Brain Sodium Linked to Cognitive Deficits in MS - <AUTHOR> http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/873803 <comment><USER2> Based on the abstract, right now all they're saying is that there's a correlation in a study of less than 60 patients. That's going to lead to some significant additional studies, but anything definitive out of those is going to take time since part of what's being studied is slowly-increasing cognitive deficit. Size-wise, it's probably comparable to the significance of the studies a few years back showing that intestinal parasites (whipworms/helminths) are strongly correlated with reduced MS symptoms and relapses - last I heard there are ongoing studies in that area as well, but I don't know that I'd advocate going and getting wormy.

Among the studies likely already in the starting phases:

* Are similar accumulations and cognitive issues seen in non-MS study participants? Is this indicative of a wider-spread issue but happened to be noticed first in a population that's more actively studied? Does a college diet of ramen, canned goods and frozen pizza make you stupid?

* Does a low-sodium diet impact the accumulation of sodium in brain tissues in patients with MS? Test participants generally? I'd expect preliminary work on this to happen by recruiting people already on medically-mandated low sodium diets, but a better-controlled study would take years.

* Are there practices or treatments that are effective at lowering the sodium load in brain tissue, or is what's there basically "locked in" in a format that's semi-permanent? Using another reactive metal as an example, is this the equivalent of calcium chloride that washes away or is this blobs of cement mucking things up?

* (half joking) Are intestinal parasites correlated with lowered sodium in the brain?

That's not to say it's a bad idea to reduce sodium intake, because reducing sodium is almost certainly great for your health not just because of lower sodium but because that reduction is probably accomplished in part by switching from highly-processed foods preserved with salt to fresher foods.

<comment><USER3> > right now all they're saying is that there's a correlation in a study of > less than 60 patients

Sort-of. Many recent studies had already suggested a role of sodium accumulation in brain tissue loss in MS. Previous work had also shown significant sodium accumulation in regions where there was no apparent cell death, suggesting that cell-death does not drive measured sodium concentrations.

What's cool about this result is 1) that sodium measurements from the brain are better indicators of cognitive defects than actual death of brain cells. 2) Abnormal sodium accumulation occurred in neocortex, which is the first place you'd suspect cognitive impairment to originate. That's a correlation across patients, and brain areas, suggesting at the least that NaMRI is a good tool for early MS detection.

I doubt it's dietary sodium. Likely, sodium accumulation occurs when normal processes are disrupted. I wouldn't expect increased sodium in your diet to lead directly to increased sodium in selective areas of the brain (could be wrong here).

<comment><USER2> Argh, I completely blew past noting that what they weren't saying was that sodium was the problem, that it was quite possible that the sodium buildup was the result of other problems that were the problem. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A better link -- abstract to the actual study.

[http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2016/12/14/WNL.000000...](http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2016/12/14/WNL.0000000000003511.short)

I am thrilled whenever anyone includes ROC analysis in their studies.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link.

ROC analysis is mostly useful for actual signal detection paradigms, like radar for which it was invented. It's generally not terribly useful as a statistical test, as tests like Kolmogorov-Smirnoff have much more power while remaining non parametric. And other descriptive statistics are usually more interpretable than ROC.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Thanks for pointing me to K-S -- non-parametric tests have their uses and I like to have as many dirty tricks as I can get.

I have a signals and controls background, not really a stats one -- so ROC makes some intuitive sense to me. It's gained currency in the biomedical world, probably because so many of us come from EE backgrounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those Googling this to find out whether it's "too much" or "too little", here's a couple of quotes from the article:

"A buildup of sodium in the brain detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be a biomarker for the degeneration of nerve cells that occurs in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS)"

and

"In the early-stage RRMS patients, sodium MRI revealed abnormally high concentrations of sodium in specific brain regions (...). In the advanced- stage RRMS patients, abnormally high sodium accumulation was widespread throughout the whole brain, including normal appearing brain tissue."

(RR = Relapsing Remitting)

<comment><USER7> What would be interesting to note is how is this accumulating (that is, in which form)

Is there some process that's causing the formation of an insoluble salt or other insoluble substance containing sodium? Or does this has to do with some misregulation of some process?

Did they try dietary sodium restriction to see if it had an impact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that POTS/dysautonomia due to poor brain perfusion (not enough blood flow in the brain) is extremely frequent in Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and is treated and self-treated by very high salt intake (sodium) - and that those with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome appear to have ten times the rate of MS than the general population. This leads to the obvious suggestion that excess sodium in the brain may be a proxy for poor brain perfusion, which of course profoundly affects cognition!

If you want to increase brain perfusion, for whatever reason, mixing concentrace (sea salt with the sodium removed) and potassium chloride are better choices or should also be taken along with sodium chloride.

"Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and multiple sclerosis: a possible association." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18208891](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18208891)

</comment><comment><USER9> You can't read this without a username & pw.

<comment><USER10> Click on the "web" link, that will get you to google, click on second article and you can read it without password.

<comment><USER11> Which outlet are you talking about? The second match for this on the "web" link for me is this HN story; the third and fourth are pages on newsblock.io and bioportfolio.com that don't have the full story, and after that there are just partial matches.

<comment><USER12> I clicked the actual story, www.medscape.com/viewarticle/873803 from Google and it loaded for me, where before it showed just a login prompt.

<comment><USER8> PMID: 27974643

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27974643](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27974643)

or

[http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2016/12/14/WNL.000000...](http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2016/12/14/WNL.0000000000003511.short)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Diapers.com Founder Could Raise $50m or More for New Jet.com Startup - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/05/16/diapers-com-founder-could-raise-50-million-or-more-for-new-startup/

<comment><USER2> _Stone also describes how, before the acquisition, Amazon announced the launch of a competitive service while Lore and Bharara were visiting Amazon so their employees wouldn't be able to reach them to figure out how best to react._

That whole process sounds pretty toxic. This is happening while they're trying to negotiate a deal? If I were them I would have walked, but I gather they really wanted to sell the company and move on to something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know what that domain cost? More than one pretty penny - though worth penny if execution is done well, which it seems is likely with the founders' history.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect that jet.com was sold for 7 figures but the price, at least for now, is confidential as I understand. It may come out at some point, though.</comment></comment>


The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again? - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2012/09/12/the-windows-store-why-did-i-sign-up-with-this-mess-again.aspx

<comment><USER2> This sounded awfully much like Apple's app store process. Different details, but a horrible and unintuitive experience nonetheless.

Is it simply difficult to make a good developer signup workflow, or are both of these companies unmotivated to make any effort on the front?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is your bank run by like a 90-year-old man?

Because I have a bank-issued credit card also, and I can log in and see my activity, even pending purchases that haven't cleared yet.

<comment><USER4> The dude is in Europe. Most people in Europe don't even have credit cards, really. Credit card infrastruture is way less developed in Europe. (Let alone 'less developed' parts of the world, which still have developers). The whole world is not the US.

<comment><USER3> Dude, have you _been_ to Europe? Because credit cards are freakin' everywhere there and have super-advanced James Bond anti-fraud smartchips in them. You don't even have to reach for a cheque book (that's how they spell it in Euroland) because the cards do everything.

UK ATMs even have two slots in them: one is labeled "CIVILISED PEOPLE" and has a smartchip reader; the other is labeled "YANKEE TOSSERS" and has a magstripe reader.

<comment><USER4> you sure those aren't debit/check cards? May also vary in different European countries.

[http://www.foreignersfinances.com/money-around-the-world- cre...](http://www.foreignersfinances.com/money-around-the-world-credit-card- use-in-europe/)

I think most of those fancy debit/check cards do not have visa or mastercard serials, and thus can not be used to pay American websites that take credit cards (unlike American debit cards that have visa serials and use the same processing network as credit cards).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, the pains of spending all day filling out forms and spending $180 in licensing to become set up in the Windows store. The agony!

This sounds like the same signup process is in use for both M and Desktop apps. You could probably start making M-ui based programs too, and even host them in the store!

Why ARE you going through all of this effort, since you're so quick to point out the small the benefit to you? Why not just forget it all and just sell your programs from your own website? Do you regularly place yourself in disadvantaged situations so you'll have a reason to be angry later?

<comment><USER6> Not quite $180. More like $300 dollars for the first year, and potentially at least $800 a year after that. Apple's offer is generous by comparison. Or did you miss the part where the pricing is introductory on the required certificates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses.

>Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates?

Cannot believe he's serious. Doesn't he see the massive malware problem with Windows applications? Microsoft is going to such great lengths so that anyone submitting applications with malware, disguised or not, will have some accountability later. i.e Expect MS and/or law enforcement to come after you, that's why all the identity checking. Also, this discourages fly-by-night operations from trying to submit malware to the store.

Comparing that to MSDN login is a pretty invalid comparison. If someone hacks in to your MSDN account, MS potentially loses a few thousand worth of software. If people are able to distribute malware through Windows Store, care to estimate the damage caused by the inevitable headline "Microsoft Windows Store distributes malware" even though MS just links to the software ?

