eBay's Critics Faced an Extreme Case of an Old Silicon Valley Habit - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/technology/ebay-silicon-valley-security-reputation.html <comment><USER2> > She had met a man on Match.com who claimed to work in construction in San > Jose, Calif., and he had convinced her to send him a topless photo. He was > threatening to email the photo to the entire company if she did not pay him > $10,000.

> With her permission, Mr. Sullivan's team took over her account and > redirected her extortionist to a payment scheme that they knew would reveal > his identity. They determined he was a former Google intern living in > Nigeria.

> Mr. Sullivan's team hired Nigerian contractors to confront him. He confessed > and surrendered access to his computer and online accounts, which showed he > was extorting female executives across Silicon Valley. Investigators were > able to destroy the nude photos and warned his victims not to pay.

...

> a former Google intern living in Nigeria

> hired Nigerian contractors to confront him

All of this is both insane and fascinating..

<comment><USER3> _> hired Nigerian contractors to confront him_

I assume by "contractor", it is not meant that they called up WiPro for someone who can knock out a nice PHP website in a week. OTOH, I wouldn't want to mess with anyone that has to deal with PHP week after week.

<comment><USER4> I understood "contractor" in this usage to mean mercenary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Mr. Sullivan learned that lesson as a security executive at eBay in 2006. > Romanian fraudsters were running rampant on eBay, and Romanian authorities > refused to address the problem. It was only after Mr. Sullivan's team shut > off eBay access to all of Romania — with a message blaming eBay's shuttering > on Romanian law enforcement's refusal to pursue online criminals — that > Romanian police took action.

Haha, I remember an article that quoted an anonymous Ebay employee maybe 10 years ago where they said something like « What do they want us to do, go to Romania in our green EBay jumpsuits and confront them? »

But it sounds like tech companies do just that!

<comment><USER6> Multinational tech companies are now more powerful than many smaller governments. They can, and do, impact who ends up in charge of many such governments, at the end of the day.

10 years ago, no politician would've gotten stressed out over a statement from a tech company executive. Now many are worried about keeping close contact with them.

<comment><USER7> And it's a good thing. It helps keeping bad people on a good behavior.

<comment><USER6> If you trust politicians less than tech company executives, sure. But tech company executives are by and large pretty shady people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This Wired article goes into more detail. Stranger than fiction.

[https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged- cyberstal...](https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged- cyberstalking-harassment-campaign/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Completely insane behavior. How do you wake up one day at a corporate environment and think any of this is OK?

<comment><USER10> People who think bad behavior is okay tend to cluster together. The people who objected likely were selected out over time, either by leaving for more ethical companies or being pushed out for non-compliance.

Over time, the bad actors would become surrounded by other bad actors. It becomes a bubble, or an echo chamber.

<comment><USER11> >tend to cluster together.

Yeah that is seems to happen informally too. Often I don't think it even requires people being pushed out or even knowing what everyone's views on things are, it just happens.

I worked with a guy who had some interesting views, I suspected he was a casual sort of racist (turned out to be way more than that) but obviously I wasn't going to probe this guy's opinions and I avoided him beyond work related topics and such. He never said anything overtly racist and I really didn't think much of it other than not wanting to be around him.

Then over time as his team was built ... similar folks with similar views. It wasn't some planned cabal or anything, I don't think they were in a conference room talking about recruiting racists ... it's just that people who were less comfortable tended to want to work elsewhere and those who liked him worked with him and like gravity things sort of just worked out that way.

Then finally he did something monumentally stupid (some text in code ... in a customer environment).

There's some further investigation and yeah some emails are found involving this guy's team and suddenly they're all gone.

In my example it wasn't even that anyone was pushed out for differing views or etc .... they just chose to be elsewhere before they even knew what that guy really thought, and folks with similar views / ok with that guy got closer.

And it might have also been less a racism vibe that people picked up on as much as 'this guy seems like he'd do something unpredictable / is not trustworthy'.

<comment><USER12> super non-helpful comment deleted -- instead, be good to each other, and I will try also

<comment><USER11> I gotta be honest and say that I'm not at all sure what you're saying. Clearly there is a very general common theme here about bigotry... but beyond that I'm not sure how your comment is connected to mine.

For the record I'm not in Virginia ... I'm not sure what that or "East Asian companies" has to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's nothing funny about this. Oh, one thing is really funny. They bought the mask and the book on Amazon ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> On the one hand I can look at what he did and say that his intent was good and he protected those women and protected his company. However, Mr. Sullivan is clearly taking the law into his own hands (even if that law is in another country).

If you look at this as a business deciding that they want to move forward a business deal elsewhere in the world, they would run afoul of the FCPA if they decided to bribe someone to further that business deal. But it seems that hiring PMCs to intimidate and threaten people is permitted. Perhaps the time has come for legislation to cover this particular practice.

<comment><USER15> > However, Mr. Sullivan is clearly taking the law into his own hands (even if > that law is in another country)

FTA: "Romanian authorities refused to address the problem."

Law is a social construct. If the law does not or will not address _material_ interpersonal harm, taking matters into your own hands is less being a vigilante than it is creative problem-solving.

<comment><USER14> That's the type of behavior I would applaud. If a country is not handling law enforcement to your satisfaction, then simply don't do business there.

My issue is with an American company literally furthering their business interests by hiring foreign actors to intimidate and threaten. The relevant quote from the article:

"Mr. Sullivan's team hired Nigerian contractors to confront him."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article give me the impression that eBay is going to get off scot free in this whole episode. Did the scummy-6 not use eBay's resources in service of its corporate goals to harass/intimidate/terrorize the small-business couple? The operating motto for corporate rule-breaking is "while 1; do-nasty-shit; catch me if you can; oh you did; sorry-bye; goto do-nasty-shit;".

</comment><comment><USER17> > It was only after Mr. Sullivan's team shut off eBay access to all of Romania > — with a message blaming eBay's shuttering on Romanian law enforcement's > refusal to pursue online criminals — that Romanian police took action.

Jeez. While I get the frustration that eBay had with fraudsters, this is _yet another_ case (after Amazon trying to extort France in the corona conflict, or Uber and AirBnB ignoring local court orders) of a major US tech company to outright crap on national sovereignity of an European country.

How can us Europeans protect against this kind of moves? Especially with the current US President being someone who would retaliate for anything that he gets complained about?

<comment><USER18> American companies regularly fight with the American government too. There was a story a while back, for example, where the FBI demanded that Apple unlock a mass shooter's phone and Apple refused. If you want companies that consider themselves subservient to the government, you'll probably need to build your own, because Americans just don't think that way.

<comment><USER17> There is one thing to argue with politicians, that's fine. Ignoring courts however? That is unacceptable in any case as long as the court is not in a banana republic (i.e. truly independent).

<comment><USER19> Which part of Ebay refusing to do business in Romania is "ignoring courts"?

<comment><USER20> The grandparent comment (not the story) said some words about US companies not considering themselves "subservient to the government", and the child comment (the one you replied to) said "but these companies have to obey the courts."

I'd say the GP comment over-reached by implying that a US company is not ultimately subject to US law. In principle, the companies _do_ have to obey the courts, although in practice, there are multiple ways for companies to contest the power of a single court.

<comment><USER19> If appealing to a higher court is what is meant by "ignoring courts and being a banana republic", that doesn't make much sense to me. What's the purpose of having higher courts to appeal to if not so that people or companies can do exactly that? To me, "ignoring a court" is contempt of court, and courts have mechanisms available to them to deal with it. It's the sort of thing people get tossed into prison for. Appealing things to higher courts is not contempt of court.

