hkphooey

China is a creditor nation. It's not drowning in external foreign debt.

Fake growth? Sure, I get it, China should behave more like responsible Western countries who report real figures all the time!

Maybe you've been reading too much Gordon Chang - he's been predicting the collapse of China every year for 15 years now, and he's been wrong every time.

I guess Forbes publishes his garbage because they know their audience, and some of that audience just can't bear to see China or Russia or India or Brazil or South Africa succeed.

Wow, so every CEO should be be asked to state their position on social issues?

What are staff going to do if they don't like the answers? Quit? Strike?

Yawn. This is not a big deal.

There's no China, India or Brazil in the G8 (now G7) so it doesn't exactly represent the biggest economies in the world.

What the G7 does represent however are some of the most debt ridden countries in the world!

Disqus just turned off the ability to see how many people have downvoted a comment.

So now every comment will look positive and be re-affirming instead of challenging someone to think, "Hey, I agree with that comment, but hundreds of others have disagreed, maybe I should read the thread to see why people disagree, maybe there is something I should learn about."

There is too much gaming of comments. Let people speak freely, moderate for illegal stuff, and be done with it.

You want emotionally charged?

This new rule is F*ING STUPID!

We are humans, not robots!

If you agree and you have more than 1000 Karma points, please upvote and approve this message. Thank you.

This perhaps marks the beginning of the end for HackerNews.

Who wants to contribute to a "community" where there is active censorship of posts critical of YCombinator companies (see Dr Chrono), or you get hell-banned for no good reason, and now this poorly thought-out "rule"?

CPerciva pointed out an obvious flaw. Another is this: if you had to start a brand new HackerNews tomorrow, would you implement the rule? Of course not, because nobody would have any karma points to begin with, so they wouldn't be able to approve or see pending comments, meaning no comments would ever get posted! Duh!

Now you could argue that the HackerNews moderators and owners have karma points and they could approve comments to seed the system... but then why not just have a private forum for all your start-up friends, invite only, so you can be sure they all speak right?!

Amazon has physical warehouses and a supply chain. Hyatt has property and employees all over the world.

Airbnb has a website. The entry barrier to competition is very low. They are not unique at all.

It's outrageous - no way is AirBnB "worth" more than Hyatt hotels!!!

"At $10bn, Airbnb would be one of the world’s most valuable startups and worth more than than Hyatt Hotels ($8.3bn) or Wyndham Worldwide ($9.4bn)."

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/20/airbnb-fun...

Did you raise issues with the glibc team and submit patches etc... before deciding to create your own project?

What does YCombinator have to lose?

What does HackerNews have to lose?

Why has this story been killed so it doesn't appear on the front page?

I feel there is technical merit in discussing the poor security practice of WhatsApp, so that others don't copy their example.

Maybe the military of several countries are not sharing their data in a timely manner because it's embarrassing for them to reveal that they were sleeping on the job, there is no actual intercept plan, and that the millions/billions spent on air defense is a complete waste of money.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2583553/Thai-militar...

"Has there been a military cover-up over missing jet? Thai air force says its radar spotted MH370 heading to Strait of Malacca minutes after it vanished (but didn't say anything)... MH370 spotted at 1.28am, eight minutes after it stopped communicating. Turned towards Butterworth, a Malaysian city along the Strait of Malacca... Thai air force did not report contact because 'it did not look like a threat'"

If I am not mistaken, the 9/11 commission report revealed that civilian and military radar systems and processes were not linked, thereby resulting in confusion as to what was happening. Although lessons should have been learnt, I suspect this problem still exists in many countries, and this is what we are witnessing right now.

What is best practice when it comes to Java GUIs?

Would you recommend Java for building cross-platform desktop apps with near native UI performance?

The IntelliJ IDE looks great but most Java desktop apps I've come across just look and feel weird. Not sure why there is such a big difference.

Good point, so any bookmarked runways could be a complete red herring...

