Bernie Sanders Vows to Curb Wall Street by Purging Federal Reserve of Bankers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/23/bernie-sanders-wall-street-federal-reserve-bankers <comment><USER2> The Federal Reserve _is_ a bank; in fact it's the central bank of the United States. Removing banking professionals from its governing board sounds a bit foolhardy.

Whom would he replace them with--political cronies? social justice activists? people with degrees in finance but no banking experience?

Sanders is great at these populist sound bites, but I don't see a lot of substance behind what he is saying. Like sort of a left wing Trump.

<comment><USER3> Amaericas banks & banking system are a joke.

You could put a trained chimp in the fed and get better results just from which paperwork the thrown faeces landed on.

It's hardly surprising he wants to replace the people involved.

<comment><USER4> So wouldn't it help to hire people with more expertise than chimps?

<comment><USER3> When the expertise in question is what's given you the current system, no.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Should Probably Stop Using Antibacterial Soap - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2014/01/five-reasons-why-you-should-probably-stop-using-antibacterial-soap/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=01032014&utm_content=surprisingscienceantibacterialsoap <comment><USER2> I don't know anything about the other points, but point #2 is conflating antibacterial and antibiotic. Soaps that contain antibiotics definitely contribute to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and thus should not be used. But soap that is merely antibacterial without using antibiotics will not cause bacteria to become antibiotic-resistant.

<comment><USER3> I remember seeing a comment on reddit about this a few years back. It went something like:

"If you put a poison in the air in hospital nurseries that kills 50% of babies, after enough centuries you'll have a human population that's resistant to the poison. But if you go in there with a flamethrower you'll just have a lot of dead babies because, well, it's a flamethrower."

Alcohol-based solutions that are anti-bacterial dissolve the lipid membrane around the bacteria. They can't really develop a "resistance" to this.

<comment><USER4> That is about the most awful casual analogy I've ever heard. I doubt hurt was intended, but do be aware that many people have lost children and would find this hurtful.

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry for whomever you have in mind, but I absolutely reject the mentality that non-bullying humour must be curbed in case someone might have their feelings hurt - especially the kind of hurt where people _take_ offense where none was intended.

<comment><USER6> People are not taking offense.

People are grieving and gently pointing out that perhaps other analogies might be better. There's no ranting nor pitchforks. Just a polite gentle reminder that the loss of a child is an incredibly traumatic thing.

That's a reasonable point. The analogy isn't so amazing that it is crucial to understanding. It cod easily be tweaked.

I would have used it unmodified, but now i will try to change it to avoid dead children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never used antibacterial hand soap precisely because I assumed it would somehow contribute to bacterial resistance, and because humanity survived just fine with regular hand soap in the bathroom for centuries. Having said that I've recently been given a bottle of it. Maybe I'm overthinking things, but is there any way to dispose of this stuff in a responsible way?

<comment><USER8> I've had a hard time finding liquid hand-soap _without_ triclosan in it.

<comment><USER9> I just reuse a foam soap pump bottle and fill with about 3 or 4 parts water to 1 part plain dish washing liquid (non-antibacterial, of course).

I consider foam soap to be one of the great advances of the past few decades.

<comment><USER10> A friend told me they did this recently, and I argued to her that it was a bad idea. It's going to sit around for however long with all the baddies in it multiplying, and then you're going to smear it all over your hands to "clean" them. This was my feeling mostly because she had made it with just tap water and dish soap, but I imagine even boiling the water first wouldn't stop this happening as it's going to sit around as still water for weeks/months or even longer.

Maybe I was over reacting a bit, I'm admittedly not sure how store-bought foam soap is produced. I just search around quickly and see that the prime ingredient in most foam soaps is (unsurprisingly) water, but they're also pumped full of other stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've never used anti-bacterials, not when it got introduced into dish-washing soap, and not when H1N1 created a ridiculous scare.

This is one of those things where I take the elitist path and my palm hits my forehead at high velocity.

Disease, illness, death, it's all a part of life, and some ridiculous washing ritual which consumes a significant portion of your daily thought process will not keep any of it at bay. I know hypochondriacs and obsessive cleaners who are sick almost year-long, who almost die every time a cold hits their town.

But it's a tough sell, living life _on the edge_ like that. Isaac Asimov has gotten pounded these last days, but this scare is another symptom of what he predicted: Man has taken further steps away from nature. This is another aspect we fear, one the majority does not understand as anything except _what kills us_. Truth is, in my opinion, sickness is what keeps us alive.

<comment><USER12> > Disease, illness, death, it's all a part of life, and some ridiculous > washing ritual which consumes a significant portion of your daily thought > process will not keep any of it at bay.

My understanding is that washing really does help to keep these things away, and washing with soap helps more; it's not a ridiculous idea that a different kind of soap could be even more effective, and antibac soap takes no more effort than any other kind.

And I am totally in favour of making disease, illness and death be as-small- as-possible parts of life, and not parts at all, if possible.

<comment><USER13> Being overly clean leads to allergies, many people surmise, because low-level dust/pollen/allergens are never properly introduced to develop the immune system. So, there's a difference between drinking dirty water and being OCD around the house. Clearly, we want surgeons to maintain sterile operating theatres. Its not clear we need sterile environments in every walk of life (where the skin is not broken, and the immune system not already compromised...etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Points 3 and 4 are reasons why I should stop using antibacterial soap. But the others are reasons why _all the rest of you_ should stop using it. There might still be some benefit to _me_ if _I_ use it.

This is why it's important for its removal from soap to be public policy. We only benefit when we all stop using it. If I stop using it, but everyone else continues, I gain nothing (excluding reasons 3 and 4). So I have no individual motivation to stop.

(I hope it's obvious that I intend "I" in some sort of generic sense in the above.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Soap was fully functional a few thousand years ago: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_soap](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_soap)

Everything since has just been feature creep.

I use a single type of bar soap around the house for washing my hands, showering and shaving. Works just fine, not to mention probably saving me a pretty penny every year. On top of that, the dry skin problems I had with liquid soap are gone.

<comment><USER15> _On top of that, the dry skin problems I had with liquid soap are gone._

I would point out that soap, by its very nature, removes oil from skin (including sebum) "drying" it out. You may have been using an overly harsh (read: effective) liquid soap, but for many people, all soaps will dry out their skin to the point where they could use something like lanolin to rehydrate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Things like this always reminds me of the way the Romans poisoned themselves with lead pipes for centuries. What modern equivalents to this do we have? Soap? Cell phones? Sitting? Who knows. There have to be plenty of things in the modern world that we aren't yet fully aware are killing us over time.

Having said that, now that I've Googled the Roman lead pipe fact I learned in High School I have found that to be in question as well, so really I don't know what to trust ever.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is question everything.

<comment><USER17> Augustus died in AD 14 at the age of 75, and Vespasian died in AD 79 at the age of 69, and these were just emperors whose longevity I happened to recall.

Neither were considered to have many (any?) symptoms of lead poisoning either, so I am somewhat skeptical of widespread significant health effects from their use of lead pipes.

<comment><USER18> I don't know the data there either but considering just three people who led rather exceptional lives among millions of others isn't a great way to draw a conclusion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This presents an interesting marketing issue. What do normal soaps advertise as. "Non-anti-bacterial soap"?

I've found it exceedingly difficult to tell whether commercial soaps are antibacterial or not, because flaunting the opposite of antibacterial makes the soap seem ineffective.