Apple's answer to this was to heavily sandbox OS X apps, due to which there was a lot of outcry with developers jumping ship to normal distribution.

Also note that Microsoft is not forcing developers to pay 30% of the desktop software sale price like Apple is, so the cost of those certificates might pay for itself down the line.

<comment><USER8> > Also note that Microsoft is not forcing developers to pay 30% of the desktop > software sale price like Apple is

"That percentage is 30%, unless and until your app takes in total Net Receipts of USD$25,000, after which time the percentage is 20% for that app."

So there's little or no difference for smaller developers.

<comment><USER9> You're talking about Metro(WinRT) apps which are hosted and distributed by Microsoft.

The OP and the article are talking about desktop apps, which the store will only have a link to the developers website. The cut is zero for desktop apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i for one feel that microsoft is completely justified in actually being stricter with these desktop listings in the windows store..

these apps don't go through the same certification processes as do the modern apps that sit alongside them in the store, but they get all the discoverability from being in there.. to a consumer, all apps via an app store are assumed to be stable and safe (even if they link to an external site to complete payment). just the fact that they're listed there in the _windows_ store provides a de-facto stamp of approval that these apps are vetted by microsoft.

if they aren't sufficiently strict and maleware (or process-hogging apps) get through it would undermine both trust in microsoft and in the reliability of the app store which would probably hurt all devs.

<comment><USER11> "Reliability of the app store"????

This goes back to the beginning of the internet, where folks were reluctant to link to other sites because they might have 'bad stuff'. Does anybody alive think Microsoft is responsible for stuff they link to? When you have to buy the stuff on some obviously-3rd-party website?

Paying to link to a 3rd rate store is not worth any of the money or hassle Microsoft put the guy through. Its exactly as if a bloated corporation overdesigned the process - full of arrogant assumptions and pointless theatre.

<comment><USER10> that may make sense to you, but for the average consumer i doubt they'll differentiate. microsoft has built and will be promoting the windows app store as _the_ place to find and download apps (and on some devices, windows rt tablets, it will be the only place)

ios popularized the app store and their model, which has defined it as a safe reliable place to find apps that won't fuck-up your system, has become the standard (many may suck, but they're generally not harmful). microsoft is doing the same with the windows store and in the case of metro/modern apps, that holds true. but for desktop apps (which many people do, and will still, want) that's not true. they have deeper-access to the system and are not sandboxed. so it makes sense to try to differentiate malware and crap from valuable desktop-style applications, which is exactly what they're trying to do..

and microsoft does not charge for these desktop application 'store listings', and they are not required. they do however look like a good option for desktop application developers to showcase their offerings within (the increasingly common model of) a managed store, improving discoverability. if they let anyone publish apps without trying hard to verify the identity of the developer and reliability of the application (as they're not 'certifying' these like the metro apps) then it would entirely undermine the whole point of the store..</comment></comment></comment>


The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/ <comment><USER2> Ugh. Sorry, but anyone who tries to link the measurement problem and a process as high-energy as cognition is either misled or trying to mislead you.

Here's what we know experimentally: when you measure something, it looks like it has a definite value. (Math version: the measured value is always an eigenvalue of the hermitian operator corresponding to the measurement. Even if a system started in a mixed state, it always seems to end up in the eigenbasis corresponding to the measured eigenvalue.)

"Measurement" is any process that carries information about the state of the system. When I get hit in the back of the head with a photon from a distant planet, I'm measuring its position.

What QM does _not_ know is why this seems to be the case. There are many theories. (Plug for Einselection.) But just about any serious theory happens at time and energy scales so small that it doesn't make sense to consider the interaction of consciousness with wave function collapse. If there's no objective reality, the "subjectivity" probably only exists at scales too small to notice without an experimental setup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really. Fundamentally all he's saying is that there is a huge benefit from seeing distortions to reality. If you prcieved all threats in a red outline as you walked down the street, you'd be better able to avoid them.

You can also look at data display problems the same way. Take a height map of the world, and just blindly use a rainbow mapping, and you won't be able to see sea level. But if you pick two color spectrums, say, beige and blue, and suddenly it pops out.

He's basically saying that it makes sense for our brain to lie to use fir the same reason; some data is too valuable to not stand out to us. And this holds for any given organism.

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a meaningless argument. It's like saying:

"We are all just brains in vats in a giant floating supercomputer storage facility in space hooked up to a networked virtual reality system! Everything we perceive is false since the true reality is brains in vats! You think that's a snake? Nope, just an AI being fed to your vat brain by the supercomputer. There's no such thing as snakes."

There's no way to prove me wrong, but it's not a really useful thought exercise either. How does that help us solve the problems we want to solve?

<comment><USER5> For what it is worth, this is how I feel about many philosophical arguments. Personally, I enjoy thinking about and talking about these things but when it comes down to it they are not likely to affect my behaviors at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't this argument undermine the validity of evolution? If we can't know reality, then we can't know that evolution is real. If we can't know that evolution happened, then the argument refutes itself.

At best you could argue that if evolution is real, then we can't know reality, but then we would also be ignorant of evolution.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looking through the history, it doesn't look like this article has had significant discussion even once. Why is this a dupe?

</comment><comment><USER7> This is most likely a false argument. You have to hedge such things because technically you can't disprove Descartes' evil demon, but beyond that, it can be shown to be false.

First, I pull in the paper "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity": [http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf) I particular commend to your attention the discussion in section four and the subsection "'Reductions' That Do All The Work".

At which point, if you understood that paper, the remainder of my argument is probably obvious. But:

Given the complexity of our incoming sense input, in order for the universe to somehow be something completely different but still meaningfully causally connected to our sensory input, there must be a transform function from the real state of the universe to the sensory experience my consciousness experiences (or "what my brain appears to be processing" or whatever you like here; the "mysteries" of consciousness are not important to my argument, I merely need "the thing that is not experiencing the true state of the universe but is making decisions somehow"). Given the ready available availability of the true (if wildly incomplete) state of the universe to these hypothetical organisms, the transform function must have been created by evolution, co- evolving with the organisms as they get more complicated.

When we say "all of reality is an illusion and it's wildly different than what we experience", we can (with a bit of handwaving) observe that if reality is supposed to be _radically_ different than our experiences, yet the transform function somehow successfully keeps us alive as we act on our illusions, it is not unreasonably to expect the transform function to be exponential in complexity. I mean, I see a coherent "thing I think is my child", and if that's actually a three-toed sloth that can't speak or play video games, it's gonna be one heck of a transform function to maintain the illusion. However, evolution's speed can be characterized by the rate at which it can acquire bits. While there is some debate about what that speed may be, it generally considered to be linear at best in the number of generations. There is no time for such a complicated transform function to be evolved.

On the other hand, if the transform function is relatively simple, the argument degenerates to the rather pedestrian observation that humanity has known about for centuries if not millenia (depending on how you look at it), that our sense perceptions are not a completely accurate reflection of reality. But there are still significant ways in which it is a reflection of reality.

So I can not help but think that this article is one of two things: An impossible claim about the disparity between our sense impressions and reality, or a pedestrian claim about the disparity between our sense impressions and reality dressed up in very provocative, but ultimately content-free, dressing.

Incidentally, why do the experiments he run seem to confirm his point? Scale, of course. In a tiny little simulation, the differences between exponential and simple transform functions are still quite small, and evolution has plenty of room to play with outright deceptive sense functions. But as you scale up the complexity of the simulation, evolution will not be able to sustain wild illusions, only relatively simple transforms between reality and sense impression, exactly as we see in the real world. ("Relatively simple" compared to what it would take to have wildly deceptive transform functions; still complicated and we are still learning about what our real brains do, of course, but it's still the difference between "polynomial-but-large" and "exponential".)

Per Descartes' demon and/or brain-in-a-vat, etc., I can't prove very much about where our sense impressions are coming from, whether it's "real" or not. But I can say with some confidence that, where ever those sense impressions are coming from, be it a real universe or a simulation or whatever, I have no reason to believe that evolution is causing me to have those sense impressions so completely chewed on that "it's all an illusion". For that to be false would require so much about my world to be false that the very existence of "evolution" that his argument hinges on would not be a reliable fact to argue with.

<comment><USER5> I do believe he is in fact claiming what you call "a pedestrian claim about the disparity between our sense impressions and reality dressed up in very provacative, but ultimately content-free, dressing".

How I read it, but using your words, was that he is saying that the "transform function" you mention could throw out a large amount of data about the "real world" as being unimportant, so the only things we notice are those things that evolution has deemed important enough to allow through the "transform function". Hence, our perception of reality does not match reality.

