Never Hertz to Ask - <AUTHOR> https://alexdanco.com/2020/06/14/never-hertz-to-ask/ <comment><USER3> "But then weird things started to happen. Hertz's stock, which is literally worthless, starts to go up. And up. And up. It gets bid up a whole 500% over a 3-day period last week. What is going on?"

This phenomenon is not unique to the recent RobinHood millennials with extra cash and extra money who are bored. There is a tone of condescension against an entire generation of millennials painting them uniquely as jack-asses (the author even uses Jackass to make the point).

Here are some facts.

If a stock like HTZ plummets from $20 to 50 cents in a matter of days, the volatility is so great that when the stock spends a few days at the bottom, a few cents up can be seen as strange. Except it's not. Very few people have the intution to appreciate that percentage returns are a function of the price. If a stock gets hit by 90%, it requires 10 times its value to recover the loss. That is 1000 percent!

This has happened since the earliest days of stock trading. Here is an example with Enron:

[https://famous- trials.com/images/ftrials/Enron/documents/enr...](https://famous- trials.com/images/ftrials/Enron/documents/enronstockchart.pdf)

Notice the daily returns from the 3rd of December 2001. So, really, what has been going on _forever_?

<comment><USER4> Don't look at the price action; that on its own is not surprising. Shares in near-bankrupt companies trade like options (because they are options - on the potential of recovery), with extreme volatility one would normally see in individual options contracts. The same way as bonds in near-bankrupt companies trade like stocks, largely ignoring remaining maturity, because very likely bonds will soon become stocks (wiping out the previous equity).

Look at the facts. Nobody has done this before:

> _Jared Ellias, a law professor at the University of California Hastings > College of Law, said he has studied hundreds of bankruptcies and never seen > a company try to fund a case with an equity offering at the start of chapter > 11._

> _"Hertz looks at the market and sees there is a group of irrational traders > who are buying the stock, and the response to that is to seek to sell stock > to these people in hopes of raising some amounts of money to fund their > restructuring," Mr. Elias said._

> _"It is incredibly creative and they get props for that, but I wouldn't buy > those shares," said Nancy Rapoport, a professor at UNLV's William S. Boyd > School of Law, who said she has never seen a bankruptcy funded this way. "I > guess they're trying to catch whatever the opposite of a falling knife is."_

<comment><USER5> "I guess they're trying to catch whatever the opposite of a falling knife is."

profound

<comment><USER6> Ethan Hunt jumping on a plane taking off: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elpUGB9Ap1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elpUGB9Ap1Y)

<comment><USER5> Gromit placing rail tracks

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwJHNw9jU_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwJHNw9jU_U)

edit: and here's the full scene, greatest chase scene in cinematic history [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrmZIgVoQw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrmZIgVoQw4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uber / Lyft / Snap were never cash flow positive, and don't have any clear way of reaching that, while User is burning 2 billions a quarter and has only two more quarters to go bust.

There are tons of VC unicorns which are burning investors money on unsustainable business models, like food delivery apps that subsidize your orders. WeWork has no chance of avoiding bankrupcy.

The irrational exuberence has been here for quite some time already, and out of everything, a bankrupt company which at least used to have a working business model and existed for 100 years is not nearly the most insane investments going on here.

(The insanity is buying it before the bankruptcy restructuring, tho).

<comment><USER8> Agreed. The thing that seems especially bonkers to me is that the theory of Uber is that you could turn a low-margin business into a high-margin business by a) shifting most of your risk (opex, capex, labor costs) to low wage workers too desperate to negotiate a fair deal, and b) spending massively to get Google-ish monopoly pricing over a key activity.

Point A is looking more and more false. Uber took on a lot of costs; instead of running a very lean operation, they spent like a tech company. They're having a hard time weathering this downturn. Governments are catching up to them on their labor-isn't-labor regulatory arbitrage, and I expect that come 2021, they'll see national-scale questions about their worker exploitation.

Point B is looking even worse. Once they failed to kill Lyft, extracting monopoly rents went out the window. And now a bunch of well-funded organizations with strong brands are coming after their business with autonomous cars. It won't be easy competing with Google on software. It won't be easy competing with GM on cars. And plenty of companies have brands compatible with becoming a preferred transportation provider. E.g., imagine BMW's autonomous car service. Or even worse from Uber's perspective, Costco. That's something like a quarter of American households.

It's perfectly plausible to me that Uber will never hit breakeven in terms of total profit exceeding total investment. By 2040, they could be in the same bucket as Groupon: an early darling that still exists but people barely remember.

<comment><USER9> Everything being equal,isn't what Amazon did before anyone else? Burning astonishing amount of cash and create a massive monopoly. Prof Galloway, gave very interesting thoughts:

[https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf](https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf)

<comment><USER8> I don't think so. Per Crunchbase, Amazon only took $108 million in investment. Uber took $8 billion. Although I have plenty of issues with Amazon's behavior, I think they earned their market dominance the hard way.

<comment><USER10> Amazon has been raising money though bonds for a while now, though. They even recently raised $10 billion in bonds at a crazy low rate.

[https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/amazon- raise...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/amazon- raised-10-billion-through-record-low-borrowing-costs-2020-6-1029272938)

<comment><USER8> Fair point. Although I think Amazon is doing that based not on speculation about the possibility of gaining market dominance, but because they already have it. The fact that it's bonds and not venture funding is a sign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Side topic: the rental car industry is a dinosaur walking. Just like Netflix and video-on-demand put Blockbuster out of business, Uber and rideshare companies are slowly putting the kabosh on rental car business.

I can't remember the last time I really needed to rent a car. Maybe for the random site-seeing roadtrip. But vacationers aren't rental company's bread and butter: it's business travelers. And business travelers are seeing much more convenience from rideshare than from rentals. The hassle of renting a car, parking, tolls, gas, dealing with insurance and liability, and just the shenanigans of rental car companies is not worth the hassle.

It took a solid decade before the impact of video on demand was felt on Blockbuster, but it was inevitable.

Just how COVID is bringing the water out of shore on the low tide, all it is doing is exposing already weak companies. Those that fail can't simply blame COVID, altho it's certainly a contributor. For some, the writing was already on the wall.

In 10 years we'll be writing the post-mortem on the rental car industry.

<comment><USER12> Maybe someone needs to do to rental cars what Uber did to Taxis.

If I could order one on my phone, have it be ready or turn up, and avoid all of that complexity over insurances and tolls then I would probably sell my own car and use that.

I'm sure the rental companies have some digital stuff, but I generally associate rental cars with queuing at an Avis counter for an hour after a long flight, lots of paperwork and getting hit with fees etc. For exactly this reason I tend to stick with Uber on business trips over rental cars.

<comment><USER13> > I'm sure the rental companies have some digital stuff, but I generally > associate rental cars with queuing at an Avis counter for an hour after a > long flight, lots of paperwork and getting hit with fees etc. For exactly > this reason I tend to stick with Uber on business trips over rental cars.

I just rented cars two times in the past two weeks. I was able to shop online between a few different rental car agencies (there's only 3 big ones that own all the major brands, although I like to stick with Enterprise/Alamo/National). I made a reservation after a few minutes of shopping, I walked up to the counter, gave my ID and credit card, had the car in next 5 minutes and drove away in a total of 10 min max with the clean car that I wanted.

I've done this many times too. I don't see why I would trust a random stranger more than a business who should have established best practices and proper insurance.

I also prefer proper hotels to stay in than random Airbnb. I don't even have to talk to anyone at many Hilton branded hotels, and they have an online chat option in their app with the front desk.

<comment><USER14> My worry with both the car rental market as well as hotels is the constant upselling or offers/loyalty programs/etc.

The good part about Uber or Airbnb is that there isn't any of that. You find what you want, pay the price they ask for and that's it. I agree that there are other major problems with them but at least the user experience for buying the service is on point.

When it comes to hotels I either have to book direct and fill in my details every time (I don't have a preference for any brand, so having an account with one particular brand doesn't solve the problem either) or use sites like Booking/Expedia and suffer the constant upselling or dark patterns.

I don't need your "loyalty" or "offers" or anything. I need you to tell me what's available, take my money and get out of my way. I'd gladly pay money if such a service existed (that doesn't belong to any particular hotel chain so that _all_ the hotels are on there).

<comment><USER15> Uh? All airbnb does is try to push you to their 'experiences'. And God forbid you ever gave Uber your email address, they'll try to get you on Uber Eats for many rounds of the 'unsubscribe me from yet another list I never realised I never signed up for' dance.

<comment><USER14> Regarding Airbnb it's been years since I last used it so maybe they changed in which case it's too bad.

As far as Uber is concerned I've used it up to last year and I don't recall ever getting an unwanted marketing e-mail from them (disabled all marketing comms in the app early on when I signed up and they respected that just fine).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those not aware of WSB history, Martin Shkreli was an early member and moderator, and at one point actually tried to reign the YOLO in.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/4ox508/yolo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/4ox508/yolo_ban/)

<comment><USER17> > Martin Shkreli was an early member and moderator > u/martinshkreli

Surely this is not the actual Shkreli, but rather an impersonator?

