Ask HN: What's a good real-time stock trading platform? - <AUTHOR> I was just wondering what you all would recommend for doing real-time stock trading online for an individual investor? <comment><USER2> You really haven't specked out the question very well.

Do you mean algorithmic or just the ability to post orders?

Not sure what you mean by online. If you mean web based or mobile? Or is desktop fine?

Robin Hood isn't bad if you just want point and click.

If you want to do something algorithmic then use Interactive brokers.

You might find something better but IB has been around for ever and probably wont' get out of this business any time soon. I can't say the same for any other broker that a retail investor can use.

Having said all of that, I would really, strongly, emphatically advise against trying your hand at algorithmic trading.

For the average person the rule they should internalize is Investing good, algo trading bad.... and this is comming from one of the people who benefits when the average person tries to trade in the stock market.

<comment><USER3> Been working in the hedge fund industry for a while now. I confirm that 90% if people I know that do serious personnal trading use Interactive Broker (IB). It's just the de facto solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Barron's Magazine does a comparative study of online brokers every year and recommends the best based on your needs. This is the one for 2015 in which Interactive Brokers comes out at the top:

[http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB51367578116875004693704580...](http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB51367578116875004693704580502703510707706)

This is the methodology used for the ranking:

[http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB51367578116875004693704580...](http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB51367578116875004693704580502730821853148)

This is a comparative table where each broker's offerings are broken down and analyzed:

[http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB51367578116875004693704580...](http://www.barrons.com/articles/SB51367578116875004693704580500193983582362)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interactive Brokers is probably the best option for retail investors. They have extremely low commissions and pretty advanced access (including API access).

Keep in kind that their product isn't designed for "novice" retail investors. There is a $10k minimum and the trade stations have a learning curve.

</comment><comment><USER6> It depends on what you want. As others have pointed out, IB is good for a near-pro trading experience. If you don't need margin access, shorting, options, etc you might want to check out Robinhood (disclaimer: I've never used it although it looks nice).

Really though, why do you care about real-time trading anyways? Not being sarcastic; this is an actual question.

<comment><USER7> I found Robinhood to be useless. Not enough research/discovery tools to do anything other than "buy a specific stock". I also felt like my orders' fulfilled prices were wildly different than quote ticks—to the tune of a 100+ BP (front-running algos?).

<comment><USER8> Ah, that bullshit! I think you stumbled on the way Robinhood makes money.

When I first joined the Android beta Robinhood had a very clear message before every purchase: "to protect the user from volatility, Robinhood creates market orders as limit orders with a 5% higher price". So, yeah, that means that if you place your market order at $100, they reserve the right to broker it all the way to $105, which is bullshit. On average it won't be that high, but still, if you were planning to make a 0.5% profit, you'll always lose.

The only way to get around that is by creating a proper limit order yourself, setting the price a couple cents the current price (to match the BP you are willing to give up.)

Since I started doing that, things became way more predictable.

<comment><USER7> Total BS. I'm a big fan of limit orders (though most of my purchases are DCA). Since Robinhood can't do limit orders (or couldn't when I was using it—or I couldn't figure it out), it's useless.

<comment><USER8> You can do limit orders now! The interface is still kind of clunky, but it works well enough for my use case. Still, I haven't used Robinhood for anything but short term speculation, as a toy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's an algorithm that should work well for most casual investors:

At 2:00EST [daily|weekly|monthly], buy N shares of SPY.

<comment><USER10> For a little more diversification, I would amend that to buying shares of ITOT and IXUS in a 3:2 ratio (60% domestic/40% foreign), without paying commission if possible (e.g. [https://www.fidelity.com/etfs/ishares](https://www.fidelity.com/etfs/ishares)).

Once you are comfortable with that, just rebalance this portfolio to the 60%/40% ratio once every year or two ([http://seekingalpha.com/article/2130243-portfolio- rebalancin...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/2130243-portfolio-rebalancing- the-whys-and-the-hows)), and start moving toward fixed-income funds as you get closer to retirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I highly recommend TD Ameritrade's Think or Swim platform.

<comment> trey-jones I have been using Think or Swim since before TD Ameritrade bought them, and it's pretty great. The charts in my opinion are the best that I've found, highly customizable, and feature rich.

You can trade all types of securities as well. And it's very easy. The mobile app is also top notch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interactive brokers for automatic trading. You would also need to backtest your algorithms, so depending on the granularity, you would need to shell out decent bucks. Daily data or minute data is easy - but if you need Tick data, it gets very expensive (IQFeed is the one I've used in the past). But the most important question is why ?

The only ones who make money in the market are arbitration traders (HFT types) or those who just happen to be on the right side of market. As an individual investor, you will spend lot of time and money to get your systems running - but market conditions will change dramatically and all your backtest algorithms will become irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER13> Quantopian has a really good platform for creating algorithms, back testing them on historical data, and for performing real time trades.

[https://www.quantopian.com/](https://www.quantopian.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> _Non-algorithmic trading_

Optionshouse.com is great, for both stocks and options, commissions-wise. Not as good for lightweight, realtime charts. I use OptionsXpress for that purpose.

Optionsxpress has high commissions, so I only use the charts, which are superior. Put in $100 bucks and it'll give you full access to the trading tools.

 _Algorithmic Trading_

I use T4 for day-trading futures. I think it has APIs for C#. But no stock/options, only Futures.

Edit: T4 API link [http://www.ctsfutures.com/wiki/T4%20API%2040.MainPage.ashx](http://www.ctsfutures.com/wiki/T4%20API%2040.MainPage.ashx)

<comment><USER15> OptionsHouse used to be an amazing discount brokerage, but ever since they were bought out by TradeKing it's been ruined and I can no longer recommend it. OptionsHouse's platform has been replaced by TradeKing's terrible flash platform. Here are some issues I've had over the past 3+ months. I've submitted tickets to customer support for all of them, but never gotten any response.

1) Flash platform that randomly crashes after being open for extended periods of time (eg. more than an hour). I've even seen the prices stop updating after a while.

2) Often appends a bunch of 0s after the decimal to the price of your order, forcing you to manually remove them in order to place the trade

3) This morning the platform was extremely slow, and I was unable to load pricing data into the charts. I tried to submit a ticket to customer support, but the server was down. I didn't try to submit any trades, but for all I know that may have been down as well. Keep in mind this morning the S&P 500 was down 10%. Nice to know my trading platform will crap out on me when I most need it

4) UI sucks and is confusing. When specifying how many shares you want to buy, you're not told on the same dialog how much total that would cost. The charts suck and are confusing to work with.

5) One day I submitted a sell order, and it ended up buying. Although I was convinced the platform screwed up my order, I gave OptionsHouse the benefit of the doubt and figured I must've made a careless mistake. Then later in the day I attempted to sell again, only to have the platform issue a buy order again and give me more or the stock I was trying to sell. At this point it was clear the platform fucked up my order, so I called OptionsHouse. They basically just told me to use an alternative method in the platform to close out my stock (clicking the Close/Adjust button).

During my call about #5, I mentioned issue #2 (it had been months after I submitted a ticket for it). They told me it was a known issue that they were working on. How long does it take to fix a bunch of trailing zeros after the decimal being appended to your order? Do they even have a dev team? The fact that it's been months and they still haven't solved such a simple yet incredibly annoying bug gives me absolutely no confidence in the future of their platform.

I'm going to transfer all my funds out, probably to IB or RobinHood. This morning was the last straw. Having the platform down when the S&P is down 10% is unacceptable. OptionsHouse used to have the lowest commission fees, but that's not longer the case with RobinHood (although of course you don't get nice things like options trading and a web platform).

<comment><USER14> Ah. I used thema lot when I was day-trading a couple years ago. Guess they've really gone downhill since. Only use them to place long term trades now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interactive Brokers might not be the best option for long-term investors who are just starting out due to their monthly minimum activity fees.

[https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969&ns=T](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969&ns=T)

It basically imposes a minimum fee of $10 per month. It does gets waived if you have more than $100,000 USD in your account though, so this is just something to keep in mind, and YMMV.

I would personally just go with Robinhood for long term investing. No fees is better than low fees, and the longer the time frame you're investing, the less important individual trade execution and customization (areas where IB excels in) becomes.

RE: Algorithmic trading. Check out Quantopian:

[https://www.quantopian.com/](https://www.quantopian.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> The biggest problems in investing are (i) when and what do I buy; and (ii) when do I get out?

Instavest is the only platform to address these issues in a systematic way.

You'll see high quality investments ideas that have been backed by real money. You can choose to invest in these ideas and have the investment leader notify you when they sell or you can invest in your own idea and share with it with the community.

Our equity trades only $3.49 a trade.

<comment><USER18> > You'll see high quality investments ideas that have been backed by real > money.

Why should I believe this is something other than wagering on survivor bias?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tradier.com is another one. They have an API for developers. It's not as mature as IB, but if you are looking to start/play with something with no/minimal initial investment check it out - [https://developer.tradier.com](https://developer.tradier.com)

I know that instavest.com (YC company) is powered by them as well.

