If it's a nice problem to have, don't solve it now - <AUTHOR> https://davnicwil.com/if-its-a-nice-problem-to-have-dont-solve-it-now <comment><USER2> This can also be summarized as "Early on, don't be afraid of doing things that don't scale".

In this particular example, my "reset password" functionality could be sending me an email, and I have to reset the password manually and email you a temporary one that you can use. Bad solution? Yes. Doesn't scale? Of course. But if you have 5 customers it's not a big deal and you can use your time on something else.

The key here is to have good people in the team. A decent Senior Engineer / Architect would know that 'Reset password' will be needed. That is why a very technically solid person is gold in the first round, because they can design the signup in such a way that it's prepared for future requirements. They of course would also know that you can't store in plain text, that it should be hashed, that you might have to use a vault, that you need to randomize the hash, and that in the future limit access to the "user" table and never ever expose it through an endpoint where a user can reach it, as well as protecting against XSS and SQL injections.

Which of the list above goes off the list? There is a balance there in getting the right solution without scope creep, but also not implementing something so silly that it's going to get you into trouble later. The genius of a competent person is being able to tell what needs to be solved now vs. later

<comment><USER3> > That is why a very technically solid person is gold in the first round, > because they can design the signup in such a way that it's prepared for > future requirements. They of course would also know that you can't store in > plain text, that it should be hashed, that you might have to use a vault, > that you need to randomize the hash, and that in the future limit access to > the "user" table and never ever expose it through an endpoint where a user > can reach it, as well as protecting against XSS and SQL injections.

Wrong. The correct technical decision is to bundle in a library that solves this for you - login with Google, or Facebook, or GitHub, or OIDC, pick one according to the context. Get password reset, MFA, password security, etc. for free.

Why reinvent the wheel, poorly?

<comment><USER4> Assuming that Google or Facebook or Github has implemented a library correctly, and that it will remain available as long as you want your app to function is dangerous.

<comment><USER5> As opposed to assuming that you'll implement it correctly when Google or Facebook or github haven't?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Yes, because what's good for them is not necessarily what's good for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with issues like this is that this is patch development. If you don't look a couple steps ahead and at least think through your "nice to have" problems, you might end up getting the architecture wrong. The password reset problem might drive you to find an authentication library instead of rolling your own. Suddenly, your "nice to have" problem is fixed before you get to it, because you decided to look at the larger picture instead of just rushing to just rely on an email and password column in your MVP. That way when you demo your app to an investor or early beta users, you won't be stuck saying "oh, there's no password reset, just create another one".

<comment><USER7> I'm curious, what's the right alternative to having an email and password columns in a "customers" table?

<comment><USER8> In addition to the sibling answer of "use a framework"; if you simply stick passwords in a database, and the database gets stolen, you've now leaked your users' passwords. So you should hash the passwords, and they should be salted, so now you need a `salt` column. Most people use too cheap a hash function, so this is an additional argument for using a library / framework.

<comment><USER7> Umm, but using bcrypt to hash the passwords is just a couple of lines of code (at least in Go); I'm wondering if I'm doing things wrong by not using a dedicated framework.

<comment><USER8> No, that's fine :) It wasn't clear to me from your original comment whether you were hashing passwords, apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a person who has worked at many startup, I get it, "shipping" features is important.

As an engineer working at many startups, this is a sad and painful reality of working under product driven ideas and "first to market" type things- basically anything that doesn't (usually) involve life or death, or federal regulation is rushed out the door when it can be.

As a user, I absolutely 100% hate this mentality. You skip features you don't consider necessary, do things in ways that make them difficult to return to later and throw it in the "technical debt" pile.

<comment><USER10> I think the "ship asap" is necessary for brand new startups. If you can't generate the user growth necessary to secure the next round of funding you'll be out of business, and that time spent writing the ideal code was not only a waste of time, but also a potential cause to the slow user growth. In its first year or so, until it receives enough funding to stabilize, it makes sense for a startup to give more weight to the short term than the medium term.

But once stabilized, and there's no immediate danger of running out of runway, things shift, and the medium and long terms become much more significant. But many startups fail to realize this; they've become too accustomed to the fast- paced, ship-asap mentality. Breaking from it seems to them a decline in productivity, where it's actually just a shift in priorities. There are a lot of contributing factors to this oversights, and they can vary from company to company, but it's continuing to prioritize the short-term is a dangerous act that usually serves neither the end user nor the business.

<comment><USER11> > ideal code

One problem in these discussions is that people quickly start using absolutist language, which makes it hard to find _balance_.

<comment><USER10> Balance also is not quite the correct thing to strive for.

The proper course of action is to work with the leadership to figure out when the expected critical points are for the business. This includes fund raising, IPOs, acquisition, or any other time when the company receives a valuation. The goal, for both the business and the dev team, is to make sure that the company has the best possible value at those exact points. You don't want to peek too early or peek too late. The proper course of action then is to prioritize things in accordance with how they impact those points in time. If one's coming up soon, prioritize the short term almost exclusively. If it's years out, plan ahead as a marathon, not a sprint.

<comment><USER11> Know the enemy, but also know thyself.

For example, it would be a bad idea for me to say "I am not going to write any automated tests" for a 3-week MVP. That decision would lead to me producing nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just to push back a tiny bit on this, sometimes nice problems can turn into nasty problems very quickly.

"My customer data isn't backed up", is a nice problem to have when you're just launching a new service and don't have any customers. But it's still a problem you'd probably like to solve relatively early. There won't be a moment where missing backups are an immediate problem but also still easily solvable; they're either a future problem or you're unavoidably about to lose a large number of your customers.

As a less on-the-nose example, sometimes when I'm building software, I can anticipate that something will be a problem two or three months from now. In those cases, I have a decision to make. If the code is disposable, I can ignore the problem and solve it later. But if I'm working on core architecture, spending an extra 2-3 days to solve the problem now can save me 3 weeks of refactoring in the future.

Many businesses start agile and become slow and cumbersome over time precisely because of this reason. They can't keep up the pace they started at because the technical debt, compliance issues, and future problems end up weighing them down over time.

I think there's just a balance to be had here.

<comment><USER13> "My customer data is too big to back up with an rsync cron job" is a nice problem to have.

"My customer data isn't backed up" is a _stupid_ problem to have, and if your friends and coworkers aren't stopping you, then you need a better class of friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think that this advice cannot be generalized. There are companies with large development teams spending staggering amounts of time solving problems they don't have and probably never will and companies burning through whatever goodwill they can find to extract maximum profit by throwing garbage, buggy, and incomplete software out into the market "because agile". Almost no one gets this right. I think the two sides feed off each other by each pointing to the other as an example.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is good, difficult advice. I'm working on an app, and it's so easy to go off the feature deepend. I recently spent a week trying to do data import/export - an un-requested feature by my 20 users. That time almost certainly would have been better spent marketing or otherwise finding more users.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice to have today, executive demand tomorrow. What's important is not to solve tomorrow's problems today, but to not inhibit tomorrow's solutions today either.

</comment><comment><USER17> _Whilst I 'm building signup, I realise that I probably also need reset password functionality. If a user signs up, but then forgets their password, that's a problem. But from my perspective right now, is this a nice problem to have? Actually, yes! I have zero users, but having this problem implies I would have users, which would be great. Reset password functionality is important, and will absolutely be required eventually, but I can do it later. First, I should ship anything that's stopping me from getting users in the first place._

While I'm all for building minimum viable products, I would argue that a login process that does not have a password reset function is too minimal to be viable. If you're so strapped for time that you can't build a password reset form while you're building your user sign-up form, I would ask why you're bothering with building your own sign-up functionality at all. Why not use OpenID or OAuth based logins that bypass the need for building a sign-up system at all?

As a user, I would be hesitant to sign up for a product that didn't have password-reset functionality, and, if I discovered that the service I just signed up for has no way to reset a password, I would probably stop using it (since I lost my password and have no way of resetting) and disrecommend it to people who ask me about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The password thing was just an illustrative example, it's not perfect, but the point isn't that you don't need it or that not having it won't be really bad _when_ you have users, it's that whilst you don't have users perhaps there are other things that are higher priority to build first.

When those are done, reset password might literally be the next item on your list. You might end up building and shipping it before anyone signs up anyway, but in the meantime you've at least got something out there and had the opportunity of getting any users at all.

<comment><USER18> And data security will come exactly: never. Because security is never the most important thing. A company that runs with this mentality will always be reactive, and never prepared for threats.

<comment><AUTHOR> Security is foundational. It's not something to add later. Without it, signup is not done and shouldn't be shipped. Ironically, not having the reset password functionality actually _reduces_ security bug surface area :-)

<comment><USER11> Which is an argument in _favor_ of leaving off some features. Don't half-ass password reset. Wait until you have the need to whole-ass it and make things conceptually-coherent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I take a different attitude to "nice to have" problems. I work on a professional services team that is massively undersized relative to demand. Our role is less than a year old within the organization. We have far more clients in need of support from my team than we can give.

This is a great problem to have - lots of pent up demand. Nevertheless, it is a problem, and we must actively strive to solve it. It's nice to have lots of demand, yet if the problem is not solved, we will be giving up future revenue. A larger team will be able to support more revenue than a smaller team.

There is no part of this situation where it is a good idea to slow down on hiring, or to compromise on hiring standards.

