The War Against Too Much of Everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/business/adbusters-war-against-too-much-of-everything.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1356193041-AIz2mW6wAv8pEYkAAFmeWg&gwh=CACE70A4F01C6503EA651D7C6BE8131B&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of this very interesting article saying that we're wasting our resources buying stuff that simply ends up in landfill [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/on-12th-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/on-12th- day-christmas-present-junk?INTCMP=SRCH)

<comment> guard-of-terra The problem with money in the modern world is that you can buy a lot of things you don't really need.

But on the other hand there are a lot of things you want but you struggle to buy because they are too expensive. That is, housing/real estate mainly, education in some countries, medical care in some countries yet. You might stuggle to buy legal protection if need arises. You certainly can't buy a predictable quality of life after when you retire.

So we have two large classes of people: there are people who struggle financially with their basic needs - food, shelter, transportation. But there also is a larger class of people who have some free money and they can buy loads of stuff they don't really need - such as described in your article - but they can't buy higher quality of life in terms of real estate, seciruty and predictability of their future.

And it doesn't make much sense to save because prices tend to inflate faster than you save.

People end up buying useless crap because it's almost free.

If someone finds out to produce _real_ wealth much cheaper, we'll see a major redefinition of consumer society.

<comment><USER3> > housing/real estate mainly

> If someone finds out to produce real wealth much cheaper, we'll see a major > redefinition of consumer society.

Please learn basic economics.

The problem is that there's a limited amount of supply of real estate. Everyone wants real estate, so market participants bid up the price until supply and demand match.

If everyone in the world gets substantially wealthier in the next few decades, then they'll just bid higher and higher against each other for the same pool of real estate, driving up the price of real estate until enough people are priced out of the market for supply to again match demand [1].

Of course, Le Chatelier's principle [2] says that as the prices rise, changes will happen that oppose the rise in prices. For example, if you're a company in a land-intensive sector like agriculture, more expensive land means you invest more in existing equipment and techniques that can help you use your land more effectively right now, and R&D into brand new equipment and techniques that will help you use your land more effectively in the future.

Likewise, if land prices rise, prices of other goods will change to reflect the cost of land used to produce them. Because land-intensive products are more expensive in this world, people will naturally make decisions on their own to use less of them. Falling demand for land-intensive products will translate directly into reduced demand for land to produce them, opposing the rise in prices.

[1] Assuming no new supply of real estate is discovered. Of course, it's possible that new supply sources _will_ be discovered causing a _drop_ in prices, or blunting the impact of the forces that cause housing prices to rise. While we can rule out the discovery of a new continent as happened with the European "discovery" of North and South America, it's conceivable that within 100 years we'll have some combination of space colonies, artificial islands, multilevel cities / more high-rise construction, better technology for doing things in deserts and other presently marginal regions, underground buildings...

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chatelier%27s_principle>

<comment><USER4> > The problem is that there's a limited amount of supply of real estate. > Everyone wants real estate, so market participants bid up the price until > supply and demand match.

In most developed countries, real estate prices are artificially inflated by restrictions on the construction of new housing stock.

This is far from a simple case of supply and demand.

<comment><USER5> It's still a case of supply and demand, just that the supply of build able real estate isn't just about dirt. It's dirt with a road,sewage, power and legal status allowing dwellings.

The point still stands - even a radical readjustment in planning policies could maybe double land supply - but a type of moores law with land will never happen.

<comment><USER3> > a type of moores law with land will never happen.

Never say "never." It's easy to imagine a future where interplanetary travel is routine, and habitable places are common (either due to the human race getting lucky in terms of there being an abundance of vacant Earth-like planets within easy range of future space drives, or due to the human race being diligent in the development of technology to live on hostile worlds or asteroids).

In such a future, I could readily imagine the human race expanding geometrically -- such expansion would end when we reached the edge of the galaxy, but that would still give tens of thousands of years of unlimited geometric expansion, assuming our ships are self-sufficient and can penetrate any within-galaxy area void of habitable planets, and also assuming our space drives won't allow faster-than-light travel (I think the galaxy is ~100,000 light years in diameter).

Should we count on things turning out that way? It seems irresponsible to assume so at this point. But it also seems like we shouldn't discount this scenario entirely, either -- and discounting this possibility is exactly what you're doing when you say "a type of moores law with land will never happen."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 737 Max 8 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2019/05/18/737-Max-8.html <comment><USER2> it wasn't software. the design of MCAS was done by systems engineers. they tell software what to write. it is called requirements.

people make mistakes. the system / process is supposed to find them. if the process was not followed, that is negligence. until we know more, it was simple an error that was not caught by the process.

i am distressed that the CEO did not stand up and say "it wan't the MAX design team. it was the Boeing Company. everyone of us working together. and we will make it right" evidently, litigation is the biggest concern.

those systems engineers, and aeronautical engineers, and mechanical engineers, and software engineers were doing the best job they could. they care about the flying public, and feel responsible for these incidents. i would expect there are some on leave right now, because they perceive the honest mistakes they made as killing those passengers.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree.

This is not entirely a software fault. Someone must have thought that it was ok and safe enough to rely on data from one sensor.

<comment><USER4> Or they assumed everyone would pay more for two, ie that the upsell was a sure thing, 'cause, who wants to die?</comment></comment></comment>


How do you report a FB page admin deceased?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [https://www.facebook.com/help/408583372511972&#x2F](https://www.facebook.com/help/408583372511972&#x2F);

<comment><USER2> After a bit of Google-ing it seems as if only their profile/timeline will be memoralised and that any pages they've created will simply have no admin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an "Ask HN" worthy post? Damn...</comment>


Investigation and Analysis of Anomalous Electromagnetic Propulsion Devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KurtZeller/investigation-and-analysis-of-anomalous-electromagnetic-propulsion-devices-41315-46946953

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, if you're going to break the laws of physics, please be professional enough to know VNA stands for vector network analyzer.</comment>


HTTP status error 451 for legal takedowns is now official - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/12/21/theres-now-an-official-http-status-code-for-legal-takedowns-451/ <comment><USER2> 451 is "approved for publication". It is not yet an RFC.

Source: [https://www.mnot.net/blog/2015/12/18/451](https://www.mnot.net/blog/2015/12/18/451)</comment>


Amazon Has Transformed the Hasidic Economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/nyregion/hasidic-jews-amazon.html <comment><USER2> About 6 years ago I ordered a tv on Amazon, it was going to be shipped out and delivered in about a week.

About an hour later I got a phone a call with a thick accented voice – "John, John, are you home?"

"Who is this?"

"I got your TV, we can come over right now."

Sure enough they pulled up with their van and I got my TV about two hours after I ordered. Unknown to me I had ordered it from a Hasidic run company just down the street from my home in Brooklyn.

<comment><USER3> Nice! I wonder if the vendor gets his money earlier from Amazon if he delivered it faster.

<comment><USER4> > I wonder if the vendor gets his money earlier from Amazon if he delivered it > faster

No - Amazon pays sellers every other week.

<comment><USER5> This is not necessarily true. Some sellers can request disbursement at any time. For a breakdown of when Amazon pays sellers, see [0].

In this case, the only delay is the 7 day holding period after the latest possible delivery date.

For example, if you sell and deliver a product on Jan 1st, you may be able to disburse the funds as soon as the 8th.

However! This example does not hold for the situation described by the GP because no tracking information can be provided to Amazon. In which case, the longest possible delivery period in the shipping method selected will be used.

More importantly, what the seller did as described by GP is big liability, for two reasons:

1\. Phone numbers should never, ever, be used to contact the customer directly. They are for the seller to give to the carrier. This is a violation of Amazon's ToS.

2\. Sellers should never, ever, deliver directly to buyers. Not only will this hurt their valid tracking rate metric, but it also makes them a very easy target for item not received cases as there is no proof that the item was delivered. The only recourse in a case like this would be through small claims court.

And on a much more minor note, it's unprofessional to visit a buyer in person. Amazon is not eBay.

[0] [https://3t122x28ppxb3z3e3u3i0eib-wpengine.netdna- ssl.com/wp-...](https://3t122x28ppxb3z3e3u3i0eib-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/08/amazon-payouts-timeline.png)

<comment><USER6> Maybe?

They can still use the same tracking mechanisms, I mean when I order from the pizza place, they don't contract it out, so why should I care of my amazon seller does?

<comment><USER4> For orders over 10 USD, Amazon requires a verifiable tracking number from one of the major carrier services. (It's possible to "ship" an order without a tracking number, but the seller takes a hit to their account metrics, and Amazon will eventually freeze their account for review).

This is so they can verify you actually shipped the package, and verify it was delivered within the fulfillment promise date range, ie. if you paid for 2 day shipping or whatever.