</comment><comment><USER20> May want to try MOMO realtime stock discovery. (Www.mometic.com) Streams highs and lows to your phone. Not aware of any other app that helps you find stocks that are breaking out. /still need a trading platform. Has super fast push alerts too, fwiw.

</comment><comment><USER21> CapitalOne's Sharebuilder platform's the only one I know of which allows the purchase of fractions of shares.

[https://www.capitaloneinvesting.com/](https://www.capitaloneinvesting.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I used to work for Stellar Trading Systems some years ago. AFAIK they are doing very well. They have multiple APIs for algo-trading and the access is very fast and robust. Definately a professional tool though.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you trade a lot and you know what you are doing: Interactive Broker.

If you do long term investments and you are learning and/or want a full package of information and tools: TD Ameritrade and their Thinkorswim platform.

</comment><comment><USER24> I used to use Ninjatrader. It has integrations with a lot of brokers, and you can write C# algos. The GUI is pretty good the last time I used, it so overall I would recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER25> While we are at it. Does anyone know of a random stock trading possibility? Ideally you would set certain boundaries then let the product randomly trade without much analysis.

<comment><USER26> As the market is a random walk, One would expect to break even minus the cost of trade - this losing money. It would be at least a validation of your ability to get the API up etc.

I don't quite understand why the OP wants to do this. Algo trading is mostly about market making it seems - finding a spread and keeping ones risk as neutral as possible. I suppose there is always a market to be found - but I would assume that one would have specific domain knowledge rather than hope to trip over it.

<comment><USER27> not necessarily [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0068344) it's almost as if the market rewards entropy

<comment><USER26> I don't quite see that - the conclusion seems to be random strategy is not significantly better or worse at predicting next day's market than any other and it is less volatile - seems a good bet.

Great link though thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What would be the best option if one only cares about an API?

<comment><USER29> If you only care about EOD market data, you can take a look at TagniFi's free markets API - [https://www.tagnifi.com](https://www.tagnifi.com).

Disclaimer: I am a TagniFi co-founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://tradestation.github.io/webapi- docs/](https://tradestation.github.io/webapi-docs/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Like others here, I like Think or Swim by TD Ameritrade.

<comment><USER32> Just one problem though, in times of extreme market volatility and volume, Thinkorswim freezes up. Like today, it was unusable at times.

<comment><USER31> was that limited to ToS though? Wasn't much liquidity out there

<comment><USER32> Interactive Brokers and Tradestation didnt have much issues, but yes, getting filled on trades, especially options trades was a nightmare.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering about this, so Interactive Brokers was still pretty solid during last Mondays market swings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Whats the purpose? answer can vary based on that.

</comment><comment><USER34> Think or Swim. Dough platform is great.

</comment><comment><USER35> AmiBroker + IB</comment>


Hacked Sonic the Hedgehog gains weight as he consumes fried rings - <AUTHOR> http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=623

<comment><AUTHOR> And footage of said hack - > <http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/30427>

</comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome, I'd love to see it done with mario mushrooms =P Progressive mushroom abuse leads to one long never ending trip...</comment>


Tiny website for side project: What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://readrapp.co/

<comment><USER2> Hey, I made this! If anyone has any feedback/suggestions, that would be awesome! I'll be around to answer any questions.</comment>


NYTimes Opinion: Let's Ban Porn - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/lets-ban-porn.html <comment><USER2> Porn is an outlet for many people who have trouble finding as much sex as they want. Or can't get.

If we deprive these people of porn, we are essentially depriving people who are underprivileged (unable to get as much sex as they want, regardless of the reason).

The privileged few who are attractive enough to have frequent sex will be able to do so while the underprivileged will be deprived of a sexual outlet.

Sexual frustration can be terrible, and depriving people of porn could lead to a building of tremendous tension in society.

If we're being realistic, this would probably drive up demand for prostitutes, which is an industry that thrives on human trafficking and enslavement. So getting rid of porn would increase human trafficking and enslavement of people.

So many lines of argument that lead to the conclusion that porn is a net good for society....

</comment><comment><USER3> Banning anything without changing society's view of the subject never works. The grand example is Prohibition. A very influential group of people were able to ban the manufacturing of liquor by adding the 18th amendment to the constitution, something that's extremely hard. Yet instead of stopping the use of it, it brought it underground and a whole criminal industry was born since there was a big section of society that didn't agree with the ban.

If there's to be any change in the production of porn, minds need to be changed first. This can be done primarily with education and the help of the porn industry to police itself. Banning does nothing, it just makes people feel like they have accomplished something but ultimately it makes the problem worse since it festers in the dark corners of society. There are no simple answers to problems where people have a natural interest.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting article I found especially after this was posted recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16324159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16324159)</comment>


Passive art creation from mouse movements - <AUTHOR> http://iographica.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> A Google Reader session:

<http://imgur.com/DwzzH.jpg></comment>


Did removing lead from petrol spark a decline in crime? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27067615 <comment><USER3> I what some people here seemed to be missing, is this correlation isn't just lead was removed from the environment and 23 years later crime went down. It's that various areas has differing degrees of lead pollution and started reducing it at different times.

The places that reduced lead pollution first, saw the drop in crime first, the places that reduced it later saw the drop later. The eras that initially had high levels of lead had a larger drop in crime than areas that always had a low level.

And it's not just the USA either. The pattern holds pretty accurately for various nations around the world, like in Europe. Those who banned leaded fuel first, saw the drop in crime first, those who banned later, saw the drop later.

And these nations had massively differing crime policies. Some nations increased prison sentences to try and deter crime, and crime went down. Some nations put a huge effort into reforming criminals, and crime went down. And some nations cut prison sentence, and crime went down.

<comment><USER4> Aren't the politics required to enforce lead reduction the same that would tackle crime, though? I don't think there are many enviromentally-friendly corrupt parties.

<comment><USER5> The crime reduction reliably occurs 20 (23, from the graph?) years _after_ the lead reduction; there's no response in the crime rate until the less-lead- exposed babies have become adults.

The politicians who tackled crime (or didn't, or did whatever) 20 years ago haven't been in power most of the time since then, generally.

I've read about this theory before; it's impressive and (to me, at least) pretty persuasive.

<comment><USER6> To paraphrase a comment I made further up, banning lead in gasoline is a binary initiative that doesn't take a long time to initiate. Cracking down on crime is a longer process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mildly off topic but Bill Bryson is interesting on how we ended up getting lead in petrol in the first place [http://enconv.org/docs/index-26824.html?page=11](http://enconv.org/docs/index-26824.html?page=11)

Except: "So in 1923 three of America's largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive "ethyl" because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than "lead" and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.

Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, the Ethyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab , when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: "These men probably went insane because they worked too hard." Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills, and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility. ..."

</comment><comment><USER8> Midgley is perhaps among the most damaging engineers the world has known: he is responsible for both tetraethyl lead additives to gasoline (the subject of this article) and chloroflorcarbons, responsible for damaging the Earth's ozone layer:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr).

This story is also a very strong argument toward both regulation of markets due to externalities (lead in gasoline and paint were defended vigorously by their respective industries for decades), and of the argument that there are some products and services which, despite being profitable to those dealing in them directly, impose a net negative cost to society as a whole.

Such activities are often difficult to recognize strictly because of the nature of externalities: they're diffuse, affecting many individuals, often incrementally in a small way, often indirectly and, in the case of environmental lead, with impacts lagging cause by decades.

This is also a very powerful case of negative impacts accruing largely due to socioeconomic circumstances _not_ ascribable to the conscious and voluntary decisions of those directly affected: neither the infants and children exposed to lead, nor the victims of the criminal acts they transacted on a probabilistically greater scale, had entered into any sort of voluntary or legally recognized agreement with the manufacturers of leaded gas and paint. Punches a bit of a hole in that whole libertarian argument which promptly ... sinks like a lead balloon.

</comment><comment><USER9> This has come up before with the Mother Jones article [http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime- li...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link- gasoline) This article is better in my opinion. Good discussion on HN then too. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006368)

<comment><USER8> Lead paint really can't be mentioned without bringing up the name, work, and abuse heaped upon Herbert Needleman who drew many of the associations between the use of lead in paint and brain damage to children, especially inner-city and underprivileged youth:

[http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/health/why-is-lead- sti...](http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/health/why-is-lead-still- poisoning-our-children/)

 _For his efforts, Needleman endured years of attacks denigrating the quality of his research and his integrity as a scientist. In 1982 the industry-funded International Lead Zinc Research Organization (ILZRO) went to the Environmental Protection Agency to accuse Needleman of scientific misconduct. The EPA convened a committee of experts, which concluded that Needleman's study had not proved a connection between lead exposure and a child's mental development. Needleman countered that the committee report contained serious mistakes. The EPA agreed, reversed the committee's findings, and lauded Needleman's "pioneering study," saying it confirmed a "significant association" between lead exposure and childhood intelligence._

 _The ILZRO hired the public-relations firm Hill & Knowlton to publicize the original committee's criticisms of Needleman._

 _Two scientists led the next attack on Needleman. One was Sandra Scarr, a developmental psychologist at the University of Virginia who had been a member of the EPA committee that disputed Needleman's study. The second was Claire Ernhart, a developmental psychologist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who called Needleman's study "slipshod." Beginning in 1983, Ernhart, who had conducted lead research, received about $50,000 a year from ILZRO for research support but denies being beholden to the lead industry or speaking on its behalf. Scarr claims not to have received money from ILZRO other than expert witness fees and likewise denied industry influence...._

 _In all, the attacks on Needleman's work and integrity and his defense against them dragged on for 15 years._

Intentional disinformation is a major theme of this (59 minute) lecture by Philip Mirowski, an economic historian (he focuses largely on global warming but the principles and rationale apply broadly to other cases of economically incentivized disinformation): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I)

Among other things, it references the work of Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, _Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming_ , and Robert N. Proctor's _Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition_.