Ninja edit: this is in contrast to things that aren't a problem yet. E.g., in the article, the author discusses not having password reset functionality. That is not yet a problem in the absence of users. It's not a nice problem to have. It is not a problem.

<comment><USER6> > It's not a nice problem to have. It is not a problem.

I think you misunderstand his word usage, though you're seemingly following the same process.

A "nice problem to have" is one that results from having success. Yes, he doesn't have the problem now, because he's got no users, so indeed, having to reset the passwords of existing users would be a "nice to have" problem.

You're already in the "nice to have" zone (clients with problems to solve!), and you want to fix those problems brought on by popularity.

<comment><USER19> It's a matter of tense. I think we're all agreeing in this sub-thread.

I am focusing (perhaps too much) on the tense issues. Without tense, "no password reset mechanism", to continue using the same example, represents a problem state.

If something _is_ a problem, it exists in the present.

If something _will be_ a problem, with any contingency or timeline, then by definition it _is not yet_ a problem.

Even in your own phrasing, the tense issue becomes clear:

> Yes, he doesn't have the problem now, because he's got no users, so indeed, > having to reset the passwords of existing users would be a "nice to have" > problem.

Specifically "... would be a "nice to have" problem." This indicates that it _is not_ a problem, rather that it _can become_ a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This can be used to justify any kind of crap being shipped in newly introduced features, merely baring regressions.

Therefore I don't value the approach as presented here. But a sane variant could be interesting: anyway I suspect it will need domain specific judgment, preventing from throwing a nice universal rule of thumb to the world.

</comment><comment><USER21> The glorification of technical debt.

A 'good problem to have' is 'we need to scale to handle another 1 million users', not missing basic functionality.

</comment><comment><USER22> I deleted my older comment.

For many "nice problems to have" I really disagree.

A nice problem to have can be a real problem. It's nice you are in that situation but it's still a problem.

Your site offline because of demand is a nice problem to have. It's absolutely one to solve right now.

<comment><USER23> They are discussing nice problems to have _relative to the status quo_ , so problems that are really only potential problems right now, but could become actual problems if good things happened. So I think even with the rewrite, your comment misses the mark.

OTOH, I think that it's still a bit wrong to say don't solve them now: if you have a problem that is potentially a business-ending disaster that you won't have time to fix before it destroys your business if it manifests, it doesn't matter if the conditions which would cause it to manifest are otherwise an improvement over your status quo conditions. It still needs fixed before that happens.

Otherwise, yeah, YAGNI applies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, your first paragraph is spot on. It's pretty much exactly what I was going to reply to IanCal. Instead I'll just +1 it.

On your second paragraph, 100% agreed. This is really just a useful prioritization heuristic, not a rule, and in some cases other considerations should and will override it.

It's mainly useful just to deliberately and routinely check that instinct to go deep on whatever you're working on when there's a lot of breadth to cover that's more important to get done first.

<comment><USER22> Whether the problem is nice to have or not is entirely orthoganal to how important it is to solve.

"Is this feature important, or a nice to have" is the question they want, not "is this problem nice to have?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >"It's good advice, but hard to follow in practice. Often when you explore solutions to a problem, even simple ones, the problem reveals itself to be more complex than you'd anticipated. You find sub-problems, and tangental problems, which look just as important as the original. It's easy to go off track and end up deep into the problem you were supposed to just find a quick solution to. After all, it's just one more thing, you're thinking about it, and you'll have to solve it at some point anyway. Why not now?

I've made this mistake a lot. I'm trying to get better at being strict about saying "not now" to new problems that I discover in the middle of an iteration, and avoid getting sidetracked from shipping by working on things that can be left for later. I'd like to share a tactic I use to do this that has worked well for me. It's to ask a simple question about each new problem I encounter: "From my perspective right now, is this a nice problem to have?". If yes, I skip it. If no, I work on it immediately."

Opinion: There is great value to persisting problems that can be instantaneously or quickly solved, if only for the simple reason that they can be thought about; meditated upon; and other/better/more novel/more creative/more elegant solutions devised -- than the one initially determined by one's mind...

In fact, if in the future, I built a large company, and solved all known business problems (well, in that business's industry!), then I'd probably want to get rid of that company and start over again with nothing!

Why?

Well to again rethink/reengineer better solutions -- to the problem set that I once faced as barriers!

You will always think more creatively the second (and nth) times you revisit problems and problem sets!

This might sound crazy to most normal people -- but I value problem solving skills over money.

With problem solving skills, you can always get money -- but the reverse is not always true...

Anyway, excellent article!

</comment><comment><USER25> Having too many customers trying to buy your stuff is something folks would call a "nice problem to have"

It's a TERRIBLE problem to have not addressed in advance because now you're loosing money and people may wander off.

almost everything folks call "a nice problem to have" is not really "nice". It's frequently business hurting and sometimes business killing.

<comment><USER26> If you have no end-users, then deficiencies in your product won't cause any actual problems. (points at head)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone else feel like we are all trying to be high growth startups?

I understand that we all want to build products which others use and pay for but why not also be building things for yourself?

Is it really such a bad thing to spend some time over-optimizing pieces of a system for your own pleasure and possibly learning things along the way?

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd say this is more relevant for (customer facing) features and not so much for (technical and architectural) problems.

Work on the most important features first but find the middle ground between some spaghetti that just works and an over engineered system.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think this is great advice, but hard to apply or understand if you've never actually had nice-to-have problems. I can totally relate to those rabbit-hole kind of problems that only feed the procrastinator in me.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I can totally relate to those rabbit-hole kind of problems

Exactly the mechanism that this question aims to address!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Obviously it's just an example, but should most new companies just avoid building login entirely and use something like Auth0, AWS Cognito, Firebase Auth, etc?

<comment><USER31> You should definitely do SSO from some other service if you can.</comment></comment>


Is it common to pay designers up front? - <AUTHOR>

I've contracted many times as a python programmer for companies but I have never considered charging a 'deposit'.<p>I recently started my own company and I have been asked a few times now to pay 30-50% up front and to me this seems like a horrible practice but it is also my first time hiring a designer. <comment><USER3> From the point of view of an established designer most startups are seen as having a high flake factor: Some startups go south overnight without paying their vendors, many startup owners have no clue on how to work with creatives and the worst offenders ask you to work for free.

So for a designer to work with a startup is high risk. Now of course if you're Steve Jobs after Apple and you're starting NeXT then yes Paul Rand will work with you. But that said I don't think Paul Rand would have even spoken to Steve Jobs when Apple was in the garage in the 70s.

PS This isn't just for tech startups, but for any sort of startup.

</comment><comment><USER4> Us freelancers oftentimes live paycheck to paycheck. Getting a delayed payment is more than an inconvenience, it starts a trainwreck of financial consequences. In my experience, if a client can't pay up front then they were going to have trouble paying on time later.

Not to mention that the transfer time can take longer than it takes to get the work done, especially if the payment is via echeck.

Getting partial - or full - payment up front takes a major headache off the programmer/designer, allowing them to concentrate on getting the job done.

<comment><USER5> _Us freelancers oftentimes live paycheck to paycheck. Getting a delayed payment is more than an inconvenience, it starts a trainwreck of financial consequences._

Sincere advice said with love: charge more. Not being paid on time is a _predictable and natural state for a business_. The risk of that should be priced into your offering.

<comment><USER6> If I find myself pricing a deal to make up for the would-be client's flake factor, I usually wind up regretting taking the client in the first place. But if it's all you have and you need to eat, by all means, add the dentist tax up front.

<comment><USER7> Building in the business cost of unpredictable receivables isn't just a smart idea; it's part of the whole business model of consulting. This is just one of the 25+ business issues that make a consulting bill rate multiples higher than a full-time salary for the same work.

<comment><USER6> I just haven't found people's price tolerance to be correlated to their riskiness, so I like to try to keep the client risk low. Good clients pay just as much as bad ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes it is very common, though not always 100%.

I tend to estimate the total price, and charge as follows:

10% of the estimate when the proposal and contract is agreed and signed. This secures the project in to my schedule.

40% of the estimate when work begins.

And the remaining fee when work is complete. Only when paid in full are copyrights and files transferred to the client.

<comment><USER8> Saying that, I'm usually pretty flexible with pricing - If the client wants a different payment schedule then I'm open to discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I charge 20% up front. Doesn't matter if it's a $40,000 contract or a $4,000 contract. Freelancers are easy to screw over because most of us can't afford to take people to court. It would usually cost me way more money in legal fees than the contract is even worth.

There are people out there that, I think, love screwing over freelancers. They get joy out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think there are more people who like screwing over freelancers or more freelancers that are screwing over companies?

I've heard horror stories on both sides.

<comment><USER10> I believe it's more freelancers screwing over companies from my own personal experience. (6 years). I've had stories from colleagues of them flaking out from personal reasons, disinterest, etc. More of those stories than them talking about being taken to court.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In my experience it is common, and the percentage / structure depends on the total estimated price.

</comment><comment><USER12> This doesn't really answer your question, but you should take a look at 99designs. Depending on your needs, it could help make finding and working with designers pretty painless. I used it because I needed a logo for a side project and I had a great experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I _love_ 99designs for logos but we are building a web application, so a lot of interface design, and I haven't seen many success stories for that type of thing out of crowd sourced design sites.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys, I didn't want to pay up front and become a sucker. This just makes me a little more careful with who we are, its hard to trust some random person with this much cash up front with no work done.

