China's two-child policy is having unintended consequences - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/china/2018/07/26/chinas-two-child-policy-is-having-unintended-consequences <comment><USER2> There are lots of versions of the "works in practice, but does it work in theory?" anecdote. Most times I've heard it, the "does it work in theory" guy is either french or american and the topic of conversation is some element of the post-WWII Marshal Plan.

Anyway... This is a policy area that (in _my_ estimation) just doesn't lend well to philosophical theorizing. This (more contentiously, but also IMO) which means we need to watch out for the French and the Americans. They will want to solve the theory part of the problem in a theoretically ound way, without inelegant hacks or "this seems to work" solutions.

Just to state the obvious, the problem is: "How do we improve maternity benefits and (maybe) increase fertility, without undermining women in the workplace."

Theoretically) the problem is almost impossible to solve. In practice, there are all sorts of things that help or hurt, some of them surprising.

For example, it seems to be the case that "shift work" (anywhere from fast food to paediatrics) is _way_ better for mothers. In a shift job, if you aren't in your seat, someone else is. Work doesn't pile into your backlog, waiting for you to come back. This means jobs are better defined, and can therefore be more easily parceled out.

Ironically, shift work turns out to be _more_ flexible in ways that matter to working mothers. It doesn't lend to flextime and work from home, but it does lend to job sharing, flexible loading and such.

The trend is in the opposite direction though. A lot more modern jobs (especially good ones at technology companies) tend to be built around individuals. You might have 3 "sr developers" on a single team, but they generally can't step into eachothers' shoes flexibly. Each one plays a unique role.

It's almost impossible to reconcile such tidbits of specific, practical knowleedge with a wider abstract theory of labour, contracts, freedom and such. But, it is possible to make more maternity (and paternity) friendly policies by understanding them.

</comment><comment><USER3> The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected strongly by law, and make paternity leave _exactly equivalent_. Make no distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave.

Obviously there's the associated job of changing perceptions around taking the leave, which will vary from country to country, but by making the risks associated by hiring a man no different from those associated by hiring a woman you move towards eliminating this gender imbalance.

As an additional benefit, both parents are more likely to have time to bond with their newborn or newly adopted child and share the burden of early parenting.

<comment><USER4> > The solution to these problems IMO is to make maternity leave protected > strongly by law, and make paternity leave exactly equivalent. Make no > distinction by gender when it comes to maternity and paternity leave.

In Germany, there's the "parental leave" (not maternal or paternal leave) [0]. The time period is 12 months with parental allowance : 2/3rds of your income - 300 to 1800 €. If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until 14 months. Of course, there are other benefits like child care etc. [1] after the child has grown up.

[0] [http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Elterngeld/el...](http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Elterngeld/elterngeld- node.html)

[1] [http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Kinderbetreuu...](http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/KinderFamilie/Kinderbetreuung/kinderbetreuung- node.html)

<comment><USER5> > If the mother and father share the parental leave, the leave extends until > 14 months.

However, "sharing" in this case does not necessarily mean equal parts. The rule is "max. 14 months in total, but max. 12 months per parent". So a lot of couples end up doing 12 months maternal leave and 2 months paternal leave (not all though).

<comment><USER6> This is also my experience. However, recently I have picked up more and more cases, where both take 7 months (more or less). Maybe just a coincidence.

<comment><USER7> I have a male friend that took 4 months of from memory. I'm not sure it's uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Obviously I'm a women's rights maximalist, but I'd like to point out something else fundamentally wrong with the thrust of these policies: they're aimed at producing more unwanted children. It doesn't take a genius to see what happens if they're successful at scale.

<comment><USER9> One way of handling this is making paternity and maternity leave nearly equal, and mandatory. Making maternity a bit longer could make sense given that there's a lot of physical recuperation involved, but mainly employers shouldn't see one or the other as a liability.

<comment><USER10> Mandatory paternity leave! Can we do a straw poll of how many people think that if you have a child the government gets to tell you how long to quit your job for!?

<comment><USER11> There are cultural differences here, specifically those that involve what the concept of "liberty" means in practice. Americans tend to focus on freedom "to", which is exactly what you're talking about here: employees should be free _to_ choose whether or not they take maternity/paternity. Europeans tend to focus on freedom "from", i.e. employees should be from _from_ worrying about whether the decision to take maternity/paternity will hold them back or not.

You can frame it the way you have if you want to, but to some cultures, having the government tell people what they can and can't do is the only way to ensure true liberty for all.

<comment><USER10> I'm British and pretty left wing, don't assume that it's all tribal. Granted my post sounded quite American. The government forcing you to take time off is absolutely mental to me. Think of the edge cases => what if I'm not planning to bring up the kid? What if I want lots and lots of children? What if it's an absolutely vital time for me at work, partnerships are coming up or something. What if I'm self-employed? Then think about how possible choices for these edge cases lead to messed up situations. I can imagine people pretending not to be bringing up their children so that the government doesn't mess with their lives.

I see how you can frame it as "freedom not to have reproduction affect your career". But for one thing that still won't work. Time off is time off and income correlates with total hours worked in your life. For another, I don't think all of society agrees that we should pay for your freedom to have children without incurring any costs. We don't need more children, the world population is still increasing. There's this strange train of logic now that because aging populations become poor (because we massively overpromised on pensions) we need native children. 1. We can use immigration. 2. If your system cannot support the decreasing population necessary for the world to get through the next centuries, you need to fix the system not encourage breeding.

Also what about incels, gay people, people who just don't want children? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class peoples ability not to have their kids interfere with their law career.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't sound especially left on this issue. Welfare and safety nets are normally accepted as a good thing in the centre and on the left, in varying degree.

In practice if you're young, junior or working for a jerk (or a high hours constant death march startup) the choice becomes work through and let partner do it alone, or get fired. For the rest it is a case of how confident you are in your tenure, seniority and perhaps number of years in the workplace how you will react to your employer hinting strongly to just take a couple of days.

What's needed is strong enough legislation such that anyone who _wants_ to support their partner can, and the few who have to work can do also. I'd much prefer for it become an accepted norm, and for those who don't to be the unusual case. It has benefits for both the parents and the child.

Your last point immediately begs the question what about all the rest? Why on earth are they paying for straight middle class kid's education, healthcare, child allowance etc. Why on earth are they paying for pensions of those no longer working? That way lies the abolition of all social safety nets and ultimately pay yourself or sink. I don't want to live there thank you. :)

<comment><USER10> Your last point is incoherent. Every single person benefits from education. The person benefiting from time off for maternity/paternity is the parent much more than the child.

If you're poor/young bad boss/start up and have kids it's tough yes. It's also tough if you don't have kids, and they're a choice.

It's kind of pointless to argue left/right, dismiss me with a label if you want. This only exists in a few very left wing countries so I don't think opposing it puts me on a fringe somewhere.

The point is that maternity/paternity leave is the rest of society subsidising parents, who are not doing anything useful by adding to existing overpopulation. Not whether I'm left wing or right wing. If you want to make life easier then I'd go for basic income over selective welfare that disproportionately benefits the already privileged.

<comment><USER5> > The person benefiting from time off for maternity/paternity is the parent > much more than the child.

That's a very surprising claim. All the psychological consensus that I've seen says that the continuous presence of people of reference (preferably the parents) is a positive influence on the early development of children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even where parental leave is publicly funded (rather than paid by employers), women of a certain age are rejected because it's expensive to hire someone who may be gone 2 years of the next 5. You need to find and train replacements etc.

<comment><USER10> Where does that happen?

I've always thought that was much more logical, the current system in the UK just doesn't make sense at it's core => if you're an employer you can get saddled with an employee who you have to pay whilst they don't work for a period, who can then quit, but you're not allowed/expected to try to avoid this by not hiring women. Or taking it into account in promotions/salary.

If you really believe both of: 1: women should be paid to have children at their current salary. 2: women should not be discriminated against in any way. Then the only way to reconcile it is to have the government pay. And no, equal male leave wouldn't solve the problem because they don't take it. And no, mandatory male leave isn't a good solution. For a start it's unbelievably authoritarian to force someone to leave their work because they had a child. For a second you still have exactly the same discrimination problem it's just directed at potential parents instead of women. That would remove it as a feminist issue so it wouldn't get press but it would still be a problem.

<comment><USER14> To be honest, if you're willing to have a kid while unwilling to leave work aside for your kid, that's just plain old bad parenting and IDGAF if it's "authoritarian".

I care about your kid being raised properly, because I don't want to deal with a criminal 20 years from now. That's why I happily pay taxes for education, less problems for me later even if I don't have kids.

<comment><USER10> So any father who doesn't take several complete months off work is neglectful? Which months are these, and if you take the wrong ones off are you neglectful? Is it the very early months where kids can't speak or ever remember what happened? Is it when they're learning to speak? This is an insane standard. Your kid isn't going to be a criminal because you worked when they were young. There are such things as evenings and weekends.