<comment><USER20> >I've found it exceedingly difficult to tell whether commercial soaps are antibacterial or not, because flaunting the opposite of antibacterial makes the soap seem ineffective.

Soaps and products containing triclosan are considered over-the-counter drugs by the FDA, so any soaps in the US containing triclosan are required to list it as an active ingredient in the "Drug Facts" box on the label.

Source: [http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm205999.ht...](http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm205999.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Antibacterial soaps have the potential to create antibiotic-resistant > bacteria.

This is probably true. But do soaps in general have the potential to create soap-resistant bacteria?

[http://consumer.healthday.com/general-health- information-16/...](http://consumer.healthday.com/general-health- information-16/hygiene-health-news-396/briefs-12-26-univ-at-buffalo-certain- germs-that-cause-common-infections-may-linger-on-surfaces-and-objects-for- hours-683416.html)

Well-cleaned surfaces are now known to harbor strep bacteria for months. Perhaps this is (to some extent) because bacteria has adapted to stick to materials much better than before we used soap?

<comment><USER22> How long until my Nest thermostat activates UV-spectrum functionality (in yet to be sold LED bulbs) when I'm away to break down surface bacteria?

<comment><USER23> Also to break down your furniture surface. UV is used in medical laboratories at the end of the day to disinfect surfaces. If you are germophobic you can create similar setup in your house right now. Not LED based though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't the skin whole ecosystem of bacteria? Killing all of them often and efficiently may destroy power balance between different species of bacteria and by accident allow more harmful bacteria to win the power struggle. Something akin to when you take antibiotics that kills of bacteria in your intestines ending up with messing up your internal bacterial ecosystems entirely and giving you a condition that is recently most successfully treated with fecal transplant.

You probably had to bathe in antibacterial soap to do that but still..

<comment><USER24> Our environment is full of bacteria. Our body is capable of having bacteria inside.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange- but...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true- humans-carry-more-bacterial-cells-than-human-ones)

But when the immune system is not capable of handling them, you become sick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I already knew about the bacterial resistance issue, but I wasn't aware that triclosan was known to be an endocrine disruptor in animals. That's a significant additional risk factor.

</comment><comment><USER26> Proper hand washing techniques say to wet your hands before applying soap, but I rarely see people doing that.

<comment><USER27> Sources, cite?

If you are washing grease off your hands then you actually do want to apply the soap/washing up liquid first.

In this way the grease-loving end of the whatever-it-is molecules stick to the grease before the water-loving end gets to adhere to water. You can then remove the grease from your hands using less soap and with less water.

Also you should _always_ silently sing the happy birthday song to yourself whilst washing your hands to make sure enough friction goes on for long enough to get the job done...

<comment><USER28> The CDC:

[http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/when-how- handwashing.html](http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/when-how-handwashing.html)

World Health Organization:

[http://www.who.int/gpsc/clean_hands_protection/en/](http://www.who.int/gpsc/clean_hands_protection/en/)

Mayo Clinic:

[http://www.mayoclinic.org/hand- washing/art-20046253](http://www.mayoclinic.org/hand-washing/art-20046253)

WebMD:

[http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/cold- prevention...](http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/cold-prevention- hand-washing?page=2)

American Red Cross:

[http://www.redcross.org/prepare/location/school/flu- preventi...](http://www.redcross.org/prepare/location/school/flu-prevention)

<comment><USER27> Call me a precocious five-year-old, however, _why_?

I read that doing so minimises the risk of irritation, however, isn't that the same as locally diluting the soap? Is that the only reason?

<comment><USER6> Some people are expected to wash their hands a lot, many times a day. These people need to a oid irritation because that defeats hand washing.

"When is clean too clean" (or something like that) is the CDC document.

I've also heard that wet hands then soap makes for better coverage. I'd think that either way would work the same if peoe took enough time and effort with washing.

I would really like to know - with science - what the best method is. I suspect that at one point someone had to write a set of instructions and so that's what we've been doing ever since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How about antibacterial toothpaste? Some have triclosan (Colgate), some do not (Crest). Is this a concern?

<comment><USER30> Just use regular toothpaste. Use Listerine if you are that concerned about germs in your mouth.

<comment><USER29> I thought I was using regular toothpaste. I didn't know Colgate had triclosan until I read it in another article about antibacterial soaps and their risks. The box does not say "antibacterial". Unless you know what triclosan is (I didn't), there's no reason to believe you are buying antibacterial toothpaste.

It does say "Antigingivitis" on the box, but that does not necessarily imply an antibacterial toothpaste. Crest also says "Antigingivitis", but they accomplish that with stannous fluoride rather than something like triclosan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If it's so bad why are they waiting to 2016 to ban it? Aren't there people who are forced to use this like food workers and hospitals? Not to mention schools, public bathrooms and people who just don't know any better buying it for their home?

</comment><comment><USER32> Points 1 and 4 contradict themselves. So triclosan is no better than regular soap at killing bacteria. But the point 4 implies its killing too much bacteria and contributing to allergies.

<comment><USER20> No; point 1 is about effectiveness measured in health outcomes, such as reduced infection rates, not just number of bacteria killed. The article specifies that triclosan soaps do kill more bacteria than regular soaps, but that this doesn't make them more effective at reducing infection rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How come antibacterial soap is sold freely while antibiotic drugs are only available with prescription? If they both create resistant bacteria, both should be under similar regulations.

</comment><comment><USER32> So if regular soap and water is effective against bacteria why can't these companies label all soap antibacterial?

<comment><USER34> The reason regular soaps works is because it removes surface oil and dirt from your hands, which the bacteria binds to. So the bacteria gets mechanically removed from your hands and goes down the drain. And this is very effective.

Antibacterial and antibiotic soaps do something extra of a chemical nature that acts on the bacteria to kill it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> triclosan is also found in toothpaste which is more readily absorbed compared to skin contact.

</comment><comment><USER36> _Recently, researchers from the University of California at Davis and the University of Colorado found that the chemical impairs muscle function in fish and mice and stated the results they found show "strong evidence that triclosan could have effects on animal and human health at current levels of exposure." Beyond Pesticides has provided more extensive documentation of the potential human and environmental health effects of triclosan and its cousin triclocarban. Triclosan is an endocrine disruptor and has been shown to affect male and female reproductive hormones and possibly fetal development. It is also shown to alter thyroid function, and other studies have found that due to its extensive use in consumer goods, triclosan and its metabolites contaminate waterways and are present in fish, umbilical cord blood and human milk. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also found that triclosan is present in the urine of 75% of the U.S. population, with concentrations that have increased by 50% since 2004._ [1]

 _The study, entitled, "The effects of triclosan on puberty and thyroid hormones in male wistar rats," was reviewed by the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and approved for publication in Toxicological Sciences. Researchers measured blood concentrations of testosterone and several other types of hormones and weighed a variety of organs that are essential for rat development and puberty, including the pituitary gland, the testes, the prostate gland and the liver of male rat pups fed an oral dose of triclosan for 31 days. The purpose of the experiment was to determine what effects triclosan would have on concentrations of thyroid hormones and the onset of puberty._ [2]

 _This study demonstrates that triclosan exposure does not alter androgen- dependent tissue weights or onset of PPS; however, triclosan exposure significantly impacts thyroid hormone concentrations in the male juvenile rat._ [3]

Could someone for the love of all things natural please elucidate on how relevant, in general, are rodent studies and fish studies to the physiology and therefore the prophylaxis of humans?

