How to Burn Bridges with Bootup Labs and Other Investors  - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/04/how-to-burn-bridges.php

<comment><USER2> This article reeks eerily of keep you mouth shut and do what we tell you or you will get black listed in the VC industry. Those are the kind of subtle tactics that could bring regulation to what some regulators already would like to consider a financial industry.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

Although I can't say anything about the substance of his claims, I thought Jamie's tone was measured and fair. The complaints about accuracy raised by the VC seem relatively minor. If this is what burning bridges is like, then these VC's have some very fragile bridges.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure I agree with the opinions expressed by Dana Oshiro in this article, but it's an interesting perspective nonetheless. As much as others may benefit from this lesson, Jamie's candor might end up hurting him in the long run. (I hope it doesn't, and I'd say that it reflects poorly on VCs if it does: The world needs more people who are prepared to bluntly state their opinions, not less.)

</comment><comment><USER4> The worst I can say about Jamie was that possibly he was a little naive, and should have ensured there was a binding contract in place before he moved. However given the visibility of Bootup I doubt them reneging on the deal even crossed his mind.

He has every right to feel the way he does, and in fact I thought was very measured/mature in his article.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm trying to figure out where Dana Oshiro is coming from.

Her bio reads "Dana Oshiro is a Writer for ReadWriteWeb. She is a Canadian blogger, PR pro and start up strategist. She writes about her life in San Francisco at Villagers With Pitchforks."

Does she have a connection with Bootup Labs? Is she disappointed that Jamie in a way is putting Vancouver ina bad light?

This article is really shameful. She cherry-picked a comment on the original Hacker News thread and focused on it. She ignored the rest of the comments that are sympathetic to Jamie and are castigating Bootup Labs.</comment>


Ask HN: How many hackers (or even tech enthusiasts here) love to cook? - <AUTHOR> The Barefoot Contessa was making some awesome chicken dish while I was eating lunch in our break room and it made me really want to save a little more time for trying to cook better. I think I have mastered all thinks crockpot - it is time to step up the game! ;)<p>If you do like to cook, what do you cook? <comment><USER4> Warning: I can write about cooking all day long. I can cook for ever longer.

Cooking is my form of artistic expression and a perfect outlet for nearly every aspect of my personality and work experience combined.

I've been cooking seriously for years, even going so far as to have trained formally in commercial kitchens from commis to chef as a form of vacations from the IT world. Adding to that over 15 years of constant travel; I've eaten just about everything and everywhere in thousands of restaurants and food stalls. I have incredibly high standards and test myself against them constantly.

It keeps me grounded in all things I do and gives me a way to directly please others and gratify my own need to test for success or failure. (Try cooking for a nationally renown chef and his girlfriend in your home several times. No excuses and the pressure is intense, no matter how gracious the guest.)

 _Order, discipline, attention and eye for detail, intuition, physical sciences and chemistry, good taste, a rock solid internal clock_ and ability to spin dozens of plates with one hand - all of these skills help in many ways outside the kitchen.

My favorites foods are too many to list, but I'm a big fan of making house pate and terrine. Duck and rabbit rillettes. You work with me, you'll need to watch your waist line. I'm hoping to have a full-scale commercial kitchen in our next office location and I intend to use it daily.

How many bosses do you know want to run their own brasserie style cafeteria? I may be totally nuts, but I have confidence I can get the job done in the kitchen.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love to cook. Focusing on chopping carrots, caramelizing onions, stirring and tasting, etc. is a good antidote to hours spent worrying about abstractions of abstractions.

I'm also drawn to "project" cooking, stuff that involves aging and/or fermentation. Making cheese, various kinds of pickles, growing tempeh and yogurt, sourdough, etc. I also homebrew (beer and mead). If you like being a mad scientist in the kitchen, _Wild Fermentation_ (<http://www.wildfermentation.com/>) has a lot of recipes and techniques.

<comment><USER6> I love to cook, and I love cheese, but I just assume that I would need real milk (e.g., not 4% jug milk) to make a good cheese.

I'm working my way through Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", but I keep getting drawn back to the very early chapters on cheese and dairy, even though it isn't particularly specific.

Any tips?

<comment><USER5> I've used farmer's market milk but not raw unpasteurized etc. milk. It's not a big issue for me, though I'm completely disinterested in milk on its own. Most cheese is probably made with relatively unremarkable milk, though.

For cheese-making, I recommend starting with paneer / farmer's cheese, rather than aged cheeses. Gradually heat milk in a big pot, stir in a curdling agent (such as lemon juice), let it separate, then wrap the curds in cheesecloth and let them drip, maybe press them after. Real directions will be more specific (the book I linked has a great intro!), but that's the gist. Paneer is great fried with spinach and/or scrambled eggs. Also, try making bread with the whey.

Homemade yogurt is also good, particularly if you strain it a bit to thicken it ("labneh", among many other names). Buttermilk is even easier, since it's less finicky about being kept warm, and it's fantastic for baking - soda bread with lots of rolled oats, pancakes, etc. Having a lot of large jars helps; I've accumulated a bunch of half-gallon (~2L) jars from honey used for meadmaking. They're incredibly versatile.

I really like _On Food and Cooking_ as a reference, though it doesn't inspire me the way _Wild Fermentation_ does. I also wholeheartedly recommend John Thorne's books, particularly _Pot on the Fire_ and _Outlaw Cook_. The newsletter is good, too, if a bit sporadic these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To answer the question a bit -- I love to cook, and have for awhile, though it isn't always easy finding the time for it.

Watching the common cooking shows are good, but stay away from shows like Top Chef (at least while you're learning) as they are well advanced, and you're not going to learn much.

On the flip side, Jamie Oliver used to have a brilliant show wherein he focused on simple recipes that were easy to put together and tasted amazingly.

One of the shows I've been watching recently is "Worst Cooks in America" which, while the show itself sucks, actually goes through and shows some practical cooking basics.

I loosely copied a pork paillard recipe with a sundried-tomato herb butter, and it was phenomenal. I tend to eat well when I eat out, and have eaten at some very nice establishments, and can honestly say that I've never had a better piece of pork anywhere.

Of course, the real learning is in actually cooking. Watching shows and reading books (I recommend Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", or Alton Brown's books) might teach you the theory of cooking, but actually DOING is still the best way to learn.

I have a friend of mine who had literally never cooked a meal in his life that didn't come from a box or can, and he was talking about making something nice for his fiancee for Valentine's Day. I gave him a foolproof recipe for filet mignon, honey glazed carrots and asparagus, and now he's begging me for more recipes to wow her with.

Simply put, it's a great hobby and, if you have kids, a great way to get them involved and have some easy family time.

