Ask HN: What this fact means about Twitter (and web-startups in general) - <AUTHOR>

Twitter is a successful web service. Perhaps, I can say it is amazingly successful, this is nothing to be argued about.
Yet, it seems to be the only popular web service which require installation of third parties and sometimes desktop applications to power-use it. That is, using gmail within your native mail client (via POP/SMTP) is nothing comparing to the gmail client itself. Same applies to youtube, facebook, friendfeed, and any other one you can think of.
Those services are all shipped with a well invested web client that evolves and renew itself once in a while. Twitter.com on the other hand, is becoming a mass, or perhaps useless, if you want to follow more than 25 people. tweetdeck seems to be far better client than twitter.com
This support PG's claim that twitter is a protocol, not just a web application or a web service. As such, we can treat it as torrent or any other protocol/hub.
But the point I am trying to make is that we might should look at web startups from different angle. In an era which everyone is willing to move into the cloud, perhaps one should focus about infrastructures and APIs and not on a rich client development, leaving the clients and apps to the echo-system which would built around the core service.
I refer to twitter.com as a demo application for the twitter capabilities, and not the the "twitter". this distinguish between twitter and twitter.com is astonishing to me, and I would be glad to hear more opinions about this.
love you all,
Tzury <comment><USER2> Facebook revenue (2009): ~$650m

Twitter revenue (2009): ~$4m

Twitter just don't seem to have a business model. They're making a paltry handful of cash from sponsored tweets and a slightly larger handful from the Bing deal. Beyond that, they don't seem to have much of a plan. I don't see how you can effectively monetise a platform like Twitter. It smacks of bad old bubble era thinking. Great protocol, great community, great service, lousy business.

<comment><USER3> "they don't seem to have much of a plan"

Considering Evan William's success with Blogger and Jack Dorsey's early success with Square I think it would be disingenuous to think that they don't have plan just because they're not broadcasting it.

<comment><USER4> If memory serves Evan Williams had to fire everyone including himself in the process of getting Blogger to the break-even point; a point that it reached only a few months prior to it's sale to Google. He seems like a resilient guy but it doesn't seem like he has any exceptional ability to generate profits. I don't know Jack Dorsey's back story so I can't comment there. Can you explain your thinking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree, for the most part. More and more webapps are providing APIs for 3rd party developer. And why not, right? It benefits everyone.

But I think Twitter understood from the beginning that they didn't need a super awesome native client. Why would they? We were blasting 140 character messages around, mimicking the way we text from our phones. Their core client device was, and still is, the mobile phone.

But consider Facebook, which is generally more complicated than Twitter. If we had to deal with competing, unpolished 3rd party clients from the beginning of Facebook, I don't think Facebook would have taken off. In this case, it's good that Facebook controls the experience; it's a complicated one.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think importance of owning UI/UX has been underestimated lately because importance of APIs and 3rd party ecosystem has been recognized. Especially in mobile space, many investors seem to suggest that don't concentrate building UX, but outsource it to 3rd parties by creating good APIs.

I'm not convinced that this is the right approach as UX really defines what your service is about. Twitter might be an outlier here, it's a rare startup that is succesfully operating mainly in protocol space.

Many other successful services are owning their main UX. E.g. Facebook, Dropbox, Foursquare, 37signals products to name a few. They have APIs and it's clear that those provide real value, but core experience is still defined by their UIs.

Now that we are starting to have open source or inexpensive scalable solutions for backend, developing good UX is actually becoming the hard part. If you outsource this hard work to 3rd parties without providing great financial opportunities for them, you are actually not providing value .

</comment><comment><USER7> Tzury, I absolutely agree with you. The power of Twitter certainly lies in their API.

To many other posters here: Twitter does have a strategy. At this year's Chirp the Twitter exec team and Ev Williams in particular struck me as being very strategic and thoughtful about their progress. Promoted Tweets in combination with their position as a channel (and not a tool) are a powerful and economically promising combination. And this is only one of their three pillars of monetizations. IIRC the other two were not disclosed.

Another note: A company can only develop technology so fast. Twitter is currently growing by a couple of employees every week and soon they will have the resources to address many of the points mentioned here.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been thinking about this for some time but you put it into words very well. However, I'd like to suggest that Twitter is more than a protocol; Twitter is a decent protocol and a great, huge user base. It's more than the sum of its parts I'd say.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this goes hand in hand with the mantra, "Do a few things, and do them right."

<comment><USER10> Bingo. They are taking it slowly and it seems to be paying off. I mean, shit they didn't even have an official mobile Twitter client until recently. I use to be so critical of them, but I think they get it, but they want to be sure that their users don't feel like they 'sold out.' They want to actually provide values in their services and the way that they monetize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My take on this: [http://berislavlopac.tumblr.com/post/615858128/the-future- of...](http://berislavlopac.tumblr.com/post/615858128/the-future-of-web- browser)

</comment><comment><USER12> You might say Twitter's success is unarguable, but 37signals are arguing it all the time, and pretty convincingly IMO. The term "success" has a pretty specific meaning in the context of a business — "highly profitable" — and Twitter does not fit that definition very well.

</comment><comment><USER13> Depends how you look at things I guess. Without simplifying the discussion Twitter's value is in the stream and data they generate, not their userbase. Having encouraged an ecosystem this is a conscious choice they now seemingly want to rectify.

</comment><comment><USER14> A better question might be "What other protocols are we missing?"

<comment><USER15> payment protocol.</comment></comment>


Politics Is the Mind-Killer (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer <comment><USER2> If I'm interpreting this correctly, it seems that the author falls victim to the same fallacies he mentioned in his post. By assuming that all discussion of politics inherently devolves into tribalism, he invokes the all-or-nothing attitude which, as he mentioned, is often present among politically "engaged" people with minimal experience with views outside their sphere of opinions.

It's also worth noting that I notice some people will often conflate, usually accidentally, holding strong opinions (politically or otherwise) with not being exposed to a wide enough range of opinions/not being educated enough.

In addition to this, people will often hold a series of political views out of ideological consistency, rather than tribalism, a factor which strangely is minimised in the discourse surrounding it.

I find that, as long as you're with reasonably politically aware adults, you can have positive conversations as long as you are both aware of your moral bases and discuss in good faith.

<comment><USER3> The tendency toward ideological consistency seems itself driven by the tribalism tendencies of the ego-survival mechanism that assesses a self's fitness to be protected by the in-group they're expressing allegiance to / holding an identity/belief system of.

I think it doesn't take a realistic view of humans or the mind to try to draw a clean distinction between these two as if they are separate behaviors in a human ego.

<comment><USER2> I'd argue that the trend can come from two places, the less rational type you mentioned which appears to occur to enhance compatibility with an in-group, and the type which is based on having a set of base moral values which then affects our political beliefs. The latter of these can be seen as creating one layer of abstraction above the values, perhaps aiding in expressing those views, as well as enabling discussion with those who arrived on their views without consultation with their morals (due to copying others views, going with current trends in ideology, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this man must feel compelled to write a new post every few days? Every week? I don't see the motivation for posting this otherwise. It embodies no thesis of any consequence.

<comment><USER5> Can't writing be it's own end? Does it need a thesis? Simply writing can be a great way to organize your thoughts on a matter. This just happens to be posted online

<comment><USER4> My comments are usually more positive, so I am glad you pushed back on me.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: NSA SSL Private Keys? - <AUTHOR>

So we know that the NSA are capturing the majority of internet traffic passing through the USA, currently it's a bit more vage on how much access they have to the data/servers of Facebook, Google, Twitter etc...
And a high percentage of the internet traffic these days it SSL encrypted, especially the more interesting traffic.
So what's the chance that the NSA have Google's, Facebook's Private SSL keys? and their actually decrypting the mirrored internet traffic that we know their capturing? <comment><USER2> The biggest risk is one of the X.509v3 certificates for various Certification Authorities (CAs) is compromised.

[http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/firefox-adding-trusted- ca/](http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/firefox-adding-trusted-ca/)

Discussion of SSL on cryptome: [http://cryptome.org/0005/ssl- broken.htm](http://cryptome.org/0005/ssl-broken.htm)

<comment><USER3> No, it's not; you can only use a compromised CA cert to MITM traffic, and if you do that, the Chrome users who have Google's actual key identity pinned in their browser will detect you doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty much nil. The NSA isn't stupid; even in the (exceptionally unlikely) case that they can just MITM any SSL connection without arousing suspicion in even a well-monitored network, why would they reveal that? _Much_ easier to just hack your computer/telephone/...

</comment><comment><USER5> More likely they have access to a trusted CA, or wildcard certificates that they can use to apply MitM to specific traffic. Almost the same effect, but no key stealing is necessary. (although that would require redirecting your traffic rather than passive capture)</comment>


In Birds' Songs, Brains and Genes, Erich Jarvis Finds Clues to Speech - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/erich-jarvis-in-birds-songs-brains-and-genes-he-finds-clues-to-speech-20180130/ <comment><USER2> I started filming birds in super slow motion 240fps whilst I fed them. I was amazed at how much went on, it is as if their life happened at 10x speed with lots of in air action that you would not see otherwise.

