Goldman Sachs May Be Forced to Fundamentally Question How Capitalism Is Working - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/goldman-sachs-says-it-may-be-forced-to-fundamentally-question-how-capitalism-is-working <comment><USER2> >We are always wary of guiding for mean reversion. But, if we are wrong and high margins manage to endure for the next few years (particularly when global demand growth is below trend), there are broader questions to be asked about the efficacy of capitalism.

This isn't a criticism of capitalism.

This is an acknowledgment our current "capitalist" financial system isn't able to produce "capitalism" itself.

<comment><USER3> A lot of Americans are obsessed with "capitalism" and "the free market", but don't even understand the basic assumptions that must be true for free markets to work like perfect information, interchangeable goods and services, and a lack of market power for any single entity. Like, the basic—the most basic—assumptions.

Capitalism has become synonymous in the collective mind with "don't make laws, laws are government interference and socialism." Just look at the way people on the right talk about removing Obamacare and letting the "free market" do its thing. But the healthcare industry basically NEVER met the assumptions necessary for a free market to exist in the first place. The same is true in banking, albeit some might argue to a lesser extent.

You've got oligopoly or monopoly firms in many industries that are "too big to fail", have near total market power, and make many decisions (some around pricing) behind closed doors or with little transparency (let alone anything close to complete information), and then expect markets to run efficiently? You can't bake the perfect cake if you don't have any of the ingredients in the first place.

<comment><USER4> A little rant that I have been saving up:

"Capitalism" is not the same thing as "free market" is not the same thing as " _laissez faire._ "

A "free market" means lots of buyers and sellers participating on even playing field. Even Adam Smith acknowledged that government regulation is necessary in order to ensure that the market remains free. When people argue for the removal of laws and regulation, they are actually arguing for _laissez faire_ economics which, in a nutshell, means for the government to stay out of it. Left to their own devices, however, capitalists will naturally (and rationally) try to tilt the playing field in their favour. Capitalism, for what it is worth, is people investing their free capital into economic enterprises in order to glean a return.

So, I am, actually, a strong proponent of capitalism operating under free markets. I am against capitalism, however, under a completely _laissez faire_ economy.

<comment> vezzy-fnord _A "free market" means lots of buyers and sellers participating on even playing field._

I've never seen this definition used before. _Even_ playing field is a grossly inappropriate and unattainable normative ideal. Even playing field means homogenization, which is completely antithetical to a market as a vehicle for coordinating entrepreneurial plans, necessarily implying imperfections and heterogeneity.

 _Even Adam Smith acknowledged that government regulation is necessary in order to ensure that the market remains free._

Regulation is certainly necessary, at least in the sense of property rights enforcement and dispute adjudication. _Government_ regulation it need not be, and it need not be anything more than a minimal legal institutional framework.

 _Left to their own devices, however, capitalists will naturally (and rationally) try to tilt the playing field in their favour._

How did you reach this conclusion? It makes no sense whatsoever. If anything, we would expect this behavior to occur only where there are large amounts of government regulation. That is to say, when there is more opportunity to exploit the political method over the economic method. Otherwise, _how_ will they tilt the playing field? By forming cartels? Those are brittle. Any attempt at trying to use market power leaves you vulnerable to undercutting in some way in the absence of special privileges.

 _I am against capitalism, however, under a completely laissez faire economy._

Your taxonomy is worthless.

<comment><USER4> _I 've never seen this definition used before._

I don't know what to tell you. The definition (admittedly paraphrased) comes from Adam Smith. The gist is that anyone can freely participate in the market on an equal or fair basis without artificial constraint. There is sometimes a need for strong regulation to prevent larger participants from using their size to gain an unfair advantage in the market.

 _Government regulation it need not be . . ._

Can you give me an example of effective non-governmental regulation that doesn't ultimately derive its authority from the government?

 _How did you reach this conclusion? . . ._

I am currently reading a book about the so-called "Robber Barons" of the later half of the 19th century. If you want to see what truly unconstrained capitalism looks like, I suggest you read up on this period: fraud, price- fixing, market manipulations, extortion, bribery . . . they even resorted to armed conflict with their rivals on occasion. The fact that capitalists continue to try to exploit any advantage that they can in the face of strong regulation is precisely my point. Heck, even in my own comparatively small investments, I seek to exploit any advantage that I can. It is not rocket science; it is acting in one's own best interest. The job of regulation is to ensure (as much as is reasonably possible) that no one gains an unfair advantage.

I've talked a lot about regulation, so I want to make clear that I am not in favour of endless reams of red tape. Regulation should be as complex as it needs to be, but no more complex. What regulations there are should be strongly enforced. The current reality does not really live up to this ideal; there are many ineffective or unnecessary regulations, and there are regulations that are missing entirely. Nevertheless, I am talking about an ideal vision that we should strive toward.

<comment><USER5> Personally I think the major problem with capitalism is it ignores sustainability and assumes there is always an unlimited potential for growth when in reality we live on a planet of finite resources. Growth isn't a bad thing but unsustainable growth is. When the system is geared around maximizing profits it leads to a drive to dig up more, consume more and emit more at the lowest cost and damn the consequences.

Thus you get things like Sweatshops, Ok Tedi disaster etc.

Without regulation there's a good chance we'd still not have catalytic converters, we'd still be living with CFCs, Asbestos and DDT. I'm sure you can think of a dozen other examples the market has repeatedly shown it is not capable of regulating itself.

<comment><USER6> when in reality we live on a planet of finite resources

There's an awful lot of matter and energy in our lightcone, there's no fundamental reason we can't keep growing for millions of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rethink capitalism - aka rebalance capitalism and socialism, two sides of the same coin.

The government plays a regulatory, distributive role in society, allowing profits to accrue to capitalists but setting taxes and running social programs at the proper level to ensure that society as a whole functions smoothly, and that there are opportunities for everyone to improve their situation.

Most of the economic world is in agreement that financial deregulation was a huge contributing factor in the crash of 2007-08. The repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed banks to take on too much risk with too little supervision.

This would have been fine if the banks had been the only ones punished when their bets went bad - but they had also been allowed to accrue so much power (through consolidation/M&A) that it was impossible to let them face the consequences of their own bad decisions and fail. So they had to be underwritten with public money in the form of QE.

A functional society requires healthy levels of both capitalism and socialism to survive. But the most important thing in my opinion, is that those who intentionally commit fraud or do not act in the fiduciary interest of their stakeholders are adequately punished. This last part is of course the rub - how can you tell if the leaders of business and finance were intentionally setting up their dependents for a crash? What is the adequate punishment?

<comment> vezzy-fnord In case you haven't noticed, this has been how virtually all first-world states have operated for decades. This social democratic ideal has not worked out, but has led to a dysfunctional corporate statism where mere "deregulation" (which is a misnomer, as most cases of deregulation have really been regulatory adjustments in an overall baroque framework that unsurprisingly lead to new pathological regulatory states - just because you cut some edges off the graph doesn't mean the nodes are going to stand still) can lead to catastrophe. This is an example of the state being entrusted to ensure smooth regulation, and failing miserably at their task.

In fact, many banking panics and examples of financial fragility have originated from pathological financial regulations guided by desires of the state to subvert various public finance constraints. Authors like George Selgin, Kevin Dowd and Lawrence H. White have written on this subject.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what you're advocating for - pure capitalism with no government oversight and regulation?

<comment> vezzy-fnord I'm advocating for actually getting acquainted with economic literature and not repeating moronic talking points about "redistributive and regulatory role of governments" that are filled with theoretical and empirical problems, and in any event are not a radical new idea _but how it has always been to begin with_. Whether it was anti-vagrancy and poor laws or the modern welfare state. Whether it was mercantilism or the state-guided capitalism of today.

<comment><USER7> I understand your frustration, but you are not going to win any support or convince anyone to read somewhat obscure economic literature by being caustic and attacking old ideas simply for being old.

How would you structure society and how would this work in a more efficient manner than the government that we have now? If you a) define the problems and b) give me some tangible examples of how you/these authors think we should fix these problems I'm more than happy to read and think about them.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Firstly, most common standards for gauging market failure and inefficiency are based on static, institution-less Paretian general equilibrium and/or social choice models that require interpersonal utility comparisons, among other things. The public choice and Virginia school of political economy have critiqued those. More broadly, the subject of dynamic market process has been explored by Roy Cordato, Gerald P O'Driscoll and Mario Rizzo (The Economics of Time and Ignorance), Israel Kirzner and other later Austrian School authors.

I already listed you three authors about banking and finance. More broadly, we already live in the system that you advocate, and it does not work.