<comment><USER14> Mostly yes.

There is [0] plenty of research [1] on the subject [2]. Early infancy is when the sense of empathy and belonging develops the most, and this development improves with the participation of the father in child care [3]. Daycare is in general subpar in this regard until the children can go to preschool, 0-4 isn't optimal for socialization.

[0] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232438327_Empathic_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232438327_Empathic_Distress_in_the_Newborn)

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282751496_Developme...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282751496_Development_of_Self_and_Empathy_in_Early_Infancy_Implications_for_Atypical_Development)

[2] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016363831...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638311000506)

[3] [https://web.a.ebscohost.com/abstract?direct=true&profile=eho...](https://web.a.ebscohost.com/abstract?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&jrnl=00916544&AN=24686157&h=bBc2JvQKtLb5xuuMn9KB8I%2bp3Jh%2b3%2fWEMbvwJQ%2b4FDgLt9YSAQxp2gC8VmMhT5dHFxVQs0qDHAdz3QpA7suUJg%3d%3d&crl=c&resultNs=AdminWebAuth&resultLocal=ErrCrlNotAuth&crlhashurl=login.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26profile%3dehost%26scope%3dsite%26authtype%3dcrawler%26jrnl%3d00916544%26AN%3d24686157)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Don't all policies have unintended consequences? Not to make this political but this is partly why I think many people lean right intellectually without knowing it because at some basic level we know what's good for us. Good intentions often set policies but constantly backfire because we collectively lack the humility to say we don't really know how the world works. People's intentions are so tricky that it's the 2nd and nth order effects that catch you out

<comment><USER16> It is a shame that we can't seem to take a more iterative approach to public policy.

E.g., try a program somewhere, and if it achieves the desired results, scale it up. If not, iterate until the end of a pre-agreed timebox, and if things still fail to deliver, that's how learning happens.

Sadly, I doubt that the public at large would be okay with this approach. :/

<comment><USER15> I like the interative approach - especially if its the local community that has decided to adopt it. But this arrangement undercuts the power of a central authority (especially if its effective)

<comment><USER17> And central authority needs this power because they're actually rebranded aristocracy, right?

Generally central action ought to be taken to harmonize local development and fit to super national level norms, not just because - and only when necessary.

Anything else is dangerously authoritarian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unintended? Hardly. The current administration has pushed hard for some time now, to encourage women to "go back to family".

[http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-02/24/c_1118142363.ht...](http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-02/24/c_1118142363.htm)

<comment><USER19> I was thinking that examples of Italy and Germany (versus e.g. France or Sweden) were showing that this mindset simply doesn't work. Women end up spending even more effort on infiltrating the workspace and have fewer children later.

When you demand mother to be perfect (e.g. by being stay at home), you get less children, and nobody becomes happier. As opposed to laid back approach with society safety net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why have countries that have generous paternity and maternity leave implemented it by obliging companies to pay the salary for the duration, as opposed to the government paying for it?

Are there any counterexamples of countries where the state picks up the bill?

That seems to me to be a much better policy, you avoid obvious perverse incentives like a small company not wanting to hire a woman in her late 20s because she might get pregnant, and that's going to be a huge expense.

I think it makes sense as a social policy to have generous leave after people have children, but it seems ridiculous to implement it like this.

If the state paid for it you'd get other perverse incentives, since they'd be obligated to pay a salary determined by some private company, but fraud there should be easy to control for, e.g. you get paid the mean salary you earned for the last N years, not what you happened to be earning the day you had a child.

<comment><USER4> > Are there any counterexamples of countries where the state picks up the > bill?

The state foots the bill in : France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark

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

<comment><USER20> Thanks. That's interesting, but according to the article some of these countries are just paying out extra money from the state on top of employer- mandated leave, or they have a hybrid system where the employer covers some significant percentage, which still leaves these incentives in place.

<comment><USER4> > according to the article some of these countries are just paying out extra > money from the state on top of employer-mandated leave

What do you mean by "extra money"? Also, are you against employer-mandated leave too?

> they have a hybrid system where the employer covers some significant > percentage

In Germany, the employer doesn't cover any significant percentage - the money comes from the state.

<comment><USER20>
        > What do you mean by "extra money"?

In my original comment I'm suggesting that employers needing to pay out the salary of parents as they go on leave because they've had a child produces perverse incentives, and suggesting that things would be better off if the state was obligated to pay for that salary instead.

This "Elterngeld" policy you've linked to describes something entirely different, at least in some countries. That Wikipedia article seems to conflate many different types of policies.

In e.g. France this just seems to be an allowance system unrelated to however the French handle paid paternity and maternity leave (I'm not familiar with if/how they do that). According to the news article on the BBC which Wikipedia links to the German system is something similar.

        > Also, are you against employer-mandated leave too?

I'm not sure I understand that. Am I against employers getting to decide if and when you go on leave?

Yeah I can't see how that's a good idea, especially in the context of paternity or maternity leave. It should be up to the state to set that policy, and then you should have a right to make use of it. Your employer shouldn't be mandating anything.

But that topic is entirely unrelated to my original comment, which is how you fund the leave once it happens.

        > In Germany, the employer doesn't cover
        > any significant percentage.

So in Germany the Elterngeld is all you're getting? Given the money caps mentioned in the Wikipedia article that seems rather low, around 25K/yr.

But in in case, I was referring to Sweden and Norway which according to that article have some system based on a percentage of salary, although I see now that that could mean that 80% is all you're getting, instead of the employer paying the remaining 20%. I don't know which it is.

In any case, I feel all of this is getting lost in the weeds, and not at all discussing what I think is the interesting point I brought up, namely that if there's countries that run their policies as I was suggesting, have there been studies of how that impacted workplace discrimination when it comes to companies e.g. being more reluctant to hire women they think might get pregnant soon?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here in Vietnam the maternity leave law is also quite generous. I forget the exact details? Six months of pay?

Anyway, the result is that most companies require women to sign a contract saying they won't get pregnant in the first year or two after signing a labor contract. If they do get pregnant then they are fired without benefits.

<comment><USER22> If such a contract is valid, I have no trust on Vietnam's law.

<comment><USER23> On the sliding scale of law regimes that try to regulate human labor, going from a universal declaration of labor rights all the way down to chattel slavery, this is rather progressive for that part of the world.

Naturally no one in European or Anglophone countries would countenance such a thing, but in Asia this can provide women with a means of self-determination that they didn't have before.

I remember reading a book about Britain's service class from the Edwardian era until the end of that culture after WW2. Service class culture replaced something far far worse. And the ugly labor regimes that replaced those were better than the service class. If you had an issue with the way one particular factory treated you, well, there was another one right down the road. If you had an issue with the way your masters treated you, your options for finding better employment were far more restricted. This dynamic caused women to leave the service industry in _droves_ to go work in factories.

The classist society in Britain had been fighting a rearguard action to maintain the service legal regime for decades, until WW2 thoroughly annihilated any chance of it ever coming back.

Nowadays any time I hear about some crazy contract law, I immediately think about what human agency is being liberated here.

Amazon link for the interested: [https://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs- History-Britain-N...](https://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs-History- Britain-Nineteenth/dp/0393241092)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well, the one child policy had unintended consequences as well (rejection of daughters to the point of infanticide) so, it seems the issues are deeper

<comment><USER25> We have seen a neighbouring country (India) suffering from the results of rapid population growth, so doing nothing isn't free of consequences either.

China has basically just taken a shortcut to the "natural" reduction in family size that happens to every country as it develops and become richer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Every public policy has its negative consequences. Ending the one child policy is a non-brainer.</comment>


Facebook's Hyperpartisan Political-Media Machine (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/inside-facebooks-totally-insane-unintentionally-gigantic-hyperpartisan-political-media-machine.html <comment><USER3> >"Facebook's takeover of online media looks rather like a slow-motion coup. Before social media, web publishers could draw an audience one of two ways: through a dedicated readership visiting its home page or through search engines. By 2009, this had started to change. Facebook had more than 300 million users, primarily accessing the service through desktop browsers, and publishers soon learned that a widely shared link could produce substantial traffic."

It seems to me that the New York Times is just complaining that they can't control the political narrative anymore because the proles can now decide for themselves what news they will read. Thoughts?

<comment><USER4> Realistically speaking, when would you say the NYT last controlled the political narrative? I would argue that it's not a recent loss of control, so implying that this is a case of sour grapes strikes me as unlikely to come close to the truth.

Besides, Facebook is an appalling, festering wound. It's not just politics, but of course a lot of money and talk floats around politics and a lot of noise as a result. Facebook is a case of a minority using the service to keep in touch with some people, and a vast majority engaged in a bizarre and self- destructive series of narcissistic behaviors.

The evidence keeps mounting that using Facebook and unhappiness are strongly correlated, and I keep seeing people who aren't remotely surprised by that.

