The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version - <AUTHOR> https://forward.com/culture/433666/the-real-mark-zuckerberg-is-a-lot-less-impressive-than-the-movie-version/ <comment><USER2> The congressional hearings are a hostile environment. The only reason to have Zuckerberg there is to get camera footage of him looking shifty and to pressure him to do whatever the politicians want him to do.

His tactical and strategic goal is not to deliver 'zingers', it is ideally for the situation to go quiet and be forgotten by everyone. Failing that, an acceptable fallback is for any anti-Facebook action by government to get mired in endless committee investigations that are boring, neverending and unproductive to slow down any hostile regulation that might eventuate. Failing that, regulation that is onerous but favours Facebook by locking out any competition from the American markets. None of these will be achieved by interesting public exchanges with Congresspeople.

Public government hearings are not where the serious moves are made. It is more a show-and-tell for the politicians to communicate to their voters what is being negotiated in the backrooms where real work happens.

<comment><USER3> Only one of these parties to the negotiation works on behalf of the American people. Zuckerberg said he has 3B customers.

You seems bored with the process but I would argue the job politicians are doing is equally important if not more so than the construction of an Online Ad Delivering Skinner Box, the "real work" you allude to. (Current top most on HackerNews explains how much people despise ads and pay money to avoid them)

Holding powerful people accountable, publicly, creating laws and regulations and governing the rules of our society is very important to operating this country.

<comment><USER4> Only if the said lawyers were doing those for the benefit of the people. Many of those lawyers would kiss Zucks ass for a million. Hearings are just theaters until we get money out of politics.

<comment><USER3> And in a representative democracy, there is an ability for the public to remove said lawyer. We need to do that.

Private Corporation there is no such method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Movie dialogue is scored on being _interesting_ but there are a lot of _interesting_ responses to Congressional inquiry, including _interesting and true_ responses, which pessimize for your tactical or strategic goals.

They also plausibly pessimize for Congress' goals. If you wanted to learn when Zuckerberg learned of a topic, you could send him a letter, and he would check his notes and send you a letter, and then you would know a thing you don't care about in the least. The point of grilling Zuckerberg in person about it is not to ascertain the truth, it is _to grill Zuckerberg on television_.

<comment><USER6> Congressional inquiries haven't been about finding truth since TV was invented. They are a platform for the parties involved to signal their positions. MZ is talking to his investors, AOC to her constituents.

My point is: there is no conversation going on. Just people talking.

<comment><USER7> This is very true -- there are also echoes of how politicians prepare talking points in response to journalists' questions these days. The person being quizzed isn't actually prepared to answer questions, they come prepared with a set of themes to talk about and will seek to massage their answer to _almost any_ question to one of those prepared themes.

The other interesting thing specifically about televised Congressional hearings is that Congresspeople have very little time -- AOC had 5 minutes, if I recollect correctly. This gives the person being grilled an advantage -- by simply taking his time with his answers he can run down the clock and be done with AOC's questions.

<comment><USER8> The whole "grilling" format is just publicity for politicians. If they were really interested in answers, they would send an email and get a response back, and if they didn't they'd send a subpoena or start court proceedings.

And if they really wanted to do something, they would pass legislation. But of course, you can't do that and get paid by lobbyists and/or get favors from businesses at the same time. This grilling format solves all interests. Politicians get to look like they're doing something, many gullible voters think the politicians are doing something, and the businesses being looked into get to look like there is something being done about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree his answers about why political ads shouldn't be fact checked weren't good, but I found some of these "zinger" clips on Twitter really silly.

> Mr. Zuckerberg, what year and month did you personally first become aware of > Cambridge Analytica?"

Unless I missed that the hearing was highly related to this, why would he remember this exact date offhand?

You'd be better declining to answer this question than guess and get it wrong which seems like what he did. Asking if he became aware of them before or after a specific event would have been much more reasonable. There's tons of important events in my life where I don't know the month it happened because it's not important to remember.

I think he's right to say "I don't know" when he can't be completely sure. That's not a zinger.

Likewise, it's not a zinger when you ask a really long question that contains several factual claims that you require clarification on, or try to force a yes/no answer to a loaded question (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_question#Complex_quest...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_question#Complex_question_fallacy)).

<comment><USER10> > Unless I missed that the hearing was highly related to this, why would he > remember this exact date offhand?

Because it is one of the biggest scandals affecting Facebook in probably its entire history, and he's been grilled about it before? You'd think that once they found out his staff and advisors would make sure to tell him every single detail about it. Likewise, it should be the thing that occupies him for months on end.

It's inexcusable for him to not seem to know some basic factoids about the whole thing.

<comment><USER11> Fun fact: The "oid" suffix in factoid means "like", or "resembling". So a factoid is not a true fact, but a statement resembling a fact. The word "factoid" was coined by Norman Mailer to mean "an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." So it is a source of great irony that the meaning of the word has been inverted by the press to mean a trivial but true fact. Historians of the future may have a fun time trying to figure out if our factoids are a true fact that we consider trivial, or a fact that we know is false but is believed to be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this the state of journalism in this day and age? Is there any surprise that a real life CEO carefully coached by PR and lawyers is less interesting than his doppelganger in a multi-million dollar Oscar-targeted movie backed by a team of professional writers?

<comment><USER13> Are you not entertained?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was a very inspiring response from the original founding Facebook team about Sorkin's movie (right around the time they had the entire company go and see it): like most people here know, starting a company isn't glamorous, at all, certainly in 2004-2006. Servers going down, impossible hiring; they remember a blur of incessant crisis. They thought romanticised version of that story where they look good, say witty things and kick ass was surprising but inspiring for them.

Zuckerberg has gone through media training and can be very good when he's prepared for specific questions (see his public Q&A). He's also notoriously focused and happy to delegate. Asking him to come talk about Libra and ask questions about Cambridge Analytica is an easy way to get vague answers.

</comment><comment><USER15> "No one had any doubts who the adult in the room was Wednesday," ends the article. Right before the promoted content "This deadly sex habit is killing seniors!"

I know that's a bit off topic, but does speak towards the current environment of not just Facebook, but the entire internet.

<comment><USER16> Not sure how much the idea makes sense, but these days I feel that rather than education, looks, status, etc. being the rare and difficult-to-attain markers or benefits of being of a higher class, being a generally sane person with a coherent worldview and some degree of emotional control is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Preparing and asking a bunch of interview questions is a lot easier than being on the receiving end and having to think though the legal ramifications about what you're about to answer. Contrasting the slickness of the interviewer with the interviewee and drawing conclusions based on that is not accurate.

<comment><USER18> I appreciate that answering questions in a grilling interview is more difficult than asking questions, but ...

> "You don't know? This was the largest data scandal with respect to your > company, that had catastrophic impacts on the 2016 election. You don't > know?"

... but at the same time, I would certainly expect the chairman and CEO of a company to be more prepared to answer these difficult questions than what is reported in the original article. This was one of the biggest scams related to Facebook. I understand that Zukerberg's legal team may have advised him to be vague during the interview and he probably answered what is best for his company.

But as citizens of the world, we should never find such vague answers acceptable. The way Cambridge Analytica has upset the process of democracy and how Facebook data was used while doing so requires Facebook to be subject to such grilling. It should be made clear to Facebook in no uncertain terms that it needs to present answers and concrete answers.

<comment><USER19> I've worked in marketing for an Agency. If Facebook had to check everything we did, they'd really had a hard time. We had multiple clients with multiple banners with multiple landing pages and all of this with a software rotating stuff with A/B tests and regressions. If a political party came to hire us, I'm sure we'll do it. This was in Spain, so I guess that there will be a lot more companies doing this in the US.

Checking all of this within an acceptable timeframe for advertisers requires a lot of labor. That comes with another wide set of problems. Loosy boundaries, arbitrary bans, increased cost of ads etc etc. I have no special sympathy for Facebook, but we have to understand that this is a really hard problem to solve, and maybe there won't be any solution that satisfies the public.

<comment><USER20> If it's hard, then it's hard. That no perfect, complete solution is possible just means we accept the imperfect, incomplete solution if it is an improvement on the status quo.

I really don't have a lot of sympathy for the woes of the advertising industry, considering the consequences.

<comment><USER19> If I, working there, found that FB was painful to work with, I'd go somewhere else, as simple as that. I won't spend two days wrestling with FB to see if my ad it's ok or not.

I may not care for political advertising, since my client is not looking to "make a profit" like a traditional customer. But I definitely do for an eCommerce brand for example.

Most agencies use FB because it's easy to work with and it's cheapish with a little expertise. If that dissapeares then nobody is goung to pour money on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had at few meetings with Zuck at Facebook after Wit.ai was acquired in 2015. To me, the real version is at least as impressive as the movie version.

Then, of course, maybe was I biased by the movie and everything else I already heard about him? I'm sill wondering.

<comment><USER22> Care to share an anecdote?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's a missing "real" in the title of the submission: "The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version"

</comment><comment><USER24> Reality != Movies

People are boring, bias and sometimes, really dumb (or playing dumb to avoid further persecution).