The last INMARSAT ping was at 8:11am, the plane lost contact around 1:19am, so it's possible.

http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/16/satcom-acars-explained/

Note the comments in the above link, the authorities have only released the INMARSAT ARC corresponding to a single ping. They have not released the ARCs for all the pings which would indicate if the plane was flying West or not.

It may be that authorities are already investigating the Maldives and possible follow-on destinations, but do not want to publicly alert the pilot/hijackers that they are on their trail, so in public the focus has been on the northern corridor and Kazakhstan.

Maybe there's something lost in translation but I guess the story was leaked to journalists because the runways were specially designated i.e. bookmarked or set-up for regular practice with waypoints similar to what investigators have found.

I'm not a pilot, but I imagine if I were, I would want to try landing at airports I normally wouldn't. So in the simulator I would probably pick the world's toughest runways, the most scenic ones, runways on the other side of the world...

The Malaysians are being criticized but I don't think many countries would do that much better given the task in hand. Sure, the public relations and messaging should be better, but I'm sure there's a lot of stuff going on that we don't know about.

The five airports are located in the Maldives, Diego Garcia, India and Sri Lanka.

News out today claims multiple eye-witnesses in the Maldives:

"Residents of the remote Maldives island of Kuda Huvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll have reported seeing a "low flying jumbo jet" on the morning of the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

They said that it was a white aircraft, with red stripes across it – which is what the Malaysia Airlines flights typically look like.

...

"I've never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We've seen seaplanes, but I'm sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly," said an eyewitness.

"It's not just me either, several other residents have reported seeing the exact same thing. Some people got out of their houses to see what was causing the tremendous noise too."

http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/54062

In a strange way, it's good that people don't get to vote. With voter apathy and declining turnout in many countries, might as well encourage people to stop voting.

Let voter turnout drop to single digit percentages. It would be hard for anybody to claim that the elected person had any kind of mandate. The news headlines would be farcicial, "Prime Minister elected, wins 55% of the popular vote, on 7% turnout"

Of course in Australia they currently fine you if you don't vote. Perhaps in future they'll make it a criminal offense and put people in prison for not voting!

When I ask accountants, here in the Bay Area, about Form 5471 the quote for personal taxes goes up $1000-$1500.

Who does them for $100-$250? Please let me know, thanks!

Do you think bureaucracy and regulations make it (deliberately) hard for US residents to invest in seed stage companies abroad?

For example, if a California resident Bob injects capital into a foreign company, say $20,000 for 1% of the brand new company as it is formed in the UK, and receives preferred stock and passes voting power by proxy onto other investors, what are the personal tax and filing implications?

My understanding is that any tax impact is only when the preferred stock is converted to ordinary stock and sold for a capital gain or loss. No different from buying and selling regular stocks from ETrade.

Regarding filing, form 5471 does not apply, as Bob would have <10% of the company, and the voting power is only %1 and has been granted by proxy to somebody else. On the other hand, if either equity ownership or voting power was >10% then Bob would need to file 5471 and translate the accounts of the foreign company which is a major pain (and accounting expense thus reducing the return on investment)

In a nutshell, US residents should only invest small amounts in any foreign companies and make sure equity ownership and voting power is minimal?

p.s. Thanks in advance.

If you see a paywall:

"China's defence ministry will redeploy 10 satellites to join the hunt for the Malaysia Airlines jet that disappeared on Saturday with 239 people on board after three days of fruitless searching.

...

Hong Kong's Civil Aviation Department said it had received a report from the crew of a Cathay Pacific plane flying from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur at about 3pm that debris was spotted near Vung Tau, off southeast Vietnam.

...

But the location of the debris does not match the path expected to have been taken by Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which should have flown over Ho Chi Minh City. The location supplied to the Civil Aviation Department was more than 125 kilometres southeast of the original flight path."

Also in a separate story:

"Malaysia Airlines was convicted two years ago for boarding a passenger against the wishes of a foreign government by falsifying passport identity records, it has emerged, and was also prosecuted for a similar incident in 2007"