I don't know their language but they are not schreeching for the sake of it. When you listen to their utterances in slow motion it is more like 'whale song', it is hard to believe something is not being said.

The birds I study have at rest heart rates that are stupidly fast. I do wonder if their smaller brains are being used ten times as fast and therefore do not need to be ten times larger. RISC vs CISC.

Until recently you would have to pay a fortune for a posh camera to do slow motion. Now with mobile phones a lot is possible and study is accessible to more people.</comment>


Google yanks sketchy iMessage clone for Android from app store - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242634/Google_yanks_sketchy_iMessage_clone_for_Android_from_app_store <comment><USER2> On the first page it's mentioned the fact that the app can download other APKs in the background. This very thing is disallowed. IIRC that's how Facebook got chastised a while back too.

<comment><USER3> And here was have a prime example of why, despite all the opinion to the contrary[1], there is a clear need for a more stringent review process for Android apps. This is exactly the kind of thing which could have been caught by some kind of run-time analysis, either by hand or through some automated process that's part of the "approval" needed to be on the Play Store. Given Google's technical chops, I doubt they would have a hard time checking for this automatically at submission time, so they wouldn't have to hire a staff of human reviewers like Apple does. It might slow down the process of posting things to the store just slightly, but in the end it would benefit users.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6329490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6329490)

<comment><USER4> There is an automated process, even though it's very very far from perfect, called Google Bouncer [http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2012/02/android-and- securit...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2012/02/android-and- security.html) but I doubt this kind of case could be automated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's an interesting part in the linked article, including a reference to HN:

 _He found that iMessage Chat for Android essentially inserted itself into the middle of the normal back-and-forth between a user and Apple 's iMessage servers. In a thread on Hacker News [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435902)], Freeman spelled out his findings._

At least on iOS, the man-in-the-middle part would not seem unusual:

As far as I know, messaging apps that want to be available to the user all the time, need the user credentials in order to keep the users online since there is no way on iOS for an app to reliably run all the time. And such messaging apps use the user credentials on their own server(s) to keep the users online and reachable. If the app is no longer running and a new message arrives, the server sends a notification to iOS and the user can open the app if he wants to read the new message.

A major difference is of course that the iMessage user credentials are (cannot be?) used only for messaging.

<comment><USER6> You seem to have everything backwards, which makes me question whether you read the actual comment as opposed to just attempting to guess at things from the snippet :(.

What you said would make some sense if the client connected to someone in the middle who then connected to the server. Instead, the client connects to the server, but when data comes back it is forwarded to someone in the "middle" (really, off to the side) who then processes it and returns results to forward back to the server.

In essence, the device is in the middle of a connection from the developer to the service, as opposed to the developer being in the middle of a connection from the device to the service. In such a configuration you are not getting any of the benefits you are talking about, as if the device isn't online it won't be able to maintain the connection on behalf of the developer's server.

(Also, I must point out the normal situation with such messaging apps on iOS is that you get them from the service itself. In addition to being less common on Android, it is thereby interesting to point out to people who might not realize the app is implemented in this weird way--some people who even analyzed it assumed this was a side-channel for analytics--so they can make the right call for themselves.)

<comment><USER7> This is very standard with web scraping implementations. Honestly, if you are reversing someone's protocol or scraping their web site, you are stupid if you put the implementation on the client because it will break all the time. Instead you put it on a server where you can fix breaks instantly. The server usually delays/shows stale data while things are broken as well, then does what it can to replay once fixed.

<comment><USER8> On the other hand putting things on the server means that you can get cut (by IP) and also brings the need of dealing with scaling problems.

<comment><USER9> You can always scale easier on the server platform, as well as spin up new instances with new IPs on any VM platform.

Handling it on the server allows you some control over the chaos. Not so much when all the logic is on your mobile app.

<comment><USER10> You aren't suggesting that it scales easier on the server than on the mobile client, are you? Nothing would scale better for this app than putting the logic on the client -- it's a customer's phone communication with an Apple server. This leaves nothing for him to scale, anywhere, except for engineering to push out updates.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't say you're scaling properly if you have millions of mobile clients failing to make the proper calls to a service because the protocol has been changed. I'd say its damn near irresponsible to do that. It's not scaling if you're just throwing packets against the wall when the protocol or service unexpectedly changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those of you who are unaware, it got pulled the same day it was put on the play store. It did not exist long enough to do any serious damage.

</comment><comment><USER7> There isn't any API for iMessage as far as I know, collecting username and password was the only way to do it. It's a lot like many Twitter apps nowadays just ask for username and password since the Twitter API, which is needed for oauth/xauth, is pretty locked down and useless nowadays.

<comment><USER12> Correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression Twitter only supported oauth nowadays with password auth being phased out a few years ago.

<comment><USER13> The Twitter API only supports OAuth now. There is an API method developers can use to jumpstart the OAuth flow with a password but this is restricted to apps that Twitter allows to use it.

<comment><USER12> I was not aware of this, thank you for informing me. Do you know if this is like Facebook+Spotify (and only a couple other FB apps that can use password) or is it much wider-spread in the Twitter ecosystem?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pardon my ignorance but doesn't apple own rights to the term 'app store'?

Update: apparently I'm wrong [http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/legal- privacy/15714.h...](http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/legal- privacy/15714.html)

<comment><USER15> Google calls theirs the Play Store. Of course, that's not going to stop everybody else calling it an "app store".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It was only a matter of time. I think everyone saw this coming from a mile away.

</comment><comment><USER17> Still waiting for the promise Apple made about opening the Facetime protocol during a Keynote in the Jobs era to be fulfilled.

<comment><USER18> What was the exact quote? I remember it as him saying that it's using open technology which it is. I think people misunderstood this.

<comment><USER19> Steve Jobs at the 2010 Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco: "We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard."

People seem to forget how frequently Steve Jobs broke his promises to developers over the years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm getting an error in the app now too, "Cant connect to server"

</comment><comment><USER21> so erm... they should remove all cloud services that require a 3rd party login (theres quite a few well known ones) and all chinese apps sounds rational!

if youre chinese youre a terrorist anyway - right?

and then there is no mention of which policy it violates. so much for the benefit of the doubt - this all sound very arbitrary at least in tfa

<comment><USER22> "iMessage" is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. in the United States and other countries. "iMessage Chat" violates this trademark. Infringement of intellectual property, such as trademarks, is prohibited by the Google Play Developer Terms Of Service. There is nothing arbitrary about this.

<comment><USER6> The app also used the iMessage icon from Apple.

<comment><USER23> Also every emoji from the app.

<comment><USER24> Other apps (e.g. Whatsapp) use the same emojis.

<comment><USER25> How do they not get hit with C&Ds?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Conflict reigns over the history and origins of money - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/money-ancient-origins-debate-mystery <comment><USER2> My impression after reading Graeber's book was that he was probably right in questioning the simple story of a barter economy transitioning into a money economy. But he's way too simplistic in his own narrative. It is hard for me to see how people could start denominating debt in terms of money without at least some limited sense of using money to replace barter.

He also seems to think that this is the foundation of all economic thought and thus he suggests that all of economics is wrong because they have assumed an incorrect origin of money. (I exaggerate, but not by much).

<comment><USER3> Graeber's point was that barter is not used in small societies. In debt-ed social relations were the means of negotiated trade. Paying for things with currency was how one dealt with strangers in a spot trade. In our world most interactions are alienated transactions with strangers, thus money is used. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs&feature=youtu.be&t=1500)

<comment><USER2> It has been a number of years since I read the book, but my recollection was that he argued that money was invented to quantify debt and that any kind of currency was a later invention.

<comment><USER4> Likewise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As I've gotten older, I've stopped caring about these black and white style comparisons.

Instead of saying that money was used to facilitate trade OR used to pack back debts, why not both?

Given how useful money is, I only imagine that it solved many problems that many civilizations and villages ran into.

<comment><USER6>
        Recent research from the Americas adds new questions to
        the debate. These investigations suggest that money
        independently appeared for different reasons and assumed
        different tangible forms in many parts of the world,
        starting thousands of years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This isn't a debate. Historians and anthropologists actually have some idea of how the past works. I guess if you want some weird 19th century idea of the past you might want to talk to an economist.

<comment><USER8> > _guess if you want some weird 19th century idea of the past you might want > to talk to an economist_

The myth appears to be that economists believe in the barter hypothesis. It was prompted by Adam Smith and subsequently disproven. Using the barter hypothesis as an argument against economics is like using Haeckel's embryos as an argument against evolution.

<comment><USER9> I believe the barter hypothesis is already in Aristotle, so it's perhaps several millenia old.

Anyway, the issue does run deeper, since the barter theory is implicit in for instance theories of banking, inflation and the money supply. See "veil over barter". It's pretty important economists get it right.

<comment><USER8> > _the barter theory is implicit in for instance theories of banking, > inflation and the money supply_

No it isn't. (There isn't a single theory for any of banking, inflation or monetary theory.) If anything, modern economics starts with the fiction of a perfectly liquid medium of exchange that can be infinitesimally divided, borrowed and loaned. Low-liquidity economics ( _e.g._ bartering) is an edge case to modern theories.