For every two or so multi-year studies done on humans there seem to be dozens, if not hundreds, done on rats, fish and ferrets. /s/

Anatomically speaking, aren't pigs much better candidates, in that they much more closely resemble humans? There have been organ transplants from pigs, right?

[1] [http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=7913](http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=7913)

[2] [http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=1004](http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=1004)

[3] [http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/107/1/56.abstract](http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/107/1/56.abstract)

<comment><USER37> If you get a pig to wash its hands(paws?) on camera, and say "it's for a study" I think they'll give you a igNobel prize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've always thought antibacterial soap was a bit ridiculous. Bacteria are everywhere, most are harmless, and they reproduce rapidly. It seems then that killing a bunch with a soap that "kills 99.9 percent of bacteria" only creates churn in the environment-- unless it targets only the harmful bacteria, which I doubt.

To me, bacteria are just another force of nature like wind or chemicals: harmful or harmless depending on context more than anything else. Table salt will kill you if you ingest 300g of it, but small amounts are healthy. Example with bacteria: E. coli, which is beneficial in its right place (the gut) but harmful elsewhere.

<comment><USER39> You must've made a typo with your salt. 1500 mg is a reasonable daily intake.

Also, with the bacteria it isn't so much where they are as it is that there is usually a lot of variation within each species, with only some of the varieties being virulent.

<comment><USER38> Major typo on the salt. Meant 300g is enough to kill. (You'd have to seriously try to die by salt.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't use abac soap, but I do wash frequently and thoroughly, and that's been enough to keep me out of the grave.

I do keep alcohol wipes in my car because I don't always have access to a sink when I'm out. And let's face it, some people are worse than pigs when it comes to personal hygiene.

<comment><USER6> Do alcohol wipes work againts the bugs you don't want to get? Like noro virus or e coli or etc etc.

<comment><USER40> I don't think triclosan would work well against a virus either.</comment></comment></comment>


How I approach product management in early stage start ups - <AUTHOR> http://gheller.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/how-i-approach-product-management-in-early-stage-start-ups/

<comment><USER2> The title is such a turn off. Early stage startups hardly think about management. You will never see them running around trying to do a management thing. (though they manage a lot - but not the classic way)

Nice points there in blog post. But just nice. One sentence was enough and not-much thought provoking.

Your own suggestion to you: "Simplicity is the key" even when it comes to preaching startup people (one thing they don't like)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interested in getting your two cents</comment>


The inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and a hospitalized employee - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-military-contractor-google-x-employee-collapsed-on-the-job-2017-3 <comment><USER2> "For Joe and the rest of the flight-test crew, that meant 10- to 12-hour days outdoors flying the drones, sometimes in freezing temperatures or while standing in fields of two-inch-deep mud and cow excrement or, at other times, dealing with the Central Valley's infamous 100-plus-degree heat."

I don't understand why takeoff aerodynamics under these extremes (and more extreme, uh, extremes) couldn't have been simulated in a wind tunnel.

Also, couldn't simple ageism have been a factor as well?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why are people with poor performance reviews barred from transferring? You'd think it would be encouraged; someone who struggles in one team may thrive in another.

<comment><USER4> Because that would result in poor performers simply getting passed around ad infinitum. There are companies where this is the de facto policy, and it's pretty bad for all involved.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but if that's the intent, it would be better to set a limit on the number of successive poor performance reviews someone is allowed. Two? Three, maybe?

People underperform for all sorts of reasons, and one of them is a skills mismatch. The fix for that is to find a team where the worker's skillset fits better. And a blanket ban on transfers prohibits this solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always fail to understand why silicon Valley is hell bent on AI for everything, replacing dangerous jobs with machines is good but why everything else? Are everyone supposed to be an engineer at Silicon Valley? I mean if all jobs are replaced by machines, how would someone earn to buy or use Silicon valley's "products". Prices are going up not down

<comment><USER6> What prices are going up because of AI? Prices seem to be mainly going up in places where AI has no effect (real estate, education, and medical expenses seem to be the big ones)</comment></comment>


AWS co-branding guide forbids mentioning multi-cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.crn.com.au/news/aws-forbids-partners-even-mentioning-multi-cloud-529598 <comment><USER2> > AWS _Partner_ Network

> AWS won't even let _partners_ use the word _"partner"_ in some cases. When > it comes to joint engineering or co-development, AWS won't let partners use > the words "partner," "partnership," "partnering" or "alliance," opting for > terms like "agreement," "teamed," or "in cooperation" instead.

The not very cynical take is, the person(s) responsible for this had too wide a mandate to dictate language and went overboard.

The cynical take is that this puts partners into a position where they almost _certainly_ will violate the guidelines. This is like making jaywalking a crime. If you make something everyone does a crime, you can selectively prosecute the people you don't like, so language like this makes it easy to tell any partner offering services AWS doesn't like they're violating the rules.

The conversation will go something like this:

(Satire follows.)

Partner: How can we get right with AWS?

Amazon: Well, easy, you just need to stop advertising that you're partners.

Partner: So after we went to the effort of forming an agreement with Amazon and becoming partners, we can't advertise it? Advertising our services as partners helps drive new customers our way!

Amazon: Well, that seems like a _you_ problem. It's plain as day, the rules say you can't advertise yourselves as partners in the AWS Partner Network brand guidelines.

Partner: What about $other_partners?

Amazon: We can't comment on our relationship with other individuals or businesses, have a great day!

<comment><USER3> Here is the thing. The word "partner" is legal velcro. Amazon does _not_ want a judge to determine that you are a PARTNER of Amazon's in the legal sense of the word. Even calling it the "Amazon Partner Network" is profoundly stupid, IMHO.

Partner means a different thing in contract litigation than it does in casual English usage.

<comment><USER4> Why don't Microsoft Lawyers know this?

[https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/](https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/)

Nor Oracle?

[https://www.oracle.com/partners/index.html](https://www.oracle.com/partners/index.html)

Nor Google? [https://support.google.com/google- ads/answer/9028757?hl=en](https://support.google.com/google- ads/answer/9028757?hl=en)

The actual reason is that Amazon doesn't want anyone making a buck of Amazon's name. They are ruthless about capturing all the value in a relationship. Amazon does things like require 1+yr free trials of enterprise software and charging for the privilege of not being under NDA.

<comment><USER3> Guess what! My wife _is_ a lawyer at Oracle. And she knows. And guess what else? Marketing owns the wording of marketing collateral, and can ignore the advice of the lawyers, and then the lawyers get to clean up the resulting problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article title and contents appear to be intentionally inflammatory: "AWS forbids partners even mentioning multi-cloud!" Except that's not true. A more accurate title would be "AWS won't participate in co-branded marketing campaigns that promote competing clouds".

I'm not an expert on this topic, and have no familiarity with the co-branding guide beyond having just read it, but it appears to describe the conditions for AWS and other companies to _work together on a co-branded marketing campaign_. From the guide:

> Co-branding occurs when AWS and an APN Partner ... agree to work together to > achieve a shared marketing goal.

I see no restrictions on partners having or advertising multi-cloud solutions on their own. The guide just says that AWS isn't willing to participate in marketing campaigns that mention them. Here is the entire relevant section:

> APN Partners should not promote the use of their solutions on other cloud > platforms _in joint marketing activities_ or in high-visibility assets used > at our events ... The focus of these assets and campaigns should be on > customer success with AWS Cloud. If you prefer not to reference AWS > specifically, you may reference "the cloud" or "your cloud". Booth > collateral, such as data sheets, flyers, and whitepapers may reference all > the specific cloud platforms that the APN Partner's solution runs on. > [emphasis mine]

Thus the article seems to misconstrue the issue, and the truth seems to be merely that AWS isn't willing to participate in marketing campaigns that promote competitors.

