Scooter Madness - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/opinion/electric-scooters-nashville.html <comment><USER2> > Last month, the inevitable happened: Brady Gaulke, a 26-year-old Nashville > man, was killed in a collision with an S.U.V. while riding a scooter. His > grieving parents have launched a petition to ban the devices in Nashville. > "[E]-scooters are unsafe at any speed, and we are calling on Mayor David > Briley and the Metro Council to ban them from the streets immediately," the > petition reads, arguing that Mr. Gaulke should be "the last victim of an > epidemic that the e-scooter companies and local government both refuse to > acknowledge."

Imagine being gaslighted by the auto industry so hard that you think scooters are the problem here, not the car that actually hit and killed someone.

All of the problems that are discussed in this article are artifacts of a culture and cities designed around cars, period.

<comment><USER3> Imagine being gaslighted by the scooter industry so hard you think that cars are the problem here, not the scooter rider that made an illegal turn in front of an SUV which tried but failed to break in time to avoid hitting him.

[https://www.wsmv.com/news/bird-responds-after-scooter- rider-...](https://www.wsmv.com/news/bird-responds-after-scooter-rider-dies- after-being-hit-by/article_8a15872e-7d6f-11e9-84a3-0f4598259e24.html) [https://www.chattanoogan.com/2019/5/20/390590/Brady- Gaulke-D...](https://www.chattanoogan.com/2019/5/20/390590/Brady-Gaulke-Dies- After-Being-Hit-On.aspx)

All of the problems with scooters are artifacts of a startup culture that disregards safety, and business plans designed around scale, period. [[https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197713/the-inventor- rev...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197713/the-inventor-review- theranos-scandal-silicon-valley-startup-elizabeth-holmes-fraud-sundance-2019)]

<comment><USER4> Cars obviously _are_ the problem here. Had the SUV driver been riding a motorcycle, there is a high probability the scooter rider would be alive. But instead of saying to car drivers, "you are operating the least-forgiving vehicle, therefore you will bear the most burden of responsibility", we say, "ran over a bike because your were texting? Here's a $120 ticket, pay more attention next time."

<comment><USER3> SUVs generally are more dangerous to the _other_ parties in a collision.

But in this case the scooter rider suffered fatal head injuries because he wasn't wearing a helmet. He would have still suffered fatal head injuries no matter what vehicle hit him since it wasn't the size of the vehicle that mattered here; what mattered was that he fell off his scooter and hit his head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Brady Gaulke, a 26-year-old Nashville man, was killed in a collision with an > S.U.V. while riding a scooter. His grieving parents have launched a petition > to ban the devices in Nashville. "[E]-scooters are unsafe at any speed [...]

I'm just going to take a moment to remark how impressive it is that automakers have achieved this, that the roads are owned by cars and collisions are framed to be the fault of whoever was not in the car that shouldn't be on the road. Cars were invented first, and then Jaywalking (as a crime) was invented second.

In theory, you should evaluate these programs (and other programs like helmet laws) against the risk posed by cars, but unfortunately, when people take bicycles or scooters instead of cars, it frees up space on the road for more cars.

I don't have a particular angle here, I wish we could redesign our cities to accommodate better modes of transportation but that's expensive and there's little political will for it.

<comment><USER6> It's also amazing to read this piece in the same newspaper that has published perhaps thousands of articles about the (very real) threat of climate change.

The solution is to ban 30 pound scooters, which have zero point emissions, in favor of multi-ton cars, which carry around an entire internal-combustion rig, spewing CO2 out the entire way?

Talk about bizarre.

<comment><USER7> > which have zero point emissions

It's better to be precise here: "whose contribution to emissions is an order of magnitude lower than cars."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And just last Friday in my walk home, two young gentlemen on scooters on the sidewalk, riding in the direction I was walking, passed by me at 20 mph, on my left, just as I was stepping left around something in my path and I came very close to being hit. Had I stepped a second earlier I could have been severely injured, even killed.

I've been walking to/from work for 23 years, and I've never felt less safe on the sidewalk. I abhor these scooters because of how the users of them disregard the safety of pedestrians.

<comment><USER9> Scooters are limited to 15mph typically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's an easy fix - just add bike lanes and bike/scooter racks.

The benefits of scooters are many: a single lane can accommodate many more scooters than cars. less emissions. faster than public for 1-3 miles. It's worth accommodating scooters.

<comment><USER11> > less emissions

Are you sure? Accounting for the fact that drivers pick them up with a car, drive them home, charge them, and then drive them again to a new location? And the fact that they can have as little as a 6 month life because of wear and tear?

<comment><USER10> Than a taxi? Definitely. A taxi _also_ has to drive to pick you up and drive around to wait for more passenger.

Than public? it's a tossup.

As for linespan, the first scooter rollout used consumer grade scooters. Commercial scooters are just rolling out: [https://www.bird.co/zero/](https://www.bird.co/zero/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This doesn't seem like a very well-written article to me. The main claim is that scooters are dangerous, but since some trips on scooters are replacing trips in other forms of transportation like riding a car or bicycle, you should really be comparing to the dangers of using a car or bicycle. This just has a few anecdotes of people dying on a scooter.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Brady Gaulke, a 26-year-old Nashville man, was killed in a collision with an > S.U.V. while riding a scooter. His grieving parents have launched a petition > to ban the devices in Nashville. "[E]-scooters are unsafe at any speed, and > we are calling on Mayor David Briley and the Metro Council to ban them from > the streets immediately," the petition reads, arguing that Mr. Gaulke should > be "the last victim of an epidemic that the e-scooter companies and local > government both refuse to acknowledge."

A much more sane response would be to acknowledge the personal responsibility of a single individual who chose to take risks, and suffered the consequences.

Personal e-vehicles are one of the rays of hope in the fight against climate change - getting people out of cars, reducing congestion / load on transit. It is the most shortsighted thing to try and ban them.

</comment><comment><USER14> My primary issues with dockless scooters are these:

1\. Solid tires are awful. Harsh ride, unsafe/twitchy as hell on even slightly rough roads, and they don't inspire confidence for handling.

2\. Motors that need to be kick-started in order to have enough torque to work are incredibly frustrating to use and don't have enough acceleration to get out of trouble.

<comment><USER13> Check out the Boosted Rev...

<comment><USER14> for $1600, i'll just craiglist myself a 49cc scooter if i want a not-bicycle to get around on. 90+mpg, 30mph top speed, no special insurance or licenses needed, you can park it on the sidewalk, and (in my city) use the bike lanes. And it even carries groceries!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > And while there is no question that this country needs a micro-mobility > revolution,

Is there no question? Maybe we need to build fewer car dependent neighborhoods. Maybe the revolution is called "walking".

The article starts from a position that we have giant hunks of metal going at high speeds and anything that stands in their path must be banned or be destroyed. But car to pedestrian deaths happen with or without scooters. So why is there no talk of getting rid of the cars? Or at least creating a culture where drivers are more careful.

</comment><comment><USER16> Having just gotten back from Nashville, their implementation is not really working. The sidewalks are now stressful to walk on as scooters fly above 20 MPH in all directions, with the rider often yelling "Sorry! I don't know how to drive this thing."

</comment><comment><USER17> We are so violently opposed to car alternatives, it makes me wonder what other better worlds are within reach that we simply can't or refuse to see

<comment><USER18> I think that's a mischaracterization of the argument here, though. The point is that riders of these things are causing novel hazards to the people around them without any sort of mitigating factors like licensure or taxation. I know I feel pretty mad when someone zips by me on the sidewalk while I'm walking my (small) dog, and that anger goes mostly to the scooter company that is enabling an idiot. If, in the end, this is a stepping stone to lower pollution, great, but that doesn't mean there aren't any problems with it because it is the lesser of two evils. This is all to say that I, a real genuine person, am not upset with the Advent of scooters because they are competing with cars; it's for completely different reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Show me the statistics on fatalities per capita per mile traveled on scooters, vs in cars and I'll start taking the anecdotes a little more seriously. (I think I know how those stats will look). I don't for one second believe that this outrage is about the safety of others. It's about people feeling uncomfortable and inconvenienced by something new and strange to them.

Scooters are very progressive for cities. I'm excited for anything that is quiet, efficient, and possibly takes cars off the road. Their popularity speaks for itself, but the nimbyism around them really is insufferable. People want to ban anything new that they don't themselves benefit from (gasp).

It's really gross that people think that they and their preferred mode of transport own the place. We need to learn to co-exist and be flexible about our shared spaces while the cities evolve (at a slower pace) to support us and technology better. Just be as respectful as possible and don't try to scare the bejeezus out of the grannies in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER20> So there were three deaths for who knows how many rides. How does this compare with bikes and cars? Surely some people die using those or any other means of transport, including walking.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here in Chicago, we just started a pilot program of the scooters throughout certain parts of the city this past Saturday [1]. I think that's the right approach to all this. Do a test run with a handful of companies (there is 10 companies here in this trial), and get the data to see how they should move forward. They have pretty strict guidelines on the pilot program, as well. I'm very curious to see how it all goes, and what happens next with them.

[1] [https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-biz- scooter-...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-biz-scooter- companies-chosen-20190611-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> From TFA:

> Less than 1 percent of the injured riders were wearing helmets.

