Remember QR Codes? They're More Powerful Than You Think - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2019/10/30/the-power-of-qr-codes/ <comment><USER2> I like the functionality of QR codes, but the fact that they're not human readeable makes them unsafe. It would'nt be unthinkable to make a QR-code, paste it over an existing one (for instance: the QR code in the bar to pay for a tip) and redirect the user to a spoof website where they can tip me instead of the bar/musician.

<comment><USER3> My QR reader on Android (ZXing's Barcode Reader) shows you the information on the screen before you decide what you want to do with it. That's as "Human Readable" as it needs to be, for me.

<comment> m-p-3 Imagine if someone discovers a flaw in the qrcode library and manage to execute an arbitrary command once read? It's already too late, the device already read the code.

It's the same kind of issue that's possible with any kind of viewer (Adobe Reader, Flash Player, etc)

Once the file or data string is read, it's already game over, and both the QR code and PDF, SWF, etc aren't human-readable.

<comment><USER4> This has actually happened before. [0]

> An exploitable code execution vulnerability exists in the QR code scanning > functionality of Yi Home Camera 27US 184.108.40.206D. A specially crafted QR Code > can cause a buffer overflow, resulting in code execution.

[0] [https://talosintelligence.com/vulnerability_reports/TALOS-20...](https://talosintelligence.com/vulnerability_reports/TALOS-2018-0571)

<comment><USER5> Note that it was not in the QR scanner itself -- the parsing part was fine, the image was always decoded safely. It is the network setup script which parsed the extracted text which was vulnerable.

And this is not unique to QR codes -- the correct setup string looked like "b=USmtPf6GnLZYDuR9&s=PCheX14pPg==&p=AbCD123465". This already looks like gibberish to most people; if this was replaced with evil string, I am not sure user would realize that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because it says "powerful" rather than "useful", I was expecting this to be about surprising data types rather than business cases.

For example, you can make a data URL containing JavaScript and turn that into a QR code:

[https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/executable-...](https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/executable- images/)

Some QR code readers execute that JavaScript. (Not all, fortunately).

<comment><USER7> Hah! Reminds me of Piet: [http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html](http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html)

<comment><USER8> Ok Piet is pretty sweet...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Remember them? This wednesday I saw a giant QR code 2 meters high at a train station in Copenhagen.

They're very much in use, everywhere. I fail to see how I'd forget about them.

But without even reading the article I know that QR codes are only as powerful as the app that parses them. They can't do anything on their own, just convey a chunk of data to a reader.

I believe they caught on more than NFC because they require so little. Just a camera, which is already present in all devices. While NFC is a much bigger decision to implement since its field of use is much more restricted.

<comment><USER10> I think you are right on track with your observation. Another thing I might add:

QR codes can just be printed, by everybody with a printer. Designers don't need to think a lot about technical details, they just put the QR code into their layout and send it off to the printing press (or in fact the screen).

Additionally because QR Codes are optical, it doesn't matter if you stand 20 meters away from the billboard if the QR code is big enough, while with NFC you would have to come close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I put a simple image on my homescreen with a QR code of my contact details some time ago. One thing I like to do when somebody asks me for my details is just show them the image and tell them to point their iphone camera at it. On Android, use Google Lense. The look on their faces when the phone offers to save the contact is priceless.

Apple only added this feature fairly recently. So, people are mostly unaware of how convenient QR codes can be. Most people I do this to are completely unaware their phone can do this and it beats having to fumble with apps and mobile keyboards trying to figure out email addresses, phone numbers, etc.

If you are interested; just google for qr code generator and contact and you will find dozens of sites offering that. There are plenty of libraries for generating QR codes client and server side. You can download them as pdf, png, svg, etc. I puth the document on my Google drive and created a short cut on my android phone.

<comment><USER12> Really cool idea. I used Qrafter[1] to make a QR code from my contact. Uploaded the image to Google Drive, then dragged a GDrive widget onto my home screen on my Android phone for quick access to the QR code.

Even cooler, on Sunday made friends with someone just back from teaching English in China, and at lunch we're exchanging phone numbers and I go, "Wait a minute..." and opened up the image.

She scanned it and immediately demanded to know how I'd done it. Thanks for the tip! :)

1: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/qrafter-qr- code/id416098700](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/qrafter-qr-code/id416098700)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" Nomophobia, the fear of low battery on phones, is virtually nonexistent in China, thanks to the widespread availability of power bank stations"_

Perhaps I'm more paranoid than other people, but plugging your phone in to a public USB device seems incredibly dangerous to me. At the very least someone could have tampered with it to damage the next user's device, and at the worst it could be cloning your device's entire storage.

<comment><USER14> You are best off buying a "USB condom", a USB 2.0/3.0 connector with the data pins removed.

<comment><USER15> The problem there is that the USB standard requires the initial power transfer to be low amperage, and only switches to the high amperage mode on request, with the request being delivered over the data pins.

<comment><USER16> USB condoms include a tiny chip that does the negotiation to get full power. Sometimes they even work better than the phone itself at getting the charger to give up the juice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use QR codes to quickly share a URL (or text) with my Android phone from my iPad.

The Shortcut is simple and easy to use (1). If I wanted to do the same thing on Android, I'd use Termux (2).

\---

My 'Universal Clipboard' is a text file on a VPS. My devices set or get the contents via SSH. E.g. Android[Termux SSH] > VPS < iOS[Shortcuts 'Run Script over SSH']. Comes in handy!

1: [https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2190aca622b948258a9024d8dda...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2190aca622b948258a9024d8dda78b9f) 2: [https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)

<comment><USER17> I used QR odes for the same sort of thing, but Firefox sync has gotten so good at sending tabs to specific devices, including a desktop that might not have a convenient camera, that it's even more convenient.

<comment><USER18> In the "now that I think about it, it was silly" category, I "copy pasted" a mail using QR Codes from the computer to the phone while in a train. I could send the mail from the phone, but it was more convenient to type it with the computer.

KDE Plasma provides a QR Code for anything not too big you copy-pasted by clicking on an icon. "It should be more convenient than using the computer as a Wi-Fi hotspot for the phone, which is a two clicks operation, right?"

Wrong. It was painful.

We should reuse the idea of Quiet.js, seen today on HN [1], to solve this kind of situation.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415946)

<comment><USER19> Shameless plug: [http://zipl.ink](http://zipl.ink) is the bookmarklet I use for the exact same purpose which also keeps record of the interesting links I zipped to my phone locally as a nice side effect

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-i-l _" Nomophobia, the fear of low battery on phones, is virtually nonexistent in China, thanks to the widespread availability of power bank stations"_

Actually nomophobia is more than a fear of low battery - it is a fear of being without a working mobile phone, e.g. due to loss of phone, poor signal or low battery. It is more of a psychological condition, and proper treatment is to address the root cause rather than avoid the situation - it would be like saying heroin addiction is not a problem because there are heroin dealers on every street corner.

<comment><USER20> I think this is a valid thing to worry about.

It's almost the same thing as worrying about a car breaking down if you're 100 miles from the nearest town.

Yet we don't have a specific "fobia" for that, because it's really not a mental disorder to worry about such things.

So many things today depend on having a working mobile phone.

<comment><USER21> Curious to hear your thoughts/experience about the 'many things today depend on having a working mobile phone'. I often do not carry a phone because I use my laptop at home/office to do most digital things.

<comment><USER22> I'd say navigating on long road trips is one of them. While my current car has a built-in GPS, my previous one didn't, and so I was somewhat dependent on having a working phone in order to navigate.

Now, only somewhat. I generally know how to get home from where I am, and I figure if my phone were to fail, I could drive until I could find a gas station with a map. (Or perhaps a convenience store to get a charger cable or new phone.)

And of course, this fear (of being phoneless) is just an update of an old one (of being lost). It's really hard to get lost in the modern world of gps and data.

<comment><USER23> You don't _need_ GPS to navigate, but without one you'll want to own a decent map.

Before GPS people just carried paper maps in their cars. It's harder to find paper maps at a gas station now, but if you're preparing for a long road trip, it's not a terrible idea to just bring along a paper map to start with.

<comment><USER24> There was also an intermediate period between everyone using paper maps and everyone using GPS. I didn't get my first phone until I was 23, before that for trips I just printed out the google maps directions and some map screenshots of nearby areas to the destination or stops along the way. Usually didn't even need that because the US interstate system is well labeled with road signs. These days I like an online maps navigation just to tell me about upcoming slowdowns or better routes, find the cheapest gas stations, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Because every scan is linked to the shopper's online profile, the store > collects valuable data to personalize its customer experience.

No, thank you.

<comment><USER26> >No, thank you.

Do any shoppers actually want this? I have legitimately never walked into a supermarket and thought "Gee, the experience today just wasn't as personalised as it could've been. I'll go elsewhere next time".

<comment><USER27> I was in an airport in China, in the departures area. They had a screen showing a live video from a camera pointing at passer-bys, it said "Stand here, we'll scan your face and tell you how to get to your gate". I did, and it showed my name and where to go. But, when did I link my face to my boarding pass and agree to this "commercial" use by the airport?