There are some sellers that have been approved for self-delivery of packages, which are not trackable. In these cases, they usually forfeit all rights to dispute non-delivery claims and more. So, it's pretty risky for the seller.

<comment><USER7> Speaking of which: Amazon (and ebay, too) had recently started using a UK- based service called Yodel.

Last time Yodel had delivered a parcel of $50 to my door (marking it as delivered), which obviously got stolen. You can't call Yodel - their line is always busy, and the line is not a free number.

Yodel had done that regularly to me, but I could never contact them or do anything about my delivery, since their customer service is horrendous.

Is there any way to set it up in Amazon (or ebay, too) so that their fulfillment never uses a certain delivery brand?

<comment><USER8> >Is there any way to set it up in Amazon (or ebay, too) so that their fulfillment never uses a certain delivery brand?

Amazon support was able to do this for me. They also CC:d me on a really strongly worded email to the delivery company, which I found really surprising.

This was one of the euro amazons with european support staff.

<comment><USER9> Did it actually work? Did they actually stop using that delivery company for your packages (and is the company common enough for this to not be random chance)?

<comment><USER8> Yes, and yes. I probably get closer to 1000 deliveries annually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Buzz Feed News (yes!) covered this same story with much more sensitivity several weeks ago.

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-o...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon- orthodox-jews)

<comment><USER11> Understand that the way Buzzfeed covered it obscures the very real fact that there's a huge amount of controversy regarding this specific Satmar Hasidic community. This is not a question of Antisemitism, there have been very real issues directly caused by prominent rabbis within this community. These controversies are known to pretty much anyone in the NY metro area, so it makes sense that the NYTimes (being located in NYC and publishing in the nyarea section) would cover it in such a way.

They say this in the Buzzfeed article:

>But on an economic level, this commitment translates into a 28% poverty rate among Orthodox Jews in New York, according to the UJA Federation of New York. Many Orthodox Jews find employment at religious schools and rely on welfare to support their large families, which have an average of seven children.

This completely ignores that welfare fraud has been a perennial issue in the Lakewood [1] and Brooklyn [2] Hasidic communities. The community knows it can take advantage federal, state, and local programs so they do. The same community has issues with overt employment discrimination [3], and is also known for being one of the more vocal anti-vaxxer communities [4].

I deliberately chose local, Jewish, and official state sources to appeal to your sensitivities. I understand if you aren't from the area and/or have never associated with members of the Hasidic community so I encourage you to review and understand why the NYTimes article was written the way it was.

[1] [https://www.app.com/story/news/investigations/watchdog/2018/...](https://www.app.com/story/news/investigations/watchdog/2018/03/27/amnesty- program-results-lakewood-nj-welfare-fraud-arrests-recovery/948466001/)

[2] [https://forward.com/news/351162/wealthy-orthodox-couples- cha...](https://forward.com/news/351162/wealthy-orthodox-couples-charged- in-13m-brooklyn-benefits-scam/)

[3] [https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170814](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170814)

[4] [https://forward.com/news/national/422354/hasidic-measles- out...](https://forward.com/news/national/422354/hasidic-measles-outbreak- peach-handbook/)

<comment><USER12> I think anyone who is not familiar with these particular communities in Lakewood and Brooklyn will see warning flags of anti-semitism in a lot of related comments about them. I would just like to voice some support for the people speaking up about them, because this is not a problem with Jews, or even Orthodox Jews. It is specific to these particular Hasidic communities and the fraud is rampant and expanding.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I believe it's really important to call out and charge the leadership inside these communities. They know full well what is and isn't legal. If you shut down discussion on these sorts of issues, I believe you allow for abuses to happen and rage to grow against the larger community who are often innocent.

As others have mentioned, the Hasidic community is an insular community. I have interacted numerous times in business and I've never had an issue professionally. In matters of business they learn how to behave with customers and run things efficiently. It was why, until the discrimination charges were announced, I kept going back to B&H to spend thousands of dollars on gear over the years. When I was a kid I thought of them like Amish, but instead of farming and barn raising they just happened to sell stuff.

Unfortunately, just like other groups that rely on propaganda to hide abuses, the good rabbis inside it that act as whistleblowers end up attacked. This sickening NSFW/NSFL article [1] is about a rabbi inside the community that decided to speak out against child abuse. He was rewarded with chemical burns after bleach was tossed in his face.

[1] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbe8bp/the-child-rape- ass...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbe8bp/the-child-rape-assembly- line-0000141-v20n11)

<comment><USER10> Is it any more "insular" than the Haskell community or the Scheme community?

<comment><USER13> One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just isn't the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This makes for interesting contrast with this two part story on Reply All about a Hasidic Jew who discovers the internet and begins to struggle with his community.

[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply- all/39hzw2](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/39hzw2) [https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply- all/awhm5x](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhm5x)

<comment><USER15> wow, that was a great story, thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amazon is great yet I wish there were more sites like Amazon and eBay so healthy competition between them would stimulate further improvement.

BTW why people won't use OpenBazaar instead?

<comment><USER17> > BTW why people won't use OpenBazaar instead?

I strongly dispute your "Amazon is great" statement but I digress. I think I heard about OpenBazaar when it launched but just checked it out again and having no web frontend for a marketplace is total crazysauce. People who are looking to buy something elsewhere from Amazon find those storefronts through search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does the Hasidic community have any advantages in the reseller market? With some of their traditional businesses, such as the diamond trade they do: evaluating gems, connections for sourcing stones, etc.

<comment><USER19> B&H, an electronics super store in Manhattan, is owned by Hasidic Jews, and it sells new and used gear. The web site won't even take orders on Shabbat. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people selling new or used electronics have some connection to B&H or another brick and mortar store.

<comment><USER20> B&H has been our goto place for electronics / computers lately. They deal well with educational institutions, will take a PO from an community college on a reservation in North Dakota, and have excellent customer service.

I do keep track when I can order, for instance right now they are closed for Succos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> '"Whatever you decide to sell doesn't matter as long as you meet Amazon's requirements," he said.'

That's about all you need to know about Amazon these days.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think there's something about knowing you need to care for a large family (e.g. a member of a religion that values having lots of kids) that is motivating for entrepreneurs in a way I don't always hear about e.g. entrepreneurial tendencies among Hasidic Jews and Mormons

<comment><USER23> For Latter-day Saints (Mormons), the entrepreneurship roots go back to the early church history. Between 1831-1847, members of the church established 4 settlements and were expelled from 3(Kirtland, OH; Western Missouri; Nauvoo, IL; Salt Lake City). These areas were all frontiers at the time, and grew to become the largest cities in their region, which drew fear and persecution from people in the surrounding areas. Salt Lake was many hundreds of miles from the closest white settlement, and Brigham Young intentionally assigned/coerced/funded as many crafts and industries as possible to reduce dependence on trade with the (indifferent to hostile) United States. And established dozens of settlements throughout the Mountain West. So you have generations of entrepreneurs that had a captive market that needed EVERYTHING, and only internal competition.

Also, many Latter-day Saints go on 2 year missions in their late teens/early 20s, where you mostly self-direct your proselyting in the area you are assigned to. Good sales experience, self-starting, persistence, etc.

It's a potent combination for business.

<comment><USER24> WordPerfect was ran by Mormons, wasn't it? I'd love to hear some stories (I already read Almost Perfect)

<comment><USER25> Yes, out of Orem, UT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The manufacturing is in China; I wonder how the tariffs affect them.

<comment><USER27> The article says they acquire most of their merchandise through local, physical clearance sales. I don't think they're ordering much from China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Belated cultural note:

Both the article and many in this comment section are using the term "Hasidic" to refer to all ultra-Orthodox (aka Haredi) Jews. This is not the case.

As the article briefly mentions, Hasidism is a recent (~18th-century) ecstatic religious movement that split off from conventional ultra-Orthodoxy. Non- Hasidic Haredim originally called themselves Misnagdim ("opposition"), but these days are usually called Litvish ("Lithuanian", since that was the stronghold of Misnagdi thought). The two have since reconciled over their combined opposition to later secularist Jewish religious and political trends, and through the efforts/existence of groups like Chabad which blur the binary; but the separate identities are still strong.

Borough Park, the neighborhood the article is about, happens to be majority Hasidic, but also has a substantial Litvish minority which is subject to all of the same pressures and constraints that draw Haredim of all stripes to online businesses.

</comment><comment><USER29> Considering how prevalent state-provided aid is among ultra-conservative sects like this, it is good to see a viable career path for them.

<comment><USER30> Kinda funny how antithetical that is to tradional conservative values regarding entitlements.