I discuss these at more length here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/deep_ecology/comments/1yum2c/life_an...](http://www.reddit.com/r/deep_ecology/comments/1yum2c/life_and_debt_living_through_the_financialisation/)

<comment><USER10> Sounds like the attacks of the global warming alarmists on people that question their theories.

<comment><USER11> Disputing flawed studies does sound like something that scientists who acknowledge human-caused global warming might engage in, yes. The same is true of, for example, vaccine-autism linking studies. This is in fact something that happens all the time in the scientific community. The better question is whether those scientists were getting paid large sums of money by industry in order to make those claims (hint: they aren't--in fact, the opposite is true, with virtually all global warming denialism organizations linkable to large private investments by the oil industry).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's been suggested that the removal of lead from fuels, paints, etc. may explain the fact that our IQs have risen since about the same time, and since leveled off somewhat.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect)

Say what you will about environment, but the lead explanation seems to match historical data in all the ways we'd expect it to. Find something that lead does, and we find a trend showing its decline since we started eliminating lead.

<comment><USER10> Speaking of historical data: leaded plumbing is linked to the decline of the Roman Empire.

<comment><USER13> Are there reliable sources on that?

Also, using Lead Acetate[1] as an artificial sweetener probably didn't help matters.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%28II%29_acetate#Sweetener](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%28II%29_acetate#Sweetener)

<comment><USER10> Here's a good place to get started: [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/win...](http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html)

although this argues that lead in plumbing was NOT a major source of poisoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> NPR just ran the story "Study: Half Of Jailed NYC Youths Have Brain Injury"

 _The study found nearly 50 percent of both boys and girls reported traumatic brain injuries that resulted in a loss of consciousness, amnesia or both. And they said 55 percent of those injuries were caused by assaults._

 _An estimated 60 percent of adult prisoners have a brain injury, according to a study of prisoners in South Carolina._

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3045728...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=304572805)

The US justice system has become extreme in the pursuit of punishment vs treatment and rehabilitation.

<comment><USER15> That is vs 30-40% of the general population.

There's nothing unexpected here. Youths mostly go to jail for violence. The more fights you get into, the more likely you are to be injured. I'd imagine that there's a far larger percentage of number of jailed youths with knife scars than those in school. That doesn't mean knife scars cause people to end up in prison.

<comment><USER16> _There 's nothing unexpected here. Youths mostly go to jail for violence. The more fights you get into, the more likely you are to be injured. I'd imagine that there's a far larger percentage of number of jailed youths with knife scars than those in school. That doesn't mean knife scars cause people to end up in prison._

I'm no neurologist, but i suspect that a brain injury might change your personality more than a scar from a knife fight, possibly making you more likely to engage in criminal behaviour.

<comment><USER15> I see no reason why a head injury shouldn't equally change a personality to become less criminal. Head injuries have completely unpredictable effects. My core point is that prisons are full of violent people, and violent people punch and receive more punches, therefore are more likely to have brain injuries.

<comment><USER17> Sometimes head injuries do make you less likely to become a criminal. Very few people in comas and vegetative states commit crimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yup, Cosmos was on tonight, subject: lead. It's nice to see it got some brains fired-up.

PBS also had a great series the Poisoner's Handbook about different poisonous elements and the one about lead was more in-depth about leaded gasoline. Charles Norris was an amazing person! [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduc...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/poisoners- introduction/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sesame Street debuted in 1969.

Whenever I see stories like this, I wonder what sort of impact it has had.

<comment><USER20> Or to say the introduction of violent video games in the mid to late 90s and the rise in gun violence in schools in the last few years? Young children growing up with the increase exposure to violence could be related?

<comment><USER21> _Or to say the introduction of violent video games in the mid to late 90s and the rise in gun violence in schools in the last few years?_

Oh, you must mean _this_ ( [http://www.theesa.com/policy/scotus_chart.gif](http://www.theesa.com/policy/scotus_chart.gif) ) rise in violence.

<comment><USER22> I genuinely don't know whether violent video games implies more violent behaviour, but I am 100% sure that this chart doesn't prove or disprove anything.

<comment><USER21> You offered a suggestion that was based on a false premise. I posted a chart that shows that your premise was false -- nothing more, nothing less. You responded by pointing out that the chart doesn't "prove" anything. This is true. It can't prove causation, because there's no effect to observe in the first place. You might as well ask whether cell phone radiation is responsible for our present worldwide bubonic plague epidemic.

Your beef is with whoever told you that the world was becoming more dangerous, not those who post statistics that paint the opposite picture. Somebody lied to you. Find out why.

<comment><USER22> > _You offered a suggestion that was based on a false premise._

I haven't, I am not taf2. I was just saying that this inverse correlation that you see may be due to other factors or may not even be statistically significant. We're missing a lot of data here (e.g. how does the juvenile crimes rate fluctuates prior to 1990).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've read about a couple of different explanations for changes in crime rates. I think freakanomics has discussed greater prevalence of abortions[1], and one thing I've heard in academic circles is that crime reporting has gotten better. You could actually make predictions with this article's question. There may have been areas where lead was used in petrol for longer than others, one could compare across regions and see if the time at which petrol was changed also adheres to drop in crime to see if there is still a correlation.

[http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who- sh...](http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you- believe/)

<comment><USER24> Levitt and Dubner wrote down a number of interesting theories about lots of things, but I think they overthought this one.

The crime rate rose and dropped pretty neatly along with the proportion of young men in society. The median age is much higher now than it was 30 years ago. Crime, especially violent crime, is a young man's game.

Perhaps they are right and roe vs wade was one of the factors in raising the median age, but it seems that people today want smaller families, and have more control over this than a generation ago. You can't assume that if a woman has an abortion, a miscarriage and two kids over her lifetime, she would have had four children if it hadn't been for the abortion and the miscarriage.

<comment><USER25> While I've been generally convined Freakonomics is to be considered suspect on this, the argument you present in the last paragraph doesn't counter it: the Freakonomics point was that absent abortion, people were forced into having children earlier when they were not ready to support them fiscally or emotively due to their situation, whereas with control of their fertility they can choose when they are best prepared and most desired them.

<comment><USER24> My point was that a society dominated by young men is going to have more crime than a society with a median near middle age - that smaller families made us calmer. They didn't convince me that younger parents are worse than older ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe there is an interesting story to be written concerning another heavy metal - mercury and its use in dental amalgam.

Aside from whether it's prudent - irrespective of current evidence - <USER2> permanently store a compound containing 50% of a neurotoxin an inch or two from your brain, the release of almost 3,000 kilograms (6,613 lbs.) of mercury (data for 2005 alone) into the atmosphere from crematoria is cause for worry. Wikipedia notes that 'Good empirical data on the magnitude of mercury emissions from crematoria, however, are lacking'. No one is interested I guess.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is relevant. Always use cold water from your pipes to cook with and drink especially if you live in an older home. Also let the water run for a minute to flush out the pipes if it hasn't been used in a while.

The EPA states:

>Flush your pipes before drinking, and only use cold water for consumption. The more time water has been sitting in your home's pipes, the more lead it may contain. Anytime the water in a particular faucet has not been used for six hours or longer, "flush" your cold-water pipes by running the water until it becomes as cold as it will get. This could take as little as five to thirty seconds if there has been recent heavy water use such as showering or toilet flushing. Otherwise, it could take two minutes or longer. Your water utility will inform you if longer flushing times are needed to respond to local conditions.

>Use only water from the cold-water tap for drinking, cooking, and especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead. The two actions recommended above are very important to the health of your family. They will probably be effective in reducing lead levels because most of the lead in household water usually comes from the plumbing in your house, not from the local water supply.

[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8615/is-there- an...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8615/is-there-any-reason- to-use-cold-water-over-hot-water-for-boiling)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER28> It's significant that there is this advice, and it supports the point of the article, but this is really insufficient. If you can't be sure of the water quality at the tap (as parent notes, different from the quality at the plant where the utility measures contaminant levels), then it's best to use a filter that removes metals (as well as biological contaminants).

