How to prepare for losing your programming job - <AUTHOR> https://codewithoutrules.com/2020/05/14/prepare-losing-job/ <comment><USER2> At a former company that shall remain nameless, the bigwigs from the head office came out to announce the closing of our satellite[1] office. They offered a relocation package to the head office for some of the folks working one of the projects we had in the remote office. Except it was kind of a crap relocation offer: same salary moving to a more expensive part of the country working for a person everybody thought was an idiot.

They _also_ gave everybody a month to accept or decline that offer.

In practice, that meant that everybody at the remote office spent a month getting paid to look for a job. It was a bit like the job center in The Full Monty, but folks were actively supporting each other: helping each other practice whiteboard questions, going over each others' resumes, etc.

If you can get current on some new technology on company time or raise your profile, do it. Folks who didn't get a relocation offer got to clean out their desks the day the bigwigs showed up.

I don't have numbers from the group of people formerly of that office, but from my experience it's a hell of a lot easier to find a job if you have one than if you don't. If your company seems shaky, the time to start looking is now.

[1] Edited per suggestion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23181222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23181222) originally read "remote".

<comment><USER3> That was kind of them. The one time I actually got let go from a programming job was when the company shut down suddenly: I showed up Monday morning and found out that there was an all-hands conference call at 9 AM. Everybody in our office dialed into it and it was a recorded message that the company had shut down and we were all unemployed effective immediately.

<comment><USER4> In some states, subject to some limitations, that is illegal.

E.g., California's WARN layoff notice requirements:

 _Per Chapter 4, Part 4, Sections 1400-1408 of the Labor Code, WARN protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring that employers give a 60-day notice to the affected employees and both state and local representatives prior to a plant closing or mass layoff. Advance notice provides employees and their families time to transition and adjust to the prospective loss of employment, time to seek alternative jobs and, if necessary, time to obtain skills training or retraining to successfully compete in the job market. For more information, visit WARN Frequently Asked Questions. ..._

[https://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WAR...](https://www.edd.ca.gov/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN.htm)

<comment><USER5> Are you sure that still applies if the company is bankrupt? Even if it does how are they supposed to comply when there is no money.

<comment><USER4> I don't know, hence my "subject to some limitations" weasel.

My principle point was to make known that immediate layoffs without notice or compensation are not something all employees are required to immediately and unconditionally accept. _Know and assert your rights._

Searching "warn notice layoffs bankruptcy" gives some additional information.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warn+notice+layoffs+bankruptcy&ia=...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warn+notice+layoffs+bankruptcy&ia=web)

A bankrupt firm virtually always _has assets_. The question is how these are distributed amongst creditors. Inclusive of employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quote I've seen a lot: "Leetcode every day keeps unemployment away"

Seems the best way to avoid long term unemployment in this day and age is to be "coding interview ready" constantly.

My best friend at a FAANG always tells me he dreads having to look for a job ever again - whether voluntarily or involuntarily, as he is in no way shape or form ready for coding interviews.

<comment><USER7> A lot of the companies I've seen actually hiring these days are doing more legit work-sample problems than Leetcode tasks.

Coinbase and Stripe both have programming tasks that are clearly condensed versions of the actual work you'll be doing there. Google does too if you get a good interviewer, though it can vary a lot between interviewers. Snap, Lyft, and Facebook were all leetcode exercises - but they're ones that have been hurting more from the coronavirus recession.

Leetcode is popular now because there're a bunch of tools (CoderPad/Karat for interviews and Leetcode/HackerRank for practice) that make it easy. I'm already seeing the pendulum start to swing the other way though - many of the best companies are building hiring processes tailored to their own business because they get a competitive advantage from doing so, both because they get more signal on prospective applicants and because it means interviewing does not become a transferrable skill that you can use to get multiple competing offers.

<comment><USER6> I've encountered takehome problems more often these days, but they've always been in addition to leetcode interviews, not instead of.

As one example, a "mid-tier" company gave me homework to do, which I spent a lot of time and effort to do a good job. The team apparently was impressed - supposedly I had one of the best solutions, and I got to the onsite. Then the onsite had two leetcode rounds, one of which I struggled with. I got rejected. I don't know the exact reasons of course, but considering I felt the rest of the interview seemed to go great, I suspect it's the leetcode problem I failed to get the superoptimal solutino for that killed me.

Nowadays my policy is to just reject any company that gives me homework to do as part of their interview loop. More often than not it's a waste of time. The exception would be companies like FAANG or other "top" companies. I'd definitely still do homework for Coinbase or Stripe.

Some company I've never heard of or some non-tech company? Nope. At least studying leetcode scales horizontally across many companies.

<comment><USER8> I ask leetcode round to be before homework. I don't do it if its other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Read most of this but are there any non-obvious points of value that I missed. Cut expenses and try to get a new job seems to be the primary point. Anything else?

<comment><USER10> Do extrovert stuff, speak at conferences, network make lots of friends / contacts, be popular.

Hard for introverts like me, I am better at computers than people which means I am at a disadvantage even in the computer field it seems.

Worried if I ever have to look for a new job especially getting older.

<comment><USER9> Isn't that so counter-intuitive? This clearly means that it's an inefficient market. I don't need to have a good social network to buy a nice TV. What a great problem that needs to be solved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I maintain a file of headhunters that I have come in contact with. If I lose my job (or even feel like I'm going to), I've got about 10 people who can earn money by finding me my next job.

<comment><USER12> The only thing I use email tags/folders for is to tag recruiters. Last time I looked for a job (in September), I just ranked the companies in order of my interest, and went down the list. 80% of the recruiters were happy to hear from me (even those who I had ignored)

<comment><USER13> What is the best way to approach an overdue reply? I always find myself at a loss for words as the thought "sorry for being a spacey moron" ricochets around my brain.

<comment><USER14> Unsolicited cold recruiting emails aren't owed any sort of response. Apologies are not needed or expected. Just a "Thanks for getting in touch. Would you still like to talk?" is sufficient.

Alternatively compose a "Thanks, not now" template that you send to all recruiters when they email. Then later on hit them with a "How about now?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Other signals to look for is your company's inability to raise a round. This is an important one, typically rumors will circulate internally regarding financing. Not being able to raise a round is a signal that says investors, who have made a best effort to judge your company's books have decided your company is not a good investment. Those investors will have been provided a balance sheet that you typically will not have access to. So pay careful attention to this signal.

<comment><USER16> That only applies to the small percentage of companies that isn't profitable and that still relies not only on investor money, but on fresh financial injections to keep their head above water. Most companies aren't like that.

A lot of software companies will continue to generate income as well, due to having recurring income like subscriptions and licenses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We need some startups in the proof of skill space as vast amounts of time and energy are used by developers providing public proof of their skills rather than actually doing work or improving their own skills.

Sure, talks and blogs can be useful, but in the same way that companies are harmed by resume driven development, there are community downsides to resume driven blogging if just that things trend towards whatever is new at the time rather than a diverse range of topics. It also is not helpful if a lot of them are geared towards impressing recruiters rather than informing.

We want tutorials by people who actually enjoy creating good tutorials.

I say this as someone who spent a couple weeks on Stack Overflow answering trivial questions after graduating so that I had more of a public profile. I would answer anything and everything easy as I wanted to get over 200 rep points (so I could say I was "ranked"). Anything challenging was skipped simply because if it took more than half an hour to answer, I might not get 200 points that day.

I knew nobody would see me as an expert due to inexperience (so nobody would really read by Stack Overflow answers), so I was trying to generate proof of enthusiasm.

That isn't desirable for the programming community as a whole as it meant that niche questions I had the answer to never got answered as I had points to earn.

EDIT: Leetcode is for passing the interview. Resumes. blogs, and tutorial writing are about getting the interview. Leetcode doesn't attempt to solve this problem.

<comment><USER18> Back in my teens (mid 20s now), I was very (very) interested in Photoshop to the point where I would consume dozens of tutorials a day and just work on projects for things like forum signatures or post headers and graphics. My "graphic design" career never took off, but to this day I still have muscle memory of certain tasks and actions I've created and still set up my workspace in the same way.

Now that I'm a programmer I rarely find the itch to dive into things like this again. Every now and then, I'll want to create some silly website with a game or something and again I'd find myself spending late nights just working on it. I've realized that the fact that I "know something" isn't what drives me, it's that I'm interested in what I want so much that I'll learn anything just to get to do it.

Lately, I've been starting to feel the itch for doing something related to baseball (again, something I love), like data analytics or amateur scouting or something. I have no idea how to get started, but I just know I want to. I hope I find tutorials from people who are just as excited to share information as I am to absorb it.

<comment><USER19> This may be a fun place to start. There is a lot of work in this area and this type of technique is great for baseball: [https://docs.pymc.io/notebooks/hierarchical_partial_pooling....](https://docs.pymc.io/notebooks/hierarchical_partial_pooling.html)

<comment><USER18> I _really_ appreciate this resource. Thank you!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Start looking for that new job before the previous one has ended. This is just a slightly next-level variation of simple networking, where you don't merely make friends all over the place, but make it clear that you'd take a better offer if one were to come along.

<comment><USER21> +1 for this. In our industry, finding a job when you're unemployed can be quite difficult. Massively so if you're "old". Networking helps with that-- definitely recommended.

