Things You Cannot Say on China's Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/24/world/asia/china-internet-censorship.html <comment><USER2> I've always told my parents who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia that the Chinese communism is a very different beast from the eastern-bloc communism they've know (which Vaclav Havel described masterfully in his texts). But this article would feel very familiar to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice to see a table of the things one cannot legally say in different countries.

<comment><USER4> That would be fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y Hm, I find it weird that it is forbidden to publish things that "publicize luxury life". I would dare to say that most Chinese popular TV series and movies do just that. (Be it in the ancient china period or in the present time)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand.

== Stereotyping alert ==

At least in Malaysia and Singapore, even though there are a lot of Chinese (but not China national), "China girls" (from China) carries negative connotation. The reason is, many of them work in brothels, dodgy massage parlors, etc (you get the idea), and they're also known to "steal people's husbands" and being "gold diggers".

In China itself, it's "common" for rich people to have mistresses, and prostitution seems to be "common" (I have few friends who regularly visit China for this purpose).

Is it _because_ of that the China govt puts censorship, or _despite_ of that, or totally unrelated?

<comment><USER6> Its totally unrelated. Like most issues with prostitution, it is simply caused by poverty.

China is a very materialistic society with incredibly high inequality and it lacks any sort of welfare support network.

If you just walk around in shanghai, then the country might seem pretty close to first world levels of development. But if you go deeper inland, you will find hundreds of millions rural people who have been left behind, and still live in grinding poverty.

When you are that poor, then becoming a prostitute can be a acceptable option for you.

<comment><USER7> I would imagine that people choose sex work even if they are not destitute.

For example, look at the American porn industry or "high-end" call girl/escort scene. Often, it seems, these women (and men) come from means, or at the very least, not squalor.

Poor sex workers are of course more open to exploitation, but you would still find sex workers in developed nations with high social welfare (Australia, for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The actual list as published by the China Netcasting Services Association on 2017-06-30:

Original: [http://www.cnsa.cn/2017/06/30/ARTI0Qg4cp7jtd1Z5o0RnfzM170630...](http://www.cnsa.cn/2017/06/30/ARTI0Qg4cp7jtd1Z5o0RnfzM170630.shtml)

English (via Google Translate): [https://goo.gl/j7ii74](https://goo.gl/j7ii74)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a quintessential example of not basing policy on evidence of harm. Any decision that affects others (such as policy) should be empirically-based, or risks being simply wrong/bad (as I would surmise it is, in this case).

<comment><USER10> I agree with the spirit of what you say, but I think those requirements are too stringent. It's very difficult to get evidence before-the-fact for a lot of public policy type issues.

I think it would be better to be seek out and take heed of evidence, but not block things because of lack of prior evidence. What you need to be able to do is experiment -- try out policies -- and gather evidence from that. This will lead to some number of failed policies but ought to lead to better overall outcomes in the long-run.

<comment><USER9> The problem with operating laws-as-experiments are that laws are extremely difficult to change, while actual experiments are not.

> It's very difficult to get evidence before-the-fact for a lot of public > policy type issues.

Yeah, and this is exactly where I constantly see mistakes made and where I'd want some data or at least secular ethical rationality first, indicating at least a direction to take with policy. For example, treatment of sexual issues was terrible decades ago (and depending on where you are in the world, still is) due to lack of basing it on secular ethics ("who is actually harmed by this behavior? and in what capacity? and how much, by some objective measurement? and for how long?") or evidence ("wow, sure seems like a lot of animals are reproducing just fine despite having a percentage of gay members, maybe it's not so bad after all"). Or look at drug laws or prostitution laws- all based on big old dusty religious books or Victorian-era repressed sensibilities instead of rigorous data or secular ethical discussion.

You might argue that prostitution/oral sex (remember sodomy laws?) are an "affront to nature" instead of perhaps a "necessary evil," but without evidence as to actual objective harm (physical/emotional pain, long-term negatives, societal negatives at an institutional level, etc.), you should only be able to act in accordance with that by yourself and without being able to impose it on others.

In court, you cannot convict someone ("act against them and their interests") unless you prove harm has been done. Creating laws that curtail anyone's freedom should be treated equally.

I am 100% certain that China has absolutely NO good empirical basis to support their banning of 68 things off the Internet other than a flawed perception of reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just wanted a list, not an article. :~(

</comment><comment><USER12> One rule is to never click on "list" articles. Most of them are not worth your time.

And after reading the comments here, it is the case for this one too :-/

<comment> yoz-y Although the title looks like it would led to a listicle, it doesn't. The article is a perfectly fine column about the issue at hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The thing with obedience (which is disgustingly praised by quite some HN commenters, maybe even not just astroturfers) is that it leaves zero territory to live your actual life.

Which then will create people living completely double lives, the obedient shell one and the _other one_.

<comment><USER14> Please don't post generic ideological tangents to HN. Much as we might wish otherwise, a public internet forum isn't able to have meaningful discussion about things like this. It just turns into boring slop.

<comment><USER13> Why have HN at all then? Let's close comments.

You can't discuss specific things if you never figured generic things out. We will have pointless discussions like "was is a good thing to murder this particular person, or you say it wasn't?"

<comment><USER14> We don't close comments because some comments are good. But some are boring, particularly the generic ones and the indignant ones. To make HN discussions better we need to make them less boring, i.e. less predictable.

Nobody figures generic things out. They're too generic for that. The true things you can say are trivial and the non-trivial things are untrue.

The grander and more general a topic, the fewer interesting things there are to say about it—especially in internet threads. Those few things get said over and over, making the threads predictable and boring. The solution is to avoid such tangents. To avoid a black hole, don't go near it.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20black%20hole&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20black%20hole&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

<comment><USER13> > But some are boring

That's what you are thinking.

But you know what HN users think? They think +24.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article fails to list the 68 things...

</comment><comment><USER16> Every time an article that is politically critical of one of US's rivals is posted on HN, there is a lot of incoming comments about how US is just as bad. Which is perfectly reasonable and commendable - most HN readers live in US, and a good citizen is more concerned with problems in his own country than elsewhere. But it makes me wonder, what kind of justifications will this article get.

<comment><USER10> > a good citizen is more concerned with problems in his own country than > elsewhere.

In practical terms it's hard to be personally concerned equally as much about what happens in every country on earth, but as a matter of principle I think what happens to people is just as important regardless of where they are. And in our globalised world, what happens in one country, especially a major country, can have implications for many other countries.

<comment><USER16> > as a matter of principle I think what happens to people is just as important > regardless of where they are

Important to whom?

<comment><USER10> To me, and obviously I think it is the appropriate attitude for others to have, too, but of course I'm not trying to force that on anyone.

<comment><USER16> So, your own well-being, as well as well-being of your closest relatives, is just as important as well-being of people on another side of the globe?

Clarification: I know that it's not what you meant. But if you answer "no" to this question (as any reasonable person would) then I can show that from that, it logically follows that well-being of people in your own country is more important to you - because those people can affect you and people close to you more than people on another side of the globe.

<comment><USER10> I think people are equally important.

But if you're asking specifically what I would do, well, the question you've posed is very abstract so it's hard to get clear what you're really asking.

What sorts of scenarios, where it's my close relatives vs people on the other side of the world, are you thinking of?

It's often not a zero-sum game, and often the popular perception of it in zero-sum terms is vastly overblown.

.

Regarding your clarification, I can not think of any scenario where I would want something done that would benefit my close relatives at the expense of people in other countries. I'm open to you suggesting some possible scenarios.

<comment><USER16> > It's often not a zero-sum game, and often the popular perception of it in > zero-sum terms is vastly overblown.

It's never zero-sum, and it's never full cooperative either.

> I can not think of any scenario where I would want something done that would > benefit my close relatives at the expense of people in other countries.

Imagine that your close relative loses a job, and his, hm... "standard of living" goes down X, while someone else on another side of the globe gets that job, and his standard of living goes up 2X. (It's not zero sum, yes). Would you be happy over such an outcome?

<comment><USER10> > _Imagine that your close relative loses a job, and his, hm... "standard of > living" goes down X, while someone else on another side of the globe gets > that job, and his standard of living goes up 2X. (It's not zero sum, yes). > Would you be happy over such an outcome?_

Why did they lose their job? Is it because of freer trade? If was something like that then I would be ok, because I think that ultimately that's likely to make things better for everyone including the people in my country and including my relatives and descendants.

(and why does helping your relative out have to be at the expense of those other people overseas? Perhaps the best way to help them is for them to receive funding to get retrained to be more competitive in another area?)

