Ask HN: How do some people build their careers so fast? - <AUTHOR> I was browsing LinkedIn out of curiosity and saw a pattern of people that had timelines that go something like this.
1) Graduated Harvard with degree in [random non-business related major]
2) Worked at [random company] as business analyst for 1 year
3) VP / Director at [multi-billion dollar brand name corporation] for 2 years
4) Seed investor at [unicorn tech company]
I'm just generally curious how people are able to climb like that so quickly. Does anyone know people like this and have some insight into how it happened? Are they just wunderkind that get groomed by billionaires or something? <comment><USER2> 1) Mom wants you to take the time to become an adult and find yourself

2) Dad wants you to develop the discipline of waking up at 8 every morning and cheerfully greeting your company president

3) [multi billion dollar corp] has 5,000 directors, one just retired, and Dad plays golf with their boss

4) An acquaintance from high school/college bacchanalia with richer, cooler parents that just gave him his trust fund without requiring 1) and 2) is starting his seed fund because he doesn't want to wake up at 8 and play golf with old people, and you were fun enough at parties to make the cut. Plus you know directors at [multi billion dollar corp]!

</comment><comment><USER3> With the money one must spend to study in Harvard, they can possibly live forever in a third world country without ever needing to work.

Not to mention that people frequently have parents and build very powerful networks in a institution that all the rich people send their kids to study. I would be actually impressed if they would take any time at all to build their careers.

Instead of focusing on those unicorn people, go get good examples of people for YOU. The ones that perhaps work as hard as you do and have similar outcomes and upbringings, they are the ones that together, you can possibly send your kids to study at Harvard.

The most important lesson I've learned in life is that what matters is how you are viewed and compared to your PEERS, not to how you are compared to someone from a different background than you. It takes a lot of time to build ones career, you will need to fluctuate in many social circles until you finally make it, don't make the mistake that there is a corner to cut.

<comment><USER4> > With the money one must spend to study in Harvard, they can possibly live > forever in a third world country without ever needing to work.

Harvard claims to cover 100% of financial need for attendees. If the situation is similar to MIT, then this really isn't true.

[1] [https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/types- aid/scholars...](https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/types- aid/scholarships-grants)

<comment><USER3> Well you should go to a class in Harvard and make a questionnaire about everyones upbringing and see how diverse the class really is. I bet that it will be horrible and they will ask which yatch do you ride before they are even willing to answer your questions.

<comment><USER4> I went to MIT, down the street from Harvard. We had folks from all over. Among my social circle, I counted folks that grew up poor in poor suburbs of NYC, guys who grew up on farms, a pretty wide range.

> they will ask which yatch do you ride before they are even willing to answer > your questions.

Yachts are really expensive. Like, stupid expensive in terms of total-cost-of- ownership. From the Harvard people I knew, I really think this is false. They might not want to answer your random questionaire because people get annoyed at being asked about their background all the time, but I'd be very surprised to see someone gatekeeping based on owning something so rare.

<comment><USER3> > among my social circle

You could have ended your reasoning as soon as you wrote this. It is obvious what I said is an exaggeration, but it carries out some truth. Go ask around the people in America itself, outside a city like SF/NY, what do they think about it. I'm not even American. That's not what I see/read about. A country with some big time inequality, with little to none social mobility, possibly the worst social mobility since the country was founded. But no, everybody can get into Ivy League.

<comment><USER4> > But no, everybody can get into Ivy League.

I didn't say that. I said that the universities offer scholarships which cover their assessment of financial need. They still have limited slots and are very selective.

> It is obvious what I said is an exaggeration, but it carries out some truth

I genuinely didn't know that you were exaggerating. I thought that was your perception.

We live in a world where lots of things are true in degrees. There is _some_ amount of snobbery at elite US universities and there s _some_ quantity of social mobility. But exaggeration makes it really hard to talk about how much or how little and that quantity _matters_ to understanding the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bill Gates' career trajectory:

\- Access to a computer lab in high school, something not common at all in the '70s, was making small computer apps before his freshman year

\- Attends Harvard, meets Paul Allen (working at Honeywell nearby) and Steve Ballmer (Math + Econ).

\- Gets a chance to pitch Basic (or whatever it was) to a higher-up at IBM, since Gates' mom was on the board of United Way and could arrange an introduction.

There's a lot of stuff that goes unsaid in a LinkedIn profile.

<comment><USER6> He was just very lucky that MS-DOS was chosen in one particular moment. More in the first comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624887)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's the elitist career path of the people from oligarch/aristocracy/magnate circles. Might be quite surprising for someone believing in the US' "rags to riches" myth (dead by now) but it doesn't surprise anyone in countries with strong family clans of various kinds (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden - just replace the Ivy league with Oxbridge, grandes écoles, etc).

</comment><comment><USER8> One surefire way I've seen is to work at a company in which your bosses keep quitting. I've seen people jump from IC to VP over the course of a handful of years.

Another is to start a startup and then get acquihired into a large company.

</comment><comment><USER9> The tallest tree grows from resilient acorns. It also grows from abundant light and water, lack of competition, and good soil.

There's a whole mix of nurture and nature. They don't necessarily have the best upbringing, but some have the ideal amount of bad conditions killing off potential competitors.

Gladwell's book, Outliers, covers all this in detail.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have seen many similar profiles over at linkedin, but i would like to ask you not to get carried away.

They are outliers who, if you carefully observed, had got some stroke of beginners luck or an influence that guided them correctly or it could be any of the many advantages of being privileged.

</comment><comment><USER11> Friends and family.

In many cases they are super-smart too. That's optional. More often they're good at relationships and have a great network.

</comment><comment><USER12> This usually happens when you join a startup that either gets acquired by big co or it becomes billion dollar company itself. They key is to be lucky enough to join rocket ship early, which is mostly luck so most ppl fail.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think we need to plough our own field and not be too concerned with other people's fields...especially in an age when all the best fields are on display.

</comment><comment><USER14> Resourceful parents and/or luck.

Example of the latter:

Plenty of noobs joined the dev scene in London at its most under supplied. They suck at what they do for 70k/y and drop off like flies, the survivors, but a few years later, become managers / heads of / etc.

<comment><USER7> > They suck at what they do for 70k/y and drop off like flies, the survivors, > but a few years later, become managers / heads of / etc.

They suck at staying overtime regularly, commuting daily 1h one way with an overcrowded train costing an arm and leg, and at bearing the pressure from cocaine ingested manager.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Thinglist, my first iOS app - <AUTHOR> http://getthinglist.com/

<comment><USER2> Thought it was going to be just another todo-list app, but actually pretty interesting!

Though the use model might be ahead of it's time, since I don't think most people can interact quickly enough with the app to have this take off (I imagine that the idea is to basically annotate ANYTHING, and keep your notes on it forever) -- I do this often, but not nearly enough to seem like it would be worth it?

App also looks good, go pastel colors

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks very nice! I'd second the comment to be thinking about ways to speed input of things.</comment>


What's new in OpenResty for 2016 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://openresty.org/slides/Whats-new-in-OpenResty-for-2016.pdf <comment><USER2> Looks like this is the slide deck for a presentation. Unfortunately it's indecipherable without the words and context.

<comment><USER3> I think the video is live at here: [http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQ5OTgxNDgxNg==.html](http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQ5OTgxNDgxNg==.html)

Sorry this is a Chinese site, the video is in English tho. IMO, one thing that blocks the spread of OpenResty, is that most of the discussions and materials are in Chinese only. This is kinda like the early days of Ruby. Hope we can have a Dave Thomas for OpenResty soon :)</comment></comment>


Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-cloud-services-demand-up-775-percent-prioritization-rules-in-place-due-to-covid-19/ <comment><USER3> Wow.

First of all, I'm curious to what proportions this is driven primarily by remote office work (O365), videoconferencing streaming, recreational video streaming (does Disney+ run on Azure?), or what.

But second... I'm fascinated by the concept of prioritization rules in place rather than simply raising prices. I wonder if it "looks bad" to raise prices, or if the vast majority of customers already have locked-in prices contractually so that raising prices has little effect. But I'd always thought that with AWS's spot pricing and so forth, that auction-style dynamic pricing was a core feature of clouds.

<comment><USER4> It would certainly look bad, and I think it would potentially be illegal in some states.

[https://consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/price- gou...](https://consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/price-gouging-laws- by-state.html)

For example, Georgia:

> Selling items or services determined by the Governor during a declared state > of emergency to be necessary for public safety at a higher cost than they > were immediately prior to the declaration.

Kansas:

> For any supplier of a "necessary property or service" to "profiteer from a > disaster" by charging 25% or more than the pre-disaster price for such > goods/services.

Louisiana:

> Selling goods/services during a declared state of emergency (within the > designated emergency area) in excess of the ordinary price range immediately > before the declaration.

Mississippi:

> Selling goods and services at above the prices normally charged during a > declared state of emergency (or what was charged immediately preceding the > declaration).

etc.

Also consider that raising prices would itself be a form of prioritization, just prioritizing ability to pay over need.

<comment><USER5> I don't know how I feel about this. In the general case, I feel like price gouging during emergencies is unethical.

But, when there is a non-artificial supply and demand issue, I struggle with the derivative effects of these policies.

My concern is that rather than simply evaluating on the consumers ability to pay (and backwards-looking at prior statements instead of increased go-forward costs), these policies add only one additional criteria: ability to threaten legal issues. Thus, it's only effect is to prioritize government agencies alongside wealthy clients. And that's just governments using force to get better treatment. Which also feels unethical.