<comment><USER31> the 'conservative' here does not refer to traditional conservative politics that include those values. You're being confused by two definitions of 'conservative'.

<comment><USER30> I'm really not though. I'm aware that 'conservative' has specific religious connotations, but on the Venn diagram with political conservatism, there's a lot of overlap. Trump won many predominantly Jewish districts in the last election.

<comment><USER31> Nonetheless the values of receiving and giving charity are more common in the community in question than your comment about conservative values, because conservative doesn't mean "trump supporter" or "same values as Republican party".

So aware or not your previous comment was wrong in every way because you cannot or will not separate different meanings of "conservative".

You smeared all with one brush and your subsequent worldview is just as nonsensical as one would expect from such a nonsensical approach to viewing others.

Your comment was the opposite of insight - anyone who read your comment was actively mislead. You are fake news.

<comment><USER30> Everyone makes generalizations, it's one of the ways we communicate without needing to get overly academic about everything. I would also note that your tone exudes a high level of bias. If, as TFA states, there are a lot of very poor people in these communities, then that underlies your statement that charity is common among Hasidim.

It _is_ an interesting fact that (disclaimer, generalizations follow) a community that tends to take charity from the government also tends to vote for a candidate like Donald Trump.

<comment><USER31> generalizations are good when they're somewhat accurate. they're bad when they're inaccurate. Generalizations aren't inherently good. yours distorts reality by ignoring specifics in a way that does not good except to your ego.

Your reaction to my pointing this out is that my "tone exudes a high level of bias" \- when you're the one doing the tone reading.

People are more complex than you make them, and your one dimensional analysis based on a purposeful misconstruing of a word, leading you to smear an entire religious group adds no value to any conversation, and reveals you as a likely a bigot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Early in my career, I worked for two companies run by orthodox Jews that sold lots of goods on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yet another example of how a decentralized free market has innumerable and unexpected positive outcomes, such as letting a restricted and insular community become prosperous and self-sufficient. Don't be fooled by calls to allow the government to take over tech - this outcome would never have been centrally planned by any bureaucrat.

</comment><comment><USER34> article is behind paywall

<comment><USER35> Seems like an unusually large percentage of posts on Hacker News are behind paywalls, some soft, some hard, some with a maximum free articles per time- unit. I peruse most of the top stories daily and can't read a good number of them making me have to just read the comments to get a sense of the article. It is seriously annoying. I wish there was some kind of flair or warning on these posts.

<comment><USER36> I think HN should have a rule that if someone puts up a link that is behind a paywall, they should give some way to get around it. Like they should make the first comment a set of instructions, like disable JS or an alternative link.

<comment><USER37> Or you could just ignore things you aren't willing to pay for, instead of expecting to be able to steal them.

<comment><USER36> The problem with that is I would have to subscribe to a hundred different publications, and a new one every few days.

If I could buy a subscription that covered all online publications, and for a reasonable price, I would be quite happy. As it is I already have 5 print subscriptions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News All-Time Top Links - <AUTHOR> https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/.

<comment><USER2> And now I'm playing 2048 again :/

<comment><USER3> Let's admit the truth to ourselves... we were already playing it when we read this post... :(

It's interesting to see this list though... the things that really tick with HN heh.</comment></comment>


Gitlab is battling scalability issues - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/production/issues/937 <comment><USER2> Next up on my wishlist: _GitLab battling the scalability of their license renewal process for academic users._

<comment><USER3> Hello! Just wanted to comment on this, since I'm a GitLab employee and my team is responsible. We currently only have 1 person who is able to do this (my team is 3 people but we all have our own focus areas), so when he's OoO they take a while to get renewed. But we're working on training up/getting access for the rest of the team and also potentially hiring someone else, so hopefully this can get crossed off your wishlist!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the explanation. It's just a bit frustrating to not get any reply for weeks when your license is going to expire in... _looking at calendar_...3 days from now.

Any ETA on when renewals will be possible again?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the whole week there is a degraded service for at least some parts of the Gitlab.com:

\- web unicorn workers stuck

\- background repo mirrors delayed for hours

\- scheduled pipelines do not run on time</comment>


China loves the lingo of games - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/chinese-gaming-multi-entry.html

<comment><USER2> By all means, i like the view on how gamer lingo slowly takes foot in chinese language, but imho it should be read carefully.

This article gives nearly no evidence that this is more than a subjective view. Sorry, but 'my mother uses gamer lingo' and statements like this are supporting arguments but no evidence. They did manage to show off some market- related numbers, why not support the main claim?

This lack of evidence taints the reading experience.

<comment><USER3> It didn't taint the reading experience for me, as I wasn't expecting a peer reviewed research paper.

I viewed it as an interesting opinion piece.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, that was strong worded. I should have chosen better fitting terms to make that point.

Thank you for the reminder.</comment></comment></comment>


Rosetta's comet 'sweats' two glasses of water a second - <AUTHOR> http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_comet_sweats_two_glasses_of_water_a_second

<comment><USER2> This makes me wonder about the potential of having fuel-scoops like in Elite, only with chasing a comet rather than mucking about near the sun.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how chasing comets into the Oort cloud could possibly be profitable.

<comment><USER2> Folk once held that view of sailing far into the Atlantic.

Besides, I wasn't so much meaning going as far as the Oort cloud, was just thinking you could tag along with a comet for a bit as it went through the mid solar system and suck up some reaction mass from it without having to land on the thing.</comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley has turned into the place it hates the most - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/kairos-ventures-raises-fund-focusing-on-middle-class-problems-2017-11 <comment><USER2> This is a PR piece for Kairos Fund, whatever that is. For fun, you can compare with PG's formula[1]. I'd give it a B-.

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER3> We've updated the headline to the document title, which is far more substantive and less bait-ey.

<comment><USER4> You should change the title back or remove the link entirely. This isn't the right way to handle what you consider "bait-ey"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author conflates several things into the label "SV": the private capital, the founders, the startup execs and so on. but surprisingly it barely mentions the engineers that are perhaps SV's most defining characteristic.

Now to address the article, the current ecosystem of companies in SV and the people it attracts is the byproduct of what venture capitalists are willing to invest in, which is itself a consequence of what the economy wants and the kind of ventures regulators allow to succeed.

So, if you want to point fingers asking why aren't tough problems solved you should start by asking yourself why is it that those are so much more capital- intensive to solve in the first place. And more importantly, what could be done to make them more attractive to private capital.

Of course, there's a narrow category of problems that are intrinsically capital intense. But many more are just artificial moonshots i.e problems that aren't that hard if not for the many roadblocks and hoops one would need to go through to formulate even a basic answer.

How long would it take to get a railroad network going in 2017 v. 1830s?

tl;dr: the entities influencing the incentive structure are more to blame than the individual agents trying to optimize for their own KPIs.

<comment><USER6> Your railroad question made me think... back in 1830s there was a huge need by both the public and industry for a railroad network. These days transport is a mess in some ways but it's not a huge need for anyone. On the other hand the issues of what can we use smart phones for, what should social networks look like and how to advertise on these new mediums were actual problems of our day that companies and engineers had to solve. Hopefully we can move on to more interesting problems soon though.

<comment><USER7> There's also just more things in the way. It may have been difficult to tunnel through a mountain but it's several times more difficult now to both deal with getting the rights to land with all the people in your path _and_ tunnel through the mountain

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's much easier to build an attention app, pull demographic info, sell advertising, than it is to build a product that adds bottom-line value to society. It also seems over the last 10 years or so, there has been lots of "small cash" sloshing around. Early stage employees from the first wave of successful internet companies write small cheques to fund questionable ideas. Taken together with the continued commoditization of the software developer as a job segment and the ability to deploy easily and it's not surprising people don't try particularly hard anymore. It feels like one of the main issues in the valley these days is insular intellectual dishonesty. Sadly, I feel like the same thing is about to happen to tech here in New York.

<comment><USER9> So then the question is: Where did the innovators and hackers go? And why aren't they doing that anymore? Where are the next generation of hackers and innovators, and where are they going? And why aren't the lot of them trying to add bottom-line value to society?

<comment><USER10> In a corporate open space office? According to the article, this is where they are.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but my question was really aimed at something deeper. I agree that they're in the corporate open space office. But that doesn't answer the question of why they're there, on the whole, and leaves the question of getting the hackers working on societal problems instead of attention problems.

<comment><USER11> You have a bit of idealism in your understanding of how things are made , created adopted and maintained. Weather the problem is societal or not these are the attributes that need to be solved.