<comment><USER18> It was the actual Shkreli, back in the days when he was still streaming. Also, he wasn't a very 'early' moderator of WSB, it had been around and popular for a while by the time he showed up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You might think the smart thing to do is to short the stock, but then the five feet man that tried to cross the four feet river on average yada yada margin call problem.

However, there is exactly one entity that can sell short HTZ without ever being margin called. And it is, amazingly, the same entity that can (and almost certainly will) delete the shares. Yes, the company itself, a debtor- in-possession that since the Ch11 filing has officially zero duty to the shareholders and is supposed to maximize the value to the creditors.

The Big Short for the March'20 trading mania.

While we're here, can we get TSLA to $4000 just like Cathie Wood has predicted? And maybe a second IPO attempt of WeWork? I want a few more cherries on the top and then the re-pricing of risk and the beginning of the recovery.

<comment><USER19> The one thing that wsb may have understood better than anyone else is that many stocks no longer are bound by their issuer's value.

They have become purely speculative entities just like bitcoin.

<comment><USER20> In the short term the stock market is a voting machine, being vulnerable to fashions and fads. In the long term it's a weighing machine that evaluates the actual earnings of the company. That was true in 1934 when Graham&Dodd penned it down in "Security Analysis" and it's still true today. Just look at what happened when WeWork tried to go public. It's just that "short" term in the stock market can be a decade or longer.

<comment><USER21> Yeah ultimately you always have the option of treating a stock as what it actually is (a stream of dividends), and the more random prices get, the more people will do that (because more dividend streams will be priced below NPV)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A meme floating around wsb is that the 1k handout is driving this behaviour, and at first I thought that was kind of ridiculous but actually, it makes some sense:

On one side you have people who are bored and have nothing to lose, the handout was free money, nothing to spend the money on and no entertainment.

On the other side you have people who are desperate for a ticket out of their current situation.

Catalysing this is the low barrier of activation provided by Robinhood and the likes...

<comment><USER23> It would take a lot more than some redditors with 1k each to move thwbmarket like this

<comment><USER24> not saying you are 100% wrong but there was a MASSIVE influx of robinhood buyers into Hertz as the stock crashed

[https://robintrack.net/symbol/HTZ?symbol=HTZ](https://robintrack.net/symbol/HTZ?symbol=HTZ)

<comment><USER25> 160k new stockholders is still a drop in the bucket. The daily average for HTZ is 60M stocks traded.

The real action happened on the days leading to that June 6 peak, when it hit $5, and it has already retreated. This is a straight pump-n-dump operation and I'm surprised there has been no crackdown on these in reddit...

<comment><USER24> a good friend of mine was a trader for Goldman.

He is almost 100% positive the funds and larger firms are pumping this market to get newer retail investors to buy in and right now we are at the top or close to the top of one of the largest bear markets we have seen in a long time.

He expects maybe 2-3 weeks of small but choppy rise in the market to hit around Feb highs. Then you will see big time collapse that will make what we saw in Feb seem tiny. Then we will enter a bear market for a good 12-16 months.

<comment><USER26> I see a lot of traders blaming the "retail investor" for the general rise in stock prices, but retail investors are not even 3% of the market. The HFT and over-leveraged hedge funds are doing something for sure. And they'll blame Robinhood.

<comment><USER23> So basically we have the equivalent of "millenials have ruined the housing market" in terns of reporting quality here. Find something negative that happened, and blame it on a weired group of people without checking if the theory is even plausible.

Right up there with "4chan elected trump" and "immigrants have ruined the economy"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> >... But you know what kind of public companies have zero earnings for years at a time, and where future earnings are so far away that it's already understood by everyone to be a day-to-day game of chicken, just like this? Biotech companies. And you know what kind of companies are going to be really interesting in the aftermath of Covid? Biotech companies.

Sounds sorta like Amazon. It's one giant game of expanding P/E multiple. The bulls say tell me what I'm missing is that Amazon could turn on earnings like flipping a switch. They just don't want to. It's more efficient if AMZN holds on to the money. My response is that it's always been that way with this company. Same story in 1999.

Also sounds sorta like Microsoft. Sounds definitely like Tesla. Sounds, in fact, like way too many companies.

There's a bubble here of biblical proportions. The Fed has suspended the inevitable in the name of economic survival. But the signs were everywhere pre-COVID. Now, no severe decline in stocks will be tolerated. It's Powell Puts as far as the eye can see. The returns will be jaw-dropping. The valuations will be lunar.

Still, it would be a terrible thing to be riding in this particular shopping cart when it smacks into the wall.

<comment><USER28> I can see how you view Amazon that way but Microsoft is a money printing machine with real profit, and its PE is not unreasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reading this made me laugh so hard the tears started to flow. Post Modernism / Post Reality life imitating art. Funniest thing I have read this week.

I just hope that "real" people don't get hurt from this (obviously plenty of people have lost or are about to lose their jobs at Hertz which truly sucks), cashed up get rich quick day trading fools on reddit losing money is one thing, some scammed unsuspecting retiree losing their shirt is another.

All in all it is Jackass humour meets reddit meets online trading. The world is a strange place.

<comment><USER30> > some scammed unsuspecting retiree losing their shirt is another.

how could a retiree (or anyone for that matter) be scammed into buying Hertz?!

<comment><USER31> Do you know whether your retirement or pension fund hold shares of Hertz? Would you have cared 6months ago?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Have you guys come across Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente on Twitter. This guy embodies everything that is wrong with the retail/millennial/wsb crowd.

But remember that the markets are a beautiful thing. There are millions of inputs into the pricing function. If the price is wrong, then arbitrageurs will come in and bring it in line with where it "should be". There is nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER33> Dave portnoy is not a millennial, FYI. He's like 45.

But he owns barstool sports and literally exists to drive pageviews. There are no sports so he turned to sticks, just like it's described in the article. Unlike wsb he's worth tens of millions so losing $1MM is less significant than it would be for most.

But yeah, awful for the stock market undoubtedly.

<comment><USER34> Is he really any worse than Cramer taking advantage of retired geriatrics with declining faculties on daytime cnbc?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Day trading does not appeal to me at all because it feels exactly like gambling, but I can see the appeal and I hear more of my friends talking about it. I can see the alure, but I do believe in the end the "Boglehead" strategy is the best long term low stress investment strategy (low expense mutual funds in tax advantaged accounts).

This type of situation with Hertz definitely feels like a unique combination of events (corona, gig economy, etc) but I won't be surprised if we have more and more weird stock situations occur as weird internet culture leaks into the real world...

</comment><comment><USER36> > Hertz was in trouble anyway; it's carrying around a ton of debt to pay for a > fleet of cars that no one wants to drive, because we have Uber now.

Do people go on vacation and just Uber everywhere? The times I take an Uber are largely times I'd have taken a taxi, which is to say times I should not be driving.

I still however rent a car on vacation. I like the freedom to just be like "I wonder where that road ends up" and end up exploring 50 miles out of town.

<comment><USER37> >Do people go on vacation and just Uber everywhere? The times I take an Uber are largely times I'd have taken a taxi, which is to say times I should not be driving.

More or less yea (assuming wherever we're traveling has uber)

<comment><USER36> It seems like that would very quickly become much more expensive than just renting a car.

<comment><USER38> Depends. If you're going somewhere for just a weekend and you don't go around outside cities all the time, it's probably cheaper to just use Uber for the 3-6 times you need it, rather than having to rent a car. If it's a very different country it's probably easier to go with taxis/uber rather than driving in an unfamiliar environment with regulations and driving culture you don't know 100% as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The author has missed a few important points to paint a picture that ultimately misses reality.

First, Hertz isn't worthless because it has restructured. Even if hertz is ultimately wound up because its debts exceed its assets (something very very unlikely historically) its shares today are worth something because there is still the chance thelat may not happen (including the chance the company will be saved by a bailout)

Second, the traders he refers to are speculators. Speculators fulfill a role that is a well understood and widely agreed to be important for both liquidity and price discovery.

Third, if other people are bidding price up (or down), who cares? You're not a share holder in a "worthless" company, so let them run their casino in that little corner of the market and you can invest in the other 99.99%.

Ge should also Google what a "dead cat bounce" is to better understand crashed stocks' behavior...

<comment><USER40> > its shares today are worth something because there is still the chance > thelat may not happen

Doesn't equity go to zero (and reset), if the new capital is not enough to cover the debts?

<comment><USER39> No, weirdly enough that's actually very unusual. They'll get no dividends for a while and they will be diluted, but they almost always end up with some value. I can't say I understand it totally, I'm just speaking historically...

Plus that's assuming it even gets that's far. Hertz may get a fat cheque from the federal government or the companies it's been buying cars from or some other source. Maybe a competitor will offer something for some locations and stock?

