A guide to IoT processors - <AUTHOR> https://imgtec.com/blog/mips-processors/a-guide-to-iot-processors/ <comment><USER2> I'm not quite sure how this is a guide. The ESP8266, arguably the most low- cost WiFi capable chip, is not even mentioned.

Also, according to the article, "high-density compute nodes feature a heterogeneous CPU architecture" which is needed for "green computing-type systems (e.g. network and storage systems, cloud computing or large-scale data centers)". I have no idea what that means.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried to break down the different IoT categories and identify generic characteristics that apply to them. There are of course hundreds of specific SoCs to choose from but they all typically fall under one of the five categories I've mentioned.

High-density compute nodes are a specific type of processors that have manycore CPUs. The reason they are called high-density is because they pack tens or hundreds of small CPU cores onto a single die. These types of small cores don't provide massive single-threaded performance by themselves but when added together, they can be quite compelling. This is a different approach to having a few but very powerful cores such as Intel Xeons on an SoC. An analogy would be a flock of starlings versus an eagle. Moreover, many CPU designers today have abandoned the practice of scaling in frequency to achieve performance and are focused more and more on performance per watt (hence the term green computing). This is because the costs associated with powering and cooling a data center are rapidly rising.

<comment><USER3> > This is because the costs associated with powering and cooling a data center > are rapidly rising.

Because when I think "IoT", the first place I think of is a datacenter...

<comment><AUTHOR> You might not, but where do you think the vast amount of data produced by IoT devices is going to go?

<comment><USER3> Somewhere other than an IoT device?

<comment><AUTHOR> It usually goes like IoT device - gateway - data center. IoT devices are having a massive impact on data center architectures.

<comment><USER3> So any processor that ever touches data that came from an IoT device is an "IoT processor"?

<comment><USER4> I would agree that data center processors are not IoT processors. They're generic, server processors.

IoT == "connected devices"... with the emphasis on devices. i.e. embedded microcontrollers.

Also note that they themselves don't have to be packaged with some RF comms, plain old microcontrollers are entirely suitable for most cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...and no mention of ARM??

really? the most used micro of our time and quite possibly the most popular controller for IoT devices and there isn't a mention?

(This article is purely a press-release for the manufacturer).

<comment><USER5> They are competitors to ARM, so it's not really surprising. Agree with that this is just a press release - which mostly aren't neutral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Duh.. I came here expecting to see a guide. Please change the title to reflect content of the article.</comment>


Raindrops Are Not Tear-Shaped - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php <comment><USER2> I presume the submitter meant to point to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain#Coalescence_and_fragmenta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain#Coalescence_and_fragmentation) and not the main Wikipedia page, as there is nothing on the latter about rain drops.

> Smaller drops are called cloud droplets, and their shape is spherical. As a > raindrop increases in size, its shape becomes more oblate, with its largest > cross-section facing the oncoming airflow. Large rain drops become > increasingly flattened on the bottom, like hamburger buns; very large ones > are shaped like parachutes.[22][23] Contrary to popular belief, their shape > does not resemble a teardrop.[24]

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. Thank you.</comment></comment>


China May Have $5.8T in Hidden Debt with 'Titanic' Risks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/china-may-have-5-8-trillion-in-hidden-debt-with-titanic-risks <comment><USER2> The article kind of assumes that you understand what these "local government financing vehicles" are. Which is probably true for the median reader of the story, but it wasn't true for me, so I went looking around for an explainer and found this from 2013: [https://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-local-government- financing-ve...](https://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-local-government-financing- vehicles-lgfv-7-things-you-should-know-about-chinas-1411694)

 _In contrast to state governments in the U.S., most local governments in China are forbidden to borrow money directly._

 _Historically, land sales have been a large revenue source for local governments, but since the global financial crisis this revenue source has diminished. Yet local government spending, especially on infrastructure investments, has accelerated..._

 _Detroit filed for bankruptcy with debts of $18 billion on July 18, but this is the average amount of debt for many Chinese cities. A 2012 audit of 36 local governments found $624.6 billion in debt -- suggesting there are at least a few Chinese cities with debt equal to, or in excess of, the $18 billion that sunk Detroit._

So the news is that what was understood to be ~$625 billion in debt six years ago has turned into $5.8 _trillion_ in debt today. Which is, like, _322 Detroits._

<comment><USER3> For the sake of argument, let's assume that the headline is true -- local governments have taken on more debt than they can service in a slowing economy. What's the endgame? Here are some possibilities, would love to see some economic modeling to quantify some scenarios.

1) Central government gradually inflates the currency to monetize the debt with a few defaults along the way. Damage is funded by Chinese creditors (defaults) and Chinese citizens (inflation), and it takes 20 years to fully play out.

2) Central government bails out bad loans by selling a portion of their $3T in foreign reserves, including $1T of US government debt. Chinese creditors, investors and citizens are made whole. Foreign bond prices fall and interest rates rise, causing recession and financial crisis in the US.

3) Central government bails out a few well connected players, but mostly allows market forces to run their course. Shadow banks and local government financing vehicles go bankrupt, causing a cascade of bankruptcies in the real economy, and economic growth is 200 basis points under potential until 2022.

<comment><USER4> The Chinese government only holds 6% of US government debt. Selling it wouldn't cause a recession and financial crisis.

<comment><USER3> Last week's stock market mini-crash is getting blamed on interest rates increasing a few hundredths of one percent [1].

How much would interest rates rise if $1T gets sold into an already weakening market?

I don't pretend to know the answer, but I'm pretty sure it's greater than zero.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/11/trump-says-the-stock- market-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/11/trump-says-the-stock-market- correction-caused-by-the-federal-reserve.html)

<comment><USER4> A temporary 4% drop in the S&P 500 (based on closing prices) is hardly a mini- crash. If you check the historical price charts over the past several decades, movements of that size are common. And analysts make up all sorts of explanations after the fact for the fluctuations just so that they have something to talk about on TV. The reality is that we don't know why; maybe it was interest rates, maybe it was something else.

<comment><USER5> The problem is we haven't seen a 4% drop for years, from a predictive of recent decades, many who wasn't in the Stock market during 2008, a 4% drop is a mini crash.

Of coz for those of us who are in it for multiple decades.... 4% drop doesn't surprise us.

<comment><USER4> There were 10 other trading days in 2009 and 2011 where the S&P 500 index dropped more than 4.0%. The largest daily decline was -6.7%.

No one cares about investors who only got into the stock market after 2008. They don't have enough capital to really impact anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions LGFVs, without defining the acronym or explaining much about them.

Here's another article that goes into more detail:

 _Local government funding vehicles (LGFVs) are companies owned and funded by a local government in order to raise funds for municipal projects. These firms stem from the taxation system in China that allocates the lion's share of revenue to the national government, and from regulations implemented in 1994 that prevent the government from selling bonds. This strict budgetary regulation was intended to promote sound financial management and prevent local governments from spending themselves into deficits. LGFVs became prominent after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1998 and the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 when central government stimulus packages put the onus on local governments to raise necessary funds. LGFVs are effectively state-owned enterprises (SOEs)._

[https://www.strangemarkets.com/chinese-lgfv-bonds-the- next-g...](https://www.strangemarkets.com/chinese-lgfv-bonds-the-next-great- default/)

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure why they thought everyone should know what that meant. As I looked it up, I came across articles from as far back as 2013 saying that China's collapse is imminent. Considering that still hasn't been the case, this may not be as imminent as Bloomberg is making it seem.

<comment><USER8> Your theory that a large systemic problem is only real if it blows up quickly is puzzling to me. I was working for financial traders at the time of the Orange County crisis in 1994 [1], and even then people were concerned that the rise of complicated financial instruments was concentrating and perhaps even creating risk in ways that were poorly understood.

Those concerns got louder during the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 [2], as that removed depression-era regulations that kept banks from a lot of financial speculation.

But this all didn't really blow up until the financial crisis of 2007-8. [3] Financial instruments with long time horizons (e.g., mortgages and long-term loans to governments) can be dangerous a long time before the truth comes out. And large organizations like banks and governments may end up exacerbating the problem by smoothing over what they think of as small problems but are really the canaries in the coal mine for major systemic issues.

Closer to home, we could look at Theranos, which took a full 15 years to go from founding to criminal charges despite never really working. Enron and Worldcom are two other good examples where booming markets covered up all manner of sins for years before the music stopped.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/08/business/orange- county-s-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/08/business/orange-county-s- bankruptcy-the-overview-orange-county-crisis-jolts-bond-market.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_the_repeal_of_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_the_repeal_of_the_Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008)

<comment><USER9> Hell, an even more outlandish example is Bernie Madoff, who ran his Ponzi Scheme starting in the late 1980s which lasted until 2008.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> LGFV (Local Government Financial Vehicle) are companies set up, fully owned, and operated by local governments that borrow money from the banking and financial system to engage in businesses that are fiscal in nature, like infrastructure investment and public affairs. Local governments can't sell bonds and Central government takes most of the taxes so LGFV is the only way they can finance their projects.

Most of that $5.8 Trillion valuation is not going to vanish because they are real investments into infrastructure. Most problems come from wrong cash flow estimates, and lower than estimated returns and some nonprofitable investments. The actual potential loss or haircuts investors are facing is some percentage of that sum. Probably few $100's of billions, maybe even close to $1T.