Also people should be aware: the government somehow allows pipes and fittings to be sold as "lead free" when in reality they contain up to a few percent of lead.

<comment><USER29> Be careful with filters-the main issue with lead is that it leaches from pipes and/or solder. Most of the cases I am aware of in modern (post 1970s) US homes were related to whole house reverse osmosis systems, because the ion-free water had so much more capacity for free metal ions. If you have hard water, it is almost impossible to persuade lead out of the pipe into solution. If you do want to use a filter, make sure you have an at the tap point filter as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The European Union (EU) banned lead from petrol in 2000. [1]

Airplanes are still allowed to used leaded petrol!! [1]

And the immigration movement to Europe increased the crime. [2]

[1] [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorenbenzin#Verbleites_Benzin](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorenbenzin#Verbleites_Benzin)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Europe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Europe)

</comment><comment><USER31> Scott Alexander had a pretty good blog post on other sorts of potential biological correlates with crime recently.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/18/proposed-biological- exp...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/18/proposed-biological-explanations- for-historical-trends-in-crime/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I ate lead paint chips I turned out fine... None of those felony charges stuck.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckeye_CableSystem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckeye_CableSystem)

I don't doubt that the reduction of lead in our environment has reduced the amount of mental illness. But I also think changes to truancy laws in the US in the 70s helped, advancements in psychotherapies, and drugs for the treatment of mental illness helped. Identification of treatments for ADD and ADHD helped.

Changes in the economy helped, we had more women in the workforce which meant we had more ability for families to survive father's unemployment.

Wider adoption of TV meant people became more aware of crime, and criminals were easier to catch.

So yes, lead removal was probably a contributor, but I think it was bigger than that.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if the result could be less about the lead itself having a direct effect on behaviour, and the action of the removal of lead being identified as "something obvious and beneficial which would be good to do" as being coincident with a greater enlightenment amongst those making the rules?

I.e. to what extent "we should remove lead from petrol as that is obviously bad" is actually a handy indicator of more considered minds running the shop, those minds also being more predisposed to the kind of other "obviously good" decisions which could also have brought about an eventual reduction in crime.

</comment><comment><USER34> Sort of related, neat history of another toxic gasoline additive: tetra-ethyl lead

[http://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned- earth/](http://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/)

<comment><USER35> I see you didn't click through and read the article.

<comment><USER36> Speaking of toxic, do you think you could be less so? I realize you're a throwaway but you wouldn't need one if you weren't being abusive and rude.

<comment><USER34> Gracias.

There seem to be ever more folks ready to overreact with pitchforks and cudgels calling for the draw and quarter anyone over misinterpreting the color of a bikeshed.

It's too bad folks choose to disagree, point out something as an excuse to be uncivil and with the cowardice of anonymity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I grew up in the 90s and can affirm that violence was substantially higher than now. It was common to get into 'street fights' just for something to do. But, I'm also curious whether there were higher death rates for the potentially violent, which could have also rapidly reduced crime rates.

Of my friends in the 80s / 90s, I've had around 20 of them die over the course of 20 years. Of those who've died, I can say the great majority were in the 'violence prone' category. They generally seemed to have lower ability to gauge risks and sought out risky behavior, frequently.

<comment><USER37> Why all the down votes? HN is becoming a hostile wasteland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Previous HN discussion a year ago with 200 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006368)

</comment><comment><USER39> I've never seen a study correlating the rise and ubiquity of video games with the drop in crime.

Before video games, bored young males ran around the neighborhood making mayhem. Today they sit in front of an xbox. I personally think the people who would be out committing violent crimes are still in society they just have a way doing it virtually.

<comment><USER40> I can't find a link at the moment, but I've seen articles where parents in bad neighborhoods talk about buying their sons video game consoles specifically to keep them sitting at home, rather than out on the dangerous streets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> An enlightening article, it reminded me of an article from the Guardian on ammonia synthesis and its environmental and social impact:

[http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/03/fritz- haber-f...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/03/fritz-haber- fertiliser-ammonia-centenary)

</comment><comment><USER42> Is there anything new in this article? There was another piece that I think I remember reading on HN about a year ago on this same topic.

[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime- li...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link- gasoline)

</comment><comment><USER43> Might be able to confirm this by testing kids for lead poisoning in countries where leaded gas is still legal.

There are children that lived in the country and later move to the city. How early their exposure began would be the variable being tested.

You could treat all cases of lead poisoning you find and still be able to measure the impact of leaded gas on development.

Of course, I think the jury has been in on lead gas and paint for decades. But I guess for a poor country, an economic case must be made.

<comment><USER44> Well, it's talking about chronic lead poisoning, not acute lead poisoning. Different things. It's interesting to consider that chronic lead poisoning could have escaped notice for a long time because the symptoms seemed like random variance to you or me when they were actually a trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone think there could also be a link between lead in fuel and Alzheimer's? If there was, at what point would we start seeing Alzheimer's cause decline?

</comment><comment><USER46> Are there countries, or locations in the USA that could be used as a control for this hypothesis? Places that didn't get rid of lead.

<comment><USER47> The control is Australia, which got rid of it about a decade later than the US.

<comment><USER48> Are there places that still use it?

<comment><USER47> Wikipedia says it is still available in "Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, Myanmar, North Korea, and possibly Afghanistan."

<comment><USER49> also Iran

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The incredible thing is that they still allow private aviators to use leaded gas, primarily because it would cost the owners of obsolete aircraft a few thousands dollars to either refit their engines, or get supplemental type certificates for unleaded gas. These joyriding dipshits fly all over the place spraying lead over everybody.

<comment><USER50> Even more incredible is that our parents and grandparents willingly drove cars that spewed out lead into the atmosphere.

 _They knew lead was a poison._

Even the Romans knew lead was a poison so it wasn't like asbestos where suddenly a realisation was made.

Yet everyone pretended it did not matter. Everyone did what everyone else did. Nobody thought to avoid driving past schools because they weren't sure about the ethics of covering kids in a cloud of lead (with NO2, CO, O3, PAH's and maybe some invisible micro particles thrown into the mix).

<comment><USER51> Many people still drive around cars that spew toxins into the atmosphere.

Air pollution from cars kills 50,000 a year in the UK [0]. Apparently closer to 200,000 a year in the US.

But it's even worse than that. 1.24 million each year are killed directly by motorists.[1] There are more young people killed directly by motorists than malaria or aids.

And yet many people are happy to continue driving around.

It's not like this is unavoidable. Electric cars are here, we could move the pollution out of cities. We could design our cities to be safer for walking and cycling. We could invest in public transport and pass on the cost of some of the externalities of cars to motorists.

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/22/air- pollu...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/22/air-pollution- deaths) [1] [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs358/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs358/en/)

<comment><USER52> I don't know how it is where you live, but I pay about 60% tax on gas. This is quite common in Europe. How much more of the externalities do you want to burden drivers with?

<comment><USER53> Enough to make them drive less!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> funny, i was just speaking with someone this weekend who was convinced about correlation to crime in NYC vs legalized abortion. (Donohue-Levitt hypothesis) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_ef...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect)

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm a target shooter, I wonder how the lead contained in the bullets and that is burned at firing time is affecting me :s

<comment><USER56> This was a concern for the armed forces who have conducted studies on lead- alternatives for ammunition. (Aplogies if I get my bullet terminology wrong - I have little idea about this stuff. Here I'm talking about the lead slug projectile part of the round of ammunition).

[http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19116438](http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19116438)

I think that alternatives cause other problems by stripping the gun barrel and etc.

On a gentle tangent I sometimes wonder how many rounds of ammunition were fired during Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And how much brass and lead there is for local populations to recover and sell. And whether that's worth the risk of handling unfored ammunition or finding cluster bomblets or similar.

<comment><USER57> The brass would be more easily recovered. The lead and depleted uranium is not quite so simply recycled.

Recall that hollow-point ammunition is banned for use by national armies. A lot of their munitions are designed to tumble in soft tissue or to shatter on impact. Some rounds are intended to send a rivulet of liquified metal through armor.

Under such conditions, I am sure that a lot of the fired rounds ended up as dust, to either be inhaled immediately or to become a soil contaminant later. Turning every battle site into a Superfund-style cleanup is unlikely according to the local economics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> No. It's mostly due to the big increase in standards of living over the past 40 years. But the BBC don't want to admit that things have actually improved quite a lot because it conflicts with the narrative they try to push day after day so it must be...petrol.

</comment><comment><USER59> A bit like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_controversy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_controversy)

</comment><comment><USER60> Many variables share this exact graph shape over the 1960-2000 period, without having anything to do with crime. It's not a particularly characteristic shape. This seems to be a textbook example of "correlation does not imply causation".

If there was causation (due to the neurological effects of long-term lead exposure during childhood years), then you would observe _delayed_ correlation (at a 20 year scale), not simultaneous correlation.

<comment><USER61> Correlation does not imply causation, however correlation can be used to support a theory of causation. The article does address this point:

       "There is a substantial causal relationship," she says.
       "I can see it in the state-to-state variations. States
       that experienced particularly early or particularly sharp
       declines in lead experienced particularly early or
       particularly sharp declines in violent crime 20 years later."