I'm against the idea of blocking things with long-term gain, for the purposes of short-term gain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And the number 69

</comment><comment><USER18> Bigotry in XXI century. This is funny.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why is western media so concerned about China when their own government ramped up their control over their own people ? And hackernews mostly westerners going ga ga over this. You should be concerned about what's happening at your home than what's happening in some other country. Stop policing the world.

There is a proverb, fix the dust in your eye before trying to fix the dirt in someone else's.

<comment><USER20> Is our freedom of speech being censored online here? It's a good start that we can talk about this very subject.

<comment><USER19> Thats the only freedom you people have right now. It will be gone soon with the way your country is heading. Making it mandatory to reveal social media accounts for starters.

A country like China can protect its citizens from external propogandas. This propagandists include countries which are envious of the growth that China has achieved.

<comment><USER20> Brainwashing is where all evil begins. If you do not have the ability to think for yourself, and seek the opinions of others, you have nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why is Nytimes so concerned about China while failing completely to put the spotlight on the burgeoning surveillance culture at home?

Who is going to talk about draconian surveillance, secret courts, secret orders, gag orders and government officials empowered to violate your dignity and privacy by searching your phone and personal effects. Why is Snowden still in Russia? Are we to pretend all this is not happening?

All this is left to the EFF. This is a kind of denial and posturing - oh look how bad they are while looking the other way at the growing authoritarianism at home.

Not even talking about the current censorship of alternative voices by Google, Facebook and others in support of mainstream media like the nyt with completely opaque and non transparent standards and lending credence to shadowy groups like propornot.

<comment><USER9> OBJECTION: Whataboutist Fallacy

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

In addition, making a claim from a fresh anonymous account conveys the message that you do not actually stand behind it, giving it zero credence.

<comment><USER22> > In addition, making a claim from a fresh anonymous account conveys the > message that you do not actually stand behind it, giving it zero credence.

Let me do it instead then:

Why is Nytimes so concerned about China while failing completely to put the spotlight on the burgeoning surveillance culture at home?

Who is going to talk about draconian surveillance, secret courts, secret orders, gag orders and government officials empowered to violate your dignity and privacy by searching your phone and personal effects. Why is Snowden still in Russia? Are we to pretend all this is not happening?

All this is left to the EFF. This is a kind of denial and posturing - oh look how bad they are while looking the other way at the growing authoritarianism at home. Not even talking about the current censorship of alternative voices by Google, Facebook and others in support of mainstream media like the nyt with completely opaque and non transparent standards and lending credence to shadowy groups like propornot.

I have an account created 1284 days ago and linked to keybase.io, is it credible now?

<comment><USER23> No, it's just as wrong and stupid. Repeating idiocy doesn't make it less idiotic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Up to 17 F-22 Raptors may have been damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Michael - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/nktpnd/status/1051607249209253888 <comment><USER2> This feels like one of those events that historians will look back upon as a signal of the decline of the American Empire that went unnoticed.

Yes, all the reasons listed in the article make sense. These reasons are the proximate cause for why the aircraft could not be saved. However, what we're effectively saying is that we as a society have a defense system incapable of prioritizing a few million dollars in hangar cost to protect a few hundred million dollars in aircraft cost (think about how many weather events can be expected to happen over the 50yr life of the F22).

When the military industrial complex starts making such poor resource allocation decisions, something has gone horribly wrong. We're just too afraid to admit it.

<comment><USER2> Not to mention, what's the true capacity of the US defense network if there's a series of bad weather events? What happens if a hurricane hits the east coast shortly after a major earthquake hits the west coast?

Are we training our enemies on our non-nuclear weak points?

<comment><USER3> > Are we training our enemies on our non-nuclear weak points?

ATM there is no nation in the world with the ability to launch a conventional invasion of the USA, let alone have a chance of succeeding

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since a lot of the comments on this are basically "Why weren't they flown away?"

Many of the aircraft were flown away: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHKLfXTwvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGHKLfXTwvc)

The aircraft that remained were likely unable to be evacuated: [http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the- recor...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record- straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, an F-22 isn't a Toyota Camry. Some quick googling shows they require 12 maintenance man-hours for every hour of flight time. Given how quickly Michael ramped up, I wouldn't be surprised if those planes were simply caught in an unflyable state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given a 2009 flyaway cost of $150 million each [1], 17 F-22s lost is about $3B in todays dollars. Seems like it's worth hardening Tyndall's buildings or scrapping the base and moving inland.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor)

<comment><USER7> All the talk about flying them away, or not. You're storing billions in hardware next to a beach in hurricane country. Maybe drop 10 million -- hell, even 100 million -- for an elevated bunker rated to survive the strongest possible storm?

Maybe cancel a few band practices -- or, a dumb-ass DC parade -- to pay for it.

The bunker doesn't have to be large enough to be a general working space. Just a safe, to toss the crown jewels in, when warranted. (And elevated, because storm surge, if that's a possible factor.)

<comment><USER8> Builders of cheap, strong bunkers can't hire expensive lobbyists. And Lockheed definitely isn't going to lobby for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also worth reading (and is also included in the tweet chain) before any discussions on moving them.

[http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the- recor...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record- straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms)

</comment><comment><USER10> The thread goes on for a bit before the author says:

Fair. Technically correct would be 9% of Raptor airframes in the USAF inventory. Appreciate the correction.

The caveat is that the damaged airframes could be trainers, as many combat ready jets were moved prior to the storm.

</comment><comment><USER11> Any before/after pictures of the hanger? I guess not due to the sensitivity of the intelligence, but hard to believe hangers holding a few billion of jets weren't fortified to withstand anything short of a nuclear blast.

<comment><USER12> here is before. [http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21133/florida-air- base-...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21133/florida-air-base-hangar- turns-into-a-raptors-nest-as-f-22s-take-refuge-from-alberto)

packed in pretty good.

AFter [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpRVHdvVAAADoHd.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpRVHdvVAAADoHd.jpg:large)

I see couple of F16 with orange marking, but in top left corner, there is F22 tail

<comment><USER11> Thank you!

Wow, that hanger was completely destroyed. Unbelievably destructive storm. Those planes are toast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not the first time this sort of thing happened.

[http://www.tailsthroughtime.com/2010/06/prior-to-arrival- of-...](http://www.tailsthroughtime.com/2010/06/prior-to-arrival-of- boeing-b-52.html)

The 1952 Carswell AFB Tornado

In 1952, 2/3 of the B-36 bomber force of USA knocked out in less than 30 minutes by tornados. And I'm pretty sure B-36 was the only strategic nuclear weapon delivery system at the time, as this was before nuclear powered submarines or ICBMs.

<comment><USER14> The B-29 was the first nuclear strategic bomber. They were decommissioned in 1960.

<comment><USER15> The B-29 wasn't strategic in terms of Cold War capability against the USSR, in fact SAC had downgraded it to 'medium bomber' in classification.

SAC did modify a few dozen with inflight refueling as the B-29MR but that required stripping off nearly all defensive armament and giving over half of the bomb capacity to fuel tanks. And even then the missions would be one-way: [http://b-29.org/charlie/charlie1.html](http://b-29.org/charlie/charlie1.html)

The developed B-50 was semi-strategic and had inflight refuelling capability from the outset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is one of the reasons The Pentagon needs to keep their eyes on climate change. The politicization of the science needs to stop.

I am also surprised The Air-force did not move the entirety of the fleet as it normally does when extreme weather is imminent.

<comment><USER17> If you have read down the twitter thread you would have perfectly found an article explaining the reasons..

[http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the- recor...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24204/setting-the-record- straight-on-why-fighter-jets-cant-all-simply-fly-away-to-escape-storms)

<comment><USER18> Does that author have any sort of military background, or is he just a blogger?

<comment><USER19> Tyler Rogoway is a well known defense journalist and has been covering this stuff for years. He's not just a blogger.

<comment><USER18> I tried to find a CV for him, to no avail. I am pretty unimpressed with the tone of his comments (you fools just don't understand!).

<comment><USER19> I might take a snippy tone myself if ignorant people kept sending me the same stupid suggestions and questions. Most of his articles are somewhat "inside baseball" and assume that the reader has a certain baseline knowledge of policy and technology rather than explaining every little thing.

<comment><USER18> > I might take a snippy tone myself if ignorant people kept sending me the > same stupid suggestions and questions.

And in that hypothetical, I guess I'd point out that if you are affected by such things, having a strong Twitter presence and making your web presence a sub-blog on an automotive website might be the wrong way to go about things.