</comment><comment><USER6> That article and this HN thread are much more amusing with the Cloud to Butt browser extension installed.

</comment><comment><USER7> The joys of partnering with the gorilla. Amazon are trying to own the concept of cloud, at least in the IaaS space.

With the consolidation to the big cloud vendors, the pain the cloud giants put on their minnow partners are only going to get worse. And I am not sure what can be done about it.

<comment><USER8> > And I am not sure what can be done about it.

In this case the answer is clear: when you build a cloud app, take the effort to make it multi-cloud, so you can bail out when any one cloud gets too domineering, or just too expensive.

This is the primary reason that I'm reluctant to build on Datomic Ions. They have made an explicit decision to build it for AWS only.

<comment><USER7> Sure, But this is about "Partners". Some such as consultants and MSPs. These organisations are typically providing the strategy to less technically savvy companies.

Some others are the technology vendors who are producing the tools to provide higher level cloud management tools. This will limit the ability of these companies to both be a partner and to have promote multi-cloud tools in their portfolio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Your profit margin is my opportunity."

Good luck making smart friends Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't this making the point of why folks want a multi-cloud capable solution?

</comment><comment><USER11> That's life as a vassal. Try asking a Microsoft Gold Partner about Oracle.

</comment><comment><USER12> Meanwhile, at Microsoft and Google events, the corporations trip over their own tongues trying to say multi-cloud too many times in one sentence.

I suppose the #1 player wants customers not to be told that other players even exist, and the other players want to talk about the advantages of using the #1 player and ALSO them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the idea of a single cloud.

The problem I would see is the fact that the service needs to be built as a whole.

In the past when I used multiple cloud services it was very easy to build a single cloud solution and the cost of each version would increase.

In the past I used a single cloud provider to build and deploy the entire AWS ec2-core infrastructure.

It is not too bad for the AWS-core business but I would much rather have a single cloud service built in than rely on one provider.

</comment><comment><USER14> I met with a Rackspace rep _today_ who explained how they can support AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and of course their own cloud, including several simultaneously.

Not sure what this article is referring to but it did not seem to be restricting that particular relationship.

</comment><comment><USER15> That stance is pretty clear when you take into consideration data egress costs, which are pretty high and makes cross-cloud deployments usually more expensive than using the AWS alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER16> Boy, terraform is one of my favorite tools, looks like they are pretty f __ked from a quick google search of the relevant terms.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well they earned it. The AWS platform is a brilliant feat of system engineering.

edit: removed non-citable claims

<comment><USER18> citation needed</comment></comment>


What millenials would do with additional funds - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/what-millenials-would-do-with-additional-funds-2015-6?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20%28Wednesday%20Friday%29%202015-06-26&utm_content=BISelect <comment><USER2> Original survey page [http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/millennialsurvey.pdf](http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/millennialsurvey.pdf)

Interesting question from page 6: "How willing are you to accept inconveniences and a loss of privacy in exchange for better security?" Possible answers are:

      -As long as it doesn't impact me very much I'm
        not too bothered
      -The loss of privacy and some inconvenience is
        the price you pay for security
      -I'm not, privacy and convenience are much more
        important than security
      -I'm happy with it, security is the most important thing
      -I don't care, I just assume the government watches
        me all the time and that's not changing

<comment><USER3> I guess "I will accept inconvenience to maintain my privacy" is now outside the Overton Window? (Or at least outside Goldman Sachs' worldview, or Conor Fitzgerald's.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe millenials have figured out that happiness doesn't lie in having more stuff?</comment>


Germany's trade surplus is a problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben-bernanke/posts/2015/04/03-germany-trade-surplus-problem <comment><USER2> (Disclaimer: I know nothing about economy, and the very little I've read made no sense to me)

I keep reading about how Germany's "zero debt" economic policy is bad for the country, and how bleak Germany's future is. That is, everyone seems to agree on this... except for the Germans, who say nothing about it while they continue being one of the top 5 economies in the world.

Lots of these analysis come from the US, which to me makes even less sense: why would anyone listen to the country who got paralyzed when they couldn't keep getting even more in debt? How come George Soros can suggest[1] that Europe should go to war against Russia as a mean for stimulating the economy, and do it with a straight face?

Every article seems to suggest that German economists are a bunch of amateurs who don't know what they are doing. But from my layman's point of view, it certainly doesn't look that way.

[1] [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/wake- up...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/wake-up-europe/)

<comment><USER3> It's like an algae bloom in an ocean, the German economy is strangling the rest of the Euro zone. If all countries were to exit Euro Zone, Euro would probably be echanged for 30-50% more than it's currently worth and then German economy would tank.

          > Every article seems to suggest that German
            economists are a bunch of amateurs who don't know
            what they are doing. But from my layman's point of
            view, it certainly doesn't look that way.

They aren't amateurs. In same manner, people running Ponzi Schemes aren't dimwitted. It's a great system it benefits German export economy greatly but it does so at expense of others.

Quick explanation: If you have weak currency, it's great for export, since stuff produced here is cheaper than elsewhere. And if currency is strong, then that favors imports, because your currency buys more in outsider market than in yours.

However the more you export, the more valued currency becomes and the more you can buy with your currency, which leads to increased import. But Germany doesn't need to ever grow its imports, because they have other countries like Greece, Italy, etc. to drag the value down.

What Germany is doing is eating its cake, having it too, at expense of other states and then blaming them for not having any cake.

Because Germany doesn't import enough, other countries can't recover and to make matters worse, they can't export since German products based on Euro and of higher quality and equal price.

<comment><USER4> Since the introduction of the Euro, many EU states got money a lot cheaper than they should have, due to their association to the stronger neighbouring economies. That started a completely irresponsible spending frenzy that was well-received by the voting public.

Germany is trying to save the Euro zone, not tank it. The US-based economists claim that it is possible to spend money (take on debt) to kick-start an economy and then recoup that money by increased tax earnings. It turns out that doesn't work any longer. Plus, many contries worldwide are already paying interest on their debt with new debt. And they have zero margin to increase taxes.

Some countries (including Germany, but not including the US) can still make it out of that downwards spiral. The question is no longer, whether the EU will tank. The question is which of the EU, the US or China will default first on their debt. The results will be devastating and capital will flee to the non- defaulted economic blocks.

This is a big political game played over decades. And media-based support of one or the other school of economics is part of it.

<comment><USER5> That problem with you, is your so reflexively focused on government debt that you can't get your head around the fact that most of the Southern countries in trouble DIDN'T HAVE LARGE GOVERNMENT DEFICITS. They had large and growing public debt most of it related to borrowing to buy private assets. And unsupportable wage inflation.

Go look it up, the governments of Italy, Spain, etc except for Greece weren't borrowing beyond their means. What they were suffering from was out of control inflows of cash. Inflows of cash in a country with it's own currency tends to be self limiting, because as money flows in the exchange rate adjusts making investments less attractive. (A country with a well run central bank will actively adjust the exchange rate to prevent the inevitable panic and flight that happens at the end of a bubble, or you have a bubble and it sucks for a while)

Part of the problem with the Euro is weaker member countries can't control the flow of capital into and out of the country. Yet they are on the hook for the mal effects that result.

This is wrong.

