Managing Work-In-Progress Folders with "ls -ltr" - <AUTHOR> http://sef.kloninger.com/2012/08/wip-folders-with-ls/

<comment><USER2> Combine watch with ls -ltr and you have a neat little way to keep an eye on a given file or directory:

        watch -n 1 ls -ltr

</comment><comment><USER3> Like the author, I probably use 'ls -ltr' more often than any other variation of ls. It's more useful to view most directories in date order (newest nearest to your cursor), although of course this probably _won't_ be news to most GUI / Windows users.

Edit: A small shell script over my history proves my guess is correct:

        plain ls: 59
        ls -ltr: 8
        ll: 6

</comment><comment><USER4> I do basically the same thing. In fact I have 'ls -cr' automatically run after every cd.

The problem with aliases of course is that you end up typing them on other people's systems and looking foolish. Still, I use 'lcr' for 'ls -cr', 'll' for 'ls -alF', etc.

<comment><USER5> I even have 'l' as 'ls -halF'. And it's used so much that the L button on my keyboard seems to grow more fungi than the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny, I've come to use the same system some time ago, but for general to-dos. I just use more readable filenames, with spaces instead of dashes and more complete sentences, and in the file content I put more detailed info and links do resources.

The great thing about this is that it's utterly portable. You can sync with Dropbox, explore with a file manager, zip and send by email, grep, open and edit with scripts... The possibilities are endless, and you don't have to install anything.

</comment><comment><USER7> I always use ls -lart. It's handy for a lot of different things. What's the name of that file I just downloaded? Which subdirectory of my home directory is the one where that program saves its config information? What have I been working on in the last month?

</comment><comment><USER8> Why not recursive? Use the following command if you want to have one directory per idea, rather than a single file:

      find -type f -print0 | xargs --null ls -ltr

<comment><USER9> I know it gets talked about quite a lot round here but I find zsh really quite useful for this type of thing..

the zsh equivalent of the above, for me would be

        ls **/* -ltr

(Edit)[ for an exact reproduction ]

        ls **/*(.) -ltr

if you wanted to put a date range on it.. for example, only files from the last 5 days..

        ls **/*(m-5) -ltr

or the last 5 hours

        ls **/*(mh-5) -ltr

there's loads more of these <http://grml.org/zsh/zsh-lovers.html>, obviously your shell is a matter of preference, and if you know bash or something similar well enough then the incentive to change is obviously lessened.. but _personally_ I've found that a whole series of small improvements (for me) added up to a pretty large win

edit: as pointed out by pyre, my initial suggestion isn't an exact replica.. but was the first thing that came to mind for me.. i guess s/the\ zsh\ equivalent/something\ similar\ in\ zsh/

edit again:

        /tmp/ $ mkdir -p /tmp/test1/test2/test3
        /tmp/ $ touch /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4
        /tmp/ $ ls -ltr /tmp/test1/**/*(.)
        -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  7 15:49 /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4
        /tmp/ $ find /tmp/test1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -ltr
        -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  7 15:49 /tmp/test1/test2/test3/test4

<comment><USER8> Nice to know, thanks! But, how does it work with file names containing spaces (or other strange characters)?

Edit: just to clarify: my question concerns the zsh method. Regarding find+xargs, I wrote that comment :-) Actually, this edit would be an answer to zap; HN does not let me reply directly to him: is it to prevent flame-wars?

<comment><USER9>
       /tmp/ $ mkdir -p test1/test2/test3

       /tmp/ $ touch test1/test2/test3/test4

       /tmp/ $ ls -ltr test1/**/*(.)
       -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  9 11:11 test1/test2/test3/test4

       /tmp/ $ touch test1/test2/test3/test\ with\ spaces

       /tmp/ $ ls -ltr test1/**/*(.)
       -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  9 11:11 test1/test2/test3/test4
       -rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 0 Aug  9 11:12 test1/test2/test3/test with spaces

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting timing on this; I just starting using _almost_ this exact command (`ls -1tr`) days ago. Great for checking the last few things in that giant `Downloads/` folder

<comment><USER11> ls -lrt is probably the command I use the most in Unix since ... 20 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey can someone write me a script that will draw a bar chart of the frequency by date/month/year of each file's last modification time (in a directory)? Free beer. I promise!

</comment><comment><USER13> I use it frequently enough that I've aliased "lt" to it. Any other flags people use with it?

</comment><comment><USER14> This is _exactly_ what version control is for.

<comment><USER15> Listing files in order of modification time?

<comment><USER14> Not literally. I should clarify.

Using ls -ltr will indeed list files in order of modification time, but when I read 'Managing Work-In-Progress Folders' I think version control.

ls will list your files, but it won't really 'manage' anything.</comment></comment></comment>


Valve Puts An End To The Steam On Linux Rumors - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2010/08/22/valve-puts-an-end-to-the-steam-on-linux-rumors/

<comment><USER2> The rumors started when Valve was looking for skilled Mac and Linux coders. Don't forget they denied the Mac client for a while too.

That said, the Linux gaming market might be too small to be worth supporting :/

<comment><USER3> > That said, the Linux gaming market might be too small to be worth supporting > :/

I think that's exactly the reason, Mac market is much bigger than 3 years ago but we got at least 5 years more for a decent linux gaming market.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but the Linux market is pretty much a "winner takes all" one, since there's so little choice. Just like the Blizzard games sold so well on Mac a few years back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Phoronix did seem to have some compelling evidence that Valve was at least toying with the idea. My guess is that Valve's statement doesn't mean that they aren't interested in the potential of Steam on Linux, but that they aren't _actively_ developing for it and therefore do not want the public to have expectations for progress, release dates, etc. Companies do this all the time; one of the inside jokes of tech news seems to be that, if Apple or Sony take the time to officially state that they're not working on something, then they're probably working on it.

</comment><comment><USER5> A summary of a summary wrapped in ads. How unique.</comment>


Show HN: HackerNewsers,com, find other hackers near you - <AUTHOR> There's been lots of discussion recently about finding other HNers to talk to / bounce ideas off / work with, some Google spreadsheets were set up to share details but they were soon vandalised. I had a spare afternoon yesterday (which turned into a long day) and here's the result:
http://www.hackernewsers.com/
It's only open to people with HN accounts, it lets you post your biography, location, skills etc. Anyway, I hope you like it and find it useful. <comment><USER4> Very cool! I really liked the registration process, very smooth. I also like that you made it clear that I could delete my account if I wanted on the front page, before registration: that made me much more likely to sign up.

One point: your Google map uses custom icons, which are cool I suppose but I'd prefer the standard ones for the sake of consistency. More importantly, I'd like to see an info box appear when I click an icon on the map: it took me a bit to realize that full info was being displayed below. Otherwise this is a great tool!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link:

<http://www.hackernewsers.com/>

<comment><USER5> looks like your from York, I'm thinking about doing a northern HN meetup thing (as we can't all get to london) if your interested?

<comment><USER6> You call that Northern? It's not northern if I have to fly over 3000 km south to get there! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great work, especially for 1 afternoon/day, and I like the account verification process too - it's quick and effective. Look forward to meeting more HNers via your site!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for your comments, hopefully enough people will see this and join so it becomes a useful resource.

<comment><USER7> BTW, do you have plans to integrate some geocoding/geonames capability? And how about having a map overview like,

<http://djangopeople.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> The map on the home page shows all the registered users, currently just the two of us lol, it groups them in to hot spots, but it's hard to see until there's more users. The registration form is geocoded, it just wasn't working correctly, fixed now.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the clarification. Well I'm certainly happy to be the first guy to join in this dance. :)

<http://sivers.org/ff>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Suggestion - add to the karma listing how long someone has been registered with HN. Absolute Karma is less use than dK/dt. Someone may have Karma 100, but only been registered for 10 days and hence be accruing Karma quickly, as opposed to someone registered for 100 days, hence not active, or not getting much karma.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER9> Or they might actually be developing a business and not getting any karma.