> Most of his articles are somewhat "inside baseball" and assume that the > reader has a certain baseline knowledge of policy and technology rather than > explaining every little thing.

I didn't exactly feel like I was reading Aviation Week or something when I took a peek at his stuff. Hence my original question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does seem like a bad idea to have an air force base right on the coast.

<comment><USER21> The best idea is to have a geographically- and meterologically-diverse network of bases, with enough capacity to shift your flyable assets in case of emergency. Which is basically what we have. And you do want bases as close to your borders as possible to gain the initiative when needed.

The failure here is the F-22 replacement parts supply chain, which is likely exacerbated by cancelling the program after purchasing about half of the promised aircraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd have thought that military aircraft hangars could withstand a hurricane. They are supposed to serve in times of war, after all. I'd think they'd be built to survive a somewhat near miss from a nuke.</comment>


Being a Musician and Writer Fucking Sucks So I'm Going to Learn JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/being-a-musician-writer-fucking-sucks-so-im-going-to-learn-javascript-8e02ed2cf382#.ouru49ol0 <comment><USER2> Good luck to you.

I gave up on the dream of being a FT touring musician at 24 after a handful of part time college fail/drop outs to become a designer full time. I had studied it in high school (I went to a Vo-tech HS) and practiced a bit of web design to make a little money between college and playing in bands. I've been working as a designer / front end developer for 5 years now and my work has taken me from my hometown in New England to Texas(where I met my wife), Nevada, and now Washington. About as far from home as I could have ever imagined.

It is indeed still a creative existence, but in a much different way. I don't play music at all in my free time anymore, but I now play a lot of D&D, write (currently working on a screenplay and a book), record a podcast, and have creatively fulling software side projects that touch on interests I like. Dog related, mostly.

Most of all, money isn't an issue anymore. A low point in my life was on tour digging change out of vending machines to get tacos from jack in the box. That life is behind me now and a lot of the folks who looked down on me for selling out are pushing 30 and living on their parents couch still, feigning rockstardom.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a job as principal bassoon in a symphony orchestra (80 musicians, so not a "full" orchestra with 4 in each wind group, but still decently sized). Tinnitus ruined that and I had to look for another job. I worked as a librarian in the royal music library in Denmark while studying CS. I did not end up doing what I wanted (Jesus Christ, I work in Pascal!) but I have a great job. I would throw it all out of the window to work with music again though.

The core thing for me is that music is all about "spiritually" feeding yourself. Employers realise this, and give you time to do that.

I find that for programming this is not the case. I have to struggle to keep my soulby continuously struggling to have fun side projects.

<comment><USER4> I love Pascal! But the tinnitus is a nightmare. Sorry you got it. What caused it? How do you cope with it? I know modern instruments are much louder than they were a few decades ago.

<comment><USER5> I get the impression that most European shops dodged the C/C++ bullet. They seem to prefer sane Algol derivatives with bounds checking.

Here in the US, instead of getting something like "Eiffel", we got "Java", after the insanity of connecting C++ to the internet was demonstrated. It's all cowboy country on this side of the pond :-)

... and yeah, hearing issues are much more serious than problematic programming languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny. I was thinking Friday how much I hate Java, and should have been a rock star :-)

But you gotta keep on keepin on (about 30 years as a developer if I include part time work back in school days), and pay the bills for the kids :-(

Good luck with those web page layouts and actions and such.

<comment><USER6> Java is lame. You should have co-invented USB, thats what a real rockstar would do

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=intel+rockstar](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=intel+rockstar)

<comment><USER5> :-)

Java _is_ lame. There's actually a lot of things I like about Javascript better, but it's hard to get people to paradigm shift...

And I really liked hanging out in the music department back in my college days (too many years ago).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating JavaScript..."_

\-- Allen Ginsburg</comment>


Move over Elo - crowdsourcing a new chess rating system - <AUTHOR> http://kaggle.com/chess

<comment><USER3> As someone who has played competitive chess for many years, I am impressed with just how robust and reliable the elo rating system has proven to be.

A 100 point difference between two players suggests that the stronger player will score 66% ((1 _#wins + 0.5_ #draws + 0*#losses)/#totalgames) and a 200 point difference will predict the stronger player will score 75%.

</comment><comment><USER4> I bet a modification of PageRank would be a fun place to start.

I've been participating in a website that uses directed acyclic graphs to rank NFL teams (<http://beatpaths.com>), but lately I've been thinking about PageRank after reading a paper on it: <http://www.ncsu.edu/crsc/reports/ftp/pdf/crsc-tr06-19.pdf>

You could probably make similar adjustments to PageRank to make it suitable for chess.

<comment><USER5> I tried modifications for PageRank for rating soccer teams, and I will say it provided a questionable rating and not very good predictions compared to other rating methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been playing on FICS recently. I've always been an average player - <USER2> enough to beat my friends but usually lose against anyone who has 'studied' the game. However I decided to try a new strategy: knock them out of their opening book at the earliest opportunity. Spectacular results so far: beat a player rated 300 Elo above me in 9 moves! Probably a fluke though, but still it generally seems to give me a much better chance (I don't have the patience to learn the opening theory).

<comment><USER7> You were most assuredly playing against below average players. Most of the early part of a chess game is spent trying to establish an 'opening line' and can transform several times depending on what moves both players make. So, you as white could set out trying to play the English and find your self ending up with the QGD.

If you don't learn the theory behind the openings (whether by reading or by observation) you will remain a below average player for a long time

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everybody's submitted solutions to this seemed to have an RMSE of 0.794 to 0.808 which seemed a bit odd to all converge in such a narrow range.

I don't think my solution is that clever, but it's gone straight to the top of the leader-board with a 0.70 RMSE.

<comment><USER9> what was your methodology or general strategy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Elo system is really cool, when I was a kid, I thought the name Élő (the inventor's name) is meant literally, as it means "live" in Hungarian, so I thought it is just something that is being constantly updated, which it is in fact.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think that one of the interesting areas for Elo-type ratings is in online video games. Especially where teams are involved. How do you rate a single player based on what they did in a team game?

<comment><USER12> I just read a blog post today about Starcraft 2's rating system: [http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/7/24/analyzing- starcraft-2s-...](http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/7/24/analyzing- starcraft-2s-ranking-system.html). It seems like Microsoft's TrueSkill system described there might be very applicable to this chess-ranking problem.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> at 50 years old - it's probably due for an upgrade!

<comment><USER13> Instead of being upgraded the ELO system is actually being applied to other sports because of its solid statistical basis.

<comment><USER5> It is solid and it is easily computable</comment></comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs Upped Paternity Leave to 20 Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-04/goldman-now-offers-more-parental-leave-than-any-other-major-bank <comment><AUTHOR> The article fails to mention American Express who has had the same 20 weeks off for both parents since 2017, but still newsworthy and in a positive direction promoting work-life balance.</comment>


What if the IoT is only a micro-optimization? - <AUTHOR> http://www.michael-jakob.com/thoughts.html

<comment><USER2> It was easy to understand why the Internet was awesome, right from the beginning, because you could use it for something really useful: communicating with other people. This is something every human being wants to do.

I still don't understand how this internet of things is going to provide a service that human beings actually want. I can see why the economics of chip manufacture have made it _possible_ to add a microcontroller to every electronic device, and a network interface to every microcontroller, but then what? Why would we want to do that?

<comment><USER3> I've been wondering this for years as well. I don't understand what make IoT a big deal. Why do I want my fridge connected to the internet? Or my toaster, or whatever else? The only device I want connected is my cat feeder, or my coffee machine, so I can remote control them, or program their timing.</comment></comment>


Downloading Hardware: The quiet revolution in networking - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/downloading-hardware-the-quiet-revolution-in-networking-9ab6bdae99f2 <comment><USER2> FPGA are not new stuff (have been here since the 80s) and no, downloading a FPGA netlist/design/config is _not_ "downloading hardware".

Misleading title.

<comment><AUTHOR> FPGAs are not a new thing. But FPGAs that are big enough and fast enough to outperform ASICs (in the networking context) is a new thing.