This is the thing about stocks that take a tumble. If it's trading at 5% what it was last month, and it's actually worth 6%, you can buy at 5 and sell at 6 and make a 20% profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> One of the key why stocks of bankrupt companies like Hertz go up 500% in matter of days is so called "river of money". Globally, there is massive amount of cash sloshing around through people's retirement accounts which ends up at places like Robinhood, Blackrock etc. When you sign up for 401K, you are putting money in this river where these gamblers take a dip. The bottom line is that no one is playing with their own money and so gambling, short term profit jacking etc are full on. The principles of value investing, looking at future long term returns is all down the drain. Even the many big tech boards are almost exclusively run by investor suits looking to squeeze out money in short term and walk away. If the situation continues, I think stock market isn't going to be viable channel for public investment in long run.

<comment><USER42> > no one is playing with their own money

Who's money is it then?

<comment><USER43> The people investing in the funds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> My understanding is that retail trading volume is several orders of magnitude too low to be responsible for swings in most stocks (such as airline stocks), and certainly not the market as a whole. Random low volume penny or bankrupt stocks are a whole different story and retail speculation certainly drives the price.

<comment><USER45> In small stocks, when using leverage, they can influence things. I can't find it now (on mobile) but I saw an analysis of HTZ that showed almost all of its rally was due to retail.

<comment><USER46> If you could find this analysis later I'd appreciate is as well, because I have OP's intuition that retail couldn't cause this

<comment><USER47> Call buying forces the options market maker to delta hedge by purchasing the underlying.

Example: As of market close on Friday, a June 19, 2020 expiration HTZ $3 strike call option cost .55 ($55) and has a delta of .56; if I were to buy a 10 lot for $550, the options market maker would be short 560 deltas and would purchase 560 shares of HTZ to hedge their short call position. This can push the share price up quite a bit if there's non-stop call buying.

The converse is also true for put options, buying puts from an options market maker forces them to sell the underlying to delta hedge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> BTW I've been trying to buy a car from Hertz.com, and it's been pretty much impossible. Whenever I call they tell me weird things like "we lost the key for this car" or "we'll call you back". They never call back. They don't answer to my emails either. This is weird.

<comment><USER49> Why would they try to sell you their inventory if they think there's a chance the company will be saved as discussed in the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Can't see why they shouldn't be allowed to raise funds by selling stock. People are free to buy or not to buy, at their discretion. Govt/courts shouldn't be picking winners and they shouldn't be picking losers either.

<comment><USER51> There are plenty of stocks you can by over-the-counter "freely".

Stock exchanges are regulated marketplaces. Regulated marketplaces have existed since the dawn of the civilization because they are valuable for buyers and sellers. City marketplace in a had different rules than trading outside it.

Companies go there and voluntarily submit to strict rules and regulations to get access to more investors. Investors wan to invest in regulated markets because regulators work for them.

<comment><USER30> > Investors wan to invest in regulated markets because regulators work for > them.

no, that's not true. Regulators ensure transparency and correctness of information. It works to everybody's advantage, not just investors.

Investors are free to choose bad investments, provided that the investments are made with full and transparent information. Regulators aren't supposed to be there to "protect" investors from making bad choices (what is a bad choice? Who gets to decide that?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can I suggest that it should be legal to create a Pnozi scheme, as long as you are up front and absolutely clear that that is what you are doing.

It seems to me that situations like the current one with Hertz are really just Ponzi schemes played out with stocks.

If we could do this legally, I bet you there would be a lot of these, and the ones playing would know what they are in for. (And there would be less incentive to do it illegally).

If Dave Portnoy and Warren Buffet both started a pyramid, who could grow the larger one before bust? Would you buy?

<comment><USER53> Ultimately the end of any pyramid scheme is a large number of people losing money , often money they can't afford to lose.

It doesn't seem likely to be in the interests of most governments to actively encourage straight Ponzi schemes as when the people at the bottom of the pyramid lose their money, they may end up requiring state assistance, transferring the risk to taxpayers.

<comment><USER54> sounds a lot like regular old gambling. most will lose, but a few will win through luck or skill. if it's clear up front that the expected value is negative, I don't really see a reason to ban it. most forms of entertainment involve losing money.

<comment><USER53> The people who "win" at Pyramid schemes aren't (IMO OFC) winning through luck, they're winning by being the people that set them up.

And in the US and many other countries gambling is regulated, so that the games have certain parameters and the risks are known, can't see that being applied to pyramid schemes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is not really surprising to me. When you have a prolonged zero interest rate policy, and "there is no alternative" then the only thing left to do if you want to make money on your money is gamble. To me the Robin Hood traders are not creating this phenomenon, rather they are just making it plainly visible as it goes mainstream.

<comment><USER56> Low interest rates are destroying everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'd argue the third 'new' bubble type is actually the platonic ideal underlying the first two types.

</comment><comment><USER58> I've seen this happen to a number of bankrupt companies, this just happens to be a big one. The expectation is that the stock go to zero, but somehow it bounces upwards. Happened with GM back in 2008-2009, happens to a lot of other stocks that are in bankruptcy. The stock becomes unmoored from the actual company and trades like a weird collectible.

</comment><comment><USER59> And here we are, today making fun of all those supposed jackasses exchanging cash for - such obviously worthless! - things such as Hertz stock, and tomorrow going back to our jobs that pay us in - so obviously valuable! - <USER2> money, some of which we may "invest in" such obviously valuable things as Bitcoin... Go figure!

<comment><USER60> Whats even your point

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Nice story, although something about the clean distinction of the third type of bubble seems imperfect to me.

The difference being that in the other two types of bubble there are still many people (not a majority) who are trading on the predicted behaviour of other traders (rather than a prediction about the future being the same or better).

</comment><comment><USER62> The retail investors are fully aware of what the author describes and are pushing their conclusion forward: Nothing matters. Being trapped in binaries we strangle. This is a cultural disavowel landing on an economic register. Dragging white supremacy into the public realm is another such motion.

</comment><comment><USER63> Cost of borrow for hertz shares reached over 140 percent last week. Some of the purchasing could well have been driven by hedge funds which were short but had to buy stock to exit their positions after available shares to borrow dried up and their brokers forced them out of the position.

</comment><comment><USER64> "The YOLO Stock Market"

The vast majority of equity investors -- including quite a few professional portfolio managers -- have only a faintly vague understanding of how bankruptcy works. Many couldn't tell you the difference between a Chapter 7 and a Chapter 11 filing in the US Bankruptcy Code without first looking it up on Google.

But details such as "who gets what in a bankruptcy" are _irrelevant_ to people who are trying to "beat the gun," as J. M. Keynes described it nine decades ago:

 _> It happens, however, that the energies and skill of the professional investor and speculator are mainly occupied otherwise. For most of these persons are, in fact, largely concerned, not with making superior long-term forecasts of the probable yield of an investment over its whole life, but with foreseeing changes in the conventional basis of valuation a short time ahead of the general public. They are concerned, not with what an investment is really worth to a man who buys it 'for keeps', but with what the market will value it at, under the influence of mass psychology, three months or a year hence. Moreover, this behaviour is not the outcome of a wrong-headed propensity. It is an inevitable result of an investment market organised along the lines described. For it is not sensible to pay 25 for an investment of which you believe the prospective yield to justify a value of 30, if you also believe that the market will value it at 20 three months hence.

> Thus the professional investor is forced to concern himself with the > anticipation of impending changes, in the news or in the atmosphere, of the > kind by which experience shows that the mass psychology of the market is > most influenced. This is the inevitable result of investment markets > organised with a view to so-called 'liquidity'. Of the maxims of orthodox > finance none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the > doctrine that it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions > to concentrate their resources upon the holding of 'liquid' securities. It > forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the > community as a whole. The social object of skilled investment should be to > defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelop our future. The > actual, private object of the most skilled investment to-day is 'to beat the > gun', as the Americans so well express it, to outwit the crowd, and to pass > the bad, or depreciating, half-crown to the other fellow.

> This battle of wits to anticipate the basis of conventional valuation a few > months hence, rather than the prospective yield of an investment over a long > term of years, does not even require gulls amongst the public to feed the > maws of the professional;—it can be played by professionals amongst > themselves. Nor is it necessary that anyone should keep his simple faith in > the conventional basis of valuation having any genuine long-term validity. > For it is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs—a > pastime in which he is victor who says Snap neither too soon nor too late, > who passed the Old Maid to his neighbour before the game is over, who > secures a chair for himself when the music stops. These games can be played > with zest and enjoyment, though all the players know that it is the Old Maid > which is circulating, or that when the music stops some of the players will > find themselves unseated.

