Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-29/snap-ceo-hired-a-chief-business-officer-then-changed-his-mind <comment><USER2> I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for its operational excellence seems like the right decision. It appears that this was a poor timing issue.

Maybe the handling of the situation was unprofessional and I bet there are ways to avoid these fake start promotion situations, but I think at this stage you gotta play your cards. Either you save face and do the politically correct decision (promoting a good employee, but ultimately an employee with no new insights or inputs) or you take a risk for the company knowing that you're about to make a decision that could be decisive for the company's future but that may have an impact on the impressions people have about your decision- making abilities.

Given that Snap is running out of cash and cred, I think it makes sense to do the latter. It also seems that Snap may be looking for a buyer pretty soon and some of their recent moves indicate that they are trying to create a story on why Snap would be a good an asset for Amazon.

<comment><USER3> That's a charitable way to look at it. A less charitable way would be the CEO is shooting from the hip and doesn't have a clue what the company needs.

<comment><USER4> > A less charitable way would be the CEO is shooting from the hip and doesn't > have a clue what the company needs.

\- He continued backing the redesign long after it was clear the public hated it

\- He continued to push spectacles and insist they were a "camera" company, long after the market showed there was no demand from it.

\- In the last 5 years he's gone from insisting that snap is a "social media company", to "a camera company", to "the fastest way for people to connect".

In my mind, he seems like he's pretty out of touch with what the public wants from Snapchat and is just bouncing from one idea to another hoping to get lucky again.

I feel like he was a college kid who built an app that he wanted, but as he's aged he no longer identifies with Snap's user base. He's trying to push his idea of what Snap should be (because that worked originally) as opposed to asking users what they want.

<comment><USER5> _just bouncing from one idea to another hoping to get lucky again._

Welcome to the world of social software!

I'm not convinced that anyone really knows what people want in this market.

<comment><USER6> Hey, but he's a product genius no?

[https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=evan+spiegel+%22pro...](https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=evan+spiegel+%22product%22+genius&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiww72SvqzeAhVKiqwKHT94Az0Q5t4CMAB6BAgJEAc&biw=1253&bih=1307)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> SNAP IPO should herald the death of dual share class listings. They sold billions in equity to the public, but gave the shares 0 voting rights. So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

<comment><USER8> How about Buyer Beware?

There's nothing illegitimate about raising money without selling voting rights. You want voting rights, want to play active investor? Buy another stock.

<comment><USER7> You want to raise money without voting rights? Sell bonds.

<comment><USER9> Sure, you can do that too. The comment you're replying to is arguing that all these options are legitimate, and buyers are adults who can buy something that matches their investment theses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Evan thinks he's steve jobs. Lost god knows how many users of Snapchat because he felt compelled to completely redesign the app himself and looks like he off course when Instagram started copying Snapchat's features. A lot of these companies that aren't profitable rush to become public without a proper business model and end up getting crushed ( eg: HMNY company of movie pass) It's no surprise that Snapchat is doing so poorly and lots of us could have called this ahead of time. I really don't see this company being around in 2-3 years.

<comment><USER11> Seems like every wanna be Steve Jobs completely misses the point of what made Steve Jobs great, but then use all the bad parts about his personality to justify doing horrible, stupid, crazy things.

<comment><USER12> Jobs was a genius late in life (sans on his own health,) but he also helped run Apple into the ground after early success. People tend to forget that.

<comment><USER13> Jobs never changed his vision - build stylish easy to use appliances of the future. What drove Next down was the same philosophy that made Mac lineup so popular mid 00s when the technology finally caught up to Jobs vision

<comment><USER12> I was more thinking about shortly before Jobs was fired from Apple in the mid-80s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's obviously inappropriate, but not beyond what a young executive might do. Startups need to move quickly, changing your mind after 2 days is normal, it's just the politics (and optics) that are affected.

It's kind of a rookie move ... but in a way, maybe it's the rookies advantage.

Evan _can_ get away with doing this because he's young.

Consider that an older exec would have not changed his mind out of fear of 'looking bad' even if it were not the right thing for the company.

This isn't good, but it's not a big deal at all.

Of course this assumes he mad the right decision in the end ...

<comment><USER15> It's not about being young, it's about being inexperienced. You can make a parallel to Trump, whose supporters give him a lot of leeway on "inappropriate" decisions because he's not a politician.

Being inexperienced isn't a good excuse for being a bad CEO (please give any evidence you have of him being an effective one). Realizing two days after you make an important public decision that you should have made a different one is a failure, regardless of if you got it right the second time.

Founding a company doesn't mean you should be CEO.

<comment><USER14> Yes I agree with all of that, but founding a company does give you incredible impetus.

Because Snap is a consumer facing company - we hear about this all the time.

Tons of startups do stuff like this - we just don't hear about it.

AirBnB, Stripe etc. are all making clumsy decisions daily, even some occasional big ones - but it's just not newsworthy. Neither is this item frankly, it's just kind of fluff. Nice to know but not news.

This kind of mistake is well within the entitlements of a Founder/CEO for example, I'd imagine the board won't have much to say about it. He knows he kinda screwed this up surely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Rather than focus on the bad focus on the good part. He got someone he thought was better and decided to go with that. From a business perspective and if you remove the short term way it looks (or his reputation impact) it is a good move. Of course a writer for a blog or news site doesn't see it that way. Because of course (to take an extreme) if you just started working at the local paper and the New York Times offered you a position you'd turn it down, right?

Back in the day a long long time ago I remember someone who had taken a job at Sun. Two weeks later he left because Apple came through with an offer and he really wanted to work for Apple. I thought it was really rude because I would have never had the guts to do that. I would have felt obligated to stay at the job that I had because that is the way I was raised. But when you consider that Sun would have let him go at the drop of a hat if it suited their business purpose it actually made sense and I learned from that event and seeing what happened later because he went with Apple.

</comment><comment><USER17> I sort of feel like this is par for the course with SNAP. It seems to me to be a rather scummy company that got lucky despite its original intentions of encouraging people to send nudes (which is pretty sleazy IMO). The CEO as far as I can tell has never said or done anything that I would consider noble or respect worthy. His emails before he was in the public eye really show his true character. Obviously his word is worth less than nothing. Can't wait for the company to die, just bummed that little snot got rich from it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I get that there is a widely held belief that startups eventually reach a point where they need veteran leadership. The kids built the thing but they need adult supervision in order to become a real company. But I find myself wondering what the logic is behind hiring a 40 year old to design the strategy for a company who's primary demographic is in their teens and twenties. Clearly this is a strategy that has worked before but I'm curious why more orgs don't try the opposite. If you won't listen to what your customers want (which Snap has not) why not hire a young executive who more closely aligns with the demographic your catering to.

<comment><USER19> Well, by that logic Nickelodeon should be run by kids, for kids.

<comment><USER20> Isn't that just reductio ad absurdum? Of course Nickelodeon shouldn't be run by kids, but there can be a benefit to having leadership that can empathize and understand your customer base better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is Evan doing? _facepalm_

<comment><USER22> Better question- why is the Board allowing his incompetence to run this company into the ground?

<comment><USER23> Maybe because the board has no control over his decisions - [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/snap-10-k-annual-report- show...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/snap-10-k-annual-report-shows-power- of-ceo-evan-spiegel.html)

<comment><USER24> At what point does he realize that his decisions are bad and he needs supervision?

<comment><USER25> He is a billionaire married to a VS supermodel. At this point, he's more likely to squander all his money and make reality TV appearances to make ends meet, than turn Snap around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The headline is a bit confusing: the CEO wasn't named CBO, he named someone and then (apparently?) fired her before she took the role.

<comment><USER27> We'll squeeze an article in there to make it a bit less confusing.</comment></comment>


The Wikipedia Zero program will end in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/16/partnerships-new-approach/ <comment><USER2> 'Wikipedia Zero' is a zero-rating [1] scheme where many ISPs and network operators offered data access to certain Wikimedia sites (or just Wikipedia) at no metered-data cost to the line's subscriber.

Zero-rating's relationship with the broader subject of net neutrality has been hotly debated, and some legislation considers it a violation of net neutrality, while others don't. Nonetheless, fierce backlash against Facebook's zero-rating scheme in India was contrasted with Wikipedia's zero- rating which was broadly popular, exposing a dilemma.

By Wikimedia discontinuing this scheme, the situation moves towards resolution: no longer does it need to be debated whether Wikipedia's zero- rating is a net good, but Facebook's, although ostensibly also for public benefit, is something to be avoided.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero- rating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating)

<comment><USER3> The Wikipedia trafic (mostly text and thumbnail images) is also becoming quickly negligible compared to, say, Facebook with autoplaying videos, Youtube or other streaming providers.