But maybe there's a happier and healthier read of the situation.

<comment><USER6> I find price gouging to be perfectly normal and perhaps even desirable during times like these. If the toilet paper prices go up drastically people will not be able to hoard it the way they are doing today.

<comment><USER7> People will still be able to hoard things. The difference is that only the rich will hoard, because everybody else never got the chance.

The normal market logic that high prices encourage extra production doesn't apply during an emergency, when the demand is panic-induced and momentary, and supply changes won't take effect until after the emergency is over.

The actual solution that makes sure everyone gets what they need and theres no hoarding is rationing: limit the number that one person can buy. And that's exactly what most grocery stores are doing.

<comment><USER8> How is rationing working? supply is still not enough and rationing on that basis still doesn't prevent the "rich" from effectively paying straw purchasers to buy the goods they want to hoard. Hell, it doesn't even prevent people from repeatedly making visits to collect whatever is on the shelves.

I'm not convinced the US government, let alone any western government, has the plan, manpower or infrastructure in place to actually take over distribution of essentials in fair quantities.

<comment><USER7> What do you mean? Rationing is working fine in the stores that are implementing it, the problem is that so many stores aren't. My local grocery is rationing paper products, milk, chicken, and eggs, and they're always available if you visit before noon.

There is no supply problem for consumer products. The shortages you see at grocery stores are exclusively because of panic-buying and hoarding, the shelves are stocked right back up to full overnight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Microsoft blog post that the article is using as a source: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/update-2-on- microsoft...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/update-2-on-microsoft- cloud-services-continuity/).

<comment><USER10> After reading this, it seems the headline is a bit misleading.

The Microsoft blog post states: "We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders."

So it's not an overall increase, just in certain regions?

<comment><USER11> Yes, and they also say that if you're hitting quotas, you can try another less congested region. If you have established workloads in a region though, I'm not sure how quickly you can migrate a complex interplay of services to another region-- are there simple tools to do so in Azure?

<comment><USER12> hopefully you are writing infrastructure as code - would be easy then.

<comment><USER13> I doubt they're talking about their compute services. The increases are more likely in Microsoft teams and Office 365. And as far as I know you can't choose a region for those services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why would Microsoft be disproportionately affected by this? Are we expecting similar decrees from AWS and GCP? Or was Microsoft operating with less runway before this began?

<comment><USER15> Working with all three of them, so here's my two cents: 1\. Mostly traditional, "legacy" companies have been hit hard by this. Ones that don't have culture or technology of work-from-home. Those companies use some Microsoft products. Also, Microsoft has been poaching them heavily, handing out trials, bundling licenses and so on. A lot of them don't actually buy stuff from Microsoft, but through 3rd party vendors which have incentives of their own. Some of the end users don't actually want to use AWS, also.

2\. I actually think Microsoft has much less runway. From what I understand, AWS has more modern infrastructure and backend, and they shuffle resources easily around, between services, and I think they have much more in reserve. Microsoft has concentrated much more on the sheer number of regions.

3\. Azure has a strange way of handling quotas, if you ask me. Up until now, once you provision a VM, it is deducted from a quota and stays like that as long as it exists. It has never been an issue to actually power it on (unlike AWS), once you have it. It's not billed, but we always thought it stays like that. Since last week, you can see failures not only when provisioning VM's (even within your quota) but also when starting them. Nevertheless, I also think a lot of users had larger quotas allocated then they actually use. So they just started creating more VMs or other resources (because they could), and the thing came crashing. I think that's just poor planning on Microsoft's side.

But the thing I'm mostly pissed of is the status page. VM's are failing left, right and center and everything is nice and green on the status page. Once you open a ticket, they send you an incident-in-progress report.

<comment><USER16> > _But the thing I 'm mostly pissed of is the status page. VM's are failing > left, right and center and everything is nice and green on the status page. > Once you open a ticket, they send you an incident-in-progress report._

Status pages parroting lies in service of marketing should incur more liability for companies than they do. How does a society discourage vendors from doing things like this?

<comment><USER17> It should eventually fall under consumer protection laws. Failing to report incidents on a status page is like failing to mention trans fat on a package label.

<comment><USER18> It's more like actively claiming "contains zero trans fats!" On the packaging when in fact the product is full of them.

<comment><USER19> Which they do. Your tortillas with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil? Yeah, it's less than 0.5g per serving so they get to say 0g.

<comment><USER18> >Your tortillas with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil? Yeah, it's less than 0.5g per serving so they get to say 0g.

Personal favorite: Tic Tacs are 94.5% sugar yet Tic Tacs can be marketed as a "sugar free" food.

"The Nutrition Facts for Tic Tac® mints state that there are 0 grams of sugar per serving. Does this mean that they are sugar free?

Tic Tac® mints do contain sugar as listed in the ingredient statement. However, since the amount of sugar per serving (1 mint) is less than 0.5 grams, FDA labeling requirements permit the Nutrition Facts to state that there are 0 grams of sugar per serving."

[https://www.tictac.com/us/en/faq](https://www.tictac.com/us/en/faq)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How much excess capacity would a cloud provider typically have (as in %) to accommodate normal peak loads and still have a comfortable margin?

Or maybe that's not something providers reveal, so let me as the sys-admins of this thread: For on-premise resources, what is your % margin of excess capacity reserved?

<comment><USER20> For specific ec2 instance types the excess capacity is sometimes zero, which customers sometimes see. I've needed to swap instant types to get a deploy unstuck or to scale up in the past when capacity didn't exist.

Because of that I always recommend that a project reserve instances to ensure capacity exists when you need it. It's also cheaper, but that risk is important to mitigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting to know how many standard deviations is 775% extra demand from the norm. More than six standard deviations is rarer than a 1 in 506797346 event.

<comment><USER22> Samples getting 6 standard deviations away from the mean can happen 1/6² ≈ 2.7% of the time. You might be assuming properties of the distribution that aren't true.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev%27s_inequality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev%27s_inequality)

<comment><USER23> Isn't that an upper bound? It says that it happens _at most_ 2.7% of the time

<comment><USER22> Yea, it's an upper bound. The actual percentage depends on the distribution and can be anywhere from 0-2.7%. The Wikipedia link has more details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The difficult question is how quickly can capacity be increased and given uncertainty about how long this demand increase will last, does it make financial sense to do so?

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if this is because a lot of companies suddenly have to make a change they didn't feel necessary in the past and now rush to compensate for a lack of planning.

While it technically doesn't matter where you run, there are a lot of choices that have a different answer depending on if you ask your vendor or if you do your own checks and research.

Scaling purely because you needed to scale up would be a different story, and then you're expect overall service demands to go up that steep. This seems more like an unpreparedness peak to me.

</comment><comment><USER26> Office365 and AzureAD has been even more unreliable than usual over the past week or so, plenty of "an error has occurred" pages and delayed mail - <USER2> usually Microsoft didn't update the status dashboards (the ones you can see without being able to log in anyway), The other client I work with uses GCP and Google Mail/Docs for business which I haven't noticed any issues with.

<comment><USER27> GSuite and GCP had impactful outages for us this past week and were listed on the status dashboards.

<comment><USER28> Looks like you are repeating the same comment everywhere without linking at what kind of outages GCP had.

Disc: Googler

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h It made the front page, so most readers here are already at least passingly aware of it.

<comment><USER28> Sorry I should have been more clear in my comment. I meant to emphasize that the outages were not related to COVID-19. So there is no point of repeating the same thing everywhere as it is not relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So that's why my OneDrive sync hasn't been working at all.

</comment><comment><USER30> There is no cloud, only other people computers. (c) FSFE

</comment><comment><USER31> video conferencing is way up online food ordering is way up buying stuff online in general is up i imagine all video streaming and gaming is up

</comment><comment> 867-5309 I read and executed but did not write that percentage

</comment><comment><USER32> Time to buy MS stock.

<comment><USER33> priced in

<comment><USER34> No it's not.. The market is not sane atm. It's 100% emotion.

<comment><USER35> What makes you think that? Have you seen a discrepancy between your projections of future cash flows and therefore your valuation, as compared to the value the market is at right now?

<comment><USER36> I think it's safe to say the market isn't rational when Zoom Technologies is up nearly 900% when it's completely unrelated to Zoom Video and not actually operating.

There's a different HN post about it: [https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the- sec-really-wants-investo...](https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-sec-really- wants-investors-to-stop-buying-the-wrong-zoom-stock-2020-03-27)

<comment><USER37> I don't think you can really compare people accidentally buying the wrong ticker to investors unable to place valuations based on virus uncertainties. They were buying the wrong stock before the virus hit more than a year ago.

<comment><USER36> The wrong stock increased faster than the real stock. Volume matters too but when the underlying causes are irrational, how can any pricing be logical over any period longer than a few days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Honest question; how do you define "demand"?

<comment><USER39> Maybe start by clicking the link?

> In a March 28 blog post, officials said that demand for its new Windows > Virtual Desktop usage has grown by more than three times. They also said > government use of public Power BI for sharing COVID-19 dashboads is up 42 > percent in a week. (As is the case with Microsoft's overall cloud services > figure, we don't have a base number for WVD and Power BI from which to > calculate these percentages.)

<comment><USER38> It still doesnt define demand. Is that new sales or what?

<comment><USER40> Utilization.

<comment><USER38> Their utilization has gone up 700%? Bullshit.