1) what is the problem and how much money can we make from solving it? 2) how much will it cost the enginners to solve the problem (we are not your slaves) 3) If problem is solved at a profit is it still viable/worth to approach , is it a $5 profit or a $50,000,000 (business men/women/pick a gender are not our slaves either) 4)Is it legal? The more money to be made the more the masses and dems feel its evil even if it good for all , we cant have anyone being successful off of hard work now can we, so any kind of far reaching societal solution will have gov red tape (this is a good thing I believe, better to be safe than sorry)

we are all in this together, its no super smart guy overlords that tell us what to do, and if you think that is the answer you should look up the idea of "euthanization". Elite , intelligent people are not always kind , but they are always efficient. They sometimes have very cold ways of solving your "societal" problems.

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry, but you have completely missed the mark here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > America's business hero has become Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Is this accurate? I feel like more people look to Musk than Bezos. However, I realize I have a sheltered "internet only" view, so pardon my ignorance.

<comment><USER13> >> I feel like more people look to Musk than Bezos.

Businessman? Bezos for sure. He's the Sam Walton of our generation.

Inventor/technologist? Musk. I'd guess that most people would believe Musk if he said he was going to start building a car that ran on water.

<comment><USER14> Tbh if most of the time that you talk to people they either know exactly the plausablity of what Musk is saying or they just read a headline. Most of the time it is the later but there are a lot of advocates in the former that call him out on his plans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree with a lot of the author's points, but the "big problems" facing the American middle class that Kairos is aiming to solve just cannot be solved by tech alone. They are political, legal, and social problems.

Student debt is largely a consequence of easy loans for low-return degrees and laws that prevent those loans from being released (pretty much ever), combined with a generation that pushed kids to go to the "best" school they could, regardless of cost. High housing cost is a problem of zoning laws, NIMBYism, and lethargic construction. Retirement income is a problem of an entire generation just not saving any money (financial irresponsibility) combined with jobs that don't pay pensions anymore and a strained national retirement system. Etc.

SV isn't falling down on producing tech to solve problems, it's falling down on using its wealth and influence to actually change laws, opinions, and behaviors that would have a broad impact.

<comment><USER16> > Student debt is largely a consequence of easy loans for low-return degrees > and laws that prevent those loans from being released (pretty much ever), > combined with a generation that pushed kids to go to the "best" school they > could, regardless of cost.

Tech _might_ be able to solve that by making the "best" school an online and low-cost one.

> High housing cost is a problem of zoning laws, NIMBYism, and lethargic > construction.

Tech might be able to solve that one by increasing the availability of remote work.

<comment><USER15> Fair points, but I would argue that both of those possibilities hinge on social/psychological issues. Companies typically hire from prestigious schools because there's an implicit faith in pedigree and the pre-selection criteria of admissions panels at traditional institutions. You would need to shift that view before anyone would consider an online degree of any kind the "best" qualifier for employees. Same with remote work - you need to shift the perception that butts-in-seats and long hours in an office are favorable things before the technology even has a chance of making a solid impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Look up how Ankur Jain's family made their money. That and this obvious PR- piece article are both enough to make not feel like eating my lunch today.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love the fact that at the very end of the article, there's a link to see Google's stock price.

</comment><comment><USER4> The title of the article is, "Silicon Valley has turned into the place it hates the most", not whatever this watered down title is. I saw this post earlier with the original title and I'm curious why it was changed? Is this too sensitive of a topic for HN?

<comment><USER19> Maybe it hits a little close to home. From my experience, there's a bit of a disdain for SV in the other US tech hubs (Austin, Atlanta, Raleigh, Boulder, et Al) and maybe rightfully so.

<comment><USER4> I agree and I'm disappointed HN would change the title. They claim it is a PR piece for Kairos but it certainly doesn't read that way to me.

<comment><USER20> If this was truly a heartfelt article, I doubt it would have cast Kairos as the only do-gooder in this industry. The focus on helping the US Midwest is straight from Kairos' thesis.

Most honest articles about SV's shortfalls focus on bigger problems, like global war, famine, or extreme poverty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Now I don't cover Silicon Valley. But I do cover Wall Street. I know Wall > Street.

Stopped reading after this statement.

<comment><USER22> The article is good. I do not "cover" silicon valley, nor do I live there. But I share the author's thoughts. Rather than solve real/bigger problems, startups are being over-funded for services made to create a market and sell user data, opening doors to misuse without serious monitoring. What a waste.</comment></comment>


Why the gun industry should support net neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.guns.com/2017/12/13/why-second-amendment-advocates-should-support-net-neutrality/ <comment><USER2> In a previous discussion, user craftyguy said "The NRA would be all behind this the first time someone reports a 'suboptimal experience' when trying to access their site to become a member, or order ammo from some random M&P gun shop."

That's certainly possible. But they might also try to get laws passed that _just_ benefited their own interests. Like forcing traffic to any gun-related site to be given high priority based on a convoluted reading of the second amendment concluding that doing otherwise would be a restriction of gun rights. I don't see the NRA being generally a friend of free and accessible information. They have, for instance, lobbied to prevent epidemiological research into gun violence.

<comment><USER3> As I understand it, they've only lobbied to prevent biased, underhanded research: none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.

CDC can discover facts and make observations all they like, but is barred from advocacy. Why did they stop all work after that? Don't they have any work on violence and guns that was inquiry rather than advocacy?

<comment><USER4> This is not a fair summary.

The NRA lobbied Congress in the 1990s, and Congress reduced the CDC budget by the amount that had been used to study gun related deaths. This resulted in the CDC no longer funding research relating guns to deaths. Congress has specifically rejected amendments that would allow such work.

The research that was de-funded was peer reviewed and appeared in the NEJM.

[https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-02/quietly-congress- exte...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-02/quietly-congress-extends-ban- cdc-research-gun-violence)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 Presaged by HN user vorpalhex three weeks ago [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15749774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15749774)

</comment><comment><USER5> Net Neutrality or whatever this fantasy name actually implies is more likely to see the Justice department and the rest of government including other non elected officials dictate what you will be allowed to do or see. What protocols down to eventually what countries.

plus we were fine the 15 odd years leading up to the rule change and if anything it will stagnate high speed internet even more because there will be zero incentive to try except where they are told to go. like your speed or not, it will be all you will have because competitors won't have any reason to try to take down cable or phone companies.

oddly the content providers who will stand against or represent wrongly places like guns.com and have an outsized influence higher than any cable company (facebook/google/twitter) are all very much pro government less freedom except where THEY are concerned. They certainly don't like your pro gun stance

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Pretty sure that would drag them into the purview of the 1st amendment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Basically anybody with unpopular opinions or opinions that the powerful fear should support net neutrality.

<comment><USER7> Except under the current "Net Neutrality" rules, we've seen Cloudflare shut down Stormfront because the CEO woke up in a bad mood.

If Net Neutrality really worked the way everyone described, it would be great and I would be all for it.

As is, it appears to be more of a religious mantra instead of an actual policy.

<comment><USER8> Cloudflare is not directly an ISP (they do operate their own network and BGP though, so they are) for this case, rather, they were the hosters and Stormfront were the customers.

While I'm personally not happy that they killed a site they don't like, the site was still just a customer and it has nothing to do with Net Neutrality.

<comment><USER7> So if a service provider can take any content offline, it doesn't matter if ISPs block content or not.

That renders the entire "it protects controversial ideas!" point seems moot.

<comment><USER9> If you self host, no one can take your content offline.

The rules are about distribution not storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like a good idea. Many online services (like PayPal/Facebook/Craigslist) prohibit firearm and accessory sales, so it's already much more difficult to do business in this area online.

</comment><comment><USER11> From what I've read Net Neutrality will do anything. The absence of it will take everything you don't like about interacting with the Internet 10 times worse. If it's in effect however the everything will be cheaper, faster and more free then it's possible to imagine.

If it's this simple why are we limiting this line to just networking on the Internet? Why not car regulation - every car will get 100 mpg, cost $100 and drive you to a hospital should be the need arise.

<comment><USER12> The equivalent of "net neutrality" for cars would be "road neutrality"; any car can drive on any road, regardless what the contents are.

If you have a dog in the back seat, you can still drive on every road. Cat? Same deal. If you have some railroad tracks in your trunk, which obviously means you might be competing with the roads, well, you can still drive on them.

That's the more "honest" comparison.

<comment><USER13> A more compelling exploration of that analogy would be the state taking land to build a road through eminent domain, and then selling or long term leasing to a private company to build a toll road. The corporate owner of that road then signs an agreement with certain car companies (say Chevy) to have discounted tolls for that brand of car, while raising tolls on the other brands to prohibitive levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The NRA is no longer seen by many gun owners as a pro-2nd amendment org...they have become a mouthpiece for the gun INDUSTRY and will periodically support curtailing rights in favor of increased sales for gun manufacturers

I don't know why America thinks gun owners universally support the NRA

<comment><USER15> >I don't know why America thinks gun owners universally support the NRA

The only organization I've ever heard gun owners talk about when also talking about the second amendment is the NRA, and the NRA is the only organization known by the general public that claims to speak on behalf of gun owners.

