in comparison - got a few percent of interest rather than adequate compensation for the risk they bore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If we follow the cheeky title, snapchat has the chance of a lifetime to buy its way to profitability.

</comment><comment><USER32> General argument of this story seems to be that "if an industry is not doing well in the open market it needs taxpayer doleouts to prop up share prices". Europe has tried that many times before (e.g. with the shipping industry) and it has always ended in tears... Let's not go down that road yet again!

</comment><comment><USER33> > When the biggest bank in Europe's biggest economy, with annual revenue of > about 37 billion euros, is worth about the same as Snapchat -- a messaging > app that generated just $59 million of revenue last year -- you know > something's wrong.

More on the Snapchat side, than the DB side.

</comment><comment><USER34> Snapchat is not 'worth' 17 billion. Some investors start to make money on the investment iff Snapchat exits or IPOs above 17b, but that's about it. The term 'valuation' is completely misleading when applying it to this 17b number.

In fact, due to liquidation preferences in the term sheets Snapchat's true valuation (i.e. the point at which investors actually lose money) immediately post investment, according to basic math, is $0.

<comment><USER35> I think Facebook would make a $17b offer, but that the actual number is significantly higher. Snapchat is much more of a threat to Facebook than Whatsapp and FB had no problem opening up the piggy bank to grab it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Another salvo in the continual barrage of "why we always need to bail-out banks"from the financial media.

</comment><comment><USER37> The title seems to suggest that this due to the Brexit, but in reality the value of Deutsche Bank has been in decline since the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

[http://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-epic-collapse- deutsche...](http://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-epic-collapse-deutsche- bank/)

</comment><comment><USER38> *Current market valuation.

I think it's an important differentiation.

The underlying dynamics of the two companies are quite different, and I'm not sure their "worth" can be directly compared.

One is worth a lot to the granny taking out cash from her pension fund, the other is worth a lot to the advertisers wanting to cash in on the cloud social services.

</comment><comment><USER39> The pessimism around Snapchat in this thread is reminiscent of the negativity surrounding Facebook. Advertising is moving to social media, Snapchat is currently the best platform for targeting the demographic advertisers value the most (young people).

</comment><comment><USER40> Since when Snapchat is a publicly traded corporation?

Snapchat valuation is nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER41> Central banks does not fix the economy. Maybe the Brexit was a analogy to poker play call on central bank strategy whatever it takes print new money as central bank debt.

Central bank balancec sheet vs inflation expectation [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-05/central-bank- death-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-05/central-bank-death-cross)

</comment><comment><USER42> What does this have to do with Brexit? The graph on Italy's banking system bad loans starting rising during the 2008 crisis.

</comment><comment><USER43> Thanks for updating the title. I wonder sometimes if the residual malaise in the economy is about _not_ writing off the bad loans. Cancel the loan, roll up the debt. Painful yes, and disruptive, but one way to recalibrate investment risk and to normalize capital flows more accurately.

<comment><USER15> That's pretty much the classic Keynes vs Hayek debate.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo- Sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk)

<comment><USER43> Pretty much, I love that video btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It was much more than just the failure of Lehman Brothers that brought the financial world to its knees in 2008. This article is rubbish.

Comparing a Banks market cap to Snapchat? You can't take this seriously. I thought more of Bloomberg.

</comment><comment><USER45> Comparing Snapchat with Deutsche Bank sounds like a (bad) joke. Snapchat could go bankrupt and everyone would laugh at it... DB will never go bankrupt and here's a simple pic that explains why:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbBMXbTWAAAl- PG.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbBMXbTWAAAl-PG.png)

It's another league. That could cause a x10 times Lehman. Too big to fail. If DB falls, the rest of the world follows suit...

Another pearl from the article:

 _> If the rot isn't stopped soon, Europe will have found a novel solution to the too-big-to-fail problem -- by allowing its banks to shrink until they're too small to be fit for purpose._

Really? and what about the derivatives exposure?

<comment><USER39> A bank failure doesn't have to happen overnight (Lehman), it can happen over a protracted period of time, in which there will be no systemic risk to the global banking establishment. In 2007, every bank was playing dirty w/Credit Default Swaps + CDOs -> "if our balance sheet is loaded with garbage, then the other guy's is too" -> no lending -> credit crisis. The only thing the DB "has" that is toxic is crappy management. BoA won't reconsider it's lending to JPM Chase because of DB, as would've been the case in 2007.

<comment><USER45> _> A bank failure doesn't have to happen overnight_

A confirmed bankruptcy of Deutsche Bank would be followed by the collapse of 10s of banks, not in a day but maybe few weeks. Quick enough for unleashing the biggest financial armageddon in the western world.

 _> there will be no systemic risk to the global banking establishment [...] _

Are you sure? on June 30th the IMF said exactly the contrary: "Deutsche Bank Poses Greatest Risk to Financial System"

[http://www.nasdaq.com/article/deutsche-bank-poses- greatest-r...](http://www.nasdaq.com/article/deutsche-bank-poses-greatest- risk-to-financial-system-imf-says--2nd-update-20160630-00064)

or in a simple pic:

[http://cf.broadsheet.ie/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/risks.jpg](http://cf.broadsheet.ie/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/risks.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yes, I wonder what's going to happen to those VC money poured into unreal valuations in Silicon Valley, if the banks in the Eu start imploding...

<comment><USER47> Logic would have it that more money would pour into SV and VC in general. Say €500B new money is pumped into the Eurozone banks, where is that money going to go? The boom in VC financing post 2007 is by in large due to the surplus 'free' cash that was floating around the US and global economies due to quantitive easing. More money means more competition for equal amount of startups which points towards valuations being pushed even higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's pretty annoying when the discussion here revolves around the title of the article, and then the admins go and change the title on HN.

Stop doing that.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can anyone who uses snapchat speak to how effective the introduction of the "Discovery" ads section has been.</comment>


Web-Scale Training for Face Identification - <AUTHOR> https://research.facebook.com/publications/787935884654205/web-scale-training-for-face-identification/ <comment><USER2> It's a matter of time that they can search for your face, on every internet- connected camera, on real time.

The question is, as with any technology, what are we going to do with such capability.

<comment><USER3> > The question is, as with any technology, what are we going to do with such > capability.

The porn industry will put it to good use, somehow.</comment></comment>