Ask HN: Where to Find Freelance Work?  - <AUTHOR>

Where does everyone get their leads for freelance work? I'm looking to land a couple projects to last me a few weeks until our startup finishes the fundraising process. I'm a fullstack dev as well as a UI/UX designer. Any leads would be awesome, thanks! <comment><USER2> I personally never found the freelance sites all that useful. Not saying people haven't done well, but I never liked them because it always seemed like a race to the lowest cost over value.

For us it has been all about networking and meeting people as while we are building our own products we are paying the bills by also building other peoples. Of course, the advantage is that gives you a foot in the door so you can hopefully sell your own product either to them or someone they know too.

You say full stack dev, what technologies specifically?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lately I've been doing mostly Rails, JS, CSS, CoffeeScript, and Ruby stuff. I do have experience w/ PHP though

<comment><USER2> We have some node.js and frontend js work that is up for carving out if you want to talk. Send me an email. You can reach me at my email on my profile or through our company site [http://tenorent.com](http://tenorent.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I started the platform Searchfreelancejobs.com to search projects over the top freelancing sites in one platform. It's helped me as a freelancer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Contact me!! I need help with a project! Google Roy Barber. 1st result :)</comment>


How to Build Your Entrepreneurial Confidence - <AUTHOR> http://jonbischke.com/2009/11/20/entrepreneurial-confidence/

<comment><USER2> Those are all nice, but nothing builds confidence like making a change and then watching revenue go up.</comment>


Rationality: From AI to Zombies - <AUTHOR> https://intelligence.org/2015/03/12/rationality-ai-zombies/ <comment><USER2> This is a collection of Yudkowsky's blog posts on LessWrong, and it's making the rounds now because it forms the basis for most of Harry's rationalist insights in the extremely entertaining and recently finished Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. (The last chapter of HPMoR went up on Ultimate Pi Day - 3/14/15 - last week.) I picked it up on the advice of some friends, and while the editing is less than perfect, it is overall an impressively well- organized and cross-linked treatise on how to reason.

At the heart of the book is the assertion that rationality is not about justifying why we are _right_ , but thinking how we might be _wrong_ , and paying careful attention to any evidence that puzzles us or could convince us to change our minds. The resulting philosophy is a combination of the falsification principle and the scientific method, applied to your own character. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER3> Given that this compilation was published on March 11th, and hpmor finished on March 14th, I don't think it's making the rounds now because of the timing of hpmor. Their finish/release dates are simply close together.

<comment><USER4> The release dates were purposefully close together.

<comment><USER5> I don't have inside knowledge, but yeah, it seems extremely likely -- the sequences have been available for years, after all.

<comment><USER6> They didn't wait for the end of HPMoR to publish this book - they made an extra effort to have it ready in time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That Eliezer Yudkowsky is a pretty smart guy. Against all prior expectations (lol), I am now reading Harry Potter fan fiction and enjoying it.[1] The LessWrong sequences are poignant and concise and pushed me down the road of rational thought.

I look forward to getting some of these books on my shelf.

[1] [http://hpmor.com/](http://hpmor.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm happy to see this in the preface (where EY looks back and details what he thinks he did wrong):

"Today I would write more courteously, I think. The discourtesy did serve a function, and I think there were people who were helped by reading it; but I now take more seriously the risk of building communities where the normal and expected reaction to low-status outsider views is open mockery and contempt.

Despite my mistake, I am happy to say that my readership has so far been amazingly good about _not_ using my rhetoric as an excuse to bully or belittle others. (I want to single out Scott Alexander in particular here, who is a nicer person than I am and an increasingly amazing writer on these topics, and may deserve a part of the credit for making the culture of _Less Wrong_ a healthy one.)"

<comment><USER9> For those interested in Scott: his LW posts can be found at [http://lesswrong.com/user/Yvain/submitted/](http://lesswrong.com/user/Yvain/submitted/) , his old blog at [http://squid314.livejournal.com/](http://squid314.livejournal.com/) , his new blog at [http://slatestarcodex.com/](http://slatestarcodex.com/) , and a tumblr for shorter things at [http://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/](http://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/)

If you're not sure where to start, a number of his writings have been received well on HN: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=slatestarcodex&sort=byPopulari...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=slatestarcodex&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><USER10> gwern, Scott makes a specific point of not linking to his blog from his LJ in his penultimate LJ post - he might prefer that you didn't make that link here?

<comment><USER9> He went back and hid the more sensitive LJ entries, IIRC, so I don't think it should be a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is an ebook here ([http://lesswrong.com/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/)) where you can read it unedited as it was originally written. I don't know if anyone would want to do this, but it's how I read them. I imagine a lot of the content would be edited down or out, especially the standalone stuff. That's not necessarily a bad thing though.

<comment><USER6> I have edited that post to recommend the book over my ePub. You can always read my compilation after finishing the book, if you want to read the articles the book leaves out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am currently reading, and loving, Yudkowsky's introduction to Quantum Mechanics from the blog: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/pc/quantum_explanations/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/pc/quantum_explanations/)

Does anyone know whether that sequence has made it to one of these books?

<comment><USER13> I quite liked his introduction! Be aware, however, that he dramatically overstates some things. For example, he claims that the many-worlds interpretation is obviously correct. This is basically wrong: it may be correct, but it certainly isn't obviously correct, and many scientists whose entire research is dedicated to quantum mechanics would disagree that many- worlds is correct at all.

There is a long list of alternative explanations[0], with very little evidence to lend support to or contradict any of them (at least, any of the ones that are still around. Some have fallen by the wayside).

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics)

<comment><USER14> I think it's fair to say that it's "obvious" when optimizing for the same things Yudkowsky does. For instance, any issue having something to say about the Born rule seems to be his dump stat, if you will. This makes sense, because in the paper where Max Born introduced the rule, he suggests that it indicates only one possible correct interpretation (hint: it was not Many Worlds).

That all being said, no one really disagrees about the predictions of the math, and at least many-worlds has less completely ridiculous misinterpretations by lay-people, so both ends of the spectrum are tolerable to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who are interested, I will be moderating a online reading group covering the book here:

[http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/lx0/rationality_from_ai...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/lx0/rationality_from_ai_to_zombies_online_reading/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'll just say that "intelligence.org" is as heavy-handed as Google buying the .dev TLD.

<comment><USER5> I don't think I could bring myself to be a "Bright" for that reason (see the- brights.net)...

Vague counterpoint -- this is an ebook collecting essays from lesswrong.com, which is a bit more subtle as names go.

<comment><USER16> > I don't think I could bring myself to be a "Bright" for that reason (see > the-brights.net)...

A name is enough of a reason on it's own?

<comment><USER5> Sure.

That is, my understanding of reality is the same, regardless. I think the goals of "The Brights" are laudable, generally. But I didn't register on their website, and wouldn't really want my photo and identify featured as a Bright, because the name just doesn't feel right to me.

How you identify yourself makes a difference to how you're judged, and hence the influence you can bring to bear on the world.

Or, you know, if I someday gain a bit more public recognition and clout, it may start to matter then how I self-identified back in 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Careful. Yudkowski and LW have a dark side. (google Roko's Basilisk)

Rationality applied to ethics is a sticky wicket. You have to subscribe to some metric of "good" in order to weigh and compare outcomes. EY's definition of good is ruthlessly utilitarian, and that has some extreme, nay dire consequences for certain thought experiments.

Consume this philosophy at your own risk.

<comment><USER18> Yudkowsky's "good", at that of his fans, also tends to be naively utilitarian, ignoring modern development of that philosophy (see his whole "it's better for one person to be tortured for 50 years than for a very large number of people to each get one speck of dust in their eye" thing, for example).

<comment><USER19> Check out that topic more carefully. As far as I remember, it was a toy example pointing out where the naive application of utilitarianism goes bonkers, and from what I can tell, Eliezer doesn't actually subscribe to "torture over dust specks".

<comment><USER18> He does. He says so explicitly in the comments.

> I'll go ahead and reveal my answer now: Robin Hanson was correct, I do think > that TORTURE is the obvious option, and I think the main instinct behind > SPECKS is scope insensitivity.

<comment><USER20> If you opt to remove the SPECKS, you would have to change some law of nature or some property of matter, which will have other consequences for the amount of suffering in this world. As you cannot reliably predict or calculate those consequences, you cannot solve this problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Crowdsourced research: Many hands make tight work - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/crowdsourced-research-many-hands-make-tight-work-1.18508 <comment><USER2> An excellent article making good, clear points. If only more science writing were like this.

In summary, the authors got 29 teams of researchers to work on the same data set and answer the same research question (are football [soccer] referees more likely to give red cards to dark-skinned players?). The teams proposed different analytical/statistical approaches, discussed each others' approaches, and came up with a range of effect sizes based on the data.

Some key quotes:

"Most researchers would find this broad range of effect sizes disturbing. It means that taking any single analysis too seriously could be a mistake, yet this is encouraged by our current system of scientific publishing and media coverage."

"The transparency resulting from a crowdsourced approach should be particularly beneficial when important policy issues are at stake. The uncertainty of scientific conclusions about, for example, the effects of the minimum wage on unemployment, and the consequences of economic austerity policies should be investigated by crowds of researchers rather than left to single teams of analysts."