<comment><USER5> It can be hard to attribute control, if 100 news organizations all push a narrative and that narrative sticks maybe all 100 of them had some control, maybe one had control and the other 99 were just mindlessly parroting what they said. The last time the NYT's narrative matched up with the generally accepted version of the truth? Probably as recently as the 2012 election, possibly even more recently. Was that control? Certainly looks like it to me but you may disagree and as I said, control is tough to prove. I don't think the parent comment is unlikely to come close to the truth though. It seems to come from pretty reasonable observations.

<comment><USER4> That's just not even close to being true, for at least half of the country. You're not controlling anything if an order of magnitude more people listen to Rush Limbaugh than read your paper. For a huge section of society, the NYT has been seen as basically untrustworthy or a "liberal shill" since Reagan to be realistic, and Clinton to be charitable.

<comment><USER5> There's no way an order of magnitude more people listen to Rush Limbaugh than read NYT. There might be more listeners than subscribers. But that's hardly an apples to apples comparison, one is free, the other costs money. Many many more people read NYT articles for free without subscribing.

<comment><USER4> Well, the NYT has a weekly circulation of about half a million, and Limbaugh gets a weekly audience of 20 million. As to who clicks through a google link to their site? I don't know. I don't think that's anything like "controlling the political narrative" though, and I don't think having a site that people sometimes read is the same as twenty million people listening to you for hours.

<comment><USER6> The New York Times has at the very least 30% more unique monthly consumers than Limbaugh, and realistically probably 300-400% more given Limbaugh's weekly listener overlap.

* nytimes.com had 72.9 million users and 649.2 million page views in January 2016 [1]

* "Limbaugh still draws some 13 million listeners a week (though that's down from his 1990s peak of more than 20 million)", per an article from May 2016 [2]

1\. [http://adage.com/article/media/york-times-pulls-back- ahead-w...](http://adage.com/article/media/york-times-pulls-back-ahead- washington-post/302720/)

2\. [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/is-rush- limba...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/is-rush-limbaugh-in- trouble-talk-radio-213914)

<comment><USER4> Of course that averages out to 9 page clicks per user, and Alexa estimates that more than 25% of those clicks are Google referrals. Not exactly the same as millions of people listening to your every word.

Then there's drumdance's excellent point.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, 13-20 million people listening to a voice in the background while driving to lunch is not exactly the same as 73 million people actively mentally engaged while reading an article.

Even notwithstanding his comparatively miniscule and unengaged audience, Limbaugh's agenda-setting power pales in comparison with The New York Times. The combined audience of The New York Times' editorially-aligned media ecosystem utterly dwarfs that of Limbaugh.

Limbaugh influences Hannity, Beck, Levin, and other conservative talk radio; and, to an extent, cable news like Fox and web media like Breitbart.

The New York Times influences a vastly larger media syndicate: the most listened-to radio organization, NPR; print and web media like The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Atlantic; cable and network news like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC. And while there are of course other areas of coverage, politics garners the largest share and most prominent placement. The New York Times' highly syndicated political message not only covers the general population, but also percolates through universities, where engagement with it deepens as it intertwines with the academic curriculum.

The vast reach and depth of the latter media apparatus means that The New York Times plays a major role -- and quite likely constitutes the single most influential voice -- in shaping the dominant narrative in American political life.

<comment><USER4> I see that the Gish Gallop is alive and well, and I'm starting to see what that other article was saying about shills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's what I keep coming back to: when Dan Rather was hoodwinked into pushing a fake story about GWB's minimal military service, he was fired. When Keith Olbermann was similarly caught pushing a story he found and liked that turned out to be false, he was fired. When Brian Williams made up a BS story about an RPG firing at his chopper, be was suspended for 6 months.

What happens when Breitbart or HuffPo or various YouTubers and bloggers get caught in a lie? Nothing. Nobody's head is put in the noose.

News aggregators are to journalism what AliExpress is to shopping - they'll give you what you wanted at the price you wanted, but piled high with lies and crappy quality, and you'll never find the same company twice so their reputation doesn't matter.

<comment><USER8> It's not true that the people you mention in the first paragraph were punished after a single instance of fake news. The truth is that networks like NBC are as loose with the truth as Breitbart and have been for decades. Millenials won't remember what it was like flipping through the nightly news shows before the internet and seeing the same false stories reported on different networks with the same phrases and clips of the same "experts". The only difference now is that they have competition. Other organizations can call them out on their lies when they become too outrageous. But the news media has always been hyperpartisan and full of lies.

Edit: Yeah. Just downvote, cowards.

<comment><USER9> There are many examples of the mainstream media manipulating the news to suit their preferred narrative. I have written about this a bit, using the example of how the New York Times, and their associated fact checkers, pushed the false narrative that Trump mocked a reporter's disability. [1] There are hundreds of other examples, but you have to make the effort to get out of your bubble to see them.

As for the topic: Traditional media is losing its distribution to social networks, so it's fighting back with what it sees as its market advantage: The Truth. However, the new distribution methods allow users to find the truth in a different way from before. Instead of Dan Rather telling you the one true news, people collect their news from multiple sources and make their minds up. As with distribution, the mainstream media is set to lose this next part of the battle.

[1] [http://newslines.org/blog/lets-talk-about-fake- news/](http://newslines.org/blog/lets-talk-about-fake-news/)

<comment><USER7> That is not fake news. Trump made a pallsy gesture when mocking a disabled reporter who actually crooks his arms like that. It's not the media's fault he's the kind of bloated jackass who makes pallsy gestures when mocking _everybody_.

They saw something that walked and talked like a duck and called it a duck. You supported a bloviating toddler for president, don't call it "fake news" when somebody notices.

That's not even what fake news even means. "Fake news" is yet another example of the right perverting a word to mock others for their own weaknesses. Fake news isn't slightly distorting the facts or lying by omission, it's making things up from whole cloth.

Obama birth certificate nonsense is "fake news". Pizzagate is fake news. Trump making pallsy gestures when mocking a disabled reporter is _literally what happened_. The only thing is some missing nuance that he does that to everybody because he's a dick.

<comment><USER10> You can argue about the Trump gesture but at least he wasn't making a lot of money out of imitating a vulnerable person in public as did Trump's critic, Meryl Streep and company with the film 'Iron Lady'. Margaret Thatcher was still alive at that time suffering from dementia. Thatcher's biographer has noted that no one asked the family for their permission or views on portraying her at such a distressing time. Imagine the feelings of family members while film goers went to see an enactment of scenes undoubtedly akin to the reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's cool how articles like this are able to take a vague feeling that probably a lot of people have and put it in more concrete terms. It is well- written.

They mentioned that some post had gotten big enough that it had merited commentary by Snopes. When the vast majority of political discussion takes place over a distributed mess of memes the nature of fact-checking changes tremendously. On top of that, a lot of these pages are building up the ideological armor to rebuff attempts by the platforms themselves to provide more rigorous filters (e.g. "corrupt Twitter / Reddit algorithms"). Maybe this is just the way the world works now, but if so that's kind of depressing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Thought this was interesting:

///// Littlepage is also a recent convert. During the primaries, he was a Cruz supporter, and he even tried making some left-wing pages on Facebook but discovered that they just didn't make him as much money. /////

Now with Trump in charge, will this flip? With angry leftists flocking to Occupy Democrats, Young Turks, etc?

We'll see.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, this is happening, but other left-leaning outlets are calling it out too:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/democrats-confront- lefty...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/democrats-confront-lefty-fake- news) [http://mashable.com/2017/02/01/left-wing-conspiracy- theory-v...](http://mashable.com/2017/02/01/left-wing-conspiracy-theory-viral)

<comment><USER14> I skimmed that buzzfeed article for examples, all the ones I checked were either right-wing outlets "conservative Daily" or articles containing speculation about Trump's/Bannon's plans, backed by recent factual evidence. Not fake facts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To me, the media always believes the rest of the non-media world is interested. We are not.

None of the 300-500 people i deal with each week ever talk about "stuff" in this article. Hardly ever does the word Facebook ever come up (except my spouse who uses FB to voyeur friends &family )

<centralized online news consumption in an unprecedented way.

Nope. Not to those I know. Just because it's on a screen does not mean it an engrain.

People aren't stupid. Really. Whether it's Walter Cronkite or National Enquirer or Readers Digest. Or now Facebook or fox news or npr or blogs. We get it.

Just because the vehicle to spread BS has moved does not mean we don't realize that.

Chill out American press.

<comment><USER16> You don't have any friends or family who sincerely believe in patently stupid claims on FB, like Hillary Clinton being a Satanist and/or serial killer? You're quite fortunate, but I assure you there are large numbers of people who genuinely believe in complete BS.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps. How would or could I determine this?

I think there is a difference between reciting BS on the internet and believing it.