<comment><USER7> > More broadly, we already live in the system that you advocate, and it does > not work.

You still haven't made any specific argument as to why the system of balancing capitalism and socialism does not work, and could not continue to work without some rebalancing of the scales. Briefly, what is the alternative?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What we think of as 'capitalism', in many ways is more akin to mercantilism or oligarchy. Corruption is basically codified as 'lobbying', and governments enact all sorts of stupid laws to the benefit of large, incumbent corporations, preventing the free market from actually functioning.

And of course, these unnatural barriers to competition allow inefficiencies, concentration of wealth, and so on.

The 'free market' is somewhat of a myth. The west has never truly had 'free markets', in the past monopolies have been bought, wealthy merchants, nobility and corporations have patronized governments and monarchs, and tariffs and subsidies have been ever-present.

The current arguments for free markets have to do with price discovery, personal freedom and 'fairness', however we need to realize that these sacred cows are myths, and that if we want to build a better society, it may be time to rethink exactly how we distribute resources.

</comment><comment><USER9> The reason for this is barriers to entry to be a big corporation are getting bigger. (This is the only fundamental truth that the author fails to mention!)

However, the barriers to entry to be an entrepreneur are far far lower. Corporations still compete with each other on innovation but now more than ever this is through buying small and medium sized companies said entrepreneurs have created :)

So, this is neither good nor bad, just a shift in where the competitive opportunities are. Hint, it's getting easier for the little guys to compete.

<comment><USER10> Rate of entrepreneurship in the US has declined, and is overwhelmingly class, race, and sex based. It's borderline sociopathic to assert that it's getting easier for the little guys to compete.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about that, but it is flat-out psychopatic to claim that the rate of entrepreneurship in the US has declined when it has been increasing faster than ever in the past few years[1].

[1] [http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TIMELY_BDS_ISIC...](http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TIMELY_BDS_ISIC4)

<comment><USER12> > sociopathic ... psychopathic

I don't think either of you understand what those words mean.

<comment><USER10> Asserting that one's company hit a triple when it was born on third base is self-serving and manipulative.

<comment><USER13> You seem to be asserting that this is what most "entrepreneurship" is. Can you justify/document that assertion, or should we just take it as merely one person's opinion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Never quite followed the plethora of "Capitalism isn't working" articles. And the alternative is?? There always seems to be some political agenda involved.

<comment> saiya-jin there is no alternative, not a better one at least, not now. look at other possibilities - ie central planning is a major fail over longer time (I lived in one of those systems, no thank you).

IMHO what fails in all other systems is to take into account human nature, and not some ideal working guy that never actually lived. people are lazy, care more about themselves rather than company good, some are plain evil etc. very few work on themselves unless they see the carrot at the end of the stick (bonus?).

in capitalism it's cash, which can get you quite far in life, so most are chasing it (even you probably are - if your employer stopped paying you today, would you come in tomorrow?). this chase can easily ruin your life, makes people do regretful decisions but overall, it pushes mankind far beyond (and much faster) that it would achieve without this perpetual force.

I'll claim one thing, feel free to disagree - capitalism ain't often the best system for a single person, but (if all internal mechanisms work) it's probably best for the advancement of mankind. and these days, we need to advance to not destroy ourselves (for that, we already have capability)

<comment><USER15> I'd agree with this. (I also briefly lived in a socialist paradise myself.)

I'm not a fan of capitalism, but everything else has historically been worse. The only pre-capitalist system that may have worked well was distributism, but that was under an aristocratic rule.

I think the modern fair market issues we have in all 1st world nations isn't a feature of capitalism - it's the failure to reign in plutocratic tendencies.

Democratic nations have a tendency to ignore oligarchs as they initially grow industry and produce lots of growth. Long term though, they tend to become parasites on the budget and political vampires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >We are always wary of guiding for mean reversion. But, if we are wrong and high margins manage to endure for the next few years (particularly when global demand growth is below trend), there are broader questions to be asked about the efficacy of capitalism.

I find this title to be misleading. The above quote can be paraphrased as, "We think profit margins will revert to the mean. If they don't, we will be really surprised that capitalism isn't working as we think it should."

</comment><comment><USER17> Here is a much more thought out analysis from a generally excellent econ blog:

[http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/05/profit- margins...](http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/05/profit-margins-in-a- winner-take-all-economy/)

</comment><comment><USER18> No one has a clue about what's going on in this article. Nothing substantial it seems.

</comment><comment><USER4> What I see in their chart is profit margins are generally in the 6-8% range with dips down to ~2% after economic recessions. It would seem to me that profit margins may be slightly higher than the historical average, but only slightly (though I would need a chart with a much longer x-axis to say anything with confidence).

As for the free market (I believe "capitalism" is the wrong word to use) squeezing the margins to zero, that works great in theory. However, the real world is made up of real people with imperfect information, so maintaining a slightly above zero profit margin doesn't surprise me, even when averaged across the entire economy.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but you're missing some context. Specifically the theory that, historically, business profits have always been limited to a set percentage of overall GDP. Everytime it tries to expand beyond a certain point, the market seems to correct either through increased competition driving that number down or labor pushing back to get workers a greater share, or government taxation/regulation (in a few rare cases) pushing this back down.

It may seem like a historically high range of a few percentage points is no big deal, but it would be very surprising for that amount to stay constant over time and (when you account for compounding effects), it actually would be a big deal if it did stay at that level.

<comment><USER4> I don't think I'm missing anything. What I was saying was that, from their chart at least, the current level appears to be completely normal or perhaps only slightly high. I'm willing to admit that their chart could be misleading, but they failed to clearly make their point and really didn't convince me that anything unusual is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the result of blue ocean strategy in play (whether consciously applied or by accident). When it's easier for me to create a new market and reap huge profits, than to struggle into fighting with Big Co for a share of their huge profits... guess which way I'd rather go. At the end, both I and Big Co win.

We are already living in a new time period - a new age in world history, fundamentally different from all other ages experienced by humans so far. We have entered the age of ubiquitous abundance. All economic, political, moral and philosophical frameworks revolving around the concept of scarcity are fast becoming obsolete.

<comment><USER20> I don't see it. Unless you mean debt subsidized growth involving inserting "internet" or "mobile" into existing things and calling them "blue oceans". I think what Goldman Sachs is trying to say is that capitalism ( in any flavor: laissez faire or mixed economy ) might favor evolution to a small number of large entrenched winners rather than eternal competition and churn.

<comment><USER11> Neither the GS analysis, nor cursory observation of daily reality can possibly lead to any such conclusion. Wealth is increasing, globally, at an accelerating pace. The number of players creating and sharing such wealth is also increasing at an accelerating pace. These trends are not showing any signs of slowing down, much less of reversing (and might in fact be non- reversible).

As a consequence, global well-being (by any reasonable measure) is also increasing at an accelerating pace.

Note that this DOES NOT contradict the fact that various "inequality gaps" are also increasing at an accelerating pace. This is natural.

<comment><USER21> > _As a consequence, global well-being (by any reasonable measure) is also > increasing at an accelerating pace._

Meanwhile, in reality:

\- corruption / inability to problem-solve in most governments in any reasonable amount of time is more and more evident as transparency / software insecurity increases, and there's no obvious way to fix this

\- business advantages through technology, information asymmetry, lack of competition, and very cheap labor accelerates, businesses which have a singular goal in mind with little care for negative externalities

\- species diversity plummets

\- climate change remains negatively positive (zika incoming everyone, I'm _sure_ we'll figure it out in time, just don't have any babies in the meantime)

\- wage slavery becomes more and more real for more and more people, in the US particularly through people taking on debt for what used to be a non-risky endeavor (higher education) but which actually turned out to be foolish once they were ready to work

Remember, the only thing that matters is that you get yours; that's the name of the game and it's only so long until the consequences of this utterly delusional approach of infinite growth in a closed system will find its way to the homes of the rich and powerful, too. Who in their right mind, excluding miraculously well-executed altruistic AI proliferation appearing, is looking to the future and saying, "we're doing it everyone! things are getting better and better!".

Do you have any idea what 3 billion+ people living in poverty looks like? Because that is now, and it's fucking shameful how little we care about our communities, our planet, in this race to greater and greater "wealth".

<comment><USER22> You're defining global well-being from a very American viewpoint. Poverty, war, actual slavery, child labor, hunger, disease, etc are dying out on a global scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know the brand or model of that beautiful keyboard with the orange and green keys in the photo just above the title?

<comment><USER24> Bloomberg keyboard with specialised func keys for std cmds.