<comment><USER4> How does the twin deficits hypothesis fit into your world view? [1]

Capital inflow is due to a trade deficit, that is to a large part financed by government debt (taking in money from abroad).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_deficits_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_deficits_hypothesis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The really funny thing is, that the Idea of the Euro was never well beloved by the german government prior tho 1990. But then, the French demanded (out of historical fear) some reassurings for allwing the German reunification and preventing a dominant Germany in Europe again. That plan has hugely backfired, boosting the struggling german economy after the very costly reunification in the beginning of the 20th century.

In fact, French fear (or envy?) of the Deutsche Mark in the 80s and 90s lead to a legenday discussion between a german and a french state official: "We have to talk about the threat of german nuclear weapons, too!" "But we germans have no nuclear weapons!" "Yes you have. You just call it Deutsche Mark!"

<comment><USER7> Just curious, who said that?

<comment><USER6> The quote circulates through a lot of the german press for about two decades, here for example a international article from Der Spiegel

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-price-of- uni...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-price-of-unity-was- the-deutsche-mark-sacrificed-for-reunification-a-719940-2.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If these were 2 people, then who is the 'problem':

* US with heavy debts?

* Germany with savings?

Germany is in a position to fix its infrastructure, but then again, this can wait until there's a need for job creation.

Also, outstanding tax 'reforms' are more a symptom of weak political influence by corporations, which is a good thing.

Germany isn't the US, and for this reason, it is rich.

Edit: punctuation

<comment><USER9> The US is wealthier than Germany is.

The net _mean_ wealth per adult in the US is upwards of $350,000 to $400,000. In Germany it's half that.

The net median wealth is roughly equal (especially after US housing values have recovered, and the stock market is near all-time highs).

Germany only has $50,000 in net median wealth per adult. They are not that rich. France by comparison is nearly three times that; Belgium is three times that; Australia is four times that; Italy, Japan and the UK are over twice that.

Total assets in the US are upwards of $200 trillion according to the Federal Reserve. Household assets alone are nearing $100 trillion (~$80 trillion net after liabilities).

<comment><USER10> Those numbers are heavily influenced by the value of domestic property. Most Germans rent, for example.

Further, storing wealth in domestic property is a poor use of money.

Edit: If you look at countries by net financial wealth per adult, a quite different picture emerges.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult#List_of_OECD_countries_by_financial_wealth_per_adult.2C_2011)

<comment><USER9> I disagree. The US is the world's most valuable real estate market overall; it's a massive market when it comes to home owners; and it's extremely liquid as far as real estate markets go, with not only a very large number of buyers and sellers but also a massive financial engine behind it (critical for buying and selling).

It's clearly a perfectly good use of money. It has assisted the US in acquiring a median net wealth as high as Germany, while having four times the population, a very challenging feat.

<comment><USER10> The major part of the value of domestic (as opposed to commercial) property is that of the land on which it sits, this is a non-productive use of that land (i.e. the land per se doesn't produce anything, unlike in agriculture). The money in domestic real estate would be put to better use if it were instead invested in enterprises that produced goods or services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a fairly interesting book written by the current finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis on the subject called "The Global Minotaur", he argues that after Bretton Woods the trade surplus of Germany especially vis a vis the United States was by design, as the profits of German corporations ultimately ended up in the hands of Wall Street. On the other hand Europe lacks such a surplus recycling mechanism, which according to him worsened the current economic crisis in Europe.

<comment><USER12> Aparently the current finance minister of Greece has his own idea on how to "recycle" German surplus? At least he has build a congruent worldview that lets him sleep well at night.

The fixed exchange rate 4,20 DM == 1$ in the 1950s is usually cited as helping German exports during the 1950s. During later decades the Deutsche Mark was exceptionally strong, in theory harming German exports.

It's a fallacy to pick and choose events in the ultracomplex global economy and form a story from that. Consider all the fiscal and monetary policies that were enacted by all countries - ultimately success of an economy depends on the intrinsic strength, regardless if it's export oriented, or if it lives happily with a trade deficit like the US.

<comment><USER13> "It's a fallacy to pick and choose events in the ultracomplex global economy and form a story from that."

You are probably right but, this has not prevented the Germans (or, at least, the German press) to create a narrative of how the current situation is due to how lazy the Greeks and the south Europeans are.

I suppose that they have build a congruent worldview that lets them to sleep well at night.

<comment><USER12> Keep in mind that the German press has always strongly supported the ideal of a unified Europe. So, I believe as a tendency they would rather underreport problems (say, financial problems in other countries affecting Germany), instead of giving arguments to EU critics.

I can't remember reading about "lazyness" \- maybe you read too much into it? However the press had a look into the financial conduct of Greece - I hope that's allowed when you're out 50 Billion €?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm from Germany, and im tired of the argument, the Germans should do something about their export.

Export exists, because someone outside of Germany thinks goods from Germany are better then goods from their country.

How to solve this problem? Go and produce better goods urself, instead of crying to Germany to make their goods worse.

<comment><USER15> The strong exports would be self regulating if Germany had its own currency the deutsche mark. If you have the Dmark and people like german cars, germans exports will rise and so will the currency deutsche mark. Like it is now, people like german cars, but germany has the euro so it can export good cars at an almost artificially by the euro cheap price.

Thus the south of Europe is trapped in the Euro as they do not increase productivity as much as the north and in some product cases does not make as good products as Germany.

The European politicians has pretended that all of europe are equal in productivity.

The german wants to sells cars in euroes, but you do not want to support the south permanently financially.

This is like going against the tide, its a matter of time before the Euro will fall.

I just hope Europe will unite in peace after that event.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't have to end like that. I'm pretty sure United States also have different levels of productivity between states and dollar works remarkably well for them.

<comment><USER16> USA have internal transmission mechanisms that even it out. It require a fiscal union or some other big common spending programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's always nice when our American masters tell us what to do with our money and laws.

<comment><USER16> Well, in this case you deserve rebuke, as the current policies are horrible for the world and really bad for the Germans.

Trade imbalances are simply not sustainable, regardless of direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why do macroeconomists focus on single countries at all? I guess you can argue that policy changes (and taxation) can be made on a country level. For many policy decisions this is not as true as it was pre EU. Since I'm a "micro guy" anyway (even though I do enjoy chaotic systems etc.) I am fairly suspicious of the aggregation mechanisms in general. If you aggregate over "what money is used" (which seems sensible if you want to make balance of trade arguments in the traditional, currency based sense) the Euro-zone has close to a +-0 balance of trade. Recently the chart got a bit out of whack shape wise but it's still close to the +-0 now.

I used to be very interested in economics but have grown more and more frustrated with the entire field. I pretty much stick to stuff that's interesting for other reasons (multi agent based modelling, chaotic systems, game theory etc.). As an academic in another field the entire field seems pretty strange. Conflation of politics and economic theory is wide spread and there seems to be a lot of "friend helps friend, outsiders suck" like structures in place. Granted this is the case in academia in general but economics always struck me as rather extreme in that regard.

</comment><comment><USER19> As Paul Krugman has said before[1]

This is a reflection of the following identity:

Current account = Savings – Investment

Basically, Germany is over-saving and both Germany and its trade partners are worse off because of it.

[1]: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/more-notes-on- ge...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/more-notes-on-germany/)

<comment><USER20> There are schools who disagree with this and say Savings = Investment because 99,9% of the money saved is put on the bank where it gets reinvested.