<comment><USER10> Another fiction in modern economics is the rational man that always maximizes utility.

<comment><USER8> > _Another fiction in modern economics is the rational man that always > maximizes utility_

Nope, this is another fictional fiction. _Homo economicus_ is a pedagogical tool and toy model. Utilitarian economics feature pretty much nowhere because defining a single utility function for real people is impossible.

When modelling agents, it can be useful to start with a rationality assumption and then add complications. Or not. Depends on what you're studying. The entire exercise of valuation, for example, asks "what would a rational person pay for this asset" and then looks to see if someone will sell it to you for less. The toy model is useful even if it doesn't repreeent the present reality in the same way models of thermodynamic systems at equilibrium are useful.

<comment><USER9> > Homo economicus is a pedagogical tool and toy model. Utilitarian economics > feature pretty much nowhere because defining a single utility function for > real people is impossible.

Then what is the point? I mean, seriously, what is the point of teaching it? Why not simply use a different model that doesn't result in all kinds of awkward edge cases?

<comment><USER8> Same reason we start with frictionless surfaces in physics. It's simple to grasp and extends gracefully. I provided an example of valuation exercises as a practical application. Nobody thinks price = value. But by asking "what would a rational me pay for this bond" and then observing the price, we gain useful insight.

If the word rational bothers you, replace it with equilibrium. As to why we don't use other models, these models predict realty better than purely behavioural and other exotic models. They're Newtonian mechanics to the economics discipline.

<comment><USER9> > If the word rational bothers you, replace it with equilibrium.

The world is a complex adaptive system, how does micro or macro equilibrium fit that any better than homo economicus? If anything it sounds even worse to me...

> They're Newtonian mechanics to the economics discipline.

To me this is really the crux of the issue... how is it desirable to model the world in terms of static mechanics, when it is clearly a dynamic system?

For example, I find this on the Wikipedia page about Market Clearing:

 _In economics, market clearing is the process by which, in an economic market, the supply of whatever is traded is equated to the demand, so that there is no leftover supply or demand. The new classical economics assumes that, in any given market, assuming that all buyers and sellers have access to information and that there is not "friction" impeding price changes, prices always adjust up or down to ensure market clearing._

And then at the bottom there's this nugget:

 _Most economists see the assumption of continuous market clearing as not very realistic. However, many see the assumption of flexible prices as useful in long-run analysis, since prices are not stuck forever: market-clearing models describe the equilibrium towards which the economy gravitates. Therefore, many macroeconomists feel that price flexibility is a good assumption for studying long-run issues, such as growth in real GDP. Other economists argue that price adjustment may take so much time that the process of equilibration may change the underlying conditions that determine long-run equilibrium. That is, there may be path dependence, as when a long depression changes the nature of the "full employment" period that follows._

I mean, I have never seen an econ 101 lecture mention things like path dependence, which seems to be _a very big deal_ indeed. That to me makes it seem this emphasis on being the equivalent of Newtonian mechanics is a bug and not a feature. I mean, I don't want to single anyone out here, but it seems to me this talk about "simplifying assumptions" and "toy models" is just some elaborate ex-post justification for keeping outdated (and hugely invested-in) models around.

<comment><USER11> > The world is a complex adaptive system, how does micro or macro equilibrium > fit that any better than homo economicus? If anything it sounds even worse > to me...

Chemistry is a field of complex and dynamic systems, yet we are still able to talk about equilibria there. Equilibrium doesn't mean nothing is changing - and in fact, it doesn't mean that the equilibrium corresponds to any actual observable state of the world. Due to aforementioned dynamism, observation effects, and other complications, it may not be possible to observe the true equilibrium state at all, but it's still a useful construct in our understanding of the chemical world.

> I mean, I have never seen an econ 101 lecture mention things like path > dependence

I'm sorry to hear that you've never experienced a good introductory economics course. However, that experience (or lack thereof, as the case may be) doesn't serve as testimony against the field.

<comment><USER9> I'm starting to notice a trend whenever I engage with economics on these matters. In fact this pattern shows up _every time_ , it's like they are trained to do this.

It starts with an acknowledgement that the theory is stylized beyond any practical purpose, or that it is merely a pedagogical "tool". They then point out that any fault I see with economic theory and/or methodology must be my own failure to understand the material. Like, sure, go read Varian or Mas- Colell's tomes before you try to bring up _anything_ wrong with elementary supply-demand analysis. It's worth noting that they never go out of their way to explain what the supposedly superior methods are. To me it's just moving the goalposts.

In fact, I just stumbled on this paper, the conclusion reads as something straight out of Monty Python's Flying Circus:

 _Complexity and Economics: computational constraints may not matter By F. Echeneque, D. Golovin and A. Wierman

Conclusion: "We show that the notion that economic agents have limited computational resources adds no empirical content to the theory of utility maximization. A data set of observed consumption at different budgets is either in contradiction with the hypothesis of utility maximization, or it can be explained using a utility function that is easy to maximize. Our paper is not a critique of the literature on complexity and economics in general; rather, we take issue with the idea that worst-case hardness of a model implies that the model is flawed. We emphasize that the existing results on complexity are useful for understanding how economics can be applied in a normative and algorithmic way — for example, to engineer economic systems with desirable properties. We posit that while computer scientists tend to think 'algorithmically' about economic models, economists tend to think 'empirically' about the models. There is a need for considerations of computational complexity in both views. In particular, an algorithmic view of economic models assumes that the model is fixed and literally true, and then proceeds to ask about the computational demands placed on the agents by the model. That is, it assumes that the agent is simply an implementation of the model and asks whether the agent can efficiently compute its decisions. In contrast, an empirical view takes the model as a tool for thinking about reality. One does not presume agents literally follow the model, only that the model provides a way to explain the observed behavior. In this view, a model still loses credibility if the agents must solve computationally hard problems; however, worst-case complexity is no longer the relevant concept. Instead, the question is whether data from an observed phenomenon can always be explained by the theory with the additional constraint that agents are not required to solve computationally hard problems. This is the case with the theory of the consumer. On the other hand, we expect complexity to matter empirically for other economic models. When that is the case, one would want to characterize the added empirical consequences of assuming that economic agents do not solve hard problems."_ Source pdf: [http://users.cms.caltech.edu/%7Eadamw/papers/letter_sigexc.p...](http://users.cms.caltech.edu/%7Eadamw/papers/letter_sigexc.pdf)

TL:DR; Yes the critique is completely valid, except in highly restricted environments that never occur in the real world. But look, that's not what we are actually trying to do, oh and by the way, those critics just don't understand economics. In any other field you'd be laughed out of the room, economists parade this stuff with a straight face, and if you object "you just don't understand economics".

> > The world is a complex adaptive system, how does micro or macro > equilibrium fit that any better than homo economicus? If anything it sounds > even worse to me...

> Chemistry is a field of complex and dynamic systems, yet we are still able > to talk about equilibria there. Equilibrium doesn't mean nothing is changing > - and in fact, it doesn't mean that the equilibrium corresponds to any > actual observable state of the world. Due to aforementioned dynamism, > observation effects, and other complications, it may not be possible to > observe the true equilibrium state at all, but it's still a useful construct > in our understanding of the chemical world.

I might have worded that awkwardly. Yes equilibrium is a thing, I don't see how modeling markets as tending towards equilibrium is helpful in any meaningful sense. In fact, I think it actively obscures the dynamic nature of real world economics.

> > I mean, I have never seen an econ 101 lecture mention things like path > dependence

> I'm sorry to hear that you've never experienced a good introductory > economics course. However, that experience (or lack thereof, as the case may > be) doesn't serve as testimony against the field.

No comment :)

<comment><USER11> > I'm starting to notice a trend whenever I engage with economics on these > matters. In fact this pattern shows up every time, it's like they are > trained to do this.

I could say the same, in that I notice a pattern too. It's like HN commenters are trained to engage in extremely facile criticisms of fields that they have little knowledge of, understanding of, or respect for, and then reject any substantive critiques to the contrary due to their lack of understanding.

> It starts with an acknowledgement that the theory is stylized beyond any > practical purpose, or that it is merely a pedagogical "tool"

Nobody has said either of those things. They've said that it's a model. As Box famously said, "All models are wrong, but some models are useful". The key to using a model, though, is understanding its scope and limitations - where it does not apply, but also where it _does_ , and in which _ways_.

> They then point out that any fault I see with economic theory and/or > methodology must be my own failure to understand the material. Like, sure, > go read Varian or Mas-Colell's tomes before you try to bring up anything > wrong with elementary supply-demand analysis. It's worth noting that they > never go out of their way to explain what the supposedly superior methods > are. To me it's just moving the goalposts

Nobody's saying that you have to do doctoral research in order to discuss the limitations of elementary supply-demand analysis. It's just that the critiques you're bringing up (in this thread, but with this pattern more broadly) are somewhere between "not very interesting, because they have no relevance or are mitigated elsewhere", and "based on complete misunderstandings of the fundamental concepts at play".