Re the title. It's perhaps a bit poetic, but it's not misleading. What else could the title possibly mean? It's either going to be about 3D printing or FPGAs. You can't seriously expect to actually download a physical piece of hardware.</comment></comment>


Connect IFTTT Triggers to a REST API and Return the API's Response to IFTTT - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bberg/ifttt-proxy <comment><AUTHOR> Ifttt-proxy simply proxies IFTTT triggers from one maker channel to a specified API endpoint, and posts the API's response to a different IFTTT endpoint. Use it to connect any IFTTT trigger -> API -> IFTTT action. (e.g. push me metro next train times when I leave a geo-fence)</comment>


MakerDAO's "DAI" stablecoin is breaking, as predicted - <AUTHOR> https://prestonbyrne.com/2018/01/11/epicaricacy/ <comment><USER2> The thing the author seems to be confused about is that when people talk about stable coin they aren't claiming that the market can't be irrational. They are claiming that over a sufficient period of time the coin will trend towards its target. In the case of DAI today, that target is 1 DAI == 1 USD. This means that while the market may irrationally buy/sell DAI for more or less than 1 USD, over time it will trend towards 1 USD.

For the vast majority of people looking for a stable coin, this is exactly what they want. They don't care so much that on a particular exchange DAI is worth more or less than $1, they care that in a week, or a month or a year DAI will still be worth "about a dollar" and not "100x USD" or "x/100 USD". DAI has the mechanisms necessary to make it profitable to drive the price of DAI back toward 1 USD if it loses its peg and those mechanisms have been shown to generally work in the wild so far.

I have personally made a few bucks when DAI transiently slipped its peg in the past. There are people actively authoring bots that profit off of DAI losing its peg and as those bots become more efficient and gain capital, I think we'll see DAI slip its peg less and less often.

<comment><USER3> > They are claiming that over a sufficient period of time the coin will trend > towards its target

This is not what the MakerDAO team, nor any other stablecoin shill, is claiming. They are claiming the system "ensures" that the stablecoin is "a money that will always maintain its purchasing power."

"Ensure" and 'always' don't mean "trend towards over time." They mean always, as in all the time. If their intention is to sell a different product, I can only suggest they make more representations which are a little harder to falsify.

<comment><USER2> If what you want is "something that always is worth _exactly_ 1 USD then you are asking for the unatainable. As others have mentioned, it is _impossible_ in an open market to have a true 100% no variability peg. Markets work on supply and demand and the instant that one exceeds the other the peg will drift.

A good stable coin will have pressures that push that drift back toward the target, but it is impossible to stop the drift from ever occurring. The USD itself presumably targets some basket of goods, but it drifts away from that basket of goods. So even the USD isn't a "stable coin" by your definition.

<comment><USER4> I mean the notion of "exactly" is nonsensical in so many ways, especially when it comes to thinly traded exchanges. I can sell $1 to my friend for $1.10 break the US dollar. Lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In this thread cryptocurrency community will rediscover banking and money.

We have stablecoins or tethers (manny attempts to create something people want) - people want some form of money for peer to peer value transfer, that will allow arbitrage between exchanges and connection to "real world" as almost nobody is pricing their services in ethereum/bitcoin.

Let's say we have 3 competing stablecoins and Gresham's law will apply = people will be moving to "best" coin and leaving others holding bad ones. Imagine that you have 2 banks - one with good reputation and large reserves and second one - almost without them, yet both will be issuing private money redeemable for each other. So how come one can attract customers to his specific stablecoins solution? By offering interest rate - a stablecoin that pays dividend will be better than stablecoin without it.

It's complicated - ideologically stablecoins are similar to economical perpetuum mobile devices, yet the first are impossible due to laws of physics and second one may work because economy depends on human behaviour and humans may act irrationally.

<comment><USER6> A stablecoin isn't a store of value. It's an instrument for holding pretend Fiat. It's a way for holders to pretend they are the Fed, and say "Now I have USD! You can have it. Just sell it back to someone else eventually because it's pretend."

It's an index basically, not an actual commodity.

(Except of course in the sense that Everything Is A Commodity in the crypto world.)

<comment><USER2> Eh, I wouldn't quite call it an index. While I agree that it isn't _actually_ 1USD (or whatever it is pegged to), it is backed by other assets (in the case of DAI today, it is backed by ETH) and the system is setup such that there should always be more ETH backing the DAI than necessary to make everyone whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Actually, for such laughably small trading volume DAI is as stable as mountain:

[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dai/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dai/#markets)

I do expect DAI to be more stable as adoption and trading volume grows.

Author of is article is a troll. In his last post he wrote literally:

> Having taken fifteen minutes to review the MakerDAO paper

MakerDAO is probably one of the most ambitious projects on Ethereum with pretty complicated structure. Draw conclusions on 15 minutes of review is nonsense.

<comment><USER8> > Author of is article is a troll.

He may have an incendiary and flippant writing style, but it's worth noting that he was a founder and COO of Monax (née Eris) which released an open source private-chain fork of Ethereum in 2014. He's qualified to have an opinion on complex smart contracts and not be called a troll. If anything he's emblematic of the frustration felt by many early adopters who understand that the hype bubble is making it hard for this rather experimental technology to meet inflated expectations (Vitalik recently being another prime example).

[http://www.businessinsider.com/ethereum-founder-threatens- to...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ethereum-founder-threatens-to-leave-if- the-crypto-community-doesnt-grow-up-2017-12)

<comment><USER9> "Author of this article is a troll" != "Author of this article doesn't have a technical background"

I also have a strong background in the field and the MakerDAO project took me a long time to understand. The author makes several mistakes in his opening paragraph.

I'm not entirely convinced that the project will work as intended, but the author clearly doesn't even understand the basic ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a bit skeptical of derivative-based stablecoins in general, but Dai dropped briefly and then went right back to about a dollar, currently $1.02. I don't think they ever claimed that their price stabilization mechanisms would work instantaneously.

<comment><USER11> And while it dropped momentarily, it dropped to 70%-80% of the USD. In the world where most other cryptocurrencies move that much in a regular day without anyone breaking a sweat - that seems like a very good deal to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is funny because this guy also fundamentally doesn't understand how Basecoin works.

"If the price of 1 BASE is above $1, the blockchain prints new $BASE to holders of "BASE Shares" (mother of god), a standalone cryptocurrency which is issued in the genesis block and held by early adopters, which then distributes new Basecoins to them as a "dividend." Holders of "BASE Shares" are free to either hold onto their Dividend-Basecoins (thus not bringing the price down) or sell them into the market, pushing out the supply curve and bringing down 1 BASE's price. This process continues until the price of 1 BASE drops to $1."[0]

Actually, the Basecoin will first go to the Bond holders. I think there are reasons to be skeptical of Basecoin and stable cryptocurrencies, but this guy's "articles" don't really seem to touch on those.

[https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/10/13/basecoin- bitshares-2-ele...](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/10/13/basecoin- bitshares-2-electric-boogaloo/)

<comment><USER13> Well, of course it's easy to ensure that the price doesn't stay _above_ $1. You can make more of them. It's ensuring that the price doesn't stay _below_ $1 that's hard. You have to draw value from some reserve. If that reserve is depleted, you're screwed. All attempts to peg currencies run into that problem.

<comment><USER11> Would it not be possible to just destroy some of the coins? If they were destroyed for everyone, proportionally to how much they hold, wouldn't that be in interest of everyone? Because it would make the coin itself worth more?

<comment><USER14> As I see it, you have two options.

The first is distributed destruction. Everyone destroys some of their coins to raise the value of remaining coins. The problem is that this is a prisoner's dilemma: defection is the best strategy. Some people will _not_ destroy their coins, thus increasing their relative position to others who do. Over time "destroy your coin" signals will simply be ignored.

Not to mention cold wallets, which simply don't participate in the ledger unless it suits them to. Are they meant to simply nuke coins upon rejoining? This introduces an incentive to stockpile coins in the hope that the policy will change in future.

The second approach is centralised. Someone has the authority to mark some fraction of coins as destroyed. Rather undermines the decentralisation thing people like.

<comment><USER11> But the destruction would of course (obviously) be implemented in the protocol.

Just like in Bitcoin, it's not up to each user to be honest and prevent double-spends, it's instead up to the network that checks and re-checks everything - the destruction of those coins in the example would be enforced by the network. Not relied on users.

<comment><USER14> This is why I brought up the cold wallet.

The network can check that transactions occurred, but it can't really make people perform them. It's a ledger system.

If someone doesn't post a coin destruction event, how do I know why? Is it because they're cheating? Because of a cold wallet?

You might say "I will make coin destruction a precondition for any other transaction". Now the incentive of a hoarder is to sit on their wallet while destruction is high and only enter the market when destruction is low. This means liquidity is tied to how far off the peg you are, which isn't a desirable property.