But I don't see how any of this relates to a merchant refusing to do business in a country that neglects to prosecute thieves and scammers. I assume it's somehow meant to relate to that, since the conversation is threaded that way, but I can't work out the connection.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: The importance of heredoc - <AUTHOR>

I wish to ask Rubyists and Shell programmers: Does heredoc still have a place?  Is it still worth its syntactic weight?  I can see how it would be great for one-off scripts producing a bit of text.  But I can picture a number of ways to get almost the same effect (readable one-offs producing text) in a scripting language without complicating the syntax. <comment><USER2> Oh, heredocs absolutely still have a place. It's the right choice for any multiline string which might contain quoting characters.

And what's so complicated about the syntax? Even if you have never seen a heredoc before, it's generally very easy to figure out what's going on from context.

<comment><AUTHOR> The syntax is a complication to _implement_ , not to just program with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Perl and PHP also use shell-style heredoc syntax. The main alternative is to provide a newline-friendly quote delimiter, like the """string""" syntax in Python.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've never had a problem with heredoc. I'm curious what you mean when you say "I can picture a number of ways to get almost the same effect . . . without complicating the syntax". Would you care to illustrate your point with an example so we can make the discussion a little bit more concrete?

<comment><AUTHOR> Put the text from a heredoc in a comment with special tags. Have a special method that lets you retrieve the text in the same source file. This puts _zero_ syntactic load on the language, but has much the same effect. You can even have embedded methods, source debugging, regexes. But there's no additional syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> heredocs are great. I use them all the time for metaprogramming. I don't see them going out of style anytime soon. Not sure what you mean about complicated syntax.

I supect you may be new to Ruby and confused by the heredoc sytnax. If so, this post has a review of some of the syntactical issues with heredocs:

[http://log.gmarik.info/2007/12/rubys-here-document- heredoc-m...](http://log.gmarik.info/2007/12/rubys-here-document-heredoc- mini.html)

Hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not confused. Heredoc is one of the things that complicates Ruby syntax from the implementer's POV.

Use heredoc for metaprogramming? Now I'm starting to believe in the Lisp dogma.</comment></comment>


Redesigning Outlook.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.area301.com/blog/2014/02/redesigning-outlook/

<comment><USER2> I think this is a very funny article because half of the stuff is simply wrong...

Disclaimer, I'm not actually using Outlook.com myself but I have a dummy account where I checked the following stuff.

1\. The "delete" button, next to the navigation arrows is not a delete button. If you hover the button it says "Back to messages" and it does exactly that.

2\. The top menu would be quite hard to operate if there weren't any visual cues which button you are hovering, but there are some - You can clearly see at any time which button you are going to click.. The placement of course can be discussed, but looking away while clicking will also not work on GMail.

3\. It's argued that Outlook would not respect the "default" use cases. But then, I don't get why it's confusing that your e-mail is classified as junk if you click the "Junk" button. What should happen instead?

4\. Reading pane is actually no mistake but used by MS since forever to name the place where your e-mail is previewed.</comment>


AT&T exempts HBO Max from data caps but still limits your Netflix use - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/att-exempts-hbo-max-from-data-caps-but-still-limits-your-netflix-use/ <comment><USER2> And so it begins...

<comment><USER3> This isn't the beginning, T-Mobile was the first to really promote their zero- rating: [https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/19/10794288/netflix-t- mobile...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/19/10794288/netflix-t-mobile-binge- on-net-neutrality-zero-rating)

Let's not all pretend that this is something new simply because we don't like the side that is now doing it.

<comment><USER4> It's different as T-Mobile doesn't OWN the content provider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> _-david-_ Unless I am missing something it seems like AT&T would be limiting both HBO and Netflix if net neutrality had passed?

Also, as far as I know net neutrality did not remove all data limits on unlimited plans right?

<comment><USER5> AT&T has a partnership with HBO. I get HBO for "free" as part of my phone bill. So by nature of that relationship they need to have a fat trunk to HBO's content.

<comment><USER6> Not so much a partnership as AT&T bought Warner Media which includes HBO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are the chances??

</comment><comment><USER8> if only there were some rule that require that network providers were required to treat traffic neutrally.</comment>


Translating and Interpreting Chinese Philosophy - <AUTHOR> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-translate-interpret/ <comment><USER2> An important point that I think this article leaves out is the relationship of Classical Chinese to modern Chinese.

Often I've found that translating Classical Chinese into modern Chinese is easier than translating Classical Chinese into modern English.

It gives three English translations of a poem from the Book of Odes (Shijing 诗经), namely the "Cock's Crow" (not sure if there's a standard English translation of the title, 鸡鸣). It mentions that there is no definite mention of the speaker and different translators make different choices (it incidentally leaves out the other point of ambiguity in that section which is whether to translate 朝 as "court" or "dawn", which you see in Legge's and Pound's choices of "the court is full" and "crowding the hall" vs Waley's choice of "full daylight" but this is a more ordinary single-word-has- multiple-meanings problem).

Yet if you look at a modern Chinese translation of the poem, e.g. one found on the Baidu encyclopedia ([https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%9B%BD%E9%A3%8E%C2%B7%E9%BD%...](https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%9B%BD%E9%A3%8E%C2%B7%E9%BD%90%E9%A3%8E%C2%B7%E9%B8%A1%E9%B8%A3/1806628?fromtitle=%E9%B8%A1%E9%B8%A3&fromid=12002905)), the same "ambiguity" persists! There is no explicit speaker.

The relationship between modern Chinese (including its various varieties) and Classical Chinese is a far more complex one than the relationship between say Latin and the Romance languages. At times it is useful to think of Classical Chinese as an entirely separate language from modern Chinese. At times it is more useful to think of it as an extremely elevated register of modern Chinese. A modern Chinese work can be successively "Classical"-ified. For example there is a rough ordering of informal, spoken language -> informal, written language -> popular nonfiction -> modern academic articles (about the humanities) -> full-on Classical Chinese where each stage uses increasingly more "Classical Chinese"-isms than the previous one. Pronouns used change; a weird bimodal distribution of monosyllabic words occurs where the informal spoken language has a lot of monosyllabic words, full-on Classical Chinese has a lot of monosyllabic words, but everything in the middle tends to have a lot more bisyllabic words; sentence structures also change.

There isn't really an analogous, somewhat smooth transition of say a French work into a Latin work.

Even within Classical Chinese you have different gradations of how "Classical" it is. Early Christian missionaries to China distinguished between "deep" Classical Chinese and "shallow" Classical Chinese and produced different translations of the Bible written in each style.

This carries over to the ambiguity in the sentences. Different Classical Chinese works can have very different amounts of ambiguity, even in the same genre. The Records of the Grand Historian, a Western Han dynasty historical record is written in a fairly plain style. In contrast, the Book of Han, an Eastern Han dynasty historical record is at times infamously impenetrable (even to ancient readers), where single sentences have spawned whole commentaries.

So through the lens of Classical Chinese as a very elevated register of modern Chinese, I would contend that a portion of the difficulties in translating Classical Chinese are inherent in differences between Sinitic and Indo- European languages, which are only exacerbated by the extreme concision of Classical Chinese.

That is, to a limited degree, I would say the reason that aren't articles about "translating Classical Greek" or "translating Sanskrit" is that those all are still languages from the same language family whereas Classical Chinese is entirely different. The article alludes to this, but seems to single out Classical Chinese as special. A fun exercise to explore this idea which is unfortunately beyond my expertise would be to examine the process of translating ancient Egyptian or Classical Arabic to see if it is at all similar.

Another factor in difficulty of translation, returning to the idea of register, is that different grammatical constructions, even if they appear in both languages, can only be appropriately used in wildly different registers. English also has, to a limited degree, the flexibility of grammatical categories that Classical Chinese has. "Beer me!" says the guy at a party to no one in particular, which the host obliges by handing him a beer. Beer, a noun, has been pressed into service as a verb, and subject of the command is the vague, unsaid "Someone". Indeed, if you were so inclined, you could call this "verbing a noun." However, this is extremely informal in English, whereas in Chinese this is extremely formal.