Ultimately, it ends up something like the physicist from XKCD #793.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money)</comment>


Quickly Create a Full-Stack Web App in TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-programming/quickly-create-a-full-stack-web-app-in-typescript-9188f011748b <comment><USER2> Not sure what's worse: app generators leaving you with tones of unmentainable code or hard dependency on VScode.</comment>


Notes Toward An Open Digital Bookcase - <AUTHOR> http://thestylus.org/

<comment><USER2> Note to all writers: The idea of an Open Digital Bookcase sounds intriguing. I don't know what one is, despite having read part of this article, but I think I'd like to know what one is.

But as far as I read, the article didn't tell me what one is, and more importantly, I found no hint or promise that the article would tell me.

As far as I read, they gave me neither, and I finally lost interest. _If_ I had been confident that I'd be shown what an open digital bookcase is, I probably would have soldiered on, but lacking confidence I had to cut my losses.

So, please, when you write something long, give me _some_ idea of the payoff, or even that there _will_ be a payoff.

Thank you.

EDIT: style.</comment>


U.S. Seemingly Unaware of Irony in Accusing Snowden of Spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/06/us-seemingly-unaware-of-irony-in-accusing-snowden-of-spying.html <comment><USER2> Discussed and declared dead yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5925294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5925294)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seriously? Are we so hungry for opinions on this case that we rabidly up-vote clumsily written satirical blurbs (twice)?

</comment><comment><USER4> Andy Borowitz is a well-known satirist.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Satire is really really hard to do well. The Onion's been a roll, however: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-administration- releas...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-administration-releases- nations-phone-record,32712/)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you get caught by your hand while stealing - claim it's not your hand.

</comment><comment> o0-0o Now the New Yorker is posting articles like The Onion. The world really is upside down at the moment.

<comment><USER7> Borowitz has been doing satire at the New Yorker for a long time. This one is just profoundly close to being not-satirical. The world isn't very different from last month, except that more people are becoming more aware how our government conducts itself.

<comment><USER8> This is the only thing that has been shocking to me - that so many people are suprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is doublespeak.

<comment><USER10> Actually, it's satire.

<comment><USER9> Ah, I see. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could we _please_ stop with the NSA horseshit. The Democratic National Party has identified techies as a target demographic for their Media Circus and is seeding these stories to garner votes and attention.

We need to be concerned about the bigger picture, the story being covered up by the "OMG Snowden is a cyberpunk, how dreamy". The bigger picture is that Washington, D.C. has allowed the security apparatus to rot. Misplaced nuclear missiles, abysmal physical security at nuclear bomb plants, total lack of mandatory access controls on computer system, inability to close the decision loop on protecting assets on foreign soil, etc.

The DNP keeps running these tech celebrity scandal stories to distract from the catastrophic state of American security.

<comment><USER12> So the _Democrats_ are the ones to blame for making a big story out of Snowden?

That's a very interesting theory. And you follow it up with a long list of security state problems.

I don't want to dismiss you out of hand, but you have to acknowledge that not every person writing about Snowden is a Democrat, or manipulated by Democrats, or is somehow caught up in some tech celebrity hero worship.

I _hate_ tech celebrity stories. I'm a registered independent. Voted with the Republicans a couple of times nationally, with the Democrats a couple of times, and with a third party a couple of times.

I find it strange to be accused of being manipulated by one party. Hell, it's both parties that got us into this mess. Why would the Democrats think they could control this message? They're going to lose as many, and maybe more, people from the center as the Republicans are.

And if you're seriously suggesting that we need even _more_ access and control over information, instead of just cleaning up the bureaucratic mess we already have, I'm at a loss for words. I suppose once the hole gets deep enough, the only logical choice is to keep digging?

American security is in exactly the state that it deserves given the completely shitty leadership both parties have shown over the last 30 years or so. Nobody knows what their mandates are, nobody seems to have any idea of how to identify and properly assess threats, and there's hardly anybody in charge. This is a failure of Congress and the President. A good housecleaning would not only fix privacy issues, it might straighten the rest of the mess out. Maybe.

It might be just that we've created an intelligence and security apparatus that's too damned big. In which case, it's all going to need to be decentralized/privatized/deregulated somehow.

But all of that aside, your comment struck me as an attack on the readers and voters here, so I felt I should reply. Snowden is but a small story in a much larger tapestry of a security state gone to hell because of poor oversight and structure. I don't think the Democrats have any more or less to do with that than the Republicans. And I don't think they have much to gain by pointing out what a mess they've helped create.

<comment><USER13> > _I 'm a registered independent_

Completely off topic, but what does this mean? (I'm not American). You register your political affiliation in the US? What for?

<comment><USER14> Mostly to vote in primary elections, which occur within each party to vote for who will be nominated as that party's primary candidate.

<comment><USER13> So where do you register as an independent? Not at the democratic or republican party offices, I imagine.

Does it grant you rights to vote in primaries of all parties? Or none? If the latter, what's the point?

<comment><USER14> You have to be registered with the government as a voter in order to vote at all. When you register, you list your party affiliation. If it is one of the major parties, that information also adds you to the party's list of members, granting you the ability to vote in their primary elections. If you register as an independent (e.g. unaffiliated) voter, it depends on what state you're in, but sometimes you can vote in either primary and sometimes none at all. Note that there is also an Independent Party, which is different from lowercase independent, meaning no party affiliation at all.

<comment><USER13> wow. I thought democracy meant voting is anonymous. Scary!

Thanks for the explanation

<comment><USER14> The vote you place is anonymous. Your vote is not tied to your voter registration, but you have to prove that you have registered in order to place that vote.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Noderly: Is there such a thing as too basic monitoring? - <AUTHOR>

We just launched noderly a hosted monitoring system.
Love to get some feedback we have getting to the point where we wanted a monitoring tool. We thing its stable enough and would really appreciate feedback from YC.
http://noderly.com <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [http://noderly.com](http://noderly.com)

Demo: [https://noderly.com/#test](https://noderly.com/#test)

Status Page: [https://status.noderly.com/](https://status.noderly.com/)</comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension that shows AMP pages on the original publishers site - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/distractoff/nlfeedojibkplbociijniaaeindohmdc <comment><AUTHOR> (Author)

This plugin will redirect you to a lighter-weight (AMP) version of any page you're on, if available. It shows the AMP pages directly on the publisher's site, bypassing Google and thereby bypassing a lot of the objections to the AMP format itself. This disentangles what amounts to a spec to create clean pages and Google's bundling of the pages on google.com.

Open source, the very simple code is at [https://github.com/minwebio/extension](https://github.com/minwebio/extension)</comment>


Big European states call for cryptocurrency curbs to protect consumers - T-A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-economy-cryptoassets/european-countries-call-for-eu-stablecoin-regulation-idUSKBN26219G <comment><AUTHOR> > The five countries want all stablecoins to be pledged at a ratio of 1:1 with > fiat currency, with reserve assets denominated in the euro or other > currencies of EU members states, and deposited in an EU-approved institution

So either backed in whole is fine, and not backed at all is fine? But not partially backed? No room for a middle ground? Seems silly, and mindless.

Yet banks, whose _entire business_ is partially backed fiat money are kosher? Almost seems like bias towards old businesses. I have nothing against banks but this smells kinda like big-bank flexing it's muscles to push out competition.

<comment><USER2> Banks (and their customers) get government protection in return for following a very extensive set of restrictions about how they can run their business.

<comment><AUTHOR> But why is there no room for middle ground? If I'm personally fine with the risk/reward balance of non-protected partially backed finance, why is it not acceptable?

<comment><USER3> Lots of people are fine with the risk/reward balance of using recreational drugs, driving without a seatbelt, working as a sex worker, and tons of other things. And somehow that's not acceptable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Two of the three on that list are legal in at least one of the countries involved.

Moreover potential major bodily harm versus potential loss of savings don't seem directly comparable.

<comment><USER3> From the stories I've read about people losing their entire life savings. It sounds as it is a deeply traumatic event. Which ranks up there with bodily harm, losing relatives, ect. And one which often has a permanent effect on the reminder of their life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article focuses heavily on Facebook's Libra, which to my knowledge has recently scaled back from offering a currency balanced by (and collateralized against) a basket of commodities to offering a handful of 1-to-1 fiat-anchored stablecoins.[1] This is way less technically ambitious, and seems pretty similar to the old Facebook Credits system of in-app purchases.

Where this gets interesting for me is 1) stablecoins like DAI, which collateralize using other cryptocurrencies, 2) projects like Celo, which are doing something similar to Libra but with way less initial runway for backing EU-sanctioned reserves, and 3) projects like Reserve Protocol, which aim for something similar to Libra's original goal (achieving "stability" relative to an algorithmic balance between the real value of currencies, goods, etc).

From the article it's not obvious to me whether a lot of this could be evaded simply by not marketing your project as a stablecoin.

