For more information, see http://rejectiontherapy.com/share-rejection-therapy-experiences-npr/

The point of this Ask HN isn’t to start a pity party, but I am just getting some data on how others like me are doing.

I have an ACE score of 6. Currently, I look accomplished to people, but I don’t feel accomplished. My estimated networth is maybe 300K or more with home equity. My biggest concern with my quality of life is I don’t feel safe (don’t ask).

So what’s your ACE score, and how satisfied are you with your life?

ACE quiz: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/3870079...

https://lite.cnn.com/en

https://text.npr.org

US Hispanics have largely been ignored by traditional banks [1], resulting in 5% of this population being unbanked and an additional 13% underbanked. This is mainly due to cultural differences and lack of trust, as well as in-person and Social Security Number requirements that exclude a significant number of people.

Why is this market under-served? In Latino communities, a lot of transactions take place within family and personal networks based on trust. But this trust network isn't connected to the standard banking system, and therefore they don't get access to the financial products they should, if their creditworthiness were evaluated properly.

In addition to remittances, Latinos commonly lend amongst each other. Lending circles are an example of trust and credit-worthiness currently outside the formal financial system, and are common among US Hispanics (e.g. [2]).

We’re working on a new “social banking” concept that is designed to be a better fit for the trust-based behaviors that are common and familiar to this community. Of course, everyone is welcome! But we believe that social banking is especially applicable to the US Latino market, so we’re focusing there for now.

It’s worth adding that a proper evaluation of trust-based payment behavior should help us lend to people who are currently being abused by predatory rates.

The inspiration for Pana came during my time as head of Scotiabank’s Caribbean & Central America Digital Factory, where I saw the power of building digital banking products for the Hispanic market. In stark contrast, I was surprised to learn on a trip to the US that without a Social Security Number I had to visit a traditional branch. After numerous signatures and hours of waiting, I was finally able to open the account—and then handed an ATM card instead of a debit card which would only allow me to do cash withdrawals and not the ability to make purchases. Adding insult to injury, I could never reach the bank officer again for support.

Because this was so surprising to me, I checked with friends and family, and all of them shared similar experiences. “Lack of trust,” “high fees,” and “cultural differences” were words I heard repeatedly.

It isn’t just end-customers who struggle with this system. Employers and sellers transacting with the 12M people living in the U.S. without a Social Security Number have to rely on cumbersome paper checks, cash or money order, and seriously, you have no idea how complicated it still is to perform basic transactions like sending money abroad.

Encountering this broken situation made me realize that a new startup would be best positioned to fix it. I had already, working with a team that’s knowledgeable about the Hispanic market, built digital banking solutions solving some of these issues—but only for big banks; smaller institutions tend to lack the scale, technology, and reach. However, the big banks are the ones who ignore this demographic in the first place because they have “bigger fish to fry”—a catch-22! The market, however, is easily large enough to support a new business, so we decided to build it ourselves.

With Pana, we’re applying the functionality and community-building aspects of familiar apps like WhatsApp to the banking space. Today, Whatsapp is widespread in the US Latino market -specially around informal peer-to-peer financial transactions-, proving that when one tool catches on, it will probably become the norm across this diaspora. We’re building on the social trust strongly embedded within the Latino culture to help achieve personal financial goals. Individuals can choose to share milestones and celebrate achievements with close friends or public groups of peers with similar needs. Within a group, payments and requests for payment among users can be made.

If this works, banking on social trust could potentially disrupt the $320B in yearly transactions through Alternative Financial Services (money orders, check cashers, payday loans, etc.), and who knows, maybe eventually the banking industry as a whole!

Latinos represent the fastest-growing diaspora in the USA with a 1.7T buying power and are often forgotten—in part, because we are not compelled to use existing banking products and therefore, no one can see how trustworthy many of us really are. We're now on a mission to remove these financial barriers.

We really hope you guys check out Pana and tell us any feedback you might have, and we look forward to your comments!

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2021-economic-we...

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/04/01/292580644...

Here are some other examples:

https://future.a16z.com/the-future-of-search-is-boutique/

https://dkb.io/post/google-search-is-dying

https://nypost.com/2022/05/01/google-critics-say-ads-spam-sites-are-killing-search/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/google-search-algorithm-internet/661325/

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/

This is certainly a popular topic in the media, and maybe we can even say the reports of Google's death are greatly exaggerated. An important consideration is the fact that SEO has also gotten a lot more sophisticated, so the number of high quality articles on any particular topic might not be that high.

But my question is, if we accept the premise that 1) Google search is getting worse and 2) Google is responsible for this, what would it take to unseat them?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola

and I'm having trouble reconciling this with the fact that health care workers seem to be so easily infected. I can't imagine that HIV is transmitted to health care workers this easily otherwise they'd be wearing hazmat suits.