But you guys raise good points.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes. For both development and design, I've yet to work with someone (or be someone) who did not get a significant portion of the total bill up front. If you work with good professionals, it's not an issue.

</comment><comment><USER13> Designers get stiffed all the time; programmers have more job security because of maintenance. Also, software is something you can show working; people will reject a design for wholly arbitrary reasons.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly why I think its weird that designers are charging upfront, I don't think there is a legitimate way to estimate how much time a project is going to take upfront since there will be a lot of iterations and changes and we may not agree on how it should be done.

It would be much easier to pay for hours worked than to have to request a refund on the extra left over if we decided to part ways or anything like that.

<comment><USER13> Having worked in the arts, my experience is that many people - <USER2> first-time buyers and even with the arts industry - don't really appreciate the economics of creative work and tend to undervalue it. If you don't assert a fairly stiff price tag up front people will try and beat your fee down later. The deposit is a way of getting people to put their money where their mouth is. I would be a richer man if I had figured out this trick earlier in my film career :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How long is the project? Do you have a bad reptutation for paying on time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a couple month long project. I have seed funding and am fairly well known in the programming community so I have good 'credit'. I'm not against paying upfront I just thought it was weird because I always bill for my time, how can someone charge up front if they haven't done any work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Deposits just make sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would rather pay hourly because the amount of changes / iterations that are going to happen. I'm a programmer and I know hard estimating is and it seems weird to charge '30%' up front... What is 30%? What if our iterations go longer the designer though? Do I get billed more even though I paid up front?

<comment><USER15> Actually you're right, that makes even more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes it is very common.</comment>


Nintendo shares drop after investors realize it doesn't actually make Pokémon Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/25/12269466/nintendo-stock-plunge-pokemon-go <comment><USER2> This story is absolutely insane. How could so many professionals not realize the game was not made by Nintendo?

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't help but be amused by this.</comment>


A Cool SQL Problem (and Why It Is Also a Bullshit SQL Problem) - <AUTHOR> https://ryxcommar.com/2019/06/24/a-cool-sql-problem-and-why-it-is-also-a-bullshit-sql-problem/ <comment> chupa-chups

      with allTimes as (
          with
          startTimes as (
              select distinct start_time
              from meetings
          ),
          endTimes as (
              select distinct end_time
              from meetings
          )
          select start_time as pointInTime from startTimes
          union select end_time as pointInTime from endTimes
      )
      select tt.pointInTime, count(*) from meetings mm
      inner join allTimes tt on (
          mm.start_time <= tt.pointInTime
          and mm.end_time > tt.pointInTime)
      group by tt.pointInTime
      order by tt.pointInTime

(no idea if this is totally correct, just hacked together in a few minutes (postgresql))</comment>


Encarta.com (RIP) Redirects to Bing Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.encarta.com <comment><AUTHOR> This isn't entirely surprising, as Encarta was pretty much dead by the time Wikipedia got popular. What's more interesting, however, is that the "official site" for Encarta as listed in Bing's sidebar is an Archive.org link.</comment>


SyncDriver:client for OneDrive working on WIN8.1 with local or different account - <AUTHOR> http://syncdriver.com

<comment><USER2> Instead of Windows 8.1 I have used it on Windows XP. It looks like it is the solution for edge versions of Windows :) which does not supported by MS itself.</comment>


Atomic bond types discernible in images - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19584301

<comment><USER2> Fc*king paywalls. This is such an amazing article, if only they could not have paywalls for research articles. Its as if the licenses will make enough money to fund the research, stupidity I say.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.filedropper.com/science-2012-gross-1326-9>

<comment><USER4> you are a king among men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd really like to see a labelled version of one of these images.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm genuinely impressed by this research and would have probably become a physicist myself if images like this were available when I was in high school. But I have a nit to pick...

"hexagonal bonds of carbon atoms"

No. Maybe I'm just having an issue with the terminology, but those hexagonal shapes are not the "bonds" like the ones we'd draw for a molecular shape in chemistry class. That's just where the orbiting electrons squeeze between the nuclei. You get these bright lines because electrons' orbital paths are concentrated in these areas.

<comment><USER7> Isn't all solid matter surface form just the high probability areas of the electron clouds?

<comment><USER8> Yep, pretty much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know if the tip carbon monoxide was oxygen toward the probed surface or carbon? I wonder if using the same atom to probe as be probed is part of the resolution enhancement.

<comment><USER10> The tip atom would be oxygen, as CO adsorbs to metal surfaces via carbon-metal bonding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> These pictures are simply amazing. It's mind-boggling how far science and the necessary technology has progressed that we're able to do such a thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Amazing pictures. But not really sure what I'm looking at here. Are those red spheres meant to be the nuclei of atoms? Are the bright hexagonal lines meant to be the path of electrons? If so, isn't the nucleus much too large in relation to the size of the whole atom? Isn't the proportion of the size of the nucleus to the whole atom akin to the size of a fly in a cathedral?

<comment><USER13> It's the size of the electrical field of the nucleus, which is about the size of an atom (well, as much as you can define a size for such a thing).

The size you are thinking of is the size of the strong force of the nucleus - a lot smaller.

Atomic particles don't actually have a size - at all. They are entirely empty space. The only "size" you can define for them is the size of the forces that act on them, but then you have to say which force you are talking about.

Electromagnetic force, strong force, weak force, gravity and quark force (gluons), are your choices.

Note that some forces have a distinct "edge", others just peter out - so there is no real good way of defining the size. Gravity is especially interesting, because measured by that force objects are huge. But of course gravity has no edge, so how do you define size?

Probably the best definition for forces without distinct edges is where does the signal from the force get lost among the noise from other objects? (For example, the other atoms in a molecule.) That's what you see here - each atom is visible until the next atom near it is closer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some IBM group produced images of single and double bonds "pre-internet", or very early internet at the latest.

I remember thinking how the double bonds looked like the plastic plug-together model that I had for chemistry class.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why did they choose colors that make it look like a Metriod? Seriously, I can't unsee no matter how hard I try.

</comment><comment> m-i Incredible stuff. If this would have been when I was in school maybe I would have chosen a diffrent career.</comment>


Ask HN: Nice lifestyle bootstrapped businesses - <AUTHOR> HN community - I figured there was no better place to ask this than here. For people who have started their own businesses, side hustles really in addition to their day jobs - how did you figure out the market? Are there books or podcasts on what you would recommend people like me to read or listen to to get an idea of what markets have niches that can be monetized? <comment><USER2> you might also want to check out indiehackers.com

Lot's of good stuff around that site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


The Long, Slow Decline of Windows Phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/windows-phone/64299/the-long-slow-decline-of-windows-phone <comment><USER2> I mean, what did they expect? Windows looked really nice on the phones, but it didn't have a chance to catch up with the concurrence. Nokia must have been so happy to sell their sinking business.</comment>


Show HN: A curated directory of tips and resources to help you lose weight - <AUTHOR> https://www.fat2lose.com/ <comment><USER2> This isn't a bad list of resources.

But I'm not seeing any profound new value from curating them all together. You still have a large list of opinionated ways to lose weight, some of which conflict with each other, and none of which take into account personal abilities or differences.

What would bring value is to curate them into categories - Here are a list of non-conflicting tips for IF. And another list for people who can't fast, but want to reduce calories. Another for old people, another for young. And another for those with disabilities or metabolic concerns that preclude certain tips. Or even something more interactive - If tip #7 sounds good to you to try, click it and all the conflicting advice is removed, so you can choose from a menu of ideas and end up with a customized plan to try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions! It's right everyone has a different view for losing weight, but I found that a lot of people don't get the basics.

Great idea for dynamic suggestions. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's all about and only about CICO of course but the other tips might help you succeed by making you less hungry or increase the CO side or just keep up motivation to resist temptations to overeat.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sort of Startup Stash for weight loss. I like the idea, but would love to see something like plans personalised for my needs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like how the tips are organised. Bookmarking it!</comment>


How to Fix Two Linux Kernel Bugs While Testing TiDB Operator in K8s - <AUTHOR> https://pingcap.com/blog/try-to-fix-two-linux-kernel-bugs-while-testing-tidb-operator-in-k8s/ <comment><AUTHOR> Bug #1: Unstable kmem accounting

Keyword: SLUB: Unable to allocate memory on node -1

Bug #2: Network device reference count leak

Keyword: kernel:unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free. Usage count = 1</comment>


Tabco parodies Apple Lemmings ad from 1985 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRtQa9EE0xI

<comment><AUTHOR> Original Apple ad here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYP1Tjgt1Ao></comment>


Study: Sitting is no worse than standing without moving - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/10/14/sitting-for-long-periods-doesnt-make-death-more-imminent-study-suggests/ <comment><USER2> The work looks useful and valuable to this area of study. But WaPo and other media outlets persist in a ubiquitous and terrible trend in science reporting, especially those associated with lifestyle and healt : "Here is a study which has different findings than the other studies we've been reporting on, all that research is now overturned! Burn your standing desk!" Of course, in a few months, someone will publish another study calling this one into question, and they'll tell us all to go out and buy new standing desks. As we all know, science doesn't work that way. This study needs to be put into context with other studies, if it contradicts those studies, that needs to be discussed, future studies that might resolve the discrepancy should be identified, limitations on the applicability of this study and on the ones it contradicts should be pointed out, changes in the model we use to understand the effects of mobility and posture on health should be discussed, etc. etc.

