verbify

While there might be some edge cases (e.g. startups associated with a high profile brand/person), in most cases there are usually better things for a startup to do than obfuscate the number of users they're gaining.

There's a Yiddish joke that illustrates the extent that Yiddish has a borrowed vocabulary.

A Rabbi is at an event with the Kaiser. The Kaiser says to him 'Sprichst du Deutsch' - 'do you speak German?'.

The Rabbi replies confidently 'avadah, iz doch unserer mama loshon' - 'certainly, it's our mother tongue'.

The joke being that 'avadah' (certainly) is Aramaic, and 'loshon' (tongue) is Hebrew, so all the Kaiser would understand is 'gibberish our mother gibberish'.

> How many people are poor like that?

My experience is that it is a significant percentage (i.e. more than 10%)... And about your point about home owners being poor - not everybody owns their own home (stats show it's about 2/3rds). I just don't see BTL as realistic for people struggling to make ends meet.

I think we have very different definitions of poor. $100k with a LTV of 10% means savings of $10k (besides the other fees of buying a place). Poor people don't have that.

A quick Google showed that the median savings account balance across American households is $4,830. And when you have a median that's considerably lower than the average, it means that the poor people are doing worse. The likelihood is they're in debt.

And as an aside, seeing as this is the UK, $100k wouldn't buy a house in an area that is desirable or has jobs, so you'd struggle to live there or rent it out.

> Even the poor can get a loan from the bank and do it.

You usually need a deposit for a loan. Poor people generally don't have huge amounts of savings.

There are two kinds of contracts with property managers - one kind that only find tenants, and another that manages everything (e.g. if the boiler breaks they get a plumber).

Which kind are you talking about? I'd be surprised if the discrepancy between countries was as large as 6% to 15% for the same contract.

> It takes about three minutes of listening to him talk on the subject to understand that his singular life's mission is to figure out what is necessary to prevent totalitarianism ever again

I spent some time listening to him, and that wasn't my impression. It struck me as a mixture of contrarianism, attention seeking behaviour and latent transphobia.

Was your father not allowed to switch jobs on pain of death?

Do you not have a personal bank account that your significant other doesn't audit?

I'm struggling to follow your argument. You can also default on a payday loan - I think defaulting is better than the mafia, which is precisely the benefit of payday loans - they add in a step where you don't go to the mafia.

I'm not sure about the laws in your locality (in the UK you have to have a licence from the UK Office of Fair Trading to offer consumer credit), but I would generally support banning anyone other than payday loan companies from selling very high interest loans - high interest loans from utility companies and landlords strikes me as an obscenity.

> What tends to happen is not that people go to the Mafia (traditionally they come to you!)

The mob definitely loans money at high-interest:

http://archive.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/03...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loan_shark#Post-criminalizatio...

I think that's a charitable reading of the parent comment. I thought I made it clear that in an ideal world payday loans (and the mafia) wouldn't exist, so I'm not even sure what kind of ideal world the parent comment is suggesting.

On the contrary, I think you summed up my feelings pretty succinctly. Was there something I wrote that led you to think I felt otherwise?

If you cap maximum interest rates then people who are deemed too 'high risk' will be refused credit. As a result, they will seek credit elsewhere.

Switzerland is a wealthy low-crime country to start with, the mafia do not have a strong hold. For example the homicide rate in Switzerland is 0.54 per 100,000 people, by comparison in the United States it is 5.35 per 100,000 people.

An underappreciated facet of payday loans is that without them desperate people would borrow from unsavoury people - making them illegal drives the high risk loan business underground into the hands of the Mafia. And then the consequences for the desperate people for defaulting is no longer bankruptcy, but broken legs or worse.

I agree we should have less of it, but all legislation should be mindful of the consequences of certain types of restrictions.

Your first point is definitely correct - their guide is confused at best.

As to your second point, I agree in terms of 'best practices', but in terms of teaching about phishing, the fact is, companies do use multiple domains (and some deliverability guides actively encourage different domains for marketing emails and transactional emails - companies should use subdomains for this, but not all are that savvy).

Given that companies are sending from multiple domains, I think the litmus test for phishing is:

"Is the email trying to get me to give me information? E.g. a login on the wrong site, sending card details or anything like that"

Your pdf reader should allow you to open a pdf without being compromised (just as your browser should allow you to click a dodgy link without being compromised). So I think that item should pass the litmus test (unlike the email reading one).

I don't know if that would be enough in real life for me. I know some organisations use two different domains (e.g. they did a transition but they don't want to turn off .org just in case something still uses it, the IT team forgot that Sam has two Outlook profiles, one is on .org).

And while pdfs can be attack vectors, they're not an especially strong one - it's not like running an exe with administrator privileges.

Comparatively giving a third party access to your emails should definitely raise flags.