Before you enter China there are machines where you scan your passport, face, and fingerprints, so that's how they link faces to identities, but the example above shows the government gives this info out to... at least airport operators, but whom else?

<comment><USER28> They don't need to give it to anyone, since they already operate everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Surprises me that YouTube videos don't use them - instead the YouTubers say: "click the link in the description" but I am always using a console to watch YouTube on TV from my couch, so I _never_ click their link.

Also free to air television never uses them.

Also I've never seen one used on the giant screen at a sports game or concert.

Also they could just be used for paying for anything at the checkout.

</comment><comment><USER30> My understanding of QR code's is that they just are a machine readable string and that string is usually a URL. The phone then is responsible for parsing the string and doing something (like launching a browser/url or other installed app). So users are not paying by QR code, users are paying via a web app and Using the QR code to input the url for that app/item/quantity etc.

Is my understanding incorrect?

<comment><USER31> Correct. My (wild guess) understanding is that QR codes took off in China because of widespread usage of WeChat, which is a do-all mobile app, including payments etc.

If your QR code requires user to create an account in _your_ webservice or install _your_ native app to do anything useful, it does not bring much value, unless everyone around has your native app.

Whereas if you integrate via a an app widely used by all people in the country (i.e. the QR code is a URL which opens the widely used app with certain parameters), you're more likely to have people use it.

Classical chicken-and-egg problem and a situation where monopolies do better than a fragmented market.

<comment><USER32> That's one use case; the other use case that's less talked about is when you use an app where you need to log in on more than 1 device. WhatsApp and WhatsApp Web's QR login is a good example. One of my side projects, [http://karaoke.house/](http://karaoke.house/) does something similar as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> QR codes are not good for high throughput situations, like subway gates although:

[https://atadistance.net/2019/08/13/transit-gate-evolution- do...](https://atadistance.net/2019/08/13/transit-gate-evolution-do-qr-codes- suck-for-transit/)

But China is in love with the QR code, so who knows how many years or decades it will take them to make their subway gates use fast NFC payments.

<comment><USER34> Both have advantages that make them complimentary identifiers and not actually that competitive with each other. Ultimately they promote each other rather than consuming each others market share and I see both last years and years in to the future.

You can print a QR on paper. You can't do that with NFC.

NFC works in low light conditions -- QRs typically don't. NFC chips have allocated uids -- QRs are mutable. NFC is expensive and QRs are cheap. QRs are universal while NFC is tightly controlled.

<comment><USER35> >NFC chips have allocated uids -- QRs are mutable.

NFC is mutable too; the low-cost unpowered chips you'll buy are mostly write- once read-many, but an NFC device with host card emulation can largely be whatever you want it to be. I suppose it's analogous to a QR code displayed on a screen vs. a printed QR code.

<comment><USER34> >but an NFC device with host card emulation can largely be whatever you want it to be.

Nope -- even host card emulation can't emulate the UID for obvious reasons. Hence making it controlled.

<comment><USER35> Well sure, but it can emulate just about everything else. And if you're depending on the UID not being spoofable, well...

[https://www.aliexpress.com/popular/nfc-card-writable- uid.htm...](https://www.aliexpress.com/popular/nfc-card-writable-uid.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In short: QR codes are a great way of connecting arbitrary physical items with your smartphone and as a consequence with any kind of web service. A bit similar to NFC, but with some important differences: they don't require any electronics, work at any range (just make the QR code large enough) and they can be done either by print or displayed on a screen. Additionally, when scanning the QR-code, the user can see the URL it translates to. (Doesn't have to be URLs, but that is probably the most common usage).

I am surprised, not more business cards have QR-codes printed on them with the important contact information. But for my personal use, I have a QR-code containing my email address as a picture on my phone, so I can display it for anyone to scan whom I want to give my address to.

</comment><comment><USER37> _> Tip bar staff [...] Scan and shop anywhere [...] digital public transportation cards_

The thing that surprises me here isn't the success of QR codes, but the failure of NFC (and to a lesser extent Bluetooth) which was practically _designed_ for paying with your phone.

How did NFC lose out to QR codes at _the application it was designed for_? Was it a reliability problem? Were the APIs too locked-down for anyone to be able to work with them?

<comment><USER38> iOS for many years did not expose generic NFC functionality. I don't know if it is properly available even now? This meant that it was impossible to have the same user experience on iOS and Android - a serious problem for any product that would have NFC a key interaction targeting both these platforms (as most western things do).

<comment><USER39> To be honest I bought a Galaxy Nexus in 2011 with NFC and the promise of payment functionality, but I only got Android Pay (here in the UK) in 2017 when my bank, NatWest, decided to add support.

<comment><USER40> German Banks are somewhat behind on this, too. So I added a PayPal account and put my bank information there. Works like a charm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's still strange to me that android doesn't come with a simple qr reader. They did the right thing with the thousand crappy flashlight apps, and just integrated the functionality in the OS. They should do the same with QR code scanning.

<comment><USER42> Actually, I don't know which version they started but on my Pixel it's built into the Camera as well as the Lens app.

When you point your phone camera to a QR code it'll show a description/link.

<comment><USER43> Same on my few years old MotoG4 ... but not a friends much newer Sony Experia.

QR codes are really handy for connecting to Wifi, I have a shell alias that runs:

        qrencode -t utf8  "WIFI:T:WPA2;S:<Basestation-SSID>;P:<SecurePassw0rd>;;"

<comment><USER44> Nice! How do you consumer it on your phone (I suppose)?

Is "WIFI:..." automatically passed to the network intent?

Edit: just tried in ZXing QR code scanner on Android, I was too curious.

After scanning the code, the proposed action that appears in the bottom part of the screen is "connect to network".

It just works! Super useful, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Alan Zhang of WeChat was prophetic when he said: "The entry point for PC internet is the search box. The entry point for mobile internet is the QR code

</comment><comment><USER46> Always reminds me of the "Pictures of People Scanning QR-codes" blog

>[https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/](https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER47> I just found "The Barcode Book" in my local library, and it was pretty cool to see dozens of different barcode schemes out there, all with different properties. The world of interesting, useful barcodes is much larger than QR codes.

</comment><comment><USER48> ++ India. QR codes are everywhere for payments due to NPCI's (national payments commission of India's) efforts with instant payments. Shops small and big today display a QR using which you can pay bank to bank without credit/debit card charges and interoperability between payment processing companies like Paytm is mandatory.

The ad network and renting bikes and more recently charging electric scooters cases are also catching on.

</comment><comment><USER49> >>>"At scenic sites and public spaces nationwide, toilet paper is BYO. Those who come empty-handed can do a QR code or facial recognition scan to receive up to 31 inches of toilet paper."

So hold on, if I don't have a working phone, I can't wipe my ass?

</comment><comment><USER50> I think the biggest problem QR codes had when it came to adoption is that phones, by default, don't come with software to read them. If every OEM camera app could read QR codes I think they'd be much more common.

<comment><USER51> iPhones do it now, as well as some newer Android phones. They problem is that they don't tell you that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I find Vxiaocheng's use of QR to be super interesting and something that I'd think is worthwhile to work on; QR reading is now native in android + iphone camera apps and this is an itch I've been looking to scratch for a long time. Anyone interested? I would think of expanding the application to restaurants, libraries, etc. I would be comfortable with design + engineering + product while mostly looking for a business developer to sell the product to customers.

<comment><USER53> let's chat. i've tried a couple qr-related early stage ideas this past year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Same link a day ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398697)

</comment><comment><USER28> Many, many years back (2011?) I and a few friends applied to YC with an eye on use cases like 1/8/12, but mostly focusing on enabling quick interactivity with storefront displays, billboards, and public screens in general.

We didn't go through (our video was awful) and never carried on the idea, but almost a decade later I still feel there is a ton of yet-to-be-unlocked potential in this!

</comment><comment><USER55> Just as much an enabling technology as QR codes is the ubiquity and openness of WeChat/AliPay/Taobao, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER56> QR codes can also encode binary data. With structured append it's even possible to encode larger amounts of data as a series of QR codes. Open source decoders don't seem to support these features though. Could've been a great way to transfer small files.

<comment><USER57> I've seen this show up on Hacker News before - transferring data via an animated series of QR codes [https://github.com/divan/txqr](https://github.com/divan/txqr)

<comment><USER56> Awesome project. I see it is based on ZXing. Do you know if it decodes binary data? I see there's support for multiple error correction levels in the qr/qr.go file but I don't see anything related to encoding modes, binary or otherwise. I assume it is defaulting to alphanumeric encoding.

I'm asking because I'm not sure if ZXing supports decoding binary data to begin with. I know zbar doesn't: current versions seem to mangle the output by trying to convert it to UTF-8. I haven't tested ZXing yet.

Also, is it using structured append mode or simply reading normal QR codes in a series and concatenating the data? Structured append mode QR codes have metadata such as an identifier for the sequence they're part of and as well as their position within it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I've contemplated a startup that eliminates "checking in" a doctors office using paper or worse, a shared tablet, via QR code to personal smart phone form. Have at it hackers.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm currently working on a QR product for small business and companies. I hope to launch in 6 weeks in my home country.