<comment><USER25> The newer ones look amazing: [https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bloomberg_keyboar...](https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bloomberg_keyboard.png?w=640&h=197) They have that certain beauty of something carefully designed for a specific domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just reading that headline makes me think to myself. Why ask Goldman Sachs? They are clearly ahead of the capitalism game so of course they are gonna say it works well!?!?

Asking the richest capitalists in the world if capitalism works is a silly question if you ask me...

<comment><USER13> Yes, but having them say we may have to question whether it works is big news.

<comment><USER26> True, I think I was influenced by the sensationalist headline.</comment></comment></comment>


Dynamic Programming: The Name (1984) - <AUTHOR> http://learning.cis.upenn.edu/cis520_fall2009/index.php?n=Notes.DP <comment><USER2> Another example of bureaucratically named concepts is one used heavily in FPGAs - what programmers would call a library or a package in FPGA-land is called an "IP core". I don't know where the naming comes from but it really smacks of some bureaucrat telling his bosses "We create IP! We create IP cores!". I guess to bosses it sounds more valuable and marketable than a library.

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

<comment><USER3> It's "IP" (intellectual property) because it's something the company designed, and it's a "core" because it's a circuit that performs a computation.

I don't really see how it's comparable to the linked example.

<comment><USER4> > It's "IP" (intellectual property) because it's something the company > designed, and it's a "core" because it's a circuit that performs a > computation.

The same can be said for software.

<comment><USER3> And your point is?

<comment><USER4> That the term "IP core" is not sufficiently narrow.

<comment><USER3> Probably not, but this whole discussion is about a technical term whose origin does not reflect its usage or nature. To me, "IP core" reflects the nature of HDL libraries quite well, and is not at all similar to how the term "dynamic programming" was coined.

<comment><USER4> Ok, fair enough, but the term is still bad :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a similar category is Shellsort[1]. When I learned about it, they helpfully neglected to mention it was created by some guy named Shell; unlike bubble sort, insertion sort, mergesort, etc., the name has nothing to do with the technique. I spent way too long trying to figure out what it had to do with shells.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> I try to call it inductive programming whenever possible. Because that's what it is: a programmatic form of proof by induction.

The analogy isn't exact (e.g. it could also refer to just recursion), but it's a lot more apt than "dynamic".

<comment><USER7> But the "programming" part of "dynamic programming" is the older synonym for "optimisation" like in linear or quadratic programming, not for writing general computer programs. It's not the same kind of "programming" as in OOP or FP.

<comment><USER8> In fact, many linear and quadratic programming problems are solved using dynamic programming. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember an interview with Alan Kay where he described what are the conditions to enable the kind of innovations he is known for. Quote:

 _" The shortest lived group at Xerox PARC was `Office of the Future,` because Xerox executives would not leave them alone. I chose the most innocuous name for my own group, the Learning Research Group. Nobody knew what it meant, so they left us alone to invent-object oriented programming and the GUI."_

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how many, who never heard of the original concept, would think it simply means using languages like JavaScript, Python, PHP, etc.

 _It also has a very interesting property as an adjective, and that is its impossible to use the word, dynamic, in a pejorative sense. Try thinking of some combination that will possibly give it a pejorative meaning. Its impossible._

Dynamic memory allocation, in the context of realtime/embedded systems. :-)

<comment><USER11> Dynamic constant? ;).

<comment><USER12> I just hate it when variables won't, and constants aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That is hilarious.. I vaguely remember thinking, when I encountered this class of algorithms in college, that it was not particularly well named.

<comment><USER14> Oh my me too. Every time I come across the concept, I get bothered and feel like I must have missed a core concept of it, as the naming never made any amount of sense for me.

For some reason, this truly brings me some amount of peace. Both that the name was applied for non-obvious reasons, and that I'm not the only one to find the name misfitting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am genuinely happy to bring you thus tiny closure, friend

<comment><USER14> You really did! I never would have thought to check out the history behind it. Would have remained confused if not for you. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Don't even get me started on memoization...

<comment><USER3> \- "You mean caching?"

\- "Nope, memoization."

\- "Uh ok."

<comment><USER16> I like that it's not called caching because caching for me makes me think that there is some sort of eviction policy. I generally talk about "storing" data in "lookup tables" if I'm talking to someone not familiar with the jargon

<comment><USER3> Good point. Caching does usually refer to a temporary memory store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The story I heard was that Adobe's Type 1 font encoding [1] used obscure names like BlueValues, OtherBlues, FamilyBlues, FamilyOtherBlues, BlueScale, BlueShift, and BlueFuzz, so that Adobe employees could discuss their proprietary font hinting algorithms in public while they were in line for burritos at La Costeña [2]. That way nobody from Apple or Sun or SGI who was standing in line next to them could understand what they were talking about.

Yes THAT World Famous La Costeña: Guiness Record Holder for the World's Largest Burrito! [3] On May 3rd, 1997 La Costeña of Mountain View, California created the world's largest burrito. The burrito weighed in at 4,456.3 pounds and was measured at 3,578 feet long. It was created at Rengstorff Park in Mountain View.

[1] [https://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/font/T1_SPEC....](https://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/font/T1_SPEC.PDF)

[2] [http://www.costena.com](http://www.costena.com)

[3] [http://www.costena.com/famous.html](http://www.costena.com/famous.html)

<comment><USER17> There was a large blob in the installers for System 7 (mac) that was named Cerulean Data. I wonder if that was truetype related data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Try thinking of some combination that will possibly give it a pejorative > meaning. Its impossible.

"Dynamic typing", to some! But it was definitely a clever move to use terminology with positive and concrete connotations.

</comment><comment><USER12> James Gosling published a 1981 SIGPLAN paper titled "A Redisplay Algorithm" [1], that used dynamic programming to solve the string to string correction problem [2], which he implemented in Gosling Emacs [3].

>Wikipedia: "Gosling Emacs was especially noteworthy because of the effective redisplay code, which used a dynamic programming technique to solve the classical string-to-string correction problem. The algorithm was quite sophisticated; that section of the source was headed by a skull-and-crossbones in ASCII art [4], warning would-be improver that even if they thought they understood how the display code worked, they probably did not."

>Abstract: "This paper presents an algorithm for updating the image displayed on a conventional video terminal. It assumes that the terminal is capable of doing the usual insert/delete line and insert/delete character operations. It takes as input a description of the image currently on the screen and a description of the new image desired and produces a series of operations to do the desired transformation in a near-optimal manner. The algorithm is interesting because it applies results from the theoretical string-to-string correction problem (a generalization of the problem of finding a longest common subsequence), to a problem that is usually approached with crude ad-hoc techniques."

In essence, it finds the shortest path through a twisty little maze of text and terminal escape code sequences (so different terminals would have different optimal routes to updating the display, depending on what was already on the screen, the length of their escape sequences, if they supported features like character/line insert/delete, cleol, extra padding for slow terminals and commands, etc).

[1] [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=806463](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=806463)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String-to- string_correction_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String-to- string_correction_problem)

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

[4] [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/emacs/skull-and- crossbone...](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/emacs/skull-and- crossbones.txt)

</comment><comment><USER19> "dynamic" cannot be used in a pejorative way? That's a nice challenge. What about "dynamic" accounting (similar to "creative" accounting)? or "dynamic" application of the Law? Some things (not a lot) should really be static. Not talking about typing...

<comment><USER20> Anything put in scare quotes can be used pejoratively.

>dynamic" application of the Law? Some things (not a lot) should really be static.

We have human judges precisely because a statically enforced law would be unfair and inappropriate to handling the complexity of human lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The part about it being impossible to deride anything labelled 'dynamic' reminded me of the story about naming WordPerfect in the "Almost Perfect" book[1]:

> Despite its initial unpopularity, the name proved to be a good one. It was > so positive sounding that it made any criticism sound untrue. It was like > naming a soap, "Makes You Look Younger," so the competition would have to > say something like "Use our soap instead of the Makes You Look Younger > soap." "WordPerfect" also sounded like a very good product.

[1]: [http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ap_chap03.shtml](http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ap_chap03.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER22> > its impossible to use the word, dynamic, in a pejorative sense

The Times They Are A-Changin'.. No bullshit bingo is complete without mentioning "dynamic" few times.

</comment><comment><USER23> Dynamic programming is, embarrassingly, one of those topics I've never quite grokked. Any recommendations for a "OH... I get it now" explanation?

<comment><USER24> Dynamic programming is when you break a problem into sub problems and then cache the solutions of the sub problems so the work is only done once.