Just for kicks i am going to ask my acquaintances if they use FB, why and how often. Could be a good conversation starter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The big issue not mentioned is how much influence Facebook exerts by feeding users what each user likes. Facebook is by its nature a filter bubble. That's inherently divisive.

<comment><USER14> The filter bubble is relatively minor -- we've always filtered our social groups. The open bazaar Internet is a recent anomaly. Facebook's dark side is how outrageous lies spread faster than nuanced truth (regardless of partisanship), and Facebook's technology accelerates the difference

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems like a good time to link to this prescient 2002 TED talk from Daniel Dennett on "dangerous memes":

[https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes)

</comment><comment><USER19> Fucking LOL. The NYT. Purveyors of bullshit extraordinaire. Telling us about the media machine.

Their end can't come soon enough. Judith Miller 2003. Never forget.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Unintentionally"

</comment><comment><USER21> from August 2016

<comment><USER22> Good catch! Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Visit the article, if for no other reason than the emoji Great Seal

<comment><USER14> Those are Facebook UI graphics, not emoji

<comment><USER23> Actually, an emoji is defined as "any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, e-mail, and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc" (merriam webster)

So I think the icons seen in the graphic would qualify as emoji.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Verify and Trust;

</comment><comment><USER25> we need to realize that social media experts have basically discovered a new form of addictive drug that is based on ideas instead of on a physical substance. "if it bleeds, it leads", but industrialized and backed by big data, in the way that cocaine was an industrial-revolution optimization of relatively benign coca leaves. there are people who literally cannot take their eyes of this stuff, constantly looking for the next 'high' of outrage. righteous anger in meme form has some kind of addictive force beyond what we have seen before on a scale that can manipulate mass audiences in a way that propagandists of the old times would never have been able to dream of.

we should be worried the last three presidents were all elected by the team with the best data operation.

it has infiltrated the communication you have with your family members - <USER2> before in human history was your interaction with your own family and friends mediated through a for profit corporation whose interest it was to make you share memes.

i dont know if i am ahead of things but as someone who was on the internet since 1996... i deleted my facebook account years ago. i deleted my twitter this past year. i am close to deleting google.

i pay money to certain sites that i value, and patreon creators. my money goes to people who make stuff, and they make stuff i like without trying to manipulate me with some kind of weaponized big data political campaign. the free internet is almost become an unusable pile of shit.

i feel like there is this nugget of people leaving behind the 'standard internet' for these new little bubble enclaves where we cannot be assaulted with never ending streams of .... garbage. i dont know the name for it...

we need a name for it. its something like a drug, but crossed with a meme. it is a virus but one that you voluntarily re-infect yourself with every time you log on to some platform like facebook.

its like addiction but without the physical component. its a dysfunctional manipulative relationship but one side is a data center and a bunch of algorithms.

its like a toxic person but that person is a platform that you log in to every day to try to connect with people who are not toxic. its like you cannot get away from the toxicity anymore

its like if there was ubiquitous angry talk radio that you could never escape. its there in your pocket all the time waiting to get you angry about something or other.

its almost like the internet is turning people into psychotics... except they really do hear little voices in their heads all day long telling them how terrible the world is. because that is what is really actually happening.

its like renting your brain out to a corporation, for free, so that you can plug into some pseudo community that exists only to generate profit.

these things all come through some kind of 'feed', which is designed to trigger the release of brain chemicals that in a feedback loop cause you to consume more of the feed.

the feed is designed by an algorithm and big data. you are like the squirrel in the psychology experiment, except of pushing the lever to get more nuts, you push the lever to get another hit of the chemicals that are released when you have a nother righteous anger story in your feed.

they used to call blackberry 'crackberry'.

maybe they are more like drug dealers. anger dealers.

or virus spreaders. they spread the viruses and re-infect people even as they try to get away.

maybe they are the reservoirs of the virus....

their only purpose is to grow. using your brain. your mind that is.

maybe they are , essentially,

mind cancer.

<comment><USER26> Made an account to respond to this.

On the net a bit before you. Effectively left the net around 2003-2004 due to a dangerous rise in vigilante-ism specific to a community I was involved in. Saw the darkness coming, a prelude to the Twitterite-Trumpian shit. Net was no longer about amazing technologies connecting people. Became a power that could be used against people.

Never had any social media accounts. Surprises me people could not see where it was going. People who never touched HTML didn't see what they were giving up by raising their flag on corporate PHP. The ecosystem of private web has almost entirely disappeared. Today you're either corporate or silenced.

Don't have any permanent accounts anywhere. Imo, accounts are surveillance / advertising delivery mechanisms. The longer you ride an account, the more info "they" have on you. And one day somebody is going to want to f__k with you. And it'll all be there, on a plate.

(This is not a theory. I saw it happen, more than once. Including to myself.)

Gave up email around 2005 as the worst offender. All your account information, all your personal business, all your draft-grade ideas, all in one place, waiting for some a__h__e to hack in or get a warrant? No thanks. And nobody has any discretion in email. Nobody has figured out how to use PGP in 25 years. Hopeless.

People who use social media, imo, are like Neanderthals waiting for their extinction event. Intelligent people, engineers, and evil corporate and political people are basically cooking up crack and handing it out so they can get rich and grab power. Zuckerberg sitting beside world leaders at the G8 a decade ago kind of cemented this perception imo. And the Neanderthals keep signing up as if all of this was neutral, like clean air or fresh water.

(My favorite Neanderthals are the political activists claiming the high ground of human rights to conduct their political campaigns via Facebook without the threat of surveillance!)

And, yes, I live in a cave. I'm almost not joking.

Tried recently to get an email to register for a throwaway account somewhere. Could not figure it out via Tor. Tor services permanently or temporarily out of service. Or require non-anonymous bitcoin. No way to get emails without leaving trail. No way to be anonymous. Internet = surveillance. No more privacy. Everybody is a social media idiot. America is crumbling. Not a coincidence, imo.

When I get nostalgic for the good old days of cyber revolutionaries and tech manifestos, I think of the failure of the front page of Reddit to provide any solutions to the very serious long term problems we are facing as a species. It's all astroturfed joke gifs and one or two rage-news story of the moment. The comments have gone from bad to impenetrably terrible in the past 5 years. There's no wisdom in this crowd.

(Hackernews is an interesting exception, but the narrowness that keeps it sane is also its shortfall. Not every problem can be solved from the command prompt by start-up engineering visionaries. The principle virtue here is respect for craft, and it shows everyday in the careful comments.)

The internet has turned into something worse than television. The people are more passive as ever in their hyper-personalized info-holes, zoned into whatever gives them that dopamine hit, as you put it.

Reading used to be an alternative to television. We used to leave the boob tube and go read a newspaper, or a book. Reading was good. The internet has transformed reading into the problem. Where is the escape? The people who wrote, who called themselves intellectuals, used to occupy a social and technological space separate from television. They had their own world. Now writers, um, bloggers, newspapermen, scholars, and the rest, are all shoulder to shoulder in a disorderly cue, all mobbed together trying to get a golden ticket on the train to success. And the train station is called Facebook, or Twitter. Writers have always been poor, but never until today have they been beggars.

(My favorite omen is Twitter, where all the formerly important pillars of the political aristocracy, like Bill Kristol for example, go to flash their underwear. Trump is just the best example. Hardly the worst. Imagine Hemmingway ruined by Twitter.)

The internet destroyed the BBS scene. First came the information superhighway through that hometown feel. Then came the skyscraper social media conglomerates. Now we're getting the double tap psychological bombing campaigns that shake the ruins we are huddling in. And we are supposed to be amused.

I don't know how people manage all this disaster. Maybe like most people they buy junk cookies and pies and forget that grandma used to make this stuff at home much better, and that's why we used to love her. Life in America has become worse and worse. Emptier and emptier. More abstractly equal, more invasively political. And in the past 20 years, America has been transformed by surveillance properties of the internet.

Nobody has a handle on this. Including the great political parties, including the technologists, including the intelligence services. Great winds are sweeping through.

I think America is reaching its late Soviet period. The machine is creaking. Everybody is looking at each other wondering what part of the machine is breaking. The ship is full of leaks (and not only Wikileaks).

The plan is to rearrange the deck chairs. Just a little more Uber. A few more sprinkles of Netflix. Just one more cloud service. Fix Facebook. If we can get one more round of funding. If I can cash this pay check (with no healthcare no dental no retirement fund). One more Walmart shopping binge. One more lid of meth. One more line of code.

The internet revolution has become nothing other than the digital exploitation of the masses. Every attempt to right the ship has failed. There is no decentralized post-surveillance internet coming. Trump is the past present and future.

/rant

<comment><USER27> Have you considered that you're just old and the new generation will be able to instinctively pick out which bloggers are credible and which are just full of shit? I mean, your rant reads like something Bradbury would write approx. 50 years ago regarding TV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unintentionally gigantic? I really kind of thought the first order of business was to make that social media platform into a giant.