Without reading the paper, I will not venture any opinion on the hypothesis/research/etc itself. I do however thing it may take more than 5 words to completely dismiss the theory.

<comment><USER25> The causative mechanism is the body of research done on the brains of criminals. We usually find reduced function or actual damage in the frontal cortex, and other regions associated with empathy and emotional processing.

The other group of people we find this in is those suffering from childhood lead exposure, and we know that the regions of the brain most affected are those which occur from lead exposure.

While not going so far as to imply everyone with this pattern becomes a criminal, it certainly increases the statistical likelihood that they are, and studies on people with extreme issues - i.e. psychopaths - tend to show that's its a pattern of life experiences which determine whether you learn to function in society, or go another path. Notable is the neuroscientist who was studying psychopaths and discovered he has the same sort of brain structure as one - but, is a scientist, married and has children.

Since we can't really control an individuals life experiences through policy, but they roughly sort out statistically based on socioeconomic status, it seems pretty clear that exposure to brain development inhibiting neurotoxins is going to give you a higher then expected fraction of criminally-inclined young adults.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This always amuses me. Crime in the US was rising... until the mid-90s when the twin powers of the ridiculously high incarceration rate j-curved and the internet bringing all sorts of indoor distractions happened.

I mean, who would have thought that teenage delinquency would be reduced by distributing computer games, giving them something to do rather than wander the streets being bored?

And if lead really is responsible for 90% of the crime, as stated in the article by the chief propagandist, then before leaded fuel was around, crime should have been negligible - and it clearly wasn't.

Edit: perhaps the lead-in-your-fuel people should debate against the concealed-carry people, since both of them claim absolute ownership of the decline in US crime from the mid-90s onwards.

<comment><USER63> Problem with the CC argument is that this trend has been witnessed in other countries that have no such gun laws. And if the US was a special case, how would it explain all the cities that saw a drop in crime with restrictive gun laws (Several of which were deemed unconstitutional a decade after the crime drop began?)

As for youth distractions: The internet did not have significant saturation until the 00s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_United_States) seems to indicate that in 2000, only 2.5% of Internet users had broadband.

Video games exploded in popularity in the 1980s while crime was still rising - not to mention this was a time when arcades were far more prolific, so you could make the argument that entertainment was more accessible to youths with families that couldn't afford video game systems in 1980 than 1990 onward.

<comment><USER62> Going out to an arcade puts you out and about. And when the money runs out, the arcade has no further interest for you. There's no money to run out with a video game at home. While there were some homes with consoles and computers in the 80s, home computers didn't really take off for the general public until the 90s, and you see also that it was the 90s when the game industry at home really took off. You don't need the internet to play video games.

As for CC, it should be clear I'm not fond of their arguments :)

<comment><USER63> I want to believe but...

Looking at crime stats by age and gender of arrest [1] You see an across-the- board decline for men and women. You're telling me a 60 year old woman was too busy playing Doom on a 486 to commit a violent crime?

[1] [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/additional-ucr- publicat...](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/additional-ucr- publications/age_race_arrest93-01.pdf)

<comment><USER62> So, keeping in context of my original comment, do you have statistics for how many 60-year-old women are engaged in teenage delinquency?

Keep in mind that the period you're talking about in the US (1993+) is around the start of hysterical anti-crime politicking, with a soaring incarceration rate, and heavily increased funding for policing.

Or for something more relevant to 60-year-old women in the 90s, how about it being more socially acceptable to leave an abusive husband? Or better social support services than previously?

There's a lot of different things that affect crime - I'm not saying in the slightest that any one thing is responsible for crime or lack thereof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Correlation is not causation. Of course, there is a correlation between pollution and "depression" (as in "depressive regions") or "desperation", but it is not a direct cause of seemed decline in crime.

My bet is that the decline (or at least shift to less dramatic "technological/financial" crimes) is a cultural phenomena, influenced heavily by cheap and easy credit and media (especially so-called "social media"). It is just not cool or fashionable to be a dumb looter or a "primitive" gangster anymore.

Nowadays one has to be "a clever guy" \- a cheater instead of a criminal, an internet tycoon, overcharging credit cards of idiots who had ordered a colon cleanser form a stupid website, instead of simple armed robber of a drugstore on the corner.

This works even for Russia, which, putting aside some African extremes, is the most criminalized society in the world. Even for them it is more fashionable to run a porn studio to sell pictures in the net than robbing trucks or brutally killing each other for a used BMW car.

Nowadays one has to be "clever" to steal from the government, to gamble the corrupted [banking] system , cheat on idiots in internet, and even with their own credits and mortgages.

The shift from stupid brutality to technological/financial/social "cleverness" (as they think of it) is what others call "decline in crime".)

</comment><comment><USER65> Removing lead also lead to greater usage of facebook! Look at the stats!

Lead Usage:

       |\
       | \
       |  \
       -----

Facebook usage:

       |  /
       | /
       |/
       -----

EDIT: While my post is satirical, and slightly obnoxious, it presents about as much evidence and citation as the article. The graph he presents (where did that come from?) doesn't even show proper correlation, it just kinda-sort-of fits.

<comment><USER66> First off, this is a news article - not a peer-reviewed study. You can't reasonably expect complete detail to be included - have a look at the linked papers.

Second, there's substantially more detail in here than you have stated. For example, the correlation between the decrease in violent crime and the use of lead is reproduced in areas with differing crime policy, and shows a similar kind of decline in areas which stopped using lead earlier or later than others.

Third, "it just kinda-sort-of fits" is all you will ever get in anything outside of pure mathematics. The real world is pretty noisy, and exact correlation is never going to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word _no_."

<comment><USER68> Careful, they're out in droves downvoting anyone that disagrees with the premise of this story.

<comment><USER62> We don't need Betteridge's Law quoted every single time there's a question mark in the article title.

<comment><USER68> We also don't need environmentalist drivel that has no hope of being scientifically proven on the front page of HN, along with a vocal minority waiting to pounce on anyone that questions the validity of such nonsense. Yet, somehow it winds up there.

<comment><USER69> I'm sure you have at least as much research and data backing your hypothesis as this article does. Please do link it so we can take a look for ourselves.

I'm sure you don't just have an unreasoning, politically-motivated, knee-jerk hatred of anything that strikes you as "environmentalist." That would be silly, after all.

<comment><USER68> That's just it: this article presents no data showing a definitive link between the two. Show me some evidence of that, and I'll be happy to agree with it. I agree with _facts_ ; not politically motivated opinions. It shows that one thing happened, and another thing happened. The tie (or, the much hated term "correlation") between the two is a stretch at best.

<comment><USER21> See comments elsewhere about the effects observed when lead was removed from gasoline in different geographical areas at different times. The correlation is strong enough to be suggestive of a causal link -- so strong, in fact, that the burden of proof lies on those (e.g., yourself) who claim that there is no causal link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> That graph seems silly, why use two different time scales?

<comment><USER71> They're showing it roughly twenty years later. The argument being, in effect, that lead exposure when young lead to later-life criminal behaviour.

<comment><USER70> Oops, now I feel silly :) Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Correlation does not imply causation. While lead exposure may have _something_ to do with it, an issue like the crime rate is driven by a number of complex factors.

Perfect example of why this type of analysis is ridiculous:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_indicator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_indicator)

<comment><USER72> You might enjoy this article: "Correlation does not imply causation: How the Internet fell in love with a stats-class cliché"

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/10/correlation_does_not_imply_causation_how_the_internet_fell_in_love_with_a_stats_class_clich_.single.html)

<comment><USER73> That comment was such an epic burn, it contributed to global warming!

... Which is why, I suspect, the commenter you replied to won't believe it either. _Sigh._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Some say it was a decline in environmental lead, as the linked article does. Some say it was the advent of mandatory sentencing and three-strikes laws. Some say it was the easy availability of birth control and abortion, meaning fewer unwanted children were born.

But, social psychologists to the contrary, we will never know, because this kind of study can never ascend to the level of science. All we can be sure of is a rise in ... not crime, but contentless articles whose titles end in a question mark.

<comment><USER61> Antipositivism is a thing, like it or not. I've aways loved the quote from Heisenberg:

        > The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that
        > which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in
        > silence. But can any one conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing
        > that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we
        > omitted all that is unclear we would probably be left with completely
        > uninteresting and trivial tautologies.

Rejecting the entirety of a science because it deals in confidence values rather than "facts" is foolish; it might be better to judge works based on their quality, rather than some ranking that deems X to be a science and Y to be something other. I particularly love that you used the word "ascend"; I shan't be the first to compare positivism to scientism

<comment><USER75> "science", to some, implies a discipline subject to the scientific method - none of this discussion is. Replace "science" with "discipline" in your post and it will make sense.

<comment><USER61> Nope. Still not seeing how "this kind of study can never ascend to the level of discipline (née science)" is something that can be stated without any supporting argument.