<comment><USER41> >"We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders."

Seems to be a cherry picked statistic, not an overall increase in utilization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Good time to remind that 'the cloud is just some else computer' ...

<comment><USER43> The cloud is someone else's collection of computers operating at a very large scale. If my load changes in a way uncorrelated with other users', that's a very good thing. If my load is correlated with other users', that's may be bad. But it could still be good, because at that scale, they can justify having robust contingency plans -- back-up supply contracts, extra engineers around to ramp stuff up, or relatively unimportant stuff they can de- prioritize. (If you're relatively unimportant, that's a bummer; if you're a hospital getting priority, that's a plus.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> And 77.5% of the new demand turns out is from the Microsoft employees sent home :)

</comment><comment><USER45> Leave it up to Microsoft to find out ways to profit more during a pandemic, rather than open sourcing their software and platform to be used anywhere and everywhere. People forgot what hosting is like without these massively overpriced cloud services that nickel and dime for every feature. Want encryption which basically costs nothing? Oh, you'll pay an extra $0.10 per hour on top of your $.08GB of outbound traffic. God forbid you load balance your service.

<comment><USER46> Office (/Microsoft) 365 is a pretty good value for what it is. It isn't free, but $20 per user per month for Windows + Office + Exchange + OneDrive + Azure AD and support is pretty good.

Microsoft saying "Ahh! Crisis! Here's the Windows Server codebase!" wouldn't help, since you'd have to still find a host and time to make sure your code works on this upstream variant without all of the licensed DLLs that makes Windows work.

<comment><USER45> Google offers the same for less than $12 a month with unlimited storage for large companies and $12 a month for everyone else. Plus you get an operating system that is based off Linux and open source. Windows is a giant PITA when it comes to deploying and setting up mobile device management.

Matrix offers free decentralized video/voice communication and there are lots of self-hosted alternatives that often provide better features than things like Teams. With NextCloud you basically get a free office solution that just needs to be deployed. With Kubernetes you can quickly deploy a Nextcloud cluster. These services should be free and open source because the goal should be helping build a better world, not building better profits through backroom deals with tax dollars.

<comment><USER47> You've just named and listed the services. Odd why people would choose Office365 instead of hosting their own nextcloud distribution cluster in their own colocation space.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Links between Paul Graham's essays - <AUTHOR>

Today (2008/11/18) I had a whim to look at the links between Paul Graham's essays, so I futch an index page, massaged with awk, futch the others, extracted the links, output a digraph, and used neato.
The result is here:
http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ColinsBlog.html?yc <comment><USER2> If you have a link, it's best to not put a description in the textbox on the submit page. Just put the description on the page you're linking to, and we'll get the idea :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yah - got that now. I sent the original to Paul, who suggested I post it here. I read a little, but didn't get the point that the URL would link direct. I thought a URL in the text would auto-link, as per a wiki, but it didn't do what I thought. Mea culpa.

Next time ...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> First post - I didn't realise the URL wouldn't be clickable. Sorry for the inconvenience.

</comment><comment><USER3> the most connected are "gh" and "start" ... that's very telling

thx</comment>


John Conway guest appearances on Numberphile - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA&list=PLt5AfwLFPxWIL8XA1npoNAHseS-j1y-7V <comment><AUTHOR> In the third video in the series he talks a bit about death, making his peace with it, understanding he won't get to see the solution to many difficult math problems, and the idea of unfinished business.

Conway is fascinating to listen to anytime, but I found this series especially moving right now.</comment>


Don't Assume Your Data Scientist Is a Software Engineer. A Thread: - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DynamicWebPaige/status/936680687486238723 <comment><USER2> I started working as a data scientist 9 months ago, coming primarily from a research background. I had never heard of tools like Docker or Airflow in grad school. After reading about them though, their value to a small but growing team of data scientists was quite apparent, so our team took some time to learn how to use them. We now have a reproducible, versioned workflow that removes a lot of headaches that previously existed.

I don't think it's too much to expect data scientists to quickly learn some DevOps skills, as long as you can motivate the value for using them.

</comment><comment><USER3> if you really need your data scientist to know these things then just invest some time in training. So many skills can be quickly picked up on the job, at least to a "good enough" level, yet people insist on looking for unicorns that appear to tick all the unrealistic checkboxes

<comment><USER4> This is one reason I ask brain teasers in interviews.

I don't just care about what you know now, I need to know your willingness and ability to think on your feet when confronted with a seemingly random puzzle and actually persevere towards an answer if necessary.

Not everything will fit neatly into the box of tools that were previously learned.

<comment><USER5> Be careful about focusing on brain teasers during interview sessions. In the early days at Microsoft they focused heavily on brain teaser interviews, and hired what was quickly seen to be an incredibly smart bunch of devs BUT much later seen to be a highly concentrated monoculture that over indexed on one set of skills at the expense of bringing in team members with other strengths. It took a lot of work to break away from that monoculture driving interview style and get the full set of skills and capabilities the company actually needed.

Not all smart people play chess, or know every line of Dr Who dialog, or are Makers, or like brain teasers.

<comment><USER4> Fully agree with that, brain teasers should definitely not be the dominant component of any interview process.

That said, I've run into interviewees who have simply refused to fully engage with a brain teaser -- like they just shut down and gave up, even after I provided hints. For me, that seems to be a signal that they're not likely to deal well with unexpected puzzles that appear in the normal course of engineering work.

<comment><USER5> It may also be they dislike the artificiality of the question style, particularly if they look like "find the twist hidden deep in the description because this isn't a normal real world problem" sort of questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lmfao, why would a data scientist need to know TCP/IP, Server Setup, SOAP/REST Web Services, SDLC, etc?

Sounds like someone looked up a list of IT stuff you should know and applied it to data scientists randomly. In fact, most of those things in the list may or may not apply to a "software engineer".

<comment><USER7> I agree that this knowledge is not necessary, but it could be useful for certain scenarios.

TCP/IP: networking between cluster nodes Server setup: deploy a map-reduce cluster SOAP/REST: read/write data from services Software development life cycle: plan/deploy a reporting system for end users

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree that there is a big issue in the field w.r.t. "unknown unknowns", where more effort needs to be put into making useful knowledge available. However, I do not think that many of these technologies are hard for someone who understands data science, at least at the level neccessary to use them. Doing productive developement in these more systems or CS focused topics is a wholly different topic though...

<comment><USER9> There is no such implication. In fact she specifically implies otherwise. It's just a matter of not making assumptions of specific knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The classic problem of software engineering. Talking about how your specialist doesn't know other stuff. Then durinng interviews lamenting the fact that while you are getting well rounded generalists they are not up to par.

He/she knows SOAP/REST but that unaware of that NN model.

A human can only retain so much. Invest in a team which has it's own specializations.

</comment><comment><USER11> Data scientist have a variety of background: CS, applied mathematics, pure mathematics..

I don't think a data scientist need to know all that stuff to be good at his job

<comment><USER12> I imagine what prompted this thread was the growing tendency of software companies to hire for "Data Scientist" positions and imagine that what they'll be getting is analogous to a Database or Distributed Computing specialist-- someone who has a strong software engineering background plus deep knowledge of their specialty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> After looking at the stuff listed, no worries. Most software engineers don't know all these either

</comment><comment><USER14> Don't assume your data scientist is a scientist. It's a made up non- credentialed title.</comment>


Is archive.is blocked in your country? - <AUTHOR>

I just noticed that archive.is is blocked in Finland. It seems that they have self-censored the site. Is archive.is blocked in your country? Yet I can access the site just fine via proxies / Tor. <comment><USER2> loads fine here in Australia :) have you tried proxies located in Finland to make sure it's not just your ip/subnet?</comment>


Making a 4K Fractal Movie with Fractal EXtreme - <AUTHOR> https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/making-a-4k-fractal-movie-with-fractal-extreme/ <comment><USER2> If you like this kind of zoom into the Mandelbrot set, check out this[1] zoom to 2^1116 from a few years ago (which is also available in 4k). The final ~2/5 of the zoom is probably the trippiest part of the Mandelbrot set I've ever seen, with a repeating "evil eye (nazar)"/"eye of sauron" motif[2] of incredible complexity.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbwaFQ2r2c4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbwaFQ2r2c4)

[2] [http://imgur.com/a/cwVHZ](http://imgur.com/a/cwVHZ)

<comment><USER3> Very nice. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like many others here I am sure, I was quite obsessed with fractals way back, fractint was awesome, and I did spend quite some time writing an integer math fractal generator in assembly on my AtariST back then (I remember enjoying just how many registers I could use on M68k compared to my friends that were working with x86 and how it made things so much simpler, I really enjoyed M68k assembly)

When I first found XaoS in later years it was amazing, thinking that you could actually zoom in real time (!) and it's nice to see that some programs are still around allowing you to do fractals.

It would be interesting to know which would be the fastest way to calculate them nowadays, if on the CPU or on the GPU (I think in both cases one would have to roll their own high precision math for deep zooms)

(edit) found a post on the Fractal Extreme blog discussing GPU math, it is from 2012 though, I wonder if the intervening 4 years have changed the author's opinion on this.

[https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/fractal-and- cry...](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/fractal-and-crypto- performance/)

<comment><USER5> I think it is no question that GPU's handle fractal renders significantly better than the CPU does. If you are rendering a fractal properly each pixel can be computed separately from all others, a problem that is perfect for the massive parallel multiprocessor.