As far as gaining anything from it, I think it is an interesting thought exercise and if it could be proven that'd be cool(and his math about observation actually seems quite interesting) but I don't think any of it is likely to change human behavior in any significant way.</comment></comment>


Kubernetes 1.1 – performance upgrades and more - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kubernetes.io/2015/11/Kubernetes-1-1-Performance-upgrades-improved-tooling-and-a-growing-community.html <comment><USER2> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10535994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10535994)</comment>


Wines Are No Longer Free to Travel Across State Lines - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/dining/drinks/interstate-wine-sales-shipping-laws.html <comment><USER3> The title is a little (not a lot) misleading:

      Wines Are No Longer Free to Travel Across State Lines

Later in the article, it points out that _There's no jurisdiction for retailers at the federal level._ No law was enacted at midnight last night. Instead, 14 states including CA + DC allow importation across state lines. Moreover, the laws in the other states only apply to retailers and not to vineyards ( _Granholm v. Heald_ ). The change seems to have been that UPS and FedEx are now enforcing this in the other 36 states. Maybe this is a better title:

      In Some States, Wines Can't Be Bought From Out Of State Retailers

<comment><USER4> I don't understand. How is this not a straightforward violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause?

<comment><USER5> You can't "violate" the interstate commerce clause; it grants powers, doesn't limit them.

(It, along with "necessary and proper", have been used to justify just about every activity the federal government has done.)

<comment><USER6> So many people get this backwards, although I think some of this is the Constitution's fault. Originally it was a list of rights the government had, with the understanding that the states retained the rest. Then the bill of rights added a few civil liberties, i.e. rights the government _specifically did not have_. Theoretically this shouldn't make a difference, because anything not listed in the constitution was already unconstituional. Of course in practice we've read between the lines a lot with the original constituion, so it makes some sense that we also set some hard limits to what we can't do. But still, it makes it really confusing and leads to a lot of "interesting" legal beliefs by people who aren't familiar.

<comment><USER7> > _Then the bill of rights added a few civil liberties, i.e. rights the > government specifically did not have. Theoretically this shouldn 't make a > difference, because anything not listed in the constitution was already > unconstituional._

I don't think this is true even for the strictest originalist interpretation possible. Without the Bill of Rights, Congress and the President would have much more expansive power in their creation and especially enforcement of law.

The Constitution does not establish a process for the federal government to investigate, detain, try, and punish people for violating its laws, though it is clear that it must have those powers. The major function of the Bill of Rights is to draw lines around those powers, lines that perhaps existed in the common law, but that could have been altered by Act of Congress in the absence of a constitutional provision.

There are also parts of the Bill of Rights which do constraint Congress's enumerated powers. For example, even under a strict originalist interpretation, the Commerce Clause would allow Congress to take actions that abridge the freedom of speech, religion, and assembly. It could prohibit the publishing of certain newspapers across state lines, for instance. The First Amendment prevents that kind of thing.

<comment><USER8> If I recall correctly, Madison's original position was that the content of the Bill of Rights (and more besides) was already implied by the Constitution, and that the document was superfluous and possibly harmful if it led to people considering rights not explicitly mentioned to not also be part of the Constitution. He changed his mind, however, as a pragmatic gesture toward unity and compromise with the Anti-Federalists.

<comment><USER7> The position that he and Hamilton took was somewhat incoherent in my opinion, since the Constitution _did_ list rights, like the prohibition on _ex post facto_ laws and bills of attainder, and the guarantee of _habeas corpus_ except in times of insurrection.

Hamilton made an interesting argument in Federalist 84, that rights like freedom of the press and of speech are too vague to belong in a legal document, since their interpretation would necessarily be determined solely by political winds. Compare to the more concrete prohibition of _ex post facto_ laws, for example. Nevertheless, the majority of the Bill of Rights turned out to be more like those concrete provisions. The First and Second Amendments are the most notable exceptions, and his predictions have partially panned out. Thankfully, it's been for the better anyway: freedom of speech as we know it would not exist without the First Amendment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another of the many businesses that attempt to bypass competition with absurd regulatory capture.

Taxis, auto dealers, and many others

<comment><USER10> In Seattle we have a train that goes from the airport to downtown Seattle. It's perfect and ideal to get to and from the airport. BUT! It stops at about half a mile away from the the actually airport lobby as to not disrupt the taxi business. I simply can't believe it.

<comment><USER11> It's a bit of a walk; the real amazement to me was that the rental car terminal was built across the street from the Tukwila Int'l Blvd station - <USER2> assume some union or lobbyist there for the bus driver's union forced that one.

Karma is fun, though. It's fun walking past the cab and town car aisles in the garage now (entirely empty, zero customers) and instead heading to the millennial cab stand to wait for an Uber/Lyft.

<comment><USER7> The whole setup really bothers me. They are clearly trying to make it unnecessarily annoying to take an Uber. You should be able to get picked up at the same place that friends/family would pick you up, right at the exit to the terminal. Instead, you have to walk to a random spot in the middle of the parking garage, where 50 other people are also trying to get picked up at the same time, and there's a long line of Ubers crawling through one lane trying to find their passenger.

<comment><USER12> Instead of asking why an Uber can't pick someone up at the friends/family pickup lane, why not ask this question:

Why shouldn't a taxi be allowed to pick people up at the same place that friends/family would?

An Uber is, for all intents and purposes, a cab - not a friend.

I assure you, the SeaTac taxi lane existed long before Uber. This isn't some petty anti-Uber ruling.

<comment><USER7> The SeaTac taxi lane is a different kind of thing altogether, since you just walk up and take the next taxi. It is much more convenient, and is much more logically justified, than the Uber zone, since Uber matches you to a specific driver.

Aside from the fact that the cab lane creates convenience, while the Uber area destroys it, there's other reasons that apply to cabs and not Ubers. Cabs would just be slowly crawling through the arrivals area, hoping to get a client, and causing traffic. Ubers, in contrast, are there to find a specific passenger, just like family/friends, and have no incentive to slowly crawl through arrivals.

<comment><USER12> > and is much more logically justified, than the Uber zone, since Uber matches > you to a specific driver.

That sounds like Uber's problem. If they just got medallions, they too could queue up for curb-side pickup.

> Ubers, in contrast, are there to find a specific passenger, just like > family/friends, and have no incentive to slowly crawl through arrivals.

Yes, they would absolutely be causing traffic. At most times of day, the arrivals lane is already at close to capacity. Throwing in a bunch of commercial traffic would be awful for the rest of us.

<comment><USER13> family/friends are also causing traffic. Why do they deserve priority access?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a minor nit, unrelated to the article's main point, but I found it strange that the author seems to think you need a high-speed internet connection to order wine across state lines. I'm guessing this comes from ISP marketing which portrays broadband as an absolute essential for all internet activities.

<comment><USER15> Depends on your definition of "high-speed." I still think of that as meaning anything faster than dialup. The front page of wine.com is 4MB, which would take ten minutes to load over a 56k modem, so in that sense it doesn't seem wrong.

<comment><USER14> Of course the meaning of high-speed is always going to be relative. The author makes it sound like ordering wine over the internet wasn't possible until broadband become available. I don't know if such sites existed, but a wine retailer certainly could have setup a storefront on the internet back in 1995.

<comment><USER16> Or even earlier. Catalog sales and mail order have been around for a long time. 1-800 numbers for orders by phone started in the 60s and became standard in the 80s. The internet didn't invent remote ordering.

<comment><USER15> Do any still exist? They weren't implying you _always_ needed a high speed connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Idea for startup: web site that provides a unified storefront for vineyards, but doesn't actually touch the transaction or shipping.

Maybe the wineries pay the site a percentage of referred sales at the end of the month.

Once you've made your first billion on this, please gift me a few choice subscriptions. :-)

<comment><USER18> If anyone in the New York area is interested in collaborating on this, as a political project for 2018, let me know.

<comment><USER19> Interested. Not sure the extent you're willing to go other than "political project" but I've got some other wine industry connections that may be interested in this as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The only way around this that I can think of is if you live in a state that has the wines locally, and a friend or family member wants one, you may be able to ship it to them. Personally, when it is holiday time, I have shipped wine to myself at my parent's address, so that I wouldn't have to pack it for a flight.

Is it legal? My guess it is, but only because you aren't selling it to someone. I am not a lawyer, and of course I am not your lawyer!

In doing so, I came up with some important guidelines for myself:

• ULINE has very good wine shippers, made of styrofoam ([https://www.uline.com/BL_5450/Wine- Shippers](https://www.uline.com/BL_5450/Wine-Shippers)) and pulp ([https://www.uline.com/BL_5451/Pulp-Wine- Shippers](https://www.uline.com/BL_5451/Pulp-Wine-Shippers)). This was a helpful coincidence in that I already like to consume Black Blood of the Earth (from [http://www.funraniumlabs.com](http://www.funraniumlabs.com)), and Phil uses those shippers.

• Be safe, and use the shipping option that requires 21 or older delivery. Even if you're shipping it to yourself. This has the helpful side-effect of ensuring that someone is there to receive it, so it won't get left alone.