Also consider gathering "knowledge" resources from your current job. Silly stuff like your dotfiles, but also things like config files from the hosts, parts lists for physical systems, phone directories, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great advice as always (newsletter subscriber). The other piece of advice I offer is to join Stack Overflow and answer a few questions a week. This helps reinforce skills, understand common developer pain points, and can occasionally lead to a job offer.

</comment><comment><USER23> This article provides advice for how to spruce up your resume in order to procure interviews.

Getting an interview is maybe 10% of the overall process.

To make it through the interviews, you need to study an algorithms textbook and practice coding exercises. At the very least, you should be able to solve any of the Easy-rated problems listed on Leetcode without issue. You need to know what things ike "dynamic programming" are, etc.

I'm not saying that this is the way things should be. Just that this is the reality of what you will need to do to procure a job offer.

Edit: I see my advice has proven controversial. If you have better idaes about how to prepare for whiteboard interviews -- which many of us are statistically likely to encounter should we be thrust into the job market -- please share your suggestions!

<comment><USER24> It saddens me that this is the way things have gone.

With 20+ years in the industry I can say that I never encountered this kind of thing until fairly recently. I know it was out there, especially with the BigCorps, just not that common when I was looking for work 10ish years ago.

It would be hard for me to stomach an interview like that without just walking out. I do not code on whiteboards.

<comment><USER8> start leetcoding hard everyday, its not possible to get a job these days even at tier 2-3 without leetcode screens.

<comment><USER25> I have never, in ten years, had to do leetcode to get a job. And what on earth is "tier 2-3"?

This whole subthread reads like it's escaped from r/cscareerquestions.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for sharing your perspective. Your experience is very different from mine. Are you trying to say that you believe whiteboard interviews are less common than I think they are? Or are you trying to say that there are ways to conduct a job search such that one can successfully avoid such interviews?

<comment><USER6> There are ways to get a job without leetcoding still. But they are becoming rarer and rarer.

I think it mainly involves focusing on non-tech companies (who, BTW, are also starting to join the leetcode cargo cult).

I got my current job at a non-tech company (bank) several years ago. I did not get leetcoded back then. The interview was mainly language and framework trivia. Nowadays, we have to subject candidates to leetcode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How safe are mid tier management jobs compared to devs. Upside of management positions is that interviews are relatively easier.

<comment><USER26> Less safe in a downturn. When a company wants to tighten its belt but is still mostly solid, and don't have particular products that are clear losers, middle managers are an attractive target: they need the engineers to do the work and support the customers, and the sales people to bring in the money, but if they can get by with fewer managers, maybe they can do all that for less.

<comment><USER8> I was looking at airbnb layoffs[1]. There didn't see to be a lot of middle managers on the list. Ofcourse, I don't know the ratio but i was expecting to see more middle management than engineers.

[https://www.airbnb.com/d/talent?location=&uuid=&relocation=&...](https://www.airbnb.com/d/talent?location=&uuid=&relocation=&remote=&function=Engineering&page=1)

<comment><USER27> Jobs that scale linearly in proppotion to demand, like customer service and sales (anything where most of your time is spent focused on one client at a time), get cut when demand drops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A job lost adds options, a job landed removes them.

</comment><comment><USER29> Trying to stay up to date with everything is a surefire way to make sure you're never really good at anything</comment>


Google cars would have caused 10 accidents without test drivers taking control - <AUTHOR> http://electrek.co/2016/01/12/googles-self-driving-cars-caused-10-accidents-drivers-control/ <comment><USER2> Actual report: [http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report- an...](http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report- annual-15.pdf)</comment>


Cell site data nabs a robber - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/cell-site-data-analysis-nabs-robber-who-used-mobile-phone-during-heists/ <comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned in another post the intelligence effects of having so many devices both connected to the Internet and watching for various things (license plates, faces, cell signals, etc) This is the sort of thing that you should expect to see more of, combing IOT sensor databases into comprehensive surveillance security products.

Now imagine that a security company put into their protected properties an IMSI catcher type device. Could have sped up this investigation (and will in the future)</comment>


Ask HN: What response time is acceptable for auto complete inputs. - <AUTHOR>

Looking at sites like Google, their autocomplete can respond within 30-50ms, which is clearly well below the threshold which any human would regard as being slow.
What should ordinary folk try and aim for when aiming to deliver similar auto complete functionality for search fields?
I'm using Solr, for driving my autocomplete, but my main application stack (which is using Zend Framework/PHP) is just too darn slow. After a request comes in to my application, it takes about 100-170ms to respond to any request.
So I'm curious as to what we should aim to server these requests in, in order to appear extremely responsive. <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, I should of included in the original question...

The "auto complete" works over two queries.

The dataset on the first query doesn't change, however the facet results on the second query do. The documents which I'm searching over for the actual auto complete are place names from around the world. About 6 million in total.

A query comes in from the user, and I use the search string to check for all place names and known aliases (which is about 20million).

Once the server receives the response back from Solr, it then has to fire off _another_ query back to Solr, in order to figure out the facet counts for each location. (The application is basically a mapper, where "entities" are tagged to specific geographical locations, so it is useful for the front end user, to have both auto complete and then counts of documents in that particular facet/location.

I'm thinking about dropping PHP for powering the auto complete, just due to the initial 50ms that my application takes to bootstrap itself. Or perhaps I should just try and employ a more sophisticated cache for the first query, in order to check APC for strings which are less than three characters in length, and then start to check Solr for when the character length of the search string is 4 or more. (In fact, this sounds like a pretty reasonable solution).

<comment><USER2> The user probably only needs an approximate count. So, instead of firing that second query to Solr, can't you just show a cached document count? You can update that in a separate background process depending on how often the document count changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We had a similar problem at <http://www.formspring.me/> when we wanted to implement a search feature somehow similar to Facebook search.

Our main application stack suffers from the same symptoms, robust, but slow- ish.

After lots of thoughts, and because we knew how often the data would change, we came up with a solution of generating an index per user stored in s3 and retrieved from the client via JSONP.

The text matching and sorting is all done client side and the search feels fast.

If your data doesn't change in an unpredictable way and with no concurrency issues, building indexes (json blobs) at write time is a strategy that'll get you pretty far.

Let me know if you want more details about our implementation, I'll be happy to share.

<comment><AUTHOR> This reminds me of MySpace's method for searching messages by downloading as much as they could to the client and storing in local storage.

Unfortunately for me, as mentioned (in my second response), I need to search over 6million place names, and then I need to take the result of these locations, and figure out the number of documents that have been "Tagged" as being inside of them to display an interface such that you have place name followed by item count.

I could definately save a small selection of the first XXX possibility locations though. And regenerate this every day to reflect recent changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For Autocomplete, there are two usage cases

1) Partial Data, but fast 2) Complete List of data for user to select interactively

Google search belongs to 1) -- they simply can not display ALL matches to you. I guess they just show a few of the most relevant ones.

In other cases, your data set is not huge, so the goal is to make data selection more visible to user for easy selection. Speed is the secondary goal in this cases.

If you only goal is speed, obviously you need to cache subset of data based some conditions.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Designing with the Mind in Mind" includes a summary of time intervals which are significant for interface design.

[http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding- In...](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding- Interface/dp/012375030X/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Apologies if it sounds like a 'me too' post, but we faced/may still be facing the same issue at <http://www.RapiDefs.com>

Please give it a quick try and let me know if you find the response time acceptable or not. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely under 150ms. It depends on context too. Have you tried testing with some real people to see what their reaction is ? Then try again with other people with faster version.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I haven't yet. It's just what I observe when testing it myself. That's the concern, I could port this to node.js for example, but it might take me 4 days to migrate the environment correctly, which could be wasted if I don't see a significant improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It helps to have the user know an autocomplete is taking place. A spinner with color change could work well in this regard.</comment>


Everyone in my accelerator always talks about tweeting and blogging, so I caved - <AUTHOR> http://ytadesse.tumblr.com/post/34533802005/the-intro

<comment><USER2> Baby steps. Baby steps. Good luck in the new(ish) venture.</comment>


Implementing scrum and missing the mark - <AUTHOR> http://binarysculpting.com/2012/04/26/implementing-scrum-and-missing-the-mark/

<comment><USER2> I've experienced this in my own 7-year practice as CTO of an agile rails consulting shop, growing from 2 to 20 people while working with dozens of clients ranging from government agencies to VC-funded startups and self-funded single founders. Some of these projects have been extremely successful, while others have resulted in high-quality software which never saw the light of day or met real user needs. I would estimate the ratio of success to failure has been 1:5. It's deeply disheartening for me, and for the outstanding development teams I've built, to see work we have put months or years of effort into collapse due to lack of focus and clear, cohesive product management and vision.

The successful clients all had someone inhouse they could dedicate full-time to defining a well-structured backlog, grooming stories, balancing feedback from stakeholders, acceptance testing work, communicating with design and development, and generally acting as the unary executive voice of the product.

SomeONE. And the problem is that the role here calls for both executive, rather than committee, function and requires a broad generalist skillset. A good product owner needs to think analytically, write clearly, communicate firmly and negotiate competing needs and priorities. They need to be comfortable discussing technical details, even if they are not themselves technical. They need taste and understanding for user experience, even if they are not themselves a designer. They need delegation skills and a keen editorial instinct.