I'm not sure why this statistic was included. All it could demonstrate is "people more likely to wear helmets are less likely to be injured". IE: cautious people are cautious.

This article reads like FUD. Along with scooters, people are currently free to go bungee jumping, skydiving, rock climbing, skin diving, and all other manner of activity which carries a higher-than-walking-around-the-block chance of injury. I don't want to live in a nerf-like society, where our available activities are dictated to us by...anyone.

<comment><USER23> Because all of the scooters, for liability reasons, implore you to wear a helmet. Nobody does. It's a farce. They are unsafe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The problem isn't scooters. Scooters have just exposed the problem: it's the cars.

There's a lot of victim blaming going on: we have giant weapons rolling around in broad daylight and when someone is killed by one we say nothing about the lumbering giants we allow to occupy so much of our space, not to mention time, money, and what little remains of the environment?

</comment><comment><USER25> What misguided nonsense. The solution to cars crashing into scooters and bikes (no, cyclists aren't magically protected like she seems to think) isn't to ban them - it's to build proper bike lanes!

And why do people think scooters are street litter when cars aren't? Cars are left _everywhere_.

This is just classic luddism. "Roads were only for cars when I was young and that shall not change!"

<comment><USER26> >build proper bike lanes

Strongly agree.

>This is just classic luddism.

Strongly disagree. To me, the common "luddite" accusation often seems like a disconnected, elitist framing of issues that have important pragmatic angles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's always an adjustment period when transportation options begin to shift rapidly. If you go back and read newspapers from 100 years ago, you'll see people complaining about how cars are a menace and don't belong on the road with horses. Based off of some of the stories about how recklessly people handled some of those cars, you might even be inclined to agree with the anti- car crowd of that time!

However, just like with cars, banning scooters altogether is probably not going to be a widespread outcome. The reason scooters are so popular is because they actually do solve a crucial missing link for many cities, especially southern cities which often have terrible transit options and patchwork sidewalk and bike paths. Then you factor in the crazy summer heat and humidity, and it's no wonder that people are into the idea of a quick, breezy, ride that can navigate on either roads or sidewalks.

Here in Raleigh (which is a fraction of the size of Nashville to be fair ), there is a major problem of pedestrian unfriendliness the second you leave the downtown core or college campus area. The sidewalks are spread out thinly, often only existing along major arterial roads which are hard to cross, and then often only one sidewalk on either side. The back roads which would be safer to walk on in real cities normally (due to having less traffic), typically lack sidewalks at all. So you end up with your options being big empty, sidewalks with no shade or benches alongside cars going 50mph (on a road that doesn't usually have actual houses on it) or tighter roads with no sidewalk at all where people actually live (no benches, but more shade). It's a crappy time for a pedestrian either way and it's no surprise that most people don't want to make use of either option. However, I've found that on a scooter it's actually not terrible. The big empty sidewalks aren't so miserable because you get a breeze, and on the back-roads your scooter keeps up with cars better and has a light on it for visibility.

The issues with parking in bad places could be pretty easily solved with a some infrastructure for racks and geofencing to ensure riders end up there. The helmet issue can be changed by making helmets more portable and widely available. I bought a helmet for myself and my husband just to use the scooters. It's slightly inconvenient, but not a big deal. I can buckle it to my backpack. I'd prefer something that could fold up, or maybe a sharing model (leave a helmet / take a helmet at stations with scooters), but again I think that's something we can solve with regulation rather than outright banning. One thing I've wondered is if scooter companies could install a little camera facing the rider (or require you to take a pic with your phone camera) to verify a helmet is on before starting the ride using ML (like the "hotdog, not hotdog" joke app from the tv show "Silicon Valley").

</comment><comment><USER28> A car driver was killed in a collision with an S.U.V. Lets ban cars.</comment>


Light-Driven Soft Robot Mimics Caterpillar Locomotion in Natural Scale - <AUTHOR> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adom.201600503/abstract;jsessionid=B0FA5890D157ACB732C0FB7B957A5B9E.f03t02?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+unavailable+on+Saturday+3rd+September+2016+at+08.30+BST%2F+03%3A30+EDT%2F+15%3A30+SGT+for+5+hours+and+Sunday+4th+September+at+10%3A00+BST%2F+05%3A00+EST%2F+17%3A00+SGT+for+1+hour++for+essential+maintenance.+Apologies+for+the+inconvenience <comment><AUTHOR> Video of the robot moving [http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~zopt/photonics/LCE_caterpillar.avi](http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~zopt/photonics/LCE_caterpillar.avi)</comment>


U.S. investigates market-making operations of Citadel, KCG - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-probe-exclusive-idUSKCN0Y11CJ <comment><USER2> If I'm buying with limit orders, can someone explain how I'd get a bad deal on one of these exchanges?

<comment><USER3> It's a good question. If you are a retail trader, you should almost always use limit orders.

You can never get a worse fill than what you ask for but the internalizer can make money off your order and you can miss out on market moves that occur in the second after you place your order. if you are fine getting price that you put your limit order in for then as far as you are concerned, you'll be fine.

As with all things market micro structure related, nanex.net has a good writeup on this. I'm not sure how often this scenario occurs as I've never worked for an internalizer but its

[http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/What-Every-Retail-Investor- Needs-...](http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/What-Every-Retail-Investor-Needs-to- Know.pdf)

Check out the section called "Marketable Limit Orders".

> For example: the Wholesaler receives a retail order to buy 2000 shares at > $10.03 or better (lower) when the SIP shows a total of 2000 shares offered > at the best offer price of 10.01.

1\. Wholesaler buys 300 from one exchange at $10.01, and immediately, 1700 shares that were available on other exchanges disappear, causing the best offer price to move to $10.02.

2\. Wholesaler buys 400 at $10.02, and again, sell orders on other exchanges disappear, causing the best offer price to move to $10.03.

3\. Wholesaler sells short remaining 1300 shares at $10.0290 to retail investor, providing a $0.0010 price improvement relative to the $10.03 SIP offer price at time of execution.

4\. Within seconds, stock reverts back to $10.01 offered.

5\. Wholesaler covers short by buying 1300 shares at $10.01.

> By quickly influencing the price of the stock, perhaps by less optimal > routing, then directly filling the order at an execution price away from the > original NBBO at time of Order Receipt, the Wholesaler profits from the > $0.019 change on 1300 shares ($24.70), less any "price improvement" given to > the retail investor, less the $4.00 Payment for Order flow paid to the > Retail Broker (2000 shares x .0020 per share) and $6 in exchange fees > (maximum SEC fee $0.0030 per share x 2000 shares).

<comment><USER4> How is step 3 not front running? It would appear to be the very definition; the wholesaler is executing an order before yours, without your knowledge, that will affect your order.

Is there an order option to prohibit wholesalers from trading before you?

<comment><USER5> Because the broker isn't doing the front running. That's why it isn't the currently illegal kind of frontrunning. They sell the data to other participants who have faster internet connections than you.

Basically any time you send a "smart" routing order, it is actually the least smart thing to do (unless you REALLY need the liquidity). Your trade order gets sent to all the exchanges, and ah I don't really feel like explaining it.

tl;dr Someone intercepts your data packet to one exchange, and alters the liquidity on the other exchanges, so you get a partial fill and then adjust your order at the slightly worse price.

<comment><USER4> >Because the broker isn't doing the front running.

In the scenario presented, the wholesaler receives your order, then executes its own orders, then fills your order based on its own executions (which you are unaware of).

<comment><USER6> The wholesaler is required by law to meet or beat the NBBO --- the "exchange price". If you took your tiny order directly to an exchange, you would not fare better.

<comment><USER4> The defense is that this behavior is legally sanctioned front running?

How can a wholesaler guarantee the exchange price in the face of disappearing orders?

I don't think they can. Instead, the wholesaler fabricates an order at the limit of your order, then reports the sale to you.

Edit: [rate-limited] Reply to tptacek comment below:

> I can't even tell if you're talking about market or limit orders.

Can you view the context of this thread? I am talking about the explicit steps listed in the comment I first replied to. Specifically, step 3 [0].

In chollida's description the orders are limit.

Step 3 appears to be, _exactly_ , front-running as explained in my post [1] immediately above this one.

I asked if anyone could explain how that behavior was _not front-running_. You responded; indicating that the behavior was according to regulation.

You claim that the wholesaler must give you the best "exchange price", but I claim that such a guarantee is generally impossible to fill (time-distance- information problem), and that in the specifics of chollida's described scenario, the wholesaler is actually front-running you by examining your unfilled (limit) order and then filling it at the limit (as in, calculus) with it's own fabricated (perhaps, synthetic, but front-ran, nonetheless) order.

If such a guarantee is generally impossible, then the wholesaler must be cheating, the law is incompetent, or, both.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11668835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11668835) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669193)

<comment><USER6> I don't understand any of these three sentences. Can you reformulate your argument as a sequence of events, like:

T0: Bob->Schwab: Market BUY 100 ISSX

T1: Schwab->Citadel: Forward Market BUY 100 ISSX

... and so on? I can't even tell if you're talking about market or limit orders.

<comment><USER6> If you place a limit order, you're guaranteed that any execution you get will be at least as good as your limit. That's the point of a limit order.