</comment><comment><USER25> Slightly off-topic - why doesn't FB just ban all political ads? Is it really worth continuing to display them?

Either have a coherent policy that the CEO can explain or just don't do it.

<comment><USER26> In Germany every political party gets a fixed number of slots for TV-Spots basically free of charge ahead of an election. There is no other political advertisement allowed (only the parties themselves are allowed to advertise). Unfortunately neither newspapers nor internet advertisement is as strictly regulated, but I feel like it should be eventually as well.

<comment><USER27> Similar in the UK - set up that way to stop money being able to buy elections.

Overall, election spending has been very strictly controlled.

One of the problems is recently people have being getting around this with hard to trace online campaigns - using "national funding" and effectively locally targeted online campaigns.

I'd like to see people being properly sanctioned for breaking the rules. In my view there are few things more serious than trying to subvert democracy. It shouldn't be normalized like it is in the US.

<comment><USER26> I agree, basically it should either not be allowed or strictly controlled how to advertise politics online. Targeted political advertisement should be banned completely. Then there is twitter, which also basically serves as a direct marketing channel for political parties. In Germany this is a huge problem especially with the AFD, they can publish lots of nonsense there, more or less unchallenged by facts or reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Popups, tiny font, etc. [https://outline.com/kFKtF3](https://outline.com/kFKtF3)

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it only me, or for anyone else, articles written in one-sentence paragraphs are unreadable?

I try, and it is hard for me to focus after a few such sentence-paragraphs. (No matter what is the topic.)

</comment><comment><USER30> I have to admit that there was something surreal in the short videos of hearing I saw on the internet. Congressmen/women, people of power, whom we stereotype as poker-faced, cynical, and manipulative, having people-like problems - e.g. "my granddaughter played with a mobile phone and then some creepily relevant ads started to appear", against a youngster without any formal power who cuts them off with laconic responses.

<comment><USER31> I've only seen a few clips from the interview-- clips that were supposed to show Zuckerberg getting owned by some politician or other. To be honest, the politicians seemed really childish to me. Their questions were uninformed, hostile, and off topic. I thought Zuckerberg handled himself just fine, given the circumstances.

I say this as someone who thinks the world would be better off without Facebook. I don't use it. I don't invest in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The title is missing the word "real" Title on site: "The Real Mark Zuckerberg Is A Lot Less Impressive Than The Movie Version"

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe if there was dramatic background music to manipulate your emotions?

</comment><comment><USER34> Looks just like a guy who did something ho-hum, at the right time and with the right connections, and thanks to lots of in-between people, got 1000000000x more value that he'd ought to get. Facebook was neither impressive technology, nor original conceptually. It just was there at the right time and had the right funding.

Not even for a moment did he strike as a computer genius, a business genius, or anything in between.

</comment><comment><USER35> Drop the "the". Just "Mark Zuckerberg". It's cleaner that way.</comment>


Usain Bolt's Split Times and the Power of Calculus - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/infinite-powers-usain-bolt-and-the-art-of-calculus-20190403/ <comment><USER3> Haven't read this article yet - but I studied the picture at the top of the link carefully.

Not only was Bolt a mile ahead of his competitors and not only did he turn to face the crowd as he was crossing the finish line... Usain Bolt's shoelace was untied...

<comment><USER4> Haha, the article calls it out as well

"Even with his celebration (and an untied shoelace) he set a new world record of 9.69 seconds."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The wiggles are interesting. But they also open up a can of worms - <USER2> precise is the measuring instrument, and which part of Bolt is it measuring? His feet, knees, torso, forehead? In engineering parlance, what's the metrology design? Think of UB as a noodle with each part having different instantaneous velocities.

</comment><comment><USER6> Numberphile created an entertaining video regarding Bolt's speed, the speed of light, and the distance he actually covered while sprinting.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tflf05x-WVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tflf05x-WVI)

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems to be promoting a new book that was released yesterday:

[https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Powers-Calculus-Reveals- Univ...](https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Powers-Calculus-Reveals- Universe/dp/1328879984/)

<comment><USER8> The subheading does say this:

 _This adapted book excerpt from Infinite Powers ..._

So it might not be correct to say the article is promoting the book, rather, the article is adapted from parts of the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I'm not mistaken, interpolation methods existed before the invention of calculus. Interpolation was used to reduce astronomical data before calculus, afaik.

Would it be possible to find the speed on any given moment without calculus? Is it just easier with calculus?

</comment><comment><USER10> This article brings to my mind the joke about the physicist and spherical chickens in a vacuum.

<comment><USER11> "Assume a perfectly spherical cow of uniform density"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The 100m dash have three phases, acceleration, top speed, and speed endurance. Almost all sprinters deaccelerate at the last 20m. Bolt had very good speed endurance, probably because his 200m training.

<comment><USER5> Source? And why would they decelerate? Extrapolating from your last sentence – fatigue? Would be interesting to compare acceleration at 80m in a 100m sprint vs. a 200m sprint.

<comment><USER13> The energy system that is used for explosive power can only last a few seconds, after that muscles have to use another energy source

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioenergetic_systems#ATP- CP:_T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioenergetic_systems#ATP- CP:_The_phosphagen_system)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Probably just the topics of the article, but I think this is the first of the recent glut of fluff pieces that I enjoyed almost every bit of.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was rather disappointed in this article, since it was making the connection to calculus. Where is the curve of acceleration? Where is the curve for jerk? Where is the calculation for maximum force on his body from that acceleration?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_\(physics\))

<comment><USER16> You are disappointed at the article for not being a different article? Velocity is the derivative of position

<comment><USER15> Yes, I am disappointed that an article with "power of calculus" in the title left most of the power of calculus out of the article.

>Velocity is the derivative of position

Thanks, hadn't noticed that.</comment></comment></comment>


For Whom the Bull Tolls - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/archive/natural-histories/whom-bull-tolls <comment><USER2> Oh, Hemingway. He seems to attract obsessives.

Key Hemingway fact: his contribution to the French Resistance was to "liberate" the bar of the Ritz Hotel.[1] Just hours ahead of Allied tanks entering Paris, and after the Germans had bailed. He was a pretend hero, not a real one.

[1] [https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Liberating-France- Hemi...](https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Liberating-France-Hemingway-s- way-Following-2731590.php)

<comment><USER3> Yeah... I think that just reinforces the hero image in a perverse way. When I was in high school, Hemingway was just another boring Americana fiction writer that you had to slog through along with Steinbeck, Irving, and Faulkner. I didn't know he was in Paris during the counteroffensive and the fall of the Military Administration, that's awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm currently re-reading For Whom The Bell Tolls. It's important to strip away the legend surrounding the author and appreciate the writing itself, and it's clear Hemmingway is a great writer.</comment>


Gamers solve decade old HIV puzzle in ten days - <AUTHOR> http://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/gamers-solve-decade-old-hiv-puzzle-in-ten-days/

<comment><USER2> So, does this get cycled back into _new_ when someone reposts it?</comment>


Invoking the Sputnik Era, Obama Vows Record Outlays for Research  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/science/earth/28speech.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "So I'm here today to set this goal: We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development. We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race" -Obama at National Academy of Sciences

"And today, I'm also announcing that for the first time, we are funding an initiative - recommended by this organization- called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E."

"This is based, not surprisingly, on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created during the Eisenhower administration in response to Sputnik. It has been charged throughout its history with conducting high-risk, high-reward research. And the precursor to the Internet, known as ARPANET, stealth technology, the Global Positioning System all owe a debt to the work of DARPA."</comment>


Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/nasdaq-is-said-to-plan-bitcoin-futures-joining-biggest-rivals <comment><USER2> Man, this is just weird. I just bought 0.05 Bitcoins (you know FOMO and all that) and it just feels so much more empty than back in the days when I mined them myself with my brand new dual Xeon CPU and later on was thinking grand thoughts and building little projects with epaper ink displays to display QR codes on small devices that would work on low bandwidth connections and maybe offline. Lots of problems to be solved back then, but Bitcoin is just the same now. Nothing was solved. No progress and scams everywhere and people being all religious about Bitcoin. Every man for themselves and to the moon... These days I am even getting scam calls from something called the Bitcoin Academy with people cheering in the background, when it reaches the all time high. No kidding...

I have no idea what to do with my 0.05 BTC. Just let them sit there, I guess as a curiosity of old days. I don't really feel that I fit into the moon community and I don't really feel I want to build anything around this tech just because it is not about tech anymore.

Had lots of Bitcoin sift through my hands. Anyone remember the Bitcoin faucets? Those were the times.

Sincerely, One of the first 1000 users of MtGox (proof in the leaked MtGox database :P)

<comment><USER3> I've always been a negative detractor of bitcoin. But then I realized the problem was it was marketed wrong. As a currency, it's a nightmare of a creation. But as a store of value, it's actually pretty good. As long as you don't buy in at one of the speculative bubbles (which admittedly is when the majority of people get in), it's been pretty good at more or less maintaining its value.