"Scientists around the world are hungry for more-reliable ways to discover knowledge and eager to forge new kinds of collaborations to do so. Our first project had a budget of zero, and we attracted scores of fellow scientists with two tweets and a Facebook post."

It would be great to see collaborative platforms for the scientific community grow in popularity and give rise to more valid, vetted research findings.

</comment><comment><USER3> The research here is interesting, but the title seems odd for the content. A consensus of researchers found either no results of racism (which are often unpublished) or results with the similar meaning (that race was a factor). In a research paper, rather than media echo chambers, methods are generally clear to their intended audience. To me, the finding indicate that research is functioning correctly.</comment>


Liquid Robotics launches new generation of wave glider ocean robots - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/08/liquid-robotics-launches-new-generation-of-wave-glider-ocean-robots

<comment><USER2> Wow, 300000 dollars for the new one, they are not getting cheaper. We had a talk with them once because we specialize in networks/groups of robots, but with that price tag it wasn't straightforward to go that route in our opinion.

I am curious how many they sold! I hope they will fare well, because it's a fantastic product.

</comment><comment><USER3> Three-hundred large for a _model boat_? To me, it looks like a $3k boat that should be (over)priced at $30k.

Maybe that is 'retail' and they'll knock fifty-grand off and sell it for the bargain price of a quarter-of-a-million dollars!

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing you're paying for the reliability and range. Does the price include sensor suites? Those are usually big ticket items.

Also, since these are autonomous, a crew is not necessary. You also save $ on fuel. I imagine the boat's cost savings pay for itself.</comment></comment>


A Brief Year History of Manned Spaceflight - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/04/human_spaceflight?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/reachingforthestars

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Only 50 years, and look at how fast we have progressed in experience and knowledge. Imagine a 100 years from now...</comment>


How do bank payments actually work? - <AUTHOR> https://getmondo.co.uk/blog/2016/01/20/how-do-bank-payments-work/ <comment><USER3> I was just complaining to my wife about this earlier this morning (we are in the US).

I made a credit card payment last Thursday (1/14) in the mid morning, maybe 9:45 AM. Ideally this should happen pretty quickly, but I know in the US the infrastructure just doesn't match my current expectations. Seemingly there was zero movement until my credit account was credited the payment Friday afternoon, but the money was still in my checking account (no holds or pending transactions).

The weekend goes by, no movement. Monday (a bank holiday) comes and goes, as does Tuesday. I get a text message early this morning (~6:45 AM) that there was a large withdrawal from my checking account - the payment showed up! Nearly three full business days before the money was actually moved, and as of right now it's still a pending transaction.

The cynic in my wants to think that it's so people who don't pay attention to their finances are more likely to overdraw/double-spend the money, but part of me thinks it's just because the US infrastructure around banking and payments is so old it just isn't capable of anything approaching real time transactions. I would love to see a logistical/technical explanation of why it takes so long for this type of thing in the US.

<comment><USER4> I've asked bankers at the branch about this before and received a vague answer about how they need time to verify things, but I strongly suspect they were just non-technical and didn't know.

<comment><USER5> I don't know how current it is but back in the 90's when I was dealing with technical issues with payments at UBS (UBS was a big Sun purchaser) one of their bankers described bank transfers as a giant exercise in "liability hot potato". Which is to say that at each step of the way the person receiving the funds was trying to avoid becoming liable for them until they were really certain they had them in an account somewhere, and people sending funds wanted to be absolutely sure the destination had accepted liability for the funds before they were willing to release them. Because when it went wrong, they ended up liable for funds they no longer had. And he suggested that there were people that tried to make that true (basically stealing from the system) and that it happened enough to be priced into the transaction fees.

The amount of money that was flowing on a daily business through the bank was staggering.

<comment><USER4> Given the crowd on HN I'm surprised there isn't at least one person chiming in that works on these backend bank systems.

<comment><USER6> I've worked on those systems and there's not much more to say, the hot potato analogy is pretty much a perfect description.

<comment><USER4> What protocols and software stacks do they use? How are they networked? What are the steps in the verification process? What prevents it from being able to work in real time? Where is this type of information formally recorded? I had a hard time turning it up. For such a critical and prolific infrastructure it's unusually opaque.

<comment><USER7> I once worked with an ACH system where the transactions were in a txt file on a Windows box that was, IIRC, copied over ZMODEM after a dialup modem connection was opened to whatever the other party was (bank? processor? I don't know). Obviously, given the liability involved, I never messed around with it. But I always wondered what would happen if some amount was different than expected. One would hope there's all kinds of verification going on, but I kind of doubt it.

This was only 10 years ago.

<comment><USER8> When I worked at a data center for a bank, we had basically the exact setup you are describing. Part of my responsibilities was to take note of the amount that came through via ACH on that Windows machine (Windows 3.11 actually... this was in 2001) and enter it into a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, along with totals which I got from reports that ran after the days batch processing completed, and make sure they balanced. If they didn't balance, I had to go hunting and pray that I simply transposed a number or typoed something along the way... if I did not, I honestly don't know what happened. I had to call one of the other employees to come in and orchestrate getting it fixed. (I was alone at the data center, which consisted of a mainframe and a handful of PCs... probably an order of magnitude smaller than what you would picture if I just say 'data center') Luckily, it happened very very rarely. Maybe a handful of times in the 4 years I worked there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Source: I one of the elected tech-reps on the The Faster Payment Task Force,a Fed-chartered initiative to create a real-time improved bank transfer system, like the one in the UK. I also work at Dwolla, a payment platform that has exclusively focused on modernizing the backend ACH system for over 5 years, as well as created our own real-time system for banks (See: FiSync).

There's a lot of good, and bad, information here. It's all impossible to tackle, so I'm going to point to the good things the US has going for it. (Worth getting other Fed Fast members and doing an AMA? Let me know):

1) As many mentioned, Same-Day ACH is coming (slowly but surely). Although not real-time, it will be a helpful stopgap as more real-time systems come online at financial institutions (see: #3). Combined with new Payment API Platforms, like Dwolla, many of us are enabling meaningful access and adding flexibility to an otherwise outdated platform. This will position platforms to take advantage of these new timeframes when they start arriving late 2016 and 2017. 2) The major ACH operators, The Federal Reserve and the bank-owned The Clearing House, are both making significant investments in their tech stack to enable real-time capabilities (The Fed just inked a $17M deal with IBM to update their software and capabilities, and TCH signed a deal with UK Faster Payments Provider, VocaLink). 3) The Faster Payment Task Force is an unprecedented market-led initiative, which despite all odds, that actually making meaningful progress on aligning the criteria and expectations for an interoperable real-time system. This is HUGE. Imagine cramming +300 lifelong competitors, embattled legal adversaries, entrenched interests, and long- standing rivalries in one room to debate the future of a trillion dollar landscape. Now imagine them to agreeing to create a better system. And I'm not just talking about improvements in speed, but better security, flexibility, and capabilities that could enable the next wave of commerce. Keep your eyes on [https://fedpaymentsimprovement.org/](https://fedpaymentsimprovement.org/), big news is coming in the next few weeks.

<comment><USER8> You've made me terribly jealous of the UK. I'm in the US and see our current situation with regard to money transfer as an extremely dangerous one. Aside from the annoyance of money transfers needing to go through a bank, the fact that payment networks charge a PERCENTAGE drives me mad. It does not cost more to move a larger number over the wire. There is no justification whatsoever in charging a fee which gets larger when more money changes hands. And as more and more of our economy moves away from cash and toward payments that flow through these networks that skim percentages, we are quickly getting to a point where banks and credit card companies are getting to skim a percentage off of each and every single transaction that ever takes place in our entire economy. That is madness. We are setting them up as de-facto tax collectors, with the ability to levy and collect taxes with no public involvement. People fought wars over that in the past.

I've had an account with Dwolla for ages, and absolutely love what they provide. Flat fee money transfer. It saddens me that I can't use Dwolla everywhere. Are the advances in the ACH system going to do away with fees that include a percentage component? I would be very surprised if banks simply decided to voluntarily step back from a system that will enable them to have more control over the US economy than the federal government (there are many tax-free transactions in our economy that the banks will still get to 'tax' with their transfer fees, giving them more control).

Most people probably don't realize what a herculean effort you are involved in. During college I worked in a data center for a bank as a mainframe operator (this was 1997-2001), and processing the ACH data was one of my responsibilities. The system the bank used was an NCR mainframe. It was so old that during my time there, the company (it was actually a separate company from the bank for some reason) received a call and was told that the only other organization in the country still running that model of mainframe, a restaurant in North Carolina, was getting rid of it and would give it to us for free if we would haul it away. We setup a Disaster Recovery system with it. I left the data center shortly before graduating college, and the bank was being acquired by a larger bank which was going to bring all of the processing into their own data center. However, about a decade later I ran into my old boss and learned that the transition never happened. Moving away from that ancient mainframe was apparently deemed too problematic/expensive so it persisted. I would not be surprised if that mainframe was still running the show for half a dozen bank branches, with its antiquated tape drives (the kind where the tape is a big reel, 9-track I think, like the things you see in films of mainframes from the 1960s). Banks are, as far as I understand it, the pinnacle of 'if its working, don't upgrade it'. My hats off to you sir for being involved with trying to move us forward!