Finally, despite all this, I agree with the article that ambiguity plays a part in Classical Chinese that isn't often found in English or potentially even modern Chinese. Sometimes the difficulty is in disambiguating a given passage. Sometimes, however, the difficulty is often NOT in trying to disambiguate the Classical Chinese, but how to represent that ambiguity faithfully in the target language.

As a minor example, English has a word "lobster." Spanish doesn't (as far as I know)! It has two different words for different organisms that would both fall under the category of "lobster" (langosta, Spiny Lobster, and bogavante, Clawed Lobster). So, how do you translate "lobster" into Spanish? "Lobster" in English intentionally means both langosta and bogavante! There is an ambiguity in the English word "lobster" that Spanish simply doesn't have, which you lose if you choose either "langosta" or "bogavante".

Similarly, the lack of a subject in a lot of both Classical and modern Chinese sentences lends the text an intrinsic ambiguity that is essential to its meaning. The article obliquely acknowledges this in its conclusion which mentions getting away from "clarity and precision."

That was long and convoluted and I'll stop here. I'll just end with one small unrelated observation. The article also glosses over some interesting controversies surrounding Classical Chinese by viewing Classical Chinese as a purely written artifact.

Did Classical Chinese ever represent an archaic spoken version of Chinese (say Old Chinese of the Warring States Period or earlier)? Or has it always been an artificial, idealized, written language? In a related vein do the rhyme dictionaries of Middle Chinese represent an actual spoken pronunciation or are rather a handbook for an artificial and formal pronunciation of Classical Chinese works? Different academics have different views.

</comment><comment> La-ang My synopsis: The only way to understand text is to learn the original language. When I compared Arabic text with translated versions for example, although done by supposedly professionals, I couldn't help but sense awkward misalignments in context. Perhaps the interpretation (understanding) of both reader and writer differ, and so does the translation. The transcending misunderstanding can not be rectified unless a glance is made at the original. I know learning another language just to read a book is indeed way too much, but it is worth it, for you will not be reading one book eventually, and learning a language like Mandarin in this instance is an exciting experience. Examples of books I've read in original language and translation include Political Ideals by B. Russell, 100 years of solitude By G. Marquez, Spirits Rebellious By Khalil Gibran. I am also learning Mandarin, but rest assured, I still need another 5 years to be able to read and write decently.

<comment><USER3> > My synopsis: The only way to understand text is to learn the original > language.

Exactly my approach too, hence why I learn Sumerian for instance. Also note that we are speaking of Chinese philosophy here so the language to learn is Classical Chinese, not Mandarin. Few people would jump into that without at least some knowledge of a modern Chinese language, but it can be done (notably by reading Pulleyblank book).

<comment> La-ang Yes indeed, although I assume that since Mandarin is more accessible for learners, it can serve as a 101 to classical. Quote: [None of what has been said up to this point is to suggest that studying Chinese language and early thought is only for the classically curious and linguistically intrepid].

<comment><USER4> I would be curious whether it'd be easier to learn Classical Chinese and then Mandarin, rather than the other way 'round. Seems like, if you take the "forward" approach, you get to reinforce your language learning with a complementary narrative of cultural evolution, where the two bodies of knowledge can reinforce one-another.

<comment><USER5> That does sort of happen to those of us who need learn both traditional and simplified. If you learn traditional, you have a better chance of being able to read simplified with a little more effort than the other way around.

<comment><USER2> Eh... I feel like I hear claims of both directions. The Chinese internet is full of people claiming that Taiwanese people can't read simplified Chinese or that PRC people can't read traditional Chinese.

FWIW, anecdotally every mainland Chinese person I've met has been able to read traditional characters. For some of them it is, however, more laborious. All of them have been able to read long tracts in traditional Chinese (think the length of a newspaper article or longer), although sometimes it takes obvious effort. This has not been true of some Taiwanese people I've met for simplified characters.

I'm mostly tempted to chalk this up to environmental factors rather than reasons intrinsic to the script. The mainland often gets a lot of Taiwanese cultural imports, while I don't think Taiwan gets as much cultural imports from the mainland. Furthermore there is a lot of stylistic usage of traditional characters in the mainland (posters, store signs, branding, calligraphy, artwork) and university-level Classical Chinese language classes (aimed at domestic students) are often taught exclusively with traditional characters. In comparison there is essentially no usage of simplified characters at all in Taiwan.

The two scripts essentially have a one-to-one correspondence with each other anyways so it's not really that hard to go between the two if you have full fluency in one.

<comment><USER4> I would argue that, due to merging different characters together, simplified Chinese is more _ambiguous_ in meaning than traditional Chinese. So it's harder for someone more versed in traditional to read simplified, since there's a bit of guessing as to which "mapping" back to a traditional character should be taken. Whereas there's only one way to map a traditional character to a simplified character, so it's just memorization+recall if you learn simplified first.

I'd compare reading simplified Chinese characters after a traditional-Chinese education, to reading Japanese written purely in kana, and trying to figure out what kanji are meant. It's something that requires active use of your brain sometimes, where the opposite—translating kanji to kana—is a rote task.

<comment><USER2> As a note, although simplified merges far more characters than traditional, it also splits some characters that are merged in traditional. For example, 乾 in traditional is split into either 乾 (qian2 one of the hexagrams) or 干 (gan1 dry) in simplified.

Regardless, the number of simplified characters for which the merger of traditional characters happens is small, even more so compared to the number of Chinese characters you see on a day-to-day basis. On top of that, the vast majority of these mergers involve one character that in traditional Chinese is archaic and very rarely seen or are considered obscure variant characters of the same word in traditional Chinese. I can only think of maybe a dozen or so examples that show up in Chinese you're likely to read on a day-to-day basis. Even fewer if what you're reading doesn't have a lot to do with ancient China. That's why I say it's essentially a one-to-one correspondence.

I do hear your argument often from other Chinese speakers to support why reading traditional characters if you only know simplified characters is easier than reading simplified characters if you only know traditional characters so maybe there's something to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article tries to argue that Classical Chinese is singularly foreign

> ... a fourth reason for the complexity of the topic of this entry is also > the reason significantly responsible for its being the only one of its kind > in this Encyclopedia. There are no entries under "Translating and > Interpreting…" for Greek philosophy, for example, nor German Idealism or > French Postmodernism. Even Indian philosophy lacks such an entry. This fact > should bring home not just the singularity of the classical Chinese written > language, compared to contemporary languages derived from the proto-Sanskrit > Indo-European family of languages written in alphabet scripts, but remind us > as well of the greater distance between Chinese and other cultures from past > to present.

but thankfully acknowledges that the situation isn't so simple even for those other languages

> ... it is highly unlikely that by utilizing a Sanskrit vocabulary Kant's > philosophy is going to come through a translation at all clearly.

The focus on vocabulary and the meaning of individual characters gives me the impression of someone trying to understand a text in a foreign language purely by consulting a dictionary, whose definitions may very well have been guessed from the text you're trying to read! Then the difference to French or German or even Ancient Greek is that a translator can be reasonably expected to become fluent in that language, whereas Classical Chinese is more like Biblical Hebrew. There, too, contradictory translations proliferate, with ambiguities and gaps left by forgotten words leaving plenty of wiggle room for the translator to insert their favored interpretation.

<comment><USER7> To me it seems overwrought. We have Chinese philosophers who are experts in Classical Chinese philosophy who study these things and labor over them. And we have expert Chinese-English experts as well as philosophers versed in both modern languages.

So I can't immediately see how it's more difficult than looking into Classical Greek philosophy.

<comment><USER8> Ancient Greek and Sanskrit both have complex detailed grammars that leave little room for ambiguity. The language of the Dao De Jing has a minimalistic grammar, where more has to be inferred from context.

<comment><USER6> People love to blame the grammar, but you won't find anyone mentioning being made out of wood, hitting balls or any sports in a philosophical discussion on the question of "What is it like to be a bat?", which is understood to belong in the realm of animal consciousness. That's despite there not being any grammatical distinction between the two kinds of bats, they're only implicitly disambiguated by the context.