> Or, to change the metaphor slightly, professional investment may be likened > to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out > the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded > to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average > preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to > pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he > thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom > are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of > choosing those which, to the best of one's judgment, are really the > prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the > prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our > intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average > opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth > and higher degrees._

Source: [https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125515/1366_KeynesTheoryofEmpl...](https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125515/1366_KeynesTheoryofEmployment.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER65> The fundamentals of Hertz are terrible, but the market as a whole doesn't trade on fundamentals anymore, so this is unexpected as a matter of _degree_.

Still, I suspect that despite the rhetoric surrounding this dead cat bounce, the nonzero Hertz stock price is more a result of _market_ _structure_. I saw similar delayed declines years ago (when I followed the market more closely) in several contexts that I attributed to the interplay between the equity and options markets. In simplest terms, a decline that _should_ happen on Friday is delayed until Monday after an options expiration. On smaller floats this delay in price action could last for months. I never fully understood the mechanism behind it-- whether it was large options-writers manipulating the market or just the natural outcome of options-writing activity.

TL;DR: Someone in this system besides Hertz probably is acting normally and rationally, and the Hertz price action merely is delayed by the market structure, specifically, options activity.

<comment><USER47> > In simplest terms, a decline that should happen on Friday is delayed until > Monday after an options expiration. On smaller floats this delay in price > action could last for months. I never fully understood the mechanism behind > it-- whether it was large options-writers manipulating the market or just > the natural outcome of options-writing activity.

AFAIK this is because of gamma increasing as an option nears expiration, option dealers need to buy and sell more of the underlying as the changes in delta get larger due to the increased gamma. If there is a near-the-money option with large open interest, the underlying may pin to this strike price due to dealer hedging around this strike price.

Once the option series expires, underlying hedges can be unwound on the following Monday.

'Option pinning' as a search term will provide more info

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't get why everyone is up in arms about a judge allowing Hertz to issue new stock.

If these people who are buying (nay, YOLOing) the stock are not coerced or tricked, then there's no problem.

<comment><USER66> I guess the SEC should be interested in a listed company deliberately selling worthless stock?

<comment><USER67> I wonder how much stupidity they should prevent...

"My business venture is to look for fallen coins on the ground. Would you like to invest in it?".

Even that is too far from this scenario, how about "My business venture is, I ate at expensive restaurants on credit card and now I need money to pay those bills. Would you like to invest in it?"

<comment><USER68> Doesn't the public market and IPO process exist explicitly to weed out obviously bad faith "businesses" like the ones you describe, or at least force them to be transparent enough about what they're doing that no one gets hoodwinked?

There are marketplaces where you can buy and sell shares in stuff like the second scenario you describe — that's essentially a debt consolidation loan, and you can fund one in whole or part at lendingclub.com — but the SEC only allows "qualified investors" to participate. You have to demonstrate that you can easily survive losing your full investment, and there's no similar requirement for buying publicly traded stocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Do Robinhood and WSB even _show up at all_ in the charts? Institutional investors own 99% of stocks, you cannot really move a high volume stock with these individual traders.

<comment><USER69> Retail owns 30% according to top google results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Question: Have there been bankruptcies where shareholders aren't wiped out, other than government meddling? How much do shareholders who aren't wiped out typically get?

<comment><USER71> Yes, sort of. If the company is wound down, the shareholders are unlikely to get anything. However, companies are usually worth more as a going concern, so administrators will try to restructure the debt to allow the company to come out of bankruptcy. In that case, shareholders still own their shares though they are likely to be highly diluted; debt holders may only be willing to restructure in exchange for equity, for example.

<comment><USER72> Agree with the above. There are also cases in which secured or unsecured creditors will vote for a Chapter 11 reorganization plan to give something to equity holders--even in violation of typical absolute priority--if it helps get the plan approved quickly. Equity holders might also keep their shares if there's "new value" added to the reorganized company (the controlling case is Bank of America v. 203 North LaSalle Street Partnership). There are a handful of other instances, but none are especially common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Ok, so it's fun and games, but how much money exactly is being thrown at that game?

<comment><USER74> From the Hertz bankruptcy motion (via Money Stuff/Matt Levine): "246,775,008 shares of common stock" or another way "Hertz could potentially offer up to and including an aggregate of $1.0 billion of common stock"

... so, a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> WSB being compared to Jackass really sums up that whole group.

</comment><comment><USER76> I don't agree with the underlying assumption, which is that the stock market was a sober, rational affair until these yahoos showed up. It has always been a casino. Nobody knows, nobody ever has known, why stocks move how they do, or when they will move.

<comment><USER77> According to NNT (Black Swan etc.), investing in stocks is in some ways even less predictable than a casino. Your possible maximum win in a casino is precisely limited (if the house did its math), while with a market a black swan can get you up in an unbounded way.

However, the market as a whole tends to be stable, so that one can invest in say index funds for modest but reliable long-term growth. I might be off, but as far as I can tell the question now is whether even that stability is becoming past tense now.</comment></comment>


I bought these domains. What can I do with them? - <AUTHOR>

I went out and bought these two domains.
IsDue.by  -and-  AreDue.by
I need some ideas on what to do. I know I can do a word play on them for a bill reminder service such as:
a. MyBills.AreDue.by
b. Rent.IsDue.by
...and so on. I'm just looking to capitilize on taking advantage of these domains and subdomain additions, similar to Del.icio.us and others like it. I'd be interested in working with other designers/programmers to make things happen.
Any suggestions/ideas/comments would be appreciated. Thanks, HN. <comment><USER2> I think you have the app creation process in reverse...rather than starting with the domain and brainstorming ideas, you should look for ideas that solve a problem and come up with the domain later. There seem to be lots of reminder services and apps out there, and every bank and credit union already has bill pay. People usually know things are due...the real problem is finding the money to pay bills or the time to complete whatever is due. Maybe you could solve that problem with your app.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its true that one needs to build a product first then worry about the marketing. I just happen to grab these two domains so I kinda skipped the product part first.

Thanks for your suggestions/comments.

<comment><USER3> Would I be right in thinking that you were expecting a more general approach to finding an idea for them than you got? I thought they were quite harsh for something that could, for all they know, be as much a learning exercise as a business venture. I'd've grabbed 'em too, if I'd come across them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aside from bills, maybe also consider some kind of personal renting app? For example, if my neighbor wants to borrow my lawnmower, your app could help set up the due date, automate the reminders, and maybe even take care of compensation?

Along the same train of thought, if someone owes you money, maybe have this handle the amount, terms, and reminders for the borrower (small amounts)?

Personally, I'm not the type of person to hound someone for either of the aforementioned items. I think that'd be a neat service.

</comment><comment><USER5> Domain names are about 3% of the "product". You could just as easily make IsDue.by the premier place to buy and sell used parts for vintage Snapper lawnmowers, provided that there was a market for such a service.

Similarly if you invented groupon you could have probably also used the domain fuckmeintheassandrapemydog.com and you'd STILL have midwest housewives DDoSing your servers everyday.

A domain without an idea is just a random collection of letters.</comment>


RESTful Web Services: Preventing Race Conditions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.m.artins.net/restful-web-services-preventing-race-conditions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PlanetTw+%28Planet+TW%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Very nice. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Ask HN: Registrar, hosting and email for a German non-profit? - <AUTHOR> I think everything needs to be based in the EU. I'm  looking for providers who:
* Will be robust in the face of legal threats / complaints.
* Comply with German privacy / data protection law.
I'm also interested in any resources useful to a new non-profit CTO.
Many thanks. <comment><USER2> Hosting: [https://www.hetzner.de/](https://www.hetzner.de/) (Germany) Hosting/Registrar/Mail: [https://www.gandi.net/](https://www.gandi.net/) (France) Mail: [https://tutanota.com/](https://tutanota.com/) (Germany) or [https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/) (Swiss)

I'd go for a combination of these. Get your domain name with a trusted registrar and divide your servers/hosting. Especially the mail. The mail providers I posted offer encrypted mail.</comment>


An Interview with John Gray: 'Human Progress Is a Lie' - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/en_se/read/john-gray-interview-atheism <comment><USER2> Great interview. I always thought of Western politics as being hypocritical, but it makes more sense to think of it as a state of delusion. The easiest way to make tough decisions like "go to war" or "bomb that place" is to believe it's the right thing to do.</comment>


Huawei unveils the World's Slimmest Android Smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.greyreview.com/2012/01/10/huawei-unveils-the-worlds-slimmest-android-smartphone/ <comment><USER2> I still wish phone manufacturers would take this "world's slimmest technology", and then build a phone that's a regular thickness only with 3x the battery life.

<comment><USER3> I agree. At least an optimal extended battery would be nice.

Nevertheless, I think that the problem with current smartphone batteries is that the leap from a day of use to a little more than one day loses the convenience of charging it at home at night.

For example, I'm used to charge my iPhone at night in my bedside, and the iPhone lasts about a working-day of charge.

A battery that lasted 1.5 days would not be as useful, because the battery would probably drain somewhere where having access to the battery charger is not as convenient as the one plugged at your bedside.