You aren't entitled to a better price than your limit. If you think you are, can you provide a sequence of trades in which someone else captures a premium where they don't take downside risk?

<comment><USER4> I don't see how taking on downside risk improves the wholesaler's position (in fact, I think the rationalization is an even more degenerate case).

The fact still remains that the wholesaler has fabricated an order on the knowledge of a customer's pending order, which affected the execution price of the customer's order, before the customer could even know that it happened.

Even if the wholesaler sent their order to an exchange and still matched with their customer, it is still front-running, as the wholesaler is using knowledge of their customer's order to, essentially, _eliminate all possible price improvements_.

So, what is being called a "limit order" is just code for "we might just fill your order at your limit _[when there are no market orders]_ , if we think we can make money off _[front-running]_ your order with our own".

It would perhaps be acceptable if the wholesaler offered some kind of kick- back on any profits made, but that would need to be a different kind of order and I'm not aware of anywhere that does it.

<comment><USER7> Your broker or the wholesaler both have a choice:

1) match the order with the NBBO. 2) send the order to the exchange.

If your limit is better than the NBBO, then they are required by the law to price improve it. Further, the nature of their agreements with your broker are such that they are required to maintain a price improvement level (that should be better than NBBO compliance). That is, incidentally also largely the requirement the exchanges operate under as well.

A limit order doesn't have anything to do with the existence or non-existence of market orders, it has to do with your _limit_ and the NBBO. The way they make money is not by changing the market against your interests, but instead booking the spread (and in fact the reason they like retail order flow is that it is naturally uncorrelated so the spread is more even).

The customer does in fact know that this is happening as it is a regulatory requirement that they disclose it.

I suspect that lots of whole sellers would be happy to kick back profits, if the retail customer was also on the hook to back the losses. Instead, they aren't and they get heavily discounted (to the point that it is now free to trade) trading costs instead.

<comment><USER4> This is all hand-waving. Neither you or tptacek have altered the fundamental reality:

>In the scenario presented, the wholesaler receives your order, then executes its own orders, then fills your order based on its own executions (which you are unaware of).

>The way they make money is not by changing the market against your interests,

Oh, but they do. They _fabricate an order_ in response to yours. If they did not act, your order would not have filled at $0.001 under your limit.

>but instead booking the spread (and in fact the reason they like retail order flow is that it is naturally uncorrelated so the spread is more even).

You can call it whatever you want, the wholesaler is manipulating the market to their advantage. The wholesaler knows the price is likely to improve, so it arbitrarily truncates your order and infills its own account with the improvements.

<comment><USER7> Likely is the important part of your final sentence. They are not acting against your interests and they are taking on risk in the market to your benefit.

Is it limited risk? Of course, that's their job.

Finally, I'd ask, what is your point? That the law is flawed? OK, then work to change it. But know that lots of people have done their own research and come down in favor of the execution cost benefits of wholesellers.

<comment><USER4> >They are not acting against your interests

Of course they are. Had they not acted, you would have had a chance at price improvement. Instead, they took your chance for a token payment.

<comment><USER7> How?

<comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11667688)

<comment><USER7> I'm going to suppose that your response is fixated on:

> Wholesaler sells short remaining 1300 shares at $10.0290

whereby the wholesaler takes a speculative position wrt the original order?

Are you suggesting that the wholesaler giving you 0.0010 profit on your trade guaranteed, is working _against_ you? Without regard to your execution costs?

Can you suggest a single chain of messages where you _make_ money on that trade? What are the chances where that chain of messages is likely?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I am talking about where the wholesaler fabricates in order in response to your order. Such behavior is front-running, by definition.

The wholesaler is making off-market trades and treating them as if they are on-market. The wholesaler would not trade, if it did not think it would profit. The wholesaler's profit is the difference between their buy-price and what they actually paid you.

Are you suggesting that if the wholesaler wasn't interdicting orders the average price improvement for these orders wouldn't be close to the average profit the wholesaler makes on each instance of such a trade?

<comment><USER7> In the example above, if they had not filled your order at the price improved price, it would have either filled at the higher price, or rested at the higher price. In either case you get a higher price.

They do this because they are taking on the risk that the market will _eventually_ allow them to work out of their short position at a better price than they paid you. But they don't _know_ that it will do that.

One of the reasons they pay for retail flow is that it on average goes back and forth, making it more likely that this trade works to their advantage.

None of the profit of that trade came from you the limit order provider. It came entirely from the average spread.

<comment><USER4> >In the example above, if they had not filled your order at the price improved price, it would have either filled at the higher price, or rested at the higher price.

Or, you know, improve beyond the $0.001/sh the wholesaler paid.

<comment><USER7> No, it wouldn't have. That's the point of why they improved you. By that point there was no one else available to do it.

<comment><USER4> So, you wait around for an order at your limit or better. There is nothing that says your limit order must fill, even if no on is available.

<comment><USER7> It won't be better, that's not how it works.

At the point that they filled you at 10.299, the market is set at 10.30. 1 of 2 things can happen. Either there is enough volume to fill you at 10.30 that your order is fully filled at 10.30 (worse than the wholesaler gave you) or there isn't and some of your order fills at 10.30 (worse than the wholesaler gave you) and you have now set the new market level and rest your order. Once your order rests, it will not be improved and will either fill at 10.30 (worse than the wholesaler gave you) or it will be cancelled (you didn't get what you wanted).

Most people placing a limit order like that would prefer the outcome that the internalizer provides, if you don't, great use a broker that allows you to route direct. But its certainly not front-running because the internalizer acted directly _in_ your stated interests, not _against_ them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I consider this to be a big deal. Most people don't realize that retail orders( orders from an ordinary person) almost never reach an exchange.

Funds like Citadel and KCG pay the banks and brokerages( Schwab, Vanguard, etc) hunderes of millions per year to get their order flow. Here's a reuters article about Schawb's pay for order flow:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/schwab-ceo-proposal- idUSL1N0O...](http://www.reuters.com/article/schwab-ceo-proposal- idUSL1N0O12EC20140515)

> Trading companies, including market makers such as UBS , KCG Holdings and > hedge fund Citadel LLC, are willing to compete for retail investors' orders > because they are considered "dumb money" that shows the professionals where > markets are headed.

> In reporting first-quarter earnings last month, Schwab said that it expects > to earn about $100 million this year from selling client orders, the first > time it gave out a specific number, and higher than the estimate it had > given a few weeks earlier to Reuters.

and here is the breakdown of their order flow:

[https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/legal_compliance/imp...](https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/legal_compliance/important_notices/order_routing.html)

The funds then get a free look at these orders where if they are beneficial to them they can fill the order, or if they aren't, then they can pass the order onto an exchange.

If you thought flash orders were bad, these are much worse and flash orders were discontinued years ago.

If you thought HFT funds were bad then consider atleast HFT funds have to put their orders out to the market and take the risk that they'll get rolled over when the market moves. ie they put their money where their mouth is and they compete every day on a level play ground with the rest of the market makers.

These internalizers often hold orders up for up to a second, before they choose to fill them or let them go and when you consider that the IEX delay of 350 micro seconds, not milliseconds, is considered contentious you get a good idea of just how scummy things have gotten.

in an unrelated piece of news Reuters today wrote a piece showing the top paid hedge fund managers. Citadel's founder Ken Griffin can in first, taking home 1.7 Billion last year. This is really the DOJ taking on the biggest players on wall street.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefunds-compensation- id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hedgefunds-compensation- idUSKCN0Y11D1?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FbusinessNews+%28Business+News%29)

<comment><USER8> _The funds then get a free look at these orders where if they are beneficial to them they can fill the order, or if they aren 't, then they can pass the order onto an exchange._

This is simply false. For example, IB describes the mechanism here:

 _Liquidity Provider Relationships: IB has entered arrangements with certain institutions under which such institutions may send orders to IB at or near the NBBO. These orders are held within the IB system and are not displayed in the national market. If another IB customer order could be immediately executed against such an order held in the IB system (at the NBBO), the orders may be crossed and the execution reported to the National Market System..._

[http://www.arcacapitalinvestments.com/new/arcacapitalinvestm...](http://www.arcacapitalinvestments.com/new/arcacapitalinvestments/images/Rule%20606%20Interactive%20Brokers.pdf?advisorid=4024665)

So no, the liquidity providers don't get a "free look". They get to place orders (before you do) and your brokerage fills them if there is a price match. The price is always at least as good as in the national markets, modulo the limitations of physics/CAP theorem/etc.

The purpose here is to enable price discrimination - you pay a lower price for liquidity (since you have less adverse selection), Goldman pays a higher price (since they have more adverse selection).

<comment><USER3> > This is simply false. For example, IB describes the mechanism here

Well to be fair, i never mentioned IB, you did. I'm correct on this issue. Let's leave IB out of this as what you describe does happen but is a completely separate issue from selling order flow.

First off Schwab has already publicly admitted they sell their order flow. I've talked to 4 Canadian banks who do the same.

The internalizers who buy the flow are then allowed to either fill the order or pass it along, to the market, they get to see the order before it gets to the market, this is the free look i was talking about.