In my experience, context dependence only becomes noticeable when you don't understand, so foreign languages always appear to require more contextual knowledge than one's mother tongue. If you actually try to use a formal grammar to generate all possible parses for a sentence, you'll notice your brain filters out a lot of nonsensical but grammatically valid interpretations.

<comment><USER9> > If you actually try to use a formal grammar to generate all possible parses > for a sentence, you'll notice your brain filters out a lot of nonsensical > but grammatically valid interpretations.

Indeed. Canonical example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow;_frui...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow;_fruit_flies_like_a_banana)

<comment><USER10> The stress of the words is different depending on PoS, unless you don't even try, there's little room for ambiguity. In writing, correcting the spelling error to _fruit-flies_ solves the problem. The issue is real, but the example is naiv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Despite being from the west, I find Chinese and eastern philosophy in general pretty straight forward since they're just talking about fundamental observations of the mind which are universal and can filter out the misunderstandings of the translators well enough I feel. Language aside, in the cases where it's clear to me the translator doesn't understand is normally when to comes to basic fundamental observations about the mind, it's as though in the west there's basically no knowledge of the mind itself, so I think the west would have an easier time with eastern texts after observing their minds a bit closer. Typically westerns confuse the mind with the biology of the brain and go off track that way. My observations at least.

<comment><USER8> > since they're just talking about fundamental observations of the mind which > are universal

I have to politely disagree. In fact there are lots of subjects in common between so called Eastern and Western philosophy. Maybe you are mostly thinking about Yoga. Just reading the beginning of this piece of text today [https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=41979&remap=gb](https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=41979&remap=gb) made me think about a phrase used by Jesus and then much later by Marx "Let the dead bury their dead."

<comment><USER11> More just the phenomena that happens when there is an honest investigation into the mind. The west has never attempted it, at least I've looked high and low, and the closest thing I could find was Plato's Allegory of the Cave. However still it's superficial, like Yoga and western religions in that it never directly addresses the mind itself; it's always focused on the content, as opposed to the commonality between content to understand the mind which is transparent. This might seem like a lofty claim, but is indeed what shaped the east fir thousands of years and is what makes it different from the west. That's the root.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> (context: white American from midwest). I found it a very mind-expanding journey to try and read the tao, I basically had to look up each page and read what it meant. I was also listening to a TAO podcast with a newbie, that helped a lot. Now I can semi-get by on my own and it led me to look at other Chinese philosophies.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a Chinese kid, I remember first coming into contact into Chinese philosophy around 11 or 12 and it was basically impenetrable. Comics like these by Tsai Chih Chung (Cai Zhi Zhong) in Chinese helped me "get" some of it:

[https://www.amazon.com/Zhuangzi-Speaks-Nature-Chih-chung- Tsa...](https://www.amazon.com/Zhuangzi-Speaks-Nature-Chih-chung- Tsai/dp/0691008825)

Edit: Found a non-amazon link for some preview - [https://books.google.com/books/about/Zhuangzi_Speaks.html?id...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Zhuangzi_Speaks.html?id=DJNxvtO3VwEC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button)</comment>


Canadian smart glasses going 'offline' weeks after company bought by Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/canadian-smart-glasses-going-offline-weeks-after-company-bought-by-google-1.5042010 <comment><USER2> A perfect example of why I try and avoid hardware that needs a company's server to work. People have very powerful computers at home and their own work, they should be able to do the processing themselves.</comment>


Renamed TPP signed by 11 nations with U.S. out - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/03/08/renamed-tpp-signed-by-11-nations-with-us-out-focused-on-protectionism.html <comment><USER2> For the sake of a better discussion, it should be noted that this new TPP agreement leaves out a number of the more egregious IP terms that were* eliciting local citizen opposition to the policies - in both the Canada and the US.

Michael Geist, the prominent Canadian IP and internet rights activist and pundit, who had previously taken a hard line against the TPP, seems to have basically endorsed the new IP terms:

[http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2018/01/canada-successfully- stand...](http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2018/01/canada-successfully-stands- balanced-ip-canadian-culture-tpp-deal/)

I'm somewhat happy that my country's involvement seems to have helped push things in a positive direction. Our PM has also been openly bringing the issue of worker's rights and labour protections in these agreements, at least attempting to reduce some of the distortionary effects of trade between nations where exploited workers in undeveloped markets can be used to compete with developed markets.

All in all, I think we (Canadians as well as other signing nations) got a pretty decent deal out of this.

* Edit: s/IP terms, and was/IP terms that were/

<comment><USER3> We'll have to see how many workers' unions endorse this new deal. I'm sure the Kochs and the Soroses of the world will lament the US not being part of the deal. But theirs is not the opinion that matters.

What's not clear to me is why people who were in Seattle in 1999 protesting the WTO are more or less quiet on things like the TPP which were much worse.

<comment><USER4> Excellent question. Not only the individuals but the funding of the organizations who protested Seattle. It is likely that many lessons were learned on all sides in 1999, so that strategies evolved.

The WTO apparently failed to reach consensus later (Doha?) as opponents organized, including Indian farmers who committed suicide. The failure of WTO to reach new agreements is what lead to bi-lateral agreements between individual countries, and multi-lateral agreements (like TPP) + exceptions in bi-lateral "side letters".

In that sense, the Seattle protestors eventually won (no new WTO agreements) but the battle has moved to smaller and more secretive (national legislators excluded from some phases) contexts.

In addition, for the already established WTO agreements, the US is currently considering new trade barriers that are permissible within existing fine print, which could weaken the old agreements.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't cease to amaze and shock me how what were 1980s hard union democrats who fought hard against Reagan's little globalization, dissolved under Clinton's charismaman persona and fell for big globalization.

Even NPR, typically on the workers side, pushing FUD like canned goods will get expensive due to steel in the cans. As if half a penny per tin will break people and second as if we didn't have alternatives like glass and aseptic packaging.

I'm heartened to learn there could be provisions for us to amend the execution of the NA trade agreement; as it would make sense for our workers.

<comment><USER5> Union membership rate declined from 25% to 15% over that period partly because they kept losing the fight against Reagan. I suspect it was less about Bill Clinton's charisma and more about their overall level of political muscle.

<comment><USER6> I think it's more about what individuals desire. Now we have people who promote socialism in one breath, but free trade in another. It's somewhat insane that the same people pushing for $15/hour minimum wage are the same as those pushing for unrestricted importing of cheap labor from Mexico.

<comment><USER7> I think you may be conflating multiple left wing viewpoints in the US, which ranges from centrist free-trade neoliberal types to democratic socialists.

I don't think I've seen anyone push for unrestricted immigration from Mexico either - what seems to have support is a path to citizenship for the Dreamers and those who are established and working here. Legal status would provide protection for these workers and students, rather than the vicious cycle of black market labor abuses by companies and abusers who have the threat of life destroying deportation to hang over their heads.

<comment><USER3> If that were the case, you'd see full support for a "wall". But a "wall" is topic non grata because it "is racist and xenophobic" and other choice epithets.

It's implied in the phrase "people are not illegal" and whenever presenters and other talking heads invariably conflate legal immigration with illegal immigration (when offering reasons to support illegal immigrants they point to the accomplishments of legal immigrants, for example)

<comment><USER7> > If that were the case, you'd see full support for a "wall". But a "wall" is > topic non grata because it "is racist and xenophobic" and other choice > epithets.

It's hard to argue agianst that when the politician driving the push for the wall wraps it not it policy, or evidence that a wall costing tens of billions of dollars would be effective in reducing migration, but instead racist and xenophobic language.

To me the whole "discussion" about the wall is just to create a xenophobic and populist lightning rod, not to bring any serious policy debate to the table.

Do any of the statements linked below, which were well reported on, seem like productive ways to discuss immigration?