Americans believe it because the NRA has been very successful at branding itself as the de facto voice of Second Amendment politics, and gun owners haven't put forth any effective opposition to that.

<comment><USER14> it is true that they dominate the media...but the tide is turning. we need net neutrality to counter the well-funded and sometimes-anti-2nd-amendment voice of the NRA

<comment><USER16> They more than dominate the media as the loudest pro-second amendment voice, they straight up have your elected representatives by the balls and bullied into submission.

This episode of Fresh Air from a couple months ago about the NRA is pretty horrifying. [https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555859571/nra-backed-gun- laws...](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555859571/nra-backed-gun-laws-have- found-success-in-state-legislatures-across-the-u-s)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Brings TV White Space Internet To South African Schools - <AUTHOR> http://www.thismoderngent.com/2013/03/google-brings-tv-white-space-internet-to-south-african-schools/

<comment><USER2> Haha, that's a really good name to use for your technology in South Africa. It's like Google fired its PR department a month ago.

<comment><USER3> Just FYI: possessive "its" does not receive an apostrophe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Disregard. Now realised the second _its_ in the sentence and you are quite right.

<comment><USER2> I missed it as well, changing it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wireless Internet is definitely the future in Africa, since they won't be able to afford to put cables everywhere. And since LTE and even 3G are still quite expensive there, white spaces/Super Wi-Fi will probably be the future of the Internet there.

<comment><USER5> In rural areas, certainly. There's plenty of cable that's been laid in South African cities.</comment></comment>


Understanding the experiences and needs of a multigenerational workforce - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.peakon.com/reports/working-better-together/ <comment><USER2> We built an entire industry around increasing engagement stats and trying to convince the permanent servant underclass to buy more stuff.

You'd have to be utterly insane to find meaning in that.

<comment><USER3> It is insane that there is a company like Peakon that its only product is related to employee engagement but their own people seems to not be happy (see glassdoor reviews).

What a time to be alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article rests on a fundamental logical error. They claim to be measuring "millennials" versus "generation x" versus "baby boomers," but actually they're measuring 18-35 year olds, etc. Those are different groups. (Millennials will continue to be millennials even when they're retired, for example.) Obviously, younger people will have less belief in the organizations mission, for example, since largely they're still not the ones setting that mission. That doesn't mean that millennials as a group find work less meaningful than their parents did at the same age.

Indeed, there is reason to believe the opposite. Millennials are generally more conservative than the baby boomers were at the same age: [https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials- conservati...](https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/millennials-conservative- generations/index.html). That may carry over to attitudes towards things like work.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is what happens when management still thinks they can just instill "loyalty" in their employees and we'll happily putt along without raises as they slowly cut more and more benefits and throw more "pizza parties" to compensate.

</comment><comment><USER6> The chart that showed which generations work most in which fields showed that gen-X and boomers work in areas that are less precarious than those populated by millennials.

I use the triad of "money, stability, and prestige," to weigh the value of a role. Young people are naturally attracted to the money-prestige roles, where older workers want stability-money roles. People who value prestige-stability roles tend to be in academia, where prestige-money roles are in the arts/media/politics/non-profit sectors. I am sure there is a gender/sex axis for these preferences as well.

In terms of what you need in a role, admit you need prestige to increase your profile that gets access to greater opportunity. Commit to valuing stability if the things that are important to you are not in the marketplace, and if money is truly your goal, recognize it's almost always made by forgoing prestige and stability - those things come after, if at all.

<comment><USER7> Money and prestige converge as the income gap grows. Also with more consolidation, the concept of stability changes since businesses themselves aren't as stable as before.

<comment><USER6> Arguably, prestige is a euphemism for "not worth it," in that it's what people offer you when they don't want to pay market rate. See: title inflation, exposure, opportunity, etc.

When you are making a decision about whether to take a role, stay with your current one, or be content with it, the problem tends to reduce to a balance of these factors. Mistaking one of these for another is the recipe for being unsatisfied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Peakon glassdoor reviews on the other hand are the worst. How a company in HR industry can have such review and still offer such weak explanations for employee engagement across different industries, at the same time be compliant to GDPR (i.e.: not have any insight from the data but highly aggregated stats?)

</comment><comment><USER8> I couldn't gleam this information easily from the article, but I presume these surveys were given to each age group at the same time.

If that's correct, couldn't age (specifically life experience) play a large factor in the results? Certainly as I get older, my perspective on work -- and everything, really -- has been changing.

<comment><USER9> It also changes with experiences. I used to be SUPER gung ho about work. Dedicated, etc. Then I was laid off.

Changed my whole perspective. Company DOES NOT love you back. If possible, love what you do, and get paid enough to be comfortable.

For instance, my commute matters to me more than just about anything now. I'm 10 minutes from the office and can work from home if I want, and it's actually one of my first thoughts when talking to a recruiter.

Environment matters to some people too more than anything, but for me I want to get along with my boss, like my job most days, not be in the car for an hour a day and get paid enough to pay my bills and have a little extra.

For context I'm 36.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Using our cutting edge analysis, we've empirically determined that highly- paid employees looking forward to their fat pensions are more satisfied with their working environment than low-paid employees with no benefits. That'll be $2MM for consulting on intergenerational workplaces, thanks."

</comment><comment><USER11> The youngest boomer, on these calculations, is 54 going on 55. With some luck he or she has established a career.

At the mid-millenial age of 31, I wasn't happy about my pay, cause it wasn't much, or for part of the time about my work, because it was tedious and needed a change.

</comment><comment><USER12> The article seems to imply direct causation of the results from membership in a 'generation', but it seems much more likely to be the result of length of time spent in the labor market.

</comment><comment><USER13> what pay? we get paid?

<comment><USER4> Adjusted for household size, millennials households are higher income than for previous generations at the same age: [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2018/12/11/young-adult...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2018/12/11/young-adult-households-are-earning-more-than-most-older- americans-did-at-the-same-age).

Millennial households headed by college graduates have an income over $100,000: [https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how- yo...](https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how-young- adulthood-today-compares-with-prior- generations/psdt_02-14-19_generations-00-04). For the silent generation in 1968, that was under $70,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars).

<comment><USER14> which is an utterly useless metric unless it also takes how the world surrounding us has changed. Just from numbers in the article, housing has become 10 times as expensive, and the millenial generation has a significantly higher debt. I didn't know college graduates made 70k in the 60s, it sounds like an absurdly high number and if I were to guess what kind of salary you'd need to have today to have the same lifestyle and financial security I'd say its at least 250k.

<comment><USER4> You're mixing inflation adjusted versus non inflation adjusted numbers. $70,000 is adjusted for inflation. Housing costs have increased faster than inflation in some places, but not by a factor of 10. Indeed, nationally, the price per square foot for housing has stayed pretty stable for the last 40 years: [https://www.supermoney.com/2019/01/inflation-adjusted- home-p...](https://www.supermoney.com/2019/01/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/)

There are two aspects to that trend:

1) People are buying bigger houses. That is consistent with the fact that they're making more money. Instead of just having extra money, they're buying bigger houses.

2) People are buying new houses in the south, where they're cheap. That makes sense too. A house in Palo Alto is a lot more than it was in 1970. But Palo Alto wasn't Palo Alto in 1970. Today it's East Egg. Your $2.5 million is buying you into a haven for the elite. But back then, it was Round Rock. You were buying into a nice, but otherwise ordinary suburb. You can still buy a nice family house in a good school district for $250,000 in Round Rock.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People aren't sharing on Facebook like they used to - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-sees-personal-sharing-decline-2016-4 <comment><USER2> Falsebook.

On one day one of my relatives shared a completely false meme about Obama. And a day later a different relative shared a completely false one about Palin. What kind of discourse can we have where all these lies just get propagated 24/7? I'm tired of having to look up everything on snopes.com or politifact.</comment>


Google's web video ambitions bump into hard reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/googles-web-video-ambitions-run-into-industry-reality/

<comment><USER2> There is an odd contrast between this article and the announcement in January of broad support for VP9 from hardware manufacturers:

 _As Google announced today, however, virtually all major hardware vendors will soon support VP9 natively in their products and allow Google's YouTube to stream HD content up to 4K directly to computers, TVs and mobile devices._

 _These new hardware partners include ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba._ [1]

I wonder if the VP9 situation changed for the worse since January, or if the article is simply misleading. It's hard to tell as the quotes in the article are mostly anectodal.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/02/googles-vp9-video-codec- get...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/02/googles-vp9-video-codec-gets-backing- from-arm-nvidia-sony-and-others-gives-4k-video-streaming-a-fighting-chance/)

<comment><USER3> Given a release announcement and an article citing multiple independent sources, I'd guess the article is more likely to give a balanced view of reality…

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the test of a technology/codec is its ability to transport pornography; I'd say this is being successfully adopted via webm.