[1] [https://fortune.com/2020/04/16/facebook-libra-multiple- singl...](https://fortune.com/2020/04/16/facebook-libra-multiple-single- currency-coins/)

<comment><USER5> The problem blockchain companies have is that at some level they need to interact with the traditional financial system to make money. That means dealing with legal entities in various states and dealing with lots of pesky regulations that those states have around investing and transacting.

Basically, in most civilized places, if you want to be a bank there are some rules to be taken into account. That's why stablecoins are so hard to do because as soon as you start transacting, you are exposed to those rules because you basically become a bank like entity. So, authorities wake up and start paying attention as soon as you do that.

The projects you name are interesting because they are all based in the US and are being built with good old investor cash raised from the usual suspects (i.e. VCs). So, they have share holders and are operating under US law. Basically all three are really talking about building similar things but as an outsider you have to wonder who wins if their token business is successful: the share holders or the token holders?

There's a bit of friction here between the marketing on one hand projecting some kind of utopian decentralized thing and the obvious desire of the investors to turn this thing into a very centralized money funnel straight into their pockets. The reality is of course that these are companies and not charities and the reason investments are so high is that they are looking to tap into significant streams of cash. Just like banks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see any real purpuse for cryptocurrencies that benefits the greater good, to be frank.

[https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental- to-...](https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to- society.html)

I wish that smart people involved with this kind of technology would spend their time on something more relevant / important.

<comment><USER7> Proof of Work is not the only way to do cryptocurrency and there are less wasteful distributed ways of doing cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency has a useful purpose: freeing people from government and the choices that government impose on people.

Your government doesn't want you to buy weed? You can buy it with cryptocurrency from an online market instead of doing a shady deal in a dark alley, with a higher risk to be scammed.

Your government is filling the economy with bubbles through quantitative easing and "stimuli" or by printing money? You can move part of the economy to cryptocurrency.

Your government is stealing 50% of your income under threat of violence? Some cryptocurrency can be made harder to track and can be a useful tool to fight government aggression.

I doubt cryptocurrency will get us anywhere because the government can just ban cryptocurrency at any time, but there is a clear purpose.

</comment></comment><comment> chroem- I'll never understand protecting the middle class from "dangerous investments", but continuing to allow state-sponsored lotteries which are demonstrably scams.

<comment><USER8> They are not scams, they are "funny taxes": people pay extra tax and have some fun doing it.

Modern fiscal politics, from VAT onwards, is all about trying to tax the poor without them noticing.

<comment><USER9> >They are not scams, they are "funny taxes"

Or, as the cynics over here refer to it "The Stupid Tax".

The odds of winning £1million on the UK National lottery are 14,000,000-1. If you really want to maximise your chances of winning £1million, go down your local friendly bookies and see if you can find 1,000,000-1 odds being offered on any stupendously unlikely event and put your money on that. Your bet is 14 times as likely to come up as your lottery ticket is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be wiser if they did it in an effort to protect the environment.

</comment><comment><USER11> I apologize if off-topic, if you are in EU have you used bitcoin to buy things and if yes anything else except computer parts? I just did a search for my country Romania and I only found a small list of shops(it could be outdated), PayPal was not that popular here either (maybe it changed) but I could not use PayPal on the biggest store emag.ro

<comment><USER12> I was able to get whole genome sequencing from DanteLabs anonymously with Bitcoin (I'm still waiting for the test results though). Also cheapair.com works well for plane tickets, though it's the opposite of cheap.

<comment><USER13> Is there much point to anonymity when you give someone your DNA to sequence? You have to completely trust they will delete all records and samples, otherwise they can link you to relatives who haven't paid anonymously.

<comment><USER12> If you're a serial killer I would highly recommend against taking any kind of DNA sequencing. But in the US many people with rare diseases are afraid of losing their medical insurance, and paying with Bitcoin is a specific request from them. As for me I don't care about insurance at all, I just don't trust the banking system enough to keep my money with any bank (except the Norwegian thin bank that has a 1:1 reserve ratio, but I don't have the minimal amount of $10M to have an account with them).

<comment><USER11> > I just don't trust the banking system enough to keep my money with any bank

I don't trust banks that much either but it is the less risky thing considering my in existing skill at financial stuff(I did not consider bitcoins or stock market because it feels like gambling with my or my son future, and I think I am risk adverse)

<comment><USER12> Both the stock market and housing market correlates inversely with the interest rates, so actually buying stocks doesn't give you any diversification, but if you're afraid of buying Bitcoin, you could just buy some gold as an alternative store of value. Another option is to just put 1-4% of your portfolio into Bitcoin, which still is a great hedge against the current financial system, and actually decreases the volatility of your current portfolio (if you have a house right now). Having your money in fiat currencies is just giving 10% of it away to your current leaders.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Report: Bill Gates sides with dad, opposes Ballmer on income tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/09/report_bill_gates_siding_with_dad_in_support_of_income_tax.html

<comment><USER2> That's successful parenting.

<comment><USER3> That's American politics. The wealthy use their fame and fortune to oppose each other in the making of laws. All you hear about is how Ballmer, Bezos and the Gates are for/against 1098. What about the rest of WA?

<comment><USER4> All you hear is a sheep vigorously protesting a meat filled dinner. What do the two wolves think?</comment></comment></comment>


Generation Adderall - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/magazine/generation-adderall-addiction.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Baloney. If you take it the way you're supposed to, it works fine.</comment>


Schlep Blindness - <AUTHOR> If you would be starting out today, what are some of the schlep blindness problems you would look out to solve? <comment><USER2> Just adding context to the phrase:

"Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. It means a tedious, unpleasant task." [http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't there an open-source FPGA? - <AUTHOR> I'm asking about the FPGA itself - not boards or IP cores or toolchain.
The only thing I've found while searching is https://git.slaanesh.org/kfpga/kfpga which is still very new and small, but inspiring.
What are the major hurdles that have prevented people from creating an open source FPGA design? <comment><USER2> CPUs you can implement on FPGAs or something else whereas FPGAs are really only useful if you can get it made. Getting the design rules from a foundry usually involves an NDA and you will need (proprietary) EDA tools.

Also the utility of open source CPU cores is much higher than an open source FPGA since you're not going to be able to customize it anyway because of mask costs.

<comment><USER3> I hear that repeated over and over. And while it is true _now_ , it could change if concepts like

[1] [https://www.yokogawa.com/yjp/solutions/solutions/minimal- fab...](https://www.yokogawa.com/yjp/solutions/solutions/minimal-fab/)

catch up a little technology-wise, and take hold.

edit:

[2] [http://pmt-minimalfoundry.businesscatalyst.com/minimal- found...](http://pmt-minimalfoundry.businesscatalyst.com/minimal-foundry.html)

I see they have a branch office in Moscow now

[3] [https://minimalfab.eu/](https://minimalfab.eu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This FPGA is not open source by design, but this project seems fairly complete: [http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/](http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/) "Project IceStorm aims at documenting the bitstream format of Lattice iCE40 FPGAs and providing simple tools for analyzing and creating bitstream files."

Lattice (the FPGA's manufacturer) seems open-minded regarding such efforts: [https://twitter.com/latticesemi/status/1269115302140231682](https://twitter.com/latticesemi/status/1269115302140231682)

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea. I do a lot of FPGA work and have often thought the same thing. The link is very interesting. I think part of the challenge would be how do you get the foundry capacity to actually produce it. And how to pay for that, who will buy it etc. etc. Those questions are beyond me, but I do think that if it were to get momentum there could be a lot of interest.

</comment><comment><USER6> Xilinx has like 2,000 FPGA patents, proudly displayed on plaques on their cafeteria wall.

So you would have to navigate around those.

<comment><USER3> They were founded 36 years ago. How long do they last? How many of them are meanwhile void?

<comment><USER6> It's a valid question.

The current duration is 20 years.

But companies with sophisticated IP lawyers, like FPGA vendors, can create "evergreen" patents by tweaking existing ones to last 100 years or more.

Also, small companies generally cannot afford patent litigation, so most fold after just receiving a letter.

Hollywood is located in LA because East Coast companies didn't want to pay Edison patent royalties. Moving to another state is less likely to work these days.

The laser patent killed commercial laser products until it expired, since nobody wanted to pay the 4% or 5% royalty. (I'm guessing that it wasn't that one royalty that was the concern, but the likely additional demands that would come out of the woodwork.)

Same thing with the Wright Brothers airplane patents. It took war for the Wright Brothers and Curtis to work together, which is why Europe got so far ahead of the US in aviation at the time.

<comment><USER7> > Moving to another state is less likely to work these days

Would these patents apply in the EU?

<comment><USER6> The short answer is not automatically, but there is a streamlined process for filing patents in the US and then the EU.

[https://www.epo.org/](https://www.epo.org/)

I suspect that US evergreen patents would be annoying to the EU if pointed out, though.

I don't really get the desire to make your own FPGAs though. They will probably end up being slower and more expensive. It makes more sense to me to work on toolchain software.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tiger at US zoo tests positive for coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52177586 <comment><USER2> For context, the evidence-based consensus as of now is that felines (including pet cats) can catch covid-19 from humans and then transmit it to other cats and maybe other humans, but they are not as susceptible to catching it as humans are. It takes a massive initial viral load for your cat to catch it from you and it will develop only a mild expression of the coronavirus. Dogs do not seem to catch it, but that doesn't mean they haven't tested positive due to second-hand exposure/contamination (from licking their human friends).