<comment><USER5> I've been underwhelmed with most of Alton Brown's books, though his book on equipment (_Gear for your Kitchen_) is pretty good.

Maybe I'm an overly intuitive cook, but I feel recipes are just snapshots* , and once you have a feel for the rough proportions + know how your ingredients behave, largely unnecessary. A good recipe won't always work (maybe it's really humid, the eggs are unusually small, etc.), and IMHO cooking is about sensing and adjusting.

* Outside of baking or a few other niches, which depend on carefully executed chemical reactions etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anything. I enjoy baking more than cooking meals, but I happily do both.

Simple delicious dish: carnitas. Use cheap pork shoulder (incidentally, the cheaper the cut of pork, the tastier!). Cut into 1" cubes and drop into a pot and add enough water to cover. Squeeze half a lime and add some salt to taste. Bring to boil and skim off the yucky stuff floating on top. Partly cover and reduce to SLOW simmer and let all water boil off. You are causing most of the fat to render out of the meat. It should cook for at least an hour. When water's all gone and pork is starting to fry in it's own fat, add chilies, garlic, onion and maybe more lime juice. The meat will be falling-apart tender by this time and now crispy outside since it's been frying.

Eat as is, or add a cup of rice and let the rice partly fry in the oil, then add 2 cups water or veggie broth, achiote (cooked, crushed annato seeds), more onions and peas & carrots and cook until rice is done. Enjoy.

Delicioso one-pot meal! Much easier to do than to read about it. Should not take more than 5 minutes preparation time.

Aside: in my single days, I quickly learned that one of the easiest ways to impress women was to cook for them. Following JWZ's philosophy of doing what gets you laid...

</comment><comment><USER8> I love cooking, and my approach to cooking is pretty much identical to hacking. I disassemble the components, test different measurements and combinations, and use recipes as a beach head into new forms of cuisine.

On Saturday I did a slow-roasted lamb shoulder with roasted dates, a garlic and white wine sauce and lemon and mint couscous on the side. At the moment I'm massively into slow cooking and fusion, particularly sweet and spices. I do a traditional lamb shank in a red wine sauce with various veg, but also Moroccan spices, apricots and figs, roasted for between 12 and 18 hours. Has to be experienced to be understood. If anyone wants recipes I'm happy to post them.

My one word of advice to any hacker that wants incredible meat dishes, get a crock pot. You can use the cheapest, roughest cuts of meat and with very little effort get incredible results.

<comment><USER9> Yes recipes please :)

<comment><USER8> Ok, here's my moroccan lamb shank:

You will need:

* 4 lamb shanks (you can use about 1.5lb - 3lb leg or shoulder instead, but it's not a shank then)

* 2tsp cumin seeds

* Just over 1inch of fresh ginger, chopped

* 4 garlic cloves, chopped

* 1tsp salt

* 2 tbsp olive oil

* 2 large red onions, cut into wedges

* 1 and 1/2 tbsp Harissa Paste

* Small can of chopped tomatoes

* 1 pint (about 568-600ml chicken stock, hot - use beef stock if you haven't any chicken)

* 1 cinnamon stick

* 4oz halved dried ready-to-eat apricots

* 4oz halved dried figs

* A reasonable sized crock pot

Protip: if you have a very large crockpot you can add a couple of potatoes cut into larger wedges, the odd carrot or half a swede will work but don't put too much in or you're overpower the flavour. Note, by swede I mean vegetable, not someone from Sweden.

I've put the measures in US imperial as the majority of the site have it - <USER2> cook metrically, but roughly so you'll be fine with these or converting back to metric.

Bash the cumin and coriander in a pestle and mortar for a while, then add the ginger and salt and keep bashing till you have a nice paste. It doesn't need to be perfect - a rough paste is fine, but it needs to be fairly mashed and mixed up.

Heat some oil in a pan (I use sunflower or olive) and brown the shank off in the pan - this is purely for aesthetic purposes, you don't have to do this but your lamb might look a bit grey otherwise. If you do this, just brown it for a minute or two and put it in the pot.

Add your onions to the pot, along with the spice paste (you might want to rub it onto the lamb, maybe not), harissa (I generally smear this over the lamb but it doesn't affect the taste much), tomatoes, cinammon stick and stock.

Put the crockpot on low for 8 hours or high for 4. I cannot stress this enough - your meat will be so much better the longer you cook it. My record is 16 hours for lamb, you'll reach the point where the shank just falls apart and the meat falls off the bone around the 7 hour mark on low. Cooking it on high is fine, but it affects the meat more and more importantly sends the stock over boiling point. You won't lose too much but you will lose some. If you put it on low it really doesn't matter how long you cook it for, it simply will not burn, so feel free to put this on the night before if you really want to, all you'll do is get even more tenderness from the meat.

Ok, now between an hour to half an hour beforehand (closer to an hour) add the apricots and figs, make sure they're in the sauce and put up on high if the lid's off for a while or you only have half an hour, low if you barely took the lid off and you have an hour.

About 15 minutes beforehand, it's time to make the accompanying lemon and mint couscous if you want. Get a bowl and add some couscous (bear in mind that it will swell to between two and three times it's size). Bulgur wheat or quinoa are fine as alternatives (and may be cheaper depending on where you are).

Add 4 tablespoons of olive oil to the couscous along with the juice of half to a whole mid-sized lemon (depending on how much you like lemon). Add a cup of chicken stock, roughly enough to cover the couscous along with some salt and pepper, cover the bowl and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes. If you run out of water add some more. It's ok to stir it up as well. After 10 minutes drain off the excess couscous, add 3 tablespoons of freshly chopped mint (you can use parsley instead if you want) and optionally add another two teaspoons of coriander and mix it in with a fork. Using the fork is important as this 'fluffs up the couscous. Bring the couscous to the table with a nice big spoon as the smell of the lamb will be driving anyone else at home wild, then serve the lamb individually, with enough sauce, figs and apricots to get the balance.

The thing I really love about the recipe is how the spicy heat from the harissa complements the sweetness of the apricots and figs. The lamb acts as a neutral balancer, but the texture is just incredible. It's an amazing modern and exotic take on a great classical dish. Please do try it if you have a slow cooker.

Protips for the not yet ramen profitable: Looking to do this on the cheap? Then bear these tips in mind.

1\. Shanks are normally quite cheap, but you can get away with the cheapest possible cuts of lamb you can find. You can also use beef if that works for you. This dish was designed for low quality cuts - the key thing is giving it enough time. If you cook it for 12 hours on low and use a shank I pretty much guarantee that when you lift it up out of the crockpot by the bone the meat _will_ fall off and back in. It's that tender.