The reason why there are defaults is because Chinese government wants to fight moral hazard problem that comes from bailing them out. The government will allow certain number of LGFVs to default to set an example (like Lehman Brothers) but if the credit squeeze starts to hurt "Chinese main street" they will step in.

<comment><USER11> How much accounting regulation is actually enforced on these? How many ghost projects or empty infrastructure with revenue booked using estimated values instead of real sales?

I don't doubt that it won't be an entire haircut, but to say these function like regular bonds seems odd.

Is there a contagion concern here? What other products are collateralized using these? We saw this of course with well-rated packages of loans actually being manure. Anything like packaged LGFVs with hedges?

Asking because I have no idea and am legitimately curious about the possible downsides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's the thing: this sounds bad, but partly because of the massive, massive scale. However, everything in China sounds ridiculously big to me; the environmental problems, the amount of stuff being built, everything. So, my intuition for when "that's too big" turns into "that's so big it will go BANG pretty soon" is no good, when it comes to China. Thus, the question is, how big is this, on a China-everything-is-big kind of scale? What will be the thing that would make this stop? How do we know it's not just an early 90's S&L crisis kind of thing, that is, big but not catastrophic?

I'm not saying it's not a crisis, I'm just saying I can't tell if it's a crisis because it's China, everything seems way too big to me, and lots of it just continues that way for many years.

<comment><USER13> The difference between debts and environmental disasters is that debts can always be canceled or watered down.

Indeed China's MO is usually to do that indirectly every time, which is why articles like this have popped up like clockwork for the last decade in spite of China not facing a recession in that time. Counter cyclical fiscal stimulus always headed it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just as I said the last time this story popped up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17542113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17542113) People cannot use their intuition built on a western context on China. Unlike western local governments whose taxes comprise of the majority of their funding Chinese local governments collect close to no tax. Their funding comes primarily from money borrowed from other parts of the government which is standard practice and not alarming.

An analogy is like a company whose sales department generate all the cash and the engineering department generates no cash and owe billions to the sales department. Is the eng department in crisis? Obviously not. Still, oversight needs to be exerted over the eng department to make sure that it doesn't overspend or develop projects that are low in ROI... an eternal challenge.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting paper on LGFVs[1] which are "Local Government Finance Vehicles."

If you squint, it looks like an interesting parallel to the lending issues that plagued Japan in the 90's and eventually brought the economy there to a standstill. The monetary equivalent of "vapor lock" in a hydraulics system.

I am the first person to admit that the complexity of bond financing in the Chinese economy really challenges me because it operates on some fundamentally different assumptions about fiscal policy and monetary policy. That said, I'm not sure how they unwind that debt without sufficient domestic demand to keep the system operating.

If they were a third world country they could just devalue the RMB by 1000:1 and then settle the debt with devalued currency, but that option isn't really available to them.

[1] "The Law of China's Local Government Debt: Local Government Financing Vehicles and Their Bonds", D. Clarke -- [https://sci- hub.tw/10.1093/ajcl/avx036](https://sci-hub.tw/10.1093/ajcl/avx036)

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's something that seems simple and I've NEVER been able to get a straight answer to:

If Chinese wealth per capita is roughly 1/10th that of the average US citizen -- both in terms of median and mean -- and if Chinese wages are roughly 1/6th that of the average US citizen -- both in terms of median and mean... How on Earth are Chinese houses on average MORE EXPENSIVE per square foot than houses in the US?

My brain just can't understand.

<comment><USER9> The incredible thing is that these homes are often not purchased with debt financing either, and when they do, it's with a much larger downpayment than in the US as required by law. Chinese citizens have a much higher savings rate compared to Americans.

<comment><USER17> The Chinese consumer has leveraged up considerably in the last decade, to keep up with the rapid price increases in the economy. Their debt to household income ratio is quickly approaching the rate you see in the US. They appear to be making the same turn that the Japanese did from ~1998 forward, in going from being a nation of high savers to low savers and high debtors in a short span of time.

"By the end of 2017, the ratio of total household debt to disposable personal income hit 107.2 percent. This number is above the level in the US before the 2008 financial crisis. The structure of China's household debt has also diversified. Housing mortgages only increased slightly in 2017. ... But other types of loans, especially short-term loans, increased rapidly last year. One reason for this is that families have to seek other ways to finance their home purchases due to the tighter controls on mortgages. "

[http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1115334.shtml](http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1115334.shtml)

"China's household finances look more stretched than those in most emerging markets, though the level of household debt remains less than that in most developed economies, Fitch Ratings said in a report on Tuesday. China's household debt-to-disposable income ratio, a gauge of indebtedness, has jumped 9 percentage points every year since 2015, driven by mortgages and other consumer debts. If left unchecked, the ratio could hit 100 percent by 2020 versus 82 percent at end-2017, Fitch said. That would put China on par with the United States and Japan, whose household debt ratios are estimated to be at 105 percent and 99 percent, respectively."

[https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-household- debt...](https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-household-debt/chinas- household-finances-look-stretched-versus-most-emerging-markets-fitch- idUSL3N1R92WJ)

"On the back of a boom in property prices, household borrowing has been climbing for 10 years straight, at a pace that rivals any such run-up in major economies. At $6.7 trillion, and a record 50 percent of gross domestic product, private debt is now approaching developed-world levels and crimping consumer spending power."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-24/the-7-tri...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-24/the-7-trillion- debt-pile-looming-large-over-chinese-households)

<comment><USER16> To me, everything seems to point China's current situation mirroring almost perfectly Japan in the 90s. I must be looking at things wrong. It seems like no one is betting on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Who's buying these bonds? I'm assuming it must be mostly Chinese investors and financial firms?

Also, does it ultimately matter with an economy as productive as China's? Other commenters are comparing it with Detroit, which has lost most of its tax base, so I'm not sure that's a fair comparison.

And, if they are state run funds/bond issuing, than isn't it roughly equivalent to any other kind of monetary stimulus? (genuinely asking, this isn't my area of expertise)

<comment> village-idiot Also a non expert.

It seems like a lot of Chinese cities have equal to or greater debt than Detroit. How bad this is depends on the tax base of said cities and how the debt is structured, but it's eyebrow raising at best.

As far as I understand, a lot of valuation of the risk in muni bonds is based around the assumption that municipalities won't go bust together at once. It's this way in the US. This let's someone spread their money safely, in theory.

The Chinese economy is so export and manufacturing dependent, it wouldn't surprise me to see a lot of cities go bust together at once if the economy shrinks. They have very little other economic activity to fall back on.

For my part, I think any good usage of debt requires transparency about the amount and purchase. Any entity, private or public, that tries to hide its total debt load is suspect _at best_. I would expect such an entity to have other hidden debts, and possibly be leveraged to an insane degree, hence the privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> China builds ghost cities and also tears down cities and combines them into new ones. They also have built bridges 26.4 miles long miles long over water (Jiaozhou Bay). Just the materials alone must cost a great deal even at the reduced prices the Government pays and the low wages for employees. Not to mention the huge Government security surveillance and incarceration system. China chides the USA for it's foreign wars but China is at war with it's population to control them, the cost must be similar or higher.

<comment><USER20> Please do not treat all infrastructure projects as money blackholes.

I'll just contribute a little bit about the Jiaozhou Bay bridge. My grandparents live near there. It actually makes much sense if you take a look at the map below:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,120.2319581,82460m/da...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,120.2319581,82460m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Basically, Qingdao is already a mega city with over 6M population in urban area. But it just cannot expand because it is located on a peninsula (similar to San Francisco) with its back facing a big mountain. So it's kind of natural to expand on the other side for more and cheaper land. So to reach the other land, options are:

1\. Connect the tip of the peninsula to the other side. This is shorter but you're connecting city centers together (Brooklyn-alike), which doesn't work well for cargo traffics (Qingdao is also a major seaport). Actually this tunnel is already built and many people use it for commuting.

2\. Connect the seaport area inside the bay to the other side. This is what you mentioned. With that, cargo can reach factories on the other side in a faster fashion without crossing the city center.

3\. Improve the highways around the bay to handle increased demand. First it's a lot longer, which is something you cannot change. Second it's not cheap either given you need to get more land and might need more time.

And 2's price tag is not that high (roughly the same cost as San Francisco - Oakland bay bridge). If you were the decision maker, would you want to build it?

BTW, with 1 & 2's open, the other side already officially became part of Qingdao metropolitan area and cross-bay subway will open this year.

<comment><USER19> For the bridge I am saying it is a big infrastructure project and must have cost a lot of money. I am fascinated by the Chinese ability to just point and create amazing things but...

I am not sure where are the money comes from and I am afraid if everything comes crashing down for China they will go the military route and turn their economy into a military economy then take the whole 9-dash line area by force (as a keep people busy jobs project). I feel the 9-dash line thing is fake and designed to be able to stop shipping like we can stop oil coming out through the middle-east closing by closing shipping lanes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Your weekly dosis of why China is worse than us and _will inevitably collapse_ delivered by Bloomberg, Economist, Financial Times. Thanks aswaedr.