<comment><USER10> >> Are the advances in the ACH system going to do away with fees that include a percentage component?

Didn't Stripe just debut ACH that had (admittedly an initial percentage based) pricing capped at $5? They have a $10,000 limit per payment, so maybe you that's not high enough for what you're talking about, but it does seem like things will move that way.

I will say, the higher the dollar amount, it seems like there is an increasing fraud/risk component that while not costing any more money to send/receive, needs to be considered and paid for by someone.

<comment><USER9> We live in a capitalist country where no endeavor willl be undertaken without some vision for profitability. This is fair. Stakeholders in the new system, the ones that put up the money to build and support the system (Financial Institutions, providers, etc), will need to find a way to compensate themselves for their investment and prove to their share holders the fiduciary value of doing so.

From there, there are three factors that will most influence pricing.

1) Scale: how many transactions the system as a whole will process? We're all familiar with Wires and how expensive they're compared to ACH. That's because they don't have the critical mass or number of transaction ACH does. The more transactions on the system, the less financial burden the system has to assess on the end-users. 2) Market forces: How providers will price their services all depends on the market and their target customers. You mention stripe's percentage model, that's their business decision. Dwolla, a counterpoint, offers a flat fixed monthly model. The intelligence that formed the pricing models is what makes the free market so powerful. 3) Fraud: How this system mitigates fraud (through tokenization, improved fraud sharing among participants, better authorization practices, etc.) will greatly influence how much financial burden is passed on to us, the consumer. Good news is that we're starting over. LOTS OF POTENTIAL HERE!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Regarding international payments, I dug into this a little one day out of curiosity and ended up here: [https://www.frbservices.org/eventseducation/education/fedwir...](https://www.frbservices.org/eventseducation/education/fedwire_chips_swift_format_info.html) The PDFs on that page appear to show you precisely how the XML messages that conduct the transfers are formatted

There's some interesting stuff I couldn't get to here [https://www2.swift.com/uhbonline/books/hub/httoc.htm](https://www2.swift.com/uhbonline/books/hub/httoc.htm)

And some other interesting stuff covering these standards [http://project.i20022.com/the-standard](http://project.i20022.com/the- standard) [http://www.c24.biz/c24-io-standards-financial-messaging- libr...](http://www.c24.biz/c24-io-standards-financial-messaging-libraries)

<comment><USER11> Cross-border payments are more definitely more interesting. There's a lot of complexity that is outside the scope of the standards - research correspondent (nostro/vostro) accounts and cash management, for instance.

Basically, you need to find a path from your bank to the target bank account through the _cheapest_ path of intermediary banks that factors into account fees charged along the path, expected daily transfers at that bank, the payment's impact on liquidity and interest rates of cash left on books in a particular account at a particular time of day vs. alternative options.

<comment><USER12> The thing about international wire payments is you never know what you will receive. I send out an invoice for X and I get some seemingly random value less than X. My bank can't tell me why - the best I can get out of them is some intermediate bank along the way took out some fee. It makes it a nightmare to match up an invoice with a payment.

If you wanted to exploits this effect for fun and profit you could always deduct $50 to $100 from every invoice you pay and the recipient would just assume it was some intermediate bank fee.

<comment><USER11> Switch banks? If your bank is using SWIFT, the MT103 message has fields to track this information (fields 71F and 71G) and validations to ensure the fields are populated correctly (i.e. 32A and 33B must reflect 71F and 71G correctly). Any decent bank should be able to display the originating payment instruction details for a given cross-border payment ledger entry. (I've implemented SWIFT processing fees for cross-border payments.)

<comment><USER12> Well it is a little more difficult here in Australia. I have asked a few times and the only way they can provide me with the data is to do a trace which they charge me $50 for doing. Paying $50 extra to learn that some bank took out a fee is not too helpful. I more wish I could stop it happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I never thought I'd say this, but banks in the UK are actually pretty good. Over the last few years I've lived in a few different countries and banks just dont compare.

In the UK you can open a bank account for free, with no minimum balance and no stupid charges (i.e. ATM withdrawals, even at your own bank).

<comment><USER14> In comparison to where I'm from(Poland), UK banks seem to be stuck in middle ages and it's infuriating.

\- cannot get two separate cards for the same account(unless it's a joint account). Why would I want to? I'll explain in a second. In Poland I have a visa debit + mastercard debit cards for the same account.

\- the cards have a limit of 300 pounds for ATM withdrawals. There is not way to change that limit, I've asked at a few banks and that's just what it is, even in an emergency. With my Polish bank, I can log in online and change it on their website - I can set it to any amount, 100k a day if I want to. I used my Polish card to withdraw few thousand pounds out of an ATM in UK and it worked fine(the ATM itself had a limit of 400 pounds per transaction but I just used it a few times and it worked fine). I can also set a separate limit for internet transactions - which is why I have two cards. One card that I carry with me all the time but which has 0 limit on internet transactions, and another card which always stays at home but which has 0 limit on ATM and over the counter transactions. If someone steals the card that is on me they can't use it on the internet, and if someone steals the card at home they can't use it to withdraw cash or to pay for stuff.

\- No ability to see pending transactions online on my debit cards until they clear. This one is absolutely crazy to me. How can I know if someone hasn't stolen my money if I can't see pending transactions? The only way to do that is to call the bank. As far as I know, only lloyds shows pending transactions online, Barclays had it as a "suggestion" for ages now.

\- Credit cards. In Poland, I apply for a certain limit when applying for a card and I either get it or I don't. In UK, you apply for a card, have to sign all the documents for the card, and only after the card arrives I can see what sort of limit was given me. If I don't like it, there's nothing I can do - well, I could ring the bank and ask, but they don't have to increase it. I could close the account and apply somewhere else but that negatively impacts my credit score, what a nightmare.

\- can't change the pin for my card online.

\- most UK banks won't send any of my documents to a foreign address even if I ask for "security reasons" but my Polish banks sends all theirs to my UK address no problem.

<comment><USER15> > \- can't change the pin for my card online.

I can't see a way for a chip card's PIN to be updated online, without physical access to the card.

<comment><USER14> Well, I can change the pin for my Polish cards on my bank's online page, so I guess the pin must be validated with the bank's servers before allowing any transaction.

There's a screenshot of what it looks like on the website:

[http://i.imgur.com/p19315R.png](http://i.imgur.com/p19315R.png)

The third button from the top is "change pin"

<comment><USER16> Its not actually possible for this to work with a 'chip' card.

If your polish card has a chip and you change the pin online, there is a slight chance the change wont register. Many ATMs don't send a request to check the pin/they check the pin stored on the chip.

This is why you have to be physically present at an ATM to change the pin.

So if you change the pin, and say go out of Poland and use it somewhere else, without using it in Poland first, it would say the PIN is incorrect.

This risk might be why it is not readily available with UK banks.

<comment><USER14> Well, I know that it definitely, absolutely works while abroad. How do I know? Because the cards from that bank don't arrive with a pin. You don't get two envelopes, one with the card another with a pin - it's just the card, then you have to go online, log in, activate the card and set the pin. I've had new cards delivered to my UK address, activated them online and they worked in the UK without any problem(without ever being used in Poland first). So maybe there is something on the chip, some variable saying "always check the pin with server"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There was a discussion a couple of years ago around how ACH works. ACH is the dominant system of money transfer in the US and takes 2-5 business days on average for a transfer, compared to the real-time systems in many other countries.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7636066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7636066)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm disappointed there isn't a guy moving a small gold coin from one vault to another at the central bank every time I buy something with my debit card. "looks like bob is getting drunk on cheap beer at the local pub again. If he'd just order a bottle of wiskey instead I wouldnt have to run back and forth all damn night. Maybe id get to go home and see my kids for once"

<comment><USER19> This is actually how it works (or did work, recalling the stories of gold manager at a bank) when central banks move gold deposited from one bank (usually other central banks, not necessarily) to another. The gold bar is moved from one pile or trolley to another. The clipboard list is updated, and the daily tally is done at the end of the day to make sure nothing's been done incorrectly.

Banks in stressed/developing countries may do cash transactions with each other where there are issues of trust.

And then to abstract it a bit, there's the cash van moving money deposited at larger, more trusted banks, to smaller commercial banks that have more business customers (again, a much bigger differentiation in banking business in developing/emerging countries), creating a long term net flow of cash (but, if the commercial banks hopefully don't go bankrupt) not of money as credits come electronically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the main reason is all seems pretty stupid is because the system, even within one country, is so f'n goddamn huge with a lot of legacy stuff in it, that bad UX is just inevitable, rather than being incompetent.

But an exception to incompetence is the EMV's decision in the U.S. to transition from swipe & sign, to chip & sign, and later (2018?) to chip & PIN. That really is just stupid. In the U.S. my debit card I never sign for whether chip or swipe, I always use PIN. In Europe, that same card when swiped I'm asked for PIN, if I use the chip it wants sign! WTF?

The delays of ACH seem less between friends at least if you use Venmo or Google Wallet since that's effectively private currency (within that system) and then only periodically use a "sweep" action if that balance gets higher than you want.

<comment><USER8> Do you happen to know if when the US gets chip and PIN it's also going to put the responsibility for fraud on the consumer when the PIN is used?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Swedish equivalent to Paym, called Swish, has been really successful. Probably an interesting case to study for those trying to create the next Paypal.