[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/donald-trump-announces- pr...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/donald-trump-announces-presidential- bid-trashing-mexico-mexicans-n376521)

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things- don...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump- has-said-about-latinos_us_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b)

[http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/trump-slams-shithole- countr...](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/trump-slams-shithole-countries-in- oval-office-meeting-on-immigration-1134990403518)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So annoying to see virtually 100% of the media play this "oh, no, look what the US missed out on!" angle, primarily because it's Trump that helped kill it. If it was Hillary, I imagine we wouldn't see this kind of response from the media at all.

It's even more frustrating seeing people who once opposed the TPP now support it - again, because Trump was against it, so that must be a bad thing, right?

First off, the TPP was non-democratic and it introduced a ton of bad stuff, like corporate sovereignty (which was just declared illegal/invalid by EU's top court, another sign of how undemocratic these things are). Second, the US didn't really miss out on much:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160112/07433333306/world...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160112/07433333306/world- bank-report-tpp-will-bring-negligible-economic-benefit-to-us-canada- australia.shtml)

<comment><USER9> The new version leaves out some of the bad IP provisions, but leaves in the corporate sovereignty, so to that extent is still not good. Also, the TPP was basically dead in the water in the Senate before Trump took office. No one wanted it.

<comment><USER10> Clinton was vocally pro TPP and Trump's opposition to it is part of what socialized the Senate opposition in the first place. Under Obama or Clinton it would have passed for sure.

<comment><USER11> Clinton was vocally pro TPP through ~2012 but gradually flip-flopped during the run-up to the campaign and actively opposed it during the campaign. It's absolutely possible that she would have flip-flopped again if elected, but I don't think you can really say that with certainty.

2012: "This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements" [0]

2014: "Because TPP negotiations are still ongoing, it makes sense to reserve judgment until we can evaluate the final proposed agreement." [0]

2016: "I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as president." [1]

[0] [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2015/oct/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2015/oct/08/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-now-opposes- trans-pacific-partners/)

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/trump- clinto...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/trump-clinton-free- trade-policies-tpp)

<comment><USER12> > Clinton was vocally pro TPP through ~2012

It's worth recalling that Clinton was Obama's Secretary of State into 2013, and anything she said from 2009 til then is likely to reflect the position of the Administration rather than her personal views.

<comment><USER3> Never the less, she is quoted as claiming "This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to _open free, transparent, fair_ trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field".

She cannot denounce that. There is no way to say you support and believe in something with more vigor than that.

It'd be her version of saying she liked something before she didn't like something in the most convenient way.

<comment><USER12> > She cannot denounce that.

She can certainly denounce the outcome of a negotiation process that wasn't complete when she said that, or even when she left office as Secretary of State. The agreement drafted in 2015 and signed in 2016 may simply not reflect the thing she was talking about in 2012.

<comment><USER3> You can believe that. I think she is a true Globalist and it wasn't till Sanders and Trump changed people's attention and perspectives that she got her new religion.

I'm quite sure if there had been a female president Clinton, we'd have ratified the TPP as it stood at the end of 2016. Never say never, but I'm as Sure as one can without a crystal ball that we'd be in that mess of an agreement without Sanders and Trump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You do not talk about politics on HN

<comment><USER14> OP probably posted this to discuss policy.</comment></comment>


The ascendancy of Hacker News & the gentrification of geek news communities - <AUTHOR> http://anarchogeek.com/2008/7/7/the-ascendancy-of-hacker-news-the-gentrification-of-geek-news-communities

<comment><USER3> I think democratization is a better word than gentrification. In gentrification, something bad is turned into something good, in the process displacing those who made it good. In democratization, something scarce and luxurious is devalued by its increasing popularity. Niche Communities (like HN) _despise_ the unwashed masses and recoil when their community is invaded.

<comment><USER4> It's not so much that I despise the unwashed masses, it's just that the greatest common denominator tends to go very low, as the total number of participants goes up. Take a billion Nobel prize winners and the only things they will all have in common will be sex and violence, that and the Nobel prize.

My point is, it's not that the masses are unwashed, it's just the masses - <USER2> of averages.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I was going to go into normal distributions, communities of interest, etc, but I just used some sensational language that got the point across. For anyone offended by the original, biohacker gave the explanation I was too lazy to write.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What mechanisms are in place here to punish noise and reward signal?

<comment><USER6> I would say HN has maintained a remarkably high signal to noise ratio thus far.

<comment><USER5> I agree. "Thus far" is what I'm worried about. This is a valuable community and at some point will need defending from the hordes. There are lots of ways to do that, hence my question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good points. Regarding HN, I think the basic concept of submitting links by community members works. What HN needs to fight is mainstreamisation and spamming. So far, HN fares satisfactory.

What remains to be seen is, if the relatively high quality of front page can be maintained for the long time by using technology and algorithms alone, and if not, what kind of editorial control would be suitable.

p.s: Why every article about community tech sites have to bash slashdot? Slashdot is alive and well, outliving both reddit and digg.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wait until the tech crunch crowd realizes that this is the place that folks like Fred Wilson gets his leads and you'll start to see folks gaming the system. I mean Fred already has said he gets news from here, i'm sure other VC's do too. Once the techcrunch biz dev types realize that, then you'll see the attacks on the system.

<comment><USER8> there are _already_ attacks on this system.

i have no insider knowledge of this site, other than i keep my "showdead" parameter turned on. we get quite a few spammy submissions and comments, most of which are killed within seconds. most of this must be automated, there's no way the editors can be patrolling the place 24 hours a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> BTW -- DZone, which is mentioned in the article, is awesome.

Great little startup out of North Carolina. Terrific material -- topical, technical, and relevant. (No -- not a paid endorsement, just I like the site)

You guys should check it out.</comment>


New York Fed research paper: "Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit" [PDF] - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://www.ny.frb.org/research/staff_reports/sr318.pdf For those of you who are interested in learning what REALLY went on with the subprime mortgage crisis, the NY Fed has provided the best description yet.  It's long (82 pages), but not too technical.  You don't need to be familiar with securitization or the mortgage-backed securities markets to understand it.<p>Abstract: "In this paper, we provide an overview of the subprime mortgage securitization process and the seven key informational frictions that arise. We discuss the ways that market participants work to minimize these frictions and speculate on how this process broke down. We continue with a complete picture of the subprime borrower and the subprime loan, discussing both predatory borrowing and predatory lending. We present the key structural features of a typical subprime securitization, document how rating agencies assign credit ratings to mortgage-backed securities, and outline how these agencies monitor the performance of mortgage pools over time. Throughout the paper, we draw upon the example of a mortgage pool securitized by New Century Financial during 2006." <comment><AUTHOR> For those of you who are interested in learning what REALLY went on with the subprime mortgage crisis, the NY Fed has provided the best description yet. It's long (82 pages), but not too technical. You don't need to be familiar with securitization or the mortgage-backed securities markets to understand it.

Abstract: "In this paper, we provide an overview of the subprime mortgage securitization process and the seven key informational frictions that arise. We discuss the ways that market participants work to minimize these frictions and speculate on how this process broke down. We continue with a complete picture of the subprime borrower and the subprime loan, discussing both predatory borrowing and predatory lending. We present the key structural features of a typical subprime securitization, document how rating agencies assign credit ratings to mortgage-backed securities, and outline how these agencies monitor the performance of mortgage pools over time. Throughout the paper, we draw upon the example of a mortgage pool securitized by New Century Financial during 2006."</comment>


Foo - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/foo <comment><AUTHOR> The title was pretty creative, but I found the story itself somewhat lacking.

However, the attachments were pretty interesting.</comment>


Twitter opening a Detroit office - <AUTHOR> http://icrontic.com/article/twitter-opening-an-office-in-detroit

<comment><USER2> Good for them to be opening an office Downtown.</comment>


Millennials and the Working Class Are Leaving America's Expensive Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/04/where-millennials-and-the-working-class-are-being-priced-out/480243/ <comment><USER2> > The affluent and the talented are flooding into superstar cities and tech > hubs, creating a vicious competition for space that is pushing out the > young, the less advantaged, and those who do not own homes, reinforcing the > deepening class divides in our cities.

