An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering - <AUTHOR> https://dustingmixon.wordpress.com/2017/10/11/an-impossibility-theorem-for-gerrymandering/ <comment><USER2> I think this indirectly hints at something much more fundamental: district based plurality does not make sense as an election system anymore.

I think an eye opening example is to consider a hypothetical single state with 10 representatives. This state has a population, perfectly well distributed, of 35% democrat, 30% republican, 20% libertarian, and 15% green. And we draw our districts up with absolutely no bias whatsoever. What 'should' the election results be? I think any logical person would say about 3.5 democrats, 3 republicans, 2 libertarians, and about 1.5 greens. What we get in reality? 10 democrats as they win a plurality in each and every district. 0 gerrymandering, 35% of the support, 100% of the seats.

To get our above example to have the logical results we want, you end up having to create really absurd districts that would completely dwarf any sort of gerrymandering of today. So then the question is quite obvious. Why don't we do at large proportional elections instead of district based plurality elections? If a state has 10 representatives then any party is guaranteed at least 1 seat if they get 10% support, 2 for 20%, and so on.

In the past when politicians and the people were much closer, I think districts made a lot more sense. You were voting for somebody who you knew or were at worst split by the most minimal degrees of separation. But today this isn't true. The average congressional district is now up to 710,767 people [1] (as of 2010). In 1790, at the time of the first US census, the average district size was 37,082. Times have changed, but our electoral system has not.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congress...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congressional_districts)

<comment><USER3> What I don't like about this analysis is that it enshrines the notion of political parties. It makes individuals into automata that simply vote for whatever candidate is thrown at them.

The ideal is that candidates can rest on their own merits, with the party mechanic existing to provide support to candidates who nominally align with the party's interests. People vote for candidates, not parties.

Even the reality is that people are not determined by their party affiliation; New York City, for example, has repeatedly elected Republican mayors despite being overwhelmingly Democratic in state and national elections. This has even been used in a derogatory sense, as "Rockefeller Republicans" or "New York Republicans"; people affiliated with the national party but who skew to the preferences of voters in their region.

In your hypothetical state, once you created the districts, then the competition inside that district is between candidates who try to align themselves with that region; people who, for example, can be a "green- republican" to draw voters from both blocks, or just a person who speaks to the needs of voters in that district, regardless of party affiliation.

Using some sort of state-wide rank-preferential or approval system means that we remove a lot of the strategizing on the part of voters, which is a positive, but the strategizing on the part of political parties and individuals seeking office become much more complex, and not in a way that serves to present candidates that appeal to issues confronted by groups of people regardless of their party affiliation. Geography is just a heuristic for this, but not the worst one you could think of.

<comment><USER2> I think something you're fundamentally getting at is that in today's system people's views are not necessarily representative of their party's views. Ron Paul is not really what you'd call a republican, but he certainly ran as one. The reason is that in our current system, small parties cannot exist - or at least they can't get any representation in congress, but is there really any difference? So if you want to actually get a seat you put an R or a D by your name, or you run in a state like Maine or Vermont - both with total populations far smaller than many cities.

The reason for this is because of our electoral system. Imagine we have 4 parties each with about a quarter of the support. One of those parties is going to get 100% of the representation, and the rest are going to get 0. This incentivizes these parties to begin to merge. Two parties go 'Hey I know we have nothing in common, but if we work together we can guarantee our voices are at least heard in congress.' And the other two also see this going on and does the exact same thing. Next thing you know it you have things like libertarians and evangelical Christians both being supposedly represented by the same party, and you get a congressional approval rating in the teens.

Proportional representation changes this. Fractional support being more than sufficient to get seats in congress means people can break into parties that actually fundamentally represent their views - instead of being forced to clump up into super-parties. I think this effect would be particularly emphasized in our country. We have a phenomenally good system of checks and balances ensuring that even 'the little guy' in congress can have a meaningful effect. The problem is our electoral system all but precludes there being any little guys in congress.

<comment><USER3> Proportional representation sort-of fixes this. I think rank-preferential (instant run-off) or approval voting also solves this, even on single candidate elections, because they remove the spoiler effect. I think switching to these methods but keeping districting is a good intermediate step that doesn't "completely change the game" but opens some new doors.

Proportional representation, as I mention above, does remove most incentives to vote other than your actual preferences, but it does introduce very complex strategies on the part of candidates and parties. Every election becomes a state-wide election, so smaller candidates representing regional interests will find it harder to target their campaign. I'm not sure whether this is a net positive or negative.

<comment><USER2> Smaller candidates today already stand stand practically 0 chance of getting elected. Literally every single member in the house of representatives is either a democrat or a republican. That is a consequence of a simple question: 'If a person receives 10% of the vote in a state with 10 representatives, how many seats should they receive?' The current answer is 0.

In our current system the one and only power of smaller candidates is a spoiler effect. This enables them to have some influence on the super-party that's closest to their own ideology, even if implicitly. Rank preferential / Australian voting / etc not only fail to change the 10% support = 0% representation issue, but they even remove the spoiler effect which means that smaller parties can safely be completely ignored unless they look to gain a plurality themselves - which is rather contrary to the notion of smaller.

On this note, I'm not seeing why you think that proportional would make campaigning more difficult for 'smaller candidates.' It would mean they might actually stand a chance of finally getting a seat in congress. A basic example from Europe would be something like 'The Pirate Party.' They're never likely to gain substantial support, but they have been able to receive representation at the national level in a variety of nations, proportional to their support, exclusively due to proportional systems.

<comment><USER4> Sanders and King are both Independents but caucused with the Democrats.

This doesn't really negate your point, I just figured you may be interested. They may not literally all be a D or an R, but it's trivial and I'm mostly being pedantic.

<comment><USER5> If we're being pedantic, both Sanders and King are senators.

<comment><USER4> Right, my bad. I read that as congress. I'm nit sure why I missed the specificity, considering I read it twice and then looked up the information on Wikipedia.

My bad, indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At this point I feel like it's worthwhile to remember to why we even have districts.

We could, in principle, get rid of the districts and just have some kind of statewide scheme for electing representatives proportional to the outcome of a popular vote. The idea behind retaining districts, as far as I understand it, is that people in similar locales will often have very correlated interests (e.g. with regard to decisions that affect that area) and that choosing representatives from particular locales is supposed to guarantee that people in that area are represented (and make the representatives to some degree beholden to them).

Ideally, we'd split the states into districts in a way that doesn't deviate from overall proportional representation very much, hence the idea of the efficiency gap. So gerrymandering can break that efficiency constraint.

But the notion of geographic correlation of interests makes it such that the population is unlikely to be distributed in the kind of uniformly random way you need to get weirdly shaped, efficient districts, and conversely having weirdly shaped districts at all effectively assumes that geographic correlation of interests isn't an important factor.

In other words: if we have to make weirdly shaped districts to maintain efficiency, then the assumptions that caused us to require districts in the first place probably fail and we should just ditch them.

<comment><USER7> Ideally: the Representative who is chosen for a district (the weird shapes we are talking about) _represents_ everyone of the populous of that district. That way in Congress, when someone asks "hey do your constituents want a factory next to that highway plus a bunch of taxbreaks?" the representative knows which way to vote, as s/he _represents_ the local people. The weird shapes, even if they increase "efficiency" don't actually account for locality much. It'd be better to use something like commuting maps to draw regions to ensure locality.