They hint that the global penetration of Wikipedia in the rest of the world is less one of connectivity and more one of local politics and interest in permitting and encouraging such an open tool.

<comment><USER4> It cost mere 2 million (of their huge budget) to serve ALL of the pages from Wikimedia Foundation for 2017.

It can't cost "that much" for someone to download Wikipedia pages. And if so, you can still buy a Wikipedia snapshot CD/DVD.

\- But if Wikipedia is "too much" bandwidth (1) then what CAN you access on the internet? Why would you expect any utility from the internet at all, if a mostly text page is too much?

\- Unlike Wikipedia taking on the world itself, Wikipedia should be LOBBYING people with even more money to do it for them. You know... building internet infrastructures. Think how bad our internet would be today if in 2005 they said, "Let's work on minimizing the bandwidth usage instead of complaining that our ISPs need to get faster." It's like someone who wants to get out of poverty by spending less. Yeah, that's great. But you want an easier way to get out of poverty? _Make more money._ Trust me, I know. We should be elevating internet quality (and incomes) around the world, not minimizing usage for one of the already tiniest bandwidth websites on the planet.

(1) BTW, there's also bandwidth reducing plugins for Chrome that have a 3rd- party convert them to black-and-white/low-res.

[edit] There's even an official Google plugin! (If you're okay having them basically store the contents every site you visit...)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/data- saver/pfmgfdl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/data- saver/pfmgfdlgomnbgkofeojodiodmgpgmkac?hl=en)

I don't recall the 3rd party one I used but it definitely worked when I tested it out. It might be this one, Bandwidth Hero:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bandwidth-hero- liv...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bandwidth-hero-live- image/mmhippoadkhcflebgghophicgldbahdb?hl=en)

(Basically search "Bandwidth saver" in extensions.)

<comment><USER5> katastic, I see many of your comments are dead, and they don't look like low quality as far as I can tell. Best guess is that the are a bit unkind to popular tech companies.

Might wanna mail hn support?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was involved in one of the non-FB companies who pushed for this weirdo program.

If I were to guess the stats: I would guess FB got 99% of the traffic, even though wikipedia was the key thing of the marketing message, at least in the west.

The basic FB setup was to target key people in african and south-east asian operators and after a while of the usual kind of negotiation say: if you'll set us up with this zero-rating program in your company, we'll get you a cushy FB job + visa to the US.

It was an open joke in the business at the time. People in every part of the industry (including myself!) were scrambling to get an FB job offer. These were the kind of things we were discussing after drinks when meeting with mobile operator customers.

It got to the point where operators were restricting the people who were allowed to meet with FB.

I am not joking. I witnessed (on FB!) several people from these mobile operators who I had previously worked with later move to California for FB jobs.

Yes, I am aware that this is likely illegal under US law. No, I don't have proof.

<comment><USER7> Yea, I'm going to have to call this one out as bullshit, unless you can provide solid proof.

<comment><USER6> As I wrote, I don't have any solid proof for _why_ they hired those people. I suppose the counter-case is that the FB partner program people could just have been very impressed with their negotiation counterparts? I am merely pointing out a direction for investigation here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing not mentioned in the article, is the problems with piracy - [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nz7eyg/wikipedia-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nz7eyg/wikipedia- zero-facebook-free-basics-angola-pirates-zero-rating)

If you give people an artificially restricted free resource, they'll find a way to break out. If only there were a popular aphorism to explain this...

<comment><USER9> _If you give people an artificially restricted free resource, they 'll find a way to break out._

This fits with the observation that some of the most creative people I know are from Eastern Europe and former-Soviet countries. Restricting what people can do tends to, to put it bluntly, force them to think more. The darker side of this is that companies try very hard to make users think that they _aren 't_ restricted, just to stop them from "thinking too much" and thus getting out of the company's control.

 _A 20-year-old developer in Paraguay found a vulnerability in Facebook Messenger that allowed people to use Free Basics to tunnel through to the "real" internet_

I predicted that would happen; but is that really a vulnerability or just the intrinsic way communication works? It's the digital analogy of asking someone to go to the library and read pages from a book to you, because you don't have access.

<comment><USER10> Vulnerability simply means communication that is unwanted by someone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What it is:

> Wikipedia Zero was created in 2012 to address one barrier to participating > in Wikipedia globally: high mobile data costs. Through the program, we > partnered with mobile operators to waive mobile data fees for their > customers to freely access Wikipedia on mobile devices.

</comment><comment><USER12> No one else is saying this but wouldn't this essentially have been against the law under net neutrality?

<comment><USER13> Net neutrality is not a law.

Net neutrality is a principle implemented through different laws in different countries. As such, this practice would depend on how the concept of net neutrality is implemented into local laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While it's heartening to see the Wikimedia Foundation abandon its opposition to net neutrality, it would be more heartening if this was accompanied by explicit stance of _support_ for net neutrality.

Wikipedia, by contrast with the WMF, has always had strong support for net neutrality. WMF's opposition to net neutrality was a strong indicator of its lack of accountability to the community it ostensibly serves.

<comment><USER15> Wikimedia has always been in favor of net neutrality, it's just that their role in the issue was always muddled by zero rating. From 2014:

> The Wikimedia Foundation believes that the principle of net neutrality is > critical to the future of the open Internet. > ([https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-zero-and- > net...](https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-zero-and-net- > neutrality-protecting-the-internet/))

In that article they also discuss how they reconcile net neutrality with Wikimedia Zero. From December 2017:

> Net neutrality is essential for access to knowledge > ([https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/12/04/net-neutrality- > access-...](https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/12/04/net-neutrality-access-to- > knowledge/))

Regarding Wikipedia strongly supporting net neutrality, I'm not sure I would agree considering it didn't participate in the day of action on December 12. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Action_to_Save_Net_Neut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Action_to_Save_Net_Neutrality))

<comment><USER14> Zero rating violates net neutrality; you can't be in favor of zero-rating and opposed to net neutrality. I know there are people who disagree with that, or who think it's possible to "balance" zero-rating against net neutrality, including Erik Moeller of the WMF. Those people are entitled to their opinion, but it is wrong.

I think English Wikipedia didn't participate in the Day of Action because it's harder and harder to organize anything on WP, which of course is why WMF exists and why it isn't accountable to WP.

<comment><USER15> You said there wasn't any statement of support for NN from Wikimedia, I showed you otherwise. I also acknowledged that zero rating muddled the issue, but that's irrelevant now. So I don't see your point. The onus is now on you to prove they somehow don't support net neutrality. Regarding Wikimedia organizing things, the SOPA blackout [0] was actually organized by the community, Wikimedia only provided technical support on their end and wouldn't have done it unless there was community consensus. It's fine if you don't like Wikimedia, but there's no need to spout ignorance and double down while you do it.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On the consumption side of wikipedia there are other options for getting it into bandwidth poor areas.

for example there is endless OS ([https://endlessos.com/](https://endlessos.com/)) which is essentially an offline linux distro aimed at school kids preloaded with a snapshot of wikipedia, khan academy, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think this is a good decision, unfortunately.</comment>


Why I Think Elm Is the Future of Front End Development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rgoomar/why-i-think-elm-is-the-future-of-front-end-development-21e9b091fa05 <comment><USER2> This would all be magnified greatly if Elm Native were solidly production- ready.

[https://github.com/ohanhi/elm-native-ui](https://github.com/ohanhi/elm- native-ui)

[https://robots.thoughtbot.com/elm-native-ui-in- production](https://robots.thoughtbot.com/elm-native-ui-in-production)</comment>


Integrability in elementary terms - <AUTHOR> http://math.stanford.edu/~conrad/papers/elemint.pdf<p>One of the few correct proofs that e^{x^2} cannot be integrated using elementary functions, by one of the true masters of our time, Prof. Brian Conrad. The only prerequisite is proof of Liouville's theorem, Theorem 4.1 in the paper. By contrast, the proof in the book "Topological Galois Theory" by Askold Khovanskii is fraught with inaccurate details. <comment><USER2> See [http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783540214939](http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783540214939) or Barry Trager's PhD Thesis</comment>


Boeing, expecting a long slump, will cut 16k jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/business/boeing-earnings-coronavirus-jobs.html <comment><USER2> Boeing is one of few companies using program accounting. Won't this kind of slump drastically cut the number of planes they can distribute their development costs over for the 787 and 737 Max projects also?