<comment><USER25> well fuck me sideways, i thought the purpose of technology was to enoble the human condition, lift up society, and make our civilization better for the future generations. didnt realize that corporations profit margin is the only possible good to come out of technology.

<comment><USER20> Technology does not have purpose. We use technology to our own ends.</comment></comment></comment>


George Bush's Brother Is 'Tweeting' In Chinese On Weibo - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/article/419-george-bushs-brother-is-tweeting-in-chinese-on-weibo/ <comment><USER2> hmmm, didn't W hold hands with the Taliban right before 9/11 ? Just sayin</comment>


Saudi prince buys $300 million stake in Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/19/BUSU1MEB5J.DTL&tsp=1

<comment><USER2> I would guess this is how he is diversifying</comment>


Unboxing a 5G Protection Device - <AUTHOR> http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2020/05/unboxing-a-5g-protection-device.html <comment><USER2> Sort of related: had a customer with a problem where data on a serial line got corrupted which is usually resolved by applying proper shielding all around the cable, i.e. standard Faraday cage principle. So English not being my native language I wanted to explain this in correct terms and entered the term 'emf shielding' in a search engine just to doublecheck. I think 90% of the results on the result page were all like this, 'protect your family from dangerous EMF'-style. Image search: the same, images of entire iron curtains meant to be put around your bed etc. Since this was using Duckduckgo, which as far as I know does not suffer from the typical 'search bubble' like on Google, I'm afraid this is an accurate representation of.. what actually? The internet being flooded by companies wanting to make easy money? There being serious amounts of people with a misunderstanding of EMF, it's sources and effects?

<comment><USER3> Unrelated: was thinking how it would be possible to truly prove uniqueness eg. by DNA but it seems everything can be spoofed. One way to avoid it is computation eg. captcha but yeah sucks. This thought related to online voting.

I do find it interesting the desire to harm/screw other people over and feel no remorse. Like those scams getting busted in certain places eg. fake virus support. People show up to their actual office and do the scam like their 9-5 haha... Idk crazy. I sometimes wish I had that malintent vs. just being a passive people pleaser. Like I'm sorry of my existence. Meanwhile guy jaywalks across traffic to me and asks me for some money so he can go to McDonalds... Idk. Conversely I see a legitimely homeless person and I offer them money, they refuse.

<comment><USER2> _I do find it interesting the desire to harm /screw other people over and feel no remorse_

I'm not sure this is _the_ driving force here, especially when your description sort of fits the worst psychopaths, and I can think of other principles these people live by which aren't necessarily driven by such 'evil' forces. E.g. desire to survive (==food/shelter) which in modern society usually translates to desire to earn money, see an easy way to do that, feel remorse but ignore it.

Alos, after having talked to so-called tinfoil hatters, it seems that a large part of them genuinely believe all these theories (well, or were extremely good in tricking me into believing they believe) and as such also believe they can actually help people so from their point of view it's not a desire to harm or screw over but rather to help. As crippled as that might seem to others. I.e. do not underestimate the power of the human mind to play tricks on itself, or mental problems in other words.

<comment><USER3> > actually help people so from their point of view

Hmm I did not think of that. My rant was mostly about scams where you know it's a lie eg. a fake virus and then you proceed to convince someone they have to pay you money to fix this problem you made up.

But yeah I see your point about the need to make money too in this particular situation(what I'm talking about) it is a fast way to make a lot of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the subject of placebo technology. How well do HN think placebo software would work?

An example would be a productivity app that only has a flip switch for High or Low productivity. Whenever you need to be extra productive, just open the app and set it to High.

<comment><USER5> It wouldn't be just placebo though. Clearly separating time when you want to be productive vs playing around is an old and effective trick.

Placebo apps that make your Internet faster are as old as the Internet itself though. I am guilty. In my defense, that was 20 years ago.

<comment><USER6> I'm not 100% certain of how the medical/psychological community would define 'placebo', but I'd argue it's not as simple as this not being a placebo because it's an effective trick.

The fact that placebos are effective is precisely /because/ they're effectively tricking whatever badly-understood connection there is between our thinking and our body. I imagine that there are degrees to this: 'tricking' ourselves to be productive by deciding to clean our house instead would generally not be called a placebo, whereas taking a sugar pill that lifts us out of depression probably would.

But fundamentally they're just the same thing on a spectrum: an improvement as a result of something that we /know/ should not be effective by understood, biological pathways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a lazy job! The least they could've done was to throw in a low frequency oscillator, to give it some credibility. Fighting high-frequencies with low. :)

OTOH, the reasoning for poor construction of these devices is probably similar to the reasoning for poor English in 419 scam emails.

<comment><USER8> Having an oscillator on radio frequencies would require FCC stamp of approval.

<comment><USER9> The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction in the United Kingdom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if there would be a market for actual electromagnetic shielding products, such as some sort of conductive paint for walls and ceilings? Of course, you could not use your phone or other devices, but it could be useful for the bedroom. A good way to have a guaranteed "do-not-disturb" zone as well!

<comment><USER8> The market is there, schools would love this technology. The problem is that simple thin coat of aluminized paint is super expensive, as is a big mesh. And phones are very effective at getting the low signals through any available hole in filter coverage.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if it would be possible to install a 4G network extender [0] then implement IP route rules on the ADSL router, to forbid access to Facebook and co?

[0] [https://www.verizon.com/support/4g-lte-network-extender- faqs...](https://www.verizon.com/support/4g-lte-network-extender-faqs/)

<comment><USER12> Those extenders typically backhaul the traffic over a VPN back to the telco, so your router would never see the true destination (e.g. Facebook).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, I thought it would about some kind of mechanism against vandalism. How naive of me in the early hours...

Surrounding yourself with a strong electromagnetic field should help you shield against electromagne... forget it.

<comment><USER14> > Surrounding yourself with a strong electromagnetic field...

Clearly you haven't read the advert, it's a 'nano-layer of quantum holographic catalyzer technology'

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "...the slideshow will take you through my discoveries..." \- I'm being dim, but where is the slide-show?

</comment><comment><USER16> How is it not illegal to sell these?

<comment><USER17> "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA^H^H^H MHRA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

<comment><USER8> Radio waves are under the purview of FCC not FDA. (Unlike laser light.) MHRA has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Regulatory body in UK for radio waves is also separate from MHRA. I might be wrong there but I think it's CAA, while spectrum allocations are UK parliament.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I had this idea of starting a business selling homeopathic antidotes to vaccines. If anyone wants to partner up...

<comment><USER19> What would you want to treat?

<comment><USER8> Excess of money combined with lack of sense. (Or non-existent side effects of vaccines.)</comment></comment></comment>


Speedy Android 2.2 hits with tethering, push framework, more - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/05/speedy-android-22-hits-with-tethering-push-framework-morespeedy-android-22-hits-with-tethering-push-framework-more.ars <comment><USER2> One note: The extra speed is by definition a bogus feature. If the apps were compiled natively for the processor in the phone, they'd already be running at full-speed. So therefore I gather that until now, the Android apps were running at a fraction of what the CPU(+) can do.

If I understand correctly, iPhone apps are compiled natively (from Objective-C). So they always ran much faster than Android apps, and now they probably still run faster, but less so. Am I correct?

(+) I used to design CPUs for a living

<comment><USER3> It's not fair to compare execution speed of Android apps and iPhone apps. There's always a tradeoff between faster development time in a higher level language and getting better performance in a lower level language, which has been debated to death on the nets for years.

The fact is, the same code runs faster on Android 2.2 than it does on 2.1. That's not bogus, it's an objective measurement.

<comment><USER4> When comparing Java and Objective-C, which one is higher level and which is lower level? The fact that Java uses bytecode doesn't necessarily increase productivity.

<comment><USER3> I'd say the standout feature that puts Java at a higher level than Objective-C is garbage collection. You could also say that Objective-C is lower level becuase it's a strict superset of C. Admittedly, it's a murky distinction. Is there a good argument for why one might consider Obj-C to be the higher level language?

<comment><USER5> Objective-C supports garbage collection (optionally).

<comment><USER6> Not on the iPhone. I'd trade performance for garbage collection. Memory leaks are very common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Things were so much more simple before android. iPhone was undisputed champion of smart phones, the phone choice was simple. Now theres all these options! Do I really want all these new features? Am I going to miss them if I buy the new iphone? Etc, etc, etc...

<comment><USER8> Oh the price of freedom!

<comment><USER7> Yes exactly! With choice comes decisions and with every decision there is an opportunity cost. Both phones are great! It makes choosing one over the other a more difficult decision.</comment></comment></comment>


Connecting a Macintosh SE to the Internet with a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://metalbabble.wordpress.com/2020/02/08/the-final-frontier-connecting-a-macintosh-se-to-the-internet-with-a-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> 2 years younger (1985) Atari 520ST (1), upgraded to 3MB ram.

