graedus

One indicator people are talking about a lot lately is the yield curve flattening and inverting[0][1]. The yield curve tends to invert shortly before recessions, and is pretty close to doing so now. As always, there are a lot of arguments about whether "this time is different" (i.e. even though this signaled coming recessions in the past, conditions are different now so don't worry). Some people at the Fed recently argued that the traditional ways of looking at yield curve inversion (e.g. the 2s10s[2]) have lost their value as a recession indicator, and that we should instead be looking at various near-term spreads[3][4].

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/from-citi...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-20/trump-bla...

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y/

[3] https://wolfstreet.com/2018/07/05/as-the-yield-curve-flatten...

[4] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/dont...

> I even buy gasoline this way, because prices at the pump seem to change almost randomly. I buy $25.00 at a time. So I buy more when the price is low and less when the price is high.

At the risk of a joke flying right over my head, I'll ask how this works. Isn't your gas usage mostly inelastic? Are you going to drive to work less or to the supermarket less because your tank is almost empty due to gas prices being higher? If you're thinking about planning a road trip, do you say "nah, only got half a tank of gas" due to your $25 not buying you as much? Wouldn't it be easier to just look at the price of gas and decide based on that?

I managed to find that - thanks!

A few other interesting angles: Household Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income[0] (10.3%, near 40-year lows), Consumer Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income[1] (5.9%, near 40-year average), Personal Saving Rate[2] (3.2%, near 50-year lows).

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CDSP

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

I briefly searched for inflation-adjusted debt per capita but couldn't find it.

There is the federal debt to GDP ratio, which is 105%. This is at least a 50-year high[0]. FRED's household debt to GDP data doesn't go back very far, but we can see it's off the highs off 2008[1]. (edit: added household debt to GDP)

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/gfdegdq188S

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N

> One time we had even already signed a fixed-bid contract before I was able to give them an estimate.

Only one time?? Are you hiring? :)

It doesn't work in desktop Firefox or Chrome either. I don't see any errors, so I think they just forgot to wire it up.

"Oh, it's standard? Well ok then."

I've never heard or seen it until this moment.

Control+Alt+Shift+D in netflix to see information like the resolution of your video stream, bitrate, etc. As sibling comments mention, the max resolution can depend on your browser.

On youtube, you can right click > stats for nerds for some similar info.

> PS, why do people stick their necks over the tracks to look if a train is coming?

You can often see further down the tunnel from an angle close to the tracks than you can standing behind the yellow strip. If someone ahead of you on the platform is already doing this, then they're probably blocking your view down the tunnel, so you have to lean to see past them. It seems pretty silly, but sometimes it's useful, for example, in determining whether the express or local will come first, and you can then switch platforms at the last minute if it makes sense for you.

If countdown timers were reliable and accurate, fewer people would feel compelled to lean out.

I had to look this up. From Wikipedia:

Stargate Project was the code name for a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International (a California contractor) to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications. The Project, and its precursors and sister projects, went by various code names—GONDOLA WISH, GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE, SUN STREAK, SCANATE—until 1991 when they were consolidated and rechristened as "Stargate Project".

In theory, discourages certain behavior with the threat of legal action. In practice, this doesn't work sometimes for various reasons. What if you're 95% certain you have the resources to crush your opponent in a legal battle, still profiting handsomely net of the legal fees you incur?

> Ok well thanks to a few recessions

I'm interested in this guy's[0][1] approach to take most of the downside risk out of recessions/bear markets/crashes compared to buy-and-hold. Basically, start with a diversified portfolio, and when any of them closes below their monthly 12mo moving average, sell it and buy treasuries.

I'm sure there are thousands of more sophisticated models out there, but the nice thing about this is its simplicity - minimal management, just rebalance once a month according to a single rule and forget about it. Looks like it works well, backtested against lots of historical market data sets.

[0] http://michaelritger.com/2017/10/19/tactical-asset-allocatio... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGnNGuo5ywg

> Going out to party can also be fun but this becomes the difference in spending $20 at home vs $200 in one night.

Agreed, but try not to be the person who refuses to ever go out because you're too focused on being frugal. A few times here and there won't really hurt you in the long run (and having fun with friends is important and worth the money), but making it a habit every night will. Just avoid the latter.

> Frugal is buying an old reliable honda/toyota for $3,000 vs picking up a $40,000 entry level benz.

Definitely agree. Americans in particular tend to buy way more car than they need, and the difference in price is on an order of magnitude that really does matter in the long run for many of us (i.e. if you invest that marginal $20k, $50k, or $100k and wait 10-30 years instead of buying a quickly depreciating fancy car).

As you might have guessed from the title, this is about Stuxnet, the advanced worm/cyberweapon which successfully targeted and damaged centrifuges at the Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz in 2010. It is believed to have been jointly developed by the US and Israel.