There are many more people with money to build software than with someone in- house with a matching set of aptitudes and is available to own a project.

Instead we get a group of department heads, with overfull schedules and competing needs. We get people who come to us with ideas for apps they are sure will make them wealthy. We create beautiful software for them, they "launch" in the App Store, and we never hear from them again. We get VPs of Product who spend more time in endless fundraising meetings than talking to their customers and development team.

The real surprise is that the success ratio has been this high.

<comment><USER3> I've experienced the same problem, and I attribute it to the culture of "no accountability" in so many organizations, both large and small.

When I first learned scrum, the product owner was described to me as the "single, ringable, neck."

The problem is that no one wants to put their neck out there. Decisions can't be made without committee, and individuals are literally afraid to own anything for fear of being held accountable if things go wrong.

<comment><USER4> >"single, ringable, neck."

You don't "ring" a neck, you _wring_ a neck.

Like one wrings a towel dry.

Take a towel into your hands and wring it dry.

Now imagine a clasping your hands around a neck and doing the same thing.

I've just used a mnemonic trick to prevent you from ever making this mistake again.

<comment><USER3> LOL thanks for the correction and the useful mnemonic trick!

I was fairly certain 'ringable' was not a word so I fudged the quote. Unfortunately, even 'wringable' isn't a word. I guess it has to be 'wring- able', which just doesn't look right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I appreciate the insight I cannot fully agree with your conlusions. I've been a PO for the last 16 months (not my first scrum project) in a research project where it is simply impossible to have a long backlog. I bearly manage to keep one iteration ahead of the team. But it works. I think it does because I'm the person actively driving the development, I know the direction we should go and I do want the results

And that latter part is where, in my opinion, lies the difference. Not in the artifact but in the person.

<comment><USER2> In my opinion, anything on a product backlog which exceeds a 2-3 iteration horizon should be spun into a product roadmap document instead - as a general rule of thumb, if you don't have enough information about a story to sit down and write a clear set of acceptance criteria for it right now, it probably doesn't belong in your product backlog.

2-3 iterations is doable - trying to maintain a backlog of stories 2-3 _releases_ ahead usually results in a big sloppy mess of a backlog.

Unfortunately, I've worked with many clients where thinking about priorities in the future far enough to have 2-3 _days_ worth of stories in place beyond the current iteration is a struggle. This is where things usually go really off the tracks, because you build the thing it's easiest to describe right now to keep everyone working, or run from externally-directed fire to fire, instead of setting a cadence of development which represents the business' true near-term priority mix.

<comment><USER5> On big backlog: you have surprised me here. My backlog has all kinds of stuff in it that I'm not even sure we will ever build (as I said before it is a research project). As long these vague stories are more than 2 iterations away they don't distract the team but, at the same time, show them roughly what I am considering in the long term. I personally find it very important that the team knows the big picture and where and why we are heading so they can take more informed decisions. As a bonus once in a while I get unexpected insights from the team. They are smart guys, after all :)

Regarding the client involvement, what you describe is, in my eyes, not your problem but your clients' - they clearly have no idea what they want to have. If the project is important for the client I sometimes add one more (senior) person to the project from our side and charge him with the task of helping the client to figure out their needs. This new person takes over the PO role on the team side but spends most of his time with the client asking questions, guiding him etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the daily standup and retrospective meetings are easy to implement because they can be seen as status meetings for the chicken's benefit. They aren't, really, but it does seem easy to turn these from "developers appraising other developers about their problems and status" to "give me, the chicken, a list of the ticket numbers you plan on working on today and their status"

Retrospectives of course are seen as meetings (and managers love meetings) where the team works internally to make itself better. Woh , what a great idea! Except this also misses the point - sometimes the retrospective generates feedback for the organization/environment the team works in. "Sales people should file tickets, instead of cornering us and making us listen/do their thing". Things like this may be ignored or shoved in a desk drawer because "it's just developers whining"

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the only way to develop good teams is to develop a number of teams, then see what they can do. There's no currently popular methodology that will guarantee developing good ones. Y-Combinator seems to come close, but really, they are trying to encourage favorable preconditions, then letting groups succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> In all honesty, the best factor to succeed is to have good people _in_ the team. If you don't have that, you are never really going to get past that factor.

Provided you have that, I believe the greatest success factors are outside of the scum team and that the effort to improve working conditions should be concentrated there.

Though I'd love the idea of a methodology race, where the fittest win. Wonder if there ever is an organization open minded enough to try this...

<comment><USER8> > Though I'd love the idea of a methodology race, where the fittest win. > Wonder if there ever is an organization open minded enough to try this...

Every organization does that, to a degree, unknowingly. I know a (secret, undisclosed) organization where we (er, they!) do Scrum but if you analyzed what the teams actually do you probably wouldn't guess they follow anything resembling a single recipe :)

Curiously it seems to support the thesis of the article. I believe that all of the teams have some sort of a backlog and focus on making it good. The difference is that while the author strikes "prioritized" we, the devs, are more focused on "well specified".</comment></comment></comment>


What is your job/hobby's do-all "duct-tape equivalent"? - <AUTHOR> http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3234768

<comment><USER2> Has anyone else ever heard of duct tape called "100 mile an hour tape" in small aviation?</comment>


Dropbox, why it rox and how I (and others) use it. - <AUTHOR> http://kudtler.com/2008/12/dropbox-why-it-rox-and-how-i-use-it/

<comment><USER2> I love Dropbox and use it every day. But this article says the data is encrypted before being sent to the cloud, and that is not true. Because of that, it's not a good idea to put sensitive stuff on Dropbox, like "accounting" stuff or stock agreements.

For everything else, it is totally amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: <http://www.getdropbox.com/faq#security-and-privacy> Here it says it does encrypt (256bit AES over SSL) the files before sending them to the cloud.

I agree with you on the matter that you don't place sensitive stuff on it. But my 'accounting' stuff isn't that interesting for 3rd parties; as I also said in the comments on my blog: "I get your concerns and need for a private key. Also a key based on a combination of username and password would be the simplest solution to this problem. For me the encryption isn't that of a big issue since 3rd parties viewing my files aren't going to get anything out of it that should do damage to me. Of course, when you store sensitive data on it, you should also invest in some security on your part (like the mentioned TrueCrypt)."

<comment><USER2> Regarding your update: that's saying they encrypt the pipe between your computer and their servers using SSL. The files are still stored without encryption on their servers (as far as I can tell).

<comment><USER3> Their FAQ item says the data is stored encrypted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dropbox is awesome, miles ahead of the competition. My one complaint is that it doesn't seem to sync files unless they are closed. So when if I'm working on a manuscript for several hours, just pressing "save" doesn't back it up. I'd have to close and re-open for it to back up.

This wouldn't be an issue, but my laptop is wheezing the wheeze of imminent death.

<comment><USER5> If I understand it correctly the Dropbox is an application-level file- monitoring thingy. It is _not_ a filesystem-level real-time backup software, which is something that is substantially more complex to implement.

<comment><USER6> Could you elaborate more on this? What triggers the sync in the application- level example?

<comment><USER5> An OS notification does. The app subscribes to the directory content changes and the OS dispatches a notification (in whatever form) when the change happens.

See <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365261.aspx> for example.

Another option, of course, is a periodic explicit directory scan, but that's quite lame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks like a simple solution for me. I have a TrueCrypt volume that I keep account/password info in. I've been lazy and use email or ftp to get/send copies of it, so any given copy could have stale info in it. Yeah, I could rsync the file, but like I said, I'm lazy and didn't feel like configuring rsync between Windows XP and Linux. This looks like a good solution for me. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> PasswordSafe (Password Gorilla for Linux/Mac users) is a nice option for password management (which I'm sure you've seen and decided against). But the Truecrypt volume sync works very well. I've been keeping a PasswordSafe archive along with the Truecrypt volume across Linux, Windows, and Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every time I come across a neat paper online, I download a PDF of it and then put it up onto Dropbox so I don't lose it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why I think it rox:

1) You can use it on Mac or PC (I have both, and transfer files between both) 2) You can instantly share folders with anyone else, all you need is their e-mail address 3) You see files that change or get added in real-time (Growl on a Mac makes this really slick)

<comment><USER11> I think what rox is that it does that without imposing itself at all. I have it installed & barely ever use it. (no real need). I still haven't uninstalled it. I feel no _cost_ to having it installed. It could come bundled with an OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For any advanced techie, the three main reasons (Backup, sync, sharing) for using DropBox are irrelevant. For ordinary users: sure! It sounds like a great solution. Let me explain.

I don't think anyone with valuable data would trust their only backup with an external "in-the-cloud" source. On top of that, most people's upload capacity is severely limited.

Syncing is accomplished with rsync or a network share on your home network. Most geeks will SSH into their home computers, etc.

Sharing via drop box cannot be any better than a personally managed web server. GIT/SVN on your server offers much more than drop box can.

On the other hand, maybe I just like to hack and get my hands dirty creating my own solutions.