• Use 2-day shipping or better! That helps ensure that your box never sits on a truck for too long, and especially not overnight. This is very important when shipping something that is almost entirely water, during a time when much of the country is experiencing freezing weather. Or, conversely, you don't want it being exposed to too-high temperatures.

<comment><USER21> > you may be able to ship it to them

This seems like a good idea but forget about it. I tried to ship wine last year as a gift for my in-laws... I couldn't find a single carrier who would touch that shipment. They all basically told me that they wouldn't deliver alcohol for individuals, and this distinction was important since I was already having wine delivered to my house by several of them (directly from wineries).

Which courier did you use to ship it to yourself at your parents?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This sucks. Wine subscriptions are big money-makers for vineyards. And, it will mostly hurt California.

<comment><USER23> The article points out that (apparently?) wineries are exempt -- this is about retailers:

 _...the Supreme Court ruling in Granholm v. Heald effectively lifted many state bans on buying directly from out-of-state wineries.

Though the ruling applied to wineries, not to retailers, Granholm had a liberating effect on consumers who suddenly found it much easier to find the wines they wanted online. The decision also allows the direct shipment of wines purchased by tourists at wineries to all states._

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I imagine the path of alcohol and wine will give us a road map for future regulatory of marijuana. Let's say for talking purposes that it's no longer a schedule 1, what kind of regulatory capture and manipulation will be required to keep cheaper states from exporting to those with more expensive tax dollars?

<comment><USER18> > _I imagine the path of alcohol and wine will give us a road map for future > regulatory of marijuana_

I don't think this is a safe assumption. Prohibition intersected with the Great Depression and the Constitution. The latter is key; Section 2 of the 21st Amendment expressly gives states the right to regulate the "transportation or importation" of "intoxicating liquors". Marijuana has no such Commerce Clause [2] override.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty- first_Amendment_to_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty- first_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text) _§ 2_

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

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice._

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For anyone not wanting to read the article, here's the list of states where UPS and FedEx will still ship wines to:

Alaska; California; Idaho; Louisiana; Missouri; Nebraska; Nevada; New Hampshire; New Mexico; North Dakota; Oregon; Virginia; Washington, D.C.; West Virginia; Wyoming

</comment><comment><USER26> Wonder if wine-exporting states like California could use their 21st amendment powers to impose retaliatory tariffs on booze from states that are doing this.

<comment><USER27> No, this is the point of the _Granholm_ case mentioned in the article: States can't apply restrictions on imports they don't apply to in-state products.

<comment><USER26> Granholm v. Heald was about rules which targeted direct sales from wineries, and held that states couldn't have different rules for in-state wineries and out-of-state wineries. I'm saying California could impose rules on, say, larger breweries, which don't really exist in California.

<comment><USER27> Huh? Even discounting now-massive craft brewers like Sierra Nevada and Lagunitas, Anheuser-Busch has at least one huge brewing facility in CA:

[http://www.anheuser-busch.com/about/breweries-and- tours/fair...](http://www.anheuser-busch.com/about/breweries-and- tours/fairfield-ca.html)

Besides, the courts would see right through laws that just-so-happened to affect only producers bigger than those in CA. What would be the rational basis other than to evade _Granholm_?

<comment><USER26> What would be the rational basis of distributor based laws?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> surrey-fringe Why is wine interesting?

<comment><USER28> Because it's one of the few products that can be legal to purchase in retail stores by both the shipper and receiver, yet illegal to ship.

<comment><USER29> Joining some tobacco products as the only examples I know of, other than obvious safety-related items (live animals, aerosols, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In Europe, wine and beer and cider are not alcoholic beverages. They're foods. You can also safely ship wine from Spain to Germany and beer from Germany to Spain.

In the US you need to be 21 to drink beer or vote, yet 18 is fine to join the army, meet new and interesting people and kill them.

<comment><USER31> You are mistaken on all points. All EU states have a legal drinking age, and it is usually 18 or 16.

Almost all countries, including Germany, also impose an excise duty (harm tax) on beverages like beer, but the amount of tax varies considerably by member state.

It might be possible to order beer from some EU countries to others, but for example certain Nordic countries still maintain a state alcohol monopoly which practically makes it illegal for private consumers to buy alcohol online even from another EU country (more precisely, it makes the bureaucracy for _selling_ alcohol so complex for the foreign retailer, that they just refuse delivery to these countries ..)

<comment><USER32> The German one for beer is nugatory th uk beer duty is 14 times the German one</comment></comment></comment>


To Yahoo: Open up your search index to gain market share - <AUTHOR> http://ihobbes.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/yahoo-open-up-your-search-index-to-gain-market-share/

<comment><USER2> I would use this for my people search application. This would definitely bring costs down significantly. The economics actually work the same if you want to do a really good job (be comprehensive) with your search application, you need to crawl the entire web to find the documents (part of the vertical) your search application is interested in. You could use a white list of sites, but then that would not be comprehensive.

So, building a good vertical search engine is really hard, you have to crawl the entire web first to find documents that look like the ones you are interested in. At 100 billion documents, 20k bytes each:

Bandwidth = 100 Billion documents * 20k bytes each = 1.8PB To download the documents at wire speed (gigabyte speed) it would take over 230 days. And of course processing, analysis etc. would take more compute time.

It would cost over $1M a month to process all web data on AWS. This is assuming we go at wire speed and ignore any kind of politeness.

If Yahoo were to open it's crawl, we would be able to just write our specific applications on top of Yahoo's crawl without needing to download the entire web on our servers.

<comment><USER3> You might want to check out "Nutch"/"Wikia Search" ( <http://re.search.wikia.com/about/get_involved.html> )... They let you download their copy of the web ( <http://search.isc.org/download/> ) Not exactly Yahoo quality, but it might be enough to get started on some smaller scale projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't actually a half bad idea.

Letting interested developers play with a subset of their index and then giving access to the full index for promising applications could potentially help them innovate against Google.

</comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't agree with you more sadiq. Yahoo has an opportunity to disrupt the vertical search space by opening up. New interesting apps could be better integrated with Yahoo's search platform. I think it would definitely create a dent in Google's search market share. Facebook, AWS, Android are testimony to this. Opening up would definitely not hurt Yahoo, and would very likely help it earn trust from developers and be part of the ecosystem.</comment>


How to Talk to Human Beings - <AUTHOR> http://codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/how-to-talk-to-human-beings.html

<comment><USER2> The discussion is over here - submitted 10 hours ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4114301></comment>


Don't build that feature - <AUTHOR> http://logicalfriday.com/2011/08/25/dont-build-that-feature/ The importance of metrics BEFORE we build a feature. <comment><USER2> Love the related image and caption</comment>


IPv6 Security for IPv4 Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/deploy360/ipv6/security/ipv4-engineers <comment><USER2> How could people think that IPv6 is more or less secure than IPv4? They are just numbering systems, aren't they?</comment>


Facebook: Building a Better Photo Uploader - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=178492968919

<comment><USER2> About bloody time! I'm amazed it's taken them this long to do something about that awful photo uploader, when photos are surely one of their killer apps. The number of (unanswered) complaints on their forum about this issue must run into tens of thousands.

But did it seriously require a complete rewrite instead of just fixing that woefully buggy Java applet? And could they really not have achieved this new implementation with Gears or YBP? They're rather vague on what was missing from those plugins, and I remember Google stating that they supported decent file upload functionality (including drag and drop) just fine.

<comment><USER3> My guess is the preview. Other plugins seem less concern about preview files.

<comment><USER4> interesting. i use a mac. do other operating systems not show previews while browsing for files?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting approach. They have built a UI-less browser plugin that exposes new javascript API to your web app.

That gets me thinking about other possible browser plugins along those lines: \- Expose the native filesystem \- Fire an event when a USB device is connected \- Or when email is received ...

<comment><USER6> I have a working browser plugin that allows justin.tv to access and respond to the Apple Remote Control. I should really find time to get it polished and released...

NPAPI plugins are actually pretty good fun to write.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The photo uploader on facebook has always been lame, taking ages to load and often crashing. It's a classic case of over-engineering. I've always ended up using the simplified uploader, which is much more straightforward.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why did they decide to have it use the modal window? I can't see a full two rows of photos.

</comment><comment><USER9> But that's cheating...

<comment><USER10> I thought the same thing actually. If you're going to make a plugin then it might as well be a full-blown app. I thought this post was going to be about a better uploader made in JS/HTML5 or something. Dropbox has a very good uploader. Now that Facebook runs the entire site on Ajax, they could relatively easily make a Flash/JS uploader like Dropbox while making sure the user can surf around the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The photo uploader is the first step towards them taking over the browser completely. They will trick users into using this and start dark testing new features, over time they will replace the majority of the browser's built-in rendering engine.

Nothing like being able to execute arbitrary x86 code through the browser....</comment>


Google gave original Mac designer free rein on new Google+ UI - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/06/28/google_gave_original_mac_designer_free_rein_on_new_google_ui.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I find this revelation interesting as I know people who work at Google and apparently management are extremely anal when it comes to minimalistic design. Top culprit: Marissa Mayer. It is good that they allowed him to do whatever he wants because playing around with Google+, I do really like the UI.