Instead, we get serial repetitions of "standing is bad", "standing is good", "it doesn't really matter". I have to look at a calendar to figure out if the caffeine in my coffee is slowly killing me or turning me into a focused super- intellect. Won't someone please, please tell me if I should be ingesting wine and/or chocolate this week?

<comment><USER3> Audiences of those articles (nutrition, "cheap" health advice, garbage fitness, and so on) simply want trivial, feel-good advice; the media just fulfill that wish.

It's the cultural substrate which is misguided - having an interest in feeling good about something, rather than actually accomplishing it - but this is personal choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Story is far more nuanced than the title suggests:

 _" Our study overturns current thinking on the health risks of sitting and indicates that the problem lies in the absence of movement rather than the time spent sitting itself,"_

Translation: sitting is still bad for you, but standing isn't any better, which puts a pin in the standing desk fad.

Guess it's time to get one of these!

[http://www.amazon.com/DeskCycle-Exercise-Pedal-Exerciser- Whi...](http://www.amazon.com/DeskCycle-Exercise-Pedal-Exerciser- White/dp/B00B1VDNQA)

<comment><USER5> I argue that standing is better because the bias towards movement is higher. You can (and will) shift your weight around and take more frequent breaks, simply because you don't have to stand up to do so. That might be enough.

<comment><USER4> You could argue that, but given there's no evidence to support it, it's at best colloquial advice.

And to be perfectly blunt, that sounds more like an attempt to go back and justify the choice of a standing desk after the fact, now that the base assumption ("standing is better than sitting") has been invalidated.

<comment><USER6> I use a standing desk with multiple terminals laid out so I walk between them. I also agree that while standing you are more likely to take walking breaks or step away for a moment. I also feel like when I'm standing I'm a lot more active then when sitting.

Finally, when I sit I have a habit of slouching while standing I tend to have a much better posture even for extended times.

While a bad back isn't death inducing (usually), we should consider all the benefits of standing over sitting, not just the fact that you may or may not die.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I'm sure all of this is true.

For you.

You are an anecdote, not data.

I'm sure I could just as easily trot out examples of folks with bad backs or knees because of extended standing, or due to bad standing posture.

I could probably also find examples of people with circulation problems or other issues as a result of extended standing.

We were sold on the idea that standing, alone, versus sitting, will offset the life shortening effects of being sedentary. Given this study seems to contradict that, the picture is a _lot_ more nuanced.

<comment><USER5> Actually you're not sure you could do that. When do people ever stand perfectly still for hours on end? We get the difference between anecdotes and data, but it's also ok to formulate testable hypotheses in here.

Anyway this is like saying "Buying a bike won't make you thin". Yes, you have to ride the bike. But the availability of a bike in your house greatly raises the chance that you'll ride on any given day. It's indirect, but still a pretty good idea.

<comment><USER4> _but it 's also ok to formulate testable hypotheses in here._

That's a bit odd... you're basically advocating "[formulating] testable hypotheses" simply to post-justify a choice you've already made.

That's basically science backwards...

It's also human nature. We all love to rationalize. But we can at least see it for what it is. :)

Edit:

Incidentally, I have personally witnessed the fact that buying a bike has absolutely no correlation with frequency of riding it... ;)

<comment><USER7> You can't use statistical evidence to invalidate someone's personal experience. It doesn't work that way!

When someone says that a standing desk has helped them, you can't just jump out and say "aha! this study says on average they don't work, therefore that someone is rationalising their purchase".

The best you can say is that it works for some people and not others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Our study overturns current thinking on the health risks of sitting and indicates that the problem lies in the absence of movement rather than the time spent sitting itself,_

I have a sit/stand desk. I think I'm more likely to take a short walking break if I'm already standing. In this case, the study merely moves sitting from being a direct cause to being an indirect cause.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a (somewhat) misleading headline and report.

The report refers to a study which says that sitting is no worse than standing without moving the body.

However, the report does nothing to contradict past studies which show that sitting is bad for the body (in comparison with standing up and walking every n minutes).

A better way of reading the study would be to say that "sitting" and "standing without moving" are equally bad. A lot of other research suggests that sitting for hours is definitely worse than taking a break every hour (or n minutes) and walking for a couple of minutes in that break.

<comment><USER10> Ok, we replaced the title with your description, in accordance with the HN guideline, "Please use the original title _unless it is misleading or linkbait_."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "A truly #ergonomic chair is step one but your best posture is always your next posture..."

Michael Dura, Herman Miller

[https://twitter.com/mikedura/status/436155774755409920](https://twitter.com/mikedura/status/436155774755409920)

</comment><comment><USER12> For some of us, standing is necessary for back pain etc. So its more complicated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Aren't people who spend their days sitting behind a desk also more likely to be more wealthy than, say, people who do heavy construction work all day long? Did they factor in the effects of this difference?

Perhaps the extra years gained from being more wealthy are negated by sitting all day.

</comment><comment><USER14> Most Westerners can't kneel or squat properly, mostly due to sitting. That definitely has health implications, even if it's not lethal. And it's a lot harder to get that mobility back than it is to lose it.

<comment><USER15> It's not just that -- at least in the corner of the West where I grew up, kneeling and squatting were actually discouraged in young children as somehow unhealthy (to your knees, iirc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can only give anecdotal evidence on this. I prefer to walk on my treadmill desk which tends to have less impact on my knees and hips. Standing or sitting without motion will eventually tire me or cause some pain, though I generally find I'm likely to move around more while standing. Sitting for too long just tires me out.

I rotate through all 3 though throughout the day, so if my knees are bothering me or I feel like taking a break, I'll sit down for a bit.

The most important thing once I starting using the treadmill though was investing in decent shoes.

</comment><comment><USER17> Related discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10378944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10378944)

</comment><comment><USER18> This study says standup desks are no good, you are not likely to be any more active than the people in the study just because you are not sitting.

The authors specifically say this in the press release in case you can't see it from the study

[http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_476860_en.ht...](http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_476860_en.html)

Dr Melvyn Hillsdon - "The results cast doubt on the benefits of sit-stand work stations, which employers are increasingly providing to promote healthy working environments."

I too don't like the result but the study is pretty clear.

How this study could contradict a large body of evidence to the contrary I can only see as it being a

1\. Badly done study.

2\. Blue collar vs White collar

</comment><comment><USER19> Fitness and health studies really bug me. People perceive them as actionable when they absolutely aren't and should not be.

If your goal is general health in life you only need to do three things (well 4)..

1) exercise regularly 2) eat a balanced diet 3) sleep as much as you need. 4) drink water.

Don't get hung up in the details.

<comment><USER20> #3 is not exactly correct. Young people should sleep 9 hours a day whether or not it feels like you 'need' the sleep. Many people will feel fine after 6-7 hours of sleep in the morning, but studies have shown that even if you feel rested you will not perform as well on cognitive tasks if you do not get 9 hours.

I got hung up on the details.

<comment><USER19> I think your comment is characterizing exactly what I say not to do, even if you might be right.

My comment is about staying healthy over the duration of your life. It's also about doing what you can and not sweating the small stuff. Studying hard and sleeping 6 hours will get you better test results than sleeping 9 hours and not studying. Your comment is splitting hairs about a small increase and missing the point....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Between that and the VW Diesel scandal this is a tough month for silly environmentalist/health trends. Next thing you know someone will figure out getting a company to collect your banana peels for composting is bad for the earth.

<comment><USER22> I rigged my standing desk so it behaves differently under testing... no, I'm sorry, I have no idea how this is related to the VW diesel scandal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> has been standing for 4 months. About a month ago noticed that my diaphragm has, for the lack of better word, "got straightened". Sitting, probably very incorrect, for 36 years - since the first grade in school - i always thought that it is just my body construction that i have that difficulty breathing full lungs while swimming or running. Lower back also feels better where it matters. And you can't really move while sitting whereis standing you do move a bit - like walking back and forward while waiting for that beast to rebuild.

</comment><comment><USER24> Seems interesting to me that most of the discussion is sitting vs standing, when the results seem to indicate that the important distinction is moving vs not.

</comment><comment><USER25> What about sitting on the floor, cross legged or legs extended. Would that be better than sitting on the chair. Any study on that matter would be good too.

<comment><USER26> I suspect it would be better, but I would also like to see a study. I work from home and have been experimenting with fairly non-traditional setups:

\- sitting on a small stool with no back support.

\- sitting cross legged at a low table

\- standing with my keyboard at about elbow height.

All three are surprisingly good. I thought I would miss a chair, but I do not in any way. The stool is the least effort, but requires me to be careful of posture or else I get sore muscles. Standing is quite nice as long as I remember to keep shifting my weight around. Sitting cross legged is still difficult for me (lack of flexibility) for more than a few hours, but probably makes me feel the best when I'm done.

Eventually I want to transition to sitting cross legged for most of the day, but I think it will require a concerted effort at training my body to accept it. I'm a bit worried about blood circulation in the legs, though.