OK, how about summing up the destruction tally for any wallet that's inactive, to be paid in a lump sum? Now you're telling me that my wallet can be completely drained over time by a destruction tax that realises only if I open my wallet. Not very attractive.

OK, maybe you just destroy the net of coin creation and coin destruction at transaction time. This seems more likely to work, though I'm unsure whether I can evade it by changing addresses. I'm also unsure what incentives miners have to validate coin destruction. There's also the problem of how it cope with truly heavy amounts of capital flow. Watching a numerical balance surge up and down during a single day might be unattractive to a lot of holders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the past, this person trolled Bitshares to make a name for themselves. They selectively cut'n'pasted snippets of the Bitshares forum as some form of evidence in other posts. There is a ton of context there that was removed. A blockchain can give an asset value, but that doesn't mean every market will guarantee those prices. He is now going after the Maker coin. The guy does well SEOing his website with this rubbish but he doesn't seem to understand much outside of that. oh well, no big deal until google/ycombinator point to him as an authority.

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems to me that any decentralized stablecoin would break the impossible trinity. [0]

Basically, since the interest rate is fixed (at 0 in this case, I believe), there's an incentive to sell DAI in favour of some higher-yielding currency, which creates a downward pressure on the price. So short of preventing DAI from being sold somehow, in order to maintain a peg, someone needs to pump money into DAI at a loss.

You can try to build a complicated system to hide all that, but it seems the goal of a stable peg is simply impossible. Even for nation states it is only possible in the case they have sufficient resources and the will to maintain a peg.

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

<comment><USER17> Why do you say interest rate is fixed at 0. Isn't the whole bond mechanism supposed to introduce an adaptive interest rate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Author has misunderstandings of what he's criticizing. From the article I suspect he thought the crash was caused by undercollateralization at first before his friend corrected him. His 15 minute attempt to understand the system didn't include enough time to check the collateralization ratio limits.

Also claims that a collateralized stablecoins "only works if the collateral value keeps rising", and that selling something is equivalent to using it as collateral

</comment><comment><USER19> How is this mud slinging article so high on hacker news? This guy is just like every other troll who attempts to forge a name for themselves by tearing down other people's hard work.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I hate security researchers too. They should shut up about TLS and processor vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The author's main point is that since the token is collaterized by ether, the value of the coin depends on ETH rising in value. The token's creators attempt to solve this by over collateralizing 50% which he considers foolish because it just adds leverage to the system so when losses occur, they are exaggerated.

<comment><USER22> Sure, but they are planning on adding other assets as collateral. ETH is just the first version, the proof of concept. I think the author knows this, though, and chooses to dismiss the project anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> FUD. Insufficient liquidity on some exchange might cause the price to fluctuate briefly, of course. But it quickly corrected back to $1.

<comment><USER24> And unless I'm mistaken, the people at Maker never said it was hard-pegged to the dollar. It was a soft peg, so the price could fluctuate here and there, but remain _roughly_ stable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If a group wants to peg a coin to the dollar, why don't they just issue coins for $1, put that directly into a savings account, and allow redemption of any coin for $1?

<comment><USER9> That's called Tether, and its primary problem is that everyone is taking the issuers at their word that the money is going into a savings account, and that they are only issuing it when they receive $1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> introduction bashes ethereum over its price jump and seems to go for tulips explanation. that's where I stopped reading

</comment><comment><USER27> Another misinformed article from Preston Byrne. It's unbelievable how out of touch this guy is!

</comment><comment><USER28> Tether gets criticized for being fractional, but it's more stable than fancy collateralized derivative products. Cryptocurrency never ceases to amaze me.

<comment><USER29> Wait, tether is fractional now? Wasn't one of their big promises that Tether is always backed up 1:1 by the dollar?

<comment><USER30> I believe you are correct that it's not fractional, their website claims "100% Backed - Every tether is always backed 1-to-1, by traditional currency held in our reserves. So 1 USD₮ is always equivalent to 1 USD." [1]

The whitepaper abstract also states "issued tokens are fully backed and reserved at all times." [2]

[1] [https://tether.to/](https://tether.to/)

[2] [https://tether.to/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/TetherWhitePape...](https://tether.to/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/TetherWhitePaper.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon is delivering nearly two-thirds of its own packages - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/13/amazon-is-delivering-nearly-two-thirds-of-its-own-packages.html <comment><USER2> What people miss here is Amazon's is taking advantage of the fact that the cost to deliver packages varies greatly. Where it's cheap/ easy to deliver packages, Amazon delivers their own. Where it's expensive to deliver, they outsource to UPS/ USPS/ FedEx. Delivering a package in rural areas where houses are a quarter mile apart is a lot more expensive than when a carrier can load up a handcart and deliver 10 addresses.

Traditional carriers break even or even take a small loss on a percentage of deliveries because it's important to their business model to have consistent prices and deliver everywhere. Amazon isn't restricted that way, they can cherry pick which places they deliver based on how profitable it is to get the package to the doorstep.

Essentially Amazon is draining away all the deliveries which made UPS/ USPS/ FedEx profitable. How sustainable this model is long term is somewhat questionable.

<comment><USER3> The US should stop subsidizing rural communities. It is bad for the environment and people that want to live out there should have to pay the real costs of serving them.

One possibility is to reduce the days mail is delivered to rural communities to cut costs.

<comment><USER4> And city folk could pay the real cost of having their food grown and delivered to their doors and local stores. The whole issue works both directions but most people only tend to see their perspective. ;)

<comment><USER5> Most people living in the countryside rely on the same food distribution networks that serve city dwellers, so that equation doesn't check out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At what ratio can they reduce the HUGE packaging waste?

A few years ago there was an Amazon promo for when they first started "same day" delivery in another city, where all deliveries were in paper bags.

But while Amazon now offers "same day" service from a warehouse 20 minutes away, and delivers all their own stuff, everything continues to arrive in huge wasteful cardboard boxes.

I like Amazon, I like ordering from Amazon, but I'm tired of recycling entire trunks worth of cardboard boxes often holding very small items.

<comment><USER7> I'm interested to know this as well. However I'm more interested to know the overall environmental impact of buying some from Amazon in their current state.

At what distance is it overall more environmentally friendly for me to purchase from Amazon vs. taking my car and grabbing that item myself. I think I'd be surprised at how little that number is.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/environmen...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/environmental- impact-of-amazon-prime)

it's not a direct answer, but it seems like the answer is that it's essentially never more environmentally friendly to order online, because the odds that it _actually_ eliminates a trip in your car are so tiny.

<comment><USER9> I imagine I'm atypical, but if I had to drive somewhere to pick up my online orders, my monthly car trips would go up between one and two orders of magnitude. But I do order a decent quantity of things on Amazon (for non- urgent things I use the "Amazon day" delivery option to help reduce _their_ trips), and generally dislike driving and try to drive as little as possible (1-3 trips per week; pre-covid I could go weeks without driving).

I'd be curious to know what the environmental numbers are for someone like me.

<comment><USER10> You are not accounting for behavior change. Before the online ordering era, most people never went non-grocery shopping more than once a month. And did all that shopping in one big trip.

Once you think decide that all highly environmentally-destructive actions are not even an option on the table, your behavior changes.

<comment><USER9> That's a good point. Non-grocery items were a special trip, were rare, and usually involved months worth of purchases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anecdotal, but the only time I am sure my Amazon package will be delivered correctly and on time is with USPS.

Then is UPS, who are happy to stick a note on your door saying you were not home, even if the door is open and you are waving at them.

Then is FedEx, who never seem to make it on time.

And last/worst is Amazon, who lose or misdeliver about 20% of my packages.

<comment><USER12> Very different near me. Fedex is the most reliable usually delivering before 2pm followed by UPS who will typically deliver before 6pm of the estimated delivery date. I get the best tracking details from both providers showing me where my package is and even a time estimate for delivery.

Amazon itself is next, usually arriving on time, occasionally a package will be delayed and I'll get an e-mail telling me as much.

USPS is by far the worst unless it is priority mail express. One thing that constantly happens is Amazon will hand off a package to USPS for final delivery, USPS will then mark it delivered on the day it is supposed to come, but won't actually deliver it for another 2 days. I have also had packages seemingly lost or stolen once being handed off to USPS including a very expensive computer monitor. Amazon refunded me of course, but it seems clear someone decided to steal it. Priority Mail Express service though has always been perfect.

<comment><USER13> I once tracked this down! They're scanning it delivered to protect their workers from being punished for their location being criminally understaffed. It's been going on in some zip codes for years. Expect a lot more of it this fall.

