3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-long-run-of-american-job-growth-has-ended-11585215000 <comment><USER2> A few things to note:

1\. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse.

2\. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce.

3\. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1]

4\. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night.

This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel.

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA)

<comment><USER3> Further, unemployment benefits are managed by the states, and those states are running web services which typically see a few hundred hits a day. They are now trying to process tens of thousands of new records each day, and at least in MI the service is absolutely not up to the task.

My wife managed to get her filing completed a little after 1am this morning. She was the only one of her 20 coworkers to successfully file, the rest are continuing to attempt to get the state web site to work today, while more people pile in.

These numbers are going to get much, much worse.

<comment><USER4> As a developer I immediately though of the power of queues. Twenty people trying to submit same form does not work for everyone, but a queue processing one person at a time might allow the twenty people to submit within a short time. It is flattening the curve! If I was contracted to fix this ASAP, I would set up an nginx front-end proxy config that doesn't allow more than X sessions and suggest a time in the future when they could try again.

<comment><USER5> Having worked on this type of application in the past they should find a new company to work with if they can't handle this traffic. We were handling hundreds of requests per second with ease 10 years ago. That was with MySQL and the app running on the same server.

It doesn't take many resources to show the user a form, validate it, and save to a DB.

<comment><USER6> A bunch of armchair developers seem to have been summoned to tell the Federal government how to handle form submissions for an extremely security and privacy intense application using their fancy modern techniques.

You are talking about comparing a basic web form with an application for unemployment benefits which must go into a federal tax database and be processed using a what I assume is a garbage mainframe system.

It not only needs to be validated, it needs to securely store records, be able to compare them, and hook up to the system that handles payments, etc.

They can't just circumvent it and dump it into some silly Amazon or MySQL database and call it a day. That would require the employees to basically copy and paste that data into the actual warehouse and considering they have 3+ million to go through as it is making it easy for them to process is just as important as allowing people to submit.

For the time being the correct response is a queue gate.

Stop being silly.

<comment><USER4> I also completely agree with this sentiment. A gov't form could be an unsightly complex beast that can't be re-architected, sometimes, ever.

<comment><USER7> They could, they just don't want to pay for it. The government has no interest in being known for easily handling a huge spike of traffic during a crisis. They can just take the lower road and get by with less and saying 'try again later'. There's no repercussions here because it's the government.

Hence mainframe maintainers should really move to charging $1 million/year in a decade or two.

<comment><USER8> They aren't choosing to have crap infrastructure, their infrastructure is intentionally defunded as part of a political campaign to engender distrust in government functions and increase privatization. Government is incompetent because if it is, its easy to justify selling off the country to the incredibly wealthy so they can get wealthier.

<comment><USER4> It's a bit worse than that. The infrastructure isn't actually defunded, there are huge funds allocated to projects, but they're being consumed by managers at Deloitte, Lockheed, Booz Allen, Accenture, etc. The times when we see success is when enough funding trickled down to the few engineers who could make it work with what they get. Other times we see success is when there is enough public oversight by sufficiently independent stake holders. I see this in many local government agencies that are small, and projects accountable to city council, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Semi tangent, about dealing with mass unemployment.

I like to think this event changes people's perspective on folks out of work in the US. There's a lot of recrimination, and even self loathing about being poor or out of work in the US. It doesn't seem based in reality and certainly isn't helpful.

Perhaps it is time we realize that much like a pandemic things in this world change fast and we need to be able to help folks who are out of work pick up skills quickly / retrain (and maybe retrain employers that people with a 'different' resume might actually be able to do other jobs) so that they can get back on their feet.

Maybe it won't be a pandemic but things are changing fast whole industries of people find themselves offshored, jobs change, etc. I think we need to plan for / get comfortable with the idea that on a smaller scale we should be ready to deal with such things dynamically over the course of people's lives with retraining, support for it, and etc. And maybe a workforce with a variety of experiences will be better for it.

<comment><USER10> > I like to think this event changes people's perspective on folks out of work > in the US.

Sure, just like the Depression did.

And just like the Depression, a few years of boom times afterwards and that effect will be negated until the next similar event.

<comment><USER11> After the depression the US emerged as the global hegemon because of major shifts in power that happened as a part of WWII. The US was uniquely adapted to grow to be the global super power at the same time that European nations were taking a huge hit from the war.

I suspect this will ultimately lead to China as the new hegemon. We're seeing key advantages to the Chinese state that the US cannot adapt to. Decades of pushing the US government to work more and more exclusively in the interest of capital has lead to a completely impotent state that cannot take care of its people. Likewise we have a complacent populace who, as many here have argued, won't be able to endure extended isolation.

The pandemic is not just a rogue wave that has done some damage and we'll bounce right back. This event has shown deep systemic vulnerability to certain very real risks that the US is incapable of adapting too. And all these same risks are what leave us extremely vulnerable to other similar events like climate change.

The US will recover in a sense, but this is very likely the start of a long process of a major shift in global power, and the end result will look very, very different than the world of a few weeks ago.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure about this. China is, rightfully, being blamed for the initial outbreak of the virus and their failure to contain it. I think when the dust settles, we're going to see a rapid decoupling from China as countries look inward to strengthen their domestic supply chains.

I have a hard time seeing China emerging as a winner from this crisis.

<comment><USER13> Given how poorly the rest of the world reacted after getting two months of advance warning, I can't think of more than three countries that could have contained this outbreak.

Fingerpointing at China when they reacted far more decisively then the West did seems... A tad off the mark.

If this originated in Milan, Kansas, or Bangalore, we'd all be in the exact same boat today.

Hell, if the outbreak started in Kansas, we would probably have a hundred thousand dead by now, with our supreme leader still insisting that the virus will magically go away in three weeks.

<comment><USER14> Not sure it is fair to say that the world really had advanced warning from China. They were saying everything was okay and people-people transmission is low. All trust was lost, so time was reset when Italy was hit, that is the real time zero, because no one trusts China.

<comment><USER13> > They were saying everything was okay and people-people transmission is low.

For the first two weeks of January.

When they got to the point of locking down an entire city, it became pretty clear to everyone that it was a serious situation.

We looked at that, and did... Nothing.

<comment><USER15> The first lockdown in Italy was Feb 21. Trump had alread convened a task force to investigate and handle the spread of the virus on Jan 29, and was later called racist for the travel restrictions placed on people coming from China on Jan 31.

It's apparently been memory-holed, but during this period it was the US media calling it "no worse than the flu", not the other way around.

<comment><USER13> And what did that task force accomplish?

* Shipping a laughably insufficient number of test kits that didn't work, while banning private labs from developing their own tests. We _still_ have a crippling test kit shortage.

* Asking people traveling from China to self-quarantine, and not following up.

* No stockpiles of necessary medical supplies.

Getting called names has never stopped him from rolling out bad policy in the past. I don't see why it can be credited for stopping him from rolling out _good_ policy this time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And this is just the start.

While I think the US response to Corona was slower than the response in my country I feel the US is the only country that's seriously discussing economic repercussions and debating the medical experts.

In EU (at least in my country) it's doctors running things and we are in "stop the pandemic at all cost". Everyone is in panic due to Italy situation. But doctors are only trained to see the medical side of the picture - and there is a point at which this approach to fighting the virus is going to have worse consequences than a full blown pandemic itself - I don't see anyone publicly discussing this point around here.

<comment><USER17> Seriously? There were a number of submissions yesterday to HN discussing the relative merits of sacrificing millions for the sake of the market. Perhaps you missed those?

<comment><USER18> Not sure if this was your intent, but "sacrificing millions for the sake of the Market" sounds like you're trying to shift away from the point that right now about 3.28 million more folks (probably more) are wondering how to pay their rent/mortgages and feed their children. If this lockdown continues indefinitely the death numbers from the economic fallout will likely eclipse those of the pandemic.

But nah, the "market" apparently entirely consists of assholes on Wall Street playing Capitalism II and lobbying governments for payouts. No way it has any real impact!

<comment><USER19> This is where it's very important to distinguish between financial conditions and material conditions. Feeding children and supplying respirators and masks are material conditions, dependent on the production and distribution systems.

Paying rent and mortgage, on the other hand, isn't _material_. If you don't pay it nothing material changes - it's not an iron law of the world in the way that hunger is, evictions are a choice. Admittedly it transfers the problem to someone else, but if the solution to maintaining everyone fed includes them then they're not going to go hungry.

Financial conditions also have a time tradeoff. Reducing retirement funds affects material conditions _in the future_. Or the date at which people are able to retire.

If you had a button you could press which let you retire immediately, but (with probability P) took the life of some random person in the world, would you press it? With what value of P?