Here (2) with proper NE2000 compatible Realtek 8019 ISA network card (3) connected to cartridge port with super simple converter board, one 74LS245 chip.

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

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

large jpgs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_UqkQ3QbWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_UqkQ3QbWQ)

animated gifs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPaBQijrWAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPaBQijrWAQ)

3/ [https://sites.google.com/site/probehouse/networking-the- atar...](https://sites.google.com/site/probehouse/networking-the- atari/ethernet-setup-with-ethernec)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting as I'm trying to connect a Macintosh SE/30 that I recently brought back to life, without having to shell out crazy money for a network card on eBay. I wonder whether this TCP/IP over PPP solution also works under A/UX, which is what I want to run.

<comment><USER4> Does A/UX have a PPP driver ?

You could run NetBSD on your SE/30, it will do PPP (and IPv6).

<comment><USER3> Delved into this a bit, and found some claims that there's no PPP driver for A/UX, so I guess there's the answer. I know about NetBSD. However, in my somewhat irrational mind, it lacks the cool factor of A/UX, the spiritual stepfather of Mac OS X (the biological one being NeXTStep, obviously).

<comment><USER4> The PPP protocol isn't very complicated, how easy it would be to add to a binary-only UNIX is another question. You could have a look for whether the A/UX network stack is from BSD or System V. One thing that would make a big difference is whether it supports STREAMS [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STREAMS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STREAMS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That IP address configuration screen in the MacOS of yesteryear was amazing, wow. The slider to select the number of host/network bits is slick. I wonder why we don't have something like that today.

<comment><USER6> > I wonder why we don't have something like that today.

Because CIDR happened. The net/subnet/node nomenclature used by MacTCP is a relic of classful routing.

<comment><USER7> Just because CIDR happened doesn't mean that the subnet selection isn't relevant anymore.

<comment><USER8> However, _classful_ subnet selection is not longer relevant today (A, B, C...) The Mac UI limited you to those three classful subnet masks.

Today, it's much simpler to type /26 after your IP address instead of entering 255.255.255.192, or playing around with a non-standard host/network slider.

<comment><USER6> > The Mac UI limited you to those three classful subnet masks.

And it assumed a specific network architecture -- e.g, if you have a class A network, the middle two octets of your address represent a "subnet" and the last octet represents a "node". This may have been appropriate in pre-CIDR networks where all local nets were /24, but it's no longer true today; it's not uncommon to have networks which split on non-octet boundaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since there's enthusiasts in this thread: I have a working SE/30 in storage but the monitor light is dead. What would be the simplest/cheapest way of fixing it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say to have it diagnosed. It could be the tube or something in the analog board. Someone experienced in repairing CRT TV's or computer monitors can help pinning it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of a time when I sort of did the opposite: I networked a serial-only DEC PDP-11/83 running 2.11BSD using SLiRP running on a Power Mac…I want to say 7500; what I remember is that it was one of the earliest models with PCI slots, running Yellow Dog Linux, and that I was mostly using it as a router at the time.

Incidentally, does System 7.5 support AppleShare IP connections[1]? If so, Netatalk should easily build and run on Raspbian, and would allow file sharing between the SE and newer Macs with full filesystem semantics (resource forks, etc.), though, at 9600 bps, I suppose the floppy drive is faster, though, unlike floppies and floppy-compatible Mac filesystems, current Mac OS releases still happily connect to AFP file shares (over TCP/IP).

Speaking of serial port speeds: at least at the software level, the "printer port" on older Macintosh models sometimes ran faster than the "modem port", so PPP over the printer port instead of the modem port might be worth trying.

As serial communications on older Macs was also somewhat CPU-intensive, again speaking from decades-old memory, it might also be worth experimenting with a more lightweight protocol like SLIP instead of PPP.

[1] While PPP is a layer 2 protocol that should, at least in principle, be able to carry AppleTalk traffic, and while both Linux and Netatalk, at least historically, supported the AppleTalk protocols, I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if AppleTalk-over-PPP was supported on the Mac OS end.

Come to think of it, that's an interesting-if-less-than-useful question that I may just have to investigate (he wrote, as he confirmed his SheepShaver OS 9 install still works fine under Catalina).

</comment><comment><USER7> The screenshots demonstrate a world in Apple where Apple isn't stupidifed by making everything simple.

MacTCP and PPP are complex and all of the configuration options given demonstrate a level of control that's unheard of in even Linux these days, let alone Apple or Microsoft or Google products.

I wish modern software had that level of configurability.

<comment><USER11> Like with having to dig into WDEF and CDEF resource fork entries to make a GUI application, I am inclined to view that more as a limitation of the technology and the era, not a feature. It certainly wasn't what Apple _wanted_ to do.

Mac networking was, of course, supposed to be Appletalk, a system with no configuration dialogues for normal use beyond a human-readable setting for the computer's name. It also worked surprisingly well. The idea you could just connect two computers together and they'd automatically network was absent from most of the competition for another decade or more.

(For the record, I consider myself an anti-Apple fanboy. But it's only honesty that Appletalk was a big deal.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool project! I had a Mac SE a while back that I only finally got rid of a couple of years ago. It did have some weird ancient Ethernet card that had an actual 10baseT interface with the RJ45 connector. I think I managed to get it connected back before I lost the floppy disk with the drivers for it. Like the article says though, the trouble is what to do with it after you're connected.

Even over the fast-ish Ethernet connection, any attempt to browse the web is painfully slow, esp when dealing with a tiny black-and-white screen. That's before even getting into crypto issues with modern TLS and the lack of modern Javascript. Considering that the phones in everyone's pocket these days make vastly better web browsing gadgets, it's hard to see what it's good for, besides a curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've had a Craigslist alert for Mac SE ever since seeing how someone made theirs into a Spotify dashboard [1]. If anyone else has one and is interested, the code is all found here [2].

[1] [https://www.hackster.io/news/a-macintosh-se-30-spotify- music...](https://www.hackster.io/news/a-macintosh-se-30-spotify-music- player-77b4852b7965)

[2] [https://github.com/antscode/MacPlayer](https://github.com/antscode/MacPlayer)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish the screen wasn't out on my SE. I'm terrified to open it up with that CRT. I'm almost certain that it just needs to be resoldered. I've been waiting for someone to do this with a Raspberry Pi. Can the SE run any alternative OSes? The SE/30 can run A/UX. I think you need at least the Motorola 68020 to run OpenBSD... The SE is a 68000 with no MMU. Are you limited to Mac OS?

</comment><comment><USER15> From like 95-97 I had my SE/30 (whose slot was tied up with a color graphics card) accessing the internet through my PC running slackware. The whole thing was going through a dialup connection! PPP between the two and and between the linux box and the ISP. I don't have the SE/30 anymore though.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ah, my parents had one of these. It stopped booting in the mid 90s or so. I wonder if all it needed was some battery replacement or something.

</comment><comment><USER17> If the local mac web browser supports proxy server, you can set up a https bypassing proxy on your RPi and browse modern websites (to an extent since web is a pile of JS now) from that mac.

<comment><USER18> Or, better, this: [https://github.com/tenox7/wrp](https://github.com/tenox7/wrp)

The rendering/handling of JS is done on the RasPi, so almost everything should work

<comment><USER19> That is brilliant. And you can even run it remotely (e.g. on a VM somewhere) and have your old vintage machine connect to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You know you can just connect a Mac SE to the Internet with an Ethernet card, right? This seems needlessly complicated.

<comment><USER21> It's literally the third paragraph of the article - did you read it before commenting?

He didn't have one, but he did have a Pi.

<comment><USER20> No, I didn't, I simply dismissed this as yet another person using a RPi when an Arduino would do, or using an Arduino when a 555 would do, or...

<comment><USER22> There are a few considerations here:

\- The Raspberry Pi is one of the better technical solutions. It is relatively low cost, low power, _and is fairly representative of how the Macintosh SE would get on ethernet networks back in the day._ (In many cases a more powerful computer would serve as a bridge between LocalTalk and ethernet networks.)

\- Ethernet cards for the SE are rather uncommon since most SE's used LocalTalk for file and printer sharing. PDS cards were more-or-less specific to a model of Macintosh, so the option of sticking in a card intended for later models is not an option. SCSI-to-ethernet bridges are only an option if you find one with the drivers, since the drivers are virtually impossible to find after the fact.

I will admit to being a bit disappointed by this article. I was hoping for something more along the lines of interfacing an SE to the Raspberry Pi's internal UART since that would take a bit more skill, though not an absurd amount of skill. On the other hand, it is a demonstration of getting an archaic SE online is more about creativity than ingenuity. That's important for many of the people who pursue vintage computers as a hobby since they don't necessarily have the electronics background to design anything more sophisticated.

<comment><USER23> Another option would be a Ethernet-Localtalk bridge box (which were commonly used for Apple printers). These used to be dirt cheap on ebay, but I guess people are into this stuff and they're now over $100.