<comment><USER8> It's still information. Interpret it how you choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This isn't the first time someone came up with one of these. I don't recollect the URL of the previous one though. What often happens is people put their data in, and then, with time, it just sits there because it's not a site that's actively linked to from this one.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i thought this might have happened before, so i took some steps to make it a bit stickier. 1\. this seems to be a hot topic right now 2\. the domain is reasonably easy to remember 3\. it's quick to register 4\. to activate your account you have to link back to it from your hn profile page, yes you can remove this link after but hopefully most people will leave it to help spread the word.

ask me in 6 months if it worked :)

<comment><USER10> It's nicely done, no arguing with that. I just sort of wish PG would find a way to incorporate this or something like it into the official site. Or something along those lines...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has been done before here: <http://www.hackrtrackr.com>

<comment><USER12> I think this adds on nicely to hackrtrackr which appears to only be useful for geo-locating yc-readers. This looks to be built much more to satisfy that "community of people who can pick each other's brains" need.

A more blunt assessment.. Hackrtrackr is a toy that isn't that useful, this has the potential to seriously improve the lives of many people here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's confusing to have the search check boxes below the registration section like it is now; it makes it seem that the check boxes are part of the profile one is filling out.

I spent time going through the entire list checking boxes off, only to get to the bottom and see a Search button when I expected a Submit or Register button.

Now I've spent all that time checking off boxes, I really don't feel like doing it again :(

<comment><AUTHOR> yes thats a bit annoying, changed it to show either the registration form or the hacker search depending on your logged in status

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Annoying as I made something similar with the same objective last night - <USER2> a much better implementation than mine (largely because most of the time was spent figuring out PHP's crap SQLite3 class). May have to take you on :)

<comment><AUTHOR> heh i did wonder if someone else would have the same idea, it was motivation to get it done quickly :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One point I'd like to make, don't use the same password for this as you do for HN. Now I don't think anything bad is likely to come of this it's just not a great idea thats all(using the same password that is).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a fair point, that being said, i do generate a random salt + hash the password properly.

<comment><USER16> A random salt? Are you sure about that?

<comment><USER15> I assume this is a joke? Being that with computers we can only generate pseudo random data, amirite?

<comment><USER16> You can't use a "random" salt (such as one generated from the rand function) because then you can't calculate the hash later to verify they entered the correct password, unless of course you store that "random" salt in the database, which would defeat the purpose if your database is compromised.

Typically hash's are calculated using something like: $hash = sha1($password."secretcode".$username); - none of which are random.

If you were to add a random number into that like this: $rand = rand(1,99); $hash = sha1($password.$rand);

Now you can't do if($hash1 = $hash2) { loginSuccess(); } because you will never know what random salt was generated for the original hash.

<comment><USER15> >unless of course you store that "random" salt in the database, which would defeat the purpose if your database is compromised.

Not true, a plain hash can be compromised with a brute force attack. To do this all the entries in the dictionary(used in the attack) must be hashed using the same hash algorithm.

If each password entry is hashed with a random salt(with the salt being kept for password comparison) the attacker must rehash the entire dictionary(not a computationally cheap thing to do) including the random salt, for each and every password.

This doesn't make it impossible to brute force a hash+salt, but makes it a LOT more expensive and time consuming.

At least this is my understanding of the whole point of random salted hash.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is my understanding too, even if someone breaks into the db and gets the list of salts and passwords, they can't use rainbow tables because of the "random" salts, so finding the plain text passwords becomes computationally too expensive to accomplish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My nearest neighbor has -7 karma. nice...

</comment><comment><USER18> Good work for an afternoon's effort. The only problem I see is that all these HN add-ons are hard to track for everyone unless if they were on to see this on the front page. What we really need is an Evergreen HN - where one could track such add-ons and perhaps greatest hits. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have top news of the week/month/year for those who live on an ent time scale :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there a way to add an "interests" or/and "areas of expertise" section to our profile, and have those show in the search results?

<comment><AUTHOR> at the moment theres only skills and they don't show in the search results, although i might go change that now. I'm open to feedback for additional features to add

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really like all of the community things that have been coming out of HN lately. The HN yellow pages has already produced a cool freelance offer for me (just added my info to it earlier today), and this site is definitely much more robust than a google docs page. I'm sure great things will come out of this for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER21> This looks cool, I'm way into this. Unfortunately didn't work for me and I didn't do anything particularly screwy:

> CDbCommand failed to execute the SQL statement: SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table > or view not found: 1146 Table 'hackernewsers.userSkills' doesn't exist

I'm in Hong Kong until early August if anyone is around and wants to grab a coffee. Vietnam after that, probably China sooner or later... also if anyone is doing general Asia travel and wants a perspective, it's what I've been doing this year while working off laptop. Drop a line, I'm friendly, email is in profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, how did you get to that error? Was it from the registration page? I've made a change, could you tell me if it's still occuring? thanks.

edit - never mind, it appears to be fixed now, thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pretty awesome, I signed up.

Can you show up distance even in km? miles don't give much information to me. May be you can choose from imperial units and standard ones by people country...

<comment><USER23> > May be you can choose from imperial units and standard ones by people > country

It's quite simple really: US - miles, the rest of the world - <USER3>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a student, I move between two places a lot. I would guess this is fairly common among HNers. Being able to give multiple locations might be worthwhile.

(For now I gave my uni location on the basis that I spend more time there.)

Also, it might just be my particular biases, but I would be inclined to add "mathematics" as a skill, or possibly category. I have no idea what to put for "career name" though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mathemagician, I'm considering this multiple location business, it does make things a bit more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is pretty cool. I like your signup process.

It would be nice if the pins on the Google map were clickable after drilling down to the city level.

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Pretty nice. One suggestion (or bug I'm not sure): If I search in a city in Canada, I get result from usa.. is it possible to configure the "range distance" ? It's a huge difference if it's a 30min distance or a 10 hours or 3 days distance.. :D (But when I talk about range distance, I mean it in miles or somthing)

<comment><AUTHOR> i thought about that, all i'm doing at the moment is sorting by distance, irrespective of country. When more people are using the site it might make sense to change it, but right now most search results would be empty for anything under 300 miles

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I got this error while registering on your site. I am concerned after seeing this.

Sorry, we screwed up

Looks it looks like i've lost your password, hopefully the bug that is causing this is fixed now. Please re-enter your password in the form below and hopefully you'll never see this message again, but if you do, please Contact<AUTHOR>
sorry!

note to self. get beta testers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi please can you tell me exactly what you did before this occured, i thought i'd squashed this bug but clearly not.

<comment><USER27> I tried logging on to HN and adding the weblink. Was using Firefox on OSX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My only suggestion might be to add some finer granularity to location. I zoom into Boston and just see one blob - when it might be nice to see zip-code level granularity.

I try to change my location to Cambridge MA, but it stays in Boston.

Maybe handle geocoding zip codes etc.?

<comment><AUTHOR> you could actually enter your street level address or zipcode in the city box, i figured most people don't want to do this though so left it labelled as city

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Obviously these aren't staying in the cultural memory. Maybe a link to a community-maintained list of trackers should be added as one of the links at the bottom, along with "Lists | RSS | Search | Bookmarklet | Guidelines | FAQ | ...etc"

</comment><comment><USER30> I love it.

One suggestion: When you click on a pagination button on a Find Hacker News Users listings page, the page should either reload, or scroll to the top. The way it is now, it feels like it isn't answering my request for the next page.

Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed this, it now updates the map too thanks

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you've registered already, and you're still logged in there's a chance i've lost your password. If so you should see a message telling you so in your account page. If you don't see the message, don't worry about it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does this have the ability to update location in real time? I travel a lot and would be interested both in seeing stats for HN in some of the cities I visit and as displaying my current location.

<comment><AUTHOR> not at the moment, although you're free to update your location as often as you want. My reasoning is 99.9% of users will work primarily out of one location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> When searching for people near me, I try clicking on the blue spots in the map, and I expect a list of people in the area to come up, or the list below to change. Is that not the case?

</comment><comment><USER33> What did you use to auto populate my city? A while back I tried using a Google Javascript API but it was always pretty far off - your site (which looks great btw) got it exactly right

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the geoip city lite db from maxmind.com. It's free

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I get htmlspecialchars() [function.htmlspecialchars]: Invalid multibyte sequence in argument

when trying to access the homepage?

<http://i.imgur.com/K390I.jpg>

<comment><USER35> I get the same error.

Safari, Firefox & Chrome on Mac OS X.

<comment><AUTHOR> could you guys tell me if it's fixed now please?

<comment><USER35> It works now.

<comment><AUTHOR> great thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My skill-set is poorly represented here. The only things currently relevant to me are Marketing related.

What about... writing, front-end development, sales, networking, branding, research?

<comment><AUTHOR> register and add them yourself :)

<comment><USER36> I did not even notice the big yellow box until a few minutes later, sorry. Maybe you could add it below the list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great job, just registered. (Heya Northwesters, I feel all alone as a blue dot in Portland. Seattle? Portland? Eugene? I know you're out there. Represent!)

</comment><comment><USER38> Very nicely done. Great signup process. Unfortunately, not too many HN'ers around me (Columbus, OH). I will keep an eye out and see if it changes.

Again, great work. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks like HN killed HackerNewsers. Anyone else having trouble getting to the site?

You might look at a beefier server and adding a proxy in front of Apache.

<comment><AUTHOR> is it still down for you? seems to be running quite quickly here considering

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Seems like whenever I click on a drop that is 2+, it keeps zooming in until it reduces to a single profile, losing all other profiles..

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, thats happening because all the points are exactly on top of each other, seeing what i can do to fix it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I see all your pages end with .html. Are you generating static pages for everyone behind the scenes or did you just name them that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> No the pages are dynamic, although partially cached.I just added a .html suffix

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Fantastic site. I like the aggregating map, did you make that yourself?

I've almost given up finding fellow hackers in Geneva, CH, but who knows...

<comment><USER43> Il y a en effet pas beaucoup de monde dans le coin.

Nyon, CH

<comment><USER42> Ah, mais apparemment il y a qn! Interested in a meetup? My email is in my profile. I wrote to three users a while ago whom I found on hackrtrackr, but got no replies. There's also PeterHammar and Pollux (Nyon), of whom I have no contact info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is pretty awesome. When this site fills out it will be interesting to see what the actual demographics of the site are.

</comment><comment><USER45> Awesome, I signed up.

On a tangential note: any hackers in the greater Rotterdam area (or maybe Amsterdam or Utrecht) up for a beer sometime?

<comment><USER46> Sure, Zoetermeerder here :)

</comment></comment><comment> tomh- There is a bug in your code, my hn account ends on "-". Your routing system doesn't seem to recognize this..

Other than that, looks nice :)

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Awesome idea...doesn't help me much though...seems I am the only one from Jamaica on HN...which is kinda depressing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Really nice! Somehow when I search for Mexico (country), some Texas users appear. Anyway, quite useful.

</comment><comment><USER43> So what's the technology behind your website ?

For an afternoon only, that's quite a nice job.

Edit: didn't see the FAQ (Yii PHP framework)

<comment><USER49> If you need to know this in the future, check out BuiltWith: <http://builtwith.com/hackernewsers.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Wow.. great job done, withe ease of use. It's also an eye opener for me, to add some salt to my Karma.

</comment><comment><USER51> Inspirational stuff... makes me what to get off my lazy arse and start some of my _pet_ projects!

phpnode++

</comment><comment><USER49> Suggestion: Can you please require (re)CAPTCHA or similar when sending mail to people?

<comment><AUTHOR> possibly, but i do everything i can to avoid captchas. Only registered users can send emails at the moment.i could implement a minimum karma before people can send you emails, but that seems a bit.. rude. for now i'll just rate limit it

<comment><USER49> Guess it's ok as long as you need to be registered. Great site, by the way!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Neat! I signed up. One question, why do you only ask for city and not city and state?

<comment><AUTHOR> you can actually add city and state there, in fact you could enter your home address but i wouldn't recommend that. maybe i should make that clearer.

<comment><USER53> More to the point, you should at least enter the city and state. I wasn't paying attention at first and simply provided my city name (Madison) and noticed it was finding hackers in Wisconsin that were (for example) "75 miles away." When I realized it thought I was in Madison, WI, I edited my city to read "Madison, AL" and it started providing some more relevant results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> How long should it take for me to show up on the map? I don't seem to be on there.

<comment><AUTHOR> a few minutes, i cache it

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm. For some reason it's called me a physicist. Not sure why ...

</comment><comment><USER15> woops, broke it.

Here's the pastie with the error and what I was doing. <http://pastie.org/1047130>

Otherwise it's nice, I like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> this should be fixed now, please could you check, many thanks.

<comment><USER15> Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Maybe have page with statistics of most ticked skills?

</comment><comment><USER56> Nice site phpnode.

</comment><comment><USER57> Looks like a cool site! Anyway you can add some blinking texts and some scrolling marquees, and some really cool things that I've already built and feel like bragging about?</comment>


Learning Physical Intuition of Block Towers by Example - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.01312 <comment><USER2> The corresponding UnrealEngine Torch plugin is released here: [https://github.com/facebook/UETorch](https://github.com/facebook/UETorch)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Papers like these make me appreciate why Torch was chosen for Lua.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a Facebook by Yann LeCun about this, just a little background on the project, on-going projects at FAIR, and some promotion of FAIR (Facebook AI Research):

[https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10153408304077143](https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10153408304077143)</comment>


Paper Plane Champ Watches His Record Fly, Fly Away - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577408194095860860.html?mod=e2tw <comment><USER2> If we want to test paper airplane design, we need a standardized robot arm to do the throwing.

<comment><USER3> Also robots should fold the planes, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is cool and all, but it's completely irrelevant to hn.

<comment><USER5> The guidelines say otherwise.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html></comment></comment>


Please help with market validation: Mail Order Coffee - <AUTHOR> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8TGX8LX

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for filling out the survey! Keep 'em coming. I'm not about to begin roasting and selling coffee, but looking to build a platform for craft roasters to get a presence/shopping cart online; and to also help those who enjoy good coffee find good coffee.

Before I head down this path, I'm curious - would/do people order coffee online?

Like some, I have at least 4 local roasters 10 minutes from me. Part of me thinks, "people would just buy local coffee." I also think, "No one limits themselves to just local beer."

I think the biggest hurdle, and this is more for the merchants, is shipping.

Thoughts? Suggestions?</comment>


Best Programming Language to Learn If You Want to Work at a Big Software Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/06/06/whats-the-best-programming-language-to-learn-if-you-want-to-work-at-a-big-software-company/#6f15902974e3 <comment><USER2> *Perl

<comment><USER3> I wish this was true! :)

So:

1\. C 2\. Java

Special mention: Perl</comment></comment>


The world's richest people do not have a growing share of wealth - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2016/08/10/the-worlds-richest-people-do-not-have-a-growing-share-of-wealth/ <comment><USER2> For most billionaires, however, it takes more than an inheritance to join the so-called three-comma club, according to the census; 87% of billionaires, up from 81% in 2014, made the majority of their fortunes themselves.