<comment><USER4> >A battery that lasted 1.5 day would not be as useful, because the battery would probably drain somewhere where having access to the battery charger is not as convenient as the one plugged at your bedside.

A battery that lasted "1.5 days" might actually last a full day of heavy use, such as during travel. That's my biggest complaint about battery life with smartphones. They will generally last a full day on a charge, as long as you aren't using it often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I first saw this and was pretty impressed.

Then I saw this and was less so.

[http://www.youmobile.org/blogs/entry/Huawei-Reveals-the- Worl...](http://www.youmobile.org/blogs/entry/Huawei-Reveals-the-World- Thinnest-Smartphone-Hands-on-photos-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Back when I had a Palm Pilot, the screen would shatter if I left it in my pocket and sat down. I wonder how well these phones would hold up.</comment>


Making Friends and Finding a Place to Pitch Your Tent - <AUTHOR> https://advrider.com/tent-thread-with-a-little-generosity-you-can-travel-the-world/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the most caring communities online. Recently an interview was published on the site's homepage. The subject of the interview, an endurance motorcyclist, had recently posted on her Facebook page saying her sister needed a new kidney. After the interview she was flooded with offers from the ADVrider community offering to be donors. One of them eventually donated their kidney.</comment>


Twitter Data Science Interview Questions – Acing the AI Interview - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/acing-ai/twitter-data-science-interview-questions-acing-the-ai-interview-f8204a97159f <comment><USER2> These aren't AI questions, and I'd argue that many of them aren't even Data Science questions and more Data Engineering instead.

The large number of posts you've been making that repost content from Glassdoor (against their ToS) aren't helpful unless you offer a strong value- add (e.g. _answers_ to these questions).

<comment><USER3> I agree, the only question that seems possibly AI-related is the recommendation algorithm question. The rest are just like, do you know how to deal with a stream of numbers and maybe implement an algorithm or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of these seem more like data engineering questions... while it's useful for a data scientist to be able to munge data, I'd hope that Twitter has dedicated teams to do these kinds of tasks for them, and that their interview for data scientists is a bit more focused on the modeling side.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't this defeat the whole point of an interview, to find out what the person knows/can do/can understand instead of reading some website that tells them what to say?

<comment><USER2> I've never been interviewed with the questions presented on Glassdoor.

<comment><USER6> While not glassdoor in particular, I have been given interview Qs that I've seen on Interview Q sites before.</comment></comment></comment>


IPv6 Performance – Revisited [video] - <AUTHOR> https://ripe73.ripe.net/archives/video/1539/ <comment><USER3> The host side of V6 can be noticeably slower as well. Mostly due to lack of use. Here's one example:

I recently fixed a performance bug in our (FreeBSD based) TCP stack where having just 10% of connections be V6 on a busy CDN server would result in performance issues due to massive lock contention on network related hashtables. The issue was that when an ICMP (like must fragment, for path mtu discovery) was received targeted at a connection, the V4 code would look up the appropriate connection (with a read lock), and do the work for that connection. However, the V6 code would take a _write lock_ on the global hash table (shared with v4) and iterate over the entire table while holding the write lock. So the entire system would come to a screeching halt, with readers spinning on that write lock while V6 bumbled along. This is something most people would not notice, but on a busy CDN server with ~100K connections serving 80-90Gb/s, it was pretty deadly.

The cause of this bug was primarily because people have been optimizing the V4 code for years, but the V6 code "scary", unused, and often forgotten about. So people mostly forget about it when making optimizations.

Looking at some data from last night, one of the biggest sources of lock contention on one of these 100G boxes is still in the v6 code, even at a site that's serving only 15% of traffic as V6. Sigh.

<comment><USER4> Can you please report your findings if you haven't already?

[https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd- net](https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net)

<comment><USER3> [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=30362...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=303626)

<comment><USER5> This is the best kind of bug report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems like a good place to ask: has anyone got experience with going ipv6 only?

I am (or effectively have) inheriting (-ed) an aging small campus network. No external services, and no core internal services (beyond DHCP). We'll have to get all new core switches (still on 100mbit...). If my isp gives me a /64 ipv6 net, and I firewall off windows filesharing (and take other measures appropriate for placing user devices on the routable Internet) - can I expect most things to just work?

I'm fine with demanding windows 10, recent Linux, iOS or Android for wired/WiFi access - and plan on moving to/requiring 802.1x for access (which means setting up some form of auth/authz back-end, possibly Azure Ad - <USER2> likely a Linux directory server). Can i live the dream and just go for ipv6? Am I crazy because I'm considering it?

<comment><USER7> most websites won't work with v6 only, so you will need to be dual stack. For your internal services, going v6 only should be mostly fine I think. If you are running a campus network, your ISP should give you a /48 though, definitely not a /64 only since you will not be able to subnet that.

<comment><USER6> By dual stack you mean something beyond nat64?

<comment><USER8> If you've got nat64 and dns64 setup, you should be ok for most things, but in many environments it's easier to dual stack - do both 4 and 6 on end hosts, rather than setting up nat64.

<comment><USER6> Right. I suppose the time still isn't right, and I'll have to stick with private ipv4 subnets and NAT :/

(granted, nat64 is also nat - but on paper, it would be so nice to just stick to ipv6...)

<comment><USER9> You also need DNS64 which basically adds DNS NAT on top of the IP NAT making it an even worse hack (also breaks DNSSEC if you care about that). NAT64 may be a valid option for large, complex networks but on a smaller scale simply add v6 on top of the NAT setup you already have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like there's some broken 6to4 relays out there.

<comment><USER11> 6to4 has always been broken, but that doesn't really matter because client preference for 6to4 has been <= 0.01% since 2013:

[https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html](https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is sort of dissapointing the industry is stubbornly pushing ahead, even after decades, without admitting critical flaw of IPv6 being incompatible with IPv4, and just writing new version.

And I'm not talking about the difference such as absence of default gateway concept, replaced by router advertisement. I'm talking about having to build a new parallel Internet, beside the old one, and having to support both networks indefinitely. IPv4 sunset is an illusion. We're stuck with it to the end, and no incompatible protocol will replace it.

<comment><USER13> > _critical flaw of IPv6 being incompatible with IPv4_

What other choice do we/did we have? I've responded in the past to a different commenter, who lamented IPv6 not being backwards compatible. You can read my response[1] to that comment; essentially, I don't see a way to make IPv6 happen, aside from the introduction of a new, separate network, mostly due to the pigeonhole principle: IPv4 only has 2 ^ 32 addresses, so how do you fit the 2 ^ 128 IPv6 addresses into that scheme?

You can introduce a legitimately new protocol, like v6 did. You could perhaps add a special flag, or special block of addresses, or a special option — but whatever mutation you perform on IPv4 packets to "upgrade" them, the intermediate routers would still have to understand that flag in order to properly route packets — no? And thus, since they must understand that flag, you're still upgrading the entire infrastructure, and building out a completely separate network, even if it is just IPv4.1.

I do think the IPv4 sunset is far, far out in the future. There will be stragglers for a long time to come, and I'm not sure it's really worth considering when IPv6 isn't deployed to a majority of people yet. But I do think it's _possible_ ; at some point, I hope someone realizes that the maintenance of that code is benefiting so few people as to sunset it, perhaps at an ISP-ish level first. No doubt this will break _somebody 's_ workflow, though.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12168656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12168656)

<comment><USER3> I actually think that a minimally extended v4, with no changes other than a different version number and 64-bit addresses, would have gone a long way towards increasing adoption. Having IPv6 as an entirely new protocol has lead to all kinds of misery. And I'm not even talking about application layer stuff, I'm talking about OSes and hardware.

Hardware vendors hate it, because it is another protocol they have to deal with, which doubles ASIC testing matrixes. And don't even get me started on how evil extension headers are from a hardware point of view. The only good thing about the new V6 proto from a hardware perspective is the elimination of the header checksum (which was trivial anyway). This lead to hardware vendors delaying support for V6.

V6 is miserable in OSes because everything has to be done twice because you have two stacks (see my other post here regarding the PMTU locking issue in FreeBSD), and changes are applied unequally. Even if you want to say that FreeBSD sucks, pretty much every innovation has some to V6 later than V4 on every OS I can think of. From simple things like TSO and checksum offload to RSS. There are examples of this on Linux, OSX and Windows.

I've always said that if I had a time machine, rather than shooting Hilter or John Wilkes Booth, I'd concentrate on trying to make the ethernet header 16 bytes and trying to argue for an IPv5 that was just an extended v4 without all this added complexity.