<comment><USER13> Have you _tried_ DropBox? The app is so damn easy to use it's ridiculous. Sure there are other ways to do it, but the absolute lack of headaches makes DropBox way better than those other techniques you suggested.</comment></comment>


Http subversion URLs should be discontinued in favor of https URLs - <AUTHOR> https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-security/2017-December/thread.html <comment><USER2> It seems that the pro-https side argues "but it would be confidential against most hackers and also HTTPS!!!" while the anti-https side argues "but a statelevel attacker could still hack it so it's not 100% secure thusly a bad idea".

It would probably help if both sides actually tried to argue and discuss this instead of digging into the trenches and firing potshots at eachother.</comment>


One-Click iPhone App Cracker Released to the Public - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/one-click-iphone-app-cracker-released-to-the-public-090201/ <comment><USER2> I don't own an iPhone or know much about them, so please forgive my ignorance on the topic.

What exactly does it mean to "crack" an iPhone App? Once cracked, you can simply send the App as a file to others, who can then install it? Or do they need this program to be able to install the cracked app?

And can you install anything you want (including this cracker) on an iPhone? Or can you only install things via the App store?

On a lighter note... what other UI, besides one click, could they possibly have made for a program whose only function is "crack this"?</comment>


YC Office Hours with PG and Harj - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17234044 <comment><USER3> The first guy was doing K-6th iPad stuff, and Paul didn't have much advice. Anyone interested in this space should checkout ixl.com. Most people haven't heard of it, but they are crushing it when it comes to K-6 math skills. By my estimation, they do something like $100M rev/year. As far as I can tell, they actively avoid the press as they don't want competitors.

<comment><USER4> How do you come up with that number? According to <http://www.edreform.com/Fast_Facts/K12_Facts/#ENROLLMENT>, there are about 130,000 elementary schools in the US. Even if every single school in the nation used IXL, they'd only reach $25 MM in revenue. Given that IXL probably reaches some single-digit percentage of schools, $100 MM seems really high. Are parents buying this in droves?

<comment><USER5> You are sharply underestimating per-deal sizes for enterprise sales. $200 a class isn't so much to actually make $200 a class. $200 just establishes an anchor such that the school district demands a discount and you say "Alright, with 500 teachers teaching 4 classes each, we can let you have this for _only_ $350,000 a year. That's a huge discount off our list price."

Welcome solidly to Enterprise Sales if you adopt this path, which has it's own set of challenges vs. e.g. selling to teachers directly. There are quite a few enterprise software companies which make good money. Some of them even produce good software, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anytime someone asks you what makes you better than an established competitor please don't ever, ever say something along the lines of "because <competitor> sucks". It's better to acknowledge your competitor's legitimacy and respond with how your product is better.

Chauvinism has a place, but I think you have to be careful with it.

<comment><USER7> especially when <competitor> is a YC startup ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> PG and Harj's pace is amazing - not a moment wasted. It's unfortunate to see that the lucky founders up there aren't really listening to their opinions. It seems like they're more interested in defending their product, rather than take suggestions.

<comment><USER9> agreed. I was honestly pretty disappointed in the quality of startups that went up. Most of those guys didn't really seem to be prepared or willing to seriously address the obvious issues they had.

<comment><USER10> I was trying to put myself in their situation to imagine what I would be doing answering those questions.

PG & Harj's pace is superb trying to utilize every minute.

I think the startups stand to gain much by being more open to criticism and looking for take-aways to improve their positioning, product etc., from their feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Key takeaways or at least the main ideas behind PG and Harj's questions & comments- What pain point are you solving? Is it something you dealt with (or the market deals with)? How do you go about using the product? What is the killer feature of your product that will allow a user to switch from their current method?

<comment><USER12> Also: How do people find-out about your product (search, word-of-mouth, etc)? Why did you get turned down (when pitching to an enterprise)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For reference, a link to the hn thread discussing the session as it went live: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2988407>

</comment><comment><USER14> I understand that people get nervous when the pressure is on, but I can't believe how many times I thought to myself, "Answer the damn question!"

This whole video served as a reminder to me to slow down, listen to what people are asking you, and give a thoughtful response. I'm not claiming I'd do any better in this sort of situation, but the amount of marketing speak coming from most of these guys' mouths was practically dehumanizing to PG and Harj.

</comment><comment><USER15> Its awesome for us to see how PG conducts office hours, but it seems like a bad idea to do this in front of so many people. I can imagine how hard it would be as a founder to answer these questions so publicly.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but I'm pretty sure it's a great character-building exercise - <USER2> your idea is validated, or you're determined enough to prove YC wrong. Win-win imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this a one-off type video, or is there others with different people too. If so I'd love to see more!</comment>


Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en <comment><USER2> IKR?</comment>


Show HN: Habit List 2.0 (iOS app) - <AUTHOR> http://habitlistapp.com/ Some of the new features in the app came from the comments the last time I posted here.<p>* App badges * Passcode lock * Daily reminders to check your list * Data export (JSON) * You can change the app font * There's now a quick history view to see a previous day's list<p>The feedback we received last time was VERY helpful. So please keep it coming. <comment><USER2> (in case anyone else was wondering)

What's New in Version 2.0

We've kept the interface streamlined and minimal while adding lots of new features and refinements:

• Bar graph shows completion rates over time

• App badge shows remaining number of habits for the day

• Choose from 9 different fonts

• Schedule a daily reminder to review your list

• Passcode lock

• Data export

• Custom reminder sound

• Optional habits get their own badge color (dark gray)

• Refined interface and app icon

</comment><comment><USER3> To ggualberto - be aware you account are dead, so most HN users didn't see you comments</comment>


Lost in Robo-Translation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/30/lost-in-robo-translation/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr someone tries to use a portable language translator called the Pocketalk. She tries it with English <\--> Japanese and it doesn't go well.

This outcome can easily be predicted when, in anticipation of using the device, she first tries using a software app to translate the idiomatic "all bets are off".</comment>


Show HN: A playground for in-browser interpreters - <AUTHOR> http://fatiherikli.github.io/fil <comment><USER2> Very nice. I really like how it pretty prints python objects. I wish it was a bit more "repl"-y, but the quick auto-evaluation helps make up for that.

I currently use [https://repl.it/](https://repl.it/) for an in browser interpreter/repl.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Currently supports Python, Ruby and Brainfuck. Guide to adding new interpreter:

[https://github.com/fatiherikli/fil#adding-new- interpreter](https://github.com/fatiherikli/fil#adding-new-interpreter)

</comment><comment><USER3> The BrainFuck interpreter doesn't seem to work properly. For example, I tried

        ++++++++++[->+++++++<].

Which multiplies 10x7 and should print "F" (ascii 70). Nothing appears to print.

I have a K interpreter[1] that could be adapted fairly easy to a system like this. Other good candidates include JSForth[2] and NGN APL[3].

[1] [https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok)

[2] [http://home.diphi.com/users/jeffr/forth/jsforth.html](http://home.diphi.com/users/jeffr/forth/jsforth.html)

[3] [https://github.com/ngn/apl](https://github.com/ngn/apl)

<comment><USER4> > Nothing appears to print.

Maybe this is a line buffering issue?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The interface of the text editor is beautiful, and it's done using a surprisingly minimal amount of CSS.

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh, nice ... it might be worth having Brython too, since it and Skulpt both cover different areas of python (and use different methodologies).

</comment><comment><USER7> Does it re-evaluate the complete thing at every change? Or is it smarter, and only recomputes things that need recomputation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, source code is re-evaluating for every change now. It may be improved in the future.</comment></comment>


Krugman on BitCoin - <AUTHOR> http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/golden-cyberfetters <comment><USER3> "What we want from a monetary system isn't to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich. And that's not at all what is happening in Bitcoin."

Spot friggin' on, Mr. Krugman. Bitcoin's supply limiting design has added a psychological dimension that encourages collecting. Perhaps when Bitcoin reaches supply maturity the value will stabilize but for now its value just too unstable to be used as a currency.

<comment><USER4> > Perhaps when Bitcoin reaches supply maturity the value will stabilize

I absolutely hate Krugman, but this is Econ 101 and even he gets it right. Bitcoin was a flawed experiment from the start because it has an absolute supply limit. Reaching that limit won't help. It'll make things worse. The money supply needs to expand for healthy economic activity and growth. If it doesn't, weird shit starts to happen.

Here's an example. In a normal economy, the population is constantly expanding. That means you need more $$$ in the system for each new person. If more money doesn't enter the system, the value of money goes up because of increasing demand and you start experiencing deflation.

Deflation is really really bad. Imagine you're a store owner. All of a sudden, people stop buying your stuff. Not because they don't want to, they love your stuff ... they just don't have enough money. So you lower your prices. Things go back to normal. Your own expenses go down as well, after all, everybody experienced deflation.

No big deal, right? This is what happens when a computer scientist creates a currency. Just adjust to the new price level, right? WRONG. It IS a big deal.

Think of the psychological effect of having to CONSTANTLY lower your prices on your goods. At some point, you'll hang yourself. You want to charge more, not less. It is absolutely depressing and has a real effect. Deflation is absolutely horrible.

<comment><USER5> The problem isn't the psychological effects of needing to constantly lower prices – this happens all the time in the tech industry, and everyone in that industry is doing just fine psychologically.

Rather, it has to do with the fact that constantly down-shifting prices cause people not to buy nearly as often as they would if prices were stable or slightly inflationary. As a result of that, the economy slows down (sometimes dramatically).