I wonder how many startups allow their designers to have free rein over their product.

<comment><USER2> I always try to come ot the table with ideas, but I encourage my designers to overrule me on design decisions. We'll roll something in to our product and at least try it. Sometimes it doesn't work out, and we end up re-working something. I always resist the urge to pull an "I told you so". I find that designers are far more willing to compromise on revisions driven by user needs when you give them ownership over the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know Andy from folklore.org stories - that was great.</comment>


Selenium For Pythonistas - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OA941RLbmU <comment><USER2> Personally I prefer using Selenium through Robot Framework ([http://robotframework.org/](http://robotframework.org/)) and its Selenium2 Library ([https://github.com/rtomac/robotframework- selenium2library/#r...](https://github.com/rtomac/robotframework- selenium2library/#readme)).

It gives you nice reporting for free and you get to write your tests in keyword driven way.

And when your tests get huge and complicated, RF has many other libraries to help you out (like database and http libraries).</comment>


The State of Espresso in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.jimseven.com/2015/08/31/the-state-of-espresso-in-2015/ <comment><USER2> I realized I am so pavlovian conditioned to expect bullet points regarding an open source javascript framework at the other end of the link, that I had to read the article twice just to make sure it was about something I could drink [where "drink" is not a javascript package manager].

An article as refreshing as an espresso.</comment>


The Turkish city that lives for breakfast - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180715-the-turkish-city-that-lives-for-breakfast <comment><USER2> If you consider visiting Van, I recommend you to take train. This route is still not popular enough among tourists because eastern Turkey had gone through violent conflicts. As long as you don't get yourself in trouble intentionally, you'll be safe though. I traveled Eastern Turkey by hitchhiking last year with my wife, and felt really safe and welcomed. People are very friendly, food is great, the nature is like Switzerland. I'm sure that this area will be too touristic to visit in the future, so I recommend you see there before it gets hit by tourism.

If you want to do a full trip in Turkey, this is my route recommendation: İstanbul -> flight -> Cappadocia -> Bus or hitchhike -> Urfa -> Mardin -> Hasankeyf -> Van -> Doğubeyazıt —> İran. These towns are all wonderful, and probably the most different beauties I've ever seen. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER3> > As long as you don't get yourself in trouble intentionally, you'll be safe > though.

What do you mean with that part?

<comment><USER4> Stay out of shady bars/clubs, don't go looking for drugs, don't get too terribly wasted if you get aggressive.

You'd be surprised how many travelers find themselves in trouble because of some stupid thing.

<comment><USER5> Getting terribly wasted in general is probably worth avoiding.

<comment><USER6> In certain places yes, in others its kind of expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having heard the hype about this famous breakfast I have to admit to being a little underwhelmed when I experienced it myself, so ymmv. Apart from that my trip to Eastern Turkey was brilliant and as with others I wholeheartedly recommend it. So much amazing history and scenery, friendly people, easy travel. I'd suggest it's safer with at least two of you and I'm not sure I'd visit Diyarbakir area if I went again now. Van castle is amazing. Kars and Ani are worth a visit. Take immodium with you. Don't mention the Armenian genocide.

<comment><USER8> > Don't mention the Armenian genocide.

What happens when you do? Do people just stop being nice to you or way more?

<comment><USER9> Without any idea of the correct answer, I just know that it's a bad idea. Don't bring up politics in a foreign country.

<comment><USER10> Or in your native country.

<comment><USER11> Or on facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just as a note, breakfast in the rest of Turkey is also similarly diverse and excellent :-) You'll notice that each region has its own small specialty additions of spices, jams, pastries, eggs, etc. And often different fruits and vegetables depending on what's seasonally available in the area. It's true that breakfast in Istanbul doesn't quite compare to breakfast on the beach or in the mountain with tomatoes and cucumbers picked freshly from the garden, but still, quite a great breakfast can be had in the city.

</comment><comment><USER13> The kaymak and honey combination must be my favorite breakfast. Once I pop, I can't stop. Makes me wish I lived in Turkey just for that.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like it overlaps a great deal with Polish breakfasts. Lots of cold sliced meats, cheeses, vegetables, breads, preserves, etc, with some variation. A friend from college who grew up in Kansas once visited and remarked on it. That may have been when I first became acutely aware of the difference between the typical Polish breakfast and its American counterpart.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here are some photos of what to expect:

[https://www.google.de/search?q=serpme+kahvalt%C4%B1&tbm=isch](https://www.google.de/search?q=serpme+kahvalt%C4%B1&tbm=isch)

<comment> Digit-Al Looks a little bit like a Turkish version of a ploughmans platter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A restauraunt serving Turkish breakfast recently opened in my town -- I had no idea it was such a thing. I'll have to find an excuse to try it!

Also, it's interesting seeing cognates in languages I don't know: peynir (I looked it up) reminded me of paneer (which at least in the U.S. is what we call the cheese in Indian food), and it turns out the word was (at least according to wiktionary) borrowed by both languages from Farsi.

</comment><comment><USER17> When the considering current currency value of Turkish liras against $, it's most delicious and cheap breakfast in the world.

</comment><comment><USER7> I forgot to mention that the extinct volcano at Tatvan should not be missed! This was one of the highlights of my trip.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemrut_(volcano)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemrut_\(volcano\))

</comment><comment><USER18> Turkish breakfast and more broadly Turkish food is great. You don't need to go to this particular city to experience that. Though let's celebrate the funny ways word of mouth has to spread the news.</comment>


'Picasso', the Painter on GDAX? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/meet-picasso-the-painter-on-gdax-c478ff8f50e5 <comment><USER2> As someone using machine learning to identify the patterns of bots on GDAX and riding the waves accordingly, I can say this is certainly happening. It's not just one bot though. There is huge money right now in crypto markets, both illegally and legally.

<comment><USER3> While I don't doubt there are bots out there. How are you able to differentiate between bots and human trades?

<comment><USER2> Personally, I'm not fully, though I'm sure there are methods. Realistically, right now the naive solution is working just fine, which is just identifying market trends. Because so much is bots, it inherently learns the trends of bots, allowing me to write an algorithm that reacts to said trends. The human trading more or less accounts to be the noise level over the bot patterns, though I'm sure some bots also react to the noise, increasing the noise in practice for my purposes. All I know is I can get a good enough accuracy right now to make pretty accurate guesses.

<comment><USER4> What is your naive method? Like what is the algorithm?

<comment><USER2> The learning method is really quite naive, I'll put it that way. The algorithm I chose is designed to be risk averse and crash resistant. The learning method and algorithm are orthogonal/separate, and what learning you pair with what trading algorithm can make a big difference in risk and returns obviously.

I'd prefer not to say more than that simply because if the algorithm was run at any large scale I worry about its effect on the market as a whole. Imagine a bunch of bots all following the patterns of a few other bots and what happens if one of those big player bots errors or even if there's a change in the bot and people don't retrain their model. That's just one way it could all go south quick. I'm frankly worried that this risk doesn't already exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Author is mistaking basic exchange dynamics, arbitrage issues with USD, and drawing up a wild conspiracy from almost nothing.

<comment><USER6> he is trying to trigger a bank run, but doesn't realize our whole financial system runs on fractional reserves

<comment><USER7> Fractional reserve blanking is not a real thing.

<comment><USER8> Do you mean that it's not "a real thing" because some banks are not limited to loans amounts within reserve requirements?

<comment><USER7> Because the majority of banking systems dont require any reserves. Even in the USA certian household debt like mortgages require reserves while most other debt like commercial does not. And even with mortgages banks have 30 days to come up wuth the reserve.

In other words, it doesn't exist as the texbooks describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shameless plug: The orderbook visualizations of [http://www.dancingbots.com](http://www.dancingbots.com) help to understand the different kind of bots on various exchanges. However, for some/most strategies one would need a higher resolution (seconds, not minutes) and more focus on the area around the current price.

<comment><USER10> It's also worth mentioning this [1] blog post from 2014 on orderbook visualization. It has a great explanation of the methods and insightful analysis.

[1] [http://parasec.net/transmission/order-book- visualisation/](http://parasec.net/transmission/order-book-visualisation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get the point of this article. The bot he says is buying 95 BCH at 8500. I don't see how this is profitable as the the price quickly falls and the bot lost a lot of money. This is just a bunch of bots trying to catch trends. You can see this on the stock market as well. See stocks like LFIN or LTEA.

<comment><USER12> You are getting it wrong. The bot is not buying, but placing an order / intention to buy. This pumps the price. Just before the order is filled-in, the trade order is canceled, but the price is already pumped.

<comment><USER13> That's not how it works. Placing an order does not change the price, it only adds it to the book of orders. If the order executes (a buy and a sell orders are matched), then that's the current price.