Some common situations where dynamic programming is useful are when you need to do anything involving finding combinations or permutations of a series of possible actions.

My recommendation for you if you really want to _get_ it is to read and program for yourself the problems on this website

[http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/fundamentals-of- algorithms/#Dyn...](http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/fundamentals-of- algorithms/#DynamicProgramming)

Try solving them both recursively and iteratively and by the time you reach the 5th or 6th problem you should have built something of an intuition for when to use dynamic programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was beginning to think it meant that the decision lookups of the algorithm were dynamically generated.

</comment><comment><USER26> > It also has a very interesting property as an adjective, and that is its > impossible to use the word, dynamic, in a pejorative sense.

Such a wise consideration!

<comment><USER27> I would have liked examples of pejorative uses of "dynamic" that don't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> To add to the confusion, a good way to implement dynamic programming is lazy evaluation.

</comment><comment><USER29> OT:

> Its impossible.

Please, please, please: correct that "it's", please!

</comment><comment><USER30> We updated the link from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming#History), and the title from 'The term "Dynamic Programming" was chosen as a bureaucratic hack'.

<comment><AUTHOR> How DARE you tone down my click bait headline. This would have never flown when pg was in charge. He would have just banned me immediately, like God intended.</comment></comment>


Adobe Provides facial recognition Software for DHS and ICE - <AUTHOR> https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=402c305fed313f3f92f245cf5f21e329 <comment><USER2> Where does it say they provide facial recognition software? I looked through the attached "Limited Sources Justification" PDF and the three areas they claim to be using Adobe software for are "Digital Media" (this is Acrobat and Reader), "Digital Marketing" (Creative Suite) and "Digital Meetings".

Maybe this is the wrong contract??

<comment> duncan-donuts The only thing I can come up with is there is a part that says something like "user-facing, business-facing" which seems like what may have been confused? The LSG only talks about using well known adobe products.

[https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=6f4e5737cc7bd661210bf56766...](https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=6f4e5737cc7bd661210bf567664a3f9a)

<comment><USER3> They put money-recognition into Photoshop in the past -

[https://petapixel.com/2011/08/09/heres-what-happens-when- you...](https://petapixel.com/2011/08/09/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to- edit-photos-of-money-in-photoshop/)

So perhaps they are putting facial-recognition in too?

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/14/18678782/adobe-machine- le...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/14/18678782/adobe-machine-learning-ai- tool-spot-fake-facial-edits-liquify-manipulations)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where does this discuss facial recognition? All I see is information related to the standard Adobe products, Acrobat/PDF, Creative Suite and others. They may be used in support for a facial recognition application but that's all I see.

</comment><comment><USER5> The title is false. There is no mention of facial recognition.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great. Glad American software companies are working with our government to help enforce our laws!

</comment><comment><USER7> It's perfectly legal and fine for companies to provide products and services to their home governments. What's the issue here?

<comment><USER8> Ok, but sometimes our moral compass points away from these things and we need to make hard decisions to do the right thing.

<comment><USER7> Then change the government. This proxy war against corporations is just silly.

<comment><USER8> Proxy war? I can use my wallet, my voice, and my labor power as I please including strikes and boycotts. Isn't that how the "free market" is supposed to work?

This is the 2nd time in 24 hrs that someone has made your argument, where is it coming from?

<comment><USER7> Sure, go ahead. Nobody mentioned anything about a free market or lack thereof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like how people are being trained Pavlovian style to go after tech companies that provide services to alphabet agencies with this administration. Did people complain with the last administration? Will people complain with the next administration?

Whether you agree or not with the current administration, the government still needs to operate and keep in line with technology. If you are angry with how DHS and ICE operate, what do you propose? Jeopardize the safety Americans for what benefit?

<comment><USER7> HN/Silicon Valley/tech is extremely left-leaning but seems to forget that SV was borne out of warfare. It has close ties to the military from research to investment and many of our advanced technologies today are from defense projects.

Complaining about such things is usually a luxury by people who have never experienced the serious crime and poverty that exists in the world and afflicts billions everyday. In a way, it's a good thing that life can be so comfortable, but it also causes a loss in perspective.</comment></comment>


Many Hospitals Charge Double or Even Triple What Medicare Would Pay - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/health/hospitals-prices-medicare.html <comment><USER3> I consider it institutionalized corruption when we allow healthcare providers to charge X to uninsured patients yet a tiny fraction of X to patients with insurance ... this distortion should be highly illegal ... this is how the insurance industry forces people to get insured ... healthcare providers cost of services to the patient should be independent of the patients level of insurance coverage

<comment><USER4> They should be required to charge the same to everyone. If an insurer doesn't want to pay that price, the patient will have to cover the rest and insurance companies will have to compete. If there were to be an exception, it should be the provider giving the patient a break on their portion.

This would be putting people first, and it's exactly opposite of what we have.

<comment><USER5> This is called balance billing and many states have banned it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Medicare processes and payments have very little basis in reality. The payments are so low that doctors and hospitals often factor in the lost money into non-medicare bills to make up the difference.

So, the real story is that these doctors and hospitals are so committed to providing care, that they're willing to figure out ways to provide it _despite_ medicare.

<comment><USER7> The US health system is full of stories like "Medicare payments are below cost therefore we have to charge other patients more", "International drug prices are too low, therefore we have to charge US prices more", "There are a lot of uninsured patients treated for free therefore we need to charge others more".

I tend to call BS on all of them. None of them explains why especially hospitals tend to charge almost random prices for the same thing, make constant billing mistakes and haunt the patient for years with changes that already have been settled with the insurance. It doesn't explain why the medical device my company sells for 30k gets charged 140k by the hospital (happened to my girlfriend). Or why for the same 1 hour surgery one hospital anesthesiologist charges 12k while somewhere else the charge is 3k.

The whole system is totally corrupt, opaque and highly profitable for doctors, administrators and middlemen. Each of them blames the other while never providing any real accounting with hard numbers.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, maybe medicare is too low -- but then single payer MINUS insurers could beef up medicare too something like 2x what it now, but as a nation we'd still pay less total on medical (if hospitals mark up insurance 4x and the insurer marks up 2x the cost or more, that's 6x the cost that we're all paying for... Cut off 4x and tell the hospitals to be happy and downsize their operations, and get costs under control. Medicines should only be charged at cost for delivery, charging $40 for a single ibuprofen tablet is INSANE! It takes a nurse 5 minutes to deliver pills, say she makes $50/hour, that's like $5 labor + 30 cents for an ibuprofen, so 5.30 even doubled to $10 is much fairer than $40 for a single pill, or hell make some sort of automated delivery system that pops out medicine by hydraulics as needed and cut the cost even more.

With single payer the government could also put together some emergency grants/funds for hospitals that can't cope -- as long as they accept auditing from the government of all their processes/administration salaries/etc.. and follow guidelines take pay cuts to recommended averages, etc...

TLDR; Medicare for all will solve this issue, it will need to set the low-end higher obviously to compensate for where hospitals make the bulk of their money, but it'll need to hold hospitals accountable for better money management, and pay structures, and price gouging. Not to mention one of the largest cost savings : single-bulk-payer for drug purchases.

<comment><USER6> Single payer or medicare is basically the imposition of price controls, which cause shortages and leads to rationing.

In the US, you can get an MRI pretty much immediately from one of many facilities. The wait time in Canada is pretty ridiculous, and far below the standard of care anyone should expect.

[https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn- wa...](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times- for-health-care-in-canada-2017)

I've known people who moved to the US from Canada because they could not get adequate health care under the single payer system. Hospitals on the border with Canada routinely have to deal with the spill over from Canada because Canada's system does not have the capacity to deal with all of the cases (I have relatives in such hospitals who talk about this). Medical tourism to the US from Canada is one of the few options people have to get timely access to needed healthcare.

We already have an enormous amount of regulation and control of this area by the government and it is not working. Regulation can be like violence - <USER2> practitioners always seem to want to use more if it when it is not working. It's time to take a step or two back and reevaluate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article implies that Medicare is the correct rate.

If anyone has Medicare, or has worked at a clinic that accepts Medicare, or has filled out Medicare paperwork- you know Medicare isn't a gold, silver or bronze standard.

It's dollar store quality.

Things take longer, are often riddled with wrong denials, and him major limitations for patients.

<comment><USER10> Medicare rate and the reality of using Medicare are separate issues though

For me the issue is that if you had something like a hernia it would essentially cost less to fly to Europe, have the surgery, and stay a couple of weeks than to pay out of pocket in the US. And many European healthcare systems tend to rank better than the US.