[http://blog.4chan.org/post/81896300203/webm-support- on-4chan](http://blog.4chan.org/post/81896300203/webm-support-on-4chan)

<comment><USER5> It's also replacing GIF in places and seems to nullify the claims that missing support in Safari or IE is a problem. My gut feeling is that Microsoft and Apple have competitive (destroy Google) or ulterior motives and financial gains in mind in terms of actively blocking WebM. This stinks of anti- competitive behavior in need of regulation. If Google had actually acted on their plans to push WebM and phase out H.264 it could have either destroyed YouTube (highly unlikely) or fixed the video codec situation.

<comment><USER6> Both of those companies have been around long enough to remember the hell caused by there being a bunch of competing codecs in the 90s before the two main bodies that make video standards agreed to go the same direction. Google is the new kid that wants them to try something they have already watch fail again.

<comment><USER5> If you want one standard for everybody it better not exclude innovators without deep pockets and require licensing fees to use the standard everybody's supposed to use. The world doesn't just consist of TV stations, video production workstations and iPhones or Samsung TVs all licensing H.26*. Participators in creating a technical standard must be compensated for the their work but if it's a standard for everyday use by everyone what are the arguments for requiring licensing fees?

<comment><USER6> Having a license pool incentives continued research into video compression and provides a less risky environment for all participants (this a problem that Google bought their way out of).

Overall the licensing structure and costs are reasonable IMO except that software decoders that are given away for free shouldn't incur licensing costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not a single word about daala: too bad.

[https://gigaom.com/2013/10/15/monty-montgomery-joins- mozilla...](https://gigaom.com/2013/10/15/monty-montgomery-joins-mozilla-for- daala/)

<comment><USER8> was there any news of daala recently?

<comment><USER7> Good question: not that I know, but I don't think this should imply anything about the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think HEVC, or H.265 is moving to much better terms in licensing. Instead of requiring license fees for Software decoder, They are collecting a small fees for Hardware decoder / encoder. Since every Mobile devices will be getting it and devices are going to ship units in billions in the life time of the codec. It is going to get back all the investment. Meanwhile a free ( in price ) software decoder can be included in Browsers / Software.

 _Correct me if I am wrong on the licensing issue._ And BTW VP9 / 10 isn't patents free, Google is just paying for it and you get to use it for free.

And aside of patents issues, VP10 doesn't stand against HEVC in quality. VP9 quality never got close to H.264 AVC best encoder. And even VP10 will come close or exceed it, HEVC is here already. VPx ( The one after VP10, For some reason they dont call it VP11 ) will _hopefully_ rival HEVC.

<comment><USER10> What metric is being used to compare VPxyz with H264 and HEVC? PSNR? SSIM? Double-blind tests? Encode/decode performance? Hardware complexity? Patent encumbrance?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a recent paper comparing subjective performance between HEVC and VP9.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/238049197/HEVC-H-265-VP9-AVC- subje...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/238049197/HEVC-H-265-VP9-AVC-subjective- comparison)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The idea of producing new codecs every 18 months seems to fly in the face of the idea of getting broad hardware support.

<comment><USER12> Not if the new versions preserve compatibility. But it's true that the technology with the longer view, with fewer major changes, might prevail on that basis alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The broadcast media is absolutely H.264/5's home ground. Even if Google's codec play is wildly successful, this will be last place to fall.

Google has been fairly forthright about this e.g. WebM project has Web right there in the name, not TVM or BroadcastM or PlasticDiscM.

And as such, regular refreshes of the codec is a very Webby, a very Googly, and a very Open Source-y thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems odd that Google would expend effort to make web video patent-free while at the same time pushing for closed-source DRM in HTML5.

<comment><USER15> Patent-free video is good for the web, and makes it more likely to get broad support. So good for Google.

DRM in HTML5 means that you don't need Flash/Silverlight to play Netflix, etc. Which means that you can support video more easily. So good for Google.

<comment><USER16> Except that VP9 isn't patent-free. MPEG LA and other patent holders simply haven't bothered to flex their muscles because VP9 adoption is pretty much non-existant.

That's why I much prefer H.265. It is a defacto standard.

<comment><USER17> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8#History)

> In March 2013, MPEG LA announced that it had dropped its effort to form a > VP8 patent pool after reaching an agreement with Google to license the > patents that it alleges "may be essential" for VP8 implementation, and > granted Google the right to sub-license these patents to any third-party > user of VP8 or VP9.[26][27] This deal has cleared the way for possible MPEG > standardisation as its royalty-free internet video codec, after Google > submitted VP8 to the MPEG committee in January 2013.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Right now HEVC encoding is slow as molasses as is VP9. If Google improves libvpx encoding and pushes it into the same ballpark as libx264 there's a much higher chance of adoption. VP8 encoding is also slow and I don't know why Google can't manage to speed up libvpx with a team of experts vs the libx264 dev team.

<comment><USER17> I think it's because Google is trying to avoid patents, libx264 doesn't.

<comment><USER18> x264 doesn't use any more patents than other encoders. It's simply better because the volunteer/contracting development model is better for software quality than corporate closed-allocation.

You're freed from short term thinking and team headcounts, so everyone who works on it can be a world-class expert… if you can find them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd say, it is more of a bandwidth problem not a compression problem, web video is not as widespread as it could have been because people don't have the bandwidth to stream it, not because google failed to compress 4k video.

</comment><comment><USER20> Every couple of years we seem to have to re-learn the lessons from the VHS versus BetaMax wars.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what it's Weissman score is :)</comment>


Forbes is Blocking Ad-Blockers - pierre-renaux http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/12/16/95221/ <comment><AUTHOR> This extension fixes that:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fuckfuckadblock/hb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fuckfuckadblock/hbpkckdpldklpnkfacfjpjhajmenaejo)</comment>


Nasubi, The Naked Eggplant-Man Who Lived Off Sweepstakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.tofugu.com/2014/01/07/nasubi-the-naked-eggplant-man-who-lived-off-sweepstakes/ <comment><USER2> This American Life featured interviews with Tomoaki Hamatsu (the "contestant") and his producer recently:

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/529/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/529/transcript)

Their interviews provide additional details. Apparently the producers did feed him during the first two weeks, but only bread and water. Hamatsu did eventually have to eat dogfood. He was really forced to live naked, to the point where after the ordeal, clothes were itchy and uncomfortable, required a lot of readjusting. He was bullied into continuing when he wanted to quit.

EDIT: If Milgrim or Zimbardo were getting started today, they wouldn't be able to do any of their early work at Universities, because of ethics panels that set strict guidelines covering human subject research. They couldn't do any of it on reality TV either, because there it would be far too tame.

<comment><USER3> What are the ethics of doing research on reality TV? A researcher meets a television producer at a bar, and jokingly suggests an experiment he'd like to run. The producer pitches it as a reality TV show, and it runs. Would it be ethical to use the recorded video to write the paper the researcher originally wanted to?

<comment><USER4> If it's unethical to do it as an experiment, it would be unethical to do it as a reality TV show. Experiments are unethical when they're cruel and abusive. It's not like it's ok to be cruel and abusive as long as you're filming it for entertainment.

<comment><USER5> I think the GP asks "is it ethical to analyze _after it has already happened_?" I'd say "probably".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The year-long isolation seems to me like a much crueler part of the ordeal than anything food related. We consider it inhumane to do this to convicted murderers, even when they have interactions with guards and activity time that make them much less isolated than "Nasubi" seems to have been.

</comment><comment><USER7> Around the time this TV series aired competitions fundamentally changed in the UK.

If we go back to the days before the internet it was possible for a competition to ask a difficult question that you couldn't 'just Google'. You would have to have the breadth and depth of 'General Knowledge' or you would need to make a trip to somewhere like the library to look up the answer. This made it so that some prizes were 'deserved', imagine you had some novelty item signed by some famous sports-person, you would have to know something about that sport to enter, consequently there was reward for those that knew their stuff.

Tie-breaker questions were also quite common, as in 'complete in less than 25 words: I use the product coz...'

Then something changed with how the competitions were 'paid for'. In the days of postcards the prize came from some sponsor, the TV production crew sifted the cards and found the ones with the correct answers, then picked out some quality tiebreaker.