<comment><USER20> Mortgages and by extension rent provide liquid funds to banks so that account holders, including essential business's like hospitals, farmers, and factories can pay their employees and bills.

You are delusional to think it is possible to suspend payments without printing massive amounts of money that will certainly lead to more death.

<comment><USER19> _shrug_ we provided liquidity last time and can do so again. Money printing doesn't kill people, viruses do. The banks are intermediaries. The essential businesses are not affected provided we do not let the banks fail randomly, and there is no need to do that.

<comment><USER20> Last time we had nowhere near the need for liquidity. There were bad mortgages, but they were the minority.

Currency inflation kills. Look at venezuela. You cannot shrug this off. At least consider the effects.

<comment><USER19> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing)

> By March 2009, it held $1.75 trillion of bank debt, mortgage-backed > securities, and Treasury notes; this amount reached a peak of $2.1 trillion > in June 2010.

That feels like a lot of liquidity to me.

Liquidity expansion through loans and purchase of credit and equity instruments simply isn't very inflationary. It can only cause real price inflation if the money starts chasing a shortage of real goods and services - which are currently being dramatically _underproduced_. If it does start causing inflation, the Fed can and will simply raise interest rates from their current near-zero level. Or fiscal policy can be used.

Venezuela is under sanctions which are intended to exacerbate the situation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Venezuelan_crisis)

<comment><USER20> Yes, quantitative easing is okay. But that is a lot different than the direct money being given to individuals and businesses by Congress. Especially the direct payments to individuals means printing money.

What the fed is doing is printing money now that will be destroyed later, or held in reserve. Either way, it is backed by actual financial instruments (whatever equity or bonds or notes they're buying).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of filing for unemployment. It's worrisome.

Thankfully my wife is still working - but she's an administrator at a Nursing Home and people there are starting to get tested - and she's panicking. They are days from having no nurses. She's worried about cleaning crews being sick. She's worried about bringing it home. Luckily they have a stockpile of supplies, BUT THIS WHOLE THING IS ABOUT TO BLOW UP!

The problem is that the tests of their employees are taking UP TO 10 DAYS to come back. They are sending home nurses for this long just to wait and see if they are all going to be exposed, their residents too.

Anyone in their facility who may be sick is being sent home for 14 days. There will be nobody left to take care of the elderly, who may also get sick.

People are worried about dying themselves, or the people they care for dying.

I'm confident we are 10 days from hearing about Nursing Homes and Nurses in Nursing Homes everywhere getting sick and dying in massive numbers.

<comment><USER22> > Being a sole proprietor / contractor right now feels hopeless. Nobody is > spending money with me right now, projects on hold, no possible way of > filing for unemployment. It's worrisome.

Please don't take this as me being captain hindsight here, but I think that this pandemic has reallllly shown the need for an emergency fund. IMO if you're sole prop or contractor, you owe it to yourself to have a bigger emergency fund for this exact scenario.

<comment><USER23> It is not that people don't know this and spend all they make. Not all contractors make enough to save for an emergency fund easily. Independent of all of this, every experienced contractor knows that sometimes there will be dull patches and you save for that . However it is not always possible to do so, and you may have saved for 2weeks or 2 months and it may not be enough the economy might limp for 6months or a year .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And as an econ/business reporter points out, this should be seen as the lower bound on the true number of lost job, because there are a lot of reasons people didn't file, including confusion, overwhelmed systems, and many lost jobs not qualifying: [https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1243147516784324608](https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1243147516784324608)

<comment><USER25> This is also only the beginning, as lockdowns across the nation aren't in full swing yet.

<comment><USER26> There is usa how the implemented lockdowns work? They forced to shut down all non-essential industries and shops? Or they just suggested it?

I am finding confusing information online. Like... Did they really give to the each employer the power to decide if they are essential or not?

<comment><USER25> The authority has been delegated to states, each state is making their own decisions.

<comment><USER20> No. The authority was never given to the federal government. Key difference. The federal government cannot grant that which it does not have

<comment><USER25> We're saying the same thing. No need to be pedantic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights)

<comment><USER20> No, it's different. Delegated to the states implies that someone else had the power and gave it to the states. That is not true. The states always had the power, and have had it since they formed, and it was not removed upon admission to the United States.

It's like saying France was delegated the power to enforce a national quarantine. That is simply not the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > A week ago, he said he had "a good middle-class job" which paid him $35.50 > an hour plus health care and retirement benefits. Now he is struggling to > figure out how he'll pay a $300 electric bill and $1,000 in rent for his > townhouse. He also lost his health insurance.

You make $35.5/hour in (I suppose?) a stable job but if the work stops for a week, you struggle with a $300 bill? I know some people are living paycheck to paycheck but starting from a certain income you should build a safety net. What about your IRA? What about your credit score? What about small investments?

Looks like some people are living $ to $ without leaving any money aside. This might be what is going to make this even harder for the economy.

<comment><USER28> I went to my local 7-11 a couple of weeks ago to get some cash at the ATM. Next to it was a garbage bin for throwing away your receipt.

Out of curiosity, I went through about a dozen and not a single one had a balance above $1,000. Most were below $500.

There is little financial literacy in this country. Basic lessons about opening a bank account, the difference between checkings and savings, etc. is not something that is taught in K-12 nor in College. Let alone more "advanced" topics like 401Ks and IRAs and investing in the stock market.

<comment><USER29> That's a pretty biased sample. Most people with financial literacy aren't withdrawing cash at a 7/11\. They're doing it at their own bank branch to avoid paying any fees.

The reasoning here is circular. At the ATM in 7/11 that would only be used by people who aren't financially literate enough to absorb excessive fees, we find evidence of poor finances and poor financial literacy.

<comment><USER30> Uhm, what?

Or maybe they're just doing it out of convenience? Have you never payed a fee for convenience?

Have you tipped in a restaurant? Have you taken the highway instead of the back roads and payed a toll? Have you ever had food delivered to you?

Congrats you're doing the same thing people who pull money out of an ATM are doing you financially illiterate rube.

<comment><USER31> FYI, I liked the points you made. However, personal insults ruin discussion and lower the quality of the forum, so I downvoted this comment.

I can certainly relate to getting fired up at foolish comments on the internet! It's tough sometimes... heh. Cheers, I hope you have a good day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era.

I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead.

In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks:

\- Effectively nationalise a huge chunk of private industry by offering to subsidise 80% of all salaries up to £30k/year

\- Delay tax payments for businesses, and offer up to 15% of GDP in loans and grants to help keep them alive

\- Renationalise the train industry (privatising it and others was a hallmark of Thatcher's period in power)

\- Accept that their planned immigration policy post-Brexit is now probably dead in the water because who knew that "low skilled workers" like cleaners and agricultural workers would be useful?

\- Severely curtail free movement and enterprise by shutting every pub, restaurant, cinema, theatre and cafe across the UK as well as almost every shop that isn't a pharmacy or food shop

\- Become champion supporters of an NHS they were - until recently - trying to sell bit off of

Politics here has changed forever, and likely for the better (assuming the sanctions on free movement and enterprise are temporary and not a back door for more draconian measures). For the sake of the most vulnerable in America, I hope it's the same there too.

And maybe - just maybe - it's time everybody took another look at the UBI debate, again.

<comment><USER33> > And maybe - just maybe - it's time everybody took another look at the UBI > debate, again.

Doesn't UBI directly result in inflation and cause currency devaluation? If the money that you hold loses its value (because everyone has at the very least the same amount of money as a basic, consistent income) then it is worth nothing in the end. It is as good as having no money in my humble opinion. Money has to be valuable for it to be useful in trade. Giving away money to everyone devalues the currency.

<comment><USER34> You would have to implement it in a way that redistributed wealth, i.e. increase marginal tax rates.

The goal is to make sure everyone is housed, fed, and educated. One option is to just give them housing, food, and education. Another is to give people money and let them choose. Yet another is to loan the money and to put them in debt forever.

<comment><USER35> The goal is to make sure everyone is housed, fed, and educated. One option is to just give them housing, food, and education. Another is to give people money and let them choose. Yet another is to loan the money and to put them in debt forever.

It's a noble goal. What about exercising the option of personal responsibility and agency of choice? (D) none of the above.

<comment><USER34> What about it? From what I can tell, people would rather choose to live in countries where there is some social contract regarding a minimum quality of life rather than Somalia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How is our social system so fragile?

I mean seriously - thousands of years and wireless comms and rockets to the moon and not only do we forget to prepare for a virus (something that had happened routinely throughout our history) but when it hits and people have to stay at home for a few weeks the economy falls down and leaves millions of people who want to work unable to do so.