What a slap in the face for the millions of workers that made those companies profitable.

<comment><USER2> I'm not trying to take away anything from the billionaires but they didn't do it by themselves.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Crappy self hosted time tracking via Slack - <AUTHOR> http://labs.earthpeople.se/2016/10/time-tracking-via-slack/ <comment><USER2> That's why I built [https://wakatime.com..](https://wakatime.com..). which also integrates with Slack to update you on how much you worked automatically.</comment>


What the iPhone has done to cameras is completely insane - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/07/what-the-iphone-has-done-to-cameras-is-completely-insane/ <comment><USER2> I don't think it is just the iphone the other thing that they don't talk about is that digital cameras were rapidly improving in image quality from the late 90's to the mid-00's. My digital camera from '02 takes total trash photos compared to the one I got in '05 but my '05 model is about on par with what I could buy today for a similar price so there is no reason to spend money on an upgrade unless it breaks.

<comment><USER3> There have been at least two game-changers since then.

The first is high-ISO: my Canon 40D can take a good picture at ISO 800, but my Sony NEX-5N can take a good picture at ISO 12,800, which is basically pitch black - think dark room by the light of a television. You can shoot available- light pretty much anywhere, particularly in combination with the image- stabilization tech and superfast lenses that are now available. Some of the newer sensors will get a good image up to 102,400 and can capture up to 409,600, which is just nuts. That's "dim moonlight" territory, basically night vision.

[http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/amazing-sony-a7s-low-light- te...](http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/amazing-sony-a7s-low-light-test-video/)

The other is phase-detect pixels on the sensors. Previously many cameras had to use contrast-detect autodetect, where the camera racks the lens and samples the image for peak contrast on the target. Only SLRs had phase-detect autofocus, which was much faster and more accurate but required a separate set of sensors. But now they put phase-detect pixels right on the sensor, so you can get small cameras with fast/accurate focus.

Not the camera itself, but lenses have also come a long way in the last 10 years. Superfast f/1.4 primes and f/1.8 to f/2.8 zooms are now faster, sharper, and cheaper (and the idea of a f/1.8 zoom was unthinkable 5 years ago). On the high end Sigma's Art series are simply fantastic, and Samyang is raising the bar on low-end lenses too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I do have multiple cameras (SLR with long lens for sports, inexpensive Canon for times I'd be worried about dropping my iPhone - e.g. ski lifts) the reality is that old saying that "the best camera is the one that's with you".

<comment><USER5> _the best camera is the one that 's with you_

While certainly true, I hate those moments when all I have with me is a phone's camera, knowing my far-superior-photos-taking SLR one is at home, then taking the picture anyway and coming home staring at the noise and often subpar framing (never got used to holding the thing steady in front of me). That always hurts a bit. Especially in low light etc. Not that I never took brilliant pictures with a phone or similar, but knowing that the same scene could have been even captured better with other gear I have still hurts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You mean what mobile phones have done to cameras, gps navigators, handheld gaming, personal music players and other things that required dedicated devices in the past?

<comment><USER5> Those are not all exactly the same comparisions though. Sure a phone can perfectly replace a gps, the sound quality is already hard (if not impossible) to distinguish from dedicated players (usability: not so much though) and sure it's good at playing games. But there's just no phone, under the circumstances I often take pictures, which will yield pictures which are good enough or even close for me. And my dedicated device for that isn't even top of the line.

<comment><USER7> Ok, but the vast majority of users are content with "good enough" pictures, so even if you are an outlier, it doesn't really matter. And sickbeard's right that that's exactly what happened with everything else that smartphones consumed in their march to rule the planet; they aren't the best at anything, but they do a little of everything and you always have them on you and it turns out that beats the hell out of something that does it better, but that you have to remember to bring all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple and Sony? Doesnt Sony make ~$20 per iPhone because of their camera parts contribution. And Apple has 8pp engineers on the camera alone.

<comment><USER9> 8pp?

<comment><USER10> 800\. Long press P is how you input the zero on android keyboards

<comment><USER11> Wat. Fuck the camera thing. _that_ is insane.

<comment><USER7> Yeah wait, hold up, can we talk about this, that is bonkers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can somebody change the title to be less clickbaity?

<comment><USER13> It was a really thin article anyways, I don't think it belongs here. The whole article can be summed as "smartphones have tanked camera sales because smartphones have cameras, here is one chart showing this".

<comment><USER14> A poorly planned chart at that. The x-axis is so tiny and hard to read

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand the dislike for the article title. Wasn't the iPhone the most used camera on Flickr for multiple years running? And the article is based on 2007 being a major shift in buying habits. I do feel that he could have been clearer about how it is smartphones in general that helped the decline in sales of digital cameras. His closing paragraph makes it seem like the iPhone is the only phone with a camera.

</comment><comment><USER16> smart phone displaced cheap camera market with image quality that is "good enough" for every day photos. especially those that will only be used digitally. they did the same thing to hand held voice recorders. how is this "completely insane" ?

<comment><USER3> The low-end camera market has always been dominated by "good enough" right from the beginning. Things like box cameras have always been enormously popular, see: the Kodak Brownie line. Disposable cameras were another "good enough" product, and actually remain extremely popular in less affluent parts of the world to this day.

And the thing to remember here is that the smartphone is displacing another "good-enough" product, the digital point-and-shoot, not high-end DSLRs. It's just a matter of convenience to have it in your smartphone instead of two separate devices.

Smartphones do not replace a high-end camera system - but those were never something that everyone owned/carried in the first place. The vast majority of cameras out there have always been the cheap variety that mom uses to snap pictures of her kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is not an article, it's ad.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my app onesmallpage - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everybody, I just launched a web app called onesmallpage which aims to help you read more by emailing you a page (or more) of a book of a book every day. I'd like to hear your feedback on the design and functionality of the site. Also any feature requests, or discussions about the future of the site would be more than welcome.
http://onesmallpage.appspot.com
Basically the site came out of the idea that I do a lot of reading every day, but most of it isn't reading great books. I read my email, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other websites every day and I thought that if I could channel at least a little bit of that reading into book reading I would be a more productive and well-rounded person.
Right now I'm pulling about 100 out-of-copyright books from Project Gutenberg for you to choose from. If the site gets popular I plan to add the entire catalog.
The way it works is you find a book that you want to read, enter your email, and we will send you up to 5 pages of that book a day.
Thanks for any feedback! Dan <comment><USER2> Neat idea. One potential issue I can see is someone wanting to read either more, or less, per day. In the case of more... I'm thinking "what if I get to a good part and want to read more today?" and in the case of less I'm thinking "great, I've got 20 'onesmallpage' emails piled up that I haven't read yet, delete and quit".

I didn't sign up to test, but if you're not doing so already, I'd definitely think about including some links/settings right in the emails that allow users to: adjust # of pages, etc... maybe even a "I don't really like this book, suggest something else" kind-of functionality.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah the reason I decided not to do that is because I thought it might be a little bit cumbersome to the user...I really wanted to make everything as simple as possible. But now that I think about it, I think it's definitely a necessary feature and one that can be made to be simple

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My initial thought when viewing the site was "what does this site do?". After clicking around quickly I still didn't quite get it until I came back here and read your description.

I think it's because you have two images and one is a screenshot of an email inbox. I think this may be confusing because the headings you have on them aren't quite visible at first glance. My suggestion would be to make it more visible or put some more description/explanation of your service like you have described right in this post here! I think that would clear up what the purpose of your app is.

Also on the page of book listings you may want to make each "book row" clickable. Possibly put a subtle background on mouse over and when they click it sends them to the page to enter their email. This makes it a bit more user friendly instead of scanning right and finding the appropriate "Start reading now" link.