I'm curious if the prophecy will self-fulfill in 10 years or so. I'm also willing to hear independent voices and analysis.

<comment><USER22> The USSR did.

<comment><USER23> A big difference between the USSR and China, and the overall situation is the wars are now no longer about invasions, military and colonialism. But about economy and intellectual might.

As a matter of fact China not needling into military affairs is a huge disadvantage for the US.

One of the underlying themes of Donald Trump's campaign was to convince people regular politicians can no longer stop China. Because China is fighting it in an arena very different to what the US is used to fighting since a century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here is the S&P report that the headlines are based upon: [https://www.spratings.com/documents/20184/0/ChinasHiddenSubn...](https://www.spratings.com/documents/20184/0/ChinasHiddenSubnationalDebtsSuggestMoreLGFVDefaultsAreLikely.pdf/00c1bdd1-70c0-9240-12df-850df192c602)

Might as well read the source for yourself if you are interested in the issue.

</comment><comment> and-then The US has $21.6 T in debt, and a total of $71 T in public and private debt.

[http://www.usdebtclock.org/](http://www.usdebtclock.org/)

<comment><USER25> US also has a lot more assets though and is an already developed economy. China's economy will inevitably slow and for an emerging market, their debt is significant. Also, this is only local Chinese debt and not even the full picture for that. According to nationaldebtclocks, China govt debt is $5.2 trillion on paper but they suggest multiplying by at least 3.25 to account for shadow banking not on the official ledgers and local govt debt the article was talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It seems to me that China is riding easy money and sinking it into tangible assets that, beyond default, are at least usable and semi-permanent. You can't unbuild a bridge and get the money back. It may collapse in the future, but not before reaping benefits for the economy where it's sitting.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ok, there's something i don't get here. 5.8 trillions in debt, china's total GDP is 12.5 trillions in 2016... That's a lot.

And now that reminds me of another number. Apple and Amazon have 1 trillion valuation.

I don't understand if my scales are wrong or if something is seriously wrong pretty much everywhere.

<comment><USER28> Something is seriously wrong pretty much everywhere.

We are at the end of generations of solving one bubble collapsing by inflating another one. There is a lot of money on paper. But in reality there are three main places where money can go.

1\. The USA, which has been effectively printing money like crazy with low interest rates since 2008. This has been transferring wealth from the real economy to the paper economy.

2\. Europe, whose common currency is unsustainable without political integration. There is no general support for political integration, and no reasonable way to untangle the common currency. (Plus Brexit will be a disaster.)

3\. China, which has the largest asset bubble in history. When it pops they are likely to wind up in a deflationary spiral, like the one that Japan has been struggling with for decades since its real estate market collapsed in the early 90s. Our last deflationary spiral was during the Great Depression.

Of those options, investors see the USA as the least bad.

<comment><USER27> And add to the confusion the fact that inflation remained quite low. So this money really went straight from central banks to financial assets, without ever reaching the pocket of general consumers.

At which point does all this madness stops ? Whenever a new economy emerges that provides more sanity and so drains the inflated assets, i suppose ?

<comment><USER28> Everyone is playing kick the can.

A more sane economy is unlikely to outgrow the existing (at least one paper), so that isn't a viable route out.

What's left is that some day, one of the financial disasters turns into a real collapse. We're talking a sufficient run on the banks that people stop believing that banks really have money. The last time this happened was 1933, and it was resolved by FDR closing all banks, auditing their books, deciding which to save, and then opening them up again.

Given our tighter electronic integration these days, the complications are likely to be greater. Think credit cards being refused, ATMs not working, and general chaos. For values of chaos that include people not knowing if their employers can pay, or how to buy food in supermarkets.

The possibility of that happening was the nightmare scenario that was used to convince lawmakers to pass TARP a decade ago. And it is a nightmare with a low but non-zero probability of happening each crisis.

Unfortunately every time we face that threat and successfully get rescued the markets become more convinced that big players will be rescued the next time as well. Which encourages more extreme financial brinksmanship and makes the next crisis more likely. That phenomena is called "moral hazard". See also "too big to fail".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you're interested in this topic, you might like "China's Great Wall of Debt", by Dinny McMahon: [https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Great-Wall-Debt- Massive-ebook/...](https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Great-Wall-Debt-Massive- ebook/dp/B075WW1KXH/)

</comment><comment><USER30> In another article on the same story

>"And that's a debt iceberg with titanic credit risks," they added, estimating that the ratio of all government debt to GDP was 60 percent last year. [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/china-hidden-local- governmen...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/china-hidden-local-government- debt-could-be-6-trillion-sp.html)

60% doesn't seem that bad. Compare USA: 82%, UK 78%, Italy 120% etc. And at least China is still growing fast unlike say Italy which does have some issues.

</comment><comment><USER31> When I look at the jump in defaults this year, all I can think about are all of the home loans people stopped paying in the lead up to the mortgage crisis and how they were systematized into the rest of the economy by securitization. If China's system was built around those so-called "implicit guarantees for debt," isn't it due for a similar or more severe correction?

It seems like the same story--different sector and different culture, same greed and assumptions.

<comment><USER32> Jump in defaults? By whom? Can you link to some data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can anyone please do an explain like I am five on this? The article assumes lots of background which probably is fine considering their target audience.

</comment><comment><USER34> I believe China is about to tank as hard as the Russian empire. There is going to be a revolution. What the trigger will be remains to be seen, but it can be just about anything. Most likely it will be something within that we see as inconsequential.

<comment><USER35> alternatively, we may find out that this new techno-totalitarianism is astoundingly effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The chinese gov prints money electronically and buys the bad debt off the banks and the banks keep lending. We don't do this in the west because the government has to borrow money to create it and sticks the taxpayer with the bill. The cognitive dissonance on this is astonishing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wouldn't they just take whatever they need from the citizens and then make the numbers say whatever they want? Any objections from the citizens would be put down or censored appropriately. Seems like a no brainer for China.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have always found the idea that we in the US shit on China's accounting practices rather hysterical. If "The pot calling the kettle black" ever applies it is for that.

</comment><comment><USER39> If they're uncorrelated risks, it's still a pretty slim chance that they'll all explode though, right?

</comment><comment><USER40> I think China has much less room for error with Trump's tarrifs than is commonly believed.

<comment><USER41> Chinese nationalistic fervor however may give the population the incentive to outlast Americans on the pain of the trade war. Hard to tell, but US is politically divided while China appears more unified at the moment.

<comment><USER42> China appears unified because their government stifles freedom of speech and thought, with reeducation camps, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I see more and more propaganda about china recently than before

</comment><comment><USER44> Are these LGFVs similar to PFI in Britain, Australia etc?

</comment><comment><USER45> I have great fears that the economy over the next 10 years of my life will be stagnation.

The Chinese debt is something the world has known, to continue to accept the debt is the risk for the taker.

The worry is that this will ruin companies and the employees that work for them. It should be obvious how this cascades and affects the common person.

I also have concerns about the US economy given our comfort level with the growing debt.

<comment><USER2> You say "stagnation" like that's the worst thing that could possibly happen. My fear is that the next 10-20 years will make us _wish_ we had a stagnant economy.

<comment><USER46> Indeed. Financial implosions tend to have bad effects on the political system. If this situation does lead to financial problems the effects probably won't just be limited to China.

<comment><USER47> > Financial implosions tend to have bad effects on the political system

This is the primary driver behind my suspicion that some form of financial crisis the US economy has begun, but it's not yet visible when people look at the fundamentals. Unemployment is great, wages are rising, assets prices are growing, etc.

According to the indicators, the economy is as healthy as it can be. But our political situation suggests something is awry, people are way more pissed off than they should be.

<comment><USER48> > According to the indicators, the economy is as healthy as it can be.

Unless your indicators include wealth inequality, personal bankruptcies, wage stagnation, infrastructure repair costs.

<comment><USER47> I meant them to be the indicators listed immediately preceding that statement.

You can't deny that most people are saying the economy is doing very well. Unemployment is low, wage growth is happening, large business profits and revenues are up, manufacturing activity is high, retail sales are the highest they've been.

Just about every economic indicator captured by the US Census Bureau is very strong. But people are still pissed the fuck off.

<comment><USER49> > But people are still pissed the fuck off.

It's possible that people being angry and the economy are not connected. We've never been able to communicate as fast as we have in the past. Right now we live in a culture of "what to be outraged about next". Best thing to do, is not participate in the toxic culture.

<comment><USER50> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> May? Well do they have it or not? So sick of these clickbait nonsense.

If you want to know why bloomberg and financial "news" is a joke and a waste of time. Nobody in the industry takes them seriously. Only the masses who don't know better think this is news.

Sept 2018 : "China's Debt Bomb"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/chinas-debt- bomb](https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/chinas-debt-bomb)

Feb 2018 : "Sizing Up China's Debt Bubble: Bloomberg Economics"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing- up...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing-up-china-s- debt-bubble-bloomberg-economics)

Nov 2017 : "China's Debt Surge May Increase Risk of Financial Crisis"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/china- s-d...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/china-s-debt-surge- may-increase-risk-of-financial-crisis)

Aug 2016 : "China's Growing Debt Problem Isn't Quite What It Seems"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-china- debt/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-china-debt/)

May 2015 : "China's Very High Mountain of Debt"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-08/china- s-v...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-08/china-s-very-high- mountain-of-debt)

Nov 2014 : "Distressed Debt in China? Ain't Seen Nothing, DAC Says"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-20/distresse...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-20/distressed- debt-in-china-you-ain-t-seen-nothing-yet-buyers-say)

There's more but you get the idea. I guess eventually they'll be right. Wish they'd throw in a "ghost city" or some other china doom story for variety.