I would even go far to say that with current GPU hardware rendering fractals is "solved" in terms of realtime capability. see: [https://www.shadertoy.com/results?query=fractal](https://www.shadertoy.com/results?query=fractal)

I think fractals are still awesome despite being pretty simple these days. They are an excellent gateway into doing programing on the GPU. I think they are exactly the type awe inspiring programs that younger students should be shown.

<comment><USER6> A lack of arbitrary precision makes GPUs unsuitable for deeper Mandelbrot zoom levels, so "solved" is overstating it.

<comment><USER5> how many levels are you talking about?

I agree the worse floating point precision of GPUs puts them at a disadvantage but they still do better for massively parallel problems like fractal renders. ([http://www.bealto.com/mp- mandelbrot_benchmarks.html](http://www.bealto.com/mp- mandelbrot_benchmarks.html))

<comment><USER3> GPUs are happiest when doing float precision, which is 24 bits.

Most GPUs can, at reduced speed, do double precision, which is 53 bits.

The maximum precision for this zoom movie is 960 bits.

So, unless you write code to compose high-precision math operations out of double-precision math then the GPU cannot even participate. And once you do that you will find that the GPU's speed advantage is mostly or entirely lost.

<comment><USER7> CPUs can't do 960 bit operations either.

<comment><USER3> \- CPUs can do 64x64 multiplies that give 128-bit results. GPUs cannot. \- CPUs can do add-with-carry. GPUs cannot.

That means that GPUs are not very good at doing high-precision math. They lose a lot more efficiency implementing high-precision math than CPUs do. And GPUs are also worse at doing parallel calculations that end up following different paths, which inevitably happens when one pixel diverges before another.

My back-of-the-envelope estimates show that GPUs are not worth it for this use-case. I will change my mind when I see a GPU-based deep zoom fractal program.

<comment><USER8> While AMD GPU can't do 64x64 multiplies that give 128-bit results, they still can do a 32x32 multiply with a 64-bit result. (MULHI_ _INT and MULLO__ INT instructions).

And you can do add-with-carry manually on the AMD GPU using two instructions: ADDC_UINT to get the carry flag from an addition followed by ADD_PREV to add it.

<comment><USER3> Good to know. I was not aware of those instructions.

It would be interesting to see how well a GPU can do compared to a CPU. Doing 64-bit math gives an automatic four-to-one advantage (it takes four 32x32 multiplies to replicate a single 64x64 multiply) so the GPU would be starting out at a disadvantage, plus GPUs run at lower clock rates and have other disadvantages, but perhaps their many many cores would be enough to overcome this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fractals in the browser, in WebGL, in real time.[1] Pan and zoom around. Much fun.

[1] [http://hirnsohle.de/test/fractalLab/](http://hirnsohle.de/test/fractalLab/)

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. And it's not obvious, but you can move around with WSAD keys, and QE for up/down.

It would be nice to make rendered animations in this, I don't think that's a feature of the web app. Maybe there's some other way to make animations? Would make a great background for an alien ship flying through an alien cityscape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ever since I've discovered 3D fractals, 2D ones simply don't cut it for me anymore.

Unfortunately they are much harder to calculate.

[http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/category/mandelbulb/](http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/category/mandelbulb/)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's funny, I always found fractal zooms to be deeply unsatisfying. Although I know it won't happen, I keep waiting for some kind of resolution or goal. In a philosophical way, I think I have a bit of the same feeling towards life itself.. :-)

<comment><USER13> Yeah I always get the same feeling too. Traditional mandelbrot/julia whatever fractals are nice, but really boring IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's with the all the software and even file formats not supporting 4K? I mean yes it's a very uncommon resolution, but why have the number of possible resolutions fixed at all?

<comment><USER3> An excellent question. I was surprised to realized that all three video editing programs had hard-coded limits. Odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you plan to watch most of your movies in 4K, you probably should wait about 10 years before buying a new TV... the movie industry doesn't adapt very quickly and cable compresses everything so much that you can't even get true 1080 even if they say that they have HD

<comment><USER15> Really, for video, 1080p is absolutely fine, if the video is not over- compressed. Even around 20mbps, 4k won't look better than 1080p, for full- motion full-color video content.

Typical movie theaters use 4k today, and 2k (very close to 1080p) less than 10 years ago. For their huge screens. Of course the bitrate is very high, "up to 250 Mbit/s" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema#Technology_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema#Technology_and_standards))

For small text and fine lines such as used in a close-up computer monitor, 4k+ can be very beneficial. But for video, it's marketing, and a costly waste.

<comment><USER14> One good example is that most Blu-ray movie discs are just DVDs converted to take more space (quality was not increased)

<comment><USER16> I have rented lots of Blu-rays and never found one that was upscaled from DVD to 1080p. Can you provide more details please since I am having a hard time believing that's true.

<comment><USER14> I did a quick Google search and found this article [1] ... I recall seeing a website that was listing Blu-ray titles with true-1080p but I can't find it right now. Cable does something similar by highly compressing HD content.

1\. [http://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/many-blu-rays- no-...](http://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/many-blu-rays-no-better- than-upscaled-dvds/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Recycling Worth It? - <AUTHOR> http://sirwart.com/is-recycling-worth-it/

<comment><USER2> This article doesn't address whether "recycling is worth it" or not, and instead basically states a truism: If you have X amount of stuff, and you divert Y amount of that stuff to other places, you will be left with Z amount of stuff which is less than what you started with.

<comment><USER3> Penn & Teller did a decent job of digging into this a while back on Bullshit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puVBFIciqGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puVBFIciqGU)

Basically some things are worth recycling (aluminum), some things break even (plastic/glass), and others are a terrible idea to recycle (paper).

I would love to see a similar look into the composting movement that's going on now. My suspicion is that it's a terrible idea due to the methane emissions. In landfills the methane can be captured and used for generating power (Yes this still creates CO2, but that's not nearly as powerful a greenhouse gas as methane.)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if anything has changed in the more than ten years since Penn and Teller covered the economics of recycling for an entertainment show on Showtime?

ADDENDUM: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7779102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7779102)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >paper cups in the compost bin actually going to make progress towards zero waste given the mountains of trash that end up in the landfill today

As far as space I don't know, but I do know for aluminum cans there is a benefit in the amount of kilowatt*hours (Anyone else wonder why we just don't say Joules in the US?) saved. I believe the number is crazy too, like > 90% of the energy is saved by recycling the aluminum.

<comment><USER6> We say kilowatt-hours in Brazil too. Since it's a SI unit, I believe other countries use this too. It's probably because it's a more convenient unit to use when talking about electrical energy consumption, because 1 watt-hour is the energy consumed by something that has 1W of power running for one hour. One kWh is 3.6 megajoules, so it would be less convenient in this context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not at all what it says on the tin: it's illustrating that San Francisco is reducing waste (a benefit, to be certain), but says nothing whatsoever about the cost.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bug report:

Graph does not work in Firefox.

Fix:

Change lines 93-94 to

                 td.insertBefore(div, null);
                 this.parentNode.insertBefore(td, null);

Rationale:

`insertBefore` requires two parameters in the spec: [http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM- Level-2-Core-20001113/core...](http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM- Level-2-Core-20001113/core.html#ID-952280727)

Chrome and IE do not follow spec: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=964212](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=964212)

</comment><comment><USER9> I lived in the same 3 unit building for 7 years in SF. Not once did I ever see the other tenants use the green compost bin except for once or twice a year when trimming the yard.

That to me suggests that getting the compost and recyclables out of landfill means removing people from having to do it.

I know apparently some cities do the separation at the garbage collection site. That seems like a much better idea. Rather than trying to get 800,000 people to behave correctly just try to get a few companies to do it correctly. Problem solved 100%

I saw this also as someone that worked at a big tech company that prides themselves on hiring only the smartest and then watching how those supposedly smartest could not correctly place things in the right bins. If even supposedly smart people can't do it why would we think anyone else can?

Just move the separation to one or two locations and the problem only has a few people (or robots) that need to be trained and only those same locations need to be checked that their doing it right.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be hard to argue that recycling is not worth it. Now in a way, one could say that recycling is just a brilliant way for goods manufacturers to offload environmental management costs on the consumer. I sometimes feel like I'm being manipulated as a useful idiot of capitalism.

The existence of products like this:

[http://www.amazon.com/Open-Smart-Plastic-Package- Opener/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Open-Smart-Plastic-Package- Opener/dp/B0012NLLMA)

.. just says it all

</comment><comment><USER11> Given that paper waste is apparently compostable (or at least not harmful to the composting process), would it make more sense to change the system to the blue bin being "plastic, cloth, and metal", green being "food, paper, and lawn trimmings", and black being "glass and everything else"?

This might not be 100% optimal but it seems a whole lot more user friendly and I'm sure simplicity of the system increases compliance.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was kind of hoping for an analysis of what happens to whatever goes into the compost and recycling bins, whether it's actually recycled and if so is it done at all efficiently.</comment>


The Wikipedia Game - <AUTHOR> http://thewikigame.com

<comment><USER2> Anyone want to play a high stakes match?

(Why, no, that isn't a directed graph of wikipedia articles and a BFS implementation behind my back.)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are actually quite a few such sites:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Game>

It's one of these concepts that keeps poping up independently at many places (there used to be edit wars at Wikipedia pages about manual versions of this game with many people claiming they invented it :).

I did one myself long ago:

<http://wikifighting.com>

It was one of the first and it got pretty popular for a brief period of time.