Great idea though, I can find this useful reading the email on my smartphone on my way to school!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. Should I put the slogan more to the top of the page then? I'll definitely do something about making the columns clickable that's great thanks man

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really really like the concept. One page a day ... bit by bit, I would be able to finish a book! However, considering how many emails I receive every day, I am already skipping some of them so I can't guarantee to myself that I won't skip the page sent in the mail! But still I think it is a great idea. Wish you all the success.

Agnes

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great idea. I feel like it would be better served if the different intervals between "readings" were longer... I'm more inclined to read a chapter about something in a book than I am to read seven pages at three different times. Maybe send half of a chapter at a time on Friday then the rest on Sunday evening.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is cool idea, Dan. One possible feature I could see added-on that would improve this would be to have a alert sent if the receiver stops opening the emails for x number of days.

Just a thought and gl!

Magnus

</comment><comment><USER7> Its a great idea. Congratulations on getting it up and working. One feature that might work well is allowing the user to do "flow control" by replying to the email you sent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I'm actually starting to work on that, that's a great idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love it! Great idea, At least I'm stoked about it now, would be nice to check in with us in 2 months to see if we've been good little readers :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's a good idea maybe I will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great idea. Impressed. Introduce the ability for me to request more pages via email? I can see me using this to read more in my lunch hour.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be adding this in a forthcoming version, thank you for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a sick idea dan.</comment>


Jeff Bezos tweet seeking philanthropic ideas draws 42,000 replies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-22/amazon-s-bezos-disrupts-another-frontier-with-just-one-tweet <comment><USER3> Bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) concept and significantly over-pay the employees on the condition half goes into savings accounts for family use or to pay down debts of some sort. Employ it as a method to give uneducated (HS degree) or underemployed (able bodied with Bachelors and $8/hr job), rehabilitate and early-release incarcerated US Citizens and put them to work in infrastructure needs.

So, this way we address numerous factors: 1) The large uneducated mass of young people excluded from the workforce or otherwise drowning in college debt, 2) Work to reduce the prison population and actually rehabilitate people with worthwhile skills (metallurgy, equipment, etc), and 3) Fix the crumbling, pot-hole riddled, creaking, aging US infrastructure in probably record time.

Yes it will cost a fuck-ton of money but because these low-level employees will have money to spend, the wheels of US Consumerist economy will be able to pick up. Former students in the program could pay down debt AND save for after they're released from the program commitment.

Poor people are poor because they spend. The US wealth gap is so distorted the rich have choked this system. They sit on piles of assets and spend very little by comparison, even if it's millions of dollars per year. These are economic realities that Bezos is part of causing to be an issue.

It's almost as if Amazon's business model isn't viable without the public infrastructure that is now in desperate need of investment. Hm.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree!

This is why I always skeptically look at any philanthropic announcements....

if billionaires like Gates, Buffet, Zuck, Bezos simply funded the above - <USER2> would go way further, and have long asting effect on the future of this nation in so many profound ways. Rather than "give away half their wealth" \- why not do the above now and actually see it change the surface of the nation?

\---

I am getting involved in the tiny house movement. Clayton homes (berkshire hathaway) has a tiny home division... but BHs entities (like clayton and karsten) in the housing market are so poorly regarded: they build sub-standard homes, their employees are treated like crap, the quality of their products are low because they do not provide skilled training to their employees, the working conditions are fairly poor etc...

its maddening to see billionaires and governments claim all this "making the world a better place" platitudenal BS, but a critical program like CCC would be realize some serious material benefit in every sector.

<comment><USER5> Simultaneously driving the economy and increasing quality of life are often competing goals. Take tiny homes, sure, you might be able to put more people in homes they own, but housing construction is one of the most hammer-ready jobs producing activities there is, and if you cut the average house size by 75%, there are fewer jobs in building.

Then consider externalities, the environment could be a lot cleaner if we got over striving for economic growth. Growth is driven by population or consumption growth or both. So you get more trees cut down to build roads, houses and malls. More pollution from energy consumption and manufacturing.

We should really just pursue managed population reduction, combined with a prescribed amount of economic shrinkage, not growth. But then people really get stuck in their caste and there are far fewer opportunities to move into middle class.

<comment><USER6> Well, its not like building tiny homes are going to make most people who would normally purchase a normal/large size home switch to a tiny home. It would probably net increase the amount of construction work because you've now expanded the available market (lower income people can now purchase a home).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The idea here isn't that Bezos is going to get some stellar idea from the Twitter crowd that he couldn't have gotten from an hour sitting down with the best people at the Gates Foundation. The idea is propaganda / PR. Bezos is letting the world know that while yes, he's about to become the world's richest person, he's going to be a good mogul and begin giving lots of money away, so please don't attack him too harshly for the soon to be $100 billion pile of riches.

The $1b per year in space spending wasn't going to be viewed as enough of a good deed, given the business dominance Amazon is about to enjoy and all the horrible press that is about to follow in the coming years. The Twitter campaign is Bezos firing up his own PR effort ahead of becoming anointed as the world's richest (which will generate thousands of headlines & stories, plenty of which will be negative, when it occurs; and so long as he retains that title, the headlines will grow worse inverse to his philanthropy levels).

<comment><USER8> His PR is top notch, for sure:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-lyons/amazon- drones-60-min...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-lyons/amazon- drones-60-minutes_b_4372910.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great marketing campaign, but philantropic stuff needs to be long term to be of any use. Short term stuff can in fact be counter-productive by hiding that there is a problem that needs to be resolved.

The best solution for almost every response he got is: Introduce better legislation. Even charities are just bandaids over actual problems.

<comment><USER10> You can't legislate societies problems away. Legislation is just bandaids applied with the threat of violence for those who seek to remove them.

<comment><USER11> > 'You can't legislate societies problems away'

Could you elaborate? It seems pretty obvious that you can. No child labour, minimum wage laws, equal rights etc.

<comment><USER12> The reason legislation like this isn't helping our country at the moment is because of globalization. Labor laws may help the workers, but it's a net negative if those laws just lead to the outsourcing of jobs. We need to choose between globalization for maximal gains for the rich, or protectionism for quality of life for our workers. At the moment, a middle ground doesn't seem possible.

<comment><USER13> Globalisation is fine where regulation can ensure that standards are still met. There is nothing that prevents domestic legislation setting standards for the working conditions of those who produce goods in foreign countries.

Protectionism isn't going to help workers in the long term. We live in a global market; accepting that and using legislation to deal with negative outcomes is a totally valid approach. The fact that it hasn't been done is because of the large amount of money standing in the way of it.

<comment><USER12> Theoretically this is true, but look at how it's worked in practice. Manufacturing was shipped to places like China and Mexico where the minimum wage and quality of life is much lower. When considering these things, should we consider the theory of globalization, or the reality of what is happening?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Truly affordable housing. Something in the $300 range at the most. Lots of regulations, at least in California, do things to prevent micro apartments, which I think could help the situation.

<comment><USER15> Create an unsustainable system then seek philanthropy to fix the problem? Why not simply fix the system?

<comment><USER4> Seems to me, that is exactly what he stated: Legislation is blocking innovation and ability to provide micro-apartments. We need to change the laws to fix this.

I know this first hand, as I am trying to work in the tiny house movement here in the bay area.

In talking with the city and county of alameda, the code is the problem. The code states that any land parcel for a single family is required to be minumum of 2,300 square feet.

So you cannot sub-div a parcel for several tiny homes, as any structure with a door, sleeping and cooking facilities is considered a dwelling and is subject to requiring a 2,300 SF lot...

I am working with several tiny home manufacturers on this - but the laws need to change.