My "office furniture" has come in quite a bit under budget with these schemes, though. I spent the equivalent of $10 on the stool. I use my closet (which has a surprisingly convenient shelf in just the right place) for standing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My lower back pain from sitting all day won't kill me, but it does significantly lower my quality of life.

<comment><USER28> I found this exercise on /r/fitness and its been phenomenal for my lower back pain from sitting all day: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOTvaRaDjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOTvaRaDjI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Next up...treadmill desks.

</comment><comment><USER30> Phew.</comment>


Improving Perceived Performance by Prefetching Critical SPA Resources - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.siftscience.com/improving-perceived-performance-by-prefetching-critical-resources/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the fine work done by the folks at [http://instantclick.io/](http://instantclick.io/)</comment>


Ask HN: Which tools do you use for GTD (Getting Things Done)? - <AUTHOR> For those who use this technique to organize their tasks, which tools do you use ?<p>I'm currently using Wunderlist, but I'm not completely satisfied by the way tasks are linked. <comment><USER2> I've been refining an Asana workflow for a few years now and am pretty satisfied with it. (I've used GTD in one form or another for nearly 15 years now, and spent the first 10 years searching for the right toolset to keep my lists organized.)

I don't practice strict GTD, but do use most of the elements, and I find Asana ticks nearly all the boxes for me (with just one or two quibbles). It's the first tool I've used that doesn't leave me either spending all day organizing or constantly fighting friction due to a mismatch between tools and workflow.

I was never quite comfortable with Wunderlist, though to be fair it's been a few years since I tried it. What about it isn't working for you?

<comment><USER3> What's your workflow and what are your quibbles?

<comment><USER2> I do intend to answer this, but need to find time because it's not a short answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have a mac? I have had some success with Things 3. Omnifocus is a little too overloaded for me.

If you are using a PC, I like Todoist. Verge also recommends TodoIst

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a PC and a mac, so I'm looking for a cross-plateform tool</comment></comment>


Hazmat Suits to Make Air Travel Safer During Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-15/biovyzr-hazmat-suits-aim-to-make-flying-safer-during-coronavirus <comment><USER2> It looks reasonably comfortable. Next step is a tube for visiting bars.

<comment> readit-design Some of possible next steps in my view: Global economic reconfiguration - recession / depression. Mandatory digital surveillance. Low birth rate. Remote work preference - remote economy. Difficult international travel. In general the world will be more like 1970 with digital communication from 2020. But the world is different now and may be never be the same.</comment></comment>


Some Silicon Valley Tech Workers Get Home Loans with No Money Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-27/zero-down-on-a-2-million-house-is-no-problem-in-silicon-valley <comment><USER2> _One reason: Almost half of their compensation packages are in Apple shares. So their lender, Opes Advisors, assigned the couple a financial adviser who used a software program to factor in debts and future income, including the stock, and the costs of education over the years for two young children._

They don't go into much detail, but this part scares me.

I'm assuming the "model" estimates some sort of future value for the stock. "You only make $150K, but don't worry, our model says that once your stock starts to vest, you'll be making $250K per year thereafter".

Of course that assumes their "model" of the stock price is correct.

However, California is a no-resource [edit:non-recourse] state, so if the owners get to the point where they can't afford payments, then it's the lender that is on the hook for the loss.

<comment><USER3> what is a "no-resource state"?

<comment><USER2> Typo! I meant non-recourse.

<comment><USER3> I ended up turning off autocorrect- too many problems

Searching for no-resource state brought up a huge number of programming links - sometime I worry about user customization in search and other UI elements

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I realize this headline is meant to be inflammatory (look at those entitled people who get it all!), but this practice already exists for medical doctors: [http://whitecoatinvestor.com/personal-finance/the-doctor- mor...](http://whitecoatinvestor.com/personal-finance/the-doctor-mortgage- loan/)

Basically: "you're about to have a high income and—as a class—have a very low default rate. We'll let you put 0% down and not count your student debt against you". Usually before you get your first paycheck (just need to show them the contract).

FWIW I'd argue that tech workers are—financially speaking—much more varied than doctors, who generally exit residency, get a position (sometimes in a new city) and see their income skyrocket. So I can't say this is perhaps as justifiable an idea as it is for new doctors, but I can buy the rationale for certain workers.

If you're in the boat of "I could afford a mortgage around here, but would take years to save a huge downpayment on these prices", the doctor mortgage can be a great thing. Not least of all because it's not always savvy to make a big downpayment: [http://themortgagereports.com/18520/20-percent- downpayment-r...](http://themortgagereports.com/18520/20-percent-downpayment- risk-mortgage-interest-rate)

<comment><USER5> I found it to be a particularly interesting headline because I thought such things were normal. When I bought my home in 2004 it was not only zero down but on a 7/1 interest only arm at just 1 point above the basis rate with a maximum increase over the life of just 4 points. As a bonus I got $50K out to pay off the boat. Needless to say when the housing market crashed I wasn't freaked out because I had effectively nothing to loose. Sometimes not having any money invested, especially for the first decade or so can be a relief if one must consider a strategic default of the mortage.

<comment><USER2> _When I bought my home in 2004_

I think the "2004" in your reply is key. Crazy things were happening back then and as you called out, the housing market crashed.

I think what freaks people out is that only ~8 years out from the crash, you can already see lending standards getting more relaxed. Didn't we learn anything last time?

Not to mention the number of people I've talked to that said "housing always goes up, it's a great investment!". In less than a decade people have gone from "housing sucks" to "it will never go down".

Amazing.

<comment><USER6> > _Not to mention the number of people I 've talked to that said "housing > always goes up, it's a great investment!"._

"One inflation-adjusted value index between 1928 and 2012 placed the annual rate of appreciation for real estate prices at just 0.2%." [1]

Overall, real estate has historically been a bad investment. That said, it does _seem_ like there have been obvious indicators when an particular area is becoming a more desirable place to live, and when home prices are likely to go up significantly in the future. Although I imagine people have been hard at work modeling and forecasting this, and current prices will better reflect future appreciation (if this hasn't already happened).

[1] [http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052015/which-has- per...](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052015/which-has-performed- better-historically-stock-market-or-real-estate.asp)

<comment><USER2> Housing looks like a bad investment overall, but housing is local. I have no doubt you can make good money off of a house in a "up and coming" city.

The challenge is, how do you identify an "up and coming" city? Is it the same way you identify and "up and coming" stock? It's all just attempting to time the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone else experience mild anxiety reading stories about Bay Area real estate? Long ago I decided it can't be wise to buy instead of rent. Logic and math argue this must end and yet it seems there is always another "sucker". We seem to have entered a new phase in which Chinese are moving money offshore and into the local market. Lots of Chinese, lots of money, could go on and on but for how long? Ultimately a home is only worth what someone can rent it for, right? right? please????

<comment><USER8> I think the market is over-exuberant right now for sure, but I also feel that people like the Bay Area because the Bay Area is an _exceedingly pleasant place to live_. This market has hit a little perfect storm of pricing and may correct, but I think the longview is that Bay Area housing prices will just keep marching up.

A lot of the price of homes is the land, which means that (barring local regulation) homes will begin to be built up a lot more. Already on my residential street there is a 7 story live/work building going in where a pottery store used to be. Density will lower renting costs but the land itself will remain valuable.

<comment><USER9> It won't be an exceedingly pleasant place to live when there's no salary left over for food after taxes and rent.

<comment><USER8>
      after taxes and rent

If you have no money left over for food after rent, do not live here -- full stop.

If you have no money left over after taxes, then you are doing your witholding wrong. And the Bay Area isn't some zone-of-enormous-taxation. We've got like 2% more sales tax and maybe 4% for restaurants who are passing on the medical buck.

<comment><USER9> I am not referring to the present, but the hypothetical "prices continue to rise" the parent comment mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We looked at financing through some of those new 'hip' lenders. My wife works for Google and SoFi had some of the highest rates (even with 'Google discount' and 10/20% down). They may get your pre-approval within a day, but in reality most lenders get that done quickly. In the end, they have to play the game everyone else is playing and it means long turnaround times to actually close. This is the part that is fundamentally broken and really in need of 'disruption'.

<comment><USER11> Yes. Completely irrational. I can secure $60k+ in a matter of hours to purchase a new Tesla or Merc. Drive it off the lot and suddenly worth less than the loan. Real Estate, however, can take 45 days to close a loan when the projected value of the asset is surely positive. Antiquated and balkanized title process and (I suspect) unhealthy regulatory requirements are a bog. From there, I think it is simply inefficiencies in the lenders' operations. Would love an insider's take.

<comment><USER12> I'm on my 3rd house. The escrow length isn't just about the loan, it's also to give you time to complete inspections. Home inspectors -- especially in hot areas -- can be booked out for weeks.

It also gives the sellers time to find a new place/get packed and moved.

The lender gets their ducks in a row because they're going to package and sell the loan, and there are lots of compliance issues to jump thru to get it sold (properly) after what happened during the crash. Lenders are very careful now, verifying down payment sources, income, credit, etc.

I also did cars for a while and I can tell you most (all?) in-house car financing is provisional, and they do the hard work AFTER you drive off the lot. They like it this way because once you've parked that shiny car in your driveway and shown your friends, you'll work hard to keep it should something come up with the financing. If it doesn't work out they can (at worst) tow the car back to the lot. Not quite that easy with a house ;)

<comment><USER11> The contingency period in the contract is parallel with the financing process. They are not intertwined - apart from the contract being contingent upon securing a loan. If the inefficiency results from compliance issues due to needing to rate, package, and sell the loan, then couldn't an enterprising banker market speed of closing and absorb moderately more risk by having the loan on his books for a few additional weeks? In a competitive market, cash offers (one less contingency, sure but also speedy closing) are preferred.