The trouble with such sites is that you have to babysit them because they will get broken when Wikipedia changes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Okay the implementation of this is really well done. It had everything I was expecting an automated version of this game would have.

My one complaint is that the frame for the game seemed quite slow compared to normal scrolling on Wikipedia (Just checked and yes there is a noticeable lag in scrolling in Chrome on Windows). This is some what frustrating in a game designed for speed!

<comment><USER4> One other piece of feedback -- maybe hide click paths in the left hand nav until the user has marked some sort of "given up" button for current race?

It would be nice to see the active players list on the home page too (I would have started a lot faster and with less hesitation had I known X amount of people were playing just then).

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the great feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's to stop people from editing Wikipedia articles to shorten their click paths?

<comment><USER7> Most likely time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always thought it would be fun to play a "black hat" wikipedia game. You would register an account, and then proceed to make false edits throughout the site.

To get scores, we'd take all of the edits for each account and multiply the brazenness/funniness of the edit by the number of pageviews you got before the edit was reversed.

The game ends when you get banned.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's pretty fun, however, you can use firebug or a similar tool to just change the html to link directly to the answer ;-)

</comment><comment><USER10> There was a link on HN a few days ago to this site[1] that automates that process, so you can cheat :)

[1]<http://www.xltd.com/WikiMindMap/WikiPath.htm> (but it seems like it does not work right now)

</comment><comment><USER11> We used to play this game at school. We just did it ourselves though (without a website). I think your page is a bit confusing, and it doesn't leave me with any idea of where to start.

I'd simplify the page, and make it obvious! Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm the guy making this game, thanks for playing!

Got any feedback? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Excellent idea, really love the fact you've made a game out of what everyone experiences on wikipedia already. One issue, scrolling the article on the iPad doesn't work. Other than that, awesome.

<comment><USER13> That is because they use iframes. To scroll an iframe use two fingers at once. This will also help if you use Google Reader, etc.

Have fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A similar game I like to play is with Foursquare; keep clicking through friends and locations to get from one location to another around the world.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty awesome. So similar to the general idea of the Wiki Game, yet different in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is worse than tvtropes.

<comment><USER16> You could play it on tvtropes, too.

<comment><USER15> Dear God.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Or, How To Think Like A Link</comment>


Ask HN: Is ETL (data integration in batch processing mode) really dead? - <AUTHOR> I have recently come across this presentation https://www.infoq.com/presentations/etl-streams?utm_source=infoq&utm_medium=popular_widget&utm_campaign=popular_content_list&utm_content=homepage Should every data integration or data processing pipeline should be built based on stream processing  architecture, even though there is no need for such a thing from day zero? The argument i hear for doing so is that in future we might have a need for real time processing. Would like to hear what others are thinking. <comment><USER2> Far from it. CSV is by far the most common data exchange format for ERP, CRM and business systems in general. EDI is another. Good luck communicating with SAP ERP or NetSuite without good old-fashioned SOAP. Judging from the documentation none of these seems to be supported by Confluent.

SOAP and CSV are not sexy. They have plenty of shortcomings. However, those are the formats that are used in the real world today (and for some time to come).

Stream processing is a very useful design pattern but like any design pattern it should be used carefully and only where appropriate (see: Microservices).

If I were to build a new complex ERP from the ground up I'd be remiss not to use something like Kafka or Confluent for data processing.

If I want to communicate with legacy systems though that's an entirely different matter. The same applies when targeting SMBs. You'd have a hard time explaining to small business owners why they suddenly need a newfangled stream processing architecture while their old "Export CSV and load that into Excel" process worked just fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not all data comes in at a rate where streaming approaches are necessary. Sensors, click or IoT data perhaps, but for things like purchases, signups, or other "daily" activities batch processing is suitable and less complex to build.

I would wager that most data is not of a streaming nature, but as the ability to process live pipelines is relatively new, it gets more attention.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is possible, but there are a lot of caveats.

For example, how do you detect when a source's semantics change? This will break any cleansing or transforms done in the stream platform. Until it gets fixed, data may be missing, wrong, or worse (e.g. corrupted) and propagated down stream.

When data is cleansed and transformed early, there is no way to go back to the raw data, unless you carry it forwards too.

Consider these sort of questions for your use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this a problem even with ETL based solutions too? Could you please explain this with an example?

<comment><USER4> Yes, especially with early cleansing and transformation. When source semantics are dynamic, try to build recognizers rather than expect sources to obey some semantic agreement. They won't. Cast what you can recognize into an intermediate shape. I like object, property, value (i.e triple) with metadata. Don't cleanse or transform the source data. Let the data be the data. Cleansed and transformed data fall into the category of assertions. Assertions can be made by humans and software, keep metadata. Allow your applications and your analysts to overlay their own semantic meaning on the triples. Naturally, consensus understanding of source semantics is desirable, but don't want to prevent analysts from using the raw or asserted data as they see fit. Still need software to analyze triples for the bad, etc. to make assertions that data is suspect. Otherwise, your downstream programs and analysts will need to make such assertions. Given such a process, applications and analysts can write queries to ignore suspect data, undesirable assertions, etc. if they so choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course one of the initial authors of Kafka will say, that ETL is dead, and streams only are the future... But that's not the reality in many cases.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've implemented an ETL pipeline at one of my clients just this quarter that runs nightly and gives them the data they need in the format they want (Web UI + CSV exports). Just _having_ this available at all is a huge win. Having the data be "fresher" would be nice but it's small margin of win compared to the original win.</comment>


Bitcoin network reaches 1 PH/s - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/Kofo6Pz.png

<comment><USER2> I wonder how quickly network difficulty is rising now?</comment>


Anyone familiar with iTunes' infrastructure?  Scaling and bandwidth issues? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> They use Akamai to serve up the downloads.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or, along these lines, eMusic's setup?</comment>


How an Internet 'Sextortionist' Ruined the Lives of Teen Girls - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/09/sextortionist/

<comment><USER2> Why is there a plea bargain if he admitted to the crimes? Or maybe not all of them?

<comment><USER3> That's your end of the plea bargain. In order to get the reduced sentence, you have to confess to your crimes in court.</comment></comment>


Visa, Mastercard mull increasing fees for processing transactions: WSJ - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-paymentprocessors-fees/visa-mastercard-mull-increasing-fees-for-processing-transactions-wsj-idUSKCN1Q41ME <comment><USER2> The credit-card model is spinning out of control. I have a good income and decent credit. So I have a credit card that gives me 2-3% cash back on everything, low or zero fees, and tons of other bonus perks (various kinds of insurance, airport lounges, whatever).

So I should be excited right? Well, not really. The 2% cash back barely makes up for the 2% that MC/Visa take out of the middle in the first place! So the goods I buy cost more than they should and I get a "kickback" on the backend.

And if you're someone without access to great cards, then you still pay the same price in stores but you get no cash back, high APR, low credit limits, and crazy late fees.

It's regressive taxation.

<comment><USER3> I would ditch credit cards the moment all the merchants I use would give me a 2% discount for paying cash. Using credit cards is perfectly rational until then. What's more, it's rational even for credit cards that don't earn any rewards or cash back, let alone ones that do.

<comment><USER4> Pro tip: if you go to a Chinese restaurant that offers credit card payments, counteroffer with cash and you can get a discount as high as 10%.

<comment><USER5> Credit card fees are about 2-3%. So if they are doing this, it must come from not charging tax.

<comment><USER4> They are doing this. Also, there are fees from credit card fraud as well to factor in.

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression that was factored into the 2–3%. Not true?

<comment><USER4> Merchants are usually liable for fraud losses (both the loss in good or services + a fee imposed by the bank for the privilege...). This is on top of the transaction costs. Those transaction costs do not cover fraud liability or losses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it a cosmic coincidence that these two large competitors are going to increase fees at exactly the same time?

<comment><USER8> Your comment reminds me of a recent article I read (on HN iirc but can't find the comment thread):

[https://www.technologyreview.com/the- download/612947/pricing...](https://www.technologyreview.com/the- download/612947/pricing-algorithms-can-learn-to-collude-with-each-other-to- raise-prices/)

> _Researchers at the University of Bologna in Italy created two simple > reinforcement-learning-based pricing algorithms and set them loose in a > controlled environment. They discovered that the two completely autonomous > algorithms learned to respond to one another's behavior and quickly pulled > the price of goods above where it would have been had either operated > alone._

> _"What is most worrying is that the algorithms leave no trace of concerted > action," the researchers wrote. "They learn to collude purely by trial and > error, with no prior knowledge of the environment in which they operate, > without communicating with one another, and without being specifically > designed or instructed to collude." This risks driving up the price of goods > and ultimately harming consumers._

I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that two companies could arrive at such a move without _conscious_ collusion. I also don't think it should be treated differently.

Long term, I think Visa an MC could shoot themselves in the foot. Merchants are now allowed to charge fees for using CCs IIRC in at least some areas.

You could easily end up with a situation like Europe where people mostly use debit cards for in person purchases since the processing fees are lower.

Consumers lose the protection of a buffer from their bank account, issuers lose out on revenue. Not a good outcome IMHO.

<comment><USER9> Is this essentially a variant of the "tit for tat" strategy in an iterated prisoner's dilemma? It seems analogous

<comment><USER10> The prisoners dilemma is ultimately just a demonstration of game theory.

That is there is more than you win/I lose or I win/you lose but there is win/win.

It's definately conceivable two algorithms or two ai would be capable of concluding the same. In fact it may be even easier because what's the actual dilemma/self interest of such a system without the selfishness of human nature?