<comment><USER16> Can't you just make a small apartment building (with maybe 3 or 4 apartments all connected by a hallway to fulfil the single-outer-door requirement)?

<comment><USER7> Apartment buildings - even very small ones - come with their own special, elaborate, nightmare regulations. They're worse than housing regulations.

<comment><USER17> An that's a problem which legislation can remove or at least ease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As I mentioned last time, my preference would be to set up an endowment which would support the retraining of workers who are displaced by automation into areas where there is a skills shortage.

When 1,200 jobs disappear because whole foods automates sorting and packing to their stores, this is traceable as a direct consequence of automation.

Those people should be interviewed assessed and retrained into viable opportunities.

<comment><USER19> > As I mentioned last time, my preference would be to set up an endowment > which would support the retraining of workers who are displaced by > automation into areas where there is a skills shortage.

If one can believe the HN crowd there is a shortage of programmers. For this you don't need retraining, you can just teach it yourself on the internet.

<comment><USER20> Beyond retraining, there is dignity. Most workers don't feel like their job means anything, that their effort is not valued properly, or do a job by obligation, not because they like it.

<comment><USER19> > Beyond retraining, there is dignity. Most workers don't feel like their job > means anything, that their effort is not valued properly, or do a job by > obligation, not because they like it.

And what would retraining change on this situation? Why should they like the job that comes afterwards?

To state it cynically: Wouldn't brainwashing people to love their job be a much more effective solution to this problem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lobby Congress to outlaw lobbying and restrict campaign donations to $20 / person!

<comment><USER22> This. Next have a many-party political system so parties have to form coalitions. Or even better, only vote for and pay taxes to the lowest level of gov't (village, neighbourhood); then replace all higher levels of gov't with committees that are on topic (health care, roads, public transport, etc.) that are funded and mandated by those local gov't bodies. Note that committees do not have exclusive "right", local gov't bodies can switch or create their own if they feel the need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the tweet Bezos wrote [0]:

> _This tweet is a request for ideas. I 'm thinking about a philanthropy > strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time - working on the > long term. For philanthropy, I find I'm drawn to the other end of the > spectrum: the right now._

Perhaps, the focus on right now is to find cool ways to end up with a lower tax bill?

Bezos recently sold about $1billion worth of Amazon stock [1]

[0] [https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776](https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776)

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-04/amazon- ce...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-04/amazon-ceo-bezos- sells-about-1-billion-in-company-stock)

<comment><USER24> > Perhaps, the focus on right now is to find cool ways to end up with a lower > tax bill?

Sure he most likely doing it to lower tax. Capital gain is 15% no?

Either way at least he's doing it in a helpful way. Even if I don't agree with Amazon monopolistic tendencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The person who suggested building AWS data centers in Africa was right on the mark. I would love to see that

<comment><USER26> Maybe I'm missing something. Can you explain the philanthropic reasoning behind the idea? Other than lower cost or latency.

<comment><USER25> This was the original tweet: [https://twitter.com/asemota/status/875497242987307008](https://twitter.com/asemota/status/875497242987307008). He explains it better than I could.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What about treating his employees decently?

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this attention-seeking, or is there a process to reviewing these replies (maybe see what's common to many of them)? 140 characters for a great idea is very tough. And I'm sure the people advising him on this are geniuses with lots of experience.

</comment><comment><USER29> What this species needs is not philantrophy, but a new frontier- something, that equalizes, as everyone gets a chance to throw themselves at it. A wild West, and to be honest the comp science revolution was a disappointment in that regard.

We need a method to get ressources for cheap out of the gravity well, so if he built a cannon to the moon, and researched a way to get humanity (0,1,0) there, that would be the greatest gift to this species.

</comment><comment><USER30> why doesn't he create a big city with communal living and top rate security for refugees?

<comment><USER4> ... Or for anyone?

<comment><USER30> or that too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm getting so sick of hearing the word 'disrupt'. It's been so overused that it I feel that it has basically lost all meaning.

Edit: I see that the HN title has been changed in the meantime.

<comment><USER32> mainstream spoils everything.

btw, what about Bezos paying taxes instead of "optimizing" ?

<comment><USER19> What evidence can you provide that the government provides a more efficient allocation of ressources? It is well-known that a lot of the taxes go into the military-industrial complex.

<comment><USER33> Isn't the USA pretty much middle of the pack when it comes to percentage of GDP spent on the military? And I feel like I don't hear too much about Raytheon Billionaires although I'm sure some of the upper echelon at these big contractors must be doing pretty well.

It's also well known a lot of taxes go into our healthcare complex. Is that good or bad? Seems like we overpay for worse outcomes statistically but we also have some of the best healthcare facilities in the world and pioneer a decent amount of drugs.

At the end of the day both are employing a lot of solidly middle class folk who are spending their money moving the economy which seems to be the ideal situation in a lot of ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How can one person read 42k anything.

I hope he does, and not someone for him.

I remember justice roberts saying in an interview how he read letters to president Reagan, and pass along those he thought appropriate. I was truly disappointed.

<comment><USER35> > How can one person read 42k anything.

It's actually quite easy in this case. Most of them are threads, from a quick skim on the replies. So you separate them into threads, treating the person that replied to the top comment (so, mentioning @JeffBezos and himself only) as one idea. Replies to these replies are not usually ideas, but more of questions, feedbacks and such. So, I would say that there are at most 10% of usable tweets (out of 42k replies in total), which you then combine into specific ideas (chain responding about an idea is still just one idea) and you get down to something like 500-1000. Out of those, you'll might find 50 or so that are actually doable and not blatant trolling (I mean, one of the top replies is literally "I could need some money and I would consider it very philanthropic") and you get something usable and easily digestible within a day or so.

I would say that he needs to read them, but he definitely needs someone to make it digestible before starting to read them.</comment></comment>


3 Things You Must Do Before Building a Referral Program - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/before-building/ <comment><USER2> This is my post. Something I didn't talk much about: cost.

Some referral programs are for apps that lose lots of money. Others, like Uber's driver referral program, spend lots of money but are very efficient relative to their alternatives.

For SAAS, there are support costs, but referrals usually make a lot of sense for how efficient they can be. Plus they make your paid acquisition more affordable.

I'm happy to answer questions around this stuff! firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-.html <comment><USER3> I love that we get these political discussions on hacker news, but I sometimes wish we as a community would spend as much time thinking about politics as we do thinking about programming and science.

Big banks function very much as part of the government, in many ways the big banks determine government policy, certainly to a much greater extent than popular opinion does. There are many forms of this public-private merging of government. To take just one aspect, consider the revolving door whereby bank executives go between their banks and government jobs and back again: to just pick one example virtually at random, obamas chief of staff is a "former" citi group executive. I wonder, if a bank executive goes to washington for a little while, do they even notice that they changed jobs?

This article explains that the big banks wouldn't even be profitable without massive tax payer support, here is a choice quote from the article which really drives home how intense the stranglehold banks have over government policy:

"Neither bank executives nor shareholders have much incentive to change the situation. On the contrary, the financial industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle on campaign donations and lobbying, much of which is aimed at maintaining the subsidy. The result is a bloated financial sector and recurring credit gluts."

Some people wonder what could be done about such a situation. The sad truth is that there are already an overwhelming number of ideas that are floating around that have already been demonstrated to work (see iceland). The problem is not coming up with a good idea, the problem is how to implement one of the many good ideas which have already been proven to work.

The crux of the matter is that only the power of a strong federal government can take on the even more powerful too big too fail banks. The only way political change happens is when people get organized, and the american political system gives us a lot of freedoms. If you live and a free country and abstain from participating in politics, then in my opinion you have abdicated your responsibility as a citizen.