You may not be aware this happens but it does. I've literally talked to people on both sides of this who freely admit what they do. its currently legal, but I don't think it will be for much longer.

<comment><USER8> Selling order flow refers to the exact mechanism IB just described. It's mechanically no different from a dark pool (such as IEX, the heroes in Flash Boys).

If you have evidence otherwise, by all means post documentation _describing the specific mechanics of how matching works_. Simply citing news articles that use the word "sell order flow" doesn't count.

I just cited IB because their docs are very detailed and because I know them well.

<comment><USER9> You two are talking about different things. They are similar but the mechanics are different. IB's example is an internalization pool where liquidity providers _may_ post quotes and potentially fill within the NBBO when they have a desire to match/improve the quote.

The KCG and Citadel business is called wholesaling. A broker like Schwab has market orders or marketable limit orders from customers. They make an agreement with a wholesale market maker like Citadel to fill _all_ of those orders up to a certain size possibly, within the NBBO, in exchange for a fee and some price improvement requirements.

So imagine you're Citadel. You have a stream of incoming orders that you commit to fill at the current market prices with a bit of improvement. If the order flow is small, you just sit on the delta waiting for flow in the other direction or trade out patiently on exchange to make a spread. If the flow becomes largely imbalanced, you can liquidate the delta aggressively on the public market to hedge at a very small cost. Say the NBBO is 100.50 bid 100.51 offer and you just sold 500 shares at 100.5099 and bought 2000 at 100.5001. You can dump the 1500 residual on the exchange bid or in dark pools, whatever, and all you lose is the price improvement you gave and fees, which are smaller than the spread you make on a "good" trade.

In effect, the wholesaler is cherry picking and getting a cheap option to make a spread. All the small retail trades that are easy to capture spread on get siphoned off the exchanges, and they're left with only the imbalanced toxic ones. This is good for the wholesaler, good for the retail trader (he gets a bit of price improvement and lower trading commission), bad for the exchanges, and bad for on-exchange market makers like most HFT firms.

It's arguably "fair" to price uninformed flows differently, it's very common in some markets like FX, but locking that up behind opaque pricing agreements where only a handful of firms participate isn't. Most market making firms would gladly compete to offer even more sub-penny price improvement to retail trades, and there are even a few exchange programs that tried to do this but never got much traction.

<comment><USER8> Every time I've looked into the mechanics of paying for order flow, it was just a pay-to-play dark pool with certain extra requirements (e.g. you must match X% of trades). Do you have documentation on a brokerage that provides some sort of "first peek" mechanics that might allow frontrunning?

I think we are in agreement that the main purpose of buying order flow is to price discriminate based on delta toxicity.

<comment><USER9> I am not saying the mechanics allow front-running. It is just different from a dark pool or exchange in that the wholesaler guarantees execution and has some discretion over how to provide it. It's not as if Schwab pings a bunch of internalizers to say "hey, can you fill this at the NBBO?" and then routes out themselves if nobody says yes. The wholesaler must fill the order whether they want it or not, and can either wear the delta, fill it from their own inventory, or execute in the market to facilitate the trade as riskless principal. The wholesaler gets contingent orders like stop market and stop limit orders and is responsible for executing them as well. It is more like having the retail broker outsource their execution similar to how a fund may have a bank desk execute orders on their behalf, except a bank desk usually has even more discretion over execution.

Hate to link to the Themis blog, but they cite the SEC here describing how internalizers, not retail brokerages, routed sell orders out to exchanges on May 6th: [http://blog.themistrading.com/2010/10/the-internalizers- and-...](http://blog.themistrading.com/2010/10/the-internalizers-and-the- flash-crash-let's-talk-real-villains/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> HFT is nothing new. It is just the automated version of regular market making. As long as there are several MMs, they will compete for execution speed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is there any reason the DOJ should not subpoena the code here?</comment>


Lots of People Are Losing Distance Vision, and No One Knows Why - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/02/silent-epidemic-myopia/ <comment><USER2> Last year a high profile article in Nature suggested the reason is simply that kids don't spend much time outdoors in bright sunlight anymore. The eye's mechanism for growing to a good focus needs that time in bright light to trigger the adjustment. [http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia- boom-1.17120](http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120)

</comment><comment><USER3> > ...when they were sewing one eye shut in newborn monkeys to study the > development of the brain's visual system. It certainly did mess up their > brains...

That's barbaric.</comment>


Show HN: A cool way to navigate reddit front-page through time - <AUTHOR> http://chronoreddit.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I am the creator, you can also use shift + mouse-wheel to navigate through time. And you can also put your mouse over the camera icons to see the pictures. It works well on Android devices.</comment>


Yahoo Acquires Bread, Will Shut Down The URL Shortener That Earned You Money - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/11/yahoo-acquires-bread/ <comment><USER2> I just don't understand the logic behind aqui-hires. If a founder starts up his own company, and if he is very serious about it, he will put in everything he's got - his passion, his vision and his hardwork. It becomes an integral part of his life somehow.

Now, suddenly a corporation pays the founder a large sum of money, makes him shut down his company, literally erasing every single connection he had with his creation. Now, no passionate founder would like to let someone destroy his own company, his hardwork and passion. But even if he wanted the money, and he thought if it's a good compromise, no passionate founder will think nor share the same vision and passion for the corporate owning him as much as he had for his own company. Obviously most of us startup because we don't want the corporate life and we want something different. So, to aim to get into a corporate by means of a startup is quite contradictory, no?

So, in essence, how does the corporation justify the investment for a semi- passionate founder whose product has just been destroyed? They pay billions in some cases, only to realize that the founder doesn't share his old vision and enthusiasm anymore? How does this work? I will gladly love to be corrected on this one. Someone with experience, please explain this cost justification to me!

Cheers.

<comment><USER3> The acquiring company gets the entire staff (or at least everyone who comes along). Assuming the company being acquired has built up a decent product, you can see the acqui-hire as a recruiting move, where you're hiring on a group that has shown they can work together, ship product, and all the members have already been vetted by somebody else. The purchase price is really just a recruiter's fee and hiring bonus bundled together.

<comment><USER4> And that hate their bosses' guts for ruining the thing they just spent a chunk of their lives to do and were proud of, and now it's all turned to nothing. But since they need money and they're offered too good a deal to refuse, they swallow it and get in line. I'm not sure it' the best way to acquire talent. Of course, that implies people cared about the thing they did, but isn't that the kind of people you want to get?

<comment><USER5> I've certainly seen in the past the founder give it a year or two, leave, take anyone worth taking with them and then start over doing the same thing again. Successfully too.

<comment><USER4> Well, there's one thing when the gig runs over and people look for another thing to work on. But the parent post talked about recruiting the whole team, and as it often happens, just in the middle of successful and growing project - that's the principle of acqui-hire, find somebody who is currently successful and hire them out. If it's just a team looking for a next thing after previous one run out of steam, there's no "acqui" part here since there's nothing to acquire of value, it's just a regular hire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "recommends users switch to dominant URL shortener bit.ly"

Often old links can't be changed – easily or even at all. (Tweets can't be edited, for example.)

URL redirection is such a lightweight service that Yahoo/Bread should commit to either redirect indefinitely or ship the mappings and domain off to someone else who will.

<comment><USER7> Normally, I'd disagree, but part of starting a URL shortening company would seem to be a commitment to keep it working in the future, partially because its so easy and partially because URLs shouldn't die.

Charitably, we'll say they have a billion URLs. Each mapping is maybe 8bytes->256bytes. So they have a max of 264GB of data. That would fit on a heroku postgres dev plan, and the code to run it would take a single engineer half a day to put it on heroku.

<comment><USER8> While I agree this is not a huge engineering endeavor and Yahoo could do the Internet a solid by making this work, our free dev databases are limited to 10k rows (and, as the name suggests, intended for development). Please don't put a billion in them.

<comment><USER7> Fair. I was just trying to find a thing they could stick this on for basically nothing. The $49 plan would have been fine too.

FYI, I didn't notice this limitation on the pricing page.

<comment><USER8> Oof, you're right--sorry about that. The addons page [1] has the right pricing, but our own pricing page is incorrect. I'll make sure we get this updated. Thanks for pointing it out!

[1]: [https://addons.heroku.com/heroku- postgresql](https://addons.heroku.com/heroku-postgresql)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really bugs me the kind of ideas that getting funding. Some of us have viable businesses that need funds to scale but just don't have the right pedigree.

<comment><USER7> It seems you're implying that VCs - people who invest money for a living - care more about pedigree than profit.

Now I don't mean to imply anything about yourself or your business, but is it possible there might be a different and perhaps simpler explanation for whatever you're bugged about?

<comment><USER10> He didn't imply that at all; if M&A execs also care more about pedigree, then pedigree is a great way to drive a VC exit, especially compared to building a business that actually makes a profit.

<comment><USER7> Acquihires dont move the needle for VCs.

<comment><USER11> That's like saying F's don't impact your GPA. The reality is that returning capital does materially impact returns. The median VC is in an asset class whose returns are pretty poor.

<comment><USER7> I think you're saying that they move the needle down? That's not how it works: only the returned money counts, so if you return none, or only a little, the needle doesn't move up.