<comment><USER37> It's just the consequence of market economy. Everyone is under pressure to "cut out fat", make themselves "lean". That applies everywhere across the supply chain. First thing that goes is every redundancy, buffer and spare capacity - things that would mitigate a crisis like this. It's because the companies that "cut out fat" can grow faster, sell cheaper and profit more, compared to their competitors that have risk horizons longer than few months.

What needs to be done is legally mandated buffers and redundancies (so that no one can gain a competitive advantage by omitting or removing them). Many countries had that after II World War. Unfortunately, out of the wood works came people screaming "efficiency!" and cut it all out.

<comment><USER38> Have you considered what the cost of adding these "mandated buffers and redundancies" to the overall economy? Have you attempted to integrate these costs over time when there isn't a pandemic going on, and made any attempt to determine the net effect?

Have you considered that you can't start a small business with buffers and redundancies? And that small business accounts for 50% of overall employment?

<comment><USER39> Yes. His point is that game theory and economic principles favour the leaner, therefore every company moves to max. efficiency with JIT supply chains and max leverage.

The only way around this is regulation if we want to be able to withstand crises _without_ bailouts.

That's currently not the situation, which is why bailouts happen.

<comment><USER38> It's not just game theory, it's actual real world efficiency. Which translates into jobs and salaries. Reducing baseline capital efficiency drives up all baseline costs. These costs are passed on to consumers and act as a drag on the economy.

It would make no sense to do that in response to a black swan event.

Let's say small business has to keep 6 months of expenses in reserve instead of the typical 3 months rule of thumb. For the same amount of cash on hand that means you can afford half the monthly expenses.

It's not just a matter of "hoard more cash". That cash had to come from prior quarter's net income. Revenue you don't invest drags down growth (a.k.a hiring). Revenue you don't spend is also taxed, adding further drag on the business.

Basically what this proposal is suggesting is to drastically reduce the "money multiplier". This shrinks GDP.

If the government forces your company to shut down for weeks, I expect them to pay for it. It doesn't make any sense for small businesses to self-insure against government mandated shutdowns. That would simply be a recipe for destroying small business.

<comment><USER39> Nope, the efficiency is captured as profit only until other efficient competitors appear and lower the price.

The price does _not_ "trickle down" to consumers or employees until it has to. Again, theory: why would a company give away free money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Anecdotal but my company is hiring 2x support and 2x QA, yesterday alone we went from receiving 5-10 applicants a day to 53. I just got into work and there is already 21 from last night.

<comment><USER41> Just curious, did your company get an essential business exemption from any stay at home orders?

<comment><USER40> We have not, but we can work remote and have had to move our hiring process to be entirely remote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> To make it sure that I understand it correctly: this is not the total number of unemployed people, but the number of people who became unemployed recently and now file the forms? Then that number is gigantic, wow.

<comment><USER43> The USA is home to ~340 million people (many people here illegally aren't counted). Only about 63.4% (~215M) of them work.

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force- parti...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force- participation-rate)

<comment><USER44> Labor force participation rate does not include children, so the 215M number is actually much lower

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> As you look at this story, please keep some basic numbers in mind:

1\. US Population: 329,433,166 (as of 3/25/2020)

2\. Employed: 158,130,000 (approx. 48% of population)

3\. Unemployed: 8,787,000 (approx. 5.6% of employed)

Note:

Take these numbers with a grain of salt as US Population is only as good as the Census Reporting itself. The Employed # is an estimate based on 155.76 million factually employed in 2018 and does not include self-employed, contractors, gig workers etc.

Sources:

1\. [https://www.census.gov/popclock/](https://www.census.gov/popclock/)

2\. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in- the...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united- states/)

3\. [https://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/us/](https://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/us/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Just to illustrate how absurd this number is: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUCTISVXQAcIKEb?format=png&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUCTISVXQAcIKEb?format=png&name=large)

<comment><USER47> This is messing up charts so much that maybe in a couple years we will be removing 2020 from the data just to have a chart that doesn't have a crazy x-axis.

<comment><USER48> 2020: the Shetland Islands of unemployment charts. (For context: [https://bit.ly/2UEV5H5](https://bit.ly/2UEV5H5))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The thing about the current situation is that there is still no end in sight and it feels like we are just at the beginning stages of a tough struggle.

Thankfully tech seems to be holding up in terms of employment for the moment, but we have stopped hiring as well so who knows what may come next. Not every tech can withstand or even benefit from the current crisis.

</comment><comment><USER50> I grew up with the puritanical mindset of: "Your intrinsic worth as a human is the money you earn; because the money you earn is from how hard you work; and how hard you work is a reflection of your intrinsic Virtue."

Thus I grew up in a family that loathes the unemployed. I really hope -- though I have grave doubts -- that this event gets through to them, so that they can have some personal growth, too.

<comment><USER51> I think loathing the unemployed (especially if it isn't caused by health conditions and isn't temporary, like in this case) is commonplace in any society. There are many studies which show unemployed people are more likely to commit crimes. e.g. [1]

Unemployed people, by definition, are net consumers. [2] Unless society as a whole actually produces wealth, there is nothing to tax, and the government doesn't have any money to spend. And how does wealth get created without people in employment? Unless you are the country with the reserve currency, which effectively gives you the ability to keep printing money until the world catches up to the con. Which doesn't still change the underlying economics, it is just that at any given point in time there is always some country which will be using the reserve currency status to make it appear like you can create wealth by printing more money.

Aiming for more employment is a net positive to any society, and I think that is what conditions people to loathe the permanently unemployed.

[1] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/40057352?seq=1](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40057352?seq=1)

[2] I remember reading an essay by PG about how getting employment is when you go from being a "net consumer" to become a "net producer", cannot find the link.

<comment><USER52> Landlords are bigger parasites than any NEET.

<comment><USER53> I've encountered exactly two people in my life who were perfectly healthy, both mentally and physically, but just sat around all day doing nothing for years on end.

Both were landlords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Canada is at 1 million or about 5% of our population. And it's only going to go up from here.

I have no idea how they are doing to handle any of this, having that percentage of your population on EI is going to hurt.

<comment><USER54> Have heard similar estimates, found an article corroborating this.

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article- unemploymen...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-unemployment- claims-reach-nearly-one-million-as-businesses-battered-by/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Most, if not all (?) will lose their healthcare. Horrible situation to be in during a pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER18> Won't know for sure until Apr 03 (The Day BLS releases the official unemployment rate for March) but this may very well trip the Sahm recession indicator, which has correctly predicted/detected every US recession back to 1950 (If it's been further backfitted I can't find the data).

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMCURRENT](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMCURRENT)

<comment><USER56> I don't think you need a black magic/AI/fancy algorithm to tell whether there is a recession or not

<comment><USER18> No, but it's nice to have some confirmation :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> 3.28 million? Really?

With the lockdowns of retail, hospitality, etc. in Australia, a country of 25 million total, we've seen nearly something north of 800,000 unemployed (temporarily or permanently). This can't be an accurate figure, surely!

<comment><USER58> This is just the people who have filed last week. There is bound to be many more soon. And I am not sure everyone who have lost their jobs are eligible.

<comment><USER59> My wife and many of her coworkers quite their jobs in the last two weeks as working from home wasn't an option. My understanding is they won't be eligible for unemployment?

<comment><USER60> Depends on the jurisdiction but in most no, voluntary leaving is not covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> For those playing at home, that's 3.28 million people who probably don't have access to health care now. Many probably didn't before due to the nature of their jobs, but it's going to be interesting to watch the cry for bailout of hospitals from the same politicians who are completely fine otherwise with people going without healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER62> The economical impact of COVID-19 on people's lives will be far more severe than the biological one.

Hopefully this won't discourage governments from taking appropriate action once a more lethal pandemic comes.

<comment><USER63> So lets say that there are a couple hundred thousand dead and you are pretty sure that 50% of the people out there have it. Are you going to go out for dinner or a movie? Not me..

But ignore me if you aren't saying that the restrictions should be reversed so the economy goes back to normal. A guy on CNBC just said that even if it means 400K would die. The economy just will not go back to normal anytime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Things that Coronavirus is teaching us:

-the people who are _actually_ vital to make the economy are grocery clerks, doctors, nurses, teachers and other carers, but not corporate CEOs, who are ultimately just dead weight.

-money is imaginary and they can print as much as they want.

-the people in power right now would rather have the stock market crash and watch you and a million other Americans die than give healthcare to everyone, even in the middle of a pandemic. How much would it help to have a centralized, organized response where everyone gets tested early right now? But it's impossible, because it would mean giving health care to poor people.