As a non-physical thing, it's a good place to go when you're not sure about where to put your money. That used to be the role of the dollar, but this is a good alternative that has cheaper forex fees.

I think the long-term value of bitcoin will not be buying groceries, but storing money while you wait for your the storm your grocery stores currency is in to subside. Probably not relevant to Americans right now, but I'm sure some people in Latin America can see the value.

<comment><USER4> Why can't people in Latin America just buy gold or dollars to store value ? I mean it's a circular argument. To say bitcoin is a store of value, there has to be an apriori reason why it has value. It can't be a store of value because it is. Right ?

<comment><USER5> It is like if you and I took turns paying for lunch periodically and we used a ledger to track who paid what, and who owes who. The ledger itself is bitcoin. The ledger paper is worthless, but the entries on it "have value." For you and I, the ledger "has value" because that's where the history is.

If you printed 50 new blank ledgers, they wouldn't have value because they don't have the history and our mutual agreement.

Bitcoin is the worldwide ledger (WWL).

<comment><USER6> Except it takes usually 2 to 3 days for the ink to dry in the ledger, and costs you $3 every time you wrote in it, and consumed more electricity than your house does in a week, and you do it this way because you want it to be trustless.

<comment><USER7> His analogy isn't perfect with all respect to bitcoin, but it is for that explanation. And transaction fees doesn't really matter when it's used as long term value storage for a significant amount of money. The small transaction fee is basically irrelevant.

<comment><USER4> I don't get it. why is it a store of value? what makes it have value? For example, suppose I just got paid and I buy bitcoin today. What is the force that will make my bitcoins not be worth 0.5X over the next 20 years ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My guess is that this is probably pretty meaningless.

There are a few things going against them.

\- The CBOE and CME are both much larger futures exchanges and are going to be offering futures first

\- since you can't net out futures contracts from different exchanges this means they tend to become winner take all

> One way Nasdaq seeks to differentiate itself seems to be in the amount of > data it uses for pricing the digital currency contracts. VanEck Associates > Corp., which recently withdrew plans for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, > will supply the data used to price the contracts, pulling figures from more > than 50 sources, according to the person.

This might be interesting as one of the things that everyone is worried about is price manipulation.

If you haven't thought about how futures work with respect to margin and marking at the end of the trading day you need to know that you can be required to deposit more money into your margin account if the futures trade moves against you on any given day.

This means the marking price is very important and lost of institutional money is worried that the exchanges are easy to manipulate.

see: [http://openmarkets.cmegroup.com/3785/understanding-margin- ch...](http://openmarkets.cmegroup.com/3785/understanding-margin-changes)

> Nasdaq's product will reinvest proceeds from the spin-off back into the > original bitcoin in a way meant to make the process more seamless for > traders, the person said.

This is awesome,, right now the CBOE and CME both have punted on the question of forks saying, they'll have a best efforts to figure it out.

<comment><USER9> One difference is that NASDAQ is a name everyone in the world knows while CME is fairly anonymous. Yes, I know they are bigger but I can assure you that if you ask random people in my country most would know NASDAQ while very few would know CME. Seeing NASDAQ is adding it will add to the hype.

<comment><USER10> "CME is fairly anonymous".

What planet do you live on?

<comment><USER11> >> "Yes, I know they are bigger but I can assure you that if you ask random people in my country most would know NASDAQ while very few would know CME"

Just go out to a target and ask 5 people... Unless you live on mars already.

<comment><USER12> I imagine I'd get three "CME? Dunno WTF that is", "How about Chicago Mercantile Exchange?", "Oh yeah, I recognize that from the boring parts of morning news updates on the radio. They do something with soy beans, right?" and two "yeah, still dunno. Is it a farmer's market?"

Midwestern US city (not Chicago).

<comment><USER9> Outside of the US I don't think many would know what Chicago Mercantile Exchange is though while most would probably know Nasdaq.

<comment><USER13> But every single person who is qualified to trade futures would know about the CME... It's the 900lb gorilla.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/935900326007328768](https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/935900326007328768)

Well John McAfee thinks bitcoin will hit 1 million by 2020.

<comment><USER15> Pump and dumpers gonna pump and dump. [https://medium.com/@DEFCON_2015/why- mgt-was-delisted-from-ny...](https://medium.com/@DEFCON_2015/why-mgt-was- delisted-from-nyse-amex-b919093f1e59)

<comment><USER16> Or, large investment banking houses will step in and create naked shorting opportunities to inflate sell pressure creating 'death spirals' to drive prices down and scoop them up and extreme discounts. This happens in the traditional public markets everyday.

<comment><USER17> > Or, large investment banking houses will step in and create naked shorting > opportunities to inflate sell pressure creating 'death spirals' to drive > prices down and scoop them up and extreme discounts. This happens in the > traditional public markets everyday.

Is there a term for this?

<comment><USER16> Yes, this can happen in a few different ways and is the reason why Ycombinator created SAFEs. When you have a public company you will get offers for what are called "credit lines", "debt financing" or "convertible notes". They are traditionally used to create death spirals [https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/deathspiralbond....](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/deathspiralbond.asp) as the size of your float increases by you, executive director (CEO/CFO), as a public company "issuing" more stock to cover the loan. The more you issue, the less you're worth until somebody comes along scoops you up and re-engineers the cap table which is a restructuring. However, manipulation can occur within institutions as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=KasianFranks&next=14...](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=KasianFranks&next=14592122)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So here's a scheme that could be used to wildly profit in the fiat market. If you're what is considered a bitcoin "whale" holding millions worth of the currency you would just setup a short on bitcoin futures. Then you initiate a large sell from a well known whale wallet. This would trigger a large sell as stop losses are triggered. Profit then re-buy the dip.

<comment><USER19> Price wouldn't drop unless you actually sold.

<comment><USER18> The trick here is that the whale does sell but profits in Fiat. Then using those profits you can buy the now cheaper Bitcoin. Wash, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER20> Depending on what market makers are up to, this will work or won't. Trend would be towards eventually not working if it does at all. Difficult to say how liquidity differences will affect ability of your strat to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can an expert explain for the less informed:

* Do futures markets typically stabilize the price of a commodity?

* Who loses out if a futures contract can't be fulfilled (for example due to lack of liquidity in the underlying market)?

<comment><USER22> > Do futures markets typically stabilize the price of a commodity?

Kind of. It doesn't necessarily stabilize the prices of the commodity so much as allow the transferring of the risk associated with price movements.

> Who loses out if a futures contract can't be fulfilled (for example due to > lack of liquidity in the underlying market)?

The exchange acting as the clearing house is on the other side of each contract so they'd be left holding the empty bag. Exchanges deal with this by settling futures daily (so net cash movement based on current price) and by setting margin requirements on the members buying or selling contracts. The margin requirements vary based on the volatility of the future and for something like Bitcoin I wouldn't be surprised if was 100%.

What's particularly cool / safe (and interesting if you're a finance nut) about futures vs. actual trading of Bitcoins is that there is zero crypto involved. Everything is cash settled in dollars.

<comment><USER23> Does this mean that tons of money could be invested in these - let's say a trillion dollars going long on bitcoin via cash settled futures - and the underlying price wouldn't necessarily go up at all? I always thought the play with bitcoin was to wait until the "dumb money" got in via financial institutions. But if the whales are just betting on the real price with cash settled futures, does that mess up my assumptions about supply/demand?

<comment><USER24> The contracts would still involve real Bitcoin, the exchange would handle the Bitcoin side for the trader.

<comment><USER23> So I buy a future for 1 bitcoin in 10 days with a price of $10k. The future is cash settled, so in 10 days the exchange will give me [price of BTC] - $10k, or I can sell the future before then. Where does the bitcoin come in? Is the exchange required to hold bitcoin = to the net of all futures?

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing no fiat to crypto or vice versa; 1. That's a taxable event. 2. Wouldn't that lead to more financial scrutiny?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There was a 4 hour stretch this morning in which Bitcoin lost over 20% of its value. In the last 45 minutes it is up 13%. I wonder what a long straddle would cost on this thing.

<comment><USER27> Bitcoin has recovered from dips really well in the past weeks due to major buy pressure. Unfortunately GDAX (and Coinbase), Gemini, and other exchanges all went down at the same time this time around, making it impossible to buy the dip.

<comment><USER28> > _Unfortunately GDAX (and Coinbase), Gemini, and other exchanges all went > down at the same time this time around, making it impossible to buy the dip_

how like is being down planned? could there be more to this coicident?

<comment><USER29> Not sure about this incident, but I recall there was an incident earlier this year or late last year where there was major price action and evidence of someone DDOS'ing some exchanges.

And if not DDOS, it's entirely possible that these exchanges are not able to handle the rush of people logging in to buy the dip. I don't think any of these exchanges have the throughput of something like NASDAQ, not yet anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Eek. Add leverage to BTC? Now fortunes can be made and lost on micro movements.

Prefer buy and ignore for a decade. Still a trade rather than an investment but at least you can only lose what you put in.