Note that the original SARS was likely transmitted to humans from its original hosts via a feline intermediary, so scientists were not at all surprised by these findings as the similarities between the two SARS are very high.

So it's not a big surprise that tigers can catch it too.

<comment><USER3> To be clear, there is no good data on either of those assertions.

The important takeaway here is that this Coronavirus, and likely others, will have persistent animal reservoirs that make humans endemically exposed to it.

...which means that even after a vaccination campaign, the virus will still be endemic to the population. ie. It's not going away.

...what more worrying is that Coronaviruses have a tendency of re-infecting patients and have dwindling immune response in people (source=TWIV podcast from April 3rd). ...which worryingly means that we may need regular vaccinations against covid-19 forever.

<comment><USER4> however, evolution theory is on our side. With the virus going through mutations it will end being less deadly as time goes on )as a general rule=. It makes sense: Deadlier versions of the virus die away when they kill their host. Healthy mutations infect more people.

<comment><USER3> Coronaviruses with error correction in their RNA replication mechanisms, like covid-19, do not mutate very much.

This is different from Influenza which easily shifts its RNA sequence and this requires new yearly vaccinations / and avoids immunity in humans.

<comment><USER4> So then that means that likely immunization duration will be long and vaccine cycle less dense? That's positive isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For someone who understand how viruses target hosts, if a tiger can contract cvoid-19, does this mean house cats can as well?

<comment><USER6> Yes. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/cats-can- infec...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/cats-can-infect-each- other-with-coronavirus-chinese-study-finds)

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/asia/coronavirus-animals- pets...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/asia/coronavirus-animals-pets- trnd/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Nadia, her sister Azul, as well as two Amur tigers and three African lions, had developed a dry cough and all are expected to fully recover, it says. "

How do they know the prognosis?

I hope they physically distance these big cats from their keepers.

<comment><USER2> The nature of the cough and its progression tells you a lot, especially if you can tell respiratory symptoms have peaked. That said, acute respiratory distress is the primary means by which people are dying of this disease; you can easily test for the presence of severe symptoms if "patient is able to breathe unassisted" is insufficient for some reason. The lower respiratory issues can be seen quite easily on a simple x-ray.

In all cases, it's been documented to have very mild manifestations in felines in laboratory autopsies of infected and euthanized housecats and that is probably a factor in their confidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When the first Cow or Chicken gets it - then I'm going to freak out.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Tiger" and "coronavirus" are both buzzwords right now (new Tiger television show promotion). BBC click farming is understandable now that citizens are expected to be parsing their RSS feeds more often than usual (mandatory quarantine idling worker minds).

This is unfortunate because I expected these recently inflicted conditions to prompt temporarily mothballed bodies and minds to pursue interests outside of the digital realm.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tigers' body temperatures are naturally slightly hotter. Maybe this means they can endure higher fevers and thus fight off the virus a little more easily-- from what I recall reading, corona-viruses from bats often are resistant to lower fevers because they've developed in bats, which are also slightly higher in body temperature, especially in flight.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting that tigers have access to the test.

<comment><USER12> > It's interesting that tigers have access to the test.

It's a misconception that there is just one test. There are numerous tests available, some of which are from private companies still awaiting official approval to test humans in the United States.

Testing capacity has also caught up demand in most (though not all) locations, as shown by the testing rate leveling off. This isn't like the early days where tests were so scarce that they were being rationed, although many logistical bottlenecks still remain.

Some institutions are now opting not to test people unless it would alter the response or treatment plan in some way.

<comment><USER13> >Some institutions are now opting not to test people unless it would alter the response or treatment plan in some way.

Everyone that I've spoken to (on the front lines) has said that this is what's been the hospital standard since day 1, regardless of what official protocols say. Not because of testing capacity, but because of the additional ppe wasted that's required to administer a test.

Unless you've got low O2 levels and will imminently need breathing assistance, you're getting sent home without a test and orders to self quarantine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I guess we now have enough tests for humans if we have them for tigers.

<comment><USER15> Tigers are more expensive.

<comment><USER14> Haven't you watched Tiger King? Turns out tigers are very cheap to acquire and to the tune of $10000 a year to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Did Joe Exotic have a conjugal visit?</comment>


Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-lehman-anniversary/ <comment> y-c-o-m-b The definition of "we" and "survive" needs to be established clearly first and I don't think all those fancy graphs and market trends will define them. There's a lot of people that ended up bankrupt, in a bottomless depression, turned to drug abuse or committed suicide because of the last crisis. Wages are still relatively low while prices continue to climb. Many people are working 2-3 jobs and having trouble affording rent across major cities in the U.S.

A glimpse at American's savings accounts shows a single healthcare incident can wipe out most anyone, let alone financial crisis: [https://smartasset.com/checking-account/savings-account- aver...](https://smartasset.com/checking-account/savings-account-average- balance)

<comment><USER2> If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and paid nothing for it.

<comment><USER3> It's not just the 7 years on your credit score, it's having collection agencies hound you incessantly. It's having people constantly trying to scam your bank to drain your account. It is legal threats against you, your family, your friends, your employer, etc...

You're basically dropping you bloody name to a pool of sharks who have little respect for what is legal or ethical.

<comment><USER4> What does it mean to be "hounded" by collection agencies? I've allowed some of my debts to go unpaid because I considered repayment to be a poor deal. Yes, I've received phone calls, which I answered and calmly informed the caller that (a) the conversation was being recorded; and (b) this was the last time they called me because I was invoking the FDCPA. I've never had to repeat this more than twice.

Yes, I've received things in the mail, which I simply threw into paper recycling. Eventually, these stopped as well.

A debt collector has yet to physically come to my home, however, having grown up in 1990s Russia, I'm prepared to take care of them in a swift, permanent, and legal way.

<comment><USER5> > I've allowed some of my debts to go unpaid because I considered repayment to > be a poor deal.

Could you elaborate on this? I don't know if it's what you intended but it just comes off like you defrauded a company.

<comment><USER6> If defaulting on a debt is fraud, then why do lenders charge a premium for credit risk?

They do it because, in most cases, it is not fraud - defaults are just a fact of business. Being a lender is not a ticket to free, zero-risk money.

Both parties in a lender/borrower transaction understand that there is a risk of default, as well as consequences for a default. In a secured loan, the borrower loses the secured item. In an unsecured loan, more of the risk falls to the lender (which is why unsecured loans have much higher interest rates.)

<comment><USER5> of course, but my interpretation of OP's comment was that they went into a purchase with the intent of defaulting. To me, that's fraudulent - IANAL but that would seem to be legally fraud too. It's really no different from chargeback scams.

<comment><USER7> It's only fraud if you take out the loan with the intention of not repaying it. sigfubar never says when he came to the conclusion that repaying the loan is a bad idea. If it's any point after he took out the loan, it's not fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes.

The lesson of 2008-9 is that TBTF and bailouts will be applied in case of any financial crisis. Not much has been done to rein in moral hazard and so institutions will continue to offload risk to the public when they can.

This works as long as the Treasury and Fed can absorb the shock and will create near term stability, at the potential cost of a currency crisis if the shock is too big to be absorbed.

<comment><USER9> Part of the story of 2008-9 was that congress nearly _didn 't_ act, with Paulson famously getting down on bended knee to beg Pelosi to whip the necessary votes. The government has the capacity to act – but there's no guarantee that they'll make the correct choices in a timely manner.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that Hank was part of the decision to let Lehman go, so he knew he screwed up.

<comment><USER11> That was just GS thinning out the competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the few times Bettridge's Law of Headlines doesn't apply. "Survive" is an extreme word here, but I do see a big issue w/ index funds. Perhaps an unpopular opinion - but I believe index funds will be the next major bubble that cripples the financial system.

It's one massive way to persist the same inequality status quo. You know what made Bezos so rich in spite of a company that doesn't make much accounting sense? When everyone is betting on his success by blindly investing in index funds.

Bet on the winners (because they're in the S&P 500 or some total market fund), even if they aren't performing that well by their accounting metrics. Everyone will be so invested in propping up the largest companies (or at least the US/China economic moneymakers) that when a few big players seem to be doing something egregious, it will be a tsunami of sells as opposed to a small wave.

When everyone is playing and _no one knows how to play_ (because why do I care what the market does? I just let the index fund manage for me), it just reminds me of the advice "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is". The current narrative is: you don't need to know how to invest (neither does your investment fund manager). Just bet on everything, and we'll all win. And by we, we mean the fat cats who are taking in that investment money you're giving us. You'll make a meager return, but we'll make oh so much more.