<comment><USER3> That's what I wonder.

More to the point, their stock is up 8% today on this news, because short term, this quarter, will look better with reduced costs. Who cares about the quarter after that, where production will have to be impacted by reduced workforce.

<comment><USER4> > _Who cares about the quarter after that, where production will have to be > impacted by reduced workforce._

You were being sarcastic but you're kind of right. In the same way that this quarter isn't the be all-end all, neither is next quarter. Over, say, a 10 year time horizon, the next couple quarters will just be a blip.

Plus, Boeing doesn't exist in a vacuum. The US Govt is going to let anything happen to them due to national security reasons and they've shown that they aren't willing to wipe out shareholders as part of a bailout.

Frankly I'd be much more worried about the culture that allowed the 787MAX to happen than I would be about short-term COVID-19 reductions.

<comment><USER5> I disagree that this quarter will be a blip, but I agree with the sentiment here.

There are runways and parking lots in Washington full of undelivered planes which are waiting on contractual disputes related to the quality assurance of the _737_ MAX issues. A significant percentage of Boeing planes are currently undeliverable and post-pandemic world airlines are likely going to cancel / downsize contracts or at least spend significant legal fees to attempt to do so.

Barring a quick and easy vaccination or herd immunity that accidentally happens much faster than expected, travel is unlikely to recover this year and perhaps not next. Clearing their backlog of planes will likely take 4+ years unless the company can convince people and airlines to trust them again.

<comment><USER6> Delivery has taken so long that they are going to run into refund periods soon. There's normally massive down payments for these which deters cancellations but these aren't ordinary times. You are almost certainly going to see consolidation within the airlines and there's little to no chance of more plane purchases in that case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Boeing said it hopes to reach its job cut targets through voluntary means, > including buyouts and early retirement offers. Employees who take the buyout > will receive three months of health care and one week of pay for every year > they have worked at Boeing, up to 26 years, the company told workers last > week.

I don't have any reference here because I have worked only in europe or asia, but is this a good offer? I don't think its a very good offer. Why will someone take this?

<comment><USER8> By American standards, it's not awful. There are very few legally mandated protections for employees.

2 weeks per year of service is also a typical value.

Healthcare is often not included, which is a real shit sandwich for the ex- employee. Their options are COBRA (basically, pick up the full tab for coverage on their own dime - employer usually pays >50% of the cost of a policy). Or, buy a plan on the ACA marketplace. Or, do without.

<comment> mark-r I didn't think "do without" was a legal option anymore.

<comment><USER9> Enforcement of the health care mandate was shut down by trump. Without a mandate, the ACA doesn't work

<comment><USER10> It's debatable that it worked even with the mandate. Plenty of young, healthy people decided paying the penalty was a better option than paying some amount of money greater than the penalty for bad coverage.

<comment><USER11> It would work if the option was for people to purchase health insurance on healthcare.gov or pay the equivalent amount in extra taxes. Then people wouldn't have any reason not to purchase it. But also, everyone would have to be directed to healthcare.gov without exception to create the appropriate mix of healthy and sick lives for a viable marketplace, which means banning employer involvement in health insurance.

<comment><USER9> Your first part doesn't follow the second

You could keep employee insurance. If everyone else has to sign up, you still get a diverse risk pool. Maybe not perfect but way better than what we have now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is another situation where an industry deemed "essential", and unaffected directly by lockdown directives, is still impacted.

While there's some ambiguity, nothing in the state-level lockdowns prevents travel in a meaningful way (it's just a jurisdictional thing). But no one is travelling anyway, because no one is willing to sit in an airplane right now.

And Boeing sees that, and knows the recovery will be slow no matter when the official "end" of the lockdowns arrives.

<comment><USER13> Travel has certainly been a great deal affected, but the 737 Max was a pretty massive disaster in an of itself.

With the coronavirus this is a huge 1-2 blow to Boeing.

I wonder how much of their go forward business will be military contracts, as the their civilian aviation business seems to be dead for the next 3-5 years.

They can get the 737 Max recertified to fly, but I think the damage to the reputation is done, so they probably will need to release a brand new plane to be competitive. Not sure on the design to production timeline for an airplane, but that's where I assumed 3-5 years.

<comment><USER14> > They can get the 737 Max recertified to fly,

That is getting more and more dubious every day. Do you have a source which says this is doable? To recap, the 737 Max was not only fitted with the MCAS to save money but because it was relying on being grandfathered in to be able to be certified at all. So if they are forced to make so much change to the MCAS to require recertification they will fail doing so.

<comment><USER15> I thought the MCAS was to grandfather in _pilots_ to be able to fly. Without it, the plain itself would still be certifiable; but pilots would need training before being allowed to fly it.

<comment><USER16> Basically all the issues of the Max come down to the pilot certification issue: the shared "type rating" with the prior 737s. That's why they needed to make the necessary changes to fit bigger engines on the old design, why they added MCAS to basically "simulate" more similar handling in some situations, and why they made so many decisions to downplay the existence of the system or offer new indicators or controls.

The whole business case for the Max was to fend off the A320neo, and if airlines were going to have to retrain pilots, that's one less reason for legacy customers to stay.

<comment><USER17> Sure, but they have already delivered about 400 of them and have another 400 built and waiting to be delivered. At 100 million a piece, that's 40 billion they will probably have to refund in some fashion if they scrap the ones delivered, and another 40 billion in sales waiting to be realized. Granted, they probably could get some money back by scrapping all of those planes, but I cannot imagine them losing more money training some pilots than refunding and scrapping all of those planes (at least for the currently built ones).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I read this as another step by Boeing to get rid of its unionized workforce in Washington in favor of plants in other states and in China. The market downturn provides a nice rationale for doing so.

<comment><USER19> With $BA stock at a lower valuation, the union should go to the capital markets to perform a leveraged buyout and take control of the company. Likely better management material in the ranks than at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone help me understand why the broader stock market is actually up compared to six months ago despite all these dire numbers being thrown around? Heck, Boeing stock is up today!

The economy looked very rosy in October 2019 and NASDAQ was near 8300. Now it's 8900 even when millions are unemployed and even millions more furloughed.

Should the stock market simply be seen as an isolated, self-contained entity with no real correlation to the broader economy?

<comment><USER21> Because the stock market going up or down is a proxy for _changes_ in expectations about the future. If people are slightly less pessimistic than before, it will go up. Boeing being in dire straits is old news – it's all priced in, pretty much.

Besides, there are lots of news out there, including the fact that we're seeing stimulus that dwarfs even what was done during the '08-'09 crisis. Case in point, the top story at the WSJ website now is: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reserve-interest- rates-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reserve-interest-rates- decision-april-2020-11588111763?mod=hp_lead_pos1)

Think of stock market swings as the second derivative of the actual information you're seeing.

<comment><USER22> That's assuming perfect information. Behavioral economics begs to differ on that being even close to reality.

<comment><USER23> Almost nobody assumes absolutely perfect information; even Adam Smith was relying on approximations of actual behaviour. Most economics relies on the assumption that information is close enough to perfect that we can just assume away any difference.

Behavioural economics has proven unreliable, with results that are (at least) difficult to replicate, and non-predictive.

<comment><USER22> Sure, you can say behAvioral economics experiments are unreliable. But even if this field did not exist, assuming close to perfect information is simply naive in my opinion. Unless you account for insider trading, which the pessimist in me believes is rampant. In truth, none of us know, but I think it's worthwhile to consider the alternative to what is taught in textbooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The Boeing bailout was sold as a measure to keep jobs, then of course they turn around and do this.

<comment><USER25> Boeing has not taken a bailout, they didnt like the fact that the government would take an equity position. The bailout was as much targeted at Boeing suppliers as it was at Boeing itself.

<comment><USER24> Boeing was negotiating with gov to drop the equity requirement - does anyone know what the upshot was? They also did take money from other programs targeted at Airline industry, though I don't know exactly how much.

<comment><USER6> Boeing has received no bailout money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Boeing has been stealing contract money forever. Great investment, NASA.

<comment><USER27> Stealing how, from who? Defense to Commercial?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Weren't both Airbus and Boeing "booked out" with year-long order queues pre- Corona?

<comment><USER29> in Boeing's case, a lot of that backlog is 737 max...which comes off the lime and immediately goes into storage, which (I'm guessing) means no delivery hand off and no booked income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nationalize Boeing in the interest of national secuirty.

<comment><USER31> No, capitalism is good we just have to reign it in like Europe and Asia.