<comment><USER8> Not only that, usually the "representative" doesn't even live in or near the area they are representing (sure, they may have an address in the area, but that isn't difficult to do).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Totally. This is why in the more recent gerrymandering thread I was making such a big deal about the efficiency gap rather than geometry for detecting this stuff. Geometry is just a flawed heuristic for a multitude of reasons.

That's why the efficiency gap is so exciting as a measure.

<comment><USER7> Looking at the paper, counting the number of "wasted votes" is actually the most solid metric it seems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's strange that there's so much focus on district shapes, when any voting system with proportional representation would make gerrymandering pretty much ineffective.

Every voting system has its flaws, but the US system seems to have particularly few advantages.

<comment><USER11> It's not really "strange." The chances of us ever going to a proportional system en masse are near zero. The chances of making extreme gerrymandering illegal are significantly better (the Supreme Court recently heard a case about it).

Many people prefer to spend time thinking within the context of what is likely to happen. That's not to say we don't need folks who dream big, but we need more than _just_ those folks.

<comment><USER12> I agree with the substance of what you say but I don't think it's wrong to invite everyone to have a general sense of the big picture.

And by big-picture standards, because of the way the US is constituted, the questions that make their way to SCOTUS are usually pretty strange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I suspect Gerrymandering isn't uniquely a US problem. I do a lot of UK Census spatial analysis and the district centroids that are used create problems. In the article the 'ear muffs' shape would create a centroid for the voting district outside of the district, given that the shape of the district was designed to give a certain ethnic group a voice, whereas the process for creating districts in the UK are done usually on the idea of 'belonging' to a town/village/area and are decided and audited at a national 'neutral' level.

The data scientist in me wants centroids around circles with fuzzy edges. If we could all agree that fuzzy circles is the way forward we could solve gerrymandering over night.

The reality is though, that I create these amazing pieces of analysis then have to explain away why that district is odd, y'know, cos the shape is just weird.

Locally they are redoing the district boundaries which is giving me an opportunity to submit my own district shapes that work better with Census data :D

<comment><USER7> Fuzzy circles! Great idea. That, or repeated boundary drawing that brute forced every possible district combination and gave a probabilistic result of elections based on where districts were drawn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For reference, there is a NY Times article about the plague of redistricting and also a simple excel tool that someone made to make this very easy: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/magazine/the-new-front- in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/magazine/the-new-front-in-the- gerrymandering-wars-democracy-vs-math.html)

As a human who takes pride and joy in the Constitution and its tenets I find the crowbar-able gap space of redistricting an important valley of electoral attention that needs ample light of attention.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Now suppose you are tasked with drawing 5 districts for this region.

Or, we could go with proportional representation, make it a single district, and now we can reasonably expect to get 2-3 blue reps and 2-3 red ones, handling both the districting problem and efficiency/fairness problem in one go.

<comment><USER15> How would that deal with popular independents? Would they get two seats if they pull 40% of the electorate?

<comment><USER16> Under an STV you're still voting for people. The independent with 40% of the vote would be elected and then a proportion of their unneeded votes would be transferred to the subsequent candidates on those voting papers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Findi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Finding_the_winners)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the real answer to all of this is to restore a reasonable ratio of population to representatives. It is much more difficult to Gerrymander 133 districts than with 9. It will still happen but the possible advantage one party can get is much smaller.

The constituents also get much better representation, because they are much closer to the person representing them. The representative is intimately familiar with their constituents concerns because they live in and around them.

It also strips a lot of the money out of politics. Representatives don't have to spend all their time fundraising to raise war chests of millions of dollars. You can win an election in a 30,000 person district by knocking on doors and sending out inexpensive mailers.

[http://www.thirty-thousand.org/](http://www.thirty-thousand.org/)

</comment><comment><USER18> > Our paper proves that in _some cases_ , it's impossible to get a small > efficiency gap without drawing bizarrely shaped districts.

Italics mine. Is there any reason to believe that any real life situation would fall under their impossibility? The key is to get a system which is good enough to prevent gerrymandering for the world that exists, not for any possible world.

</comment><comment><USER19> So the question is if "Minimizing Efficiency Gap" is what we should be aiming for.

Its a solid proposal, but I guess its up to the courts to decide if "Efficiency Gap" is a good metric. I guess I'll be interested in hearing the arguments as they come up.

<comment><USER20> It seems to me that a system with zero efficiency gap would be equivalent to one big election with proportional representation. If that's what people really want, why talk about voting districts at all?

<comment><USER21> You're either thinking about this too broadly, or as a system filled with static entities. Within voting districts, politics is local - individuals can sway voters, voters can decide to show up/skip voting, etc.

Also, the concept of a 'blue/red' district can be very blurry - there are many examples of 'blue' districts (districts with democrat congress reps, and a history of voting blue) that voted red in the last presidential election, and vice-versa for previous elections.

Historically, Americans prefer to vote for people, not parties.

<comment><USER22> Do people in the US have the same feeling for what area is 'local' as they did when districts were drawn up ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm confused about the example.

First of all, it seems highly unlikely such a distribution of red and blue votes would occur. But more importantly, blue is a majority of every 3x3 square - why shouldn't it win every district?

<comment><USER19> > why shouldn't it win every district?

Because we are supposed to have a representative government. If there's 55% Blue voters and 45% Red Voters, you're supposed to ideally have 55% Blue representatives and 45% Red representatives.

The example is a counterexample of this concept. Instead of 55% Blue / 45% Red split, the map as a whole becomes 100% blue. This is almost the very definition of "Tyranny of the Majority".

<comment><USER24> If votes are 80-20 then it's not necessarily possible or reasonable to draw 80 vs 20 winning districts.

<comment><USER19> Which states are 80-20 in America?

Maryland is an example of a highly gerrymandered state (towards Democrats, although there are many Republican examples too). Maryland voted 60.5% Clinton / 35.3% Trump, which suggests that they have (roughly) 2 Democrats for every 1 Republican in the state.

However, due to the significant gerrymandering in Maryland, there is ONE Republican and SEVEN Democrats in the House. That's certainly not fair towards Republicans who live in Maryland.

EDIT: Apparently North Carolina is the Republican example to talk about, in case you want some "balance".

<comment><USER24> There are actually more extreme examples. Consider, Hillary Clinton got 90.9% of the DC vote Trump got 4.1%, I am not sure how you could slice up DC to get 10% Republican representation.

In Maryland's case it might be able to make 2 districts Republican, but that's assuming a very concentrated geographic minority which may or may not actually exist.

IMO, If we really want proportional representation then we should use a proportional system.

<comment><USER19> DC is a single city and doesn't even have one representative in Congress (Okay, they nominally have one. But she's non-voting so.... that's not really useful). They're technically a US Territory and have no more power than say Puerto Rico.

So once again, if you're talking about US Representatives and Voting Districts, it only makes sense to talk about well... Voting Districts. Name me one US State with 80/20 split and more than 1 US Representative. Ultimately, your hypothetical doesn't exist!

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>---

That's the cool thing about politics: its real. There's no need to make up hypotheticals when we can just draw from the real world.