<comment><USER13> This is a real misunderstanding of how markets work. An index fund invests in everything, market-cap weighted (usually). This means that your investment merely reinforces the prices _already determined by the other participants in the market_. There are still huge numbers of active managers, not to mention quants and others. They, collectively, determine the prices of assets. When you invest in an index fund, you're just saying "I'll have what they're having", basically. It doesn't _cause_ amazon to rise in price. Lots of companies are in the S&P 500, they don't have returns like Amazon does. Amazon has those returns because people allocate capital _specifically_ to them, i.e. non-index investors.

> And by we, we mean the fat cats who are taking in that investment money > you're giving us. You'll make a meager return, but we'll make oh so much > more.

Index funds are the least fat-cat-remunerating route you have available to you. They have lower expense ratios than you'd be able to achieve on your own, unless you're using a free service like Robinhood (and if you do that, you're probably paying in other ways, like poorer execution prices).

<comment><USER14> > basically. It doesn't cause amazon to rise in price.

Yes, it does - you cannot add capital to a market without raising the market cap. It doesn't cause it to raise higher or faster than it's index peers, but it absolutely does cause it to rise.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't cause it to rise in price relative to others in the same index.

<comment><USER15> But these strategies do have all sorts of side effects on the market.

It pushes the correlation between stocks up. Investors might be more hot handed as their investment is more liquid, which may result in more selling in a dip. There are all sort of algorithmic strategies that are pro-cyclical. And also it reduces discrimination between stocks which results in weaker stocks benefiting from just being in the index and being overpriced.

<comment><USER13> > It pushes the correlation between stocks up.

Citation needed. I seriously doubt that this is true.

> And also it reduces discrimination between stocks which results in weaker > stocks benefiting from just being in the index and being overpriced.

Not really. Retail investors allocating their money to index funds just leaves the price-setting power to the professionals, which, on net, ought to be better for price discovery anyway.

<comment><USER15> First result on google:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-09/asia- stoc...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-09/asia-stocks-point- to-drop-dollar-holds-advance-markets-wrap)

But it is kind of intuitive anyway. ETFs are becoming significant in volumes, so when net volumes buy or sell them, they force the sponsor to buy/sell the whole market reducing price discrimination. To have any price setting power you need large volumes.

<comment><USER13> I don't see anything in that article that supports your point. Can you snippet out the part that you think does?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The leveraged loans are now being packaged into collateralized loan > obligations and sold to investors. Sound familiar? And the CLO market has > grown to match the size of the CDO market at its pre-crisis peak. Yet one > major difference makes the CLOs of today less scary: The loans that comprise > them are backed by collateral, and if one of the companies in the mix > defaults, an investor can find recourse through the sale of that collateral. > Pre-crisis CDOs built on mortgage-backed securities had no such backstops.

Maybe this is just my ignorance of the terms of CDO agreements...but weren't they collateralized by the homes? I mean, it's in the name: Collateralized Debt Obligation. And wouldn't that make this CLO market exactly identical to the CDO market?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. The reason CDO's were underwater is because the price of housing dropped and left the collateral worth less than the principal of the loan. Loans to companies follow the same principal. If the value of companies suddenly drops same thing. It's a weird statement and is directly contradicted by the next paragraph in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Short answer: Yes.

Survival is a very low bar. Going bankrupt qualifies as surviving since being alive along with having faith in the future can be enough to rebound successfully. Plenty of millionaires exist now because they learnt from failure from bad luck or poor execution of a plan.

Whether we taxpayers will be able to bail out various institutions that should have failed dismally last time is another matter. According to the article, banks are better off now but that remains to be seen. Nothing like reality to expose a gap in planning or regulations. Multiple institutions have likely not learnt their lesson and are probably unbalanced or unstable _right now_.

The downturn is likely already happening in some sectors in some obscure way and what the flashpoint will be is anyone's guess. Possibly student loans but that's a slow burn safely covered by the government and people who can't escape paying so it's effectively already bailed out. Might be the unpaid pensions which are already hitting the budgets of multiple states. Petrodollar consequences may be a factor since it might cause moneyprinting to be less effective.

Interesting times ahead I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just my opinion, but...

Our survival depends on local farms and businesses that are able to produce real value for people.

I define "real value" as resources having the ability to be bought, sold, and traded for other resources. For example, one hour of labor is worth X pounds of produce from a local farmer.

Our culture has too much of a dependence on global supply chains that will become increasingly expensive and scarce in the coming years.

So yeah, the next financial crises will be just the beginning. Add to it climate change, trade wars, unstable governments, and I start to see a troubling future that will affect us all in some way or another.

<comment><USER19> >Our survival depends on local farms and businesses that are able to produce real value for people.

"real value" \- that's a vague term. can you expand on that more? how does $6/lb (random guess at the price) bananas from california , provide more "real value" than $0.4/lb bananas from central america?

>Our culture has too much of a dependence on global supply chains that will become increasingly expensive and scarce in the coming years.

so globalized stuff is going to get more and more expensive, relative to more local stuff. isn't that supposed to be good, given how much you like local goods?

<comment><USER18> Yes, in the long term having less of a dependence on the global supply chain is better for the local economy, climate, and people. But during that transition, a lot of people are going to be negatively affected.

Today, it's my opinion that our culture has an unhealthy fascination and addiction towards products and goods that have a cost that is not reflective of the real value to sustainable supply the demand. Too many things these days are subsidized to create consumer demand and those dependencies are unhealthy and unsustainable.

"Like the links in a chain, one by one they will start to give until the chain collapses."

Ideally, consumers will have to pay the real value for those products and goods or go without until they can afford it.

It's entirely possible that in your example, both prices are reflective of the real cost to grow, maintain, and distribute bananas.

As a consumer, the price of $0.4/lb is cheaper and will keep more money in my pocket (or does it?) when compared to the $6/lb price.

However, as a consumer I should take into account the other factors of that cost, for example, how much did it cost to ship those bananas to my local store? How much does it cost for the farmers to support their families? Should I even be eating bananas right now? Can I take a break from bananas and save up to afford the bananas that are closer to me? Is it better to support the local farmers in my region, or the farmers across the world? Maybe both?

We need to be asking more questions about the big picture.

<comment><USER19> >However, as a consumer I should take into account the other factors of that cost, for example, how much did it cost to ship those bananas to my local store?

It's factored into the price, so I'm not sure why we should pay special attention to it.

>How much does it cost for the farmers to support their families?

>Can I take a break from bananas and save up to afford the bananas that are closer to me? Is it better to support the local farmers in my region, or the farmers across the world? Maybe both?

Again, I'm not sure how this is relevant. Farming bananas probably pays better than whatever other business they can do, otherwise they'd switch over to the higher paying business. If you want to help lift people out of poverty, donate to aid organizations, don't not buy their bananas (which is what keeps them fed in the first place!). Buying "local" bananas might not even be the most environmentally friendly solution, considering you might be growing them in sub-optimal climate conditions. Furthermore, choosing inferior (in price or quality) products just to support your clan sounds a lot like protectionism.

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry, I didn't intend to offend. My previous reply was just a glimpse into some of the thinking behind my opinions.

In addition to working in the tech field, I also work with farmers and my opinions are from my own experiences, research, and study.

From what I understand, the price of 90% of what you buy in a grocery store is not the real cost to produce and delivery that item to the grocery store.

That price is heavily influenced by what the market value is of the commodity, which at the moment is mostly driven by industrial farming operations.

Industrial farming relies on their massive scale to make a profit, and they also rely on predictable growing conditions to obtain those results, which is also a tangential problem.

Non-industrial farming operations (local farmers, family famers, etc...) rely on multiple sources of income, resources, and commodities to break even. Typically, one of the partners of the farm has a full or part time job to cover OPEX, and any profits made from farming is used for CAPEX. At the end of the day, the farmer has to decided to either compete with the industrial farmers and unrealistic market values, or they bypass that and sell straight to consumers.

Another issue, is that for everyone else who doesn't live near farmers, they are accustomed to market values that are not reflective of the real cost to produce those goods.

As of right now, the market value is reflective of industrial operations that use both scale and subsidies to produce cheap food.

My entire point, is that this trend is not sustainable for consumers, farmers, or nature.

So in addition to the next financial crisis, we will also be seeing a dramatic change in our food production and distribution system.

<comment><USER19> >I'm sorry, I didn't intend to offend.

None taken.

>From what I understand, the price of 90% of what you buy in a grocery store is not the real cost to produce and delivery that item to the grocery store.

>That price is heavily influenced by what the market value is of the commodity, which at the moment is mostly driven by industrial farming operations.

>Industrial farming relies on their massive scale to make a profit, [...]

>Non-industrial farming operations (local farmers, family famers, etc...) rely on multiple sources of income, resources, and commodities to break even. Typically, one of the partners of the farm has a full or part time job to cover OPEX, and any profits made from farming is used for CAPEX. At the end of the day, the farmer has to decided to either compete with the industrial farmers and unrealistic market values, or they bypass that and sell straight to consumers.

I don't get what you're saying. Large farms have larger economies of scale, so they can out-compete smaller farms on commodities. This is basic economics. How is this increased efficiency intrinsically bad? Why should consumers pay more for food that's produced by inefficient small scale operations?