<comment><USER32> Capitalism sort of implies competition...

<comment><USER33> The only thing that capitalism implies is the existence of a class that does not work, but collects profits from the capital it owns.

That class sees competition is an unnecessary, and a profit-reducing problem[1] that can be routed around.

[1] See Thiel's monopoly essay.

<comment><USER34> Instead of aspiring to be capitalistic we should aspire to have a competitive market economy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My friend calls this the Lazy Tax  - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3063-my-friend-calls-this-the-lazy-tax

<comment><USER2> It looks more like Amazon is having a sale (the base price is 30 bucks as well).</comment>


Extracting Multiple Bits per Request from Full-Blind SQL Injection Vulns - <AUTHOR> http://howto.hackallthethings.com/2016/07/extracting-multiple-bits-per-request.html <comment><USER2> You guys are absolutely crushing it. Would have never thought to use the response time from a server to be able to extract extra bits of information.

Keep up the awesome work and I look forward to seeing more research.</comment>


Big Benefits Seen From Eating Less Salt - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/health/nutrition/21salt.html?em

<comment><USER2> "Dr. Bibbins-Domingo said that for many people the decrease in blood pressure would be modest, which is why, she said, "many physicians have thrown up their hands and said, 'I'm not going to advise my patients to reduce salt because it's too hard for patients and the benefits for any individual are small.'"

This is consistent with what Gary Taubes has been saying. Reducing refined carbohydrates has a much bigger impact on blood pressure than salt (4-5x as much, IIRC) because of the way it affects water retention.</comment>


Christian Drosten: "We Have to Bring Down the Number of Cases Now." - <AUTHOR> https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-03/christian-drosten-coronavirus-pandemic-germany-virologist-charite <comment><USER2> Christian Drosten`s podcast is the most authentic and a very compact source of information about the new Corona virus and the situation in Germany in my opinion: [https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html](https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html)</comment>


Boomers spend the most on tech - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=146391

<comment><USER2> That's because:

* Boomers are _old_ and have grown their fortune enough to spend some of it.

* Younger people have to worry about kids going to college and an unstable economy. You think we'd be spending right now? Fat chance.</comment>


Warning Signs of a Project Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.functionize.com/blog/how-to-recognize-the-warning-signs-of-a-project-crisis/ <comment><USER2> Best sign: The snack closet doesn't get refilled. That only sounds trivial.</comment>


Pros and Cons of Working at a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://underdog.io/blog/startup-jobs-pros-and-cons <comment><USER2> You get all of the cons of running your own business (stressful, wearing many hats, little compensation up-front), none of the overall control, and if it's ridiculously successful, your compensation will most likely be squeezed out during one of the rounds of investment.

<comment><USER3> Wearing many hats isn't always a con, my first job as a software engineer was at a startup and I couldn't think of a better growth experience because of that very aspect.

I'd also argue that you have more control as literally any employee of a startup because of looser power structures, proximity to upper leadership and generally more transparency. However how controlling your shareholders are will be situational.

Likewise getting squeezed out of compensation very much depends on your situation and status at the company. If you're a cofounder you'll probably be alright, if you're within the first ~10 employees you'll probably be alright, after that you'll probably still get a nice chunk of change. Though maybe not enough to make up for smaller up front compensation but that also was not my experience (outside of the bay area).

<comment><USER3> On the first point though I'll admit that it's not better for everyone. We had hired a GPU & camera driver expert and had him doing odd jobs on our Android app for well over a year, but that was more of a problem with hiring and then with management after he was hired.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter support explains how they were hacked - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1283591844962750464 <comment><USER2> IIUC, any rogue high-level access employee could take over any account and post anything? Like make trump's account post "nuke inc @nk". I'm not sure if that's any more reassuring than just saying they got breached

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools."

I think it happened because everyone is working remotely and it is easier to perform social engineering attacks. Maybe this incident will have impact on their long term remote work plans.

</comment><comment><USER3> Big/active discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23855208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23855208)</comment>


Alibaba's Jack Ma Defends China's 996 Schedule - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3005946/alibabas-jack-ma-defends-chinas-996-schedule-tech-workers-protest <comment><USER2> Well two things. First Jack Ma is at the top of the dogpile. So it's in his interests that his workers just work for him with no regard to a work-life balance. Secondly, if the 996 schedule has some support of the party, as evident by the Github repo being blocked by browsers, then Jack Ma needs to show he's on board or be quiet. Failure to do so could get real ugly for him.

</comment><comment><USER3> >"If you do not do 996 when you are young, when will you? Do you think never having to work 996 in your life is an honour to boast about?" he said.

This is so ridiculous. First you're burning people out, and if studies are to be believed, you're getting less productivity out of your workers. Second, this explicitly is biased against people who've been out of university a few years.

How can he not see a problem here?

</comment><comment><USER4> It's mentally incapacitated behavior for a country of 1 billion people not to just employ more people instead burning out a small minority who are apparently smart enough to work for their top companies. Jack Ma is not only an ass, he's a complete buffoon out of touch with reality.</comment>


Do you know any b2b social network? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not asking about professional networking sites like linkedin.com or sites that help you find cofounder for your startup.
I'm also not looking for business directories that lists importers/exporters.
I'm looking for a social networking site where different companies of a particular industry - Retailers,Suppliers,Manufacturers,Customers etc can connect with each other. They can find vendors offering supplies in a given location or in given price range. Basically a mix of social network, supply chain management, and CRM.
Do you know any such service? If not, will it be a good idea for startup? Should it be generic or focussed on a particular industry e.g. import/export or electronics ? <comment><USER2> These certainly do exist, e.g. salesforce.com are huge.

However you touch on a point that hasn't yet been developed - you could innovate around actual service connection through a b2b social network. So exposing web services that could actually allow companies to place orders from suppliers or create projects they wish to go out to tender and the suppliers can bid on etc.

I would think you're much better off focusing on a niche market, if you can prove one exists. If not then start generic and iterate, honing in on a target market.

But be aware there are definitely competitors in this general area.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I guess the right way is to focus on one particular industry. I have few in my mind that's have been overlooked. I had a tough time finding suppliers and manufacturers for a product that I wished to sell online. All I got was messy trade directories like <http://www.tradeindia.com> or a dedicated forum for discussing that business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Alibaba ?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a real career in being a coding bootcamp instructor? - <AUTHOR> What does the typical career path for instructors look like? Can it be a stepping stone to different careers in academia? <comment><USER2> I can't speak much to being a bootcamp instructor, but I'll attempt to address your last question. A bootcamp is not an accredted, degree-granting institution -- it's not part of academia in the typical sense, so, if by 'careers in academia', you mean teaching at the university/college level, you're sort of comparing apples and oranges; pursuing experience outside of academia will not be the best use of your time/resources in that case.

Teaching at the college level means either attaining a tenure-stream position, or adjuncting. Tenure-stream requires a terminal degree (normally a PhD) and such roles are difficult to get; on the other hand, one can sometimes adjunct with a master's (or possibly even a bachelor's) but there is zero job security, and your'e still competing against all the people who do have PhDs but failed to get a tenure-track role. Nobody 'wants' to be a full-time adjunct, if that makes sense.

Either way, you'd gain teaching experience by taking on teaching fellowships/assistantships while pursuing your master's / doctorate. That's not to say bootcamp instructoring would be useless, but it's hard to say how valuable it would be.

If you have a genunine desire to teach, my two cents is to keep your day job (I'm guessing you are currently a software developer) and find a way to teach part-time -- part-time adjuncting, after-school tutoring, etc etc. It can be very fulfilling, but I wouldn't stake my financial future on it.</comment>


Google search results; organic vs. ads (image) - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/kssFp <comment><AUTHOR> I remember one of Altavista's main caveats was the mixing of paid and organic results. But as of 2017 Google suppresses organic search results in favor of paid ones more and more after each quarter.

Is it time for new ideas in search space?</comment>


Protesters who are trying to upend the "fantasy world" of economics - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/05/the-protesters-who-are-trying-to-upend-the-fantasy-world-of-economics/ <comment><USER2> > "It makes no sense! It's like, they're measuring how many commodities are > bought and sold in a year, but the point isn't the commodities, you know? > It's the hours of labor."

This is a flawed, Marxist labor theory of value that can't explain why an artisanally-made handbag that takes 120 man-hours to produce still is valued less than a Coach/Prada/LV handbag that was machine-manufactured with no human labor. I really don't understand these people -- but then again, theory not matching up with reality has never been a problem for Marxism's adherents, has it?