<comment><USER11> Its called return <on investment>, so yes it matters. Absolute returns are fine, but force lager returns from winners to compensate for zeros when measured on an ROI basis. And all VC's are marketed on ROI, not absolute returns (for obvious reasons).

<comment><USER7> ROI is based on absolute returns. But more importantly, they gain actual dollar amounts from a sale. If they invest $3.5m from their $200m fund, and it returns $5m, they could care less. They're looking for the company that returns $50m or $350m.

The post I was responding to was saying that VCs were motivated by acquihires ("a great way to drive a VC exit"). Debating the semantics of needles and ROIs is pointless. VCs are unmotivated by small gains and small businesses, and wont even invest in a company that can't promise to be valued above $100m one day.

<comment><USER11> Your making silly assumpyions about VCs and how they operate, ones that you can't justify. An easy exit that returns 20-45% on a 1-2 year investment is a no-brainer if the only other option is going to zero in a time-wasting pain- in-the-ass situation. That is quite distinct from saying that this "ideal" investment sold to LPs. And its quite distinct from rational "binary bets". While VCs screen based upon threshold potential returns, the probability of being a 10x company <even after passing the screen> is order of magitude <10%. So, its silly to say that all vc exits are large exits. But since exits have more prestige than chapter 7s, disquising your failures as exits has <value>. If you can do this with non-dilutive financial returns, you a strategy that may be better than the alternative/s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am on this internet thing a lot, and I have never once heard of or seen a link to bre.ad

</comment><comment><USER13> If they are being acquired and shut down, but the Bread employees are joining Yahoo... isn't this an "Acquihire"?

</comment><comment><USER14> If anyone is missing Bread, my friend made a service that is exactly like it: [https://shrinkonce.com/](https://shrinkonce.com/)

<comment><USER15> > ShrinkOnce allows users to take a link to a file, website, or video and lock > it with a survey

That sounds terribly annoying

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What amused me about the bre.ad overview video ( [http://vimeo.com/23834665](http://vimeo.com/23834665) ) was the 'shortened URL' example which maintained a www prefix...

That's all that amused me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats to the team. Title made me double take for a second there.

<comment><USER18> "Yahoo acquires bread, will serve in company cafeteria?"

<comment><USER19> No go. Marissa wants them to eat cake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They could have been toast from running out of dough. Luckily they found a breadwinner to help them rise to the top.

</comment><comment><USER21> So what's in this for yahoo?</comment>


Musician Ryan Adams' Success Secret - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5037175/musician-ryan-adams-success-secret <comment><USER2> "Ryan Adams is one of the most prolific musicians in modern music. In the last eight years he averaged a release of one full studio album per year. In one year alone, he released three albums!"

wtf.

"In other words, consistency is required for success... What we can take from this is a new perspective on our goals."

wtf</comment>


Ask HN: Some countries require a photo included in your CV. Why? - <AUTHOR>

I'm from Germany and here we have a tradition of including our photo with our CV. Nobody knows why, but it's just "something you do." A CV without a picture is probably going to be thrown away.
German Wikipedia has this to say:
> In keinem anderen Land wird jedoch das Bewerbungsfoto in einem Lebenslauf so hoch gewichtet wie in deutschsprachigen Ländern. Lebensläufe ohne Fotos landen nicht selten bei den Absagen.
Or a translation (mine):
> In no other country outside of the German speaking ones is a photograph so important. CVs without pictures are usually rejected.
I haven't asked a Swiss or Austrian guy, but the Wikipedia entry leads me to believe photos are more or less required in those countries as well. I've also been told by a Spanish friend that it's normal to include in Spain as well. I'm sure there are other countries where it's required (in the sense that it's so normal) to include your picture in your CV.
My question is, why? I can only think of negative situations of including a picture where you're rejected due to your race or color, or that you just don't look "right" (ugly, queer, whatever) to the manager. On the other hand, I guess if you're an insanely good looking guy or girl then a manager might also give your CV more weight because they're attracted to you, which is also bad.
Also, what country are you from, and is it considered normal to include your picture as well? <comment><USER2> In Denmark photos are expected too. The argument is, that it gives you a better impression of the person. You do it for the same reason as why you show up to the interview in a suit and tie.

As for the race arguement: If the employer is going to cut you based on race or looks, it's better to save both of you time and cut out the first interview.

It is also commonplace in Japan and Korea. Other people in this thread seem to imply this is a 3rd world kinda thing. Not at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finland: Yes, perfectly normal.

I'm sure that our custom of including a line about military service would raise more eyebrows around the world. Yes, it's mandatory, but can't really be related to if the target country doesn't have conscription (you have a certain mindset of which kind of people seek to enlist). Which is why we are trying to drop it even from CV's intended for Finnish employers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Plain old cultural inertia might play a big role here: businesses copied their Modus Operandi from older large corporations (who, in turn, copied a lot from the military) where a "job" could potentially last 10-30 years; so the criteria might stem from selecting whom you're going to spend this time.

(Originally from Hungary where it's required; moved to the UK where it's highly discouraged )

</comment><comment><USER5> In China, it's also the norm to include a photo with the CV. When I was hiring a team there, all of the applications were de-facto required to have it from the company perspective. Part of it was an age-ism thing (no older developers need apply was the underlying current), and in the case of office-reception type personnel, it was obvious that it was appearance based.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can confirm that in Canada and US photos, age and family status are not required on a CV (unless you need security clearance), this kind of information is considered personal and could be used as a motive for discrimination.

However, this was common practice in the old days and it's still common practice in most 3rd world countries of European influence.

</comment><comment><USER7> In Hungary it's the same as in Germany: without photo your CV probably goes to trash. It's like a first impression. Probably it's a question of what you get used to. I just received an application CV an hour ago from the US with no photo and personal data (e.g. age). First thing I did was to search the guy on FB and LinkedIn to get an impression…

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm from Canada and I've never heard of anyone including a photo in any sort of job application.

</comment><comment><USER9> In Sweden it is a bit of both, it is not require per se but a lot of people seem to have photos on their CVs and 'CV guides' usually recommend photos.

My current CV doesn't have a photo but it is in need of a refresh so may add a photo to it this time around.

</comment><comment><USER10> Almost unheard-of in Australia, except in fields like fashion modelling, acting, etc. We also do not explicitly state age, marital status or religion on our CVs.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its common in Spain and France too</comment>


Down with URL shorteners - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/Down+with+URL+shorteners <comment><USER2> I've been frustrated by short URLs in my Twitter feed too. So frustrated, in fact, that I wrote an app to "peel" them. It's a Chrome extension that shows you where the link is going before you click. Google App Engine fetches page headers on your behalf and gives you back the real link.

It's called LinkPeelr, and you can check it out here: <http://linkpeelr.appspot.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> The ideal situation for URL shorteners (in my opinion) is for the short URLs to be provided by the content publisher AND the short URLs should easily translate to their long URLs.[1] Look at how YouTube (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC9Ss4dguu4> is shortened to <http://youtu.be/lC9Ss4dguu4>) or Amazon ([http://www.amazon.com/Kindle- Wireless-Reader-Wifi-Graphite/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless- Reader-Wifi-Graphite/dp/B002Y27P3M) translates to <http://amzn.com/B002Y27P3M>) does it, for a good example.

They aren't the shortest possible URLs, but they clearly show the content provider in the URL, which is great.

I actually created a web app and API (hosted on Google App Engine) to generate these publisher-provided short URLs, but never published it. I'll polish it off a bit tonight and post it here.

[1] This is my personal ideal. Being provided by the content publisher should be enough, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google: [url shorteners evil].

What does your article add to this discussion, Jacques? I mean, besides points to your karma score? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not aware of any concerted effort to get rid of url shorteners (other than by the Libyan NIC, that is ;) ).

<comment><USER4> The authoritative place to start is probably 'joshu's article:

<http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html>

Yes, there is definitely a concerted effort to get rid of URL shorteners.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fancy that. Ok, so reading that I guess what it brought to the table that was new is a way to get rid of them in an active way, rather than to wait for them to go quietly.

It's one step away from banning *.ly as a referrer ;)

<comment><USER5> I actually ended up banning most of the URL shortners in Delicious in like 2007ish...

(thanks for the mention, tptacek)

<comment><AUTHOR> I just scanned all our text and outgoing links and it's amazing how much of this crap has crept in over the years. Time to do some housecleaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate url shorteners too, for all the reasons the author lists and more. But the article is wrong in stating "They serve no purpose other than to create a short link..."

Actually, while that is their _primary_ purpose, they are very attractive to the people who use them because they give you a click tracking on your instance of the URL post, regardless of who owns the target website.

For me, this is actually another negative of the whole concept of URL shorteners. But it's a _huge_ draw for the people using them.

<comment><USER7> There has been increasing use of url shorteners by spammers. The problem is you don't know which domain you're heading to. My mantra: treat all short urls as spam.