<comment><USER6> The other big problem is that debt loads don't drop along with prices - <USER2> effectively makes them rise. Falling prices (which lead to falling wages) + stable debt loads make it far harder for debtors to pay off their debts, which puts even further drag on the economy.

<comment><USER7> Wow, for all I've read about Austrian Economics, I've never heard that simple yet devastating argument.

<comment><USER8> Just to be clear, it's an argument against fiat currency as deflationary and inflationary shocks occur in those systems. The effects of deflation and inflation over time are countered with market-set interest rates -- higher savings and loan rates in an inflationary period and low-to-negative rates in a deflationary period. Yes, in a deflationary economy a (for example) -5.00% interest rate might be fair and would happen were it allowed.

<comment><USER9> Why would you ever lend money at a negative interest rate? You can always get 0.00% with virtually no risk just by socking the money away in a secure location. This is the heart of the problem with deflation (and deflationary currencies like bitcoin) - there's a 0.00% floor on the time cost of money.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you are right of course. The interest rate could not rationally go down below zero, but there would still be demand for loans during the deflationary period, so there would be other compensation (like equity in a business) in exchange for the load so that the risk/return would be proportionate to the risk-free rate of holding cash.

<comment><USER9> There will certainly be demand for loans, but the supply and demand curves for loans may not intersect anymore, meaning that no loans are made (because given a deflation rate of 5%, a nominal interest rate of, say, 1.5% (only a very small premium over the minimum risk-free rate of 0.00%) is still a _real_ interest rate of 6.5%, which may be more than many of the loan customers are willing to pay.

In other words, deflation makes financing any risky enterprise much harder, so only the mostly highly profitable projects succeed. This makes sense, because in a deflationary environment just holding a pile of cash is a profitable endeavour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's another argument against fixed currencies like bitcoin that should resonate with the hackernews crowd, and it's this:

A currency with inflationary pressure incentivizes investments into new enterprises. A currency with deflationary pressure, instead, discourages investment outside of banking.

Here's why. With a slight inflation, money slowly loses value. Even if you put it in the bank and earn interest, it loses value over time. So the rational thing to do, if you have a lot of excess money, is to find places to put it where it outperforms inflation, where it has a chance of not evaporating over time.

With deflation, money is instead guaranteed to be more valuable tomorrow than it is today. Sure, you could still try to invest some of it to try to outperform the gain you get from deflation, but it would be completely rational to just stick _all_ of it in the bank, and live the good life forever, as your money automatically becomes more money (because its buying power increases), every day.

Why is there so much money managed by VC and Angel funds? While not the only reason, I'd claim it has a lot to do with inflation.

And, of course, I'm making things more b&w than they really are. Both massive inflation and massive deflation are really bad things. Currency that stays largely stable, or that deflates/inflates slowly over time, seems to work out fine.

<comment><USER11> A counter-argument is that people invest in new enterprises even when the banking real interest rate is positive.

<comment><USER12> To paraphrase jwz (like that's never been done before), "When the rebuttal to your argument is 'The Industrial Revolution', generally that means that you've lost the argument."

:)

<comment><USER11> My snark decoder is broken. Please explain the parent comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1\. _What we want from a monetary system isn't to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich._

Bitcoin _is_ facilitating transactions. The Bitcoin economy is growing, slowly. There are a lot of people, including funded startups, working on making it useful in more cases. It's far, far too early to say that Bitcoin isn't facilitating enough transactions.

2\. Bitcoin hoarding is not due to the fixed total supply, but due to the expectation that the Bitcoin economy will grow. If there was built-in inflation at 3% and the economy was growing at 20%, hoarding would still happen.

3\. No matter how much hoarding is happening, there will be some exchange rate from Bitcoins to dollars. The existence of a traded exchange rate is proof that some people think Bitcoins are not undervalued. These people will be willing to spend their Bitcoins.

4\. The claim that Bitcoin is worthless because of guaranteed deflation is self-contradicting.

5\. Volatility is bad for a currency, but this is an addressable problem. Bitcoin-priced marketplace The Silk Road offers its sellers currency-hedged escrow.

6\. Even if it fails as a currency, Bitcoin is interesting and novel as a technological invention. For the essence, see the last paragraph of Hal Finney's insightful email from 2008 (and the surrounding thread): [http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg099...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg09996.html)

<comment><USER14> Agreed. Couple more points that may not be obvious:

7\. Even if Bitcoin is not a useful currency today, not only is it a novel tech invention but it is also a useful medium of exchange (akin to credit cards). You can buy coins temporarily just so you can buy something from Amazon.com and have it shipped to Africa (as one Bitcoin startup does international shipping for many US-only retailers).

8\. Bitcoin could be a useful currency someday, but it might take 200 years. What most people don't realize is that all the properties of Bitcoin (such as the maximum supply or its present growth) can be adjusted with a new genesis block at any point (effectively forking the currency). If the majority of the network clients agrees with this fork, Bitcoin continues under the same name. Side note: I remember hearing that Gavin was going to start a non-profit to help guide (read: sort-of regulate) the official Bitcoin fork. Not sure if this happened, I've been out of the loop.

9\. There is no way Bitcoin as it is today could reach any kind of significant scale, purely from the perspective of the protocol. Bitcoin was built with the intention of evolving further down the line. This is part of what makes the technology really interesting.

<comment><USER15> _7\. You can buy coins temporarily just so you can buy something..._

This is so kludgey that I don't see it as a benefit, and IMO touting it as a benefit just makes Bitcoin look worse.

 _8\. all the properties of Bitcoin can be adjusted if the majority of the network clients agrees with this fork_

I suspect that there will be many Bitcoin forks, and none of them will take off due to a combination of path dependence (i.e. kooks sticking with "the true Bitcoin") and the paradox of choice.

<comment><USER16> >> 7\. You can buy coins temporarily just so you can buy something...

> This is so kludgey that I don't see it as a benefit, and IMO touting it as a > benefit just makes Bitcoin look worse.

It's a benefit if it can easily add anonymity to transactions under existing currency schemes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _"So how's it going? The dollar value of that gold has fluctuated sharply, but overall it has soared. So buying into gold has, at least so far, been a good investment.

But does that make the experiment a success? Um, no. What we want from a monetary system isn't to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich. And that's not at all what is happening in gold.

Bear in mind that dollar prices have been relatively stable over the past few years – yes, some deflation in 2008-2009, then some inflation as commodity prices rebounded, but overall consumer prices are only slightly higher than they were three years ago. What that means is that if you measure prices in gold, they have plunged; the gold economy has in effect experienced massive deflation.

And because of that, there has been an incentive to hoard the gold rather than spending it."_

I'm willing to stomach lots of negatives to take away the government's power to inflate to pay for war. Historically inflation has always been for war.

<comment><USER18> Exactly! You can substitute Bitcoins in that text for gold, Swiss Franc or even Brazilian Real. What a ridiculous pseudo-criticism by Krugman.

Perhaps Econ 101 is escaping me, but the idea of deflation being dangerous is massively overstated. First of all falling prices mean a higher standard of living for everyone in the economy. Second, nobody is going to indefinitely put off purchases due to a decreasing price level. Time is a factor in demand, and you require food today, fuel tomorrow and a new laptop before 2020 would be handy. Even if the price of the 2020 Macbook Pro/Air equivalent has fallen to 100 USD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He's just begging the question. That a fixed currency supply creates deflation is not a new insight. The idea that this causes 'hoarding' is highly questionable. Prices in consumer electronics fall significantly every year. Does this cause people to hold onto their money instead of buying computers, tvs, and iphones? Of course not. Why would other types of goods be any different? People still need what they need and want what they want and are going to buy those things regardless of what relative prices will be in the future. The difference with a stable currency supply is savers and fixed income earners wouldn't have their purchasing power sucked away from them year after year--on the contrary, they'd become continually wealthier as the economy grows around them.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough, but I think most economists would agree that we shouldn't be trying to make savers and fixed-income earners wealthy in the first place. We should make it economically advantageous for the people with money saved up to invest it into the economy.

<comment><USER21> I've always been suspicious of this "spending is better than saving" mantra. I'm sure it's better in some situations, but I don't think it's better in general.

The point of an economy is not to spend money, it's to create more wealth for more people by allocating resources efficiently. If someone "hoards" money, and prices are stable, that person is effectively staying out of the resource- allocation business. It doesn't mean that there are fewer resources to allocate, it just means that _other people_ are doing the allocating (even though those people collectively have less money because of "hoarders", prices are lower because of them, too).

You can make an argument that everyone needs to take part in efficiently allocating resources, and that makes a lot of sense. But to say that buying a bunch of consumer junk is a good way to do that is ridiculous (and bad for the environment).

A middle ground is to buy the things you need, a few things you want, and make conservative investments. That allows most individuals to mostly stay out of the resource allocation business, but still enjoy the benefits.

<comment><USER19> In fact it's not a question of being in the game or out of the game, just a question of time preference. The sole purpose of accumulating money is to eventually spend it. Maybe it will be spent tomorrow, maybe by future generations, but it will eventually contribute to the economy and allocation of resources on whatever schedule and for whatever purpose the owners of the money deem best given their unique situations. The argument in support of inflation is that it's somehow preferable, in the vast general case, for people to spend their money sooner rather than later, and worth using force to accomplish this. It's as presumptuous and arrogant as it is arbitrary, an essentially totalitarian position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The next hacker currency should keep Bitcoin's strengths, i.e., decentralization and anonymity, and lose its weakness, the fixed supply.