<comment><USER3> Your statement ironically exemplifies the value judgment that the protestor is talking about. Neo-classical economics says that the _price_ of a good or service is a function of supply and demand. It says nothing about "value." Some people have the tendency of conflating the two, but it's nothing that falls out of the mathematics.

Simple example. You have a company. What's the "value" of your receptionist? Well how do you measure that? Simple: get rid of her, and have your developers answer the phones. The decrease in productivity from that is the value of her position, and it's independent of how many or few people could do the job. The _price_ of her services is a lot lower, and based on the cost of hiring someone else to do the same thing. There's a strong drive in our society to conflate the two, but they're mathematically distinct. Is it Marxist to point out the fact that a capitalist society rewards people based on their fungability rather than the value of their service? Yes, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Rant: the older I get, the more I think that "value" (our social evaluation of worth) should be based on nothing more than hours of labor. An hour of labor from someone with a 130-IQ might carry a higher price on the market than an hour of labor from someone with a 90-IQ, but that doesn't mean our society should perceive the former as being more "valuable." Because at the end of the day, each person is giving up the same hour of life on this earth God gave him.

<comment><USER4> 'An hour of labor from someone with a 130-IQ might carry a higher price on the market than an hour of labor from someone with a 90-IQ, but that doesn't mean our society should perceive the former as being more "valuable."'

And an hour of time of a person who studied hard, got good grades, and went through college should be compensated same as high school dropout? Your logic while nice in a "we are all equal fairy tale" way, immediately breaks down society because it devalues education, intelligence, and hard work tremendously.

<comment><USER5> No it doesn't, it devalues effectiveness. You can argue that all of those things make you effective, and while that's true, lets make sure we're on point here.

It devalues effectiveness, not education.

<comment><USER4> That is a good generalization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh boy, people protesting a science.

I'm the first guy in line to cut into economics. To me it's just astrology for people who know calculus. Or, as one wag put it, How many economists does it take to reach a conclusion?

But having said that, the practitioners themselves are just as aware of the problems of the "science" as anybody else. I'm also not crazy about Jungian psychotherapy, but you don't see me protesting outside the psychiatrist conventions.

While I may disagree with methodology, and I may even argue politically about policy implications based on conclusions various sciences reach, I remain convinced by the Charity Principle that these folks are working in good faith. What I'm seeing here are people who don't want other people in positions of authority because they disagree with their conclusions. This looks uncomfortably like an ecclesiastical dispute.

So as bad as economics and economists look? These protesters look worse. Terrible thing.

<comment><USER7> > I'm also not crazy about Jungian psychotherapy, but you don't see me > protesting outside the psychiatrist conventions.

Economics is much more political than psychiatry, and most other sciences. As you stated, maybe due to it's lack of hard science. So it doesn't surprise me that there are activists doing this.

Whether it will actually influence the top economists who have politicians ears, and to a lesser extent overall academia, is the big question.

<comment><USER8> From that perspective I agree with the protesters, though I'm coming from the right of the mainstream instead of the left. Economics, particularly that of the academic variety, seems like an exercise in starting with a view of the world and fitting the data to it instead of the other way 'round.

But I agree with DanielBMarkham in that economists are generally working in good faith (though I have my doubts about Krugman). It's just not very easy to see your own biases.

<comment><USER6> I have a guilty pleasure: I enjoy watching economists. I read the financial opinion columns, and I enjoy the policy debates. But that's just because I like watching smart people argue. Economics is a great place to watch this.

Krugman looks to me like a political shill, not an economist (Somebody said once that most of his columns should start with "Fools!") He'll say something outrageous, and then over the next several days other economists will try to sort it all out. Many times it's just political bickering, but there have been times where it looks like he's crossed the line: I see folks who don't do politics try to come out publicly and reason with him. It's most always a mistake. The more they pile on the more he revels in it.

Having said that, I'm fine with him continuing to opine. The dangerous thing I'm seeing is politicians who don't seem to be responsible for anything: everything they do is based on experts somewhere who are more than willing to back them up on whatever decision they make. The real discussion we should be having here is the role of academia and the role of elected leaders in a democracy. That's where the lines are blurring, and that's the reason you see well-meaning (but perhaps not-so-well-educated) folks protesting who can work the job of basically "a guy that tells me things I didn't know". It's because they view professors as some sort of priesthood that decides what the policy should be. That's not true -- and it should never be true.

<comment><USER6> For example, in today's reading: [http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2015/01/12/krugmans...](http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2015/01/12/krugmans_wrong_about_the_volckerreagan_inflation_triumph_101480.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ignoring content and ideology. If mainstream economics is so demonstrably flawed, the best way to make the point is not to childishly disrupt conventions and speeches, nor to make personally-directed attacks at individuals. The best way to "protest" the flaws would be to consistently and professionally refute the flaws and falsehoods.

By making their vehicle a protest rather than a rigorous intellectual deconstruction, at best the message is that they can't come up with more than catchy slogans and loaded (unbacked) statements. I have not done significant research beyond the article linked, which includes no reference to supporting and more rigorous arguments produced by this group.

Factually, there is huge variation in the economics profession and the claim "Neoclassicism is essentially the standard for 95 percent of the graduate departments in the country." is simply not true. There are many academic foci in economics and a healthy dialogue among proponents of different viewpoints. There is also a vast network of blogs published by both academic economists and amateurs (connotation = non-professional, but well educated on the topic) treating the topic in a more casual tone.

Lastly, the representation of neoclassical economics presented is a straw man, and an uninspired one at that:

>the fantasy world of neoclassical economics — a faith-based religion of perfect markets, enlightened consumers and infinite growth that shapes the fates of billions.

This is the model (excepting infinite growth) typically taught in introductory economics courses of all types. It is not taught as an actual representation of the world (though even as simplified as the models in Intro Micro/Macro carry a great amount of explanatory value over a naive interpretation of matters economic), but as a framework within which the basic principles of economics can be taught. A rough equivalent would be protesting a physics conference because the solar system model of an atom is not representative of reality.

<comment><USER10> It seems like every time there is a demonstration, no matter the subject, someone complains that it is childish and that they should spend their time doing something constructive instead. Maybe post on their Facebook page or something...

> I have not done significant research beyond the article linked, which > includes no reference to supporting and more rigorous arguments produced by > this group.

So.. because you are to lazy to look up whether they have made good arguments you assume that they haven't?

> A rough equivalent would be protesting a physics conference because the > solar system model of an atom is not representative of reality.

No. That would imply that they are cranks and you have no evidence of that. It's like you already have made up your mind on what to think without listening, which is kind of why they have to resort to demonstrations in the first place. :)

<comment><USER9> >>I have not done significant research beyond the article linked, which includes no reference to supporting and more rigorous arguments produced by this group.

>So.. because you are to lazy to look up whether they have made good arguments you assume that they haven't?

Because I was at work and had limited time, I was limited to the resources linked in the article, which included a very non-rigorous page which is more concerned with its manifesto and self-congratulatorily declaiming the "mainstream." I also had the content of the conference they were protesting, and the quotes in support of their views.

The conference, as others have pointed out numerous times covered some pretty heterodox views to begin with, and that it was their choice of target as representative of the mainstream implies a naive understanding of what is and is not mainstream economics.

The quotes of the protesters and the economics these quotes represent are not heterodox so much as well-refuted theories, again, as others have covered numerous times in other comments.

>>A rough equivalent would be protesting a physics conference because the solar system model of an atom is not representative of reality.

>No. That would imply that they are cranks and you have no evidence of that. It's like you already have made up your mind on what to think without listening, which is kind of why they have to resort to demonstrations in the first place. :)

I have laid out above my reasoning for not putting merit toward their academic rigor. I, personally, loathe the "economics" put forth as support for popular political policy of the day, so I came into the article sympathetic to the thesis. Every element of the article and supporting evidence I was able to find based on my limited time during work pointed to the conclusions that I drew.

Finally, it is clear without needing further research that they do clearly hold the belief that the following quote is representative of mainstream economics:

"the fantasy world of neoclassical economics — a faith-based religion of perfect markets, enlightened consumers and infinite growth that shapes the fates of billions."

This belief is a strawman caricature of an introductory economics model. To declaim mainstream economics based on this understanding is hopelessly naive and is exactly akin to declaim modern physics because of the solar system model of an atom (another 101-level model which is an un-nuanced but accurate in broad strokes model used to introduce new students to a field).

Whether the quotation above is central to their argument, or tangential, my comparison holds. Further, the case is much stronger that the quotation above _is_ of primary concern to their argument, which only strengthens any critique based on it.