So it seems that the procedure can be done for less, maybe even for less than Medicare costs; the "dollar store quality" doesn't seem to come from the inexpensiveness.

<comment><USER9> Then your issue is likely with the extraordinary wages of Physicians in the United States.

The American Medical Association is the 3rd biggest lobby in the United States.

Physicians/surgeons in Europe do not make 300k/year.

<comment><USER11> This is part of it , but physician salaries are 10% of the spending. This could be fixed by laxing licensing laws, allowing doctor immigration and reducing the cost of education.

But only one of many reforms needed.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure where you got the number 10% from. Perhaps you're dispatching heavily on the word "salary", when most doctors and surgeons operate as small businesses, and don't earn much income directly as salary?

Doctor plus nurse compensation dominate every chart I've ever seen of US medical spending.

People like to imagine it's all the fault of insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and malpractice; those are collectively a tiny fraction of US spending. It's mostly labor costs.

The US is rich, health is a good with infinite demand. It's hard to reduce costs in that context.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and- Systems/Sta...](https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and- Systems/Statistics-Trends-and- Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf)

This one shows 20%, though when you say clinical services you include nurses, mid levels and medical assistants, though it doesnt explain how much of the hospital spending goes to providers, so higher.

Also, add that the amount of debt physicians graduate with, does not make it a very healthy career, particularly in primary care (where you could do most of cost control).

PCP's have high burnout and suicide rates, work 50+60hour weeks until their 50's , etc. There is nuance to the analysis of provider spending.

In any case, i can assure you there are plenty of marginally useless rank-file employees that exist thanks to the current regulatory framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Completely missing context from the story: If a healthcare provider accepts Medicare patients, legally they cannot charge anyone a lower price than they give Medicare. The Medicare price is the price floor, not the average price. Once you understand that, the charge rates make more sense. However, I suppose adding that context wouldn't gin up the correct amount of outrage...

<comment><USER14> I used to see a doctor who had an angry note in his front office stating he would charge less if he could but his group had negotiated a price with Medicare and it was against the law for him to charge less. In lieu, he took donations to pay for the needy and I strongly suspect laundered his own profits into that pot effectively circumventing Medicare's insane rules. I suspect this because lots of people used the donations but he would never accept any from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is not news, I'm surprised it's in the NYT. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates are very low and hospitals lose money on these patients. All hospitals depend upon private insurers paying higher rates in order to stay in business. They call this the payor mix (private/medicare/Medicaid).

<comment><USER16> Based on how they framed it, I am not too surprised it is in the NYT.

Headline: _Many Hospitals Charge Double or Even Triple What Medicare Would Pay_

You have to get about 80% of the way through to read a more accurate version of the truth: _" Medicare payment rates, which reimburse below the cost of care, should not be held as a standard benchmark for hospital prices"_

<comment><USER17> If you're going to quote the article, I think it's important to include context. So let's broaden your article quote (that is, the article is quoting someone else) just a smidge:

 _"Medicare payment rates, which reimburse below the cost of care, should not be held as a standard benchmark for hospital prices," said Melinda Hatton, general counsel for the American Hospital Association, AN INDUSTRY TRADE GROUP, in an emailed statement._ [emphasis mine]

You claim that the quoted statement is more accurate / truthful than the statement that private insurers pay more than the Medicare rate, and seem to imply that the Times' reporting is biased. Did I get that right?

Would you like to furnish some support for those claims?

<comment><USER18> Check any of the studies from the AHA, AMA, Beckers, or any of the financial institutions/investment firms reporting on the healthcare sector. It's ugly out there. Beckers tracked 20+ health care orgs that went bankrupt in 2018, Morgan Stanley reported 450 being at risk for 2019. Some links: [https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/21-hospital- cl...](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/21-hospital-closures- in-2018.html) [https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/450-hospitals-...](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/450-hospitals- at-risk-of-potential-closure-morgan-stanley-analysis-finds.html) [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-21/hospitals...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-21/hospitals- are-getting-eaten-away-by-market-trends-analysts-say) [https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/12-latest- hosp...](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/12-latest-hospital- bankruptcies-041019.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A lot of comments on here about Medicare not paying enough compared to private insurance- so here is one from a very recent personal experience with private insurance. My wife had surgery followed by 6 days in the hospital for recovery. (This is I think her 9th surgery in the 8 years of our marriage, and every time the billing is similiar.) I just received the explanation fo benefits from my private insurance from the hospital. They billed $245,000! The negotiated amount with the insurance company was $36,000. They billed for 6.8X what they actually got from private insurance. The amount that the hospital bills is completely made-up gibberish.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hospitals are one of those things that just shouldn't be run like a for-profit business. There should be regulated set amounts for how much various services cost, and those amounts should be equal (or at least close) to what the government/insurance programs cover.

It's bonkers to me how much resources and technology we have as a species, and how we decide to not let people access it because money/capitalism.

Obviously the US is notably worse at this than other countries, and it doesn't feel like we're on a path to fixing it.

<comment><USER21> Economics 101: Price controls create shortages.

Note that I'm not defending the broken U.S. system, but attempting to fix it with price controls will exacerbate its problems.

<comment><USER22> Sure, but US hospitals are also known to charge up to 1000% more then a procedure actually costs[1]. That should be illegal.

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/why-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why- some-hospitals-can-get-away-with-price-gouging-patients-study- finds/2015/06/08/b7f5118c-0aeb-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html?utm_term=.27ff0b2e8c0e)

<comment><USER11> Software charges 1000000000% its costs, maybe it should be made illegal as well.

<comment><USER22> I highly doubt that any company charges that much of a premium for software, you have any sources or examples?

<comment><USER11> Take any digital book sale from amazon.

<comment><USER22> Seriously, book publishing is your example? You know writing, editing and publishing a book takes a lot of time and skill. Also the majority of book authors are not making out like bandits on books sales, even digital ones. Book Authors and Publishers are not making 1000000000% on digital book sales, otherwise we would probably see Goldman Sachs in the book publishing/writing business.

<comment><USER23> You're correct, but that is all fixed cost. The marginal cost of an e-book is essentially zero. In the short run, a publisher can keep selling an e-book at almost any price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hospitals don't have to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients. If they are truly losing money on them, then why do they accept them?

<comment><USER25> >Hospitals don't have to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients.

An emergency room has to treat anyone until they're stable, regardless of their means to pay. You don't exactly have time to shop around for an affordable doctor if you've just had a heart attack.

Why do you think medical debt is a key reason for 2/3rds of US bankruptcies?

<comment><USER26> Turning away patients and accepting payment are two different things

<comment><USER23> A patient is accepted, cared for, and cannot pay. The patient has medicare. Would you, as a hospital, refuse any payment; or would you take what you could get (medicare)? A below-market rate is bad, but nothing is worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hospitals negotiate for the rate with the insurance companies, including Medicare. They don't have to accept Medicare payments at all. It is the right price because that is what the group with the most bargaining power says it is. That doesn't mean Humana should pay less, but should work harder to add people. Maybe there is a way for one entity to have all the people?</comment>


What is namecheap using to verify if I am a bot? - <AUTHOR> https://www.namecheap.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it Google's no CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA? A custom implementation? I am quite curious to know.

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't see any captcha ?</comment>


Zurb Ink: Responsive HTML Email Framework - <AUTHOR> http://designinstruct.com/tool/responsive-html-email-framework-zurb-ink/ <comment><USER2> This is great to see and long overdue. We get a lot of customers that ask about how they should create email templates. We don't really want to go down that path, so we'll be happy to direct them here.

Also, +1 on using Litmus for testing rendering across different clients.

There are also other things to consider when designing email templates and email deliverability in general.

\- Always use multi-part, with a nice text part. Not having a text part is a spam flag.

\- Keep the ratios of images and links to text low. High ratios are spam flags. Also, most of the time images will not be displayed by default.

\- Use common sense, avoiding exclamations and referencing spammy words (eg. buy now!).

\- Avoid link shorteners (commonly used in phishing emails)

\- Use Litmus to test against spam filters to see where common sense fails.

\- mail-tester.com is another nice free tool for checking for spam flags.

\- There are also some little things that can trip you up, like having malformed message-Ids where the domain in the message-ID does not match the sending domain.

For more thoughts, we have a best practices ([http://documentation.mailgun.com/best_practices.html](http://documentation.mailgun.com/best_practices.html))

Edit: Also, PLEASE only send emails to people that have given you (like on your website) permission and you have validated the email address with a confirmation link (double opt-in) before sending subsequent emails. Always give recipients the conspicuous and easy ability to unsubscribe.