<comment><USER22> Thank you for the correction.

I just saw a video by a vintage computer collector who had one of those Ethernet-Localtalk bridges, then realized I used to own one!

<comment><USER23> In the past I would swing by some retro Mac discussion and say "hey! you're trying to network that classic mac? just buy this bridge for $25 on ebay!" But they're not so cheap anymore so I guess make your own if you want.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented <comment><USER2> Big discussion 4 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822) (437 points/188 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Comment collapsing is a useful feature. The problem with giving the largest weight to the most upvoted comment is it also gives a large weight to all replies (unless they're heavily downvoted). It's useful to be able to skip those replies once they get less interesting.

However, this does lead to yo-yoing: reading comments downwards, going back up to find the right collapse button then reading down again. It'd be useful to have a more direct "fast forward" button. Though admittedly I haven't thought this through in terms of UI design.

<comment><USER4> The new Reddit desktop site has a good solution for that - each comment draws a bar down the side of its children, which you can click on to collapse the paarent. You collapse any level of parent comment without havign to scroll back up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score < 1) reduce their placement on the > comment thread and will appear desaturated to other users deemphasize them.

This desaturation is the most annoying misfeature of Hacker News IMO, it makes reading comments very hard and negates the "bandwagoning prevention" that not showing a visible score has (which is a good idea). I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me.

(yes there are workarounds, like using Stylus to override the CSS, but my comment is against the misfeature not trying to find a workaround)

On a similar note, i see a lot of dead comments which i guess are marked as dead by getting flagged too much - essentially using the flag as a super- downvote and driving whoever is flagged out of discussion, not just because of faded out text (which can be worked around) but because you cannot reply to dead comments. The idea is only goon on a surface level (stomp out the bad commenters) but in practice it often backfires since if someone is spreading misinformation and their comment is killed, you cannot reply to it with the correct information so all what people will see is the misinformation.

<comment><USER6> >I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me.

It's not for you, it's a feedback for the commenter. And making your comment unpleasant for others adds an emotional component into the feedback, which is quite effective.

<comment><USER5> But it also affects "me" and anyone who tries to follow a discussion by making the text harder to read. The commenter already has a feedback on the visible- to-them score. Why not make negative scores visible to everyone instead (even make the score red or whatever to point out this is a negative comment)? After all at the moment you introduce this visual change you do not care about the bandwagoning aspect anymore.

<comment><USER7> You can always read the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page. The comment shouldn't be faded when you do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "One popular "trick" for obfuscating voting manipulation on Hacker News is to link to the Hacker News's /newest page of new submissions (instead of a direct link which would otherwise make voting manipulation obvious), and asking friends to upvote the submission from that page. This trick doesn't actually work."

I use /newest to find and upvote new stuff all the time, are my votes being silently ignored?

<comment><USER7> No. I looked at your upvotes from /newest and they have a very high rate of being counted.

Thanks for upvoting from /newest!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors](https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors) is kind of fascinating (and ridiculous - why does it exist?).

Let me add some plots to the situation: [https://imgur.com/a/KRzcQcU](https://imgur.com/a/KRzcQcU)

Quite a range (I've always been happy with orange).

<comment><USER7> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97573) for why the topcolor option exists.

See also [https://web.archive.org/web/20080115223854/http://ycombinato...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080115223854/http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html?12jan08).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know if 50 was the original karma limit for downvoting? I'm asking because I've always thought it was 50 and was surprised I was wrong by a factor of 10 :-).

<comment><USER7> To judge by the version at [http://arclanguage.org/install](http://arclanguage.org/install), the original was 200.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 'If the comment desaturation makes Hacker News difficult to read, you can click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page where the comment will no longer be faded, or you can install the CSS extension discussed here.'

Actually, it is also possible to just select the text. This will make it readable again, at least in my firefox.

</comment><comment><USER12> Also there's [https://news.ycombinator.com/whoami](https://news.ycombinator.com/whoami) which will let you see your cookie values.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a great list, I've kept the link from the last time [0] it was posted.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973)

<comment><USER7> That was the first time! Last time was [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are you the person behind that list? If so, thank you! I referenced this list quite extensively last month when I was developing my iOS app HACK as it supports pretty much every endpoint referenced there!

<comment><USER9> No, it's minimaxir: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=minimaxir](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=minimaxir)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you __mkl __for answering me!</comment></comment></comment>


JPMorgan buys Bear Stearns for $2/sh, ~$236mm total - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/business/16cnd-bear.html <comment><AUTHOR> Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous this is:

\- BSC traded at $30 a share Friday, and well north of $100 a year ago

\- Their building is supposedly worth $1.2bn alone.

\- They have a solid asset management business, and a world-leading prime brokerage business, and STILL sold for pennies.

\- They were the 5th biggest investment bank in the US

My take: KKR and Flowers (two private equity firms) were apparently interested in the bidding. Why didn't they pay up, and at least get the building for cheap and fire all the employees? Probably because Treasury/the Fed wouldn't let the transaction go through unless the buyer agreed to guarantee all of BSC's trades. Who is big enough to guarantee BSC's trades? Out of the pure investment banks, Goldman is the only one with any sort of financial strength, but they probably don't have the balance sheet to assume all of the trading and litigation risk that comes with taking down Bear. Citi and UBS are crippled, BofA is certainly big enough but is scaling down its investment banking and just bought Countrywide anyway. On Thursday and Friday people were talking about Wachovia being a potential purchaser and a good strategic fit, but who knows if they ever had any real interest. That leaves JPM as the only bidder, and since it was the only bidder, it paid basically nothing.

This crisis is so much bigger than Long Term Capital in 1998. LTCM almost destroyed Lehman. This crisis has destroyed Bear, and Lehman has one foot in the grave again too. Many more losses are yet to come.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure it was that bad:

 _Bear Stearns was simultaneously preparing a bankruptcy filing in the event the deal had fallen through_

Better 2/share than zero. What's strange...really strange...was just how wildly wrong the market was on Friday. 30/share on a company putting bankruptcy paperwork together. That's scary.

<comment><USER3> From DealBreaker.com's liveblog of tonight's 8PM JPMC conference call (<http://tinyurl.com/2jlhjy>)

"8:24. Good question about how to reconcile the alleged $80 per share book value and todays $2 per share price. JP Morgan doesn't say it directly, but Bear's liabilities must be severe."

"8:35. Bear Stearns does own it's building, which means JP Morgan is getting a huge piece of midtown real-estate as part of the deal. By our math (which is shaky even when we haven't been drinking all day), that means either the building or the business is worth something like negative $400 million."

<comment><AUTHOR> The litigation risk is a huge component. There are going to be massive shareholder lawsuits (against both Bear and JPM) coming out of this. And who knows what kind of shady dealings at Bear might come to light during the acquisition? Dimon & Co. had only a weekend to put this deal together -- not nearly enough time to fully inspect Bear's books and to figure out all the risks of the trade. They had to set a price low enough to protect themselves.

<comment><USER4> Is all this stuff common knowledge amongst big firm traders, or Wall Street folks, or the financial sector at large? Are you just someone who follows the relevant -- and perhaps access non-layman -- information, or are you required to be sharp to know all this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of my friends commented today that the US Gov't is now taking measures to shore up the economy - however he remarked that they did _very_ _little_ to control the economy during the boom period. For example, if the stock market falls 500 or whatever points, there are built-in circuit breakers to halt trading. However, in the roaring NASDAQ/Dow days, there were no circuit breakers to prevent crazy, gambling-style appreciation..

The best analogy I've read likens the economy to California Wildfires. One of the reasons the California wildfires were so intense was the policy of fire prevention. Forests in the natural cycle of burn and regeneration seem to require a healthy burn once in a while. Obviating the natural wildfires leads us to bigger conflagrations. One can liken the economic impacts of lowering interest rates to fuel the housing bubble to putting out natural wildfires, building up fuel for a bigger economic problem (recession, millions of upside- down mortgages)

<comment><USER5> An interesting facet of this fiasco is that the poison of artificially low credit is also being touted as the antidote. I for one believe that we would have been better off if we let the economy slip into a recession in 2001 and coped with 7% or 8% unemployment, rather than causing a massive asset bubble and a gigantic financial mess.

<comment><USER6> You already have 7-8 precent unemployment and probably had it back in 2002. The reason you don't know this is because of the very specific US way of counting unemployment: someone who has not "actively" looked for work in the last 4 weeks is not counted.

This is the reason countries in Europe tend to report higher unemployment than the United States does. Look to payrolls reports and the percentage of the population "working" for a better sense of the job market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On a trivia note, as we're on Y News: Zed Shaw (from Rails Is a Getho rant fame - <http://zedshaw.com>) works at Bear Stearns and they have lots of RoR projects over there.

<comment><USER8> Let us all pray for Zed's sake that his mighty cynicism was strong enough to convince him to sell his Bear Stearns stock as soon as he got it.