Is anyone working (in public) on the problem of designing a currency that adjusts its supply algorithmically based on appropriate metrics? Sort of a Greenspan-o-matic?

I've thought about this for all of 90 seconds, and it seems like the metric might be some combination of transaction volume, a price index, number of users, and the current money supply.

<comment><USER12> Most people who use bitcoin don't believe that the fixed supply is a weakness. A lot of us are vastly frustrated at the previous lack of an easy-to-tranact- in pseudonymous INflation-proof currency. The others that were in common use (eGold, Liberty Reserve, and Pecunix) have all become relatively unsafe recently due to their centralized natures.

That said, there are bitcoin-network forks out there that remove the maximum cap on new coins, if I recall correctly. You are welcome to go and use one of those if you choose.

<comment><USER22> How would I find one of the forks?

<comment><USER12> <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7500.0>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What I find far more interesting about BTC is its decentralized and (mostly) anonymous nature, rather than arguments about fixed money supply.

<comment><USER24> BitCoin is no more anonymous than your IP address. As soon as your BitCoin address can be tied to your identity, such as by trading through a major exchange, your transactions might as well have your name on them.

Like IP, anonymity can be emulated through routing mechanisms. Basically laundering your packets and coins. Tor, the state of the art in this kind of anonymity, is not without faults. And there isn't really an equivalent to Tor for BitCoins that I know about.

Related, I know BitCoin can be run over Tor, but this is not the same as a Tor for BitCoin. This merely protects against traffic analysis to tie your BitCoin account to your IP address.

Tor for BitCoin might look more like a network of wallets that simulated a perfectly noisy economy. If A wanted to pay B, A's coins would go everywhere to B, C, D, E, F and so on. Over time coins would pass in and out of people's wallets until at some point the right number would stick to B's wallet equal to the number A sent. Hopefully, the ones that stick to B's wallet will be a mix of ones that A actually sent and other coins being anonymized by the network.

There are obvious flaws in this design. But hopefully it helps illustrate why BitCoin isn't anonymous and the difficulty of making it anonymous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> tl;dr: The soaring value of bitcoin forces those holding currency to hoard it. The Bitcoin economy has, in effect, experienced massive deflation.

<comment><USER26> He also touches on a great point:

 _What we want from a monetary system isn't to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich._

This is where I think Bitcoin fails as a currency. While some people invest in currencies, the point of currencies is to allow goods and services to flow through the economy. Currency is and should not be primarily an investment vehicle.

<comment><USER27> Currencies are goods like any other goods and the people who own them have divergent purposes. When Krugman writes "we want [a monetary system] to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich", he's assuming a lot. Obviously, some of the people who own bitcoins right now are not interested in facilitating financial transactions to the detriment of their net worth. So, for people who want that facilitation, bitcoin isn't getting the job done, but the people who are using bitcoin as an investment are getting just what they want. Those two conditions could flip fairly quickly down the line, but that's how these things go. But for Krugman to just assume that only one of these is an acceptable condition just begs the question.

<comment><USER26> Currencies are not goods and should not be thought of as goods. They are mediums of exchange[1]. They may be backed by goods (such as gold), but currency itself should have no inherent value (otherwise, it's a terrible medium of exchange).

What you're talking about are securities[2]. There is a distinct difference. Bitcoins are ostensibly a security masquerading as a currency.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_(finance)>

<comment><USER27> No, I think I am correct. Currency exchange rates are prices and in that sense a currency is a good. The typical use of a currency is as a medium of exchange, but people use goods for different reasons. That was my point originally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One thing that might be interesting to consider is wealth distribution over population growth.

Thought experiment:

Say our money supply is fixed (10 million dollars), and there are 1 million people in our economy. Everyone averages out to holding about 10 dollars. Everyone goes on a massive baby-making spree, and in 10 years, there are still 10 million dollars, but 2 million people in the economy. Average wealth is $5 per person. Either prices dropped (unlikely, demand has doubled in this ideal world), or everyone is averaging to be poorer.

To my mind that thought experiment demonstrates the need for the supply of money to keep pace with population growth.

I might be wrong, I am not an economics student, and there might be angles I've missed.

<comment><USER29> But the absolute variation of the value the 5$ represent is based on systems that can't exist with a limited total amount of money.

What will hapen is that if the population doubles, then the 5$ will also double. Laws of demand and supply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pro-inflationists a simple question for you.

Inflation creates an incentive to invest. Fine. But why should the level of inflation and thus the risk profile for investors be determined by a single authority? Why not multiple competing currencies whose rates float against each other? Let the market figure out an optimal rate of inflation. The wild guesses and uncertainty of the Fed resetting the rate is surely inferior.

<comment><USER30> The world already works like that. You can buy money from countries other than the US, you know.

<comment><USER17> Legal tender laws should be abolished is the thrust.

<comment><USER31> What's the advantage you get from even more currencies that you don't get from today's basket of international currencies? The only one I see is that, if you build a big enough reputation to issue your own currency, you get to collect seignorage.

In exchange for that, you now have to carry _n_ different currencies to make sure you can buy gas at a Shell station _and_ an Arco; small retailers go out of business because they can't afford the overhead of combating so many varieties of counterfeiting--which, while still technically illegal, is much harder to prosecute--medium sized retailers go out of business because of the accounting overhead of setting appropriate prices when several currencies could be undergoing hyper(in|de)flation at any time.

I'm not sure that's a good trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't get the problem with hoarding. Most people don't hoard gold, property or tech stocks during times when the price looks like it's increasing constantly. There is a point where it makes sense to sell some after it has made some gains. In reality, unless buyers make a massive mistake in the valuation of BitCoins, the current gains in BitCoins value should taper off at some point.

<comment><USER33> What's the basis for that statement?

How many pre-1965 US Quarters and Dimes do you run into during daily commerce? Answer: Very few, since they are hoarded by collectors for their silver value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Krugman prefers the dollar, which has a supply that is constantly inflated by the central bank. But if the dollar is so good, why do people have to be forced to use it? (You have to pay your taxes in dollars, and you have to accept payments for debt in the form of dollars.) And how come bitcoin adoption has radically grown even though no one is forced to use it?

<comment><USER35> The dollar is so good _because_ people are forced to use it. It's the currency of the land, which is enforced by the government. Hence, people use it.

That bitcoin adoption has grown significantly does not necessarily mean it will remain as a viable currency in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> He should have added a link to this alltime classic - a good macroeconomics, deflation 101 tutorial: <http://www.slate.com/id/1937/>

<comment><USER37> I was going to mention that article too. It's a great explanation.

Money and monetary systems are human creations, not laws of nature.

<comment><USER36> Yeah - it always amuses me to read these long detailed arguments on these threads from people who seem to not have understood basic macroeconomics.

<comment><USER38> Econ isn't a science. There are schools of economic thought that completely contradict "basic economics" taught in schools today, and you can't possibly prove that one or the other method is correct.

Hence, Economics: the dismal science.

<comment><USER36> I have to disagree here. Yes there are schools of thought, but questions like "how does a market work?", "what causes deflation?" are pretty well studied and agreed upon. This is one of those very basic settled questions with a very clear accessible explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> He's totally overlooked one aspect of bitcoin, it doesn't matter if it's deflationary if all I'm using it for is selling drugs and converting bitcoins into cash straight away or using it as an intermediary step in sending large amounts currency around the world anonymously. Who cares if it doesn't work great as a currency (if you believe deflation is a bad thing), it still has a lot of utility.

</comment><comment><USER12> He seems to overlook that bitcoins have been worth steadily less and less the last few months, losing some 50% of their value in 60-90 days.

Also: The bitcoin transaction volume has been steadily increasing since its introduction.

This article would carry a lot more weight if it had accurate facts.

</comment><comment><USER40> "To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." Paul Krugman, 2002. ([http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double- dip...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html))

</comment><comment><USER41> The problem is about finite amount of BitCoins. What happen if you introduce a new coin, SubBitCoin, such that a BitCoin is ten SubBitCoins (the quantity of coins is increased ten fold) and you must pay something for the change. Increasing the cost of changing the coin and introducing in the future a different ratio: A BitCoin is only 9 SubBitCoins eliminate the problem.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hmm, I am curious how this link was accepted, when I have the exact same link in my submission from 16 hours ago. I thought the submission mechanism elimated duplicates.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2968548>

</comment><comment><USER43> Theory of money and credit by ludwig von mises: <http://mises.org/books/Theory_Money_Credit/Contents.aspx> (free HTML or pdf)

</comment><comment><USER44> He couldn't care less about Bitcoin. What he does care about though is the chatter amongst non-Keynesian economists about the need for an objective currency, i.e., a gold standard - a force that would utterly devastate his precious welfare state. Accordingly, an opportunity to ridicule Bitcoin is a perfect segue to take sneaky, conniving, collectivist jabs at gold.

</comment><comment><USER45> Krugman is focusing on the _least important_ aspect of bitcoins, supply.