BTC moved 20% down in the last 24 hours. That's like a market crash in old money. Leverage that and life will get exciting, fast.

</comment><comment><USER31> > _... New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc. is the > only one of the four major U.S. exchange operators without public plans to > offer bitcoin derivatives._

That's pretty big. A couple years ago people were very skeptical that the big players would ever start dabbling in Bitcoin.

<comment><USER32> In some sense, they're still not. Derivatives don't require much involvement in the underlying commodity. For example, consider weather derivatives:

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

E.g., the CME's weather futures and options:

[http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/weather/](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/weather/)

It's not like the Merc is really involved in weather. They just let people gamble on the weather.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I thought BTC going above 10000 was the end of the bubble, but with announces like that it's just the beginning.

Each time it grows I fear bigger damages... But I also hope I'm wrong and I'll be just proven to be a fool for not having a bigger amount of bitcoin (I mined some back in the days)

</comment><comment><USER34> Hopefully it's not cash settled like the CME. That is the worst idea ever, and will probably cause a lot of people to get screwed over by market manipulation. Especially since the CME is basing the cash settlement price on a single exchange: GDAX. Anyone can go to GDAX and crash or spike the price for one minute at 4:00pm any day and trigger a bunch of margin calls on the CME.

Especially considering how easy it is to make a bitcoin transaction (compared to things like wheat, or oil...) it really should be "bitcoin settled".

<comment><USER4> I disagree completely. Cash settled futures let people bet on bitcoin without ever touching bitcoin itself. For example, suppose I am a huge bitcoin hater and want to bet that bitcoin will go down 100% in the next 3 months. Why force me to worry about wallets, etc.? I just want to have a way to express my conviction without messing with all that stuff.

<comment><USER35> Lots of people trade physically settled commodities futures contracts without handling the underlying products. You just have to make sure you close or roll your position before it settles.

<comment><USER4> Of course, but you could get stuck in a position. What's the point when cash settling accomplishes the same thing ?

<comment><USER36> Physically settled allows the future to better match the price of the underlying since you can take or give delivery in it.

<comment><USER4> That's not correct. They still have to pick a settlement price. Physically settled futures makes sense when customers are interested in the commodity itself and cash settled makes more sense for pure speculation.

<comment><USER36> There are many products that are settled both ways, and some financial futures that are physically settled.

<comment><USER4> Sure. But physically settled funancial futures such as bond futures are physical because customers actually want to get delivery of the underlying bonds. In the case of bitcoin futures, most likely they don't. Physically settled futures cost the exchange more in terms of additional expenses / infrastructure. So the exchange will go with physical only when there is a clear customer demand for that.

<comment><USER36> You're going off track. I'm just saying that phys settled allows the future to track the underlying better because you can take delivery. This is a completely seperate issue on if you actually want to hold the underlying (many people would prob love the idea of using cme to deal in btc directly since current exchanges are so terrible at it).

<comment><USER4> why does it track better just because you take delivery? either way, whether you take delivery or not, the exchange has to decide on a settlement mark to market price. So, delivery or not, it will track the same.

<comment><USER36> Because you can take delivery and sell on spot market either now or in the future (with carry costs) or buy on the spot now, carry, and sell into the future. This keeps the prices linked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> inevitable that this will turn into another taxpayer bailout, somehow

<comment><USER38> This makes me laugh and cry at the same time. Using tax dollars to bail out the big guys who bought derivatives based on a virtual currency would be such a cliche.

<comment><USER39> For all the complaining on HN about accredited investors, this is exacatly why they were invented in the first place: because there was too much speculative investment available to people who subsequently invested more than they could afford to lose. The big guys have the power to get a bailout but the small guys are the ones that starve to death because they can't.

<comment><USER38> That's all backwards. The little guys are supposed to need the protection. The big guys are said to be smart enough to know what they're doing and not need protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If the bitcoin price was increasing linearly people would not be blaming the technology so much. Rapid exponential growth followed by abrupt decline in repeated cycles makes people confused.

</comment><comment><USER41> What is the difference between Bitcoin futures and gambling?

<comment><USER42> It's still gambling in a sense however there is a major difference in the type of randomness you are exposing yourself to. At a casino or when playing cards it's very easy to compute probabilities of all possible events - hence the house always wins. Here in order to compute the probabilities of price movements you'd need to model millions of human agents across dozens of markets. So unless someone has a lot of insider information, you have a decent chance of making some money.

<comment><USER41> Or lose a lot of it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Tulip bulbs anyone?

<comment><USER44> I'm taking it you are mad you didn't get in early, huh lol?

<comment><USER45> I don't know about him but I'm mad.

Of course I'd have to have got in early and had the balls not the sell, not lose the keys, not get hacked and not leave them on an exchange, for years.

<comment><USER46> I think one of the most important skills in trading is realizing the impossibility of 'ideal' trades.

Perfectly buying at the bottom of a dip and selling at the top are both very RISKY trades, particularly if trading with your whole stake: you don't have much information to indicate that the market is changing and could have been very wrong.

I think the healthiest perspective is just to compare investment vs. return _in dollars_. If you're beating the broad market, you're doing fine and should be happy. If you think about what you could have done with perfect hindsight, you'll just make yourself miserable.

<comment><USER45> The difference with bitcoin is the price increase from 1c / BTC to $10,000 means at many points someone could have purchased $1000 in BTC and been left with enough to retire.

I don't think anything else has had that levels of "returns"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Seriously the top comment here should, WUT THE F __K!

Man we should instead of trading bitcoins trade fish in World of Warcraft. Insane times we live in.

<comment><USER48> You may be interested to know the creator of the crypto currency exchange Kraken was CEO of Lewt Inc. Many of the people involved in virtual item shop businesses over the past few decades are prominent holders and founders of crypto currency businesses and schemes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't know why you should be able to speculate on a speculation product with no real underlying other than a power conversion function.

<comment><USER50> Serious question: how do you feel about currency futures?

If you feel differently about them than you do Bitcoin futures? Why?

<comment><USER51> currency is a real thing that is mostly used for real transaction. Most people working in currency futures are working to offset risk - that is I shipped a widget when it is delivered the buyer will pay a set price in their currency which I have to convert back to mine. Bitcoin is used for transactions, but most of the futures are based on speculation on future value and not something fundamental.</comment></comment></comment>


Domain Logic and SQL (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/dblogic.html <comment><USER2> I wince every time I use application code to do what I know SQL can do faster and easier. ORMs are nice but it's often impossible to translate performant SQL into the ORM's API. SQL is just so concise.

<comment><USER3> We recently changed one of our supplier. The previous one allowed us a full read access to their database (400 tables) but the new one insists that we use their SOAP webservices.

So now when someone ask me for some data, I need to code, manually joining objects instead of crafting a quick SQL query and using the export to CSV function.

Dictionaries (C# key value collection) have fast become a staple diet since Linq is way too slow when you try to 'join' hundred of thousands of objects together.

It feels backward (and I'm saying this as a dev, I'm certainly no DBA or SQL expert).

<comment><USER4> If the data fits in RAM, you could try loading it into an in-memory sqlite database, and run SQL queries there.

<comment><USER3> I thought about making a "shadow database" on a server since my work PC is only 8 GB ram but ultimately decided against it.

The first reason was GDPR compliance and the second is that we have an already complex architecture as it is (and we're only 2 to manage it) so I don't want to add one more brittle layer that will need debugging at the worst time.

<comment><USER5> About GDPR: is it possible that holding data in a non-storage/volatile medium could be legally distinct from non-volatile storage, especially if it's essentially syncing with an authoriative data source that's responsible for managing GDPR? Because if not, it seems to me every proxy and persistence layer runs legal risks....

<comment><USER3> To be honest I have no idea. But since our supplier still hasn't implemented the mandatory 4 months max data retention I'm not taking any risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is why I like transparent sql libraries like [https://www.hugsql.org/](https://www.hugsql.org/)

Just writing sql and maintaining and testing it like regular code is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Not to mention that having sql be callable as an actual function in the programming language that the rest of your application is written in is just so much more comfortable than having small bits of sql scattered about in strings.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is worth mentioning that there are some data-process heavy work that can be done much faster and more efficiently in SQL.

Real life example for a regulatory batch job:

6 tomcat servers + 1 RDS. 30X lines of code + UTs in java. 30+ minutes time.

In SQL No tomcat servers + 1 RDS instance. 1X lines of code(SQL) + UTs (in java). 3+ minutes

Here is a good book on it: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Relational-Database- Programming-Set...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Relational-Database-Programming- Set-Oriented- Approach/dp/148422079X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=set+oriented+approach&qid=1582289243&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER8> "But that's not going to be database agnostic!"

Haha ... I'll admit I used to say that but rarely did an internal system (what I work on most) ever actually have that requirement. Systems that are sold to customers to run on their premises are another story but don't worry about using PostgreSQL-only (e.g.) features to speed up both your processing and development times. I have however seen the horrors of 600 line stored- procedures with calls to other stored-procedures nested 15 deep. If you get to the point that you can't easily understand the business logic, you've gone too far.