<comment><USER12> Speed is just not that important for most residential purchases. The most critical thing is ability to close, which is where cash excels. Predictability is #1 - given the choice between 80% chance to close in 10 days (remaining 20% the deal falls thru) or 99% chance to close in 30, almost everyone takes the latter, all else being equal. I just can't think of any situation where a turbo close gets you so many more deals that it's worth the extra risk as a lender.

On the other hand, people often pay extra for a lender that has a history of closing on-time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How does it make sense to tie up $1M+ at 1%? Are they turning around and selling the note to Fannie or Ginnie Mae? Unless we are Japan (and that's a slight possibility, but not likely IMO) this will be a total loser - not as bad as buying Spanish/French/Italian debt at negative rates, but pretty bad.

Who else has friends going through all sorts of ridiculous acrobatics to buy houses in the bay right now? Where they are "lucky" to get their 10-20% over the list price offer accepted? Yeah, this will end well.

<comment><USER14> > _How does it make sense to tie up $1M+ at 1%?_

Three things likely going on here: loss leading, promotion and a hunt for yield.

Let's start with the hunt for yield. Yesterday's auction priced the 3-year at 0.87% and the 5-year at 1.15% [1]. We don't know the term of Zuckerberg'a mortgage. If it was less than 5 years, the bank might make a spread.

If it's a loan with a longer term the lender could have made more by lending to the U.S. Treasury. In that case, the difference may be booked as a promotional expense. "We're the guys Mark Zuckerberg gets his mortgage from" is succinct and memorable.

Finally, the lender may eat a loss on the loan for the opportunity to do more business with Zuckerberg in the future. One sees this with credit facilities in investment banking: JPMorgan and friends give companies cheap loans in hopes of winning their more-lucrative IPO and debt capital markets business.

[1] [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/i...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield)

<comment><USER15> Also, someone like Mark Zuckerberg has almost 0 default risk. To the banks, this is free money.

Remember, when the bank issues a mortgage for 3.5%, the spread between that and their cost of capital covers the risk of default. But if the default risk is minimal, they can basically issue the loan at cost.

<comment><USER2> Most banks don't hold mortgage risk. They sell the mortgages to investors who hold the risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Medical school graduates get similar deals as long as they verify proof of residency. They can get up to $500k with no money down and $1m with some down and near zero interest rates.

I'm sure other types of employees get these deals.

See this for example: [https://www.53.com/mortgage/physician- loan.html](https://www.53.com/mortgage/physician-loan.html)

<comment><USER17> Came here to mention this exact thing -- you don't even have to be an attending, my wife and I have this loan through a different company, and she is still a resident. We had banks fighting over our mortgage. No money down, no PMI, and they portfolio the loan instead of selling it right away like a standard mortgage. We live in a Detroit suburb.

<comment><USER18> Why would they "portfolio" (I'm inferring this means keep it on their books) such a loan instead of selling it? Because the risk is thought to be so much lower than standard mortgages that keeping it somehow helps them in some way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr: Houses are so expensive that people can't afford a down payment, so banks let people buy houses for no money down, driving up the purchase price of houses.

<comment><USER2> This is a great point to reinforce. Low interest rates are a HUGE driver of housing prices.

No one knows what interest rates will do, but if they go from 3% to 6% (historical average), then suddenly everyone can't afford as much house and prices decline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm going to counter the "math" in this thread

Let's take the example of Nick eg:

"Nick Merz knows how tough it can be. He's a 41-year-old product designer at Apple Inc. whose wife also works there, and says they couldn't figure out if they could afford to own a place anywhere near the company's offices in Cupertino, where the median value is $1.8 million."

Glassdoor check for sr product designer = base of $157,000 to a max of $200,000.

With 7 years figure he's at $180,000.

Figure his wife is in another $100,000 territory as a co-apple employee.

So maybe they're at $280,000.

With a 20% downpayment they can "afford" $1,931,000 of house (2)

Why?

Because interest rates are insanely low.

But problem for nick and others is that lenders want a 20% down payment because that gets skin in the game.

On that $1.931 house that's $386,200 which is damn near impossible to cobble together after dropping crazy SF rents for a decade (or two).

My guess is that the bankers are using significant stock options as a swap or partial collateral for that down payment.

That's a bet I would take eg:

\- You've got a guy with a 7 year track record at the most valuable company in the world + his wife there too which is solid income criteria.

\- You've got him with real skin in his game - his life savings which just happens to be in apple stock and probably will always be worth more than zero, and likely enough to continue working for even in a downturn.

\- Even if the house drops in value when interest rates go up (which is the most common prediction from mortgage bankers I know) Nick needs a place to live by Apple, is invested in his house, and is as likely as anybody to continue paying a mortgage on an asset that technically is worth less than he paid, but because it's tied to a monthly payment he can "afford", will stay on for the long haul.

(1) [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Apple-Senior-Product- Design...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Apple-Senior-Product-Design- Engineer-Salaries-E1138_D_KO6,36.htm)

(2) [https://www.zillow.com/mortgage-calculator/house- affordabili...](https://www.zillow.com/mortgage-calculator/house- affordability/)

<comment><USER21> > But problem for nick and others is that lenders want a 20% down payment > because that gets skin in the game.

Lenders typically charge PMI if you have LTV > 80%.

Our first home was purchased with 0 down (perks of being military brat), and no PMI. Current home was ~10% down, with ~$500 in PMI (kind of a cluster-fuck --the mortgage broker said the loan had no PMI, but last minute it had PMI. We had 2 days before closing, and couldn't find a better deal, so we had them drop the rate).

Our family income is north of the projected Merz' family income of $290k, and while we could afford that 1.8m home, financially it wouldn't make sense to tie up so much of our income into a house (even though it would be straight baller).

<comment><USER22> Have you tried making extra payments to get your principal up from 10% to 20% sooner? That's the ideal situation for someone with more disposable income but less in savings (or doesn't want to tie up more saving in equity). The main thing to note is that you need to get up to 20% as quick as possible. That's because 20% is based on the current appraisal value of the property, not the purchase price. With Bay Area and other real estate markets appreciating so much, it's a ticking time bomb to get out of PMI.

<comment><USER23> > That's because 20% is based on the current appraisal value of the property, > not the purchase price. With Bay Area and other real estate markets > appreciating so much, it's a ticking time bomb to get out of PMI.

I think you have that reversed. If values are rising, you have to do _less_ work to get to 80% LTV (loan-to-value).

Example: I put $10 down on $100 worth of stuff with a $90 loan, giving a 90% LTV. If the value of stuff jumps to $120, then that $90 loan is now at 75% LTV, with zero payments made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any advice on where to look for a house in the bay area right now?

Like I'm sure a million others, I'm sick of renting in a market where landlords sell and evict every day (happening to me right now, again). Got a kid, need good schools. Other than that, anything goes. I just want to live without constant fear of being upended every 6 months. Is that so much to ask?

<comment><USER25> I'm in the same boat, rented for my first year back in the bay after living in Seattle for a number of years and my landlord wouldn't let me sign another year long lease(meaning, I'm going to get booted sometime sooner). I just bought a home in Pleasanton and I'll be taking a shuttle to my office(everything in the south bay seems to have them). And, if I change jobs I can make it into SF on bart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I seem to recall Angelo Mozilo doing some similar "deal making" type things for US Government Employees during the time he was turing Country Wide into a cesspool of bad loans. And, for some reason, he's never had to atone for his role in the 2008 crash. Not like he's the only one though.

</comment><comment><USER27> the more money you've got, the cheaper it is to get more. money follows economies of scale.

<comment><USER28> and having no money is expensive..

see Louis CK :) [https://youtu.be/rMG1MOn49Ts](https://youtu.be/rMG1MOn49Ts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why does someone like Zuck need a mortgage? Is it economically advantageous to him in a significant way?

<comment><USER30> He doesn't _need_ a mortgage, it's just financially savvy to have one.

He avoids paying taxes on the sale of stocks to finance the home.

Mortgage interest is tax deductible.

His stocks will almost certainly yield more than the interest rate on the mortgage.

He's getting a sweetheart deal from the bank.

For him, selling stock is a PITA because he has special class of stock that grant him voting rights far beyond what a normal share is worth. These special shares are granted to him by the board of directors. So selling 1 share means losing like 1000 votes (they convert back to 1:1 upon sale), meaning he needs to be careful when liquidating assets. By waiting five years, he can use vested options to pay the mortgage, rather than selling his special class stock.

<comment><USER31> >He avoids paying taxes on the sale of stocks to finance the home.

Can you elaborate on that?

<comment><USER32> If you want to buy a million dollar home using shares, you have to liquidate them and pay capital gains. By getting a mortgage you lower the amount of income you 'realize' on a year-to-year basis, lowering your taxable income. There are details on capital gains vs income taxes, etc, but in general I think the point was that the less income you realize in a given year, the less taxes you'll pay.