2\. Don't be afraid to use apricots or figs near their sell by date. If it's cheaper to get fresh or on the turn, just dry them out in the sun for about 6 hours beforehand. Apricots get squishy before going off, figs get sweaty. They're still good for this dish.

3\. You can keep the dish in the cooker and reheat it the next day - <USER3> should get about 3-4 days worth of shank on your own. To reheat just give yourself an hour or two, alternatively top up the harissa, add another cinnamon stick, put it on low in the morning before work and come home to an even better tasting lamb shank in the evening. You can also pad it out with vegetables like potatoes cut into large chunks on days two and three. You can also top the sauce up with a little red wine if you want on days 2 and 3, but don't overdo it and chicken stop is cheaper.

4\. If you're going to make this dish for someone you're having over for dinner (such as a significant other) then it's probably best to make the dish beforehand once. It is really really easy though, very hard to get wrong (given that you have about 8 hours to fix anything that pops up) and is pretty much a one pot recipe so there's less washing up. This is definitely a hacker and newb-cook friendly dish.

5\. Most importantly if an ingredient costs a load then ditch it. Use dates instead of figs if they're cheaper, just use less of them because they're sweeter. Use the cheapest onions you can find, use dried herbs instead of fresh if you don't grow your own etc. - chilli paste will taste slightly different compared to harissa paste but if it's cheaper and cash is tight then go for it.

I hope you enjoy that recipe, if you don't mind this took a while, I'll do my roast lamb with slow-roasted dates in white wine and garlic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love to cook. It's relaxing and therapeutic. For me it's a great creative outlet. I don't have a favorite dish, but I like to cook with chicken, because I can make about 100 different things with it. It's also helped my photography. I started taking photos of everything I cook and putting them on my wall as a personal menu. It's cool to look at and helps me progress by improving on old recipes.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like cooking but only once or twice in a month. I'm passionate about it but not enough to do it daily. My work and other interests don't let me cook that often. When my taste buds scream for something custom made to my taste I cook my own food.

I cook Indian dishes such as Dal, Rice, Vegetable Curry, Egg Curry, Chicken Curry, Chapati, Pulao, Biryani etc.

Sometimes I like cooking chinese dishes such as noodles.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure if I like cooking, or if I just like eating, but the former results in the latter and definitely enjoy that!

I like to cook just about anything. My taste prefernece has always been more to Latino style foods, so I tend to cook a lot fresh vegetables and such. I've really only started to enjoy cooking (used to hate it actually), so I'm still learning a lot.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cooking has become a pretty important part of my life. It's a great change of pace from sitting in front of the computer. Acquiring a very sharp knife helped me enjoy it even more.

Here's what I've cooked recently, plus other recipes I've saved:

<http://yumtab.com/sarah-justin>

(I actually created YumTab specifically to keep track of this stuff.)

</comment><comment><USER14> I love cooking. My favorite dish is braised pork tenderloin. Soak it in a brine with citrus and herbs overnight, sear it in a stainless steel pan on all sides, then put it in the oven (pan and all) to finish it out. Serve with green vegetables, mashed potatoes, and a glass of beaujolais nouveau.

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://www.cookingforengineers.com/>

</comment><comment><USER16> LOVE IT. It's what keeps my relationship with my woman strong. Life is too short to not enjoy tasty, healthy food.

I cook whatever satisfies my palate, which primarily revolves around meat and veggies. But how can you pass on a good cheesecake or burger recipe?

</comment><comment><USER17> I love cooking. I find it relaxing. It also has the added benefit of eating healthier.

</comment><comment><USER18> You should check out: Cooking for Geeks - <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596805890>

I got a copy the other day and it is a fun read so far.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love cooking. In fact, my most recent app, <http://7courses.com> was created to solve my problem of having far to recipes to manage.

<comment><USER17> I am going to try this out. Looks easy and just what I need to store my favorites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes. Here's my own leek recipe:

[http://www.pathelectronica.com/journal/public/2010/05/02/dea...](http://www.pathelectronica.com/journal/public/2010/05/02/dead_sexy_leeks)

</comment><comment><USER9> I have this one recipe for Indian chicken that is incredible. No spice mixes, all pure spices, chicken, slow cooking, homemade masala. We make it a few times a month.

</comment><comment><USER21> Leave me in a house without internet and I promise I'll either burn down the house or make delicious food with recipes invented on the spot.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh, and don't miss Seasoned Advice! <http://cooking.stackexchange.com/>

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't cook much, but I love to eat.</comment>


Show HN: MSD: A Red Hat-Like Business for Open Source EDA (Verilog, VHDL, etc.) - <AUTHOR> https://millenniumsoftwaredesign.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have been working with commercial EDA tools (Verilog, VHDL, etc.) for years and always found them to be quite overpriced and frustrating. Whenever I bring up the idea of using open source tools I get responses just like I got when first brining up Linux in the workplace back in 2001. Things like, "you get what you pay for" and "it's only free if you don't value your time." Red Hat (and SUSE/Novell) addressed those concerns for business people and made Linux mainstream (and put UNIX out of business and made a lot money for themselves in the process). Maybe a similar business could do the same for open source EDA.

To that end, I have quite my job and I've spent the past few week putting this business together. What do you think?</comment>


$250 Trillion in Debt: The World's Post-Lehman Legacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-lehman-debt/?srnd=premium <comment><USER2> If there's one single life-encompassing economic event this decade, it will be the emerging market financial crisis. The chart in the article clearly shows emerging market ex China going from 16 trillion to 29 trillion in 10 years. And China has incredibly gone from 7 trillion to 40 trillion debt in 10 years - 300% debt to GDP (not even counting another 20 trillion shadow debt, which would make it incredibly 450% debt to GDP!!) ((and if you take into account fake GDP that Chinese provinces have reported, and that authoritarian governments typically fake their economic growth, and reduce the reported GDP by 20%, it's a jaw dropping 600% debt to GDP !!!))

The emerging market crisis will accelerate pretty quickly, as soon as one or two more fed rate hike occurs, or as soon as more tariffs get levied on China from US, or any of the other black swan event that may occur (hyperinflation in other emerging markets, internal politics struggle or death of Xi Jing Ping in China, etc) . Interesting times we live in. Stay safe.

<comment><USER3> Before freaking out about CHINA IS DOOMED, look at the historic record.

From 1957 to 2017, per capita GDP in China grew from $68.24 to $8830.17. That's over a thousand times more productive. You can angst about faked numbers or whatever all you like, but the trends are plainly obvious here. China's economy has grown consistently at an extraordinary rate for a long time now, and there's no obvious evidence that a collapse is just around the corner.

<comment><USER2> What an odd comment to make :) It's true you can ignore all economic reality and focus on growth (fake or real). But history time and time again has shown that NOBODY escapes economic reality. Nothing goes up forever.

"Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage."

<comment><USER4> Who's that quote attributable to, with a link if you have one? It's brilliant.

<comment><USER5> Andrew Ross Sorkin? [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/business/dealbook/financi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/business/dealbook/financial- crisis-trump.html)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. Brilliant article too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminder: $250t debt is $250t assets on someone else's balance sheet. The money is not owed to aliens but to other humans.

Finding who is is owed to is harder. A big chunk is pension funds, insurers and so on, where one person's debt is another person's retirement savings. Which must increase overall as life past retirement does.

But a large chunk is assets of financial industries and the super wealthy, and in order for it to be net paid down _they have to get poorer_ \- or at least be forced to reallocate to equities.

(Note also that as interest rates drive ever lower debt naturally expands too. If they can be driven _negative_ it becomes an advantage.)

<comment><USER7> One of the most illuminating comments I heard recently was on a Bloomberg podcast where they made the point that fiat money is a closed system. Money can flow between economic actors, and it can obviously influence behavior, but in both a theoretical and real sense it is really just an abstraction that hovers above the physical world. That's not to deny the economic effects of monetary policy, but I do think it helps clarify a lot of monetary phenomena.

<comment><USER8> Yep, but the same applies to debt as well. A contractual IOU may say seem abstract but it can be almost as valuable as the money itself (sometimes _more_ valuable, with attached APR).

<comment><USER9> That doesn't seem like a closed system, though? The main limit on debt is the market's willingness to keep buying it. Figure out a way of increasing trust and it can go higher.

<comment><USER8> It's not, which is one of the great benefits of being able to harness debt financing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't even really understand how to hedge my bets anymore. It's not like there's an industry that will be left unaffected by the current economic climate and... well, the climate. What exactly am I supposed to be working on/towards if the system itself seems broken?

I'm down to "Hope the problems don't really precipitate in my lifetime, and don't have kids". I don't feel like that's a solution.

<comment><USER11> The current system is actually quite resilient, because it has the built-in capacity for _parts_ of it to fail without bringing down the whole thing. The situation you should really be afraid of is when everything is fine, you're the envy of the world, the Supreme Leader has your back, right up until there's gunfire in the streets, people are scrambling across the border, there's no food in the supermarkets, there's suddenly a bloody coup in the capital, and enterprising oligarches have pilfered the country's coffers.

In practical terms, you should recognize that this feeling is fear and it is in fact a _feeling_ , and you can choose to own it rather than let it own you. Stay away from the particular enterprises that everyone says are about to collapse, and double-down on whatever assets nobody is paying attention to. Life goes on, and people have to do _something_ , so own the things that people will be interested in over the next few years. It's _all_ a bubble, just do your best to ride it.

There were a few asset classes that were clearly looming bubbles in 2008: housing, CDOs, most hedge funds, Web 2.0 startups. If you were invested in them at the beginning of the year you probably lost your shirt. Meanwhile, if you invested in Bitcoin or mobile or sharing economy startups in 2009, you're likely a millionaire several times over. Housing itself started to become an attractive investment once the crash was over in 2010, with many landlords making 10%+ returns annually since then.

<comment><USER12> "The current system is actually quite resilient, because it has the built-in capacity for parts of it to fail without bringing down the whole thing."

This is false. It is the hallmark of the current economic order that our systems are very efficient, very interconnected, and _very fragile_.

I shouldn't care whether or not provincial Chinese governors are faking their economic reports or making bad loans - but of course, I do, since that could have a ripple effect that makes my business suffer. _I shouldn 't be fragile to that_ but I am.

Making the system less fragile would require removing some of the interconnections and the efficiencies. Growth and returns would be lower, but failures would be localized and less "interesting".

<comment><USER13> I actually think parent comment to yours was quite measured and appropriate. Did you fully grok it?

> This is false. It is the hallmark of the current economic order that our > systems are very efficient, very interconnected, and very fragile.

What evidence do you have to support this? Even in 07 an index-weighted fund only took 3 years to recover. If you were 50% in bonds, 1 year to recover.

OP was encouraging you to separate your fear from the evidence-backed likelihood that while you may lose a bit in deliveraging, there are also gains to be had in the 10-year term.

If you're feeling that things are fragile right now, adjust your allocation to something more conservative, take a two week vacation, listen to some mindfulness podcasts to calm down, and then think through where it might make sense to put 10% of your bets on 10yr+ plays.

<comment><USER14> The last 10 years of "recovery" have themselves been on the back of more and more credit and leverage. Pointing to them as some sort of proof that the system is not fragile is an error. The system has much more debt than it did in 2007 and is more fragile than ever. The stock market recovery that comforts you was partially due to central banks such as the BOJ and SNB actually buying stocks. That is not normal. What happens if they need to unwind those positions?

Sometimes people discuss things at a systemic level, rather than a personal level. The person you are lecturing to deleverage may be debt free, with $5M in Gold in a vault, but still be wistful of a less fragile world economic system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an alarmist article that ignores lots of important details and vastly oversimplifies things.

For example, few people realize that one of the largest owners of US Treasuries and US government sponsored enterprise (i.e., Fannie, Freddie, and Ginnie Mac, or collectively the GSEs) debt holdings is... the US government itself, via the Federal Reserve. As of yesterday, the Fed _owns_ and _is earning interest income_ on $2.3 trillion of treasuries and $1.9 trillion of GSE debt.[a]

In other words, the US federal government and GSE-guaranteed borrowers owe $4.2 trillion to... the US federal government itself.

Among other things, this means the US treasury is currently paying annual interest on $2.3 trillion of US treasuries to the Fed, and at the end of the year the Fed hands over all that earned interest to the US treasury, in perfectly circular fashion.

This startling fact is just one of _many_ \-- many! -- important details about modern monetary systems that are generally poorly understood by the public and which are utterly ignored by this article. Don't waste time reading it.

[a] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm#...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm#h41tab1)

<comment><USER16> It was hard for me to gauge what percentage of total debt that is, so a quick search indicates that by end of year 2018 the US government debt is going to be 21.4 trillion.

Roughly 20% of US government debt is held by itself.

<comment><USER17> According to the national debt's Wikipedia page 5.7 trillion is owned by the government. That ends up being about a forth of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm sure I've complained about this before, I'd love to read a similar article to this that compares two quantities that share the same unit. Debt is in dollars and GDP is in dollars per year. Those are different units.

For example, tax revenue versus debt service payments -- or where are the debt service payments actually going? Or future debt service vs future tax revenue under different scenarios. Or for that matter, what are the actual constraints to borrowing and how can they change.

<comment><USER19> Yes, you've complained about it before - more than once. (At least, someone has - I don't specifically remember if it was you.)