-capitalism is a beast that dies if it cannot grow. People work mostly to pay rent and debts. They pay rent so the landlord can pay the mortgage. The bank has already lent out the money they expect to get from people paying the mortgage- so if property owners don't pay their monthly bill, the whole financial system has a heart attack. Same thing with corporate debt. The corporation is assuming that you're going to buy crap you don't need. If you don't, then they can't pay their massive debts and again the whole system seizes up. So the primary reason we spend all our useful hours at work is so that we can make numbers bigger at the bank. And all of these debts, ultimately, are paid off on the backs of the working class. But the whole system can't be reduced, or paused, or even slowed down- it _must_ grow exponentially more and more, consuming more and more resources forever, or else it craters in a devastating crash and cannibalizes itself on the way down.

<comment><USER65> I'm not sure if the lessons will be interpreted in this way, or even remembered once things go back to some form of normalcy, at least for the monied classes that hold the largest microphones in our society.

The lessons learned from the conflict in Vietnam was not that "war is a racket" or "the US shouldn't militarily intervene unless it's a last resort". It was simply that "the US should use proxies where possible and only intervene where the opposition has a limited capacity to fight back".

And even then, they've greatly overestimated their strength in these conflicts. Because the people with the largest microphones said it would be enough to win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Welcome to the Great Depression of the 21st century.

<comment><USER67> Things are bad enough without exaggerating the situation. The big problem with the great depression was not the size of the crash but the duration of the recovery. Our view of the money supply seems a bit more effective these days and it seems unlikely that the recession that comes out of this situation will last as long.

<comment><USER32> Like you say, things are bad enough without exaggerating the situation.

If you think this is all over in anything less than 4-5 years in terms of economic impact, I don't think you've understood what has really just happened and is about to happen.

<comment><USER58> I do not think anyone knows how long the recovery will take, not even the experts.

<comment><USER37> There are indicators from past problems, though. One example I've seen is that it took 17 years for airlines to recover after 9/11[0].

\--

[0] - [https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-stocks-recover- septe...](https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-stocks-recover- september-11-911-losses-2017-6?IR=T)

<comment><USER67> I'm guessing that index does not capture total return. For example, DAL has offered ~2-3% annual dividends at least since 2013, which adds up to a pretty substantial difference to between total return and asset price if reinvested. It's not clear if that's when they resumed dividends or if Yahoo Finance just doesn't have data going back further.

<comment><USER68> Why don't you do the calculation then, instead of dismissing an article/calculation based on something you're not even sure is true?

<comment><USER67> You want me to . . . hand-calculate market-weighted total return of an index? Without access to the underlying financials? That's a big ask for an internet comment.

I didn't dismiss the article. I provided additional context that might be helpful in evaluating its claims. You are free to do with that what you will.

[https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/indices/nyse_arca_globa...](https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/indices/nyse_arca_global_airline_index.pdf)

"The Index tracks the price performance ..." suggests that my surmise is correct, at least for the global version of this index.

<comment><USER68> > _That 's a big ask for an internet comment._

So your solution is to "guess" that it didn't happen?

> _I didn 't dismiss the article. I provided additional context that might be > helpful in evaluating its claims._

You didn't add anything. You insinuated that it wasn't correct, with zero evidence or knowledge.

Why didn't you add other things, like maybe the journalist made the entire thing up? Or perhaps the whole measure of the index is simply a lie and doesn't exist?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people here consider random aspersions "adding context".

<comment><USER67> I'm puzzled that you think factual and relevant context is an aspersion. The article is technically correct that asset prices took a long time to recover to the previous levels. But it is limited in its application. In order to judge the return of an investment, you have to look at not just its asset price but what it produces. A chicken only decreases in value from the time it begins laying eggs, but that doesn't make it a bad investment. Same with the airlines.

> So your solution is to "guess" that it didn't happen?

It's not a guess. It's an informed inference from my knowledge of airline dividend habits, which I subsequently backed up with a citation. However, I will not do hours of modeling work to satisfy your curiosity. If you want that information, do it yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> The US federal and state governments have implemented policies that have forced a large number of businesses to close temporarily. A business that is closed can't pay it's employees, so naturally it would have to lay them off.

If tomorrow we found a cure and got the all clear to return to life as normal, how many of the 3.28M would be re-hired immediately? What we need is a distinction between being laid off temporarily and being laid off permanently. That would give us a clearer picture of the real economic impact.

We need a new metric. The senate stimulus bill should have included a new classification and support for workers temporarily put on unpaid leave.

</comment><comment><USER70> And the stock market loves it? I'm so confused.

<comment><USER71> It may be a temporary bump. I'm still debating pulling some money out of the market for a while. I'd still be buying via my 401(k), so I'm not totally out, but I just feel like the fundamentals will pull the market down for a while. Then again, we will probably, finally, start to see (stag|in)flation soon so having cash may be a bad move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> That's about 1% of the US population to put it in perspective

<comment><USER73> And a far higher percentage of the workforce.

<comment><USER74> About 1.6-1.8% by most estimates, so not really _far_ higher

<comment><USER75> That's 60 to 80 percent higher. Large differences in small numbers still look small haha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Someone can correct me on this if I am wrong.

Most of the unemployment is people on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of financials. Most of them are in the service sector. The middle of the pack group did not suffer because of this (yet). Whenever this clears the service sector, travel, restaurants, hospitality etc will bounce back very quickly. So all the people that lost their jobs could just get them back and the recovery will be sharp.

However, the kick in the nuts will be if the virus drags on for months. Then it becomes uncertain.

</comment><comment><USER77> What is the process for freelancers to get unemployment? I think that was mentioned in the new stimulus?

<comment><USER78> Some info: [https://www.thebalancecareers.com/can-i-collect- unemployment...](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/can-i-collect-unemployment- if-i-m-self-employed-2064148)

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> And yet - S&P 500 reacts with a sharp climb and most investors already think we hit the bottom two days ago.

</comment><comment><USER80> [https://archive.md/6BC8F](https://archive.md/6BC8F)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For context, the previous record was ~680K in the early 1980s.

<comment><USER81> Also worth noting the population then was 231 million, of which 110 million was in the labor force.

So today: 3 mil / 160 mil - 1.9%

1982: 670k / 110 mil - 0.6%

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> My initial response to this is... duh. How many governments have ordered people _not to work_. Is it surprising that all those people would then file for _not working_ benefits?

Of course not. Its an artificial unemployment spike (provoked by very real, fundamental forces in the world i.e. covid-19).

It will be VERY interesting to watch how state governments react to this spike. The federal government has monopoly money but state governments are VERY MUCH concerned with debt levels.

We'll see how long these isolation orders last. States will have to chose between unemployment, pensions, welfare programs, transit operations, etc. I wonder who gets the axe first. You could very easily see states go bankrupt and whole classes of the social safety net depleted for a generation.

</comment><comment><USER83> More than anything right now people are going to have a very strong appetite for financial security. It's about time we reconsider 'working for 50 weeks to pay for 52' as a viable means to have that security.

</comment><comment><USER84> The stock rises after the announcement...

<comment><USER85> Yes, a higher unemployment number was expected. Did you think unemployment going way up wasn't already partially priced in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> If the US was smart (big if...)

The pandemic quarantine will accumulate pent up demand, or at least a desire to consume once it is "over".

A good economic recovery would provide enough money to fund this demand and immediately reward rehiring of people to previous levels.

But this will be a series of discredited supply-side measures until (perhaps) a Keynesian friendly democrat is in office.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pent up demand for what? I'm being half facetious here, but something of this magnitude and rare will likely cause a shift in our world-views. This whole talk of "pent up demand" in Econ 101 really leads me to believe this system is guided by shibboleths and buzz phrases.

Let's be real for a second: this pandemic will fundamentally change consumption as we recalibrate just how much we "need" that new shiny thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Isn't it meaningful that the cause of this particular unemployment is very unique, in that it wasn't caused by a weak economy, but by the government artificially closing the businesses temporarily?

Theoretically, once everything starts to open back up, won't there be a similarly sized surge in "new jobs" so to speak?

</comment><comment><USER88> At least in New York the state dept of labor unemployment page is broken under the server stress and untold numbers of people haven't been able to login and file claims.

</comment><comment><USER89> Canada wins 500,000 jobs lost at 10% of the population. Oil and gas prices is a double whammy.

</comment><comment><USER90> Reminder: we spend 700 Billion on our military. No reason that can't be reduced to provide aid if needed.

</comment><comment><USER14> A year from now, will we look back and say it was worth the suffering for something 5x as bad as the flu? (based on Germany's numbers, which are more fully accounting for those with mild symptoms)

Shows how important testing randomly is, if the denominator is low because you are only testing those in the hospital, it looks like the second coming of the Spanish flu.

<comment><USER91> Even if we raise the denominator to make the percentages look better, there is no denying that hospitals are being overwhelmed. The flu often already pushed hospitals to the edge, so even only (heh) 5x worse will cause most hospital systems collapse.