Only issue is with the CMS urls. I think it should be made 'best practice' rather than just 'SEO optimization', to use URL rewriting by CMS developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's why 301works exists (<http://www.archive.org/details/301works>). Granted, even if one of the URL shortener part of this group goes down, it would be a pain to get all the sort links replaced, but this would be possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> CMS support for short links is an interesting and more healthy idea.</comment>


Understanding Byzantine Fault Tolerance - <AUTHOR> https://blockchain.works-hub.com/learn/understanding-blockchain-fundamentals-part-1-byzantine-fault-tolerance-78f64 <comment><USER2> This is cool man</comment>


Celebrate Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel Day - 11/11/11 - <AUTHOR> http://www.billboard.com/features/nigel-tufnel-day-11-loud-moments-in-music-1005508152.story

<comment><AUTHOR> This day goes to 11 !</comment>


Cookiejacking: 0-day exploit of all Internet Explorer versions - <AUTHOR> http://sites.google.com/site/tentacoloviola/cookiejacking

<comment><USER2> I mean, this is clever and all, but what am I missing? Isn't this just an IE bug? That you can access cookie files as IFRAME targets? Is there some part of the IE architecture that _depends_ on that functionality, or is Microsoft just going to patch that?

Because pretty much all the browsers, on a better-than-quarterly basis, fall victim to attacks that allow arbitrary web pages to _upload code into their processes and run it_.

Just not sure this needed the "attack class" name.

<comment><USER3> > _Because pretty much all the browsers, on a better-than-quarterly basis, > fall victim to attacks that allow arbitrary web pages to upload code into > their processes and run it.

> Just not sure this needed the "attack class" name._

You are being too generous.

By default, all web browsers ALLOW execution of ALL code encountered since all browsers ship with javascript enabled. Similarly, allowing hidden and/or transparent elements ENABLES clickjacking by default.

In other words, the fundamental design is flawed, and it remains flawed because of vested interests. Most argue the risks are worth the rewards, and anyone who disagrees is promptly told that their tin foil hat is on so tight that it's cutting off their circulation.

Seriously, do you really want to be the person who advocates removing all javascript and hidden/transparent elements?

We both know what would happen to said person.

EDIT: Getting down-voted for just stating the underlying problem on HN doesn't bode well for HN as a community.

<comment><USER4> > By default, all web browsers ALLOW execution of ALL code encountered since > all browsers ship with javascript enabled. Similarly, allowing hidden and/or > transparent elements ENABLES clickjacking by default.

Woah, woah, woah. There's such a huge difference between "they can run Javascript and maybe consume some CPU time" and "they can run native code and completely own my machine" that I don't even know where to begin. If you could do "eip = shellcode.ptr;" in Javascript, maybe this would be a logical argument, but really there's just a massive, massive difference here.

<comment><USER3> Please name any javascipt "sandbox" that has a perfect security track record.

That's the real point.

Sure, javascript can be useful and even beneficial, but the key is making a decision on whether the risks are worth the rewards. The same is true for ANY code you decide to run.

<comment><USER2> You're trolling, whether you mean to be or not. You can't name an _anything_ with a perfect security track record. And this time, you're trolling in service of a stupid argument: that we can have either an insecure Internet-as- we-know-it, or no Internet-as-we-know-it at all. Well, no shit.

<comment><USER3> tptacek, you built a false dichotomy, and then you pretended I said it so you could have a straw man to knock down. We can laugh about it over a beer the next time you visit the valley.

When a friend tells me I'm trolling, even unintentionally trolling, and even if it was expressed through a fallacious argument, it's time to stop and rethink. Something is definitely wrong.

I seriously thought about just dropping this, not responding and letting this thread die of natural causes. But I would be setting a bad example by doing nothing, or taking it privately to email. $DIETY knows HN needs more good examples of responding properly under pressure on contentious issues, and with some luck and effort, I'll hopefully write one.

It seems tptacek meant "Web-as-we-know-it" but I really do get his point; people are now accustomed to executing code from any source via web browsers and javascript. It undeniably is the status quo. Me and my outdated, curmudgeonly views have never agreed with the idea of executing code from any source. I am undoubtedly a minority.

The problem is, why is it such a terrible sin to question if the risks are worth the rewards, voice flaws in the design, and try to look for better alternatives? --In other words, why is everyone forced to accept the "as-we- know-it" part without question?

Wanting to improve the as-we-know-it is vastly different from wanting to abandon everything. I'm always in favor of trying to improve the status quo. I know for certain the same is true for tptacek and although I don't know him, I'd bet the same is true for daeken.

It's safe to say all of us "violently agree" that there is no such thing as perfectly secure code, and it makes no difference if the code is only handling data or if it is attempting to execute other code in a sandboxed virtual machine such as javascript.

Javascript has unimaginably huge investment and momentum behind it. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people have a vested interest in javascript, either as a company or developer, but also as just a user. It won't be abandoned overnight. Similar is true for other problematic aspects of the web including CSS and frames. In short, there is a damn good reason why unpopular views are _very_ unpopular --Billions (if not more) of investment would be lost if these things were abandoned.

With all of that said, browser exploits are painfully common. If you reread tptacek original comment:

> _Because pretty much all the browsers, on a better-than-quarterly basis, > fall victim to attacks that allow arbitrary web pages to upload code into > their processes and run it. Just not sure this needed the "attack class" > name._

you can see browser exploits happens regularly enough to cause significant damages, but even mentioning the underlying problems results in, "You're trolling... Internet-as-we-know-it... no shit." and similar. It doesn't need to be that way, but around here, it almost always happens. The very idea of finding something better than the status quo of javascript and endless browser exploits is far too intimidating and unreasonable for most people. If you make your living from javascript or you're just a casual user, it is terrifying to think what would happen if it suddenly stopped working at 3pm tomorrow. When an idea contrary to the status quo is voiced, many people succumb to the irrational thinking of a sudden change and the associated irrational fears. But...

      The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable
      man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
      all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
      -- George Bernard Shaw

Being unreasonable is never a license to troll; the efforts and investments of others have value and should be respected, but making improvements should remain open for discussion. Maybe I am unreasonable, but I do have good reason for it; our status quo is repeatedly broken. Taking offense to reality will simply prevent you from improving the situation, and worse, shouting-down others for venturing where you fear to tread may prevent them from improving the status quo for you.

If you can't talk about a problem, then you have a bigger problem.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that you said they would execute 'ALL' code, which is not only terribly misleading but technically incorrect. It's a false statement that has no place in a proper discussion.

Also I think it's unreasonable to expect a browser without javascript to be significantly safer. Look at all the code-execution exploits in image decoders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently that page has been shut down by Google?

"This site has been disabled for violations of our Terms of Service. If you feel this disabling was in error, please fill out our appeal form."

<comment><USER7> Any mirrors?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.lo0.ro/2011/cookiejacking-stealing-cookies- with-i...](http://www.lo0.ro/2011/cookiejacking-stealing-cookies-with-iframe/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Novel approach, but I'm curious how many networks let 445 smb over tcp out? Enterprise networks sure shouldn't, my office doesn't, my house doesn't though admittedly most people won't be configured this way. But don't big carriers like comcast also filter common microsoft ports like this and 139 because of worm and exploit activity?

<comment><USER2> You only need the SMB connection to grab the username, right? That seems straightforwardly guessable.

Apropos little: UNC path filtering is something the Rails generation of webdevs have a bad habit over overlooking.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, only the username. Still, that seems like a pretty hard thing to blind guess at in most attack scenarios if you can't get it through the cifs connect. My reading is that you couldn't brute force it, you'd have one chance to set up the iframe with the cookie file in it which needs the username, or at least just one chance per clickjacked drag action that the user executes for you.

If it's a targeted attack I suppose you have a better shot, are most home windows user names set to the user's full name like "John Doe"?

<comment><USER10> > My reading is that you couldn't brute force it, you'd have one chance to set > up the iframe with the cookie file in it which needs the username, or at > least just one chance per clickjacked drag action that the user executes for > you.

But if you made some sort of Javascript "game" (which used drag and drop) and required the users to register their name first, then you should have a fairly high chance of guessing their username without CIFS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone describe the white hat credo with respect to 0 day exploits?

Did he give Microsoft a head's up about these and a chance to respond before going public? Or does he just give a conference talk and post it to his blog, potentially providing the information allowing thousands of browsers to get compromised (assuming they weren't already) before privately letting Microsoft get a chance to patch it?

<comment><USER12> I don't know, but Microsoft doesn't care anyway (or so they say), according to [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217116/Microsoft_dow...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217116/Microsoft_downplays_IE_cookiejacking_bug) .

But I _do_ hope that he told Microsoft before the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If this attack involves "simply sniffing TCP 445" why not just MITM the whole session?

The state of security is becoming an over-hyped sideshow of late where the most trivial attacks, which would work maybe 1% of the time in the wild, are getting mass exposure.

I have a 0day in RHEL 5, you simply need to log onto the machine as root and run this script...

<comment><USER14> " _If this attack involves "simply sniffing TCP 445" why not just MITM the whole session?_ "

Because it doesn't. The attack involves using a bug in IE (an iframe will render cookie data from the local computer) with clickjacking to steal cookie information. Sniffing on port 445 is only mentioned in the context of figuring out the username of your target (by causing the target to connect to your SMB server, running on port 445).