<comment><USER9> There seem to be two ways that interacting with the database works out in practice: You can embrace the specific DBMS you have, get the most out of it, and end up tightly coupled to it. Or you can try to be database agnostic, increase your development costs and limit your performance and data expressivity in the service of that goal, and still end up tightly coupled to the DBMS.

My pet hypothesis is that "database agnostic" isn't really about being able to switch databases on a whim. It's more expressing a developer-centric anxiety. A dog whistle way of saying, "I don't want to have to RTFM of a new DBMS." Which I get, most DBMSes have awful manuals. Especially SQL databases. SQL dialects tend to mix syntax, semantics, and subtle implementation details all together into one big ball of mud and tangled hair. But this is one spot where I think it really is worthwhile to hold your nose and get through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this really depends on the context.

Scenario 1: No plans to add additional functionality. Sticking to the e-commerce example in the article, if I am designing a system for use by just one customer who wants to offer the discount for just that one scenario and they don't have any future needs to offer any other kinds of discount then put logic in theDB. It's quick and easy.

Scenario 2: Plans to expand to add additional functionality. Sticking to the example we have future plans to offer other types of discounts to our customers. Which means we have to develop generic interfaces so it's easy to add functionality. Have the business logic in the application layer.

Scenario 3: plans to expand and additional functionality but also let users configure and add additional functionality without IT intervention. Sticking to the e-commerce example we want business users to create new offers and expose them to our customers. In this case use a rule engine like drools.

It really depends on what functionality you are delivering and how you see that evolving in the future

</comment><comment><USER11> The article was written at a time when "polyglot" wasn't common iirc ... to the extent that knowing SQL in addition to a programming language wasn't common.

Today the thinking "keep all domain logic in code" would take you to crazy places given the diversity of systems we need to build applications.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and all that.

If anything it seems more sensible to centralize storage of all business rules in the DB.

</comment><comment><USER12> One thing this leaves out is the danger of concurrency issues, which can sometimes be worsened by using an ORM. Writing correct, race-free SQL can be very hard (with READ COMMITTED transactions) or require complex retry logic (with SERIALIZABLE). Preventing deadlocks can also be a concern.

ORMs tend to hide the underlying SQL operations, making it even harder to verify whether operations are concurrency safe.

<comment><USER9> I think that this is one of those spots where, if you want things to be ORM- friendly, you've got to bake it into the data model.

A good starting point is to use CR instead of CRUD. Append-only tables with soft deletes aren't necessarily the most performant, but they're naturally less susceptible to race conditions. The lack of destructive modification (under normal operation) also makes it easier to diagnose problems and keep audit trails.

<comment><USER13> isn't soft delete an update?

<comment><USER14> One way I get around this is having an append only version of the main table, and then a "most current record" version of the table. My append only table will be a running record of all the data I've loaded unmodified. Then I run a create table as select statement against my append only table to generate my new version of the final table. So in essence, I'm "deleting" the old version of the record by omitting it when I create my new version of the final table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is a great tragedy of our day that so many software engineers are poor at SQL. Use tools like Jinja and DBT to modularize it, and Airflow to schedule it; but use of SQL should be maximized wherever possible.

<comment><USER16> I agree completely. I love SQL just as much. I built a little framework based on SQL and jinja last year.

Shameless plug: [https://github.com/socialpoint- labs/sqlbucket](https://github.com/socialpoint-labs/sqlbucket)

Just changed job though, and the data engineering team I just joined is literally banning raw SQL and enforcing scala instead... I'm a bit sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One thing this article doesn't mention is that in many cases databases scale poorly, and only vertically. You can throw a bunch of domain logic in complex SQL queries and see significant performance benefits, but at some point you may find that your application has grown and your SQL server is running into IOPS and CPU limits that are difficult to fix. At that point your answer could be, pull logic out of those complex queries and create simpler queries that ask less of the DB and run on the application side so you can scale horizontally.

<comment><USER18> Most (if not all) modern RDBMSs allow for reliable horizontal and vertical scaling. SQL Server (the db you mention) is no slouch when paired with additional CPUs (for vertical linear scaling) and allows for transactionally safe replication to distributed clusters of SQL Servers (for horizontal scaling) in geographically distributed servers. PostgreSQL has this and it's absolutely free.

Where is this meme that RDBMSs do not scale coming from? (I see lots of people saying this as though it is a given. Has there been any published data on this for me to read?).

<comment><USER19> > Where is this meme that RDBMSs do not scale coming from?

They don't scale to Google or Facebook operational sizes. Once you get to a billion customers or so the ol' RDBMS tends to struggle. Because everyone wants to be Google they imagine they have Google's problems. I've been in a meeting where the client was talking about their severe scaling issues for their "big data" which could only possibly be resolved by state of the art cloud solutions. I pressed them on the numbers - they had 400GB. You can buy an iPhone with 512GB.

Oracle's Exadata X8-2 is ~1PB per full rack.

<comment><USER20> > They don't scale to Google or Facebook operational sizes.

You may or may not know this, but the primary datastore used at both Google and FB is MySQL. Sure, they use replication and sharding, but I would strongly argue that MySQL with sharding scales better than some multi master NoSQL thing like Cassandra.

Related, you should check out [https://github.com/vitessio/vitess](https://github.com/vitessio/vitess) if you haven't seen it. It's what Youtube and others use for their primary data store in production.

<comment><USER19> > You may or may not know this

I didn't, but they do, surprising!

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/tao- the-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/tao-the-power-of- the-graph/10151525983993920/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Bitcasa is leaking your emails - <AUTHOR>

I'm pretty sure users aren't aware this is happening. The CEO was alerted a few weeks ago about this issue: https://twitter.com/aaroncray/status/253737089051541504/photo/1<p>click on any of the links in this search result: https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=l.bitcasa&src=typd <comment><USER2> Im more worried why they are using my password in hidden form fields in the clear on signup.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12035718/after-signup-source.jpg>

It seems after the initial signup the server responds with with the question/answer form and pre-populates hidden fields with my entered password in the clear, which kind of make me wonder how my password is stored. Im hoping my password isn't stored like this and they are just passing it back as a response param, or perhaps the initial signup isn't hitting the server at all??

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. I work at Bitcasa and we have discussed internally. We decided to remove it. Instead we will show the user's first name only, so the share is still somewhat "personalized". The push will go this afternoon. Thanks, Luke @ Bitcasa

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it makes sense that I would be able to see who invited me. If the link is public, then one assumes that they aren't terribly concerned with their privacy, or are weighing more heavily the incentives to their privacy.

Sure, it would be better if it just showed "f_name l_name" instead of email, but I don't think this is a terribly egregious offense. Maybe that's just me though.</comment>


RobustAI - <AUTHOR> https://robust.ai/ <comment><USER2> I can't even tell what they do from the page.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is it that they do?</comment>


Show HN: Chess OCR App - point it at a diagram, and it will load the position - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kgroth.chessocr

<comment><USER2> For those curious how this works: [http://sudokugrab.blogspot.nl/2009/07/how- does-it-all-work.h...](http://sudokugrab.blogspot.nl/2009/07/how-does-it-all- work.html) describes a Sudoku recognizer. One could build a chess position recognizer along the same lines.</comment>


Why is installing software on a Mac so complicated? - <AUTHOR> http://dubroy.com/blog/why-is-installing-software-on-a-mac-so-complicated/

<comment><USER2> ....I thought this was sarcasm. The issue you mention is with the software, not the OS.

*Not only that but the post is 2 years old. What gives?</comment>


Show HN: a simple, instant online music player - puur - <AUTHOR> http://www.puur.tk

<comment><USER2> It's a nice idea, but it looks like you're just querying <http://www.soundcat.ch/> and then taking the file and playing it back, correct? I noticed in the Chrome developer console I can click a link right to download the MP3 of the song. For example I searched, "atlantic thrice" and it worked, but I could also get the song by going: <http://www.soundcat.ch/download.php?id=163850>

I also noticed that playback stops and a it tries to load the file from a domain: mystuffsite.ch and I get a 404 error. Not sure what is going on there. I also think some improvements could be a play and stop button, the ability to create a simple playlist and perhaps save it using HTML5 localStorage.

<comment><AUTHOR> That it is. I'm not sure about the playback stopping either. It's just a quick hack to provide a cleaner interface amidst cluttered interfaces like that of Grooveshark and Spotify. I tried to minimize extra features in favor of that minimalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the simplicity of this. Very nice.</comment>


Show HN: GitHub Action Changelog CI made using Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/saadmk11/changelog-ci <comment><AUTHOR> This is my First Open Source GitHub Action using python. I would love lo get some feedback.

Please try it out and let me know how can I improve it.

What is Changelog CI?