QRs are truly powerful.

</comment><comment><USER60> TIL you need to provide ID for TP in China.

</comment><comment><USER61> The rent-a-gym, I guess the west solves that by having gym equipment in a park? An interesting solution to a busy city.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'd guess that they're not used more in the US because of patent trolls.

</comment><comment><USER63> every post from a16z makes me hate my own profession.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is a fantastic post. I particularly love the analysis about how QR codes have been underestimated in the US market. Great work by Avery Segal! He's been doing some great things at a16z. Rising star in tech!

</comment><comment><USER65> QR codes are awful at usability. Shortlinks are much, much better.

<comment><USER66> I don't think that an average user wants to type in cryptic urls rather than simply scanning a code. At least, if they know what to do. But I don't know how the adoption rate for QR code scanning is. Do the stock android camera app and the ios camera support QR codes yet?

<comment><USER65> No, Android has no built-in support.

And if you break your camera, you can't use QR-codes. Happened to me with Whatsapp Web.

Like I said, QR-codes are awful at usability and have extreme pitfalls. Shortlinks are quick, fast and concise and they take much less space.

Also, shortlinks does not mean "cryptic urls". For example slush.org/L01 is much, much better and faster than some QR-code, it's wayyyy more accessible and also more shareable. You can also tell about it to people with just words that they can easily remember.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> What is this garbage top 10 article? I could as well say _Remeber 1 and 0 ? They 're more powerful than you think since all computers use them to store your virtual copy._

<comment><USER68> I think they are talking about its usefulness as a cheap, easy, quick interface between computers and the physical world.

<comment><USER67> Oh if they'd said _useful_ I would stay quiet. The word they used was _powerful_

I mean QR codes are just an encoded link, right ? What is the big deal ?

<comment><USER69> > I mean QR codes are just an encoded link, right

Encoded data. Could be a link. Could be WiFi credentials. Payment information. Any sort of identification code. Etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does infinity exist? - <AUTHOR> http://plus.maths.org/content/does-infinity-exist <comment><USER2> My favorite thought experiment that I think is relevant here is to try to pick a truly random number.

If you think about it, this is impossible, because the act of picking a number limits you to a finite set of numbers that you have considered.

Put another way, you can't pick numbers from an infinite sample space because you can't create an infinite sample space.

This has all sorts of odd implications, like the two envelope paradox: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_envelopes_problem>

Enjoy!

<comment><USER3> _Put another way, you can't pick numbers from an infinite sample space because you can't create an infinite sample space._

That's not true; there's nothing wrong with infinite sample spaces. It's just that there's just no such thing as a uniform distribution over an infinite space.

For example, suppose you flip a fair coin repeatedly until the first time it comes up Heads. The number of flips you end up making could be any positive integer, so this procedure samples from an infinite space. But not all integers are equally likely. (in fact, each integer is half as likely as the one before, following a geometric distribution).

<comment> alok-g How about generating an infinite sequence of bits to generate any positive integer (in binary) with uniform probability? Sure it will take infinite time, but so may the method in your note. As another comment here points out, it would take infinite time to write down a purely random number anyways.

<comment><USER3> The method I described gives nonzero probability to every positive integer. The method you describe a) will never terminate and thus b) gives zero probability to every positive integer (since there's no stopping condition, even if you ever get to a particular integer you're always going to generate another digit and move on past it).

The essential issue is that probabilities have to sum to 1, but you can't just give the same probability to an infinite number of things because there's no number for which p*infinity = 1. So the only way to get an infinite sum to equal 1 is if the probabilities are unequal, and in particular the probabilities have to go to zero in the limit (e.g. 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ... = 1).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favourite example of infinity is this:

"You own a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, all of which are currently occupied. A group of four guests comes and wants to rent a room. Do you have a room for them?"

The answer is that yes, you do in fact have room for infinitely more guests.

<comment><USER5> I'm gunna have to be one of those people that says "really? O_o" when presumably everyone else clearly grasps the concept.

I get that if you had an infinite number of rooms, and an infinite number of guests staying, you still have room for an infinite number more guests.

But in your example, surely "occupied" is, more than just an indicator of another guest, a state of the room. You have an infinite number of occupied rooms, but zero unoccupied rooms, so no space for more guests.

<comment><USER6> The classic approach is to move all the existing guests from room n to n+1 and put the new party in room 1.

<comment><USER7> Aren't there already guests in room n+1?

<comment><USER8> Yes. The statement as given doesn't work out. If you say "an infinite number of guests and an infinite number of rooms" it works. But when every room is endowed with the property of being occupied there is no room for more guests.

<comment><USER5> It brings up an interesting point, though. If I have an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests, then one might intuit that every room is occupied.

There is a mapping of every guest to a room: guest n is in room n. Yet somehow there exists a room that has no guest, despite being able to model both rooms and guests with the same infinite set.

<comment><USER9> There is no empty room initially. However, by having all guests move simultaneously, you can make one room free without having any guest leave the hotel.

Incidentally, this is one way to define infinite sets. A set is infinite if and only if there exists a proper subset that has the same size (cardinality).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The idea of different infinities is very important to programmers. In particular, they are the underlying reasons for undecidable problems.

You can write any valid computer program as a string of finite length from a finite alphabet. This means the set of programs is countable. (This should not be surprising--everything is ones and zeroes, after all, so you always end up mapping your program to a really large natural number to use it.)

EDIT: To clarify a bit--the set of computer programs is _infinite_ and countable. I sometimes use "countable" to mean "countably infinite" which is a very bad habit. My only justification is that the fact that a finite set is countable is trivial and therefore boring.

The number of functions between two countably infinite sets is _not_ countable. This is also fairly easy to see: the set X → Y can be easily mapped to a subset of P(X × Y) where P deontes a powerset. All this says is that you can describe any function from X to Y as a set of ordered pairs (X, Y). For two countable sets X and Y, X × Y is also countable; if either X or Y is infinite, X × Y is also infinite. This means that P(X × Y) is _not_ countable, so X → Y is not countable either.

EDIT: My justification for why X → Y is uncountably infinite if either X or Y is countably infinite (and both are countable, of course) is not correct. Just mapping something to a subset of P(X × Y) doesn't actually tell us anything. However, the actual fact _is_ correct even if I don't show it, so I'm going to figure out (or, honestly, probably look up) why this is the case and amend my post further :P.

So the number of programs we can write _is_ countable; the number of functions we can write over interesting domains (like natural numbers or integers) _is not_ countable. There has to be an infinite number of functions we cannot write programs for!

So we have managed to show, in a fairly simple way, that there have to exist undecidable problems. The real trick is that we can see this _without_ having to construct a problem like that or even reason much about programs in general; all we have to know is that programs are strings and have finite lengths.

The other neat bit is that this reasoning is very easy to adapt to proofs rather than programs. After all, mathematical proofs are also finite-length strings! And, for example, propositions about the natural numbers are essentially functions ℕ → {true, false}. So you can't prove all of them.

So now we also see a deep relationship between proofs and programs, without actually doing much thinking about proofs _or_ programs.

We can also see that I'm no mathematician and either made some blatant errors or was not very rigorous throughout :P.

<comment><USER11> I'd never thought about that before. I think you could use that argument to prove that strong AI is impossible.

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

Consider an AI to be a chat program which maps strings to strings -- all the strings of its input over time to all the strings of its output. There are, by the argument above, an uncountable number of such mapping programs, only a countable number of which can actually be coded.

So, enumerate the ones that can be coded. This shouldn't even be difficult-- let's just do it alphabetically.

Now, suppose I have a strong AI called Sal. My first input to Sal is to describe the program enumeration strategy, and instruct her to respond to any string which contains a number by looking up the program on the table corresponding to that number, inputting all the input she has received so far, and then giving a response different than what it would give.

A strong AI can certainly do this.

Sal is not programmable.

<comment><USER11> In fact, that argument can be stated a lot more simply.

Take any programmable AI. Show it its own source code. Instruct it to run the code with all the inputs it has received so far, and then return something different.

Hence, a strong AI cannot have source code that it is capable of running.

Huh. I'd always heard that a true mind couldn't comprehend itself. I guess now I know why.

<comment><USER12> This argument also proves that people can't really think, because I can set you the following challenge: "Work out what number you'd name in response to this question, and then tell me the number one bigger than that."

<comment><USER13> This doesn't prove that a human "can't think". It proves that a human can't provide a logically consistent answer to a question that doesn't have a logically consistent answer.

This isn't quite analogous to the situation in the parent. There exists a logically consistent answer to the question "tell me something other than what [algorithm] would yield from [inputs]" -- it just can't be produced by that algorithm.

<comment><USER12> It's exactly analogous. There is a logically consistent answer to the question "tell me something other than what Joe McBlow would do in situation X"; it's just that Joe McBlow can't give it to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find this question very perplexing. I can't tell if it arises from a misunderstanding of the concept of "existence" or just a misunderstanding of how important infinities are in a massive number of real world applications. I mean, two doesn't really "exist"; but we sure as hell need it if we want to get any work done.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you there. The vast majority of "philosophical" questions of type "Does X exist?" are really quite trivial once you clearly define what you mean by "exist".