<comment><USER3> Another important one: optimize the design for display without images. Most email clients block images by default, so that's how most people are first going to see it. (The notable exceptions are Apple Mail and iOS Mail which load images by default.)

With the notable exception of iOS Mail.app and OS X Mail, virtually all email clients block images by default.

<comment><USER4> Outlook displays (embedded) images too by default (that's why lots of people include them in their signatures).

I think that href images are (correctly) blocked, because they pose a security and privacy risk. That, and the only group who uses them are email marketers _. If I want to see your catalog, I 'd open your website.

You might have guessed, but yes, I do mark those image-mails as spam (and any mail where I can't find and 'unsubscribe' within 2 seconds).

_ I wonder if Americans have less trouble with this. When I was last in NY the quantity + obnoxiousness of the advertisements shocked me - we're more used to being blitzed by Germans, not by marketing. Compared to that having an inbox full of brightly colored marketing mails is restful..

<comment><USER3> Embedded images don't have very good support across clients, which makes them pretty hard to use effectively. They will not appear at all in gmail, for example.

Also, it's not very nice to mark messages as spam just because you don't like their design (it affects other recipients). Unless it actually is spam, then mark away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone brave enough to bring a semblance of sanity to the world of HTML emails deserves major kudos. For kids like me who did not grow up making table layouts, coding emails is a nightmare. Oh the 's. I am so glad Zurb is lending their knowledge building of excellent frameworks to this widely underserved market.

<comment><USER6> I never needed to get into table hell. I used an image map every time. One image. Define some areas with different links. Bingo.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ma...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/map)

<comment><USER3> So what do the majority of recipients see (who don't have images load by default)?

<comment><USER7> Um, I'm pretty sure he was joking.

<comment><USER3> _shrug_

Quite a few people do exactly that.

<comment><USER8> LOTS of game related companies use the "image map" method because, as we all know, games are audio/visually awesome and cannot possibly be represented by plain text emails.

In my case the result is: Big red placeholder image and copyright text /unsubscribe link underneath it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This would go well with Sendy ([http://sendy.co/](http://sendy.co/)), a pretty awesome self-hosted mailing list tool. Together it's like Mailchimp for hackers.

<comment><USER10> Interesting tool. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Zurb Foundation for quite some time and I truly enjoy using the framework, I'm sure I'm going to love using Zurb Ink as well.

Everyone should be giving this a shot, congrats (and thanks) to everyone at Zurb! [http://zurb.com/ink/](http://zurb.com/ink/)

</comment><comment><USER12> For those who want to star/watch the project on GitHub:

[https://github.com/zurb/ink](https://github.com/zurb/ink)

</comment><comment><USER13> Lovely framework, but can someone explain why HTML email is so stuck in the past?

Why can't email clients just abide by proper web standards?

<comment><USER14> I think it was around Outlook 2007 Microsoft decided that instead of using Internet Explorer to render their emails, they would use Microsoft Word. That's right. Word. And now whenever you try to use even the most basic CSS rules, Outlook fucks it up very badly. Then there is that abomination called Lotus Notes (mainly <8.5). Yes, I have been doing a lot of emails lately and it is the worst experience in web dev I have ever had.

Outlook 2007 makes IE6 look like the best browser in the world.

<comment><USER13> Thank you for the explanation, that's insane.

<comment><USER15> If I recall correctly - they did it for security reasons. i.e. Internet Explorer was so full of holes they thought the Word HTML rendered would be easier to keep secure.

In the sense that it did a lot less and thus presented a smaller attack surface, they were right.

<comment><USER16> Guess its a pity Microsoft never heard about sandboxing, eh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> HTML email allows an unreasonable level of deception. How does your mail client render this?

        http://trustworthy.host

If you can't get your message across in a plain text email, you may want to reconsider whether your intent is to mislead.

<comment><USER18> > HTML email allows an unreasonable level of deception. How does your mail > client render this?

How does your browser render that? This isn't something unique to emails, and we didn't end up deciding that text only web pages were the way to go. That said, email clients _could_ catch a number of simple cases like that and warn the user (yes, I realize there are ways around that).

> If you can't get your message across in a plain text email, you may want to > reconsider whether your intent is to mislead.

While this is true, the reality is that html emails are, basically, required in many cases due to marketing. Generally speaking, html emails are not being created by legitimate business because they want to mislead people. They are being created because they look better (leaving aside the caveat that some businesses aren't very good at the "make it look better" aspect).

<comment><USER19> HTML e-mail is _required_ for marketing? Hardly. Also "look better" is massively subjective.

<comment><USER18> Let me rephrase. HTML email is often required due to the requirements of the marketing department at many companies.

As for "look better" \- yes, it is subjective. However, given that html email capabilities are a super set of text email capabilities, anything you can do in a text email you can do in an html email. Anything you can do in an html email, though, you cannot necessarily do in a text email. Quite simply, an html email can look better and often does.

 _Edit_ : Given that an email can contain both text and html versions, and given that best practices dictate sending both, is this not good enough? You can always set your client to show you the text version by preference. You get your text version, most everyone else gets the html version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you don't want to sign up for a Litmus subscription, you can use Direct Mail for OS X ([http://directmailmac.com](http://directmailmac.com)) to run design tests on a pay-as-you-go basis. Also inlines your CSS by default (but can be turned off).

Disclaimer: I am a developer on Direct Mail.

</comment><comment><USER21> This looks very interesting, I wasn't even aware that email sucked that much.

* * * Side tracking:

Is email marketing a good thing? I've never looked at any numbers regarding that. I'm genuinely asking the community here.

My intuition would be that it's not; I really hate receiving any sort of pre- formatted email from any service, unless it's Google Groups or something where I receive a message as a result of a human trying to interact with me, personally.

In that sense, I would believe that more, fancier, mass distributed marketing emails aren't what I'm wishing for in this world. But my intuition could be wrong. I'm also the kind of guy who just automatically recycles all the marketing mail I receive without ever looking at it.

So yeah: how effective is email marketing? On the long term, short term?

<comment><USER22> We use it in the form of a daily newsletter (news site), and originally when I took up speeding up the newsletter process and a redesign I realized I had entered the 5th circle of Hell.

The article is dead on about just how painful it is to create that I thought it would be useless. But the numbers don't lie and a fair amount of our subscribers open and use the service every day. Granted we're not marketing, but we are at least seeing people click on the items in the newsletter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am super excited about this. I love the fun visuals, extensive documentation, transparency and honesty about issues with email clients. I think there is huge potential here and I can't wait to see where they go with it. A huge use case that no one is talking about is transactional emails from your web or mobile app. Now you can have great looking emails that increase engagement that look great on mobile email and look (both in design and the underlying code) much like foundation based rails apps.

</comment><comment><USER24> The framework looks pretty awesome. But the name choice is unfortunate. Ink is already used for this framework: [http://ink.sapo.pt](http://ink.sapo.pt)

</comment><comment><USER25> There should be an option to email the docs page with examples to one self. In order to preview it in your own mail inbox(s).

<comment><USER26> We've got a bunch of example templates along with test results across different email clients. You can just copy and paste the email into your sender of choice and check it out [http://zurb.com/ink/templates.php](http://zurb.com/ink/templates.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Offtopic_

Jacob Gube, how is sixrevisions going? It looks like it is really drying out. Have you abandoned it for designinstruct? A shame because it always had really good articles.

</comment><comment><USER28> Gone are the days of hacking up pre-fab Mailchimp templates! This is wonderful and very timely, I'll be giving this a try for two different projects next week.

</comment><comment><USER16> Zurb just became my favourite company in the world.

</comment><comment><USER29> Kinda random question but does anyone know of a simple email template app for use for something like internal company emails?

<comment><USER3> Many consumer ESPs have free templates you can download. With a tiny bit of work, you can make them work anywhere. For example: [http://www.campaignmonitor.com/templates/all/](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/templates/all/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been searching for something like this, great timing!

</comment><comment><USER31> I can't see any of the images on my iPad using safari.

<comment><USER26> Can you post a Litmus test result or post the code as an issue on the GitHub repo [https://github.com/zurb/ink](https://github.com/zurb/ink)

<comment><USER31> Meant to get back yesterday - For some reason it worked when I tried about an hour later. I dont know if it was my connection or not.

<comment><USER32> Placehold.it might have been down. They're great for development, but a lot of people were probably opening the templates and sucking up their bandwidth yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> haha, i was just working on emails, and now i see this framework. May be it will save me some effort. WOrth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER34> Doesn't support Lotus Notes. Doh!