Changelog CI is a GitHub Action that generates changelog, prepends it to ``CHANGELOG.md`` file and commits it to a release pull request

How Does It Work:

Changelog CI uses ``python`` and ``GitHub API`` to generate changelog for a repository. First, it tries to get the ``latest release`` from the repository (If available). Then, it checks all the pull requests merged after the last release using the GitHub API. After that it parses the data and generates the ``changelog``. Finally, It writes the generated changelog at the beginning of the ``CHANGELOG.md`` (or user provided filename) file. In addition to that, if an user provides a config (json file), Changelog CI parses the user provided config file and renders the changelog according to users config. Then the changes are committed to the release Pull request.

Thanks</comment>


Ask HN: Why do sped up videos pitch correct only in Chrome? - <AUTHOR> In Firefox or Safari sped up videos sound tinny. It is especially evident at 2x speeds. <comment><USER2> By default if you speed audio up it will sound higher pitched. Chrome must being doing something special because they noticed people liked watching videos at 2x but found the high pitched noise annoying. Maybe they downsamples insteadnkf actually shrinking the spectrum of the audio.

<comment><USER3> Downsampling alone will not achieve this. It's typically done via phase vocoding or SOLA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> sounds equally bad on all three here.</comment>


Ask HN: Freelancers outside US and EU. How do you find quality clients? - <AUTHOR> I'm from Tunisia and I have been a freelance developer for about 6 years now. I get clients mainly from Upwork (oDesk). My hourly rate went like this: 2010-2013 $16/hr
2013-2015 $20/hr - $24/hr (with some occasional $30/hr jobs).
My ideal hourly rate is between $30/hr to $40. But I have been struggling for more than a year to find clients with that rate without success. I have more than 5500 hours worked on Upwork and 100% job success rate and earned the Top Web Developers badge, so I'm not sure where the problem is. I also have good English communication.
I thought it may be because of the drop in quality of jobs posted on Upwork in the last couple of years so I tried other ways including AngleList, Monthly HN Freelancer posts but still no luck.
Now it seems obvious to me that the best tech jobs prefers that the developer lives in US even if the job is remote. Am I right? Any guidance or help is appreciated.
Thanks <comment><USER2> What kind of development are you doing? Do you have a resume/profile?</comment>


Building A Real Mobile Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/08/building-a-real-mobile-web.html <comment><USER2> The problem with the hardware side of this is it would require dual-mode phones in the U.S. which consumers have shown very little interest in. If your phone's subsidized you're stuck on the same network for several years anyway so why pay a lot of extra money when you'll probably want a better phone in 2 years anyway?

On the software most of what he asks for is either already available with mobile Flash or will be with HTML 5 implementation. That will give you the ability to make apps that pretty much pass for native

(You can really do that now unless you want to use the iPhone's camera or program a game).

But what Adobe and the HTML 5 spec are notably missing is support for gestures and multi-touch. The iPhone has made it clear to me that both are necessary parts of a touch screen interface. Until web apps support those two they'll always be 2nd class citizens and that's a bad thing since no mobile web development platform seems to be focusing on either.</comment>


Form validation in AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://www.ng-newsletter.com/posts/validations.html

<comment><USER2> Cool article. I really dig the interactive style of learning, reading, trying. Don't see much of that on the web yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ironically, the email newsletter form at the bottom of the page isn't using form validation at all!

<comment><AUTHOR> It does now :)</comment></comment>


An unintended side effect of kosher law: better tasting food - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/opinion/sunday/why-is-this-matzo-different-from-all-other-matzos.html <comment><USER2> Though, not Jew myself, I've been a to private jewish school for two years.

I want to say: all kosher food does is restrict consumer choice to products sanctioned by a small religious mafia perceiving a tax on every products they "authorize".

You could conceivably have the quality of products the author describes in products not sanctioned by religious mafiosos.

And the whole "holier than thou" some of the orthodox (of every religions) have is very tiring.

<comment><USER3> So basically your comment is a "holier than thou" critique of Jewish Kashrut laws, which concludes with you complaining about others having "holier than thou" attitudes.

And ironically you've posted on a Friday evening when the religious amongst the community you're criticising are not available to provide counterpoint.

<comment><USER3> So after four years of comments on Hacker News I've finally posted my first negative-voted comment.

Am I right in interpreting this to mean it's perfectly acceptable for the grandparent to write something insulting by saying : "all kosher food does is restrict consumer choice to products sanctioned by a small religious mafia perceiving a tax on every products they "authorize"."

But pointing out the inherent hypocrisy in the grandparents post as per my comment above is out-of-bounds?

Edit - my first post was rated at -3 when I wrote his second comment. But was up voted to -1 by the time I hit Submit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately some religious rules require inflicting extreme and unnecessary suffering on animals in the way they are killed. Interestingly some abattoirs have created loopholes to these religious laws (to comply with the food production laws, but maintain religious certification) by having the machines that stun and kill the animals in the normal humane way "blessed" and prayers said.

<comment><USER5> I assume you're not speaking about judaism right now — because the point of kosher slaughter is exactly in avoiding unnecessary suffering and rendering the animal unconscious instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shmura matza is charred, chewy and robust in flavor - compared with soda- cracker-like machine-made matza, it is really more like an artisanal, organic whole wheat bread.

I don't think that strictly kosher food generally tastes any better than non- kosher food, but in this instance the traditional hand-rolled product is really way better.

</comment><comment><USER7> This 100% doesn't affect most food. I grew up in Israel, where things being Kosher is the norm rather than the exception. Although the central Rabbinate covers most kosher foods, the more orthodox will often defer to the authority of particular rabbis and buy from a smaller set of products than all of what is nominally kosher. In my experience, they often tended towards the lower quality end of the spectrum.

When you're dealing with a product that has only a few ingredients like matzah, any increase in attention will have a positive overall effect. In more complex processed foods, when your emphasis is on meeting various kashrut guidelines the flavor of the food becomes secondary. Not only that, you know that you have a captive market.

So, this is a fun story, but should really have

        s/food/matzah/

Applied to the headline.

</comment><comment><USER8> The take-away I'm getting from this article is that the trick is actually caring about growing and processing the food instead of just doing whatever half-assed thing is cheapest and easiest.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does this fallacy have a name?

How can they presume that there wouldn't have been better tasting food without the kosher law?

<comment><USER10> I've heard a few before: "hypothesis contrary to fact", "what if" fallacy, and "counterfactual fallacy". None of the names are really great and none of them seem to be particularly common but I've never seen any better names for it or any used more commonly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I remember correctly, food can't be kosher if prepared by gentiles (non- jews).

Could someone with proper knowledge confirm this?

<comment><USER12> Everything you want to know and more: [http://www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm](http://www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm)

(We have our own FAQ!)

<comment><USER11> Thanks!

So, it appears that whine can't be made by gentiles.

In addition, prepared food must also at least be made in part by a Jew. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishul_Yisrael](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishul_Yisrael)

Surely this clashes with anti-racism laws in some countries, doesn't it? (Imagine food that couldn't be prepared by black people, or that would require a white man somewhere in the preparation.) Is there some special alternate rule for these cases?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not Jewish, but going on a Kosher diet greatly improved my health and discipline.

<comment><USER14> I can understand discipline in the sense of having to follow a diet, but could you elaborate how exactly it improved your health?

<comment><USER15> My supposition is that it forced the OP to actually eat better quality, and possibly also less portion size, food. It would also tend to reduce eating overly complex foods as it would be more difficult to ensure that EACH ingredient was kosher.

<comment><USER16> Chetohs and Oreos are Kosher. Not sure I suggest that diet.

<comment><USER17> Humorously, I am very picky about what I eat (for health reasons), I eat both of those and did not know they were kosher.

I try to eat clean. I don't restrict myself to kosher foods, but I have found kosher foids to generally be a good option.

<comment><USER16> I think the main thing is:

* Kosher meats are a lot of the time better than random factory farm meats. But not necessarily as good as the really expensive whole food stuff.

* Most big junk food makers get their stuff Kosher certified, to I guess not rule out any of their market. Not sure Kosher is adding much value here ;)

* Meat and dairy mixing may or may not matter to your health depending on what you read. If you find it matters, kosher can also help you on this side.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Assange tried to use embassy as 'centre for spying', says Ecuador's Moreno - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/14/assange-tried-to-use-embassy-as-centre-for-spying-says-ecuadors-moreno <comment><USER2> So the big winner here really is the US.

They got Assange in a virtual prison for ~7 years at no cost to them (that cost was borne by the UK and the Metropolitan Police). You can't argue that being holed up in an embassy is that much better than prison.

What's more none of that ~7 years counts towards actual jail time he'll like serve in the UK (for absconding) and the US (the publicized charges are only the beginning). The one (?) remaining charge in Sweden will quickly fall apart no doubt.

Arguments that Assange deserve protection as a journalist are (IMHO) a stretch at best. Getting a hold of classified information is one thing. Aiding in defeating security measures to obtain it is quite another story.

But to me at least, the big problem is that Assange lost all credibility as a journalist over the Wikileaks handling of the 2016 election and related hackings (eg the DCC emails). You'll have a hard time arguing that Assange (and Wikileaks by extension) wasn't picking a side here and doing what they can to influence the outcome of the election.