As in your example, the number two doesn't exist in the physical universe. There is no physical object that we can point to and say "This is the number two". It has some physical _representations_ (such as some sequences of electronically encoded bytes in this very comment), sure, but that's not quite the same thing. On the other hand, the number two obviously exists in a mathematical sense. So it really boils down to being precise about what you mean by "existence".

It's almost the same with infinities. I say almost, because there is some uncertainty when it comes to physics, e.g. whether the physical universe has discrete or continuous coordinates (and the article mentions singularities, which is a similar problem).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If this interests you, I can recommend David foster Wallace's "Everything and more"

</comment><comment><USER16> BBC Horizon - How big is the universe? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dne6rnITayI>

Interesting.</comment>


Why were Lisp machines so expensive? - <AUTHOR>

Going through SICP, in the last lectures they are going through register machines, compilers etc.
Abelson mentions a for LISP-chip/machine that was more parallelized(yeah spell that) than an ordinary chip.
What was the advantage/disadvantage with LISP-based machines?
They were more expensive I have heard, but why? Harder to make because they needed more parallelisation or just because there was less demand for them?
Are new multicore computers more like LISP-machines were?
Some relevant links: http://pt.withy.org/publications/LispM.html http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~weel/lispm.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machines This is cool, didnt know of it before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_architecture <comment><USER2> The MIT CONS computer and its commercial descendants at Symbolics and LMI was not a parallel architecture. It was a fairly conventional uniprocessor CPU which happened to have a register and instruction architecture that provided some hardware acceleration for typical "LISP" tasks (specifically tagged pointers: the "pointer" value had a bit telling the CPU whether to load the value as-is or indirect through it to load the next value).

As for why they were expensive: they were small market pre-VLSI minicomputers being sold in the late 70's and early 80's. They competed most directly with machines like the MicroVAX, and weren't particularly expensive for that market, AFAIK. Assembling and testing a few thousand ICs into a single computer is just inherently expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I suppose that the conjunction of a lower demand and a more complex processor (which executed Lisp directly) is a good reason for them to be expensive. The complexity is a problem in the beginning, and if the demand had been higher the prices would lowered, but... I think the main reason of the failure was due to the business side and not the technical merits, unfortunately history shows that technological success has more to do with business skills (i.e., ms) than with the technology (i.e., Lisp Machines, 80's Apples...)

<comment><USER4> >> (which executed Lisp directly)

Uh, the machine's architectures were probably designed to be more amenable to Lisp-esque features (e.g., garbage collection, tagged types at runtime, native pair operations, etc); I suspect the machines didn't execute Lisp directly for the same reason that an x86 doesn't execute C directly...

<comment><USER5> The microarchitecture really implemented Lisp primitives like cons, car, cdr, array ref as opcodes, etc. That's about as close to executing Lisp directly as you can get.

<comment><USER2> That's how it's commonly explained, but it's not really correct. The bitsavers.org folks have a copy of the original Lisp Machine paper:

[http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/cons/TheLispMachine_Nov74.p...](http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/cons/TheLispMachine_Nov74.pdf)

The pointer/register format was very LISP-friendly, but the actual instructions are much more conventional. The trick is that instead of having to test the tag bits with separate instructions, the "load" instruction equivalent does it in hardware.

<comment><USER5> Well, if you look on pages 13-14 of the manual you referenced, you'll find instruction codes for PCAR, PCDR, SCDR, SCDDR, NCONS, CONS, LIST (alloc), CxxxR, CxxxXR, GET, GETL, ASSQ, ASSOC, etc. Seems like Lisp primitive instructions to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The cost of lisp machines also include much of the cost of developing the lisp machine environment. That probably cost more than the software that came with suns, apollos, etc and the workstations had more volume, so their comparable cost per machine was significantly less.</comment>


Announcing the Visual Studio 2015 Product Line - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/03/31/announcing-the-visual-studio-2015-product-line.aspx

<comment><USER2> _" Sorry, there was a problem with your last request!

Either the site is offline or an unhandled error occurred. We apologize and have logged the error. Please try your request again or if you know who your site administrator is let them know too."_</comment>


Ask HN: How do you ethically collect browser information? - <AUTHOR> I recently joined a company that offers browser-based products. I would like to collect some information about my users browsers for development purposes: browser vendor, engine, OS, CPU, and device type/model, screen resolution so that when they have a problem, I can reproduce it as close to their environment as possible. NOTE I'm not interested in fingerprinting, analytics etc. It's just to be able to quickly diagnose a problem.<p>How do you do that in an ethical, privacy-respecting manner? Are there any npm packages you can recommend? <comment><USER2> Collecting info should be optional so people can opt out. This needs to be communicated clearly. Purposes need to be stated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Excepting screen resolution, most of this information is simply available in the useragent.</comment>


$1.2T in risky corporate debt showing similar warning signs to subprime crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-corporate-debt-risks-20190120-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter <comment><USER4> At last year's World Economic Forum, there was a panel titled "The Next Financial Crisis", and while many different potential causes were considered, the most prominent one is definitely corporate debt, especially emerging market debt that is dollar-denominated. [0]

Much of the concern in markets right now seems to stem from the idea that as the Federal Reserve tightens credit, both through raising interest rates and through unwinding its previous QE programs, there will be a significant impact on companies that have borrowed at lower interest rates. Debt that is going to come due in the next few years is going to have to be refinanced, or is going to default.

If you're a country which borrowed in dollars, the tightening of US monetary policy will often lead to a change in exchange rates that makes it more expensive to pay back debt. Coupled with a global economic slowdown resulting from a trade war, and things start to look nasty wherever you look.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOs6S0VrlA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOs6S0VrlA)

<comment><USER5> Thinking about this reminded me of the line from the movie "The Big Short" where Michael Burry says one of the indicators of the coming crisis was an increase in the rate of fraud. Juxtapose that with what feels like an uptick in white collar fraud these past couple years. ie: Theranos, Fyre, 1MDB, numerous crypto token related scams.

<comment><USER6> That's interesting though i'm not sure that's the right kind of fraud. The fraud Bury was referring to was related to mortgage lending, both on the part of the borrowers (fraudulent documents supporting income, etc.) and on the part of the immediate lenders (the banks / lead generators for mortgages). The comparable type of fraud here would be businesses inflating their assets or income streams to acquire bank loans that they couldn't otherwise qualify for. It may be that that kind of fraud is on the rise, but I don't think the examples you cited (with the notable exception of 1MDB) are instances of it.

<comment><USER7> It's not causal, it's symptomatic. People tend take bigger risks, even criminal ones, when they have less to lose or less to gain. It's an interesting proxy for economic desperation.

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting perspective that I hadn't considered. I'm not sure if it's right though. You think it's symptomatic of desperation? I don't think of the lead-up to the 2007 financial crisis as a particularly desperate time for most people.

<comment><USER8> One interpretation is that for many who took on debt they couldn't support, it was a desperate attempt to continue a lifestyle that wasn't possible for them any more due to changes in both the global and local economies, aided by technology, which resulted in the reduced value of their labor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is a bit misleading. The subprime crisis occurred because of the leverage on packaged debt that was held by big banks. Where by an original loan amount of say $1MM had an outstanding obligation perhaps 100x that.

The issue was that the banks held this debt, which means when there was an issue, they would become insolvent, which would lead to a financial crisis like the great depression, which is why government intervention was needed.

$1.2T of outstanding debt is high, however, not very relevant without knowing who the debt holders are. And as the article states, the primary big banks aren't overly exposed to this debt.

Additionally if the debt isn't leveraged on top of the outstanding loan amounts, again the damage from a potential crisis in this area will be very contained.

As the article states a lot of this exposure sits with private equity funds and hedge funds, which would result in very little impact to the average citizen if there were an issue.

In regards to the Michael Burry comments about fraud, that was specifically related to a bubble. That one of the surest signs of a bubble is out right and rampant fraud. This is critical because when a bubble occurs it means that mass hysteria sets over the general population as neighbors see people "dumber" than them making money. This leads to rampant speculation across the board, which then leads to bad actors committing fraud. They commit fraud because the incentives are high to make a quick buck.

A loosening of debt requirements, while a bad idea, doesn't qualify as fraud. There also isn't general speculation that is associated with a bubble, which was one of the main ingredients for the housing mortgage crash as well.

So while there maybe an issue here if defaults occur those issues will be very contained. There maybe some hit to the general financial markets, but nothing even remotely close to what occurred with the housing crisis.

This is basically the equivalent of saying that any debt that shows loosening guidelines and floating APR is the same thing as the housing crisis, which isn't accurate.

<comment><USER10> > That one of the surest signs of a bubble is out right and rampant fraud. > This is critical because when a bubble occurs it means that mass hysteria > sets over the general population as neighbors see people "dumber" than them > making money. This leads to rampant speculation across the board, which then > leads to bad actors committing fraud. They commit fraud because the > incentives are high to make a quick buck.