<comment><USER35> I imagine Lotus notes would have fallen back to plaintext anyway no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> doesn't work in iOS 7 Mail.app..

<comment><USER26> Do you have a Litmus test you can post on GitHub [https://github.com/zurb/ink](https://github.com/zurb/ink)

<comment><USER36> iOS 7: [http://imgur.com/N7NIWW4](http://imgur.com/N7NIWW4) iOS 6: [http://imgur.com/wekWLJZ](http://imgur.com/wekWLJZ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> HTML Email is what sells.

</comment><comment><USER37> The word 'responsive' has been sprayed all over these pages. I take it I'm supposed to read that word a certain way in this context, but I don't know how. Does it mean you can click things? Something more? Something else?

<comment><USER38> 'Responsive' simply means that a layout adjusts itself to the size of the device/screen.

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design)

<comment><USER26> Exactly, Ink uses media queries to modify the layout for different devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

NO

HTML e-mail was and is an awful idea.

My MUA doesn't need to be a browser as well. Stop the madness, please.

<comment><USER39> How else would you suggest designing an email? Plain text? Clients aren't just going to be like..."yeah, we don't want any images, or buttons, or fancy designs"...

I swear all the devs on HN work in product.

<comment><USER40> Why do emails need to be designed in the first place? Honest question.

<comment><USER39> Whether you're consciously thinking about design decisions or not everything is designed.

The better question would be, why does design matter?

This list could be huge but here are a few common reasons:

\- To simplify information.

\- To make it more digestible.

\- To be engaging. To invoke emotion.

If you blast an average email receiver with a poorly designed wall of text, at best, they might read part of it and drop out half way through. Most of them will archive or delete it without even opening it and another portion will probably report it as spam.

I won't sit here and discuss the complexities of why design matters but here are a few links:

\- [http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019604/design-50/design- in-30-s...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3019604/design-50/design- in-30-seconds-nike-on-why-design-matters)

\- [http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/30/business/la-fi-mo- wo...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/30/business/la-fi-mo-worlds-most- valuable-brands-apple-coca-cola-20130930)

\- [http://www.hackdesign.org/lessons/1](http://www.hackdesign.org/lessons/1)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Memento Mori – a simple stoic reminder - <AUTHOR> https://remember.rip <comment><USER2> Nice! I'm currently reading 'A guide to the good life' and am always looking for ways to incorporate stoicism into my daily life.

I'd love a 'distraction free' mode concentrating on only the timer (maybe even removing the 'hours', 'minutes', 'seconds' texts) :)</comment>


5 Reasons I Stayed Away from JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://javascript.works-hub.com/blog/5-Reasons-I-Stayed-Away-from-JavaScript?utm_source=Hacker%20News&utm_medium=Content&utm_campaign=Eliott <comment><USER3> Doing logic in a constructor is trouble in any language. Also, typescript and to a lesser extent flow are even nicer than vanilla es6.

<comment><USER4> >Doing logic in a constructor is trouble in any language.

This remark is often made, as is the similar comment that throwing exceptions from a constructor is an antipattern. However, it's often said without saying why it should be the case, and I get the feeling that sometimes it is parroted without understanding. (OP: this is a general comment that is not directed at you). For that reason, it took me a while to figure out the motivation for the idea through experience (read: making mistakes and realizing them in retrospect).

So, why is it bad to have logic in a constructor, or have a constructor that can throw an exception?

There is nothing, necessarily, inherently wrong with doing so, at the level of the specific object; the concern is at a higher level. The idea is, rather, that doing so is an indicator of more widespread design problems in the overall application. Let's look at an example.

Suppose that I have an object that is supposed to serve as a container for data that is retrieved from a database - a User object, perhaps, which is supposed to hold, say, a user's username, GitHub profile link, and other such things. Suppose that I define my User class so that its constructor queries my database for the its data and throws a SQLException if the query fails.

A fundamental principle of good software design is that of decoupling. Decoupling essentially refers to the idea says that a component of a system should not know more than it needs to know in order fulfill its role, nor interact with more components of the system than it absolutely needs to.

If our object is supposed to hold data that is needed by other parts of the application, it should not matter to it where the data comes from or how it gets there; that is, if I have a User class that can throw a SQLException while being constructed, then the User class simply knows too much - <USER2> database connection error has nothing to do with a User, and so if User's constructor does database retrieval in its constructor, then it hasn't been decoupled from the data layer of the application.

To illustrate why this principle exists, suppose we have to switch our users data store from Postgres to Mongo; the User class should not have to be modified. Having User do query logic or be able to throw a SQLException in its constructor means that it hasn't been decoupled from the data layer. This is why people say, broadly, that doing logic or throwing exceptions from constructors is "bad" \- it's not bad in and of itself, but it is bad in the sense that it indicates that the overall application does not have good decoupling, which can be a long term problem; furthermore, the severity of the potential problem increases probably exponentially with the overall size of the application. Imagine having dozens of data object that each do database queries in their constructor - switching databases means you'll have to modify every single one of these classes!

Just as important is commentary on how to avoid getting into this situation. Let's use the same example - how do we decouple our User class, which does a database query in its constructor, from our data layer?

There are numerous ways, but the general idea is to define a component of the application whose job is to connect to the database and read data out, along with a separate component of the layer that contains abstractions like User which are constructed from this retrieved data. Concretely, in our User example, we might first define something like a UserLocator class which takes in a database connection and that has a method which takes a User ID and returns some corresponding data from the database, and then a User class whose constructor takes that data and pulls out what it needs. Later, were we to switch underlying databases, we would only change UserLocator to query a different database but have it still return the same data format that our new, decoupled User class' constructor expects. This way, in the long term, our application is easier to adapt to changes because we have good decoupling. Applying this principle (and others) across an entire codebase can end up being the difference between spending 90% of your time maintaining legacy code versis spending 10% of your time updating existing code to meet new requirements.

Hopefully someone finds this useful. I wish I had learned principles like these earlier in my career; this sort of thing is definitely not taught in computer science programs (nor, arguably, should it be - but many people get hired out of such programs into places where knowledge of design principles is very important).</comment></comment>


Argentina, Bolivia, Chile to form OPEC model cartel on lithium - <AUTHOR> http://www.commodityonline.com/news/argentina-bolivia-chile-to-form-opec-model-cartel-on-lithium-40467-3-1.html <comment><USER2> Lithium can be recovered from seawater:

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304386X879...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304386X87900454)

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=lithium+seawat...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=lithium+seawater+recovery&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C11&as_ylo=&as_vis=0)

[http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no- shortage-...](http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for- electric-cars/)

While a lithium trading cartel can and will exist as long as prices for mining are lower than prices for extraction, the chance of a war over lithium are practically negligible. The price of lithium from the ocean is only five times the cost from mining, and the cost of lithium represents a small fraction ( < $100) of an EV.

>And that brings us to yet another issue: the fact that lithium ion batteries, despite the name, just really don't use that much lithium. About 1.4 kilograms of lithium carbonate are needed per kilowatt hour of lithium-ion batteries. A kilowatt hour of bulk lithium ion batteries costs $300 to $500. Hence, lithium carbonate costs only make up 1/30th to 1/50th the cost of the cells! The price could increase tenfold and you'd barely notice the difference. Source: Gas 2.0 (<http://s.tt/12zDD>)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for looking at this in detail.

If you are right that the price could increase 10 fold without us noticing than the cartel is a brilliant idea since it will get them just under 5 times the amount they would get now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is also very important to know that currently there are many social activists working against mining in the region. Also it seems that the level of corruption in the relationship between the governments and the big mining companies is huge. More information at [http://wp.cedha.net/?p=8321&lang=en](http://wp.cedha.net/?p=8321&lang=en)

<comment><USER4> Yes, but unless I'm mistaken I think lithium is not mined in open-pit mines but in salt evaporation ponds. Activism is focused on open-pit mines at the moment.

It's also worth mentioning that the plan in Argentina is to produce batteries and compete with China. Well, that's what it seems to be. The first factory was just built recently. We'll have to see how it goes.

(Argentinian here)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This will really suck for these countries. As someone who lives in an oil producing country, OPEC is a horrible model to follow. Almost all the countries in OPEC are corrupt, inefficient and have dictatorial govts who oppress the majority poor in their countries.

That said, I wonder what impact this will have in other conflict regions that provide lithium or substitutes to lithium like Congo and Afghanistan.