<comment><USER19> Also, think of I=S as the point of where two curves intersect (saving and investment). The point is that the savings curve is way to the right and the investment is way to the left. The curves still intersect though, but so what? That doesn't provide you with any judgement to which way the curves might shift.

<comment><USER20> OK, I think the difference is whether the amount of money is fixed. If it were, global investment would equal global savings.

In any case, it's locally possible to invest more (in nominal terms) than savings, both because money supply is increasing and there are always local imbalances.

Typically, interest rate differentials take care of this in a free market. Reducing the interest rate in Germany would be one cure, another one would be hiking it in the importing countries. So I don't see the blame at one side only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The US trade deficit, many of its finance institutions and its general over- consumption is more of a problem.

</comment><comment><USER22> Often surpluses and deficits are not really problems. Say for example a guy in the US has Facebook stock which has gone up and a guy in Germany has a Porsche he helped make. They swap, both happy but in the trade accounts it shows a big surplus to Germany and deficit to the US because the transfer of shares is treated as investment rather than trade. A lot of the surpluses and deficits are in effect stuff like that.

</comment><comment><USER23> Someone explain to me why the same argument does not apply internally within the US. The imbalance of trade between Germany and other Eurozone partners does indeed create winners and looser. How different is this from states within the US. Since when did the US care about similar imbalances created between Alabama and say California? I'm sure there are arguments against this comparison. I'd be interested to hear them.

That aside, I "feel" (based on living in Germany) that Bernanke is correct with his suggestions of where Germany could move. I don't think it will have much impact on the trade deficit but it will help Germany avoid more drastic emergencies in the future. The pay for workers is out of balance. The investment in infrastructure is not required now but important for its future. Currently it's infrastructure is far better off than other EU zone countries of similar size (and many times better than the US). But if it wants to retain it's significance 20 years from now it will need to innovate in infrastructure or be satisfied with being that country known for making old-world things at good quality. Germany definitely needs policies that encourage investment. Ideally though I'd prefer that not be in housing as stable housing is probably one of the primary social benefits in Germany. But as it stands with its undervalued assets it's becoming a place to be bought by others. Politically this creates interdependence which is NOT a bad thing but ultimately as the undervaluing continues Germans are just throwing away that value as value lost. In a globalized economy if they do not capitalize on it someone else will. Still, none of this will do much for the trade deficit. Because while it may take 20 years for Germany to push some of these changes, change within other EU countries to take advantage of it will take significantly longer. Then again, I'm not an economist so what do I know.

</comment><comment><USER24> The article assumes that if you have a trade surplus then your bridges are crumbling. I cross bridges in Germany everyday and they look OK to me. There are some big projects going on here too, for example cities are burying their ring roads underground. Not cheap. [http://www.dorsch.de/en/news/story/article/licht-am-ende- des...](http://www.dorsch.de/en/news/story/article/licht-am-ende-des-tunnels- mittlerer-ring-suedwest-laeuft-auf-hochtouren/)

<comment><USER25> The only problems would be stuff like the bridges over the Kiel Canal (and the canal itself), and other smaller projects like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't he the one who thinks printing money is a sound economic policy? Pot calling the kettle, I suppose.

Anyway, I don't think there are absolute rights and wrongs in this game. And a game it is, the outcome of which is quite uncertain. The players (i.e. nation states and larger economic entities such as the EU) in this game sometimes act as opponents, sometimes they cooperate but unfortunately they're hardly friends with a common goal or the greater good in mind. Germany's zero-debt policy might very well prove to be the right one once the next few rounds have been played.

Bernanke's criticism has some merit, though. Certainly, Germany's economic policy currently severely disadvantages other EU countries and benefits from their weakness. That definitely is a problem. However, this weakness also is largely self-imposed by corrupt politicians or generally wide-spread corruption. Greece for instance, economically shouldn't ever have been admitted to the Euro but it was nonetheless because of political reasons. This doesn't mean German politicians or Germans for that matter have any right to be condescending towards other nations as they sometimes come across recently. There's corruption and tremendously wasteful spending in Germany as well. Maybe it's just not as severe as in other countries but Germany hardly is a paragon of economic virtue itself. However, they can hardly be blamed for trying to achieve the best for their country first. Why should they draw up economic policies that benefit other countries which - without any accompanying political change on their part - would likely continue as before. Their crisis primarily isn't caused by Germany's strength but by their comparative weakness. On the same grounds Bernanke could advise the US the cut their grotesquely large military expenses and donate some of it to Greece so they can pay off their debt. Not bloody likely either, I suppose ...

That said, Germany is a tremendously wealthy country that could spend a lot more on infrastructure if it wasn't for large amounts of taxpayers' money wasted on pointless stuff and corrupt structures. There have been talks about a proper tax reform for more than 30 years now and by and large nothing has happened. If there's one point of criticism that can be justly made it's that German politics is lacking a vision and is largely guided by cowardice and unwillingness to assume a leadership role. Some of its success in recent years probably was mere luck.

</comment><comment><USER27> Germany was a strong exporter even in the past, with the strong Deutsche Mark. And they save money for the rainy day, so they can invest in R&D and infrastructure as needed.

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery."

\-- Charles Dickens

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm still woefully ignorant about world economics. Could someone do me a favour and answer a few basic questions about this:

1\. Is the trade surplus mainly affected by private enterprise? If that's the case, what control does the German government have over it if the businessmen running the companies would rather save than spend? (Interest rates are already incredibly low.)

2\. I'm personally conservative with money, and never like to get into debt, so from a this naive point of view, I would be very happy to know my country has a large buffer to weather out any oncoming storms. Assuming that Germany's position (saving) is bad for the world economy, but good for Germany, what would make the Germans change their behaviour?

3\. What books would you recommend for a complete newcomer to learn about macro economics?

<comment><USER29> 1\. Higher wages would lead to more expensive (and therefore lower) exports, and to higher consumption, leading to higher imports. The government can cause wages to rise by raising the minimum wage, raising the salary of its employees, and hiring more government workers (e.g. for infrastructure projects).

2\. The assumption that Germany's high saving is good for Germany is debatable. If Germans save more than they consume, some other nation must consume more than they save. Germany has been, and might be again in the future, forced to bail out those countries.

3\. I can also recommend the Khan Academy lectures on economics.

<comment><USER28> 1\. True, that makes sense.

2\. But isn't Germany's position at the moment infinitely preferable to Greece's? Obviously the situation would be better if no bail outs were required, but if they are, I would much rather be the country with the surplus.

3\. Good idea, I've watched a few already but should continue.

<comment><USER29> Suppose two men are in a lake, and one man is on top, pushing the other man down below the water surface.

Is the position of the man on top infinitely preferable to the position of the other? Absolutely!

Is that an argument for acting as the man on top? I wouldn't say so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe Germany shouldn't have cut the solar power subsidies so quickly.

<comment><USER19> The interesting point is that this is a question of ideology - there are plenty of things the Germans would love to spend on, but the government believes that more spending would make things worse. Bernanke doesn't suggest things that he believes are harmful or less good for Germany itself.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, but taking up loans is the wrong way to go about it. If the German government wants to spend more money then it should raise taxes. That's not politically impossible, but maybe there are some obstacles to private consumption of foreign goods and services that can be tackled simultaneously?

<comment><USER19> If the government raises taxes and spends the extra money, it would still have the same effect, but less of it than spending directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The US is simply not producing and exporting anything of value and able to compete with comparable products.

Furthermore not every country in EU is "suffering from Germany's export surplus" \- countries like Estonia, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, ... are doing pretty well and doing better.