That reads like a description of SV. Mass hysteria - check (eg. BTC, shitty startups)! "dumber" people making money - check! rampant speculation - <USER2> (eg. Uber IPO valuation of 120B, bay area shacks going for millions)! Actors committing fraud - check (eg. Theranos, Zenefits)!

So can we say that SV is in a bubble, maybe confined to the tech sector?

<comment><USER9> SV doesn't really fit the criteria of a bubble.

Bubbles gain steam by being accessible. The more people that get involved, the larger the bubble becomes. It isn't a ponzi scheme, but acts like one in many ways.

ICOs were well on their way to becoming a bubble, but being pegged to the price of cryptocurrencies, the bitcoin bubble popped before the ICO bubble really took off.

But if you look at the ICOs there was rampant fraud. Basically people writing white papers, with no real companies or products, and then raising millions of dollars. Very similar to the dot com bubble.

SV in and of itself creates a tremendous amount of value. Sure there are some spectacular failures, and some questionable investments, but overall there is value that is created. Without getting into any morality discussions, but purely looking at revenue, profitability, return to investors, companies like Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Tesla, and so forth have created tremendous shareholder value.

When you some a "stupid" app raise $5MM it really isn't much considering how much these other companies have raised, the revenue they generated and so forth.

So SV is definitely not a bubble per say. You could make the case that some valuations are inflated, but that is a sign of the macro market where SaaS companies are enjoying their largest revenue multiples ever, but if that corrects there will be a rest of perhaps 30-50% in market cap, but no where near total collapse.

Additionally these companies do have underlying products, services, benefits, and revenue.

You could say there is hype, over valuation, and so forth, but we aren't anywhere near bubble territory.

<comment><USER11> > Without getting into any morality discussions, but purely looking at > revenue, profitability, return to investors, companies like Uber, Facebook, > Twitter, Airbnb, Tesla, and so forth have created tremendous shareholder > value.

Facebook yes, but how many of the others have paid any dividends to shareholders? Even these "success stories" seem to have valuations that are based mostly on speculation; plenty of investors have made money but they could have just been selling to "greater fools".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> no it's not.

The subprime crisis was precipitated by a lot of people taking out mortgages with either blatantly or coerced false income information in their mortgage applications on homes that had inflated values. Once home prices stopped going up as much and interest rates started increasing, these people were no longer able to make their mortgage payments.

Leveraged loans at 7x ebitda are still less leverage than someone taking out 90% LTV mortgage (90% LTV can be thought of as 9x leverage against your equity). Companies usually also have more flexibility to increase their income, or decrease their expenses compared to an average person. And mortgages have required amortization where as most levered loans to my knowledge are interest only.

All in all, unless a significant % of companies taking out levered loans are submitting fraudulent financial filings, this is nothing like the subprime crisis.

<comment><USER13> > _a lot of people taking out mortgages with either blatantly or coerced false > income information_

Money flowed freely b/c the mortgages didn't matter. It was the ability to bundle the mortgages and leverage them that fueled low-standards and drove much of the lending frenzy.

> _The subprime crisis was precipitated by a lot of people taking out > mortgages...these people were no longer able to make their mortgage > payments_

No. Again, mortgage debt alone was a mere fraction of the problem. Those loans were levered up many multiples through CDOs and other exotic instruments, which was the real problem.

In 2008 there was a lot of effort made to blame poor people/subprime debtors. But, it's been covered ad nauseam since then, so it's kind of surprising to hear someone still making those claims in 2019.

<comment><USER12> The derivatives were created and rated on the assumption that the borrower's default rates were consistent with historical default rates. Of course that was not the case, and losses became multiples higher, and blew up derivatives that were highly levered. However, derivatives didn't cause the losses, borrowers defaulted!

<comment><USER14> Derivatives did cause the loses basically for what you said above.

>derivatives were created and rated on the assumption that the borrower's default rates were consistent with historical default rates.

The historical information was wrong because the issuer of the subprime loans hid bad loans given to people with thin credit histories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lot of the problem isn't in the debt as such, it is in the collateralization. When you bundle the debt and sell it on in slices with different risk profiles (i.e. separating out who gets paid first (least risky) to last (most risky) then it becomes really hard to understand how risky the debt slices are (which dictates how much they are worth).

People assume that the least risky debt (sometimes called super-senior) is worth its face value. The problem is that when things go wrong, investors lose confidence in the valuation of the debt. And suddenly a bank with say $1T of super-senior debt finds it is only worth $100B on the open market. And that means that the bank doesn't have the assets to back the loans it has made - <USER3> has to raise money by selling things. Selling things when you are in trouble is never a good idea, as you are forced to accept a discount. So you now have the market flooding with cheap assets (say securities), which then drops the value of the securities that other banks hold - which gives them problems in backing the loans they have made. Then they have to start selling.

And that's how a financial earthquake begins...

</comment><comment><USER16> I run a small SAS company and consult for another medium sized O&G company. The amount of debt I am offered to take on every day is staggering. The O&G company recently took a $200k loan with little to no proof of income, collateral, or anything else. I know of some other small companies with MILLIONS in debt and absolutely 0 collateral to back it up. In the event of insolvency the lender will just soak the loss.

<comment><USER17> I work for a fintech company that is in the business of small/medium business credit and financing, and this is a very surprising thing to hear. My understanding is the majority of our customers are struggling to establish business credit and get decent financing, especially if they haven't been in business long and/or don't have high revenue streams.

Do the companies you mention have decent revenue, even if they also have debt?? Your situation is one many of our customers would love to be in.

<comment><USER18> Echo this. We have collateral, revenue, decent profit margins, and significant YOY growth (over 500%) and it's been difficult to get a loan or LOC due to how young we are. We finally got one for a small $10k LOC which is funny because our company credit card is many times larger than that. Gotta start somewhere though...

<comment><USER19> Struggling to get a 10k loan... like just as an individual that should be pretty easy for me to get at the drop of a hat.

Odd a business would struggle to get something that small.

<comment><USER20> A company can go under in two seconds with all the assets gone and the lenders will have to suck it up. An individual has to struggle with bankruptcy laws for a decade or more to get rid of the debt.

So if I've got 10k to loan, I'd rather loan it to some poor sucker that I then own, rather than to a business that might disappear tomorrow.

<comment><USER19> Yeah good point, businesses can effectively evaporate into nothing.

People, you can hassle them forever.

Kinda sad how that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The difference is that everybody knows that leveraged loans are risky. The mortgage crisis wasn't triggered by the fact that complex mortgage backed securities were risky, but by the fact that people thought they were pretty much risk free and were blindsided.

<comment><USER22> Whoever is determining credit worthiness needs to have skin in the game. This is what Dodd-Frank did. It required security bankers retain 5% of the overall risk of the security. Known as the Volcker Rule, it is now being rolled back: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump- signs-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-signs-law- rolling-back-post-financial-crisis-banking- rules/2018/05/24/077e3aa8-5f6c-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the key phrase in the story: "packaged into securities and sold to investors". This is exactly like the mortgage crisis. Back then banks knew many of the borrowers are not being truthful in their loan applications but lent to them any way (look up "liar loans"). Banks didn't care because they packaged these mortgages into securities and sold them to investors as "mortgage-backed securities", so defaults are someone else's problem. Banks are back at it again.

<comment><USER23> A public company is just packaged up its equity into securities and sold them to investors.

The mortgages of 2008 were to the real problems, the sudden lack of liquidity in the markets for trading them was. Sure, some mortgages were hurt, and the housing market went down, but the problems with those securities were illiquidity brought on by the difficulty in valuing the derivatives. Corporate debt is somewhat easier to price, because disclosure is better/easier.

Still. I am not rushing out to invest in these securities now...

<comment><USER24> _> the problems with those securities were illiquidity brought on by the difficulty in valuing the derivatives_

Can you please elaborate and/or provide a source? I'd like to learn more.

<comment><USER23> Timothy Geithner's book "Stress Test" does a great job of explaining this, IMO. The trouble with derivatives is that they are contractually bound to reflect some price that is locked to the price of a primary asset. If the derivatives are linked to the price of a security, which is in itself linked to a certain risk-bundle of assets (e.g. the AAA rated CDO with the most senior debt) then it was not exactly clear what happened to the derivative, because it wasn't clear whether people were going to make their payments on their mortgages, or whether the derivative counterparties could pay. The market responses was to try to sell all the derivatives, rather than wait to see what they'd be worth. Effectively, the liquidity which those derivatives and CDOs had prior to the crisis disappeared entirely, which meant that their true value fell much faster than it really should of since people were selling at a discount just to get them off their balance sheets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The FED certainly still remembers the mortgage mess, considering they still hold some $1.6 trillion in mortgage backed securities on their books. One wonders what they will do when the next debt crisis hits. Will they take on another trillion in corporate debt? Clearly this can't go on forever, but there seems to be little political will to let credit markets normalize.

For me the whole situation is really scary.

<comment><USER26> That's the scary thing that makes it so difficult to argue invest in my opinion, in that really ever since the late 90s Asian financial crisis we've been on these huge boom/bust/boom/bust cycles, all fueled by the Fed encouraging people to take more risk to lessen the blow of the bust.