<comment><USER52> Well, the debt didn't just magically pile up in the last two years - it's just reaching alarming levels in tough times for the country (deleveraging, trade war, worsening international relations).

<comment><USER51> I know. China was asked to increase their debt during the financial crisis. John Paulson flew there directly to ask them to leverage.

I'm just pointing out the pathetic chicken little clickbaiting by bloomberg.

As I said, it isn't news. It's just nonsense they created to sell you ads.

<comment><USER52> Bloomberg's main source of income isn't ads, in fact they don't even have an anti-adblock script.

They mainly make money from data feeds of financial markets and their terminal offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> _There 's nothing literally magical about China and their government isn't omnipotent, no more than the Soviets were._

The Soviet leaders were omnipotent enough to plunge half of the developed world into 70 years of darkness and decay.

My guess is that the Chinese communist leaders are no less potent, just a bit less self-destructive.

<comment><USER54> > The Soviet leaders were omnipotent enough to plunge half of the developed > world into 70 years of darkness and decay.

Please read a history book.

<comment><USER53> Let's try to keep the conversation constructive. Any favorites to recommend?

<comment><USER54> Try Hosking's The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within.

Mind, it's just an intro. And its not a happy book. But one doesn't need to exaggerate or parrot shallow condemnations of a part of the world that had its triumphs as well as its tragedies.

<comment><USER53> Cool, I haven't seen that one. I'll look at some reviews. It's easy to allow biases to creep into one's thinking when the only books on socialist history one's read were written by people like Bo and Solzhenitsyn. Those were "histories written from within," too, but they neglected the bright spots like pioneering work in certain scientific and technological disciplines.

My understanding (and, yes, my bias) is that those few bright spots in Soviet life weren't worth it. We might disagree if, for instance, Hosking extols the fact that the Soviets were first to feed, clothe and house their entire population, because I don't agree that housing a large fraction of them in prison camps while exiling another is a valid solution to that particular problem.

As an additional example, my thinking is someone, presumably the US, would have been first to launch an artificial satellite in the absence of Sputnik. Someone, again presumably the US, would have educated and encouraged the first female astronaut. It's true that we missed out on those 'firsts'... but how many opportunities did the Soviets miss because the prerequisite researchers and teachers died in a gulag somewhere for purely-ideological reasons?

Am I overlooking any other instances of triumph mentioned by Hosking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Anyone else notice Bloomberg's negative focus on China lately? With that "China Hacking Chips" piece where Bloomberg never backed it up with any evidence and the companies said it was fabricated. Does management at Bloomberg have an agenda against China or is this just reflecting what the people want to hear?

<comment><USER14> Not really recent. I read Bloomberg often and don't notice a concerted effort to make China look bad. Negative stories come out regularly and not infrequently but that should be considered normal. There are just as many non negative stories and quite a few positive ones as well. What I will agree with though is that the negative ones have a way of making their way to HN while the positive ones don't. That's really disappointing but that's what HNers up vote so would not blame Bloomberg for this.

<comment><USER56> Yes, I do agree

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I think this is kinda funny. Talks about this "hidden debt", talks about the huge debt the USA has, and so on and so on. And what happens?

In the end, I really wonder if any of it actually matters. The people suffer because of this magical, invisible money, sure, but only because we let it matter.

Long term, I don't think it matters in the end, because governments will try to prevent any sort of huge collapse (which will happen anyway, but will recover over time).

<comment><USER58> this is just some hearts and minds article to get people to worry about things that shouldn't worry them.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Multiple Gmail Inboxes - <AUTHOR> Does anyone have a extension of know a way of viewing all gmail inboxes in 1 window?  On mobile there is a option to view "All Inboxes" but not on web.  Don't want to go down the route of forwarding from one inbox to the other. <comment><USER2> Isn't is easier to forward into one inbox, and then just have that one gmail window open? You can set up gmail to send emails with aliases so that you can correspond as if you are responding from the other accounts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ideally want to keep them as separate as possible as some are for personal and others for various businesses/ventures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Firefox Priv8 extension.</comment>


Why Lisp macros are cool, a Perl perspective (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://lists.warhead.org.uk/pipermail/iwe/2005-July/000130.html <comment><USER2> A thread from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17990114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17990114)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8698074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8698074)

2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4246143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4246143)

2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795344)

<comment><USER3> 2022: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32644851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32644851)

<comment><USER4> I know you're being funny but it's part of the community culture to always link to prior discussions cause they might spark continuing discussion and extended context to the article.

<comment><USER5> I didn't read it as mocking the people posting previous discussions. Rather, I read it as saying "and it'll be discussed again... it always is".

<comment><USER4> Well thats kind of a given for posts with so many repeated prior discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think Lisp is ugly or anything, but part of me wonders if, in languages with syntax, the lack of expressivity is a feature rather than a bug. Partially because wrong things look wrong, if the syntax is intelligently designed. The setx example he gave seemed perfect in that respect, while it's superficially pretty neat, the maintainer in me started to think about what it would be like to debug that, or all the horrible ways it could act slightly different than you'd expect. I kind of like that assignment in the languages I use is really boring for the most part. I dont think that setf example is a footgun per se, but, I would have to look at it more closely than in another language like python.

<comment><USER7> The best thing about a highly expressive language is that you can do anything you want to.

The worst thing about a highly expressive language is that you can do anything you want to.

Expressive power vs. intelligibility (for the sake of common convention and communication in a team setting) is a real tradeoff, and the "principle of least power" does partially explain the popularity of slightly less-powerful languages like Java, Python, and Go, where there is generally just one idiomatic pattern for accomplishing a given task.

<comment><USER8> I have done some Real Work ™ in Lisp, but dear deity, Forth... that to me _really_ is _you can do anything you want to_ \- in such a scary way I have never worked up the courage to actually learn it.

<comment><USER9> If you go full Forth you start with writing your own interpreter, so what you are scared of is really your own shadow.

And that's one of the qualities of Forth: to stop worrying, stop being scared of yourself, stop being scared of the future... Or more precisely it learns you to fear the right thing: namely the Great Evil of Accidental Complexity, which often disguise itself as necessary evil.

<comment><USER8> That resonates... I'm actually afraid of what I may become taking that path. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a blog post making a similar point with Clojure as an example: [https://vvvvalvalval.github.io/posts/2018-01-06-so-yeah- abou...](https://vvvvalvalval.github.io/posts/2018-01-06-so-yeah-about- clojures-syntax.html)

The core ideas are timeless really, but the examples might be a bit more relatable today.

I'm reproducing the ToC here:

      1. Does syntax matter?
      2. The ingredients of Clojure's syntax
        2.1 Data literals
        2.2 Macros
      3. Consequences
        3.1 Verbosity is a solved problem
        3.2 Separation of concerns: code layout ⊥ program structure
          3.2.1 Example: the Builder Pattern
        3.3 Code = Data = Data Viz
        3.4 Tooling as libraries
        3.5 An 'all-tracks' language: embedding paradigms
          3.5.1 Example: Web UIs
        3.6 Saner language stewardship
      4. Summary

</comment><comment><USER11> What's with the `=3D` all over the place? I tried searching for it but that doesn't do much useful unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoted- printable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoted-printable)

Note that 0x3D is the "=" character in ASCII, so "=3D" in QP is "=" in ASCII. :)

This email has probably been through a few conversions to QP and back again between different email clients. Perhaps some buggy client got confused between an ASCII "=" and a QP escape sequence or something like that.

<comment><USER11> Roughly what I expected, TIL, thnx

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unpopular opinions, CLVII: Sturgeon's law applies to macros. Squared.

<comment><USER5> Being able to write new control structures is something I miss in most languages. Lisp macros make it much easier to do that. Tcl uplevel and upvar are another way to approach it.

<comment><USER14> Curious: what kind of new control structures do you miss in other languages?

<comment><USER15> This would save me literally thousands of lines of code at my day job:

        (defmacro ?= (symbol-or-symbols expr)
          (let* ((symbols (etypecase symbol-or-symbols
                            (cons symbol-or-symbols)
                            (symbol (list symbol-or-symbols))))
                 (tmps (loop :for s :in symbols :collect (gensym (symbol-name s))))
                 (err (gensym "ERROR")))
            `(multiple-value-bind (,@tmps ,err) ,expr
               (if (not (null ,err))
                 (return ,err)
                 (setf (values ,@symbols) (values ,@tmps))))))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What curious newbies might miss from discussions of macros is that they are a separate language operating at compile time. They are usually advertised as code operating on itself or something like that. They're not. Powerful, yes, but not that cool.

<comment><USER17> Your comment is true about most languages, but false about Lisp.

Lisp has no compile time vs run time distinction. It only has lists. What is done with a list depends on what the first thing in the list is determined to be:

1\. Function - evaluate the arguments then pass it to the function.

2\. Macro - manipulate the list according to the macro and then get another list.

3\. Special Form - follow the special rules for the special form. (The list of special forms varies from Lisp to Lisp, and are the elementary building blocks from which the language was built.)

In Lisp, macros are advertised as code operating on itself, because that is exactly what they are. And yes, they are exactly that cool.

<comment><USER18> Macros are fully expanded before the rest of the code is executed. Trying to argue that Lisp doesn't have a distinction between compile time and run time because you usually have the compiler (or at least interpreter) available at runtime strikes me as just playing semantics games.

<comment><USER5> Do you have a citation for this? I was under the impression it was entirely possible for lisp macros to be expanded at runtime. For example, you could have data that is passed to a function and then used as code (because code and data are the same thing). The system doesn't know it's going to be used as code until it is, so the macros can't be expanded until then.

<comment><USER19> If Lisp uses an interpreter (which runs Lisp source code), you may see macro expansions at runtime.

For compiled code, there usually will be no macro expansion at runtime. Lisp will not macro expand code in compiled code, since all macros need to be expandable at compile-time.

But: if you explicitly want it, you can generate code at runtime and then you need to call EVAL or COMPILE. Then macro expansions might happen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mithril.js – A modern client-side Javascript framework - <AUTHOR> https://mithril.js.org/ <comment><USER2> I credit mithril and it's fantastic community of knowledgeable devs with really changing my learning style at the outset of my dev career. Essentially from learning by reading, and becoming overwhelmed (as is often reported in the js world), to learning by doing and using technology. I'm sure this happens to many other people through different routes but I personally experienced it through this community. Seeing people so actively discuss things with new users and the amount of other general interesting discussion that happens in the mithril Gitter channel makes it one of my favourite places on the web. There is a strong desire for simplicity and a strong anti bloat sentiment from the devs over there. I like it a lot. I'm referring to you, Pygy, Leo, tivac, barney, porsager, jaforbes and foxdonut. I have built and deployed a few mithril apps in production early in my career and I'm glad I had the chance. I wonder now how new js devs starting with frameworks like vue can learn to work with the language rather than than the framework when every part of it is wrapped up in a reactivity system. I would worry that a lot of vue devs would come to mithril and not understand why the string literals they are passing down to components are not being set in the parent.

Anyway that's enough. Cheers to mithril and it's great devs, if you like mithril check out bss and Wright from porsager and meiosis from Foxdonut.

<comment><USER3> Second this. Mithril.js is absolutely incredible, and my coworkers are often surprised at how quickly I can dive into a React project and fix an issue because I don't carry the baggage of doing things "the react way".

Every now and then I use software tools where rather than complaining about how x or y should be different, everything seems to be the best possible version of something I'd have come up with myself, and I have zero complaints. Mithril.js is one of those tools.

You're not "in a Mithril project", you're basically just using javascript but the VDOM is expertly and minimally handled by some key functions.

Participating in the project via Gitter was very welcoming as well. Long live Mithril!

<comment> shady-lady > can dive into a React project and fix an issue because I don't carry the > baggage of doing things "the react way".

Would they not want your solution to conform to existing solutions; which (regardless of being idiomatic to React) would be idiomatic to the codebase?

<comment><USER3> I usually find the issue, point it out, then they make sure they implement the fix in a way that is not alien to their codebase.

It's not many hands on one project but everyone taking care of their own projects, so it's a bit different where I'm at right now.

<comment><USER4> Some people are way better at finding issues than others, even in other's code bases.

Another good skill to have though, that is unfortunately not super duper common either, is being able to figure out and match conventions and patterns in code bases when introducing changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course what I am about to say is my opinion

I have nothing but great things to say about mithril. It has a wonderful and well documented API that maintains simplicity but manages to cover the entire project (no hidden APIs or undocumented features) to the credit of the mithril community the focus in simplicity is grained into the project from the bottom up.

I have to say that it's been nothing short of amazing and is the reason I took JavaScript much more seriously.

The community is awesome and very welcoming. The gitter chat is always active and people are happy to chat and answer questions. I credit them with being able to move quickly with mithril.

At my job my entire team uses it and everyone so far has loved it. It's been great!

</comment><comment><USER6> I love Mithril. I would encourage every React/Vue developer to try it for a small project. Not to convince them to switch (I use all 3), but because I think using tools designed by smart people with a minimal mindset is valuable. Also I really like the hyperscript approach. It just fits my brain.

Last I checked, Mithril hyperscript couldn't handle SVG, which is a non- starter for dataviz work. Anyone know if that's still the case?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, hyperscript really doesn't get the attention it deserves.

SVG works fine with Mithril now, and has for a while. Here's a quick sample: [https://flems.io/#0=N4IgZglgNgpgziAXAbVAOwIYFsZJAOgAsAXLKEAG...](https://flems.io/#0=N4IgZglgNgpgziAXAbVAOwIYFsZJAOgAsAXLKEAGhAGMB7NYmBvEAXwvW10QICsEqdBk2J4s+LLQCuDABQATWtSk4G+AEa15ATwoACYAB00evQDcIMAO6I9sgJR6AvAD5jp01lkByOGYDm3vpGJh6mFtYADrQATsS23gAMeskAjIlpGUHuHuw5YV7e1BAx1LDIkFBQTjEw8gC6yNQAHk4ArImN1NrtncgxvfXe9hT5HoW11MRBBmNhlVAJ6lBSMNmhYabNth2jG5vaO4l7mx5WEPLEhLbpx3MehDAQ- iQ3Gfes9mNfaJ+UNLQsJFoDAYnh1Bh1DByFQ4NCYFMIPQEDx0ohUgBONgcECYHB4fDUOACAHCZg8Nj1KhQCBoADWKNQuK4YggVxi0H+Uhi5B4JGIkTgiAA9MKZJE6f5CYDhVg2YQOVAAAKpfCqgBssvlivw-H+xG0kW4IDg1A5kVErHqrCAA)

<comment><USER6> That's great to hear. I'm almost wondering if I'm getting my history mixed up. Maybe it did work when I tried it (~ a year ago) but I just stumbled on old information and gave up.

Or maybe I'm thinking of a different hyperscript implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is great to see Mithril again on front page of HN, it is one of the most simplest and easiest modern JS frameworks. I only know flarum [0] as a project which has used Mithril mixed with jQuery [1] and personally, I am quite amazed how snappy it is.

[0]: [https://discuss.flarum.org/](https://discuss.flarum.org/)

[1]: [https://github.com/flarum/core/blob/master/js/package.json](https://github.com/flarum/core/blob/master/js/package.json)

<comment><USER7> Lichobile[0] (lichess[1] mobile version) is also made with mithril.

There's also [https://flems.io](https://flems.io) a snappy web playground with an open source embeddable core[2] ( shameless self promotion :P )

[0]: [https://github.com/veloce/lichobile](https://github.com/veloce/lichobile)

[1]: [http://lichess.org](http://lichess.org)

[2]: [https://github.com/porsager/flems](https://github.com/porsager/flems)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mithril is probably my favorite widget framework. I will still use React for larger applications because of the breadth of third-party modules. That said, Mithril and Preact start to make me question React. I'm sure a React developer would say that 10k LOC and 70MB worth of repository is completely necessary for the functioning of React, but part of me thinks there are too many cooks and only one pot. React is elegant, but I don't think its abstractions are simple enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> I recently rediscovered Mithril.

I needed to build a fairly complex tree-table in our legacy ES5 app and I initially turned to Vue to build the first prototype. I'm a big fan of Vue, but for the first time with Vue I found myself really fighting against the framework. In particular Vue's templating system and lack of template fragments make it hard to create complex HTML table elements as they require a strict structure. Another issue is our ES5 app already has its own build system so we'd either be stuck with using Vue without Webpack (which in Vue is a really inferior experience) or attempting to use both build systems which is a bit cumbersome.

While researching Vue template fragments I discovered Mithril has had support for fragments since its inception (React recently also added support for fragments). I had always discounted Mithril. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's the simple homepage, the seemingly brief documentation, hyperscript, or the lack of HN hype. Wow was I ever so wrong. The documentation is short because the API surface area is tiny and this is a GOOD thing. I never felt like I was writing framework code or trying to figure out the Mithril way of doing things. It pretty much gets out of your way. Hyperscript, which I thought I would hate, turned out to be one of my favorite parts of using Mithril especially when I paired it with Tailwind CSS. Since Hyperscript is pure JavaScript, doesn't require a build step, and is the standard way of writing Mithril components, integrating Mithril into our legacy JS app was absolutely dead simple.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using it for some time now, and the biggest plus for me, besides the very simple to understand API and the manual redraw feature, is the ease one can find setting it up for a project.

Even with webpack or some other complex bundle, someone without any formation can really quickly set it up and get to code without worrying much about the internals of webpack etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, exactly. Using JSX is also easy for development purposes if you don't like hyperscript syntax. Just add babel.min.js file and use

      <script src="https://unpkg.com/babel-standalone@6/babel.min.js"></script>
      <script type="text/jsx">
      /** @jsx m */
      // your can use jsx here
      </script>

and bingo! You can use JSX. No need to use npm, webpack, etc.

<comment><USER12> Setting up Webpack manually is a pain, but honestly if one uses create-react- app, everything is done for you and you just start coding your app: you have transpiling of ES6 (at least, I don't know about ES7), you can install and include other packages, etc. etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. If you're creating an app that will be used in production then of course you need to use npm, webpack and other tools.

But if you're new to a framework and just want to experiment then being able to create an html file with a couple of script tags and writing code removes many barriers to entry.

React, Vue and many others already offer this, I thought it was worth mentioning that Mithril does this too.

<comment><USER12> I don't know. Creating the HTML file, finding a CDN, and adding script tags take more than:

npx create-react-app MyApp

There is nothing to install, and you have a complete playground to experiment.

<comment><USER7> [https://flems.io/mithril](https://flems.io/mithril)

That link preloads mithril in a web playground and you're ready to go in a couple of seconds. You can even download and continue development locally should the need arise - without the gorilla and the jungle hiding behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lighter-weight and largely API-compatible replacement for React: Preact.

[https://preactjs.com/](https://preactjs.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. If you still want to be React-like, that is! But React, Preact are still view libraries right? Mithril is a (reasonably) complete framework. It's sufficiently similar to React that if you know React, you can get productive in Mithril very fast. I guess mithril is for people who want a full framework with no fluff that gets out of the way.

<comment><USER14> > But React, Preact are still view libraries right?

No, they're component-oriented. View suggests you're doing MVC or similar. You don't need an M & C with React -- you will likely need to add react-router, but react + react-router (or preact + preact-router) is all the 'framework' you need for most apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. For that matter, Mithril is also component-oriented and router is included.

And what I meant by react being a view library is that react by itself only handles the UI part and you need to get additional libraries to handle stuff like routing and talking with the server. This stuff is provided by mithril itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Haven't used it in a while, but it definitely shaped my understanding about functional programming as it relates to javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a similar experience. It made me understand how front-end javascript frameworks actually work (in general). The no-fluff approach taken by the framework meant that code was clear and descriptive docs helped (reminds me of Django's docs sometimes). I wish there were more tutorials though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Loved mithril when I used it a few years ago. Simple clean and effective. The source code was very straight forward if you needed to investigate deeper.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks interesting, but I found the fact that they say

| Be wary of aggressive performance claims, as benchmarks used by some of these projects are known to be out-of-date and flawed (in the sense that they can be - and are - exploited)

on a page full of aggressive performance claims[0] slightly ironic

[0][https://mithril.js.org/framework- comparison.html](https://mithril.js.org/framework-comparison.html)

<comment><USER18> Mithil maintainer here.

Guilty as charged. That page hasn't been updated since the v1.0 release, we've been focusing on code improvements.

V2 is around the corner (mostly bug fixes, some of which required subtle breaking changes (i.e. things that most users won't run into but it would not have been honest to make it a minor semver bump). We'll revisit the home page before the release.

<comment><USER19> Do you accept PRs for website and documentation? Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Mithril has a very open and inviting community and will definitely accept PRs. I reccomend popping into the Gitter channel if you'd like to discuss things further

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This follows Reacts style of 'functions instead of templates'. I don't think it's a good idea.

I think React will be the Java of our time. It caters to engineers who want everything to be well defined and typed. And to large corporations which don't care about heavy build processes.

Looking at what happened to Java: It's still used a lot. But not by new and exciting companies or indie developers.

I think we will see the same with React. It will stay around for decades. But the exciting new projects of the next ten, twenty years will not be written in it. They will be written by lighter tech stacks. Just like FB was initially not written in strictly typed Java but in loosely typed PHP.

<comment><USER21> You might be right, but I think you underestimate how lightweight React felt compared to all the alternatives when it was first released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> An even smaller framework that doesn't have its own components (I use bootstrap with it): [https://maquettejs.org/](https://maquettejs.org/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nowadays I'd recommend HyperApp over mithril.js.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm asking why you prefer hyperapp because Mithril has router and xhr capability built-in, and hyperapp doesn't seem to have those features. But hyperapp is really tiny though. :-)

<comment><USER23> Because HyperApp also has state management built in.

<comment><USER24> If I understand correctly, HyperApp enforces the so-called SAM pattern, but that's it. Calling this "state management" seems to me an exaggeration. And why would one use a view framework to do (domain/application) state management? It doesn't sound right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can someone summarize with an example that shows why this has benefits over React? I read the first few examples and it seems simple enough, but I've bought into the whole JSX benefit and don't see how those first few examples allow me to write less code and code that is closer to the HTML I'll eventually be rendering. Is it the tooling that mithril allows me to forget about? Is it _something special that mithril gives me_ a novice who doesn't realize I'm being held back by using React?

<comment><USER26> (Mithril author here)

Usually, what I hear from folks is that you come out of using Mithril with more transferable knowledge than something like React.

One example that comes to mind was when someone realized you could implement an incredibly simple atomic CSS composition framework by basically doing this:

        /* some atomic CSS */
        .primary-color-700 {color:blue;}
        .pad-700 {padding:1em;}

        /* a bog standard CSS selector string */
        const MyWidget = '.primary-color-700.pad-700';

        /* a Mithril element */
        m(MyWidget) // <MyWidget /> in JSX

So you can get a fairly aggressive CSS optimization scheme for basically free, and you can iteratively improve the quality of your atomic CSS as you learn more about plain CSS / semantic taxonomy practices. And meanwhile, you're still just writing bog standard CSS and Mithril templates. There's no compile- time shenanigans to dedupe styles, no extra library runtime, and CSS is actually CSS so if you server-render you stay on the browser's streaming rendering happy path instead of waiting blocked on scripts.

Now compare with what one would do with most frameworks: one would pick some CSS-in-JS library, get things done and over with, but probably learn nothing interesting in the process and have little idea of what sort of code is actually getting shipped to customers.

<comment><USER25> This is really useful. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As web-development is not my primary trade, I found that MithrilJs was the right amount of abstraction to get into it. Small API, modular, as close to Javascript as it could get and with the help of the folks in the Gitter channel and the invaluable pearls of wisdom in Leo's blog in the earlier days of the framework, my code became more functional and much more readable. For me, it's kind of the swiss army knife of Frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER28> The main problem with steering away from templates is that designers who know HTML are immediately alienated from the code base. Same thing with CSS as objects instead of using real CSS.

When working with libs that use HTML templates such as Vue, it's still possible for designers to be integrated in the development process. But with HyperScript, JSX, or Mithril, anyone contributing to the codebase has to know JavaScript.

<comment><USER29> If they can't learn basic JavaScript, they should not be touching the code base with a ten foot pole. Designers can still design, but through mockups and comments passed to people qualified to modify code.

<comment><USER28> If markup and styling are not in JavaScript, designers do not need to touch JavaScript at all.

<comment><USER30> This is where the whole fight over what "separation of concerns" in the front- end means scores a clean point for the traditional definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting, I don't have much experience with either, but I thought Mithril was kinda succeeded by Aurelia, which makes it a less attractive choice for a new project. Good to see there's still stuff going on.

<comment><USER32> Mithril is far superior to and simpler than Aurelia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good thing designers have chrome DOM inspect. :) very terse script, nice idea.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why include XHR in a view framework?

<comment><USER35> You can use mithril.js without m.request, but then you have to dispatch redraw events when you finished handling the request[^1]. It also provides a promise API for web requests in old browsers, i.e. without fetch(). If I choose not to use m.request, I would have to find another XMLHttpRequest wrapper and bind it to Mithril.

[^1]: [https://mithril.js.org/autoredraw.html#after- mrequest](https://mithril.js.org/autoredraw.html#after-mrequest)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> YAJSF ?

Yet-another-js-framework

<comment><USER37> but a good one :D</comment></comment>


Pet Projects - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2009/05/29/pet-projects/ <comment><USER2> My current pet project is a Boilerplate OpenGL-ES 2.0 Android project in java. I don't want to go all the way and build an engine, I'm far from being experienced enough, but at least it's a great way to sort the good and the bad in all the things I've done already.

Loading of textures, creation and loading of materials, loading of shaders, linking of programs, creation and buffering of VBOs... there's a ton of things to be done before you can even see anything on your screen. I'd love to speed this up for the first launch, and then let the code be overhauled according to each and everyone's specific needs - OpenGL is too low-level to be wrapped in a full-fledged library (that would be an engine...), and I'm a bit fed up with copy-pasting my own bugs from previous projects, so a boilerplate with very few features (and errors!) will do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah yes. I wrote a game (text-based "sports" sim) in Python and wxPython roughly eight years ago that still has a small, but hardcore community of players. I started on a "version 2" of the game about six years ago. Anytime I want to learn a new language I try and implement "version 2" using the new language. As a result I've learned Ruby, JavaScipt, ActionScript, Scala, Clojure, Lua, Haxe, and a ton of frameworks/libraries associated with the previous languages. It's been an absolute blast, but I still haven't released "version 2" yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> My own pet project is a browsergame: 2 years in I still don't have anything playable because I start over all the time. It began with Ruby, Sinatra and MongoDB; the last version before I deleted it was with Rails, Haml and ActiveRecord. Next time I'll go with Rails, Slim and Sequel.

I don't think I'll ever release anything, but it's fun to work on it and learn new tech!