<comment><USER33> "If you want to buy a million dollar home using shares, you have to liquidate them and pay capital gains. "

Just to note: you don't :) In fact, if you wanted to pay all cash, and had enough shares, you'd generally take out a portfolio loan against the shares at some very low interest rate (probably not lower than current mortgage rates however) rather than sell the shares at all.

Whether this is better/worse than a mortgage depends on various things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have little interest in tying myself down by buying a house, but the part that's most appealing to me is the mortgage structure. You get to borrow money at a ~3.5% interest rate, in order to invest in something that produces 5-7% yearly returns. On average, this is going to make a ton of money in the long term.

Is there any way to do something similar with stocks, without paying an insane amount of money in interest rates or fees?

Edit: I know returns aren't guaranteed, I'm referring to expected returns. I'm perfectly willing to take on risk, in order to make positive-EV bets. I tossed out the 5-7% number as a very rough approximation - assuming that you buy a house with a buy-rent ratio of < 20, in which case the returns that you make by not having to pay rent, will be 5% or more.

<comment><USER2> Why do you assume housing provides a 5-7% yearly return?

Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

You're also ignoring the carrying costs of a house.

<comment><USER35> > carrying costs of a house

Indeed, taxes and insurance can dominate the mortgage.

<comment><USER36> Not to mention a new roof.

<comment><USER37> Or fixing it up in order to sell it at a reasonable price (not in SF area).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> >30-year adjustable-rate mortgages

>clients for life

You'd think what is very clearly a paid advertisement for SFCU and SoFi would leave out the scariest details.

</comment><comment><USER39> doesn't seem to surprising, high job demand, high salary = low risk to banks.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm confused. The title says "Silicon Valley Elites" but the article says "tech workers", then goes on to list Mark Zuckerberg and some Apple guy who's salary is apparently 50%(!) stock, as examples.

So who are these banks "courting" again? Elites or tech workers? Or just these two guys? It's hard to tell. Interesting news would be "Banks giving kickbacks to CEOs and VCs who throw them corporate business." This article seems to just be "Look! Some people are getting sweet deals on their mortgages."

<comment><USER40> I find it hilarious that the answer to this isn't obvious.

This is 2016. Tech workers _are_ the American elites.

Did you think elites were still guys with a monacle sitting in a drawing room that overlooks a coal mine or something?

<comment><USER38> The new elites are in tech, but they're not the rank and file. Making even $250k/yr may be top-5% for income and give you breathing room to make a few investments, but it will never make you _wealthy_. That's lifetime earnings of about $10m before taxes, so you likely wouldn't get to fuck-you money ever, let alone with time to use it.

There's a very serious discontinuity somewhere around the $1m/year mark where you get to the point that you don't have to work for the rest of your life while you're still young. There's another huge difference between that and the guys worth $100m+ who can have whatever they want, including financing insane research and construction projects, not just the normal comfortable middle- class lifestyle, and never run out of money.

Putting those people in the same group as your average software engineer for socioeconomic purposes is ridiculous. Sure, I might have more in common with Zuckerberg than with a coal miner, but only just, and that's not saying much.

<comment><USER40> > it will never make you wealthy. That's lifetime earnings of about $10m > before taxes

This thread has taught me that people in the valley or the HN echo chamber really sort of have no idea how most people live in this country, let alone around the world.

<comment><USER41> and you must have no idea how much it costs to live in the bay area. a dentist in arizona will have a higher net worth at retirement than a tech worker in the bay area.

<comment><USER40> > and you must have no idea how much it costs to live in the bay area

I live in New York City. I could probably grok the basic concept.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airbnb Racks Up Hundreds of Millions in Losses Due to Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-racks-up-hundreds-of-millions-in-losses-due-to-coronavirus-11584723498 <comment><USER2> It's kind of frightening to think of the broader economic impact it would have on the whole real estate market if Airbnb went belly up. Aren't there a ton of cases where people are mortgaging multiple homes and paying them off with the revenue they generate? That cash just dried up over night and there doesn't appear to be any incoming federal support.

Edit: Look, I'm all for affordable housing, but when viewing this within the context of a looming recession and potential financial crisis I can assure you that the last thing you want to do is add in a potential amplifier to a housing market crash. Houses may get cheaper, but everyone is going to suffer in very difficult to imagine ways. Corporate debt markets are looking scary as hell right now. If you threw a housing market meltdown at it right now, we could easily be looking at something much much worse than what we saw in '08.

<comment><USER3> As someone that would like to buy a house one day, I welcome this. People owning multiple houses to rent out to vacationers that people would like to actually live in doesn't upset me at all.

If people buying houses to rent on Airbnb artificially inflated the housing market, it's just a necessary correction and federal support would be a mistake.

<comment><USER4> >People owning multiple houses to rent out to vacationers that people would like to actually live in doesn't upset me at all.

If people buying houses to rent on Airbnb artificially inflated the housing market

net-net : is n't both the same?

<comment><USER5> Airbnb turns housing into hotels. Typically those are zoned differently, potentially subsidizing housing for locals at the cost of driving up prices for travelers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is fair. A lot of hotel groups have seen their revenue drop 75 to 90 percent. Airbnb was never profitable (I think) and this round of trip cancellations put them deeply in the red.

<comment><USER7> > Airbnb was never profitable (I think)

Do you have any sources for this?

<comment><USER8> AirBnB first announced profitability in 2018, followed by 2019.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/airbnb- sa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/airbnb-says-it-made- a-profit-again-in-2018-as-ipo-looms-large)

That said, I'm not sure how many asterisks are attached to the definition of profitable. Likewise, the fact that a company that holds no substantial assets while operating in the face of most regulations only became profitable in 2018, while clearly being the market leader, makes me wonder what is going on with their financials. It should not take 10 years for a company like AirBnB to become profitable, it should take closer to 5.

I know they had a disagreement with their CFO in 2018, and it took them the better part of a year to find a replacement. Admittedly, the replacement seems incredibly qualified.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/airbnb-hires-cfo-dave- stephe...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/airbnb-hires-cfo-dave-stephenson- amazon-exec.html)

<comment><USER9> No they didn't. Literally the first sentence of your Bloomberg link includes "based on a common measure that excludes some expenses."

They made an EBITDA (operating) profit. They were not a profitable company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why should Airbnb be making losses at this point?

Are they refunding booking fees to customers while paying hosts?

Traditional hotels lose money because of huge amount of, costs (both fixed and variable) associated with running a hotel.

shouldn't Airbnb be making so much money at this point?

Edit: "...at this point?" not in reference to the current pandemic, rather at this point of how far Airbnb has come and how they've become a household name all over the world.

<comment><USER11> Why would they be making lots of money when their business is tanking? Their reservations have more than halved, so that's a huge drop in revenue without much if a drop in costs (unless they fire half their workforce and walk away from half of their office leases).

<comment><USER12> They should not be tanking. Airbnb is in a highly profitable business with very high operating margin.

For reference, they take 20 to 30% commission on each booking, whereas the fixed costs to run a website are ridiculously low. Even with half the bookings, it's still a cash cow.

<comment><USER13> A company growing as aggressively as AirBnB wasn't taking a 20-30% profit and paying out shareholders.

They were taking that 20-30% and reinvesting back into growth. That means people, offices, tech, marketing, audits of homes, process, insurance, etc.

When things look good you can run lean and focus on growth. If things start to turn you can ratchet back those costs.

Unfortunately, things turned on them _very_ fast and they aren't that nimble. When you've got 15k employees with salary, bonuses, benefits, offices that aren't being used and overnight you reduce your top line revenue by 50%+ you're likely in the red and from what I hear, they were in the red prior to this.

AirBnB will likely be a casualty of this downturn. They're highly focused on the part of the economy hardest hit by COVID-19 and are unable to diversify in time.

Lots of folks will lose their jobs, a lot of others may lose second or third homes that were used solely for part-time rentals. It's going to be hard on a lot of people and had AirBnB not gotten so far out over their skis they'd likely be OK, but would not be the market leader they were a few weeks back.

<comment><USER14> There is NO WAY they have 15K employees! edit: Wow, ok, so the number appears to be 12,736 - incredible. Well, I'm speechless.

Good for them for passing money down to staff, but my goodness, how does it make financial sense, no clue.

<comment><USER11> You're right, the correct number is around 13k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this submission drop from top 10 to 3rd page in about 20-30 minutes? Not allowed to mention anything negative about YC co's?

<comment><USER15> The opposite: we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are involved. Obviously the trust of the community is critical and we would be dumb to risk that.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment)

It doesn't mean that we don't moderate such threads at all, though. We penalized this one the same way we've been penalizing almost every coronavirus story, because if we didn't, HN would have consisted of nothing but coronavirus for the past week. I don't see this story as significant or interesting enough to rise above the threshold. "$Company is losing money" is a dog-bites-man story right now, especially in that industry. No?

<comment><USER9> Thanks for explaining.

> we've been penalizing almost every coronavirus story

Only you know the actual volume of coronavirus-related stories, and whether leaving them as-is would cover the entire top 10, entire first page, or entire first 3 pages.

However IMO the adjustment, or "penalization," being applied seems too severe. CV is obviously the most important news topic in the world right now, the situation changes extremely rapidly, making the comments section, with contributors from around the globe, highly relevant and informative. My opinion is that up-to-date CV-related content on HN has been difficult to find, and the lack of such, in favor of random, often whimsical topics, trivializes HN.