FYI: the discussion at hand is about US Representatives, and not about the Electoral College. Washington DC is therefore irrelevant, as it has no representatives. Washington DC does get 3 Electoral college votes, but that has nothing to do with Gerrymandering.

There's a variety of states who have "Representatives At Large", such as Wyoming, which are basically immune to Gerrymandering. The population is so low that Wyoming only gets 1-Representative, so the entire State is the whole district. There's really no "fair" way to cut up a single Representative (its all or nothing), but that's mostly due to the very low population of these states.

Basically, Gerrymandering can only be an issue in a state with more than 1 Representative.

<comment><USER24> These rules are not limited to National elections. State elections are also based on redistricting. DC is part of the US and has District Elections so these rules will apply to it.

[https://www.dcboe.org/election_info/election_results/v3/2016...](https://www.dcboe.org/election_info/election_results/v3/2016/November-8-General- Election)

So, no you can't dodge the question. And I ask you to draw a DC map with some Republican representation.

PS: AKA draw a map such that WARD EIGHT MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL is likely Republican.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure why you're so obsessed with Washington DC in particular. If you live there, you probably know much more about it than I do.

But my general interest is how this whole event will play out in the greater scope of the country. I don't believe any US State with more than 1 Representative has an 80/20 split.

Perhaps Washington DC really is an edge case that needs to be thought out more. But I don't think its representative of the problems of Gerrymandering that exist in multiple states right now. (In particular, what this Gill v Whitford Supreme Court case is bringing up in Wisconsin)

<comment><USER24> You can find plenty of examples on both sides South Carolina sends 7 republicans an 1 Democrat to the house, but it's own biased house is 75 Republican to 45 Democrat. Which is a very safe majority of power, while still better representing the actual voting. It also contains wacky maps like this one: [https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/SC/2](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/SC/2)

Still, my concern is not about the results. My concern is how easy it is to game this proposal.

<comment><USER19> > Still, my concern is not about the results. My concern is how easy it is to > game this proposal.

Approximately the same difficulty to game the US Court system.

At the end of the day, Judges will adapt the rules to future cases. Law is an innately human process, not the cold machine logic that most of us Computer Science folks deal with.

If a major mistake is made in the current rubric, future lawyers and judges will bring it up on a case-by-case basis. Unlike code, Law is pliable and changes on local conditions. The issue isn't the "edge cases" which are dealt with as they come up.

If the proposal isn't working for say, Washington DC, then you can expect a case to bubble up through the Washington DC Courts, to maybe the US Court of Appeals, and eventually back to the Supreme Court if its major enough. If its purely a Washington DC issue (and not applicable anywhere else), there might not be any need for the US Court of appeals or US Supreme Court to hear about the case!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Gerrymandering is so ridiculous. Clearly geographic coordinates is the wrong data structure for systematically biasing votes for/against certain demographics.

A voting system should be explicit about exactly which demographic criteria should carry weighted bias, what value that weight should be, and what it's purpose is.

It should also be clear to each voter which demographic categories they fall under, what the final strength of their vote will be, and what the justification is for that outcome.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is also gerrymandering against independents and third parties.

A fair metric minimizes average distance from a citizen to the centroid of their district. The lowest energy Voronoi diagram wins. Nobody gets screwed.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Supreme Court (id est The Highest Court of the Land) is currently evaluating if they can rely on an algorithm to detect Constitutionality of district shapes. You're kidding, right? As a computational scientist this is concerning to put it mildly.

Trying to ensure proportionality in representation... is that the intended goal? Is this even a meaningful pursuit in a bicameral system? The Supreme Court makes rulings that span time infinitely forward, meaning that all those different parties that have existed since the inception of the Union have dissolved and new ones have been formed since, but the rulings of the Supreme Court have not this luxury of death and recycling. Nay, a ruling by the court is very potent and quite a footprint on the legal plain.

So there is no easy way to ensure that a district is Constitutionally Compliant, but we can definitely point out "unconstitutional districting" \-- right? Do you agree?

<comment><USER27> From my understanding, the Baker v Carr in 1962 decision enabled federal courts to intervene in and to decide redistricting.

Back in the day redistricting was even crazier. You could just draw an arbitrary number of districts with arbitrary population sizes. That seems bad on the surface. With this system, election outcomes could potentially be _entirely_ determined by how districts were gerrymandered.

The efficiency standard seems like trick to get closer to proportional representation. All of this comes down to the 14th amendment being "one person one vote" rather than something like "all votes must have equal weight". A small language that has made things really complicated.

IMO just switching to proportional representation is a much cleaner solution. But the efficiency standard seems like a decent solution to keeping races competitive and from being severely gerrymandered.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for your words and insight. Yes, proportional voting would be great! Your state gets 5 house seats? Let's have priority-voting where a voter picks choices 1-5 for representation. Jane is first choice, then Miyoko, Sofia, Leben, and Pierre. Jane may not get all the "first place" votes but she could get enough to end up in one of the five house seats our state gets.

Reading up on the 14th amendment, it does ensure that every male over 21 is able to vote (assuming they did not lose the right through crime, also a big issue today as a third of our populous is disenfranchised). It does not, however, say anything about how voting for reps is done at the state level, and I wonder if this becomes a States' matter as soon as we part from the 14th amendment. Pardon my gap-riddled knowledge of such important affairs

<comment><USER4> Most States don't take away your right to vote if you are convicted of a felony. Felons get to vote and can even, more often than not, vote while incarcerated. To vote while incarcerated, they use absentee ballots from the district where they resided prior to detention.

<comment><USER12> Only two states allow felons to vote while incarcerated: [http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and- campaigns/felon-v...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and- campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx)

<comment><USER4> D'oh. I had looked up, previously, to find out that felons can usually vote and extrapolated Maine to be the same as the rest, with regards to voting while incarcerated. My bad, the rest is correct however.

I know Maine allows it, and even encourages it. I actually started a campaign for State Senate at one point. As I got closer to election, I learned more about the system and decided I couldn't participate in that. So, I never turned in all the signatures and didn't run.

But, thanks for the correction. For some reason, I'd assumed the rest of the States allowed it. I understand that, in Maine, some candidates have even campaigned, in person, in the prisons. Notably, we don't actually have a lot of prisoners or very dangerous prisons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


So You Want to Launch a Rocket? The FAA is Here for You (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://groundbasedspacematters.com/index.php/2017/06/30/so-you-want-to-launch-a-rocket-the-faa-is-here-for-you/ <comment><USER2> OP is a useful overview of the relevant regulations.

And in case anyone disputes the need for regulations, it's worth remembering that any rocket that can put a payload into orbit — _any_ size of payload — is _de facto_ an ICBM: not a very good ICBM by modern military standards, but an adequate one. Expecting your government to pay no attention to your microsat launcher is like expecting them to ignore the unlicensed tank factory in their back yard.

<comment><USER3> I would wager you coulld weaponize a micro/cubesat enough to cause much more than icbm levels of chaos by attacking other sats (GPS, Spy, Comms, etc.) Thinking in terms of 1940's missles is a bit outdated.

<comment><USER4> Miss-iles, that's a very appropriate typo. "But I'm not planning to do any damage intentionally, and I'm expecting nothing to go wrong!" Well - the best- laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and things going wrong at orbital velocities tend to have unintended...impacts, if you will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Highly editorialized title. The original (sane) title is _So You Want to Launch a Rocket? The FAA is Here for You_.