The author managed to jump to this conclusion without actually offering any evidence for the claim, or even entertaining other explanations of the trends seen in the data.

Likewise I can claim that millennials are leaving because baby boomers have rigged the housing market in their favour, saddled them with debt by hollowing-out funding for education, placed an undue tax burden on them via property tax controls, and locked-out up to 80% of the rental market in some cities via rent control, which allows older generations to avoid participating in a fair market and massively inflates prices in the remaining 20%.

But no, it's talented people's fault, apparently.

When the previous generation has kicked away the ladder, why are we surprised that those following them can't climb upwards?

<comment><USER3> I'm buying a house right now, and while I don't feel it's rigged- it sure is a pain the butt.

You realize rent control isn't just about baby boomers, right? Pretty much all the minority advocacy groups fight for more rent control, or at the very least section 8 housing- and I'd like to see a single study showing a city > 100,000 people with 80% of the market locked up in rental control. I have a hard time believing any market would even get to 30%, after all the people with REAL money (the developers/land owners) want nothing to do with it.

Also agree with you on getting let down by our parents/grandparents on the education issue. I was born in '82 and had it rough, I can only imagine what a kid born in '92 had to deal with.

Edit: I'm moving from Seattle to Portland, so does that mean I'm one of these people they're talking about that has to move out, or one of the assholes moving in? Both?

<comment><USER4> The number of units in NYC under 'rent control' is ~30,000.

Yes, it's that low. It's less than 2% of the available housing.

<comment><USER5> Nope, nope, you have it right but in the context of this discussion you have it wrong. :-) There is rent control and rent stabilization, two separate items under the rubric of "rent regulated housing". See, those terms have political and legal connotations that don't necessarily perfectly match with the colloquial or intuitive phrase "rent control".

Rent control is specific to a tiny percentage of buildings and units, relevant to the situation where a) the tenant is in a rent-controlled building [ build before 1941 ] and b) the tenant or their descendants have been continuously occupying the unit since 1971. That's your rent control. Rent doesn't ever go up. The stereotypical picture here is of an older woman in her 70's or 80's living in a three bedroom walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village paying $500 a month while other units rent for $6500 or some such.

Rent stabilization is a different matter. About one million units in NYC (out of 2 million, perhaps?) are rent stabilized. That means a lot of things, but in summary it means the rent can't go up by a percentage set yearly by a board of individuals called the Rent Guidelines Board.

Now it gets interesting because in NYC, a rent stabilized unit can be cheap, well below market, depending on how long the tenant's been there, or it can be high. A unit can actually fall out of rent stabilization if the tenant makes above 200,000 a year and the unit hits 2700. It gets more complex: the landlord can make improvements to the building and use that to increase the rent to a degree; rent stabilized units are typically pre-war units/buildings but not exclusively, as a now-expired (this year) program called 421a gave developers tax breaks in exchange for rent stabilizing their units (even if their starting rent was market rate).

As an aside, and back to the original point -- here in NYC we're in the throes of some major class conflict and it centers enormously around 'affordable housing' in this city of 8.5m (up from 8m in 2000). Our mayor was elected on the platform of providing cheaper housing. Gentrification is a huge topic here, subject to daily barrages in rags like the Gothamist (whose comments section has commenters with about 50% the average IQ of the people here, I might add).

So approximately 50% of our housing stock falls under some form of housing regulation.

Source, I'm a NYC resident and landlord; also, this: [http://www.nycrgb.org/html/resources/faq/rentcontrol.html#di...](http://www.nycrgb.org/html/resources/faq/rentcontrol.html#difference)

<comment><USER6> "That's your rent control. Rent doesn't ever go up."

Huh? Controlled rents go up whenever the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal says they do; right now they're in the process of increasing by as much as 9.6% by 2018 [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/01/nyregion/facing- increase-r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/01/nyregion/facing-increase- rent-controlled-tenants-complain-of-being-singled-out.html) and since 1975 they've gone up 707% [http://www.nyshcr.org/Rent/PublicHearingInformation/SAFR- Pre...](http://www.nyshcr.org/Rent/PublicHearingInformation/SAFR-Prelim-with- tables.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Fair enough. I stand corrected on that sentence.

A few nuances need to be pointed out, though. While they increase, they increase to levels set by the city based on a calculation that incorporates costs of things like taxes, utilities and whatnot.[1] In addition the owner has to apply for the increase, which is laborious and more than half the time never even is done. But the point is that they started at very low levels, and even if things eventually catch up, rent controlled units are typically quite below even rent stabilized units in rent asks.

If a genie appeared and magically offered you a choice between a stabilized unit and a rent-controlled one, equivalent in every other way, without knowing any other facts you'd most likely pick the rent-controlled one, even if there's been a 7-fold increase since the 70's as you point out, because you'd be more likely to pick the cheaper of the two.

1 - "New York City Local Law 30 of 1970 stipulates that Maximum Base Rents be established for rent controlled apartments according to a formula calculated to reflect real estate taxes, water and sewer charges, operating and maintenance expenses, return on capital value and vacancy and collection loss allowance. The Maximum Base Rent (MBR) is updated every two years by a factor that incorporates changes in these operating costs." ([http://www.nyshcr.org/Rent/FactSheets/orafac22.pdf](http://www.nyshcr.org/Rent/FactSheets/orafac22.pdf))

<comment><USER4> Except you can't pick a rent-controlled unit, because you can't get into one unless you were in before 1971. You can be transferred one as immediate-family but it requires 2 years of financial interdependence between you and the tenant -- not easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> J-dawg When I look at London, I'm amazed this trend isn't happening faster.

London is full of young people who are basically just breaking even, spending 50% or more of their monthly income on rent. I think people tell themselves this is ok as long as they're gaining experience and moving up the ladder.

The fact that people aren't moving away in greater number says more about the stagnant UK economy outside of London, than anything else.

I think we're on the cusp of a massive re-think of how we live and work in cities. This will either come through regulation (rent controls, bans on 2nd homes, tax on unoccupied buildings, etc), or innovation (maybe we'll all have homes outside cities and come and stay in Tokyo-style capsule hotels during the working week).

Right now, millions of people are working hard every day to make a relatively small number of landlords richer and richer. It's unsustainable, and I think some major societal change is coming.

<comment><USER7> You're completely right about the economy outside London. I'm from London and love it but i can frankly say the UK's biggest problem is having only one genuinely world-stage level successful city.

Look at our productive friends in Germany, they have Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg.

It's not surprising rent is so high when all the good jobs are in one place.

<comment><USER8> Well, as an Edinburgh resident I'm personally mystified as to why anyone would want to live in London! :-)

[NB Of course there are perfectly good reasons for wanting to live in London - just never appealed to me!]

<comment><USER9> London is a handful of very pleasant millionaire villages - Primrose Hill, Hampstead & Highgate, Ken + Chel etc - surrounded by terraced Edwardian worker slums.

There's also been a new build boom in the East. Some areas were almost affordable for a while.

The big advantage compared to the rest of the UK is networking potential. Even the biggest competing cities - Manchester, Birmingham - are an order of magnitude less happening. And places like Leeds and Swindon have almost nothing at all.

The UK has really screwed the proverbial pooch here. Compared to traditional industry, Internet and creative businesses have huge potential for almost no infrastructure spend, and can create jobs almost everywhere.

Aggressively promoting startups across the country should have been a no- brainer. But... that's not what we got.

<comment><USER10> The other smaller startup city is Cambridge, which in some ways is even worse - less dense housing and a complete lack of decent transport links in of any kind, because all our transportation centers on London.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So... people are leaving places they can't afford to live? I'm not sure I see the problem - this isn't a new thing. I loved the town where I went to college, and stayed there a few years after graduation. But the combination of high housing costs and low wages meant I'd never buy a house if I stayed.