Today Putin announced Russia developed a nuclear powered missile with unlimited range [3]. The missile was reportedly tested in late 2017. Did Russia spew radioactive jet waste over their country during a field test of their nuclear powered missile?

News Sources:

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/10/563286253/mysterious-radioactive-cloud-over-europe-hints-at-accident-farther-east

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/21/that-harmless-radioactive-cloud-over-europe-did-come-from-russia-after-all

3. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/01/590014611/experts-aghast-over-russian-claim-of-nuclear-powered-missile-with-unlimited-rang

It's still too early to determine if the program will be successful in the long term, but early results are that it's been a lot more effective a creating jobs than any other traditional jobs program.

This got me thinking: not only should someone (YC maybe?) try this with startups in the US, but companies should also do something similar with employees.

Using a random sample would allow companies to determine if their hiring practices are really effective at all or just a waste of time. It would also eliminate any biases from the hiring manager.

We know that stock picking isn't any more effictive than random chance (that's the theory behind index funds). Maybe the same is true for investing in startups and hiring employees.

Do any other news outlets offer similar services? Would be nice to collate all these ultra-lightweight sites in a list.

[0] http://lite.cnn.com/en

[1] https://text.npr.org/

- text.npr.org

- lite.cnn.com

http://election2012.npr.org/

We've also made public the "big board" visualizations the reporters and editors are using to track the races:

http://election2012.npr.org/bigboard/president.html
http://election2012.npr.org/bigboard/senate.html
http://election2012.npr.org/bigboard/house.html

Enjoy!

Hi,

I am very concerned about this. Is it possible for Trump to somehow take control of nuclear bombs and set them off.

What are the different safe guards that are in place to prevent this?

Hopefully, I am just being paranoid.

I love what NPR does with its end-of-year "Books We Love" page (https://apps.npr.org/best-books), and I wanted to build that for the HN community (as I get amazing book recs here).

Step 1 = Vote for your 3 favorite reads of 2024

Vote here -> https://shepherd.com/bboy/my-3-fav-reads/join?referrer_id=32...

(the referral ID is how I track that your vote goes toward HN, as I also do this for subreddits)

Step 2 = Browse everyone's picks!

Then, see what books the HN community loved the most this year:
https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/hacker-news-community?referre...

You can break it down by published-in-2024 or by all-time.

And you can see all the picks by readers and break it down by genre here:
https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024?referrer_id=329d2f

This was fun to build :).

The biggest challenge is the genre data publishers provide, they often mark fantasy books as science fiction.

If you have any problems, let me know (ben@shepherd.com).

Thanks, Ben

Here's a recent article about lead concerns in Canadian water (including affluent areas like Victoria and Vancouver):
https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/water-in-crd-being-tested-for-presence-of-lead-1.23997842

For American friends, here's an excellent 2018 NPR interview:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/623126968?storyId=623126968?storyId=623126968

Quote from that article:
"So you would be drinking bottled or filtered water no matter where you lived in the U.S." - Terry Gross

"Yes." - Dr. Hanna-Attisha

Now, it seems that tests later showed that Victoria and Bay area water is OK. But as Dr. Hanna-Attisha said, lead in drinking can exist anywhere. If you have children, it's especially important to take care.

Some tips:

- Never use hot water from the tap for cooking or drinking

- Flush your taps with cold water before taking water for cooking or drinking

Educate your children to do the same.

Note that problems can occur in an unexpected way. For example, by upstream chemical changes in water, which is what happened in Flint. This makes it seem worthwhile to consider a filtration system (instead of that second Tesla).

In the same thread, another user (not a mod) states that 'there is no "doxing" rule on HN'.

Will mods continue to reveal private information that only they know? Under what circumstances will they do this? Similarly, what rules will they impose on discussions. Will they ban users who dox other users?

For reference, the comment that instigated these actions was

>Can we have a publication named "The Forgotten Male Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" now?

which was a top level comment in the story The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech (npr.org)

How do I start this group? How do I find men to join? What sort of things should the group do?

1: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/769538697/guys-we-have-a-problem-how-american-masculinity-creates-lonely-men

During this period, inflation has probably been close to 10-20%, especially for items that consume most of our salary (housing, education, insurance...) [1]

With profits at FAAN companies expanding, why haven't salaries increased or at least stayed the same in real terms?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/business/inflation-worse-pandemic-coronavirus.html

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/26/1048892388/meet-skimpflation-a-reason-inflation-is-worse-than-the-government-says-it-is

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/07/06/1012409112/beware-of-shrinkflation-inflations-devious-cousin

I found a very interesting NPR article on the subject.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-attack