<comment><USER11> Why would you intentionally operate an AI that wasn't as selfish as possible?

<comment><USER12> if you ruin your only competitor, the antitrust folks will come after you

<comment><USER13> Nah, they still can come after you if you prevent new firms to enter the market. (But if you just do the usual regulatory capture the gov. will be just happy for you, as you gave them a lot of busywork for nothing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Visa and mastercard should be careful they don't compete their way out of a market. Stripe, square, apple, google, samsung, etc; there is no reason these companies couldn't band together to create their own clearing system. Visa and MC started as credit cards, but almost nobody I know uses them that way anymore. They're all bank cards, and visa/MC/Amex are just proxies. I see no reason why they can't be replaced, and I'm honestly hopeful that they will be.

Okay and seriously: I actually just want US Mint backed card. I think it's absolute lunacy that these private companies are essentially levying their own tax on consumer transactions. Cash is outdated, and the government should react appropriately. (And only in my most feverish of fever dreams: it's a cryptocurrency, and only at >104F temperatures, it's on the ethereum network. Oh boy a man can dream!)

In this world: Amex, Visa, and MC can go back to being _credit_ cards.

<comment><USER15> I mean the actual reason these companies are able to levy these taxes is because they provide contractual consumer protection. If we had strong consumer protection laws in the US in the first place, there wouldn't be much value left in Visa/MC etc.

<comment><USER14> I don't think I follow you here. What consumer protections does visa offer me if I am using it as a bank card?

<comment><USER16> I haven't used a bank card in many years. Is it common for people to use bank cards for general purchases? I believe more people use credit cards now because of the many benefits, including consumer protections.

<comment><USER14> Yes this is very common. Most people I know use a bank card, which is powered by Visa's payment network, and ran as credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Worth noting that here in NYC, the courts have gone back and forth on whether passing transaction fees onto consumer is legal: [https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2018/10/23/ny-court- of...](https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2018/10/23/ny-court-of-appeals- says-info-requirement-on-credit-card-surcharge-doesnt-infringe-merchants- speech-right/?slreturn=20190115114916)

I remember being shocked when my local pizza place put a sign on the register saying there was now a 3% fee on card usage (which became legal to do as of ~September 2017). Absolutely wild that Visa/Mastercard would raise prices further. It's already hard enough to find a place that accepts my Discover card, let alone an independent joint that will accept Amex (accept for all the places in and around Chinatown who only accept Amex, never will understand how _that_ happened).

<comment><USER18> Absolutely support passing crap like this on to customers.

Otherwise there is no incentive to lower them.

<comment><USER19> Conversely, we could regulate and treat card networks as utilities (allowing them to recoup reasonable operations costs) instead of for-profit concerns siphoning unnecessarily off of the flows of capitalism. It works for Europe.

Customers regulating through voting with their wallet isn't going to work with how much power large financial firms wield. I contacted Elizabeth Warren's office (she's on the Senate Banking Committee); if this matters to you, I suggest you do too!

<comment><USER20> > I contacted Elizabeth Warren's office (she's on the Senate Banking > Committee); if this matters to you, I suggest you do too!

Unless you've also got a plan to get a Democratic majority in the Senate, your plan probably needs to extend beyond Warren if you are relying on her role in the Banking Committee (if you are expecting her to win the Presidency in 2020, that's perhaps another story.)

<comment><USER19> > your plan probably needs to extend beyond Warren if you are relying on her > role in the Banking Committee (if you are expecting her to win the > Presidency in 2020, that's perhaps another story.)

It does. No need to pollute this thread, email me if you want to chat about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Visa/MC are probably going to try to target the margin that fintech startups have able to eek out at the lower end of the card processing market.

From their perspective, the fact that companies like Stripe and Square have been able to obtain unicorn valuations for card processing services means that there's money left on the table. Card processing was a basic commodity business before these guys. Somehow, Stripe et al have been able to convince a large swath of customers to accept 2.9% + $0.30.

Did you know that interchange on most debit cards is just 0.05% + $0.22?[1] That's massive margin.

Visa/MC is like, sorry Stripe, don't try to play our game on our platform. We invented it. (Somewhat cynically you could argue this is why Stripe spends a lot of time/resources on "big thinking" and kind of puffing themselves up into more than a "card processor". It's part of the sell.)

[1] [https://www.burlingtonbankcard.com/interchange-plus- pricing/...](https://www.burlingtonbankcard.com/interchange-plus- pricing/interchange-plus-credit-card-processing-faqs/what-are-the-interchange- fees-on-a-10-visa-debit-card-sale/)

<comment><USER22> Stripe and Square will just raise their fees. Visa/MC are the network, you still need a processor. For low volume transactions, its normal for a processor to offer a merchant blended rate. For higher volume, you pay interchange + processing fee. Stripe offers interchange plus pricing if you have enough volume.

Visa even owns a low volume processor called authorized.net that charges same fees as stripe. They also own cybersource which specializes in high volume processing which operates on an interchange plus model.

<comment><USER21> _> Stripe offers interchange plus pricing if you have enough volume._

Are there published details on this? What is their markup?

<comment><USER22> Most interchange plus pricing is negotiated and covered by NDAs.

Generally, Interchange plus fees(not stripes) range fixed of 0.05 with 10bips settlement fee all the way down to fractions of a penny if you're doing millions of transactions per month. Authorized.net used to do 0.10 and 25bips settlement but I think they only do blended rates now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> India launched UPI (Unified Payment Infrastructure) which is more like a public utility which does 10x more transactions that Visa and Mastercard in mere 28 months of its launch and is 100% free. More interestingly you can built very interesting apps on top of it and make money.

<comment><USER24> I don't know if the stats you quoted are true but UPI is a fantastic product. The only problem being you can't use credit so you pretty much pay through your bank account.

Also, they have a more direct rival to Visa and MasterCard as well. RuPay, which has lower fees apparently.

<comment><USER23> The stats are for India only BTW. UPI does close to 700M transactions a month and growing around 20% month on month.

Compared to that Visa, MasterCard and Rupay combined do around 150M transactions a month. Of course if we add ATM withdrawals (which is actually a cash transaction to think of) than that number is around 800M per month for all of them combined.

All numbers are for India only. in USA Mastercard alone does around 12B transactions a year and globally around 75B transactions a year. Large but India's UPI had a fair chance to even overtake than in next 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Presumably this is to pay for all the points people get by using cards, not to mention the sign up promotions.

I like how in Europe and Australia interchange fees are capped. Even if it means they live without such bountiful premium cards.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee) >> In the United States, the fee averages approximately 2% of transaction value.[2] In the EU, interchange fees are capped to 0.3% of the transaction for credit cards and to 0.2% for debit cards.[3]

<comment><USER26> I think the points are fully paid by avg 21% APR, $37 late fees, interchange fees, foreign transaction fees(2%) and ATM fees on credit cards. Its just greed.

<comment><USER27> Saw a video by vox today where they argue that the points are also paid by increased retail prices. Even if you decide to use cash, you are basically paying for someone's business class upgrades

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySH5SudRwak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySH5SudRwak)

<comment><USER23> The Chinese store I buy from offers me discounts if I pay in cash. He offers me 5% discount on furniture and also gives me a proper invoice (so he is not really defrauding the tax authorities either).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> While this is a hostile development that will be painful for some, there's a part of me that's grateful for every shitty thing they do because it increases the likelihood of a challenger.

Would Stripe exist if PayPal hadn't been so hostile to their customers? Giant markets of money movers all explicitly saying "We hate having to use these guys, isn't there anything better?" tells David that it might be worth fighting Goliath.

IMO blockchain is like a green-party candidate that undermines more promising candidates by sapping votes in a system that doesn't allow runoff voting – it's a shiny, utopian distraction that prevents people from starting the companies I think are more appropriate and promising – card & payments startups that support or resemble existing infrastructure.

Privacy.com, Final (RIP), the venmo card – the first company to unseat the incumbents in the card space is going to be a big deal. Stripe is making excellent headway in eating the elephant, using their web payments platform to get big enough to compete in the more difficult card issuance space. Here's hoping they have ambitions of re-investing the clout they get from cards to attack the underlying processing layers, and disrupt global financial infrastructure from the outside in.

The Point Of Sale industry is making great headway here too. Revel, etc. The blockchain equivalents have flopped, but the card-based ones are now standard issue at even the tiny mom and pop stores. There's real hunger for modern tech in the payments space, it just needs to roll out in more accessible stages.

<comment><USER29> We have a solution in Denmark, thats cheaper called Dankort, litteraly everyone over 18 has one (Works just like any credit card). Jointly created by all Danish Banks. Works pretty much flawless, but the banks jointly sold the company behind it, and now looks like some banks wants to let it die... So they can instead get kickbacks from Visa/MasterCard.

<comment><USER28> > the banks jointly sold the company behind it, and now looks like some banks > wants to let it die

There could be a dark brilliance to such a move. Want to raise your margins? Get paid to sell your low margin product, let it die, and get paid again when you raise your margins in the new market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1283 The best way to beat the system is to take advantage of the massive credit card reward bonuses that US banks offer. I've churned credit cards since 2012 and have nearly all my personal travel paid for by points every year, including international business/first class flights, luxury hotels, and cash for travel...

Best thing is credit card rewards are not taxed because they are considered a rebate, which is quite amazing especially in a high tax state like CA!