<comment><USER27> We've been on large boom and bust cycles since the 19th century at least. This isn't new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The economy is always in one of two states - recession, or people predicting that the next recession is just around the corner.

<comment><USER29> Here are two more things lurking behind the corner that can drastically effect the economy:

Inflation Deflation

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Have also been reading about this [3-6]. With some believing the economy is slowing[1] (i.e., lower corp profits), and with the Fed believed to be pausing rate hikes[2] (i.e., no interest payment increases), I'm curious to see if this turns into a sizeable problem (i.e., quasi '08 bad)

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/10/goldman-sachs-warns-of-a- sha...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/10/goldman-sachs-warns-of-a-sharp-us- economic-slowdown-next-year.html)

[2] [https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex/dollar- falte...](https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex/dollar-falters-on- bets-fed-will-pause-u-s-rate-hikes-idUSKCN1P112U)

[3] [https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-30/corporate-debt- bub...](https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-30/corporate-debt-bubble)

[4] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/corporate...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/corporate- america-s-debt-boom-looks-like-a-bust-for-the-economy)

[5] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2018/08/29/the- u-s...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2018/08/29/the-u-s-is- experiencing-a-dangerous-corporate-debt-bubble/)

[6] [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4225847-corporate-bond- mark...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4225847-corporate-bond-market- getting-junkier)

</comment><comment><USER31> People have been saying this since 2015. While the conditions for debt refinancing have certainly changed, it's not clear by any means that this is the sort of problem that would cause any sort of cascading recession all at once.

<comment><USER32> Peter Schiff and Ron Paul have been saying this since 2008. I used to believe them. I stopped when the fed ended QE and started raising rates despite Schiff's predictions.

<comment><USER33> Some might say the end of QE and the forced budget cuts due to the Tea Party shenanigans is the reason the predictions didn't come true...

\--edit--

I also find it amusing, in an ironic sort of way, how the Austrians get a bunch of flack for not accurately predicting future events when large parts of their economic theory is based upon not being able to predict future events.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The current financial system does not price taking care of the environment. Tragedy of the commons, air co2, oceans pollution. Further it is unstable there is always credit booms and busts in cyclical fashion. Further besides thrashing the planet it sends wealth from the middle class up to the top of the pyramid. I am curious why the middle class tolerates it? Could it be that most people do not understand the financial system?

<comment><USER35> I am sure that it is made deliberately complicated so that only those in the know can make money from it. I don't doubt that I could make money from it myself, but I don't have the time to learn all the intricacies of the system. Well that's my excuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I called this when we moved from basel 2->3 . It changed the reserve requirements to 0 for these type of loans.

</comment><comment><USER37> Misleading. They show the amount that debt has increased, but they don't show how corporate assets have increased. If they did, you'd see that the wealth/debt ratio is NOT alarming.

</comment><comment><USER38> When markets crash they tend to crash fast after seeming to be in a slow motion. I wonder what the kickoff will be?

If it's this week it will go something like this:

1\. People realize that they aren't getting their tax returns because of the shutdown and it has an outsized effect because consumer savings rates are low. Market wobbles.

2\. Treasury issues short term debt at high yields and long term debt at low yield yields Thursday, market crumbles Friday.

3\. Fed meets next week to discuss the debt window and if they need to slow down QT or go back to QE. They don't know. Market goes volatile.

4\. Government shutdown ends at first sending stocks up. Then key economic data releases showing consumer spending is going to be weak because real wages were down.

Anyways, it's more likely we'd have to see a couple of blue chips go bankrupt first like a big state utility company or a classic old American tech company.

<comment><USER39> Your first statement (People realize that they aren't getting their tax returns because of the shutdown) is incorrect: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/irs- will-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/irs-will-pay- refunds-during-government-shutdown-official-says)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> You have to take all these gloom and doom articles with a grain of salt. And take them as a reminder that all economic booms reverse. Yes, some are right. Yet, most are not. Question is which and when? We can't know and won't know until after the next financial disaster happens. Even as we go through one we won't know until months after it starts.

The last recession started at the end of 2007 yet we didn't really start feeling it until well into 2008.

Financial collapses are more like earthquakes. You never know when they will happen. But by the time they happen, it's too late to get ready so you better be ready to avoid a major disaster beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER41> Beware financial analysis and economic forecasts. Confirmation bias is rampant.

</comment><comment><USER42> "Leveraged loan", defined:

[https://www.nasdaq.com/investing/glossary/l/leveraged- loan](https://www.nasdaq.com/investing/glossary/l/leveraged-loan)

FT offers a more technical view of the phenomenon. Yesterday:

[https://www.ft.com/content/64c9665e-1814-11e9-9e64-d150b3105...](https://www.ft.com/content/64c9665e-1814-11e9-9e64-d150b3105d21)

</comment><comment><USER43> How would one go about shorting this debt?

<comment><USER44> First, watch The Big Short and decide how you'll manage being on the right end of a winning bet with the incumbents doing everything they can to screw you out of payment.

<comment><USER45> Read the book - a couple of great scenes that weren't included in the movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Who profits off of people worrying about another economic crisis? I'm pretty knowledgeable on my local real estate market, and people are constantly telling me we're in a bubble (we're not) and it's all going to come crashing down this year (it won't). It seems very common these days for people with next to no economic expertise to be certain of a coming crash. I don't think it can be credited to everyone watching the Big Short.

Edit: Explanation because i'm getting downvoted. I live in Utah. Our prices have increased quite a bit in the past couple years. The first bit of increase was justified by the increase in high paying tech jobs, but then sellers got greedy. We're currently in a stalemate where nothing is selling because sellers want unrealistic prices. That's not a bubble, that's a market correction.

<comment><USER33> When prices reach a point where you can't pay your mortgage by renting out the property then you can pretty much guarantee that prices are on the (too) high side.

> ...but then sellers got greedy. We're currently in a stalemate where nothing > is selling because sellers want unrealistic prices.

Technically...buyers make the market. Without a willing buyer it's all just wistful thinking.

The real question is if the prices are truly unrealistic or are they necessary to ensure the seller isn't losing money on the deal?

<comment><USER46> It was really interesting to watch. Prices kept going up until spring of 2018 when they crossed the threshold into too high territory. This is where we were kind of in a bubble because there were some willing buyers paying more than they could rent for. There weren't very many buyers that could afford those prices though, Salaries in Utah are historically lower than they would be in similar markets else where. If you're in Utah there's usually good reason to be stuck here. Religion, family, obsession with skiing, etc.

So now sellers are wanting the prices that houses sold for in the spring, but there just aren't enough buyers out there that can stomach that. And certainly not enough salaries out there that can stomach that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Are these debt misclassified as AAA, I don't think so because of what happened before at Moody's, I think they changed some rules

<comment><USER23> No, they're junk bonds, I.e. not investment grade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> does that mean VCSH (Short term investment grade debt) is a good or bad play?

[https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/VCSH](https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/VCSH)

</comment><comment><USER49> Seems to be a similar theme: there is a ridiculous amount of money at the top that has nowhere to go and nothing to do but inflate debt and asset bubbles.

<comment><USER50> The irony and tragedy of modern capitalism.

Everyone wants to get paid, but no one wants to pay.

Since ones in power have more control, the top end up keep getting paid more, while the lower ends keep getting paid less.

One example would be equity firms.

They buy a firm with borrowed money, and in order to pay back the loan, interest on the loan, AND make a profit, they apply the expensive knowledge learned from fancy MBA schools (that charge bucks) and lower cost and increase profit. And lowering cost always means paying less to employees. And increasing profit means charging more.

Little do the super rich realize, that soon enough there will be no middle class to buy their stuff/services. And eventually the rich/superrich can only sell stuff to each other, while us peasants watch on smartphones from our slums using youtube service and enduring all the ads since we can't afford the $20/month to hide the ads...

<comment><USER51> Marriner Eccles, after whom the Federal Reserve building is named, said something very similar to your last paragraph. I need to dig up the quote.

Edit: Not the quote I was looking for, but maybe pithier: "The United States economy is like a poker game where the chips have become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and where the other fellows can stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit runs out the game will stop." Beckoning Frontiers, Marriner Eccles

Edit: Here's the one I had in mind, written by Fed Chair Eccles in 1933:

"It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not "soaking the rich"; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment."

\- [https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/marriner-eccles- on-t...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/marriner-eccles-on-the-need- to-save-the-rich-from-themselves.html)

<comment><USER52> That quote reminds me of something Huey Long said not much after that (1935) after people were accusing his "Share our Wealth" program of being communist despite it having explicit protections for private property.

> "Communism? Hell no! ... This plan is the only defense this country's got > against communism."

His was less of a "using poor people is helpful to the rich" argument than an "abusing the poor is going to create violent revolution", but both arguments stem from the same source. The cynic in me says that lines like these were easier to sell back when the idea of automating most of workforce wasn't quite so real. If the rich people of the future can get everything they need and want by owning technology - through patents, tech investments and physical technology for self-defense, why would they care if the rest of the country can play the poker game with them? If they have enough chips, why not just trade them among themselves forever? There will be nothing left to gain from letting other people buy-in significantly and there is no significant risk from refusing them.