This PDF is "A Technical Analysis of What Stuxnet’s Creators Tried to Achieve". 37 pages. 2013.

Related HN discussion about Stuxnet from earlier this week: "The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17099969

You think it is more likely for a poor person to ascend to a higher class than for a rich person to remain rich? That is surprising.

Broadly, those with power and money. Having enough money to lobby congress is one manifestation of that. Having enough money to wage large multichannel PR campaigns on the population is another. Funding think tanks, funding PACs, ownership of or influence over the major media outlets.

People with this kind of power and money form a series of formal and informal interlocking networks, and often interests align across most or all of those networks. Tax cuts for the rich and for corporations is perhaps the most obvious one. Pushing for war might be a bit less unanimous, but wars do produce near-immediate profits for the military-industrial complex and those invested in it, and potential future business opportunities for other sectors (for example if the war results in regime change, which leads to an opening of previously closed markets, the sale of state-owned businesses and assets, etc).

Same in Chrome and Firefox. Basically between 481px and 984px viewport widths, you're going to have horizontal scrolling. Can't say I've seen this approach to a responsive grid before.

edit: I think 10 second fix is to just change .main from width: 960px; to max-width: 960px; width: 100%;.

You can organize and vote all you want, but being one person out of 320 million, sometimes things aren't going to go your way. It is not a bad idea to have a backup plan, even for unlikely events. So then what? "Retire to the Bahamas"? Assuming you have enough money laying around to do that, and don't have elderly or less-mobile family/friends, is running away to a foreign country where you have no connections really so preferable to having the option to defend yourself and your family/friends?

You can listen to a classic example of this behavior from Comcast here:

https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service

IIRC, their dual mandate is:

"Price stability": sounds like no inflation or deflation to me, but in fact they pursue some non-zero amount of inflation, usually 2-3%.

"Full employment": sounds like 0% unemployment to me, but in fact they target some non-zero value, around 5% I think.

Targeting equity prices or other asset prices is not officially within their mandates, but given their behavior at times (e.g. suddenly dropping dovish comments when the market drops), one might start to think this is a de facto or shadow mandate. :)

I think worrying about the price of the dollar is closely related to the level of inflation or uh "price stability" they are aiming for.

Right, but if the type of people having their guns taken away (say repeat violent offenders) or the type of guns being taken away (say automatics) are reasonable enough in the eyes of the people, you don't see a ton of resistance. Gun laws have been incrementally tightened many times in the past. It's lobbied against, voted against, and there is outcry by some gun owners, but not mass rebellion.

I think banning bump stocks, which are just a crude workaround of the longstanding automatic gun restrictions, are something we'll probably see without mass revolt or officers refusing to enforce.

The original context of this thread (starting with user yequalsx's comment) isn't about "tighter gun controls", but rather the a complete ban of all guns ("I hope I am now seeing the beginning of the end of acceptance of gun ownership.") I think that is the scenario -- actual confiscation of all guns -- user purple-again was addressing ("This country is filled with rational, professional, well organized people who will kill before being disarmed").

This is different from outlawing or more tightly controlling certain classes of weapons, which seems to be what you're talking about. I think not being able to easily purchase fully automatic weapons or crazier stuff like rocket propelled grenades, stingers, 20mm cannons, etc is something a minority of gun enthusiasts grumble about but pretty much everyone basically accepts. Nobody that I know of is revolting about that, cops/feds have no problem enforcing it, etc.

"If people doesn't have money, why doesn't the government print money and gives it to people?"

Because people are not systemically important financial institutions :)

> [...] both sides have no shortage or rich benefactors.

I think the idea of "both sides" having rich benefactors grossly oversimplifies political alignment in the US. Perhaps you mean that there are both rich Democrats and rich Republicans. True! Unfortunately, this is a problem in itself if the most of the rich benefactors of both major parties have outsize influence over the direction of their party - which candidates it backs and funds, what policies it favors, etc. It can lead to bipartisan consensus among most of the politicians in each party that is not in alignment with what is desired by the non-rich majority.

> Then you've got companies like Dollar General betting on America having a "permanent underclass", their own words

Interesting quote, thanks for that. However it's not "in their own words". The quote comes from Garrick Brown, director for retail research at a commercial real estate company. Here's the original source:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-11/dollar-ge...

> less manipulation

> If it goes in a funk, the government will think of ways to prop it back up

I don't disagree with the second statement. I guess what you're saying is that there is manipulation (talking about government intervention in this case) but overwhelmingly in the "right" direction?

There was a popular one few years back called "money flipping". Mostly on Instagram and Facebook. Not sure if it was a pyramid format but definitely a get-rich-quick scam.

I don't think it rates as "hipster", but Foundation works fine.

https://foundation.zurb.com/