<comment><USER4> You make a couple of great points, but you're obviously extremely misinformed about Iceland. Basically what happened in Iceland is due to an amount of stupidity that greatly exceeds the amount we're used to in the rest of Europe and the USA (not implying that the people of Iceland are stupid, but they had incredibly incompetent people at the helm). They bailed out their banks as well, just wanted to make it look like they didn't.

 _"[there are ideas] floating around that have already been demonstrated to work"_ is a bit of hyperbole and I'd love to see you get into the specifics.

The sad truth, to me, is that _we_ are responsible because we make our governments spend too much money.

<comment><USER5> Iceland jailed bankers, and paid for the citizens' debt. I don't see why the US can't jail people responsible for the crisis, even though the banks are too big too fail. In other words, I don't see how banks are 'too big' to receive a new CEO and lose a few employees.

<comment><USER6> The vast majority of the people "responsible" were not doing anything wrong or illegal. Who is responsible? Anyone who:

-Sold a house at an inflated price

-Bought a house at an inflated price

-Sold a mortgage to someone who could not afford it

-Bought a mortgage that they could not afford

-Sold MBS

-Bought MBS

-Used or provided leverage to buy MBS

-Insured these transactions with derivatives or other instruments

Who, precisely, would you like to arrest, and for what? This was not the result of fraud (although I'm sure there was some of that) but the result of a systematic setup for failure. Even if you cleaned up all of the fraud, it still would have happened.

<comment><USER7> No, it was caused almost entirely by fraud. If not for people within 'the banks' knowingly rating these mortgages as a ludicrously good buy, etc, there wouldn't be a banking crisis.

There are even further systematic abuses that should see thousands jailed, such as deceptive marketing and intentional misrepresentation of clients. None of this would have been self-sustaining without all the coverups.

<comment><USER8> >There are even further systematic abuses that should see thousands jailed, such as deceptive marketing and intentional misrepresentation of clients.

I'm okay with that as long as all the homeowners who lied about their financial situation go to jail as well. How many thousands of otherwise ordinary people made false statements on loan applications?

<comment><USER7> Oh, so you aren't okay with charging a single uber-fraudster until all the little guys are safely put away. That's handy.

While I agree that the little guys committed crimes too the bankers were ALSO in a position of power AND have a duty to protect their clients AND engaged in an on-going conspiracy to commit fraud. I'd be pissed if someone tried to cheat me on EBay, I'd be livid if I discovered my banker had intentionally been giving me bad advice because he profited on every dollar I lost.

The difference in scale between these things is so monumental that it makes your comment seem absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This analysis is a bit disingenuous, from the article: "The larger they are.. the result is an implicit subsidy: The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail."

As an implicit subsidy it is not as if there the 83 billion dollars that can be "taken away" from the banks and used for other purposes. The implicit government guarantee has value but if you can not find a way to recover that value in some other way when taking it away from the banks you would just be robbing the economy of that growth.

That being said it seems like the way to remedy this would be to use a tax mechanism that can measure this subsidy and extract it from the banks in a manner that is fair to bank investors and citizens.

<comment><USER10> Presuming that the theory is correct, there seems to be two sides to this:

First, you're going to be transferring that money to the banks/institutions that lend to them. So the money isn't going away, it's just ending up as profit for somebody else (as compensation for them considering themselves to be taking on more risk.)

Second, the taxpayers going to get rid of that amount of cost in the form of risk; the averaged risk is paid by the taxpayers, it is just paid in bulk when the banks are about to fail.

This assumes the calculations are all correct, and it doesn't count in what indirect cost the economy would have from loans getting a bit more expensive overall.

<comment><USER6> This is the part that gets me, as I've been saying this for a while -

 _Left unchecked, the superbanks could ultimately require bailouts that exceed the government's resources. Picture a meltdown in which the Treasury is helpless to step in as it did in 2008 and 2009._

Makes one side seem a little less important to me.

<comment><USER11> Well, it is certainly possible.

It can go from "too big to fail" to "too big to rescue".

When that happens these banks, it would be disaster for many countries, not just companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting article, and it should be noted that while it's in the opinions section, it is an editorial by the editors. See: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-29/bloomberg-view- to-b...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-29/bloomberg-view-to-begin- publishing-editorials-in-late-may.html)

It's not some random HuffPo piece...

That said, the "profitability" of the big banks is somewhat irrelevant. JP Morgan, Goldman, etc, evolved out of partnerships, where all the profits went to the partners. To this day, the banks pay out most of their revenues as compensation. "Profits" are what's left after all that.

<comment><USER13> >That said, the "profitability" of the big banks is somewhat irrelevant. JP Morgan, Goldman, etc, evolved out of partnerships, where all the profits went to the partners. To this day, the banks pay out most of their revenues as compensation. "Profits" are what's left after all that.

Couldn't the argument be easily changed to "Big bank executive compensation is subsidized by taxpayers"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry -- with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy -- would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare."

That's a brilliant observation. Props to Bloomberg for this incredibly lucid op-ed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I feel it's a little disingenuous to call it a "subsidy" since the taxpayers aren't actually writing the banks a check for $83 billion. But the key point is still spot on: without the implied backstop of a government bailout the banks would pay what everyone else must pay to borrow money, etc.

Too big to fail is simply a euphemism these days for "The government will take care of everything no matter now stupid and reckless we act." This attitude really must go. How should that be accomplished? I don't know. One thing is for certain: the banks will drag their heels kicking and screaming should someone try to change the status quo. And they'll probably get their way - <USER2> it should still be attempted.

<comment><USER16> "Too big to fail" means "they are our buddies and give us money and we won't prosecute them".

<comment><USER15> Sad, but so, so, SO true!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think Elisabeth Warren said it best when she asked "The Most Obvious Question Ever And Stumps A Bunch Of Bank Regulators" She asks federal bank regulators _why no banks were taken to trial_ in the aftermath of the financial crisis. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mavB1lbtIow)

</comment><comment><USER18> We will be better served as a nation with smaller banks, we need to get over the concept of to big to fail.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think we need to drop the concept of "too big to fail." If another large bank requires a bailout, let's give it to them, but make a Ma Bell-style breakup part of the deal. i.e. You get the bailout, but you can no longer be too big to fail.

<comment><USER8> Why wait? Instead of the consolidation we've seen, what we should have done is increased reserve requirements and broken up the banks so they all had assets below a certain dollar figure. On top of that, they should be forbidden from owning securities related to other banks or insurance companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In some sense the thesis of the article makes intuitive sense. How can the banking sector really have much of a margin since they are dealing with the ultimate commodity product, money!

Trading is a zero sum game, all the banks can't make a profit doing it.

Banks provide quasi governmental services to society, so one could make an argument that they should be subsided in some way, or that they have to be subsided! Their role in the economy is too fundamental to not have.

I've come across arguments that banks should just be turned in to utilities.

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/should-banks-be- publi...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/should-banks-be-public- utilities.html)

<comment><USER21> Wait, what? Trading is not a zero sum game except for maybe options and futures contracts.

<comment><USER20> Well, buying and selling financial instruments with short holding times is a zero sum game. Any gain is created by another traders loss.

<comment><USER21> Yes, but banks more often hold large positions for long periods of time. While they do engage in HFT, it is hardly their only trading strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Any one know how much it would cost to let a failing bank go down, but compensate the people with their money in that banks?

I never found out why we couldn't let that happen. If a bank fails, and I have $10,000 in it, give me the money, not the failed bank. Then I can pick a new back, which should in theory be stronger with the new influx of customers form the now dead bank.

Besides, what happened to capitalism and competition? We capitalists seem to ditch those principles the second it goes wrong, expecting socialist payouts from the people to bail them out. No, businesses go bust, that is the whole point. Survival of the fittest. Strength through competition. That is the American way, no?