<comment><USER74> > Still not seeing how "this kind of study can never ascend to the level of > discipline (née science)" is something that can be stated without any > supporting argument.

If you understood the basics of science, you would know what's missing from an opinion article that picks a quantity at random and discovers a correlation with something else, but without a testable theory about how they might have something to do with each other.

Science requires something, that something can be expressed in s single word, and once that word is uttered, all who hear it will realize why this kind of article cannot represent science. And I am astonished by how few people know this requirement of scientific practice.

Science isn't the answer to the world's problems, but for certain problems, it has no meaningful substitute.

<comment><USER76> As a thought experiment, just imagine Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Richard Feynman gathering their teams together in a room for a major announcement.

All three scientists have reached a unanimous conclusion. Each time they try to measure some aspect of an atom, their results are inconsistent! They declare to to their teams that this cannot be real science. After all, we need reliable measurements in order to do science. So let's not waste our time any longer. Go home, get some rest, and come back tomorrow. And please take a moment to review the equations governing the path of flying baseballs. We think this merits a second look.

Fortunately history tells a different story.

By the way, I'd highly recommend reading the outstanding book "Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum" by Leonard Susskind of Stanford. If you've seen a matrix before, then you're good to go (with some effort). He walks you through the rest.

As a fair warning, try to mentally prepare yourself. Your seemingly rational & logical viewpoints, while admirable, will be shattered one by one. And you'll see that even our precious boolean logic is merely an illusion.

EDIT: Oops. Wrong level. This reply was geared to downandout in above thread. Apologies.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bang With Friends Is Raising $1 Million - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/bang-with-friends-is-raising--1-million-to-help-people-find-hook-up-buddies-2013-4?op=1 <comment><USER2> These VCs clearly invest in entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world.</comment>


Google Creating Twitter Clone for Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_creating_twitter_clone_for_gmail.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 <comment><USER2> Thanks for submitting this post! =)

Lucky me, I get to go to the Googleplex tomorrow to get the deets. They wrote to us that they're releasing "innovations in two of our most popular products."</comment>


Your Path to a $16B exit? Build a J2ME App - <AUTHOR> http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-app <comment><USER3> The key take away from this article is not to build your app in J2ME but to recognize how big the world is outside of America. American focused startups face lots of competition in a relatively small market.

<comment><USER4> The US is a pretty big market. 320,000,000 people, most with at least some disposable income. There are also plenty of advertisers that want to market their products to Americans, which means you can choose between ad-sponsored or for-pay business models.

<comment><USER5> There are also plenty of companies targeting the US market. The rest of the world? Not so much.

To give you an example: there is no reddit equivalent in French. The closest things we have are a few French-speaking subreddits that have very few subscribers since reddit scares people who don't speak English before they can reach the French-speaking subreddits. We also have a few very poor quality reddit rip-offs with no users.

Granted, the French-speaking world is not as big as the US market. But 100 million people is already a decent target, don't you think?

<comment><USER6> Funny story about that. We (reddit) had a long debate about what the default UI and content should be back when we internationalized (2008 I think?). Should we use the Accept-Language header to select both the UI and the content, or just the UI? We started by making the assumption that if your preferred language was French, for example, you'd want French content.

We got a ton of feedback from French speakers that they preferred the English content, so we ended up settling on selecting a UI based on the A-L header but giving the default English content (unless you specifically set it otherwise).

<comment><USER5> That's interesting. I think your decision makes sense, since your french users all speak English and you have much more content in English. In fact it personally irks me when I see reddit's UI in French (for example when I'm not logged in) because I'd rather have the whole site in English than parts of it in French.

In any case I think that if you really wanted to target the French-speaking population, it would be best to have a separate site or at least a clearly separated part of the site.

<comment><USER6> There is a separate part of the site for French speakers:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/fr](http://www.reddit.com/r/fr)

There's one for every supported language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The message of the article is good but it's not seeing the forest from the trees.

Having just read the Forbes artcile on the company and Jan in particular, some interesting things stood out:

1) Jan had money to start and was able to take time to build a user base and find the real value in the App and didn't need to go around "raising money". The SMS component of the app wasn't the initial focus. The company didn't need VC funding at any point. He was able to focus on product development and revenues started to come in to cover costs.

2) Jan is a technical guy. He did the initial backend but hired out the iPhone development. Either way he was involved. He developed the initial app for the first 9 months or so before bringing on Ackon as a cofounder.

3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and billions of users.

The $16 billion exit is largely due to number 3. It's rare for a lot of businesses to have that kind of scale.

Reading the Forbes article, my takeaway is that there is no way anyone can "build a path to a xx billion exit". What one can do is find a business model that can actually scale and generate real revenue. Maybe not to billion users or hundreds of millions in revenue but enough to take it outside of the "lifestyle" business mode. Also, having money of your own and technical skills to execute doesn't hurt one bit.

I think one lesson that I would take away for the younger crowd is - slow down a bit. Go work for a big corp or even a startup that pays well. Save every penny. Instead of spending that $100 on the get together every other night save it. Build your skills. At some point, go for it. You'll have money to live off, money to test your business model and a fallback if it doesn't work (get another job).

EDIT: Another big reason for the big exit is incredible leverage by Jan. He's got the most equity. He doesn't need Facebook. He is already a millionaire and the App can only get better. This is deal making at its finest. I can only imagine how much back and forth happened, each time with a bigger number from Facebook.

<comment><USER8> > 3) There is real value in the app. No one needs to question this. There's no > big pitch deck's, presentations, etc.The app was allowed to grow organically > due to its network affect. The business can scale into the millions and > billions of users.

Can you explain this one? Something that seems to have been lost in all the hype is how yet another messaging app is somehow novel, innovative, or exciting. Is this somehow a major technological leap from other instant messengers (which we've had for nearly 2 decades now).

<comment><USER9> WhatsApp is different to most messaging apps in that it runs on dumb phones (featurephones), not just smartphones. It's different to built-in text messaging in that it uses data rather than SMS. Dumb phones are a lot cheaper than smartphones, and for most people, data is cheaper than SMS.

There are an awful lot of people in the world who can't afford a smartphone or a serious SMS habit. Those people use WhatsApp.

There is a parallel here to BlackBerry Messenger. In the UK at least, the two groups that use (or used, a couple of years ago) BlackBerries are businesspeople, who use it because it integrates with their corporate IT whatnot, and schoolchildren, who use it because BBM is free, unlike SMS. However, BBM is tied to a shonky and still not that cheap hardware platform that uses special snowflake network services that are not available everywhere, whereas WhatsApp is portable.

<comment><USER8> That sounds rather trivial to me. Facebook has a huge userbase and I'm sure that if they made FB Messenger run on J2ME as well, it would have massive uptake. Seems like Zuck just wanted to spread the love around a bit and generate some news (or has some serious lack of confidence in the competence of his own developers).

<comment><USER10> A difference is you don't have to create a WhatsApp account, it just uses your phone number. It is plug and play.

<comment><USER8> Trivial to implement.

<comment><USER11> Yes, everything about WhatsApp is so trivial that Facebook with their billions and billionaires and 1000's of high-quality engineers decided to spend 18 _B_ illion dollars on it. But of course they're all dumbasses because you say it's all 'trivial', right?

<comment><USER8> I think it's pretty clear that Facebook didn't buy WhatsApp for the technology itself but rather the large market penetration/installed user base. Whether that was stupid or not is up for debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The j2me is just a piece of "it just works".

1) Covers a huge amount of devices. Yep, because j2me, but also because what could be the top-1 competitor, Apple iMessage, can't inter-operate between Apple and Android devices (very stupid tactic, it will get marginalized).

2) Does not require an account, so it is not bound to Facebook, Twitter, ... You may ask, what's the problem with having an account? That you capture in your use base non-social people. Hey mom, put this in your phone and we'll exchange messages for free.

3) Because it just works and is not bound to a specific social network / company, people see it as SMS that is both free (hugely important because of stupidly overpriced SMS are, and especially, were). And... an improved version of SMS because MMS are totally a fail: limited, costly, lame.

4) Add to this business smartness behind that: old users don't pay for premium accounts, no ADV, resist to the temptation of fixing what is irrelevant for the mass of people (security) if this impacts in any way the product aspect (no account, trivial recovery of the account if you change phone).

5) Add to this product/technology smartness: don't archive messages server side so the service runs with 1/100 of resources. No huge scaling issues.

So this is just a very very very well executed product, that was able to provide what users wanted, and this is why they did a 16B deal, not for the j2me app, every successful business is a mix of a number of critical things.

The ground that made this possible was the incredible situation where on the internet era you had to pay 10 cents to exchange 160 chars between two phones.

<comment><USER13> I agree, this is the real reason WhatsApp took off so quickly. Especially that it automatically uses your phone number as account-id and then goes through your address book to automatically populate your WhatsApp contact list.

No other Instant Messenger did that. It was always: Create account, exchange account-ids, add to contact list. This adds huge amounts of friction for a new service, and WhatsApp sidestepped this completely.