A traditional media outlet with an op-ed section is one thing. Playing an active part in illegally obtaining emails and other materials as well as arguably passing on that information to a presidential campaign is quite something else.

Even Snowden filtered his classified material through reputable media outlets.

So now we have embassy (~7 years), fighting extradition to either the US or Sweden (2+ years probably), whatever prison time he has to serve in the UK (which will run concurrently to fighting extradition no doubt as it's typical to serve that time first) and then years, perhaps many years, in US prisons. He may not see the light of day until 2030, maybe 2040.

<comment><USER3> _You can 't argue that being holed up in an embassy is that much better than prison._

I've seen footage of where he was in the embassy, it's a _lot_ better than prison. He also didn't have to be counted five times a day, no one was trying to rape him or stab him, he woke up and went to sleep when he wanted, ate an array of foods, and until the end had access to people who wanted to visit in person. No guards abused him, and if he wanted to he _could_ leave. Plus, he made a choice to enter the embassy and stay there.

 _What 's more none of that ~7 years counts towards actual jail time he'll like serve in the UK (for absconding) and the US (the publicized charges are only the beginning). The one (?) remaining charge in Sweden will quickly fall apart no doubt._

On what planet would time spent after jumping bail and seeking asylum in an embassy count toward time served? That's... insane. As far as the charges falling apart we'll have to wait and see, if they're even filed. Of course if the charges were nonsense then 7 years in an embassy was a really stupid choice.

 _Arguments that Assange deserve protection as a journalist are (IMHO) a stretch at best. Getting a hold of classified information is one thing. Aiding in defeating security measures to obtain it is quite another story. But to me at least, the big problem is that Assange lost all credibility as a journalist over the Wikileaks handling of the 2016 election and related hackings (eg the DCC emails). You 'll have a hard time arguing that Assange (and Wikileaks by extension) wasn't picking a side here and doing what they can to influence the outcome of the election. A traditional media outlet with an op-ed section is one thing. Playing an active part in illegally obtaining emails and other materials as well as arguably passing on that information to a presidential campaign is quite something else. Even Snowden filtered his classified material through reputable media outlets._

Yes, that all sounds about right. He's also not being charged with what he carelessly published, but rather how he attempted to obtain it. Journalism isn't even in the room.

 _So now we have embassy (~7 years), fighting extradition to either the US or Sweden (2+ years probably), whatever prison time he has to serve in the UK (which will run concurrently to fighting extradition no doubt as it 's typical to serve that time first) and then years, perhaps many years, in US prisons. He may not see the light of day until 2030, maybe 2040._

The common factor here is his series of bad decisions.

<comment><USER4> > no one was trying to rape him or stab him ... no guards abused him

Raping, stabbing and abusing people is still illegal in prison, you know. It isn't supposed to be part of the process. Assange isn't a violent offender either, so it'd be a little unfortunate if he was imprisoned with people who are.

Nobody is saying that the time he spent in the embassy should or could count towards his eventual prison sentences, but the 7 years he has spent there looks a lot like a self-imposed prison sentence.

> He also didn't have to be counted five times a day, ... he woke up and went > to sleep when he wanted, ate an array of foods

Those are clearly luxuries vs being imprisoned, but if that is the margin between being imprisoned or not the distinction is really irrelevant.

> Plus, he made a choice to enter the embassy and stay there.

So instead of accepting a state-controlled imprisonment he chose a voluntary period of conditions quite similar to being imprisoned. That is compelling evidence that he was serious about fearing extradition to the US to face whatever horrors they have in store for him.

I mean, objectively, if he believed he was just going to face rape charges in Sweden none of his choices make much sense. I doubt he was going to face more than 7 years for an offense that caused no injuries and that the victims didn't think was outrageously terrible at the time it happened. If he ever claimed his accusers weren't being truthful, the only compelling evidence is that there are two of them.

<comment><USER5> >So instead of accepting a state-controlled imprisonment he chose a voluntary period of conditions quite similar to being imprisoned.

Yes, that's what anyone who has ever fled an arrest warrant has done. It also apparently worked, as he was able to outlast the Swedish warrant (though I understand that the charges are technically suspended, not dropped).

>That is compelling evidence that he was serious about fearing extradition to the US to face whatever horrors they have in store for him.

If he was serious about that then he probably should have been very careful about not irritating his hosts, which he seems to have done flagrantly and repeatedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > He accused Assange of repeatedly interfering in the internal affairs of > other states, referencing WikiLeaks' publication of Vatican documents in > January 2019 as a recent example. "It is unfortunate that there are > individuals dedicated to violating the privacy of people," Moreno said.

Why even offer asylum then? This is literally what WikiLeaks _does_.

<comment><USER7> When you lose your freedom and become a political pawn, you should act the part. You don't see Snowden shitting on Russia do you?

<comment><AUTHOR> You do. [1][2] But you have a point more generally.

[1] [https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/19/edward- snow...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/19/edward-snowden-nsa- leaker-says-hes-not-safe-russia/)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/29/edward- snowd...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/29/edward-snowden- describes-russian-government-as-corrupt)

<comment><USER7> Yeah this was what after 5 years and not saying much other than Russia is corrupt. And if he keeps it up then he may be sent to the US at any point.

<comment><USER8> He has been critical of them the entire time[1], knowing the risks it entails. It's just not his focus as he has no influence in Russia.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/vladim...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/vladimir- putin-surveillance-us-leaders-snowden)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isolation is a very bad thing. Seven years is too much. Feeling wronged, with the USA after you, confined to a building for someone used to travelling the world... I can understand a behaviour that I strongly dislike, including all kind of shit suggested by the only people that supported him.

So I'm sorry for him and Snowden, but I wouldn't trust either of them in their current circumstances.

<comment><USER10> odd to add Snowden to that

Assange was in a building, Snowden is in the largest country on the planet

<comment><USER11> I get a sense that some think Snowden is hiding somewhere in Russia, under some form of house arrest.

My understanding is that he's pretty much free to move about the country.

<comment><USER12> He's tweeted as much. People do ask him about it and the response has always been he basically has no contact with the government anymore and lives a boring mundane life in a city somewhere. Make of that what you will.

As long as he doesn't speak ill of his hosts he'll probably be fairly safe for a while.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: my music player - <AUTHOR> http://albertz.github.com/music-player/

<comment><USER2> Not working with Snow Leopard(10.6.8). Getting error in launching the application

<comment><AUTHOR> What error?

<comment><USER2> It is failing because it is looking for python this path /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Python. Snow leopard default support is only to 2.6. Either the path should be configurable(I could not find this) or if it supports 2.6 change the path to /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/Python</comment></comment></comment>


Issue 87 – google-compute-engine – UDP Packet Fragments cannot be reassembled - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/google-compute-engine/issues/detail?id=87 <comment><USER2> Broadly speaking, UDP applications which rely on IP packet fragmentation are broken as designed. If you wanted reliable transport you would have used TCP or a higher level abstraction. If you wanted simple transport of large data chunks, you would have chosen likewise. You picked UDP because you have latency requirements that cannot be met by TCP, and that means you need to know what your packets are actually doing, and that includes fragmentation.

If you want to play in that world you need to be prepared to handle MTU discovery on your own, or else design your app around deliberately small packet sizes.

That's not to say that this isn't a bug. But let's not start editorializing our titles: the apps for which GCE is "unusable" are buggy apps to start with.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say that apps which rely on UDP fragment reassembly are "buggy", but I definitely agree that the article title is exaggerating by calling UDP on GCE "unusable". Many UDP services (including one operated by my company, on GCE) will work just fine.

Interestingly Linux will actually, by default, throw EMSGSIZE any time you try to send() a UDP datagram that is larger than the detected network MTU to the destination. As I understand it, you have to explicitly turn this behavior off to get fragmentation.

[http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/udp.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man7/udp.7.html)

<comment><USER4> > I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say that apps which rely on UDP fragment > reassembly are "buggy"

Isn't fragment reassembly essentially implying all the packets (fragments) will arrive, and will be rearranged in order? i.e. exactly what TCP does?

For example imagine sending a single 1MB packet via UDP, letting it fragment and be reassembled. What distinguishes that from TCP?

<comment><USER5> > Isn't fragment reassembly essentially implying all the packets (fragments) > will arrive, and will be rearranged in order? i.e. exactly what TCP does?

No. It is implying that it does what UDP does. TCP is different because it constructs a continuous stream. UDP is inherently packet/message based.

UDP ensures that all of the IP fragments for a given UDP packet get reassembled and rearranged and order. The UDP packets themselves are not arranged in order, and it is possible to see duplicates.

> For example imagine sending a single 1MB packet via UDP

Not possible. You can't send more than a 65,507 byte packet via UDP[1].

Sigh... unfortunately, there are a lot of misconceptions about the basic plumbing of TCP/IP.