I appreciate your feedback on how to come off less dismissive of the original article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem with economics is that its trying to make sense of the single most dynamic, difficult problem ever contemplated. Its basically an attempt to model the entire world's behaviour.

There's 7 billion people in the world, we're all connected in various ways, and we all buy, sell, engage in work and other economic activities multiple times per day. Oh and nothings reproducible, so good luck trying to recreate experiments.

That's one huge model to attempt to simulate.

And if any programmer/engineer thinks they're smarter than the people currently working on these problems, I'm sure some hedge fund will pay you millions to 'solve' the problem of modeling economics.

<comment><USER12> As a matter of fact, it's something I've thought about (large model economic et al simulation) for quite some time. It was only recently after my work with "big data" in a genetics lab that I think it might actually be doable.

I also think part of the problem is that it's the blood-sucking octopus entities that pay all the money normally for such development and then use it to sharpen their fangs on the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If these people are concerned about "growth and limits to growth" then why are they heckling economists and not lobbying for putting birth control drugs in our water supply? Is an economist is really needed to tell anyone that growth is bad when it causes an overwhelmingly destructive externality? The thing is that people don't want to be convinced of the link between economic activity and climate change. And yes, perhaps the high priests of money are indeed the right group to give mainstream credence to the (economic) downside of climate change.</comment>


Accountancy used to be boring and safe, but today it's neither - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/29/the-financial-scandal-no-one-is-talking-about-big-four-accountancy-firms <comment><USER3> Married to an accountant, and her words are echoing in my head (loudly): "The purpose of an audit is not to discover fraud!" An audit is a written opinion on the reliability of a company's financial statements (my words this time). It is not an opinion about the company's business model, ethics, or future viability. Saying, "the auditors should have caught that" misses the point of an audit (a financial audit, anyway).

I think people may have conflated these auditors' jobs with that of, say, an auditor from a government entity like the IRS whose job duties can include discovering fraud.

<comment><USER4> > reliability of a company's financial statements

I don't really understand the difference.

Can you give an example of accounting fraud in which the company's financial statements are still reliable?

<comment><USER5> The difference is one of scale. For example, a Walmart sized company could easily have some fraud going on the scale of a couple million dollars - <USER2> financial statements are considered to be _materially_ correct (i.e. in that investors would not consider numbers off by a couple million to be a big deal), but there would still be fraud going on.

You have to understand that the underlying concept of audit that a small team of auditors is responsible for ensuring that a huge (relatively) company is going about things correctly - there's no way to obtain a 100% assurance with that scale of manpower, and there's no appetite from companies to significantly increase the audit fees to obtain that level of assurance. Instead, a sampling/risk-based approach is taken in order to ensure that there cannot be a large error within the financials.

<comment><USER4> Ok, I think I understand now. The layers are:

reality -> accounting books -> financial statements

The auditors don't look at the first mapping "reality -> accounting books" but only at the second one "accounting books -> financial statements"?

And even in the second mapping, they check with a sampling-based approach?

<comment><USER5> No, all testing is down all the way down to 'reality'. But testing is statistically scaled to detect large errors. The threshold for 'large' shifts with how large the audited company is. i.e. a couple million dollars is a rounding error at Walmart.

Additionally, pretty much 90% of an audit flows through a limited number of client contacts. Audits are not designed to defend against a concerted effort to prevent the auditors from seeing 'reality' (i.e. un-doctored documents), due to the manpower requirements to validate information at that level.

Conceptually, it's the difference between 'I-trust-you-but-I-need-to-check- that-you-did-your-homework' and 'Trust no one, everything you see is a lie'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the side consultancy businesses are a big problem. Accounting firms should be banned from providing any services other than accounting. This is currently the case in the US for law firms and it is widely accepted that this rule limits conflicts of interest.

It is just far too easy to make a bribe with consulting services. There is no good way to measure the real value of consulting services, and their cost can be massive. If a crooked CEO gives his accountant bags of cash to cook the books, he may be caught and both the CEO and the accountant can be sent off to jail. If a smarter crooked CEO instead hires his accountant's accounting company to a 100 million dollar consulting contract, in exchange for cooking the books, good luck proving a bribe took place. The accounting firm will surely put in a hundred of consultants on the contract and they will surely produce long reports with stacks of technobabble and graphs. Who is to say how much that is worth.

<comment><USER7> FWIW I don't think companies are allowed to purchase consulting services from their auditor, specifically because of this conflict of interest. In my experience, companies will have one of the big four as their primary auditor, than use some combination of the other three for consulting (in addition to MBB or any other firms).

In no way defending the value of these services though - their primary function is to shift culpability off of the executives IMO

<comment><USER8> Currently at a Big 4 on the consulting side, this has been my experience as well. We cannot touch our audit clients as the rules are very strict.

<comment><USER9> Also my experience - there are pretty significant safeguards against this stuff. It can be really annoying on the consulting side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Have the 'big four' firms become too cosy with the system they're supposed to be keeping in check?"

Yes. This was clear in 2001 during the Enron scandal. Which by the way triggered the collapse of one of the then-"Big Five" and created the "Big Four". Nothing has substantially changed.

<comment><USER11> You are talking about Andersen / Accenture?

<comment><USER12> Andersen used to have two main divisions. Arthur Andersen did accounting and audit, Andersen Consulting did management consulting and professional services.

After Enron, Arthur Andersen folded. The partners of Andersen Consulting rebranded their business as Accenture.

<comment><USER13> Your timeline and causality are incorrect.

Arthur Aderson and Anderson Consulting operated separately under Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative since 1989. The companies formally separated in August of 2000, and the Accenture name was announced in January, 2001.

The Enron scandal broke in December, 2001.

Accenture's timing proved fortuitous, but coincidental.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have lots of friends who work for the big 4 firms. I think the biggest worry is that most of the people doing the actual audit procedures are so inexperienced and have no long-term goal of staying with the firm. When you talk to them they talk like they're at grad school - "I'm just going to stay here for three years to get my CPA and experience then I am going to the private sector".

If that is your mentality, are you really going to try to dig up a bunch of issues that will cause stress for you?

<comment><USER9> I'm on the consulting side at a B4 and what you're saying is true from the experience of my friends working in audit. The manager level and above should be checking the work quality, but they also have to balance client relationship building (which will advance their careers) with reporting potentially negative results from analysis.

Side note: for anyone looking for a miserable career, choose auditing at a B4. It's a rare combination of overworked and underpaid that has basically everyone racing for the door after a year or two.

<comment><USER15> You forget the multi level sales scheme that has everyone dreaming of becoming a partner and living the good life. Similar to a startup you are taking lower pay to build value-less equity in the hope you will get to the top and cash out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The principal/agent problem.

insurance, auditors, government regulation, government backed loans. All have their own problems with this.

I know in mortgages, appraisers are randomly selected. Where as before they were selected by the mortgage company for what value they could get for the house. The problem now is they have no accountability to anyone.

part of the problem in health insurance consumers aren't price sensitive so prices just keep going up. (obviously they're are more problems that that)

governments have regulator capture issues.

shop your auditor(regulator) is a problem.

<comment><USER17> >I know in mortgages, appraisers are randomly selected.

Not sure about that - the bank that financed my last mortgage employed the appraiser as full-time member of staff. The appraisal exactly matched the contract. I do find that fishy, but apparently not against the rules.

<comment><USER12> The purpose of the appraisal is to determine the loan-to-value ratio. As long as the appraisal is at least the required number, they're fine. The appraiser is basically saying, "in my opinion the property is worth at least $X." Not that it might be not be worth more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a thought. I've heard somebody's started a "long-term stock exchange"; ah, here it is: [https://ltse.com/](https://ltse.com/) (more info: [https://blog.ltse.com/modern-companies-think-long-term- soon-...](https://blog.ltse.com/modern-companies-think-long-term-soon-the- market-will-too-e0c9a94f5ef7))

Seems like such an exchange could also insist that the companies listed on it submit to independent audits paid for by the exchange. Well, the listed companies would still pay for the audits through the listing fees, but the auditors would report to the exchange. Seems like this could align the incentives better: the exchange wants to attract investors, so they want to be able to provide additional assurance that the companies listed there are sound.

</comment><comment><USER19> UK financial auditor here. Putting in a low bid for an audit engagement is considered a breach of professional ethics. You might have an incentive to do less work and gloss over things if you're on a very tight budget. So it's hard for competition to bring fees down.

<comment> UK-Al05 I think companies are all too happy to pay high fees if certain things are overlooked.