This is especially eggregious given the overall positive tone of the post, see:

 _The point is, you do need federal permission to launch a rocket from the United States. And, if you are a U.S. citizen or other entity you need FAA approval to launch anywhere in the world. The Commercial Space Launch Act says so. You also need permission to reenter a reentry vehicle or operate a spaceport. The one thing my protégé had wrong, however, is that you don't need a license—or even an experimental permit—to launch a toy rocket or even a somewhat large amateur rocket._

</comment><comment><USER6> The expensive problem is having enough liability insurance for the worst case. Space-X originally launched from a Pacific island until they had their rocket working reasonably well.

Hobbyist rockets have a mass limit and a thrust limit.[1] Low-powered rockets, below those limits, have few regulations. As mass and thrust increase, the restrictions increase. Above 1 lb, you're an airspace user and have to talk to the FAA. Not much of a problem in rural areas far from an airport. Heavily restricted in controlled airspace. Reasonable enough.

Remember, if it can't reach escape velocity, it's going to come down somewhere. At high velocity.

Mojave Air and Space Port is supportive of people testing strange air vehicles. [2] Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, and the National Test Pilot School are all out there.

[1] [https://www.nar.org/find-a-local-club/section- guidebook/laws...](https://www.nar.org/find-a-local-club/section- guidebook/laws-regulations/) [2] [https://www.mojaveairport.com/](https://www.mojaveairport.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> There are always ways around the law for those creative enough. All it takes is one unregulated launch to put up a 'cold' ICBM in orbit, which would be effective insurance against any and all regulatory action. It's a vicious sort of realpolitik, but it would likely work.

Just wait until someone surreptitiously puts up a whole network of sleeper nukes into orbit. One weird trick to become world emperor, eh?

A good sci-fi plot, since it's likely do-able by private firms in the near to medium term.

That said there are more mundane ways to escape. However those come with their own risks (ask Gerald Bull how his attempt turned out).

<comment><USER8> > _All it takes is one unregulated launch to put up a 'cold' ICBM in orbit, > which would be effective insurance against any and all regulatory action. > It's a vicious sort of realpolitik, but it would likely work._

An ICBM with what payload exactly? With a _nuke_? Getting your hands on a nuke is hard. But, if by some miracle, you managed to launch one into space, then no later than you'd start threatening regulators with it, your nuke would eat a satellite interceptor.

> _Just wait until someone surreptitiously puts up a whole network of sleeper > nukes into orbit. One weird trick to become world emperor, eh?_

Near-impossible to pull off at this point, as it would require absurd world- wide levels of incompetency in tracking nuclear material _and_ space launches. That, or new technology for doing damage (this was a side plot in an excellent hard sci-fi book, A Sword Into Darkness, where a fictional propulsion system created by a private company could also work as a sort-of fusion bomb, without radioactive material).

<comment><USER9> You don't need nukes for space weapons, kinetic bombardment will do just fine.

<comment><USER8> Still, there's no stealth in space, and neither the US nor Russia nor China will let you _just_ assemble a kinetic bombardment vehicle in orbit.

Things _might_ get easier if humanity expands meaningfully beyond GEO.

<comment><USER9> No assembly involved. You launch a 20 ton tungsten rod with minimal atmospheric steering ability to LEO. Deorbiting the rod to a target will result in a 0.1 kiloton impact, which due to the directional nature of the strike will be far more locally destructive than a nuclear weapon.

<comment><USER8> That's the reason you won't be able to launch it in the first place. A rocket with 20 ton to orbit capacity will attract scrutiny of other space-capable powers, and they will be within their right (moral as well as legal) to shoot it down if you insist on not cooperating and disclosing its payload.

Also, even if you put a single "rod of God" in orbit, the moment you've threatened anybody with it, an attempt to shoot it down will be made. If you manage to drop it on someone, it'll only add extra mass murder charges onto your life sentence or execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The note at the end is somewhat important. If you are deciding where to incorporate your startup and you are _not_ a US citizen, ITAR is a good reason to avoid the USA. YC generally suggests US incorporation but it has real downsides, and exporting of technology is restricted.

</comment><comment><USER11> What happens if I go to Russians?

<comment><USER12> Then the Red Airforce will ask a lot of questions about what you're doing. The last thing they want is the US confusing your rocket launch with a preemptive nuclear strike.

Then, the rest of the government will have their pick at you. By international law, each country is responsible for anything that gets launched into orbit by their citizens/companies/from their territory.

<comment><USER13> It may be 'international law', but I'm pretty sure it has never been enforced, and probably never will be unless there's an intentional aggressive action against some other country outside a time of war.

<comment><USER12> It's the kind of international law that results in lawsuits, which nation states don't always ignore.

<comment><USER13> But they generally do, since they are not enforceable... Worst case, you get some sanction/parting shot.

That said, I would love some examples of a country being convicted of violating international law (or losing a lawsuit in an 'international court'), and having to pay for it. The only ones I can think of are WTO trade disputes, but recent (~2 months?) history shows that this body is now incapable.

<comment><USER14> Oil companies have won international law cases against Venezuela as one normal example. You have to be able to enforce that through seizing assets though (if necessary), backed by force. That's true in any such court case, whether we're talking domestic or international.

Conoco won a judgment against Venezuela before the International Chamber of Commerce and they have an open case before the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. They can then plausibly leverage the US Government as the means to seize assets of Venezuela in the US (Citgo being an example).

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/business/energy- environme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/business/energy- environment/conocophillips-venezuela-ruling.html)

An unorthodox example: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was basically universally found to violate international law. The UN authorized coalition of 30 nations made them pay for it (crushed their military and economy).

You have to have a really big stick to back-stop anything like 'international law.' The UN and most agencies don't have that kind of power unto themselves, only nations do, because in most cases it ultimately comes down to military enforcement (for the exact same reason taxation enforcement ultimately is supported by a gun). The sole major exception to that, is the US using the USD global reserve currency as a platform for sanctions (through various levers), and or working with the EU and other large economies to sanction in concert (Iran, North Korea, et al.).

The US is one of the few entities capable of unilaterally dictating international law, because of its numerous large sticks. It occasionally suffers the non-surprising blowback from doing so (as with the recent withdrawal from the Iran deal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The site's title for the post is "So You Want to Launch a Rocket? The FAA is Here for You."

HN title has been editorialized to "Launching a rocket? The US Govt _will_ have its hooks into you."

<comment><USER16> Thanks, we've reverted it to the original.</comment></comment>


How to guide for building a modern web app with React and Firebase - <AUTHOR> https://field-guide.web.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Would appreciate any and all feedback! Thanks in advance :)</comment>


"Gigster Guaranteed" Refunds? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone been able to successfully get refunds from Gigster? Gigster offers full refunds for building less than your full site. We've been waiting months, and we keep getting delayed and stalled. I relied on the "Gigster Guarantee" and now I have no code and no refunds. Any advice? https://gigster.com/ <comment><USER2> I am Amna from Gigster HQ. On behalf of the entire Gigster team, I apologize that we did not meet your expectations. We aim to delight every client, I am personally looking into this case to determine what happened here. While we can't entirely replace the time or vision we had at the start of the project, we'd like the opportunity to make this right for you. If you would like us to help you feel free to send me an email to me at email@example.com with your gig name. I will be able to update you on a refund request within a few business days.