<comment><USER9> > And don't even get me started on how evil extension headers are from a > hardware point of view. > trying to argue for an IPv5 that was just an > extended v4 without all this added complexity. > V6 is miserable in OSes > because everything has to be done twice because you have two stacks (see my > other post here regarding the PMTU locking issue in FreeBSD),

On the other hand that flexibility may save us from going through that "we have to upgrade the whole Internet at once" pain again. In the end widespread v6 adoption is driven mostly by v4 address space exhaustion. At the time this got really severe some years ago the implementations in both hard and software were already pretty reasonable and widespread. Would we really be at a higher adoption rate right now with no additional reason to upgrade? (also IPv5 was already used in RFC 1819 for sth. different, that's why they jumped to 6 ;))

> The only good thing about the new V6 proto from a hardware perspective is > the elimination of the header checksum (which was trivial anyway).

What about fragmentation which is entirely left to the hosts in v6?

> Even if you want to say that FreeBSD sucks, pretty much every innovation has > some to V6 later than V4 on every OS I can think of. From simple things like > TSO and checksum offload to RSS. There are examples of this on Linux, OSX > and Windows.

I don't think such optimizations coming a bit later had a significant negative impact in v6 adoption (and if v6 adoption would have been higher it would have been implemented more equally). Also bugs get found and sorted out a lot faster if someone is actually using the code.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Great Flu - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegreatflu.com/

<comment><USER2> Was that really a game about the spread of influenza?

By GlaxoSmithKline?

I'm not sure if "sheesh!" or "yikes!" is more appropriate...</comment>


Google snaps up 52 Sunnyvale properties worth more than $820M in one fell swoop - <AUTHOR> https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/07/27/google-sunnyvale-property-buying-spree-campus.html <comment><USER2> Site requires registration and/or subscription to read anything.</comment>


Lazy, Hazy, Crazy: The 10 Laws of Behavioral Cloudonomics - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/06/06/lazy-hazy-crazy-the-10-laws-of-behavioral-cloudonomics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OmMalik+(GigaOM)

<comment><USER2> Then contrast with this article: [http://arstechnica.com/business/inside-the- cloud/2010/06/clo...](http://arstechnica.com/business/inside-the- cloud/2010/06/cloud-tradeoffs-freedom-of-choice-vs-freedom-from-choice.ars)</comment>


Signs You Will Suck at Programming – Noteworthy – The Journal Blog - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/10-signs-you-will-suck-at-programming-5497a6a52c5c <comment><USER2> I can never find this article, but I remember there was one about a class at some American University, might have been MIT, where for a good number of years they had given all intro to programming students a quiz on the first day of class and the results of this quiz predicted very well the failure rate of students.

As it was described in the article it was not so much logic or mathematical reasoning or abstraction that predicted whether people would pass but how they handled the arbitrariness of systems.

If anyone knows the article or class I'm talking about can you respond with a link because it has been driving me nuts for I think at least 10 years now.</comment>


Show HN: Dead simple Bitcoin payroll - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone! We're the folks from Codelitt Incubator. We pay several of our employees either entirely or partially in BTC. This is a huge pain every month when we run payroll. Normally it consists of a wire to Bitstamp  (which includes a steep fee), buying the BTC on Bitstamp, sending to our company wallet, collecting receiving addresses, and then paying our employees. Because of this we're building a dead simple BTC Payroll.
Our main goal is to make it easy for you to request that your employer pays you in BTC (partially or completely).
We don't hold any money nor Bitcoins. It all happens in real time. Security, simplicity, and user control are our main priorities.
Employers - Sign up, verify bank account, add employees/contractors name and email, and choose date to run payroll (if you opt in for automatic payroll. Also an option to run manually).
Employees/contractors - Receive email after your employer adds you, setup account with bank account/BTC receiving address, and how much of your paycheck you want in USD or BTC.
Incoin.io (that's us) - We ACH debit company bank account, purchase necessary BTC, then credit employees/contractors with USD or BTC depending on how they choose. We'll maintain records so that when tax season rolls around, you're all covered.<p>We would love some feedback. What are your questions? What are your concerns?
Are there any cryptocoins besides BTC that are of any interest?
We are very close to launching our beta. We're looking for some companies who would like to participate in our beta. You can sign up here for beta access or just to be alerted when we launch (very soon.) We'll open it up quickly though after that. You can sign up here: https://www.incoin.io/ <comment><USER2> How are you handling payroll withholding? Nearly every major nation has some equivalent of this. What about income tax withholding for cross border payments?

These are issues that even the most basic payroll services offer today (i.e., handling the actual withholding/deductions and remitting the proper amounts to the relevant tax authorities, not just keeping records). If you're not addressing the tax issues, you're product isn't dead simple--it actually increases the complexity of paying employees dramatically. Withholding taxes, for example, are due at least quarterly; payroll taxes are usually due at least monthly.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great question — and that is one of the first issues (alongside bitcoin) that we want to get right.

Garnishments, withholdings, and taxes vary state to state, and sometimes city by city. We're working with our tax lawyers and accountants to make this all seamless, but it's a real pain. We're looking to launch in potentially three states at first — just to make things easy.

Right now the reporting and payments are manual — we notify the company how much is owed in taxes etc. and they must pay the government themselves.

We're looking to simplify this further, though, and debit the money for garnishments to pay the government on behalf of employers where possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In finance, being subject to holding a currency you don't want to hold and prefer to change, is called Foreign Exchange Risk [1].

Why would a reasonable person want that ? Even If I believe in Bitcoin, I'd prefer getting paid in USD and choose to invest in Bitcoin.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_risk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_risk)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're using this internally right now, and that's a risk we wanted to mitigate for ourselves. Pretty sure that no-one wants to assume this risk.

The companies that use our service don't own or transact in Bitcoin. Wages are specified and debited in USD — we then purchase Bitcoin and transfer it to the employees. This effectively mitigates any risk from the companies.

For employees our main feature right now is that they can manage how much they want in Bitcoin/USD — every month — and manage the risks themselves. Also, one of our employees requested an "average bitcoin price", which helps to mitigate any risk on the employees side ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916822))

<comment><USER3> I see. Than I still don't understand what you\ your employers benefit from paying in Bitcoin ?

Unless your USD-->Bitcoin (and the other way round) transaction costs are lower than the average joe's, why would I prefer being paid that why ? Even if you cover the transaction costs I'd still prefer to be paid in USD and that you'd pay me the additional transaction costs instead of converting USD to bitcoin on my behalf.

Unless it's a finance backdoor in terms of tax, etc, I can't see the reason in doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats for given this a go, good job. The only hesitation is of course is payroll tax reporting. This is something you must be able to do for an employer or really your service is of little value, due to assessed penalties of non and/or late filings. I would suggest taking one State at time such as CA, as soon, it appears cryptos will be legal tender and figure out how to do all necessary payroll activities, such as tax reporting to State/Feds, wage garnishment, etc., once you have this, then you've got something. I wish you good luck in your endeavors!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support. And you're correct. We answered a bit about us. We're going to start simply with 1-3 states and then build out as we go.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916812)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the main advantage over getting paid in USD and buying bitcoins on your own? Other than promoting bitcoin.

<comment><USER6> Hey! I'm working on this project too.

You have a great question. One of the features that we're looking to implement is "average bitcoin rate", where employees get paid an average rate for their paycheck's work; this could heavily decrease variance and soften drops in Bitcoin's price. Right now it's just an idea in the pipeline — we really need to test demand and see if people would actually use it.

<comment><USER7> That's nice. But you didn't really answer the question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks nice! I like the B logo.

I've also seen Bitwage [1] doing something similar to this and heard that people like them.

[1]: [http://bitwage.co/](http://bitwage.co/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya! We've seen them, but we haven't been able to use their site yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Out of curiosity, what do your BTC-paid employees do with the BTC? Are there enough BTC-accepting merchants where you are that doing a significant portion of your spending in BTC is reasonable? Are they able to buy groceries, pay rent, etc in BTC? Or do they just hope that BTC will go up and they'll make money on the exchange?

This may come off as critical, but it's not intended that way. I'm genuinely curious as to how far BTC has come as a 'real currency'.

<comment><AUTHOR> No don't worry. It doesn't come off as critical at all. I would say its about split. Several of them buy a lot online which helps. They use it in real life occasionally, but often just change it into dollars when they need cash/local currency in their account. Some of them hold a bit of it.

A few real world examples:

Employee 1 takes a 50/50\. He payed for his holiday with it because his travel agent accepts it. He splits about half of his paycheck and uses the BTC whenever possible.

Employee 2 takes 100% BTC, keeps everything in BTC and exchanges when he needs local currency, but manages to do almost everything in BTC.

Employee 3 takes a tiny percentage in BTC and just holds it as an investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're using Bitcoin as a means of _payroll_ , you may want to look into the tax implications.

<comment><USER11> Good point.

I believe the IRS treats bitcoins as property, rather than an actual currency. But form what I've heard, when doing you're taxes, you actually just treat it as regular payroll taxes.