</comment><comment><USER46> His description of Bitcoin is technically incorrect. As described in the original Bitcoin paper, workers are not necessarily "miners" and may be funded by transaction fees.

Bitcoin isn't susceptible to hoarding because, unlike gold, it has no intrinsic value. An alternative explanation for the rise in value: the Bitcoin ecosystem is under heavy development. The value of Bitcoins is possibly soaring in anticipation of this infrastructure i.e. its utility as a currency.

I wouldn't rely on Krugman's blog for serious analysis.

<comment><USER47> The monetary value of gold is in excess of its intrinsic value — exactly like Bitcoin. It's only a question of degree. And "shiny things" as a motivation for mining explains gold _and_ Bitcoins.

<comment><USER46> Yes, but the reason _why_ is not exactly the same. That point is lost on Krugman, who equates gold and Bitcoin on that basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It seems a bit premature to judge that way. For example now that the exchange rate is slowly falling, more people might be considering to part ways with their BTC. So things might eventually settle down. It is still very early days.

Also, I suspect few people realize that they should not hold on to their normal money because governments will continually seek to devalue it (that seems to be the takeaway from the article, that that is the normal procedure for "normal" currencies). Their spending habits are probably more governed by their prospects to earn money in the future, or their savings, rather than a look at the value of their money.

<comment><USER48> Why the downvotes? Because it is about BitCoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Had read it. It's not serious at all. The arguments there are out of touch with reality. For example: "What that means is that if you measure prices in Bitcoins, they have plunged; the Bitcoin economy has in effect experienced massive deflation." For this argument alone, one may look at <https://www.bitcoinmarket.com> and see exactly what kind of person Krugman is.

<comment><USER20> You basically interpreted this backwards. When Krugman says that the bitcoin economy has experienced deflation, he means that a bitcoin is worth more now than it was in the past.

The graph on bitcoinmarket certainly shows this. If I wanted to buy a motorcycle in bitcoins in 2010 I would have needed several thousand. Now I only need a few hundred. Which means that I would have been stupid to spend my bitcoins last year. If deflation continues and bitcoins continue to be worth more and more, then the rational thing to do is never spend my bitcoins at all. And most economic theory says that the more people spend money the healthier the economy becomes so Krugman is arguing that bitcoins are an unhealthy direction for the economy to head in.

<comment><USER50> >And most economic theory says that the more people spend money the healthier the economy becomes

Doesn't that seem like a bizarre theory since the economy is in shambles and debt-financed spending seems to be getting higher and higher (consumer/credit card debt, etc.)

I thought people were supposed to be encouraged to save, pensions, 401k and Roth IRAs, etc. Is overall economic health inversely related to individual economic health?

<comment><USER51> Money is a wealth transfer medium. If you're familiar with physics, think of exchange particles associated with forces. In biology, it's similar to blood. I'm not sure a transportation analog works but it might (I need to think about that).

Money works when it is exchanged for goods and services.

When money stops moving, the economy "stops". There isn't any exchange going on (or there's far less than before). Economic activity slows, employment slows, etc.

Credit and leverage, done right, allow more work from a given initial money supply (technically, credit increases the money supply), but this is predicated on the borrower repaying the initial investment. Done wrong, credit is extended for activities which don't allow repayment, and not only can't the the interest be paid, but the initial principle is lost -- and the money supply contracts.

Money is _not_ wealth (value imbued in goods/services), but it can be (with a stable currency) a _measure_ of wealth.

If the amount of money in circulation is decreasing (or the real wealth of an economy is increasing relative to a fixed money supply, say, with a gold/silver standard), then the _value_ of a given denomination of coinage increases. Hoarding coin/currency/money becomes a wealth-accruing activity, while facilitating economic activity (by spending money) largely _loses_ wealth. Hence the problem with a highly deflationary currency.

Economic theory says you want a currency whose value tends to be stable, or slightly inflationary, with time, in order to encourage spending rather than saving.

Note that none of this addresses the underlying physical economy, resource limitations/depletion, or other criticisms of traditional orthodox economics (most of which are highly valid -- we live on a planet of limited resources and good planets are both hard to find and the commute is a real drag).

Regarding your comments on savings: yes, there is a well-known "savings paradox" where individual incentives to save are opposed to the overall economic goals of growth. This is one of many such individual/group paradoxes, and is one of the principle reasons for laws (legal, moral, or otherwise). The 1971 book _The Logic of Collective Action_ by Mancur Olson is one of the better illuminations of the concept: [http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/logic_of_acti...](http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/logic_of_action.htm)

There are numerous other conflicts and paradoxes within economic theory and reality. Free markets, where they exist, work quite well. They're rather more rare, I'm coming to believe, than is frequently thought, and many forces work to limit them (political, plutocratic, monopolistic, and others).

<comment><USER50> Really informative, thanks!

<comment><USER51> You're welcome. I'm not going to claim great insight (yet), I'm still stumbling through this stuff myself (and have been for 25 years).

Other than Mancur Olsen, some of the more interesting reading I've found includes George Akerlof ("The Market for Lemons"), Garrett Hardin ("Lifeboat Ethics", "Tragedy of the Commons", and several books of essays), Neal Stephenson's _Baroque Cycle_ (a cunningly disguised treatise on the emergence of stock corporations, banking, and modern finance and capital), Niall Fergusson's _The Ascent of Money_ (a less cunningly disguised version of same), and _The Ordinary Business of Life_ which is dry as dust but still a wonderful exposition of 3000 years of economic thought.

A book I've just heard of but haven't read is David Graeber's _Debt: The First 5,000 Years_. He's a radical anthropologist, but has some really keen insights and views on the formation of credit and money (guess which came first).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The world of cheap produce and its consequences - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/cheap-food-consequences-bee-wilson-book-review/ <comment><USER2> One of the points that debates about healthy vs processed miss is that processed food is selling convenience.

A bag of spinach lasts about a week, fresh meat a few days. Meanwhile a retort pouch of chili or curry lasts forever and doesn't even need to be refridgerated. There are unprocessed foods that last almost forever like dried lentils, rice and oats but most people don't want to eat those things (or at least not for every meal).

What do poor people tend to eat? Fast food burgers and other high calorie, low cost meals that are readily available. No prep/cook time, minimal cost (at least on the surface) and hot and palatable to most.

As someone who cooks all my food from raw ingrediants, that's absolutely a luxury but it's not a money expensive one, it's a time/management/availability luxury.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I totally agree about time expense being greater.

Consider most fresh produce is Cheaper than processed food. And it can be eaten raw (or steamed easily in a microwave)

I think education is the major factor here. Commercials will tell you that fast food is cheap, despite it not being cheap. And most people aren't aware how fast you can cook potatoes in a microwave or that kale tastes fine with dressing.

Edit: Potatoes are high calorie. Top with oil.

<comment><USER4> > that kale tastes fine with dressing.

I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you here. I've eaten kale raw, cooked, dressed, spiced, dehydrated, blended, and it still tastes foul. YMMV

<comment><USER5> When did kale become a thing? I worked in a kitchen two decades ago and its only use was what we put the chicken wings on. I have no idea how grumpy lettuce caught on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, it's a fine article, with lots of interesting details about Victorian food supply....but you could write more or less the exact same article replacing "cheap food" with "cheap clothes" or "cheap mobile phones" or "cheap any consumer good" and the stories about Victorian costermongers with Vietnamese sweatshop workers, or Chinese electronics factory workers, or Honduran coffee pickers, etc., and the end of the article seems to be arguing for just paying more for food?

I don't think talking about poverty in modern societies in terms of economic sectors instead of trying to address it at a societal level is particularly useful. The point of the article should not be "let's all pay more for food" it should be "give everyone a UBI and if that means food costs more because you have to pay people more to work as cooks or strawberry pickers, that's a _good thing_.

<comment><USER7> My takeaway is that is exactly what this article is about - food is one category along with clothing, phones, material culture - and he is not arguing about what we pay. Rather, he is describing a facet of the structure of Western Civilization that requires a de-humanized constantly replenished underclass to provide us with the cheap good food we want. The fact is we cannot have this infinite growth within a finite biosphere and his article explores the relationship between the West and the so-called developing world and how, though we seem opposite we are the same now, because the neocropolitics we practice is now burgeoning within the West and the shape of starvation just has a different mask depending upon context. The book and the article use a genealogical methodology, which is what is the norm now is this work. (I am a Critical Theorist).

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump)

If anything, centralized food production in the modern, western world is extremely efficient.

The blood of animals is turned into high-grade fertilizer. The bones into soup stock. Every portion of the animal is shipped off to a country that finds it tasty (ie: China eats the ears and feet, we Americans eat the belly).

I think we should continuously think about how to optimize our system. But simultaneously, we need to understand how our system is far, far more efficient than the historical norms.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Today's machines make the processing and harvesting of food incredibly efficient.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcG0jVuThfs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcG0jVuThfs)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTWpLZ- Hn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTWpLZ-Hn8)

Some plants are still processed by hand (IIRC: Strawberries still need to be done by hand). But for the most part, we're moving towards highly automated, highly efficient, food producing machines.

The progress of farming and agriculture continues forward today. I think there's issues in our system that need to be discussed, but the modern day is clearly far better than the past.