</comment></comment><comment> purple-again >>Just four major global firms – Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY) and KPMG – audit 97% of US public companies and all

Yeah that'ts not even remotely close to true. The author meant to say Fortune 500 companies not all US public companies.

<comment><USER20> What makes you say that? Who are the other auditors?

<comment><USER21> Grant Thornton, BDO, and RSM are the next step down. There are a few other international firms and then there are a large number of international alliances.

The second tier firms operate very similarly to the Big 4 but are an order of magnitude smaller. They'll do audit work for public companies, just not very big ones. Or they'll do pieces of work for bigger firms. But companies can still be public with revenues of only a few hundred million and they'll be far more price sensitive than Google or Goldman.

Just like in cloud computing or AI scale has serious advantages for accounting firms and it is difficult and expensive to try to make the jump to the top tier. Better to stay in your target market in terms of client size, geography, and what price you charge, than to try to drastically change your business. Far too likely to lose your existing business and not succeed in the new one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And we're back to the question at least as old as ancient Rome:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ("Who will guard the guards themselves?")

The very structure of large accountancy needs to be overturned, as today, the primary incentive for the big 4 is to preserve their client relationships -- that is the side on which their bread is buttered. This means applying their stamp of credibility, not finding and highlighting troubles, especially fundamental/systemic/existential troubles...

<comment><USER23> It's great to find problems, just share them over a golf game and not an official report.

<comment><USER22> And when the problems have systemic implications, and are the result of policies/actions from those at the top, with whom the accountants are golfing?

This was the point of the article -- accountancy was supposed to provide a guard function -- checks and balances. Now, it is merely a compromised credentialing service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> is it still irrepressibly drab and awful?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azkFz1ZbXyU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azkFz1ZbXyU)

<comment><USER25> I would like to add

The Crimson Permanent Assurance [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSO9OFJNMBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSO9OFJNMBA)

and their humble beginning and dramatic end: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YUiBBltOg4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YUiBBltOg4)

As one can see proper Accountancy is exciting, adventurous and associated with big risks for life and limb.

<comment><USER26> It's fun to charter an accountant

and sail the wide accountancy,

to find, explore the funds offshore

and skirt the shoals of bankruptcy!

It can be manly in insurance.

We'll up your premium semi-annually.

It's all tax deductible.

We're fairly incorruptible,

we're sailing on the wide accountancy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My personal prediction is that audit in its current form will cease to exist within the next 10 years. Already at Big Four firms, there is a shift towards risk management, especially when more and more clients are adopting technology to manage all of their financials. What used to take many hours/days for auditors to manually reconcile and "audit", now can be automated using technology and instead, the focus will be on assessing risk and controls that are in place in those technology solutions. This is evident by current downward trend of audit revenue (even in Big Four) and an increase in revenue coming from Risk Advisory service lines instead.

</comment><comment><USER27> It is quite simple, the big 4 have the UK and US top companies sewn up. We need a cap on how long a form can audit one company as a start. This would take away the incentive to keep the client ahead of making good judgements

<comment><USER19> In the UK firms are meant to rotate auditors.

<comment><USER27> They don't though, they rotate audit partners

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems like the relatively simple solution here would be to nationalize these firms, or at least their auditing aspect. A public company could handle that and remain more independent and less susceptible to greed than the big four. Have any countries tried doing this?

<comment><USER29> I believe that the appropriate model is the one chosen for the Paris MOU and copycat Port State Control authorities.

* Ports can't afford to inspect every vessel that enters

* Inspections are annoying and costly for owners even if their vessel passes

* But, left to their own devices the Flag States may skimp on inspections, causing a Race to the Bottom where ships registered with Flags of Convenience are mostly awful and the port states end up absorbing the cost (atrocious labour conditions, deaths and injuries, pollution)

So the Paris MOU randomly inspects ships, but it has an intelligent and adaptive model controlling the probability of any particular ship being inspected when it arrives in a port.

If (say) Panamanian flagged vessels all keep passing their Paris MOU inspections, the rate at which vessels with a Panamanian flag are inspected falls.

On the other hand if, say, Venezuelan flagged vessels keep failing inspection, rates of inspection for that flag go up.

This encourages owners interested in an "Open registry" (Flag of convenience) to pick one that's doing a good enough job at inspecting vessels to attract the lowest rate of Paris MOU inspections. Which in turn pressures the flag states to either do good quality inspections of their own, or get out of the "Open registry" game instead, either of which suits the Paris MOU signatories just fine.

So, governments should have their own small number of specialist auditors, and they should randomly re-audit some fraction of public companies, with the chance depending on which Audit firm that company hired and how many re-audits of other firms audited by that company found problems. The cost of doing all this would be paid by the audit firms, as both a fixed levy AND fines whenever something is wrong.

<comment><USER30> That is exactly what a PCAOB does except it is private.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is a private-sector, nonprofit corporation created by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 to oversee the audits of public companies and other issuers in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, accurate and independent audit reports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Article aside, the title interests me. There does seem to be some general relationship between boring and safe (or interesting and risky) in our psychology, or mine at least. I wonder why that is?

<comment><USER32> Any new experience is interesting. People will often feel compelled to get a glimpse at an event they haven't seen before, or that is rare. New stimuli is sought-after.

People also derive their perception of safety from past experience. If you've driven in a car hundreds of times, you will think it much safer than doing something you've never done before. To many people, stability = safety.

<comment><USER33> By definition stability (low volatility) is safety and implies low risk (not no risk), please offer counter examples.

<comment><USER34> I would always tell my younger brother there is a difference between dangerous and reckless. I think we are still saying the same things, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER33> Well nothing is truly 0 risk given the nature of opportunity cost, inflation, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just like a zero-day vulnerability waiting to be exploited, the cause of the next major economic recession is currently being synthesized, audited, and approved by the big 4.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd rather be a Lion Tamer (yes, I do have the hat!).

</comment><comment><USER37> An industry that needs to be 'disrupted'?

<comment><USER27> If you have seen the work junior auditors do, it is begging to be automated. It will be a question of which company is first to get it past the standards bodies...

<comment><USER21> The automation is already happening. Massive deployment of AI to wipe out low level work in next 5-10 years, just like with law.

<comment><USER14> I work in accounting and have been seeing this for years. Most people are completely delusional because they think they have "professional skills" that will make them immune to automation. I've given up warning others and now I focus on just improving my IT skills.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How we found rogerkver's obfuscated wallet private key - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/lets-enhance-how-we-found-rogerkver-s-1000-wallet-obfuscated-private-key-8514e74a5433 <comment><USER2> This is a great reminder to follow the advice of a previous article here about the blurring of sensitive data.

1) If you care about the data, don't blur. Black it out, entirely. 2) If you don't want to black it out for aesthetic reasons, then you don't care enough about the data being private. 3) Black out every pixel, every time.

<comment><USER3> JPEG also stores the thumbnail separately in the EXIF data. This might not be updated when the image is edited and can reveal the original data.

<comment><USER4> It's not even in the EXIF data, it's part of JFIF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out Deconvolution[1])

The technique has been done before and the text string of the private key would probably be the easiest point of attack.

WHY BLURRING SENSITIVE INFORMATION IS A BAD IDEA[2]

RESTORATION OF DEFOCUSED AND BLURRED IMAGES[3]

Take away: black out any and all sensitive information. Blurring just marginally reduces the independence of the bits presented in blurred output. To have privacy, all dependence must be eliminated, e.g. black out.

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

[2] [https://dheera.net/projects/blur](https://dheera.net/projects/blur)

[3] [http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration1.htm](http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration1.htm)

<comment><USER6> In addition to just blacking out, it's also important to screenshot the content if you are able to _and then_ black it out. Otherwise you may leak meta data or pre-rendered thumbnails. The reason you screenshot first and black out second is that it reduces the chances of you mixing up which file to upload.

<comment><USER7> Also, even more basic: don't just redact a PDF by adding black boxes over the text as a new layer. The text data is still there. (Yes, this has been a source of leaks on numerous occasions.)

<comment><USER8> Similar thing happened in Australia recently. Every member of parliament and senators have their phone bills published to the government website as part of public disclosure.

What happened though is instead of deleting their phone numbers, the contractor who was in charge of this simply changed the font colour of their phone number to white (same as the background).

So if you looked at the PDF, it looked normal. If you highlighted the text - the phone number instantly showed up. Also viewing google "text" cache version showed the number too. As a result - hundreds of their personal phone numbers were available to anyone and everyone.