So I left and went somewhere that had a better CoL/wage ratio. That's life.

<comment><USER12> Be quiet and accept capitalism in other words. Brilliant, out of touch response.

Some people have lived their entire lives in cities, paid into the taxes and helped build businesses, infrastructure, and the like, only to be kicked out due to lack of regulations in the housing market and the flood gates opening and driving prices through the roof.

I suspect you haven't experienced it given your flippant response.

<comment><USER13> Blaming capitalism for this missed a lot of facts. Housing supply is artificially restricted through zoning and other regulations. And housing demand is artificially stimulated through various tax breaks and subsidies. Neither are market forces and they certainly combine to drive up prices.

Maybe other factors are at work here. I hear foreign nationals like buying real estate to hedge against their home countries' political and economic stability. But that wouldn't be capitalism either. It would be foreign policy affecting Britain and the US for a change, instead of the other way around.

<comment><USER14> I don't think so. Ultimately, this could not happen if the market did not set rents.

<comment><USER13> The market sets rent within the parameters it is given. Maybe an entrepreneur could build taller buildings with cheaper per-unit prices, but zoning regulations cap building height. In that way, the market isn't really setting the absolute price. On top of that, many localities literally overrule market prices with various forms of price fixing, affordable housing mandates, etc.

Would it be an open market if we only removed one regulation, height restrictions? Nope. But to blame capitalism when other major forces are at play is not a full assessment of the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's almost like a long-slow-great-depression. We can see these trends (average house price in Toronto / Vancouver exceed $1m) but nothing happens to reverse them.

Plodding and lumbering forwards, the depression continues.

Recently I've read a few articles about how "the Exodus of millenials threatens these cities' economies"

[http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/news/exodus+millennials+th...](http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/news/exodus+millennials+threatens+metro+vancouver+economy/11070861/story.html) (specifically, Vancouver but consider this as a cannary in a coalmine)

Some of the massively expensive cities don't have the infrastructure to support a London-like commuter lifestyle. LA traffic & all the young people leave? They'll go somewhere else entirely.

<comment><USER16> I left Vancouver and currently live in Toronto. The real estate bubble monster is a truly frightening beast in those cities. Outside of tech (I am a programmer) and banking, so much of Canada's economy is in real estate.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-29/canada- s-o...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-29/canada-s-one-legged- stool-economy)

<comment><USER17> Same issue with Australia. Too much of the economy involves digging up rocks and flipping houses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I predict that communes will make a comeback.

The conditions are ripe. A generation of hipsters (I don't say that in a disparaging way) that have a fetish for authenticity, craft skills, and clean living; are also financially stretched to their limits even when sharing houses; have a strong desire to be part of a community in a society that is focused on the individual, and can't afford to create a community the traditional way (i.e. by starting a family). Communes (not necessarily rural) are coming back.

<comment><USER19> Regulations won't prohibit them?

Rural are possible but cities aren't cool with people setting up shop in uninspected old factories or lofts.

<comment><USER18> Despite the huge market demand for property, a lot of it is under utilised. There are some very big houses out there. Like up_and_up, I also spent some time living in a large shared house that was more of a community. Central city, a garden with chooks, nine bedrooms, usually twelve or more occupants, shared responsibilities, budget, cooking, etc. We were each spending about the same for rent, food, electricity, gas, phone, and internet combined as others in shared house situations were spending on rent alone.

Our home was a true community hub. We hosted a lot of events. It was a great way to live as a young person. In my opinion it was the cooking roster (you cooked once every two weeks for everyone else in the house) and the fact that we all sat down to a shared meal that made it work. Without that it would probably have devolved from a large family-like situation into something more like a large hostel situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't waste your time blowing all your money on overly expensive cities, move away, live a higher quality of life, build your families, and let all the millionaires left in the cities that over charge for everything alone.

We don't need them at all.

<comment><USER20> That's all good and fine, but even cities that were once considered affordable are beginning to see large price increases. Seattle, Austin, Denver, etc. Yes, they remains affordable relative to SF, NY, London, but there was a time I could sell my house in suburban DC and pay cash for a house in any of the first three. That's not true any more.

<comment><USER21> Time to start looking elsewhere then. Baltimore and Detroit come to mind.

<comment><USER20> Baltimore's older harbor neighborhoods definitely have some appeal.

One of these days, I need to make a pass through some of the old steel belt cities. Don't know enough about them to know if I'd want to live in them. Big down side is most of them are significantly colder than DC or the other places I listed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not trying to come off as a snake, BUT,

Since these trends seem to be at the beginning stages, how would one best capitalize on this?

I feel that actually owning a property is going to become less and less common for people as time goes on, so maybe now is the time to push hard to invest in rental properties? The wealth classes seem to be getting more and more quantized, so I'd like to try my hardest to get myself above the rounding point before it's too late.

I have a lot of friends who will simply never be able to afford to actually purchase a house. They're renting and living paycheck to paycheck, which basically means they're "stuck", as it's very hard to save for a down payment for a house at that point.

However, if they were only able to get over the initial hump of getting the down payment, they would be fine, since mortgage payments in many places are less than rent, but I digress…

<comment><USER23> I've been saying this for a couple of years, but if I were into real estate investing I'd pour money into rental properties in secondary and tertiary cities. I lived in Baltimore 10 years ago and was visiting last weekend. Neighborhoods that were effectively no-go zones back then (think of areas with shootouts in The Wire) are full of cafes and hipster shops now. 10 years ago you could get a house that sells for 400k today for under 150k. I predict that pretty much every city of a few 100 thousand people within a couple hours of a bigger metropolitan area is going to grow like this.

I'm also very interested in the trend towards "micro" apartments in expensive cities. They will require code changes, but the idea is solid: make tiny but affordable housing for young single people. [http://www.nydailynews.com/new- york/nyc-micro-apartments-art...](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc- micro-apartments-article-1.2478722)

<comment><USER24> Live and work in Baltimore now (been here around 10 years) and it's definitely a thing. Our main issue is that this "reinvestment" in the city is happening at a glacial pace--much slower than needed to address the seriously neglected and decayed infrastructure that's been piling up since the white-flight of the 50's and 60's.

Still, the city's population is much lower than it was during the boom years of the 30's-50's so gentrification, while certainly spurring some conflict and debate, is nothing compared to a Manhattan or a San Francisco.

Since much of the recent shifts have spread out from the redeveloped waterfront and Rt. 83 corridor, you still see huge differences in home prices over the space of, say, 10 blocks. Looking at mostly typical Baltimore townhomes renovated in the past 10 years, our house which cost $240k would've cost $350k if it had been maybe 10 blocks south in the more gentrified Canton neighborhood.

And now, a few years on, new renovations on our block are being listed for those $300-400k prices. From a long term investment perspective, it would seem that values will be holding steady or rising in my immediate area but in bigger terms, I think it relates quite a bit to the overall topic of this thread. Younger people (and probably some not so young) are still interested in home ownership but can't (or won't) afford to pay DC prices or even the prices of surrounding suburbs.

I truly hope (selfishly, as a Baltimore resident) that this signals a wider shift to reinvestment or just investment in smaller cities that may have seen major declines during the 60's-80's as those with means moved out to the new burbs. Living within a few miles of work is great and being able to walk or bike places is awesome. I don't know how much you'd need to pay me to get me on that hour-long highway commute from the suburbs every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If I get to choose the age cohort that defines the word "millennial", I can probably get the data to say "millenials" have whatever migration pattern I desire.

<comment><USER26> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> OK, there's some data but were's the insight? If millennial move out, does that mean that as the current population ages out, post-millennials all stick around / move in or does it mean they'll become dead zones of old people? A vibrant environment needs a mix of ages (and other demographics).

</comment><comment><USER28> This is actually great.

It looks really strange in the modern globalized world that everybody worth something in tech have to physically move to Bay Area.