That 2 day delay is because sorters and carriers are scanning packages delivered in bulk in their vehicle, and then either loading or delivering only a subset of them, due to your local sorting/delivery teams having been overwhelmed by package volume. Eventually the overflow carriers catch up on the pile of packages, and yours is either included or lost. The early delivery scan protects them against retaliation — but also hides the necessity for more staffing.

This isn't a defense of their actions, but since I did the months of diligence with my local post office on this a few years back, I thought you might be curious to know why.

ps. Palo Alto? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why didn't FedEx, UPS, and USPS cut/drop prices in order to be competitive? They raise rates yearly like inflation but... shouldn't their costs be going down year over year as they grow larger and larger? Volume discounts, efficiency gains.

I don't have data in front of me so I'm sort of pulling numbers out of my a __if you will but I 'm pretty sure UPS + FedEx raise rates about 7% year over year for all sizable shippers at pretty much the same time of the year. Meaning, FedEx raises rates, the next week, UPS raises rates.

<comment><USER15> >Why didn't FedEx, UPS, and USPS cut/drop prices in order to be competitive?

Amazon retail operates at basically 0 margin. It is very difficult to compete with them given their scale and willingness to forgo profit. The writing was on the wall once Amazon decided they wanted to handle their own shipping. No way Fed Ex et.al. could be competitive on price and make money.

<comment><USER16> \- Amazon what is your business domain?

\- Yes

Its scary what amazon will be in the future.

<comment><USER17> We need to break it.

<comment><USER18> Yes. It's at the point where it can strong-arm large chunks of the economy. That's too much power in the hands of a single for-profit entity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I couldn't be happier with Amazon's delivery service. I can track my delivery (the tracker tells me how many stops ahead of my delivery, etc) and I get a picture of the package on my doorstep.

USPS has been mostly reliable and yet on Saturday a package scheduled for delivery didn't make until Monday with no status change until Monday morning.

</comment><comment><USER20> No wonder I have seen severe degradation in delivery times. It is a minimum of 5 days now to get anything.

<comment><USER21> You don't think the global pandemic currently in progress has anything to do with it?

<comment><USER22> Anecdotal, but my quoted Amazon delivery times here in norcal are now significantly worse than they were in March-June. This was true before everything caught on fire, too.

<comment><USER23> At the start of the pandemic, things were pretty rough, with Amazon conveniently omitting dates on their website (they would say "Arriving on Tuesday!" but then you'd get further through the flow and it would be "Tuesday, August 4th"... back in April.)

I wanted some more RAM this weekend, ordered it on Sunday morning and had it Sunday afternoon.

Personally I think that everyone is a little bit too "okay" about the whole pandemic thing... but you can certainly buy stuff from Amazon and have it show up quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I doubt Amazon is delivering much of anything. Amazon Logistic's partners are delivering large numbers of packages. See "Amazon Delivery Service Partner". Many of those "Partners" then hire contractors to drive the trucks in order to meet Amazon's requirements and still make money. If Amazon had to pay for employees directly to do the deliveries then it would cost them much more and Prime shipping might not be worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's the Uber model: win by bankrupting the competitors who allow employees to make a good living. Amazon contract employees have low pay, no benefits, no union, no protection, no vacation. All the things that Americans are entitled to in exchange for 40 hrs/week.

The Uber model wins by destroying society.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wholefoods was a great purchase for Amazon. I'm sure they are saving a TON in shipping costs.

</comment><comment><USER27> I thought "independent delivery contractors" _definitely not employees_ were the ones delivering.

Or is the Amazon Logistics gig-economy tax scam unique to the UK?

</comment><comment><USER28> Trump: Amazon should pay more to use USPS.

Bezos: ok, I'll DIY.

USPS: uh oh.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+amazon+pay+more+usps](https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+amazon+pay+more+usps)

<comment><USER29> Regardless of all that, this was the logical step for Amazon.

The world's most sophisticated logistics company is WalMart.

Not because they wanted to be a logistics company, but because by doing their own logistics, they can cut costs.

Same thing with Amazon. At some point, shipping all those packages is your last remaining major cost (outside of personnel). The more you can do in- house, the cheaper you can do it.

And that's not the only space where they've done this. AWS is basically Amazon selling their infrastructure. Infrastructure they built because at some point it was their biggest cost. Then they reduced that cost by bringing it in- house. Then they turned it into a profit center by selling it.

So I don't think this is going to stop at Amazon doing their own deliveries. Soon enough, you will be able to ship items via Amazon. (This is already kind of the case with third party sellers on Amazon, but instead imagine treating Amazon as FedEx or UPS).

<comment><USER30> > Not because they wanted to be a logistics company, but because by doing > their own logistics, they can cut costs.

For retail, logistics is core business.

<comment><USER31> It's true of large-scale retail which is really what the parent's point is. Small retailers just outsource their logistics to a company like XPO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why is the USPS doing so badly when e commerce is doing so well? Even if the post office goes away, Amazon will still keep doing well.

In Japan they use 7/11 to do deliveries to people and pay bills there like a post office. Maybe we can learn from them and use Amazon for that.

<comment><USER33> | Why is the USPS doing so badly when e commerce is doing so well?

Because it's actively being sabotaged. It's staffing is held back by pension requirements which other parts of government and Amazon do not have. Their perfectly fine working sorting are removed.

<comment><USER34> > Because it's actively being sabotaged.

I know this is the political line of the day, but the reality is USPS is, has been, and will be insanely inefficient for decades. Decades. That spans multiple presidents from both parties. Decades.

The very fact that USPS receives funding by Tax Payers, but also still charges the same tax payers money to use services, _and_ still manages to lose billions of dollars every year is a modern marvel all in it's own right.

The very fact it costs USPS more than $0.55 to deliver a letter to your mailbox (which only USPS is legally allowed to put mail into for whatever reason in 2020), is insane. Raise rates they'll say! To what end? To the point where UPS or FedEX rates start looking attractive for normal letter mail? What will happen then to the USPS?

For larger packages over a few pounds, it's already insanely cheaper to ship packages via UPS or FedEx. Sometimes over half the price in difference. Neither UPS nor FedEx are subsidized by Tax Payers + Still Charge for Services. Somehow, they make a profit and deliver packages on time.

The mismanagement of USPS is as criminal as it is resolute. It is not the current administration's doing - claiming so is not just intellectually dishonest, it's flatly wrong. No, the mismanagement of USPS has always been, and all signs seem to say it will always be.

EDIT: It's a myth that USPS isn't tax payer funded. Pay attention to the wording they use - "Not Tax Payer Funded". That says nothing about routine bailouts[1][2][3], which are so routine they might as well be scheduled. How is a bailout not tax payer funding? Run yourself into the ground then get bailed out by tax payers again, and again, and again, and again. It would probably be more efficient to actually just give them the money up front.

[1] [https://justthenews.com/government/congress/congressman- says...](https://justthenews.com/government/congress/congressman-says- usps-25-billion-bailout-bill-favors-democratic-party-backed)

[2] [https://keller.house.gov/media/in-the-news/usps-has- lost-78-...](https://keller.house.gov/media/in-the-news/usps-has- lost-78-billion-2007-despite-receiving-billions-taxpayers-every-year)

[3] [https://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal- service/](https://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/)

<comment><USER35> USPS is a service, not a business. Do we look at how profitable the US military is or schools?

That being said, USPS used to be profitable until Congress decided that they pre-fund pensions for all new hires (1). They went from making a couple billion a year to losing $5 billion a year. Your statements have no truth in them. Republicans love to actively sabotage profitable and useful public services and then try to defund them by claiming they don't work.

As a bootstrapped business owner working out of a rural and very republican community, I'm disgusted by the lies and misinformation people use to try to destroy the USPS. It's literally in our constitution.

(1) [https://www.thoughtco.com/postal-service-losses-by- year-3321...](https://www.thoughtco.com/postal-service-losses-by-year-3321043)

<comment><USER36> The pension thing has become a talking point, but it's a red herring. I agree with you that the USPS needs to be defended, but we degrade the discourse when talking past each other with hyperbolic points.

Most private businesses no longer operate with _defined benefit_ pensions, because businesses have moved on to _defined contribution_ retirement plans (eg 401k) which are inherently prefunded. Funding retirement obligations at the time they are accrued is a good thing, and we should push for more of it rather than silently indebting future generations.

If the USPS was partially compensating workers by promising them a pension out of some future budget, then they were only profitable as long as their assumptions about growth held. We can accept this while still acknowledging USPS as a public service entitled to public funding, especially as needed to get through this accounting change.