<comment><USER14> Should 1000 people go unemployed to save one person?

<comment><USER92> Phrased differently, are you willing to die to give employment to 1000 people?

<comment><USER14> Phrased differently, I would be willing to die to give employment to 1000 people who can work to save 10 (?) people. If people aren't working to care for the system, then doctors can't find helpers with their kids, etc.

The system collapses in this scenario as well.

I don't have a real answer, but this event is helping discuss interesting and difficult questions.

If I was over 70 y.o., I would think that I would be willing to die to prevent my grandchildren from experiencing the great depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Everyone should expect the stock market to thrive off this data today...

<comment><AUTHOR> Why's that? I see that the SP500 is rising... but why is this "good news" for businesses?

<comment><USER93> The danger was businesses losing customers (revenue/income), which these initial numbers confirm...but on the other hand these jobless folks (and the whole country)just took out a $6T loan, of which $5.75T is going to these businesses ($1.75 will not have to be paid back and $4T will be interest free loans, and likely in may cases these companies will actually have negative interest rates, in other words they will make money on borrowing these tax payer loans). These are the very same companies that will also avoid paying US taxes.

Public companies cut all their costs/expenses and are going to be given $5.75T...mainstreet can't buy on these lows (because they have no jobs/income, fear and lack of liquidity are a bad combination) and the companies are flush with cash to buy back stocks now before they get the real windfall from tax payers. In short, public companies will be spending today to buy their own stock.

<comment><AUTHOR> But it's been confirmed that stock buybacks will not be allowed for companies receiving a bailout. Am I missing something more here?

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-stimulus- packa...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-stimulus-package-set- to-ban-stock-buybacks-for-companies-that-get-aid-2020-03-25)

<comment><USER93> >Am I missing something more here?

Apparently...they are doing the buy backs now (like right now) while they are flush with cash/no expenses, main street can't invest, and before they get their bailout cash. Never mind the buy back prohibitions are being majorly overstated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Stock market up, Trump says churches will be full of people in two weeks. I'm watching a movie it seems

</comment><comment><USER95> I wonder would a vaccine be able to reverse this instantly? Can you imagine. It's going to be a bumpy few months.

</comment><comment><USER96> My biggest concern is that we aren't working on the infrastructure and cultural shift that is going to be needed to have a return to normal.

The endgame of covid-19 is herd immunity, which requires either 30-60% of the population infected and recovered, or it requires a vaccine. Realistically both are probably 9+ months out: vaccines are slow to develop, and almost every governor has proven they'd rather shut down everything than see hospitals be overloaded.

In other words, for the next 6-12 months we have two choices:

(a) Public life sees a boom-bust pattern of sickness, where we open things back up, then a new outbreak of infection happens, and everything shuts down again for 2-6 weeks.

(b) We aggressively fight off our initial outbreak, then build infrastructure to quickly identify and contain all infections. We gently reopen life back to a kind-of-normal states of permanent semi-quarantine until a vaccine arrives.

In my opinion, (b) is clearly the optimal approach. And yet we haven't even begun working on the infrastructural and cultural changes needed to support pre-herd-immunity public life.

We need mass production of face masks and a culture where it is unacceptable to not wear a face mask in public, particularly crowded locations and public transit.

We need every building, every bus and train, every tourist attraction, testing every visitor with a contactless thermometer. If you have a fever you get a covid-19 test.

To support allowing non-remote-capable work to resume, any jobs that are remote capable should remain remote until we have herd immunity. More people leaving their homes means higher risk of an outbreak, and when an outbreak happens non-remote-capable employees are the ones screwed over.

As much as I distrust the CCP and China's official numbers, it just takes one glance on the measures being taken in China to prove that China is a thousand times more serious about containing this virus than we are, and that's going to play in their favor in getting things back to normal. Here's an eye-opening video on some of the steps Nanjing has taken to prevent an outbreak:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM&feature=youtu.be)

The simple fact is we're lacking the national leadership to make an effective response to this disease.

<comment><USER97> Cultural changes? How would you build those? The government doesn't control the culture. How would you make it unacceptable? Bureaucrats don't have direct control over that. Also, a bunch of "we need"s about the ideal situation don't do much.

The reason the China contained it is because she is an authoritarian state. While that provides certain advantages in this situation, it comes with certain drawbacks: not being able to access many websites, inability to express your political opinion, inability to own a firearm, being tossed in a concentration camp if the government doesn't like you. This isn't a question of leadership, you're asking the government to do things it literally has no power to do, things entirely outside of the constitution.

<comment><USER96> > Cultural changes? How would you build those? The government doesn't control > the culture. How would you make it unacceptable? Bureaucrats don't have > direct control over that. Also, a bunch of "we need"s about the ideal > situation don't do much.

We have a federal government. A federal government can spend money, including on marketing. Remember WWII propaganda, some of which people can still recite to this day, like "loose lips sink ships"?

A federal government can pass laws that require workplaces to take certain actions (temperature checks for employees, WFH for jobs that are capable of doing so). A federal government can pass regulations requiring public gatherings to take certain security actions such as taking visitors' temperatures with a contactless thermometer. A federal government can spend money to have factories produce a very large number of face masks and contactless thermometers, and can coordinate with states to distribute them to population centers.

> The reason the China contained it is because she is an authoritarian state

Yes, thanks for stating the obvious. If you notice I didn't suggest we restrict travel between states and cities, or that we lock people inside their homes, or that we should register every location that a person goes to so that we can quickly identify who they've been in contact with should they test positive for covid-19. These are the more authoritarian actions that China has taken.

In fact, lacking the authoritarian actions, we need to try even harder at the non-authoritarian stuff. Which we aren't doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Recession will take place in every country next year so expect that the number of jobless people will strike up during and after the pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER99> And this is only the beginning... if you look for projections (or run your own [1]), we will need a hard nationwide shutdown for at least 2-3 months (not 2 weeks) for this to not kill a million plus Americans.

I suspect even if a shutdown is lifted, when people start seeing body counts it's not like they'll return to traveling or eating out.

We'd probably need to see an anti-body test first and/or vaccine. This is going to take years to recover from.

[1] [https://austingwalters.com/covid-19-vs-the- economy/](https://austingwalters.com/covid-19-vs-the-economy/)

<comment><USER100> Well, the antibody tests are coming in a matter of weeks - multiple approaches have already been developed and they are currently being validated, that is, checked if they trigger reliably on the Coronavirus antibodies and ONLY on those and not similar ones (source: Charité Berlin - the virology lab there is on the forefront of developing Coronavirus tests and assists in validating new antibody tests).

They will allow us to make large randomized studies in the population and finally determine the "real" percentage of people who can be considered immune, which is the key element currently missing in all projection models. Having that data, more realistic projections can be made as to how fast the virus will resume to spread if we lift specific restrictions. At the moment, we can only hope for this number to be far larger than expected.

But doing such studies takes time, and without their results, lifting any of the restrictions is going to be a dangerous gamble with public health. So I would also suspect for most restrictions to stay in place for about 2 months, and then maybe a slow and gradual opening. First schools, then essential day- to-day businesses, and travel/leisure stuff last.

However, antibody tests are not a substitute for a vaccine. Only a broadly available vaccine will give people enough confidence of not contracting the disease for them to start living a normal life again. We can't expect any kind of normality in the economy until this happens, regardless of whether "America (or any other country) is opened for business" again or not - because an open business is worth nothing if the customers stay away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> You know how to fix the problem with those record layoffs though right? First cut all funding to social safety net programs and use that money to give tax cuts to the rich, who then don't even pretend that trickle down economics works and instead set up a fund for the public to donate to help those who need relief because fuck you I got mine.

</comment><comment><USER102> "The great American job machine"

The whole previous decade needs to come with an asterisk when talking about job growth. Looking at job participation rates and those that have stopped looking completely from BLS paints a completely different story. The pandemic obviously isn't making things better, but it's just always been an afterthought when talking about job growth.

</comment><comment><USER103> For this not to bankrupt the nation and retard our growth for the next twenty- five years, we need to all go back to work, today. Even if coronavirus kills a million people, the rest will probably be fine in the long term. If we shut down the economy, three hundred million will be affected. This "flattening the curve" business is clearly not worth it.

You cannot shut the economy. There is only so much we can borrow. The fed is buying debt right and left, and the government surely doesn't want to borrow money and remove that liquidity. So, the fed will buy t-bills instead and probably have to inflate the currency to pay for it all. We could end up spending orders of magnitude than 2 trillion on more hand-outs, so we could end up with another period of stagflation. Unless we want to retard our growth and prosperity for the next 25 years, we all have to go back, consequences aside. Vulnerable people need to stay home for months until this blows over; it's not the responsibility of the rest of us to lose our jobs for the sake of a few others. Doctors say we have to stay home, but as doctors, they naturally want to prioritize health. As the saying goes, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Like many other problems, there are diminishing returns as we approach either extreme of opening the economy or shutting it down. This extreme clearly isn't working. The at-risk million stay home; everyone else goes to work.