You can get notifications using http://www.hnreplies.com/

But will you see this comment given that you don't get notifications?

Surnames are heritable through the male line only. Genes are heritable through both parents. Wealth is some societies is heritable mostly through the male line, and in other societies through both lines.

Assuming that in the ~584 odd years from the study to the present day that 20 generations passed (average of 30 years per generation), the specific great-great-grandparent who passed on that name has roughly a 0.5^30 on that person (which is an infinitesimally small number).

However, rich people usually marry rich people. It's likely these results aren't just direct inheritance, or direct genetics, but it shows stratification within Italian society.

That's my feelings, although I've seen so many successful app-only startups that I feel I'm missing something that these startups grasp.

E.g. in the UK Monzo, an app-only bank, won't allow you to access your statements, do transfers, or pretty much do anything to manage your account on the web, and is one of the most popular challenger banks.

I'm not sure how this content got to the number 2 spot on HN (with only 3 points and no comments). Especially considering it seems to be a partisan political attack on an Indian party.

> it's not unheard of for places to sell quality marijuana for as low as $48/ounce, which is very cheap

When I look at other dried herbs on amazon, they're much cheaper. E.g. thyme is about $10 for 12 ounces, oregano is $13 for 5 ounces.

Weed obviously has higher taxes, more regulation and I presume a smaller market (most people consume culinary herbs as part of their diet, not everybody consumes weed). But I'd expect the price to come down once the regulations disappear.

I thought I addressed perspective in my post. In addition often all you have to do to change your perspective is go to another continent.

There's also an element of survivorship bias. The Antikythera Mechanism, while not a book, is amazing, yet it and devices like it and its instruction manual didn't survive through the ages. Many books on the minutiae of the regiments and classification of angels did.

I'm going to take a contrarian view on this.

About 1/15 humans who have ever existed are still alive. And that includes the period before writing.

I think it's not unreasonable to think that most books have been written in the past 125 years.

I do not see any reason to deify the past. I say this as someone who has read the Bible in the original Hebrew and the Talmud in original Aramaic. They're of interest as a window to a different time, but fundamentally they're probably no smarter than many people today, and they have less mental tools and worse nutrition (which is linked to intelligence).

While I agree with you in the main, many economic liberals would still support government intervention to stop oligopolies, monopolies or monopsonies. They support free markets and individual choice, not just privatisation or corporatisation for the sake of it.

OP wasn't talking about a working class background - they were talking about extreme poverty. There are obvious differences.

Can you confirm whether you grew up in an environment of extreme poverty?

Or maybe the guy thinks that people who create unhealthy work environments should be fined for it, and that's why Bezos shouldn't be that rich?

> we survived WW1 and 2 so we'll survive a trade hiccup.

I don't understand this reasoning. We didn't all survive WW1 and 2. If you mean the union survived - the Republic of Ireland left the union shortly after WW1. And if Brexit isn't _as bad_ as the Blitz, surely that could still mean it's pretty awful.

The prices haven't moved relative to the pound, which has dropped sharply. If you're a US investor, and you made an investment the day before the referendum, the exchange rate alone has seen you lose 14% of your investment. 14% is a large drop.

The pound is at a historical prolonged low - except compared to the miners strike during 1984-5.

But it's interesting how the markets did not predict that remain could lose:

* On the 28th of May 2015, the EU referendum act was introduced. One pound in dollars was 1.46.

* It came into force on the 1st of Feb 2016, one pound in dollars was 1.42.

* On the 22nd of June 2016, the day before the referendum, one pound in dollars was 1.46 USD.

* By the 30th of June 2016, one pound in dollars was at 1.33, and it's stayed around the 1.30 mark for a long time.

* Right now it's only dropped to 1.28.

So I ask you:

If the markets foresaw the referendum (which the polls showed was always pretty close 51-49), why did the price of pounds not drop further before the referendum? Surely they knew there was a risk of 'leave' winning? Some people claim it was already 'priced in', however we can't see a significant drop between the legislation being announced, and the polls showing the election is close.

The conclusion I draw is that the markets aren't rational. Until the 'apocalyptic event' happens, people don't believe it will happen.

So that's why the pound didn't drop _before_ the referendum. Similarly, the pound will not drop before the UK drops out with no deal (despite it being a real possibility), because these things don't get priced-in in advance.

However, if there is no deal, we should probably see very large market movements.

The number of homes for sale has dropped to a decade low (lowest since the 2008 financial crisis). And property prices in London have dropped.

The uncertainty around Brexit means that people don't want to buy, nor do they want to sell at a loss until they're sure that they have to count it as a loss. There's a lack of liquidity.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/05/uk-house-pr...

Edit:

As I point out in a comment below, if you're a foreign investor investing the day before the referendum, the exchange rate along means you lost 14% of your investment so far.