<comment><USER37> From what I understood the main problem is that they need to backfill it within 10 years, whereas when similar changes were forced on companies having such pension plans, they got to adjust it over 40 years?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In Defense of CryptoKitties - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rchen8/in-defense-of-cryptokitties-16dd2e447d9e <comment><USER2> I see this kind of argument a lot. But it seems to always be missing a step when it comes to theoretical crypto innovations.

All the examples of "toys" he mentions here are also _useful_. That seems to be the fundamental concept of what grows.

Amazon was useful, you could buy rare books that were previously hard to find.

Ebay was useful, you could buy (and sell) niche collectibles that were previously difficult to trade.

Facebook could show you pictures of classmates and let you communicate with them.

Backrub (ie Google) could help you find information on the early poorly- indexed world wide web.

And so on.

So how are cryptokitties useful?

<comment><USER3> How are baseball cards useful? How about fine art? What about virtual goods in MMORPGs? I guess my point is that enjoyment and fun is a worthy utility in and of itself.

<comment><USER2> Sure. Games and toys are a category of products and services.

The premise of this article however is that things that look like toys are often actually not just toys, but "important" innovations.

To point out that there are toys that look like toys is less insightful.

<comment><USER4> cryptokitties are digital assets that can live on any digital platform like a mobile phone app as an AR filter or inside your favorite video game as a character or a pet for your character. cryptokitties are digital assets that people own. if that isn't important to you, you can't see the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, good points all around. I hear similar criticisms of augmented and virtual reality as being just "toys." IMHO being a "toy" that people actually want to play with is not a bad thing at all, it's an important part of the r&d and adoption lifecycle!

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure, but I think you just tried to compare the technological platforms of VR/AR with virtual cat trading for money on existing platforms? I'm not even getting into the huge amounts of time, money, and hard work that's gone into VR/AR, because as far as I can tell you just compared apples and bricks.

<comment><USER4> cryptokitties are unique, individually owned assets for digital platforms. how are you going to play with VR/AR without the assets that are needed to make that experience worth it? he just compared the apple tree and the apples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Big fan of CryptoKitties and CryptoCollectibles. I collect my notes at the Awesome CryptoKitties page [1] and also started a collection of (open source) tools and public domain datasets at CryptoCopycats [2]. Have fun with the blockchain. It's serious business. The future is meow :-). [1]: [https://github.com/cryptocopycats/awesome- cryptokitties](https://github.com/cryptocopycats/awesome-cryptokitties) [2]: [https://github.com/cryptocopycats](https://github.com/cryptocopycats)

<comment><USER7> Did he just say Meow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The sky-high exchange rate of ETH seems to be largely based on the assumption that there will be a "Web 3.0" of Ethereum-based applications. Slim pickings so far...

<comment><USER9> I suspect their will be a decentralised 3.0 web allowing supporting the later layers of the semantic web model.

I do not think it will be Ethereum, not just because of the technology issues but also the philosophy, too much greed in the heart of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > What makes CryptoKitties valuable? Scarcity.

What exactly is scarce here? The picture of the Kittie is just an image, right? Can't that be displayed anywhere by anyone?

<comment><USER11> The scarce thing is being able to say "Cryptokitty #123 belongs to me". No one else can say that, and everyone will agree that you're the answer to the question "Who owns Cryptokitty #123?" or "Who owns the Cryptokitty with that specific appearance?". It's definitely a bit silly, but I still feel there's some neat allure to that. Maybe try thinking of it like owning the original piece of some fine art. Art can be photocopied, so what's the point? There's some kind of prestige in having the original, in knowing that you have a direct relationship with where it came from, and the fact that your direct relationship with it may affect others who are interested in the art.

And about the specific cat images themselves: sure, anyone can create a cat image like these, but there's a certain fun in knowing that the image was produced by a specific system and by people learning and using the rules of the system. Anyone can take a chess board and its pieces and arrange the pieces into a winning configuration, but that's missing the social significance that you get from playing a game against someone and getting the pieces into that winning position through artful play within the game's system of rules.</comment></comment>


Linode wants all VPS idle all time, raises a ticket if don't idle for 24 hours - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hmage/status/1142102681609224193 <comment><USER2> It says under 80%, not idle. If you're over 80% in a 24 hour period, you're likely over-utilizing your VPS.

<comment><USER3> But why raise tickets though? Since they already measure CPU utilization, it's not hard to also lower priority or throttle CPU or move such VMs to a separate machine where they can't affect anyone but other heavy CPU users.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what are the two best technical decisions you made for your startup? - <AUTHOR>

Looking back on your startup and its progress so far, what are the two best technical decisions you've made? Did you know they would have such a dramatic impact? <comment><USER2> 1\. Tackle a hard problem : a) is interesting b) hard to follow

2\. Choose a technology stack that will work for our projected scale and that we knew well (hint - may not be pop).

We are having fun and will (shortly) be delivering as much joy as we can manage to our user community.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Write our own profiling code: Lots of conventional wisdom doesn't stand up to running your own tests.

2\. Use XML/XSL for a rendering/template engine: After 10 years, it is the cleanest and largest part of the code base.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. To use Emacs

2\. To use Vi

Or was it the other way around? I can't remember.</comment>


What does the logo of Toyota imply? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/MNAClnt.jpg?1

<comment><USER2> wow that's pretty clever</comment>


Why I Pivoted my Startup - Charlie-B https://www.golemtechnologies.com/why-i-pivoted

<comment> mike-cardwell Seems more like:

      Added some new features to my web app

Than:

      Pivoted my startup

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The front page of your website has a broken layout - the 'Increase conversions' box text is overlapping the link. Chrome 15 on Win 7.

</comment><comment> Charlie-B An open letter to customers and friends on why I pivoted my startup. Thought it might be of interest to the HN community :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Pivoted?</comment>


Vacuum trains: a high-speed pipe dream? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120601-high-speed-pipedreams <comment><USER2> _We 're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes._

For some reason I find this message amusing.

</comment><comment><USER3> There was a project proposed in Switzerland about a vacuum metro a couple of years ago. It never made it out of the concept phase because of the costs. The goal was to make a city to city connection with a speed of 800km/h. The project website contains techical details too: [http://www.swissmetro.ch/en](http://www.swissmetro.ch/en)

</comment><comment><USER4> What always irked me about the whole "vacuum train" debate, is that once you have vacuum, why bother with trains?

Trains beat individual cars efficiency wise, largely because they are long and have low frontal areas, hence air resistance, for their size and carrying capacity. Get rid of the air, and why not go whole hog with lightning fast cars?

Heck, put in place mechanisms to charge e-cars' batteries when in tunnel, and you can not only shoot someone to Europe in an hour, but allow him to drive out of the airlock and to his final destination pretty much interruption free as well. With Elon Musk being the latest hawker of vacuum tunnel hype, maybe we'll finally get to see a Tesla with no need to apologize for limited range.....

More realistically, before even contemplating doing a passenger version, someone should at least do a preliminary, by soundly and reliably beating FedEx Overnight Air between New York and LA/SF. Then plan on going from there with acquired learnings.

<comment><USER5> Safety, how do you know the car is safe, what do you do if it has a leak, etc etc. A single unit that can be tested and properly maintained is a far better idea.

You also then require car ownership, with very specialised cars that only a few would be able to afford.

City design in Europe also seems for the most part to be trying to push cars out of cities. If I was going for a business meeting in London I would prefer not to have a car. Taxi and expenses would be far easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The security at a vacuum train station will need to be comparable to an airport, maybe more so, because the tube will be highly expensive and very publicly visible. (Assume for the sake of amusement that airport security has something to do with preventing actual threats.) You can probably put these stations closer to cities than airports, but that only cuts out 30 minutes of the 3+ hour lead time you need for international flights, because most of the lead time is spent inside the actual airport dealing with security, baggage, etc.

<comment><USER7> They should put the customs agents and immigration police on the train and have them go down the aisles clearing passengers while the train is in motion.

Then there's no waiting. You walk through the nude rape-o-scanners at Penn Station in New York and step right onto the train and over the next ninety minutes the passengers are all reviewed by Schengen police so they can step off the train at Gare du Nord right into the Tenth Arrondissement of Paris

<comment><USER6> Well, I'm talking about travel security, not border security. All the boarder security happens at the end of the journey, so doesn't effect my comment. But yes, you could do customs in transit and potentially save yourself that time, but only if space on the train isn't at a premium (which it will be). I expect the vacuum trains to have tiny interiors like airplanes because building larger tunes will be so expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The idea certainly seems feasible to me.