What countries are supposedly suffering?

\- Portugal

\- Italy

\- Greece

\- Spain

... aka the _PIGS_ states - have a look at their economic and political history and you will notice they were all ruled by incompetent and corrupted governments.

Berlusconi is still active in policts ... do I need to say more? A lot of countries in EU have issues not due to Germany but due to their very own problems.

<comment><USER3> > you will notice they were all ruled by incompetent and corrupted > governments.

Yes, governments that EU and Germany support because they only care about them doing what they want in foreign arena, regardless of their domestic politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not it's not. Currency is a unity of measure, it's not the foundation of an economy. The real problem with Germany's trade surplus is that is showing how inefficient and backwards are some of the other European countries. What would happen if Italy, let's say, had it's own currency? They would still buy goods from German, they would pay more, plus they would be even more unreliable as a country since the monetary policy would be in the hands of the Berlusconis and such (meaning: huge inflation to monetize public debt).

</comment><comment><USER20> This article could be called "Countries' trade deficits are a problem" with the very same logic.

</comment><comment><USER34> why, when something works well, some people have an urge to change it?

shouldn't it be the other way around?

why not go through Germany state policies and copy working ideas over to other countries?

telling germans what to do sounds like a joke, people should learn from them, not teach them how to do things.

</comment><comment><USER35> No, it is a problem for the rest of us that we cannot make anything Germany wants, at a price it wants.

People, especially economists, love to make macro economy some big mystery (no doubt so that they seem important) when it really can be solved the same way it can be solved on a smaller level.</comment>


Hajnal line - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line <comment><USER2> this recent paper is related:

[https://psyarxiv.com/d6qhu/](https://psyarxiv.com/d6qhu/)

The Origins of WEIRD Psychology

> Recent research not only confirms the existence of substantial psychological > variation around the globe but also highlights the peculiarity of > populations that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic > (WEIRD). We propose that much of this variation arose as people > psychologically adapted to differing kin-based institutions—the set of > social norms governing descent, marriage, residence and related domains. We > further propose that part of the variation in these institutions arose > historically from the Catholic Church's marriage and family policies, which > contributed to the dissolution of Europe's traditional kin-based > institutions, leading eventually to the predominance of nuclear families and > impersonal institutions. By combining data on 20 psychological outcomes with > historical measures of both kinship and Church exposure, we find support for > these ideas in a comprehensive array of analyses across countries, among > European regions and between individuals with different cultural > backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article links to the article on the Western European marriage pattern, which gives as a major explanation the marriage rules instituted by the Roman Catholic church. But weirdly enough, the areas in Western Europe where the pattern does not hold (southern Spain and Italy, Ireland) are deeply Roman Catholic. Does anyone have an explanation for that?

<comment><USER4> Maybe former Islamic Caliphates.

But if Catholicism plays a role:

a) why is Ireland outside?

b) why is the Non-Catholic part inside?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the stretch of the line along the east baltic i see as a result of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Teutonic_Order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Teutonic_Order) . The Teutonic Order east conquest set up a lot of history there that is still being played out almost 800 years later.

<comment><USER4> It would be interesting to know if footprints of past conquests/empires are the reason for the line not correlating with today's borders. At least the two pockets on the south Iberian Peninsula and as well the southern Apennine Peninsula correlate with former Islamic Caliphates.

I wonder though why Ireland, Austria and Venice would be outside. In some respects all of them played central roles in European history (Ireland in Christianization).

EDIT: Just figured out, the drawing is off. If drawn correctly it would include Vienna and Venice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this still true? I've read some eastern euoprean countries are suffering from very low birth rates.

Also interesting the US seems to have a sort of fertility zone right down the middle [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/84g2n5/states_and_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/84g2n5/states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate_in_the/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't want to nitpick, but the drawing is a bit off:

The line as it is drawn excludes Venice and Vienna. Correcting that line to actually overlap with St. Petersburg and Trieste gets these epicenters of European culture back "inside".

</comment><comment><USER7> The drawing makes no sense... there's a triple point in the blue boundary, so there are at least three regions, not two. But the article talks about "two sides".

<comment> dan-robertson The Hajnal line is in Red. The blue lines highlight other regions, as described in the caption of the image.

<comment><USER8> I was confused by the diagram as well. And it's only after reading your comment that I discovered there were lines of two different colors!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: iWagerr | A Twitter app to track and share personal bets - <AUTHOR>

Link: www.iwagerr.com
I made iWagerr after realizing that I had no easy way to track trivial "bets" or challenges that I'd wager with friends on random stuff (say, Manchester United defeating Arsenal, or Butler beating VCU, or Obama winning the re-election etc). I had also come across a post on Quora in which a user mentioned that there was no way to easily keep track of non-financial, trivial bets, so I realized I wasn't the only one with this problem and decided to work on iWagerr over some weekends.
So with iWagerr, you can now easily challenge your friends to a bet over anything, and keep a track of your win-loss record (and earn bragging rights!). :)
Do have a look and let me know your comments on anything (concept, design, problems etc). <comment><USER2> Cool idea; I like it.

I do have a question, though: what if people use iWagerr to conduct financial bets? Where does that leave you from a legal standpoint? I've been considering building a platform that allows users to fund themselves and, for lack of a better word, gamble on games of skill. The problem that _I've_ been having with that is how to make that legal (as casinos, of course, are not).

Where would you be if, as you suggest, I use iWagerr to bet on Butler vs. VCU but have money riding on the game?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I know, there is no issue. Think of iWagerr as a notepad-like web app that simply allows you to _record_ or _track_ all of your wagers (financial or not). There is no money passing through iWagerr (no credit or points system either), just a tally of whether or not you've won or lost bets, so that $1000 riding on Butler vs VCU might as well be 1000 burgers or a trip to the Bahamas.

So to answer your question, I wouldn't have an issue with people using it to track their financial bets (though, admittedly, I'd like them to use it to track their _non-financial_ bets, since those are typically made with lighter, less-serious intentions!).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://www.iwagerr.com></comment>


Ask YC : How to find ideas for a web startup - <AUTHOR>

I have a day job in IT firm bulding "Enterprise Class Application" in Java/J2EE. There is a lack of innovation, creativity and challenges in my current job. I want to do something innovative, meaningful and challenging. So, I am working to start a web startup. But, I am unable to find unique ideas. Whatever I think of, already exists in one form or other.
How do I find an idea? <comment><USER3> You need to work on your it sucks radar. In my experience all software sucks (even what I've written). The user is typically looking for a piece of software where something works, anything.

So everything that you see can be improved. What you want to find our improvements which change the market? Sometimes you can see this before you start working on the problem. I can only see the possibilities when I consider the problem deeply.

So my suggestion is to find a problem that you have, and figure out what is the least that you have to do to solve it. (You really want this to be 1 weeks work). Then develop the solution and figure out how it sucks, and it does, all software sucks. Get feedback from your friends and make improvements.

</comment><comment><USER4> Who cares if something exists? The important question is can you do it better?

Once you get the urge to do your own thing an important stage is to reflect upon your ideas and their feasibility. Once you hit on the right one, you should get a "this is it" feeling. Seeing other sites doing the 'same' thing should just spur you on.

<comment><USER5> Agreed - IMO, until 2 or more players have saturated the market, competition isn't going to necessarily keep you out.