<comment><USER104> One thing I don't understand about this line of thinking is how do you expect sick people from working? Sure, not everyone will die but a significant portion of the population will get infected and need at the very least to stay home for a week or two. How is that situation better than where we're at now?

<comment><USER103> 3.28 million people are already out of work, likely a good deal more than that. One million are most at risk. There won't be zero impact, but that's less than a third, right out of the gate. Long-term we'll see significant increases in unemployment on the "shut-it-down" path.

To clarify based on your reply to this comment, my point was that we've already seen more people out of work than the estimated worst-case 1.2 million death toll. This is the first data point, and we'll see more huge increases as we gather more. You mentioned that sick people won't work, but we're already seeing what is possibly more unemployment than we'd have with people sick. 1.2 million < 3.28 million.

While some people may not work in the short term, this "flattening the curve" business prolongs that time greatly. We'd all be back much sooner if we just ripped off the band-aid and got it over with.

EDIT: Replying to circumvent123 here, as HN is rate-limiting.

Yes, death is worse than unemployment, but for how many? Death for one vs unemployment for everyone, which would you pick? If so, is this simply a question of the ratio of the two? Regardless, that's not the choice of bureaucrats to make. At-risk populations are responsible for staying home and keeping themselves safe.

<comment><USER104> I don't understand what this has to do with the question I asked. Feels like a non sequitur</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mono Project Releases 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://ostatic.com/173647-blog/mono-project-releases-2-0 <comment><USER2> Already a big thread about this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=324688></comment>


CIO update: Post-mortem on the Skype outage - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/12/cio_update.html?cm_mmc=PXBL|0700_B6-_-downtime-20101229

<comment><USER2> There was a major cascading failure in the power grid a few years back.

I thought there was a case of Amazon outage attributed to the same class of error.

The engineering trade-offs that are required are: 1) to protect the servers themselves from being damaged 2) when servers go offline to protect themselves, this may cause other servers to go offline. 3) to isolate the failure to specific subgroups in a network. 4) to provide enough excess capacity to take the load in the event of an outage

Bugs will occur, no matter how good the engineering is. Clients will need to be smarter, for example - implement some kind of exponential back off depending on whether the network is responsive or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> A very transparent, friendly attitude... from the same company who does this: <http://kirils.org/skype/27c3.pdf>

I guess companies can have several faces, but it still strikes me as bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting. As with all outages of major services, it seems it started with a confluence of independently minor, unforeseen events.

One question they didn't address, though, is if they're going to address the core problem - that a positive feedback loop of overloading supernodes is possible. It seems to me that a p2p system should be able to recover from having 20% of its nodes taken offline, rather than spawning a full collapse.

Avoiding the scenario where 20% of supernodes go offline to begin with is of course desirable, but since any number of things could cause that, it seems like a genuinely resilient system should remain functional (even in a degraded capacity) even if only a small fraction of nodes remains available.

<comment><USER5> That's desired behavior, although much more difficult in practice than it is in theory. If 20% of your network goes down and you can still serve clients normally, it means that you have a big reserve of machines useful only in case in big outages. I don't know if you can justify it economically.

You can also gracefully degrade performance, by rejecting client connections, disconnecting progressively some clients, accepting loss of consistency etc. It depends how far you can go without infuriating your customers.

We discovered that large-scale real-time systems(in our case, currently 400.000 concurrent connections) are really hard to stabilize against presence storms, network problems and buggy clients, among others.

<comment><USER6> _If 20% of your network goes down and you can still serve clients normally, it means that you have a big reserve of machines useful only in case in big outages. I don't know if you can justify it economically._

Just spin more EC2 instances ?

<comment><USER5> Yes, if you use an elastic cloud, by all means, spin more instances :-) Most existing companies still have real servers however.

<comment><USER7> Most existing companies don't run P2P voice chat networks, either. Using EC2 or some other elastic cloud for emergency supernodes makes a lot of sense, since they can outsource the risk of those machines sitting idle to Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how they managed to launch "several thousand more mega-supernodes through the night".

I assume they can't turn regular Skype nodes into supernodes because they must be reachable from a public IP address.

Where they using a cloud computer provider such as EC2?

<comment><USER9> They mention using "group video chat servers".</comment></comment>


Greenwald Responds to Wired - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/29/wired_response_1

<comment><USER4> Here is the companion post, which addresses the more substantive issues:

[http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/opinio...](http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/12/29/wired_1)

I've put in on HN, here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049449>

If you think this is only about "drama", you're sorely misled. This is about journalism, and about whether we have any journalists left that will examine the Wikileaks issues with some rigor, as opposed to grade-school attacks on the messenger and Palinesque distraction tactics.

<comment><USER5> Putting aside the political slant of your comment, please educate me. Quite honestly it all looks like a drama-of-the-week from where I sit.

What feature of journalism is under attack to warrant all this hub-bub? And in your response, please remember whom the Pulitzer prize was named for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is my foray into writing completely speculative theories on a message board, but what the hell, gotta start sometime.

<rant>

1) Not speculative: Manning is gay - the media already made a huge deal out of this.

2) Somewhat speculative - Lamo is gay - <USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo> \- "Lamo was appointed to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Youth Task Force by San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano"

3) Completely speculative - Manning contacted Lamo on the basis of talking to someone who would understand.

4) Completely speculative - So far, there's no direct evidence that Manning's leaking the documents has anything to do with him being gay, and only complete right-wing nuts (e.g. <http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31575>) claim that. If there's something in the chat logs that says "I am gay, I leaked the documents because I hate the US and the Army's policy on treating gays, and I hope you (Adrian Lamo) understand", then there's direct evidence. Repealing DADT was already extremely controversial, and if Wired released those chat logs when they first acquired them, it would've made the discussion even more explosive. (never mind the argument that being dissatisfied in the army because of DADT is a reason to repeal DADT.) The repeal of DADT passed. Had Wired released those chat logs, it might not have. Assuming that editors at Wired and their general audience is left-leaning (somewhat speculative - <USER3> lean to the left, so do my friends, we read Wired), they wouldn't want to do anything that might interfere with the repeal of DADT, especially something like providing a link between Manning's sexual orientation and him leaking the cables.

<rant>

</comment><comment><USER7> I think both Wired and Greenwald are operating ethically. Greenwald is right to be, as a reporter, skeptical and demanding of more evidence. Wired, unfortunately, is caught in a position where they may well be acting completely ethically but can't explain why without violating someone's privacy and trust.

They both may be doing the right thing here. I hope I am right and we really do have two pretty good journalistic organizations operating with good intentions.

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate on your theory of why Wired is justified in withholding the chat logs? What about the matter of not disclosing all ties to their sources -- do you think there is an ethical reason for that? Why counter-attack Greenwald if they know his accusations are justified, from the public perspective?

<comment><USER9> Imagine the portions of the logs not released by Wired and the Washington Post include Manning discussing his sex life, opinions about other as-yet- uninvolved private individuals or active duty personnel, medical/psychological details, or cable contents even Wikileaks hasn't (and might choose not to) release. Further, that the logs aren't conclusive either way on Lamo's other statements, perhaps because the logs Wired has are only some of the Manning/Lamo communication.

Then Poulsen/Wired's selective disclosure is perfectly reasonable, and there's no journalistic obligation to play '20 questions' confirming/denying every hunch Greenwald has about the logs, or release a meticulously 'redacted' set of logs which could just set off more wild speculation about the redacted regions.

They made a call about what excerpts were newsworthy, and have stuck to it. Even if they erred around the edges, with a few other sentences having some interest to those with a compulsive interest in coloring in every detail — well, opinions vary and errors happen. It wouldn't help to trickle out new marginal details in response to Greenwald's barbs.

<comment><USER8> What personal private details could outweigh critical info about a _huge_ news story? If they really are compromising their integrity as journalists to be good loyal friends, they can expect and deserve to be criticized as bad journalists.

And if they refuse to even explain themselves then nobody can be blamed for assuming the worst. And I can imagine scenarios worse than just protecting someone's privacy. The "we can't tell you why we can't tell you" excuse is as good as nothing.

<comment><USER9> Are you suggesting that once a news story is 'huge' it outweighs any claim to privacy involved individuals might have? Neither Wired nor Greenwald believes that.

I gave examples of the kinds of personal info that might justify privscy- preserving selective log publishing: sex life, discussion of uninvolved peers, and medical/psychological details. Your imagination should be able to fill in the rest.