And it's a valid point. The units are wrong for them to be compared.

And yet, it's only half of a valid point, because the only thing people are doing with that ratio is comparing it to the same ratio for other years or other countries. The number can be dimensionally wrong and still be useful to use in that way.

Why would the number be useful to use in that way? Well, it seems intuitively reasonable to say that the bigger an economy is, the more debt it can carry without the debt burden being any more of a strain. The US can carry more debt than Vanuatu can, and not because the US government is more credit-worthy. So scaling the debt by GDP makes some sense.

And, in fact, dimensional analysis can make sense of this. Let's say the GDP is $10 Trillion. Well, it's not really $10 Trillion, it's $10 Trillion/year. If the debt is $30 Trillion, then the ratio is $32 Trillion / ($10 Trillion/year), which equals 3.2 years. That's how long it would take to pay off the debt using 100% of the GDP (which of course never happens, but it's still a measure of how much of a load the debt is). So when you see them report that debt is 320% of GDP, what they're really saying is that the debt load is 3.2 years.

<comment><USER20> This is also a good point.

But it's not as easy to interpret as you say. The currency, maturity distribution and interest rate of the debt are all important. If the average maturity is 20 years for 1%, it's completely different from 3 years and 5 percent.

Differentiating debt in foreign or domestic currency is even more important. In the US and Japan all government debt is in local currency. It's completely different problem from countries like Venezuela or Argentina that have also debt in foreign currency. Hyperinflation occurs only in countries with large debts in external currencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _After all, how can officials from the Federal Reserve to the Bank of Japan even pretend to know how to reverse what they've done over the past decade?_

As I understand the US Fed plan, treasuries bought under QE would be allowed to mature without buying replacements. These assets were purchased with a variety of maturity dates. In other words, the bonds simply disappear on their own - not all at once but gradually.

The problem in Japan is much worse because the central bank has bought ETFs directly and is now a major holder.

[https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/BOJ-is-top-10-shareholder- in...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/BOJ-is-top-10-shareholder-in-40-of- Japan-s-listed-companies)

Any unwinding of the BOJ position would lead to major disruptions.

<comment><USER22> > Any unwinding of the BOJ position would lead to major disruptions.

That's just pushing the inevitable. A lot of stocks went up because of debt. Those stocks needed to come down. In a real capitalist system, the companies with declining stocks would be replaced by new ones. But BOJ intervened (for good reason) and now they are in a painful slow decline.

Pull a bandaid quick vs pull it over time!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow. I assumed global deficits were approx $50T in the QE-era. With Global World Product (GWP) ballpark $75-100T. And annual global growth rates averaging 3-4% in good times.

Even with old numbers. And the assumption interest rates will remain below historical means. There is the possibility creditors can never be paid back.

But with these new estimates of 3X leverage? Time has come to think seriously about debt relief and cancellation. Not top down this time, but bottom up. Starting with direct injection into student loans, home mortgages, medical, small business loans, etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> this is a bad article

it harps incessantly on debt, throwing out scary, big numbers ($250T! $40T in china!) but doesn't explain why increasing government debt is an issue

there is a reason to worry if the interest rate on the government debt is larger than the growth rate of the economy

currently that average interest rate is below 3 percent [1], so for any countries with >3% economic growth, it really doesn't matter - they'll be able to make their interest payments to one another (most big holders of gov debt are other govs themselves)

financial and household debt is down across developed economies, and corporate debt is about the same as it was in 2008

furthermore there is no discussion of what could trigger a debt collection death spiral/meltdown, other than "the world's second largest economy is now coming to terms with rising corporate defaults", backed up by 0 context or data

the real worry would be continued slowdown in GDP growth ala "secular stagnation" that many prominent economists are exploring - if you're not growing your income, you can't pay down your debt, and you have to start cutting costs (healthcare, education, defense)

debt has a bad connotation and is easy to sensationalize, so articles like this get attention, but there's no news, argument, or takeaway to be had from reading it

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/opinion/on-the-debt- non-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/opinion/on-the-debt-non- spiral.html)

<comment><USER25> >> currently that average interest rate is below 3 percent [1], so for any countries with >3% economic growth, it really doesn't matter - they'll be able to make their interest payments to one another

What does 3% economic growth mean? Is it measured in terms of that country's own currency? But isn't that currency's value inversely proportional to the amount of money which was borrowed from the Fed? So the higher the interest rate is, the more new money the government has to borrow from the Fed in order to pay back its old debt, the less the currency becomes worth, the less meaningful this 'economic growth' percentage becomes (because that growth is measured in this fast-deflating currency). This seems to be mind-numbingly complex.

<comment><USER26> > Is it measured in terms of that country's own currency?

No. The obvious makes that a useless measure. GDP is used, modified to ignore what government factions like to conveniently manipulate or modify. Lumping in tech stocks and pharma was the latest trick in the USA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I see no intention from governments of ever paying off that debt. All I see, worldwide and US is more and more spending. At one point in the future we won't be able to pay for it anymore. So, what happens if everyone finds out they're not getting their money back? i hope we never find out.

30% of US debt is owned by intergovernmental agencies: like Social security/medicare/military retirement funds - so that might go down the tubes.

The other 70% of US debt is public debt, of which almost half is owned by foreign governments and investors.

[https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national- debt-33...](https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-debt-3306124)

<comment><USER28> If governments paid off their debt, there would be no money. Money IS debt.

<comment><USER29> you keep posting this all over the thread, but it's not true.

money requires no interest payment.

debt does.

<comment><USER30> There's a very interesting explanation on why you can consider money as being debt by Paul Grignon [0].

Of course, there are critics of this view and it's not necessarily 100% correct, but it does seem plausible.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The current system seems extremely fragile to me; it's as if the tiniest miscalculation in terms of government debt versus economic growth could set a country on an irreversible course to hyperinflation (with respect to other countries' currencies). It seems ridiculous that governments have the power to seal the financial fate of their citizens in this way; irrespective of the actual economic output of those citizens. I think this makes a strong case for cryptocurrencies; citizens should be allowed to choose a currency which reflects their own level of financial discipline (and not that of their government).

</comment><comment><USER31> The difference between debt-money and value-money is that debt-money is supposed to originally be backed by cashflows of value-money but is really paid back by an ever expanding amount of debt-money.

In other words, things are getting more and more leveraged. The amount of money to actual goods and services is exponentially increasing. So the value of money steadily decreases and we get inflation.

The danger is that this money evaporates as people default on loans.

As long as interest rates are low, people don't default very much, but as they rise, the defaults happen.

Why do central banks need to raise interest rates at all? It just leads to a bloodbath as some loans get renegotiated.