That's where author's theory makes little sense. It's quite expensive to sell to yourself. Even if you're a high-volume trader on GDAX, you pay 0.1% on each executed trade. So you make 400 trades, you lose half of your money to the fees.

<comment><USER14> I couldn't help but think the same thing regarding this article. It doesn't seem worth it for the bots to price-paint unless they are owned by the exchanges. In that case, this could be a much bigger story, but the author asserts that they are _not_ owned by the exchanges. I think this assertion is merely for face and the author probably thinks the exchanges are involved. This doesn't add up unless the exchanges are involved.

Even then, let's say they are involved. Occam's razor? Was it a carefully engineered price-paint by the bots owned by the big bad corporations, or was it just a bunch of people who had live bots that didn't know what the fuck to do with an empty orderbook?

It seems way too easy to write a bot that has no idea how to trade, or gets influenced by very arbitrary anchors.

<comment><USER13> Now that's a decent hypothesis. An exchange wanted to create an illusion of high liquidity, they wrote a stupid bot, which worked in unexpected ways, they had to shut everything down.

<comment><USER14> It's funny because I was on GDAX (looking at it) when the price of BCH jumped to over 9000. It didn't "start" at over 9000 like the "tape" suggests. Right when it was added to the exchange, it was at maybe 4000. Then, a series of jumps occured in a timeframe of about 1 second and the price was at 9500 or so (or was it 8500?). Anyway, clearly my memory is spotty, but I found that very strange.

<comment><USER15> your memory is right. it was showing both those numbers at the same time. one on the chart the other on the bid. made no sense.

<comment><USER14> One was the last price, the other was an average of some sort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _I believe that the reason we saw Bitcoin Cash start out trading like this, several hundred percent higher than the rest of the market, is because the tape painting bot was unleashed on this trading pair too early._

So, the Coinbase spike was not due to "insider trading" but a bot and they should investigate the bot? The amount of wild theories is just mind boggling.

While there are serious doubts on Tether this seems a stretch just to tie thing to Bitfinex.

<comment><USER16> The theory was, price increase prior to announcement (couple days) was insider trading. After announcement might be bot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> His assertion that no humans would place certain irrational trades seems dubious. Sure they would. What am I missing?

<comment><USER18> When the news went out that BCash is being listed, the price on Bittrex shot up to $5k and then started settling down at around $4k. At that exact time, the price on Gdax was showing over $9.5k after which they halted trading for the day.

I am with the author on this one, no human with good intentions would put a buy order at that price.

<comment><USER19> That there is software trading these order books is not disputed. They even publish APIs for the purpose. However the argument that no human would place a buy order at a significant premium over market value is not a good one.

Many people issue market buy orders. (Why? Some exchanges prioritize them over limit orders. That might be one reason. Another might be that Coinbase's customers aren't predominantly day traders.)

Coinbase is known to have issues with their trading engine. They have outages every time there are large market movements. They can be very slow to execute places orders and there have been spurious reports of people having their orders executed out of order.

If the order book was empty, the execution engine lagging the user interface considerably, and many people placing market buy orders, this outcome is expected. Coinbase probably did the right thing to disable trading for a while. If a trading engine that could keep up with the user interface was a possibility for them that would probably have happened years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Question is why wouldn't this be going on? When there are different exchanges each with their own price it invites arbitrage.

<comment><USER5> Author is claiming that a single bot is able to drive up the price on GDAX and then arbitrage the difference, ignoring the fact that more than 1 bot is in operation.

<comment><USER21> A lot more than 1 bot in operation. All you have to do is just sit there and watch the trading. It's fairly obvious there are a bunch of bots trading at any given time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My brother and I were talking tonight about arbitrage and how it's likely happening on Bitcoin considering how close the exchanges are tracking each other despite being independent from each other.

<comment><USER23> Arbitrage is legal and beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Or perhaps all this painting is coming from the market orders placed on coinbase

</comment><comment><USER25> What's a good BTC trading firm that pays in BTC?</comment>


Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/crunch-mode

<comment><USER2> In my experience, this is true whether I've been working on my own project or at a company. There may be people out there who can write code for more than 8 hours straight per day but it's impossible for me. Realistically, if I get 5 good hours coding out of an 8 hour day I think I've done well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there's a big difference between working for ABC Company and building your own. When you're building your own, the concept of increasing effectiveness by reducing hours is counterproductive and limiting. Anyone who's ever built anything significant will readily tell you that crunch mode is essential.</comment>


Migrating to React and MobX Without Stopping Feature Development - <AUTHOR> https://heap.engineering/migrating-react-mobx-while-shipping-new-features/ <comment><USER2> Hey! Author here. Happy to answer any questions or go into any details about our approach. I know this post was pretty broad, but we'll be publishing more deep dives with code examples soon.</comment>


Full Analysis of How the GDPR Impacts Digital Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://www.seoptimer.com/blog/how-gdpr-impacts-seo-and-digital-marketing/ <comment><AUTHOR> Came across this comprehensive resource that triggered a lot of questions about the GDPR, i.e. the way businesses comply with the regulation. Is cutting people from the EU really the answer? How will the data economy change? Will digital trust really be restored or will we witness a division in cyberspace - EU vs. rest of the world? Please, share your points of view!</comment>


Google to Encourage Americans to Get Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/google-to-encourage-americans-to-get-online/ From what I can tell based on a large purchase of domain names today by Google, the online search giant is planning some sort of campaign to encourage us to get online. Google has purchased a large number of State-related domain names including Get Online America, including the get online phrase along with a State name. <comment><USER2> When you're as big as Google, I guess the best way to grow all your programs is to grow your market. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I totally agree, Shenglong. What I would like to see is more free internet access nationwide, just like Google did with their airport effort a while back.</comment></comment>


Don't Build a Startup, Build a Movement - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/dont-build-a-startup-build-a-movement-15c31213168 <comment><USER2> A thinly veiled promotion for Drift. Read like sponsored content.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. I know of a number of services that offer a similar feature/product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get the appeal from company's perspective, but there's only so many "movements" a customer can handle. I don't want every tool I use to disrupt my thinking - imagine how tiring that would be. Unfortunately this approach is currently so in fashion that a simple landing page which just states it's proposition in a clear way seems refreshing.

Also, it seems incredibly desperate and fake when a company tries to forcefully come up with unique culture when there is none to begin with. Some companies are naturally more interesting than others and that's okay. Not everyone can be basecamp and not everyone needs to :)

<comment><USER5> This. Most people just want a well functioning product or service. Personally, I basically never want to join a "movement" just because I want to buy something.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Companies need to stop pretending that they are selling their customers on "disruption" or "a movement".

Consumers are not dumb. We see through all the marketing-speak and see your product for what it is.

If its a good product at a good price that ALSO attempts to make a market better - I'm in. Otherwise, spend less on marketing and more on making a better product.

If you really want to "Disrupt" or create a "movement", get into the non- profit sector. At least then we (as consumers) know you aren't full of bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mailchimp just exploited bad behavior of Gmail, which accepts mail only from large and reputable servers, so your own server, which had never sent spam, will be almost blacklisted by default.

Or maybe it's a lie and Gmail happily accepts mail from properly configured servers? But Mailchimp's marketing made people believe in former. So yes, disruption of thinking.

Why it's called "movement" and considered good? They almost killed last decentralized system on internet — the email. With basically FUD. All hail disruption!

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't call it a lie. I worked for a place that had an IP for years and only sent transactional email from it (i.e. receipts) and one day we started getting a lot of calls about no receipts. Sure enough, one of the large isps blocked our server. (Yes, spf and doing we're setup.)

I'm not saying MailChimp is the answer. The whole system of blacklists is just bad and causes systems like MailChimp and it's kin to pop up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Building a movement is just another version of the _handicap principle_ [1].

A startup that can afford to waste time and resources on building a movement is seen as "healthy" to potential customers. It's a reliable signal of fitness for a company.

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

</comment><comment><USER10> So what happens when everyone is out there trying to 'create a movement' and 'change everyone else's way of thinking'.

I mean, we could encourage people to be honest, clear and concise ... and to build useful stuff ...

<comment><USER11> Applies to work life too: if you just work more then you can become rich. But what happens when everybody works more? You get the same basic stuff, but now you really have to work for it.

<comment><USER12> Shouldn't there be more stuff for everyone then? Something is wrong if there weren't.

<comment><USER11> Only slightly. The question is if this small increase in stuff is worth the total degradation of ones life quality. I say it doesn't. You earn more but then you spend that extra income on expensive stuff that you don't need just to feel that you are still living a good life.

<comment><USER13>
       The question is if this small increase in stuff is worth the total
       degradation of ones life quality. I say it doesn't.

Oh oh, sounds like you're arguments are about marginal utility, subjective value and economics trade off. Are you a crypto austrian ;) ?

<comment><USER11> I don't know what crypto austrian means :) I'm romanian.

<comment><USER13> Crypto-* to say that you are that * without knowing it.