[http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political- news/privat...](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/private- mobile-phone-numbers-of-nearly-every-federal-mp-accidentally-published- online-20170320-gv1x85.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gaussian blur is mathematically reversible, but in practice you don't have enough resolution to successfully deconvolve the original image. However in the case of video you have multiple images and you can reconstruct a "super- resolution" image by combining frames. I'm sure there is a tool somewhere that can do this, there are too many secrets being shown blurred on TV to pass ...

<comment><USER10> Not sure how up to date the algorithms are, but OpenCV has an implementation: [https://docs.opencv.org/3.0-beta/modules/superres/doc/super_...](https://docs.opencv.org/3.0-beta/modules/superres/doc/super_resolution.html)

<comment><USER11> Very curious to see if someone can solve this using this method. Would be as magical as ECC

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats.

I had also started trying to decode the QR but as I was starting to look into the ECC I noticed someone had moved half of the coins and gave up.

Glad you explained your technique. I initially used a Picross editor to map the screenshot before moving to a full Python script.

<comment><USER11> Nice trick to use the Picross editor. We started with GIMP but quickly moved to Google spreadsheet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was a great story which previously didn't hit the front page. I'm glad for the re-submit policy. I enjoyed learning about the build structure of QR codes. Years ago I chose to learn how barcodes are constructed so that I could create custom barcodes for my college library. Having access to nothing more than Microsoft office, I naively decided that a whole lot of conditional formatting rules would be enough to build the thing in Excel. And I was right! But it's not a method I would recommend anyone ever attempt.

</comment><comment><USER14> My biggest take-away from all this -- look at how much high quality engineering work was just crowdsourced for $1,000?!

</comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't look very blurred. I expect you could do a blind deconvolution and just read it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was hoping for some application of Bayes' theorem.</comment>


Today's developers are screwed, just like they were in 1976 - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/05/26/for-eager-robot-developers-its-1976-all-over-again/ <comment><USER2> At least in the 70's there were dumb terminals and you could timeshare computers.</comment>


China Unveils 'Revolutionary' Plan to Give Communist Party Even More Power - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-13/china-unveils-revolutionary-plan-to-ensure-party-holds-power <comment><USER2> There is also something interesting in this plan, such as an immigration bureau. Those expats can finally get Chinese green cards soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Alarmist article, nothing new here. The term thing was already reported. Other than that, it seems to be mostly very practical changes: overhauling tax departments is overdue (I visited four today), financial services regulation is usually normalized across sectors in most developed countries, more environmental prioritization is overdue.</comment>


Egg Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Men and Women - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2628696/ <comment><USER2> Does egg quality matter? Chickens that eat bugs versus chickens that eat dead chickens ground up with meal?

</comment><comment><USER3> What if you eat only egg whites? It's just protein.</comment>


Show HN: RetirementPlan.io – Financial app for do-it-yourself investors - <AUTHOR> https://www.retirementplan.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there - the app is currently in public beta, and completely free to use while it's being built out.

I'm open to all comments & criticism... Have at it! I'm not a professional programmer (I do this on the side) so hopefully it still stacks up.</comment>


If you're looking for startup ideas this might help - <AUTHOR> http://www.querycell.com/Business_Forum_Discussion.html

<comment><USER2> This thread caught my eye: <http://www.mechanicslounge.com/showthread.php?t=4982>

<comment><USER3> If this (screenshot of UI) is what people are paying $250/m for, and it's the best thing around then it looks like room for a simpler web based solution.

<http://www.m1products.net/sms/manager/images/orderscreen.jpg>

<comment><USER4> The market is the biggest problem - mechanics probably don't have a decent internet connection at work to start with, don't want to learn new software, and wouldn't even think to look for new software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Im not sure about that. How many mechanics in the world are there ? A lot. So even if a small percentage have internet and are willing to try new stuff it could well be a market that is worth tens or hundreds of millions. Maybe.

How many mechanics have email ? I think a large percentage.

How many people starting up new mechanic businesses are in their 30s or even 20s and reasonably net savvy ? I imagine quite a few.

Course these questions are best answered with some research and discussion with mechanics.

<comment><USER4> Definitely, it just reminds me of PG's musings on "Art Museums Online" because of my own past (but limited) research into this market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another great technique that I read about recently: be the opposite of secretive <http://cdixon.org/2010/03/14/developing-new-startup-ideas/>

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are looking for startup ideas, start talking to customers, basically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well yeah, I mean you don't necessarily have customers per se but get out and talk to people with real problems.

People who have money at stake in some way is probably best.

My 2 cents anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also I like the idea of non-glamorous businesses. There is an English saying "Where there's muck there's brass".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This link is a perfect example of how a tangential article is being used to boost page rank of his website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think it is spammy ? I think it adds value. What happened was It occured to me as a useful thing to post and then I considered which of my websites to put it on.

I think google does a pretty good job of providing good incentives. I mean there are a lot of people competing to create content that other people are interested in. That's a lot better than many of the alternatives.

My 2 cents.

<comment><USER7> I never complained its spammy! It is one of the useful ways of boosting your page rank and getting it linked.</comment></comment></comment>


Projects to Help You Learn React (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://daveceddia.com/react-practice-projects/ <comment><USER2> I can imagine these being useful at learning Vue as well!

</comment><comment><USER3> perfect timing, thank you.</comment>


Warren Buffet may not have used AirBNB service but he may use Pobyt - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Pobytapp/warren-buffet-may-not-have-used-airbnb-service-but-he-may-use-pobyt-8c2f51aa0b07 <comment><USER2> Is the name chosen based on the Slavic word? "Pobyt" means "stay" in Czech and others.</comment>


Mathoverflow.net - for research level math questions - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net

<comment><USER2> Seems like this has a surprising acceptance rate just by quickly looking at the Badges page. They have given out quite a few!

One things, though, is that I am sad that it is just for questions. It seems like they could harvest this group of people and write some nice explanations to some difficult problems, yet their FAQ explicitly doesn't want this:

"MathOverflow is not an encyclopedia. MO is a site for questions that have answers. MathOverflow visitors should know how to learn new things and do mathematics on their own, but we all get stuck sometimes, and this is where MO saves the day."

<comment><USER3> This is my BIGGEST qualm about the StackOverflow line extension strategy. A Q&A site is NOT a community site, a proper community site has discussions, sharing, along with some Q&A.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think these sites fill their niche well; Each question can have discussion surrounding it, or a specific answer, and the comments can enhance the quality of the answers. I was never able to get specific questions answered as quickly or as well until I started using stackoverflow type sites.

<comment><USER2> Each question should have discussion surrounding it, I don't think the StackOverflow mindset is the way to go about this, however. The discussion on each answer is shoved below in an unnested order which makes conversation almost impossible. StackOverflow works wonders for easy questions with finite answers, not dicussable "research-oriented" math questions.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, which I find somewhat of a paradox. Questions w/easy finite answers are generally easy to solve via a Google search (for example, the most points I've earned are from answering 'how do you copy a python list'), and the more complex questions that should have answers along the lines of "well it depends, you could do 1, 2, or 3" have one accepted answer that isn't the best solution for the context I'm working in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Terry Tao is on it! [http://mathoverflow.net/questions/9731/polynomial- representi...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/9731/polynomial-representing- all-nonnegative-integers)

</comment><comment><USER6> I should point out that the mathematical topics on math overflow lean very heavily towards sophisticated topics in algebra, though there are certainly many other topics represented.

Im repeatedly amazed at how many heavy hitters in math research are active on MO

</comment><comment><USER7> Site is well put together - nice job!

BUT a word of caution:

I would expect that you'll receive a letter from StackOverflow's legal counsel regarding trademark violation for your domain name - rename now before you get enough traction to matter . . .

<comment><USER6> Nope there's no infringement issues, they're using stack overflow's software with some extra bells and whistles to allow inline latex equations

<comment><USER8> The software is fine, but I wonder about the name Math Overflow. "Overflow" doesn't seem particularly to have anything to do with the name math or with answering questions, so it seems it is only referencing Stack Overflow. Therefore, Stack Overflow might be worried about people confusing Math Overflow with Stack Overflow, and might want MO to change their name.

<comment><USER9> The founder of MO was on the SO podcast last week ( <http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/podcast-86/> ), and they didn't seem to have any problem with it. They're pretty easy-going. That said, SO is trying to get VC funding, and their investors may not be so charitable.

<comment><USER4> Given that MO is a customer via their 'stack-exchange' program (<http://stackexchange.com/>) I don't see that as becoming a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>