<comment><USER14> Fairly sure Viber did the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A comment [1] I made 829 days ago on Whatsapp

 _Its biggest plus is that it is cross platform. They have apps for Blackberry, Android, iOS and Symbian. So you can talk with almost anybody out there. At least in my home country, most people have Blackberry /Symbian. Imagine having a group conversation with people on different platforms and in different countries._

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231053)

<comment><USER16> Well they don't have an app for Jolla and are now sending takedown notices for the existing apps that try to take on that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This. This is the answer I have always looked for.

> "But, but, how is WhatsApp any different than iMessage / Facebook Messenger > / Hangouts?"

I have made this exclamation multiple times, and my friends in India and Singapore and other parts of Asia just turned up their palms with a "I dunno, everyone uses it and told me to get it."

I refused to use it since I like to use as few messaging platforms as possible (just Google Hangouts right now since it has most of my contacts, voice and video) despite my friends pestering me.

J2ME is the most reasonable explanation. I see why it made Whatsapp itself popular. But still? Almost everyone I know who's using it actually uses it on an Android/iOS smart device. Who is this "everyone" of theirs using it on feature phones? I doubt their friends circle intersects that heavily with rural villagers living on $10/day.

And also, is this really a viable long-term play for Facebook? How does this contribute towards the rest of their product plays?

<comment><USER18> In Holland, WhatsApp dominates, and it's not a $10/day country.

It dominates because SMS rates were too expensive here. Even when Mom & Dad would buy you an iPhone, kids were choosing Blackberries (!) as their primary phone because of internet messaging.

WhatsApp was seen as something worked with non BB devices (iPhones, Androids). It pretty much murdered the cell phone providers who were giving away cheap data rates and betting on income from increased SMS usages. Whoops.

When iMessage and Hangouts came along it was really too late. The process flow for most users who want to send a text is: go to WhatsApp first, if the user isn't there or doesn't respond, send an SMS and be frustrated with them.

Anyone could have beat WhatsApp in NL, but didn't. If the telcos would have given out unlimited SMS messages, it probably wouldn't exist. If BlackBerry would have released iOS/Andriod versions, they probably would have been the standard in Holland. If Apple would have released iMessage earlier, instead of (presumably) not wanting to piss off the carriers, it would have stood a chance. ... certainly if they also released apps for other platforms.

<comment><USER19> Yes and I would also add that using the phone number / imei as account identifier helped them a lot to convince everybody and their mother to use the service. Personally I'm not a friend of WhatsApp, but the reason even older, far from tech-savvy people are using it is the ease of access - you don't need anyones username or email - just install the app and your existing contacts show up. I've seen people who couldn't remember their own email using the app within seconds on a feature phone. Try that with Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's not forget Symbian and Blackberry either. WhatsApp also runs on those.

I don't think starting a new Blackberry, Symbian or J2ME project today is really a good idea, though. It takes at least a few years for a company to make an exit, and by the time you do, those burning platforms will have flamed out.

<comment><USER21> It absolutely makes sense to work on a J2ME app today if you have a product aimed at developing nations. They won't be swimming in smartphones any time soon.

<comment><USER22> Low end Android phones are approaching feature phones in price.

<comment><USER23> They are already cheaper than feature phones! At least in India : [http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou](http://tinyurl.com/la5g2ou)

<comment><USER24> That link appears to show the cheapest Android phone at R 2699 and the cheapest feature phone at R 699. I'm not sure that fits your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm pretty ignorant about whatsapp, but I paged through their blog a couple hours ago, before reading this post ([https://blog.whatsapp.com/](https://blog.whatsapp.com/)).

And the fact that they had blog posts about Windows Mobile, Nokia, and Blackberry clients really stood out.

I think Google, Facebook et al probably prioritize those platforms last, if at all. So kudos to Whatsapp for their contrarian thinking.

Their blog also shows the achievements of 1M and 2M simultaneous connections on a box, which I remember seeing here before on HN. So these guys are also very talented and experienced engineers.

</comment><comment><USER26> Citation needed; I'd certainly love to know whether J2ME devices were a significant chunk of WhatsApp's actives, but there's zero data to back up the suggestion..

<comment><USER27> As of today: Smartphones outsold feature phones for this first time ever in India. [http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones- outse...](http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/samsung-smartphones-outsell- feature-phones/1/344332.html)

From my personal experiences, international countries that have smartphone adoption use Viber, and the feature phone countries use WhatsApp.

<comment><USER28> WhatsApp is also really strong here in Germany and other parts of Europe. More of my friends are on WhatsApp than Facebook (only very few more though).

<comment><USER29> These numbers are going to drop significantly now. Everyone I talk to is unhappy about the acquisition and will switch to something else like telegram.

<comment><USER30> I'd say more than 99.9% of WhatsApp users haven't heard of Telegram.

WhatsApp users are mostly not early adopters like you and your friends. They are ordinary people, because WhatsApp is is a simple communication tool targeted to everyone. And that's why they keep doubling their user base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Writing J2ME apps is no cakewalk.

It's a bizarre perversion of everything that makes software development bearable. I've created my share of horribly cobbled-together ad-hoc embedded software development toolchains, but these can't hold a candle to the abysmal monstrosity of a vendor-patched J2ME SDK.

</comment><comment><USER32> If anyone has used the J2ME version of WhatsApp, can they describe how similar it is to the smartphone versions?

For example:

• Do you get a notification as soon as messages are waiting, even if the J2ME app hasn't been run recently?

• Are photo/video messages available?

• Are the group messaging options the same?

<comment><USER33> Yes all of them work. Not just that they work surprisingly well. This is the best J2ME app that I have ever used on my phone.

<comment><USER34> Background notifications too?

I'm surprised - I wrote a Twitter client in 2009, and I couldn't find a way to make that work. I didn't think J2ME could do that at all, to be honest.

<comment><USER32> Maybe some form of this... ?

[http://www.javaworld.com/article/2071753/mobile-java/push- me...](http://www.javaworld.com/article/2071753/mobile-java/push-messages- that-automatically-launch-a-java-mobile-application.html)

<comment><USER35> Yep, that'd probably be it. You could listen out for SMS (on particular port), TCP and UDP connections if I remember correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The key success of Whatsapp is IMHO that it uses your phone's address book as contact list. There is no hurdle to use it what is very important for the average user. The multi platform support from beginning is second thing. J2ME as stated in the article is negligible. I can't understand why this article is on top of HN.

<comment><USER37> The phone number as an id is a very important component to their adoption indeed. So do you posit that WhatsApp's adoption rates being what they are (compared to say Viber which does the same thing) is purely due to first mover?

<comment><USER36> yes that's my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of the key reasons whatsApp was successful was the simplicity for the user to start communicating - No registration or username creation hence allowing users not to care about remembering passwords. Another important feature was that the user did not have to search for their friends in family if they were on whatsapp and then add them or send request etc. They used the phone number and users phone book. If you have a friend uses whatsapp it will automatically show you.

WhatsApps is easy, simple, quick and beautiful! so the path to $16B exit is not a J2ME app but an idea to get users start communicating with minimum amount of effort and time.

</comment><comment><USER39> Speaking of J2ME, $16B is more than twice what Oracle paid to acquire Sun in 2010.

</comment><comment><USER40> i dabbled with some J2ME development back in the day when palm pilots were cool, i even made a basic app for the original (early 2000-ish ) Motorola Razer.. it's not easy at all... i haven't looked for community resources for J2ME in years but back then i could find hardly any...

<comment><USER41> And out of curiosity I decided to search for J2ME on my laptop and Google had very little resources except official Oracle docs and a Java blog tutorial ... from 2005.

Good times.

[https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html](https://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/02/09/j2me1.html)

<comment><USER40> what kills me is the initial release had support for the IR blaster that most palm pilots had, the next "SDK" i found had it removed, and i later read it was because of something along the lines of "most devices don't support this so we removed it". the possibility of having a programmable IR remote control on the cheap 12 years ago was amazing to me. I think its kinda cool that newer android devices are starting to have IR blasters again..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> J2ME is interesting. Each phone supported Java Specification Requests (JSRs) and you could look up which JSRs a phone supported. For example, JSR82 is some Bluetooth supporty thing.

The real problem was that between different phones and JSRs, some implementations were really bad (I remember having a Nokia 6500slide with dodgy implementations) and varied between phone models. This was especially odd on Nokia phones considering that there were hundreds of phones running S40 or S60 and yet there were differences between those phones. (If I recall correctly, I had a 5200 and 5300 and there were differences between them). Highly unreliable.

But $16bn unreliable for testing? Not sure. Well done for getting bought though.

<comment><USER37> They aren't paying for a J2ME app and the requisite testing. They are paying for the results of the network effect made possible by it.

<comment><USER42> So, the $16bn is for a massive network of end-user testers? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Pretty sure facebook could give a darn about the app, they are buying access to the customers, to either get their data or show them ads. The app itself will probably be bloated or ruined within a couple years.