Austrian refers to austrian economics ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School) ), you basically said in one sentence the 3 economic concepts I said earlier.

Spoiler : nobody ever justified communism / marxism / socialism based on this.

<comment><USER11> I guess I might be. Thanks for the link. I didn't know about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I saw a great talk on this topic by Dharmesh Shah, founder of Hubspot.

He says that movements are great, but they're necessarily harder to build. Convincing people to change the way they approach their job is _hard_, even if you're right. Then you have to sell them software, which isn't trivial.

Their competition, Marketo, didn't build a movement. They latched on to the existing trend of Marketing Automation, and they built a huge business, at least as successful as HubSpot.

In both cases, the software and ideas were new, but as a company, you don't have to be the standard-bearer for your movement. You just have to support it.

As others in this thread have argued, you don't even have to have a movement to sell software. But fundamentally, if your software doesn't enable people and companies to work differently, you haven't built something deeply valuable. Outside of the early adopter SF-product-hunt folks, nobody wants to buy new software just for kicks. People buy software to change and upgrade their workflow. You can call it a movement or a trend or a wave, but it's always about change. If you want to build something enduring or big or valuable, you need the wind at your back, bringing a useful change to your customers.

</comment><comment><USER15> The most effective types of brand signals are the ones which are expensively risky. If your branding positions you for quality or honesty, and that doesn't match the strengths of your product or service, that message will do really badly for you!

It's not useful to talk about branding strategies in isolation from the product, because people (mostly) aren't so stupid. People are listening for signals that would be costly if false (even if they don't know that's what they're doing). If you're succeeding by telling everyone your service is secure and reliable, I default believe you, because courting customers who value security and reliability is a really bad strategy if your service is flakey and insecure.

<comment><USER16> > If you're succeeding by telling everyone your service is secure and > reliable, I default believe you, because courting customers who value > security and reliability is a really bad strategy if your service is flakey > and insecure.

I'd caution against this approach when it comes to security, unless your "default [belief]" is already tempered with "Hey [security-knowledgeable person I know], have you heard of [product] before?" and gauging their reaction from the sales copy.

If you're going to trust, make sure you also verify.

<comment><USER15> It was hard to get across concisely, but I really meant something like my beliefs move to some extent. Yes, I verify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Brands are more valuable than products - see Nike, Coca-Cola etc. - read 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein

</comment><comment><USER18> They succeeded because they built a platform that doesn't suck. Just take a look at some competition like constant contact. Their marketing is awesome but it's no movement. They just have a great product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is marketing by the book vs freestyle marketing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Brand follows product, not vice versa.

Good product allows for a good brand to be built. Mailchimp only looks "simple" now. When it first hit, it was revolutionary in its simplicity and effectiveness.

So build a startup, then, maybe, you can build a movement.</comment>


The Art of the Motorcade - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/dispatches/the-daily/the-art-of-the-escort <comment><USER2> >British police do not push through congestion with parping, wailing sirens. Instead they somehow unzip it, opening and closing a rolling, convoy-sized gap in the traffic. The clever work is performed by a swarm of police motorcycles, which zoom ahead, blue lights flashing, to halt traffic at the next two or three junctions. Sometimes they create temporary chicanes so that the convoy can cross to the wrong side of the road for a few hundred yards. (Passing through north London, I felt British pride as pedestrians asked motorcycle officers just who we thought we were – a wholly reasonable question. I felt a stab of embarrassment as we hit the M11 motorway and headed at speed up the hard shoulder, leaving stationary commuters to fume in our wake.) In the absence of sirens the loudest noise is the buzz of motorcycles catching back up with the convoy then overtaking it at speed, on their way to close off new junctions ahead.

There's an interesting short documentary about the Metropolitan Police Special Escort Group: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5TkSE_5GsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5TkSE_5GsE)

<comment><USER3> This sort of makes me wonder about how driverless cars could be designed to handle this sort of situation. Or any situation where an authorized human is temporarily modifying traffic rules using gestures and verbal communication. Especially in edge cases where they might be giving non-trivial instructions to individual cars.

<comment><USER4> Well, driverless cars will have to deal with unauthorized humans doing all sorts of weird stuff in traffic.

I think this is a smaller problem.

<comment><USER5> These will be authorised humans, and thus will probably have some kind of (hopefully cryptographicly protected) id to tell the cars that this is an instruction it probably wants to obey.

<comment><USER6> So they will take OTA instructions through a backdoor?

<comment><USER7> More like a front door; one of the biggest problems with backdoors is that they are not supposed to allow the 'owner' to know what is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a great read. Going off a tangent to this, if anybody is looking for a breakdown of the US Presidential motorcade, Tyler Rogoway does a great job in this article :

[http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4518/the-fascinating- an...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4518/the-fascinating-anatomy-of- the-presidential-motorcade)

<comment><USER9> There is a memoir of a Security Service (Mi5) operator Soldier Spy and he goes into how they where trained to drive when tailing people.

<comment><USER10> The book is called "Soldier Spy" [1], by "Tom Marcus". He was on the Jeremy Vine show last week, his interview is worth a listen (starts at 33:30).

[1] [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32330232-soldier- spy](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32330232-soldier-spy) [2] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b085hbwn#play](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b085hbwn#play)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool video of the Japan prime minister motorcade merging into traffic - [https://i.imgur.com/Fz11DuI.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/Fz11DuI.gifv)

And a parody of motorcade abuse in an African country - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbDgJN-j- PM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbDgJN-j-PM)

</comment><comment><USER12> I dont think anyone really debates the need for such escorts, the prez needs to get to the airport securely. But perhaps due to my locatuon ive witnessed many ridiculous uses.

Training. A good number of these police escorts are training senarios. Police need to train, but the use of force to detain members of the public during training is a step too far imho.

Some VIPs arent very vip in my book. After concerts downtown, in the traffic chaos, it is not unussual to see police escort performers to the airport or hotel. Taylor Swift doesnt qualify as vip imho.

Questionable destinations. Taking someone out to lunch doesnt need the police convoy. Send for take out. Dont block a bridge or manhandle me off my motorcycle just because a visiting vip feels like italian tonight. Let the food come to him.

<comment><USER13> Do stars really hang around after a concert is over?

From documentaries I've seen, they're on the bus and on the road before the applause is over. All the meet-and-greet is done before the concert.

<comment><USER12> In the case of one taylor swift concert last year, it was also fireworks night. The streets were packed before she ended. Stars can do what they want. Most leave asap, but i have heard of some overnighting at tge venue, or traveling to the next show with the crew. Helicopters are also an option, ussualy after the parking lot empties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Motorcades also put on out an air of legitimacy, even when they're completely fake [https://youtu.be/N3zKuLgH_l8](https://youtu.be/N3zKuLgH_l8)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's a Youtube video showing police motorcycle escort of an ambulance. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXTDnYIHQBE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXTDnYIHQBE)

It's interesting to see how much direction they need to give to drivers - "Don't slow down here, keep driving"; "stop there until we've gone through".

<comment><USER12> Do ambulances and fire trucks need police escorts? I would think it could do more harm than good. I've driven through several red lights to give way, but if there was a cop in sight i'd probably hesitate. Seeing a cop, but perhaps not the ambulance, would trigger drivers to pull over thinking they were getting a ticket. In my area ambulances and fire trucks have no issues. Everyone gives way, even when they dont have lights on.

<comment><USER15> My wife had an ambulance ride with a police escort once. A 20 minute drive turned into about 8 minutes. Minutes and seconds saved can make a difference sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Living and working in Washington, DC, I have thought for some years that a new administration brings in a increase in the number of motorcades, until the novelty wears off. I am fortunate to live within walking distance of work (extended: about three miles), and wouldn't be surprised to find myself walking home more this spring.

<comment><USER17> Rumour has it that Trump's planning to spend significant time in NYC, so it may turn out that there won't be as many as you fear. Trump Tower is being reglazed with bullet proof glass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Indian and Japanese versions were the same, but in India they pretended to have a motorcade.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pordonone should be Pordenone. Interesting read, in any case.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is not the kind of escort I thought I would be reading about.

<comment><USER21> That was clearly a bit of cheekiness by the Economist that doesn't translate particularly well to the front page here, so we did a s/escort/motorcade/.</comment></comment>


Sono, a noise cancelation and isolation device that sticks on your window  - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170649-sono-a-noise-cancelation-and-isolation-device-that-sticks-on-your-window <comment><USER2> Too bad it is physically impossible to create a working device that works like in the video.</comment>


Elon Musk threatens to move Tesla out of California - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/9/21253127/elon-musk-lawsuit-alameda-coronavirus-tesla-fremont-lockdown <comment><AUTHOR> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127552)

Apparently I can't delete this anymore.