Why not just have one predictable interest rate like Milton Friedman spoke about?

It seems to me that the central banks fix the next crisis by QA and low base interest rates. Why not just keep them low and let people default for actual reasons, instead of having a terrible time taking out a loan during high interest rate season?

If our money supply is going to be so debt based, why raise base interest rates? To "reload" so you can swoop in and save people from a money supply crunch you induced?

</comment><comment><USER32> > Because of that, the fretting about the Fed's current balance-sheet runoff > plan is almost comical. There's simply too much debt in the system and no > clear path to truly paying it off. Not even central bank officials are > pretending they'll shed all their holdings — estimates fluctuate around > ending at $2.5 trillion.

I thought that the plan was to eventually inflate the debt away. But maybe that's just cynical conspiracy theory.

</comment><comment><USER33> I remember the national being a huge issue in the 80s (and probably before). This send like important and scary reporting but I'm not sure how this time is different from all the other alarm bells over the past 40+ years.

Is this a case of people calling wolf or is this a real crisis just decades in the making?

<comment><USER34> This isn't about national debt but global debt. The US national debt at present is not much of an issue because the dollar is strong and interest rates are still quite low. The risk is for less economically strong countries who are susceptible to changing foreign interest rates / exchange ratios.

<comment><USER33> > no one is quite sure what happens when a global superpower like Japan > reaches a debt-to-GDP ratio of 224 percent. The U.S., U.K. and France have > all surpassed the 100 percent level

It sounds like the author is nervous about the rise of US debt as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Debt relative to GDP according to the chart shown in the article went up 14% in a decade from 280 to 380 trillion, which does not seem that bad imho. Relative debt is more important than nominal debt.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is a bit older but good background presentation by Richard Duncan: [https://vimeo.com/101487179](https://vimeo.com/101487179)

PS: Ignore the title

</comment><comment><USER37> "The system is insolvent. No one knows what to do next — except repeat the insanity till the next bubble blows. That'll be the one. The big one."

— Gekko, Wall Street 2, 2010

#thewayoutisup

</comment><comment><USER38> Would it work if all debts on Earth were simultaneously erased by creating the relevant amounts of money?

</comment><comment><USER39> Why is there no mention of India?

</comment><comment><USER40> Isn't that $35K for every man, woman and child alive? How can that be?

</comment><comment><USER41> To truly understand how bad it is, we would have to analyse the 250T figure in more detail.

There is a "free debt" component to it which was generated via seigniorage[1] and "real debt" to people, companies and other economic actors. It seems to me that many commenters here see only one part of it.

To illustrate it, let me give you an example how "free debt" can be generated by a government. Imagine for a second that we have one world government (WG) and one world currency. And assume that we are in a peace time when collective world productivity grows 3% every year. World's central bank (WCB) targets 2% inflation. Also assume that velocity of money[2] is constant and in general people's behave the same in time. This effectively means WCB can "freely print" 5% of new money without causing any real problem. But who should get the new money? Instead of simply printing it and directly giving it to someone, they have pretty sophisticated/obfuscated mechanisms how to introduce the new money to the system. Typically part of that new money is given to the WG in exchange for WG's bonds. The new money is effectively introduced as an interest-bearing debt. But please note that this debt is "free" for WG. WCB will never want to repay the debt (by allowing WG's debt to always roll over). And also note that WCB is part of WG. That means the collected interest WG formally paid to WCB is then given back to WG.

Of course WG can also sell bonds to people, companies and other actors. This debt is the "real debt" which must be paid back. But let's assume WG is prudent and does not do that.

You can observe that WG can continue this as long the world productivity is growing better than -2%

The problem with "free debt" comes when the growth is even worse (e.g. in war times) or when velocity of money gets faster suddenly (or there are other inflation pressures or shocks). WCB should reverse this mechanism in this bad case. It has to "pump excess currency out of the system" by selling its bonds and destroying the currency to hit the 2% inflation target (technically it would do it by not allowing complete rotation of WG's debt).

Of course real world scenario is much more complex than that. And real governments additionally take "real debt" where usual rules apply. The question for us is how big part of those 250T is the "real debt".

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money)

</comment><comment><USER42> What a wonderful article. I think that there are two sides to this coin: the nature of the debt and the nature of the repayment. Even the smallest and most well mannered debt is a problem if there is no path to repayment. And even large, nasty debt is ok as long as the people borrowing have done their homework and have a solid plan to repay. So this article did a great job of profiling the debt but it didn't go into enough detail about the borrowers. If interest rates have been so low, and the borrowers have been somewhat lucid, even this large debt can be paid off without any crisis?

</comment><comment><USER43> Using 150k tonnes of above ground gold, if all of it was minted into currency, would equal +- 100M dollars. Probably not more than 10% is minted currency coins - .999 isn't for currency use. So there is about 10M dollars in existence.

<comment><USER44> 1200 USD per ounce x 16 oz per lb x 2000 lb per ton x 150,000 =5.76E12 USD

5,760,000,000,000 USD, except for the fact that Troy ounces are slightly different than normal ounces. Too lazy to look up.

<comment><USER43> a dollar is 24 3/4 grains of gold.

edit:typo

<comment><USER44> Ah I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Before you read the article, keep one thing in mind, Money IS debt. If there is no debt, there is no money. Another way of looking at government debt is private sector savings.</comment>


Ask HN: Is this coding bootcamp reputable? - <AUTHOR> Aside from online reviews, student twitters, and celebrity endorsements, Holberton School seems sketchy. Should I attend? What worries me:
sketchy marketing: (https://www.reddit.com/user/rizwakhan001) and (https://www.quora.com/profile/Alyssa-Ann-25), (https://www.quora.com/profile/Arundipta-Debnath-1). I think they pay people to answer questions with the same format: long-winded answer, and a "by the way, I suggest this good school called Holberton School!" I couldn't verify these marketers' identity online.
I looked at students' linkedin and github. I can't tell what the code does since no students hosted projects online. Also, it looks like a low percentage of students who started in 2017 actually have tech jobs. I saw some people who ended up with non tech jobs. <comment><USER2> The only thing sketchier than the stuff you linked is the fact that 3 karmaless HN accounts came out of the woodwork almost immediately to defend the school.

<comment><USER3> Well, it's not like we don't talk to each other, Kiren saw the post and shared it online. I'm a student, I started in 2018 and I have a job in tech. I'd be curious to know who else's github he looked at to decide that we don't get jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These existing positive comments who's accounts only have comments on this post are a little eerie.

<comment><USER5> at least they provide a clear answer that yes, you need to worry about shitty marketing.