[https://bitcointaxes.info/](https://bitcointaxes.info/)

<comment><USER12> This is correct. From a tax perspective, this brings up a lot of headaches. Let's say you get paid $5000 per quarter (to make things simple):

March 31: 25BTC (price per BTC - $200) June 30: 20BTC (price per BTC - $250) September 30: 20BTC (price per BTC - $250) December 31: 10BTC (price per BTC - $500) Total: 75BTC

Now at the end of the year you need to calculate your income. You made 75BTC over the year, each of which was purchased at a different price. When you sell them to transfer them into USD, you need to keep track of _which_ bitcoin you are selling. If you sell one on December 31st, was it one from your first paycheck (in which case you made a profit of $300, which counts as income because you didn't hold it for over a year) or from the last one?

Simply buying BTC with USD from a company's bank account and sending it somewhere isn't difficult. To actually provide a service that doesn't leave employees in a tax nightmare they have no way of understanding is really what matters.

[http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Virtual-Currency- Guidanc...](http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Virtual-Currency-Guidance)

<comment><USER13> This is exactly the same as automatically buying stock shares every month in a fixed dollar amount, and then having to figure out the profit/loss for taxation when you sell the shares. With stocks, the most straightforward approach is also to specify which shares you sold so that you can calculate their change in value accurately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Normally it consists of a wire to Bitstamp (which includes a steep fee)_

If you mean $30-40 for the wire and 0.2% for the trade, that's not steep at all.

Try sending money abroad any other way, and you're likely to pay around 3-8%. Or much more if the destination is one of the messed up African countries.

<comment><USER15> Would you not just pay the exact same fees minus the 0.2% bitstamp fee?

I assume the 3-8% you're talking about is the exchange rate but unless the place your sending money has a good local exchange with liquidity you're going to pay that anyhow having the money sent from the exchange to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> With our system you will just pay one fee to accomplish your end goal. The ACH debit and BTC transaction fee doesn't cost you any more. It should eliminate the 3-8% on exchanges for foreign currency, the wire transfer fees, and the BTC exchange fee. You'll just have one instead of 3. We're working to price it competitively.

<comment><USER15> True but thats not really a comparable result to be one discussed with 3-8% exchange fees. To be comparable the person on the receiving end would have to sell their bitcoin for their local currency. That would reintroduce the exchange fees.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. That's why we offer employees the option choose what percentage of their paycheck to receive in BTC and USD (hope to add other currencies soon). The idea isn't to get paid in BTC and then to exchange it. We're idealists, but the idea is to get paid in BTC and use it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> clickable link - [https://www.incoin.io/](https://www.incoin.io/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Any chance of adding other coins, such as Nxt?

<comment><AUTHOR> We want to add other coins for sure. We're going to get BTC right during the beta and then start adding other coins as we go. Maybe we could open up voting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is the source code Free and Open Source Software?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately not right now. We're looking at this from a startup's point of view, and putting our SaaS code on github isn't something we're looking ATM. We will be work on releasing an API for others to use.

<comment><USER17> That's very unfortunate. With the revelations of Edward Snowden against the NSA, and the ability to call into questions the ethics of cloud computing and their providers, startup cloud companies that don't provide their software code under a copyleft license won't do well in the long term, I suspect.

The fact that personal and financial data will be hosted on your company servers, tying names and accounts to Bitcoin transactions and wallets, all doesn't pass the smell test, if the code isn't open for inspection.

Of course, there is nothing preventing your company from putting up placebo code on Github, that doesn't actually represent what is running on your servers. I understand that, but as a show of good faith, it would do your company more in the long term by opening the code in addition to providing an API.

Anyway, good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Extremely valid concerns.

We're trying to be as secure as possible — personal data is strongly encrypted in our database, we're using tokens instead of bank details to keep things more secure, we're implementing 2FA for logins, and we're using perfect forward security for SSL.

Unfortunately, though, money laundering law mandates that we need to record personal information so there's little we can do to get around the name <=> bitcoin address issue. We have ideas (like company-specific encryption for bitcoin addresses where only employers can decrypt addresses) but it's a long way out, even if we do implement it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We Are The Dick Pic Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.leighdrogen.com/we-are-the-dick-pic-generation/ I think history will look back on my generation of technology entrepreneurs and hackers and say that we were the dick pic generation. We are solving relatively trivial problems because we have the tools to solve them. I hope its not long before many entrepreneurs have the same ability as Elon Musk to solve the bigger ones. I'll be happy when people laugh at what we were doing 20 years ago and say it was juvenile and insignificant. <comment><USER2> Your writing made me think a lot about the crazies/true innovators, and I agree with how you see those people adding value to our world. But I also think that there are not enough people who seek to shift paradigms, not just through the products and services that exist in them, but through inviting everyone into a discourse of change. I'd be curious to hear from you how (and if) this TED Talk relates to your writing:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html)

Cheers</comment>


Lego is so popular, it can't keep up with demand - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12829974/lego-sales-2016-growth-demand-factory-strain <comment><USER3> Companies that quickly expand to meet sudden demand find themselves over capitalized when the demand inevitably drops, and often bankrupt soon afterwards.

Lego has always been managed for the long term and I assume they will grow production capacity only to the extent that they believe the demand growth is structural and not cyclical.

<comment><USER4> They could raise prices if they didn't mind the negative PR.

<comment><USER5> But why?

The glory of privately held companies is that they can say "Enough. There are things more important to me than another dollar."

And when I say "they" I literally mean a small group of humans, able to project non-monetary desire onto corporate behavior. The abstraction of public ownership does away with this, leaving only "more".

<comment><USER6> And that's the difference between conservative but revolutionary, in it for the long haul private Nintendo and trend-chasing, Super Mario Run, "we have shareholders to appease, let's throw anything at the wall and see what sticks but in the meantime here are a few tentpole franchise remakes/rehashes" public Nintendo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post reminds me: History repeats itself.

Once upon a time, we moved from 16-bit graphics to 32-bit and more. Everything seemed so lively and real. Windows XP icons suddenly became so lovely.

Now, it looks like we're bored with these great graphics again, and want to go back to the 80s and 90s. So we build games and animations that resemble that 16-bit graphics.

Odd thing is, now we watch 16-bit, pixelified faces on 32-bit Full HD screens.

A few years later, all this hype about "flat design" will subside, and we'll miss XP icons again.

And so it goes on and on...

<comment><USER8> Just like fashion, just like music, just like everything involving aesthetics, no? It's cyclic.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, exactly like fashion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Grown-ups can play with Lego too! Here's a GBC (Great Ball Contraption); looks like lots of fun: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUtS52lqL5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUtS52lqL5w)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the link. I've been to Lego Land in San Diego and seen Lego exhibits before, but I've never seen anything like the GBC!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It does, but for some of us Legomaniacs it explains why some things are hard to find.

But you need to wonder, do people throw Lego away? Hopefully they get handed down from generation to generation.

<comment><USER12> Apparently there's quite a market for used Lego.

[http://embedded.fm/episodes/157](http://embedded.fm/episodes/157)

<comment><USER13> [http://www.bricklink.com/catalog.asp](http://www.bricklink.com/catalog.asp)

You can find almost anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty cool. And far cry from the hole they were into a few years ago:

[http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/innovation- almost...](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/innovation-almost- bankrupted-lego-until-it-rebuilt-with-a-better-blueprint/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems to me the biggest takeaway from the article was that it was Lego's partnerships that saved the company. Without those deals with Star Wars (for example), the company would have not needed to meet demands in the first place. This seems like a big lesson to learn from.

</comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat related, but how is K'nex doing these days? I was never a Lego child growing up, I loved K'nex. The roller coaster sets, and everything else. It just was easier to build really tall and elaborate structures without having to have as many pieces.

</comment><comment><USER17> Also interesting that the trademark for Lego bricks has expired. Does not seem to hurt them too much though: [http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/09/15/eu.lego.trademark...](http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/09/15/eu.lego.trademark/)

<comment><USER18> If you've ever had the misfortune to try any of the clones, you'd understand why - they're crap.

There's a level of quality to Lego bricks and how well they stick together. That and the quality of the designs. Those things are missing in the clones I've tried. (Presents to my kids from well-meaning people.)

<comment><USER17> Weird though, isn't it? If the design is not protected, you'd figure somebody would make bricks of the same quality for a lower price.

Business opportunity...?

<comment><USER19> Unlikely. Lego has spent a lifetime learning how to make the bricks really well. Plus the only reason they are still around are their partnership - <USER2> you can't make a star wars lego brick, no matter how good your tolerances are.

<comment><USER20> Mega Bloks (which seems to be the biggest compatible competitor) also has a surprising range of licensed franchises, targeting both kids (e.g. Despicable Me, Spongebob) and adults (e.g. Halo). Still nowhere near the market power of Lego of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reads like advertisement/PR-placement.

<comment><USER22> It absolutely is, I don't know how someone wouldn't notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why are Legos popular? Is it because they're like containers?

<comment><USER24> My nephew likes them because they're one of the few toys he has where he's encouraged to take them apart and put them back together. He can play with them as roughly as he wants. If they break, it's no big deal, just put it back together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So much plastic... they should release compostable Lego.