You say that the price you pay doesn't represent the "real cost", but obviously it does, otherwise the farm will go out of business operating at a loss. The only other explanation is externalities, but you haven't really explained what negative externalities big farms are producing that small farms aren't.

>[...] and they also rely on predictable growing conditions to obtain those results, which is also a tangential problem.

Is there a reason why industrial farms are more reliant on predictable growing conditions than a smaller farm? If anything large farms can weather shocks better than small operations because they have better expertise to mitigate the negative effects and bigger bankroll to avoid bankruptcy.

>Another issue, is that for everyone else who doesn't live near farmers, they are accustomed to market values that are not reflective of the real cost to produce those goods.

disagree. in the same way that living next to a GM plant doesn't accustom me to the the real cost in producing a car.

>As of right now, the market value is reflective of industrial operations that use both scale and subsidies to produce cheap food.

scale: as I said earlier, I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with economies of scale associated with large scale operations. If anything, they're a net benefit to society because they have higher efficiency.

subsidies: this mainly hinges on whether large scale operations get more subsidies (relative to size) compared to small scale operations. I haven't done any research on this so I won't comment either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The leveraged loans are now being packaged into collateralized loan > obligations and sold to investors. Sound familiar? And the CLO market has > grown to match the size of the CDO market at its pre-crisis peak. Yet one > major difference makes the CLOs of today less scary: The loans that comprise > them are backed by collateral, and if one of the companies in the mix > defaults, an investor can find recourse through the sale of that collateral. > Pre-crisis CDOs built on mortgage-backed securities had no such backstops.

Wait, what's the difference here? Mortgages had collateral- the homes. That's the C in CDO. The problem was that when home prices fell, the collateral wasn't enough to cover the loan defaults. It seems like the same thing could happen for a structured product based on other types of debt if the collateral turns out to not be as valuable as we thought.

</comment><comment><USER21> The article states:

>"Leverage has shifted to companies from consumers, and some risk has migrated to shadow banks from traditional lenders."

Can someone explain this statement to me. The banks _were_ the one's that were too heavily leveraged before. This is why the required the bailout. What am I missing?

<comment><USER22> What are shadow banks? Sounds to me the risk was just moved off the books using some financial trickery into "shadow banks" and when those blow they take the regular banks with them.

<comment><USER23> Shadow banks were already a thing in 2007-2008

[https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/research-and- data/pu...](https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/research-and- data/publications/business-review/2014/q2/brQ214_shadow_banking.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The surprise that is coming is that the working class won't tolerate being robbed in the next financial crisis.

Working American's had to financially absorb the 2008 Mortgage crisis. 2008 was a direct robbery because Mortgage Orginators KNEW the mortgages would blow up, because their own Underwriting equations said they would. That is why they did fraud on the customer's income levels or worked with politicians to allow ignoring customer's income.

It caused a $5 trillion in transfer from the wealthy away from the working classes to the investor class in that 2008 Mortgage crisis.

The 2008 Mortgage crisis robbed the working classes, and transferred to the investor classes. Homes lost because of unemployment. Savings gone via rigged economy unemployment. Bail outs. Banks offloaded their worthless assets with government buying them. Wall Street over leveragged had huge wealth handed to them in money printing that was giving directly to their balance sheets.

The surpise will come the next time a Financial Crisis comes and the government works to sell out the working class

<comment><USER25> > The surprise that is coming is that the working class won't tolerate being > robbed in the next financial crisis.

If that's true, then why is the current government working hard to remove any protection (however meager it is/was) to prevent the same mistakes from happening all over again?

If the working class has no tolerance for these things, then it definitely isn't reflected in the people the working class has elected to 'represent' them.

<comment><USER26> >If that's true, then why is the current government working hard to remove any protection (however meager it is/was) to prevent the same mistakes from happening all over again?

I find your average worker doesn't really pay attention to the day-to-day news/politics (especially regulations & individual votes, media doesn't cover this either and nobody watches CSPAN) but by now knows that in 2008 the bankers & wall street — the people who put us in such predicament in the first place — got an enormous bail out that went to already super rich executive & CEO bonuses, but the working class lost their homes & jobs and received absolutely nothing.

I don't think think it will go that way the next time it happens.

<comment><USER24> The average citizen not paying attention will stop when the next financial crisis hits.

<comment> village-idiot History repeats itself. The peasants, sorry workers, are peaceful and complacent right up until they _really_ aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There is a lot of blame to go around but It would be nice for people to actually realize what is obvious post-factum was not really obvious at the time. I had friend who was VP at JPM and prior to crisis when all the banks were posting record profits Jamie Dimon started unwinding some risky positions and taking write downs, there was a lot of heat from shareholders and if it was someone of lesser statue that person most likely would back down or even get ousted.

</comment><comment><USER28> People live too comfortably now for us to see anything significant. 2008 was blatant and the Occupy Wall Street movement lasted a hot summer. I know a lot of people are expecting the next crash right around the corner but it's not gonna happen until the Chinese economy collapses which I don't see unfolding without Xi putting up a fight.

</comment><comment><USER29> Just because is human nature to think history could repeat itself, he is looking at the next crisis from a similar angle, which is implying lighting striking twice. I would look at polical or after shocks from a melt down from another super power.

</comment><comment><USER15> The article dismissed bailin in a short sentence at the end when I think it is one of the most significant difference between 2007 and now.

Bail-in is the right given to the regulator to declare a bank non viable and to impose an instantaneous, extrajudicial, chapter-11. Basically writing down bond holders over the course of a week end, and possibly any unsecured, non deposit-guaranteed creditor of a bank, and in this way auto-recapitalising the bank. It has been used a few times in Europe already, though not on major institutions yet.

I am not aware that in the US only holdco debt is bail-inable, so I am not sure why the article infers that the tightening in borrowing cost between holdco and opco means investors don't believe in a bailin. I'd say that they rather don't believe in a bailin of the holdco only.

In the UK the regulator stated its approach of bailin-ing the holding company first before considering the operating company (bank), and you see a clear spread between the two, particularly initially as banks are starting to issue debt out of the holding company (and therefore a lot of bailin risk is concentrated on a small amount of debt).

Another important difference is that unlike 2007, a default risk of banks is priced in. The market has the capacity to absorb losses, in fact it is designed for that. The issue comes when losses occurs in places where they were not expected (money market funds, "AAA" MBS, bonds issued by major financial institutions, these were what cause the 2008 run on the banks). Then it gets really messy. But even now (in rather benign credit markets), bank credit spreads are still significant.

What worries me is not banks themselves, but sovereign debt and central bank capacity to react. We forget that as recently as 2011, investors were getting seriously worried of a country like Italy defaulting. Italy has now even more indebtedness, and a populist government that wouldn't think twice about making a radical action on its foreign debt. And other countries like France aren't that far behind, with a massive reliance on short term borrowing and no political willingness to control public deficits. Central banks on the other hands are still all-in on QE (at the current rhythm the Fed will have fully retired QE well after the next cycle kicks in), and with very low rates. So what levers are they going to use next?

And yeah if states collapse, the financial system under them will be wiped out.

<comment><USER30> > And yeah if states collapse, the financial system under them will be wiped > out.

That's not a thing that is foreseeable. Default? Perhaps. Collapse? Plenty of states have defaulted and not failed.

<comment><USER15> I mean collapses financially (default, hyper-inflation, etc). Then typically the local banking system sinks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglar_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglar_cycle)

</comment><comment><USER32> I think its worth reading or getting the audio for the book Antifragility. It raises some good points about the financial system.

</comment><comment><USER33> Let's hope we don't have to 'survive'

</comment><comment><USER34> Yes we will survive the next crisis but we will have to switch to a green crypto based currency. The Zero interest rate policy has made for ownership accounting errors. We will also need to consume less and make use of more recycled goods.

There is a leverage issue where young people are in debt, has less house ownership compared to older people who own lots of the assets houses, stocks and derivatives. [https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...](https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7706) [https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/170808150752-char...](https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/170808150752-chart- stock-market-ownership-age-780x439.jpg)

There is an accounting error in the current market system of tragedy of the commons where pollutions of common assets the polluter does not pay.</comment>


WWDC 2018: What we expect Apple to announce on June 4 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/wwdc-2018-what-we-expect-apple-to-announce-on-june-4/ <comment><USER2> Long-shot: announcement of macOS on A-series ARM processors. The complication, unlike the Intel announcement in 2005, is that there's not a bunch of hardware with A-series CPUs on which developers can test their macOS applications right away so if they do announce this they are going to have to also announce hardware. If this is the case my bet would be A11-powered Mac mini and MacBook Air.

More realistically thouh, I expect emojis: lots of new emojis, and probably AR emojis at that.</comment>


Robbers Are Using Pokémon Go to Target Victims - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/10/criminal_are_using_pok_mon_go_to_target_victims.html <comment><USER2> Previous submissions of this story:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12067200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12067200)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12066749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12066749)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12066134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12066134)

<comment><AUTHOR> And a subsequent submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12067526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12067526)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Criminals abuse technology and people are stupid are the 2 takeaways here. Neither is really news.</comment>