Wired has explained themselves and no part of their explanation talks about being 'good loyal friends'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think after 1 post and 2 exchanges the only appropriate resolution to this debate is a duel between the participants.

<comment><USER11> I absolutely hate when people respond to a legitimate debate this way.

<comment><USER12> It's not that debate is bad, it's that debate's duration should be finite.

Unfortunately in this day and age of endless interweb debates, duel does seem like a reasonable idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I honestly don't know all the story to comment about the accuracy but one thing I can say though:

After reading Greenwald's original post and his response to Wired's response, he comes off a calm. measured and rational. Wired, on the other hand, comes off defensive and argumentative. Seems like they are more interested in taking shots at Greenwald instead of addressing the issues he raised.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why do I get the feeling this is going to go on for quite some time?

On the other hand, I'm sure this is doing wonders for both Salon and Wired's visitor numbers.

<comment><USER15> It should at least be more interesting than a Techcrunch "scandal".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think Wired will get burned by the Manning case..

When a writer gets involved in the story we call it Gonzo Journalism..but usually when that is the case..its claimed upfront...

In this case Wired wants to hide the fact of a writer being fully involved in the story and claim its due to personal privacy..

<comment><USER4> I tend to agree. It's a tad hard to see how personal privacy concerns require redaction of 75% of the material, unless the people chatting are romantically involved. If that is the case, then I officially withdraw my objections. :)

<comment><USER7> There's another explanation that is reasonable but Wired can't even talk about without someone's privacy being damaged.

It sucks that they're in this bind. I believe they are acting ethically.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for your endorsement. How do you square that, then, with the irresponsible attacks on Greenwald? Why don't they just come out and say precisely this? A response saying "Yes, it sucks that we're not releasing more, and we know why it's sensible to ask, but we have other priorities and for now we think we're making a balanced choice." would be a lot more respectable.

It'd be even better if they'd identify in advance some change in the situation which would alter the equation such that they'd be willing to release more. Outsiders could then better gauge what kind of trade-off they're making, and it also gives an accountability horizon such that outsiders can later on assess whether they made the right trade-off. That's a much easier pill to swallow than "We're right, now shut up and go away."

<comment><USER7> Weren't their earlier responses pretty much that?

There's also a duel of personalities going on and neither side is being terrible graceful. I wish neither side would find need to talk badly of the other, but welcome to modern media? :/

<comment><USER18> It's interesting how people can read articles yet miss entirely their substance.

Greenwald has noted a number of inconsistencies in Lamo's declarations, inconsistencies which have enormous potential consequences for the evolution of the case, notably whether Assange can be considered an accomplice of Manning. Some of his further investigations also reveal that one of the Justice Department officials which investigated Poulsen has very close ties with Lamo, Poulsen and Wired in general.

All of this raises important questions regarding the validity of Poulsen's reporting and the credibility of Lamo's current public testimony. Hence he demands Wired to publish the parts of the logs which would clear those inconsistencies, redacting away the ones which deal with private aspects of Manning and Lamo's discussion.

There is nothing that would justify Wired to not want to address these inconsistencies by publishing the parts of the lags which contain the corresponding information, yet they refuse.

What could justify this refusal ? Nothing, and that's where the whole "debate" points more and more in the direction of something very fishy smelling going on between the DoJ, Lamos and Poulsen.

If they have nothing to hide, have them publish the logs which explain the factual inconsistencies of _extreme_ relevance to the case that Greenwald has pointed.

That could change radically how Manning and Assange might be (or not at all) indicted, so, sorry, that matters.

<comment><USER7> The court has the logs, they can use them however they want. How Manning or Assange is indicted is not in the hands of Wired.

I believe there is some sort of deeply personal information in the logs scattered through most of the references. Wired pulled out what they could and posted. They are sticking with their decision on what could and couldn't be published without revealing private unrelated issues.

It may be perfectly reasonable and you really should at least concede that possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> D R A M A</comment>


How to use Git proficiently, both for personal and collaborative projects - <AUTHOR> http://devcharm.com/pages/46-improve-your-git-workflow <comment><USER2> Alternative headline: "Links to Git resources & HowTos"

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, I lead a software dev course and am always looking for good resources to send along to students and this looks great!

</comment><comment><USER4> What a nice wrap-up!</comment>


Taking Pictures with MMAPI - <AUTHOR> http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/midp/articles/picture/ <comment><USER2> This is incredibly old stuff.. MMAPI is standard on just about every new phone released nowadays (except for probably the iPhone).

If you want more recent documentation on MMAPI and JSR 234 check out forum Nokia: <http://forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/java/documentation/multimedia.html></comment>


Ask HN: Need home office setup recommendations - <AUTHOR> I'm moving to a decently sized home office for the first time and have the opportunity to build it out. It's about 12x12.<p>I'm looking for ideas, insight, desks, and photos of your office. What products have worked really well for you? <comment><USER2> "What does your ideal home office look like?" from 3 days ago might give some ideas [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17182211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17182211)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks...looks like I missed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What your gear requirements? Minimums. Laptop? Monitor? Printer? Desktop?</comment>


Show HN: Silicon Valley Prediction Training - <AUTHOR> http://www.aforeseeablefuture.com <comment><USER2> There's some dope advice at the end: "I recommend you use predictions to become reliable. Whenever you make commitments, ask yourself am I at least 80% confident I'll follow through here? When I'm not, I renegotiate immediately: Actually I expect I can have that for you in 3 weeks, 1 was optimistic. Actually I can't commit to do that at all because I'm super focused on x and y right now. The earlier you reset expectations the better. It's pretty easy to get other people to clarify their commitments in the same way." Overall solid.

</comment><comment><USER3> I definitely recommend the HBR article as well.

[https://hbr.org/2017/05/how-our-company-learned-to-make- bett...](https://hbr.org/2017/05/how-our-company-learned-to-make-better- predictions-about-everything)

"Founders bet years of their lives on finding product market fit, investors bet billions on the future value of ambitious startups, and executives bet that their strategies will increase a company's prospects. Here, predicting the future is not a theoretical superpower, it's part of the job."</comment>


Apple dumps Intel from laptop lines. Moves to ARM. - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-laptop-lines/

<comment><USER2> This story is a year old, why post it now?</comment>


How Do You Think of Problems to Solve? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like the best way to get an idea going to just to think of a problem. However, even this doesn't seem very easy. How do you do when you try to think of problems to solve? How do you poke your memory? <comment><USER2> One thing I've found helpful is to keep a notebook (either online or physical) with every interesting idea, unsolved problem, or irritating deficiency that I notice. Once you get into the habit of thinking "how could I improve this?" or "why does this suck so much?", I've found that I've begun to notice an abundance of potential problems to tackle. There's a big difference between just thinking idly about something, and taking the steps to write it down.

<comment><USER3> I do the same thing. Make sure to ALWAYS write down anything you've thought of - you may think that you'll remember it but you may find yourself trying to think of that idea again.

Writing things down also causes some additional thinking to go on so that may give you even more ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By using the (according to Larry Wall) First Chief Virtue of a Great Programmer: Laziness.

I'm pretty lazy and my mind has the tendency to space out into thought, so no matter what I'm doing (programming, yard work etc) I always look for ways to make it easier on me. A lot of times there isn't much to improve and you just have to keep plodding along, but sometimes you get really neat insights and ideas.

For example, some time back I was working as a web developer doing applications for program managers at a large company. After a few months of doing that, it turned out a LOT of the applications they needed were very similar, so after I finished my intern work term and went back to school, I made an application that writes other applications for my 4th year design project.

The idea behind it is that non-programmers can use a GUI to generate a certain class of applications automatically. Turns out that was a very good idea, since while I was writing the prototype Coghead (www.coghead.com) came out with their public beta and their software aimed to do the same thing I was doing (albeit in a different way).

I could give more examples, but being lazy is generally a good source of problems. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> You can try to solve your own problems, and see where they might be problems for other people, too. If you've run out of problems, you can try to be either more curious, or more discriminating.

You can hold a tool in the back of your head, and try applying it to everything, to see if it might fit. This requires discipline. It is often much better to hold a problem in your head, and see if new tools might apply, Feynman used this technique to great effect.

Or you can try to solve other people problems. This requires insight, but it also requires empathy. This is a hard thing to cultivate. It can't be turned on like a switch, and it's difficult to empathize with those far from your life experience. But there are many people who've lived lives similar to yours -- if your friends don't have any problems in their lives, they are unusually charmed.