<comment><USER26> The absolute volume of Lego is pretty small, and it's far more likely to be resold than discarded because it has high resale value.

Lego that rotted would destroy the brand.

<comment><USER27> Those bricks last _forever_ anyway, and they're almost indestructible. As a kid I played with Legos that belonged to my parents growing up. Compostable Legos is a terrible idea.</comment></comment></comment>


History of LSD in Czechoslovakia - <AUTHOR> https://przekroj.pl/en/society/a-communist-lsd-trip-aleksander-kaczorowski <comment><USER2> Here's a documentary including the original 1968 documentary of the experiment on army officers:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qNK3dQES6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qNK3dQES6I)

It's pretty hilarious (if you understand Czech). The officers are issuing non- sensical orders, can't stop giggling, can't put on masks, get into conflicts.

<comment><USER3> I like the last sentence at 9:18 in the video where he says:

> During the experiment I experienced sensations of mostly unpleasant nature > ... however if there's a need I'm willing to participate once again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a fantastic interview with Stanislav Grof, who supervised roughly 4500 LSD sessions starting in Czechoslovakia, here: [1]

His intelligence, knowledge and keenness of mind is truly impressive, especially considering his advanced age. This interview is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in this subject.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig)

<comment><USER5> Psychedelic-induced plasticity (ability to re-route) seems to lend itself to folks retaining their cognitive function in spite of damage (e.g. in context age, stroke).

<comment><USER6> It didn't seem to be doing Alexander Shulgin any favors in old age, from what I saw of his later interviews anyways. Though he probably exposed himself to far more than just psychedelics.

<comment><USER4> Shulgin did suffer a stroke and dementia in his old age. His wife, who probably did just as many (and many of the same) substances he did survived him and is doing fine.

Something else to consider is that Shulgin said he usually only ever did maybe two or three sessions with any given substance, and then moved on to another one. It could be that one or more of them was beneficial, but he might not have taken enough of those particular ones to help. In contrast, Stanislav Grof had over 100 LSD sessions.

I don't think enough is known about the relationship between psychedelics and neurodegenerative diseases to say how and which psychedelics affect them, but there are some interesting ongoing studies to see what effect microdosing LSD has on Alzheimer's disease, the Phase 1 trials of which have recently completed:

[https://newatlas.com/science/microdosing-lsd-alzheimers- phas...](https://newatlas.com/science/microdosing-lsd-alzheimers-phase1-trial- results-safety/)

<comment><USER7> Sasha Shulgin tested a lot of compounds, so making any claim would be tough - some might have helped and some might have hurt.

It can take only a minor chemical modification to turn a benign drug into a neurotoxin one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "LSD made in CSSR" (2015,CZ) - documentary by Pavel Křemen and Czech Television, describes those times very interestingly

[https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10463665003-lsd-made- in-...](https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10463665003-lsd-made-in- cssr/21456226510/)

<comment><USER9> (edit: bad translation on my part)

<comment><USER10> That doesn't seem possible. I'm not aware of a single documented case of an actual LSD overdose (in the fatal sense)

<comment><USER11> The most famous example of how hard it is to overdose on LSD was probably the case where 8 patients were admitted after snorting what they thought was cocaine, but which turned out to be LSD.

The amounts in their blood suggests they each got hundreds of times a normal dose. All eight survived (though it's not clear if they would have without hospital treatment).

<comment><USER12> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/) here's a research paper on them. They were in really rough shape for a hit but did survive. It's a fascinating read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Solid article! Beautiful ending. It's great having psychedelics sold over the counter, like truffles in Amsterdam, but with lsd I prefer a license or prescription scheme.

</comment><comment><USER14> When I first landed on this web page, I could read exactly 1 line of the article before closing all the popups:

[https://imgur.com/a/HcKD7cX](https://imgur.com/a/HcKD7cX)

<comment><USER15> Ironic that I couldn't see your picture before accepting imgurs cookie notice

<comment><USER16> Anytime a site tries to twist my arm and take their tracking cookie I just right click>block element and proceed without their stupid cookie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is similar case as metamphetamine (better known pervitin), which was re- discovered by some Czech junkies in toxicology literature. In late 70s, somebody actually developed how to synthethise it from pseudoefedrin found in common drugs against flu. So after that, Czech junkies began to ambush pharmacies and some even get employed in efedrin production plant in Roztoky u Prahy.

</comment><comment><USER18> The wikipedia article is about Expansionism not Explosionism but I can understand the word because the art form is rather bulging / expanding / spatial

<comment><USER19> Expansionism is something else.

You just read english translation of a polish article.

Vladimir Bodnik called it explosionalismus. In polish explosionalismus is translated as eksplozjonalizm or eksplozjonizm. It was translated from that to 'explosionism'.

[http://www.artcasopis.cz/clanky/explosionalismus- vladimira-b...](http://www.artcasopis.cz/clanky/explosionalismus-vladimira- boudnika)</comment></comment>


Low Cost Product Feature Information - <AUTHOR>

My partner and I come from an academic background in information extraction and we would like to gauge interest in a potential service that would provide cheap product feature information for products in various web catalogs such as amazon.com and ebay.com.  We imagine that the service would be subscription-based and would provide extracted values such as price, weight, dimensions, physical memory size, etc for a wide range of products. The service would cost less than $100 a month.  Though a lot of sites are offering APIs with some feature information, we have noticed that much of the information is still in "raw" format- not ready to use. <comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/products?q=ipod&aq=f](http://www.google.com/products?q=ipod&aq=f)

<http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=ipod>

Also, don't underestimate the difficulty of doing this. I know a little bit about how Google Squared works, and it's basically a complicated mess, and often doesn't even get the right answer. (A search for [rice cooker] failed miserably, for example.) Granted, they're solving a harder problem - not just products, but all facts on the web - but creating a useful database of products on the web that's comprehensive _and accurate_ enough to pay for is probably an even bigger problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links, it's definitely a hard problem, but as you pointed out, it's a bit easier when you're focused on products which often have landing pages (on say amazon or ebay) with lots of highly structured data. I think google squared is cool but probably not useful to a web retailer because there is no API (that I can find) and no guarantee of good coverage for a given catalog.</comment></comment>


Top Twitter Trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.toptwittertrends.com

<comment><USER2> Great site, nice clean interface with intuitive controls. I think there are some HTML5 magic. Hats off to the developer.

</comment><comment><USER3> all I need is a cup of coffe and toptwittertrends in the morning..I am Following trends from here. Great job</comment>


Evolution versus Intelligent Design: a mathematician's view - <AUTHOR> http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~norman/papers/IntelligentDesignhtml/IntelligentDesign1.htm

<comment><USER2> We should not be surprised to find strong relationships between the universe we observe and the formal system we invented to describe it. Mathematics is not static, we are constantly extending the formalism to explain new things we discover. We have invented plenty of bad formalisms (and beliefs) it's easy to focus on what we got right. This essay is an attempt to disguise mysticism as mathematics.</comment>


Is The Way To Tech Workers' Loyalty Through Their Stomachs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/07/26/205824630/is-the-way-to-a-tech-workers-loyalty-through-their-stomach?ft=1&f=1053 <comment><USER2> I can't think of anyone who would consider vending machine tokens as an enticing way to keep employees.

How about a 401k, medical/dental benefits, flexible spending accounts, vision service plans, or even paying for the hardware & software to do the work on would be a nice change.

The author is out of touch with reality.</comment>


A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn't Really a Gift - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02seco.html?nl=health&emc=healthupdateema1

<comment><USER2> In case you are curious, the "case in the 1980s" referred to in the article is almost certainly Moore v. Regents of the University of California ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Regents_of_the_Univers...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Regents_of_the_University_of_California) ).

</comment><comment><USER3> HeLa cell lines were one of the first things I learned about when I started doing molecular biology research. They're truly universal in the research world -- pretty much every molecular biologist knows of Helen Lacks. That said, I doubt that very many scientists know that she was an unwitting donor, or that there were serious class and racial issues surrounding her "donation". An amazing (and sad) story.

<comment><USER4> _pretty much every molecular biologist knows of Helen Lacks._

Considering her name was _Henrietta_ Lacks, you just disproved your own statement. ;-)

<comment><USER3> D'oh! Touché. ;-)

(Not that it's an excuse, but there's actually a relevant reason for screwing that up: in one of my first labs, people referred to them as "Helen Lang" cells, presumably because they didn't know the name of the woman, just the story of her uterine cancer. Hard habit to break, I guess.)

<comment><USER4> No worries. HeLa cells have become so mutated over the years that they might as well have been isolated from Henry Laurens.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google: 100,000 lives a year lost through fear of data-mining - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/26/google-healthcare-data-mining-larry-page <comment><USER2> Just imagine how many lives it will save once Google is allowed to implant Maps directly into our parietal lobes.</comment>