So then it changed to phone lines and TXT messages. Clearly it now cost money to enter, albeit that cost being a premium rate phone number - '0898' numbers etc. Money was made off the phones, even if notionally a 'national rate' call. So the answers were 'a', 'b', 'c' with questions requiring less thought than you would think possible, e.g. for the Tour de France show a bike would be the prize and the question being 'How many wheels does a two-wheeled bicycle have?' a) 2, b) 25, c) 27.

Behind the scenes the phone lines and the organisation of the competition would be out-sourced to a company with no involvement in the production of the show. The revenue from the phone competition would be enough to cover the production costs of the show and the prize would be something the producers had acquired for free anyway.

At least in the UK it is now not really that possible to live off competition winnings, as per Eggplant Man. Quality competitions have gone and the relationship between reader/viewer and those setting the competition has completely changed. Some things (but not many) were better before the internet.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've actually looked for recordings of this show several times over the years, but sadly have only turned up short clips.

Seems I missed it being put up on Hulu at one point, but you can find some of it now (sometimes even subtitled in English).

[http://vimeo.com/49589381](http://vimeo.com/49589381)

[http://vimeo.com/53656752](http://vimeo.com/53656752)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sc6kuxHbDk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sc6kuxHbDk)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SUONIiWLjs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SUONIiWLjs)

</comment><comment><USER9> This article is pretty bad. "Japan is weird! Some weird and horrible stuff happened... or did it?"

</comment><comment><USER10> If I was in change of a sweepstakes and saw his name come up I'd rig the contest somehow. Poor guy.

</comment><comment><USER11> horrible, absolutely horrible

</comment><comment><USER12> How is this hacker news?

<comment><USER13> It received enough positive votes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He volunteered. And nothing prevented him from walking out the door. Not cruel, but certainly a spectacle.

And not eating for a week or two? Many people do that - its called 'fasting' and not especially dangerous. I fast for days at a time as I see fit.

<comment><USER2> He actually tried to quit after they blindfolded him and moved him to South Korea, but producers just argued with him until he gave up. (This is a guy who is malnourished and starting to feel the psychological affects of isolation, he probably wasn't the hardest person to bend to the producers' will.)

He could have ignored them, stumbled naked into the streets of a foreign country and tried to beg for help, maybe using some form of pantomime.

Not literal locks and chains, but in the beginning, he probably didn't know what to expect, and by the end of the series, there was some strong psychological pressure keeping him there.

<comment><USER14> And still it was his choice. Hard to ignore the strong enticement of fame and fortune (whether he was right about that or not).

<comment><USER3> And Stockholm Syndrome victims just get kidnapped by people who turn out to be right after all.

<comment><USER14> That's a straw man. He's been interviewed, has he made any claims of being brainwashed? No in fact he continues to pursue the limelight.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Silverlight to back Ruby, Python in browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/09/microsoft-silverlight-back-ruby-python-browser

<comment><USER2> My personal alternative is to read _Javascript: The Good Parts_ and just get better at Javascript.

I don't see the sense in adding a fiddly, potentially fragile additional layer of code to the client side -- to say nothing of tying myself to _Microsoft_ \-- just so that I can use Ruby syntax instead of Javascript syntax. Yeah, I like Ruby, but it's not like Ruby is some kind of massive feature or performance win. It _might_ be different if the browser only supported assembly language, or FORTRAN, but Javascript is pretty nice.

I mean, what's next? A Python port of jQuery to run in your Python-enabled Silverlight application? Don't we have something better to do?

</comment><comment><USER3> Bah! who needs a microsoft-backed product when you have _why?: <http://hackety.org/2008/06/09/dismantlingBrowserPlus.html>

:)</comment>


Tell HN: Meeting Satoshi  - <AUTHOR> back in 2011 I convinced my wife who ran a small creperie in DUMBO, Brooklyn to start accepting bitcoins. We were one of the first in the world physical location that accepted this new digital currency [1]. In the next couple of month we received a lot of attention, but no one has purchased anything with btc. Then one day, my wife calls me and informs that there is someone who would like to pay with bitcoins. I got excited and asked her to take a picture of the guy because he is the first one and it's a historic moment for us.
He bought 2 crepes and paid using his smartphone and our QR code with btc address. One crepe and a lemonade  was 1 bitcoin at that time :)
After he finished his food my wife approached him and asked to take a picture of him for  being the first. He blushed and politely declined citing that bitcoin is an anonymous currency.  He wished us well,  added that bitcoins should already be in our account and left.
My wife called me back and revealed that he refused to take a picture. So I asked her to describe him. She portrayed the guy as  a humble polite Japanese man in his 50s. We joked maybe it was Satoshi, but I dismissed the idea. I assumed it was some one from Mt Gox since it was located in Japan.
Today I showed the picture of Satoshi in Newsweek to my wife and she recognized him.
http://bitcoinbabe.blogspot.com/2011/07/bitcoin-sex-drugs-and-baklava-and.html <comment><USER2> Goddamnit guys. Let him be. Come on. Are we hackers here or are we paparazzi?

I thought Hacker News was a club of quality-valuing people that saw the world from a hacker's perspective and questioned the status quo. My view is shifting with every comment posted here.

<comment><USER3> Hi, newsflash "hackers" are people too, and who doesn't love being in the spotlight?

<comment><USER4> Yes, there are people in the world with poor manners and still more people that have lapses in judgement, but neither is an excuse for dismissing civility altogether in a community that selects for it.

These people are trying to doxx a man using the excuse that he is a public figure, as if that strips him of his humanity. It's a positively shameful behavior, and should not be encouraged or allowed to continue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am not going to reveal any more information that I already have. I respect his will to stay anonymous. It was just an emotional post without a thought of provoking a witch-hunt. Satoshi has been an inspiration to me, I apologize for any inconvenience I might cause.

<comment><USER5> I saw no harm in the post. Thanks for sharing.

IMO, the criticisms are unfounded and just another example of the HN's community recent penchant to hate on anything and everything.

<comment><USER6> Recent?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All of you asking for the transaction ID are incorrigible. The man clearly wants privacy. The kind of privacy that you all opine for every time there's some governmental incursion. Or some startup gets hacked or whatever.

Leave the man be.

<comment><USER8> If the man wanted privacy, he shouldn't have designed a system that broadcasts every transaction you make out onto the entire internet.

<comment><USER2> Well we haven't exactly found him through this information yet, but disclosing it after the news of earlier today I think is unethical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not that I doubt this story, but human memory is not very reliable. There's many studies that have been done on this. The fact that your wife would remember someone from three years ago who she met for 20 minutes is a little far fetched even if it was a significant meeting.

It also matters how you showed the picture. Depending on how you did it can influence people to remember incorrectly.

<comment><USER10> Furthermore, it's known that Europeans make errors in recognizing Asian faces.

From 1987:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3627925](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3627925)

Ten European subjects made significantly more errors in recognising Asian faces than European faces

[http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/6/440.short](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/6/440.short)

Koreans who grew up in Europe recognize Asian faces much worse than Koreans who grew up in Korea, and Koreans who grew up in Korea make mistakes in recognizing European faces.

It's called the "Cross-race effect": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- race_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect)

OP seems to be American so I'd wager that his/her wife is, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please don't disclose the transaction. It's a serious decision, at least.

<comment><USER8> There is no social expectation that store keepers shouldn't talk about famous people that patronize their establishment. In fact, unless the nature of the establishment merits sensitivity, the expectation is the exact opposite.

<comment><USER4> There is a social expectation that an establishment of any kind not publish their customers' transaction information publicly.

If nothing else, it's in poor taste.

<comment><USER12> I'm not familiar with many details of bitcoin, so correct me if this is wrong, but aren't all bitcoin transactions public for anyone to see?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the address for the creperie's wallet: 1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC

Blockexplorer: [https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3J...](https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC)

Source: [http://o-crepes.com/](http://o-crepes.com/)

<comment><USER14> Following the first 'received' transaction all the way back I found this address that has had 432000 coins sent to it from dozens of addresses on 2011-06-12. A lot of the funds sent from this address were tumbled, so if it associated with Satoshi then he was using a tumbler pretty early on. It could also be a MtGox address.

[https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KLahQtqDNAXvrjNyfvgSBtAhw...](https://blockexplorer.com/address/1KLahQtqDNAXvrjNyfvgSBtAhwco5ZxLp4)

<comment><USER14> Hmm. It seems possible that this address was a Gox location, since following the tumbling trail led me to this address:

[https://blockexplorer.com/address/1eHhgW6vquBYhwMPhQ668HPjxT...](https://blockexplorer.com/address/1eHhgW6vquBYhwMPhQ668HPjxTtpvZGPC)

This is the famous "424242" transaction that Mark Kerpeles signed to prove that he was in control of enough BitCoins to keep Gox solvent in 2011. Perhaps the first 'received transaction' wasn't actually Satoshi's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think we're at the point now where we need a mod to step in and delete this entire post.