\</comment><comment>--

EDIT: The issues of today's era, is the production, distribution, and investment of these expensive machines. Who owns the machines? Can small farms afford these machines? Or will farms centralize into monopolies (who can afford the machines, pushing the smaller farms out of business?).

"Who owns the machine" becomes copyright and patent law rather quickly. Right to repair, right to reverse-engineer. Etc. etc.

<comment><USER9> A major problem with our relentless optimization of food production is that we don't price in the externalities, like large scale destruction of ecosystems or the exploitation of workers. Few people argue that we should go back to pre-modern agriculture (billions would starve!), but I think it's fairly obvious that our current system is not optimizing a good cost function.

<comment><USER8> That's why they're called externalities. Laissez Faire capitalism cannot handle externalities.

Regulation and laws that run counter to pure capitalism are needed. I'm not talking about going 100% communist here, but anti-trust laws, cap-and-trade, taxes, and other such regulations can help factor the externality problem into an otherwise capitalist marketplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Eggs were no longer a luxury and as the price of imported fruit fell, many > in the cities started eating oranges and bananas for the first time. They > could only afford to buy these foods because the costers who sold them kept > the prices too low to allow themselves a decent life. By the same token, big > shopkeepers kept food prices down by forcing employees to work long hours > for low pay.

This seems to turn cause and effect completely upside down. What shopkeeper would not have preferred higher prices? What "coster" was putting forth any effort individually to "keep prices too low"?

Both of those parties were undoubtedly striving to sell for the maximum possible profit. And cheap labor in the large had nothing to do with the actions or power of any individual shopkeeper. There were just a lot of hungry people willing to work for next to nothing because next to nothing to eat is slightly better than nothing to eat.

</comment><comment><USER11> This wasn't the clearest argument I've heard but I agree with the conclusion: "In the end, cheap food is a symptom of a bigger problem: an economic system in which some lives are treated as less valuable than others."

Now what I'd really like to see are more serious discussions of solutions.

<comment><USER12> I disagree with the conclusion. Fast food is not actually cheap. If you go to a supermarket and get a bag of rice / lentils, it will be an order of magnitude cheaper, if not more. The problem is 1) culture and 2) taste. Burgers do taste better than lentils.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Big agriculture could learn something from lowly modern homesteads.

I'm constantly surprised at the modern science (and old, forgotten science!) being deployed by regular homesteaders. In particular, employing the beneficial symbiosis of animals and plants. The pigs till and root up the soil and manure the land, the root crops go in next year, then grazing and rest.

Digest plants as animal manure are healthier for the soil than simply composting them, according to many people. Sounds crazy but we have remember that animals and plants evolved together in the same space.

The whole system becomes a closed loop where the inputs and outputs of the farm are closely monitored. Pest and disease are kept at by with careful rotation. Nothing is wasted, and the fertility of the soil and health of the animals (and humans) _improve_ over time from this relationship.

If you're interested in watching this first hand, I recommend "100 days of growing food" playlist by youtube homesteader Justin Rhodes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpDm5OA- TZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpDm5OA-TZE)

<comment><USER14> Small farms have a lot to learn from big ag. No till and cover crops increase soil organic matter. Modern Chemicals and genetics kill weeds without needed massive amounts of CO2 (fuel or human labor, either way the energy goes to CO2) emissions.

<comment><USER13> Agreed! I actually think the entire industry is moving forward in really amazing ways, and it's entirely science based. The amazing of science that goes into improving the soil on a modern farm is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related reading, on the social cost of cheap goods today: "The True Cost of Dollar Stores", in the current New Yorker [0].

What is the underlying system? In my interpretation, these low price vendors have succeeded in a market that is foremost cost-sensitive, both in terms of price and time. Eventually competition was priced out and now "dollar deserts" exist in poor neighborhoods. These vendors ignore "externality" accountabilities, in the Dollar cases in particular spending for customer and employee safety, in keeping with minimizing cost. The resulting situation, as illustrated in the article, I'll say is one of immoral public jeopardy. In these locales consumers and employees have no alternatives. It gets worse, because the vendors extract wealth from the communities without reinvestment. The margins, from a community perspective, are exploitative.

What are the characteristics of this system? A subsistence market cannot price safety and dignity into the cost of its goods. Margin-maximizing vendors can ignore it. Regulation and policy processes act slowly and undervalue safety, not to mention dignity. And returns for new entrant competitors are too low to make these markets a priority. I think this illustrates an systems cycle with a very few "winners" and many, many more losers.

The New Yorker article is an argument that the very least, Family Dollar and Dollar General, as businesses, should be ashamed of their conduct. That's a starting point. When you move onto interventions and incentives, to say specifically "what should the new policies be?", I don't know.

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-true- cost-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-true-cost-of- dollar-stores)

</comment><comment><USER8> > At least the new cheap foods of Victorian times – such as fish and chips and > imported oranges – added more protein and nourishment to the working-class > diet. The cheap foods of today add mostly an excess of refined starches, > oils and sugars.

Anyone who visits the grocery store knows that the cheapest item is a can of corn.

I just visited my grocery store yesterday. A 101 Oz. can of corn was on sale for $5. 101 Oz. of peas was $5. Etc. etc. The cheapest foods are canned vegetables, by far. 16 Oz cans are 60 cents (store brand) to $1 (brand-name)

People eat refined starches, oils, and sugars, because its tasty. But if you actually were buying the cheapest thing in the supermarket, you'd be buying corn, peas, potatoes, green beans, kidney beans, tomato paste.

By weight, corn and peas are cheaper than bread ($2 per pound of bread, $1 per pound of corn / peas / carrots). You can create a very sustainable, and healthy, diet off of $2 or cheaper food items.

<comment><USER16> People like to say the poor eat fast food because it's all they can afford, but the truly poor don't eat McDonald's, You're still spending $3-4 a meal at the least, if not $7-8.

They have to do $0.50/meal, so they eat potatoes, rice, beans, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was thinking this was going to be about mass produced fruits and vegetables and how they actually have less nutrients (vitamins, minerals) than generations past.

</comment><comment><USER18> We get cheap food thanks to tractors, combine harvesters, selective breeding, insecticides, herbicides and fertiliser.

Low wages are a problem but they aren't really related to how cheap our food is. The cheapest supermarket near me is Aldi but their pay is quite generous compared to their competitors.

<comment><USER19> You forgot govt subsidies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if there is a resource that classifies most foodstuffs (raw and processed) by nutrient content, cost, degree of processing, growing condition etc. Something that is essentially the wiki of food but arranged in a way that makes SQL like queries possible across a range of variables.

<comment><USER14> The usda has one, though I'm not sure what format it is in. Several projects source it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's really a spirit, way of life, most people are consumerists sadly, if they own money, they 'need' to spend it

On my side, I rarely think about money, I just buy what I need, that's not much (about 100€/month in total for everything)

</comment><comment><USER22> If you want to see an example of the opposite approach, look at Norway. It is infamous for how expensive its food is, but that has meant, among other things, small farms are profitable.

</comment><comment><USER23> Tl;dr: Food consumers care about price. That's been true since at least Victorian times. Selling items in a competitive market can be tough for vendors but good for consumers.

Price matters.

<comment><USER24> The final point is a little more subtle: low prices for commodities are especially bad for producers in developing countries - farmers in those countries have a hard time making a profit competing with mechanized agriculture in developed countries. So it's good for consumers only if the overall development level is high.

<comment><USER10> And the lesson there seems to be protectionist policies make sense for developing nations.

<comment><USER25> It's very complicated, some of the greatest successes in catching up to 'developed nations' have relied on open markets and others have been far more protectionist. Protectionism has huge negatives in exchange for the benefit of being able to have a local industry in an area that's not disrupted by global markets. With a few exceptions, said industry is unlikely to become globally competitive and mostly competes for the market of the country it's in which may be a tiny portion of the global market. In contrast, industries honed by competition may be able to compete in the global marketplace, but are largely restricted by the practices that make them competitive there which tend to involve cheap labour for lower prices. If there were very clear answers here we would have seen far more countries following them to develop. Unfortunately, the truth is it's an extremely complicated case by case decision where it's very hard to know the right answer in general. We tend to see a strong bias for open markets on the right and protectionism on the left, which further complicates things as neither solution seems to capture the whole problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What do you say to people who respond to stories about exploited labor with, "But they have a better life now than they did before!"?

<comment><USER14> Well do they or not? If their life is better rejoice for them. Help their kids take the next step better.

Someone who grows up in a mud hut with no education and no idea where the next meal comes from cannot be made into an engineer easily. But if you can get them enough to eat they can take their kids out of the child labor market and send them to school to learn. It might be a few generations, but that is normal. Me and my sister are the first to finish college in my family on either side, more cousins have since followed. We started on farms generations back, but have moved on as technology advanced.</comment></comment>


Rails 5 and Vue.js: how to stop worrying and love the front end - <AUTHOR> https://mkdev.me/en/posts/rails-5-vue-js-how-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-frontend <comment><USER2> started using stimulus and loving it so far, got sick of react and jquery (trying to use plain js + underscore + my own "utils")</comment>


Show HN: http://broadr.in/ Virtual message boards, everywhere - <AUTHOR>

Android app to broadcast a message to user's current location(all the remaining app users in the place) anonymously and in realtime. <comment><USER2> So like Plague then, but with much more abuse-potential.</comment>