At Gigster we evaluate refund requests on a case by case basis.

Thanks in advance, Amna Mulla</comment>


Sony warns users not to take 'waterproof' phones under water - aps-sids http://www.cultofandroid.com/76101/sony-warns-users-not-to-take-its-waterproof-smartphones-under-water/ <comment><AUTHOR> OK, Sony deceived their customers in advertising. How is this any different from what they do every day?

Note that in EU deceitful advertising is illegal.</comment>


What does Siri know about foreign policy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/20/iphone_siri_herman_cain?page=full

<comment><USER2> Slow news week at Foreign Policy?

</comment><comment><USER3> And thus begins the singularity.</comment>


Eucalyptus - <AUTHOR> http://eucalyptus.cs.ucsb.edu/ <comment><AUTHOR> EUCALYPTUS - Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems - is an open-source software infrastructure for implementing "cloud computing" on clusters. The current interface to EUCALYPTUS is compatible with Amazon's EC2 interface, but the infrastructure is designed to support multiple client-side interfaces. EUCALYPTUS is implemented using commonly-available Linux tools and basic Web-service technologies making it easy to install and maintain.

</comment><comment><USER2> One way to go about democratising the "cloud". Some have cheekily aligned it with how current day linux came to form. A need for a free and hopefully standard platform. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know how useful it is, but I'm willing to give it eight points for the acronym alone.</comment>


How to disable Mac OS X Dashboard - <AUTHOR> http://jjbohn.ruhoh.com/mac-os-x/how-to-disable-mac-os-x-dashboard/ For me, Dashboard is one of the worst features of Mac OS X. If Apple were to release it today, there would be all kinds of comments on how they are losing it and that it's just not the same since Steve left. But, it can be removed. <comment><AUTHOR> Changed the site to <http://jjbohn.info></comment>


Silicon Valley's geeks are trying to turn themselves into jocks - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21704834-silicon-valleys-geeks-are-trying-turn-themselves-jocks-revenge-nerds <comment><USER2> > Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, gets on the treadmill by five in the morning. Jack > Dorsey, Twitter's boss, is a fan of squats, push-ups and jogging. Brian > Chesky, a co-founder of Airbnb, was once a competitive bodybuilder. Jeff > Bezos and Elon Musk both reportedly have "pecs to die for".

Tech executives are the celebrities of this community, and this is gossip-rag level reporting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Embarrassing. This tripe gets published on The Economist these days?

A piece on the fitness trend in SV without the trash psychoanalysis would have been somewhat interesting.

<comment><USER4> sad actually because the economist is a good publication otherwise

<comment><USER3> exactly, that was my impression. Now I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER5> Could it be related to Pearson PLC selling off its 50% equity stake in The Economist Group in Aug 2015 for £469m?

<comment><USER2> Highly unlikely. Pearson PLC is a publicly traded company whereas the buyers of the equity stake are private families. The families are a lot more likely to act in a way that maximizes long term value over short term profit than Pearson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is bizarrely low brow for The Economist. What the hell? I can't tell if it's satire or human interest or what.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real submission here should be a thought piece along the lines of "what the hell is going on over at the Economist?", providing this link as evidence of its decline.

</comment><comment><USER8> what a random pile of shit

<comment><USER9> Good way to put it yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My general rule on trend pieces: ignore them all.

</comment><comment><USER11> For a moment I thought I was reading Buzzfeed, not the Economist.

</comment><comment><USER12> Typical Buzzfeed article.

<comment><USER13> Except it's in the Economist. Bizarre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone that recently submersed himself in the Bay Area and its resentment of change:

WTF is a tech bro? That's not a thing

</comment><comment><USER15> A junk article, but I would add that there is one aspect to the word "jock" that the silicon valley elite aren't respecting. They are not competing in heavily-regulated sports. For all the talk of clean living, drugs and "sups" are common. A jock is someone who works at being competitive, regardless of look. These guys are only interested in projecting an image.

<comment><USER16> You're being downvoted heavily, and I thought I might mention possible justifications for that. You have an impressive density of third-rail-steppage on your way down the karma hole! :)

1) every sufficiently regulated sport seems to have frequent violations of these regulations. Clearly "nerds" (a term I find nearly as demeaning as "jocks") are not the only ones trying to hack the body.

2) Talking about people's health activities as both you and this article have done is reductionist to the point of absurdity. There are many ways people try to improve their health, some are performance minded but plenty are looking to improve base metrics like weight, body fat percentages and such. You can't describe all of silicon valley in a sweeping statement in such a basic area of human activity.

3) The false dichotomy between "nerds" and "jocks" is silly and false, at least in my experience. Anecdatally, I worked with an extremely competitive rugby player who was also a great functional programmer, and he's far from the only example I could provide. This is an 80's stereotype and seeing it perpetuated by the Economist (and then echoed) is disappointing.

<comment><USER15> Funny, I'm not being "heavily" downvoted (-1) nor did I mention any dichotomy. I work with these guys. I exercise with them (personally, I'm a swimmer). They are in it for the body image, not to compete in regulated sport. With no rules forbidding them, the use of substances legal or otherwise is common. Jocks aren't image people. That term is associated with sport, for those who compete rather than simply exercise for purposes of health/fitness/look.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Canadian incorporated employees, how do you deal with the CRA risk? - <AUTHOR> More and more companies demand that you as a developer work for them as an incorporated employee: you should be an employee (9-5, no autonomy, 40h/week, cannot subcontract, told where when and how to do the work) but they want to pay you as a contractor to save money and let you go easily. They demand you incorporate so that when the CRA catches you and deems you a personal services business or incorporated employee, you are personally on the hook for the 40% tax rate and penalties rather than the employer/client if you were not incorporated.
Small startups do it, huge corporations do it (banks, telcos...) It looks like an offer for these jobs is contingent on incorporating and taking on the risk.
How do you deal with this situation? Is the risk worth taking? Have you been caught and it ruined your life + profits? Did you pass on the job or were you able to work as a proper employee? <comment><USER2> The 'get incorporated' trend has certainly been more noticeable in the past couple of years.

Generally speaking I do not give course to such employment offers, in other the tax rate for incorporated individuals/small business is too high.

In regards to thw reasoning behind this, I believe it's mostly a question of company culture and perhaps the expenses the employer needs to pay (gov tax, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> > I believe it's mostly a question of company culture and perhaps the expenses > the employer needs to pay (gov tax, etc).

I agree, it's the company wanting to evade taxes but getting you to incorporate so that all the risk is shifted on to you. I suspect it is also to lower your leverage because you don't get EI if laid off so they can push you harder without repercussion. Not even mentioning how easy it is to get rid of a contractor without notice or severance vs an employee.

I wonder why so many accept it, I suppose people don't realize how drastic the punishment is if you're deemed an incorporated employee and only think about today's savings by paying a 15% tax rate.</comment></comment>


Different ways to build a $100M business (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-build-100-million-business.html <comment><USER2> Re: the animal analogy... If you want to extend the sales-lingo, the term is "rats and mice" not mice and flies.