[1] _UPDATE_ : as was pointed out in comments, my statement was only true for IPv4. Since IP packets in IPv6 can have jumbograms larger than 65,535 packets, IPv6 UDP does support larger packets. Of course, in that case, UDP doesn't handle the fragmentation/defragmentation protocol itself, and of course GCE won't handle anything IPv6.

<comment><USER4> > Not possible. You can't send more than a 65,507 packet via UDP.

It's a thought experiment not a specific number. I'm trying to demarcate some of the differences between TCP and UDP, and UDP reassembling fragments looks a whole lot like TCP.

<comment><USER5> > UDP reassembling fragments looks a whole lot like TCP

There is only a tiny bit of similarity in that they are both dealing with reassembling a higher layer protocol payload from fragments split up over IP.

Let's count the ways they are different:

1\. UDP does provide ordering guarantees _within_ a UDP packet. It provides no ordering guarantees between UDP packets. Consequently, the protocol never has to worry about ordering more than 2^16 bytes of IP data (that makes the sorting algo really simple and efficient).

2\. UDP doesn't have to deal with complex stalls or partial delivery of data. Either it has all the IP packets for a given UDP packet (in which case, it immediately delivers the UDP packet), or it doesn't (in which case it doesn't deliver it). If there is a UDP packet is missing a fragment, but a subsequent UDP packet is fully assembled, that one gets delivered.

3\. There is no retransmission. UDP doesn't retransmit. It doesn't even guarantee deduplication. It is entirely possible that fragmented packets going different routes can end up creating an echo of multiple copies of a UDP packet being transmitted to the recipient.

The above makes UDP far simpler, and the contract application layers operate under very, very different. If you look at your typical TCP stack's logic for reassembling fragments, you'll find it far, far more complex than for UDP.

<comment><USER4> > UDP doesn't have to deal with complex stalls or partial delivery of data.

Are you sure? If some fragments show up and some not, doesn't it have to wait and see if the rest show up? Maybe it doesn't have to wait for a long time (like TCP), but it does have to wait.

Both point 1 and point 2 are a matter of quantity vs TCP, rather than quality. i.e. UDP+fragments is a sort of TCP-lite.

<comment><USER5> > If some fragments show up and some not, doesn't it have to wait and see if > the rest show up? Maybe it doesn't have to wait for a long time (like TCP), > but it does have to wait.

Much of the stall logic is tied in to whether to wait longer, whether to deliver partial data, whether to request a retransmit, whether you've already transmitted the data (once you reassemble a UDP packet, you can fire it and then promptly forget you ever saw it.. if defragmentation causes you to reconstruct and send the packet again, that's 100% okay!) and most importantly, what to do with an open ended amount of data that may need to be held up while waiting for that one lost fragment.

The logic is simple:

1) Allocate space for UDP packet. 2) Fill in UDP fragment data as it arrives. 3) If all the data for a given packet is there, transmit it and delete all memory of the fragment. 4) If you timeout, delete all memory of the fragment.

That is so, so, so much easier.

If you looked at the code, you'd not think it much similar.

<comment><USER5> To clarify, first paragraph is talking about TCP stall logic. The rest is talking about UDP logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The last update really hits the nail on the head for most Google products:

> Apparently the update from Google is to find another support channel to > escalate, or only use TCP.

I've never had a Google product issue ever resolved using an official channel I was directed to. It's only by back channels, friends of friends, posting to HN, etc.

<comment><USER7> I've had a couple of issues with Google Apps and their support has been very helpful, getting a phone call from them and the issue solved in the same day. For example I got them to revert me from annual to the flexible plan by simply asking nicely and I even got them to operate settings that aren't normally available, like changing the primary domain. Nowadays I've been moving off Google Apps, but let me tell you, it's the support that I'll miss ;-) Also back in the day when I was working on integrating with AdX, their reply was very slow, but they did reply and they did help us with our integration.

I do not have experience with GCE, but saying that you don't get support for any Google product is disingenuous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, reported May 2014, and still no resolution for such a serious issue. GCE looks nice in theory, but I've heard no end of problems like this with shitty communication and support when something doesn't work. I'll stick with AWS for the time being. I really wish Google would get their act together and provide serious competition though. That's good for everybody who uses the cloud.

<comment><USER9> AWS still doesn't support IPv6 except on internet facing ELBs. Pick your poison.

[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=536049](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=536049)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/3ccn5o/real_ipv6_suppo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/3ccn5o/real_ipv6_support_in_aws/)

<comment><USER10> There are loads of good cloud providers with IPv6.

<comment><USER5> Yes, just none with Amazon in their name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like UDP packets that fit within the MTU work fine. If you need to transmit more than fits in one packet (1452 bytes), UDP is a bad choice.

SCTP is ideal for this use case but it is not well supported by OSs or networking APIs. TCP works but adds overhead. TFTP works, is UDP-only and has less overhead than TCP, but it does not respond well to packet loss. UDT is like TFTP done right, and is a good solution if you can setup a dependency on its large C++ library.

<comment><USER12> > If you need to transmit more than fits in one packet (1452 bytes)

You must never make assumptions about what fits in one packet. The MTU could be 100, or less, or 8000, or more.

As soon as you start doing math based on MTU values that you don't permanently have end-to-end control of yourself, you're setting yourself up for trouble.

<comment><USER11> That's true, it's a bad idea to assume an MTU of 1500. Although there is no minimum MTU in IPv4, IPv6 specifies a minimum of 1280 bytes. So if you send your UDP packets over IPv6, you are guaranteed room for 1232 bytes of payload.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please don't editorialize the titles of articles you submit to HN.

The submitted title was "Warning: Google Compute Engine Unusable for Applications Which Rely on UDP", which several commenters have objected to as exaggerated.

</comment><comment><USER14> AWS de-prioritizes UDP packets making it not a great choice for UDP based applications as well.

<comment><USER15> That doesn't sound right. Consider DNS.

<comment><USER16> Whenever people talk about behavior/treatment of UDP traffic I consider DNS as a special case. I have no idea how AWS handles UDP but I will never use DNS as a generalizable example of UDP traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I feel the title should be updated to: "for Applications Which Reply on UDP packets larger than 1500 bytes".

<comment><USER18> Any application might very reasonably choose to do this. Maybe version X never does, and you can satisfy yourself of this by peaking at the code, but there is no reason to believe that X+1 won't, or that another vendor's product/FOSS project you need to interoperate with won't, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is certainly not the only case of "network subtly broken on cloud VMs". For example, every provider I have tested (including AWS, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Linode) enables TCP segment reassembly offload, and provides no way to disable it (presumably because it is being done on the host not the VM). This will typically break TCP tunneling (e.g. using GRE) because PMTUD doesn't work under these conditions. fwiw a shout out to Soft Layer which is the only VM hosting provider I'm aware of that does not suffer from this blight (provided you pay for additional IP addresses routed to your box).

</comment><comment><USER20> I've run into several misfires while using Google Cloud/Compute Engine: MySQL database access, email and encryption. These features didn't work without either a Google or third-party service. I set up postfix and use SendGrid for email and Google's Cloud SQL. You can get tech support at Silver or Gold level. I think everyone starts at Bronze.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wait... you mean there are protocols other than http? Somebody should tell Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.</comment>


Bay Area doctor who ordered America's first coronavirus lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/29/she-shut-down-the-bay-area-to-slow-the-deadly-coronavirus-none-of-us-really-believed-we-would-do-it/ <comment><USER2> The lockdown was a reasonable decision at the time when there was a belief that we had a ventilator gap, because nobody bothered to read the papers written by Chinese doctors on how ventilators don't work (66% to 90% mortality.)

Now we know it was a mistake. And we should re-evaluate the information we have and end the lockdown.

It was a mistake because we (the US) still don't have adequate testing or tracing capabilities, and no cure in sight.

<comment><USER3> > we (the US) still don't have adequate testing or tracing capabilities, and > no cure in sight.

this is what is crazy. the u.s. has quite literally made the decision to make the effects of this virus the worst possible ones and to let them linger in both space and time. the whole response is to lie and divert and half ass everything such that infections and deaths keep rising, unemployment skyrockets, the economy tanks, etc. it is really despicable, and i am seriously beginning to worry about being in the u.s. through the next six months.

i mean, did the u.s. even consider trying to learn from even a single other country? it is really showcasing the vast systemic problems we have in this country that everyone talks about but then dismisses and then ignores. our government and support structure is wholly fragmented, and we have corporations rushing in thinking they can save the day. meanwhile, countries with universal healthcare, welfare, and support structures are breezing through this.

<comment><USER4> > meanwhile, countries with universal healthcare, welfare, and support > structures are breezing through this.

Name me a country with universal healthcare with a lower COVID-19 death rate per capita than the US.

<comment><USER5> Canada. Ontario has a per-capita death rate of <2 per 100000. New York State is at 32 (~17x higher) with Ontario having ~75% of the population of New York State. I'm sure this changes when you start looking at urban areas but I suspect the stats hold up pretty well.

[1] USA breakdown [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus- covi...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus- covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/) [2] Google summarizes the Wikipedia data for the Canadian rates</comment></comment></comment></comment>