Two other bits of advice:

1\. Find something limited in scope, and build it under constraints. At least to start, assuming that you're going to keep your day job. In other words: can you build something that actually has value, and that you would use, in 40 hours? This is a good exercise for a first startup project, and can keep you from running down a rabbit hole.

2\. Decide if this is a side project or a full-time job. If it is a side project, you can build something you like and help it grow slowly, without worrying about your take-home pay right away. If you're going to quit your day job, the stakes are much higher - you can't rely on slow growth (because your rent/mortgage depends on profit), and you should never rely on explosive viral growth (because it probably won't happen to you, no matter how good you are).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are looking for something absolutely no one is doing then you are going to end up having to open up the whole market on your own.

I would suggest making something that exists, better. Something that people will want and will use because they are already trained to use it.

Go one step further and make sure that it runs on people's system tray as well as on the web, and on a mac, and linux.

<comment><USER7> or in our case, we are applying and combining existing proven technologies into existing markets that haven't used this tech yet. Stay tuned for updates on how well we do, but if we fail it's not likely due to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some people actually blog about ideas they'd like to see: <http://blog.stevepoland.com/>

One way might be to combine a platform (PC/Mobile/Voice) with a communication medium (RSS/Twitter/Video) and think about ways people could use a new combination. For example, Voice + RSS = people 'reading' the web from listening to a phone.

Another way might be if you are using a service already but there is a serious 'feature gap' that you could address, i.e. how to find out what Twitter users are linking to? Sure you would have to de-code tinyurl addresses, what else would you have to do to accurately report that figure? (Idea was suggested by Merlin Mann; he is another guy who frequently posts ideas he'd like to see).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for the help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Agree with timcederman. Pre-Google buyout, there were and still are tons of video hosting/sharing startups. BUT, why did YouTube ultimately take off and get purchased by Google? They did something different/better than everyone else.

In YouTube's case, I argue that they knew how to market themselves. Don't discredit your positioning and target audience. Write a kickass app tailored to what they specifically need. And hey, if it's another video app, how is your version better or more niche than YouTube?

</comment><comment><USER10> Solve a problem, and don't look at how the competition tried to solve it until you've formulated your own solution, then start looking at how your competitors do it. Note that this doesn't mean that you should ignore your competitors; obviously you need to investigate the market potential before you draw up your own plan. Competitor analysis is part of that process.

</comment><comment><USER11> As people have mentioned - who cares if it exists, everything exists in some shape and if it didn't exist, it probably doesn't have a market anyway!

If you can do it better, you can succeed. (though don't try, for example, to create a mail app like Gmail, you will probably never keep up with them!)

</comment><comment><USER12> Paul Graham would say: "Build something people want."

And in your case, "Build Something You Want" (provided it doesn't exist) - <USER2> you'll have more energy to play with too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Partner with someone who has more ideas than you? But beware of "idea guys" who only have ideas and no useful skills.

<comment><USER14> Isn't having great ideas a useful skill?

<comment><USER13> As agotterer says, the problem is with people who only "have ideas". Having an idea and communicating it takes 10 minutes. If that 10 minutes is all you spend on the startup, while the technical guy spends months... it kind of sucks for the technical guy.

<comment><USER15> touche... even though ideas are very important.. ideas by THEMSELVES are useless... Having said that I am totally useless when it comes to "coming up" with ideas.. i am more a builder myself... again, thats a pretty stupid labelling...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists discover new class of semiconducting entropy-stabilized materials - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-class-semiconducting-entropy-stabilized-materials.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Semiconducting High-Entropy Chalcogenide Alloys with Ambi-ionic Entropy Stabilization and Ambipolar Doping

[https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c01555](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c01555)</comment>


Restoring the IBM 1401 - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/restoring-the-ibm-1401/ <comment><USER2> Slight tangent but check out ibm 1401, a user´s manual jóhann jóhannsson

[http://open.spotify.com/album/3ZqqvWwHzoVCxwdsaUaF9z](http://open.spotify.com/album/3ZqqvWwHzoVCxwdsaUaF9z)

Inspired by a recording of an IBM mainframe computer which Jóhann's father, Jóhann Gunnarsson, made on a reel-to-reel tape machine more than 30 years ago, the piece was originally written to be performed by a string quartet as the accompaniment to a dance piece by the choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir. For the album version, Jóhann rewrote the entire score, and it was recorded by a sixty-piece string orchestra. He also added a new final section and incorporated electronics alongside those original tape recordings of the singing computer.

</comment><comment><USER3> The IBM 1400 series is pretty significant in the history of computers and the 1401 was the first of it's line. So why are there so few out there?

Simply put, the average IBM 1401 is comprised of roughly five tonnes of gold- rich salvage material that hit the market at a time when old "new" stuff was basically worthless. Yes, antique chairs and china had value then, but not obsolete technology, records, or film. This was a time before VHS, mass market home video, and the notion that old celluloid was anything besides junk. The only surviving copy of Dreyer's cut of "La passion de Jeanne d'Arc" was sitting in closet in a mental institution in Oslo. This was a tough time to be an inconveniently large hunk rich in precious metals!

Laboriously scraping the gold off of connectors etc. is obviously a lot of work. That's not how the pro's did things. We're talking chemical baths, electroplating, you name it. I once had a prof who moonlighted as a computer salvager in the 80's. He admitted to being the final death of many large mainframes, including 1401's, that he dearly wished he could have saved if he'd known then what he knows now (or did at the time I took his course)!

The worthless becomes the precious. Maybe people with hoarding disorders are saner than we think! (Looking around me, I might have a touch of that myself...)

</comment><comment><USER4> Part of why I love the IBM 1401 is because of how mechanical it is. So much of what the computer does is done in hardware. You can see and feel the machine running.

If you are able, I highly recommend visiting the 1401 exhibit at the Computer History Museum: [http://ibm-1401.info/#how-to- visit](http://ibm-1401.info/#how-to-visit)

The "ibm-1401.info" site is maintained by the IBM 1401 restoration team. It contains nearly everything you'd ever want to know about the machine. It's a pretty dense website, so I suggest visiting these links first:

[http://ibm-1401.info/1401GuidePosterV9.html](http://ibm-1401.info/1401GuidePosterV9.html) [http://ibm-1401.info/IBM1401_IEEE_SSCS_Mag_Jan2010-100DPI.pd...](http://ibm-1401.info/IBM1401_IEEE_SSCS_Mag_Jan2010-100DPI.pdf)

I also really enjoyed learning how to program the 1401. I wrote instructions on how write a "Hello world" in the the "ROPE" simulator environment: [https://github.com/jpf/ROPE](https://github.com/jpf/ROPE)

</comment><comment><USER5> Per his tweets, Paul Graham seems very fond of this machine.

The IBM 1401 seems so primitive that it's strange to think that programming has felt continuous since then, but it has.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522587988451024896](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522587988451024896)

Hearing the fabric-tearing sound of the 1401's brutally powerful printers took me right back. Can't believe only 2 1401s left.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522584973614673921](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522584973614673921)

@alexia The first computer I programmed was a 1401.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522474545073385476](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522474545073385476)

</comment><comment><USER6> Back in the day, I wrote a few machine language programs for that beast directly at the keypunch, including a one-card card deck duplication program.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wished to see more detailed pictures. This was funny:

"Back in its era, it's reported that 1401s ran for over six months before needing service."

<comment><USER4> You can find more pictures here: [http://ibm-1401.info/](http://ibm-1401.info/) and also by searching the Computer History Museum's collection catalog: [http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/?s=1401](http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/?s=1401)</comment></comment>