Apparently Bear Stearns employees were partially paid in stock, and a third of the outstanding shares are held by the employees. According to the NYT:

[http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/the-cost-of- bea...](http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/the-cost-of-bears-crisis- to-its-employees/)

the drop in stock price averages _$375K_ per employee. Of course, the stock was not evenly distributed across the company, so some employees lost much, much more than $375K, and some lost less. But, still... that sound you hear is the sound of 14,000 Bear Stearns employees losing substantial portions of their life savings.

Index funds. Index funds. Index funds.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to co-workers of mine who used to work at Bear, the stock comes with a rule that requires you to hold it for a certain period of time. So most of these guys probably got burned.

<comment><USER9> That's such a weird rule. What's to stop them from buying put options?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bear Stearns current losses from the sub-prime investments are $3.2bn but GM's losses were reported as 39bn sometime last year. Why is the Bear Stearns saga so significant?

Edit: I didn't understand the whole problem behind Bear Stearns but this Q&A from BBC details the issue really well (would still appreciate some insight or further reading links though): <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7296827.stm>

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill JPM is a bank and the Fed can loan money to them in a way that they cannot to BSC because BSC is not a bank.

As I understand it, the Fed will essentially loan against 100% of the value of $30B worth of hard to liquidate, hard to value (read: value is less than 100% of face value) mortgages as part of the deal, covering JPM's exposure in that part of the business.

What should happen: head of BSC should face criminal charges, not for running company into ground, but for lying to small investors (you and me) while disclosing other information only to large investors (JPM and other institutions). This is a violation of SEC rules.

This is not the first time JPM helped, there was the banking panic of 1893 (IIRC) - JPM bailed out the USA and in return, got $7 million in fees.

</comment><comment><USER11> Take a look at the dollar. Looks like it's in freefall.

[http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDJPY=X&t=5d](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDJPY=X&t=5d)

<comment><AUTHOR> S&P index futures down 30 pts, US 10yr note up one and a quarter points, Nikkei off 4%. The US market is going to shit itself tomorrow, not because this is a negative event, but because this indicates just how bad things really got.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The swan swims again:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory>

</comment><comment><USER12> Is Citi next? [http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/01/15/citis-bad-news- bank...](http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/01/15/citis-bad-news-banks-worst- period-since-great-depression/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think so -- Citi is unlikely to have a major liquidity problem since they've attracted major investments from overseas and have billions of dollars in assets from their retail and commercial banks.

Lehman might be next... their stock was off 13% or so on Friday, and their credit default swaps are trading around 500 basis points... people aren't very upbeat.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Citi's problem isn't liquidity, it's solvency. One look at what terms they took that major investment from overseas is enough to tell that you should be very far from anything that loses value when citi blows up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like all those pundits predicting a 'slow-down' or 'mild recession' for the next couple of years were being wildly optimistic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is actually a positive for the market. Now that people don't have to worry about trading with Bear and know that the financial strength of JPMorgan is behind their obligations, there should be a return of confidence.

<comment><USER13> But this problem is bigger than Bear, isn't it? So former Bear clients may now be happier trading with JPM, but what about all the other banks that are about to go to the wall?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What happens to the share holders, as the stock was trading well above $2 at the end of the day friday?

</comment><comment><USER15> Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich. Welcome to America.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is it socialism for the rich when one of America's leading financial institutions is completely wiped out?

<comment><USER16> For one thing because the Fed is buying the crappy mortgages and mortgage securities that brought Bear Stearns to it's knees. IOW the Fed is accepting those securities as "good" when they really aren't.

Also, the Fed is extending federal insurance to BS somehow. Prior to Friday, BS had no such insurance, paid for no such insurance, did not follow the rules for such insurance but now, surprise, their customers get Federal insurance for free.

So yes, it is indeed socialism for the rich: your dollar is being devalued to buy worthless mortgage securities so that a firm used by the wealthy can be saved from collapse.

Bernanke's pulling moves out of his ass here: he should have let BS fail. Now every hedge fund will think the government will save it (which the government may try). Those are the same hedge funds that have been posting returns above 20% annually for years and that you need at least $200K to open an account. These funds didn't want to be monitored by the SEC while their value was going up. Now they've hit a snag and they're crying like babies for a Federal bailout paid for by your dollars.

P.S. OMG! They just did it! Just off the Washington Post presses: </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===

"[The Fed] announced a new provision that will in effect do the same for major investment firms. Starting today, and lasting for at least six months, this new operation will allow "primary dealers," which are 20 major Wall Street firms, access to cash in exchange for assets in which the market is not currently functioning"

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===

So for six months the Fed is going to buy any and all illiquid (read "crappy") securities that these 20 Wall Street firms can't unload on their markets. Astonishing!

Soon we'll have to swap dollars for toilet paper: they'll both be better suited for the other's purpose.

<comment><USER17> Do not be so quick to say 'illiquid' and 'crappy' are the same thing. Markets can act irrationally, both on the upside and the downside. Note that even when LTCM failed in 1998 (a MAJOR credit insolvency event - read 'When Genius Failed'), the Wall Street banks that bought out their balance sheet ended up either break even or yielding some profits once the markets went back to normal.

"Ironically, after the bail-out by the other investors, the panic abated, and the positions formerly held by LTCM were eventually liquidated at a small profit to the bailers." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_term_capital_management>

<comment><USER16> Getting technical on my usage of the terms "illiquid" and "crappy"?

In this case "illiquid" and "crappy" securities are the same: securities that are worth much less today than they were yesterday and that are projected to be worth even less tomorrow and for which the bottom has not yet been predicted. Those are certainly "crappy" since no one holding them wants to be holding them. They are certainly "illiquid" since no one _else_ wants to hold them.

And your reference to the LTCM bailout are hardly reassuring.

This is a great deal _only_ for J.P. Morgan.

It's a very bad deal for U.S. citizens, most whom have no large holdings in J.P. Morgan. Essentially the taxpayer is taking on all of Bear Stearns' bad investments and J.P.Morgan is getting all the good parts of Bear Stearns at reduced price.

But that's only the beginning. The Fed guarantee to back up these 20 Wall Street firms for the next six months will be disastrous. That gives them 6 months to dump all their garbage onto the Fed. What a deal.

Hey, I've got a 1995 Buick that I can't sell and I'd like the Fed to buy it back for the $8000 I paid for it. I had no idea it wouldn't become a classic selling for twice what I paid for it. Justice! Give me justice!

<comment><USER17> Yes, I am. They are not synonymous in this context. Don't take it personally.

Projected to be less tomorrow? Says who? I would think that JP Morgan would not accept even a $2/share buy out if they thought it would be worth less tomorrow. They would only make such an offer if they thought it was a good deal to them with a potential upside. Thus they are willing to buy a "illiquid" asset and provide "liquidity" for "value" to themselves. It's how the world goes 'round. Illiquid and crappy may be the same thing now, yes, but investment is, by definition, making decisions for future profit. This is why, in terms of net present value, crappy and illiquid are not the same thing. JP Morgan is thinking "This is a great opportunity".

In terms to my reference to LTCM as being hardly reassuring: get over it. We are in a credit crunch. We were in '98, we are now. It's bad, yes. This is probably worse than LTCM. I never said this was good, I said that 'illiquid' and 'crappy' are not by definition the same thing. That's all I said.

I'm not even going to address your Buick analogy. Read this book - [http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term- Managemen...](http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term- Management/dp/0375758259/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205726864&sr=8-1) \- it will give you a good idea how credit markets operate and how they can act irrationally.

Right now the major issue is that no one knows how to value themselves because no one else knows how to value themselves because no one can value their portfolios. And in that uncertainty no one can judge who is right and wrong, who is getting a good deal and getting a bad deal. This is exactly why this situation is so screwed up. And this is exactly why the Fed is offering to provide liquidity for the rest of the market: because no one else is liquid enough to. Yes, it is a moral hazard, it sucks, but it is how it is.

Look, this isn't a zero sum game. For all we know, inaction by the Fed could lead us down a more damaging path. There are smart people working there, with far more education and experience than both of us and then some. Let us not be so quick to judge.

<comment> Tuna-Fish The upside for JP is the office building. It's worth over a billion on it's own. Since there were no other bidders and the price was just 200m, it's really clear that the real value of all the securities that Bear held is negative. The only question is how much negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> while some people worry about a tech bubble bursting, this what happens in the financial world.

<comment> Tuna-Fish What do you think is gonna happen in tech when there is almost no financing available?

<comment><USER19> Same thing that happened in 2000-2002 when there was almost no financing available. Folks grow businesses by being cheap, doing the work themselves, and having a revenue model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't panic!

</comment><comment><USER21> Taleb vindicated. Again.

<comment><USER9> Malcolm Gladwell on Taleb's investment strategy: <http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ooh, that's got to hurt.</comment>