You guys are literally trying to _doxx_ this man.

<comment><USER15> He's already been doxxed by Newsweek. They even published a picture of his house with the street address clearly visible.

<comment><USER4> That's no excuse and you know it.

<comment><USER16> You sound like the CIA saying the leaked documents are not public information.

There is no 'doxxing' to be done anymore. Satoshi has been 'doxxed' as much as anyone can be in real life.

If you are worried about the anonymity of his Bitcoins transactions (and all other's that could be identified from that), I'm sorry, there is no such thing as complete anonymity (as the Bitcoin community apparently still has to learn).

<comment><USER4> This is not about anonymity. He posted his name in the original Bitcoin white paper after all.

This is about an individual's right to privacy. His finances and personal life have just as much right to protection as yours or mine, and just because you may have the power to disclose that information does not mean you should.

For god's sake, you even cite the leaked documents in your argument. Do you remember why that's a big deal? Why we're all so upset that the government has been invading our right to privacy despite our knowing all along that they have technically had the capability and we only expected they would exercise proper caution and due process in wielding it?

You're not some internet economics superhero detective, and I don't care what the impact to the economics of bitcoin would be, that still does not give you the ethical right to harass Satoshi Nakamoto.

<comment><USER16> You missed the point. The magazine has already done as much damage to his privacy as it`s possible. Destroying this thread accomplishes nothing.

Thus, my next argument that you must be worried about his Bitcoin transactions (which might not remain anonymous for very long). Which is a valid concern but impossible given his notoriety now. There are just too many curious people already digging.

You're implying that, because of my initial argument, I do not care about his privacy. You're wrong.

Being realistic on the Internet seems to be an thankless task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wallet of the store: 1KfQKmME7bQm5AesPiizWk6h3JPUekwoBC

source: [https://twitter.com/Ocrepes/status/83671795693133824](https://twitter.com/Ocrepes/status/83671795693133824)

<comment><USER18> now everyone is tracing a maze of chains to discover the account with millions...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can you identify the transaction? We are fairly certain which bitcoins belong to the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

</comment><comment><USER20> Your crepes are awfully expensive now. ;-) [http://o-crepes.com/bitcoin/#](http://o-crepes.com/bitcoin/#)

</comment><comment><USER21> Do you know which BitCoin it is? This is a collectors piece and you can probably trace its lineage!

<comment><USER22> Oh yay, a collectors' item. So, some bitcoins may be more valuable than others!

<comment><USER23> This is kind of the idea behind colored coins.

[http://coloredcoins.org/](http://coloredcoins.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> No wonder Satoshi wanted to be anonymous. People are already tracing the transaction and the BitCoin.

Though it might just be a lesson in how "anonymous" bitcoin transactions actually are.

</comment><comment><USER25> DO NOT DISCLOSE THE TRANSACTION ID, PLEASE

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm curious because this suggests that Satoshi was maybe at the Bitcoin World Conference and Expo in New York, which was in August 2011.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _and politely declined citing that bitcoin is an anonymous currency._

I wonder if he still believes that today.

<comment><USER2> I wonder about a lot of what he thinks of Bitcoin nowadays and I would love to hear it from him, but I'm not going to ask for it. He may come forward on his own, when and if he wants to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> really fascinating story: now we must ask you the Transaction ID :D

<comment><USER29> I love how smiley faces make it easy to spot evil :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What cellphone app allowed you to buy and sell Bitcoins in July 2011? I didn't think QR codes were regularly used till late 2011/early 2012.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, there were several floating around at that time, as I recall. For example, Bitpay started up around that time, and they had a QR-code-enabled mobile app when they launched.

The first commit of bitcoin-wallet (most popular Android wallet presently) was March 8, 2011: [https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin- wallet](https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin-wallet)

Here's another from that time: [https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin- android](https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin-android)

<comment><USER30> Thanks. I do remember using that one or one similar in maybe Fall of that year. I believe the first ones actually downloaded the entire Blockchain which was maybe a gig or two at the time. The one I had became unwieldy enough that I eventually just uninstalled it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Remember everyone, if you get the correct transaction ID you will not learn too much. It's widely known the vast majority of Satoshi's 1,000,000 bitcoin still sit in their mined blocks. So you might search back to a small set of addresses probably totalling a few thousand bitcoin but nothing spectacular like a giant 50,000+ address.

</comment><comment><USER33> >Invents a currency that allows all your received and paid values to be tracked by the entire world.

>Says it's anonymous.

Good luck with that.

<comment><USER34> > apparently knows nothing about bitcoin and the level of anonymity it > provides.

> comments on it anyway.

good luck indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hey, I tried to go to your place to spend some bitcoins last time I was in NYC, which was about 6 months ago. It didn't look like your store was in business anymore, though, and a tweet to a blog post seemed to confirm it. Too bad, I'd still like to spend some BTC at a brick-and-mortar store.

</comment><comment><USER36> Oh what a witch-hunt after Satoshi, he wants to be left alone from the public so please respect it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Eventually the government is going to come after him. If you just happen to be sitting on 400 million without paying taxes the government is going to be interested.

<comment><USER38> That simply isn't true. As someone else said, taxes are not owed on bitcoin until you realize your profit by converting them to USD or spending them on goods.

<comment><USER39> Because really, things don't have value until they're sold. Until then, there's just assumed value.

He might have $400m worth of bitcoins, but can he actually sell them and get $400m for them? It would be tricky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Would you be able to give us the Transaction ID for this? :)

</comment><comment><USER41> And most of New York wants photos of athletes, musicians and movie stars. :-)

I wonder if his motivation was testing, or to generate some seed business for it?

</comment><comment><USER42> How many bitcoins did he pay at the time? (no need to be exact to the satoshi if you want to maintain anonymity, i'm just curious)

</comment><comment><USER43> OP: Your account is interesting, but was it really necessary to confirm the doxxing?

</comment><comment><USER44> Hello neighbor. I've eaten your crepes. :D

</comment><comment><USER45> Why does anybody care?

</comment><comment><USER14> Amazing - that you had the foresight to ask for a picture and he had the foresight to politely decline.

Do you think Satoshi travelled all the way from his home in California to your creperie in Brooklyn just to try out BitCoin in real life?

</comment><comment> FT-clox We need to know the adress he used!</comment>


Elon Musk Makes $82B Gambit to Silence Tesla Critics - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/for-elon-musk-an-82-billion-gambit-to-silence-telsa-s-critics <comment><USER2> If the company needs a massive infusion of cash (as many analysts believe), and obtaining it from a public offering or large investors is not possible at a valuation Musk is comfortable with, he has little choice but to write a big check himself under cover of taking the company private.

<comment><USER3> I think they story that they need a 'massive infusion of cash' is simply false. I have no idea why anybody would believe that. It is not in accordance with their own guidance or what we know from their production numbers and cashflow numbers.

<comment><USER2> _I have no idea why anybody would believe that._

Well, a few reasons are listed in articles like this: [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-burns- cash/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-burns-cash/)

It's clearly not false to state that the company will need a lot of money to scale going forward, compared to the money needed in the past. The only question is whether that money comes from revenue, debt, or investment. The revenue projections don't come close to covering it in the short term, and the company has already taken on quite a bit of debt with respect to its assets, making it unclear whether it could get loans for the amount of cash needed to scale up to "real car company"-sized manufacturing capacity.

Maybe they don't need money, and Musk is just taking advantage of undervaluation to make a great deal. But it's certainly not crazy to think that they do need money, and if so, taking the company private may be the only viable option.

<comment><USER4> > Maybe they don't need money, and Musk is just taking advantage of > undervaluation to make a great deal. But it's certainly not crazy to think > that they do need money, and if so, taking the company private may be the > only viable option.

This doesn't make any sense. Companies don't go private because they need money unless it's a private buy-out. There is no indication at all that TSLA would have any trouble accessing the debt markets. In fact what we see is TSLA turning _away_ investors like the Saudis who are eager to increase their exposure to the firm. If TSLA was so desperate for money why would they be turning away some of the biggest investors in the world?

<comment><USER5> > There is no indication at all that TSLA would have any trouble accessing the > debt markets.

Actually there are a lot of indications that junk bond markets have little appetite for Tesla offerings:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/tesla- bon...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/tesla-bonds-down- to-86-cents-start-to-flash-warning-signals)

[https://www.thestreet.com/investing/tesla-junk-bonds- sending...](https://www.thestreet.com/investing/tesla-junk-bonds-sending- powerful-market-signal-14643694)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>