<comment><USER51> I think Eccles refers to the 'violent revolution' argument with 'Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment.' I think (hopefully or cynically?) the answer to 'why would they care if the rest of the country can play the poker game with them?' is, to quote economist Mark Blyth, 'The Hamptons are not a defensible position.' IMO, it's a stable society that enables wealth, and wealth can't survive as an island in an unstable society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think what's really happening is social media is "going dark" in the wake of Facebook and Trump, and predictions that were previously possible, will now expire.

All of this ties into candidacy announcements for 2020 presidential elections, and people are doomsday prepping for that one, since the ground is going to shake no matter the outcome, this time around.

<comment><USER29> Nope, the economy goes in fairly predictable cycles and it doesn't care who's president.

Stocks are currently over valued: see Nobel prize winning economist's CAPE ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I imagine economic bubbles are not independent. I wonder if this in sum with the student loan 'bubble' could make things worse than in part.

</comment><comment><USER55> The article doesn't mention who's buying the debt. As long as it's private investors using their own money, I don't see a problem with this.

<comment><USER56> You'll recall the financial crisis in 2008, where many of us taxpayers paid massively to bail out these private investors using their own money.

<comment><USER55> The taxpayers made $96B on those loans [1]. The issue then was that everyone was buying those CDOs because they were AAA rated, things like the pension funds and the banks themselves. I'm saying that if only individual investors are buying the corporate debt, it's not a systematic risk.

[1] [https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/](https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/)

<comment><USER56> That's a fair point given the way I phrased my reply, but TARP is far from the extent of the cost of the financial crisis. The resulting market crash, credit crunch, unemployment all play a role in making this much more than a private issue. The fed estimated the cost to each American at $20-80K. [1] Also TARP could have very easily _not_ made money, and bailouts are certainly not guaranteed to make money the next time around.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/business/economy/the- cost...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/business/economy/the-cost-of-the- financial-crisis-is-still-being-tallied.html)

<comment><USER55> That's fair too, though it's easy to blame all of the recession on the subprime bubble bursting while I think it would have happened anyway, eventually. And I'm advocating for letting banks, funds and investors fail if they lose at the game of musical chairs. For this to work though they need to be kept separate from rest of the finance system and use their own money.

<comment><USER56> I'm agreed with you on that point. I wish we lived in that world and I think we should work harder to get there. As long as we don't, though, I'm resigned to recognizing the public costs of these private failures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> How much is 1.2 terabyte of debt? :P

<comment><USER58> 1,228.8 gigabytes (in binary)</comment></comment>


Because You're Worthless: The Dark Side Of Indie PR - <AUTHOR> http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

<comment><USER2> As a software developer, it was very sad to read :( I have to consider giving more $$$ to the devs with my humble bundle purchases.</comment>


Update your footer - <AUTHOR> http://updateyourfooter.com <comment><USER2> Peeves me to no end as well - FWIW, the Django version is:

        {% now "Y %}</comment>


What is your best programmer joke? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/234075/what-is-your-best-programmer-joke <comment><USER2> _A TCP packet walks into a bar, and says to the barman "Hello, I'd like a beer."

The barman replies "Hello, you'd like a beer?"

"Yes," replies the TCP packet, "I'd like a beer."_

I'd tell you my UDP packet joke, but I'm not sure you'd get it.

<comment><USER3> "We don't allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here, says the bartender.

A neutrino walks into a bar."

(read on /. years ago IIRC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the way to a sales call, a salesman, a project manager, and a programmer were kidnapped. When their employer refused to pay the ransom, the kidnappers granted each a last wish before killing them. The salesman said, "I still want to make the pitch I prepared for today. It's awesome and will only take an hour." The project manager said, "I still want to present my Powerpoint for this project. It's only 92 slides." The programmer said, "Kill me first."

</comment><comment><USER5> I often use "There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors."

<comment><USER6> I prefer "There are 3 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things."

<comment><USER7> My favorite on this vein is: "There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't."

<comment><USER8> I like this variation:

      There are 10 type of people in the world:
      Those who understand binary
      Those who don't
      And those who count from zero

<comment><USER9> Or:

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who didn't expect this joke to be in base three.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know an accounting joke:

 _An engineer and an accountant are on a train when they pass between two fields of sheep._

 _" Boy, there are a lot of sheep in those fields." says the engineer._

 _" There are 1,005" says the accountant._

 _" How do you know?"_

 _" Well, there are about 1,000 in that field, and there are 5 in the other one."_

<comment><USER11> The thing about this joke is that the accountant is (kinda) right. Suppose they pass one field with about 1000 sheep and lots and lots of fields with ~5 sheep. Someone who thinks "about 1000" \+ 5 = "about 1000" is going to get a very wrong answer, and someone who thinks "about 1000" \+ 5 = "about 1005" is going to do much better.

This is also why, when combining floating-point values of different widths, it is better to say single + double -> double than single + double -> single, and why the concept of "significant figures" as commonly taught in schools is dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favorite was originally about the DEC minicomputer Field Services organization, known as "field circuses":

      Q: How can you recognize a field circus engineer
         with a flat tire?
      A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one
         is flat.

      Q: How can you recognize a field circus engineer
         who is out of gas?
      A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one
         is flat.

      Q: How can you tell it's *your* field circus engineer?
      A: The spare is flat, too. [1]

That particular organization may be long gone, but you can definitely spot the behavior. E.g., when calling front-line tech support and being asked to reboot and reinstall things that clearly don't matter.

[1] The Jargon File is full of little gems like this. [http://zvon.org/comp/r/ref- Jargon_file.html#Terms~field_circ...](http://zvon.org/comp/r/ref- Jargon_file.html#Terms~field_circus)

</comment><comment><USER13> An mechanical engineer, physicist, and computer programmer are in a car driving down a steep mountain when the brakes fail. The careens around bends picking up speed until they finally reach the bottom and the car rolls to a stop.

The engineer hops out of the car and begins inspecting the brakes for the source of the failure. The physicist grabs a pad of paper and starts calculating the maximum angular momentum and friction coefficients.

The computer programmer looks at the car, then at the mountain and says, "let's push it up to the top and see if it happens again."

</comment><comment><USER14> Some programmers prefer to intermingle functional code with imperative code, while others do not: they believe in the separation of Church and state.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why don't communists make good Java programmers?

The class system has dissolved and the state controls everything.

<comment><USER12> Oh god! From the enterprise code I've seen, American large companies must be hotbeds of communism!

And now that I think about it, enterprise systems may be fully realized soviet states. There are long queues for often meager returns, there are a large number of factories that produce mysterious junk, security policies are both incomprehensible and harsh, and to get anything done, you have to know somebody.

<comment><USER16> This is pretty accurate, actually, and has been studied by economists, for whom this was a huge problem: If the free market is supposed to be so great, then why are firms not organized as markets internally? In fact, why do they exist in the first place? In a sense, the existence of firms is evidence that a free market is not the best organizing principle for everything.

You may want to start here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm)

<comment><USER12> My personal theory is that this is mainly about the primate dominance dynamic. Markets really do work better, but too many people would rather be the alpha monkey to care about little things like organizational effectiveness.

Of course, to bring this back on topic, as a software guy I'm inclined to think it's a hardware problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mck- How long does it take for a dyslexic programmer to get this joke?

Logn time

</comment><comment><USER17> This article from devhumor: [http://devhumor.com/193/](http://devhumor.com/193/)

The assembly panel is very funny.

</comment><comment><USER4>
      >If you're happy and you know it, missing quote
      missing quote

      >IfYoureHappyAndYouKnowItNotAVerb
      Not a verb

      >If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it, If you're happy and you know it, syntax error
      syntax error

</comment><comment><USER18> At a place where I used to work, someone had a car with one of those Virginia "Internet C@pital" license plates. The design has changed over the years, but this one put the @ in a big blue dot right in the lower center of the license plate. Sadly, I can't find a pic of this person's plate, or even that style of plate, anymore.

The license number was "CAR JPG".

I SO wish I had a pic to prove this.

<comment><USER19> Not sure if this is the one you are talking about, but a cursory image search on Google led me to this image in a Flickr set: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbee2828/92718344/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbee2828/92718344/)

I don't see the '@' anywhere which leads me to believe this may be a fake/photoshop. Still, quite interesting... :)

<comment><USER5> [http://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/virginia-internet- capit...](http://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/virginia-internet-capital.png)

In your picture it would be covered by the license plate frame.

<comment><USER18> That's not the design I remember -like I said, it has changed- but it does look like a similar vehicle. Maybe they got a new license plate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Before I click, just a quick bet with myself this excellent question has been closed.

[edit] yep, locked. Thanks NullUserException! Now another quick bet with myself that someone will reply to this comment defending S.O.s repeated closure of interesting questions.

<comment><USER21> Looks like I already won my bet that someone on HN was going to bitch and moan about closed questions again.