<comment><USER3> I mean, you're not entirely wrong. Their marketing is often misleading. I don't regret going, but I had a very good friend who attended the school so I knew a lot more than the average prospective student going in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi Harvey! My name is Kiren and I'm a student (and also a software engineer) at Holberton School. Just to be clear, we are NOT a bootcamp - we are a 2-year software engineering school. As downrightmike has said, any career is a marathon. There are a lot of students who come in with no prior experience and do get internships/jobs after the first year, but having had some self-taught experience creating low-fidelity iOS prototypes of an app I was working on before attending Holberton, I know that this won't be the case as we expand into other locations and markets. However, the people with no experience who have gotten jobs after the first year have consistently worked hard for that entire first year building on their basics. In addition, most people who do get jobs after the first year spend months interviewing and focusing on interview prep (algorithms, data structures, system design, etc.). Our application process has been awesome so far at accepting people who are undoubtedly smart and have a lot of grit. Even if we do have students of all ages who come in and get jobs after their first year, we firmly believe that it will take 2 years for students coming out of high school to become full- fledged software engineers. People shouldn't underestimate the work it takes to become a software engineer, and we certainly don't at Holberton.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with me @srinitude on every social media platform (including Github: [https://github.com/srinitude](https://github.com/srinitude)). However, I'm most active on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/srinitude](https://twitter.com/srinitude)).

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi, If this is going to be your intro into programming, codeschools may not be a good first step. They may say you don't need any prior experience, but typically they drop those people out if they aren't doing well so it doesn't mess with their metrics. Honestly, it may take a bit more time, which can be a good indicator if you want to work in this field, is to find out what a local community college is offering for courses and sign up for one programming class. You'll often find that you have time to learn the material and put it to use while being in a classroom setting where the class size is smaller and the instructor can walk you through tripping points. Plus it will be way cheaper. You'll expand your network there too and maybe get a good reference from the instructor who has industry contacts. Any career is a marathon, some people can sprint the distance, most can't. Don't set yourself up for failure from burnout.

<comment><USER8> I took a community college class in programming, and also went to a bootcamp.

The college class had 40+ people in the beginning, maybe 30 at the end, 3 months later. We spent _a week_ on basic for-loops. I was one of 5 female folks in the beginning, and only 3 of us made it to the end. There were some absolutely intolerable know-it-all teenage boys that made me seriously reconsider my interest in programming, despite getting over 100% in the class (through extra credit and curved tests). At the end of the class I had a commandline game, and had no idea how to do anything but basic programming.

The bootcamp I went to was about the same duration. There were ~35 of us, and every single one made it to the end. We were explicitly taught how to work well with each other. At the end of the bootcamp I knew about all kinds of things from databases to css, and had made several complete projects.

I hear what you're saying about community college being a good way to try it out, but it's in no way comparable to a full codeschool course. I think Holberton school is multiple years, too, rather than a standard 3 month program like the one I went to.

<comment><USER7> That is rough. Good job sticking it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Holberton is not a bootcamp, it's a 2-year engineering school. I've worked with alumni and they were excellent entry-level developers, they learn fast and work great in teams.

Bottom line, it's a solid school and I recommend it.

I wouldn't read too much into the tone-deaf positive comments from karmaless accounts in this thread. I think it's just Holberton students eager to defend their school, and creating their first hn account for the occasion. To me it comes across as clumsy, but sincere.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I just found another quora marketer while researching bootcamps... [https://www.quora.com/profile/Shaikh-Bilal- Mehmood](https://www.quora.com/profile/Shaikh-Bilal-Mehmood)

Same answer format, very strange. Now I'm sure they pay people to market online.

</comment><comment><USER10> if there is any doubt, there is no doubt

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi, harveyspec! My name is Robert and I actually went to Holberton School (Cohort 4) with no prior coding experience. I also felt like the school was sketchy when I first heard of it too, because who offers no tuition until you get a job? After attending, I can guarantee you it's not sketchy.

Honestly, I don't know who those people are that you're linking to. I've never seen or met anyone at school with those names, so I don't know what that's about. Every students code is actually on Github, so I'm not sure where you were looking. We host all of our code on GitHub publicly so anyone can see them. A lot of the reason that people who started in 2017 don't have tech jobs (I started in Sept 2017) is because we finished the first 9 months recently and are in the process of interviewing OR decided to move on to the 2nd year of the curriculum.

As for my experience: I had a wonderful time. I started in, as I said earlier, September 2017 with a class size of 35. I ended up graduating the first 9 months at the end of June with a class size of 25. Some of these people went down a Cohort to Cohort 5, and some of them dropped out due to personal reasons. No one was actually dropped from my Cohort due to bad performance. I put in my time and worked roughly 12 hours a day (sometimes shorter, sometimes longer) during the first 9 months at school. This allowed me to learn everything, use it, and commit it to knowledge. I then started preparing for interviews and actively applying during the 3 month break between the first 9 months and the last year. I ended up getting an offer letter before year 2 started, so I took it. Now I have a full-time software engineering job at my current company!

Benefits: I've met CEO's at big companies like LinkedIn and Docker, and I have friends in all of the major companies. I've also met the celebrities that you are referring to, which was nice. I genuinely just find it really exciting to be here at this time and to have such a huge network after going to Holberton.

I do agree with downrightmike though on 1 case: burnout. Holberton will take up LITERALLY all your time for 9 months, so be prepared for that if you decide to attend, but it was totally worth it. It's one giant stamina race, and you are always doing something. And when there aren't any projects to work on, you should be going to meetups and networking. That's what allowed me to get where I am.