Worse still, was the bail out of the car industry. How did that happen? A whole load of new companies killed off right there. People would have left, some would start new firms, some would got an bolster existing firms, and so on. Now, the same stagnation remains because it was propped up.

Ah, pah. Just another one of those things that leaves me depressed, confused, and cold.

<comment><USER23> > I never found out why we couldn't let that happen.

Because they frightened everyone with an _imminent apocalypses_ if we were not to save their fraudulent asses.

I believe we should have let them fail. It would not be pretty, but we'd manage. Long term benefits would surpass temporarily hardship. First it would cleanse the system and second set a strong precedent.

Besides, it would be very much in terms with capitalism - failed in competition goes under. Yet funny how the banks that lobby for ever more independence, rely so heavily on social welfare from the government :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article says that without subsidies the big banks would about break even. Does that presuppose that toxic assets are recorded accurately in their books? I recall that there was controversy about this, and then the issue seemed to vanish. If toxic assets have not been accounted for accurately, how big is the discrepancy?

<comment><USER8> "Toxic" assets don't necessarily remain toxic. In the last few years the housing market has recovered somewhat, making the problem less urgent.

<comment><USER25> That statement is disingenuous. Collateral based bad mortgages were a small fraction of the toxic assets. Banks only ended up forgiving around $20 billion in mortgage debt, which is nothing compare to the size of other issues. The bad mortgage issue has been a red herring from the beginning to distract attention from criminal fraud by bankers and absurdly focus on homeowners instead.

Almost all of the toxic assets, or more properly, speculative loss that will never be paid, was on the derivatives market which could be as much as $1.2 quadrillion dollars, 20 times the size of the entire world economy, of which even the $16 trillion in bailouts was a small amount.

The toxic assets have been moving around and ending up off of bank sheets and on federal government sheets as part of loan paybacks, which is more of the massive scam and stealth bailouts going on.

Every one of these mega banks should be dismantled. The same scams continue.

<comment><USER8> >Almost all of the toxic assets, or more properly, speculative loss that will never be paid, was on the derivatives market which could be as much as $1.2 quadrillion dollars, 20 times the size of the entire world economy, of which even the $16 trillion in bailouts was a small amount.

This is quite literally unbelievable. Do you have anything to back it up?

<comment><USER26> I suspect that [http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/top-derivatives- exper...](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/top-derivatives-expert- finally-gives-a-credible-estimate-of-the-size-of-the-global-derivatives- market.html) or something like it is the source.

In theory these unwind cleanly, and the actual risk is low. As the article says, if there is even a small discrepancy in how they unwind, the real numbers are insane. A big part of the freak out when Lehman failed is that everyone knew that in theory the deals would unwind, but it had never been tested in practice on anything like that scale.

<comment><USER8> I've never read anything I thought was credible from washingtonsblog, and this is no exception. The number is based largely on speculation, and if you follow the chain of blogs and investor articles the whole thing just stinks of the sort of hype you see when an investment site is trying to scare you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So I thought this article was pretty opaque. They didn't really discuss the subsidy enough. They just said there was a subsidy that allowed the banks to borrow money at a reduced rate. Who is giving them this preferential treatment? How do those particular banks get that subsidy? Why not charge all banks the same rate and let the size of these banks eat themselves. It's not a hard concept to swallow if you've had economics 101. Law of diminishing returns which happens to any business when it gets too large. But, I think it didn't really layout a case for why this subsidy exists.

<comment><USER28> The basis of this article is a May 2012 IMF Working Paper called _"Quantifying Structural Subsidy Values for Systematically Important Financial Institutions"_ (<http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12128.pdf>).

The subsidy discussed is not an issue of economics directly, but capital markets, i.e. finance.

The paper infers a subsidy level for state-supported financial institutions by comparing the level of state support embedded in credit agency ratings and comparing them to their long-run average value. The authors control for the factors such as the sovereign's own ability to support, because sovereign debt is also rated by agencies, and for institutions intrinsic rating values.

Credit ratings are used directly and indirectly by capital market participants to determine the level of funding costs across all debt markets. So, they are the best available proxy for determining at least a floor for this preferential rate. As can be seen from previous financial crises, actual bailouts would be highly dependent on the nature of crises and may be substantially higher than expected.

 _How do those particular banks get that subsidy?_

\- from other market participants. In a sense, governments are permitting the misallocation of capital from other market participants, including governments and government agencies (hence taxpayers are directly involved), into the state-supported institutions. It is not a zero-sum game because of how that capital is then used.

 _Why not charge all banks the same rate and let the size of these banks eat themselves._

\- there is no central rate allocation. Market participants use market prices and their best available information for funding costs. A state-supported institution is naturally considered by many participants to be a lower risk than a non-state supported institution.

<comment><USER27> I get the feeling the author of that piece didn't quite understand what the "subsidy" represented, hence why the author didn't explain it very well. If I can sum up what you said these bigger banks get better credit ratings because rating agencies give them better ratings because of their size and perceived safety. Overtime these small changes give them an edge in lending rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> ... Because it is in the best (short and mid-term) interests of a debt-laden and debt-fuelled state to support those entities which can maximize further debt creation.

Banks do not exist in isolation. You could go as far as to say the problem is not so much Too Big to Fail, though that produces its own problems, as Too Interconnected to Fail. These issues have only become worse since 2008.

<comment><USER12> > ... Because it is in the best interests of a debt-laden and debt-fuelled > state to support those entities which can maximize further debt creation.

How exactly?

<comment><USER6> I think he's saying we need cheap capital right about now, and this quasi- government lending machine is just about the only practical way to do that. But it's not a forever thing, and it's going to break again.

Or as a character in _Margin Call_ put it:

"If you really want to do this with your life you have to believe that you're necessary. And you are. People want to live like this in their cars and their big fucking houses that they can't even pay for? Then you're necessary. The only reason they all get to continue living like kings is because we've got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off and the whole world gets really fucking fair really fucking quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don't. They want what we have to give them, but they also want to play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. That's more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow. Fuck them. Fuck normal people."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hey! Who are you calling 'too big to fail'? I think they are failing just fine, epic even, thank you very much.

</comment><comment><USER30> citizens should get the money directly. why should a private bank be able to borrow at x% and sell the money to me at x+4%? if you are going to have the fed system the government should loan out mortgages directly at the same rate plus a fixed fee for a government approved appraiser.

</comment><comment><USER31> Because being successful cheater is better evolution strategy than being a drone.

</comment><comment><USER32> We already let banks print money. What's another $83 billion?

<comment><USER21> Doesn't the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (part of the Treasury) print money?

<comment><USER33> I have seen this argument countless times but the BEP just gives money to the Fed. It's pathetic. From Wikipedia:

> The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) is a government agency within the > United States Department of the Treasury that designs and produces a variety > of security products for the United States government, most notable of which > is paper currency for the Federal Reserve.[1]

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

<comment><USER21> None of the banks talked about in this article can make money. Only the Federal Reserve Banks can. Equating one of the non-profit, tax-exempt Federal Reserve banks which are controlled by the Federal Government, but "owned" by member banks with a consumer finance bank is ridiculous.

Heck this article is talking about subsidized bank borrowing costs. The Federal Reserve Banks have zero borrowing costs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> ... and us nothing?

</comment><comment><USER35> _The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail._

Great, so we all should go to borrow from huge banks, no doubt their lower rates are passed to the consumers, with the banks being caring and all.

<comment><USER36> People need to refuse to pay their taxes until .gov does something about the bank fraud and criminality.

<comment><USER37> Reminds of this. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience> Though the context doesn't fit exactly. and is a weak point for the analogy, but still the idea is interesting.</comment></comment></comment>