The world needs new tech (and other talent) hubs, and market pressure helps in this diversification. No need to resist it.

<comment><USER29> What's strange is people who do not see the value in face to face communication and think remote is equal to everything else.

<comment><USER28> What's the difference between video chat and face to face communication? I don't see any.

And, for that matter, resolving the issue in Slack is often much faster.

<comment><USER29> For me it's literal presence. Some people may not be able to feel it, but I do. And for my best work, it matters.

On the other hand, I do agree oftentimes it is faster to resolve issues in chat, over the phone, or whatever digital reduction du jour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I live in Canada, did a degree in CS and work as a programmer. I do ok money wise. I consider myself lucky that I enjoy programming. I live in Toronto and have zero chance of ever owning real-estate (unless there is a massive real estate correction which would blow up the Canadian economy). Even if you consider a hypothetical marriage and doubled my income, it would be out of reach.

Its even worse in Vancouver.

I don't think its the end of the world. With a bit of luck and discipline, my retirement will be funded by investments.

(edit: i am using the rule of not spending more than 30% of after tax income on housing)

</comment><comment><USER14> I just read yesterday that the suburbs were coming to an end because in the future everyone was going to live in areas like Manhattan. Shocked to learn that's not the case.

</comment><comment><USER30> For good reason. Smaller towns are more livable then ever. With uber you can do without a car even in small towns and distant suburbs. With high speed internet and delivery, you rarely have to go shopping into a city center. With wikipedia, github, and youtube, education from advanced topics to daily diy projects is available to villagers. With tinder, there is a singles scene where there wasn't one before...

<comment><USER14> lol. That is definitely not the reason and many of those things are not necessarily practical for working-class people (like taking Uber everywhere)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, something like that is happening in germany. Everyone want to live in the cities. Literally paying any price for rent. And then complain about the price. Soon or later they will there own undoing not be able to pay the rent anymore and moving out.

I live outside the city so I don't pay insane rents. While I watch to blow that over.

I say no problem with that. It is there fault. They don't need to live there and, especially pay any rent which is way too high.

</comment><comment><USER32> But as people leave those expensive cities, won't they become more affordable?

I mean, they are expensive because there are more people than available housing, and because there are lots of people making lots of money so they can spend more on stuff. But if those people want to leave, that reduces demand so prices should reduce.

Eventually, we should reach an equilibrium (or at least something more stable).

<comment><USER14> So you think they're going to become more affordable as poor and middle-class people move out and are replaced by well-heeled professionals and the international elite? I think that is unlikely.

<comment><USER32> Fair point

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Time to build new cities.

<comment><USER34> ... On Mars!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's not just America, and apparently, a 9-5 job is working class as well, because major cities in Europe are unfordable for someone with a job like that.

</comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, squeezed by two major trends - landlords optimize for profit maximization, while employers optimize for wages minimization, gives no other choice.

It is exactly the case of losing ground/territory to better competitors in ecology - manual laborers would be pushed out of overpriced neighborhoods by JavaScript-coding hipsters and their managers.

<comment><USER14> Well, there is at least one other choice in government intervention. We don't actually _have_ to let rents keep going up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if they're going anywhere in particular, or just spreading out.

</comment><comment><USER38> In a sense you could say this is the market working. America is huge and there are _lots_ of good places to live. We also have this amazing global telecommunications network thingy. Who knew?

</comment><comment><USER39> tl;dr gentrification</comment>


Ask pg: What's up with the randomly [dead] comments? - <AUTHOR> Every day I see articulate, polite and relevant posts being flagged dead for no apparent reason. One of these posts was by jashkenas in a thread about CoffeeScript (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2503653) I've added other examples below.
Is this a misbehaving bot or a rogue moderator with an happy trigger?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2582372
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2566826
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2566797 <comment><USER2> Another example:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567191>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2598559> => <http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=brudgers>.

BTW, none of these people are dead banned. All of these cases are one shot dead posts.</comment>


Ask HN: What skills are worth learning to find freelance work nowadays? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Assuming you are interested in technology, I would say Web Development. It's one of the growing careers out there and as a freelancer, it is good to learn new technologies as the . field is constantly evolving. Learning JavaScript and HTML might be a good start for you.</comment>


Exploiting the DRAM rowhammer bug to gain kernel privileges - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/636136/

<comment><USER2> Posted 6 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171722)

</comment><comment><USER3> This most interesting comment here is this one: [http://lwn.net/Articles/636143/](http://lwn.net/Articles/636143/) . I had not seen that you could fix this by changing the refresh rate before. I also did not know that you can potentially change the refresh rate with new bios firmware. Hopefully, some one will be able to put together solid fixes using these techniques.

<comment><USER4> That's already explained in the original blog post

[http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2015/03/exploiting- dra...](http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2015/03/exploiting-dram- rowhammer-bug-to-gain.html)</comment></comment>


The Genius Who First Predicted Black Holes - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/the-forgotten-genius-who-first-predicted-black-holes-e2045b98dc51 <comment><USER2> This appears to be strongly based on Alasdair Wilkins' 2010 piece on Gizmodo, at [https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-forgotten-genius-who- discovered-...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-forgotten-genius-who-discovered- black-holes-over-20-5717082) .

Consider the quote from this essay by Enright:

> Born in 1724 in the small village of Eakring, Nottinghamshire, Michell > studied at Cambridge University. A true polymath, he later went on to teach > there, instructing students in everything from Hebrew to geology. In 1761, > Michell was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, before settling down > to the position of rector at St. Michael's Church in Leeds in 1767.

with that in Wilkins' article:

> John Michell is one of the great unsung geniuses of 18th century science. > Born in 1724, he studied at Cambridge University and later went on to teach > there, instructing students in everything from Hebrew and Greek to math and > geology. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1761, but in 1767 he left > for northern England to take up the the post of rector of St. Michael's > Church in the city of Leeds, where he spent the rest of his days.

Or, this essay by Enright says:

> He made significant contributions to our understanding of electromagnetism > and is often regarded as the father of seismology, having discovered fault > lines, rock strata, and the wave nature of earthquakes. Michell also devised > a method involving torsion fibres to determine the mass of the Earth.

Wilkins' article:

> His speculations on earthquakes proved remarkably prescient, writing that > earthquakes act like waves of energy beneath the Earth and that they are > caused by discontinuities between different strata, essentially predicting > the existence of fault lines. All this work earned him the later title of > the father of seismology, and he developed a method to very accurately > measure the mass of Earth.

(Note that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell) says more directly Michell "introduced the idea that earthquakes spread out as waves through the Earth and that they involve the offsets in geological strata now known as faults.", making Wilkins' description more accurate.)

Enright:

> Combining these two insights, Michell devised an ingenious method by which > the mass of stars could be determined by looking at how much the emitted > light was slowed down by the pull of gravity.

Wilkins:

> Michell came up with an ingenious method to work out the masses of stars, > figuring that careful calculation of the speed of light coming from a given > star would reveal its gravitational influence and, in turn, its mass.

To be fair, Enright includes things which Wilkins does not cover (and vice versa). However, Enright's overall organization is quite similar to that of Wilkins' 2010 article - enough that I can't help but wonder about the connection between the two.</comment>


Show HN: Brevity – Summarized insights from articles about tech, startups and more - <AUTHOR> http://pushnews.campayn.com/contact_list_form/signup/20781

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear your feedback. Confused? Feel free to ask questions. :)</comment>


Time Travel Simulation Resolves "Grandfather Paradox" - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-travel-simulation-resolves-grandfather-paradox/ <comment><USER2> _On June 28, 2009, the world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking threw a party at the University of Cambridge, complete with balloons, hors d 'oeuvres and iced champagne. Everyone was invited but no one showed up. Hawking had expected as much, because he only sent out invitations after his party had concluded._

<comment><AUTHOR> I had actually begun to feel bad that no one showed up ("poor chap"), when I landed on the next sentence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did this understanding change since 2014?</comment>