I'd suggest you go back and re-read the whole page before making sweeping generalizations.</comment></comment>


Migration Strategies for Cassandra or Scylla Using Apache Spark and More - <AUTHOR> https://www.scylladb.com/2019/04/02/spark-file-transfer-and-more-strategies-for-migrating-data-to-and-from-a-cassandra-or-scylla-cluster/ <comment><AUTHOR> Which of the various methods fit best with your own migration strategy? And did we miss any other options you'd consider?</comment>


Kindle books have overtaken paperbacks as the most popular format on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110127006667/en/Amazon.com-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-Sales-36-12.95

<comment><USER4> Paper books are going the way of film - though it's about three or four years ahead of the curve that I predicted when I got my first Kindle.

People still use film to take pictures, and people will continue to buy paper books - but as the format improves, the resolution and page changing gets better, and the battery life increases, "Paper Books" will become more an more niche - I think people are going to be absolutely shocked how quickly tablets wipe out the paper textbook market.

I originally predicted (in 2007, when I got my first kindle - a laughable device compared to my K3 (or Ipad+Kindle, for that matter) - that eBooks would overtake Paper books as the most popular format in 2015 - eight years seemed like a reasonable time span based on previous transitions (Vinyl->CD, VHS->DVD). Then three years to pick up the late majority, and finally another three years to reduce paper books to a tiny niche - 2021 would have us all reading books on electrical devices. Given that 2012 looks like it will be the year eBooks become more popular (Give it a full two years after they become the most popular on Amazon), It looks like that prediction was off - <USER2> everything in by about three years. 2018 - The year people will look at you funny if you are reading a paper book.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens to all of our libraries...

<comment><USER5> The problem though is that paper books still cost less money than their Kindle counterparts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, this is great news for my weekend startup, Booklends. I think that the 'try before you buy' model will work great for eBooks. So I'm creating a website <http://www.booklends.com> to let Kindle users borrow and lend books with other users.

Certain books (depending on if the publisher allows it) can be loaned from one user to another for up to 14 days. Booklends will let you keep track of all your books and let you make wishlists of books that you want to borrow from other people.

My site is coming together quickly, now I just have to get it finished and launched! :)

<comment><USER7> Hopefully this isn't a surprise, but there's one out there: <http://www.kindlelendingclub.com/>

Though I do like your name better.

<comment><USER6> Haha, yeah it's not a surprise.. I didn't know they were creating their own site - I thought they wanted to just keep it as Facebook group. But by the time they launched, I was well into it, so I decided that I may as well finish what I started.

<comment><USER7> > so I decided that I may as well finish what I started.

I like the spirit. I'll keep an eye on booklends. Hopefully it will be fewer romance novels and more good books.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I'm going to try to just support all the books that are lendable.

But to your point - I've found that there is a _surprising_ amount of romance/erotica novels on Amazon Kindle. I have my crawlers doing common searches, and it turns out that a large number (more than I'd expect anyway) of the books on there are of the shirtless-dude-on-the-cover type.

<comment><USER8> With a Kindle, nobody else on the bus knows what you're reading...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How big a portion of the total number of books sold world wide goes through Amazon?

That's an important number in this debate, you could easily interpret this as 'ebooks are now sold more frequently than paperbacks' but I'm not seeing bookstores going out of business in the towns that I visit so there must be more to it.

Another question that needs answering is how many of these ebooks would have been sold as paperbacks, and how many of them are really sold just on the merit of being available as an ebook.

Typically I'll read anything technical on a screen and 'books' in dead tree format, and I pass my copy on to someone else after I'm done with it. As long as ebooks do not allow me to do that given the price I'd much rather have a 'real' book than a stream of bits, it seems more value for money.

<comment><AUTHOR> > That's an important number in this debate, you could easily interpret this > as 'ebooks are now sold more frequently than paperbacks' but I'm not seeing > bookstores going out of business in the towns that I visit so there must be > more to it.

In the US, bookstores are going out of business at a rapid pace. Borders is nearly insolvent, Barnes & Noble is on a long slump (the only thing that may save them is eBooks). Independent bookstores have been declining for at least a decade if not two.

<comment><USER10> Stores can be fairly resilient in the face of terrible trading conditions for some years, especially the big chains. So there is some lag time between a business model becoming unworkable and the companies pursuing it disappearing.

<comment><USER11> Plus, bookstores are a relatively slow business in the first place. Even a healthy bookstore doesn't sell anywhere near as many books in a day as, say, McDonalds does hamburgers.

They are used to and designed to handle slow sales, so it's taking a long time for this to kill them.

<comment><USER12> I'm not saying I disagree, but I don't think it's a fair argument to compare a non-essential "luxury" item (books) to food, a necessity (especially when the former costs $10+ and the latter is roughly $1 each).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me, or has this been an extremely swift market transition from physical towards digital? Even counting that it is only Amazon we're talking about?

The transition from film to digital cameras was very quick once it happened, but my feeling is that ebooks were adopted sooner after mass-market devices became available. Anyone got numbers?

Would be interesting to compare with Netflix's transition from DVD to streaming as well!

<comment><USER6> I've thought about this too. Amazon sold _millions_ of Kindles this past holiday shopping season.. Why? I personally know 6 people who got Kindles or Nooks in the last month.

It would be interesting to know what contributed to their 'overnight' success. Perhaps there's something magic about the $139 price point, which I suspect is about what a serious reader might spend on paper books every year anyway (Nobody has better data on this than Amazon)..

Also there weren't really any other big ticket, must have items this holiday season - no game consoles launching.

Like I said, it would be really interesting to know why this transition happened so suddenly, and why now..

<comment><USER10> The $139 price point makes them a good gift, about the amount you may be looking to spend on someone close to you. I got mine because my girlfriend was asking what I wanted for Christmas and it's about that price point where if you decided later you didn't like it it's not a huge deal.

Interestingly in the space of half a book I've pretty much decided the vast majority of my future purchases will be ebooks despite being someone who initially questioned whether books would easily transition to digital.

<comment><USER14> Yep, the $139 price point did it for me. I bought myself one for Thanksgiving ;)

I've bought like 15 ebooks since then, and now if it's not available for Kindle, I just won't buy a book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm wondering how many of those are free - a lot of classics are free on kindle.

For instance: Robinson Crusoe [http://www.amazon.com/Life-Adventures-Robinson- Crusoe-ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Life-Adventures-Robinson-Crusoe- ebook/dp/B002RKR7N4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296167853&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER16> The article says that free books are not included in this count of sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just to clarify for any others who misread the title, this is comparing paperbacks to Kindle edition, not all paper books. The numbers imply Kindle sales are about 85% of hardcovers and paperbacks combined.

Also, since Amazon sells 100% of the Kindle books its readers buy, but only some of the physical books its readers buy, I think this most interesting part of this release is what it says about how great a business move the Kindle was for Amazon. Every time a customer switches to the Kindle they instantly gain a lot of sales that used to happen at various physical bookstores. And that's before even considering that people who walk around with a bookstore 1 foot from them will buy more books, too.

<comment><USER18> I think you may be mistaken

 _Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books. Since the beginning of the year, for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company has sold 115 Kindle books. Additionally, during this same time period the Company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books. This is across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the numbers even higher._

<comment><USER19> 100 paperbacks ~= 115 kindle books ~= 40 hardcover books (33% of 115)

140 paper books ~= 115 kindle books => ~82% as many kindle books as paper books

<comment><USER18> Oops.

Thank's for the explanation :) Perhaps Amazon's words are intentionally ambiguous.

EDIT: Actually, I just read TechCrunch's article

 _Has the pixel to print tipping point been reached? Last July we reported that Amazon's Kindle eReader books had surpassed hardcover books in terms of sales, selling 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. Now that lead also holds for paperbacks and by default all books, with 115 Kindle books being sold for every hundred paperbacks._

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/kindle-books-overtake- paper...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/kindle-books-overtake-paperback- books-to-become-amazons-most-popular-format/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't really see the death of print as something imminent, but the convenience of e-books might make them more preferable to a lot of people.

My actual question is if the decline in brick and mortar book shops will just fuel a print-on-demand industry instead?

Granted, the price for production and shipping can only be so low - <USER3> is completely non-viable for someone living in my part of Europe due to shipping rates.

</comment><comment><USER21> There is a tactic that Amazon has been doing that frustrates me and might contribute to why kindle books are selling so well.

Search for a book, if there is a kindle edition, it will be the one that shows up on the search NOT the paperback. You have to navigate around just to get to the paperback.

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't do that for me, but it's not that far off since the kindle version is the best selling version. They may also boost Kindle results if you have purchased a Kindle before (that would actually be pretty clever).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hopefully the older publishers will change the way that they deal with digital books now that the medium is becoming (has become?) mainstream. I know many publishers will offer lump sums to authors to publish digitally, but wont give any royalties (despite the often equivalent pricing).

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow. It seems like yesterday that eBooks were just becoming somewhat well known...thanks to Bezos and Jobs for nailing this major accomplishment in such a short amount of time!

<comment><USER24> What did Jobs do? The Kindle was massively popular before the iPad was conceived. In fact, Jobs derided Amazon for releasing the Kindle.