</comment><comment><USER5> This might be a good way to learn a language, but I'm not motivated to solve a problem which I've already solved.

<comment><USER6> I agree. I think I take the reverse approach -- I maintain a list of project ideas that I would actually use were I to build it -- and when I get the free time, I can see what new languages / libraries / techniques I can apply to implement one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before starting a pet project, ask yourself why you wouldn't start a "pet product" instead :)</comment>


MedHack: mentorathon for startups to land clients and VCs - <AUTHOR> http://medhack.prebacked.com

<comment><USER2> Been to a couple of these. Best ROI in terms of mentorship and networking per time spent all the events I have been to.</comment>


Julian Assange was 'handcuffed 11 times and stripped naked' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/25/julian-assange-handcuffed-stripped-naked-claim-lawyers <comment><USER2> Reading this, Snowden have to feel lucky he managed to escape in Russia , if he didnt he pretty much will face the same fate as Assanges. Assange mistake was he was counting too much on Ecuador's officials but they got pretty easily bribed by US government.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is really strange how hawkish, conservative policies seem almost inevitably to degenerate into kinky gay porn plots

</comment><comment><USER4> "The book contained a password which the authors had been told by Julian Assange was temporary and would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours..."

That doesn't make sense as stated. Perhaps they meant that they believed that the encrypted files would all be deleted in some secure way. Strange they just didn't say that.

</comment><comment><USER5> It really bothers me how anyone who views Assange or Snowden as criminals on here get downvoted.

<comment><USER6> Why does that bother you? Putting this instance aside, I am not aware of a single person who believes legality defines morality in 100% of cases. Furthermore I have not met a single person who does not believe at least some illegal events were morally justified, for example most americans believe the american revolution was justified.

When you say things like I can't understand why you would not think X, when in reality it's very understandable why someone would think X, you come off as just trying to use a logical fallacy to argue that everyone should bend their morals to yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh man, I usually have to pay extra for more than 10 hand-cuffings...</comment>


Bing and Yahoo still advertise freeware with toolbar/adware installer - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/UPE0QTz.png <comment><AUTHOR> At least in germany.

Same problem with searches for "google chrome", "filezilla", "7zip", "opera" and "vlc player". It could be more.

Duckduckgo is using yahoo adnetwork and shows the same adware/toolbar installers. Google banned the ads for this search terms years ago.</comment>


Bitcoin Is an Expensive Way to Pay for Stuff - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-02/bitcoin-is-an-expensive-way-to-pay-for-stuff.html

<comment><USER2> The current cost to send a Bitcoin transaction is about 35 cents.

In contrast, if you have a credit card merchant account (if you can even get one...) you will pay 3-7% in fees, plus often a 10% rolling reserve. This isn't counting the additional costs and risks associated with chargebacks.

This is why businesses who accept Bitcoin are often willing to drop the price by 10-15% for those who pay using that method.

IMAGINE -- 10-15% lower prices! Yet somehow Bitcoin is "expensive" ??

Nothing could possibly be more expensive, and more of a hassle, than the current legacy banking and credit card system, which functions as a massive tax on every transaction today.

Bitcoin is often accused of "wasting resources" but the work of the miners is what secures the transactions, and the balances, and the individual liberty, at a much lower cost than the legacy banking alternatives.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, a better comparison would be with debit card transactions, which are 21 cents plus .05%.

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/story...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/story/2012-05-01/retailers- see-big-drop-in-debit-card-fees/54661640/1)

<comment><USER2> Most of the time, when your CC merchant account is processing cards, they ARE debit cards, but they are being processed through the VISA or Mastercard system, and to the merchant, the distinction is irrelevant.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook? - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-liking-stuff-on-facebook?

<comment><USER2> A reasonable explanation I thought of is they're having trouble keeping track of who is liking what across their databases. i.e. Alice has liked Company X, but the like turns up on Bob's account.

While this is a bit of a poor show, it would be an explanation that doesn't require any nefarious behaviour from Facebook, just some slightly dodgy code somewhere.</comment>


Why the Wealthy Fear Pandemics - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20200409103641/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronvairus-economy-history.html <comment><USER2> archive didn't work for me. here the original [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus- econo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/coronavirus-economy- history.html)</comment>


Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/08/moneyland-how-super-rich-looted-their-own-countries-create-elite-global-haven <comment><USER2> It is not just the super rich running this scam but almost every multi- national.

Just take Apple as one example.

Apple is sitting on close to $300+ billion in cash in some offshore tax haven, just to make sure that cash is located outside of the USA to insure it does not attract any tax.

This wide spread multi-national tax avoidance has been running at epidemic levels for many decades now.

From what I recall Google started this scam and it is still the master of avoiding tax and while the populous is happy to vote in governments that turn a blind eye to this practice, it will remain a very lucrative endeavour.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but you're missing the half of the equation where everyone who is a senior employee gets granted or grants themselves large amounts of stock options, then decides to funnel this tax free hoard of wealth into stock buybacks.

It's the most direct and massive transfer of wealth from normal and poor people to rich in the history of any society. It's disgusting and despicable, anyone who owns equities in 2019 needs to recognize they have become a part of this amoral system and work to reform it.

We are literally destroying billions of dollars every day to enrich a handful of shareholders (who are already the richest humans that ever lived by any metric). It's the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of humanity squared, and it's only increasing.

Google broke records and made headlines by announcing an unprecedented $25 billion in buybacks for this quarter. Everyone else copies Google. This heist is happening right now, today, in the open, and it's totally legal.

<comment><USER2> > Google broke records and made headlines by announcing an unprecedented $25 > billion in buybacks for this quarter.

This sort of tax avoidance has been going on for decades.

As just one example see the link below to see how Google has been avoiding it's tax responsibility here in Australia:

[https://www.smh.com.au/business/google-paying-a-fraction- of-...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/google-paying-a-fraction-of-the-tax- in-australia-it-should-20150208-139176.html)

If that same level of tax avoidance was perpetrated by an individual they would be facing decades in prison.

<comment> m-p-3 Imagine all these uncollected taxes that could be used to properly fund public services like healthcare, etc.

These businesses are actively stealing the citizens from their essential services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is painting mobility as a bad thing, but it also has a good side. China's capital controls are a big part of how it oppresses people: if they could just leave, China would have no ability to make itself into a productive dystopia. The ideal situation would be if countries had to compete for everyone's presence, but as it stands limitations on mobility mean that only the very powerful can leap over the boundaries and have countries compete for them.

<comment><USER5> Mobility is great but when on .001% of the entire global population gets to do it, and they get to do it much easier than anyone else would have (sometime skirting laws and requirements that normal people would).

The rich and elite get special treatment, when they should not. It leads to more unfair conditions.

<comment><USER4> The question should be, how can we give the average person the freedoms that the elites have, not how can we enslave the Chinese elites in the way we've enslaved the average Chinese person.

<comment><USER6> The first point would be policies aimed at distributing ownership of property etc. So for example we could have a high tax for:

1\. Real estate not directly used by the owner as his or her residence or place of work.

2\. Shares of a business where he or she does not work (Zuck doesn't get taxed as heavily on facebook shares as the investors do)

A major part of the problem is that ownership itself is so heavily concentrated that freedom for ordinary people is not possible. But if we have policies which encourage smaller businesses, weaker concentrations of wealth and more ownership by more people that would be a major start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moneyland is a good book on this topic. Rich people (top 1%) don't live or earn money "anywhere" anymore. There's so much ease to global movement of capital they just move it around so they pay - no taxes - have no accounts with their name on it - launder all their money legally (if need be) - buy up property and invest without any interest in any country in particular.

It's a depressing read.

<comment><USER8> Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of. They are just workers making somewhere in the mid-6 figures - doctors, lawyers, small mom-and-pop business owners, best coders, etc. And they pay the majority of taxes, actually. Bottom half of Americans pay nothing and top 1% pays 35-40% of all taxes. You are not fair to those educated, strong, hardworking people.

<comment><USER9> To be global 1% means earning $32k/year (source: investopedia). It's a catchy phrase but ironically basically any Westerner using it is part of it. The archetypal Occupy protestors clutching their latest-model iPhone in one hand and a Starbucks in the other

<comment><USER10> I assume you got this from the Investopedia article [1]? This seems a little disingenuous, no?

To make the top 1% in terms of income, yes, it's $32k/year but to make the top 1% in terms of wealth you would need $770k in net worth, well beyond most Americans, even with assets such as an iPhone and a Starbucks coffee.

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/05061...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp)

<comment><USER9> _This seems a little disingenuous, no?_

Not at all - from the comment I was replying to "Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of."

But my wider point being that it is just used to mean "anyone slightly wealthier than me".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those interested in learning more about the invention of Eurobonds and how they destabilised the postwar Bretton Woods system by enabling free movement of capital across borders, this Guardian article is a fascinating read: [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/the-real- goldfi...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/the-real-goldfinger- the-london-banker-who-broke-the-world)

</comment><comment><USER12> The idea of The Perpetual Traveller ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler)) had been around for a long time (at least to my knowledge since the 1960s).