<comment><USER22> The reason Swish is successful is because it is owned and maintained by 6 Swedish banks [1]. So the payments network - the hard part - was already in place. The banks just had to brand the app in an attractive way, offer discounts/promotions to get user adoption, and provide good UX/UI.

I doubt we'll see a new Paypal until there is a new marketplace (Ebay) on a new communications medium (internet) that attracts enough users that a new solution needs to be created to deal with it.

[1] [http://ecommercenews.eu/swedish-banks-want-use-swish- ecommer...](http://ecommercenews.eu/swedish-banks-want-use-swish-ecommerce/)

<comment><USER23> Ok, all you need is a good platform, a good brand, good marketing and a nice app? So you're basically saying that the reason Swish is successful is that they are doing a good job and deliver a good product?

<comment><USER22> I'm saying that they did not have to build a payments network from scratch, or convince the largest banks in the country to provide APIs for their platform, which would have been the hardest part of launching a similar product as a private company or individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good article. I'd like more technical details, especially security related, as some pretty hard problems must have been solved to implement such system where every error or vulnerability might costs tons of money. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER25> Disclaimer: I work at Mondo and am the one implementing the way we talk to our agency bank.

How it actually works is theres a Message Queue (IBM MQ) that is connected over dedicated lines (MPLS or point to point, but not over the internet).

Each side uses a couple of layers of Crypto, including using Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to actually encrypt and sign the messages.

The crypto signatures also have legal standing in a sense, if the message is valid and signed then the counter party or agency bank is authorised to process it.

<comment><USER11> Banks are full of great lessons in system design that extend past the realm of purely technical solutions. They regularly make cost vs. risk trade-offs that make technical people nervous, for example, straight-through processing of low value payments with the expectation that material fraud can be detected through regular analysis/reconciliation/auditing and dealt with out of band.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In Canada we have something called an Interact E-Transfer that the major banks all support. You add a recipients email address and create a "secret question" they can answer. Then, you simply fill our a form that says "Send $X From Account Y to Recipient Z". Depending on the bank the email is sent between 0-60 minutes later, the recipient clicks the link, logs in, and picks which account to deposit it to. The whole process is super easy to use.

Most banks charge about $1 per Interact E-Transfer, but some accounts will get a certain number of free transfers.

With all that being said, I just received an email from TD Canada Trust (One of the major banks) stating that they are now imposing a $5 fee to cancel an E-Transfer (previously free). I can't remember the last time I cancelled an E-Transfer, but I'm still most likely going to close all my accounts with them over it. I find it absolutely outrageous that they would charge you $5 to cancel a completely automated process. The only explanation I can think of is to nickle and dime their customers.

<comment><USER27> In the Netherlands I take my phone and send money to friends, companies, tax services etc, for free in about 15 seconds... arrives within minutes usually. Then there's iDeal which is nice, too.

Creditcard payments are a different story, also pretty quick but not as seamless, and not as popular either. I only have a CC to buy some stuff from other countries, or when I leave the continent although my regular debitcard worked in 4 different continents so far, too... Tbh my CC is pretty much collecting dust.

<comment><USER28> In 15 seconds? Between which banks is that?

My experience is quite different, sending from Rabobank to ABN AMRO seems to take a few hours. From Rabobank to ING at least a day. From Rabobank to a bank in Ecuador is usually faster (within 30 minutes), but not reliably so.

<comment><USER29> Transfers between ABN accounts are effectively instant, one to three seconds before the money pops up on the recipients account in the app.

Even abroad (South America) I still see my debit payments a few seconds after completing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All the fast payment systems outside the US are Government-run. In the US, online payments are run by private enterprise. The US doesn't have enough socialism for this to work.

The US Fed has been pushing for faster payment processing, but the big banks don't want it.

<comment><USER31> The system listed in the article is also run by a private company in the UK, Vocalink. The government isn't involved in it.

Systems in most non US countries are run by associations run by the banks. More examples include APCA (Australia), PASA (South Africa).

Not too sure where the socialism comes in.

In the US there is also Fedwire, which works in real time. It just costs a bit more.

<comment><USER30> The UK system is now private, but the Payments Council, which set it up, was sort of a quango. The UK has a history of organizations which are semi-private but have close ties to the government.

<comment><USER32> > The UK has a history of organizations which are semi-private but have close > ties to the government.

That statement applies to the US as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The transaction limit has recently been raised to £250,000 per payment"

So what happens if you want to send more? Do you need to make a personal trip to the bank or is there some other system in place?

<comment> jon-wood You can still do it electronically, it'll just take more than a few minutes as it has to run through the bank's daily reconciliation process. That's probably OK though, I doubt many people have the need to transfer > £250,000 and the entirety to be available immediately.

<comment><USER33> Actually it can be quite stressful waiting for the transfer when buying a house!

<comment><USER7> In the US, anyway, I had to do such big transfers via wire transfer, and while it happens (almost) immediately, you have to catch the 10am or 11am (Pacific) deadline, depending on the bank, or else you're waiting another whole day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> India uses something similar – IMPS. [http://www.npci.org.in/aboutimps.aspx](http://www.npci.org.in/aboutimps.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER35> This type of system looks like somewhere that a blockchain could be genuinely useful.

Each of the trusted banks could be given access to the blockchain (rather than needing proof-of-work) and it would work as a distributed ledger without the need for VocaLink as a trusted intermediary.

Of course the question is how the costs of running VocaLink compare to those of running a blockchain type system.

<comment><USER36> While bitcoin is very small compared to banks and credit cards, at this point it is definitely cheaper to send bitcoin than to send Visa money. How it would work if that blockchain was scaled to the level of VocaLink I have no idea about.

<comment><USER37> No, in terms of the overall cost of operation of the system, bitcoin is most definitely not cheaper. Transaction costs paid by the users are low because of the inflation subsidy paid out to the miners.

In terms of overall costs, the bitcoin mining network alone (i.e., ignoring the cost associated with running all the full nodes, the underlying network and so on) costs $1MM per day to process a measly 100k transactions.

<comment><USER38> The cost to secure the system is orthogonal to the cost of processing transactions and rises and lowers proportional to coin price, providing a level of security commensurate with the market value of the thing secured.

The cost per transaction is simply a function of the rate limiter that is attached to Bitcoin. Bitcoin could secure many more transactions per second if the rate limiter was removed.

> a measly 100k transactions

As I type this the network is averaging ~12000 txns per hour, or 288,000 per day, FWIW.

<comment><USER39> 12,000 transactions per hour translates to 200 transactions per minute or 3 per second. However, you're being generous here because what you're suggesting is what it currently does at best, when in reality it is anywhere between 1 and 3 transactions per second, meaning that it is doing anything between 86,400 and 288,000 per day--that's a large spread.

Visa claims it can do 2,000 transactions per second or 172,800,000 per day and Paypal suggests its maximum is 115 per second or 9,936,000 total per day [1]. At best, Bitcoin is able to handle 3% of the volume that Paypal is able to and it doesn't even register as a blip when compared to a single major credit card.

If we continue to read the link I cited for those numbers, we get these details:

>Let's assume an average rate of 2000tps, so just VISA. Transactions vary in size from about 0.2 kilobytes to over 1 kilobyte, but it's averaging half a kilobyte today.

>That means that you need to keep up with around 8 megabits/second of transaction data (2000tps * 512 bytes) / 1024 bytes in a kilobyte / 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte = 0.97 megabytes per second * 8 = 7.8 megabits/second.

>This sort of bandwidth is already common for even residential connections today, and is certainly at the low end of what colocation providers would expect to provide you with.

If we were to expect that everyone was to get onboard the blockchain, we would have to assume that we're all going to start sucking up 0.97 MB per second, or about 82 GB a day. This would mean that in a month, one would use just about 2.5 TB of bandwidth. If the average residential user were to want to transfer 2.5 TB for just a blockchain (ignoring modern life's pleasures like Netflix and other streaming services), you'd have to find an Internet service that would not impose a usage cap. As it stands with Comcast, if you exceed 300 GB, you'll get charged $10 USD for every 50 GB you use [2], meaning that a month's worth of transactions will cost you just about $450 on top of what you already pay for the privilege of having access to a blockchain.

This doesn't even take into account that transactions are replayed once confirmed so those numbers could end up even higher if the whole protocol isn't changed. Heck, I am not even taking storage into account which is a different problem all together.

The idea that blockchains are going to be the future is pure lunacy. It's either going to be limited to data centres that can handle this load or it's not going to be used at all. It has no future for the general public and is part of the reason why Bitcoin in itself is not practical.

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability) \- Bitcoin's "official" wiki backs this up

[2] [https://bgr.com/2015/11/19/comcast-data-cap-2015-bad-for- us-...](https://bgr.com/2015/11/19/comcast-data-cap-2015-bad-for-us-all/)

<comment><USER38> First off, the numbers I cited were not theoretical, they were the observed network run rate at the time I posted.

Secondly, Bitcoin doesn't have to scale up to Visa levels, at least not in 2016. In 2016, it just has to scale up. And there's plenty of room to scale up.

Bitcoin has a growth plan that subsidizes the expansion of the network (via inflation and adoption) for many more decades. In two decades, the Moore's Law equivalent of a 1MB block size is a 16GB block size. Even without additional scalability, Bitcoin can process a lot of transactions with 16GB blocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Net settlement is used because it's more efficient - it only requires a few > hundred entries in the Bank of England's ledgers each day for potentially > millions of payments.

Not a very compelling reason... storage is cheap!

<comment><USER41> Storage isn't the only consideration when comparing 'millions' of transactions to 'hundreds'.

<comment><USER42> The banks still have to process millions of payments between them.

But they also have to process the BoE payments - which is an added overhead.

The only real benefit is confidence, because the BoE effectively acts as escrow for all parties. So no one has to worry that settlement won't happen.

From the user's POV, it's not a bad system. It's vastly better than the situation ten years ago, when you literally had to wait a week for a cheque to clear - because the receiver had to validate it, and then post it back by snail mail to the originator.

However, some transactions still use that system. I recently closed a savings account and could only transfer the money by physically taking a cheque from one bank to another, and waiting a week.

Basic transaction processing should really be part of the national (international?) infrastructure. It would be hugely beneficial to all kinds of businesses to have a simple, secure publicly available service for moving money around, at all scales from microtransactions to many millions - <USER2> linked to a free no-credit-offered cash account for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This reminds me a bit of Prudio [http://www.prudio.com/](http://www.prudio.com/) Saw that project on the old assembly site (was a cool idea).

</comment><comment><USER44> Anyone who doubts why something like Bitcoin would be of use in banking should read the part about net settlement and counter party risk.

This article describes the system for moving money within one country but similar mechanisms exist for moving money internationally. Imagine the counter party risk involved between banks who are governed by different central banks in different countries half way around the world. Bitcoin removes the counter party risk in transfers by making settlement instant per transaction instead of net daily settlement in traditional banking.

The reason this is important is that these transfers revolve around credit and when there is a banking crisis and everyone suspects everyone else's credit worthiness then payment systems can break down.

<comment><USER45> The security problem in a Bitcoin world is real though: The "instant" settlement is equally instantaneous, and equally non reversible, when someone has access to a private key. At the same time, if I lose the key, the coins are gone.

So instead of being afraid of everyone else's credit worthiness, we now need Fort Knox level security, and any breach of said security means losing everything, permanently. It's like keeping savings inside a mattress, except people can use automated to try to hack into everyone's mattresses.

You can have a different opinion of course, but seeing how even Bitcoin exchanges get hacked all the time, it seems to me that the traditional banking system is far less risky.

<comment><USER44> The difference is you have no control over counter party risk you can only choose to accept it or not. You can do a a lot of simple things to prevent your Bitcoin from being stolen. The security problem with Bitcoin is largely a myth boosted by people and companies that were paying little to no attention to security or who were outright dishonest. People who kept their Bitcoins on deposit with exchanges. didn't own Bitcoin they put themselves in a position of being a Bitcoin creditor of an exchange.

<comment><USER11> Regularly improving regulatory requirements protect the average person on the street from the majority of material risks. Cryptocurrencies have no such protection.

Banking systems were not forced on the world; they evolved to solve real problems, and continue to evolve. It's is unreasonable to dismiss the structure of these institutions without a deeper discussion considering the reasons for complexity and where the industry is headed.

I believe that cryptocurrencies may present some improvement in the status quo at some point in the future, but not until there is more regulation (through government and/or through private contracts enforceable by civil law).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Sadly, uptake of Paym has been slow.

I don't think this is very sad. I don't use Paym. I think account number + sort code is easy enough to deal with and doesn't need to be changed.

<comment><USER47> My friends know my mobile number. When they want to send me money, then I have to give them my sort code and account number. Having a mapping from mobile number to account credentials seems sensible to me.

I'm set up on PayM, but no one else seems to use it.

<comment><USER48> I love it, but find it takes around the same amount of effort to send money by PayM as it does to send it by regular bank transfer to somebody already set up in my mobile banking app (my main use case is usually sending smallish amounts of cash to my kids, like a modern-day Al Bundy). PayM could do with a really nice streamlined app of its own, rather than being buried deep within each of my banks' own apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> By the way, Mondo are doing a hack weekend this weekend and i'll be attending, if anyone else on HN is, please shoot me a mail (see profile).

</comment><comment><USER50> Do we have something like FPS in Australia?

<comment><USER51> End of next year we should have NPP([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Payments_Platform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Payments_Platform))

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> So everything seems to go back to money in accounts at the bank of England. Where does that "money" come from? How are there non-zero balances there? What stops someone at BoE from just changing a balance?

I guess changing an account balance without a corresponding transaction would make automated checks (accounting verification) fail. But then we get back to the question of how any money got in the system in the first place.

<comment><USER53> The banks using the system pay money into their BoE accounts if their transactions add up to a net outflow.

<comment><USER54> No. If their transactions add up to a net outflow, banks _use_ the money that is _already_ in their BoE accounts to make transactions in favour of the BoE accounts of _other_ banks or the FPS (those where the net outflow went to).

Since this does not change the total amount of money at BoE accounts, it does not affect the parent's question about where that money originally came from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The US ACH system is actually what killed bitcoin as a currency fwiw.

It's like the system acting in self-defense

<comment><USER8> You mean that's what made it so hard to get into bitcoin in the first place, preventing its wider adoption? I know when I originally bought some bitcoin (back when it was ~$3/btc) it took WEEKS. The US govt hadn't yet said 'we won't kill you if you follow the rules and work as a money-handling institution' so I had to create an account with Dwolla (badass service that needs to see more adoption), which required the 3-day wait to verify my bank account, then transfer money into the Dwolla account, which took another 3 days, then transfer from Dwolla to the exchange (MtGox but I luckily did not let MtGox hold my coins).

Not too long ago, there were companies formed that used bitcoins faster payment clearing to offer faster processing to some sort of trading companies, I remember reading about their IPO. That was before the time for bitcoin transactions to clear started growing significantly... according to an article I found on HN a week or so ago, that's what's going to finally kill off bitcoin. Due to not increasing the block size, either wait times or processing fees will keep growing steeply.</comment></comment>


Yanis Varoufakis' first interview since resigning - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece <comment><USER3> The issue with Greece is that they were given money and they did not change anything, they just kept spending. Giving them more money is just going to delay the inevitable - they will go bankrupt, full stop. They don't produce enough of "what people want", plus they spend more than they can afford to, and that's that. The real problem is that the Eurozone has no mechanism to deal with bankrupt. There should be an easy way out of the Eurozone or an "easy" way to default. Italy will follow Greece, sooner or later, maybe Portugal and who knows, even France. We have to deal with the fact we have broken public spending all around Europe and that will catch up, if not now, in 5, 10, 15 or so years. But markets adapt to this king of stuff, they will soon build default risks in their prices and demand higher interests, on the other end, when a country default, we will be able to leave the loss to the private sector and not to the tax payers, which is the real shame in all this story.

<comment><USER4> "The issue with Greece is that they were given money and they did not change anything, they just kept spending."

I don't understand why this is repeated again and again.

The reality has nothing to do with that. Greece has implemented austerity policies that no other country in Europe has implemented. Compared to the American big depression, they have lived for a longer period of time with worse economic conditions.

The recipes coming from the Troika has been implemented and the result is that they are in a deeper hole. So they say "now what?" and the answer is "keep digging".

I am amazed how brainwashed is the public opinion.

And about where the money is going, I recommend reading this: [http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6013.html](http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6013.html)

<comment><USER3> Where do you see the austerity: [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/government- spending-t...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/government-spending-to- gdp)

?

Public spending of GDP was 46.9% in 2008 and 49.3% in 2014.

Really, the brainwash is probably on the other side. Everybody talks about austerity, yet public spending has been growing steadily after WW II pretty much everywhere, even after 2008.

<comment><USER5> Their GDP has contracted massively since austerity was introduced. Look at Euro's spent and the government cuts are pretty clear.

[http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=greecegovspe&d1=200...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=greecegovspe&d1=20000101&d2=20151231&h=300&w=600&ref=/greece/government- spending')

<comment><USER3> Well, 3 things. First, to define austerity, you need to use ratios, absolute values make comparisons impossible and 49.3% of public spending on GDP is _not_ austerity, by any means. Second, the graph you linked shows similar level of spending as 2001 and I am not aware of any austerity claims during that year in Greece. Third, how much public spending do you want? 60/70% of GDP? Because that's what it takes to keep the same level of spending as 2007/8\. Do you think that's reasonable? More than half of the economy managed by a (very corrupted) State?

<comment><USER6> The generally accepted theory of economics these days is that, as a nation's economy hits a downturn, the government should spend _more_ , not less. Not "more as a higher percentage of GDP" \- GDP is shrinking. No, the theory is, the government should spend more in absolute terms.

That's the theory. The theory could be stupid if too much government debt is what caused the downturn in the first place.

And the theory usually breaks in this way: There is a downturn. The government spends more. The economy picks back up eventually. The government continues to spend more. That means, to have any effect, at the next downturn, the government has to spend even _more_. And that eventually gets you to the situation stated in the previous paragraph.