Jests aside, I like this kind of abstract strategic thinking process. It reminds me of the "1000 true fans" writeup from the last decade. _But_ , it's important to remember this is scaffolding for thinking strategically, not a blueprint. Often, the winning tactic is to break such "rules." But, thinking within a framework like this can focus the mind. It's useful to realize you're breaking a rule when trying to break it.

For example:

" _1,000 enterprise customers paying you $100k+ per year each_ "

There are lots of examples of sub-enterprise sized companies (even small businesses where everyone can still fit in a jumbo taxi) paying this much... for _something_.

A big example is advertising. Plenty of businesses spend 10% or more of their budget on advertising. How many software startups pay google/fb most of the money they raise from VCs? This applies to lots of businesses from SAAS apps to dental clinics. There are ad-management apps that charge 5% of ad spending. Services that charge 15%-20%.

Another example is "franchises." Mcdonalds corporate's business model is to make $100k+ from small-medium businesses. It's not a very startup-ey example but an example nonetheless. The uber-of-x business model is kind of a reverse example of franchising. Uber charges the customer, and cuts the driver their share. If the customer were to pay drivers and the and the drivers paid uber... you have the mcdonalds model. It's debateable whether this counts as "selling to consumers" or "selling to businesses," but there're specific examples in both camps.

So, it's _possible_ to sell 100k software to a $1m-$10m businesses... But it is very useful to realize that this _is rulebreaking_. An enterpirse pays $100k+ for lots of things. A small business will only pay that much if it's absolutely core to their business model. Usually this means it's absolutely indispensible to gettng customers.

<comment><USER3> > So, it's possible* to sell 100k software to a $1m-$10m businesses... But it > is very useful to realize that this is rulebreaking. An enterpirse pays > $100k+ for lots of things. A small business will only pay that much if it's > absolutely core to their business model. Usually this means it's absolutely > indispensible to gettng customers.

This is a very good point, especially when you force yourself to define "absolutely core to their business model" (if you're selling franchises it literally _is_ their business model, but you only sell franchises if you've worked out how they can make much more revenue from selling to people further down the chain...). And remember that services like Google Ads only ended up absolutely core to some businesses because they _didn 't_ start off with the ambition of getting 100k contracts but let people start as small as they liked to prove its worth....

Thinking you might get 100k licenses from the $10m per annum businesses theoretically encompasses a lot more companies than "large enterprises", but in practice the sort of software and marketing channels companies are willing to decide to spend 1%-10% of their annual revenue on up front tend to be either (i) super specialised solutions you've developed to make/save demonstrable amounts of money or completely run operations in their niche, which might well be a niche smaller than the "large enterprise" space anyway or (ii) services where they get the perception they're paying for a lot of your time to make it work for them, in which case your margins aren't so impressive. They're probably not expanding their IT budget or dedicating most of their marketing budget for a generic CRM system or user monitoring service, even if you have a very good pitch about why yours is better than the ones with attractively low rates for medium sized enterprises.

<comment><USER4> My company has multiple $50k/year clients that gross only 5-10million a year.

<comment><USER5> You would need 2,000 of those customers to reach $100 million ARR.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, and I don't think that's a realistic goal for us. Was just pointing out a single data point to contribute about lower revenue companies investing 1%+ of their revenue into a tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The hardest parts are getting those customers and keeping them. When you are high functioning like me you can do almost anything in IT, but lack people and social skills. People and social skills are needed to market and use public relations to get those customers and you have to emotionally connect to them. You have to keep them satisfied or else they leave and go somewhere else. You have to let them know what needs your products and services meet, you have to find ways your product and services save them money and time. This is why 9 out of 10 startups fail, can't connect to people enough to get them as customers.

<comment><USER7> > but lack people and social skills

I am curently working with a programme director that is one of the best PMs that walk this earth. Nothing escapes him. But when he opens his mouth.. oh that mouth!! Kinda like the Sex Pistols song "Bodies" that sings "f* this and f* that, f* it all and f* a f*ing brat". He will never be customer facing. He will never be business (people) facing, he will never be finance (people) facing. He will always be talking to IT people, because.. well for some reason they tolerate him (for the time being).

He cannot grow any more, he cannot mature any more, he is stuck in the position.

> can't connect to people enough to get them as customers

I had the same problem to with my first iOS app. I just couldn't listen to feedback and criticism. I had a vision for my app, and I just didn't want to change anything. Until I faced reality and I did change it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Much more achievable would be to aim for revenues of $10M-20M, and a $100M exit value (5-10X multiple).

<comment><USER2> And more achievable than that is 1m-2m in sales for a $10m exit value.

$100m is just a number he picked to focus the thought.

<comment><USER9> Well, I would actually do be very happy if my bootstrapping business do $200k/year in revenue and a $1m exit value

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> funny because I'm actually in the selling mice business, and doing the business of selling mice... and it gets funnier because my mouse is called the RBT mouse, or rabbit mouse... coincidence is so wonderful

</comment><comment><USER11> I really like the fly analogy - eating flies is disgusting, but will make do if nothing else works.

Also, why can't you have a $100mil business selling a service to 10 million users for $10/year?

<comment><USER12> see updates at the bottom, there are updates to his post where he covers extra ways, including one you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps this reflects what VCs want to see in your pitch (one of these), but an entrepreneur will hopefully not set out to "build a $100m business" but try to solve real problems.

Amazon gets > $500 from normal customers and > $2500 from Prime members per year according to Morgan Stanley, FWIW. Aiming for $10/user from ads is aiming too low (and was already shunned as a business model soon after 2000).

<comment><USER14> It doesn't have to be a complete dichotomy. Knowing your market size and customer profile is a good thing, and often key to building a successful sales team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about hunting hunters?

<comment><USER4> This is the business I am in and the sector us exploding. The tools that come to market every week in the biz dev space are mindblowing but increasingly hard to connect for optimal results.

<comment><USER15> Indeed! We are building one right now, Track Email for iOS / Android, so you can track the emails you send and the links that were clicked. Know anything like this right now, that doesn't require a server? Maybe Newton Mail?

<comment><USER4> Yesware and many (most?) CRMs have tools to track opens, forwards and link clicks.

<comment><USER15> Talking about iOS

<comment><USER4> A Google search reveals lots of options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have anyone of you built a Enterprise web company alone? Or is it just a fantasy?

<comment><USER14> This is basically impossible.

Enterprises do not buy from a single person companies and the sales cycle alone usually takes multiple people even if you could build a product that they would use by yourself.

That being said, there are several examples of single-person businesses that have gotten around the 1-2k/month price range.

<comment><USER16> Could you give some example?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1) Exploit labor.

</comment><comment><USER18> From 2014 by Nine Point Capital. Their tagline is "We invest all over the world" but when I reached out they said "they don't invest in India".

I am in Canada. smh

<comment><USER19> Wait a second. Reading [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19540773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19540773) Does that mean they excluded you based just on name before figuring out where you are based? That would be more like "They don't invest in people from India" and I think it'd be good to red-flag them for that.

<comment><USER20> Christoph here from Point Nine.

No, we didn't do that. I can confirm that with certainty even without having asked everyone on my team.

I'm trying to find out what was going on and will post more details ASAP.