<comment><USER44> The point of the article is that WhatsApp built that customer base not having only shiny iPhone or Android app, but also having a presence on feature phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Framed another way, it goes to demonstrate the ridiculous price paid for the company. How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook? That they don't even view ads? And that the cost of switching is practically close to zero, with many other competitive products like WeChat?

It all seems to me that it's just to pad the "total number of active users on Facebook and associated platforms" column during earnings season.

<comment><USER46> > How are the "other 3 billion people" without smartphones going to contribute > to Facebook's bottom line? When they don't even have Facebook?

That makes them even more valuable. Why should Facebook buy users they already have?

<comment><USER45> As WhatsApp's user base grows, the probability of users who are also on Facebook increases and vice versa. Which means you are supporting my argument that this is just a play for "number of users", since it's very likely a good proportion would be counted twice instead of uniquely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Wrong.

Whatsapp didn't start with a J2ME app, they started with the smartphone versions first and later they provided J2ME versions when they had already significant market share.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point isn't actually which came first, it is that they are ubiquitous. The difference between WhatsApp and Viber is that WhatsApp put far more effort in being on every possible platform, and for something that relies on network effects, that effort was worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "And you know what, on $10 a day you probably don't have an iPhone or an Android handset."

Most people I know who earn ~10$ a day have smartphones with Android or WP.

</comment><comment><USER49> Just amazing example of cargo-cult phenomenon! The idea that using a particular technology (here J2ME) would allow one to get a $16B exit. Hilarious!

<comment><USER9> Imagine how much they would have sold for if they'd used node.js!

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Really? The viral growth & popularity of Whatsapp is due to early J2ME versions rather than the widespread adoption of Android. I think it's the latter but maybe I'm mistaken.

</comment><comment><USER51> Guess how long ICQ has a J2ME app...

</comment><comment><USER52> Your path to happiness? Don't be so obsessed with money. Build something that's fun, and meaningful, that makes you, and others happy.

</comment><comment><USER53> One more thing.. I doubt anyone 'updates' a J2ME app, they had to get most of the stuff working perfectly the first time itself.

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant Funny how Paul Graham came up with "schlep blindness"[1]: It's a subset of LessWrong's "ugh fields"[2].

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html)

[2]: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/)

</comment><comment><USER54> On the other hand, how does Facebook expect to monetize these millions of users who are living on $10/day?

The number being thrown around yesterday was that Facebook paid $40/user. Bearing in mind that a good percentage of these users will never provide any ROI, it is one more reason to look like it was way overvalued.

<comment><USER55> A significant portion if the deal value is defensive, IMO. AKA: so Google or VK don't buy them and strangle off a major tentacle of user adoption and stickiness of the FB ecosystem.

Facebook doesn't have to directly monetize THOSE $10/day users for this to be a smart decision. They can monetize some users directly, but not having a competitor own whatsapp is worth a lot to FB.

<comment><USER56> How long will it be until they have to purchase Whosdown for the same reason? How much time did they buy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Awesome, now Facebook can spy on everybody!

</comment><comment><USER58> I completely agree with most comments about catering for most operating systems but I also think that this acquisition was also due to Facebook "panicking" about losing ground (e.g. teens) and WhatsApp having a great number of monthly active users.

</comment><comment><USER59> For this article to really make sense, we will need to know how many J2ME users _really_ us Whatsapp. Yes, there are many users with featurephones. But how many of them use Internet on it? Can i afford an internet flatrate with 20$/month income? Nope.

</comment><comment><USER60> OK, how is Whatsapp different to using SMS to communicate with friends? What am I missing?

<comment><USER61> It's cheaper (free). All this value stems from carriers's infinite greediness in making us pay (international) SMS and MMS.

<comment><USER62> It's only free if you have a data plan, right? (or connected to WiFi). Historically in NZ, SMS has been basically free, unlimited but data has been 10mb, 100mb etc.

We're now trying to catch up on the world with our data plans on 3G and 4G networks, but even then it's about $50 NZD for 1gb data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is WhatsApp popular in the states? I'm Irish and living in Spain and in both countries it's incredibly popular. Most of my communication is channeled through it (I'd rather send a WhatsApp then call in most cases)

</comment><comment><USER64> [http://openwhatsapp.org](http://openwhatsapp.org) \- One example of how powerful the community around WhatsApp has been. Certainly loved it when I was on my Nokia N9.

<comment><USER65> :(

[http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca- takedowns-...](http://openwhatsapp.org/blog/2014/02/13/mass-dmca-takedowns- whatsapp/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Boy, that 2 in J2ME (and J2EE for that matter) just never goes away.

<comment><USER9> J2EE is officially JEE now:

[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index.html)

But yeah, i still call it J2EE too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> The article makes it sound a big deal to develop J2ME app. This app basically has just 2 screens, so I wouldn't think it would be any big deal to replicate those screens across platforms. Their challenge is more on the server-side, scaling for all the billions of users that they have - again, no big deal for plain text but mostly the pictures and the videos that are shared ...few big datacenters somewhere...again, nothing great. And hey, they dont even support voice calls. I dont buy that the app itself is a deal breaker. It's mostly their user base that they have been paid for.

</comment><comment><USER68> reminds me about Sun buying StorageTek for 4B - a company whose technology and market had very visible end. J2ME on smartphones - basically an oxymoron if one knows why and how J2ME was designed 15 years ago - doesn't seem to be happening (despite predictable post-WhatsApp influx of crazy VC money into such combination in the next half year) and cheap $10-$20 smartphones are the next billions of devices.

</comment><comment><USER69> Only problem is that low cost android is disrupting that, which I imagine is part of the reason for the decline in fb stock price seen yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER70> Also, at least in Brazil, Whatsapp became a tool for journalists on the streets. A very interesting use...

<comment><USER71> And in Sweden (some) police men were discovered using Whatsapp - <USER2> sensitive information about suspects[0]. They were discovered when they accidentally misstyped a phonenumber. Whoops.

The police in Sweden have some Blackberry encrypted services, but apparently these police men were not given one because they're expensive.

[0] Swedish source: [http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens- chatt-...](http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.547026/polisens-chatt-miss-- hemlig-spaninfo-pa-drift-i-whatsapp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> How many people still have the exit strategy "die old"? Are we a shrinking group?

</comment><comment><USER73> Facebook paid 16B Dollars for 400,000,000 active phone numbers and all the personal info bound to them. It's not the app itself it's the data, you know it well too.

<comment><USER74> That's not the case. WhatsApp barely holds any data. The user doesn't have to give over their personal details. It ties them to their mobile number & messages are stored only until they're pushed to the client. Once pushed they are then removed from WhatsApp servers.

<comment><USER75> I'm curious: how do you know that they're removed?

<comment><USER76> They pinky sweared, of course!

/s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> it looks so much like WeChat from Tencent(one of the largest IT company in China), and WeChat is totally free.

</comment><comment><USER78> I is only me who is thinking that everything that worth $16B is happened on the server side and J2ME is just a crap?)

</comment><comment><USER79> can someone explain how a free app ends up generating $40 per user?

more importantly, if facebook keeps buying large MAU at costs exceeding their revenues (not profit), at what point will those purchases start generating revenues (if at all)?

at what point will they no longer have money to buy MAU or even generate revenue on those users they purchased and own?

Are we in a new economy now just like 1999?

</comment><comment><USER80> I have to say this is the wrong conclusion. J2ME and the stuff that runs it runs on is in the past.

Its simply a waste of time. So Im not sure why the OP focused on this. Let's not make up reasons this guy got bought out beyond a few dinners with Zuck and a whole lotta luck.

</comment><comment><USER81> You forgot the marketing and promotion. (BTW I'm a techie trying to be a humanie :)

</comment><comment><USER82> Did anyone else chuckle at the title including "Path"?</comment>


Bored People Quit (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://randsinrepose.com/archives/bored-people-quit/ <comment><USER2> Not sure if I am one the of "bored" ones yet. We have an interesting project at hand with Hadoop but my work just laid off the entire team around me that I was leading. It sure killed any belief I had in the company. I seem to be bored due to not believing in the company.

Great read though! I've been thinking lately how everyone has a bank of energy (morale, drive, enthusiasm, etc) for each job they take. Things like layoffs can use up big chunks of that energy each employee has for the company.</comment>


Pig War - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War_(1859) <comment><USER2> _A probably apocryphal story claims Cutlar said to Griffin, "It was eating my potatoes." Griffin replied, "It is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig."_</comment>


Show HN: Slacker Snooze – a personalized HN - <AUTHOR> https://treylawrence.github.io/slackersnooze/ <comment><USER2> Neat!

It's definitely showing me some cool articles I hadn't noticed before.

I wish I could upvote and watch it re-order, instead of having to click and then come back to a completely changed list.

What's a "fellow RC'er"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question, I'm currently doing a "retreat" at the recurse center: [https://www.recurse.com/](https://www.recurse.com/)

Good idea on the upvoting. I haven't added that as a signal for interest in an article. Right now it just redirects to the HN url upvoting that article.</comment></comment>