</comment><comment><USER2> At what point is Elon himself a liability?</comment>


Concentrated Wealth Is Strangling Prosperity - <AUTHOR> http://evonomics.com/insanely-concentrated-wealth-strangling-prosperity/ <comment><USER2> You know what else is strangling prosperity? Normalization of taking debt. When someone "buys" something using debt, it must be paid for many times over. They usually don't end up paying that all on their own, even though they were responsible for taking the debt.

For example, when you buy an over valued house with a mortgage, say during a housing bubble, it doesn't make sense for you to try and sell it later on for less than you originally "paid" (with your fancy loan). So you are going to hold onto it, waiting for the market to go "up", so that you can sell it to yet another person who takes out yet another loan to "pay" for this overpriced house. In the mean time, either you or some renter is busting their ass to pay the interest on that unnecessary loan. It's completely ordinary for people who who decided not too take a mortgage to get stuck paying the interest for someone who locked a house into debt.

This is completely straight forward but when I try to convey how absurd it is, a lot of common sense people look at me like I'm crazy. It's considered a financially "sound investment" to buy a house and try to sell it higher. Well what if I don't want to live in a world where everyone is just playing monopoly all the time? I feel like there are much more interesting and pressing things to do with our precious human time and energy than cater to these ridiculous cycles of debt.

And lot of people who take debt because it's so "smart" couldn't come up with an original exponential function if their life depended in it.

<comment><USER3> I dont think you understand the economics of debt related to mortgages.

If there were no morts, you would have to amass wealth for a long time to be able to purchase a home, which means ur capital becomes tied and you cant invest. Mortgages increase the amount of circulating money enormously.

Everything is exponential in finance, both debts and house values. Also income and investment returns. The exponential nature of debt is not an argument against anything. Rental also has an exponential opportunity cost.

<comment><USER4> Mortgages don't solve that problem.

In the UK is that housing has become unaffordable for most of the population - precisely _because_ mortgages made it possible to buy property as an investment.

At the same time the market has been deliberately starved of affordable housing as a matter of national policy.

So your point makes no sense. What are you going to do with capital while you're saving it for a property purchase? Keep it under a mattress?

In reality, without mortgages, there would be far more investment cash available, because the money would be out there doing something useful, not trapped and congealed inside a fixed asset.

<comment><USER3> Man, I always say Argentina is anachronistic: we've had 15 years of no mortgages and we are starting to have them now, while there is an anti- mortgage sentiment in the world.

> In the UK is that housing has become unaffordable for most of the population > - precisely because mortgages made it possible to buy property as an > investment.

Without going too deep, there is a problem with saying unaffordable. Are we talking about indigents? Or that the middle class 25-35 doesn't have the access to houses the previous generation had? They are very different propositions.

I would take for granted that mortgages raise the price of housing, simply because it helps foster demand more than supply. But it also means more houses are sold, which also means more houses are built. The goal is not to have cheap housing, is for the biggest amount of people getting housing, and banning mortgages will reduce both prices and people getting housing.

> At the same time the market has been deliberately starved of affordable > housing as a matter of national policy.

I can't comment or debate about this for UK because I don't know what this is about. Any government that puts a policy to control what is built is likely going to have bad effects. It is true that luxury housing is providing higher returns than affordable in the U.S. In argentina its a bit different, due to historically no credit: basically the only buyers of new property in Argentina are investors, because those are the only ones that had the capital to purchase in advance. Hence for a decade, the market was flooded with cheap- construction rental homes. I expect the introduction of mortgages to create a market for long-term quality housing.

> So your point makes no sense. What are you going to do with capital while > you're saving it for a property purchase? Keep it under a mattress?

Probably low-yield money funds if you are sophisticated. Home-owners are ill- advised to mortgages their home to invest in the stock market: using your capital to buy a home to invest in stocks is basically the same.

> In reality, without mortgages, there would be far more investment cash > available, because the money would be out there doing something useful, not > trapped and congealed inside a fixed asset.

If a man buys a house at 100k, his capital is now owned by the former seller, so the amount of capital in circulation is the same. The point is what happens when someone wants to buy a house: they have decades of saving money in low yields. This can be seen in Argentina again, as there is a mortgage boom, 30 year olds are making cash-down payment, even though market participation is almost non-existent. People were saving the cash in their mattresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This will only get worse as jobs get replaced by ais and robots, which will be owned by the wealthiest people as well.

The darkest timeline is one in which the wealthy decide that the vast number of humans are unnecessary surplus to be eliminated, as the wealthy retreat into secure enclaves guarded by robot armies, leaving the rest to serve as slaves or to starve and die.

<comment><USER6> We've been the path to the "darkest timeline". Mark Blyth (Prof. of political economy at Brown) has been warning his hedge fund friends that that, "the Hamptons is not a defensible position. ... Eventually people will come for you."[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzl4B3mrKQE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzl4B3mrKQE)

<comment><USER7> That's why they're building prepper-bunkers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I laughed at the Smaug example because it's a good analogy - wealth doesn't hurt anyone sitting in a cave. And aggregate demand is controlled by the Fed - if it's too low "because" rich people are sitting on bank accounts, everyone at the Fed should be fired for incompetence.

<comment><USER9> Why is it incompetence if Fed increases shareholder value?

<comment><USER10> At some point people will realize it's bad too optimize the world for shareholder value.

<comment><USER11> But at that point, will it be too late to do anything about it?

Like most things, it depends where you are in the scheme of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And all that because accumulation of wealth is the best strategy to ensure long-term survival. Would we want to do it if we knew for sure we would always be able to live in nice houses, in nice, safe, clean neighborhoods, have good food and have healthy kids that go to good schools an colleges and repeat this same cycle?

I wouldn't.

I'd do what I do best, not what pays more.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reagan won.

At least his policies got what he wanted. He probably did love this country but didn't consider the consequences.

<comment><USER14> He was an actor! He did well to surround himself with "experts" and then listen to them. Unfortunately his experts were wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Keep in mind folks, over by the green button: 'DONATING = CHANGING ECONOMICS. AND CHANGING THE WORLD.'

</comment><comment><USER16> > people with lots of money don't spend it.

They do, they just spend it on buying things like factories, companies and real estate. This is usually called investing and will also get money back into the system since the things you buy when investing were built by workers as well.

<comment><USER2> Maybe they'll get money back in the system, but peoples' debts grow exponentially faster than the wages purported to trickle down. And you don't need to have debt personally to pay for it. My landlord, for example, like many landlords, has a mortgage. We pay her interest and her principle. We pay for the debt she locked the house behind.

<comment><USER3> But u have to consider that the house wouldnt be available without the mortgage, and u would pay a higher rent somewhere else, and the owner might still be amassing the cash to buy it.

Mortgages have a low interest rate in comparison to regular credit, so money that is not put on the mort and into the business economy is an exponential gain.

<comment><USER7> You're describing a situation where mortgages are alreadu the norm, and have already raised the price of houses beyond an affordable price at cash _precisely because_ it's relatively easy to take out a mortgage to buy a house at the prices we have today. If it were never so easy to take out a mortgage to buy a house, housing costs would be much lower as the market matched demand to supply.

<comment><USER3> They would be lower prices, but there would be less home-owners.

If the final goal were to reduce prices, you just need to pass a law that all housing is worth 1$ for an unprecedented successful policy.

It is always interesting to me how in Real Estate, people are intelectually sensitive to price increases: as if price increments were a sign of things going awry. More often than not its the opposite: job creation in a city raises rents which is a net good (i.e. SF and Seattle). Or people moving out of their parents home earlier.

It is senseless to look at the price of one thing and focus on that as a measure of well-being. After all, a man in the 20's would look at our salaries and say we are all filthy rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The author seems to have the forgone conclusion that high concentration of wealth is bad but doesn't put any real effort into explaining why. It's going to make people who agree it's bad feel supported and people who disagree feel frustrated at still not having an answer.

The best reason I've heard is that is leads to violence. People (specifically men) can't cope with knowing they can never succeed in the competitive race to be the richest so they turn to other ways to gain power - like intimidating and beating people. But that seems to be more the fault of those individuals not the people they're jealous of. Maybe we should educate kids to not feel jealous of rich people and that would solve the problem.

<comment><USER18> Wow, just wow. The biggest flaw is ignoring shared biology: the meanest virus/bacteria bred in the deepest helpless squalor of absolute 3rd+ world poverty can and will infect any 1st- world billionaire at the first opportunity. Add climate change and associated vector spread (west-nile, zika,...) and those opportunities multiply. Solidarity may be the optimal approach, even with a pure self-serving outlook.

<comment><USER19> The effect is the other way around; diseases like aids, malaria, polio were/are the scourges of the third world, because the poor do not have the means to treat them; the viruses/bacteria in the third world suffer low evolutionary pressure because the humans only fight back with their immune systems. In the first world, we grow super resistant bacteria due to evolutionary pressure from our modern medical treatment. It's the first world that we should fear from a "shared biology" standpoint.

<comment><USER12> OTOH, populations that develop imune systems that can deal with their diseases will host deadly stuff for those who rely on external defenses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>