<comment><USER18> Hey Christoph, here is a screencap of the email : [https://screenshots.firefox.com/DCsDhXwfTXv0hsls/mail.google...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/DCsDhXwfTXv0hsls/mail.google.com)

Sorry I don't want to come off as offensive and I didn't expect so much reaction to a simple denial. VCs have passed us on for far absurd reasons.

<comment><USER21> Hi Ganesh,

I would be interested in hearing the conclusion to this interaction. Do you have a point of contact where I could reach you at the end of this week?

-Tom

<comment><USER18> Tom, that was the end of the email trail; I didn't hear back anything.

It's no big deal really. A miscommunication between their tag line and my expectation. My email is ganesh @ aihello.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A well conceived article about building your business and giving novice entrepreneurs a chance to think about earning millions of dollars in revenue. The reference given to animals here in accordance to customers makes it a bit weird but otherwise the whole post is quite informative and interactive to read.

</comment><comment><USER23> (2014)

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting point but it's unnecessary and irrelevant to compare startup scaling to hunting animals. Why hunt? As though we hunt customers. And why animals? Who in their right mind would hunt any of these animals. Could use a better analogy to communicate the point. Startup scaling is an act of persuasion rather than condescension.

<comment><USER2> It's sales lingo, especially stock brokerage.

Whales, fish, mice, elephants. SV VCs added unicorns.... I wonder what they call their LPs.

<comment><USER25> Sir</comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's $585B Problem - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/silicon-valley-tech-ipo-market/ <comment><USER2> I'll take a bit more controversial side. I don't believe Sarbanes Oxley has anything to do with companies not going public. Its a crutch that week companies rely on..

I probably get ot speak with more CEO/CFO's than most people here and I've never once heard SarBox brought up as any sort of issue.

What Sarbox will do is force companies to be a bit more mature with their own internal financial controls, ie they can't run their company using quickbooks anymore.

From my perspective the biggest issues that companies who go public have are two fold:

1) They've come from the VC model where growth is held above all other things. Once you go public, growth is expected but its also expected to take a back seat to generating profits. This can be a very tough transition for some companies as it means quite often the things you were doing to please your VC are no longer the things you should be doing when you are public.

2) You can now be shorted. When you are private, its like the market for sports free agents. it only takes one VC/team to pay a company/player.

There is now check and balance in terms of being able to short the company. Which means there is no real downward pressure that allows companies to find their equilibrium price.

Unfortunately this means that many companies whoi go public find out later on that they were the sheltered child who was good at sports in their own small town, but when they got to the big city, they and their parents(VC's) overvalued their own abilities.

3) Most companies who go public don't know how to guide or handle wall street. You might get offended by this, "who is wall street to say what I can or can''t do with my company", but they are the owners of your company.

Consider this scenario. Your friend raises a great Series A valuation, say $25 million. He then comes to you to complain that his VC's are pushing back on him for wanting to pay himself a $1,000,000 salary and the company buying a share of a private jet, and who are the VC's to say how the company should spend its money.

You'd probably look at your friend with disbelief. Wall street is the same, once you go public they are the owners of the company and you need to know how to keep them happy. The best thing Twitter has done since going public was to hire Anthony Noto as their CFO ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Noto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Noto)).

<comment><USER3> Per #1, you are correct in theory. However I can counter with Amazon and Tesla, which have been increasing revenue rapidly but making losses for years. And their stocks are near all time highs. So I would say Wall Street prefers profits, but as long as you can keep increasing revenue, your stock will continue to go up regardless.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue there's a big difference between companies with positive gross margins and companies with negative gross margins, though both may be making losses in total.

Amazon most certainly has positive gross margins - and instead chooses to reinvest profits aggressively. Tesla is less certain, but I think a far cry from some of the unicorns that continue to run on deeply negative gross margins with the expectation that scale/future tech/vague fantasies will save them.

On the other hand many unicorns don't currently have business models where they are selling dollars for more-than-a-dollar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are two issues that are causing this:

(1) Sarbanes-Oxley has made life harder for public companies, so companies are waiting longer, getting bigger, and giving more of their returns to pre-IPO investors.

(2) QE means there's a lot of money trying to chase returns, leading to asset bubbles and volatility as investors bid against each other.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely agreed on (2). However, to follow that up, that should be leading to bubbles in both private and public equities (which it has). Ultimately, QE does nothing to stimulate the economy, only artificially pumping assets we use as metrics for the economy. Ultimately information will be passed through prices as institutional traders start to agree that fundamental values are lower, and more QE will start to actually damage equities, rather than pumping them as we've seen.

So cheaper credit affects private and public equities equally. But that's not what we're seeing here - public equities are at lower valuations than private. I believe that is because PE is substantially less sophisticated relative to public markets. There is no way to short assets, holding periods are 3-7 years, and the method of transaction is cumbersome and antiquated. Compared to public markets, PE has more information asymmetry, less efficiency, lower liquidity, fewer participants, and no easy way of ratcheting down valuations until the next sale.

So QE has pumped up PE even more than public equities, and we see that as privately valued firms struggle after going public.

<comment><USER7> I am genuinely worried if assets such as real-estate will deflate once we get to normal interest rates (which I suppose will happen around the time I die). As someone who is house poor, I can see an asset that is bubbilicious but I feel I have no choice but accept the distortion of the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm beginning to think the "bubble" has more to do with financial news needing something to report on and get people's attention than the broad performance of the industry.

In that case, it's the "Ad Bubble" not another tech bubble.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Spot on.

Unlike the 90s, a lot of startups today are actually making things and making money hand-over-fist, it's insane. Too bad for the press they're obscure business models and located in places like Lansing MI and you've never heard of them, but there is tons of money to be made.

On the other hand, social networks, big data, and now neural networks are The Big Thing, so everyone relentlessly reports on them, throws money at them like the hottest stripper in Vegas, and gets resoundly disappointed when they don't live up to people's astronomical expectations.

Besides, if people generally only spend $X a year on stuff they see advertised or sold online, how much money is going to be sunk into online advertising, big data, and all that other junk until you're basically getting one dollar earned for every dollar spent?

<comment><USER9> the question is how much of the other stuff being built is built on top of the ad money pyramid. would cloud computing have grown as much without tons of apps and sites springing up that then try to acquire users via the main adverting channels? how many saas businesses are there catering to these types of cos that are basically unsustainable, but got funding which they primarily used in user acquisition efforts?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Yeah that's a scary thought. You get a bunch of businesses that are flush with VC money and that opens opportunities for other companies that rely on their services or networks (granted that usually means google <thing> or AWS but that doesn't make their arbitrary removal of services any less capricious), and suddenly the pyramid wobbles like a house of cards.

Then again I'm naturally averse to invest in anything that doesn't have a profit motive front and center.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Part of the main reason for going public was to continue to establish Lending Club's brand and credibility," he says.

I feel like this doesn't apply to most companies nowadays. I think Lending Club is in a special place because they deal with financials, which requires an increased level of trust. A lot of companies like Uber, Airbnb, and smaller startups like Wealthfront, Betterment, etc are able to generate pretty solid brand recognition and trust without going public.

Also, this article really makes it seem like the only reason companies aren't going public is because they aren't ready and that none of them are making any money. I feel like that is a vast overgeneralization. The ones that are making money, or are successful are still going to be able to raise money privately. I know everyone here thinks the sky is falling down and funding is drying up, but I don't think that is the case for GOOD companies. Sure your uber for X might not get funding anymore, but solid companies I imagine are still able to raise new rounds reasonably easily. Why would you want to go public when you can raise adequate sums of money through private financing?

</comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed this article. Interesting detail, compelling story line, easy to digest.

Unfortunately, the thesis is deeply flawed--that most stocks plummet after IPO does not a broken system make.

</comment><comment><USER12> So are these IPOs LC, GPRO AND LNKD ever going to recover?

<comment><USER13> yes, if they start making money. their PE ratios are still on the high side

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Inserting stock ticker garbage into articles is really obnoxious.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: this article is from February 1, 2016</comment>


After 5 years of Dvorak, I am switching back to Qwerty - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@xkpb/after-5-years-of-dvorak-i-am-switching-back-to-qwerty-5756b8f607de <comment><USER2> Typing speed does not matter at all in creating software.

I type around 140wpm with a maximum of 146 in normal text whilst using qwerty. Never did I feel like this was important when writing code.

Dvorak might be interesting to learn just as a challenge but I am not sure if it necessarily makes you a better typist either.</comment>


Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/21-days.html# <comment><USER2> This has been posted to HN at least 3 times before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191235>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833965></comment>


Ask HN: Is having a unique handle for profile pages a problem? - <AUTHOR> Every major platform I know has their core entities behind a user chosen handle. Right now I'm deciding how to handle this matter for a web app I'm developing and my main concern is name squatting. There have been many discussions about squatting, here's one about Rust's package repository, crates.io[1], for example.
An alternative approach that I've been thinking about would be having a slug (for SEO purposes) and an ID in the URL: myapp.com/page/FancyCorporation/mYlIcpWXpCG3GithkD2OdA. Although it makes the URL uglier, naming the thing is less stressful as every name is allowed. Another problem with this solution might be the fact that the slug part can be any string: myapp.com/page/asdasd/mYlIcpWXpCG3GithkD2OdA and myapp.com/page/FancyCorporation/mYlIcpWXpCG3GithkD2OdA point to the same profile. This allows bad actors to create URLs that look legit.
Am I overthinking or what do you think?
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/9dole9/proposal_crate_squatting_on_cratesio/ <comment><USER2> Seems like there's two things here:

      1. username handles
      2. unique page urls

For the usernames I would use system generated (numeric or uuid) internal ids that are associated with usernames.

For the page urls, I would let the author use any string, generating a semi- meaningful default for seo. The page url should include the username handle and so the unique part for the page only has to be unique for that username.

This means that say the db for page urls will have a unique constraint on (user_id, page_url_suffix) where the user_id is the numeric/uuid one. So if user with handle xxx is deleted and a new user uses handle xxx only the new urls for that user are still accessible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have a look at OnioNS (Onion Name System). It's a method for allowing users to claim unique names while limiting the effects of squatting, as it takes continuous computational power to retain a name.

This probably isn't going to help with your web app, but it's an interesting part of the theory to understand.</comment>


Google Maps Mystery Actually Spy Satellite Targets - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/17/mysterious-symbols-in-china-desert-are-spy-satellite-targets-expert-says/ <comment><USER2> out of curiousity -- could the Manhattan grid be naturally used for satellite calibration (thus masking intention)? Could we install objects on top of buildings to help calibration (surreptitiously)?

<comment><USER3> The first thing that comes to mind here is the enormous red bullseyes that Target puts on top of all of its stores. They're visisble from airplanes and satellites, but their symmetry would make them less useful for calibration.

An example: <http://craphound.com/images/googleeasrthad.jpg>

<comment><USER4> That's a brilliant move on Target's part-- how easy must it be to find your nearest target on Google/Bing/Etc Maps? Pretty forward thinking of them, if you ask me...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about this that is just next to the weird circle thing. Did noone catch this, or is there a good explanation for this one:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.457985,93.392801&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.457985,93.392801&hl=en&num=1&t=h&vpsrc=0&z=16)

</comment><comment><USER6> "In other words, the Chinese military probably uses radar instruments to send signals down at the target from above, and determine how much radar bounces back to the instruments from the fighter jets..."

I'm curious, what type of radar is used in spy satellites? Is there any health risk for people on the ground?

<comment><USER7> The military probably has radar on satellites similar to aircraft-mounted battlefield management systems like JSTARS

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-8_Joint_STARS>)

Basically, they can identify tanks, buildings, and other large objects via radar. There are also millimeter band radars that can produce images.

<comment><USER8> Satellites can do _much_ better than just identify large objects. Resolution depends on the aperture width, and a satellite in orbit can pretend to have a very wide aperture indeed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did we find their area 51 yet?

</comment><comment><USER10> Do we have to link to fox news?

<comment><USER11> That's somewhat prejudiced, no? Besides, the content is originally from here[1], Fox News just republished it.

[1]: [http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/mystery-structures- china...](http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/mystery-structures-china-desert- spy-satellite-2184/)

<comment><USER12> _That's somewhat prejudiced, no?_

The point of avoiding Fox is to eschew prejudice, I'd say.

You could summarize this story as "Yep, China has spy satellites," which isn't actually news to anyone who's interested. It's exactly the sort of "keep the people afraid" non-news Fox has become infamous for.

<comment><USER13> CNN, MSNBC, and aljazeera are also all biased. In fact, all news is.

The only difference is that you don't agree with the politics of Fox news.

<comment><USER14> I don't know about CNN, MSNBC, or Aljazeera, but Fox News admitted to fabricating stories and lying in court (bizarrely, they won the right to lie and call it news in said same court).

[http://ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/...](http://ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/fox_news_gets_okay_to_misinform_public.html) [http://digg.com/news/entertainment/the_daily_show_fox_news_l...](http://digg.com/news/entertainment/the_daily_show_fox_news_lying_dynasty)

(I'm for totally ignoring CNN, MSNBC, and Aljazeera as well if they admit to intentionally misleading the public.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't be a douchebag: Best practices for game mechanics in your web app - <AUTHOR> http://blog.meatinthesky.com/presentation-dont-be-a-douche-best-practices

<comment><USER2> Why should you "avoid leaderboards"? No explanation under that bullet point. I like leaderboards that let me see how I've done in real games against my friends (XBox Live Arcade has a great implementation of this). What's wrong with using them in an app?

<comment><USER3> It depends on whether you want your users to compete against each other or not.

Take in example reddit trying to avoid becoming digg and hacker news trying to avoid becoming reddit, what is everyone trying to avoid? Competition for points and essentially leaderboards.

However for something like games leaderboards are essential as they can provide an incentive to keep playing.

<comment><USER4> HackerNews has leaderboards though. <http://news.ycombinator.com/lists>

<comment><USER5> Though interestingly there's no longer a link to the leaderboard on the top bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I didn't really find enough value in the slides to justify the time consuming 36 clicks to get through them. I'm sure it may have been a great talk, but what do we get out of the page, exactly?

Is video or at least audio available anywhere?

<comment><USER7> The takeaways are in the last few slides (the text is on SS if you scroll down).

Sadly, this BarCamp didn't record anything. :(</comment></comment>


Try out new pwd management sytem Passpad? Limited invite code "hackernews" - <AUTHOR> http://passpad.org

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm interested in hearing feedback and comments.</comment>