<comment><USER6> Many successful businesses are based on comments by people solving problems for their friends and families; the man who came up with the Band-Aid did so because his wife was unusually accident-prone. Listening to the problems of the people around you, and helping them solve those problems, is not a bad way to go about things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a mindset. Start thinking of everything as "something you can fix". Every time something annoys you or you think of something you wish existed but doesn't, or you think of a novel way of doing something, write it down. After a couple weeks you'll realize that you have a lot more ideas than you thought you did, but you were just (falsely) assuming that you couldn't do anything about it.

</comment><comment><USER8> When I solve my own problems, I end up creating the next "emacs" for the problem area. It is _awesome_. But people on the web don't want emacs' they want notepads.

So don't do that I guess.

<comment><USER9> tell us more

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pretty much everything is suboptimal. Consequently, if you dig into anything deep enough, you will begin to notice many of its problems. And depending on how you "dig," people usually will just tell you the problems.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, you encounter problems on a daily basis. Next time you encounter something that was poorly organized, poorly created or just down right poor, then solve the problem that made it poor.

That is ultimately how I came to the vision of <http://www.propertystampede.com> . Ultimately I saw a problem of lacking innovation in the real estate rentals world. So I am solving it.

Chris

</comment><comment><USER12> Just keep asking "why?" over and over like a 5 year old.

Combine that with a solid knowledge of history.

<comment><USER13> This is incredibly insightful advice. Almost accidentally, I've found that recursively asking "why?" results in very unexpected answers. And by unexpected I mean insightful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It doesn't work you like that: you can't just think of a problem out of nowhere (nor a research project, nor an idea for a poem). It's a lot easier to pay attention for a while and notice when _you_ have a problem.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thinking of a problem to solve? What happened to ones that already exist?</comment>


Lammily - Average is Beautiful - <AUTHOR> https://www.lammily.com/average-is-beautiful <comment><USER2> I never thought much about it until now, but accurately proportioned dolls are uncanny and creepy. I wonder if that's why Barbie wasn't accurately proportioned to begin with.

<comment><USER3> It sure doesn't look like a fun toy. As a male I never played with Barbie, but I sure didn't want to play with a toy that looked like my parent. I wanted to play with the action figure that was bright, fun and imaginative. IE GI Joes, Turtles, Super heroes, etc.

I think the problem with girls toys is how they are promoted to be played with. The point of Barbie is to make sure she looks pretty, regardless of the dolls initial proportions. So little girls are taught to focus on appearance and making sure things are visually appealing as possible (including themselves).

<comment><USER4> > As a male I never played with Barbie,

I don't mean you call you out, but you should note that comments like this are essentially exactly why this project exists.

<comment><USER5> Um, sorry, I don't follow. Can you expand on that?

<comment><USER4> You're enforcing gender roles.

<comment><USER6> I do not see how creating a doll with a more regular dimensioned body will make boys want to play with them more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't the entire point of Barbie dolls to represent a ridiculously unrealistic ideal? In the same way that boys' action figures are impossibly muscular, and superheroes have super-strength/superpowers.

When making a toy, the question to ask should probably be "is it exciting?" rather than "is it beautiful" or "is it realistic". Is average exciting?

<comment><USER8> This is a good idea on paper, but it feels a little "Harrison Bergeron". I agree that there are major problems in our culture with body image, but Barbie seems like a minor culprit compared to advertising, fashion magazines, Photoshop [1], and celebrity culture. And I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with a certain level of idealization and fantasy in abstract representations like Barbie and He-Man.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(South_Park)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_\(South_Park\))

<comment><USER9> Or, maybe Barbies are way more damaging because they're aimed at children. While celebrity culture and photoshop are hard to escape for adults looking at most media, children are learning what ideal bodies look like not only from those sources but also from toys like Barbies and Bratz dolls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For more background on this campaign, check out this TIME piece from the morning: [http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/03/05/the-new-barbie-meet- the-...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/03/05/the-new-barbie-meet-the-doll- with-an-average-womans-proportions/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd feel more comfortable pressing the "Back This Project" if the button said "Powered by Crowdtilt" underneath it.

The whole "looks like a kickstarter but isn't on kickstarter.com" thing scared me off.

<comment><USER12> More people are starting to handle their own crowdfunding. Lockitron got rejected by Kickstarter so they created an open-source app for it: [http://selfstarter.us](http://selfstarter.us)

<comment><USER10> Definitely. Many of the largest crowdfunding campaigns of the past year have been self-powered (see Soylent, Tile, Lockitron, Coin, Star Citizen).

Might be helpful to check out Lockitron co-founder Paul Gerhardt's views on self-hosted campaigns: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261442)

This campaign for Lammily is powered by our open source tool CrowdtiltOpen (formerly Crowdhoster). We've taken Selfstarter's awesome groundwork and turned it into an end-to-end solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Average in the US would be 20-30% overweight

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumm- Ra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumm-Ra)

His action figure came in standard and special editions.

With Lammily they could bring out a special edition "Lammily after a night on the tiles":

Stilleto heels, one of them broken, a black eye from picking a fight with a cabbie, ciggie hanging out of her mouth, bottle jack-d in her hand, vomit dripping from her chin and an inappropriate tattoo on her arse ... she has a button on the back which when pressed repeats the phrase "hey fuck you, asshole".

Far more realistic.</comment>


This is Why Google Scares the Sh*t Out of Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.newcommbiz.com/this-is-why-google-scares-the-sht-out-of-companies/ Wow. I mean really, WOW! One announcement of a Web based product that is currently inferior to your product that only runs on a very limited number of devices and your company looses Billions of dollars. Wow. <comment><USER2> _This is what happened to TomTom and Garmin stock prices when Google announced Maps Navigation._

To be honest, that's why the stock market should scare companies not google. The stock price is an arbitrary number derived by people who do nothing but sit around deriving stock prices.

Both TomTom and Garmin (hell they make avionics suites FFS)_ address different market needs from google, and I highly doubt either will see a dramatic immediate effect on their revenues. Long term, my guess is that TomTom will feel something, but Garmin is pretty secure on the high end.</comment>


Ask HN: Shared email accounts? - <AUTHOR>

I noticed our startup is using a lot of shared email accounts. We have shared Gmail accounts for dev@, support@, contact@. We basically just share the pw.
I doubt this is a one-off case and I think a lot of small businesses are using shared email accounts.
While sharing pw is not that big of an issue. The whole procedure of handling mails is a bit clunky. What tools do you guys use to make this more efficient?
I'm not looking for a CRM/helpdesk tool yet. We love Gmail, just want the email handling to be more efficient. The collaborative inbox in Google Apps is absolutely atrocious, partially because it has it's own non-Gmail UI. <comment><USER2> I wish I knew of shared email providers where I do not need to share passwords.

For most cases using a simple CRM tool such as helpful.io or Helpscout for email only purposes has been enough for me, but there is one big disadvantage: you cannot send emails proactively, but just respond.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Office 365 offers shared outlook accounts for teams.

Our issues is not shared passwords, but the confusion that arises out of multiple people managing the same account.

You're right about CRM - even while replying to someone, it shows them that their email became some sort of ticket. That gives a bad taste of non personal response, bad for small business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We use Zoho, which makes this easy. support@ and info@ are just "group" (or maybe another term) accounts that anyone with permission can send/receive email from.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sharing passwords is an issue. General example: Have an employee 'go bad' or want to make another employee look bad in a high profile way: Use email.

</comment><comment><USER5> Front was built for that use case: [https://frontapp.com/](https://frontapp.com/)</comment>


Clojure Unsupervised Part-Of-Speech Tagger Explained - <AUTHOR> http://aria42.com/blog/?p=48

<comment><USER2> That's a very thorough description. It's always great to see laymen-readable expositions of research.

I find it nice that a purely functional language can handle this sort of problem (state management) more cleanly than what I usually do with my python- based samplers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. It would be considerably enhanced by some examples of how the algorithm performs on real data.

(I wonder how it does if you feed it not words from a natural language, but tokens from a programming language. Can this sort of technique be adapted to infer the whole grammar? I guess that would be more difficult -- you're trying to learn a much more complicated sort of structure.)

<comment><USER2> If you feed it words and appropriate features from a programming language you should get something close to a tokenizer. Laura dietz ( <http://www.mpi- inf.mpg.de/~dietz/index.html#publications> ) has some work that applies similar techniques to programming languages to find bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> very cool, haven't read it through yet but i'm curious, what's your motivation for this research?

<comment><USER2> It is still an open problem to do unsupervised or mostly-unsupervised part-of- speech tagging that performs as well as (or close to) the usual supervised models. For English in the standard domains for which there are annotated corpora this is not necessary, but if you want to apply tagging to a completely different domain or a resource-impoverished language this sort of technique is necessary.

This is relevant because it performs just as well (or better) than state-of- the-art methods while being faster and simpler.</comment></comment>