<comment><USER3> I think you guys should read Schumpeter. There is no economist sane (or honest) in his mind proposing to do more random public spending when things go south. Think of it this way - if an economic downturn hits US, would you rather leave more money to ycombinator to invest in promising startups, or tax them more and use that money to "grow" the economy through public spending?

And let's be realistic, Greece is like Italy. An enormous proportion of the public spending goes to pay privileges (pensions that are too high, useless public jobs, useless buildings, etc.), do you really think that money will grow the economy? Don't you think it creates much more value if left to the private sector? Of course, you need a real private sector, with clear rules for everybody, and that's exactly what they don't want to do! You see the problem here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I (genuinely) do not understand: Greece had the choice to not accept the bailout. It was a hard and potentially dangerous choice, but the Greek people made it.

\- Why is Tsipras ignoring the people?

\- Why do people think the Greek government didn't have the choice (eg '#thisisacoup' on Twitter)? Just because it's a difficult choice doesn't mean the choice didn't exist.

<comment><USER8> I strongly believe that as Krugman pointed out, if Greece were to exit the EUR, Germany would have pushed for a Eurozone exit as well, probably issue some sort of embargo and made everything possible to made an example out of Greece. It already did actually.

I think that was the meeting all about: They told Tsipras that he either sign a deal or face oblivion one way or another.

Greece had no real allies.

The people in Greece made a choice last week and are ready to make many _difficult_ choices. The problem is that we (me and other citizens) are caught between the hammer and the anvil, on one side we have Europeans who don't care and on the other a corrupted government who doesn't want to take on anyone, oligarchs (ship-owners, tax-evaders, etc.). See my other comment above for details. (to be posted in a while).

<comment><USER9> > The problem is that we (me and other citizens) are caught between the hammer > and the anvil, on one side we have Europeans who don't care and on the other > a corrupted government who doesn't want to take on anyone, oligarchs (ship- > owners, tax-evaders, etc.).

So because you don't want to fix your government and continue the oligarchic corruption, the rest of Europe must pay? Please explain _why_ Germany should continue to pour money into Greece if, after five years of known problems, there are _still_ oligarchs and tax evaders there.

<comment><USER8> How do you propose fixing our current government when the oligarchs are strongly supported by the TROIKA[1]?

[1] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Christoforakos#Auslief...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Christoforakos#Auslieferungsverfahren)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Varoufakis said that Schäuble, Germany's finance minister and the architect of the deals Greece signed in 2010 and 2012, was "consistent throughout". "His view was 'I'm not discussing the programme – this was accepted by the previous [Greek] government and we can't possibly allow an election to change anything."

Well, Germany does know a little about bearing the debts of your predecessors on your shoulders.

<comment><USER11> Indeed Germanys' own attempts at managing the crippling debts imposed upon it, resulted in the Debt Relief it seems so disinclined to offer to others. Germany was once in Greeces' position - and would not have survived if it were not offered debt relief by the world - including Greece - when it needed it.

I find the duplicity in the public arguments rather distasteful. How easily the world forgets that Germany was once forgiven its debts.

<comment><USER10> I still don't see that as "in Greeces' position", unless you're really just focusing on the debt as a solitary data point without giving heed to the other circumstances. Bad loans and fiscal irresponsibility isn't really the same as the fallout from a war.

But that has been debated again and again before and is basically the center of the whole brouhaha: Germany's debtors back then thought that after the debt relief it would become financially stable on its own. And that doesn't seem to be the case now with Tsipras' Greece -- and Schäuble doesn't seem to be the only one with that opinion.

<comment><USER11> Germany had fought two wars and destroyed Europe. It did more damage to the world than Greece is doing - or has the potential to do - here and now. Bad loans and fiscal irresponsibility was very definitely a key factor in how Germany managed to get into that position - yet Germany was granted clemency and 50%+ of its debt was relieved. Its economy rebounded and it is now a major European power.

Why is this not good enough for the Greek people, who have not destroyed Europe in two major wars, have not enacted a hateful ideology across the lands? Certainly, there should be some 'punishment' for Greek fiscal dishonesty - certainly, there should be 'repercussions' for screwing around with the worlds' economy - but why do the punishments and repercussions not match the deed, relative to that granted the prosecutors of action (Germany) in this case?

The answer is: this is economic warfare. Germany is at it again, albeit this time with bad loans and unfair negotiation instead of blitzkrieg and racial cleansing. Much attention should be being paid to the un-yielding position of a country which should know better than to deny economic relief to a large citizenry who need it badly. This is, after all, the basis of Germanys' own "miraculous" recovery after it nearly destroyed the world.

Debt relief is the only answer, and in a just world - not one dominated and ruled by unelected authorities with illegal powers - this is what would be happening for the Greek people, and indeed all of Europe. But because people don't realize that Europe is ruled by an autocratic, fascist, unelected oligarchy, the correct action: letting the banks fail, and fail utterly - <USER2> not being done.

<comment><USER12> Fair enough.

Until when should Europe (Germany, France, etc) keep bailing out Greece. They did it for the last few years. The answer should not be "indefinitely". In fact, doing it more than 3 times is impossible... the trust is completely gone. After that, its just charity.

<comment><USER11> What does 'bailing out' mean to you - give Greece more loans? That is all that has happened - the hole was dug deeper. Debt relief is not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For better overview of current affair related to Greek crisis, may be read this [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-33503955](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33503955)

Above title is not title of the article. Mods please change?

</comment><comment><USER8> Greetings from Greece,

You have to understand that Greece is a very young country between that west and the east that was never modernized to the core. Renaissance came in Europe when Greece was ruled by the Ottoman empire. Indeed the cultural impact of the Ottoman empire is extremely strong here, although many people don't realize it. The moment a government different from PASOK and ND came to power, was a pivotal moment in Greece's "democratic" history (1974 and on). The population was ready for a change and tried to remove from the government everything the two other parties resembled: corruption, clientellism and injustice. A lack of a justice estate is the biggest problem in Greece. There's not even the hint of justice.

I voted for SYRIZA and I strongly supported the government until last Monday. After Varoufakis resignation I knew what to expect but did not wanted to believe that it was going to actually happen. Well it did in a spectacular way and I can't stress how disappointed I feel. No matter what Varoufakis says, SYRIZA lost the most important battle the first two months and that battle was with the local oligarchy. I will give you some prominent example of failure where it matters the most:

\- Rena Dourou, the SYRIZA MP who turned Mayor of Athens right before SYRIZA came to power, signed a contract with SIEMENS[1]. As far as I'm concerned, she was bribed, exactly the same way PASOK and ND were bribed in the past by SIEMENS.

\- Deputy Minister of Finance Nadia Valavani, announces that ship-owners won't be taxes because if they do, they will change flag(!). That's a spectacular U-Turn from a "left" government. Of course the statement did not hit the headlines in Greece because we occupy the 99th position at the Freedom press index.

\- The first thing Minister Lafazanis did were raise the salary of our national power company called "DEI". These guys (workers) get paid ~ 1.250 EUR, which is an extremely high salary for public workers. There are DOZENS of underpaid public servants. Hospitals are running out of syringes and cotton and this guy has the nerve to give a raise to an already highly paid group of people!!! The nerve!!!

\- All main private TV stations and newspapers in Greece operate with heavy losses. They are subsidized by the state and owned by the oligarchs who effectively keep in the check the government by controlling the (mis)information. Not one of them was taxed in since January. This is something that should had been done in the first week of governance. Right away.

SYRIZA tried to compromise and turn into a new corrupted PASOK with everyone, but apparently everyone kept spitting them in the face: The local oligarchy and the Troika at the same time. But IMHO their major failure was the lack of will to tackle our local oligarchy and bring at least a glimpse of justice and equality to our country. And you can blame Germany all you want abroad, but there's seriously no excuse for not taking action at home. NONE.

As far as the EU/ECB/IMF is concerned. Well, here Varoufakis is at fault: They SHOULD have prepare a Grexit, as smooth as possible, but they should be ready for a Grexit. They didn't (both Varoufakis and Tsipras) even ALLOW the public conversation to dig on the topic! It was dismissed as soon as someone hinted the idea. That's incredibly stupid from someone who is (because I believe he really is) as smart as Varoufakis.

The result is ridiculous, if not plainly tragic: We actually gave away sovereignty after holding a referendum. Tsipras probably expected the 'YES' vote to win by a large margin getting him effectively off the hook, but that did not happen and he found himself trapped because it's crystal clear that at any cost he does not want to manage a GREXIT but he is totally unfit to manage a third 'memoradum' which involves selling national assets to the best offerer.

SYRIZA IMHO is politically dead. The entire Greek parliament is totally out of sync with the Greek society. I'm extremely concerned about what the future will bring for my country. If Golden Dawn's percentages grow, I'll have to leave the country because I can't stand those people, but Greece today resemble very much pre-WW-2 Germany and the TROIKA resembles very much the winners of the first WW.

If you take anything from this long post is this: The Greeks, especially the young population, are ready to take any change that will made their life easier in the long term. But the troika has showed time and again that doesn't care about the population. They need a country to blame, do business with our oligarchs, recycle money through our banks and that's about it. The local oligarchs are even worse, so we're caught between the hammer and the anvil and I see no way through.