It has simply got easier and in fact the group of people who can attempt it, though tiny, has grown much larger.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was thinking about the super rich, recalling that story where a rich philanthropist made NYU Medical School tuition-free in a surprise announcement. I couldn't help think: why do we live in a system where there are people so rich, that we rely on their kindness for our upper-crust medical students to not have debt? Why not have an economy that limits mega-wealth so we don't need to rely on the generosity of mega-wealthy donors? The subtext here is the vast majority of mega-wealthy donors are NOT going to help the rest of us who helped build their wealth.

<comment><USER14> The problem as I see it is that accumulation of wealth-movement power (note that I did not say "accumulation of wealth" because that isn't really at thing) seems to be necessary to some extent in order to overcome collective action problems in society. Funding medical school is a great example -- nobody wants to do it, on their own, but society as a whole wants it to get done.

Either you have wealthy individuals do it, or you have the government do it. But _someone_ has to pool a lot of resources in one place and start moving them around, if we want things like free med school to exist.

Maybe it's better if the government does it; in theory it leads to better outcomes because the government has better incentives to make good decisions with their wealth-movement power, outweighing the inefficiencies of economic centralization by ensuring that people's basic needs are met across the population. This is what a lot of leftists and liberals will argue.

Meanwhile conservatives, libertarians, etc. will point to government track records in actually implementing programs well, engaging in corruption, designing good policy, and becoming extensions of corporate interests. Not to mention generalized waste due to mismatch between "incentives to start projects" and "incentives not to spend money".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is ironic that Britain is already close to a tax-heaven than they admit.

<comment><USER7> The Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the Isle Of Man I believe are constantly being used for the purpose of tax evasion, money laundering etc... that's what frightens me about Brexit - I think the hard Brexiteers actually want to make this easier, not harder.

I.e. I met a software guy from Sachs who told me about what he did there. Essentially he built automated software to flag "suspicious transactions". So ie if 200 million came in from he Faroe Islands the software would flag it as "possibly" an unlawful transfer. It made sure the books were "kosher".

So I asked him

Me: oh ok, so then the software blocked those transactions?

Him: no.

Me: Well did it flag them so they would investigate it?

Him: no.

Me: What did it do then?

Him: It just flagged them.

Me: just flagged them? ... so what did it do? What was it for?

Him: It was designed so when the Sachs managing team are called to court they can say "oh yeah we're very sorry our software flagged that as a suspicious activity. We're really sorry, won't happen again". And then they'll get a 200 million fine on a 3 billion operation. By law they don't have to do anything else, so they don't.

<comment><USER16> > The Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the Isle Of Man I believe are constantly > being used for the purpose of tax evasion, money laundering etc... that's > what frightens me about Brexit - I think the hard Brexiteers actually want > to make this easier, not harder.

It's the one single thing that makes me most pro-EU. I don't see how we can fight tax evasion on a country-by-country level. But a economic and geographical bloc as big as the EU has enough clout to have real enforcement power.

<comment><USER9> _But a economic and geographical bloc as big as the EU has enough clout to have real enforcement power._

The EU gave us the double-Irish and the Dutch-sandwich and other tax evasion schemes used by large corporations. They want the exact opposite of "real enforcement power".

<comment><USER7> The EU didn't do that, states did that.

And if I'm not mistaken part of the reason why it went away was the EU kept giving them advice to stop it.

<comment><USER9> The EU requires member countries to let money cross their borders, and grants corporations the right to pay taxes for the entire EU in the member country of their choosing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's in the best interests of the owners of capital that capital be free to cross any borders with a minimum of friction, but people be stuck where they are. That's the basic dynamic that creates this kind of situation, and it's not accidental.

</comment><comment><USER18> Given the plain absurdity I can't help but ask what they are high on if they think a banking system is a neccessity to loot. Banks have certainly been complict but the solution is to hold /actual bad actors/ responsible.

Perhaps rhetoric or ideology given that it is dripping with antisemitic dogwhistles taken at face value. Most of those are essentially ancient bullying charging them with being disloyal, rootless, and exploitative after repeatably persecuting them, displacing them and forcing them into a scapegoated "dirty work" that was religiously allowee so they stood to inherit the money after their death. Looting like that has occured through time immemorial - from the occupation of Viking, literal stealing of goods and the very literal colonialism of the East India Company and Leopold.

Once again it ammounts to absurd scapegoating - if they actually wanted to hold the kleptocrats accountable they would hold them accountable! Their fortunes aren't going to do them much good when they are isolated from them in prison or death row.

It is the blind hierarchical normism of enforcement double standard that is the true root. Ousted dictators aren't responsible for travesties and can retire quietly while enslaved hostages are guilty of materially supporting terrorists.

</comment><comment><USER19> Imagine if instead of constantly building horrific low-income housing projects to (fruitlessly) retroactively "solve" the problem of middle and lower-class people being unable to afford housing in major metropolitan areas, we didn't poison the market in the first place by treating housing as foreign investment vehicles.

<comment><USER20> The cycle works like this:

\- we have people who live in subpar conditions

\- let's build some cheap houses and rent them at discount to those in need

\- actually not that cheap: why is that only rich people deserve to have a balcony?

\- within a decade the houses turn into a ghetto

\- oh, but there is a research which suggests if people actually _owned_ the houses instead of just renting them, they would stop throwing garbage on the floors. So we sell these houses at discount.

\- goto step 1

<comment><USER14> In New York, they were deliberately intended to become ghettos, or at best a place to sequester the city's poor.

[http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/216905-the-l...](http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/216905-the- lingering-effects-of-nyc-racist-city-planning)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-new-york- cit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-new-york-citys- coastline-became-home-to-the-poor.html)

<comment><USER19> "Mayor John V. Lindsay, who took office in 1965, was determined to break this cycle, to put low-income projects in middle-class neighborhoods. He tried, memorably, in 1971 in Forest Hills, Queens, figuring that the community's predominantly liberal Jewish population would not object to the arrival of three 24-story towers. He was wrong. The construction site was soon overrun with angry protesters."

I have to wonder, does anyone, yourself included, want projects in their neighborhood? And more importantly, is there evil dirt in 'bad' neighborhoods that makes housing projects become high-crime ghettos, and if we just build them in middle-class neighborhoods with good dirt instead, everyone's going to behave and make it a nice place to live?

I can tell you, living in an extremely liberal, formerly low-crime small city that in the past decade decided to "put low-income projects in middle-class neighborhoods" and even offered section 8 vouchers to random people from a big city hundreds of miles away to move in, it's been a catastrophe. Spreading crime and dysfunction around isn't really better than quarantining it.

<comment><USER14> I'm not an expert in this area, but I think the general line of thinking is that it's concentration of poverty that causes these kinds of problems in the first place. Now that the problems exist, spreading the poverty around as you point out won't make the problems go away.

I'm sure there has been research done on this, I will try to find some references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> These places are called Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, Switzerland and others.</comment>


Ask HN: Time Warner Cable doubled my internet speed. Why dont pages load faster? - <AUTHOR> I've done speed tests dozens of times. A few things I've noticed:
1. Though I have significantly higher speeds, pages made "load" quicker but, I'll still see an activity indicator. The pages don't load asynchronously in other words.
2. Speeds seem to spike up and down quite often.
What gives? They double my speed at no cost to me, but I don't see much improvement, but speed tests indicate that I should be seeing improvement. <comment><USER2> Stuart Cheshire's rant may be relevant - "It's the Latency, Stupid"

[https://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Latency.html](https://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Latency.html)

Discussed at length here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826768)

Many other articles on roughly the same topic:

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=It%27s+the+latency+stupid](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=It%27s+the+latency+stupid)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, interesting. The HN thread doesn't seem to propose many solutions. Is this something a new modem would fix? Time Warner gave me a (very large and unattractive) modem. I have an old-ish Apple wireless router plugged into it.

<comment><USER2> My impression as a non-expert is that there is no non-commercial solution, every system for Joe Public is crap in this regard. They get away with it because everyone quotes top possible speeds without considering latency. With web pages especially, you make lots of connections and get lots of small files, each delivered extremely quickly after a measurable pause. Hence poor perceived performance.

It boils down to large pages with lots of bloat, analytics, ads, and formatting. So no, I don't think a new modem would fix it. Welcome to the modern web.

Of course, I could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lots of things can wreck your internet performance. For instance, when I first got Frontier DSL it was often subjectively slower than dialup because the DNS servers sucked and could take 4 seconds or so to get back.

I installed djbdns and it got much much better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not familiar with djbdns. Looks like it could improve my speeds in theory. I'll look into it. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Capacity is not the same as throughput.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pages are complex and non-trivial to render nowadays. Your computer speed is probably playing a part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brand new 5K iMac with maxed out specs so, I don't think it's my machine. Happens on all our machines unfortunately. :-(

<comment><USER5> OK it's not your machine ;-) I mentioned it because I have seen newer non-mac laptops be pretty slow.

Try wired instead of wireless to see if that is the issue. Try changing your DNS to Google's or OpenDNS and see if that helps.</comment></comment></comment>


Tachyons, a light-weight, responsive, functional css framework - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Used this on my every project that I started. Ever since then, I almost never touched CSS anymore. I used it on my personal website: [http://www.philipyoungg.com](http://www.philipyoungg.com)

cons: It's rather messy in HTML, but I grow with it.</comment>