<comment><USER30> Good job beating the system. If you tracked all the hours and mental energy you spent on these tasks vs the amount of money returned, what do you think the hourly rate would come to?

<comment><USER31> Something embarrassingly small. It's not worth it.

<comment><USER32> Eh, even if you don't value airline/hotel points, you can pretty easily get ~$500/card in value in sign up bonus just for opening the card and using it for expenses you were going to incur anyway. You need to be discerning about what you apply for and only apply for the good deals, but it really doesn't take much time.

<comment><USER31> For someone on HN, if you spend more than a couple of hours mental energy per card in total, it's not worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a point of comparison, interchange fees in the EU are capped at 0.3% and total average cost for merchants is less than 1%.

</comment><comment><USER34> All this talk of regulating Google, Facebook, Twitter. What about Visa and Mastercard? How is acceptable for so much power to rest in the hands of such a small number of companies?

<comment><USER35> Would Stripe or Paypal ever create their own credit cards?

<comment><USER36> Stripe already does: [https://stripe.com/issuing](https://stripe.com/issuing)

Granted, it seems geared towards businesses who want programatic control of the credit cards they own, but still.

<comment><USER35> That looks like its a Visa card still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think there's a place for a nationalised network or some sort of not-for- profit org.

Seems silly to rest such an important part of society in the hands of a few private orgs. Or maybe even empowering banks to better compete (as long as we don't end up with 50 different networks).

<comment><USER38> The post office would be a good host for such a network, among other banky things.

<comment><USER39> It does so in India for rural communities. I've always wondered why it cannot do low cost banking in US. they already have the infrastructure and the manpower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I forgot where I read it but an article explained the way credit card companies hide how the fees have been transferred to the customers. The merchant takes the burden but they jack up the prices of the goods which hits the consumers.

The reward point systems of the credit cards work the same way. Merchants jack up the price of the goods to be part of the reward point system which in the end hits the customers. In fact, the people that don't get a credit card with reward points actually end up losing by not joining.

I thought it's interesting that everything in the end gets put on the customers. It's the price we pay for convenience. I just don't like the way it's hidden to make it look like we're not actually the ones paying for it.

<comment><USER41> It reminds me a little of medical pricing. The real costs are hidden from the customer and things are intentionally convoluted. There are a lot of areas where we need more transparency.

<comment><USER42> When costs and prices are hidden, competition cannot happen and the market stops working.

<comment><USER41> Businesses don't want working markets once their position has been established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Meanwhile europe phases in instant inter-bank transfers, had direct debit for years (now standardized via SEPA) and paying via wire transfer (to any bank, via IBAN) has always been an option.

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe if they did a better job at securing their systems and card security requirements there wouldn't be as much fraud that they are liable to cover? Their systems are broken. CC fraud is at a high. They're having to pay out more, decreasing profits. Answer? Raise fees and keep the broken system in place so they don't have to spend millions/billions to fix _their_ problem they created. Being able to use a RFID/NFC reader in close proximity to someones wallet (like in their back pocket, standing ahead of you in line) and being able to charge their card without even touching it is not a very good thing lol. Chip cards are pretty cool. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmoE1mDz_cM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmoE1mDz_cM)

I can't find the other demo/video where they were just walking up to people and making charges in realtime by rfid scans.

One of the first thing I do on chip cards is cut the antennae trace on the chip. I don't need or want that convenience. Swiping the mag strip on the card isn't that hard for me, and never was.

They recently (last year?) raised limits (at least Visa) for the amount you (or someone) can spend without requiring a signature. It doesn't make me feel good that if my card is stolen someone can charge up to $1k on it without a signature. I don't know when the last time a merchant asked me to see my identification to see if it matched the name on my card.

This will just raise the price of all goods since merchants figure the cc fees into the prices of all products, whether you're paying with cash or card.

Meh, it's easier to just raise fees than fix the real problems directly affecting their bottom line: Fraud.

<comment><USER45> Unfortunately business owners are the ones responsible for paying for fraud.

For example I've sold many thousands of copies of my digital courses online. Never had any type of problem.

Today I got a taste of my first Stripe dispute.

The customer signed up, bought the course, watched some of the course, never contacted me, disputed the charge for unknown reasons, Stripe notified me for evidence, I sent evidence of everything they asked for, weeks later I lost the dispute with no feedback from anyone, on top of everything I was charged an extra $15.00 by Stripe as a "dispute fee".

In other words, I got completely screwed with no chance to do anything and the banks and Stripe made a profit off an arbitrary dispute charge.

To make matters even worse, after talking to support, I asked Stripe to send me a screenshot of the images I provided them as evidence and it seems Stripe manipulated the images I uploaded as proof by shrinking them to be completely unreadable. So basically I'm penalized because Stripe tampered with my evidence.

The system is completely broken.

<comment><USER46> Cryptocurrency is great for merchants doing online transactions. Once you have funds in your wallet, customer can't claw them back except with the explicit action of the merchant.

Is it much easier for merchants to scam? Definitely! But it also allows merchants to trust that funds will never disappear with no recourse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I believe Visa and Mastercard are feeling threatened perhaps?

For both UnionPay and Alipay are huge in Asia, various banks replacing Visa/MC as primary choice for credit/debit cards and mobile payments in a majority of shops.

Europe seems to be next from what I've noticed, their brands showing up here and there in shops.

But I think this might be a good thing, we need more competition in that area.

<comment><USER48> The situation in Europe is generally better because EU legislation (Interchange Fee Regulation) has limited the fees that payment processors can charge. That regulation also requires more transparency and is supposed to promote alternative payment systems by limiting lock in.

As always, Europe is too fragmented, and slower to adopt new tech, for one of these app based solutions to gain wide spread adoption quickly, though.

<comment><USER49> > As always, Europe is too fragmented, and slower to adopt new tech, for one > of these solutions to gain wide spread adoption quickly

Not sure what you're talking about. In Poland, I can use my phone to pay for anything anywhere. Seriously. I can buy a single apple at a grocery stand and tap my phone on the reader that will surely be there and will surely work with all NFC payment systems.

Coming to the US is a shock, because suddenly nothing works, and even in places where it's supposed to work nobody tries to pay with a phone, because it's flaky.

So I'd say it's exactly the other way around. With customer-facing banking tech, Europe is _way_ ahead of the US.

<comment><USER48> And what is the name of the app?

Because I guarantee most of Europe has never heard of it.

That was my point. Solutions might gain adoption in a single country quickly, and there are some that are becoming very popular in various countries.

But it's hard for any one of them to get adoption across the EU.

<comment><USER50> Usually 'the app' is just contactless payment via Apple Pay or Google Pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> People forget that cash transactions also have a cost.

It's mostly on the risk of keeping and transporting cash, and the cost associated to mitigate those risks.

Small shops are usually more willing to take the risk to avoid fees.

<comment><USER52> In Sweden the cost of handling cash is forcing small shops to go card only. Even banks thesedays have cash-free offices.

<comment><USER8> Are there a lot of violent robberies in Sweden? I'd think in a society with less guns people would be more wary of robbing. The clerk is separated by a counter and may have a bat or simply hit the panic button before you can get on them, leaving little time to escape...

<comment><USER53> Assuming Sweden is similar to Finland, I think the main point is not avoiding robberies, but just to save money.

Here, visits to bank branches have been in decline for decades now, especially for cash services, so it makes sense for the banks to reduce the amount of locations that offer those services to save money.

In 2018 there were 854 bank branches in Finland, compared to 1627 in 2007 and 3600 in 1985. Population is 5.5M.

This also has the effect of increasing cash handling costs to businesses if they have to get cash services from a bank branch that is far away.

Sources (Finnish): [https://www.finanssivalvonta.fi/kuluttajansuoja/kysymyksia-j...](https://www.finanssivalvonta.fi/kuluttajansuoja/kysymyksia- ja-vastauksia/pankkipalvelut/peruspankkipalvelut/selvitys- peruspankkipalveluiden-saatavuudesta-ja-hinnoittelusta-2018/) [https://www.savonsanomat.fi/kotimaa/Suomessa-pian-alle- tuhat...](https://www.savonsanomat.fi/kotimaa/Suomessa-pian-alle-tuhat- pankkikonttoria-Fiva-Alaraja-alkaa-tulla-vastaan/1039549) [https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/pankkien-konttorit- katoav...](https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/pankkien-konttorit- katoavat/6b102a9e-f5b8-34eb-a164-a7a1bcb8f565)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for this. I did not think about distance as a cost factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > They also say that expenses for ramping up anti-fraud/theft security > measures, to make payment processing safer, need to be covered.

Or they could implement Chip & Pin like the rest of the planet – with the side benefit that we might be able to reliably purchase a train ticket from an automated kiosk overseas on occasion.

</comment><comment><USER55> Before we break up Google and Facebook how about we take a look at collusion and behind the back deals happening in these companies. This duopoly has been levying tax on huge chunk of transactions happening all across the world. How have they avoided scrutiny for so long?

</comment><comment><USER42> Something should be done about this. These companies have a criminal monopoly by forcing out their competitors.

If you have ever ran a small business and seen the obscene amounts these companies make; you would be outraged too.

</comment><comment><USER56> They have survived the internet revolution where other businesses have been disrupted. No startup is even close to chipping away their collective control. So they are empowered to do as they please.

<comment><USER57> I suspect a big reason for this is that merchant agreements prevent you from directly passing on the cost of cards to customers. So if you accept Visa, MasterCard, and payment form X (where X could be cash, bitcoin, Venmo, whatever), the price you charge customers is the actual price you want to set plus the Visa/MasterCard fees, even if they pay with form X.