I don't know what to vote when the time comes, I don't even know if I wanna keep following politics at home since everything seems so desperate. Oh, my prediction is that Germany's obsessions are going to end the european project pretty soon. IMHO they already alienated far too many europeans and created a schism in Europe's population. Now the European governments are all singing like a chorus but these governments in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland, UK will IMHO soon be brought down.

Sorry for the long-long comment, farewell everyone!

[1] [http://ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_09/03/201...](http://ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_09/03/2015_548022)

<comment><USER14> That's the real tragedy in all this: not having any spark of hope. Unfortunately I'm not sure all the SYRIZA voters realize how bad they've been cheated. But that's history already. What from now? What can the humble Greek citizen hope, when all s/he gets from the leaders is finger-pointing but no real measures? I really hope the actual accord (for lack of anything else) will bring you some stability and you can find a party or something really representing the _working_ people and recognizing their needs, including the need to stick with the other Europeans. Yes, we'd very much like to keep you around, hopefully not with crooks as leaders (and only you alone can manage that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So how does Germany pull off that control? What gives it it's power?

<comment><USER16> Germany is the largest financial contributor to the bailout fund. It's power is the power to say "no more."

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-has-a-lot-to-lose-in- a-g...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-has-a-lot-to-lose-in-a-greek-euro- exit-1436205505)

<comment><USER15> So the evilness of Germany is not donating Billions of Euros? Evil is not what it used to be anymore...

<comment><USER16> What's more, the founding treaties of the EU make it illegal for one member state to assume the debts of another member state. And the "no bailout" clause was added exactly in response to Northern European concerns that they would eventually be responsible for the debt incurred by Southern Europe.

[http://www.cfr.org/world/eurozone-crisis-historical- legacy/p...](http://www.cfr.org/world/eurozone-crisis-historical- legacy/p22932)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ownbzwfyg-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ownbzwfyg-4)

</comment><comment><USER18> There seems to be a lot of resentment against Germany lately.

To offer an analogy, I see similar resentment against parents among adult children who are forced to live home. Most often, those adult children got in over their heads on some kind of loan, most often student loans, and they need their parents to "bail" them out. They go back home and the parents then set conditions on them again on how they are to conduct their lives. The condition that gets the most resentment among adult children is control of the adult children's finances.

Germany is the parent, Greece is the adult child, and the rest of Europe are siblings who are turning a blind eye because they are either out in the world making it or because they also require their parent to bail them out.

It's an economic union. Germany's economy dominates the region, so of course it will dominate the union.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well, let's see. Tax collections in Greece are at a little over 10% what's owed compared to 97.5% in Germany, deficit spending is astronomical, they have hardly any exports except for tomatoes and olives, have been using cheap credit to splurge for over a decade with no means of repaying their debts, and the so-called austerity was a farce in that it failed to achieve any significant improvement in their financial situation, or the goals they were meant to reach.

Greece was ranked the most corrupt nation in the EU. Greece has a thriving black economy which is unofficially at around 35% of the total economy. On top of that, Greece was understating their deficit figures for years. Their national debt stands at €340 billion today, give or take a few billion.

Interest rates for Greece hovered at around 18% before they had the Euro, and not many were willing to lend to them. Later, cheap abundant credit helped them increase state spending on pensions, jobs, and benefits, all with borrowed money, while barely being able to manage to pay the interest on their debts; this brought them great political mileage at the time.

Now that the payments are due, €45 billion has left Greece in Q1 of this year. On June 15 alone, banks saw cash outflows of €400 million - yes, that's in one day. Youth unemployment is at 50% and nearly a quarter of a million people have left Greece for good over the past five years.

Now most of the country is up for sale, right down to their public infrastructure, ports, and so on, with very few buyers.

Austerity amounts to little when the rot is systemic at this scale. Greece should have never been in the EU in the first place, and they would have retained the Drachma if they were truly interested in sustainable long term stability.

I feel for the Greek people, but a cheap bailout is absolutely not the solution to this problem today.

Greece was "set up"? Hardly. They set themselves up.

<comment><USER5> > _Tax collections in Greece are at a little over 10% what 's owed compared to > 97.5% in Germany_

This doesn't pass the sniff test. Greece has revenue around $120 billion. If they are only collecting 10% of owed taxes, that means they should be collecting $1.2 trillion, or about 5 times their GDP.

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/gr.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The current title is not the title of the article, it's a political statement from Yanis Varoufakis.

<comment><USER21> We changed the title from 'Eurogroup "completely and utterly" controlled by Germany, Greece was "set up"' (<\-- please do not editorialize in submission titles!) and changed the URL to the transcript of the interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Could a mod un-editorialize the title of this submission, please?

</comment><comment><USER23> Plan for Greece :

1) overthrow parliamentary regime 2) set up a democracy ancient athens style 3) round up professional politicians of all stripes, capitalist thieves (pleonasm), media whores and economists and put them at work in labor camps. 4) tell troika that they can shove the debt up their arses 5) ban money (instead create a resource-based economy) 6) epic win</comment>


Edward Way's Photos Capture Japan's Vending Machines Hiding in Plain Sight - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/life/2016/06/japans-vending-machines-hiding-in-plain-sight-edward-way/485333/ <comment><USER2> This is a definition of "hiding" with which I was previously unfamiliar.</comment>


What is Value? - <AUTHOR> http://patrickleahy.me/post/23534375869/what-is-value

<comment><USER2> what about games or any leisure activities? do they that no value?</comment>


Using Google Earth to Find an ISIS Training Camp - <AUTHOR> https://bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2014/08/22/gun-safety-self-defense-and-road-marches-finding-an-isis-training-camp/ <comment><USER2> It makes me super proud that he used Panoramio, a site I created 9 years ago. Nowadays with the prevalence of Google Street View is less useful than it used to be for this kind of stuff, but there are still places that the GSV guys have not (yet) covered.

<comment><USER3> Rachel Maddow, popular American talking head, mentioned this project and your site on her show tonight.

<comment><USER4> Popular where? I think I've heard her name once over the last year and I live in the SF bay area.

<comment><USER5> MSNBC, left-wing of fox's right-wing talking heads, approximately

except nobody watches MSNBC... Old people and conservatives watch TV, young people and liberals read the internet, leaving MSNBC a ghost town, in my estimation

<comment><USER6> I'm not in the US, don't ever watch MSNBC or Fox and I know who Maddow is just from political blog/story mentions.

I think the original commenter's point was that the project was mentioned to a large audience. Seems fairly accurate.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I didn't mean literally nobody, I just meant that compared to other markets MSNBC is fairly small so I can understand missing who Rachel Maddow is if you don't watch MSNBC or follow political blogs, shes not O'reilly or Jon Stewart, but yes it is a mainstream cable TV channel so that necessitates some minimum audience size lest the channel go off the air

<comment><USER7> Her show is also distributed as a podcast, which is relatively popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone who is impressed by this should seriously check out Andrew Sullivan's view from your window contest. Most weeks a reader submits a photo from their window, literally anywhere in the world. And people track it down with very similar techniques, to the exact window. And a lot of the contest photos offer much less to go off of than this [namely, only 1 photo, low res, country/context unspecified].

Here is the winners archive.

[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw- contest/](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/)

Some of photos aren't too crazy or offer a landmark that is recognizable if you'd seen it before. But most of them offer very little in terms of knowing where to start unless you've got a huge body of contextual knowledge you can draw on.

A couple ones that I had absolutely no idea where to start with:

[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/08/17/the-view-from- your...](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2010/08/17/the-view-from-your-window- contest-winner-11/) [http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/19/the-view-from- your...](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/19/the-view-from-your-window- contest-winner-218/)

I imagine the CIA/NSA has a crack team of a couple dozen people doing this exact job.

<comment><USER9> _I imagine the CIA /NSA has a crack team of a couple dozen people doing this exact job._

There is actually an entire Agency devoted to doing this exact job and other similar activities:

[https://www.nga.mil/Pages/default.aspx](https://www.nga.mil/Pages/default.aspx)

 _A few recent ones that I had absolutely no idea where to start with:_

Those actually provide TONS of identifiable features that make them relatively easy to track down with relatively simple tools.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps I didn't select the hardest from the recent archive. My basic point was more to show that people have the tools to a lot more digging with a lot less context.

Hadn't heard of the NGA. Well there you go.

<comment><USER9> _Perhaps I didn 't select the hardest from the recent archive. My basic point was more to show that people have the tools to a lot more digging with a lot less context._

Sure. Not intended to be a slight, more a nod to our Defense brethren doing this with a lot harder targets!

<comment><USER8> Indeed. I swapped in a couple tougher ones :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure the government is on this as well but its pretty incredible what a citizen journalist can do from his home computer with a few basic web sites. Some of the other projects that he has worked on (finding a russian training camp, authenticating an Egyptian revolution movie, etc..) are worth a read as well

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately once IS gets wind of this they'll be more careful and revise their strategies for releasing media. Those guys are disturbingly tech savvy.

<comment><USER11> Any examples of their tech savvy?

<comment><USER12> This one's rather chilling.