Overall, Holberton is amazing (in my opinion) and I realize I am falling into your "long-winded answer" stereotype, but it's just because I like it so much. My suggestion: go through the application process and see if you enjoy it. If you enjoy it, then I think it would be a good fit. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/RobertMalmstein](https://twitter.com/RobertMalmstein)) if you have any more questions.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hi, I totally understand your concern. I moved from Toronto last year for Holberton school and it was a big and scary move for me since I did not know much about the school either besides a couple of articles from online research. I liked their admission process and thats what reassured me to take a leap of faith. Also, when you are making big decisions about your career everything looks like a marketing strategy or a gimmick. Thankfully, my bet for a rewarding career played really well for me. I could not have been happier going to holberton school. Little about me, I have a bachelors in Biomedical engineering and I was working in the mechanical engineering industry and absolutely hating it. I did not like the work and the people and that's why wanted a switch. During research I was considering community colleges and masters programs. My friend(Masters in Software engineering, works at Cruise Automation) suggested that I should go to a bootcamp instead. They are shorter and teach you on the job skills (unlike colleges and universities), teach you major skills like networking, resume building, selling your story, interviewing skills etc. So, I started researching and came across bootcamps like hackreactor, hackbright, general assembly and Holberton School. After a lot of deliberation I decided I wanted to pursue Holberton school. My reasons included 1\. the school does not charge upfront so they have a vested interest in my future and me getting a job 2\. Having not much coding experience I wanted to learn from the basics and take some time to actually have strong foundation and fundamentals. 3\. I did not think that I could learning programming in like 3-5 months only 4\. I wanted to learn to think like a software engineer which takes time and effort. 5\. Its not a bootcamp but a college alternative Needless to say, I went through the first 9 months of the program and I am extremely happy about how this turned out. Last month I started my internship at Zume Pizza(a silicon valley startup) and I use all the skills learned in the program. One thing that I will like to point out is that Software engineering field requires life long learning and Holberton taught me how to keep on learning and how to pick up on new languages fast. Adding on to this I had to briefly attend De Anza college for my visa status (since I am canadian and cannot stay in US for more than 6 months on a visitor visa), I attended 3 classes- Intro to Bash, Intro to C++ and methodologies, Intro to SQL. Whatever I learned in those classes in a semester I actually had covered that stuff in like 2-3 weeks at Holberton. In conclusion, I would not underestimate the work that you have to put into this program. You have to put your life on hold because it is very intense but I would also not underestimate my power of learning in this model. You will be surprised how much you can learn in just 9 months. I completed the 9 months, studied/interviewed for another 3 months before I got my job. Also, if you're unsure that you can be a programmer or not, just do the application process for Holberton because its free and doesn't hurt to just try it out. Coming to your low percentage question- Holberton does not purge out people from the school just to maintain their numbers. Sometimes people don't want to work as an "engineer" but want to learn Full Stack development to complement their career. We had a guy in my cohort who was a game developer before but feeling stuck in his career so he did the program, and now works at Facebook as a Production Engineer(ofcourse his previous experience factors in). UX/UI design jobs really value people with a knowledge in full stack engineering because that helps them come up with realistic website designs. The school cannot control what career trajectory people want to pursue so it has been their own choice. There are a lot of peripheral career paths that people decide to take that don't necessarily have the job title "Software Engineer". I really hope I answered your questions and if you have more feel free to DM me on Twitter. My Identity- LinkedIn- [https://www.linkedin.com/in/suekalia/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/suekalia/) twitter - [https://twitter.com/fallenicicle](https://twitter.com/fallenicicle)</comment>


Chinese stock market crash - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/george_chen/status/617204962817372161 <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently trillions have been wiped out already, this doesn't look good. Bet you Taleb's inbox is flooding with interview requests already.</comment>


Farewell to Craigslist's personals section, an artifact of an older, weirder web - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/farewell-to-craigslists-personals-section-an-artifact-of-the-older-weirder-more-sordid-web.html <comment><USER2> This is a terrible situation for the internet in America.

Lawmakers are simply blind to facts and only want to feed their own egos it seems.

This law is created to curb sexploitation but it will only drive it more underground.

I am convinced that crime has a role in society and a certain level of crime must be tolerated so keep our freedom.

<comment><USER3> > and a certain level of crime must be tolerated so keep our freedom.

Children were being kidnapped. They were being forced to take drugs. They were then being raped. The rapists paid the abductors cash.

The kidnappers openly advertised children for rape in Backpage.

Once some of those children escaped they saw that their images, of them being raped, were still used to sell sex in Backpage.

They contacted Backpage and asked for i) those images to be taken down and ii) for Backpage to stop selling advertising to people who kidnap children and rape them.

Backpage refused. Backpage forced these children to go all the way to the highest courts in the US, because Backpage wanted to defend their "first amendment right" to advertise a service - kidnapped drugged children for paedophiles to rape.

When Backpage lost some of the court cases they put in filters so the advertisers couldn't be quite so blatant. But Backpage also told the advertisers how to evade those filters. "Use words like 'Amber Alert'" they said. Here's what Amber Alert means: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert)

> certain level of crime must be tolerated so keep our freedom.

Do you still think this?

<comment><USER4> I don't think you're responding to the point. The point is that speech-- methods of communication--are being restricted here, which hurts legitimate users and does not prevent anyone from performing these heinous acts.

The whole point of speech protections is that you have to allow people to say things you don't want them to say in order to protect the things you do want to be said.

Going after the speech here is a pandering waste of time that infringes on fundamental rights. The actual crimes here are what need to be chased after.

And the parent's point is a strong one -- why would you discourage criminals from using an open communication medium?? If we can't stop these people when they communicate openly how on earth are we going to do so if we drive them underground? Enforcement, police resources, whatever you want to call it is the issue here. Pushing the communication out of sight and pretending something has been done about the problem is the complete opposite of a solution, it makes people feel like something has been done while making the problem less visible and no more solved.

<comment><USER5> Commercial speech has always been regulated in the us.

<comment><USER6> I think it could be reasonably argued that a personals ad is not commercial speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the first I'm hearing of this law, but is the point that platforms are now responsible for policing whatever content they host? Does craigslist just not want to take on the burden of ensuring there's no sex trafficking on its personals site?

On the one hand that seems fair- but suppose craigslist is doing all it can to police its site, at a certain point criminals can outsmart them by using secret codes or other less obvious subversion tactics. At what point is it clear that a website is doing enough to police itself that it won't be liable for criminals who are going to great lengths to outsmart them?

<comment><USER8> As I understand it, that's the problem: there's no "enough" self policing. If your site is home to sex trafficking, you're liable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find this 'new' web far more weirder, but it's probably just me...

</comment><comment><USER10> People need to think forward: When Musk's satellite network gets going, what laws/rules are going to govern it?

I know I don't particularly want individual nation states putting their stamp all over that.

Some people have been saying: You need control of the physical layer.

We're about to get a new physical layer. How do we want that run?

<comment><USER11> It'll be handled the same way it is now. The services you access through the satellites will be the same as they are now, and regulated by the same laws.

Unless you plan to launch all of your servers into space as well, a new physical layer does t make any difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I dont think that this is the way to curb sex trafficking nor do I agree with this decision, but I think most people would agree that 99% of the "personals" activity was ads for sex workers. If this is legitimate consenting adults partaking that is their business. Here in Houston, however, there _is_ a problem with sex trafficking. I dont think this will fix it, but I dont know that it will make it worse either.

</comment><comment><USER13> Still open for Craigslist cities outside the USA.

<comment><USER14> So I guess there is a market opportunity for a small nation to create 25 "cities" named "Los Angeles", "New York", "Chicago", "San Francisco", ... so that people can run personal ads in the city of their choice. Sort of a 'mirror country' :-). Add in a VOIP provider that lets you provide country phone numbers that re-direct to US numbers and voila, your first "portal country" as a way to hack US internet law.</comment></comment>