<comment><USER6> Chile already makes much(most?) of it's money from copper, and lately it seems that they have a decent handle on things, in that it's a stable democracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The link is broken, this is the goog cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JIzz0fD...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JIzz0fDVQYkJ:www.commodityonline.com/news/argentina- bolivia-chile-to-form-opec-model-cartel-on- lithium-40467-3-1.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)</comment>


Independent Contractors Treated as Employees in Tech (How to Prevent)? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed an increasing trend that companies and agencies will hire you as an independent consultant with the resulting lack of job security and benefits, but without the advantages of being an independent consultant.
Those advantages are around flexibility of hours, autonomy and of course higher pay.
Other than higher pay, I'm finding companies are loosey goosey in their hiring and treatment of contractors.  In one recent SOW I came across via an agency (as a subcontractor to a contracting agency), upon arriving on the first day there suddenly was a 9 to 5 requirement such that the contractor gets reprimanded if they arrive at 9:05;  moreover they have a 'manager' with tight control over the contractor's time, work and whereabouts during the work day.
To me this signifies an employee-employer relationship.  And this is tech, not Uber drivers and the ambiguity around that.
If you are a tech consultant, what can you do, if anything, to avoid these situations?  Sometimes you do not know until you begin the actual engagement. <comment><USER2> If you are a direct contractor, it sounds like the IRS would consider you an employee. If you are actually an employee of a company that contracts you out to a 3rd party, then this doesn't apply.

 _"The IRS developed the 20-Factor Test shown below to help employers evaluate whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. No one factor on the test is more indicative of employee status than another. If there is a high number of "yes" marks, then it will most likely indicate the presence of an employment relationship, a high number of "no" marks may or may not indicate a contractor relationship."_

[https://www.regent.edu/admin/busoff/pdf/20-questions1099test...](https://www.regent.edu/admin/busoff/pdf/20-questions1099test.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fully agreed. Question is, what's the best course of action? Is this common?

<comment><USER2> You're treated as an employee because you _are_ an employee (of the contracting agency). You aren't an _Independant_ contractor. And yes, it sucks depending on the agency.

You need to go contract Direct if you want to be treated as an "independant" consultant. The Agency usually makes you sign something that makes it near impossible to contract Direct for a company they place you at. You need to use your network to find your own contracts. This is easier said than done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wait a second. What if you're contracting via an LLC and they (the consulting agency) made you sign a contract that it's not an employee relationship?

<comment><USER3> IRS protocols very frequently override contracts in this regard. If they determine that you should be treated as an employee by the 20 Factor Test (see above), they will go after the company for their half of your back payroll taxes. The form to initiate such an inquiry is Form SS-8: [https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-ss8](https://www.irs.gov/forms- pubs/about-form-ss8)

While an SS-8 is pending, you can file your taxes _as if_ you were a W-2 employee by filing Form 8919: [https://www.irs.gov/forms- pubs/form-8919-uncollected-social-...](https://www.irs.gov/forms- pubs/form-8919-uncollected-social-security-and-medicare-tax-on-wages)

I did this in Canada (long ago) with a former employer who contracted me but treated me as an employee, and the Canada Revenue Agency sided with me, regardless of the contract text. All I've read suggests that the IRS is similar in this regard.

Keep in mind that if you do this while you're still employed, they are likely to fire you. The ideal thing to do here, if you can negotiate with the employer in good faith, is to have them void the previous 1099s and file back W-2s for you, so you can then file amended 1040s and get back your previously paid tax. Unfortunately, an employer who would do this in the first place is likely just trying to avoid payroll tax liability, so I doubt you'll see much success going this route.

<comment><USER4> I believe the statute of limitations is 3 years, correct? I have been a case of being misclassified as an employee but paying me on 1099. But that happened over 9 years ago so I don't think I have a case anymore.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure. There are limits on claiming a refund (e.g. if you are filing previously unfiled returns), but I'm not sure that they apply in case of a dispute. Let us know what you find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your observations are perfectly correct, the short answer is these are low quality (and sometimes exploitative) job shops. You should avoid.

What I think is going on is that consulting stratifies into two groups: high quality consulting exactly as you envision with high pay and freedom, and these consultancies which effectively are low quality labor.

Obviously avoid the later if you have no other choice. In addition to the shitty pay, you will suffer serious penalties to respect and the projects you'll work on will be the least attractive (and sometimes shitty and dangerous in other ways).

</comment><comment><USER6> There are usually some red flags:

\- the language used during the sales process points to an employee-employer type relationship

\- conditions like full-time and having to work at the client's office all the time

\- the sales process itself is treated more like an interview process (you have to provide documents like a CV first etc.)

If you encounter these or other aspects that feel off: Walk away.

If the contract stipulates you be at their office from 9 to 5: Walk away

If the contract doesn't say anything about this but the client still tries to enforce such rules: Point to the contract and if the client still insists, again walk away.

If this sounds overly harsh or opinionated please keep in mind as a contractor / consultant you're running a business and an essential part of running a business is establishing long-term, trustworthy relationships. You can only do this by agreeing upon and adhering to clear conditions of how you do business.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have been a victim of a 1099 misclassification scheme. At the time I had graduated just three months ago and taken a job at a small web development agency that was run on a very tight budget- mangement was "top heavy" meaning there was about 1-2 managers per in-house developer and designer, and the rest of the team worked in India.

They expected me to show up to the office every day 9-5, while I was working as an independent contractor, along with other treatment as employee (was given my own computer and desk, etc). As a few people have pointed out, yes this is common in exploitative job shops.

Unfortunately it was beyond the statute of limitations when I found out I could take action by verifying status with the IRS. But I still have the physical printed out contract with me. It says $15/hr on 1099 as contract-to- hire with conversion to $20 on a W2 after 3-6 months. I was never put on a W2 and I have worked there for at least 18 months.

Now to answer the actual question- how to prevent it? It's hard to say. The US has laws in place to prevent this but without acknowledgement of the problem, the bite is weak. A lot of these things occur due to simple ignorance of the victim's part.

Perhaps a general "professional development" course to be taken in a junior of senior year of college could help smooth things out? Then less college graduates will be left behind, and there's less risk for them to go through the school of hard knocks after graduation.

Such a course doesn't have to be limited to employee-employer or contractor relations. It can cover issues related to how to deal with workplace politics, understand what perception does to others at work, etc. There are many gotchas that people do not see entering the white-collar workforce.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any software engineer should be able to find work as a W2 employee with benefits good enough that i.e. healthcare costs are not something that ever crosses your mind. I suggest researching compensation norms, as I suspect you are wildly underestimating your market value. If this isn't true in your location, you might need to move to a larger city. Our skills are in high enough demand that none of us should have to rely on legal protections to be treated well.

There are no job-security advantages to being a regular employee, by the way. Employment in essentially all of the US is at-will.

<comment><USER8> This is a very US-centric answer. In other countries there are absolutely job security benefits to being an employee.

<comment><USER7> This is the website of an American venture capital firm focused on a community that occupies a small stretch of coastal California. The poster did not specify a foreign country. Of course it's a US-centric answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Presuming this is long-term contract (3-6 months), you basically are going through same process as employee - need to interview the company first, need to read the contract, and not sign it if it's not acceptable.

If they're asking you for stuff that's not in the contract, say no. If they persist, walk away.

</comment><comment><USER10> Learn how to say no. It's not complicated or difficult to avoid what you're describing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nothing about your situation says independent contractor. You work for an outsourcing sweatshop that sells labor as contractors to further reduce their rates.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you define "real-time" - <AUTHOR>

How exactly do you define "real-time"?
Currently a lot of companies are coming out with a real-time label on some aspect of their service.  The trend seems to be:
1. Content they serve is now automatically updated without needing viewers to manually reload. 2. Content is updated sooner and faster 3. Slap a chat on it, call it real time. 4. Put some twitter, facebook, openid, what have you and call it social real-time.
I see real-time as things happening at the exact moment, which is updated a bit faster than 10 seconds.  But you are real-time with what?  The server?  Everyone you follow on Twitter?  The key is to have someone on the other side to be real time with you.  That's interesting.
This comes in many forms, here are some I think are particularly important: 1. Content you're interested in that people provide. (twitter.com updates, friendfeed, digg stories) 2. Action sharing, such as screen sharing or browse sharing. (webex solutions, browseology.com) 3. Information generated from a source that is time sensitive, not necessarily from the mass of people, but from a single entity. (big events like sporting events)
What's your definition? <comment><USER2> Are you suggesting that someone in a marketing department somewhere is twisting reality so that they can sell more products? No way!

Okay - seriously: why ask? I don't get the point of the question so I'm not really interesting in answering. We all know what "real time" means in reality so asking us what it means to us is odd.</comment>