 _ISIS is employing social media — 'crowdsourcing' — to identify Saudi agents. They've even got an Android app just for the purpose. "U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring ISIL's social media communications identified the campaign as a crowd-sourced effort to gather names and other personal information about Saudi intelligence officials for the assassination campaign."_

[http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/08/04/terror-and- th...](http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/08/04/terror-and-the-sword-of- justice/)

<comment><USER13> Hmm, smartphones are quite easy to pwn right. So, I'd wager US has the names of lot of civilian ISIS supporters now. I wonder what that will be used for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting that as it's getting easier & easier for "normal" people to do stuff like this - our media is getting worse and worse at it. They've essentially given up on reporting or investigating anything original and simply spew back "opinions", "tweets" or PR releases.

<comment><USER15> The more cynical among us would say that one of the media's main jobs is to reinforce pre-approved narratives by cherry-picking examples that fit that narrative. Look how much attention the mediocre punk rock band"pussy riot" got because they happened to reinforce a narrative that the west was pushing about Russia.

<comment><USER16> I don't know if I'm being less or more cynical, but I have simpler explanation - the main job of the media is to make as much money as possible. This means optimizing for number of readers, and nowdays (because people interact with news on per-article, not per-site basis) pageviews. More pageviews = more ad dolars.

Optimizing for profit is a strong force, and initially it helps any new industry make huge leaps of quality. But at some point, it starts to be more profitable to sacrifice human values. We're far into this part in case of media. What sells is linkbait, controversy, "reinforcing pre-approved narratives" (or more generally, reinforcing what people already believe), fake "thought provoking" content that is actually repeating established beliefs. Investigative journalism, good news, well-thought pieces don't sell _enough_ , so they get left behind.

<comment><USER17> Should one -- moi, specifically, a journalist -- upvote the approved anti- narrative? In terms of making a modest living, I don't see much middle ground.

Both sell newspapers/pageviews. There's all the room in the world between approved objectivity and calculated dissent. It just don't pay.

The recently butchered James Foley said he'd cover local planning commission meetings if that was his last professional option.

Idealist? Chump?

Who else is going to do it, and do it well -- who informs the polis, so that a half-ass democracy can at least pretend to function?

Crowd-sourced event coverage is cheap and easy and sexy. But it doesn't provide context.

Sadly, for-profit media seems determined to capitalize on free YouTube and Twitter feeds at the expense of paying professionals to pay attention and make sense of complex issues.

Nothing new here. Move along. News at 11.

Did I say that out loud? Again?

(Edit: I'm also a big fan of The Dish View From Your Window Contest, which leads this discussion. Interesting media model at The Dish: curate/create great content/commentary, and ask readers to pay. So far, so good.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like this, but probably worth mentioning that this isn't a covert group so it seems somewhat akin to reporting where the Donetsk separatists are.

<comment><USER19> Being active combatants with numerous enemies, they still need to consider operational security.

The Donetsk separatists are more like a political party than a combat force.

<comment><USER18> I'm not saying IS _are_ the Donetsk separatists, just that they're not hiding in mountain ranges or tunnels and there's never been a question of "where are these guys".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is pretty awesome! I wanted to do something similar with the video of James Foley, but I figured there was people smarter than me already doing that and I really didn't want to watch that video.

<comment><USER21> Finding where James Foley was executed is less interesting. It is most likely just outside Raqqa. Not much you can do with the location (and they likely know it).

When they were AQI, the beheadings were conducted in homes and buildings in areas under US control as part of an insurgency - so finding where they were was essential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What an odd introduction: "Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go through training as an ISIS terrorist? Or better yet, where you would go to find such advanced training?"

Nope.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is cool and all, but I can't help but be reminded of the hunt for Boston Marathon bombers. Sure, maybe the author's heart is in the right place, but Random Person On The Internet could easily have gotten something wrong, that seems intuitively correct to the author and a general audience (us), but is in fact incorrect. Which makes me inclined to instead leave stuff like this up to the professionals. (appeal to authority, i know, but... getting this stuff right is important.)

<comment><USER24> I think the difference between the two scenarios is largely dependent upon the source materials and the quality of the analysis. The author knew that the photographs were authentic because they were sourced directly from ISIS. It wasn't a matter of determining who--out of many potential matches--might have fight a given profile (young male, bomb and backpack as people were searching for after Boston), but comparing the photographs to others in order to find matching geographical points of reference.

The bridges in the photographs weren't going to change their looks. Even if you grant the possibility of a false positive in one instance, the use of multiple source photographs and different angles all combine to increase the accuracy of the analysis. This analysis in this blog post was thorough, precise, and clear. Professional. The responses to Boston, on the other hand, lacked such rigor and amounted to little more than a witch-hunt, despite the fact that most of those going through photographs were simply trying to help.

You're right, in a sense, that it's easy for this type of analysis to be mishandled. But that's dependent upon the analyst and the materials they're working from. Rather than fret in this case, I'm happy to support it. Good examples should always be highlighted and praised, if only in the hope that such examples might help prevent poor examples in the future. A bit of a pipe- dream, but it's a nice one to imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Honest question: what's the advantage of using FlashEarth over Bing maps (which appears to be the source of the data)?

<comment><USER26> Typically an analyst would use both.

They tend to compliment each other for multiple reasons: Bing has imagery from a different time period (most of the time newer than GMaps, but some of the time older, which can be useful).

Bing also has the Bird's Eye view, and different aerial imagery in general, which can help with clarification and image artifacting.

So basically, we're using all of our available options. BTW, this is all run of the mill stuff in mil/int circles, but with better resolutions and light/electromagnetic bands.

<comment><USER27> I think you misunderstood the question? FlashEarth[1] appears to just be a Bing Maps imagery viewer.

[1] [http://www.flashearth.com/](http://www.flashearth.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I read an interesting article a while ago about who they have tried (unsuccessfully) to track

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al- Zawahiri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri)

from land artifacts. I supposed it is a bit more difficult as google maps didnt make it to Waziristan yet.

It sort of reminds me of this article from a while back

[http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/03/crowdsourced-amateurs- outp...](http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/03/crowdsourced-amateurs-outperform- cia-at)

</comment><comment><USER29> Such an interesting analysis, and seemingly a very nice site too. A shame the comments are so headless.

It's a travesty communities and discussions devolve so quickly on the internet (though I of course know from PGs eternal struggle how hard it is to prevent). Whoever can solve this problem (nice try disqus etc) will certainly claim fame.

Up and down votes won't cut it. It will require a serious inquiry into psychology, sociology and behavioural studies I believe.

</comment><comment><USER30> Western governments didn't know this already?

I have a hard time believing they didn't. There are (in my opinion) strategic reasons ISIS was allowed to get as far as it did. And reasons they were allowed to appropriate large amounts of cash and US weaponry.

<comment><USER31> Governments are slow and stupid.

Also they got the weaponry from the Iraqi army, who were given it by the US.

<comment><USER30> Some parts of government are slow and stupid.

Other parts are exceedingly clever and ruthless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What totally shocks me here is the whopping ignorance and lack of even the least bit of effort of understanding shown in the pathetic comments. Are really so many Americans brainwashed to such a crazy extent? Well anyways it makes me sick.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wait, so is the "new construction" around the tower the training camp? The article doesn't seem to say explicitly. Or is this more finding where they do training marches?

</comment><comment><USER33> When looking for new apartments in NYC, a combination of Google Street View and the Flyover feature in Apple Maps does wonders to validate how truthful brokers are in their listings.

</comment><comment><USER34> But isn't the place already mentioned in the video footage? "State of Naynawa", which is a well known place.

</comment><comment><USER35> Way to crowdsource ours and Iraq's military intelligence! I'm sure someone will find this useful.

</comment><comment><USER36> I bet this guy is good at [https://geoguessr.com/](https://geoguessr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Absolutely amazing investigative work. This is very good intelligence from using everyday resources and a keen eye from the determined.

</comment><comment><USER38> this man deserve a huge applauds. He is our sherlock holmes.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER40> _applauds_

What are the next steps?

<comment><USER35> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YqpAEA3wYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YqpAEA3wYE)

Forgive me...

<comment><USER41> LOL

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> You don't need great weapons. Just Drop A "Heat bomb" In Antarctic Ice Shelves. You'll Drown The World.

</comment><comment><USER42> We need more bellingcats' \- this was a great find - can we expect a planned airstrike in this location any time soon?

<comment><USER43> > can we expect a planned airstrike in this location any time soon?

I hope your not serious

<comment><USER44> Is that because you think ISIS should not be fought militarily, or because you think tactically a ground strike would be a better approach, or what?

<comment><USER45> Maybe something to do with the location being in the middle of a city full of civilians.

<comment><USER46> It would indeed be the perfect weapon for a terrorist. Just post a picture of something on the Internet and have foreign military blast it to the ground. Create terror _and_ blame americans, and anyone can do it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In Computers We Trust? - <AUTHOR> https://www.simonsfoundation.org/features/science-news/in-computers-we-trust/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm somewhat surprised that it doesn't mention the work that Gowers and others are doing in developing programs that produce proofs similar to those produced by the mathematicians themselves, rather than talking about verification systems and calculations. Such work has been discussed here on HN a few times - I'll get some references:

 _Stand by ..._

OK, my search-fu is failing me, and I can't find the items in question. If anyone can help me out here it might be a good thing. Gowers had a test recently to see if people could distinguish undergraduate proofs from computer generated proofs - someone must remember it ...

 _Much later ..._

Found it: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5507176></comment>