Surely you can make a good case for it on meta.stackoverflow.com?

<comment><USER22> Huh. I was pretty sure this was one question everyone could understand was off-topic, but I guess I was wrong.

Interestingly, this HN submission is illustrating the original reason Jeff Atwood locked the post in 2009 - nobody can be bothered to even read the first page before posting their own joke.

<comment><USER23> Of the 20+ pages already there, no one has yet posted the funny one from xkcd or Dilbert. No other site on the Internet can put these two sources together like Stack Overflow can.

<comment><USER22> There's another whole thread devoted to cartoons: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your- favorite...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite- programmer-cartoon)

Yes, it's locked too, and it too was deleted for a year or so before the current crop of moderators undeleted and locked it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At the top of the page:

 _When I teach introductory computer science courses, I like to lighten the mood with some humor. Having a sense of fun about the material makes it less frustrating and more memorable, and it 's even motivating if the joke requires some technical understanding to 'get it'!_

When put in this context, I think the question has some value. Being honest, programming can be very dry at times. The most mirth inducing stuff I have read in relation to programming is when programmers complain about programming languages, I think SO had a question addressing this issue.

</comment><comment><USER25> An electrical engineer from GE, a chemical engineer from DuPont and a Windows kernel developer from Microsoft are in a car, driving along a desert road.

At some point the car malfunctions and comes to a stop. The following discussion ensues:

GE guy: "It's because there are some crossed wires in the electrical system that regulates the engine."

DuPont Guy: "Don't be ridiculous, this is clearly caused by a wrong mix of gasoline and oxygen going into the cylinders."

MS guy: "Why don't we all get out of the car, close the doors, reopen the doors, get back into the car, and try again."

<comment><USER26> The variation I like is this:

An electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer and a software engineer from Microsoft are riding in a car, when they start down a steep hill. Halfway down the brakes go out and the car crashes into a tree at the bottom of the hill. Luckily, no one is hurt, so they get out and start analyzing what happened.

Electrical engineer: Clearly a short-circuit in the ABS system caused the brakes to go out.

Mechanical engineer: No, no, it was an over-pressure situation that caused a brake line to rupture.

They both turn to the Microsoft guy and ask him for his opinion:

Microsoft guy: I don't know, but let's push the car back to the top of the hill and try it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Two regular expressions are sitting at a bar and having a drink. A big, context-sensitive string walks over and steals the drink from the first regex. The second says to the first "Are you going to let him bully you like that?" The first replies "Yeah, I'm no match for him."

</comment><comment><USER28> Sticker on car: "My other car is a cdr".

<comment><USER29> He cdr got a cadr. A cadr is a real car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why programmers keep confusing Halloween and Christmas?

Because Oct 31 == Dec 25.

</comment><comment><USER31> >"locked by NullUserException"

I was hoping that were a joke :(

</comment><comment><USER32> To go off topic a bit here - all these SO articles that are not pinpointed programming questions are always closed or locked. You can no longer ask these kind of open ended, leading to a debate kind of questions on SO anymore. The questions have to be very focused and narrow so that someone can answer it to get points. Its really disappointing but that is just the way the community took it in - pedantic.

<comment><USER33> On SO, mod points are granted by how many "points" you have. The idea is that if you have that many points, you got them by asking good questions, writing good answers, and generally being a good citizen on the site. But if you allow jokes or open-ended questions, then people get tons of points and mod powers even it they don't really contribute to the content of the site.

It would help if they allowed open-ended questions that are marked "community wiki" (which means the author doesn't get points for the post). But you'd still end up with a lot of off-topic content getting upvoted on the front page which would be annoying.

<comment><USER34> "It would help if they allowed open-ended questions that are marked "community wiki""

And then we'd have quora, which would not be Stack Overflow. The intention of the site from day one was to encourage specific answerable programming questions that do not involve endless open ended discussion.

I truly believe this narrow scope of acceptable question type is why the site is hugely popular.

I don't understand how people don't get this even after five and a half years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have a UDP joke, but you might not get it.

<comment><USER36> Yes - see the earlier comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7036510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7036510)

<comment><USER35> Redundancy is a key part of unreliable protocol jokes.

<comment><USER37> lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> An architect, an engineer and a programmer are discussing God:

Architect: Of course God was an architect! Look at the world! It's so beautiful and well composed!

Engineer: Nah, you don't know what you're saying! God was an engineer! Look at the universe and all it contains!

Programmer: Pfft... who do you think created chaos?

</comment><comment><USER39> Strange that the joke most popular with my friends has not been quoted yet. It's about the programmer who goes to bed and places two glasses by the bedside: one with water, in case he wants to drink at night, and the other empty, in case he does not.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why couldn't the computer scientist plough the field? It was intractorable.

</comment><comment><USER41> A couple originals:

\- Javascript programmers have no class.

\- Psst...did you hear Haskell is stateless? Pass it on.

</comment><comment><USER42> There are three kinds of people in the world: the ones who understand binary and the ones who don't.

<comment><USER36> That's a weird non-joke version. The ones I know are:

The usual:

        There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those
            that understand binary and those that don't.

Then there was:

        There are 11 kinds of people in the world, those
            that understand binary and those that don't.

Which is a riff on:

        There are 3 kinds of people in the world, those
            who can count, and those who can't.

Then along came:

        There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those
            that understand binary, those that don't, and
            those that didn't expect this joke to be in
            ternary.

Yours, on the other hand, just doesn't really make sense. Maybe I'm missing something ...

<comment><USER43> Maybe he's a SQL programmer (a binary column can be true, false or NULL).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> At a friend's wedding, I delivered the toast which was a long list of "To X!" items, where X was something special to/for/about the couple. This worked spectacularly well. Including the dead silence & puzzled looks, and seething consternation from the groom, at "To RTFM!" halfway thru.

<comment><USER39> Oh btw, did you have a toast "to X" too, or just "to ${X}"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why did the Java developer need glasses?

Because he couldn't C#.

</comment><comment><USER46> Study shows learning exotic functional programming languages like LISP/Scheme or Haskell to impact facial hair growth and accelerate neckbeards: [http://thequickword.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/on-the- origin-o...](http://thequickword.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/on-the-origin-of- the-modern-neckbeard-hacker/)

</comment><comment><USER47> PHP

</comment><comment><USER48> #ifdef GetAHearingAid

Stolen from the Bad C Pun Contest in the C/C++ User's Journal, in 1992. But I've never forgotten it.

</comment><comment><USER49> A Chinese spy manages to steal the last 50MB of the Lisp program governing U.S. missile launches. Fortunately, it was all closing parentheses.

<comment><USER50> actually, it was javascript and the file contained:

                  }
              });
          };
      }());

<comment><USER39> Well, people do say Javascript is a Lisp in C clothes, and for a good reason. Well, for a bad reason too, as in this case.

<comment><USER51> I used to say that too until I read [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript- isnt...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt-scheme/)

<comment><USER39> It is not, but there are reasons some people say that. Keep in mind this is a posting about jokes. By the way, someone managed to downvote the parent -- what a strange reaction to a joke! Kind of sad, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pair-programming: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ)

</comment><comment><USER8>
      There are 10 types of people in the world:
      Those who understand binary,
      Those who don't,
      And those who count from zero.

</comment><comment><USER52> An http request walks into a bar and says "get me a beer". The barman sets down a beer with 200 napkins.

</comment><comment><USER53> This one I sing to my kids:

"Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he had an infinite recursion

E-I-E-I-O

With an

Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O

And on that farm he had an infinite recursion ..."

<comment><USER54> an infinite loop _

<comment><USER55> I think he went with recursion so that it would eventually terminate, when he runs out of memory.

<comment><USER53> it loops when you get to "With An", not that you get through the whole verse.

That is, the cow says "Moo", the sheep says "baa", and the infinite recursion says "That is, the cow says "Moo", the sheep says "baa", and the infinite recursion says "That is, the cow says "Moo", the sheep says "baa", and the infinite recursion says "That is, the cow says "Moo", the sheep says "baa", and the infinite recursion says "That is, the cow says "Moo", the sheep says "baa", and the infinite recursion says StackOverflowException was unhandled

An unhandled exception of type

'System.StackOverflowException' occurred in Pxtl.dll

Make sure you do not have an infinite loop or infinite recursion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This looks familiar... :D

</comment><comment><USER57> Every little bit counts

</comment><comment><USER58> Knock, nock.

Race condition.

Who is there?

</comment><comment><USER59> _Two bits walk into a bar for a byte._

<comment><USER59> _Two bytes walk into a bar for a bit._</comment></comment>


(It's Great To) Suck at Something - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/its-great-to-suck-at-surfing.html <comment><USER2> The article was a bit pretentious for my taste, but I agree with the title. I've noticed a small but definite "trickle down" effect to the things I do well from spending time doing things that I'm bad at.</comment>


Startup Quote: Ryan Carson, founder, Carsonified - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/1457682456

<comment><AUTHOR> Create a 4-day work week. The benefits are a happier team, increased efficiency and easier recruiting.

\- Ryan Carson (@ryancarson)</comment>