And besides, I really really want to see these things in my lifetime. How awesome it would be to rapidly travel to distant places and be back the same day.

<comment><USER9> I agree it would be great for travel, but the two biggest barriers I see are cost and safety. Keeping a long tunnel evacuated is not easy to do, and when something goes wrong at those speeds, in a vacuum, the results will be pretty horrific to say the least.</comment></comment>


NVIDIA to Acquire AGEIA - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/Update+NVIDIA+to+Acquire+AGEIA/article10573.htm

<comment><USER2> Two cheers for dedicated hardware pushing progress while Moore's law for silicone circuits approaches a wall!

After a graphics processor, you'll buy a physics engine, and then vector math, AI, and Vision engines.

Graphics card makers know this, and will just put all those chips on a single card.

<comment><USER3> I think most people will skip the step of buying the physics card and just wait for it to be integrated into the GPU. It will be an interesting marriage, though, since the Nvidia and Ageia architectures have some significant differences.

<comment><USER4> They are somewhat different, and I suspect the Ageia PhysX line as it is now will be discontinued. It's not exactly been selling like crazy, and I suspect nVidia are buying them out for the software, not the hardware side.

If you look at benchmarks, SLI isn't exactly what they make it out to be: it scales very badly in many games, presumably because of render-to-texture and vertex feedback rendering, which either have to be duplicated or copied between the cards.

Those types of effects are getting more common not less, so I suspect it'll become commonplace for games to do physics calculations on one GPU and the actual rendering on the other. Right now, driver support for this kind of thing isn't great, and nVidia don't have their own physics engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just can't wait until our video cards match the speed out our cpu. That will be the day...</comment>


Flutter 1.0: Google's Portable UI Toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/12/flutter-10-googles-portable-ui-toolkit.html <comment><USER2> Other relevant thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18601588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18601588)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ironic how everyone emphasizes speed and ease-of-use nowadays with new toolkits and frameworks and all I witness is more clutter and slower, clunkier applications all over the web.

<comment><USER4> Tools don't guarantee quality; a novice and a craftsman can use the same tools.</comment></comment>


Google's AI thinks this turtle looks like a gun - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/2/16597276/google-ai-image-attacks-adversarial-turtle-rifle-3d-printed <comment><USER2> This is a problem, but perhaps not because innocent turtle owners will be required to be registered with the government.

It's a problem because similar AI techniques are being used to classify YouTube videos as advertiser friendly, or not. It's a problem because similar AI techniques are used to classify your emails as spam or ham. To shut down "abusive" Google accounts. To direct and classify search results (and present "facts" on those same). To censor documents stored in Google Docs. To classify people as homosexual or dangerous.

Even if you're lucky enough to get an appeal through to an actual human, it can still take days, weeks, or months to get those AI classifications fixed.

<comment><USER3> The adversarial effect might come to full force not during a YT video or Google Docs but when an actual human is involved. An example of which is the Palantir Story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15600859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15600859)

From the article:

"In fact, on two separate occasions, police shot at trucks misidentified as belonging to Dorner, injuring three civilians. "We said [to Palantir], 'We need an application that can span multiple units within an agency…multiple agencies within a county... and multiple counties within a state,'" says Jackson. "[They developed an application] based on lessons learned from Dorner." That application, called ClueMan, short for Clue Manager, has just gone live at JRIC."

Palantir or any AI/ML software seller will tout it's system as infallible, and mistakes, as low as they might turn out to be, will have real chilling effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15601479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15601479)</comment>


American broadband is better than is commonly thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/11/29/7281809/american-broadband-pretty-good <comment><USER2> This describes a study that was carried out by the American Enterprise Institute, who are, among other things, global warming denialists.</comment>


Ask HN: Any jobs for average software engineers? - <AUTHOR> It seems everywhere I look companies are either looking for junior or senior software engineers and so I thought I'd shoot this question to you to see if anyone would find some use for me (or someone like me).<p>- Javascript (Vue.js, Angular, jQuery) is quite well known, mostly by creating SPA's that talk to a set of REST API's<p>- PHP (Laravel mostly) is of average level I'd say, but I'm pretty good with WordPress related things such as creating themes or plugins which I've done for the past 5 years or so<p>- HTML is excellent (I'm not sure this should even be mentioned anymore)<p>- CSS (All the latest and greatest I do speak)<p>- Willing to relocate (in Europe), currently in Tallinn, Estonia, but if remote is a possibility I wouldn't say no to that<p>All in all, I'm sure there's lots of people like me out there (or here) that find themselves stuck in the middle with seemingly nowhere to go and yet I'm sure we could be put to good use, us average developers. <comment><USER2> Junior and Senior can mean different things in different companies. One company's senior is another's junior and vice versa. IMO go ahead and apply for senior roles and junior roles and learn more about what skills they are really looking for during the interview process, don't worry about the label.</comment>


Andrew Ng Is Leaving Baidu - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603897/andrew-ng-is-leaving-baidu-in-search-of-a-big-new-ai-mission/ <comment><USER2> Dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928638)</comment>


Kinoma: Open Source JavaScript Engine for IoT from Marvell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Kinoma/kinomajs <comment><USER2> So, the actual JS VM is here:

[https://github.com/Kinoma/kinomajs/tree/master/xs](https://github.com/Kinoma/kinomajs/tree/master/xs)

Note that this project needs both java/ant AND cmake.

Here, there's makefiles in the antfiles in CDATA:

[https://github.com/Kinoma/kinomajs/blob/master/xs/makefiles/...](https://github.com/Kinoma/kinomajs/blob/master/xs/makefiles/xsLibrary.mk)

Did they include ant just because they were using the Apache license and didn't want to seem out of place?

Further, note that the Mac instructions require Ruby, to install Homebrew, to install Java and Cmake...to compile a fucking C project.

 _This_ is why modern development is going to hell.

EDIT: It _was_ nice to have this out there, and the actual code for the VM is interesting in places.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Press Release at [http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID...](http://www.marvell.com/company/news/pressDetail.do?releaseID=6223)

Sparkfun is selling the first incarnation of their gadget (Kinoma Create) at [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13182](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13182).</comment>


Internet Bots: Anatomy of a Stock Selling Frenzy  - <AUTHOR> http://www.hothardware.com/News/Internet-Bots-Anatomy-of-a-Stock-Selling-Frenzy/ <comment><USER2> The same thing could happen with people, someone finds an old story but doesn't realise it's old, tells a few people, starts a rumour and then traders sell off stock. At least with an automated system you can improve the algorithms.

<comment><USER3> Yup - like the occasional trader that misses a decimal point and sends a stock whirling off in the wrong direction (most trading systems have mechanism to prevent this, but it still crops up now and then).

Whilst this is an unusual case - 99.99% of the time the access and currency of information available today actually makes for a much improved market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Best line from the article:

 _"a non-detail-oriented securities analyst summarized the article (apparently without reading it first) and uploaded the summary to Bloomberg."_

Should read: _"a lazy and now-unemployed securities analyst..."_

<comment><USER5> There has been no report of the analyst in question being fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Automated trading systems start a massive stock self off based on the old headline..."

Quant firms played a very little role in the selloff. It was retail and some institutional investors seeing the headline come across on their Bloomberg terminal and immediately start dumping shares.

<comment><USER7> It probably accentuate the sell-off. Trading signals were probably fired after the initial drop-off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On that subject (more or less): Can anyone recommend a good, reputable online stock brokerage?

<comment><USER6> Good:

\- Thinkorswim [the one I use]

\- Interactive Brokers

\- OptionsExpress

\- eSignal

\- NinjaTrader

Bad:

\- etrade

\- scottrade

\- fidelity

<comment><USER9> I used to work at Banc of America Investment Services before I quit to go back to school. I can safely say that I would never do business there. Unless they have cleaned up their act in the ten months I haven't worked there, the place must still be a mess.</comment></comment></comment>


Vibreoffice – vi(m) keybindings for Libreoffice and OpenOffice - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seanyeh/vibreoffice

<comment><USER2> Wow, I'm surprised someone found my little project :) I'm still planning on adding more features and fixing the bugs if I can find some free time.

<comment><USER3> Bjoern Michaelsen of LO advertised it in his blog! [https://skyfromme.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/easterhegg- vimpre...](https://skyfromme.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/easterhegg-vimpressing- libreoffice/)</comment></comment>