One way a disruptor could tackle this is by providing all (or even almost all) of those fees as cash back - giving everyone 2.5% cash back regardless of their creditworthiness / ability to get a sweet rewards card would be very popular. But then you'd probably want to _not_ do that at merchants that _aren 't_ accepting traditional credit cards, and I'm not sure how customers would feel about this.

<comment><USER58> Obama changed that to let states decide it. I don't know about websites though that are interstate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Part of their rationale is that the cost of anti fraud and AML and so on is going up. At the same time, the volume of transactions going via cards is increasingly massively year on year and will continue to do so for quite some time. Surely a lot of these anti fraud and other systems benefit hugely from economies of scale. Once you've got your anti fraud tooling set up, you mostly just need to throw a few new VMs and staff at it as tx rates grow. This seems to me like a good cover for them to cartel up and raise prices.

<comment><USER60> This chart shows overall card fraud rates (in absolute $) as being essentially flat, albeit noisy, over the past several years: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/identity-theft-credit-card- fra...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/identity-theft-credit-card-fraud-cost- us-consumers-16-billion-in-2016/)

If transaction rate is increasing, that means that fraud costs should actually be going down as a percentage of transaction income.

And of course, Visa and MC control the technology. Their continued avoidance of major technical advances in the core card technology (things like one-time credit card numbers for online shopping) tends to undermine the "fraud is why we charge so much" theory. Also wouldn't hurt to look at the profit margin of Visa while you're at it, it's remarkable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Raising rates from 2.5% is a pretty great indicator of monopoly power, and a good target for startup disruption.

<comment><USER62> Visa / MC rates aren't 2.5%.

There are multiple components to the final rate that a business pays, with the bulk of it being interchange, which goes to the banks that issue cards. Visa/MC only get assessments and dues, which are significantly smaller. (Visa's volume assessment is 0.13%, for example.)

We need to know which fees they're raising, and by how much, to know what sort of impact this will have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> There is no need for private Banks. Banks and lending should be separated. Banks have only one purpose to store the money and give it back when I need it. No interest no fees or anything else. It doesn't require some great feats to increment or decrement numbers. Similarly paying, transferring, etc should be instantaneous and cost free. Highest cost should be electricity cost of computer running the transaction. It boggles my mind why let there be cluster fuck of crappy private solutions when the problem is faced by whole society. Why not build 1 efficient cheaper public owned system. We don't have private highways, private dams, so why can't we have public owned banking system

</comment><comment><USER64> _> However, it is up to merchant banks if they want to pass on the fee hike to sellers, or absorb it themselves. Similarly, it is sellers' discretion to pass on the hike to consumers or not._

Of course, we know what will happen! This whole scheme is like indentured servitude. They not only get more of your money, but also sell your habits to others and make even more money creating or helping others create profiles of you. And you have no control over this as long as you take it with resignation.

What consumers need is a disruption on electronic payments by moving to non- conventional non-electronic/non-digital payments (cash is a good option, but it needs to be encouraged more and made to look sexier).

</comment><comment><USER65> Source article: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/purchases-with-plastic-get- cost...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/purchases-with-plastic-get-costlier-for- merchantsand-consumers-11550226601)

</comment><comment><USER66> 'Your margin is my opportunity' -someone who has a lot of money

</comment><comment><USER67> I don't know how justified this feeling is by fact, but I feel like this is being done to further compete with cash back rewards. The more card holders want in cash back percentage perks, the more the credit card companies will want to collect in transaction fees.

</comment><comment><USER68> Good. Let's break the oligopoly.

</comment><comment> munk-a In Canada we've got the Interact network which was built by a coalition to banks and offers an entirely separate plastic based method... it's sort of like a US debt card. You Americans should really give the free market a try one of these days...

<comment><USER69> We did. We had American Express, Diner's Club, Discover (the old Sears) ,department store cards, gas station cards, Bankamericard (Visa) and Interbank (Mastercard). In the 1960s there were hundreds of credit cards. Visa and Mastercard won the free market battle.

<comment> munk-a Forming a cartel is not "winning a free market battle" it is kicking the free market out of your business domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Yes please. So that our local alternative RuPay gets even broader adoption. :)

</comment><comment><USER71> This means a price increase for _everyone_. The stores will just increase their prices across the board, even for cash, because most of their transactions are credit cards now.

This is the cost of wanting a cashless society, mastercard and visa get a tax on everything. A tax not subject to voting, but one controlled by unconstrained capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER72> Considering how much of a rip off they already are on the financial system. Simple rent seeking at 23% interest, 20% + 3% processing. There should be legislation to combat this shit.

<comment><USER73> If you struck down the rules about providing different prices based on payment type and did a 10% discount by paying in cash, you'd be surprised how quickly things would change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few thoughts 1) Why doesn't PayPal lower fees 2) Use our transit/metro cards as a digital cash equivalent like in many other highly developed cities/countries.

</comment><comment><USER74> Cash is king.

Actions like this by visa and mc is gross. They are just bloated asshole companies.

</comment><comment><USER75> I hope they do, I hope they make it very large, 10x, 20x! Increase it so much that folks run back to cash, checks and alternate digital payments. Let greed do them in!

</comment><comment><USER76> This is why we need crypto :)

</comment><comment><USER77> Cash free societies?

<comment><USER78> Will never happen. What happens if the power goes out or the systems fail? There will always need to be a backup.

<comment><USER79> this just happened for me shopping at a grocery store I do not usually frequent, I overheard them saying it was happening company-wide. people left full carts of food because the ATM was also not working. (non-urban area)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> How is it legal for them both to do it at the same time?</comment>


Show HN: Glee – Delightfully Simple Help Desk Software/Shared Inboxes for Teams - <AUTHOR> https://gleehq.com/signup

<comment><USER2> Wow! The app looks promising and works great, it's very clean. I'll introduce this to my friends and colleagues. Keep up the good work!

<comment><USER3> Hello shadowzick, how are you doing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any further information? It's just a sign up form & the homepage is a template filler.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! You and your team can use it to easily collaborate on customer support, sales, hiring etc... It's currently used by 12 companies who participated in our private beta. Now we want more users to try out the app so we can get more feedback. This is the private beta signup page that we used - [http://signup.gleehq.com/](http://signup.gleehq.com/) . You can check it out to get more info like how the dashboard looks. Signup an signin to try the app, it's working, we just didn't have the time to design the home page :)

PS: you can also check it's fb page for more info - [https://www.facebook.com/GleeHQ](https://www.facebook.com/GleeHQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What does "hq" stand for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi fiatjaf! It means headquarters. Anyway, let me know if you need any help in trying out the app. I would really appreciate it if you can provide feedback. Constructive criticisms are welcome :)

<comment><USER3> What does you app offers that is different or better than the other thousands of helpdesk apps out there?</comment></comment></comment>


Now with video What Linux Can Learn from Solaris Performance, and Vice-Versa - <AUTHOR> http://www.joyent.com/blog/what-linux-can-learn-from-solaris-performance-and-vice-versa

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a good deal of discussion about this in an earlier thread about the slide deck: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7291877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7291877)</comment>


Israel's Efforts to Limit Use of Holocaust Terms Raise Free-Speech Questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/world/middleeast/israels-efforts-to-limit-use-of-holocaust-terms-raise-free-speech-questions.html?hp&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Israeli here. this law-suggestion was only preliminary approved. it still has a long way to go until it will be officially a law, and it probably won't make it. the media here criticized this move harshly once it has "discovered" about it. i say discovered because many law-suggestion are discussed by 4-5 parliament members who are present in the knesset in the preliminary stage, and really nobody hears about them or cares until the later stages...

</comment><comment><USER3> "What I'm asking is, please put away this special situation that has to do with our history."

Bullshit, Nazi. You're demanding, and threatening people with imprisonment and $30,000 fines. And if they don't go to jail, or pay the fines? You're putting the entire government and it's armed forces behind that threat, and people may possibly die or be killed. This isn't about politeness, or decorum, it's about control. You want to control people, and have them kidnapped or worse if they refuse to submit to your will.

Think about that next time you say "there ought to be a law". It isn't the same as saying "people ought to do such and such". Because with the latter, you're just expressing a preference. With the former, you're attempting to stifle, herd and dominate your fellow human beings, and putting the threat of kidnapping and death by armed goons behind that attempt.

<comment><USER4> you make a good point, but adding the word nazi pretty much ruins it.

if you want to win an argument - particularly over issues related to the holocaust - you have to remain polite and avoid abuse like that. there's no alternative. if you don't, you'll lose the argument.

<comment><USER3> I was provoked. Did you read the article? It's all about Nazis and not invoking their name, enforced by law rather than manners. I'm contrary like that.

So are many others. Expect a Streisand-like increase in Nazi-calling if this law gets passed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found the movie "1/3 of the holocaust" to be compelling, might be illegal to watch in your country.</comment>


Diaspora branch with xmpp federation support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bnolan/diaspora-x

<comment><USER2> "We don't check that the user is authoritative for an email address, some thought needs to go into how we prove a user has access to an email address in a federated system."

Ideas?</comment>


5-little-known-profiles-that-rank-high-for-your-name - <AUTHOR> http://www.ranky.co/5-little-known-profiles-that-rank-high-for-your-name/

<comment><AUTHOR> So what are you taking from that article?</comment>