As I write this, the only CV-connected stories on page 1 are at #19: "Chloroquine, past and present" and at #28: "State projections for Covid-19." While its understandable not wanting HN to be totally dominated by CV, I think there is a better balance to be had.

<comment><USER16> On any given day, most of the world's most important news topics aren't on the HN front page, and don't belong there. There are plenty of other sites that do a better job of reporting on the entire world.

<comment><USER9> > most of the world's most important news topics aren't on the HN front page

because they don't gain traction among the HN audience. CV has, and to a very large degree, according to dang's comment above.

<comment><USER15> > because they don't gain traction among the HN audience

That's a bit of a misperception. They do gain traction. If we didn't moderate them, HN's front page would consist of the hottest topics of the moment and would be a different site altogether.

The strongest force on the internet is indignation—orders of magnitude stronger than curiosity—so there need to be countervailing mechanisms (like software and moderation) to contain its effects and allow HN to be HN. Upvotes alone don't do it, unfortunately.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22upvotes%20alone%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><USER9> I appreciate your thoughts in this thread, and more importantly, your willingness to explain your decisions. Your diligent moderation throughout the site ensures it remains a terrific, unique and much-needed resource. Thank you!

<comment><USER15> Thank you too! It's important feedback to hear that the explanations are helpful, because otherwise I need to recalibrate how I do it, or just (if it's not working) do less.

People are most welcome to ask further questions if there's something we haven't explained yet. I'm slowly building up a corpus of links to previous explanations, which is why my answers are so full of HN Search links. Eventually we might compile all that into some web pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you didn't know this already. "Poor" AirBnb here is simply letting customers cancel their stays without even letting hosts know and is then not paying hosts [1].

Note that a lot of these "hosts" are often small guesthouses that barely make rent and now have basically nothing for the next months. Of course you have your fair share of "rent hackers" on AirBnb but beyond that a lot of people run genuine small businesses around the platform and care a lot about their guests.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/03/15/airbnb-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/03/15/airbnb- coronavirus-cancellations-guests-cancel-for-free-hosts-pay-the- costs/#742ec36f131b)

<comment><USER14> Airbnb was for people to make extra cash with extra space. I highly doubt people are going to be in ruin over a couple months of cancellations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Weren't they already losing money prior to this? Seems like a lot of companies are attributing losses to the Coronavirus masking the actual problem behind it all.

<comment><USER19> They lost close to $300M last quarter. And those were the good times.

<comment><USER20> well that's a little disingenous. they have been profitable before.

from where i stand they attempted to turn their platform into an entire travel experience (w/ business travel "certifications", spending lots on verifying pictures/host setups/etc., experiences) as opposed to just sharing homes. i believe they have large M&A associated with this, buying up some longer-term rental sites who may have been competitors in the future as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We recently bought a small condo in Portland for our weekend use and as we were shopping around it seemed like the whole Airbnb-triggered rental market was already hopelessly overheated. With the capacity that's there I can't imagine occupancy rates averaged over the year being worth it for the condo owners. I'm guessing there will be a glut of condos available after the virus, many of them in foreclosure.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not very surprised, most of the travel industry is getting hit hard. On a side note, I had a very bad experience with Airbnb. I found out, because it happened to me, that they remove negative reviews of hosts. I lot of the rating on their site are goosed.

</comment><comment><USER23> this reminds me of the quote "You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out." by Warren Buffet

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://archive.md/AMpB5](https://archive.md/AMpB5)

</comment><comment><USER25> It will be interesting to see what happens to all these VC-backed companies that have been losing money for years and are still not profitable.

When the VC money runs out not even government bailouts will help. Helping money-losing companies to lose more money isn't in the interest of a government unless they are essential to the rest of the economy or national security.

Maybe the bay area will be hit much harder than other companies.

<comment><USER13> A lot of the herd will be thinned out for sure. Customers of ours are starting to lay folks off.

Ultimately, it's a question of how long and deep the downturn is. A couple of months and VC-backed companies already losing money may be ok. A couple of quarters and you'll see a lot go belly-up depending on who they sell to.

<comment><USER26> This isn't winter kill thinning the herd though, it's more like the mass extinction of American Buffalo during the push to the west.

Companies with good fundamentals are laying people off en masse and burning their cash reserves rapidly. It's not just the VC backed companies, or the low marging/highly leveraged mom-and-pop, big box retail, airline, whatever.

I'm terrified what's going to happen on May 1 when rent checks and mortgage payments bounce.

<comment><USER27> We were brainwashed that sharing economy (uber, wework, airbnb) was going to be our savior. We were renting because assets were too high to own, better to do short rent; cheaper and less commitment. Looks like those sharing economy model cannot solve the root cause. The coronavirus acts as a RESET to the whole society. We may see a collapse in housing price, business bankruptcy, and stock market. If we have to think positively, the current situation will only stop when all of these apply -stock price reflects 8-10x true profit, not EBITDA -average housing price in Manhattan will be be 3x working class income. -young people get decent job, not survival gig, not blocked by increasing retiree or union.

If this virus was artificially made or by natural evolution, I can say it was meant to reset the society. It will actually prevent WW3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How? What are they spending their money on? They need to put people on leave and "pause" their business as quickly as possible!

<comment><USER29> They're losing revenue due to the massive amount of recently cancellations.

<comment><USER30> I think the OP was asking, why is income negative on any revenue (they lost in Q3/Q4 of FY19), what are the expenses that can't be covered?

<comment><USER11> They employ a lot of people and have office space. Any big company has a large amount of fixed costs that will drag you under when income dries up.

<comment><USER10> Airbnb has over 5 million listings and 150 million customers around 190 countries and they don't make enough in commissions to pay rent, salaries and server costs?

<comment><USER11> They don't. Period. That's a simple fact. No questions need asking here; they do NOT make enough money from their listings to cover all of their costs, full stop.

<comment><USER10> Then they're indeed not fit to run their business, period.

<comment><USER11> OK, so what are you going to do about it?

<comment><USER10> Am I supposed to do something about it? Do you know the meaning or point of a discussion forum? You're such a bad loser, lol.

Wsj published the article, what are they going to do about it?

Don't be rude, it's stupid.

You can have the last word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is WeWork still worth something ... guess co-working is a bum idea right now.

<comment><USER32> Isn't it hilarious looking back, people were making the argument "In the next recesion co-working spaces are going to explode as a great way of managing costs". Turns out... maybe not this recession.

<comment><USER33> Who the hell was saying that? It was pretty universally acknowledged that if there was a recession WeWork would be the first one to go bust. Of course, they did it before the recession actually happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Makes me wonder if they will start to offer "trip protection" or the like. The economics of it checks out.

<comment><USER35> Who would underwrite that at this moment?

<comment><USER34> Great question. But, at a company in the past that I worked at, they just took a gamble and hoped they wouldn't have to pay it out. Morals aside, simpler times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I watched Airbnb places ruin Nashville. I feel for the employees of Airbnb, but Im not exactly sad to see this .

</comment><comment><USER37> Why don't they borrow given we're at 0 percent rates?

<comment><USER38> I suppose the serious answer is it depends on (a) can businesses borrow at 0% (actually no, not even banks can, the fed rate is not 0). And (b) if they could borrow at 0% what would the term be? The fed rate is only an overnight rate so it requires constant refinancing. If AirBNB could borrow for 20 years at 0% it might make sense, but in terms of how it able to borrow in reality, probably not so much.</comment></comment>


Staking Rewards on Coinbase - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinbase.com/introducing-staking-rewards-on-coinbase-c394392a70eb <comment><USER2> Proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies face systemic risk from their centralization on exchanges. Users are economically lured to store their PoS coins on exchanges, since they receive X% returns. The exchange then gains an outsized portion of the supply of such coins. Finally, the exchange -- or a few exchanges in a cartel arrangement -- are able to muster enough stake to change the rules of the coin to suit the whims of the exchange at the expense of network security, decentralization, etc.

For instance, if regulators lean on the exchanges to require some form of KYC embedded in the coins themselves, they are able to oblige by suspending withdrawals until the new rules of the network are adopted through the PoS governance mechanism, voted on by the majority stake held by the exchange under regulatory scrutiny.

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't know what Tezos was so for others:

> Tezos is a cryptocurrency and decentralized computing platform. Its features > include proof of stake consensus, formal verification (which lets developers > verify the correctness of their code), and the ability to let stakeholders > vote on changes to the protocol. Tezos's block creation process is called > "baking" — Tezos holders who stake their tokens can receive Tezos tokens as > a reward for creating and verifying blocks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I tried to title this "Introducing Staking Rewards on Coinbase," but "Introducing" was removed automatically from the submission.</comment>


Create Your Own Software Program in 30 Minutes or Your Money Back - <AUTHOR> http://www.makeyourownsoftware.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just to be clear: I'm submitting this page to show how ridiculous their claims are, not to actually drive traffic to them in the hopes of getting them sales.

I'd actually be curious what you get if you buy their product, but not so curious as to actually put down my credit card details there.

Do people actually fall for this?

</comment><comment><USER2> I read the whole thing waiting for the punchline. Initially, I assumed that the ideas were getting more and more complex guide the reader to the realisation that the whole premise of a 20-minute solution was flawed.

Bizarrely, it seems to be a genuine attempt at a product.</comment>