<comment><USER23> The iPad brought eBooks to ~8 million people within the past year. I may not be an Apple fanboy (I'm a PC), but the iPad is making eBooks much more common. To be clear, I'm not talking about iBooks, I'm talking about the iPad as a reading device.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump Administration Price-Transparency Rule Covering Hospitals Upheld - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-price-transparency-rule-covering-hospitals-upheld-11592945973 <comment><USER2> a broken clock still right twice a day.</comment>


C'Dent - A Portable Module Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://cdent.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> The source code can be found here: <http://github.com/ingydotnet/cdent></comment>


Show HN: OTPCL – Tcl-Flavored Erlang - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/YellowApple/otpcl <comment><AUTHOR> This is in a very early stage of development, but it _is_ technically usable (at least in theory, and for the very limited purpose of simple script/configuration files), so I think it's ready for the Show HN (thus being the first time I actually fulfilled a New Years' Resolution!).

Documentation is nonexistent, and the interpreter currently has no test suite (the parser does, though it ain't exactly comprehensive). There's also no compiler or REPL yet (only way to use it is to fire up 'rebar3 shell' and call otpcl:eval/1 or or otpcl:eval/2 repeatedly). However, per README.md, it should be straightforward to use nonetheless (feed OTPCL programs into otpcl:eval/1 to use the standard library as-is or otpcl:eval/2 to provide a custom one with your own functions). Evaluation will return the value returned by the last- executed command in the passed program, plus the final state of that program's execution, giving two reasonably-useful ways to extract data from program evaluation (whether for simple scripts or configuration files that are at least slightly prettier than full-blown Erlang terms).

Next steps:

* Add support to actually eval a file directly (though it should be possible to separately read a file and shove the text contents into otpcl:eval/1 as a stopgap)

* Build the REPL (what good is a scripting language if you can't turn it into an ad-hoc shell language, too? ;) )

* Flesh out the standard library functions (notably, there's no way to define functions from within an OTPCL script at the moment)

* Docs, tests, etc.

* Actually publish on hex.pm (the infrastructure's there; but it's a wee bit too barebones for me to be ready to pull that trigger)

Feedback is welcome. There is certainly a _lot_ of room for improvement, but hey, at least it (approximately) works!

<comment><USER2> Too bad Tk was replaced by wx-widgets, otherwise it could be OTPCL/Tk ;)

My main usecase for Tcl/Tk was gluing some legacy and adding some GUI on top of it. With Erlang/OTP one can easily glue and orchestrate distributed code, GUI is not as easy as in Tk, since Erlang is much more verbose and wx is more complex than Tk.

Any plans to support Elixir too?

<comment><USER3> In a nutshell, the Tk GUI, to my understanding, is basically a C GUI library. A lot of its widget code is written in Tcl, so that using Tk in an application requires embedding the Tcl interpreter.

Using Tk, but replacing that Tcl interpreter with one's own is likely possible, but almost certainly a big project, possibly resulting in a complicated fork of Tk.

So simply bringing back Tk wouldn't do anything without a lot of additional work. One simpler possibility, though, would be to have a delegating API in the OTPCL which just forwards down to the Tcl/Tk, so that it would _look_ like OTPCL is integrated with Tk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed; OTPCL already diverges significantly from Tcl in very important ways that would be very hard to change while still maintaining some semblance of compatibility with Erlang and the broader ecosystem thereof; if I were to literally integrate Tk itself, that would indeed be... involved.

I do like the idea of delegating to actual Tcl for a Tcl/Tk bridge, at least for something quick-and-dirty; a run-of-the-mill Erlang "port" written in Tcl ought to be an effective first pass at going about that. It should be easy to do.

In the longer term, a toolkit geared specifically toward Erlang's strengths (e.g. each widget having its own process, message passing instead of callbacks, etc.) seems like it'd be a more valuable contribution to the Erlang ecosystem, even if it'd be harder than even trying to bridge OTPCL with Tk directly. Ideally OTPCL/$TOOLKIT should be as dead-simple to use as Tcl/Tk (and should be straightforward even if you swap out the "OTPCL" part of that with Erlang/Elixir/LFE/Joxa/LuErl/ErLog/etc.).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using dynamic libraries in static Go binaries - <AUTHOR> https://www.grant.pizza/blog/using-dynamic-libraries-in-static-go-binaries/ <comment><USER2> Cool article!</comment>


Storing data in Europe won't secure it against US - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-vows-appeal-court-order-turn-email-ireland-data-center/

<comment><USER2> Just out of interest, what would happen if US courts say they must hand over information, and European courts say they must not?</comment>


A beer brewed from a 200-year-old Tasmanian shipwreck - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181206-a-beer-brewed-from-an-old-tasmanian-shipwreck <comment><USER2> I've read a dozen or so articles on this (It's been a somewhat popular discussion on several homebrewing communities focused on using interesting/rare/"alternative" yeasts), and the beer that's been brewed so far has only used a subset of the yeast cultured from the bottles.

If they were trying to more faithfully reproduce the beer they found, they'd need to use all of the yeast cultures they recovered. (They commercial beer listed here was not actually attempting to reproduce the beer - just use the yeast)

There's some debate as to whether or not the yeast they're using is a contaminate, as well. Sacch strains do not seem to live long enough in fermented beer to make it 200+ years (though there's evidence that Brett strains will do just fine), and the samples were taken from bottles that had been decanted 20 years prior. The characteristics reported of the yeast are also similar to what many people find when using wild yeast. That might be due to them being wild yeast contaminates, or due to the selective "breeding" pressure of commercial yeasts having not yet eliminated these traits.

I wish they would sequence the yeast and release the results.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm forced to wonder whether the same strain of yeast also survived on the surface near the original brewery location, and this revival is just a very expensive equivalent of making San Francisco sourdough in a different locale, from a starter culture packet received through the mail.

Except in this case, the starter is from a message in a bottle, lost at sea for 200 years.

<comment><USER4> And also believing SF sourdough is actually a thing not born out of over engineering and OCD? I think bread could become a bit like wine. People can't actually taste the difference but enjoy being a bit snobby.

<comment><USER3> Location matters to food and drink. You can taste the difference. You can even taste the difference in ordinary tap water. I don't care all that much about SF sourdough starter, specifically--it was the only one I ever noticed as being sold commercially.

There is also a hobbyist network of people that trade their local sourdough starter to people in distant lands, as dried-up blobs on index cards, through the mail. People also trade kefir, kombucha, yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchee, and vinegar starters. They wouldn't go to the trouble if it didn't make a difference.

The local ambient microbiome certainly contributes to the texture and flavor of fermented and aged foods, and it can be transplanted successfully for a few months, but then the locals usually overwhelm the foreigners. When you find a commercially significant one, you have to take great care to preserve it and keep it pure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish I could try some of the beer, but it seems only to exist down under.

<comment><USER6> As an Aussie I just tried looking for it and it seems difficult to find even here. Might have to head to the brewery itself. The usual suspect of Dan Murphys is out of stock [https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_700183/james- squire...](https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_700183/james-squire-the- wreck-preservation-ale-750ml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had two things in my mind when I read this: where the hell can get my hands on one and is it very smart to release a bacteria that obviously can survive 200 years in alcohol?

<comment><USER3> Some microorganisms that produce a particular chemical as a metabolite are more resistant to its toxicity. So they use that to competitive advantage. It's the microbiological equivalent of pooping in the pool, so everyone else gets out, and you can then swim in it by yourself.

Yeasts do this with alcohol. Acetobacters do it with acetic acid. Lactobacilli with lactic acid. Other varieties exist, but their metabolites have less culinary importance.

But they probably didn't "survive" 200 years. In order to last that long, anything in the cold, dark, ethanol-contaminated bottles probably formed spores, going into deep biological stasis to await more clement environmental conditions. Not all microbes can do it, but the ones that can are considered very hardy. Yeasts tend to switch from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction in nutrient-poor environments, and the resulting diploid cells can sporify.

The question is analogous to questioning whether a human embryo that had been frozen solid and stored in liquid nitrogen for 20 years is safe to thaw out and implant in a live uterus. It's just not a big deal for us. Sporing up and waiting a few centuries before thawing out the embryos is not a big deal for yeast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Talk about a ship in a bottle!

Now that the pun's out of the way, normal discourse can commence...

[edit] oh wait, all the comments are just other puns</comment>


Be humble. - <AUTHOR> http://nathanclark.me/posts/emotional-quotience/

<comment><USER2> There is a difference between being humble and forcing yourself to be humble because it's a noble thing to do. Big difference. Same difference as between being and doing. Being is born from within, doing is a result of it. Be-ers are writing books about what they "do" because do-ers are buying them en-masse thinking they can repeat doing-ness and succeed. When they fail - they think they need to get a list of "better" things to "do" to succeed.

Be humble. But start with cleaning up inner garbage that drives you to think that "doing" humble things is the same as being humble. It is not. Realizing it is the first step toward being.

Yourself.

The rest is secondary.

<comment><USER3> I recall reading in _a short treatise on the great virtues_ that politeness is how we acquire virtue; the only way we can learn to be humble is through acting humbly. But acting humbly out of politeness lets us break that circular dependency; we can then learn to see the value of humility and will naturally change to fit the way we're acting.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. The way we act establishes a feedback loop into who we are; even if (initially) we are doing it insincerely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your website downloads a 393kB PNG file just to resize it in the browser much smaller. PNG is not appropriate for photographs anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. Thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment>